The roaring wind and pounding rain only served to make the inside of the mansion feel cozy, no small feat for the spacious master bedroom. The bed was big enough to fit five comfortably even during the most complicated long nights of fun, with enough space besides to fit even her biggest props. Doctor Mercurial almost never used it for sleeping. It was too much space for one person.

Terry lay with his head on her stomach, body an amalgamation of all the largest things she had in stock, mostly male save for breasts and hips. Katie’s head nestled between Merc’s legs, with her upper body close by her master’s side ready to serve drinks off a tray carried by her lower body.

Mercurial lounged in the middle, enjoying a comfortable, half-asleep haze, idly stroking Terry’s hair. The Winter Solstice Ball complete, she didn’t have to see any of the other magic-users, pretend to like them, and play their game again for six months. This had been celebrated accordingly. Naturally, the neck that went with the petite goth body had turned up the day after. She considered if it was about time to put it all away again.

She rose from her reverie when a big, bellowing sound, projected over the storm. It was much like a very large animal, or horn. It sounded angry. Perhaps most alarmingly of all, it sounded like her name.

Slowly, she began to rise, trying to puzzle out what it could have been. That she had imagined it seemed more likely than what she’d heard. The worried and confused look on her servants’ faces told her otherwise.

Then, there was a loud crash, with the clattering of wood, as if a car had crashed into her foyer. The whole mansion rattled.

Levitating to the front of her bed was painfully slow, but quicker than trying to run until she had firm floor beneath her. A second crash came as she dashed to her window, and carefully, she peeked past the curtains.

In front of her house was a man drenched by rain. She recognized him: Esteban. He was wearing a suit, probably the same one he’d worn to the Ball, though his tie was gone, his shirt and jacket left hanging open, and his pants torn and muddy. He seemed to have crawled, probably drunk, from the beach to her front door. He was also around 30 feet tall, and had thrust his arm through the wall.

As he started to pull back for another swing, bellowing something incomprehensible, Merc turned around, heart and mind racing, blood running cold. Terry had picked up Katie’s head, and both looked to her for direction. Direction was easy. She pointed to the door. “Out the back! Take the north stair and tell anyone you see along the way!” She flung her arm toward Katie’s lower body, remotely knocking the contents of her tray to the floor. Terry quickly snatched up her parts and ran. Merc herself went the other way, to the south stair.

It was some relief when she saw more than half her servants gathered around the back, filled with panicked chatter. Some of them calmed visibly at the sight of her. Leo and Rita rushed over, Leo latching on to her arm, Rita wrapping herself around her leg. There were more than a dozen questions flying her way. She brushed them aside with “I have to think,” placing her free hand over her face.

She wanted to run. Every new crash from the other side of the mansion told her that to stay could mean death. Each crash was also the potential destruction of part of her collection. The foyer was a display for several very special pieces in various inanimate forms. Jackie didn’t exist at the moment. If the box was destroyed, she’d be easily recoverable. If the sword was somehow knocked out of it first? She’d be irreplaceable.

“Why is this happening?” she wondered. “Why is Esteban here?” The man made potions that altered how the imbiber’s body interacted with space. She’d long suspected he might have a harem of his own, to play with the ability. He could almost have been a friend, if their egos didn’t grate against each other so badly. “How is he here?” None of the other magic-users should have been able to find her. Not that she knew what all of them were capable of. No one did. That’s why keeping the peace was so important. Conflict between them was too dangerous and unpredictable.

Warm rain poured down her naked body. As much as each new potential loss pained her, there didn’t seem to be anything she could do. He was too big to fit in a box. She couldn’t hypnotize someone who was fighting it. “What can I do?” pressed her thoughts heavily.

Several gunshots rang out, then a rapidly departing woman’s scream. Merc grit her teeth. Who would have tried to shoot him? It was hard guess what any of her servants would do under the circumstances, but most of them were used to depending on her. Which probably meant...

“Let me go!” Merc commanded as she tore herself away from Rita and Leo, and ran to the kitchen door. There were covered platters in the kitchen, of course. She tapped urgently on one, and hoped. A few seconds later, she heard Ella spluttering and gasping for air. Merc breathed a soft sigh of relief, and tossed the dome aside to reveal the newcomer’s disembodied head. “Did he break anything?!” she demanded. “Is your body safe?!”

“Yeah,” Ella breathed when she’d recovered enough to do so. “I landed in the ocean. I’m sore, an’ it’s too rough t’ swim, but I think I’m okay like this.” She stared up at the magician with wide, frightened eyes. “The bullets… They did nothin’.”

“Shit,” Merc spat. She had almost dared hope, but of course before attacking her, he had prepared for that.

There was one question that often helped her when planning to deal with people. It surfaced at last, in this moment of relative calm: “What would a ninja do?”

Esteban threw another punch, knocking down another supporting beam. The front door and the wall around it gone, he’d set to work destroying the rooms to either side. Suddenly, the flick and snap of something red caught his eye. On a second floor balcony, he found who he was looking for. The little woman from the night before stood boldly, flamenco dancer’s dress whipping and flaring boldly around her in the wind. She stared at him with a strange, icy anger. It didn’t matter to him. All he saw now was red.

He rose to his knees. His hand enclosed her waist. He brought her close to his face to yell once again, demanding something from her. Her icy cold glare never shifted. In fact, he began to notice, she wasn’t even looking him in the eye. Before he could puzzle out why, her body collapsed, a water balloon deflating against a wooden skeleton. From her dress a nozzle sprouted, spraying thick blue goo all over his face and hand.

He tossed the mannequin aside furiously, slapping his hands over his face to swipe the goo away, flicking it to the ground as best he could.

Watching via a mirror from around the corner, and wearing a simple black leotard, Merc saw exactly what she had hoped to. He had used both hands. That was better for her purposes. As he wiped her goo away, it revealed only blank skin underneath. The mass of slime at the ends of his arms converged, without nearly enough room within for two giant hands. It would continue to drip away, but its job was done. He had no face, and his arms were locked together as a single, contiguous ring.

What would a ninja do? Set a trap, and blind him.

She had hoped he’d give up there. His condition was a terrifying one, and one he might not be able to escape without Doctor Mercurial allowing it.

Instead, he plowed forward, thrusting his arms blindly.

Mercurial cringed. “Okay, now what?” she asked herself. Surely he was more vulnerable, now. How could she exploit it? Vulnerable how, to what? The question seemed to answer itself. Where was everyone vulnerable?

Conjuring what she needed before she arrived, she ducked in a side door, and snatched up a big, brass hoop with black cloth stretched across it.

Returning outside, she tossed her prop as best she could, keeping her arms stretched out to levitate it before it hit the ground. It floated under Esteban’s horizontal torso, then slipped into the waistband of his pants. The giant man rose upright, and started desperately flinging his arms at it, as if trying to paw it away. In the shape he was in, it wasn’t that easy to reach his belt, let alone manipulate it. The hoop slipped out of view.

Returning to the building’s interior, Merc rushed downstairs. A cement-lined experimentation room seemed the right place for this. Relatively safe, even as the man returned to his pounding, and fitting, as she still wasn’t sure if this was going to work the way she hoped. Along the way she picked up a second cloth-bearing brass hoop, the first one’s mate, and a sledgehammer.

Striding into the experimentation room, filled with fury and purpose, she found Nadire and Cherry with a small collection of inanimate parts, including the portrait that the current form of Fleura’s head. It was no surprise Nadire had kept her wits about her, and protected a few precious things.

“Doctor!” the maid cried. “What’s happening?!”

Merc placed the ring on the ground, squatting before it. “We’re being attacked by a giant, angry man. Hopefully, not for long.” She plunged her hands through, meeting stretchy, wrinkled skin. She pulled, getting only skin at first, so she leaned in, wrapping her arms around the scrotum, and pulled through a pair of balls nearly a foot long each, accompanied by a foot-and-a-half limp dick.

The pounding against the floor above her became more rapid and energetic. Gathering herself, Doctor Mercurial stood, took up the hammer, hoisted it over her head, and swung. Estiban’s right nut deformed, the impact passing through it in a visible wave.

Then, she waited. He couldn’t scream, and he couldn’t vomit. There was just one sound she had to wait for. Seconds dragged by. Then, there was another crash. She raised the hammer, and struck his left nut.

Crash. He was certainly determined. Right nut. Crash. Was it possible that at this size, it didn’t hurt enough? Left nut. It certainly looked like it must hurt.

Mercurial wasn’t certain how long she waited after the fourth blow. It was hard to keep track of time in such a stressful situation. Finally, however, she set the hammer aside. “He hits us, you hit him,” she instructed Nadire as she stepped out the door.

She came up the central stair, certain enough by the time she’d reached it that there was nothing left to fear. Upon reaching the foyer, she was met with a wide, open view of the storm outside, and not far beyond, the giant form of Esteban, curled up with his wrists tucked over his gut, heaving greatly.

The damage was extensive, but not as bad as she’d feared. The front wall was torn away, including the guest on one side, and the reading room on the other. Up to ten feet in, the floor and ceiling were devastated, but not much beyond that. A pair of busts of a man and a woman she felt looked nice were both reduced to fragments. She’d see if she could repair them later. A few stockings were in the wreckage. She might have lost some bits of Ella. She’d check if that included her legs later.

Picking up the gift she’d wrapped for herself a few days before, she drew out the epee, and dropped it aside, then tore off the wrapping paper. “Mmmm,” came the pleasantly calm and relaxed voice from within. Opening up the box, Jackie looked up at her curiously. “Oh?” Those playful eyes read her face, and turned calm. Merc plucked her out, hugged her tight to her chest, stepped back against the wall, and slid to the floor. “Oh,” came the head’s follow-up, seeing the damage. That would be all she said for a while. She’d be what her master needed her to be.