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The End of the Circus: A Tale of the Yizibajohei
Magic In Miami Omake: The Sunshine Troupe Assembles
by Regina Magia

Including characters and situations from Bendy and the Ink Machine, created by TheMeatly Games.


Miami, Allison Studios on Virginia Key overlooking Biscayne Bay and downtown, the third Tuesday of November in 2012, an hour before suppertime (Tōkyō time: Wednesday, an hour before breakfast)...

"From the beginning
We dreamed,
We created,
We controlled.
Now our creations rise against us.
Fear the Machine..."

"That's a scary thing to listen to, Harry."

Hearing that comment from the current chief of the Florida branch of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Harrison Bluth chuckled as he hit the pause function on YouTube. "It's strangely befitting," the current incarnation of the Ghostly Hunter, Ko'or'buor'be ("Neutron"), stated as he turned to face the no-maj-born son of a state senator who had graduated near the top of his law enforcement class at Seven Hills after he scored eight mastery credits in his last year at Ilvermorny. "Yiziba was like this at the time of the Dawn of Power. Nations making machines to create metahumans so they could continue to fight wars. One thing they didn't realize until Destructo and his Chosen first appeared..."

"Was their 'slaves' developing ideas 'above their station' and deciding they didn't want to be slaves anymore," Todd Darnell finished, a lanky smile crossing his face. "Shades of what provoked the Blood War in Britain some years back. Not to mention what Grindelwald provoked in the Wars of Liberation."

The son of a freelance artist/animator nodded, his own olive eyes sparkling in amusement. Part-Cuban, his mother fled that island as a young child shortly after Fidel Castro came to power in the late 1950s, eventually marrying his father when he was doing a spell of work for one of America's most prominent animation studios. Possessing a slight Latino tan on his skin and well-styled black hair, Harry was multilingual and quite bright for a Grade 11 student now attending Caleb Lain Senior High School in Coconut Grove on the mainland. Once he got the chance to learn about magic after meeting the Far-Seer of the Cosmic Mage Guild herself when she and her parents were on a magical creature hunt close to Disney World in Orlando, the would-be animator got the chance to be Gifted, acquiring high-level FISS powers and the unique ability to actually touch any non-corporeal entity such as ghosts.

It was because of that latter ability that Harry met Todd. When privately investigating reports of paranormal activity in Orlando a year ago, the would-be animator discovered a swamp wraith trying to consume the soul of innocent kids who should have been in middle school but were playing hooky. While fighting the creature, the Ghostly Hunter was surprised when a dozen aurors apparated in to get the kids out, though he was quick to recover and physically shredded the spectre. Then an auror detective, Todd Darnell remained behind to watch the fight, which made Harry Bluth a name for himself in the halls of the Department of Magic and the Magical Congress; sadly — though Harry didn't personally care for such things — a recommendation to see him awarded the Magical Medal of the United States was shot down by the "staleblood" ultra-conservatives in the Congress.

Footfalls shook Todd out of his introspection, making him turn to gaze as several people Harry's age came down from the main entrance to the studio, which doubled as the Bluth family home. "Hey, Harry! Hi, Todd! What's up?" the son of the janitor at Caleb Lain Senior High, William Bakshi, asked.

"Just getting some choice rumours from our local magical cop shop, Will," Harry answered as the other members of the Meketuo Dyatogam (the "Sunshine Troupe") took seats on couches and chairs. "The DMLE's finally got a potential clue as to what's happening to Jay and the others at the school."

"What did you find, Inspector?" Savannah Andrews asked as she crossed her arms. The most popular girl in the school drama club was an African-Latino with chocolate skin, wavy brown hair and smoky grey eyes, possessing a body she kept in perfect shape even after she was Gifted as the Crystalline Weaver, Roer'buo Kimr'be ("Crystal Angel"). "Is it something from your side of the Hudson?"

"Sadly, Savannah, it is," Todd said with a smirk on hearing that often-used term to refer to the headquarters of the Department of Magic in downtown Manhattan. With a twirl of his wand, he teleported rolled parchment sheets into the hands of the others in the room.

"So who's this swot?" Stanley Loughlin wondered as he gazed on the very pinched-looking young man on the animated photo at the top of his parchment.

"Whoa! I recognize this jerk," Will called out as Tim nodded in agreement. "Mitch Hanewal." As the others in the Troupe looked his way, the slender yet muscular boy with the sandy blond hair and the blue-green eyes added, "He's in Tim's and my class. Given the way he loves to dress as a goth, everyone there thinks that he should be marked in the yearbook as 'most likely to become a serial killer'." As the others laughed, the man also known as the Dynamo of Passion, Eteue ("Impulse"), then fixed their group's guest with a knowing look. "I take it this idiot's something else."

"In that, you're right," Todd affirmed. "The man you know as 'Mitchell Hanewal' is actually a graduate of Seven Hills." As the others gazed on him — all of them knew about the men's magical finishing school located in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Blacksburg in Virginia — he added, "When it was a BASIC school." As the others' eyes went wide, the inspector smirked. "Masters' Class of 'Seventy-six."

"Which one? Seventeen or eighteen?" Savannah asked, a look of disgust crossing her face as the basic message Todd was giving them sank in.

"The former."

All of the Troupe groaned. "Fucking death cheater!" Tim snarled, nearly spitting out that phrase that was almost as despised among most Yizibajohei as "umale".

Savannah's face twisted for a moment. "Ugh! I remember that home boy actually looking at me once after I dumped my ex before I got Gifted!" the mid-level sorceress and manipulator of mesonium sneered out. "I should've realized he was really off the rocker. The look on that creep's face..."

"A slave acting above her station?" Harry wondered.

"Damn straight!"

"So what's the sitch, Inspector?" Tim then wondered.

Todd smirked; his kids had loved Kim Possible when it came out on television after the turn of the millennium, then got him and his wife hooked on that series. "We think he's a soul vampire, like what the Spanish turned Señora Gutierrez into becoming when she was still Princess Inés of the Inca because she was also a magical." As the others in the Troupe nodded in understanding, the DMLE officer added, "He feeds on the life force of others to stay alive and youthful, but he's knowledgeable enough to not make corpses as Señora Gutierrez did after she was revived near the Hellmouth." He tried not to frown on being forced to think of that Merlin-cursed place near Los Angeles.

Harry and his friends all nodded in understanding. In recent years, magical incidents in the Sunshine State had increased markedly for some odd reason. The resources of the DMLE and other elements of the Department of Magic had been stretched until Terrans-turned-Yizibajohei began to appear and made an impact; given normal staleblood disdain for "no-majs", it was probably a relief in the eyes of the conservatives in the Magical Congress that people like Harry Bluth had got involved...even if the chances of a general revelation of America's hidden magical communities grew more and more every time someone like Tariko Katabarbe came into the area to get someone Gifted. Fortunately, the situation in Florida wasn't close to what Sunnydale had endured before Buffy Summers and her friends in the Scooby Gang became active in keeping the "nightlife" there tamed.

Still, with a growing population of demons, spirits and other things impossible to classify, aurors in Florida were tearing their hair out as they tried to comprehend what was going on.

Well, they were now going to get a ton of help...

Thank God that all of Todd's friends are all 'pro-no-maj', the current incarnation of the Ghostly Hunter mused to himself. 'No stalebloods need apply here'...!

Shaking his head, the leader of the Troupe smiled as he glanced on his friends, all of whom were fellow Caleb Lain Senior High students. As she just hinted a moment ago, Savannah became Crystal Angel after her then-boyfriend had been caught cheating on her with the head of the school cheerleader squad. Will became Impulse in the wake of Harry actually saving both him and his father from the Bakshi family's next door neighbour...who turned out to be a rogue necromancer from Mexico of all things! Stanley, a native of Crawley near London in England now on exchange while his father worked for Carnival Cruises' local offices, gained the magical Gifts of the Puppet Player, Memdyuodyato ("Gepetto"), thanks to being friends with Hermione Granger; Stanley had been one of the few people who played with the current incarnation of the Bright Seamstress of Spells before the latter began Hogwarts five years ago. Tim was Gifted after Will saved him from a sea spirit who somehow got into a local hockey rink; the would-be professional figure skater was now a mid-level magically-powered FISS and cryokinetic sorcerer who currently called himself Byuoda ("Glacier"), the Freezing Wall.

"A death cheater a day keeps the Doctor away."

Laughter filled the room as people gazed on Gavin Williams, the latter's green eyes sparkling with amusement. The Troupe's red-haired equivalent to Winston Egbert of the Sweet Valley Boosters or Xander Harris of the Scooby Gang, he normally worked as treasurer for the Caleb Lain Senior High student council. He had stumbled onto the Troupe's activities four months ago after Harry and his friends moved to clear out an honest-to-goodness ch'ŭkshin of all things from the school; how a Korean spirit of toilets had got to America STILL mystified Todd's friends in the Magical Advanced Research Projects Agency on Mount Greylock in Massachusetts. Because of that discovery and wanting to get in on the action in protecting Florida from the issues Harry warned him about, Gavin was welcomed into the Troupe, being Gifted as the Warning Bell of the East, R'bodum ("Carillon"), a man with a deep singing voice that could stun and kill someone if he really put all his power behind it.

"Well, it's best to keep Miss Black out of the situation," Stanley mused before sipping the tea he had made for himself before coming down. "According to 'Mione, the last time she was in Britain and one of the Dementors sent out to track down Rose Potter's godfather tried to attack her, Miss Black got..." Here, the blond, grey-eyed West Sussaxon cruise director's son shuddered. "Creative."

"What happened?" Todd asked; as a no-maj-born raised to understand by his parents that certain things simply shouldn't be done in a civilized society, he definitely didn't care for the soul vampires that the British Ministry of Magic used to guard their prisoners at Azkaban.

"Well, from what she told me, every magical in Britain from Land's End to John o' Groats heard the thing screaming its guts out while Miss Black held it down and plucked out every soul it had consumed one at a time like she would take off the legs of a centipede, singing some weird ditty she learned when she was in New York before Miss Katabarbe found her and got her Gifted. Everyone could HEAR her sing, by the way!" As the others in the room laughed, Stanley added, "When a dozen more of those things showed up, Miss Black was happy to do a repeat performance. Senior Undersecretary Umbridge had her tracked down and sent some of Regent Lady Bones' people to arrest her, with her going along the way. Soon as those poor chaps saw who it was, they stunned Umbridge, then themselves!"

More laughter filled the room. Much that there were times the Archangel of Mortality glanced towards Florida while she lived with her twin sister in their family home outside Savannah, Margo Black hadn't actually entered the Sunshine State to deal with the growing number of malevolent supernatural beings that were starting to make a little too much noise for people's comfort on BOTH sides of the magical security divide. When that was noted in MARPA, the head of research concluded that because Margo constantly projected a necrotic aura from her body even when she was not exercising her powers, not even the most powerful demon wanted to try their luck with her or her twin sister Nora Chapelle.

Thinking of that, Harry sighed. It's good that Georgia and the Carolinas are relatively safe. Now we have to clear Florida out, the Ghostly Hunter mused to himself as he crossed his arms, gazing down at the portrait of Mitchell Hanewal. He then blinked as memory came back to him. "Wait a minute..."

"What is it, man?" Will asked.

"I've seen Jay and a few others we've earmarked as potential Gifting candidates hanging out with this death cheater," Harry noted.

Tim moaned. Harry had called the meeting to discuss the fact that many of their peers at Caleb Lain Senior High were acting as if someone was just trying to suck the joy out of their very lives; common among the incidents the Troupe had seen at school included forgetfulness, long absences from class and radical changes in behaviour. "Yeah, I've seen a couple I marked as potentials hanging out with him. Didn't notice if they were acting as if this jerk's being sucky-sucky with their souls..." Here, the Freezing Wall considered that before he shook his head. "Have to keep an eye out for that."

"Amen to that, Tim," Savannah noted, grimly nodded.

"We have to get everyone else alerted, dude," Gavin warned.

"Agreed," Harry noted with a determined nod. One thing the Sunshine Troupe did while keeping the supernatural problems somewhat under control was to go out and find people across the peninsula and the Panhandle to be Gifted themselves, thus spread protection throughout the state. The main group of the Troupe's "branch offices" — Gavin's name for them — were based out of Orlando; Harry and his friends always loved to hit Florida's fourth largest city almost every weekend to get somewhere away from Miami to recharge the mental batteries and bring their internal stress levels to safer levels.

But with what Todd just dropped on their laps...!

"Okay, we'll spread the word and keep an eye on our friends in school," the Ghost Hunter then reported. "Gavin, get those of our friends who can access federal and state databases concerning strange deaths or unsolved disappearances to sniff around. Start drawing up numbers, locations, the whole works. I'm wondering if Mitch is killing people and transforming them into some of the things we've had to deal with." Here, he gazed down on the detailed report the DMLE had drawn up concerning the Seven Hills alumnus from two centuries before. "Todd, if your friends in MARPA or other parts of the DOM can jump in on this without making the stalebloods throw a snit, all the help you guys can give is more than welcome. Stan, pass this on to Hermione. She's lovers with Pansy Parkinson, who's a reality warper. Margo would listen more to someone like Pansy than people like us. We notice ANY disappearances among the students or staff, we jump on it right away. Chances are some of the missing people..."

"Might be prisoners of this bastard to keep him 'recharged'," Will finished.

"Damn straight! Savannah, can you cook up the pre-Gifting cake?"

The drama club member tried not to groan at that request. Despite the very egalitarian worldview of the natives of the World of the Forge, she often got stuck with the "domestic scenes" since none of the boys here could cook; this wasn't a skill that had been high in demand on Yiziba since the start of the Great Show of Life in earnest. "Sure, I've got some slices in cold storage. Much that it will get the bad gunk out of them if this white trash has been trying to turn them into his pet creature army..."

"Doubt they'll say 'no' to being Gifted, Savannah," Will lamented. "After all, nothing gets the fight scenes going better than a revenge quest."

Laughter filled the room...

To Be Continued...!


WRITER'S NOTES

The term Wars of Liberation is Fred's creation. This is a catch-all phrase to indicate the time period around the Second World War commonly known among European magicals as Grindelwald's War. The Wars of Liberation were themselves a world-wide conflict; magical battles in the Pacific Ocean basin occurring around that time are seen as part of Tsukuyomi's War of Liberation, which was first noted on in the second Wizards and Avalonians short story to Phoenix From the Ashes.

America's version of Britain's Order of Merlin forms three separate awards, though given equal levels of respect to their counterpart awards. The equivalent of the third-class Order of Merlin is the Magical Medal of the United States of America. The next-higher award is the Magical Star of the United States of America, while the top-most magic-only award is the Magical Cross of the United States of America. In the combined normal/metahuman precedence, the magic-only awards fall AFTER their normal counterparts; the Magical Medal falls in behind the Bronze Star Medal, the Magical Star comes after the Silver Star Medal and the Magical Cross falls in behind the Medal of Honour.

Inés is Fred's name for the Inca Mummy Girl who appeared in the episode of the same name in Buffy the Vampire Slayer's second season (fourth episode). She was given the name Coya Gutierrez once she was rescued by Xander Harris (Hyena); her story is explained better in Part Four of Book One.

Fred created the Seven Hills Wizarding Academy as a male-only counterpart to the Salem Witch's Institute, which was first mentioned in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Of course, this was long before JKR introduced the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Pottermore. Thus, in the universe of Fred's stories (as noted in Magic and Canada), both Salem and Seven Hills would adjust to becoming post-masters/mistresses degrees (the American equivalent of the British NEWT-level final year of study at Hogwarts) "finishing schools" for people seeking additional training.

Winston Egbert (Lightmage) is a background character who constantly appeared throughout the Sweet Valley High series. He first appeared in the universe of this series in Friendship is Yizibajohei.

This omake was the first story written introducing the concept of the Magical Advanced Research Projects Agency (MARPA), the American version of the British Ministry of Magic's Department of Mysteries. However, chronologically in story time, MARPA first appeared in Of Gifts and Semblances.