Jaime sat at one end of the countertop island in the middle of the Reynolds’ kitchen area, scarfing down the breakfast Mary had prepared for him. She glanced over his things laid out on the other end of the counter, checking to make sure her son hadn’t forgotten anything. His homework was there. His dad had checked that over with him the previous night before bedtime. Yes, everything seemed in order except one little thing.

“Don’t forget Smerd, sweetheart.”

“Mom, I’m not a little kid anymore. I don’t need Smerd to watch over me. He’s been watching over me since kindergarten.”

When Jaime noticed the serious, no-nonsense look Mary was sure must be on her face, he tried a different tactic.

“Don’t you think I’m a little old to be taking a toy to school? I don’t need him to feel safe at school anymore, not since first grade. I think you need to know that he’s with me so that you can feel I’m safe at school.”

Mary smiled at her son’s perceptiveness.

“Yes, that’s it. You got me figured out.”

“Really? You’re superstitious about a little toy dragon?”

“Yes. Now, humor your mother.”

Mary reached into her pants pocket. She knew that Smerd would see her hand appear in his pocket dimension. The p’ckit dragon would know it was time for Jaime to go to school. When Mary felt Smerd climb into her hand, she pulled him out. Once outside the pocket world where Jaime could see him, the diminutive dragon froze in position. Jaime didn’t know that Smerd was actually an alien being from another world.

One of the things that Smerd could do was to hold himself perfectly still for hours on end with very little effort and no muscle fatigue. When Mary had been in school herself, she had taken Smerd with her every day. He had sat on her desk, not moving at all, not even blinking, while she had taken tests, passed notes, daydreamed about boys, and doodled in her notebook. The story the girl and dragon concocted was that Smerd was a poseable “toy”. Mary would gently move his limbs and incline his head in various cute positions, such as the time she had decorated an empty Kleenex box to look like a swimming pool and posed Smerd as if he were diving in.

“Mom, you keep him in your pocket like he’s a good luck charm.”

“He is good luck. In fact, he’s the luckiest. He’ll keep you out of trouble.”

“You always say that. I still get in trouble.”

“I don’t mean the kind of trouble you bring on yourself from misbehaving. I mean…” Mary paused, unsure of where to take that thought since Jaime didn’t know Smerd wasn’t just a toy.

“It’s ok, Mom.” Jaime smiled at her and accepted the purple dragon, placing him in one of his backpack’s pockets where the dragon would have an excellent view of everything. Mary had always stressed that Smerd liked to be where he could see things.

Jaime washed down the last of his breakfast with a tall glass of orange juice. He slipped on his backpack, adjusted it, and stepped forward to hug his mother.

At least he's not too old for this, she thought, savoring the moment.

“I love you, Mom.”

“I love you, too, sweetheart.”

Mary watched her son run over to the the door. He reminded her of herself rushing off to school days in years past. As Jaime paused to open the door, Mary saw Smerd, sticking up out of a backpack rear pocket, wink at her and give her a thumbs up. Mary made eye contact with the little guy and returned the gesture.

As Jaime closed the door behind him, Mary heard his voice muffled through the door yell, “Hey, Mark!”

Mary knew Jaime had left the house in time to walk to school with his best friend. 4Good.

On the kitchen countertop, her phone began to ring and vibrate. The caller ID said “Unknown”. Considering what she had done yesterday in saving the baby in the Central West End, she thought that she knew very well who “Unknown” was. There was no way to avoid it. It had to be dealt with sooner or later. It wasn't like ignoring them would get them to leave her alone. Quite the opposite.

She picked it up. “Hello.”

“Your powers are back.”

That was it. That's how the conversation started. No greeting. No identification. No preamble of any kind.

“Yes,” she answered, determined to be just as cold and purely business as they were.

*******

“What is this pink stuff leaking out of your locker, Walter? I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for it, but I can't help you unless you tell me what it is.”

Inside the locker, near the vents at the bottom, a small pink creature of Chaos looked out the small vent slits at the dress shoes of Principal Persimmons and the loosely laced sneakers of Walter Wilkins.

Both sets of footwear were lightly dusted in a powdery pink residue that the creature often left in its wake. Although the substance was extremely volatile, disappearing completely from the Earth mortals’ reality after a short time, its effects were extremely potent while they lasted.

 Walter wasn't the most promising candidate to use in its machinations, but the Chaos beast had become desperate. Twice the previous night, the Janitor and his tentacled mop-creature had almost snared it. To hopefully escape such close calls, once school had begun to open in the morning, the little Chaos beast had managed to board a school bus that was dropping off kids at the high school, but had more kids to drop off at the middle school next. By changing school campuses, the creature hoped to evade the Janitor.

“Is it drugs, Walter? There are programs that I can get you into that would–”

“Oh, no! It's not like that.”

Suddenly, there was a loud bang further down the hallway. Walter's locker was located at the top of a T-intersection. From its vantage point at the bottom of Walter's locker, the creature could only see the feet of people up close, but futher down the hallway in front of it, the creature could see more. It could see the source of the bang.

A door had slammed open, a broom closet door. It had opened so wide that it had loudly struck a metal locker on the wall next to it. A custodial cleaning cart emerged from the broom closet, pushed by a very large, well-built muscular human wearing a gray jumpsuit. If there were any doubts that the form of the large man was a disguise meant for mortal eyes, such doubts were immediately dispelled upon noticing the mop prominently mounted on the cleaning cart. Although its tentacles weren't currently moving, the eldritch runes along the shaft of the mop handle were unmistakable. The Chaos beast, which was quite capable of human speech, uttered what it had come to understand during its brief time among the high schoolers was a contemporary human curse word.

The curse word had not been uttered quietly.

“Walter, is there someone in your locker?”

Principal Persimmons, as always, maintained his calm, hypnotic, almost monotone cadence, as if kids potentially doing drugs and confining other students in lockers were all normal day-to-day behavior that was no big deal. The Chaos beast had overheard kids calling him Principal Permissive behind his back. They mocked him and his stated mission to “empower” students.

It appeared that he “empowered” the students so much that they, mere children, were in charge, de facto, of the middle school. The students, simply by making up false stories, got teachers whom they didn't like fired. The teachers knew this, and those of them who hadn't quit, those who could stomach such an environment for money, kept their paychecks coming in by metaphorically kissing the butts of the most popular kids. The Chaos beast thought there was a lot of potential at Whitmore Middle School, but that potential would have to be explored later. At that moment, that overly persistent Janitor had to be evaded, yet again.

The Janitor had no doubt used his Cosmic Keyring to come to the middle school from the high school. He had probably heard about the traffic accident that Walter’s bus had had after the boy had stepped off the bus with a Chaos beast in his backpack. The beast had left a generous portion of pink Chaos dust on that vehicle. It was a shame that the beast hadn't been able to hang around to watch the accident afterwards.

The cleaning cart stopped so close to the locker that the Chaos beast could only see the gray-jumpsuited legs of the disguised Janitor.

“I can safely remove and dispose of that pink contaminant, gentlemen,” came a smooth, almost impossibly deep bass voice. “May I see your shoes?”

“Contaminant? What is it?” Principal Persimmons asked with all the concern of an administrator whose job it was to keep the school out of litigation.

The Chaos beast could hear the Janitor rummaging on the cleaning cart.

“It's something I've cleaned upsny times before. I'm sure I can get it all. This device will remove it from your shoes.”

There was a sudden, electric whirr-whine noise that filled the Chaos beast with such terror that all of its fur stood on end.

“That’s very good. Now, the other shoe, sir.”

The Chaos beast could take it no longer. It knew that if the Janitor caught it in the locker, it was done for. In a panicked, fight-or-flight response, a veritable cloud of pink Chaos dust emerged from the creature, completely filling the inside of Walter's locker. The locker door opened. The Chaos beast leaped down the hallway to its left, scampering and leaping with all its might, seeking to put as much distance between itself and the Janitor as possible as quickly as possible.

*******

Jaime had said good-bye to Mark and was hustling down the hall toward his homeroom class. There was some kind of hallway congestion in front of Walter Wilkins’s locker. Jaime started to move around the crowd, which included Principal Permissive and a very large, new janitor who was using something like a handheld vacuum on the principal’s shoes. Suddenly, Walter's locker banged open, releasing a cloud of bright pink dust everywhere. It was like a large bag of flour had burst, but pink instead of white. It was everywhere.

“Look at the bunny!” A few people cried out.

Sure enough, a pink rabbit, the same shade of pink as the powder, had leaped out of Walter's locker and had taken off down the hallway.

“Achoo!”

That sneezing sound hadn't come from a person nearby. It had come from Jaime's backpack.

“What?”

Jaime realized that he and his backpack were covered in the pink powder. He was so freaked out by the sound of sneezing coming from his backpack, that he slipped the straps off to investigate the backpack. Right there, in his customary pocket where he'd ridden since Jaime had been in kindergarten was Smerd. But, Smerd wasn't still. The little purple dragon was wiping pink dust from his face. His eyes locked with Jaime's in a look of dismay and then–

“Achoo!”

Smerd sneezed again. Jaime could feel the force of the little dragon's breath. This was really happening.

Smerd waved at him, smiling sheepishly.

“Hi,” he whispered.