This is a complete indignation! You can't just take away a Spirit's name--and tracking devices--and set it free. This is illegal spirit rustling, and the intramural Spirit Team should punished accordingly.

Where will we be if every Spirit that has been trained and armed with weapons is freed of its burdens and allowed to go where it wants? All of the time and resources spent training it to ignore its impulses and inclinations and wild... feelings... and just set it loose?

And with no formal binding to its name (as well as the tracking devices mentioned earlier), how can the Spirit have any sense of itself?

This is pure cruelty to Spirits -- not to mention an outright theft of property. The official Spirit Team will be seeking our retribution in Transcendental Court.

When we started our experiment, Fan Tompkins and I didn't think Spirit was real. Especially if it was just something that people made up for their own purposes. Like antagonizing rival schools. So we set out to prove that either Spirit existed outside of us (without our intervention), or that it it didn't exist at all.

Now, I don't know what to think. For weeks, Fan and I were very careful not to make any Spirit. It took a lot of concentration not to make Spirit. And at some point, we just kind of "broke through" is the only way I can explain it. It became clear that EVERYTHING was Spirit. Especially the Spirit that nobody made.

But now Fan has left. She got accepted to a program in Tibet. And me, well, I don't know what I'm going to do. There's a food pantry in town that needs a hand. It's next to a church and they have a room in the back I can stay in. So I'm going to do that for independent study credit till I figure things out.

Winning or losing the Spirit Building Challenge is kind of the last thing on my mind at this point, I guess.

In a unanimous vote, the Intramural Spirit Building Team has decided to let the Spirit formerly known as Euclid free. @Melba Cross had the closest relationship to it, so she performed the unbinding spells necessary to disarm the tracking devices, and removed all the unnecessary weaponry. Underneath all that, the official varsity Spirit Building squad really did a nice job with it--it's strong, healthy, coordinated, and well adjusted. All those command and control mechanisms (not to mention the ordnance and armaments) were just making it angry.

Because of that, we don't figure it will be finding its way back to the official Spirit Team's hangar. But maybe it can meet up with our own spirit, wherever it's got to, and they can watch out for each other.

Maybe the intramural Spirit Team will get together and build another one? We weren't too bad at it, were we? But for now we're just gonna take a break for awhile. Maybe relax our minds for a bit.

The Official Spirit Team is making a formal complaint to the administration regarding the Intramural Spirit Team's abduction of our entry into the Spirit Building Challenge -- known as EUCLID.

In the spirit of good sportsmanship, we asked the Intramural Spirit Team to release EUCLID immediately but received an answer that was not in good sportsmanship. Namely, we received a video of EUCLID making rude gestures at the camera, obviously under some form of duress or outright spirit mind control. EUCLID is equipped not only with heat vision, but a bevy of other spiritual weaponry including automated repeating curse batteries, bad luck flechette launchers, and a mini-doomsday device, and it is terrifying to think about how it could be misused, accidentally or otherwise, by the Intramural Spirit Team

In any case, the continued incarceration of EUCLID by the Intramural Spirit Team is against the rules, is contrary to the spirit of the challenge, and very likely illegal under the rule of law both psychic and non-psychic, and we demand that EUCLID be returned immediately to official Spirit Team HQ in the old airship hangar.

So there are all these strings of yarn hooked up to bells in the HQ and I figured it was just another feral spirit in the traps but OMG we caught the Euclid!

It wasn't near as frightening as @Theo_917 made it out. I didn't even wear the heat protective clothing because I could just tell (peeking in between the cardboard) that it wasn't like that. It was so comfy in its spirit chair!

So I invited it into the HQ and it's totally docile. It's looking at the scribblings and stuff the ferals left, and just wants an honest shoulder.

If anybody wants to come and take over I could really use a break and sleep in my room tonight! I promise the Euclid will be no problem.

I think Mallory got it backwards. Ms. Emmery too, which is pretty odd, considering she's a ghost.

Fan and I have kept on with our practice, being real mindful about not creating any spirit. We're in most of each other's classes, and have been spending pretty much all our time together outside of class. Being mindful. Not making any spirit at all.

People look at us funny, like they can tell something is up but they can't put their finger on it. In the Library. At the Spoonbender. We've even been able to keep it up at swim matches, which is hard because everybody's making spirit at those.

But all this mindfulness, not creating spirit. We're not creating a spiritual void at all. It's the opposite.

By keeping our little spirit generation out of the way, that gives everything else room to come in. And I mean EVERYTHING else.

We've tapped into the most Spirit there is. And we've done it by not making any spirit at all.

We really shouldn't go naming our Spirit. My grandpa said that giving them names is part of what makes them act up. Who are we to be giving the Spirits names? We can barely speak their language. It's no wonder it makes them uptight when you give them names because next thing they know you're ordering 'em around like they're some kind of genie. And that don't end well.

Grandpa said spirits ain't pets. Or domesticated in any way. It's more like just making space for the stray cats in your neighborhood. Or the skunks, or the Owl, or the crows. Maybe put a bit of food out for them now and then but it's more like you just have an understanding. You ain't the boss of them.

So far Charlie and his Euclid have burned down Old Man Ferdy's barn, the abandoned playground, the bio-fuel recycling center, and the rest stop on the interstate just south of town.

How is the Euclid able to track our Spirit when we can't even do it? But if the Euclid is so great, why can't it catch our Spirit?

And why don't we have a cool code name for our Spirit?

In response to the carnage at the Rosy Acres Tri-Cities Industrial Warehouse complex, the (official) Spirit Team has decided to release our Spirit, codename EUCLID, to deal with the incursion.

This is why it was never a good idea for the school to allow for unsanctioned entrants in the Spirit Building Challenge. Building Spirit is a serious business, and with luck the Happy Eye Convenience Services company has adequate insurance and can get back to refilling snack machines across the Tri-Cities as soon as possible. Hopes & prayers!

While this will be EUCLID's first public release, we have no doubt that it will easily track the abomination set loose by the amateur Spirit builders on campus, and quickly melt it down with its heat vision. This will help us fine tune the Spirit before the actual upcoming awards ceremony.

Fan and I have been very careful not to create any spirit. But it's getting harder and harder to hold it back.

My roommate (Mallory) came back from break so Fan had to go back to her own room, and the first thing my roommate said was WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING IN HERE and turned and ran screaming down the hall. She went right to the spiritual guidance counselor so of course right away I got a call to come in.

I guess Mallory complained about the spiritual void we had created. The spiritual guidance counselor--Ms. Emmery--is a ghost, but she's really understanding and was interested in what Fan and I were trying to do, in terms of the Spirit Building Challenge.

"You're right about people making spirit," she said. "We infuse a little bit of spirit into everything we do. It's like a natural part of the atmosphere."

I wasn't sure if it was for effect, but part of Ms. Emmery kind of floated up into the HVAC right then.

"So when you and Fan concentrated so hard on not making any spirit, cooped up in your room over break, you really changed the atmosphere in there. Mallory had never experienced anything like that, so she had a small existential break."

Ms. Emmery just said we shouldn't do it in enclosed spaces. And that we'd need to let Mallory build up some spirit in the room herself.

I guess that's fair. Fan and I are figuring out how to work around it.