The train swayed more than ever as it began to climb the long incline towards New Berlin, capitol of the mighty Germanic Empire. Capitol of most of the world, for that matter. In the luggage car, a teenage boy with olive skin and reddish hair dove out of the way of several boxes dislodged by the increase in movement. He dusted himself off somewhat irritatedly and gathered up the papers he had been examining.

Most of them were photos of other teenage boys in the same school uniform. He settled back into a more secure position among the luggage and began surveying this sheet again. The luggage car had no windows for obvious reasons, so there wasn't much else to do. The boy was somewhat disappointed about that. He had never been to the capitol before, so he had been looking forward to the famous skyline view.

Ah, well. I can find another way to see it, he told himself. If things went well, he would have a more advantageous position on his way out of the city. Meanwhile, he needed to memorize these kids' faces anyways. One of them would be his target, but of course he would have to investigate every single one of them.

The boy sighed and pushed the papers back into the duffle bag by his feet for a while and took out a book instead. As he did so, some of the other items in the bag shifted to reveal something large and metallic. Or rather, several large metallic somethings. He rewrapped them in one of his sweaters and sat back among the luggage with his book: Patterns and Peasants: An exploration of the origins of folktales common throughout European culturesI. Or the equivalent thereof in French. The book was well-worn and had plenty of dog ears.

He read cautiously, keeping one arm looped through the strap of his bag and half his mind preoccupied with looking out for anyone who might find his hiding place.

Several hours later, the train pulled into the station in New Berlin and the conductors began unloading the luggage car. But by then the boy was already leaving the station with his hood pulled up and his head down as he passed the security cameras. As h slipped out into the night, the city began to stir. Something different was about to happen.

“You all right?”

The sun was just disappearing behind the buildings, staining the river and its banks a deep orange. There were two boys on the grassy side of the bank. One of them was sitting on the grass with his hand over his nose while the other reached down to help him up. An electric guitar lay in its case a few feet away. The boy on the ground took the other boy's hand somewhat reluctantly and got to his feet.

“I'll be fine. They just took me by surprise is all,” he said. He was several inches shorter than the other boy and had that awkward look that boys get just when they're about to grow. The taller boy still wasn't what anyone would consider tall, but had a lean, athletic look about him that made him look a bit taller than he was.

“Do you play guitar, then?” the athletic boy asked as the small one went to retrieve his instrument. He had an odd, vague sort of face with narrow eyes and high cheekbones. There was a bruise just below his left eye and a split in his lower lip that were both starting to swell.

“No, I just lug it around for exercise,” the other boy said irritably. He was unzipping the guitar case one-handed to check the instrument for damage. “Glad I got this new padded case now. I thought the neck would be snapped for sure. I don't suppose you have any tissues?” There was blood dripping between his fingers now from his nose.

“Of course,” the boy said, and pulled a small packet from his pocket. He tossed it over and the younger boy began wadding up tissues and pushing them up his nose. “Why were they attacking you?”

“Why do you think?” He indicated his hair as he said it, which was electric blue and seemed to stick up all over his head with a life of its own. “You go to my school, don't you? I saw you in the picture for last year's football team. You're hard to miss with that hair. What was your name again?”

“I could say the same to you,” said the taller boy, whose spiky hair was a deep purple. “I'm Kubo. Noriaki Kubo. Mostly people call me Nori.”

“Yeah, I thought it was something weird. Not that I can talk. The name's Hyphen Stolz,” Hyphen said.

“So, you're a Mage then?” Nori wanted to know.

“Yeah, I guess.” Hyphen hitched his guitar case over his shoulder and began walking back up the bank towards Nori. “Electricity.”

“I didn't know there was such a thing as an electricity Mage.”

“There isn't. You should've seen the looks on the registration office people's faces.”

“Oh,” Nori said, and he looked as if he were struggling to figure this out for a moment. “Well, I'm water, but I do ice best.”

“Cool.”

“Why did you let them hit you?”

Hyphen paused for a moment. He was level with Nori once again now, but he still had to turn his pale, freckled face upward to glare at the other boy.

“It's not as if I just lay down and let them kick me,” he said. “There were four of them and they were all bigger than me.”

“You could have raised Mage power, but you didn't.” They began walking back toward the road now.

“Yeah, well. That wouldn't have been very fair of me.”

“They weren't being fair.”

“I just don't like doing it, okay? I notice you didn't, either.”

Nori shrugged and put a hand to his face. “I should've. My brother's gonna kill me when he sees this.”

They walked on in silence for several minutes until they came to a split in the road.

“I'm going this way. Gotta catch the bus,” Nori said, pointing down the left-hand fork.

“Oh, right then. Well. . . . thanks,” Hyphen said, holding out a hand to the other boy. Nori smiled—the first real expression he had shown—and took it.

“Any time,” he said. “I'll see you at school tomorrow.” And he set off down the street at a jog. Hyphen watched him go and ran his hand through the short fluffy hair on the back of his head for a while before striking off in the opposite direction.

Suzanne was already home from work when Hyphen got home. He saw her car in the parking lot and headed for the back of the building. There was a convenient dumpster just below the fire escape which he had become quite good at climbing on top of even with a guitar slung over his shoulder. He managed to hoist himself up onto the fire escape, wincing as his bruised side knocked against the cast iron.

The hall window was open as usual, and he slipped in as quietly as possible. He might have managed to get away with it if Suzanne hadn't come out of her bedroom just as he was tiptoeing past it. She stopped short and stared at her little brother. He stared back. She took in his dirty clothes, the bruises on his face, his scraped knuckles...

“Yeah, so. I was just going to my room, so...” Hyphen tried.

“Where the hell have you been, Hyphen Stolz!?” she demanded. Among other things, their mother had left Suzanne quite a generous bosom, and it had a tendency to inflate to impossible proportions when she was angry. Hyphen stepped back to avoid the damage zone.

“I was at Tracy's, I texted you,” Hyphen protested.

“And what? She beat you up? That had better not be blood on your shirt!”

Hyphen looked down at the offending spot.

“It's not,” he lied, quickly pulling the shirt off.

“Put salt on it and throw it in the wash right now!” his sister commanded. “And those jeans! I'm not buying you anymore clothes! Damn it, Hyphen! Why do you have to be such a punk??”

“Oh, so it's my fault that people beat me up for being a Mage!”

“You could wear a hat or a hood or, I don't know, not walk through neighborhoods that are full of anti-Mage gangs???” she suggested sarcastically.

“It's not that simple, woman!” Hyphen roared as he stomped off to his bedroom.

“What did you just call me?”

“Nothing! You're beautiful!” he shouted back angrily before slamming his door.

“If you break that door, you're not getting a new one!” Suzanne called before slamming her own. A minute later she opened it again. “And dinner is in the fridge! Play your guitar tonight and I'll seriously kill you! I've got a test tomorrow!”

“Ha!” Hyphen said, pulling his own door open again. “Too bad it's broken so I can't play it anyways!”

“What do you mean it's broken?” she wailed. “Hyphen that thing was freaking expensive!!”

“Whatever! I'll fix it myself!” He slammed the door again and flopped down on his bed. Out in the hallway, Suzanne gave a roar of frustration and slammed her own door. Hyphen lay on his back staring at the ceiling for a while. After several minutes, the combined temptations of dinner and an ice pack for his ribs taunted him up from his place of moping and into the kitchen.

He dug through the freezer for a bag of peas or corn while his leftover stroganoff heated up. They didn't have any, so he made do with raspberries instead. Those would be better to eat when they thawed out anyways. Then he texted his best friend, Tracy Connors.

Got jumped on the way home and you'll never guess who saved my butt.

Devoid of his guitar, Hyphen didn't really know what else to do. He had homework of course, but that was a last resort. His phone buzzed.

OMG srsly? Again? Who was it?

He stopped eating for a minute to reply.

Noriaki Kubo. Japanese Mage kid who was on the football team last year. The one that all the girls are crazy about for some reason.

That was the thing about girls. Normally, a good German girl wouldn't look twice at a Mage, let alone a Japanese Mage, but if he could kick a ball around the field, his race and denomination suddenly disappeared. Perhaps that was what people meant when they said that world peace would be made through football.

Another text message.

NO WAY!! I thought he was kind of an arrogant jerk or something.

Hyphen considered that. He supposed it was easy enough for people to confuse 'permanently vague' with 'arrogant jerk.'

Idk, he seemed nice enough. And we are all Mages. Maybe we should hang out sometime.

And just like that, Hyphen Stolz changed the course of his fate forever.

“And with that, I call this the third meeting of the NBG to order.” Ishmael Herman knocked his fake gavel (one of his marimba mallets, really) on the desk and beamed around at his fourteen classmates. They stared back at him blankly. He cleared his throat. “Would our esteemed secretary care to read the items on the agenda for today?”

Hironobu stood up and began to read haltingly from a list that Ishmael had slipped him just a few minutes before. He had been elected secretary because everyone agreed that he was the most organized member of the group by far. Also, he was too timid to do anything else.

“'Agenda for NBG meeting on October 10, 2020,'” he read. “'Item one: the subject of the mysterious stalker. Item two: The Platinos have a new....' Ish, this isn't the place for self-promotion.”

“We're supposed to support each other. What's wrong with that?” demanded Kevin, one of the other members of the three-man group known as The Platinos.

“Well, in that case, I'm singing at Zorby's next week. You should all come,” said Caterina, who was the loudest girl any of them knew on or off the stage.

“Hey, no fair! Be sure and put my student council campaign in the agenda, too!” Alexander called out.

“Please, please! Brothers and sisters, calm down!” Ishmael pleaded as each member began shouting out something they wanted acknowledgment for. He looked to Rufus and Michael, his fellow NBG generals. The one had fallen asleep and the other was doing his English homework, completely ignoring what was going on around him. Ishmael sighed.

They were a good group of kids, really. All fifteen of them were in the most advanced academic track that Hollestor High offered. Half of them had known each other since fifth grade or earlier. Some since kindergarten. There were representatives here from almost every ethnicity in the empire. They hadn't planned it that way, but they had somehow ended up all in the same philosophy class last year. And then this year the Incident had occurred and it had become necessary to create this group: the NBG. Nobody except Ishmael was really sure why it was called that, and he was slightly embarrassed to share his naming inspiration with the group as a whole.

The Incident had happened just a few weeks ago and regarded the boy who should have been the sixteenth member of the NBG: James O'Neil. He had been the sixteenth member of the advanced philosophy class at any rate. They had gone through a lot together in that class and come out of it such good friends that it drove all of their teachers insane. However, at the beginning of that school year, James had not returned to school. He hadn't told any of them why, not even Rufus who was his best friend. It was as if he had simply disappeared from the face of the earth.

And then, about a month ago, each of the remaining fifteen students had seen the same strange boy in a hoodie following them during their daily activities. It had taken a while before they realized that they had all had the same experience, and when they did, Ishmael had suggested that they form a group to investigate the situation.

“It'll be fun!” he had insisted. “Like we have a gang, but we do good things instead selling drugs and shaking people down for money.”

None of the others except Michael and Rufus had really jumped on the suggestion at first, which was why they were now the generals along with Ishmael. But then a week later, Victor and Ishmael had been walking home from football practice when they noticed the stranger following them again. They decided to confront the boy, but he turned and ran as soon as he realized they were approaching him. They ran after him, and when they managed to catch him, he put up a fight. And he was a good fighter. Suspiciously good. Neither of them could land a hit on him, but Victor had managed to pull down the hood of his sweatshirt. Ishmael, though a combination of lightning reflexes and sheer dumb luck had managed to snap a photo of the offender before he disappeared into the afternoon twilight.

Which was why they had finally convinced the others that they needed to start the NBG. But here they were at their third meeting and still no closer to finding their answers because this was what happened when you put a bunch of incredibly intelligent, talented young people who were all friends in the same room: chaos.

“QUIET!!!” Ishmael bellowed, and the others finally shut up. Rufus woke up with a start and a grunt. “Now, if you remember,” Ishmael continued once he had everyone's attention, “the first item of business is the one that we are all here because of: the mysterious stalker. Yolanda, I believe you had something to report to us on this matter?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Yolanda, looking up from her manicure. Nobody was really sure why she was in NBG. When they had all decided to begin the group, she had constantly claimed that it was stupid and childish and she wanted no part in it, but then she had shown up to their meetings as if the whole thing had been her idea in the first place.

“So, basically,” she said, “I was coming home from the club last night, and then suddenly I noticed this total creeper hanging around behind me. So, I thought, like, what the hell? You know? I thought he was some dude who had seen me at the club and wanted to follow me home because, you know, that happens all the time. It's such a pain. But anyways, he must have realized I knew he was following me because then he comes right up to me and starts all conversating with me, and then I realized that was the dude that Ish had a picture of at the last meeting, so yeah.”

“Can you describe him?” Nobuhiro asked, he was writing notes furiously.

“Yeah, he was pretty fine, actually. Like, sort of tan like a little lighter than Ramadhan--”

“I told you guys not to call me that!” Ryan Ali cut in.

“--but way cuter—sorry Ramadhan—and he had red hair. Like it was naturally dark but he dyed it red, which is totally weird. I mean, who does that? It makes you look like a Mage. Oh, and he had a French accent.”

“Okay, see people? Now we're getting somewhere. He has a French accent. Interesting...” Ishmael lapsed into thought for a moment.

“What did he... conversate with you about?” Michael asked. The amusement and scorn with which he pronounced the word went completely over Yolanda's head.

“Oh, you know. He was all, 'Hey, where you going?' 'What's your name?' 'You live around here?'” Yolanda reported, waving her hand vaguely through the air to dry her nail polish.

“You think he was seriously hitting on you?” Marina wondered, staring at Yolanda with outright skepticism.

“No, of course not,” snapped Yolanda. “He would've asked for my number or offered to buy me a drink or something if he were hitting on me. He was just trying to cover up the fact that he was following me. I mean, if he were a stalker, he wouldn't have come up to talk to me at all. If he were a creeper, he would have tried to get me in bed, but he just pretended like he was interested and then walked away.”

It was easy to forget that Yolanda was actually quite intelligent because of how she acted most of the time.

“Thank you, Yolanda. Your intelligence gathering skills are appreciated,” Ishmael said. “So, we are all in agreement that this whole situation is bizarre beyond belief, correct?”

There was a murmur of assent.

“So, a bizarre situation deserves a bizarre solution, am I correct?”

Another murmur of assent.

Ishmael turned to Ryan. “Ramadhan--”

“I'm not answering to that name.”

“--we need you to consult your oracles.”

Ryan sighed in exasperation as the others spoke out in agreement to Ishmael's suggestion.

“I've told you before, it's not oracles or something. It's prophetic foresight, and it's highly limited,” he said.

“Well, whatever it is. Just take a tiny peak and see if you can find something that will help us figure out what's going on with this weirdo,” said Alexander.

“Fine, fine, fine. I can't guarantee it's going to be anything reliable, though,” he reminded them. “We don't have any of the proper ceremonial rites or anything.”

“Just a quick peak is all we need,” Ishmael reminded him, pushing over a pencil and paper.

Ryan sighed again and took the pencil. He closed his eyes and began to hum deep in his throat. His hand twitched. Then it began flying across the paper. A very lifelike picture began to form. The others all gathered around to stare at it. After several minutes, Ryan's eyes opened again. He picked up the paper and handed it to Ishmael, who examined it carefully. It showed a drawing of a young teenage boy with unusually round eyes, unruly hair, freckles, and a semi-permanent crease between his eyebrows.

“Hey, I know that kid,” Rufus said. “I mean, sort of. He's that freshman with the really weird name.”

“Yeah, like a punctuation mark or something,” Caterina said, trying to remember. “He hangs out with Ellen Connors's little sister. What was his name again?”

“Hyphen Stolz?” Michael supplied.

“Yes! That's it!” Caterina and Rufus chorused.

“Well, then,” Ishmael said, “we shall have to find this Hyphen Stolz and bring him in!”

The Next Morning

“Kubo, what do you think you're doing?!”

Nori paused mid-shot to watch the coach running towards him across the field.

“I was planning to fake out Simmon like I was going for a corner shot, but then go down the middle instead,” he said, flipping the ball off the grass with his toe and catching it deftly on top of his head. He balanced it there for a bit while the coach mouthed silently at him. “Should I have passed it to Ly instead?”

“You shouldn't even be here!” the coach finally managed to get out.

“What do you mean?” Nori said. He let the ball fall into his hands and tossed it to the goalie.

“This is official team practice time, Kubo. You're not on the team. In fact, I don't even remember seeing you at tryouts this year,” the coach explained, trying very hard not to lose his cool completely.

“But nobody seemed to mind,” Nori said, looking around at his teammates in confusion. They shuffled awkwardly as their coach scrutinized them.

“You boys keep practicing,” he commanded. “Kubo, you come with me. We need to talk.”

He took the boy by the arm and led him off the field. Once they were out of earshot from the rest of the team, he turned to face Nori. The boy was looking back at him as though utterly mystified as to what this could possibly be about. Then again, that was how Nori usually looked. The coach ran a hand through his hair as he considered how best to get through to him.

“Kubo,” he said at length, “remind me again what your cumulative score was for your final exams last year.”

“426,” Nori said automatically.

“Out of?”

“1800.”

“And if I remember correctly, 300 of those points were for math and the other 126 were divided up among the other five subjects?”

“I did get a 50 on the physical science portion,” Nori said proudly.

“You needed a 180 to pass,, Kubo,” the coach reminded him.

“What's your point, sir?”

“The thing is, Kubo, that our school has a strict policy regarding grades and competitive sports. If you don't pass your end of year examinations, then you aren't allowed to play sports the following school year,” the coach explained.

“But I got a perfect score in one of the categories!” Nori protested. “Doesn't that make up for the rest?”

“No, Kubo,” the coach said, burying his face in one of his hands. “It really doesn't. Now, I would love to have you back on the team, but it's just not allowed. So for now I need you to stay off the field during practice sessions, okay?”

“How do I get back in?” Nori wanted to know.

The coach stared at his former ace and tried to read some sort of normal human emotion in those glassy purple eyes. Granted, the boy was more or less the most talented and enthusiastic player he had ever met, and sometimes the coach forgot entirely that he was a Mage. But he knew that the school board wasn't going to forget so quickly. They weren't happy that there had been a Mage on the team that almost made it all the way to nationals last year, and had been only too happy for a legitimate excuse to kick him out. But of course the coach would have eaten his own gym shorts before telling Nori the truth.

“If you can pass your midterm exams, then I might be able to make a special case,” he said at length. “But I've seen your grades this term, Kubo, and there's no way you'll make it unless you find a really incredible tutor. Sound good?”

That was good. The odds were almost entirely against Nori passing his midterms. Nori considered the proposition for a moment.

“Yeah, that sounds reasonable,” he said eventually.

“Alright, then. In the meantime, promise me you'll stay off the field while the rest of the team is practicing? You'll need to use that time for studying anyways.”

“Okay,” Nori said, nodding thoughtfully. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“Good boy,” the coach said. He gave Nori a clap on the shoulder and then jogged back to the rest of the team. Nori watched him, lost in thought.

A tutor. Where was he going to find a tutor? His brother was very smart, but he was also very busy. He would have to find someone else. This meant of course that he would have to start going to class. He sighed and headed back to the locker room to change into his uniform.

“Wow, you weren't kidding,” Tracy said when she saw Hyphen at school the next morning. “Those guys sure did a number on you.” She was waiting for him at the school gate, and was slightly cross because it was an unusually cool morning and he had been late. Her pale cheeks had a patchy pink flush in them and her icy purple eyes flashed in the morning sunlight as she looked Hyphen up and down.

“Yeah, well, Suzanne already lectured me plenty, so you don't have to take the bother,” he said. He had been lectured again that morning because he had woken up with even more bruises and swelling than he'd had the night before. “And aren't you cold in that?” he added, eying her uniform skirt.

“Yes, thank you for asking. So you might try getting here on time in the future,” she snapped.

“It's not like you have to wait for me.”

Tracy sighed. There was no point trying to explain things like this to Hyphen. “It's just the way boys are,” her sister would have said. Ellen knew a lot about boys. Too much, in their father's opinion, and Tracy supposed he was right. After all, Ellen was about to become an unwed mother and she had only just graduated from high school last year. When their parents had asked Ellen who the father was, she had simply shrugged her shoulders and said, “Who cares?”

Tracy had no desire to know as much about boys as Ellen did, but she sometimes wished she were better at understanding her best friend.

“What do I have first period, anyways?” he asked her as they entered the school building.

“Why should I know your schedule?” she demanded indignantly. In truth, she had known his schedule by heart before the end of their first week of school, but she never would have admitted it.

“Fine, fine,” he mumbled and stopped by a rock pillar to dig his schedule out of his bag. Hollestor High was housed in an old castle, one of the only ones that hadn't been pulled down during the Great Reawakening in the first half of the 20th century. Tracy leaned against the other side of the column and watched the tide of other students pushing around them until Hyphen managed to pull the battered piece of paper out from between the pages of his math textbook.

“Oh. Great. Freshman seminar,” he moaned. “Why couldn't you just have told me? We have that class together!”

“It's a better learning experience for you this way,” she shrugged. “Come on.”

Hyphen sighed and made to follow her. He was busy putting his schedule back in his bag as he turned round the pillar again and didn't see the other person until he had walked straight into him.

“Sorry!” he said quickly, bracing for a beating that didn't come.

“Hey, you got home okay last night?”

He looked up a bit into Noriaki Kubo's tan face.

“Uh, yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”

Nori glanced over at Tracy, who was standing a few feet away with her mouth slightly open. She didn't agree with the other girls who said that Nori was incredibly good-looking, but seeing someone from the football teaming—even if he wasn't on the team this year—talking to Hyphen with any intent other than to pummel him into the ground was too surreal for her to handle.

“Aren't you Ellen Connors's little sister?” Nori said, cocking his head to one side slightly as he scrutinized her.

“What about it?” Tracy demanded, folding her arms obstinately. This was a question she had gotten pretty frequently since starting at Hollestor. She had considered not coming to the school at all because she didn't want to live under her sister's reputation, but it was where Hyphen was going, so.

“I knew her a little bit,” said Nori. “She said she had a little sister who was super smart.”

This placated Tracy somewhat.

“Really? She said that?” she asked.

“You guys are friends?” Nori wanted to know, looking back and forth between Tracy and Hyphen.

“Pretty much,” Hyphen shrugged. “Since second grade.”

“Cool,” Nori said, brightening up suddenly. “So, do you guys wanna tutor me?”

Hyphen and Tracy stared at him for a moment, and then they burst out laughing.

“Tutor... what!?” Tracy gasped. “Where'd that come from?”

“I'm serious,” Nori insisted. “I need a tutor. You'd feel uncomfortable tutoring a guy by yourself, so it'd be better if you both did it, right?”

“I... wait, are you seriously serious?” Hyphen said, sobering up slightly.

Nori nodded.

“Well, then... Um... I guess we could talk about it?” Tracy said. “What are you doing after school?”

“There's football... Or no, there isn't. So, nothing, I guess,” he said with a shrug.

Before Hyphen really knew what was happening, they had arranged to meet Nori in the library after school. They said their goodbyes and parted ways.

“Wait, are you seriously gonna do it?” Hyphen demanded as he and Tracy headed for Freshman Seminar.

“What? Tutor him?” she said. “I dunno, maybe. You said he seemed like a nice guy, right? It might be fun.”

“Or it might be a nightmare! I heard he got a combined score of 400 on his final exams last year. Four hundred, Tracy! FOUR HUNDRED!”

“That can't possibly be true,” Tracy protested. “Anyways, you'll never believe what Ellen did this morning...”

And she launched into the latest tale of Ellen and her crazy pregnancy hormones.