A Whateley Academy Tale
Jade 6-g – Dreams and Awakening
By Babs Yerunkle
49: Peeper reaches new heights
Whateley Academy, Crystal Hall November 23, Thursday, Thanksgiving Day afternoon
Jade ran into them just before she got back to Poe. The
ever-obnoxious duo of Peeper and Greasy, accompanied by (unbelievably), the
school’s lead model, Poise. Jade quickly ducked back out of sight.
Damn! she thought. And I’m out here alone,
without Jinn!
She was wearing her Jinn cloak. Maybe she could animate
that. But there wasn’t much she could do as just a cloak. She finally decided
that she was being paranoid. There was no reason that Peeper and Greasy would
be looking for her, out of all the girls in Poe. She checked her equipment –
her barrettes, her missile cuffs, the kitty compact. Inspiration struck, and
she grabbed her latest gizmos from her purse. She’d been taking lessons from
Bunny, and was up to creating her own gizmos. So far she had achieved basic
competence with creating buttons, flashing lights, buzzing sounds, and molded
plastic cases. It wasn’t much, but when you added an invisible, intelligent,
telekinetic puppeteer, you could create some fairly impressive devices.
Preparing herself, she decided to march through them and
head back to Poe. She set her jaw and marched forward.
The unusual trio spotted her immediately.
“Hey Peeper!” the oily one said, “Look! It’s the ghost
girl. Maybe she knows where her sister is.”
Peeper called toward her, “You’re Jinn, right? Where’s your
sister?”
“I’m Jade, you jerk!” She held out her hand, holding an
item that looked like a pink plastic centipede, with blinking blue “eyes” on
both ends. “Now back off, or I’ll let you have it!”
Greasy squinted at her. “She’s right, Peeper. The ghost
girl has longer hair.”
“But…” Peeper was confused. “Isn’t Jade the little one?”
He waved a hand in the air at the four-foot height. “And she wasn’t nearly so
… big?” This time, he clutched his hands arthritically in front of his chest.
She didn’t quite understand what Peeper was implying, but
she didn’t think it was nice. Besides, the duo was bad news. After some of
the trash they’d done to Sara, she wasn’t going to give them even an inch of leeway.
“I grew up, okay? This is Whateley. Weirder things have happened.” She
turned to the senior next to the two jerks. “You’re Poise, aren’t you? Nikki
talks about you all the time! Do you need rescue from these two idiots?”
The tall, stately brunette smiled down at her benignly.
“Why thank you, that’s a very polite offer. I’m afraid that in a moment of
anger and weakness, I agreed to let them engage in a radio contest, comparing
the two of us in – I’m extremely sorry about this – bust size.”
As the two girls shook hands, Peeper was rapidly speaking
into his microphone. “All listeners, get your ears on right now! The battle
of the busts is about to commence! And, in a shocking and surprising turn, it
seems that tiny, underage ‘Jade’ – the youngest and let’s be frank, least
developed of our beautiful Negligee Nightingales – has given us a stunning
development! And what developments they are! Sometime in the past week, the
petite girl has gone from being a mere child to a taller and much more
bountiful teenager! When asked about this sudden blossoming into the very
flower of womanhood, the scantily dressed girl would only comment that this is
Whateley, and that stranger things have happened! Indeed they have, but seldom
are such sudden developments so welcome! Let’s join our two contestants now,
who find themselves, er, face-to-face!”
“—wouldn’t believe how rude they’ve been!” Jade was
explaining to the older girl. “Is it our fault the cottage was attacked in the
middle of the night? What would you be wearing? But instead, they act
like its an invitation to – to – to do all sorts of stuff! Like harassing us all
the time!”
The taller girl nodded in sympathy. “Yes, I’ve gotten
complaints from several of our models. But they aren’t technically breaking
school rules.”
Peeper had switched to using a headset microphone, while
Greasy, standing slightly back, focused a parabolic mike on the two girls.
“Now, Jade, if you’ll just let me confirm your measurements,
we can begin!” Peeper reached forward, holding a fabric tape measure stretched
between his two hands.
“Don’t you dare touch me!”
“This will only take a second—”
Jade kept a vicious smile to herself, as she prepared the
hand with her “devise” in it. This would prove that years of martial arts
training hadn’t been for nothing! She waited until the last possible moment,
then allowed him to actually touch her – just for an instant. His stupid tape
measure actually pressed against her breast, in a very unwelcome bit of forced
intimacy.
It was also the moment she’d been waiting for. She gave a
high-pitched scream of pure outrage, charged Jinn into the plastic centipede,
and spun, dropping the item into the back of Peeper’s pants.
“EEEEE! Pervert! Get your hands off of me! I’ll show
you!”
Rather than pursuing her, Peeper was suddenly jumping around
in panic. “Hey! What? Something’s in my pants! Get it off me! Get it off!”
*****
Jinn had very limited control and vision, in her hard
plastic body. She swept her left and right sets of centipede legs back and
forth, as if she were actually some sort of crawling bug, but she actually just
propelled herself with telekinesis. Hers was a loathsome task. She scurried
down the back of Peepers pants, moving around the tucked-in shirt, and arriving
finally at her destination – the waistband of his underwear. Immediately, she
clamped her left and right sets of legs together, locking them like claws
suddenly snipping shut. She was now firmly attached to the rear waistband of
the underwear.
*****
Jade had quickly retrieved her other recent creation – the
Universal Remote. She was particularly proud of it, since it featured
illuminated rhinestone buttons, wonderfully clicky dials, and an antenna that
pulsed with flashes of coherent ruby-red light. She pressed the first button,
which produced a sound like an old-fashioned radio being tuned into its
station.
“Centi-grab: Attach!”
Peeper had dropped the measuring tape, and was swatting at
the small of his back. “What’s going on? Look, if this isn’t a good time, I
can come back!”
She mashed a lavender-rhinestone button, and the controller
began emitting a beep-beep-beep something like a movie bomb, ticking down to
its explosive release. “Centi-grab: Super wedgie mode!”
Peeper’s eyes popped wide in alarm. “You wouldn’t!”
Gleefully, she twisted the large knob on the side of the
controller. Instantly, a sound like the old Star Trek transporter issued
forth, ratcheting up in pitch. “Centi-grab: Degravitate!”
Peeper set himself to launch into a getaway sprint, but
suddenly, the rear waistband of his “tighty whities” was yanked out of his
pants, and two feet up into the air. As the pitch of sound emitted from the
Universal Remote slowly rose, so did Peeper. Suspended now entirely by his
over-stretched undies, he was lifted into the air, higher and higher, until he
plateaued off at the height of thirty feet, where he hung, helpless in the grip
of an excruciating wedgie.
“Owwww! You can’t do this to me! I’m the press! I have
rights!”
“Shall I release you?” Jade called up. “It isn’t that big a
drop. You might break a leg or two, but that’s probably all. I think.”
“No! No! Let me down slowly!”
Jade twisted the knob again, and the transporter sound
issued again, once more rising in pitch. Peeper was raised another ten feet in
the air.
“No! No!” He was screaming like a girl now. “I said down!”
“Oops!” Jade apologized. “Well, you know how these
prototypes are. I’ll try to fix that on the next version.”
The girls apparently didn’t realize that they were still
being covered (and broadcast) by Greasy, with his parabolic microphone.
Greaser wisely decided not to approach any closer to the dangerous females.
“Just out of curiosity,” Poise asked, trying to hold back a
chuckle, “why did you raise him up again?”
“Well, we could still hear him, couldn’t we?”
“Good point.”
“So… as long as you’re here anyway,” Jade asked, shyly, “do
you … do you have any tips for other girls, who, like wish they could be as
graceful as you?”
“Oh, you are a darling, aren’t you? Well, you know, nothing
really beats the basics. I’d start with some of the exercises they used back
in the fifties – working on your posture, walking about with a book on your
head, that sort of thing. They’re pretty basic exercises, but good places to
start. And make sure to practice walking in heels. So many girls just clump
along. A graceful-looking stride in heels is difficult, but worth the effort.”
“Okay, I’ll work on that. I was kind of hoping that martial
arts might help me move more gracefully.”
“Oh it does,” Poise agreed. “But once you’ve mastered the
basics – are you with Ito Sensei right now? – try taking some classes with Lillian
Dennon. She has some excellent exercises for grace. Her final exercise was to
do an entire combat in high-heels and a skirt while holding a full cup of hot
tea! Even worse, I was only allowed to hold onto the saucer! You have to
disable your opponent without breaking a heel, marring your makeup, spilling
the tea, or being immodest with your skirt. Well, let me tell you, after that
even the worst modeling catwalk in the world is a piece of cake.”
“Wow!” Which was about the only thing Jade could say. “No
wonder all the other girls look up to you!”
The taller girl smiled down pleasantly. “It’s just part of
the job, being a senior and a spokesperson for the Academy. Um… if you don’t
mind my asking, is that the way you normally dress?”
Jade shrugged apologetically. “Like I told the losers, I
had a rather extreme growth spurt. None of my old clothes still fit – not even
my school uniform.”
“Oh. Didn’t they mention an older sister? I’m sure she’d
be willing to loan you something.”
Jade slapped her head. “Jeez! I can’t believe how stupid I
am sometimes.”
“It comes with being a freshman. Don’t worry, you’ll grow
out of it.”
Jade turned to suddenly face Greasy. “Are you still
recording us? Well, that last bit ought to finish any idea of ‘competition’
between the two of us! What’s the matter with you? She’s the head model, and
a senior! I’m just a freshman! As if I could compete with her! Why
don’t you guys get a life or something?”
So while Peeper continued to scream for help, dangling from
his wedgie forty feet in the air, Greasy kept his distance and faithfully
recorded what he could, as the two girls pleasantly chatted while strolling
away.
“So you recommend Dennon Sensei?”
“Oh, she prefers to be called ‘Ms. Dennon.’ She does most
of her work with bricks and some of the ultra-dense types. Grace and control
are particularly important, you see…”
*****
Thuban spun his chair around to contemplate his roommate,
Dai Kaiju, or Carapace to use his code name, was frequently dismissed by the
other students as the “turtle boy.” A twist of fate had paired the two of them
as roommates in their freshman year. Thuban suspected that some well-meaning
administrator had decided to team up the pair of “reptilian GSD cases,” not
knowing that they had shared other connections and interests. While Thuban’s
background had included Hong Kong and London, Dai’s background had included
Tokyo and Los Angeles. Furthermore, both of them were actually exemplars, with
additional talents. Most people thought they were GSD cases, but both he and
Dai were both apparently changing to match their own subconscious ideals.
Despite their similarities, the ancient Chinese-Japanese
rivalry had been a big issue during their first year. Manchuria might have
been sixty years and three generations back, but it was difficult for anyone in
China to forget the horrors of Manchuria. It had taken Thuban half a year to
overcome his anti-Japanese prejudice. Apparently the effort had served him
well, though. He’d just been hugged by an extremely happy, shapely young girl,
and he was only now considering the fact that she wasn’t actually Chinese. He
was almost surprised to realize that her ancestry didn’t bother him in the
least.
Across the room, Dai was listening to something on his
headphones and laughing.
Thuban decided it might be an acceptable time for an
interruption. “Dai, a strange thing just happened…”
His roommate spun in his specially-built chair, pulling off
the headphones. “The visit from that Jade girl?”
Thuban nodded. While he and Dai kept up a formal
relationship in the outer world, here in the privacy of their room things were
different. “She … she asked me out on a date. As a thank-you.”
“A thank you? For what?” The hard shelled student put down
the headphones and tapped a few keys on his computer.
“Her BIT was stuck. Among other things, she was trapped at
eleven years old.”
“Eh, I’ve heard worse.”
“Yes, no doubt. I was able to help her ‘grow up’ to the
form you saw outside, and she’s quite grateful.”
“So she’s taking you out somewhere?”
“The cafeteria,” Thuban admitted. “She’s rather destitute.”
“Oh, come on,” Dai said, “You’re so rich it makes me sick.
Why don’t you spring for things? Take her someplace nice. Make an impression
on her.”
“Perhaps. But she doesn’t have any clothes for a nice
restaurant.”
Dai grinned, waving his headphones. “Got an update on that,
dude. It’s the podcast from WARS. They just finished a little
interview/harassment piece with your girlfriend. Want me to shoot it over to
you?”
Thuban didn’t even hear the “girlfriend” comment as his
sea-green eyes narrowed in anger. “Harassment?”
“Listen to the ‘cast, first. Peeper’s in a world of hurt.
Three words: ‘Super wedgie mode.’”
Thuban suddenly lost his glower. “Really?”
“You gotta hear this one. Lord knows, Peeper’s going to be
catching flack for the next month!”
Thuban looked back as his laptop as the podcast arrived in
an email from his roommate. Should he upgrade the date? Would that make him
look too desperate, or too controlling? And what about her lack of wardrobe?
He’d just buy her a dress, if he knew her size.
It occurred to him that he did know her size, or
rather, he knew someone who did. His taloned fingers flew over the keyboard,
calling up database files.
Yes… Billie Wilson, several commissions from Cecelia Rogers,
and her “boutique” in Dunwich. He himself had found Miss Rogers’ talents enormously
useful, as had Dai and several other students who couldn’t use a normal tailor.
And if the devisors were correct, Jade’s height and figure should be a nearly
perfect match for her roommate’s body.
Grabbing the phone, he dialed a number that he’d long since
learned by heart. “Cecelia? This is Stephen, over at Whateley. … Excellent.
… Yes, I hope you’re having a pleasant holiday as well. … Listen, could you
do a quick commission for me? As usual, price isn’t an issue. I need a dress
by tomorrow evening. Billie Wilson’s measurements – you have those on file,
don’t you? It’s actually for her roommate. … No, believe me, their
measurements are exactly the same. … Yes, it’s a Whateley thing. The girl’s
name is Jade Sinclair. … Really? Excellent. Here’s what I’d like…”
*****
Meanwhile, Jade was meeting with another boy from Twain.
Poise had been right – Jinn’s clothes fit her well enough. She liked the
regular uniform best, but since this job would be a bit grimy she was wearing a
jeans and T-shirt combo, where the T-shirt had a few too many holes for Jinn to
use. With the overcast and wind, she also had Jinn’s cloak wrapped around her,
as she waited outside Shuster Hall.
Harry Wolfe strode up, waving one furred werewolf arm. “Hi
Jinn. Don’t we need your sister for this, too?”
“I’m Jade,” she told him. “But Jinn’s here, too.”
The cloak rose off her and the empty hood nodded in
greeting, before settling back down again.
“Uh, okay. I thought you were smaller. And younger.”
Jade grinned at him. “I was being kept artificially young,
but this is my real age. I finally had a breakthrough!”
“Oh. You know, you look a lot like your sister … uh, when
she’s being human, that is. A couple of years younger, I guess.”
“Well, we’re really quite a bit alike. Aside from me being
physical and everything.”
As they talked, Harry used his electronic access pass to
open the elevator, drop them into the Underground, and let them into one of the
many devisor workshops. They passed the impressive labs – the huge Robot
Hanger and Vehicle Pit. Continuing further, they passed a sequence of oddly
named labs:
Prosthetics and Bionics, the Alien Autopsy Lab, and a large
vault-like door that proclaimed, “The Interdimensional Gateway is permanently
closed. Press the alarm in case of any admissions or departures.”
“Is that real?” Jade asked, with a little alarm.
“The rumor is,” Harry confided, “that somebody made that
room into their personal vault, and the sign is just another security measure.
I’m not sure, I never tried to go in.”
“Oh.”
They continued on until they came to the “small mechanics
bay.” Inside was welding gear, casting equipment, grinders, metal lathes, and
other metalworking equipment. Jade and Harry both grabbed lab coats and
goggles at the door, then Harry dialed the combination on his work locker.
Around the entry, various posters helped remind the students to keep safety in
mind:
“This is not the nano lab. No self-assembling or
self-replicating systems allowed!”
“All implants and devices intended for use inside a body
must be sterilized in the autoclave.”
There was even a poster of a forlorn looking student
complaining, “I thought they’d never miss a little gold dust. I never expected
to face a MIND PROBE!”
Ignoring all that, Harry proceeded to lay a collection of
parts out on his workbench. “So did I hear you’re a devisor Jade?”
“I’m just starting out,” she admitted. “I’m not taking any
classes yet. But I’ve got a project that I want to work on while we’re here.”
Harry gave her a wolf-grin, which involved showing a lot of
teeth and letting his tongue loll out. “Sounds like you can’t keep away from
the place. Typical devisor.” He began pointing to the machine parts on the
bench. “Got to machine some custom pieces for Samantha’s apartment. The odd
angles a giving me just a bit of trouble, and I thought, why not do it right.
Deluxe, custom, all the way right.”
The empty cloak rose into the air again. “What do I do?”
Harry flicked on a small kiln and loaded a crucible up with
pieces of scrap steel. Using tongs, he slipped it into the crucible and shut
the door. With that done, he turned to the empty cloak.
“You said once that you might be able to use your
‘poltergeist powers’ on a small scale?”
“Maybe,” the cloak said. “I need to test it out.”
“Then this is the perfect opportunity. I’m going to cast
some steel cylinders, and I need to get them machined out on the inside.
They’ll be sealed, except for a small opening, and I’ve been pulling my hair
out, trying to figure out how to work through the tiny hole. If you can help
me, I’d certainly be happy to count it against what you owe me for the arms and
other stuff.”
Jade broke in at that. “Harry, you only ever charged us for
materials on that. The least we can do is give you some free labor in return.”
The six-foot-eight boy looked embarrassed. “Well, I didn’t
want to take advantage of a friend…”
“Harry!”
“Okay. Thanks.”
So Jade recast Jinn into tiny drill bits and grinding
wheels, then Jinn followed Harry’s instructions on how to turn molten metal
into castings, and then grind, polish, and assemble the parts.
Jade, meanwhile, was working on her moonsilver ring. She
actually had two rings. A while back, Bunny had drilled out her moonsilver
ring and added an activation button for her barrettes. But Jade had a second
ring that acted as a sort of safety for her gun. You couldn’t fire the gun
unless you were wearing the ring. Her job was to combine the two rings into
one.
This was mostly a challenge in micro-machining. She used
the a stereoscopic microscope to let her physical body watch, while she cast
herself into “trigger ring” and the tools on the workbench. It left her
feeling vulnerable, having her naked spirit body spread through the air like
this, but with Harry and Jinn around she felt safe enough to go ahead with it.
She was cast into objects over a wide area, including the
workbench table. That usually gave her a better resolution, but her
spirit-vision wasn’t as good at extremely fine detail, even spread over a large
viewing area. Part of her was also in contact with her physical body, so the
two of her were looking and thinking together. Her view of the ring was better
through the microscope, but as she relaxed a bit she found that she could
“feel” her way around the problem. She was cast into every component of the
ring, and she could feel the size, shape, and relative position of her various
parts. Between the way her spirit-vision gave her a sort of radar and texture
mapping, and the way her magnified human vision gave her a crisp visual
picture, she had enough detail to work with.
Shortly after that, she had the trigger ring disassembled
and laid out on the workbench. Her body kept grabbing tools and moving around,
so that Harry would think she was using conventional methods to carry out her
project. Although Harry had helped her immensely, she wasn’t ready to tell him
all the details of her powers and life. Knowing wouldn’t make any practical
difference to him, so for now, she preferred to maintain at least some control
over her secrets.
Working with the moonsilver ring was more difficult. She
couldn’t cast herself into it. It was already unique in her spirit-vision,
since it provided a perfect reflection of spirit energies. In a world made up
of grays and textures, the ring was a unique silvery reflector.
It also seemed immune to spirit energies. Not only couldn’t
she cast into it, her immaterial spirit-body couldn’t even pass through it.
The thought brought up the alarming image of a moonsilver box. Could she be
trapped inside? What would happen? Perhaps she should test things out, before
she was forced into it during a crisis.
Carefully, she looked over the ring. Moonsilver? Mithril?
There were a half-dozen names for the magical metal. Bunny had drilled three
small holes in lower side, the portion that curved in toward her palm. Bunny
had actually drilled plugs out, so that there were tiny mithril pegs that
filled the holes.
Why three? Jade wondered. Was she planning for
future functionality?
The pegs were inserted with a press and twist, to screw them
in and lock them in place. It was work as fine as old-fashioned watch making.
Jade couldn’t cast herself into the mithril, but perhaps she
could cast in past the edge of the pins to the hollow center of the ring. She
tried, and failed. The nearly microscopic gaps weren’t large enough for her to
“aim” through. Or was it that she wasn’t actually touching the material on the
inside? She picked up the silver ring and thought about it, then decided to
use a pair of jeweler’s pliers to remove the pins.
The discovery to come, like so many unexpected
breakthroughs, was a complete accident. While holding the ring in her left
hand, she absently reached through the ring with her right index finger to
touch the pliers and charge them.
The charging worked. She felt the energy flow out of her,
she felt that almost subliminal instant of “I exist in both places at once.”
Only this time, that moment didn’t end. She was charged into the pliers, and
she was present in her body, and she was still connected, even when she pulled
her finger away. There was a thread of spirit stretching out between the two
of her like a cobweb.
In an effort to break that thread loose, she pushed through
the energy of another charge. That succeeded as well, but she was still
“stuck” together.
What’s going on? she wondered.
With Jinn taking one charge, and two cast into the stupid
pliers, another charge would have knocked her out. Still they were stuck
together. Finally, she deliberately let go of herself, “dropping” the hold as
she would drop her hold on any other object in her telekinetic grip. That did
it. Jade in her body felt the connection snap, and she wondered what had
happened. She was too weak to even stand up. Was her spirit-self okay?
Abruptly, the energy flowed back into her, as Jann released
her grip on the pliers. A moment later, Jade felt as good as she normally
did. Apparently, there hadn’t been any strange side effects.
She tested again, this time trying to figure out what had
happened.
A little testing gave a few clues. For any “casting” done through
the ring, even if she cast through her ring finger while she wore the ring,
that casting was … sticky. She and her spirit form were stuck together. She
could stretch the connection out to six feet, in which case it would abruptly
“snap.” About half the time her spirit snapped back into her body, the other
half the time she snapped entirely into the charged object. Also, during the
“sticky” period, she could cast extra charging energy into the spirit-self.
The extra energy didn’t seem to serve any purpose, aside from making her feel
physically more exhausted.
Her curiosity raised, she tried “multi-charging” her spirit
self without using the ring. To her surprise, that worked too. She could cast
two, even three instances of herself into an object. Of course, that many
charges knocked her physical body out. The spirits merged like drops of water
joining together, her memories and separate selves joining seamlessly into just
a single spirit. It didn’t seem like the extra energy made a difference there,
either, until she discovered that her telekinetic strength was multiplied by
however many charges she’d used. Instead of her current weight limit of 290
pounds, she’d be able to lift 580, 870, or an incredible 1160 pounds, when she
had a full four charges! The entire range was still inside the TK 3 ability
scale, but 1100 pounds, 500 kilos – that was half a ton! That was serious
power!
On the other hand, it left open the question of the “sticky”
charges, when cast through the center of the ring. That extra energy didn’t
seem to accomplish anything. She’d need to conduct more experiments later.
Re-invigorated by her new discoveries, she set to work with
a will on the mithril ring. The pins were difficult to remove, but Bunny had
told her the trick. A hard push, half twist, release, then unscrew, and the
three pins came out. Then, casting herself along a fine wire, she was able to
cast herself into the center of the ring.
Jade’s mithril ring had been a typical campus “amusing
incident”. Rip had given Toni a friendship ring, which was proving to be a
copper core plated with brass, with a coat of lacquer over it. Then Toni had
met “Silver”, a girl whose mutant ability coated her entire body with a thin
skin of the absurdly valuable and rare mithril alloy. Silver’s film coated
Toni’s ring, until the coating made the ring too tight for Toni to wear. Toni
gave it to Jade, and now Jade was now busy using micro tools to excavate out
the original friendship ring that had been left at the core of the mithril
ring.
The job was easy for her spirit-self. The scale was too
small to see well, but she could work by feel. The senses were a little
different from what they would have been in her physical body, but she was able
to adapt. Casting herself into a tiny grinding wheel, she spun as fast as she
could. The soft copper inside was eroded away, but the mithril wasn’t even
scratched. Then, with the mithril ring completely excavated, she had enough room
inside the hollow core to move in the triggering circuitry, her barrette
activators, a micro battery, and other components.
It was also an interesting place to inhabit. Her spirit
body could compress itself into the tiniest spec of sand. She could fit
herself entirely inside the hollowed-out ring. And inside, it was dark and
quiet. There were no other spirits or emotions. She wasn’t sure she’d want to
be trapped in here, but it was an interesting refuge.
Outside, Jade was beginning to worry. She cast Jann-sensei
into her skin, so that she could use her spirit-vision. Jinn had vanished into
the ring, and was gone! Completely vanished, even to her spirit sight.
Until… a moment later, a charged spec of sand came floating back out of the
tiny hole drilled into the hollow ring, and Jinn reunited with her, sharing the
experience of the dark and silent space, inside the ring.
“Can you move Jinn over into these tools?”
Jade sat up so abruptly she almost hurt herself. She’d been
so engrossed in her work that she’d completely forgotten that she was sharing
the lab with someone else.
“Sorry! What were you saying?”
Harry snuffled in amusement. “Yeah, you’re definitely a
devisor. The total absorption in your work is a sure sign. I was saying that
I’ve got another part for Jinn to work on. Having her go inside to polish and
assemble things is really working out! This is great! I’m starting to come up
with all sorts of ways I could use this, if you’re willing to take on some more
jobs, Jinn.”
The cloak suddenly lifted up. “Maybe. I need my sister to
help me ‘possess’ different objects, though. I’m not sure how often we’ll both
be available.”
“Although we’re really using the stuff we’re learning from
you,” Jade added. “The techniques you’re teaching Jinn are a huge help as I
work on this ring.”
Harry nodded. “Glad I can help. So Jinn, this time, I need
you to fit this spring in place around a gear…”
50: Celebrations
Whateley Academy, Crystal Hall November 23, Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, 6:37 PM
The grand group of girls headed toward Crystal Hall, for the
Thanksgiving dinner.
“I am going to eat so much food you won’t believe it!”
Billie said.
“More than your usual five or six plates?” Nikki asked.
“Aren’t you afraid of losing your girlish figure?”
“Ha! I burn that much energy in one sparing match.”
Sara seemed quiet, for once, holding hands with Erin.
Neither of them spoke, apparently content to walk hand-in-hand at the rear of
the group.
Jamie, the Native American sometimes-boy, sometimes-girl was
trying to discuss details of an esoteric higher mystical realm with Nikki.
Toni, at the head of the group, was walking in wooden
sandals that seemed precariously constructed so that each foot was balanced
atop a single four-inch slab of wood.
“Sensei?” Jade asked. “Why are you wearing geta?”
“You recognize them?” Toni asked. “So do you know anything
about these Japanese clogs? I thought they were supposed to have a couple of
ridges or whatever-you-call-it wood pieces underneath. Don’t tell me that
everyone balances on top of these things.”
“Only in samurai movies, sensei,” Jade answered. “Most geta
have two ‘teeth.’ I never understood the one-tooth geta.”
“Yeah,” the black girl agreed, “they’re kind of
freaky-weird. Ito sensei assigned them to me until I could do back flips,” she
demonstrated, “front flips, and all my fighting in them, as comfortably as I
would fight barefoot.”
“Wearing those things to dinner is just an invitation for
ridicule,” Ayla pointed out.
“A duel might not be so bad,” Toni considered. “You would
not believe how nasty a kick is while I’m wearing these things.”
“One who seeks conflict almost always finds it,” Chou
intoned. “Particularly in the Whateley cafeteria.”
Toni looked sideways at her. “That reminds me, do you think
they’re going to have fortune cookies for desert today?”
“Mocking wisdom does not make it any less wise.”
“I’ll bet you’ve got a million of them, don’t you?”
Chou presented her best inscrutable look in return.
“Consider that on Thanksgiving, the greatest loser is… the turkey.”
Toni nodded at that. “Good point. Hey, that better not be
intended to have a double meaning!”
“If the same words mean different things to different
people, do you blame the speaker, or the audience?”
“Come on, cut it out already!”
“When the enthusiasm of youth tired, maturity endures.”
“I mean it! Cut it out! I’m warning you, I’ve got clogs
and I’m not afraid to use them!”
“It’s important to know when to stop speaking, lest one find
a foot in one’s mouth.”
Even Nikki looked over at that one. “Where do you come up
with these?”
As the banter escalated, Billie glanced over to her
roommate. “You missed the volleyball game. Having fun on your first full day
since growing up?”
Jade laced her fingers behind her head and leaned back
nonchalantly. “Oh, it’s been okay. Let’s see, I found out how to triple
either Jinn’s life span, or her strength. I gave Peeper the reward he so
richly deserves – on the air! I set up a date for tomorrow night, and I made some
cool new modifications on my equipment. So, yeah, it’s been pretty good.”
The sudden silence flowed out across the little group like
the shock wave from an atomic bomb. There was a moment of stunned silence,
then Erin, of all people, said, “You’ve got a date?”
*****
“Are you out of your freakin’ mind?” Billie yelled, across
the table. They’d had to push two tables together to make room for the “Team
Kimba, plus” crowd.
“Aw, come on, mom!” Jade called back, unfazed by her
roommate’s outburst.
“I think I agree with Billie,” Nikki offered. “Thuban is
bad news. He’s into so much stuff around campus that it’s not even funny. You
know that he’s done jobs for The Don? And taken contracts from Tansy Walcutt.”
“Um, hello?” Jade piped in. “I’m the one who told you
about the whole Tansy thing, remember? I was there. Besides, it’s not like
Tansy’s going to be going anywhere near Thuban for a while.” She snickered.
“Not voluntarily.”
“Yeah, about that…” Toni paused to organize her argument,
absently flicking her spoon across her fingers in a display of dexterity that
would make a professional magician weep with envy. “When you think about it,
Thuban pretty much arranged a day-long rape session. I mean, that’s what it
was, right?” The girls around her all shifted uncomfortably, but no one denied
it. “Is that the kind of guy you want to be going out with?”
“It’s not like that!” Jade protested. “Remember, I was
there at the beginning and end of that little incident. Tansy put herself in
that position. And she definitely deserved it! Between what she did to
Montana, and selling her body to The Don, and trying to turn me into her
personal slave.” She met Toni’s eyes. “I understand what you’re saying,
sensei, but it wasn’t an arranged rape. It was Tansy selling her body – again
– and getting more than she bargained for. And it served her right!”
Sara turned away from her furry and cuddly dinner companion
to join the conversation. “I’ve met with Thuban a couple of times on my own.
He’s definitely interested in our little group here. More than I like. And he
had a special interest in you in particular, Jade. Now I’m wondering whether
this was his plan all along, or whether this is a ploy to gain a stronger hold
in our group.”
Nikki nodded, gesturing emphatically with her fork. “I
noticed that! He was definitely hung up on Jade. The question is, why?”
Jade knew exactly why he’d been interested in her. The body
of Lazuli had taken a lot of work; Thuban had obviously been planning things
for a while. Lazuli was needed to kick-start the socially awkward crowd from
Faction Three, and Thuban had foreseen that even before Faction Three had
started. It was possible that he’d been trying to come up with a use for
Jinn’s powers since he’d figured them out. Telekinetic powers were common, but
the ability to animate objects and make them “come alive”, and do it realistically,
was extremely rare.
She thought that was probably all there was to it. It was
distantly possible that he’d created the BIT-slicer with her in mind, as a
bribe to do Lazuli. But it was more likely that he’d been honest there, he’d
created the BIT-slicer for people like Jello, and had seen more than one way to
exploit the technology.
She could explain all that, but Faction Three was still a
secret, and Thuban had definitely not wanted her discussing Lazuli or any of
those details with her friends. And this sure wasn’t a secret that her friends
needed to know, either.
“…tried to convince me that it would be better for everyone if
I just left Whateley,” Sara was saying.
“When was this?” Billie asked. “And why didn’t you tell
anyone?”
The Goth teenager shrugged. “About a month ago. Didn’t
seem like anyone really needed to know.”
“Like hell!” Nikki was passionate about that. “What
affects one of us, affects all of us! That’s true in both psychology and
magic!”
“It’s nice to know you care,” Sara said dryly.
That broke through Jade’s musings. “Sara! How can you say
that? Haven’t we proven we care about you? All of us?”
The Goth thought about it, then shrugged. “Yeah, I suppose
you have. A girl still likes to hear it, though.”
Chou added her own view. “Still, it is more evidence that
he’s both manipulative and ruthless.”
“Well of course he is,” Jade agreed. “I though you were
saying he was a bad guy!”
As one, the entire table slowly blinked at her, as they all
wondered what their naïve junior member could possibly be thinking.
“Honestly!” she continued, “you guys remind me of Adam
Ironknife!”
Toni jumped in at that. “Pardon me, I have to interrupt
before our brains melt. How does Thuban being a paid assassin have to do with us
being Stormwolf clones?”
“Simple,” Jade replied. “Remember Adam Ironknife’s little
pep-talk, where he told us, ‘Fall in line, be true-blue troopers, or else
you’ll get marked as a villain and forever be seen as villains’ ? Remember
that? And that’s what you’re doing to Thuban. That’s exactly what you’re
doing to Thuban!”
Toni pulled her fingers through her tightly kinked hair.
“But look at what he’s done to us! To Sara, in particular. You remember back
in the middle of October, when Peeper and Greasy ambushed Sara on stage with
the Darlings? They blamed Sara for their son’s death, in front of the entire
campus, and started a riot that nearly ended with Sara being stoned! Thuban
set that all up. He admitted it to us!”
“Yeah, well…” Jade looked down at her plate, where she was
using her spoon to draw circles in her mashed potatoes and gravy. “Well, I
can’t explain that. Not entirely. Look, I know how Thuban thinks, pretty
much. He probably figured that Sara could take care of herself, and she can,
can’t she? But for the people he protects, he’s rock-solid. Have you been
over to Twain? It’s like they worship him over there. Hawthorne and Whitman,
too.”
“Setting yourself up as a god isn’t always a good thing,”
Sara pointed out. “I have some expertise in this.”
“No, it’s not like that, it’s just… oh, forget it.”
“What?” Billie asked, sensing her roommate’s frustration.
“Look,” Jade finally said. “You remember Adam Ironknife’s
talk? You remember what Robert Shih said?”
“That stuff about the ‘third path’?” Billie asked. “You
talk about that a lot.”
“Well I’ve thought about it a lot. You aren’t a bad guy,
but sometimes you can’t follow all the rules. So you have your own honor, and
you try to do the best you can. Well, Thuban is like that. I’m not sure what
happened, but he really doesn’t trust any of the regular police, or
security, or ‘good guy’ teams. And he thinks that it’s his responsibility to
protect everyone out there that looks different. So maybe he comes down a
little hard on the ‘beautiful people,’ as he calls them. And Sara definitely
falls into that camp. But he’s not a bad guy! He’s doing some really good
stuff.”
Jade was passionate in her defense, but the other girls
weren’t convinced. Billie, Toni, Nikki, and Sara all looked up, meeting each
other’s eyes as they surveyed the table. They all shared a look of resignation
that said, “Maybe she’ll have to find out on her own.” Privately, though, each
girl resolved that anyone who took advantage of their friend would pay a heavy
price. Chou, though, defended her.
“The Third Path is difficult,” she said. “It is a constant
test, neither giving in to your base nature, nor to society’s demands. It is a
journey for neither sheep nor scoundrels, and to walk it is to be forever
searching and questioning.”
In an effort to break away from the uncomfortable stalemate,
Nikki changed the topic. “Didn’t you have some unbelievable story about
doubling or tripling Jinn’s power?”
“Oh yeah!” Jade held her hand up, displaying her mithril
ring. “Remember the moonsilver ring that Toni sensei gave me? It turns out
that if I charge up Jinn, and send the power through the ring, using my ring
finger, that the charge is sort of ‘sticky’. I can do a multiple zap, and Jinn
has energy for multiple-times as long.”
“So you can keep her around, without every seeing you, for
what, two or three hours?” Toni wondered.
“Over three and a half hours on two charges,” Jade said
proudly. “Five and a half hours on three charges!”
Billie looked concerned. “Doesn’t that make you kind of…
useless in the meantime?”
“Yeah,” Jade admitted. “I’m exhausted, and don’t really
have any, you know, extra resources. But five and a half hours – wow! And
that’s not all. If I stack up the charges, just normally, then the lifespan
doesn’t change, but the strength doubles or triples!”
So with the uncomfortable topic out of the way (even if unresolved),
the girls chatted happily about their own powers, recent training or
discoveries, and the looming question of getting a MID.
*****
Jade met James outside the cafeteria. Her euphoria at
achieving her dreams had put her into a huggy mood for the entire day. With
James, of course, it was different. He wasn’t the kind of guy that you
touched. He just wasn’t. Still, she almost did.
He looked at her suspiciously. “Are you…?”
She wished she could share even a little of the joy she was
feeling. “It’s me – Jade! Thanks partially to your help, I did it! This is
ME now! I’ve achieved exactly what I’d been dreaming of for so long! Thank
you, James!”
He said nothing, just looking slowly up and down her body.
“That’s really you?”
“In the flesh! Quite a change, isn’t it?”
Finally, he asked, “Do you still need me to do the
supercharging thing?”
“No, I found a way around that. But thank you so much for
what you did! It really made the difference!”
“So you don’t need me any more?”
“Nope! But I still owe you one tremendous, super-huge
favor! If you think of anything, I’m ready and waiting. Just let me know!
Thanks again!”
And with that, she skipped off, leaving a very bemused boy
in her wake.
*****
Jinn, or rather, “Lazuli” relaxed and sat back as she
listened to the movie. She couldn’t watch the movie, of course, which made the
experience significantly less interesting that it might have been. She’d
decided that three and a half hours would be plenty of time for the Faction
Three meeting and anything that might happen afterward, so she’d taken a
double-charge. That meant that her physical body would be tired, but not
exhausted. She could have taken a triple-charge, but that would leave her
physical body almost too weak to walk, and unable to spare a charge for the
kitty compact, or the missiles, or a blanket-bed, or half the other things she
did for herself. She’d hadn’t even considered a quadruple-charge, which would
knock out her physical body. Now that she had the body of her dreams, she
needed to start taking better care of herself.
The end theme song began playing and the audience stretched
and began to rise. Jinn rose as well, and began to circulate. She was
surprised to be approached by a huge furred man. She recognize the sasquatch,
but knew that he wouldn’t recognize her.
“How do you do, Miss Lazuli.” Monty bowed low, apparently
trying to charm her. “I’m ‘Montana’, a devisor of some small skill.”
She decided to pick a path that was halfway between
curiosity and being too direct. “A devisor? I would have guessed that your
skills were more in physical combat.”
“Well, I have been known to break a few heads—”
Hearing this cavalier reference to his backstabbing blow
against Toni, Jinn felt her temper spark into life.
“—but I’m trying to move past that. I know I look like a
‘big hairy carpet.’ I’ve heard plenty of that going around. But I my best
stuff is really miniature electronics.”
“When he’s not making cheating, illegal moves against girls
that are half his size!” This came from a tall, shiny silver boy, who looked
as if reflective foil that had been painted onto him. He walked up and glared
at the sasquatch.
Jinn wasn’t normally a troublemaker, but she’d never
forgiven Monty for his attack on her sensei. Using his temper to get him
banned from the Faction Three meetings seemed more than fair. So she naively
turned to him and asked, “Are you just going to take that sort of slander?”
The sasquatch’s shoulders slumped together. Surprisingly,
he glowed of disappointment, not anger. “Whacking him wouldn’t do any good.
He reflects kinetic energy as well as he reflects any other energy attack.
Besides… it’s kinda true.”
She glared at him. “I think you’d better explain.”
The silver boy reached a hand forward. Jinn was fascinated
to note that, like mithril, he was silvery and reflective even to her spirit
vision. And the silver effect seemed to follow the outside surface of his
clothes. “I’m Mirror,” he said, “an involuntary warper. I’ll let Monty tell
the story – it’s part of his penance. I’ll just be here to correct any details
that come out wrong.”
Monty gave a glare that to Jinn’s empathic senses had no
real anger behind it. “Well, I used to have a thing about pretty girls. Not a
good thing, like you’re thinking, but a real anger thing. I think I’ve mostly
gotten over it, that’s part of why I was forcing myself to come up and talk to
you—”
“Thank you for the compliment,” she said, abruptly realizing
that it was a compliment.
“Uh, sure. Anyway, I guess it started with Tennyo. It
really started during school last year, but I don’t want to talk about that
part. Let’s just say that last year left me with a ‘thing’ about pretty girls,
and so this year I was I kind of trying to keep them out of our cottage. Just
to protect people, you know? I mean, none of us need any extra humiliation,
right? So this Tennyo girl came over to see her ‘friend’ she claimed.”
“Which was completely legit, it turned out,” Mirror added
in.
“Yeah. Well, I kind of tried to intimidate her a little, to
get rid of her,” Monty said.
Mirror couldn’t help adding in again. “Of course, that was
before anyone knew that Tennyo was death on two legs. A month later in Boston,
she took out an actual demon. Took its best hit, and then beat it over the
head with a couple of tons of concrete, the way I heard it.”
“Um, but no one knew that right then,” Monty continued. “I
just thought she was this pretty girl, come to lord it over us like all the
rest of ‘em. So I … kinda … tried to throw her out.”
Jinn nodded, interested in hearing the story from his side.
“I’m guessing that didn’t work too well?”
Quietly, “No. Not real well. So later on, when I spotted
her pulling a clean-up shift in the cafeteria, I sort of… took some pot shots
at her with my trash.”
The more Monty talked about what he had done to Billie, the
more Jinn felt her anger rising. There was more than a little heat in her
voice when she said, “And that’s when she barbecued you, right? That’s when
she rammed a pole through your gut and roasted you over a slow fire.” She
couldn’t help pressing the control button that made her eyes glow red.
Montana, despite being taller than her, cringed back a
little in fear. “Uh, not exactly. She dodged, and the scraps hit some girls
behind her, and it sort of turned into a food fight. I got out, and she got
fired.”
Jinn pressed the “red eye” button again. “And is that the
end of it?”
Monty was reluctant, but Mirror poked him, saying ,
“Penance!” Reluctantly, the sasquatch continued.