We got there right around ten. Things were already well underway when we arrived. Music was blasting out into the street, and we were clearly the most sober people there. Out front was a blue plastic bin full of arms that people had brought and discarded.

Grace opened the door for us. I wasn't sure what to expect, but wow. There was twenty-some people there already, but almost everyone there had a different solution to "no arms allowed."

"Hey guys," said Ana, seeing us arrive. She was the one who'd invited Beth, if I remember right, a junior sorcery major. In place of her arms she had two octopus tentacles, a clever solution indeed. Next to her was Melany, another sorcery student, who'd switched her arms for two wings from… well it looked like they were chicken wings.

"Nice … things," said Beth.

"Thanks. Nice stubbies," said Ana, folding a tentacle over Beth's stumps.

"Ew, don't touch me." Beth said, giggling uncomfortably.

"Or what? This is contagious you know." Ana wrapped her into a hug, mockingly caressing Beth's face.

"We've had a bit to drink," offered Melany as if an explanation was needed.

"And we need to catch up," said Grace, opening the fridge.

"I think little Bethany is afraid of tentacles," said Ana, finally letting her go. "Should we turn her legs into some?"

"Ohh… maybe later when she's not paying attention."

Looking around the party, most of the people there had gone for the replacement route. I saw one guy with his hands fixed to his shoulders, which I guess meets the "no arms" requirement. Another guy had attached some branches from a tree. Wings were present, in a couple different forms, and one girl had opted for snakes.

I was reminded of a potion I'd made earlier that year, one that turned someone's hair into snakes for a while. I'd tried it myself (before spiking Beth's tea with it, of course), and I remember the snakes being very hard to control. The same problem was being faced by this girl now — her snake-arms slithered wherever they wanted to.

There was even another shorty there. A cute guy with dark hair was sitting across the room, talking to a girl and a guy who both had the smooth, armless look of a store mannequin.

Grace set down a shot glass in front of me. She was getting alarmingly comfortable with her toes. Having no way to pick it up, I wrapped my lips around it and tilted my head back. Cheap rum dribbled down my chin.

"Oh, here you go dear," said Ana. A tentacle with a napkin wiped my face off. Another shot was set in front of me, and another. We got a pretty good buzz going, and my … stomach started to swirl a bit. Wait, I didn't have a stomach. So what was swirling?

The other shorty, the guy I'd mentioned a moment ago, caught my eye from across the room. He gestured with his eyes out to the balcony. I left the others, already tipsy, and headed outside. We sat down on the outside couch together.

"Nice costume," he said. "I'm Max."

"I'm Tiffany. Sorry I can't shake your hand."

"We can tap toes. There. So how'd you get that way?"

"My roommate did this one, how'd you do yours?"

While also being a head stuck on hips, he had his original shoulders, while my neck tapered into the top of my hips. This gave him a couple inches on me, but we were still the only two half-sized people at the party.

"It's a simple compression spell. I see you had some sorcery done, looks pretty good."

"Wait, that's a kinetics spell right?"

"Yea. It's not too complicated, you take this special stuff made with silver oxide and spread it around the area to be compressed. It involves magnetism which is the tricky part."

"That's cool. Who'd you come here with?"

"Oh, I'm alone. I mean, I know Ana from playing IM Basketball, and I used to live next to Mel in the dorms. What about you?"

"My friend Bethany is a second-year sorceress."

"And you're what?"

"Potions."

"Potions. Aha."

"It's lame, I know."

"No, there's some … okay, it's kind of lame. But important. I mean, potions can feed into every other type of magic, so I guess that's something. It's just… I don't know, there's not as much theory. That's why I liked kinetic magic, because it focuses on using natural processes. So what kind of potions can you make?"

"Well, last week I made a potion that turned myself into a pineapple."

"That's… I didn't realize potions could do that."

"The 101 class doesn't really cover much."

"So why a pineapple?"

"I like how they taste."

"But if you are one, you can't eat yourself."

"Have you ever been an object?"

"Sure I have. Never a pineapple, but in Kinetics we turn ourselves into things all the time. If you involve your body in a spell, you'll get a better understanding of the physical processes you need to adjust."
"Right, so what were you?"

"Just a bunch of gears, and a belt driving some other gears."

"So you know what it's like to be that, uh… Whatever. It's like all you are is that thing, and you can't imagine much of anything else."

"Okay, so when you're a pineapple, it's like all you can do is taste pineapple?"

"Basically. Only it's not just the taste, it's … like super-taste. Because you are one. You get it?"

"I'll have to try it out, I think."

"That can be arranged."

Some kind of commotion had begun inside. Max got up to his knees on the couch and turned around to look through the glass door.

"You should see this," he said. "Some girl just came in armed."

I got up next to him, and standing red-faced in the middle of the room was a blonde girl I recognized from statistics last semester. She was frozen with the sudden attention, and the party had practically stopped except for a constant low booing.

Melany quieted everyone down, raising up her wings.

"So we have our first transgression of the night. But wait! The truth is, we need a bartender. Someone to serve drinks. Because let's face it, it's a little bit difficult for some of us."

She flapped her wings, looking at them disapprovingly.

"Of course, poor Jessica here still broke the rule. The only rule of this party."

"That's how I roll," said Jessica, sticking out her tongue. "What are you gonna do to me?"

Everyone started murmuring, a few suggestions being throw out — "take her legs" was a favorite, as was "party slave".

"What's a party slave?" I asked Max.

"It's when you mesmerize someone and put them under public control. It's sort of a hazing thing."

Melany got everyone's attention again.

"We're not enslaving anyone, that's for mean people. We talked about this before, and here's the deal. Hand over your head."

"My head?" gasped Jessica, cheerfully. "Oh, alright."

It was a trick I'd not seen before. She circled her neck with her fingers and activated a kinetic disc through her neck. She closed her eyes and concentrated, increasing the energy until she made a portal. It was something I had attempted after seeing it, but I couldn't get past the disc. All I succeeded in doing was making my neck itch with magic for a week.

She gave her head a twist and it popped free. The portal deactivated as she murmured a healing spell, sealing her head off from her body with a fresh coat of skin. It was artfully done, I had to say. I'd been studying such fundamental magic my first year I sometimes forgot how everything could be put together to make original transformations like that. Nothing like that was covered in any class I knew, this was pure magical engineering.

Jessica set her head on the counter, and Melany performed a brief incantation over it. I recoginized a few elements of a shaping sorcery spell, and a couple linking-phrases from the New Magician's Manual, but about half of it was something in a hard-to-understand ancient language.

When the spell activated, Jessica's head suddenly crumpled and reformed. In it's place was a beer pitcher with her face attached. Using her wing she shoved it towards Jessica's headless body, which picked her up by the handle. Everyone cheered.

I sat back down. "That was pretty cool," I told Max.

"Just wait until the next one comes in," he said.

The night only got better. Max and I danced for a while, people kept arriving with increasingly more original solutions to the no arms rule. One girl had mastered telekinesis, and although she was indeed missing her arms, her hands floated around the room wherever she pleased. Since the only person in the room with arms was occupied serving drinks, she teased everyone with impunity. Several people came in together with animal paws. Another girl had cup-holders installed in her shoulders, while the guy she showed up with had two plastic guns attached and a t-shirt that says "I might not have arms but I still got my guns."

Once the alcohol was good and flowing, so did the magic tricks. And in this case, tricks means pranks. As second-years we'd already begun to experiment with this ourselves, but some of the seniors and graduate students there were old hands at the magical prank. Except they didn't have hands. But anyway.
An easy prank to pull is to transform a piece of someone into something else. Something useless. Bonus points if you get their head. Example? I saw someone sneak up on Ana and turn her head into an octopuses'. Given that she had tentacles I suppose it was rather fitting. I don't think it affected Ana as much as the rest of us — it just made her super creepy until someone finally changed her back.

One girl turned a guy's legs into a fish-tail, leaving him to flop around in the hall. Another girl had her head turned into a balloon after making a particularly air-headed comment. And thought I didn't see what happened, there was a stretch while Grace's head had been turned into a foot.

And Max — well, this was what made the night extra special. We'd sat down taking a break from the dance floor, and he leaned in.

"Hey, you've got something on your face."

"I do?"

He leaned in without warning. I thought he might kiss me, but instead I felt a jolt of magic through my cheeks. Max sat back, grinning. He opened his mouth to show my lips inside.

"Hey!" I said, from inside his mouth. He closed it and I couldn't finish. Chewing twice, he swallowed.

Oh the things I wanted to say. I said all I could with my eyes. He just grinned.

"I guess that's the first time someone's done that to you."

I rolled my eyes. I wanted a mirror. Or no, I didn't. The thought of looking at myself without a mouth seemed especially weird. I'd only ever seen this on other people and then only in a couple of exceptional circumstances.

"Alright, I'll give it back."

He kissed me where my mouth would have been. I felt my lips part again, and, finding his mouth in mine, kissed him back.

"You'd better teach me that spell," I said.