From: Zhara123@aol.com Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 23:57:25 -0500 Subject: SRU: Auditor Spells R Us: Auditor Just a quick squib which came to me as I worked on another SRU story. No reall serious transforms, but hopefully amusing.... Spells R Us: Auditor Things were quiet at the shop. With the halloween season over, the place was no longer full of bustling frat boys and sorority girls (Or was it the other way around) begging for costumes. The old man settled down for a careful read of a complex scroll. Before very long, his reading was interrupted by the ringing of the shop's bell. He looked up and felt a cold chill. He quickly put the scroll away, brushed the creases out of his robe and sat up straighter. The man standing in the door wasn't terribly presupposing. A slender, grey haired fellow, in a rather old fashioned shirt and trousers, with a vest. A large watch chain dangled across the vest, and a long billed cap was perched on his head. More ominous, tho, was the heavy leather satchel he was lugging. The old man knew his type. "Hello there," the wizard said, quite carefully, "I don't believe I know your name. What can I do for you?" "Renfrew P." replied the man. "Auditor and Census Taker." "Errr.. Renfrew P. what?" asked the old wizard. "Renfrew P. will do, thank you." replied the auditor. "As for what you can do, you can explain these." he gestured down at his satchel and a small whirlwind seemed to sweep through the shop. A moment later, the closed sign was on the door, a large desk filled the central clear area in front of the counter, and the Auditor was sitting behind it in a comfortable chair, holding out a rather large leather book, full of column after column of figures. "You've made a total hash of my books" explained the auditor. "Look at this. Men into Women. Men into Horses, Men into hookers. An entire football team's bra and panty sizes! Do you know that this district has the largest average bust size of any for hundreds of miles! Do you know that the university now has an extra woman's sorority, and has gone through four quarterbacks in a month! Do you know how many footnotes I've had to add to my accounting tables?" The auditor took a quick breath and continued. "Temporal displacements! Unicorn fanciers absorbed by topiary! I had to go look through the regulations to figure out how to mark that one down! We won't even discuss the excess number of twins in town, or the sudden upswing in the sales of high heels and short skirts. Not to mention the huge increase in sales of Playboy!" The old man sighed. This was going to be tedious, he was quite sure of that. He took a deep breath and composed his thoughts. "First of all, I admire the attention you pay to detail. But let me assure you that this shop is properly licensed and registered. We've been quite careful to follow all the guidelines and supply all our customers with proper warnings and proper information. We really can't be held responsible if rambunctoious youth gets careless from time to time." Renfrew sat calmly, while the wizard ran through his speach. He then paused a moment and nodded. "Good, Good. Let's start with licenses and permits, along with registration material." The wizard glumly went into the back of the shop and dumped a pile of scrolls on the desk. The auditor slowly chewed through them, making annotations in one of his fat books as he went. Finally, the last scroll had been handed back to the wizard, and the auditor's quill pen laid back on the desk. Renfrew skimmed over his notes and frowned. "Well, well, well" he said, somewhat glumly. "You do appear to have all your papers in order. I am surprised you were able to get a waiver of the normal environmental impact statement, but you certainly have it. I also am pleased to see you did file an intent to dispense potentially harmful spells, and you have been quite careful to document the possible side effects of misuse of your spells." He sighed. "You're legal. I was hoping you were out of compliance somehow. I've had to order up fifty five new students, just to replace the males that belong in this area. I suppose there will be more of the same soon." The wizard smiled. He was glad the auditor hadn't found any problems, now he could relax a little. "Oh, I don't know. It's possible that nobody will abuse any items, and that people will remember the deadlines that apply to them, and not get caught by odd semantic traps, but I really couldn't tell you one way or the other." The auditor fixed the wizard with a somewhat baleful glare. "Couldn't tell me one way or the other? Pish Tosh. We both know that most of your items are carefully rigged to cause the users to trap themselves in a transformed state, or let them wish themselves into a different form by accident. But... as long as you carefully warn them, and don't actually trap them, or they do something that justifies your actions, it's OK." The wizard nodded slowly. It wouldn't do to actually admit it, but the auditor was pretty much correct. "So, can I offer you a drink, something restorative?" "Not on your life. I take one sip of any of your potions and anything could happen. I'll be on my way." With a sudden swirling noise, the desk, papers and quill pen, ink and blotter all were sucked into leather satchel. The Auditor stood up and bowed slightly to the Wizard. "Good evening sir." The auditor flipped the sign in the door back to open, and strolled out into the mall. Even before the last echoes of the door's silver bell rang across the shop, he simply vanished into the evening crowd of shoppers. The wizard sighed and carefully gathered up all his licenses and certificates and registrations. One never knew when one would need them again. Still, he supposed it could have been worse. At least it wasn't the Infernal Revenue Service. The last of thier auditors had left a brimstone stench that took weeks to disipate.