15

Saturday morning you take some time and cash to run out and grab some security cameras—both normal and infrared—and a monitor for them. You also pick up a socket set and some wrenches so you don't have to whip out a wand to fix Crystal's car.

Retreating to your apartment (because your lair doesn't have electricity), you set up the cameras to both focus on the same area and start practicing your Disillusionment Charm. It's more difficult that you'd think, with the majority of your early casts rendering you just barely translucent. While being a slime monster-looking motherfucker is cool, it doesn't help hide you very much.

Almost an hour later you manage to get the full chameleon-like effect going which masks your face from the regular camera, although a distortion is visible if you move slower than a bare crawl. Switching the monitor to the infrared camera has you show up, but as a human-shaped featureless blob which is not quite what you were hoping for.

You take a break to start setting up brewing stations and ingredient racks at your lair when your phone dings with a message. It's from Susan, and opening it shows a picture of the girls getting pedicures. Sarah is absent, but filling in her space are a shorter girl in a cap and sunglasses and over by Soon-Yi is Crystal, waving at the camera.

A second message comes in from Crystal, just text, telling you that 'S Klub' plus her and Amy are going to a girls-only party at Sarah's sorority that evening. While you're reading that more pictures start rolling in from each of the girls as they move off to get manicures and such.

The girls call themselves 'S Klub'? What the fuuuuck.

Anyhow, while the pictures of the girls are nice you start noticing things in the background of all of the shots they send you. Apparently when away from her sister for more than a few minutes Amy isn't just Vickysexual, because even with the sunglasses it's obvious she's staring hard at Savannah, who has blonde curls and a rack that outdoes Victoria's. You can't fault her opinion—Savannah is attractive—but her panting lust is amusing, the girl has no chill.

Along with the pictures there's texts asking what you're up to,

[X][Pictures] Send back a nice posed shot of making yourself lunch

You can't exactly mention that you're working on setting up potions stations your lair and it is lunchtime, so you hop back to your apartment and start making yourself something to eat while texting back and forth with the group.

You roll up your sleeves, manage to conjure yourself an apron, and ensure that there's steam wafting from your skillet as you smile up at your phone. The picture you took looks decent, so you send it off into the group chat.

There's no response for long enough you worry that you accidentally had your dick hanging out or something before you're barraged with messages.

S: U COOK 2?

A: That looks good, what is it?

C: Uh, will there be leftovers tomorrow? ;)

S: Holy shit is that some grits!

K: Very nice, Mr. Magic Pans

S: LOL

S: lose the shirt!

S: Oh shit, look at those eyes….

Knowing so many girls with S names makes dealing with them hard. You get badgered into taking pictures of your food after plating it, more of you sitting in your chair…

By the time they're all done with their mani-pedis you've taken two dozen pictures, your hair is even more tousled, and you have private messages from each of the girls where they've sent you pictures of themselves in swimwear or tight clothes 'to be fair'. There are also demands for you to either cook for them on their little illegal hotplates or to host them over in your apartment for dinner one day. Your eyes flick around your very unfurnished apartment and the magical bookshelves and you manage to deflect any possibility of that happening this weekend. You also immediately move your library to your lair and throw additional furniture around so it doesn't look like minimalist paradise. Unfortunately now it kinda looks like an antique furniture store threw up all over the place but your options from the trunk are pretty limited. You do manage to find a bed frame and freshly-charmed mattress that doesn't overwhelm the space you've set aside for your bed.

You'd largely been ignoring your apartment other than as a place to shower and cook so using the threat of people at your place was a good impetus to actually make it look lived in.

You manage to arrange six normal potions brewing stations in the room you had set aside, as well as one larger station that will allow bulk brewing for the potions that are amenable to it. You manage to transfigure some of the scrap you keep around outside into fume hoods and tie that in to what existing ductwork that remains. Enchanted fans create enough suction that your test brew of Alihotsy Draught is successful. You have enough for a half-dozen bottles that you throw unbreakable charms on. They'll be useful as gas grenades with the charm dispelled.

After your successes with setting up a potions room you return to research on evading thermal cameras. It's not until you stop thinking 'camera' and starting thinking 'hunting' that you get somewhere—thermal cameras are a recent invention, but creatures that sense heat are not unheard of. A book of hunting charms gives you a spell that was used in hunting blinds to make it appear that your body temperature was that of the surrounding area. After trying it out there's a lag time when passing from one area of temperature to another, like outside to inside, but it seems to work fairly well otherwise.

A single spell that encompasses both of the charms would be helpful, but you don't really know how to hack complicated spells together like that, nor do you know enough Arithmancy to work on a new spell that would do both tasks. For now, however, it will do.

Once dusk starts to fall you suit up and pull out a broom. After disillusioning yourself you apparate to the southernmost stash house you know of and fly towards the commercial district. You find that as soon as you lift off everything just clicks and you're soaring about with no issues—it must be that ol' Potter flying ability. You can't help but take some time to swoop around and try some dives, an aileron roll or two, and a full barrel roll all of which feel as simple as walking. Still, after playing a bit you get back on task, buzzing smokestacks and speeding around.

Online searching found the UPS warehouse, but you're going to have to work manually from there. You manage to spot where the silos and mixer of the old concrete plant have fallen just before the sun completely disappears. From there you fly a spiral until you see a caravan of cars and trucks pull in to the back lot of what you think is a aluminum siding company—you've seen their ads on billboards. There are two large buildings, and while one is brightly lit and security patrolled, the other… isn't. It's not really visible from the road, lit only by the cast-off light of the other factory, but has junky cars parked all around. Setting down on the roof of an abandoned building not too far away you cast a supersensory charm and make out a couple of scruffy-looking guys pulling up in a truck with the lights off and ducking under a partially-opened rolling door.

Once again you make a temporary wardstone and hunker down. Trying your scrying spells you search for variations of 'security cameras within one-hundred meters' and get a number of returns on the supposedly unused building. It looks like they're monitoring the roof as well as every entrance you can see from your perch. They are not looking at the windows that are high up on the walls to let light in. There are some that are either open or broken so you could fly right in.

As you're considering which window is easiest to get through you pull out your phone to check the time. You're no fool, you had silenced it completely long before you actually apparated to the area, but you find a bunch of missed messages and pictures from all of your girls. Nothing crazy—there aren't any firefights—but lots of pictures of the girls mingling with other girls at the party, a video of Amy dancing sandwiched in between Savannah and a random busty blonde in a greek letter T-shirt, Sarah getting a lap dance from a male stripper… huh, okay, maybe the party was a little crazy.

In any case, you have multiple invites—including from Crystal—to show up and get let in to the party. Apparently it's not as girls-only as they made it sound earlier in the day. You look at the factory that's probably a Merchant storage depot and back down at video of eight dancing, laughing women. You…

[X][Factory] Let them know you're on your way and leave immediately