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“The rules are simple,” said the Secretary. “Each of you will have five minutes to answer as many questions about your fields of expertise as possible. Whoever answers the most within that time will move on to the next round.”

Ireny eyed the Secretary warily, vaguely aware that her claws were trying to dig into the smooth surface of the podium. There was a catch. There was always a catch.

“However,” continued the Secretary, “in the event that the two of you try to waste our time, we have implemented several...precautions.”

Yup. There it was.

“Contained within this room are numerous hazards which have been tailored to inconvenience you. If you answer a question incorrectly, not only will you lose a point, you will be forced to contend with one hazard of our choosing. If you answer a question correctly, however, you will gain a point, and your opponent will have to deal with the hazard instead.”

Ireny would have responded, but the feral whisper in the back of her mind suddenly chose that moment to keep her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth. Instead she felt her back arch and her fur spike, and she was pretty sure she would have launched herself uselessly at the screen if it weren’t for Leafy shouting, “That isn’t fair and you know it!”

“Isn’t it?” said the Secretary sharply. “And I suppose, Miss Quill, that the two of you trying to hack into our database and shut down our servers was fair?”

“We weren’t--” began Leafy, but the Secretary was having none of it.

“For the record,” she said, “any attempt by either of you to forfeit, whether individually or simultaneously, will be considered cheating, and we will be more than happy to respond with as much corrective force as is necessary. There are a lot of doors in this room, and there’s certainly no reason why we can’t open as many as we like. The competition will continue until the clock has run out. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal,” said Leafy softly.

Aedan’s keen ears picked up a tremor of fear in her words. Ireny fought her own unease down; the weasel part of her was too angry to be afraid at the moment.

“If there are no other questions,” said the Secretary, and she made it sound like a sentence. After a moment of resentful silence, she resumed. “Very good. In that case, we’ll start.”

Ireny hissed and shielded her eyes with a paw as a spotlight descended on her. When the spots of color had faded from her vision, the Secretary had vanished from the screen, two microphones had risen up from the podiums, and two identical countdown clocks had taken her place.

“Ireny,” came the Secretary’s voice. “First question.”

Her side of the screen displayed a foilist in full gear, standing in the en-garde position. Suddenly the fencer sprang into action, their blade flashing forward, left, right, up--and then they returned to en-garde, as if they had never moved at all.

“State all four actions performed. Begin.”

Oh my god, thought Ireny, and almost said it out loud, except the last thing she wanted to do was tempt the Secretary into treating that as her answer. “Uh,” she said instead, and gripped the podium harder, staring down at the microphone. “Beat attack. Parry four. Flick. Parry counter-six.”

“Correct,” said the Secretary, and Ireny resisted the urge to sigh explosively. The clock in front of her had stopped at 4:43. That wasn’t so bad.

She was forced to revise her opinion a split second later as Leafy’s clock began to count down. One of the hatches slid open, and something large and heavy-looking shot out of it and towards Leafy.

“████!” Ireny yelled, lunging, only to find that her paws were stuck firmly to the podium. “Watch out!”

Leafy yelped in surprise, but she was already in motion. With a press of a button, she vanished, replaced by a grubby kid who was more than small enough to hide behind the podium while the thing sailed overhead and shattered against the wall behind him. But what was it? A rock? A bowling ball? No, Ireny realized. A fencing mask.

“████,” said Ireny again for good measure, still tugging uselessly at the podium. “Oh my god, Leafy, I totally forgot, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

“I think so,” said the boy shakily. “Wait, no, probably not.”

“Leafy,” said the implacable voice of the Secretary. “First question. Identify the following bird.”

From her position on the podium, Ireny could see the boy take a deep breath, then slowly turn to face forward.

Ireny wasn’t sure what happened next. Something flashed on the screen, something that ignited every nerve in Aedan’s body and kicked every muscle into action. Whatever had been holding her to the podium suddenly released her, sending her flying backward off the edge. She crouched behind the podium, trembling with instinctive fright.

“Ridgway’s hawk,” said Leafy reluctantly.

“Correct.”

In the next instant a hatch in the ceiling above screeched open, and to Ireny and Aedan’s combined horror, there was an answering screech from within. There was a rustle of wings, and then something plummeted down towards them, beak open, talons outstretched.

Change, screamed Ireny’s inner monologue, you have to change, you’re dead if you don’t, but every muscle in Aedan’s body was tense as a bowstring. Blood thundered in her ears, the sound of an inhuman heartbeat drumming at a deafening pace, and still she could only stare upward, frozen.

She’d always been good in a crisis, Ireny thought vaguely. She’d always been the one to keep her head, to rally the troops and do what needed to be done. It wasn’t the fear itself that terrified her now, it was the foreignness of it, the strange sick animal helplessness where before there would only have been anger.

Ireny blinked. Leafy was shouting something, her voice strangely distorted by the distance. It was unintelligible, but it was enough. She reached for her watch.

There was the undefinable jagged stretching, as there had been before, and the feeling of being several different places at once. Then the weasel became the man became the wolf, and the hawk was upon her, and the wolf lashed out as much in pain as in surprise.

The haze cleared. She was standing behind the podium, a ragged bunch of feathers in her mouth, and above her the bedraggled hawk was struggling to regain height, trailing more feathers in its wake. After another moment, it had vanished back up the hatch whence it had come.

“--an endangered species!” Leafy was saying hotly to the ceiling. She was back in her own body, both hands gripping the podium--or stuck there, it was hard to tell--and she looked more furious than Ireny had ever seen her. “How dare you! Where did you even get your hands on one? They’re native to Hispaniola!”

“Mwrrpgh,” said Ireny, and spat the feathers out. Her clock had stopped at 4:10.

Changing back into Florian’s human form was thankfully as effortless as she’d remembered it being, except for a part near the end where she felt sudden pressure on her throat and clawed at it only to find the bedraggled remains of a cravat. She looked down: her broken watch had put her in a mostly-sized-up version of Aedan’s waistcoat, although thankfully Florian’s trousers had stayed the same.

“This is getting old,” she muttered, and winced when Flannery’s voice came out of her mouth.

“Are you okay, Ireny?” called Leafy. She looked pale. “I thought maybe you--”

“Yeah,” said Ireny, and bit her lip, wincing again at the foreign feel of it. “Yeah, so did I, for a moment.”

“And I can’t believe they brought in an actual Ridgway’s hawk,” said Leafy. “The nerve of them!”

Add it to the list of offenses, thought Ireny as she pulled at her too-tight collar. It’s gotta be at least a couple hundred pages long by now.

“Ireny,” said the Secretary, and she looked up, scowling. “Second question.”

“████,” said Ireny, with as much eloquence and frustration as could be put into one syllable. The Secretary didn’t appear to notice.

“List the steps associated with the Hedgehog signaling pathway.”

“That’s not trivia!” shouted Ireny. “And it’s totally irrelevant to my writing! That’s--I haven’t taken molecular biology in years and you know it! And it’s really creepy that you know it!”

Silence. Ireny took a deep breath and got started.

She hadn’t studied molecular biology because she’d wanted to. It had been a means to an end at the time. And now she could barely even remember how the pathway started, and somewhere between PTCH1 and the GLI transcription factors, everything went wrong.

“I’ve heard enough,” said the Secretary firmly.

“But I didn’t even--”

“Enough,” said the Secretary, and then the spikes started dropping.

Things falling from the ceiling, thought Ireny as a six-inch chunk of metal embedded itself in the floor inches from her foot, was getting really old. So was being exactly the wrong size for everything falling from the ceiling.

Aedan would have avoided all of these easily. Florian, on the other hand, was having a hard time staying intact, and Ireny grimaced as another spike tore through Florian’s waistcoat and grazed her back. Florian’s waistcoat? Aedan’s waistcoat. It was getting harder and harder to tell.

Probably a bad idea to switch, though, she decided as she hopped back to avoid another spike. If one of these things hit Aedan, everything really would be over.

It was a full minute before the rain of spikes stopped and Ireny could properly breathe again, but even then there was no time for her to breathe.

“Leafy. Second question. Name all of the Valar, as listed in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion.”

Ireny looked up sharply. It was a surprisingly straightforward question, and, as far as she was concerned, a hell of a lot easier than the one she’d just been given. Leafy seemed to think so, too, judging from the way she straightened slightly.

“Manwë, Varda, Ulmo, Yavanna, Aulë, Nienna, Oromë.” She listed them off on her fingers, brow furrowed in concentration but otherwise apparently at ease. “Mandos, Estë, Vairë, Lórien, Tulkas, Nessa.”

Silence. Leafy stared up at the screen defiantly, a trace of a smile on her lips.

“Incorrect,” said the Secretary.

The smile slid off Leafy’s face. “What?” she said, stunned.

“Are you ████ing kidding me,” said a voice which Ireny would later recognize as her own. Well, not her own, it was technically Flannery’s, but.

“You neglected to mention Melkor,” said the Secretary.

“What--no, of course I didn’t,” said Leafy, frowning. “Morgoth doesn’t count, he hasn’t counted since the poisoning of the Two Trees and the theft of the Silmarils!”

“Nevertheless,” said the Secretary, “he was created one of the Valar, and you should have said as much.”

“But that’s a technicality!” protested Leafy, her hand hovering over her watch.

Blood roared in Ireny’s ears again, but for an entirely different reason this time. “If you wanted her to answer from the timepoint of the ████ing Ainulindalë, you should’ve ████ing well said so!” she shouted, only peripherally aware of Leafy’s shocked expression. “That’s cheating and you know it!”

“You’d know, wouldn’t you, Ireny?” said the Secretary coolly. “You’re very eager to defend your opponent. I’m surprised.”

“It’s a matter of principle!” Ireny fumed. She pulled vainly at her hands, which were stuck fast to the podium as usual. “Tolkien is sacred! And Leafy was right to begin with!”

The Secretary didn’t bother to answer. Already one of the hatches on the far wall was sliding open, and with a question like that, who knew was going to come out of it?

“If it’s a Balrog,” Leafy muttered, just loud enough for Ireny to overhear, “I’m going to file a complaint.”

It wasn’t a Balrog. It was orcs.

They poured out of the hatch like spiders, clambering over each other in their haste to get out, the dim light glinting dully off iron armor and wickedly sharp blades. There couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, but to their onlookers they might as well have been an army. Leafy had gone very still, her mouth forming silent words Ireny couldn’t read. She took a slow step back, and another. Ireny would have done the same, if she hadn’t been stuck to the podium.

Then an arrow whistled between them and broke itself against the wall, the pieces of it clattering down next to the battered fencing mask, and Leafy--or the ranger woman she’d suddenly become--leapt into action.

Ireny had seen enough combat by now to know it wasn’t Leafy moving. Not really. There was a fluidness to the woman’s motions that could only have come from years of training. Two arrows sprouted from two separate chests, punching through armor like paper, and their owners crumpled to the ground, unmoving. Another took an arrow in the gut. One more fell to a throwing knife, and then the woman was running, pulling another knife from her belt as the three remaining creatures gave chase.

One of them ran right by Ireny, close enough for her to catch a whiff of something foul, but it barely gave her a second glance as it thundered past. It was as if she didn’t exist, and she’d never been more grateful for it in her life. On the other hand, it meant she couldn’t do anything but watch as the clock ticked down and Leafy ran.

There was an inhuman howl of pain from the far end of the room, and one of the huge figures toppled over. Two left, thought Ireny as the woman came running back, the orcs hot on her heels. She didn’t seem to be gaining much ground, she looked like she was favoring her right side, and now there was a hunted look in her eyes that was more Leafy than whoever the woman was.

She had to do something. She had to, but she couldn’t move--

Her desperate gaze fell on the microphone.

Her hands were stuck to the podium, but her head wasn’t. She leaned down and carefully poked her watch button with a canine, then closed her eyes as the pain of the transformation wrenched through her.

Come on, she thought. Do this for me. Just once.

She opened her eyes. Flannery’s bare hands gripped the podium and the Box of Stuff was nowhere to be seen, but it didn’t need to be. Not when there was a microphone full of wire right in front of her. She gritted her teeth and concentrated.

A loop of copper burst out of the microphone and curled itself around the closest orc’s unprotected neck. It made a noise of choked surprise, which was cut off abruptly as Ireny grimaced and tightened the loop.

The orc stumbled forward, yellow teeth bared in a silent howl. Its sword clattered against the tile as it lifted its hands to its throat, but Ireny was shouting now, her own teeth bared with the effort, and it was only a few moments more before the wire bit through the orc’s jugular and it sank slowly to the ground.

She’d seen blood before, often in large quantities. This, she told herself firmly, was no different, but it didn’t change the fact that her hands would be shaking if they’d been allowed to and she had an uncharacteristic urge to throw up.

She waited until her vision had cleared before she glanced over at Leafy--and stopped short.

Leafy must have tried to avoid the orc by ducking behind her podium. It had worked--the orc’s scimitar had lodged itself in the metal, and judging by the dirk through its throat, the ranger woman hadn’t wasted the opportunity she’d been given. But there was no sign of the ranger now, only Leafy, crouched in a ball a short distance away from the podium and shaking uncontrollably.

Her hands were curled around her abdomen, and for one horrible moment Ireny thought she’d been hit. But there was no sign of blood anywhere on her, or her immediate surroundings…

Ireny had worked in enough hospitals to know a panic attack when she saw one. Her jaw tightened. “L--” she started to say, but nothing came out but a faint squeak.

Voices. Right. Flannery had Aedan’s. She’d forgotten.

Suddenly her arms and legs were hers again, and she all but ran over, pausing only momentarily to steel herself before she hit her watch button and switched back to Aedan. Her own scarf and jacket had come with her this time, she noted vaguely, but that didn’t matter.

Leafy had said her last round had been kind of a disaster. No kidding, thought Ireny, and put a careful paw on Leafy’s foot. What the hell had happened?

“Hey,” she said hesitantly. “Hey, can you hear me? It’s okay, you’re gonna be okay. Try to breathe, okay? Count to ten--”

The screen above them flickered.

“Oh,” said Ireny. “Oh, ████, no.”

“Ireny,” said the Secretary. Below her, the numbers read 2:51 and 0:37, respectively. Had that much time really passed during the last fight? It had seemed like seconds. “Third question.”

“I said no!” shouted Ireny, balling up her tiny paws into fists.

“Need I remind you,” said the Secretary, “that the competition will continue until the clocks run out?”

Ireny hesitated. There were a lot of unopened hatches left. If she forfeited now, with Leafy like this--hell, if she answered correctly--

“As I thought,” said the Secretary. “Back to your podium, please.”

Ireny gave Leafy’s foot one last pat, and went. Something dark and angry churned in her mind, something too complex for a weasel. It had to be her. She clung onto it like a lifeline.

“How many goals were scored by Bayern Munich during their 2012-2013 Champions League campaign?”

She knew the answer. Of course she knew the answer. How could she not, when she’d watched every single match, when she’d screamed herself hoarse over every missed chance and every flawless tackle?

And yet--

Ireny swallowed hard. She knew the answer, and somehow that only made her angrier. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. It was one thing to rub a win in someone’s face, but this was different. This was kicking someone when they were down, and she wasn’t sure if she was up for that when she actually kind of liked the person she’d be kicking.

And besides, she only appreciated unfairness when she was the one doing the cheating.

She looked up.

“Forty-two billion and a half,” she said. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done. “Bite me. And your boss can go f--”

---

Leafy breathed, or tried to. The world had gone tinny and faint, and the only sounds she could hear were her own heart racing and a terrible ringing in her ears.

There wasn’t any pain. The orc hadn’t so much as scratched her. But there should be pain, she thought, there should be something to prove it had happened. Instead there was only an awful numb feeling in the tips of her fingers and toes, like she was dead already and the rest of her just hadn’t figured it out yet.

She was shaking. She really ought to stop. But her body didn’t seem to want to respond, and all her brain seemed capable of doing was replaying the image of the blade arcing towards her, over and over, until the orc turned into the Lady and she was bleeding out on a cold tile floor again, watching the world around her fade away.

Logically, she knew there was nothing else to do but ride out the wave and count, slowly, until her breathing returned to normal and she felt in control again, but it was easier said than done. She could feel hot tears making their way down her face and she didn’t fight it, only let them fall and breathed deep, in and out.

“I said no!” shouted Ireny. It sounded like her voice was a long way off. She’d been here a moment ago, hadn’t she? It was hard to tell.

Gradually, Leafy’s shaking stopped. That was good. Another minute, and her breathing had evened out. That was better. Then she exhaled, placed her hands on the ground, began to push herself up--and paused.

She was getting up. She was moving. Whatever had held her in place before during Ireny’s questions wasn’t doing it now. Evidently she hadn’t presented enough of a threat to bother.

Leafy crouched there, and tried to think, and the possibilities unfurled themselves in front of her like tiny universes, and--

--she stood up, and she watched while Ireny fought whatever the Secretary threw at her, or tried to with three glitching characters and not much else, and she answered the next question correctly with seconds to spare, and she won the round, and the one after that, and the one after that, until she stood at the top with the publishing deal she’d always dreamed of at a price she’d never considered--

No.

She hit her watch, and her view from the foot of the podium was suddenly obscured by a light red haze and the faint pressure of goggles on her face.

The Secretary was speaking now, but Leafy paid her no notice. She had more important things to concentrate on.

There were two cameras pointed at them, too, located at the far end of the room, but as far as Cutie’s sensors could tell they were the same as the ones outside. Disabling them wouldn’t do anything but annoy the Secretary for a few short moments. The hatches were out of the question. Each of them was deadlocked, and there were more countermeasures protecting them than she could shake a stick at. It would take a minute she didn’t have to disarm just one, and even then it would probably result in all the others opening. As far as she could tell, the only thing that would shut them all down was if the clock ran out--

The clock.

Information flooded the goggle display. Out of negligence or sheer arrogance, the timers had been left unsecured. A back door, left wide open, and all she had to do was stroll in.

Child’s play for Cutie. Leafy didn’t even hesitate.

“Forty-two billion and a half,” Ireny was saying. “Bite me. And your boss can go f--”

There was a violent grinding noise. The screen went blank. Across the board, the timers glitched, the numbers flashed over each other, then suddenly jumped back to zero.

Leafy rose over the top of the podium just in time to feel an explosion rock the room, followed by a frustrated roar. One of the hatches on the wall closest to Ireny had started to open when it had been shut down: the locking mechanism must have malfunctioned. Whatever was behind it roared again and threw itself against the hatch, shaking the entire wall.

Hidden speakers crackled around them--the Secretary, no doubt, trying to lecture them again--but the sound collapsed into a feedback whine that set Leafy’s nonexistent teeth on edge.

“Oh my god,” said a tiny voice, and Leafy looked down to see Ireny staring up at the wreckage, dumbstruck. “What just happened?”

There wasn’t time to explain. She swept down and caught Ireny by the tail, plonking her onto the blanket and racing for the exit. Predictably, the doors were locked, but she hadn’t come this far to be stopped by a measly piece of wood.

Cutie’s laser sheared through the lock in a fraction of a second. Moments later they were hurtling down the hall and up the stairwell at eye-watering speeds. The door to the roof loomed ahead of them, but that fell as easily to the laser as the last one had.

She didn’t stop until they had burst out of the building and into the fresh, cool air of the rising dawn.

Description
“The rules are simple,” said the Secretary. “Each of you will have five minutes to answer as many questions about your fields of expertise as possible. Whoever answers the most within that time will move on to the next round.”

Ireny eyed the Secretary warily, vaguely aware that her claws were trying to dig into the smooth surface of the podium. There was a catch. There was always a catch.

“However,” continued the Secretary, “in the event that the two of you try to waste our time, we have implemented several...precautions.”

Yup. There it was.

“Contained within this room are numerous hazards which have been tailored to inconvenience you. If you answer a question incorrectly, not only will you lose a point, you will be forced to contend with one hazard of our choosing. If you answer a question correctly, however, you will gain a point, and your opponent will have to deal with the hazard instead.”

Ireny would have responded, but the feral whisper in the back of her mind suddenly chose that moment to keep her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth. Instead she felt her back arch and her fur spike, and she was pretty sure she would have launched herself uselessly at the screen if it weren’t for Leafy shouting, “That isn’t fair and you know it!”

“Isn’t it?” said the Secretary sharply. “And I suppose, Miss Quill, that the two of you trying to hack into our database and shut down our servers was fair?”

“We weren’t--” began Leafy, but the Secretary was having none of it.

“For the record,” she said, “any attempt by either of you to forfeit, whether individually or simultaneously, will be considered cheating, and we will be more than happy to respond with as much corrective force as is necessary. There are a lot of doors in this room, and there’s certainly no reason why we can’t open as many as we like. The competition will continue until the clock has run out. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal,” said Leafy softly.

Aedan’s keen ears picked up a tremor of fear in her words. Ireny fought her own unease down; the weasel part of her was too angry to be afraid at the moment.

“If there are no other questions,” said the Secretary, and she made it sound like a sentence. After a moment of resentful silence, she resumed. “Very good. In that case, we’ll start.”

Ireny hissed and shielded her eyes with a paw as a spotlight descended on her. When the spots of color had faded from her vision, the Secretary had vanished from the screen, two microphones had risen up from the podiums, and two identical countdown clocks had taken her place.

“Ireny,” came the Secretary’s voice. “First question.”

Her side of the screen displayed a foilist in full gear, standing in the en-garde position. Suddenly the fencer sprang into action, their blade flashing forward, left, right, up--and then they returned to en-garde, as if they had never moved at all.

“State all four actions performed. Begin.”

Oh my god, thought Ireny, and almost said it out loud, except the last thing she wanted to do was tempt the Secretary into treating that as her answer. “Uh,” she said instead, and gripped the podium harder, staring down at the microphone. “Beat attack. Parry four. Flick. Parry counter-six.”

“Correct,” said the Secretary, and Ireny resisted the urge to sigh explosively. The clock in front of her had stopped at 4:43. That wasn’t so bad.

She was forced to revise her opinion a split second later as Leafy’s clock began to count down. One of the hatches slid open, and something large and heavy-looking shot out of it and towards Leafy.

“████!” Ireny yelled, lunging, only to find that her paws were stuck firmly to the podium. “Watch out!”

Leafy yelped in surprise, but she was already in motion. With a press of a button, she vanished, replaced by a grubby kid who was more than small enough to hide behind the podium while the thing sailed overhead and shattered against the wall behind him. But what was it? A rock? A bowling ball? No, Ireny realized. A fencing mask.

“████,” said Ireny again for good measure, still tugging uselessly at the podium. “Oh my god, Leafy, I totally forgot, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

“I think so,” said the boy shakily. “Wait, no, probably not.”

“Leafy,” said the implacable voice of the Secretary. “First question. Identify the following bird.”

From her position on the podium, Ireny could see the boy take a deep breath, then slowly turn to face forward.

Ireny wasn’t sure what happened next. Something flashed on the screen, something that ignited every nerve in Aedan’s body and kicked every muscle into action. Whatever had been holding her to the podium suddenly released her, sending her flying backward off the edge. She crouched behind the podium, trembling with instinctive fright.

“Ridgway’s hawk,” said Leafy reluctantly.

“Correct.”

In the next instant a hatch in the ceiling above screeched open, and to Ireny and Aedan’s combined horror, there was an answering screech from within. There was a rustle of wings, and then something plummeted down towards them, beak open, talons outstretched.

Change, screamed Ireny’s inner monologue, you have to change, you’re dead if you don’t, but every muscle in Aedan’s body was tense as a bowstring. Blood thundered in her ears, the sound of an inhuman heartbeat drumming at a deafening pace, and still she could only stare upward, frozen.

She’d always been good in a crisis, Ireny thought vaguely. She’d always been the one to keep her head, to rally the troops and do what needed to be done. It wasn’t the fear itself that terrified her now, it was the foreignness of it, the strange sick animal helplessness where before there would only have been anger.

Ireny blinked. Leafy was shouting something, her voice strangely distorted by the distance. It was unintelligible, but it was enough. She reached for her watch.

There was the undefinable jagged stretching, as there had been before, and the feeling of being several different places at once. Then the weasel became the man became the wolf, and the hawk was upon her, and the wolf lashed out as much in pain as in surprise.

The haze cleared. She was standing behind the podium, a ragged bunch of feathers in her mouth, and above her the bedraggled hawk was struggling to regain height, trailing more feathers in its wake. After another moment, it had vanished back up the hatch whence it had come.

“--an endangered species!” Leafy was saying hotly to the ceiling. She was back in her own body, both hands gripping the podium--or stuck there, it was hard to tell--and she looked more furious than Ireny had ever seen her. “How dare you! Where did you even get your hands on one? They’re native to Hispaniola!”

“Mwrrpgh,” said Ireny, and spat the feathers out. Her clock had stopped at 4:10.

Changing back into Florian’s human form was thankfully as effortless as she’d remembered it being, except for a part near the end where she felt sudden pressure on her throat and clawed at it only to find the bedraggled remains of a cravat. She looked down: her broken watch had put her in a mostly-sized-up version of Aedan’s waistcoat, although thankfully Florian’s trousers had stayed the same.

“This is getting old,” she muttered, and winced when Flannery’s voice came out of her mouth.

“Are you okay, Ireny?” called Leafy. She looked pale. “I thought maybe you--”

“Yeah,” said Ireny, and bit her lip, wincing again at the foreign feel of it. “Yeah, so did I, for a moment.”

“And I can’t believe they brought in an actual Ridgway’s hawk,” said Leafy. “The nerve of them!”

Add it to the list of offenses, thought Ireny as she pulled at her too-tight collar. It’s gotta be at least a couple hundred pages long by now.

“Ireny,” said the Secretary, and she looked up, scowling. “Second question.”

“████,” said Ireny, with as much eloquence and frustration as could be put into one syllable. The Secretary didn’t appear to notice.

“List the steps associated with the Hedgehog signaling pathway.”

“That’s not trivia!” shouted Ireny. “And it’s totally irrelevant to my writing! That’s--I haven’t taken molecular biology in years and you know it! And it’s really creepy that you know it!”

Silence. Ireny took a deep breath and got started.

She hadn’t studied molecular biology because she’d wanted to. It had been a means to an end at the time. And now she could barely even remember how the pathway started, and somewhere between PTCH1 and the GLI transcription factors, everything went wrong.

“I’ve heard enough,” said the Secretary firmly.

“But I didn’t even--”

“Enough,” said the Secretary, and then the spikes started dropping.

Things falling from the ceiling, thought Ireny as a six-inch chunk of metal embedded itself in the floor inches from her foot, was getting really old. So was being exactly the wrong size for everything falling from the ceiling.

Aedan would have avoided all of these easily. Florian, on the other hand, was having a hard time staying intact, and Ireny grimaced as another spike tore through Florian’s waistcoat and grazed her back. Florian’s waistcoat? Aedan’s waistcoat. It was getting harder and harder to tell.

Probably a bad idea to switch, though, she decided as she hopped back to avoid another spike. If one of these things hit Aedan, everything really would be over.

It was a full minute before the rain of spikes stopped and Ireny could properly breathe again, but even then there was no time for her to breathe.

“Leafy. Second question. Name all of the Valar, as listed in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion.”

Ireny looked up sharply. It was a surprisingly straightforward question, and, as far as she was concerned, a hell of a lot easier than the one she’d just been given. Leafy seemed to think so, too, judging from the way she straightened slightly.

“Manwë, Varda, Ulmo, Yavanna, Aulë, Nienna, Oromë.” She listed them off on her fingers, brow furrowed in concentration but otherwise apparently at ease. “Mandos, Estë, Vairë, Lórien, Tulkas, Nessa.”

Silence. Leafy stared up at the screen defiantly, a trace of a smile on her lips.

“Incorrect,” said the Secretary.

The smile slid off Leafy’s face. “What?” she said, stunned.

“Are you ████ing kidding me,” said a voice which Ireny would later recognize as her own. Well, not her own, it was technically Flannery’s, but.

“You neglected to mention Melkor,” said the Secretary.

“What--no, of course I didn’t,” said Leafy, frowning. “Morgoth doesn’t count, he hasn’t counted since the poisoning of the Two Trees and the theft of the Silmarils!”

“Nevertheless,” said the Secretary, “he was created one of the Valar, and you should have said as much.”

“But that’s a technicality!” protested Leafy, her hand hovering over her watch.

Blood roared in Ireny’s ears again, but for an entirely different reason this time. “If you wanted her to answer from the timepoint of the ████ing Ainulindalë, you should’ve ████ing well said so!” she shouted, only peripherally aware of Leafy’s shocked expression. “That’s cheating and you know it!”

“You’d know, wouldn’t you, Ireny?” said the Secretary coolly. “You’re very eager to defend your opponent. I’m surprised.”

“It’s a matter of principle!” Ireny fumed. She pulled vainly at her hands, which were stuck fast to the podium as usual. “Tolkien is sacred! And Leafy was right to begin with!”

The Secretary didn’t bother to answer. Already one of the hatches on the far wall was sliding open, and with a question like that, who knew was going to come out of it?

“If it’s a Balrog,” Leafy muttered, just loud enough for Ireny to overhear, “I’m going to file a complaint.”

It wasn’t a Balrog. It was orcs.

They poured out of the hatch like spiders, clambering over each other in their haste to get out, the dim light glinting dully off iron armor and wickedly sharp blades. There couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, but to their onlookers they might as well have been an army. Leafy had gone very still, her mouth forming silent words Ireny couldn’t read. She took a slow step back, and another. Ireny would have done the same, if she hadn’t been stuck to the podium.

Then an arrow whistled between them and broke itself against the wall, the pieces of it clattering down next to the battered fencing mask, and Leafy--or the ranger woman she’d suddenly become--leapt into action.

Ireny had seen enough combat by now to know it wasn’t Leafy moving. Not really. There was a fluidness to the woman’s motions that could only have come from years of training. Two arrows sprouted from two separate chests, punching through armor like paper, and their owners crumpled to the ground, unmoving. Another took an arrow in the gut. One more fell to a throwing knife, and then the woman was running, pulling another knife from her belt as the three remaining creatures gave chase.

One of them ran right by Ireny, close enough for her to catch a whiff of something foul, but it barely gave her a second glance as it thundered past. It was as if she didn’t exist, and she’d never been more grateful for it in her life. On the other hand, it meant she couldn’t do anything but watch as the clock ticked down and Leafy ran.

There was an inhuman howl of pain from the far end of the room, and one of the huge figures toppled over. Two left, thought Ireny as the woman came running back, the orcs hot on her heels. She didn’t seem to be gaining much ground, she looked like she was favoring her right side, and now there was a hunted look in her eyes that was more Leafy than whoever the woman was.

She had to do something. She had to, but she couldn’t move--

Her desperate gaze fell on the microphone.

Her hands were stuck to the podium, but her head wasn’t. She leaned down and carefully poked her watch button with a canine, then closed her eyes as the pain of the transformation wrenched through her.

Come on, she thought. Do this for me. Just once.

She opened her eyes. Flannery’s bare hands gripped the podium and the Box of Stuff was nowhere to be seen, but it didn’t need to be. Not when there was a microphone full of wire right in front of her. She gritted her teeth and concentrated.

A loop of copper burst out of the microphone and curled itself around the closest orc’s unprotected neck. It made a noise of choked surprise, which was cut off abruptly as Ireny grimaced and tightened the loop.

The orc stumbled forward, yellow teeth bared in a silent howl. Its sword clattered against the tile as it lifted its hands to its throat, but Ireny was shouting now, her own teeth bared with the effort, and it was only a few moments more before the wire bit through the orc’s jugular and it sank slowly to the ground.

She’d seen blood before, often in large quantities. This, she told herself firmly, was no different, but it didn’t change the fact that her hands would be shaking if they’d been allowed to and she had an uncharacteristic urge to throw up.

She waited until her vision had cleared before she glanced over at Leafy--and stopped short.

Leafy must have tried to avoid the orc by ducking behind her podium. It had worked--the orc’s scimitar had lodged itself in the metal, and judging by the dirk through its throat, the ranger woman hadn’t wasted the opportunity she’d been given. But there was no sign of the ranger now, only Leafy, crouched in a ball a short distance away from the podium and shaking uncontrollably.

Her hands were curled around her abdomen, and for one horrible moment Ireny thought she’d been hit. But there was no sign of blood anywhere on her, or her immediate surroundings…

Ireny had worked in enough hospitals to know a panic attack when she saw one. Her jaw tightened. “L--” she started to say, but nothing came out but a faint squeak.

Voices. Right. Flannery had Aedan’s. She’d forgotten.

Suddenly her arms and legs were hers again, and she all but ran over, pausing only momentarily to steel herself before she hit her watch button and switched back to Aedan. Her own scarf and jacket had come with her this time, she noted vaguely, but that didn’t matter.

Leafy had said her last round had been kind of a disaster. No kidding, thought Ireny, and put a careful paw on Leafy’s foot. What the hell had happened?

“Hey,” she said hesitantly. “Hey, can you hear me? It’s okay, you’re gonna be okay. Try to breathe, okay? Count to ten--”

The screen above them flickered.

“Oh,” said Ireny. “Oh, ████, no.”

“Ireny,” said the Secretary. Below her, the numbers read 2:51 and 0:37, respectively. Had that much time really passed during the last fight? It had seemed like seconds. “Third question.”

“I said no!” shouted Ireny, balling up her tiny paws into fists.

“Need I remind you,” said the Secretary, “that the competition will continue until the clocks run out?”

Ireny hesitated. There were a lot of unopened hatches left. If she forfeited now, with Leafy like this--hell, if she answered correctly--

“As I thought,” said the Secretary. “Back to your podium, please.”

Ireny gave Leafy’s foot one last pat, and went. Something dark and angry churned in her mind, something too complex for a weasel. It had to be her. She clung onto it like a lifeline.

“How many goals were scored by Bayern Munich during their 2012-2013 Champions League campaign?”

She knew the answer. Of course she knew the answer. How could she not, when she’d watched every single match, when she’d screamed herself hoarse over every missed chance and every flawless tackle?

And yet--

Ireny swallowed hard. She knew the answer, and somehow that only made her angrier. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. It was one thing to rub a win in someone’s face, but this was different. This was kicking someone when they were down, and she wasn’t sure if she was up for that when she actually kind of liked the person she’d be kicking.

And besides, she only appreciated unfairness when she was the one doing the cheating.

She looked up.

“Forty-two billion and a half,” she said. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done. “Bite me. And your boss can go f--”

---

Leafy breathed, or tried to. The world had gone tinny and faint, and the only sounds she could hear were her own heart racing and a terrible ringing in her ears.

There wasn’t any pain. The orc hadn’t so much as scratched her. But there should be pain, she thought, there should be something to prove it had happened. Instead there was only an awful numb feeling in the tips of her fingers and toes, like she was dead already and the rest of her just hadn’t figured it out yet.

She was shaking. She really ought to stop. But her body didn’t seem to want to respond, and all her brain seemed capable of doing was replaying the image of the blade arcing towards her, over and over, until the orc turned into the Lady and she was bleeding out on a cold tile floor again, watching the world around her fade away.

Logically, she knew there was nothing else to do but ride out the wave and count, slowly, until her breathing returned to normal and she felt in control again, but it was easier said than done. She could feel hot tears making their way down her face and she didn’t fight it, only let them fall and breathed deep, in and out.

“I said no!” shouted Ireny. It sounded like her voice was a long way off. She’d been here a moment ago, hadn’t she? It was hard to tell.

Gradually, Leafy’s shaking stopped. That was good. Another minute, and her breathing had evened out. That was better. Then she exhaled, placed her hands on the ground, began to push herself up--and paused.

She was getting up. She was moving. Whatever had held her in place before during Ireny’s questions wasn’t doing it now. Evidently she hadn’t presented enough of a threat to bother.

Leafy crouched there, and tried to think, and the possibilities unfurled themselves in front of her like tiny universes, and--

--she stood up, and she watched while Ireny fought whatever the Secretary threw at her, or tried to with three glitching characters and not much else, and she answered the next question correctly with seconds to spare, and she won the round, and the one after that, and the one after that, until she stood at the top with the publishing deal she’d always dreamed of at a price she’d never considered--

No.

She hit her watch, and her view from the foot of the podium was suddenly obscured by a light red haze and the faint pressure of goggles on her face.

The Secretary was speaking now, but Leafy paid her no notice. She had more important things to concentrate on.

There were two cameras pointed at them, too, located at the far end of the room, but as far as Cutie’s sensors could tell they were the same as the ones outside. Disabling them wouldn’t do anything but annoy the Secretary for a few short moments. The hatches were out of the question. Each of them was deadlocked, and there were more countermeasures protecting them than she could shake a stick at. It would take a minute she didn’t have to disarm just one, and even then it would probably result in all the others opening. As far as she could tell, the only thing that would shut them all down was if the clock ran out--

The clock.

Information flooded the goggle display. Out of negligence or sheer arrogance, the timers had been left unsecured. A back door, left wide open, and all she had to do was stroll in.

Child’s play for Cutie. Leafy didn’t even hesitate.

“Forty-two billion and a half,” Ireny was saying. “Bite me. And your boss can go f--”

There was a violent grinding noise. The screen went blank. Across the board, the timers glitched, the numbers flashed over each other, then suddenly jumped back to zero.

Leafy rose over the top of the podium just in time to feel an explosion rock the room, followed by a frustrated roar. One of the hatches on the wall closest to Ireny had started to open when it had been shut down: the locking mechanism must have malfunctioned. Whatever was behind it roared again and threw itself against the hatch, shaking the entire wall.

Hidden speakers crackled around them--the Secretary, no doubt, trying to lecture them again--but the sound collapsed into a feedback whine that set Leafy’s nonexistent teeth on edge.

“Oh my god,” said a tiny voice, and Leafy looked down to see Ireny staring up at the wreckage, dumbstruck. “What just happened?”

There wasn’t time to explain. She swept down and caught Ireny by the tail, plonking her onto the blanket and racing for the exit. Predictably, the doors were locked, but she hadn’t come this far to be stopped by a measly piece of wood.

Cutie’s laser sheared through the lock in a fraction of a second. Moments later they were hurtling down the hall and up the stairwell at eye-watering speeds. The door to the roof loomed ahead of them, but that fell as easily to the laser as the last one had.

She didn’t stop until they had burst out of the building and into the fresh, cool air of the rising dawn.