A Whateley Academy Tale
Jade 5 – Redefining Jade
By Babs Yerunkle
23: The calm before
Whateley Academy October 4, Wednesday morning, 4:37 AM
Jade woke suddenly. As always, she touched the gloves and
brought Jinn out.
The thought struck her – it really was Jinn! She was
whole again! After the past week where she’d thought that a part of
herself was dead, or vanished, or torn away – to finally be whole again was a
joy that she could hardly explain. She’d had trouble explaining it, even to
her closest friends. She’d been able to conjure up Jann, and even Jeanie and
Jasmine. The fact that she could make multiple versions of her spirit-self was
great, but it didn’t make any of them disposable. Each and every one of
them was her. She was them. And she couldn’t cope with the idea that she
had died. She herself had died. Or at least, so it had seemed.
But now she was whole again.
Maybe it had been a mistake to put Jann into Jinn’s
costume. Because when Jinn vanished and Jann immediately took her place, it
was almost natural that her friends would think that Jinn was replaceable.
After all, hadn’t she been seamlessly replaced?
And that wasn’t the only rough spot. Ayla had snidely
suggested that she was suffering from some sort of multiple-personality thing,
and that Jinn, Jann, Jeanie, Jasmine, Jewel, and Jayna (assuming she ever got
that far) were all different personalities, not just multiple copies of her.
Okay, so maybe she behaved a bit different when she was a non-physical
real-female spirit-girl. What did they expect? She could call all her spirit
selves something dull, like “Jade 1” “Jade 2” and “Jade 3.” That would make
the point, but they were pretty dumb names. She liked to think she was more
creative than that.
How did she want the others to behave toward her?
When she was Jinn, she was now looking a lot more grown up,
thanks to her body image and hypnosis work. It was definitely a kick trying to
act more mature, and having people treat her with more respect. At the same
time, she didn’t really want to lose her childhood. Fortunately, she could
have the best of both world. That is, if she could slowly convince people to
see her spirit-self as a unique and important person. Come to think of it,
this should fit in well with Hank’s suggestion. What had he said?
“Let’s start the intelligence process both ways –
learning about them, and hiding details about ourselves, or better, providing
false information. Jade, you should start by not revealing that you can create
more than one of Jinn. Practice plenty, but do it in a way that doesn’t reveal
things to outsiders.”
Okay. She’d practice. But the only human-seeming body
she’d create would be Jinn. And if anything else happened to Jinn, maybe she’d
just have to bite the bullet, and give up the real girl-shape for a while.
Then they wouldn’t see Jinn as being quite so disposable.
Thinking it over, she decided that she needed a new
background, too. A fake story, for public consumption. What was Tansy calling
her at the end? Ghost-girl, demon-spawn, and hell-spirit. There ought to be
some good backgrounds she could invent around those ideas. Sara could probably
help with that, being half-demon. She’d seemed to know plenty about occult
stuff.
Jinn suddenly returned, and she had two other big thoughts.
Thinking things over with two minds was handy. She should be finding out
everything she could about avatars, and how to defend against them. But she’d
remembered an even more vital issue. As Jade, she’d actually shot Tansy,
although it had been with a non-lethal taser load. Every time Tansy thought
about the twelve-year-old girl that had shot her, she’d had the idea that as
soon as there was time, she’d find the little girl and “deal with her.”
There’d been thoughts like that about both Fey and Ayla, too.
And Tansy had asked Thuban to, “get rid of Hekate.” When
he’d said that he didn’t do assassinations, Tansy had actually been
disappointed. As it was, she’d paid twenty-five thousand dollars, just to lose
the girl for a week.
The conclusions were obvious. Tansy had money to burn,
she’d tried to use assassination before, and she wanted to “deal with” Jade,
Fey, and Ayla, but especially Jade.
That was a pretty nasty thing to consider. So… first things
first. Jade lay down on her bed and tried to create Jinn, take her back, and
re-create her. Then she tried other variations.
Within a few minutes, she had some info. Having Jinn “back”
didn’t make the spirits any stronger. That is, her spirit form could lift the
same amount today that she’d been able to lift yesterday – right on the
borderline of 200 pounds. The whole Tansy episode seemed to have kicked her
into a new development cycle, but Jinn’s strength was only increasing by a tiny
amount each day. Being re-united didn’t make any of the spirits any stronger.
Likewise, her casting strength hadn’t gotten any
stronger. The first spirit she conjured up could go in and out, in and out.
It tired Jade about as much as running up two flights of stairs, but she got
the energy back when Jinn (or whomever) came back. Jann was the same, but
creating a second spirit was much more tiring. That left her feeling like
she’d just run a mile or so. She could still move and fight, but she wasn’t in
top form. When either of the spirits returned, she recovered almost instantly
to “just run up the stairs.” On the other hand, she could cast the second
spirit over again, in-and-out just like the first spirit. This left her with a
constant feeling of being tired but she hoped she’d build up a tolerance.
That was the same as yesterday, but yesterday, she’d
actually been able to make four spirits. The three that she could
conjure up, and the original Jinn. Actually, Jinn and Jann, since they’d
merged. Perhaps the count should be five spirits.
That meant that, over time, she’d recovered the energy or
power or whatever went into casting Jinn. This opened interesting
possibilities, if she could convince dozens of avatars to carry around copies
of her. She could make an army of herselfs, if she could only figure out how
to keep them all from evaporating.
She sat back down, satisfied for the moment with her
investigations.
She conjured up Shroud and a sets of gloves for Jann, and
set to work. Jinn, as Shroud, took measurements and attempted to sketch out
the bones of her forearms. That was part of their new plan for a better attack
for Shroud. Meanwhile, Jade turned on her laptop and started writing new
backgrounds. Jann went thin and slipped under the door, then headed to the
downstairs library to look for books on avatars.
By the time Tennyo’s alarm went off at five, Jade had the
basic details of the story in place. She sat back and watched as her roommate
stretched.
“Hey, Jade. Glad to see you’re awake. We were a little
worried when you passed out on us.”
“Integration,” Jinn reminded her. “I think it’s going to
happen whenever one of me joins up again after a few days away. Matching up
the memories takes a lot of brainwork, I guess. The weird thing is, when Tansy
sucked me in after the breakfast brawl, I had two spirit-versions of me join
up, and they got knocked out too. So I guess it’s more than just a
physical-brain thing.”
Billie looked over Jade carefully. “So how are you
feeling?”
Jade smiled – happier than she’d been in more than a week.
“Physically, great. Emotionally, great. I’m a bit worried that Tansy Walcutt
is going to hire an assassin to kill me, but I’ll talk about that at
breakfast. Hey, do you know anyone who does metal fabrication?”
Billie blinked at that. “Uh… you might try Harry Wolfe. I
introduced you, didn’t I? I think he’s been around a couple of time. He’s a
sort of mechanic-gadgeteer. Did you just say ‘assassinate’ ?”
“Uh huh. We should be okay until this afternoon at the very
earliest. I’ll explain at breakfast.”
“Yeah… sure. I’ll be looking forward to it.”
Jade watched happily as her roommate stumbled off toward the
showers. Tennyo looked really out of it this morning, she thought. I
wonder what’s wrong?
*****
She put her new background info into an email, and sent it to
Tennyo, Toni, Fey, Ayla, Hank, Sara, and Bunny:
So, hi everyone!
I’m not sure how to start this, so
I’m just going to. Remember that Hank said we should come up with ways to fake
the bad guys out? So I’ve decided that I need to do that. Remember that I’m
now supposed to be a devisor (Bunny’s helping me out on that – Thanks Honey
Bunny!). And Jann, Jeannie, and Jasmine don’t exist. Never did. (Trust me,
Bunny and I have plans.) So I need to invent a new background for Jinn.
Here’s the story I came up with:
Jinn Sinclair is the oldest girl in
the Sinclair family. She was killed in a terribly sad accident when Jade was
only six years old. Details of the accident aren’t really clear yet (I still
need to figure something out), but from the few hints that Jade has provided,
it was probably some sort of magical experiment. The little girl was hit
really hard (by the death, not in the accident), and wouldn’t talk about it or
anything for a couple of months. Then she started playing with an imaginary
playmate named “Jinn.”
So then when Jade grows up, suddenly
she’s got these mutant powers. Only there’s two completely different powers.
Jade starts making cool little gizmos and stuff (sound familiar, Bun?). But
she could also summon up the spirit of her dead sister. Well, maybe Jinn was a
mutant all along, or maybe she needs some sort of special energy from Jade –
the Academy’s people are still researching that part. What they know so far is
that Jinn needs to periodically recharge by seeing Jade again, and that it is
taking her a while to learn how to shape the energy to look like she’s supposed
to – a seventeen-year-old girl. But Jinn is the older sister, and she really
looks out for her younger sister. And they live together with their favorite
roomie Tennyo, and they talk about *everything*, so they usually know what’s
happened to each other.
Okay, that’s the main story. That’s
what we can talk about in public. And from now on, I’m going to act like and
pretend like it’s true. Only there’s a couple of problems with it. Like, if
Tansy or someone asks how come Jinn was still around when Tansy was doing the
whole possession thing, I’ve got another story, that’s just a teeny bit
different.
Here goes. Yeah, there was an
accident when Jade was six years old. It was some really dark mysterious magic
thing (maybe you can come up with some good details, Nikki or Sara?). Anyway,
that’s how Jade’s mommy died. (Really sad, she was a good person.) Only,
something happened with Jade. Because of the accident. And her dad was okay,
I guess, but he wasn’t always a really great guy, you know? (I mean, I figure
he was the one who was doing this magic stuff that he wasn’t supposed to.)
Anyway, that’s where Jinn came from.
There never was an “older sister”, not in real life. Jade claims that Jinn is
an older sister, but no one really knows where Jinn came from. Some sort of
ghost? Like connected to her mother or something? Some sort of demon? A
spirit? And everyone’s a little spooked by the fact that when Jinn was taken
by Tansy (and they KNOW that really happened), then suddenly there’s this new
spirit to take Jinn’s place. What’s that all about? No one knows, except
maybe Jade or Jinn, and they aren’t talking.
But anyway, everyone uses the “Jinn
is Jade’s older sister” story, but there’s some creepy stuff about Jinn. Like
the whole “Shroud” business – what if it isn’t just an act?
So that’s my (new) story.
-- Jade (and Jinn, too, who turns
into a creepy spirit of shadows!)
*****
She was really zooming along. She’d already made her plans
for costume class, she had the designs and sizes for her arm bones, and she’d
called Harry and arrange to meet up with him (and probably Tennyo) for lunch.
Meanwhile, Jann had found out that avatars were pretty rare. Jade wanted to do
a bit more research before handing herself over to a stranger’s hands.
*****
“Come on, Hank!” she begged. “You’ve still got 45 minutes
before breakfast. You only need ten minutes to take a shower. That leaves
plenty of time to show me.”
Both Jinn and Jann were back in her head, so she was ready.
“I still can’t get over this,” he admitted, sheepishly. “I
mean, us guys are so damn fast in the bathroom. The whole
shower-and-prep thing is practically as fast as you can scrub off. Well, okay,
there’s a couple of guys that really primp, but I’m wondering if that’s just
‘cause this is Poe.”
Jade frowned. “I can remember some guys really primping,
back in junior high. Most of us thought they were pretty stupid. I mean, who
cares about the hair and cologne and stuff? Just a quick comb and you’re done,
right?” She had the grace to blush. “I guess… I guess I need to learn all
about that, don’t I?”
Hank snorted. “Guess I don’t have all that much to
unlearn. I never got all that fancy back when… well, before.”
“Yeah.” Jade was just as eager to drop that subject. “So,
are you going to show me?”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s something you can learn. I do
it instinctively. Maybe it has to be built-in or something.”
“Let me try.”
“Okay, okay.” Reluctantly, he pulled his shirt off and
handed a used-up pen to Jade.
Jade made sure the door was locked, then cast Jinn into
Hank’s shirt. “I just need something that’s fairly wide. My vision gets a
little better, the bigger I am.” Then she cast Jann into the pen. “This way,
I can study how you change exactly where I’m poking you.”
All prepared, she jabbed at Hank with the pen. As expected,
the TK field that coated his skin resisted the attack. Jade stabbed a couple
more times, sometimes quick, sometimes pushing slowly.
“See anything, guys?”
“Not really,” Jinn-the-shirt said. “I mean, I can tell that
something’s happening where you stab, but it’s impossible to see any details.”
“I’m getting something,” came from the speaker-disk hovering
next to the pen. “When I touch him – it’s like a grid. Not exactly. But when
I’m on the surface of something, I think I’m like a flat sheet. This feels
like some sort of complicated pattern. It comes alive the instant we touch, but
it’s not doing anything – not until you push on it.”
Jinn-the-shirt made a “hmm” sound. “Maybe – this is kind of
freaky, ‘cause he’s a guy – but maybe if you cast me into his skin, I could
watch it.”
With that, Jinn and Jann both returned to her. Jade suddenly
remembered seeing the complex weave that Jann had noticed. It wasn’t so much
seeing it, as feeling it. And it wasn’t exactly a weave. Like many aspects of
psi, it seemed to have more than three dimensions. Jade didn’t really have
words to think about it or describe it. The feeling was of some complicated
pattern squeezed out in a layer over Hank’s skin. When the front part of the
pattern was pressed up next to the back part, something happened. It was like
the energy could suddenly flow freely.
“I think I see what’s happening,” Jade began. “Well, kind
of. I see what’s happening, but I don’t know how. The patterns
over your skin is really complicated. I mean, I can’t really see the
patterns, but I can see what they’re doing. Are you willing to let me, uh,
charge Jinn into your, uh, skin? If you don’t want to, it’s alright. I mean,
I’ll understand. But that might help me see what’s going on.”
“I guess.”
Jade touched his skin and was almost surprised when she
could charge Jinn into the boy.
*****
For Jinn, it was entirely different. She hadn’t noticed
anything, being charged into Hank’s shirt. But entering his skin was
completely different. For one thing, she didn’t arrive.
Coating the surface of Hank’s skin was a field of unimaginable
force. It was like stepping onto a neutron star. Her awareness was instantly
crushed flat, and spread like a paste to cover Hank’s body.
The field wasn’t featureless. There were complex mechanisms
at work, psi-constructs in the field that waited passively. As Jinn’s
awareness adapted, she realized that her vision was still working. She could
see a pen approaching. As the tip of the pen struck the field, the
psi-constructs reacted. The harder they were pressed, the more power flowed
in, exactly canceling the force of the pen. Meanwhile, a secondary, tiny
trickle of force reached inward, tickling against Hank’s skin.
These psi-constructs were obviously the secret to Hank’s
protective field. And while she could see them now, and watch them working,
duplicating the constructs was about as easy as duplicating a professional
musician’s movements, after watching them play a solo. She’d try, she’d see
what she could do, but it would be an awfully long time before she created
anything useful.
She tried to return to Jade and suddenly discovered that she
couldn’t.
She was stuck, trapped in Hank’s TK field like a fly landing
on honey. And Hank’s field was immensely stronger than she was. Using TK to
pull herself out activated the same mechanisms that his protective force field
did. Pushing in didn’t have any luck either.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Something kind of tickles.”
Panicking, Jinn tried to think. She moved her effort and
awareness up to his ear. As loud as possible, she pulled back and forth,
moving herself like a speaker disk.
“Hank! Can you hear me?”
There was no response.
“HANK! CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
“What?” He cupped a hand to his ear. “Jade, did you say
something?”
Yelling even louder, Jinn explained herself. She ended with,
“CAN YOU DROP YOUR TK SHIELD? CAN YOU LET GO?”
A moment later, she was suddenly free.
*****
Jade reeled back as the memories slammed into her. “Whoa!
Close one! I’ll make a note of that – never charge myself into someone with a
skin-field like yours. Yikes. Like being stuck in tar.”
“Huh, what do you know?” Hank was saying. “I have to
concentrate to keep it turned off, but this is kind of interesting. Everything
feels a little more … raw … you know? Hey, if I do reps like this on the
nautilus, I can work my actual muscles! Cool. So, did you learn anything?”
Jinn nodded. “From the inside, your ‘force field’ thing is
incredibly complex. It’s like there are these feedback and response circuits.
Only it’s not electronics, it’s all psi-constructs. Not like I could duplicate
them, though. Well, maybe, with two or three hundred years of study and
practice. There was a bunch of stuff in there that never even got triggered.
You should check yourself out against lasers and sonics and stuff.”
“Sure. Maybe I will. Glad I could help.”
She’d learned a lot, but Hank’s TK-invulnerability was a
bust. Well, maybe she’d come up with something else.
*****
Breakfast was wild. Everyone paid complete and utter
attention to her. The entire crew was there, including both Bunny and
Riptide. They found an isolated spot in the cafeteria, checked for
eavesdroppers, and Jade began to tell the tale of Tansy.
Throughout it all, she kept to the fiction of describing her
“sister” and what the “other girl” had gone through. She told about the
Alphas, and how they got along (or didn’t). She talked about telepaths and
avatars and dual minds. One recurring theme was her struggle to understand her
own powers, and the triumph of learning how to actually possess Tansy.
“Hold on,” Toni said sharply. “You mean to say that while
you were possessing her, you were really, honestly, no-fooling-around possessing
her?”
Jade nodded. “Yeah, stories and, you know, misinformation
aside, that’s exactly what it was like. I mean, using her muscles, speaking
with her voice, seeing through her eyes, and particularly feeling with
her skin. I would have felt really guilty if it hadn’t been that creep Tansy.”
Nikki leaned forward in curiosity. “So, in a way, it was
sort of a dream-come-true for you, huh?”
Jade had the grace to blush. “Well, aside from being so
close to Tansy, and having to worry about her waking up. And she’d definitely
bigger than I think I’ll ever be!”
Hank, of all people, looked momentarily puzzled, until
Billie made a “huge handful” gesture in front of her own bosom.
Jade continued on, explaining about telepaths and mind
shields, and how Fey had almost saved her by tugging her free until Tansy
tricked her.
“Damn!” the elfin mage swore. “I thought – but how was I
supposed to know? And I couldn’t take the chance that I was really hurting
you.”
Jade smiled and put her hand on top of Fey’s. “Thanks,” was
all she said.
Leaning back, she got decidedly casual and dropped a
bombshell. “Oh, what else happened when my sister was possessing Tansy? Let’s
see… oh, right. She had sex.”
That got a reaction. Toni, of all people, started choking
on her breakfast. Nikki would have helped, but she was looking pretty green
herself. Tennyo was just stunned.
Bunny leaned forward and, in a voice of dread, asked, “With
a man?”
“Uh huh.”
When the most entertaining reactions had stabilized, Jade
continued. “Fortunately, Jinn and Jann had been sort of forcibly merged at
that point. Remember when I passed out last night? Same thing happened to
them. So my big sister was completely unconscious through the whole, ugly
affair.”
Nikki was still looking ill, but mentioned, “When you said
‘affair’ did you mean… oh, never mind.”
“So…” Toni broached, a little too casually, “you don’t know
anything about how it was, or what it was like?”
“Not a bit,” Jade confirmed. “Except that from what I can
tell, it’s really disgusting, and not at all pleasant. I mean, really
disgusting.”
“With a man? I could have told you that,” Riptide offered.
“And worst of all?” Jade leaned in closer, and spoke
conspiratorially. “Guys have this – yuck! – stuff. And it ends up inside of
you. And it’s all sticky and smelly, and drips out of you practically
forever. Gross!”
“Eww. Some kind of sex-period,” Tennyo said. “Are you sure
that’s normal? That isn’t the way people usually describe it.”
“Tansy, if you can believe it, is always taking these birth
control pills. Jinn lied to her, and said that we’d swapped in aspirin
instead. Man, you should have seen that girl go ballistic! Freaking out
doesn’t begin to cover it.”
“Gang,” Nikki begged, holding a hand over her mouth, “can we
please stop talking about this?”
“Second the motion!” Rip instantly added.
“Okay,” Jade agreed. She knew she’d have enough smut-gossip
to keep going for weeks. Seeing the aftermath with Tansy had been enough to
utterly eliminate the curiosity appeal that sex had. Not that she was
physically equipped for it, but even if she was, she wasn’t sure that she ever
wanted a guy to… do that stuff to her. Even so, it was fun to talk about, even
if only to gross out her friends.
“Anyway, there’s lots of other stuff to tell, I’ll probably
be going on for weeks with weird little things I saw or heard.” There was one
HUGE detail – The Don’s talk about stealing spirits out of avatars – that she
hadn’t mentioned. She didn’t plan to mention it, either – not until they were
in someplace more private. The acoustics in the cafeteria dome were too
strange. You could never be sure who might overhear you. She could handle it
if someone managed to eavesdrop on things so far, but that topic was too
scary. But there was one thing…
“One last detail,” she said, “and it’s a really big one. So
Tansy’s whole point was to make a play for The Don, right? And even she
doesn’t know how he did his mind-control whammy with Cavalier and Skybolt.”
“Yeah, you already said that,” Riptide reminded her.
“Right. And I told you how she got Thuban to get rid of
Hekate for a week. You know how much she paid for that? Twenty-five thousand
dollars! And originally, I think she wanted him to KILL Hekate! Like,
murder! But he said he didn’t do assassinations. Right up front, clear as can
be. That’s what he said. And she was disappointed. Jinn could sense her
emotions, and that’s what Tansy was feeling – disappointment.”
Everyone was quiet at that, as they digested the concept.
“So here’s the thing,” Jade continued. “Toward the end,
Tansy was seriously angry at three of us. Mostly me, ‘cause I shot her. She
was pretty pissed at Fey, too. I think it’s the whole modeling thing. And
Ayla was the third. Partially some childhood history, I think, but it was also
your whole,” she momentarily dropped her voice to a whisper, “girl/guy thing,
you know? I couldn’t figure her out. She was halfway attracted and halfway
scared.”
“Thank you!” Ayla said, in an obvious attempt to head off
the conversation. “That’s more than I want to know! Let’s not go there,
okay?”
“Right. Anyway, we’ve got three people that she’s really
p.o.’ed at, and money to burn, and a history of hiring out murders. And I
suddenly thought…”
Tennyo nodded. “I think we get the picture.”
Nikki shook her head. “No way! That sort of thing doesn’t
really happen, does it?”
Ayla snorted. “The Walcutts? Are you kidding? Although
frankly, I’m shocked that Tansy would be so careless. But then, she’s always
been pretty sloppy.” She began to tick off points on her fingers. “Let’s see,
first, when you’re doing anything dirty you never make the contact
directly. It’s always done through at least one level of intermediary. And
you always maintain ‘plausible deniability’ – you know, the old misunderstood
wishes thing. Second, violence is so completely looked down on. It’s just so…
blue collar. What are we, a gang? Some sort of mafia? Although,” she mused,
“with a name like ‘The Don’ you have to wonder.”
Toni broke into the lecture. “But you punch people, Ayla.
Doesn’t that violate rule two?”
“Naw. I’m a mutant. Different standards. Also,
face-to-face stuff is completely different. But then, I’m violating rule three
as much as Tansy is. That is, ‘breeding always shows.’ I think Grace worked
most of that out of me. And rule four isn’t so much a rule as a philosophy.
‘Always do it in style.’ Assassination or some such crass physical attack is
so totally lacking in style. But,” she shrugged. “If your question is ‘Could
Tansy do it?’ the answer is, ‘Hell yes.’ She wouldn’t batt an eyelash over
it. It wouldn’t bother her at all. On the other hand, ‘Would Tansy do it?’ I
don’t think so. Not unless she’s completely slipped up on anything like style
or class or respect or class consciousness.”
“Thanks. That makes me feel just soooo much better,”
Nikki groused.
“Hey, no problem.”
24: School and detention
October 4, Wednesday morning, 8:45 AM
It was another boring lecture, and Jann had a problem. What
exactly was she supposed to do? Eventually, she’d be operating all the
“gadgets” that she’d invent as Jade-the-devisor. But first she needed to work
with Bunny to lash together some special effects so that things would at least
look convincing. And for now, she was just hanging around so that she could
build up her endurance, and push the limit of her powers.
But it was so boring!
She could listen to the class lecture, but her physical half
was already doing that, and who cared about prepositions, anyway? She’d gotten
convinced about nouns and adjectives and stuff, but prepositions?
She’d been popping back and forth a bit, trying to get a
comfortable fit. If she cast herself into her skin, then she and herself could
talk telepathically, without anyone catching on. But she was as uncoordinated
as a web-footed giraffe. The different Tansy variations didn’t seem to matter
much. Whether she was object-mode or girl-shape or whatever, she still had
full telepathy, full TK, and she saw with both types of vision. She decided
that possessing herself was somehow fundamentally different from possessing
other people.
And being cast into just the clothes was boring with a
capitol B. That’s probably how she’d do it when she turned into girl-gadgets,
but right now it was completely dull.
So she worked on variations. She tried skin and
clothes, but that worked like back with Tansy – she got sucked into the skin
and ended up possessing herself. Then she figured out that she could cast
herself into the “dead” parts of her body without getting sucked into the
skin. She could occupy her fingernails, or teeth, or hair. For a while she
occupied all the super-fine hairs on her body. That was interesting. By
waving the hairs near her eardrums, she could speak to herself without anyone
overhearing. But herself-in-body couldn’t talk back. She tried possessing
every hair on her head. Each one burrowed into the skin of her scalp, just
above her brain. Unfortunately, that didn’t give her any special abilities
like telepathy with herself.
Then, almost by accident, she stumbled onto a major trick.
She decided she needed more practice going from cast-into-object into
cast-into-girlshape and back. As Jinn, she’d be using that trick a lot,
particularly for a quick-change idea she’d been working on. She’d gotten it
down to less than a tenth of a second. So there she was, spread through her
clothes and hair, and then –flick– she was a ghostly girl just larger
than her real physical body.
And that’s what did it. She instantly heard the
undercurrents of her other-self’s thoughts.
A little more experimentation revealed that any time part of
her “naked” spirit passed through any part of her physical body, the two of
them were in contact.
But it really did make her feel naked. Particularly since
the whole Tansy affair. She knew that her spirit form was supremely vulnerable
to any avatar. All they had to do was touch her exposed spirit body, and she
could be sucked in.
And it probably looked really odd to people like Fey and
Toni, who could see her spirit form. One minute, there’s this quiet Asian girl
sitting there, the next moment a ghost is flickering into place around her.
She paused to consider. Would this endanger the whole disinformation
campaign? A hostile snoop with the proper powers would see that Jinn was a
“spook” and even when Jinn was out-and-about, Jade still had spooks flickering
around her.
Nah, it’s too much fun. I’m not going to live my life in
total paranoia. Besides, the fallback story can still fit. Maybe they’ll
think I’m a mystic nexus or something – a living portal to the spirit realm.
The main problem with switching into girl-shape was that the
clothes tended to expand to fit her. Since her sprit-form was seventeen, and
her body-form was only twelve, her clothes looked like they were inflating.
Even when she consciously shrunk down to match her body size, her clothes were
suddenly showing a figure that didn’t match her body.
It kept her entertained through a boring class, but she
decided to quit when she began to get looks from classmates.
The next period (algebra) she spent trying to duplicate Hank’s
complicated TK field. If she could get it right she could turn any outfit into
armor! Or, inhabiting her own skin, she could gain super-tough skin. Her TK
should be strong enough to resist a knife, maybe even a low-caliber bullet!
And it would probably soften the blow on other attacks.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t manage to duplicate the
complicated field that Hank used. She could use her powers to make her clothes
stiffer. In theory, that would make her stronger. Just like in Ranma ½, or in
Dragonball Z, if she made her clothes heavier and stiffer, it would provide a
constant load, and constant martial arts training. In theory, that should
provide fantastic exercise and great muscle toning. It was too bad that didn’t
work for her. Whatever kept her from growing older also seemed to prevent her
from getting stronger. Way back in the ugly days when she’d been a boy, she’d
done a lot of working out with free weights that her dad had bought. They’d
never helped at all, although she hadn’t understood why, at the time.
There was something lurking at the edge of her mind, though…
martial arts training, and she’d had an earlier thought about paranoia. Since
she had plenty of free time, she should probably be watching in every direction
for snipers or assassins. That shouldn’t be a problem for today – Tansy would
probably be busy until this afternoon. She shuddered at the thought of what
Tansy was probably doing right now.
Yeah, she should probably be watching, constantly alert,
looking for threats, escape routes, suspicious people, angry emotions, that
sort of thing. Someday she’d be a hot-shot Aikido master, like Ito sensei, and
then she’d have an automatic awareness of everything around her, but that took
long and intensive training.
The thought suddenly exploded through her – TRAINING!
She would make her clothes heavier and stiffer –
well, as soon as it would do her some good. And in the meantime, she’d give
herself the even harder training for movement and awareness. That was what she
could do as her Jann-self – she would become Jann sensei! She would be
constantly watching herself walk and move and react. She’d train her body-self
to be aware of everything, to always move properly, to constantly maintain her
center and balance. With this level of training, she might learn to be as good
as Toni sempai!
Well, maybe someday. She decided she wouldn’t hold her
breath.
She popped back to join with her physical side, then back
out. She held the clothing and hair, including the fine hairs in her ear
canal. She could talk to herself, but her body-half couldn’t answer back,
except out loud.
“Alright, kohai, we will begin with some simple
awareness exercises. Don’t turn your head or otherwise react in front of your
classmates. You will subtly flick your index finger to indicate direction.
First: an external threat is most likely to come from where?”
Her physical self flicked a finger to point at the door,
then at the window. No great surprise, she’d been thinking of this exercise
before she’d separated again.
“And your escape routes?” More flicks. Door, window.
“Now some exercises to use me effectively. I’m going to
coordinate all your gadgets and outside stuff, so you won’t need to think about
them. I’ll return, focusing on a new destination for you to cast me into. As
fast as possible, we’ll do cast-and-return. … Pencil!”
She was instantly recast into the pencil. She returned,
thinking Book!
*****
Tennyo’s friend at lunch was a werewolf. At least, that’s
what he looked like. He was about seven feet tall, with brownish-black fur
over his entire body. The odd thing about him were the cutoff shorts and the
red vest with gold embroidery.
“Nice vest,” Jinn said. She was dressed as Shroud, with
white skin. At the moment she had her hood thrown back.
“You must be Jinn,” he said, in a deep voice with a hint of
a more guttural rumble. He turned to look at the younger girl approaching the
table. “And you must be Jade.”
The small girl nodded. “Hi, Tennyo.” Then she looked at the
werewolf. UP at the werewolf. And up, and up.
“Whoa! And you must be Harry.” Then she slapped herself in
the face. “Oh, jeez, sorry.”
“Nice one, shrimp,” Shroud said.
They all sat down, and everyone except Shroud prepared to
eat while they continued the introductions.
“I keep seeing you in passing,” Jade said, “but I think this
is the first time Tennyo’s actually introduced us.” She scowled at her
roommate.
“Snot my fault,” Tennyo said. “You could ask, you know.”
Her voice was slightly distorted, since she was chewing an entire half
sandwich. She had seven more sandwich halves on her plate.
“So,” Harry opened conversationally, “Billie tells me you’re
some sort of spirit of the dead or something?”
Shroud shrugged. “Yeah, or something. It’s not quite clear
what yet. I’m Jade’s older sister, but I’m not really alive. Well, I am, but
not in the conventional sense. I just possess things. Sort of like a limited
poltergeist, I guess. Hmmm, that’s not too bad a description.”
“And are you a gypsy or something?” Jade asked the werewolf.
“Come on, you guys!” Billie whined around a second
sandwich. “Stop embarrassing me!”
“It’s okay,” Harry said. “A gypsy? Where did that come
from?”
“Well, it’s the cool vest. It’s sort of gypsy-looking.”
“No, this is just to hold my stuff. Convenient, and fairly
comfortable. Clothes get a lot more irritating when you’re covered in fur.
This is what I wear on green-flag days. On red-flag days I have to wear a
hooded cloak, even more concealing than yours, Jinn. Even so, I mostly keep to
the class buildings and tunnels.”
“That sucks,” Jade and Jinn said in unison.
“You’ll get used to that from them,” Billie explained.
“So, Billie said something about metal fabrication?”
“Yeah, are you any good?”
Harry made an endearing sort of snuffing sound through his
nose. “Well, my mutant power isn’t because of how I look. They’re
thinking I might be a sort of mechanical gadgeteer. What are you looking for?”
Shroud leaned forward. She was the only one not eating, so
she took over the speaking. “You sound like exactly what I need! You probably
saw our little fight with the Alphas, Saturday morning.”
Harry nodded, while discretely chewing his lunch.
“Well, we’re expecting more trouble. I’m pretty hard to hurt,
since I don’t actually have a body.” To illustrate, she pulled her glove away
and gave a view down her empty sleeve. “Nothing to get injured. But at the
same time, when I hit someone, it has all the impact of being struck by a wad
of laundry.”
Harry nodded again. “Makes sense.”
“I know a bit about fighting, but it’s useless like this.
My first attempt to fix it was to fill my gloves with a few pounds of shot.
That way, when I hit it made a pretty good impact. But it’s too limited. It’s
hard to use for elbow strikes, I can’t use a knife hand, and most of my blocks
are useless.”
Harry seemed to be listening, but he picked up one rib and
sucked the meat off of it, while making doggie-growling sounds. “Sorry. Can’t
help myself. Superman was vulnerable to kryptonite – my one weakness is
barbecue. And it’s hell to get out of fur.” He shrugged while Jade giggled
and Tennyo smiled. “So it sounds like you’ve got a solution in mind already.”
“Uh huh.” Shroud held her arm out. “For atemi
strikes – what some people call ‘hard style,’ you need mass and a hard
surface. This isn’t the way a sensei would describe it, because he already
knows that his students have the common background of having human bodies. I
don’t, so I’ve had to think about this in more detail. In most moves, the
energy from a strike comes from building momentum, and from concentrating the
mass and motion of your body behind a strike. Most strikes are also designed
to focus the impact on a small, hard area of the human body – such as the first
two knuckles of the fist. This puts your hard bones behind the strike. The
smaller and harder the area of impact, the better the blow can be. But I don’t
have any bones, and I have very little material to use to build momentum.”
“Which is by you filled your gloves with shot.”
“Exactly. But that really only works for a punch. Martial
arts allows for dozens of other types of blows. After thinking hard about it,
I decided that I could get most of the benefit by simulating the mass in my
forearm – from elbow to fingertip. Same for my feet – knees to toes. For a
real martial artist, you can get more power by putting the rest of your body
into things, but I think this should be enough for me.”
“Hmmm, I think I see.” Harry paused to lick his chops. His
tongue did an impressive job of cleaning off his muzzle. “If you could make a
whole fake forearm, simulating the muscle and bone and skin and stuff, then
‘poltergeist’ it to move normally, you’d get most of the power when you
swung into a punch.”
“Exactly. And I could use nearly the full range of moves –
blocks, elbow strikes, haito – the ridge hand, yubi – finger
strikes, almost everything.”
Harry picked up another sauce-covered rib. “Sounds
plausible. Uh, you don’t expect me to do any corpse-robbing or anything, I
hope. I may look like a werewolf, but I’m really not into the whole horror
thing.”
“Not at all.” She pulled several sheets of paper from her
notebook, her own sketch and photocopies of the skeletal system. “Just the bones.
The forearm, wrist, and fingers. If they were made out of metal…”
Harry nodded. “I get it. The weight of the metal would
give you the mass you need, and the hard surface would provide a devastating
strike..”
Jinn nodded.
He licked his fingers clean and looked at the diagrams.
“Well, the casting should be easy – there’s enough skeletal models around. Are
you married to a realistic wrist design? It would be easier and stronger to
just put in a ball joint. The human wrist bones need to be really complex, but
I don’t think you have that problem here.”
“A ball joint would be fine.”
“The big issue is what alloy to use. That and how to temper
it. We might want to consider some unusual annealing steps…”
Tennyo and Jade grinned at each other as their lunch
companions suddenly veered off in a flurry of technical details.
*****
The seven of them (including Jinn) headed slowly toward
Hawthorne. Jinn stood out, looking pure white and scarcely dressed, with a
ragged bandeau top and an equally ragged skirt. The rest of her was a pure
chalk-white (quite literally, since she was using pulverized chalk), even her
hair.
Ayla was busy grousing. “It was a lot easier thinking about
the whole ‘Cooler King’ approach when we weren’t so close to the problem.”
“Hey,” Hank reminded her, “if it was easy, no one would be
impressed. So you picked your assignment yet?”
“I have!” Jade announced. She seemed to be addressing
Toni. “She’s the one you told me about, Sempai. Jello, the girl without a
body image template. I was thinking, maybe we’d be good for each other.”
The cocky black girl smiled back at her. “I hope so.”
The were received by Ms. Cantrel, the house mother at
Hawthorne. She was a large, elderly black woman in a wheelchair. But, like
some of the other wheelchairs on campus, this one had been significantly
modified. In fact, this one seemed more modified than any of the others Jade
had seen. It had no wheels, but glowing golden orbs at each corner, each orb
the size of a grapefruit. The wheelchair didn’t merely hover, it positively
swooshed about. It moved faster than they expected, giving the house mother
surprising speed for someone of her bulk.
She zoomed up to them, as soon as they opened the front
door.
“Well, here at last, and about time, too!”
“Are we late?” Toni asked, oddly subdued around large old
woman.
“Late? Not yet you aren’t! But unless we get moving you
might be. And those kids need every minute they can get, so don’t sit there
gawking, let’s get to work!”
Jade told the woman that she’d be helping “Jello”, so before
she had a chance to collect her wits or to look around at the crowd at
Hawthorne, she was bustled up the stairs and practically shoved into a room.
Inside, the room was a complete mess. The floor and bed (she
assumed the covered mound was a bed) were covered in sheets, discarded
clothing, magazines. And in the center of it all, sitting in the room’s one
chair and watching TV was a humanoid figure that rippled and shifted as she
entered the room. After a moment, the figure seemed to solidify into a rough
copy of her, including jeans and apron.
“Uh, hi, I guess.”
“Oh, oh!” Jade recognized that effect. “You have the
locker, I think three down from mine, right?”
“Oh, uh, maybe?”
“I keep seeing you between classes. I was confused at
first, because I thought there were, I don’t know, twenty different people
using the same locker, but they were all you, weren’t they?”
The other girl shrugged, which helped her shoulders to slump
and she gradually lost more cohesion.
“So I think I’m supposed to be your personal servant or
something. What would you like me to do?”
“I dunno. Clean up?” The older girl shrugged, as if
cleaning up was not exactly vital.
“Cool. Actually, I’m really glad to be here. I’ve been
hearing about you for a while, and I wanted to talk to you.” Jade paused to
listen to Jann-sensei’s whispers in her ear. Her other self had apparently
been surveying the room and coming up with a cleaning and organizational plan.
Jade started to gather magazines as she continued to chatter. “See, from what
the doctors have been telling me, I think we’re the exact opposites.”
“Opposites?” Something seemed to penetrate to the other
girl, and she seemed to pay attention to Jade for the first time. “What do you
mean?”
“Well, from what I’ve heard, your real problem is that you
don’t have a body image template, right?”
The other girl, who was now looking more and more like a
mirror image of Jade gave her ubiquitous shrug. “I guess.”
“Right. That’s what they’ve been telling me. What they
didn’t tell me was that you had such awesome shapeshifting powers!”
Jello perked up a bit more at that. “You’re impressed with
my powers?”
“Well, sure! Who wouldn’t be? Not the downside, of
course. Sorry, that must really suck. But being able to be anyone, or
anything – wow! Is that the coolest thing ever, or what?”
“I dunno. I guess. But if you could be anything you
wanted, what would you be?”
Jade was momentarily stunned. “Uh, I have an answer to that
one, but I can’t really tell you. It’s kind of a deep, dark secret. But trust
me, I do have something in mind.”
Jade started stacking the magazines on the shelf. Following
the instructions whispered in her ear, her hands moved quickly to organize them
by title and date. Jade herself concentrated more on her conversation with
Jello. The girl had seemed almost dazed earlier, but she seemed to be coming
out of that now.
“So how do you figure you’re my exact opposite. And to
really be my opposite, you’d have to be a boy, wouldn’t you?”
Jade tried to hide her embarrassment at that last point.
“Uh, well, how old do you think I am?”
“Uh, I don’t know, maybe eleven? Are you one of the
middle-school kids?”
“No, I’m fourteen! My body image template is completely
stuck! I haven’t grown so much as a millimeter in years. Exercise never makes
me any stronger, it’s like there’s nothing I can do to change my body at all.
I’m completely stuck.”
“Oh.” The other girl, who was now her exact duplicate
seemed to be actually thinking. Her voice now sounded like Jade’s too. “So
who have you been seeing?”
“Dr. Bellows – he’s been teaching me self-hypnosis.”
“Uh huh. Got that. Did it work?”
Jade grinned. “Sure! It’s pretty cool. I’m not sure why
more people aren’t using it. I use the ‘study’ technique all the time. I’ve
used some of the others once or twice, but I’m really working on coming up with
my own. I had a gun I’m trying to learn to use – devisor thing, you know? –
and I’ve got a marksmanship hypno thing. Dr. Bellows calls it a ‘spell’ even
if it really isn’t. I use that a lot.”
Jello was awake enough that she began helping pick things
up. “Whoa, you really get to talking, don’t you? Slow down for a minute. The
reason the hypnosis isn’t more popular is that it doesn’t work that well on
most people. Some people, like me, are really suggestible. They seem like
good candidates, and you get a lot of them on the initial sessions – it looks
like everything’s going to work great. Unfortunately, we’re too
suggestible. Stuff comes in fine, but it either dribbles out just as quick, or
else it’s replaced by new suggestions.”
“Oh.” Jade paused for a moment, while Jann described how
Jello’s aura and emotions were changing and brightening, as she got more
involved. “Yeah, I hadn’t really thought about that.”
“Most people don’t. They hear about it, and think it’s
going to solve all their problems. But it’s usually really, really temporary.
Then there’s other types – the un-suggestible ones. Really strong force
of will. Can’t be hypnotized. Which is kind of a shame, because from what I
hear, if you could hypnotize them, it would stick really well.”
Jade had a sudden thought. Was this what had happened to
Cavalier and Skybolt? Had The Don used some sort of telepathic technique like
Tansy’s to force a suggestion into a strong-willed mind, until it stuck?
“And then lastly, there’s a batch in the middle that’s just
right. They can accept suggestions – some of the time. And they have a really
strong will – most of the time. And the trick is to find a way to get them
into the trance, and to word things in a way that they can accept, and then
hypnosis is really, really effective.”
“Oh.” Jade suddenly understood. “I think that’s what
happened to me. I didn’t actually let Dr. Bellows hypnotize me. I had my
sister plugging my ears. She was listening to the doc, and whispering the real
commands into my ear. I trust her completely.”
Jello-Jade’s eyes were gleaming with intelligence now.
“Interesting. And did it work?”
“Like a charm. I could whip off one of those post-hypnotic
programs right now. Except I don’t feel like sleeping, or studying, or
improving my marksmanship.”
“No, I mean, did it work for your body image problem.”
“Oh. No, didn’t make a bit of difference.” She paused for
a moment. “No, actually, it worked pretty well.”
The other girl was naturally confused by this response.
“Uh, come again? It either worked or it didn’t, right?”
“Well…” Jade took a deep breath. “See, my older sister
Jinn, she’s dead, and kind of a poltergeist now. She used to spend a lot of
time just inside my head, but we figured out how to let her come out and
possess things, like a ghost or poltergeist or something. Only when she does,
we think she’s using my body image template. At first, she looked just
my age. Fourteen – what I’m supposed to be, not what I’m stuck as. But with
the hypnosis, she now looks seventeen – her age. It’s still my template, but
it’s what I’m going to look like at seventeen. At least, I hope so. So
anyway, the hypnosis changed my template, and helped Jinn, but I’m still
stuck.”
Jello-Jade shook her head. “Dead sister, huh? Weird, even
for Whateley. Hey, is she here today? Can I meet her?”
“Yeah, she’s cleaning up with Musk.”
“Oh, God. Not Sue! You’re kidding.”
Jade shrugged. “She’s a ghost. It’s not like she can smell
anything.”
“Oh. That might work, then. Hey, I’m sorry I was so out of
it, earlier. I never did introduce myself. I’m Eleanor Ruskin, code name
‘Jello’.” She held out a hand.
Instead, Jade gave her a hug. “Hi. Jade Sinclair. I’m
still trying out code names, but I’m going with ‘Generator’ for now. Does that
sound okay for a devisor?”
The other girl smiled and nodded. “Uh huh. You got any
cool gadgets yet?”
“No. I had this gun, but it got kind of confiscated after
Saturday’s big fight. I kind of shot Tansy Walcutt with it, and security got a
little upset.”