Vallant Locker Room
Mission: Tryouts Game
10:34
“What is this??” Jackson choked out, eyes wide and horrified. “Our clothes!”
The entire locker room was a disaster zone.
Water covered everything—shin-deep and sloshing—sloshing hard enough that every step sent a little wave against lockers, benches, and gear bags. Every drain had been carefully, aggressively duct-taped over like someone had taken time to personally hate plumbing. Jerseys clung to benches, socks floated past like tiny shipwrecks, and someone’s cleats bumped against the wall like sad, rubbery boats.
Danne screamed—actually screamed—like he’d just watched his GPA drown.
“Hold on!” André shouted, pushing forward. He snapped his wand out, aura flaring, and the tip lit up with a bright, cold blue. The water surged toward us—
—and stopped.
André held it at bay, a shimmering wall forming between us and the indoor ocean. The water bowed and pressed, but his aura barrier pushed right back, vibrating with the strain.
“Oh… God,” Coach Wallaby barked, voice cracking through the chaos. His beloved khaki pants were now a soggy, dark brown, sticking to his legs like wet cardboard. “Who did this?!”
“We all just got here,” the defensive coordinator fired back, boots splashing as he tried to keep his balance. “Malachi—help me get these doors closed before we flood the whole stadium.”
Malachi sprang into action, sprinting through the water and shoving his shoulder into the door. André shifted his wand slightly, directing the press of water away while they forced it shut inch by inch.
The force against the door was insane. You could see Malachi’s muscles straining, jaw set, cleats slipping slightly on the soaked floor. Finally, with one last shove—
Click.
The door latched.
The flood stopped advancing. The room still looked like someone had tried to baptize the entire team at once, but at least the water wasn’t escaping.
“Okay… what do we do now?” the coordinator muttered, staring at the mini-lake.
“I’m calling these toe-suckers right now,” Coach Wallaby spat, ripping his phone from his pocket. As he dialed, he started muttering insults at a speed that shouldn’t be humanly possible, half of which I’m sure broke several codes of conduct and possibly a few laws.
And that’s how we ended up outside.
We were herded out of the building like a flock of drowned cats—everyone soaked, jerseys clinging, socks squishing in our shoes. The blistering sun beat down on us, turning the wet fabric into a portable sauna. My shirt stuck to my spine. My jeans felt like they weighed three hundred pounds.
Multiple sleek, dark YMPA vehicles had pulled up out front—agents in tactical jackets milling around, aura scanners out, comms buzzing. For a second I thought they’d roll out some crazy magical solution to fix everything.
They did not.
Not even one towel.
D7 (calm, filtered through the earbud):
“So someone flooded the locker room.”
I looked down at my dripping clothes, water still falling off the hem of my shirt and onto the hot pavement. “Yes, Agent Obvious,” I muttered. “Unless this is a very aggressive immersive water feature.”
D7: “Confirm. Flooded locker room. Drains sealed. Equipment compromised?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said under my breath, trying not to look like I was talking to myself. “Everything’s soaked. Jerseys, gear, dignity. I just don’t see why a mole would bother with this.”
D7 (dry): “Well, it’s already working. Internal chatter is skeptical of you again. Something happens, your name ‘mysteriously’ fits the story. That’s the point.”
I clenched my jaw.
“Okay, but if I was the mole,” I hissed, “what good does flooding a locker room do? The mole’s trying to capture intel on the MP System and maybe get Malachi killed—or captured—not create a public slip-n-slide.”
D7: “Try to kill Malachi with the flood.”
I stared at the building, then at my soaked shoes, then at the concrete. “I must be frickin’ thickheaded, huh,” I muttered. “Water the size of a swimming pool isn’t killing anyone. They might smell like saltwater and sweaty despair, but that’s not assassination. Especially not of the target.”
D7 (a beat of silence, then):
“The reasoning isn’t important right now. What matters is what it causes. Confusion. Delay. Suspicion. Now—look around. See who’s shocked… and who’s pretending to be.”
I took a breath and did as ordered.
Most of the team looked like how you’d expect people to look after losing their dry clothes to a watery crime scene: pissed, loud, and mildly dramatic. Some guys were laughing, joking, kicking water at each other like this was a field trip gone wrong. Others were complaining about shoes, hair, phones, their entire lives.
It seemed like a mess of honest reactions. No one stood out.
At first.
Then my gaze landed on Mikey.
He wasn’t laughing.
He wasn’t complaining.
He wasn’t even talking.
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He just stood there, hands twitching slightly at his sides, eyes trained anywhere but on the building. Not confused. Not outraged. Just… tight. Like someone bracing for impact.
Guilty.
And then it hit me—harder than a thrown mallet.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” I breathed.
D7: “You see someone?”
I didn’t answer.
I just stormed toward Mikey.
He saw me coming. His head tilted in mild curiosity, but there was a flicker behind his eyes that said he already knew why I was walking his way.
“You seem a little antsy,” he said with a weak laugh.
“Yeah,” I replied, voice soft but sharp. “My clothes just got completely soaked. I’m surprised yours didn’t.”
He shrugged, forcing a casual grin. “I swim with my clothes on sometimes. This feeling is… pretty familiar, y’know?”
“Yeah. Maybe,” I said. “But here’s what I don’t understand.”
Mikey’s smile faltered, almost imperceptibly.
“How did they pull this off?”
“This is a spy mage school,” Mikey said quickly. “Someone could’ve done this in seconds. One spell, maybe two—boom, instant flood.”
“Right,” I nodded. “Except they’d need to know where to aim that spell. Knowing where the stadium is—sure, that’s in the pamphlet. But knowing where the locker room is inside the stadium? That’s something only somebody on the football team, or working with someone on the football team, would know.”
I slowly turned my head, meeting his eyes fully now.
“Somebody that knows them,” I continued. “Somebody who defended them. Repeatedly.”
Mikey froze.
His throat bobbed.
His eyes glossed over, not from defiance—but from guilt.
“You’re their little mole,” I said quietly. “You gave them intel on the locker room. You’re helping them put the blame on me. That’s why you knew so much. They told you.”
Silence fell between us.
The noise of the rest of the team—the distant yelling, the hum of vacuums, the barked orders of staff—suddenly felt far away, like someone had dropped a dome around us.
Mikey didn’t deny it.
He didn’t laugh it off.
He didn’t argue.
Instead—
He ran.
“He’s running!” I shouted—not loud enough for everyone, but definitely loud enough for D7.
D7 (instantly): “Don’t lose him. Do not lose him. I’m tracking your movement—go.”
Mikey darted along the side of the building, squeezing into the narrow space between the stadium wall and a tall chain-link fence that guarded some outdoor dining area. Chairs and tables were stacked behind the metal, casting strange shadows.
I slipped after him, shoes skidding on the gravel and patches of concrete. He yanked out his wand mid-stride, aura flaring with panicked intensity.
The ground in front of him turned white-blue in an instant.
Ice.
I didn’t have time to swear before my feet hit the slick surface. But instead of flailing like a cartoon, I dropped low, tucking into a controlled slide. My Perk thrummed under my skin. I slammed my fist into the ground as I slid.
The ice shattered into a spiderweb of cracks.
Mikey squealed in panic as the ground beneath him fractured.
He tried to speed up, but his momentum betrayed him. I flipped onto my feet, planting my palm flat against the concrete.
My Perk exploded from my hand in a focused shockwave.
The pavement rumbled—then bucked.
Mikey lost his footing completely. His legs kicked in the air before gravity flung him down. He hit the ground hard, rolling once before coming to a bruised stop, groaning in pain.
I jogged the last few steps, breathing heavily.
“So,” I panted, standing over him, “was this their great plan?”
He didn’t look at me.
“You flood a locker room, maybe get the council riled up, and… what? Hope I cry?” I shook my head. “No real mole would do this. No mole.”
Mikey tried pushing himself up, but his elbow gave out, and he dropped onto his side. He managed to get to his knees eventually, breathing heavily, sweat mixing with flecks of dust on his face.
“Yeah…” he rasped. “You got me. So what?”
“So now I get to clear my name from whatever mess you helped create,” I said coldly.
He gave a breathy, humorless laugh. “Well, yeah. But I still stand on what I said,” he murmured. “They’re not the moles. They’re just trying to get the suspicion off themselves.”
“If that’s true,” I snapped, “why tell me any of this ahead of time? Why warn me about distractions, about looking too close at them, if you were planning to help them anyway?”
Mikey leaned back against the wall, breathing hard. “Because I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” he said. “Not really. But if I told you then… it’d at least plant something in your head. A crack. A question.” His voice dropped, eyes locking onto mine. “And it worked. You kind of believe it yourself. You just don’t want that belief to be right.”
My jaw clenched.
“No,” I said, kneeling in front of him so we were eye-level. “There’s no way it isn’t at least one of them. They’ve been targeting me since I started this—since I’ve been hunting this mole that apparently doesn’t want to be found. Everywhere I go, it circles back to them.”
He gazed at me—exhausted, bruised, but with a clarity that unsettled me.
“You’re looking too close,” he said softly. “Your hatred and in-the-box thinking is giving you no leads. You won’t let it go.”
“Who’s ‘it’?” I demanded. “Say it.”
“Them,” Mikey replied. “You know who I mean. Jamal, Maddie, Elf. They’re your favorite suspects. Your punching bag. Your comfort zone.”
I swallowed hard.
“So who is it then?” I challenged. “You know a lot. Maybe you should help instead of playing double agent for chaos.”
He looked down at the cracked ground. “…I don’t know who the mole is,” he admitted. “But I know who it isn’t.”
“And how did you even know where the locker rooms were?” I asked. “That’s not exactly public information.”
“They asked me for a reason,” Mikey said quietly. “Not just because they caught me going to the bathroom alone, with no one to watch my back…”
His voice trailed off.
“Sorry, man,” I muttered, a tiny grimace flickering across my face. “Happens to the best of us.”
That actually wrung a small, broken laugh out of him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Anyways… I saw a paper on Principal Renner’s desk. I think it was a blueprint. Stadium layout. Emergency routes. All that.”
I stared.
“You stole a blueprint off her desk?”
“Didn’t steal it,” he corrected. “Duplicated it. You can do a lot with MP if you know how. One quick scan, one quick projection, one hard copy. Gave them what they needed.”
We started back through the narrow alley, walking shoulder to shoulder. My brain simmered with new anger and old questions.
As we turned the corner, we were immediately greeted with two very suspicious pairs of eyes.
Malachi.
Tisiah.
“Where were you guys?” Tisiah asked, confusion etched across his face. “The entire building’s basically shutting down.”
“Cheating on Danne,” Malachi said with a soft, cruel chuckle.
Tisiah shot him a glare. Malachi ignored it.
“Just come closer,” I said quietly. “We need to keep this between us.”
Their expressions shifted—from casual suspicion to sharp focus.
We huddled together, forming a small circle away from prying eyes and ears.
“So,” I began, jerking a thumb at Mikey, “you can thank him for soaking your clothes.”
“Oh, you little—”
Malachi lunged.
Mikey yelped in absolute horror, and honestly, I didn’t blame him. Having a fully trained, heavily muscled field agent charging you is basically the human form of a boss fight.
Tisiah and I crashed in at the same time, throwing our arms out to block Malachi. He snarled, trying to push past, but we dug in, holding the line.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Mikey shrieked, voice cracking, eyes wide.
D7 (dry aside in my ear):
“Can’t blame him. If Malachi came at me like that, I’d confess to stuff I didn’t do.”
“Wait,” Tisiah said quickly, forcing a smile that showed way too many teeth. “Malachi. You can beat him up later.”
Malachi took a long breath through his nose, then stepped back—barely. His fists were still clenched.
“Anyways,” I continued, “your friends, Malachi—Jamal and them—used Mikey here to get a blueprint of the stadium. That’s how they pulled this off. That’s how they flooded the locker room exactly, and not the hot dog stand or something.”
Mikey winced.
“That’s it?” Malachi snapped. “He helps them and then what, we give him a hug?”
“No,” I said. “In return, he’s working with us now. He knows both sides. If it isn’t Jamal and his crew—and it isn’t me—then maybe he can help us figure out who it really is.”
Malachi scowled. “I don’t like this Disney Channel team-up.”
“It’s necessary,” I said. “We basically have, what, ten people tangled up in this? Somebody has to break. Somebody’s gotta get caught.”
My palms smacked against my thighs in frustration.
Malachi and Tisiah exchanged a long look—silent doubt passing between them. Then they both turned back to Mikey, who swallowed.
“So,” Malachi said slowly, eyes narrowing, “what ideas do you have?”
Mikey opened his mouth to answer.
He never got the chance.