To the common citizen of Lunar, physical education was not a priority associated with the Magic Guild of Vane. One did not picture Lemia Ausa or Ghaleon engaged in hand-to-hand combat or performing incredible feats of dexterity. There was more to being a magician, however, than hurling balls of fire or shards of ice. As Ghaleon himself had once put it, "One hardly presents the image of a magician of Vane with one's leg caught in an Octo Plant's jaws."
To the common member of the Mia Ausa Fan Club, however, physical education immediately brought to mind short exercise tunics and bare limbs glistening with a sheen of perspiration.
"So why are we down here in a deserted storeroom if Mia is out on the fields?" Merrill asked.
"That, you are about to see. Do you have the hammer and chisel?"
"Here. I hope the carpenter has a spare or that section of the mansion roof is going to be weak. It'll probably fall in after a while and leave a hole."
Bart took the tools and set the chisel's point against a crack in the masonry. After a few minutes' hammering, light streamed through a small hole.
"There! Take a look for yourself and see if it wasn't worth the effort to come here."
Merrill bent and put his eye to the hole. He saw a room with a tiled floor, hooks on the walls, a mirror, a stand with light, fluffy towels...
"Bart!" he gasped, awed. "This... this is Mia's private bathroom! That curtained alcove is the bathtub!"
"Exactly! After a workout, Mia will no doubt want to cleanse herself of sweat and dirt--and being a shy, gentle girl, she will certainly come here rather than use the public bathhouse!"
Merrill looked at his friend, awed.
"Bart, I'm... I'm stunned. This is a plan worthy of the leader of the Fan Club." A sudden thought quickly sobered his attitude, though. "We're not going to take a picture of her...naked, are we?"
Bart snorted.
"What? And expose the perfection of Mia's most intimate secrets to the eyes of lechers all across Lunar? Have you no shame, Merrill?"
"We're peeping at her in the bathtub," Merrill pointed out.
"Not for our base gratification! We're doing this for the honor of Mia, of the Magic Guild, of all Vane itself!"
"Oh. That's okay, then."
"Besides, if we get caught, it might mean the difference between merely being expelled and being exterminated."
"Good point."
They didn't have long to wait. Red Bart took over at the peephole, Camera ready, while Merrill listened to the sound of running water. It was not much longer before Bart pressed the button and put the Camera to work. A piece of paper slid out of the box, just as when Colin had demonstrated it. Bart tore it off along the edge.
"By Althena!" he whispered.
"This is incredible!"
"That pearly skin!"
"Those curves!"
"That midnight hair!"
"Those sparkling eyes!"
Works of great artistic merit can have that effect sometimes, and it could not be denied that the Magic Camera had done its work perfectly, capturing the image of Mia just as she had stepped out of the tub, in the act of draping a pink towel around herself. It was the most realistic picture either boy had ever seen, and when the reality of its subject was the stuff of fantasy to the two of them, it was a wonder they managed to put the picture away and leave the storeroom at all. As they burst out of it into the hall, they nearly ran over someone.
"Watch where you're going, you little peons!"
Merrill and Red Bart glanced at one another. They knew that voice. It belonged to Nash, a Level Three apprentice who was Master Ghaleon's prize pupil--and was only too happy to tell everyone all about it. He also had a widely-known (and unreciprocated) crush on Mia.
Bart whisked the picture behind his back.
"I'm sorry, sir," Merrill groveled, figuring the best way to keep Nash from asking questions was to play up to his vanity. "It was all our fault. We should have been looking where we were going."
"Indeed you should have! Why, you might have hurt me--er, hurt someone charging around like that."
"It'll never happen again, sir." He bowed, grabbed Bart's hand, and scuttled away.
Nash stood there, bemused. He wasn't used to being run over by underclassmen. And what had they been doing in that storeroom, anyway? He poked his head inside and was at once attracted by the light shining through a crack in the wall. Curious, he bent down and took a look through the hole.
"Mia's bathroom!" he yelped.
And...and that red-haired boy was carrying Lemia's Magic Camera!
All at once the enormity of their plot crashed in upon him. Never mind that Nash himself was carrying a picture of Mia he'd taken with the Magic Camera; this was different. Abominable! Foul!
He couldn't tell anyone about what the boys had done, he realized. That would cause Mia no end of humiliation and embarrassment, and Nash couldn't do that to her.
Which left private vengeance as the only truly viable alternative.
Red Bart signed his letter with a flourish and tucked it into the envelope together with Mia's picture.
"There! All we have to do is mail this, and the next Hot Girl News will show all of Lunar who the true hotty of all time is!
"It's too bad you didn't take a second picture for us to keep."
"Surrendering this picture is a sacrifice," Bart admitted, "but what great deed has ever been accomplished without great sacrifice? We may be surrendering our own happiness for a time, but it is for the sake of history! Think of the joy we'll be bringing to the world.
Merrill started to contemplate that joy, but was rudely interrupted. The door swung open and struck the wall with a loud crash.
"There you are!" Nash screamed. "I know what you've been up to, you perverts!"
Merrill glanced at his friend.
"Is this one of those sacrifices you were talking about, Bart?"
"I think that's his idea."
"Peeping at Mia in the bathtub! Using her mother's own invention to take pictures! You, who aren't fit to scrub the floors she tracks dirt across."
"Merrill, the solution is obvious."
"What?"
"Run!"
They bolted, not for the door which Nash was blocking, but the window. Luckily it was open, thanks to the warm weather. Even more luckily, it was a first-floor room.
They hit the ground sprinting and were off like a shot before Nash got to the window.
"Cowardly jackals! Come back and take your punishment like men! Your behavior shames the whole Magic Guild!"
Realizing that they weren't listening, Nash vaulted out of the window and took off after them.
"If you won't give in quietly, then I'll have to come to you! Check this out!"
Lightning bolts from Nash's Thunder Bomb spell zapped both boys squarely in the hind end, causing them to yelp and adding a curious hop to their stride. It also jolted the letter out of Bart's hand, but neither he nor Nash noticed, being somewhat preoccupied at the time. In fact, all three of them were so intent on the chase that, against all odds, none of them noticed Mia herself walk out of the Guild mansion at that moment.
The future leader of the Magic Guild giggled as she saw them rush by. Boys could be so silly sometimes. As they ran off, the letter fluttered to the ground at Mia's feet.
"Excuse me; you dropped this!" she called, picking it up, but by this time they were too far off to hear her over their yells and the occasional crash of thunder. She glanced down at the envelope; it was apparently a letter to be sent because the return address was at the Guild dormitory.
Well, Mia decided, I'd better just mail this for them. The address read, "Editor, Hot Girl News," which left her laughing softly all the way to the post office.