Kyle the Apprentice Warlock

“Cooks R’ Us.”  He smiled as he glanced at the caller ID, thought better of having fruit in his pocket, and pulled it out to tuck into his shoulder bag.  If Samantha was calling for the reason he thought she was, she’d get the reference to his greeting, and he might as well beat her to the punch. Mock himself before she could.

“Kyle?”  His sister hesitated slightly at his new greeting then plowed ahead with the conversation, ignoring the chance for friendly banter.  "You wouldn’t happen to know any memory-erasing spells, would you?”  That was...not what he was expecting.  He frowned and pulled the apple back out of his bag realizing he was a little peckish.

“I am legally required to say no”.  His glib reply was interrupted with a crunching bite into his golden apple.  "However,” the young man continued as he crunched annoyingly, “...if you tell me where the body is and who’s involved, I can probably manage something for you.”  His chewing continued as silence came from the other end of the call.  After a thoughtful pause, his sister finally spoke again.

“What!?”  Kyle stifled a laugh that almost resulted in apple chunks up his nose.

“Ah...  So, your government friends will take care of it.  Gotcha.”  He sniggered at Sam’s offended response as he swallowed.

“No!  No one’s dead, Kyle!  Have you...read the article yet?”  Yep.  She’d called for the reason he thought she called.  He’d been thinking she called to tease him about what the guy profiling their family for the PR campaign his mom was part of wrote about him, but now he wondered...

“Working on it now.  They did a nice bit on Anna.  Too bad she’s going to hate it  Just finished reading about me.”  A sigh of relief came over the line.

“So, you haven’t seen the section on me yet?  Good.  I want you to erase everyone’s memory of those stupid tissue commercials, so they don’t haunt me until the end of time.”  Oh, really?  That instantly piqued Kyle’s interest.  Did he smell more ammo for the sibling war?

“Haha, no!  Sorry big sis.  But I’m afraid you’re stuck with that.”  He’d turned his body to shield his phone from the sun and began looking for the section of the interview on his sister.  "Give me a second to skim...Oh!  Oh.  That is hilarious.”  Somehow the writer had found...well, it wasn’t that obscure.  But that this, this, was what the author of the article focused on for Sam when she had such cooler aspects of her life to write about!

“What?”  Samantha demanded hotly.

“I’m changing my ringtone to the jingle. Medicsayswhat!”

“Fuck you!”  She called back.  Kyle could just picture her face coloring with shame at the enduring nature of embarrassing stuff sticking around on the internet.  The commercials she’d made for that business class project.

“Gesundheit.”  Kyle cackled with delight.

“You suck, Kyle” He had intended to stop, but this was a perfect opening for another shot.

“At least I didn’t blow.  Then I’d need a medic” Samantha smacking her hand into her head was loud enough to hear over the call.

“Normally, I’d have a good response to that, Kyle.”  Reasoned even tones that bordered on hysterical came to him.  “But I’ve been receiving calls from people I haven’t heard from since high school asking for a medic.”  It came out in an almost-sob. "I had deliberately made the ads as outrageous as possible specifically so that I wouldn’t win the contest.  I was trying to prevent my ideas from being featured in the Tissue Medic advertising campaign.  Please help me make it go away?”

“Oh.  I’m crying you a river.  It’s so deep I think I need a tissue...medic.”

“Yooouuuu...!  I hate you!  Ugh!”  The call went quiet.

“Sam?  Did – she just hang up on me?”  He stared at the phone as the call counter beeped off.  "She did.  I’ll call her back on break and apologize after she’s cooled off a bit.”

An incoming call from his younger sister started while he was dumbly looking at the just-ended call from his older sister.  The new ringtone began playing.  It was a jaunty jingle even if his sister had badly written the corny lyrics and Kyle chimed in with the catchy song.

“Dry your eyes.

Staunch blood flow.

Cheer you up,

on the go.

Body, heart, or mind,

enchanted Tissue Medic tissues

salve every wound from exes to skinned elbows.”

The jingle began to repeat itself and Kyle interrupted it by answering the call.

“You have reached the cook’s phone.  He can’t speak to you right now because he’s busy slaving away over your favorite meals.”  He was trying to cheer up his younger sister by making fun of himself because he knew she wasn’t going to be happy.

“Kyle, I think I’m going to do something my classmates will regret.”  While, intellectually, Kyle knew she shouldn’t encourage it, he couldn’t help himself but to chuckle.  "You laugh but if someone messes with me today because I’m in the stupid news again I’m going to lose my cool.”  He sighed and put on his ‘responsible-big-brother pants’.

“If you lose your cool, just don’t let anyone find it in the chest of one of your classmates.”  It was going to take a while to talk Anna down off the murder-everyone ledge and he realized with a sigh he was not, in fact, going to have time to get doughnuts before work.  He stared longingly at the Enchantress Doughnuts food bike about half a mile past the museum.

“Cryomancer jokes.  Ha, ha!  Like that’s not the same one you use every time.”  Usually, references to her magic cheered Anna up, but this was not looking like it was going to be a home run of cheering up kid sis by the big bro kind of day.  "Fine.  I promise I won’t get caught.”

That was...better...than outright massacring people with no regard for getting caught, he supposed.  But frankly, the thought of people bullying his little sister just boiled his bones and Kyle was more than willing to bring the pain on anyone who tried.  But Mom had left orders about how to deal with the inevitable article fallout.  Keep her calm and de-escalate.

“It’s just one little section of a PR puff piece meant to humanize Mom to the people who might be a little bit scared that she’s the magical equivalent of a flying super soldier with nuclear laser lances and wing missiles of divine wrath.”  Halfway through that sentence, he noticed a few of the pedestrians walking in the opposite direction eyeing him with concern.

“I shouldn’t have had to participate,” Anna grunted through the phone and seemed to be out of breath for a moment.  She was doing something that made thumping sounds and he assumed that she was probably still getting ready for school.  "I’m a minor.  Aren’t there laws about protecting my privacy and safety?”  Inwardly, Kyle admitted it was a valid concern.  The youngest member of the family was only fourteen and she went to a super prestigious private school full of spoiled children of the uber rich for a reason.

Bodyguards.

All the bodyguards and security on campus were the reason.

“I’m pretty sure you are the only eighth-grader on the planet who has a personal I owe you from the president of their country.”  This had been the plan that they’d worked out with Mom beforehand.  Anna was inevitably going to be upset about whatever was written.  She was a kid in a school with shitty spoiled-asshole classmates.  The family knew beforehand that something, something would go down because of this.  Their goal was to mitigate Anna’s reaction to the bullies.

“You’re right.”  Anna grudgingly admitted.  "I do have that I Owe You from him.”  Kyle knew for a fact that it was framed on her dresser.

“Right next to the ones from three different Joint Chiefs of Staff.”  He reminded her of how she’d had to be bribed into participating so that Joe Q Public could have a chance to get to know their terrifying parent as the doting mother she was.  Or at least make them think she was.  There were more IOUs, from various mom-related events over the years, and Kyle doubted that the individuals in debt would ever let her call them in... but if she ever did...

“It’s a hobby.”  She admitted sheepishly as she tried to conquer her discontent.  "Today’s just going to suck.”  He could hear the resignation in her voice and his heart bled for her.

“I know.”  It wasn’t hard to play the sympathetic older brother when he really was sympathetic to her plight.  It wasn’t that long since he’d been her age and she had it rougher than any of her three elder siblings.  She was the only one in the family who was visibly magic-touched.  She stood out with her waist-length white hair, dark eyes, and tan skin.  “But hey.  At least you got a nice bit about you that makes you seem really impressive while I’m the cook and everyone thinks Sam’s in advertising.”

“Yeah.”  Anna snorted and Kyle thought he may have heard a snot bubble pop.  Someone needs a medic, a tissue medic.  He couldn’t help the thought whispering in his head but wisely kept it to himself so that he didn’t aggravate his baby sister further.  "But they made me out to be like I was so powerful and maybe the heir to mom’s magic and position.”

That?  That had been bad.  Kyle had thought it was a bad move while he was reading it.  That should never have been okay to publish, and it was a damn good thing that Anna attended a school with security up the wazoo already otherwise they’d have to pack her off to some obscure boarding school built like a medieval fortress for her own safety.  The crazies would be out in force for her after this.

“It wasn’t as bad as all that.”  Kyle soothed while lying through his teeth.  The golden apple clutched forgotten at his side.

“The writer called me the next Harbinger and said that I ‘Light Up the Dawn with my magic’.”  She scoffed.  Kyle was nearing the museum where he worked and paused in a shaded spot near the steps so he could keep talking uninterrupted.  He heard the beep of an incoming call and pulled the phone away from his face to see who was calling now.  It was, not surprisingly, his mother this time.  He sighed with resignation.

“Just don’t worry about it, kid.  Go to school.  Have the best damn day you can.  And spit icicles in the face of anyone who gives you grief.”  It was not the most responsible thing he could say, but it was the most big-brotherly thing to say.  "Look.  I gotta go.  Mom’s calling.  Probably to tell me not to encourage you to do anything rash and to stop making fun of Samantha.”

“Kay.  Bye, Kyle.  Love you.”  Her morose response gutted Kyle a bit, if he thought he could get away with it he’d play Hookey and hang out with Anna all day.  But he had to adult, and they’d get caught when the school notified his parents that Anna wasn’t there.

“Love you too Snow Cone.”