“Oh yeah.” Was my articulate response. I gave an eloquent shrug. “A little leering has never killed me and I’m fairly certain I look too intimidating for anyone to try and make a problem of it. I’ll survive the stares.” I just hoped it wasn’t too cold outside yet, this leather bra would not be fun in the cold. The pants wouldn’t be much better either but moving around would likely help keep me warm enough. Cassie had pulled Zeke’s tux jacket on over her lounge dress, which got her covered up. Poor Barry was still dressed like a Chippendale, only sometime during the night he’d lost his bowtie and cuffs; yet all his body hair covered him quite well.
                              

                              
“Guess this will have to do, hopefully no one freezes.” I said and headed to the door; out into the bright awful sunlight. Now you may be concerned for Ezekiel, my vampire brother-in-law-to-be. However, true vampirism differs from legends. He doesn’t burst into flames, but Zeke is very light sensitive; direct sunlight will give him horrible sunburns on exposed skin and extended exposure leads to lacerations and lesions. A twenty minute stumble to our condo is not long term exposure and it left him with only slight sunburn. Stairs were a big challenge to me but I got up them eventually. My reward was the beautiful, wonderful shower. Hot water poured over my aching head and slowly some of the pains flowed away, down the drain with the dirty water. After that things were easier. Not any faster mind you, but significantly less grubby.
                              

                              
Washing off the remnants of last night’s adventures, I changed into soft sweat pants and a baggy t-shirt; real classy. Step two had me curled up on the couch and sipping my hot chocolate while the others guzzle coffee. The last thing I ever wanted was hot coffee, though the shower had kick started my system enough that I was craving greasy, salty foods to battle the Power fatigue of last night. The noise that even simple cooking makes nearly caused me to be murdered by my friends, but since I made enough of my food to share, they resisted the impulse to murder me. Though it would have been funny to see hung over people try to chase me down right now.
                              

                              
I watched as Cassie scrapped together enough effort to cure the males of their hangovers, which left her alone stuck in a wretched state; so much for misery loving company. “Well this is just peachy. I get to go run around with yelling children while my joints don’t entirely feel connected.” I announced, snuggling up to my hung over twin.
                              

                              
“You poor baby.” Barry cooed sarcastically. “Come on Cal, you know they think you’re a miserable bitch and that’s without a Power drain to sweeten your mood. Just imagine what fun you can have with the poor bastards today.”
                              

                              
I glared at him with blood shot eyes. Would I feel any better if I had intentionally done this to myself, or would I still feel like whining? “Well, beat up or not, sitting here complaining about it isn’t going to make it go away. Let’s go Barry. I have some of your sweats upstairs. Maybe if I warm up before the screaming hoard arrives I won’t feel like dying quite so much.” The warm up, like the shower, helped me but not enough to make my day all sunshine and roses. I managed to struggle through it nonetheless.
                              

                              
Luckily a Backlash, no matter how well earned, fades by the next day. Saturday morning was rather nice, however the newspaper headlines were not so nice. Front page was entirely dominated by an article about an unknown Other breaching Accords security during the Power flare last week. I figured that we were only hearing about it now because the Counsel had probably tried to keep this quiet as long as they could. But according to today’s paper, this unknown Other was capable of somehow causing its victims to go raging and completely insane. It could affect Normal, Caster and Other alike, though with a Normal the worst that happened was violence. With the rest though, madness led to Wild Magic, and that was very bad. The article helpfully listed some precautions to take and left it there; it was just enough information to cause fear and alarm without actually helping society as a whole. Thankfully there was no mention of the little Incubus incident from Thursday.