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Since it appears we're supposed to post our drabbles. ;)



Fred laughed, insane and loudly, as he swooped around the room, dressed in only a loincloth dripping green slime on the floor as he flew, and so mired in ick that he, in shape at least, he barely looked human, the fennel stalk he rode on barely visible under his bulk. Slime spattered the walls, where he'd tried to hit them, following an unfriendly welcome. So much for an easy chat about people coming down with serious cases of green and sometimes slime. The diagrams and circles on the floor, painstakingly drawn in seven colours of chalk were, if nothing else, elaborate.

Amanda bent over, examining them, whilst Wanda provided a distraction, hurling hex bolts near, but never quite at, Fred, keeping him off balance enough that he couldn't quite aim properly. Evidence suggested that being hit would be, at best, bad.

"...there's somefin' wrong 'bout this. That," and Amanda gestured at the glyphs surrounding the northmark on the casting. "That's upside down and those lines shouldn't be covered over in goo." She ducked to one side as a glob of slime almost hit her.

Fred extended an arm, boneless and dripping ooze and his fingers curled around Wanda's wrist. A coating of green began to extend itself up her arm and there was a flare of light as he exploded, coating her in even more slime.

"Shit."

Wanda, still scraping goo from her face, leant forward to take a look. "No. Those are containment lines, aren't they and that," she swore. "if that's upside down, it'll turn other people into slime, rather than just green, won't it?"

There were tendrils of green slowly growing out of the working, getting visibly larger as they watched. Neither woman needed to be told that touching them was a bad idea. Fred being blown into multiple pools of slime didn't seem to be stopping their growth.

---

Amanda had books stacked up higher than her head on both sides of the table, an overflowing ashtray in front of her and a lukewarm cup of tea in her hand. She pushed her hair out of her eyes with one hand and slammed the latest book shut. Nothing. Again. One of the more plausible options about Fred was that he was both mutant and into a weird variant of Italian black magic. Nothing like a blob of green slime flying around on a fennal stalk and cursing people with slime to make your day happy.

From what they'd been able to gather from his workings, he also wasn't terribly good at the whole magic thing. Vindictive, as all three of the people he'd cursed with were ones he'd had a falling out with, and the dogs had all belonged to people on his mail route. They'd found a good four others with partial slime, who were mostly just green.

Fred now a series of pools of green slime, there was only the slight problem of his working and its valiant attempt to cover the world in ick. Unfortunately, green slime just wasn't that large a part of traditional witchcraft.

Four cups of tea later and she maybe had something. If they rewrote the casting and included whole containment lines and then wrapped everything in a force-field before removing the foundations it was written on... maybe.

She gathered her books together, along with pages of notes and dug her mobile out of her pocket, hitting speed dial as she hurried toward the door.

"Wanda? I think I've got somefing."

---

The slime hadn't grown outside the building yet, but it would soon, a slowly spreading semisolid green carpet, growing into drifts against the candelabras filled with the remains of dripping black candles. Doug and Mark, dressed in biohazard suits and wielding snow shovels pulled cleanup.

The lines were redrawn in pink spray paint and the containments replaced. Amanda wrapped the whole thing in a shield and Remy provided the explosion. It turned out that slime was flammable. There was one hell of a fireball, even from a distance after they'd all legged it.

They'd keep a eye out for anyone coming down with a case of slime. Just in case.