Joe Gunnarson
By Joe Gunnarson
November 3rd,
somewhere in the vicinity of Twain Cottage...
Ahhh, coffee, my first true love, my hope, my sorrow, my one chance of not falling asleep in Professor Zalman's Advanced Physics class again. It giveth me strength, it maketh me hyper. It insulates me from the outraged shriek Razorback lets out when he realizes I exchanged his sketchbook with a cunning replica, complete with pictures of my own devising. Oops. Time to get to class, damn look at the time. Maybe I shouldn't have put the one of him humping a sheep in there. Or maybe I should remember that drawing blind is not the brightest of maneuvers. For all I know I left him with a perfect replica of the goddamned Mona Lisa.
In thirty, make that two seconds I was going to have a half-asleep and irate lizardman crawling up my ass. Time for my cunning escape plan! I noted the sour looks of my fellow Twainites and grin. There he came, right on schedule, two-hundred plus pounds of... Shit I'm monologuing in my brain again, if I didn't know better, I'd think I was Dricking out.
I reached in my pocket and tossed my patent-pending (when hell freezes over) Razorback deterrent on the ground and PRESTO! A cloud of foul-smelling gas gauranteed to sooth even HIS savage beast. Unfortunately all was not well with the world, as the damned thing exploded in my face as I began the toss, dropping me to the ground covered in a sort of quick-dry rubber cement I'd of course HAD to make work in the cold.
CURSES! Foiled again! Or was I?
Razor stopped a few feet from me and just stared. My fellow freak house interns were all pointing and laughing at the poor, helpless devisor caught in his own trick and at the mercy of his best friend. Woe is me. In case you wonder, I care a lot less about what happened to me and more about the results.
In any case, Razor just stood there with this slack-jawwed stunned look on his face, then started that seal/velociraptor hybrid bark of his that we all had come to recognize as laughter. He stood there, all scales, spines and other myriad sharp, pointy bits that was the picture of him and just laughed.
"Ok Razor, fun's fun. Help a guy up, would you?" I thought it sounded perfectly reasonable.
When he finally got himself under control he signed at me, -Ok I'll help you.- Never a good sign, that.
He reached around and unzipped my backpack while I thrashed mightily, or I would have if I wasn't just another mildly pudgy, slightly overweight kid in a school full of exemplars, avatars and all manner of other things that would readily render me into gooey paste if I pushed too far. He relieved me of my pilfered booty, the sketchbook, not my ass. Get your mind out of the gutter, you're blocking my periscope.
Finally, after a great show of paging through the book, making sure nothing was missing, my gallant friend reached down to... Oh the bastard. Magic marker on a helpless opponent is NOT cool! I squirmed, I shimmied, I did everything I could to jack up his aim. In any case, whatever he was drawing on my face could only have been made worse by my thrashing, all while the other twainites were guffawing and having a grand old time at the Jericho's expense. Yes, the Jericho speaks in the third person when he finds it annoying to others.
Razor looked down upon me and gave a satisfied chirp, then darted off, leaving me to my gooey fate. He's not a bad guy, although I'm not quite sure EXACTLY what he looks like. To me he's a large mass of vaguely raptor-shape with lots of spines , claws, and inch-long fangs. He also prominently displayed a warning armband and tracker that served to tell security where their worst ultraviolent was at all times. If ya want more detailed information ask Diamondback, or go look at him yourself. My mutie-vision doesn't come in technicolor. It DOES however come in a full 360 degree arc including above me, which was pointed somewhere in the direction of Dickinson.
Once the crowd had dissipated I palmed the solvent canister and began spraying, reducing the glue to a thin ball of inert foam and not even damaging my heinous wardrobe. How is it heinous do you ask? Simple, my clothing is carefully selected so I do not have one single item that has any possible fashion value when combined with any other item of clothing I own. My eventual goal is to cause mass-suicides in the male modeling industry. That and it draws attention from the fact that my two best friends are some of the most heavily GSD kids at Whateley Academy.
A quick dust-off and I'm off to the Crystal hall to loiter, ogle the women without them knowing it, and generally be a pain in the ass. Oh, food. I almost forgot. If I don't get there before the bricks and energizers, or, god forbid, Razorback and Diamondback I'll wind up starving. It's happened before! Scout's honor! I don't bother wiping away Razor's facial art, after all. I can't look in a mirror anymore, so I don't have to look at it.
A quick shortcut across the Field of Pain, AKA the woods between Twain and the main area of campus, and I see the great Geodesic grey-golf-ball-thing they call Crystal Hall. Ok so there's no color in my world. I'm blind. My eyes don't work right since the pupils and Irises just faded away, leaving me with a pair of white ping-pong-balls in my sockets. I got this esper thing going on, or psychic trick, I think. It lets me percieve everything around me all at once, out to about where normal peoples' sight fails, and in great detail.
It's great if you don't mind losing out on the simple things in life such as reading without braille, being able to look at a computer screen, read nudie mags, the usual teenage guy stuff. And people wonder why I'm fucked in the head. YOU try looking at a girl, seeing her features in what your mind translateds to slate grey shades based on texture. That will fuck with your noggin trying to figure out I gaurantee.
Inventory check... Cane with Force-Prod, check. Datajack still implanted, brains not exposed, check. Med scanner and emergency medical kit of my own devising, check. Various and sundry small items deliberately designed for maximum prank value and/or backfire potential, check.
Backfire potential you ask? Well friends pull up a chair and allow me my soapbox. Fine the milk crate will work but it just feels wrong. I am a devisor, an explorer of possibilities, a pioneer of science, a maker of widgets that go boom. In other words, I'm just another crackpot mad scientist type in a school with an overabundance of mad crackpot scientist types. Devises built by us are notoriously unreliable and tend to malfunction catastrophically, and often amusingly. It's tradition by God!
Unfortunately I am cursed. My wonky toys always seem to want to work, so in order to fit in, I must devise newer and better ways for my inventions to malfunction amusingly, like the glop grenade I hit myself with. You think that was an accident? Hell no! Razor and the other Twain kids are in desperate need of a good laugh after Halloween Night, three nights ago. I mean, Jesus Christ, damned near everyone's illusions of safety were shattered like a crystal vase under a boot.
Enough depressing bullshit. I was engaging in my favorite activity outside the crystal hall, panhandling, when I sees the Alphas of all people walking into the hall looking ragged. They look like they've been through hell. Of course with Jericho-vision, everyone looks like they're going through hell in the morning. Ya know, I would LOVE to see a few of them trapped in an invulnerable cage with Razor while someone plays Barbara Streisand music. The carnage would live forever in legend.
Nah, I couldn't do that to Razor, he's too cool. After all, even I won't inflict Streisand on anyone. Never mind sticking him in an enclosed space with the Alphas.
So's I'm sitting there on this bench, sunglasses, white-colored (theoretically) blind bitch cane, coffee mug held out to passers-by when I noticed a bit of a commotion over by the ... oh it was just the other freshmen ogling the Kimba girls. Talk about a real overrated crock of shit. The Kimbas got the Alphas into detention, I will give kudos where kudos are earned, after all. However, unlike the Alphas (unfortunately) the Kimbas are just the flavor of the week. pretty soon someone will top them for haywire shit and they'll fade back to obscurity. I read the history of Whateley, and pay attention to the upperclassmen. Groups like Team Kimba come in cycles. They arrive, they get lucky, they pull off something slick, then they relax, only to realize three years later that they're still living the old glory that got them noticed for fifteen minutes.
Maybe I'm wrong. Who knows? I doubt it, although I would rather see a pack of hyperactive girls at the top of the Whateley pecking order than the Alphas any day. Or the Betas, have I mentioned that Stormwolf is a sanctimonious twit most days?
Anyway, so as I was sitting there outside panhandling, realizing no one's dropping the traditional coinage in my mug, and realizing that Security's coming to see me about my beggar behavior... I decided to go have Breakfast with my gooood friends. Hey. They're freaky, but they're mine. Touch them and I'll eat you.
Sandra and Jack are both at the table when I arrive, signing to each other between scarfing food down. Believe you me when I say scarf, I mean I'm understating the problem. Sandra has to eat about four trays of food rapidly each meal in order to sustain both her body mass, and her Exemplar powers. You would too if you were roughly nineteen feet long and looked like a humanoid Anaconda. Razorback is, if anything, worse. He usually carries two trays with meat stacked about a foot high off each, and the bastard goes back for thirds. You'd think he's an exemplar, but no, his metabolism is so high that you could probably bottle his blood and launch the Space Shuttle with it.
So I sit down with my (slightly under-portioned) tray of food and let them carry on their conversation without really paying attention. Sandra never signs at people unless she wants some conversational privacy, so I don't try to decipher the hand-waving. It's a courtesy thing. Me and Sandra have been signing for a long time. My little brother Zach (he's actually thirteen) was born deaf. The irony of my handicap has not escaped either of us, or our parents. Razor signs out of necessity. Far from being deaf, he's mute. All he can do is make these weird animal noises. However, he's hypersensitive to sound and vibration, to the tune of fingernails on a blackboard he describes as someone jabbing knives in his eyes while inserting needles made of salt just under the scales of his skin.
So back to my food. I'm more than a little disgusted, but I choose to eat like this. On the upside I've lost well over a hundred pounds. Yes folks I was the fucking fat kid back home. Laugh it up. At this point I only looked like I was mildly overweight. Comes from a layer of fat over the muscles Razor has been helping me train on the weights and the track. I hate running. I so fucking hate running. If I was meant to run, God should have given me Razor's build, digitigraded legs and all.
That was odd. Pristine's by herself, rather than hanging out with her usual jock buddies two tables away. In layman's terms, that's a short hop over to hanging out with the freaks (read: me and Diamond and Razor) in the corner. By most standards a fate worse than death. Hence we are Outcast Corner. Too freakish to be friends with the norms, not fucking interested in the self-pity teams the other terminally GSD kids seem to form. Also not interested in the weirds who find the odd body types of my good buddies intriguing. I'm NOT fond of shitheads with a snake-girl fetish trying to glom on to me childhood friend don'tcha know.
Now, fortunately I can watch Pristine without looking. No way I'll get caught staring. She was sitting there, all bowed over like someone hit her with a truck, and eating slowly, staring in the direction of the security building. Word on the street was that she got caught in the Security control room when the shit hit the fan and sprayed all over the crowd Halloween night. We know for a fact that some of the regular security monkeys are getting closed-casket funerals, so I'm guessing that she probably saw some really bad shit. I don't need to be Empathic like Sandra to tell that she's feeling down in the dumps.
"Back in a sec, guys." I said as I stood up. The two dinguses are so intent on their conversation I doubt they noticed. Sometimes they get like that. Normally I'd screw with them, but I wasn't in the mood. I hate seeing people all shitty and feeling bad.
Pristine barely notices when I plop into the chair across from her. Normally I'd be obnoxious and do something like ask her out on a date in the most flamboyant manner possible. Now is not the time, however.
"Penny for your thoughts, Pris?"
She looked over at me. "Who are you?"
Hardly surprising. I'm just a freshie, and one of the flaky devisor crowd. Even the most batty of us barely warrant a second glance to most folks.
"Just another face in the crowd. I stopped by to see if you're ok. Nothing more." Oh god I hate being all honest and serious. It goes against my grain, but sometimes it needs done.
She looked into my eyes, of course, but if the eyes are the windows to the soul, mine are a cheap plaster wall.
"I'll be ok. Just need time to think." She looked over at the Security building again. The damage was still visible, or it would be if I was standing outside. Glass windows might as well be steel walls to me. Apparently some smartass had seen fit to fire a rocket launcher into the Lobby before rampaging through the place like a lunatic pinball. And apparently the Pinball was Whateley staff, although the reports of which staff were a bit confused. My money's on one of the gadgeteer or devisor types. Most of the others would have just used magic or some weird manifestor powers to blaze away like a soldier on a machinegun without an ammo limit.
"Well if you ever need someone to talk to, tell Razorback you want to talk to Jericho. If you do I promise no tricks, no cheap come-ons, no trying to screw with you. I'll listen when you're ready to get things off your chest."
"Razorback? You're friends with Razorback?" She looked at me as if I was insane. "He's dangerous."
I nodded. "That he is, but if you ever look past the rager, he's just another kid trying to get a handle on himself. He won't bite unless you bite first."
Pristine seemed to chew on that for a bit. "Maybe. I dunno. I'll let you know if I need to talk. Probably won't, but thanks."
"Hey, no problem." I grinned widely with my best shit-eating expression. "Now in order to avoid the rep of having a geeky devisor kid as a boyfriend, I suggest you get a disgusted look and act very indignant. Death threats strictly optional."
I'll give the girl credit, she caught on quick, and after she sort of chuckled she fixed me with one of those trademarked pissed-off-woman stares and actually growled loudly. "Ok that's disgusting! Get the hell away from me before I knock your ass across the cafeteria!" BRAVO! She even made it sound genuine!
I stood with hands up in a surrendering gesture and was aware of all the other pretty bastards and bitches snickering at the poor devisor kid's misfortune. Yep, that's me Jericho, the almighty punching bag of Whateley. I turned to my adoring throng of mockery and jeering, took a bow, and began to dance gracelessly to my friends, who were both fixing Pristine with their patented homicidal stares. Let me tell you it took me MONTHS to perfect my dance. Drives Sandra nuts to see me do it, too. With a victory wave to the crowd I sat by me partners in madness.
Ok, a bit of background story on Sandra and Razor here. Sandra, my naga-esque best friend of thirteen years, during a time when both of us were in diapers (I was potty trained first, HAH!) had been born one Ryan Carter, my cohort of the boys' locker room. Ryan had gone through the mutant change hard and fast. Her family was a pack of hardcore Humans Firsters, so he ran like Lucifer himself was on his tail to my family. We sheltered Ryan during that traumatic month of rapid shifting to the form of Sandra Carter, AKA Diamondback, the girl with scales and a snake tail instead of legs, Wiccan mage extraordinaire! Maybe not. Ryan had been wiccan secretly for years, but Sandra's talents for magic were about as laughable as my max bench press weight. Oh believe me, she got better at it.
Razorback was the flip side of the coin. He'd about scared the shit out of us when the big bloody leezard popped in on us talking in sign language about Sandra's change and how much it worried her about people finding out. The Irony. Needless to say, Razor understood and followed the whole conversation with rapt fascination. By the time we realized he was there, and for how long he'd just signed -Hi.- as if it were the most perfectly normal conversation in the world. Needless to say, Sandra was mortified, and I was ready to fight to protect her when he simply nodded and indicated he wouldn't tell anyone and he was sorry he was "eavesdropping"
Turns out the great scaly bastard was pretty much in the same boat. Jack Carlyle had been born one Erin Carlyle and had started shifting at the zoo. She got run off into the Outback and went feral on the military training areas. About a year, and a platoon of Aussie and American Jarhead casualties later, the newly minted "Jack" got picked up by a group called Overwatch Defense. He spent three years being re-introduced to the world of man, and finally landed at Whateley Academy, where he immediately topped the Ultraviolent list and became the record-holder for the most consecutive detentions...Ever. Fortunately he's gotten a lot better with the whole self-control schtick.
"What was that all about?" Sandra always had to have answers. Always the brain chugging along trying to figure things out. The fact that her mutation left her with an IQ of 240 or so probably has something to do with it.
"Thought I'd go ask Pristine out on a date."
"And she reacted like that?"
I shrugged. "Hey, I think I caught her at a bad time, she looks pretty bent about something."
-Yeah, she discovered what a shallow bint she is.- There was no real love lost between Razor and the rest of the Sophomore class.
I didn't say anything. I dunno why, but I get the impression that Pris is good people, even if she comes across rather similarly to Tansy Walcutt. Hell, she talked to me for several seconds. Anyway I usually am right when I make these calls. It worked for Razor.
"So you two done with the silent convo? I figured you wanted privacy." Honesty is sometimes the best policy, especially when Diamond is fully aware of how I act when I'm full of shit, and her empathic talents make it worse. "So I went over to Pris and gave her the same spiel I gave to Connie Freeham back home in Kilgore. I even suggested the rep-saver at the end. She was actually rather civil the whole time."
Jack looked perplexed, and Sandra smirked. "Joeseph, when the hell are you gonna stop being the punching bag of life?"
"About the time it gets boring. Until then, I'm going to play the part of the gleeful little masochist to the hilt."
-I'm missing something here.- Razor signed.
Sandra looked over at our feralistic companion and sighed. "It's an offshoot of the Drain Bamage that Jericho has. Not only is he obsessed with being a medical technician, he thinks he's Counsellor Troi."
-That's impossible. She's hot. He's a dredlocked nerdboy.-
"I tend to agree." I'm more than happy to crack wise about myself, I'm secure in my manhood. Now before you get the wrong idea about me and Diamond and Razor's relationship, what with them needling me in ways that would start fights with other kids, this is how we do business. We needle each other because we know the others aren't going to take it personal. We just do it all our own way. I set myself up as the dartboard and keep score for the other two.
-So what's your plans today Joe?- Razor was always itching to get rolling on the guitars after classes. sometimes I could, sometimes I was helping drop-kick someone out of a funk, deserved or not, and sometimes I had to play catch-up in Devisor shop after classes. That Rafe armor ain't gonna build itself.
"Depends. You feeling all right now?" Razor had been hit worse than anyone who wasn't dead on Halloween. Like I said, he's hypersensitive to sonic energy and vibration. The asshats who attacked on Halloween used some kinda rig to turn the entire stadium into a giant subwoofer/wobble board thing.
Razor had been in the can when it happened. I can only thank god and whoever else was watching that no one else was in there with him. The attackers didn't get that memo, and when me and Sandra fished his unconscious body from there the whole place was obliterated. The toilets and stalls had been torn apart, shattered, the mirrors all busted, the sinks ripped off the walls, and about eight dead guys in that funky leather armor. Let's just say the sight was a mite... disturbing, although I really couldn't find it in me to have any pity. After all they attacked US with intent.
-I feel fine. No more pain in my nerves, and my bones have finished mending this morning.- Razor was thoroughly fucked up when we got to him. He was in the infirmary for thirty hours afterward, while his regenerative abilities tried to kick back in, heal the damage and close the three gunshot wounds he'd picked up in the process.
"In that case, I'm up for the old game of 'make loud music till Cantrell pitches a fit." Me and Razor had a spot under Hawthorne that was well-insulated and structurally sound. We liked to try to crank up the heavy tunes till they could hear it in the Hawthorne common room. We'd usually have an audience long before that.
"While you two are playing with your toys I'll be in my dance class." Sandra had always been a dancer, even before the shift. Her folks had signed their bouncing baby boy up for Ballet at an early age, as a way to build his body without the punishment of a martial arts class.
-You still doing the belly dancing?-
Sandra nodded. "I'm glad too. It's one of those dances that seems like it was designed for me."
Razor and I nodded, then we all began cleaning up. Sandra had Aikido, Razor had survival class, and I got to go to Freshman English Yay, another class repeat for me. Whateley always wanted to keep their hooks in a student for the full four years no matter how old or well-educated they were, so I'm a fifteen-year-old freshman when I SHOULD be a sophomore. They claimed it was so they could get you fully ready to face the world after you graduated. I still think that it's a clever ruse to allow them to chiesel four full years of tuition out of your checkbook.
* * *
Meanwhile, somewhere out of Jericho, or anyone elses' awareness...
Hekate looked at the cloaked figure she called "master" quietly. He was standing in the circle of lifelessness a mile away from the school boundary. No one ever came here, and scrying would always fail in the circle. She hated it here, as the place left her feeling like worms were crawling under her skin, or like she was slowly melting, or sometimes even with a simple feeling of dread. She wasn't sure which sensation was worse.
"Is everything moving forward, Hekate?"
"Yes master," She nodded, "the Alphas have done as you asked, and the arrangements that need done are done. It's just a matter of waiting to see what happens."
"Excellent. You make me glad I am teaching you..." He left the rest unspoken, but Hekate was well aware of what would happen to her if she was ever less than useful.
"Something for which I'm glad." Lying through her teeth was easy. She had tried to escape this one's influence before but had failed each time, not because she objected to his methods, but because she didn't like being his errand-girl.
"Very well, and the augury I instructed you to perform?"
Hekate nodded. "It is done, but you may not like the results."
"I'll decide that, tell me now."
Biting back the burning retort to his mightier-than-thou tone she took a deep breath and began. "The path is still in flux. The forces arrayed behind and against us are still balanced perfectly. As it stands now without much more trial the outcome would be uncertain."
He nodded. Gods she wanted to see his face, just once, so she would know who it was she was dealing with.
"It is more or less as predicted then. I just wished to see if any variables had come into play I was previously unaware of."
She gritted her teeth. This was the bad part. "There IS a variable. Everything is in balance, but a new factor has come into the mix, a total wild card, brought on by the violence of Samhain. Before it was just shadows in the dark like the rest. There is no way to tell wether it will help, hinder or do nothing, but when it does it will take the extremes of such with no halfway measures."
"Interesting." He sounded too calm. This wasn't going to be fun. "Continue."
"No names, no faces, just a troupe of shadows with four images. The Bard with a heart of fury, An angel of mercy cloaked in the pain of others, a Shaman with two hearts and one mind, and a murderer with the soul of a Paladin. The other shadows were indistinct and unformed, as if they are waiting to awaken, and they may or may not. But these four can fall in any direction, and when they do they will fall with abandon."
The hiss of displeasure was audible. "And our main adversaries?"
"Still as they were in the beginning."
"Very well. Start hunting for these wild cards of yours. I want them brought to heel quickly and quietly, before they reach their full potential."
As much as I Really, really would love to torture you all, there are some things you don't do, like try to explain just how goddamned boring Miss Seever's English class is, or try to replicate Doc Zalman's raggedy-ass voice. In the spirit of the holiday season I will spare you the trials and tribulations of English and Physics, which brings me to my favorite class of the day... Devisor Lab. LET THE GAMES BEGIN!
It began with a huddled prayer around the ancient, steaming, spurting crockpot of inedible sludge that carried enough caffeine to slaughter the souls of a thousand screaming innocents. Yes friends, this coffee was made RIGHT! With that special blend of bean juice with enough acid to strip the chrome off a porsche and pit concrete on contact this was the poison of choice as I huddled around the coffee pot with my classmates, who ran the entire gamut of grades from freshman to senior. Devisor lab is far more loose and eclectic than any other class at Whateley. I love it so.
Now my description of the coffee pot is understated. Imagine a twenty-gallon stainless-steel vat of water, heated by a kind of micro-fusion reactor and made to work as a giant engine of percolation. Add to this the whole deal literally rips every useful bit of anti-nutrient and caffeine in the grounds and you have yourself some potent shit. Our coffee is considered a deadly weapon in three states, and a weapon of mass destruction by some small countries. Rumor has it the Pope himself banned our coffee from use by catholics. Good thing I'm theoretically Baptist.
As the ceremonial first cups of the class are poured we all looked upon one another and said the morning prayer.
"It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
For it is by the Beans of Java that the thoughts acquire speed,
The hands acquire shakes,
The shakes become a warning.
It is by Caffeine alone I set my mind in motion."
We all took sips of the black stuff, looking over at the heretical tea-drinkers (Like Stalwart) and Jolt-jerks (like Tinkertrain) with thinly disguised contempt. Theirs are inferior beverages and have been judged and found wanting. Hell, even Bugs and Mega-Death were over here at the pot and praying with the REAL devisors. Just goes to show you who's really in this for the long-haul. We immediately blast the traditional playing of Weird Science by Oingo Boingo and start our day.
They call my coffee unhealthy.
I merely point out they are weak.
They call my coffee vile.
I return that they have no concept of perfection.
I could go on for hours about coffee. It's truly a great thing. However, if you want to hear a coffee rant, go on the internet and look up 'coffee rant' by Mr. Badger. That guy's crazier than me and Mega-Death combined. He makes me happy.
Speaking of Mega-Death, I needed to talk to him. I just hoped he wasn't dricking too bad today. Dudeman gets really twigged-out freaky whenever he forgets to take his meds.
"Hey Mega! Can I talk to you for a bit?" Never ever EVER sneak up on that kid I warn you right now. Always get his attention first.
Mega-Death turns and has a look at me, tapping along like a regular blind guy with my cane. That reminds me. I need wrap-around sunglasses to perfect the Stevie Wonder with Dreds look.
"What do you want Jericho?" He was looking at me like I was going to steal his longer-lasting lightbulb invention or something.
"Remember if I asked if i could borrow your waveform-variance generator?" I kept the tone light and easy. I do NOT want him going all mad, cackling supervillain spewing bad monologue. Mr. Bumsfeld and Ms. Merenis chewed my ass RAW the last time, and it was an accident! I'd meant to make Zappaphage drick out. I missed. Don't ask me where the name Zappaphage came from, not only do I NOT want to know, I never want to be informed even by accident what kind of twisted mind it takes to invent such a hokey word.
He started glowering darkly at me. Oh shit, drick-out in progress. I had to act fast. Diedricks is only funny on TV, or if you're a complete asshole. It's a brain malfunction brought on by some mutations that makes you start spitting out every thought in your head, and actually causes you to think what you spew by taking a chemical shortcut through your subconscious. Stupid thing is, Devisors and Gadgeteers (of which I am both, lucky me) have about three times the chances of picking it up over any other mutation type. Sucks to be us.
"Hey, like I said MD, I don't wanna rip off your design, I just need it to fix my goddamned EMS field generator." I started talking fast. "I won't break it, I won't steal it, hell if you want to come over and help out. I figure you'd be a crapton better than I am at getting it to work." Also true, as devisor gear tends to be somewhat unreliable in the hands of others.
MD's near-drick experience seemed to fade a bit as he was mollified that i wasn't trying to take one of his precious tools (which he built himself) away from him. Hell, I don't have so many tools but I protect them like a pissed-off tigress guarding her cubs.
"All right, show me what you got."
"Bring the extra-large coffee thermos. This may take a while."
After we got the extra-large coffees we wandered over to my crap locker and I rolled out the gurney with a heavy looking suit of power armor. It's still very much a work in progress. I'm skimping on the weapons one would expect and loading it with medical sensors, tools and various other sundries. I'm basically designing a fast, strong, and hopefully nigh invulnerable search-and rescue rig, as well as emergency response units for the paramedics to be able to enter a heavy mutant fight, get the bystanders and wounded to safety, treat them, and survive the experience. I call it Rafe class EMS armor, after the Archangel of Mercy, Raphael.
Call it a quirk. I don't want to go down in history as the man who built and marketed the better manslaying equipment. I leave that to the other maniacs here.
The suit is only half-finished, being the ablative armor is complete and assembled, along with the heavy servoes required to move the thing. Basically if you wear it you can run at a top speed of thirty miles an hour, and match an exemplar three for physical strength. Fireproofing, heat-shielding and tempest-hardening for those occasional downed power lines or lightning strikes and you have a perfect combat rig... If you were going for that shit. I'm opting for the lifesaver gear.
The suit is a reflective white color with a small light bar across the chest and back and a siren to announce what the hell you're there for. As if the HUGE red cross on the chest, back and shoulders couldn't tell you. (how do I know what color it is? I painted it with a digital camera plugged in my brainjack) It looked vaguely like images of fantasy plate armor and could stop anything short of a .50 cal sniper rifle. The armor won't break under the .50 but the shock will still kill you quickly. I still have to build the heavy sensors, communications and tracking systems, onboard computer, med tool unit, forearm drug and blood transfusion dispensers, and of course the wings, which combine a jump pack and energy field emitter. It won't fly, but it'll do five hundred yard jumps which when combined with the run speed and servoes, gives the whole thing an operational speed of about 60 MPH.
"Ok MD, what I got here is the field generator. I'm running a dual-field kit here, one is a force-field that's akin to what you get on a five or six-ton TK brick, and the other which is on a separate switch converts the whole thing to have the equivalent strength of a five-ton TK brick." I went over the basics. "The whole thing is on a duplex wave-converter and a micro-fusion power plant. Basically I find that if you overlap two power fields they tend to intermingle, the whole thing feeds back and presto. Scrap metal. But if you duplex the wave-forms...
Ok it took me about ten minutes to explain what I was doing. MD didn't seem to buy a bit of it, but when I got to the heart of the problem, finally he brightened up.
"So the main problem here is the energy fields are unstable, going from about a half-ton to twelve tons, which really rips up the power plant something fierce. Optimal setting is about five for each. I was wondering if we could use your rig to calibrate and stabilize the field here."
MD nodded thoughtfully. "Not a bad idea. If we can do this, maybe you can help me with a similar project. I need to fix my personal force-field so it's harder to tamper with."
"Deal."
So we hooked up the Wave-form generator and I started tweaking while Mega gave commentary about amplitude and Isorelay chargers, which I took to be this doodad over there and that thingamabob over here. My wires and circuits are not color-coded, much to my classmates' chagrin when they try to decipher my gear. I base wire-placement entirely on texture, which I can discern, and I do most of my work by feel anyway. My hands are my greatest tools. I can tell if something's not right by poking at it usually. It also helps that I program my gear by running a wire between the equipment and my neural jack.
"Alright Jericho, you have an even, stable five-ton field on each wave. Every time you tried to alter the modulation of one it threw the other out of whack."
"Damn, I thought I solved that problem. All right, back to the drawing board." Secretly I was freaking ecstatic! I got the damned thing to work! If I could do that then I can get the Gadgeteer version somewhere between 2.5 and 3 tons on both the shield and the strength! And the gadgeteer version would be usable by baselines, and it could be replicated as such. Maybe then the paramedics wouldn't be such easy marks for asshole villains and other mutants who couldn't, or wouldn't learn to NOT hit bystanders, or target emergency services.
"So why you limiting the strength?" Mega actually looked curious.
"Not interested in building weapons. This is a Search-and-Rescue rig. If you need to lift a chunk of something that weighs more than about three tons then you're just searching for bodies. Exceptions to this are building collapses, but only if nothing bigger than three tons individually has fallen on top of where the victim is holed up or trapped under. You don't need to be able to lift an entire city bus to get someone trapped under it, but if you can lift one end and hold it you're already there. I'm only doing five-ton here because this is MY suit."
"Going for marketability then?" MD nodded approvingly.
"Yup. If I play my cards right I will become a wealthy son of a bitch." Inwardly I smiled. The first three units were promised to Whateley for use by security gratis for medical emergency purposes. After all, Whateley was funding my work in exchange, and greasing the wheels of funding is never a bad thing. Otherwise I'd wind up having to try to pay for all of the stuff myself.
Lunch. My favorite part of the day after music class and Devisor Lab. It was my prelude to Music class, Biochemistry and Aikido. Actually, after English and Lab are done my day couldn't get better. My math requirement was waived due to the fact that I can pretty much learn and do whatever mathematical theory you throw at me. Partly because I'm smarter than I used to be, and partly because I have a math-learning program I use via brainjack.
As usual I'm the first of the Outcasts to arrive. The security monkeys are onto me. They're staking out my favorite spot to panhandle. Sorry boys, you think you're slick but I see you following me.
My underloaded food tray precedes me to the traditional Outcast Table. God I hate being on a self-imposed diet. Unfortunately if I go for the fat and happy route I become an even bigger target to the other students. I'm JUST big enough to look actually strong, but not so big as to attract fatty jokes. Besides, I have to be able to keep up with Diamond and Razor in the training sims. Like that is ever gonna happen until I get the Rafe armor up and running. Diamond and Razor take the words 'physically fit,' roll them into a ball and shoot hoops with them. I'm in a team with two exemplars, Jack being faster than greased lightning on a hot day, and Sandra being a borderline brick.
Speaking of which, we were gonna have a run through the wringer that day in the sims against the grunts. Oh yippie-skippy-fucking-hooray. Supposed to be an even match, playing hero/villain, and since my team looks like a pack of monsters, minus yours truly, we get to be the villains. Add to this we're outnumbered two-to-one against the reigning simulator champs and it's gonna be a rough ride. We've gone against them no less than three times already, almost as if someone thinks we're gonna win. We gave up on the winning thing. Now we opt for making the lot of them go absolutely bonkers trying to pin us down. Sandra and Razor do the whole movie monster schtick while I play Lord Booby Trap. We managed to drag the last bout well past the intended half-hour of scheduled time. We're even worse against teams that aren't as organized and motivated as the Grunts, even won a few bouts.
Ahhh, speaking of the Grunts, there's Slapdash and Deadeye. Of the grunts those two are the absolute worst to deal with. For me. Deadeye's an instinctive sharpshooter. Those freaky octopus eyes of his (that's how Sandra describes them) can and will guide a rifle to pinhole your ass if you leave cover for even a split-second. Slapdash is their team Devisor and my personal nemesis in the sims. At least these guys don't go around like they own you. They leave that to the Alphas, but they are INTENSE as a group.
As I look around I see the three clusters of GSD kids from Twain, Whitman and Hawthorne, and not segregated by cottage.
The first cluster is called the Freakshow by the other students. These guys are mostly harmless. Their GSD tends to revolve around environmental specialization. Most of them also look like creatures of myth. There's Syline, the brunette girl (who I must add is hot) in a wheelchair because her legs are fused into a mermaid tail with purple scales. Harpy, is their team flyer, a girl who's arms have completely converted to eagle wings, and her feet into hawklike talons. Jacko, the kid who looks like an anthropomorphic wolf from the waist up, and has a centauroid body shaped and furred like an arctic wolf. And there's finally Grabby, a sour looking girl with red hair who had the misfortune of becomeing a copperhead-snake scaled Octupus hybrid-thing with eight tentacles for legs and also one replacing each of her arms. Fortunately for her she can move fine out of water.
Sandra tried talking with them a few times, but she always came back depressed as hell. Those kids were apparently all about the woe is me, it's not fair, why didn't I get to be like THAT (insert hot exemplar here). I mean, individually we've found that the lot of them are good kids, it's just that you get them together and it's like a pity me contest has erupted. Oddly the sourest-looking among them, Grabby, is usually the one who bitches the least. You'd think Sylene would be fine, at least she's still mostly human-looking and attractive to boot.
Ugh, speaking of pity parties, Thuban... Jesus that boy needs help. He's tried to pitch this Faction Three idea to me, Diamond and Razor a few times, as a place for the GSD and those of us without the uberhot exemplar genes kids to get together, hang out and generally take a break from getting shit on. I'll check it out, but it sounds like another party of mute acceptance of a bad genetic card with no hope for parole. We won't accept that. We will not hide in the goddamned shadows from the people who think they're better than us.
I may not be the hottest thing since sliced bread but I do NOT get shit on. I shit back. So does Razor. Diamond usually needs some serious provoking but once she's provoked, dear god in heaven and all of creation I've seen what she does to people, violently or otherwise. Since she became a girl she has learned the fine art of gossip and rumormongering. She doesn't ever use it as a matter of course, the whole he said, she said thing bugs the crap out of her. However, she is NOT above dropping vicious rumors or false evidence into the hands of the WORST rumor and gossip girls in the school. If she's really feeling sadistic she makes sure that the Dickinson girls hear it first. For her, it's a weapon, a scalpel with which to cause much pain without the aid of physical violence.
Not that she's a slouch at violence. I saw her throw a Humans Firster inside the trailer of a semi truck. Oh no biggie you say. I can do that too. She threw him THROUGH the side of the trailer's metal panelling and structure to get him there. Like I said. Borderline brick.
Speak of the devil and who shall arrive... "Enchante Mon Cherie." I said as she slithered up to me with her food.
The look of "Do I kiss him or kill him" is priceless. Hey I have no idea what that expression is. She could be licking her fangs and getting ready to hock a neurotoxic loogie in my eye for all I know. All I know is she's making a face.
"Jericho, do you ever get tired of playing class clown?" She almost sounds exasperated.
"Hell no! Why just this morning Razor helped me with my make-up." I pointed to my Magically Marked face.
"Ahh, I knew it, we let you dress in drag once and you start going for makeup. So when will we be seeing you in the girl's school uniform?"
Yes, I went to the Halloween ball in drag. I also threatened to hit people with my purse. A lot. It was gloriously bad drag too. Nothing matched. I also didn't try to hide my voice. I don't think i've had that much fun freaking people out in YEARS.
"Well, I dunno, I think Razor would be uncomfortable with me in my Marilyn Monroe skirt standing over a vent singing Happy Birthday Mister President."
Sandra began chuckling to herself. "That would disturb the hell out of all of us."
"The better to terrorize you all my dear."
"Oh yeah, Razor will be late. He was helping Jimmy T with a "thorny problem" as he put it." Sandra looked a bit annoyed.
I shrugged. "Hey, if someone's gonna screw with the thornies, and they called Razor in it means they're running the idiot ragged and having a blast playing movie monster chasing the moron."
"Think they'll get in trouble?"
"Not as long as no one actually gets hurt." I was less sure about that, but the thought of Razor shrieking like a mad demon and chasing some bully down and making him piss his pants appealed on so many levels.
JT and Razor could pull stuff like that off because they had a rep. Razor for being mindlessly, murderously violent and damned close to unstoppable without extreme measures, and Jimmy T because everyone thinks he's cannibalistic. Even the Alphas usually steer well clear of the two of them, at least visibly. They might have been the cause of one or two of Razor's supposed spectacular blowouts last year, but I wasn't here so I dunno.
Sandra was about to say something when she looked out the window. I can't see through windows, they are a perfect barrier to my vision, as if they were walls.
"Shit, Bannockburn and Hela are at it again." She sighed.
"What's going on?" I asked as she was looking annoyed.
Bannockburn was one of the Emerson kids, obsessive about the Scottish highlander image, and the only other Whateley student besides me who would wear a kilt. Actually it was impossible to convince him to wear anything BUT a kilt. Not so bad until you consider he's notorious for going commando and when he doesn't wipe properly he's a miserable one to be around.
"Phobos and Deimos are trying to separate them."
"Shit, those two? Those two trying to stop a fight is like putting out a fire with napalm." Phobos and Deimos were a pair of twins who tried to play peacemaker even though their names meant Fear and Panic. The two girls were Whitmaniacs, each with three eyes, four arms and cloven hooves and a pair of long, lizardlike tails each. They got their names from their ability to cause panic and havoc through probability manipulation. Both of them being exemplar 4's like Sandra contributed to this image. The worst was when they merged, forming this siamese twin-thing with two heads, eight arms, three legs and four lashing, prehensile tails. Things came apart in complete pandemonium once they got going. Unfortunately violence nearby was one of the triggers to cause them both to go rager, rather like Razorback, so they desperately tried to calm folks down, or they flee the area.
"Bannockburn just clocked Deimos!" Sandra panicked. She LIKED the two twins.
"FUCK! Sandra focus now, we gotta move, standard deal, get the injured clear and then work on the maniacs!" We'd have to concentrate totally in order to filter out the mayhem that was about to break loose.
I heard, and felt Phobos' scream of absolute fury as I grabbed my medical bag and ran for the door. Rather like the apocryphal stories of Razorback from last year, when Phobos and Deimos get started there is going to be injuries. There is no middle ground.
By the time me and Sandra got out there were already four people down in the area, with both Phobos and Deimos tearing at anything in reach. Bannockburn was trying to hit Deimos with his battleaxe and Hela was spraying magic like a water fountain. She hit one of the other students, and the boy dropped. This is the problem with mutant combat, the worst injuries invariably go to the bystanders, especially when ragers are involved.
Sandra was rushing to the boy who got hit, and I charged, screaming "RAGERS LOOSE! EVERYONE GET CLEAR!" It wouldn't help the folks inside the tag-team terror aura the twins were generating, but it would get anyone else outside the fifty yard radius the warning to stay clear.
There was no time for thought as I dove through the melee and hauled another boy out of the mix before he could get trampled or killed accidentally. I ran his unconscious form away even as Sandra deposited two more beside me in the clear. Both of us turned and bolted straight for the last two, and I almost got my ass fried by one of Hela's lightning bolts for my trouble. Just because you take the name of the Norse god of the dishonored dead does NOT give you license to act like you can just let loose havoc!
The last two bodies clear, we began checking them. One had a nasty lump, another had Hela's bolt-burns and the other three had gash marks from when Bannock swung too wide or Phobos or Deimos lashed them with their tails, or used the energy points they formed at their fingertips to slash them.
"Razor! We got a rager outbreak! Phobos, Deimos, Bannockburn and Hela! We need cover!" I barked into a ring on my finger, and heard an affirmative shriek in return. Good, Razor put on the microbead this morning. We lucked out. Usually he forgets it. Ok he almost ALWAYS forgets it.
Sandra begins focusing on what little magic she can control and I run triage to make sure we don't have too serious injuries in the mix. Between the two of us we can keep people from dying, while Razor covers our asses and plays distraction. Speaking of our rogue Lizard the panicked shouts and shrieking roar announce his presence ans he decelerats from about a hundred miles an hour to zero in a twenty foot long skid with his claws on all four limbs digging into the turf. He takes one look and begins running in circles around the combatants, and shoving people back. We had about another minute before Security was supposed to show up. Now comes the hard part. Keeping the four combat gumbies from killing each other. For this trick I give thee, Diamond and Razor.
"All right! Razor separate Hela and Phobos! Diamond pin down Deimos. I got Bannock! Let's get these fools where they can be rounded up!" The injured were safe, they'd survive the trip to the infirmary. The bystanders were clear, it was time to break this hoo-hah up. Oh shit.
Just at the WORST possible time, as we're moving forward Phobos and Deimos jumped together. When they came to Fury was loose. The Siamese Nightmare immediately started the process of deconstructing the ground around her, violently.
"Change up! Razor take Fury! Diamond on Hela! Go!"
We bounded to our separate targets and I pulled out three of my "last resort" tricks I knew would work. Bannock's backswing almost took my head off before I poked him with my force prod at the end of my cane, causing a shockwave ripple that blew him on his ass, unharmed. I tossed two of my glop grenades and he wound up covered in glue.
Sandra got Hela under control right quick, having wrapped her tail around the girl, I imagine she told Hela she'd crush her if she twitched. Sandra's been rated at exemplar four. A constrictor snake like she is can lay down enough force to kill damned near anything it can wrap around, and Hela was no exemplar.
Razorback body-checked Fury to the ground, hard and darted away before the dual shrieks and retaliation came. The aura of random havoc twisted one of the benches nearby and I could clearly sense all of the students nearby watching with morbid fascination. The two ragers went back and forth, with Razor carefully avoiding being hit, and me listening for the one sound from Razor, a long, ululating hunting howl that always immediately preceded one of his berserker fits. I held a small Devise in my hand just in case.
Security was coming, and Razor was managing to control Fury without hurting her until one of her blaze-tipped hands raked him open across his flank. I could see the slashes go deep, tearing through skin, bone and internal organs like a hot knife through butter, leaving a gash two feet long down his side. Razor darted away and let out that cry that everyone told me was a sure sign of havoc when I threw the microgrenade and me and Sandra ducked and covered our ears. Razor and Fury got caught by the shockwave of sound and vibration leaping at each other in midair and were both knocked unconscious. Fury fell in two places, as Phobos and Deimos fell apart and landed next to each other.
I ran to Razor, Diamond ran to the twins as we began checking them over. Lieutenant Forsyth began directing the medical cleanup, and had Bannock and Hela cuffed. I was injecting Razor with a metabolic stabilizer to get his regeneration going again when he came up to me. Diamond was checking the twins for damage and healing their bruises with her meager magic.
"What happened here, son?" No Forsyth didn't know my name, I was just another random, low-threat freshie to him. I knew him because Razor pointed him out to me.
"If you gimmie a sec..." I pulled the needle and Razor jerked as his body finished off healing the horrific gaping wound Fury had given him. It was almost done anyway. She'd gone right through flesh and bone with her energy claw. "We broke up a fight because too many folks were getting injured, after we got the injured clear."
"Razor involved?" Forsyth looked like he half-expected me to bullshit him.
"Razor was the only one of us that could keep Fury under control. When he finally got hit bad, he started to lose it so I hit them both with a sonic." I sighed. "Razor was actually trying to help calm things down."
Forsyth nodded. "Ok, provided he's sane when he wakes up, we'll let him go back to his room to recover. You and the snake girl over there done good."
I nodded as a few students were telling Forsyth's men what happened. Hela and Bannock got locked in cuffs and were being led over to security after I gave them the solvent for the glop grenades.
"Just wanted to make sure no one got too injured."
Forsyth nodded. "You need to make a statement, and so do your friends there. You can come once Razor recovers."
"We'll be there, sir."
Razor was exonerated of any wrongdoing, and I was shocked when Delarose took Razor's armband and tracker and set them aside. The security guys also took Razor's name off the top spot on the Ultra list and dropped him below Maggot and Killstench. He wasn't OFF the list, but he'd done himself a huge chunk of good and was paving the way to becoming a non-Ultra. Talk about a great fucking day! Razor had been fighting tooth and nail to get himself off that list for a long time, and the security gumbys were happy he was pushing so hard. He also learned he was getting a weekend pass in Dunwich for the first time EVER. Me and Diamond have already burned our passes this month, so he'd be going it alone.
As soon as we got out of the security office Razor immediately let out a shriek of glee and began slamdancing, air guitar and all for the amusement of me and Diamond. He only ever did that when he was really happy about something, and getting pulled off the top shithead slot and dropping down to the number four shithead by doing right was pretty good motivation.
"Only five minutes till fourth period," Sandra commented. "I gotta go."
I watched idly as she slithered off toward the magic department while Razor ran like a bat out of hell straight for Twain. I grinned to myself, re-hooked my medical satchel to my hip and began my blind man routine of walking to music class while tapping the ground in front of me with my cane. I don't need to do that of course, but it amuses me, I am blind, and I like being underestimated by the other students and staff.
I ALMOST beat Razor to the auditorium, and he solemnly handed me my Bass guitar case and we both went into the class together.
Now, in a class full of sonic manipulation types, sirens, Banshees, etc. you would expect it to be Razorback's hell. No no no my dear friends, when they say music soothes the savage beast they must have had mutants like Razor in mind. That boy has this maddening, insane love for music, especially heavy metal. I share this quirk with him, and both of us have been learning to play instruments since we were big enough to hold said instruments.
Class was in full swing when we got there, as everyone kicks off the party early. Sara and Axel were slamming out a rendition of Marilyn Manson's Drugs, while the Vile Age People were doing their ridiculous music politic. The cacophony would have been worse had some clever git not divided sound suppression fields around the various parts of the stage and auditorium, allowing everyone to get a solid crack at playing without being overwhelmed by the others.
You could HEAR them, and pick them out, but the racket wasn't deafening.
-God, most of these guys really need to learn what music is.- Razor hated a lot of the music people played. it wasn't part of his sound sensitivity, it was just his sense of aesthetics.
"Too true bro. Shall we borrow Bang-Bang and show 'em what being a Rockstar is all about?" I grinned as I waved the goofy looking kid with a pair of drumsticks in hand. Bang-Bang was known for his abilities with percussive sound, and could do anything from mimic a full drumset to throwing out machinegun-stacatto shockwaves that would make your teeth shatter. His retarded codename was coined by his three-year-old baby sister, who thought he was the greatest person in the world.
"Yo Mike, shall we do the upstaging act today?"
Bang-Bang nodded. "Sure Jericho, my band crew's all out with the flu bug. I told Casey and Zoe they shouldn't be swapping spit when one of 'em was ill, but would they listen to me? Nooooooo."
"All right, let's get set up then, Rockstar in five."
The three of us set up on one corner of the stage, and we all grinned. Bang-Bang actually used a drumset to practice even though he needed one like he needed a hole in the head. Cassandra Wagner, the reigning senior Diva was regaling everyone with her rendition of a Celine Dion hit. She was good, she could play your emotions like a cheap fiddle when she sang. She was singing Celine Dion. We couldn't let this stand. We deliberately waited until she reached the climax of the song then slammed the Nickelback down hard, heavy, and above all, LOUD. She actually stopped to glare at us when I started growling into the mic. Bang-Bang handles the low additions that accompanied the main lyrics as he thundered on the drums.
I'm through with standin' in line
at clubs I'll never get in
It's like the bottom of the ninth
and I'm never gonna win
this life hasn't turned out
quite the way I want it to be
(Tell me what you want)
I want a brand new house
on an episode of Cribs
And a bathroom I can play baseball in
And a king size tub big enough
for ten plus me
--(So what you need)--
I need a a credit card that's got no limit
And a big black jet with a bedroom in it
Gonna join the mile high club
At thirty-seven thousand feet
--(Been there done that)--
I want a new tour bus full of old guitars
My own star on Hollywood Boulevard
Somewhere between Cher and
James Dean is fine for me
(So how you gonna do it?)
I'm gonna trade this life for fortune and fame
I'd even cut my hair and change my name
'Cause we all just wanna be big rockstars and
Live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars
The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap
We'll all stay skinny 'cause we just won't eat
And we'll hang out in the coolest bars
in the VIP with the movie stars
Every good gold digger's
Gonna wind up there
Every Playboy bunny
With her bleach blonde hair
And well...
Hey, hey, I wanna be a rockstar
Hey, hey, I wanna be a rockstar
I wanna be great like Elvis without the tassels
Hire eight body guards that love to beat up assholes
Sign a couple autographs
So I can eat my meals for free
--(I'll have the quesadilla, ha-ha)--
I'm gonna dress my ass
with the latest fashion
Get a front door key to the Playboy mansion
Gonna date a centerfold that loves to
blow my money for me
(So how you gonna do it?)
I'm gonna trade this life
For fortune and fame
I'd even cut my hair
And change my name
'Cause we all just wanna be big rockstars
And live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars
The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap
we'll all stay skinny 'cause we just won't eat
And we'll hang out in the coolest bars
in the VIP with the movie stars
Every good gold digger's
Gonna wind up there
Every Playboy bunny
With her bleach blonde hair
And we'll hide out in the private rooms
With the latest dictionary of
today's who's who
They'll get you anything
with that evil smile
Everybody's got a
drug dealer on speed dial, well
Hey, hey, I wanna be a rockstar
I'm gonna sing those songs
that offend the censors
Gonna pop my pills
from a Pez dispenser
Get washed-up singers writing all my songs
Lip --sync-- 'em every night so I don't get 'em wrong
Well we all just wanna be big rockstars
And live in Hilltop houses driving fifteen cars
The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap
We'll all stay skinny 'cause we just won't eat
And we'll hang out in the coolest bars
in the VIP with the movie stars
Every good gold digger's
Gonna wind up there
Every Playboy bunny
With her bleach blond hair
And we'll hide out in the private rooms
With the latest dictionary of
today's who's who
They'll get you anything
with that evil smile
Everybody's got a
drug dealer on speed dial, well
Hey, hey, I wanna be a rockstar
Hey, hey, I wanna be a rockstar -Nickelback, 'Rockstar'
When we finished up Cassandra was glaring KNIVES at me. I pretended not to notice. Being blind has it's perks. There were a few approving nods and a few disgusted looks. Not everyone likes the kind of music me and Razor prefer, but we don't care.
Mr. King was walking up clapping, with his resplendantly bad Elvis outfit and Afro. "Nice work boys, nice work, very good command of the sound. Jericho where did you learn to play Bass? Your Guitar is severely out of tune."
I looked at my Deeply prized Fender and smiled evilly as I played several notes and demonstrated just how NOT out of tune my guitar was. "I dunno sir, I think someone's playing with the accoustics again."
Mr. King looked puzled for a minute, then looked up at the sound reverb panels that altered the sounds on stage and directed them at the audience. Yup, they were off sure enough. We both saw someone suddenly vanish from the control booth, although I didn't get a good look. Probably Bluejay. What few pranks he pulled in Music class were relatively harmless. I forgave him because he was the Alpha who made the other Alphas miserable. Shoulda heard some of his commentary about the Don and Hekate when they're not in the area. They guy's a hoot, even if he is thermonuclear cocky.
"Boys I'll be back, I need to go fix the accoustics." The King walked over to the control booth while me and razor busted up laughing.
"So Razor, you up for a bit of a run on the gift shop after school?"
Razor nodded.
"Excellent. Tell you what man, meet me after sixth period, we'll do some practice, then go hijack Diamond and go watch a movie in the common room." I thought for a second "Make that after we get done working. If I miss my two hours as Lab-Slave Doc Tenant will skin me alive. Plus you got your groundskeeping job, so after that?"
Razor readily agreed, letting out a bark of approval.
Bang-Bang grinned and wandered off. "See you bastards later. I'm gonna go nuzzle up to that goth girl Axel's hanging with."
"Careful, I hear she bites."
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
Bang-Bang can be cool, but I had no illusions of his chances with the girls at Whateley. He was a bit of an egotistical dick about that kinda thing. He wouldn't go for Sandra, and if he did, me and Razor would leave his body in a nice, shallow grave where no one would find it. Sandra's not normally violent about male dicks (the personality type, not the body part, duh), however if he or anyone like him ever tries to use Diamond for a cheap thrill lay, me and Razor will kill them, probably with as much pain and suffering as we can muster up. This is my one (known) exception to my distaste for homicide.
-That guy is gonna get his ass kicked one of these days.- Razor signed at me from behind me. All-round awareness, remember?
"Yeah, and if half the rumors floating around are true, probably by Sara."
-Fuck 'em. None of our business. Back to practice. I wanna do 'The Garden of Good and Evil again.' I'd like to get our song we wrote down pat for when we can fill out a band.-
"You're on, buddy, although I'm not so sure we can get us a drummer or Sandra to sing." Turns out I was wrong about Sandra and the drummer, but that's an entirely different ball of wax, and definitely well in the future.
No, I'm not gonna sing 'The Garden of Good and Evil' without the full band for you, Jesus. It's a long song, and it takes three singers, two of whom are female. As much as I love doing a falsetto to piss people off, it's just not right to howl off a tune me and Razor threw our heart and soul into improperly.
I'd go through Biochemistry, but I doubt you all would appreciate the whole dealio. A lot of geekspeak and experiments. Besides that, nothing interesting happened there that day. What, do you REALLY wanna go through mitochondrial chemical processes? If you do I can pull that lesson up. No? Good. Shut up and lemme tell the story.
In any case, I was sitting in my Aikido class, wearing the Gi I had just finished modifying relentlessly, adding pouches and pockets I could hide stuff in. Ito-Sensei was merciless about making me remove any gadgets that were obvious, so I took this as license to make small, unobtrusive little dirty tricks that would give me an edge against my classmates that I could hide on my person without getting caught. I'm sure he'll forgive me my transgressions. I mean come on! This was one of the guys always pushing us to use every cheap trick and advantage we could squeeze out of our powers. He just wasn't big on the whole "Toys on the mat" thing. But, as I have heard more than one combat instructor say (usually Wilson on the range while I was helping Flashbang test one weird gun-thing after another) "if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying."
As a side note, I can only imagine how ridiculous I look in my clean, white Gi with Magic marker scribbles all over my face. There were more than a few snickers about that. Maybe I should invest in a plaid workout outfit.
I'm ALWAYS early to Aikido. I love this class, It's gotta be my favorite. Huh? so what if I said Devisor Lab and Music were my favorite? Where is it written that I have to be consistent?
There's nothing greater than a fighting style built around the concept of taking a poor schlep who's too big and strong for his own good, and turning his own force against him. I'm not the best, but I can give the local low-level exemplar crowd a run for their money when I combine Ito's training with a few (dozen) cheap tricks and dirty pool. I also notice that very few of my aikido sparring partners ever try to bully me. I wonder why.
Ok, sparring and the infamous "red cage 'o doom" today. Ok just so you know, the red cage 'o doom is the big red cage that sits in the center of the sparring arena. If you can get an opponent inside it's representative of a power nullifier of one sort or another. See, everyone has weaknesses. Basically it represents the idea that some jackass foolio has discovered how to bone your powers and has succeeded. Get thrown into the cage and you lose. I actually lose quite a bit. Something to do with being the mighty equivalent in physical power of a baseline fifteen-year-old boy who's muscles and body have yet to fully develop. Anything above an exemplar two is about a gauranteed asswhupping for yours truly, and god forbid I have to deal with a blaster or TK brick.
Ahh, everyone was finally in the dojo, time to figure out who were the worst people to get paired off with for this little exercise. Oh yeah, the two class bricks are in attendance, Lancer and Punch. They're both bricks, and definitely high on my "do not screw with" list. Lancer's ok to talk to during and after class, but the guy's like a freight train marked RUNAWAY!!!!!
Punch is a cutie, sort of. The only thing about her exemplar bit is she's a bit overweight, kinda resembles the chubby cute good girl friends everyone seems to have. Problem is, she's really sensitive about wisecracks about her figure, and I wouldn't have the heart to mock her. Yes I have a heart, fuck off! Besides, she's a sweet girl when you talk to her. But she's also a brick, and is usually the match-off for Lancer, as they are the only two who can suck up each others' punishment.
Going down the long line of faces, and seeing a mix of people I have beaten and been beaten by equally I come back to Lancer's cohorts. Yes friends, it's the flavor of the week again, the Kimbas. Only a few of them here, but they're all a bitch and a half to deal with. Jade's the easiest, being what, twelve? Unfortunately easy is a relative term. Apparently she's done Aikido for a while, because I've had my ass tossed about like a rag doll by that little girl. I win about one in four against her, but I'm getting better.
Then there's Jade's ghost sister, shroud. She's a stone-cold bitch for me because I can only partly percieve her. She's weird, and nothing like I'd expect a ghost to be. She also does this whirling knife buzzsaw thing that I wind up doing my level best to stay the hell away from. Let there be much pain. She's a girl after my own heart though, you never know what the hell she's gonna pull next. She's less martial artist and more whirling ball of OH SHIT! WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT???
Toni's the other Kimba here today. To my less-then-detailed senses she's definitely a looker, bouncy and hyperactive on her worst day (bonus! She's as annoying as I am on her BEST day!) and she's black like me by all accounts. Ok, I'm sorry, African-American, Jesus Christ I swear political correctness was invented to suck all the joy out of my life! Thing is, Toni, or Chaka as we've all come to know and loathe, is a martial-arts genius. I hate going up against her and her funky Ki-sense on the mat because it's always a nineteen second (or less) bounding flurry of How the hell did she DO that??? Plus her kicks and punches that leave me gasping for air. I have never once laid a hand on that girl on the mat, and believe me, I've tried. I'm really going to have to start getting creative with her. The standard-issue Aikido moves flat-out do not work against that girl.
Most of the kids figure I'm a phenomenal blind-fighter, or have Daredevil's hearing because they try to be all silent and sneaky to take my white-eyed ass by surprise. So far no one's been able to do it, and no one's bothered to ask HOW I do it. I feel no need to enlighten them. As long as they keep underestimating me, I'll still have a tiny edge against them that I fully intend to exploit to the absolute max. Ok phenomenal blind-fighter's a bit of an exaggeration. I'm somewhere between high-crappy to mid-okay when it comes to martial arts. Fortunately most of my classmates are about as highly skilled as I am.
Thinking on things, I realized that I'd either wind up against Chaka or Jade this day, as I'd been doing a little too well against the random faces in the crowd lately. Ito always did like to shake things up a bit. Fortunately for me, Ito's not sadistic enough to throw me against Shroud again, or god forbid, Lancer or Punch.
"Lancer! Jericho!" Ito said sharply. "To the mat! Now!"
Oh shit, he WAS sadistic enough! Dear god in heaven I was doomed! Someone call my next of kin and send flowers to my tombstone! Greaaat, all the people who could provide me a good challenge ready and waiting for a go at the blind kid and what do I get? A goddamned Brick! Razorback I'm desperately wishing to exchange places with you RIGHT NOW!
Well wishing doesn't help, so I get up, tap my way with my cane, playing blind man to the hilt, tap Lancer's foot and feel around for the tape on the mat indicating my place. I toss the cane aside, and wait since Sensei wants me to use THAT particular toy not. He must've heard about my experiments on Stalwart, another buddy of mine. HEY! I know I only needed to test it once, but you know neat toys! Once is never enough! YOU get an exemplar-be-good-stick and try to resist the urge to use it whenever you possibly can without getting in trouble.
Give Hank credit, he did NOT look happy to be on the mat across from billy-blind-man. No matter how you cut it, only true fucktards don't get ill at the thought of picking on the handicapped. Ok, he knows I'm blind, and he doesn't like it. Gravy. I can work with this.
"Hey Hank, how's it going?" I grin at him.
"Could be better. This seem like a bit of a mis-match to you?" Hank, Hank, Hank. If only you knew what I had in store for you. Granted, I was never expecting to go against you, but I did pack a few brick tricks just in case. Let's see how you do with Jericho plus his brand-new bag of goodies. I slip my hands into the sleeves opposite each other and slip on a glovelike harness of leather and wire with a pair of metal contact points in the center.
I grin with a cockiness I definitely did NOT feel and prayed he would make a mistake I could capitalize on early and often. "You're right, Lancer. It kinda is. Tell you what, I'll do it with my eyes closed to even it up a bit."
Hank chuckled a bit. "I'll try not to hit you too hard. Just don't run into my fist by accident, ok?"
Fat chance of that happening. "Sure, so long as you remember I ain't much for fighting, we all good."
"You are aware that your face is absolutely covered in magic marker, right?"
"It is? How the hell did that happen?"
"Are you two ladies done jabbering at each other?" Sensei Tolman, I didn't see you there. And if you believe that I got a bridge to sell ya.
"Yes Tolman-Sensei," me and Hank speak the accustomed phrase simultaneously.
"Good. let's see if you boys pick up the game plan." She turned to Ito and he nodded, then she barked out "Hajime!"
Good 'ol Lancer, predictable as hell, went airborne as soon as Tolman spoke, so I put a kick through the spot he was standing a second ago, and began turning slowly to look like I was getting my bearings. I deliberately made it look like I was trying to extend my other four senses to figuring out where the hell he ghosted off to, fully realizing he was hanging not eight feet above me. Fliers are usually absolutely silent in flight unless they have wings, and are a bitch to pin down. Guess I'll have to be creative. Unfortunately my goody grab-bag is limited, and he's got a stacked deck. Oh well, if you can't beat 'em (and I can't unless Ito lets me bring a vulcan cannon to class) Confuse 'em.
Oh cute, he was inverted and descending slowly, hand reaching to catch me unawares. Closer... Closer... Come on Hank, I know I'm blind but get the fuck on with it. As he got close I flicked my wrists to signal the capacitors to charge on my odd little gloves.
When he reached just in range to grab the back of my Gi I snapped my hands straight up and held the two metal contact points on the Flashbang Express, and a loud BANG! with a brilliant strobing flash goes off right in the Brick's face. Foolio didn't see the sound filters I'm wearing under my dredlocks. He starts falling with a yelp, so I generously assist, grabbing HIS Gi and pulling down into a roll and smashing him face-first into the mat. YAY! I got the first shot in!
Getting cocky wasn't gonna help, so I dropped two jump-poppers and roll the hell away. Sure enough as he staggers to his feet, wiping his eyes the two small, half-dollar-sized devises jump to waist-level and burst out a shockwave in quick succession, throwing him first left, then right, into a padded wall. This is the way ya gotta play it with Bricks, get 'em off-balance and confused and KEEP them there.
Yes, I know, I said I'm not big on weapons, however I'm not above using nonlethal bits that might save my ass from bad things, such as the teenaged brick with a goddamned professional dancer's wiry build like Hank Declan.
I pitch my two Glop Grenades at him while he's still staggering, gluing him to a wall. That'll last only until he wises up and shakes off the flashbang. Yup, sure enough, his TK field is up and roaring as he yanks himself unceremoniously from the mound of goo against the wall. TK Bricks never cease to amaze me with the kinda force they toss around casually. That goo would have kept Diamondback under wraps for at least thirty seconds, with Hank it's like three. And that's only because he was still shaking off the flash and seeing stars.
Oh shit, here he comes to ruin my day! Ok no more mangled mighty mouse jokes, I promise.
As Hank flies in like a bulltet train I tap the metal bracers I have hidden up my sleeve together and duck as he slams into the low-power force-field and gets deflected a ways away. He also overloaded the field, and that takes about an hour to charge fully. I don't have another hour. Time to up the ante.
As he recovers I run my chubby black ass over to the red cage and use it as cover as he comes around the bend, all while pulling my NEXT trick out of my hidden pockets in my pants legs. This, like the grenade-toys is a johnny one-shot. A pair of thin metal rods, each on a capacitor slide into my waiting hands. I either needed to get him in the cage quick, or jump into it myself before he got TOO mad at me. His face was already screwing up in concentration.
Ever seen one of those rodeo clowns dodge a bull by ducking and diving around a barrel? Yeah? Well that was me, playing Rodeo clown and using the cage as a barrel. Tolman-Sensei and Ito-Sensei were both looking at me with a mix of amusement and shock, but didn't make a move to stop the match once I started playing dirty pool with my gadgets and devises. Speaking of Devises, Declan managed to get around the cage a bit quicker than me, after all he IS an exemplar and moves like greased goddamned lightning.
He caught me by the back of my Gi and hoisted me up like I was a child in his Daddy's arms. Let's not mince words here, if he'd been trying to hit and hurt me I'd be dead already at this point. Fortunately young Mr. Lancer (god I was gonna have fun with that codename) has a conscience about picking on those weaker than he is, and handicapped at that.
Flip the two prods down into a reverse grip, bring them together, and ZAPPPPP!!!!!
Hank dropped like a wet sack, dropping me too as the electricity arced and shocked the hell out of him. I dropped the now-useless prods and caught him, dragging him to the cage entrance before he could pull himself together... Oh shit.
I'd been suckered. Declan wasn't as out of it as I'd thought. What clued me in? Not much, except that I was being held in mid-air by the scruff twenty feet off the ground. Well shit, that wasn't cool, so I reverted to panicked human behavior, screaming, cussing, hitting him ineffectually and trying to kick him in the balls, six or seven times. Stupid TK field. Have I mentioned that this fight wasn't even close to being fair?
Well, predictably he flew me right to the cage, and I hit him with another flashbang right in the face, but he didn't let go. Dammit, so much for the cunning plan. He felt about for the cage door and surreptitiously dropped me inside, slamming the door closed.
The Kimba girls, of course, cheered. I got jeered and sat and grinned, counting away the seconds. I even started whistling to myself a bit as Declan managed to recover.
"You give up, boyo?" Tolman-Sensei walked up to the cage I was sitting in.
I held up a finger. "Wait for it."
Right on cue the shrieker-box I'd made just for TK bricks let loose an unholy shriek that had just about everyone on their knees, and feeling nauseous, except me. Sound filters. I love 'em, and after Halloween I'm never leaving home without 'em.
Poor Hank, he was still dazed when the shrieker, which was tuned to stick to a TK field like superglue fired off. Little known fact of force-fields. If you can talk and be heard through them, they would not defend against sonic attack. He staggered to his knees, just like everyone else, except Ito-sensei, Jade and Chaka. I swear, NOTHING slows that little Japanese guy down, ever.
"Now I acknowledge the match." I grinned.
Ito-Sensei frowned at me. "Jericho, your powers are supposed to be nullified in the cage."
"Hai Sensei, MY powers were nullified, however, I'm a devisor, and my devise was stuck to Lancer, and not in the cage with me." I smirked a bit.
Ito nodded approvingly as I helped Hank to his feet.
"You gonna be ok Hank?"
"Yeah, I'll be fine." He looked at me incredulously. "How the hell did you know I was above you?"
"I could smell you man, you need to take a shower." I left him with that comment and the jeers of his training squadmates, while he sniffed at his pits to see if he did, indeed, stink.
Oh well, score one for Lancer, but I do believe I proved that one should never underestimate the little guy. I know damned well that guys like Lancer are the ones who figure out what they did wrong, and won't get suckered the same way twice, and judging from the thoughtful expressions on my senseis' faces, I was gonna be playing with the clusterfuck of horror known as Team Kimba on the mat a lot more than I have in the past. Oh shit, maybe I should have just let Hank dump me in the cage from the get-go. Those kids just don't play FAIR.
So there it is, a typical day at Whateley academy. I figure any day at this school where you don't get folded, spindled and mutilated is a good day. I could go on and on, droning about my job as a medical assistant to Doctor Tenant after school's out, or my guitar session with Razorback after he's done doing his groundskeeping job but really. The meat and potatoes at Whateley Academy happens during classes normally. Yes, there's some interesting stuff that goes on. Remind me to tell you about some of the odd things that happens when the lights go out. Some days I miss curfew because I'm puttering around in the Devisor lab, trying to fix this or build that, and things can get really interesting I tell you what.
But for now, my story's told. It's Diamondback's turn to give her take on the school. After her, Razor will regale you with his stories of mischief and mayhem of the Ultraviolents who really aren't. He'll probably try to bitch about the fact that he'll never get laid. I dunno, I've seen that motherfucker's girlfriend and she's smokin'. Who is she? Well tell ya what, keep paying attention to what you see around here and the stories you may learn about. I'm sure you'll figure it out.
Welcome to Whateley Academy. Hope you like stories, because we got a few doozies to tell sooner or later. I do so love it when panic and mayhem come together.
Yeah yeah, I'm a Freak. Sue me.
Late that night, in the Devisor Lab...
Hands rattled the lock Jericho had kept on his locker. After a moment, the hands simply took the expedient route of shearing the lock off the whole thing, before the figure slipped inside. After a moment of searching he found what he was looking for, the design schematics for the Duplex wave generator Jericho had built for his armor, kindly logged to a CD that was filed neatly amongst all the other odds and ends of records the devisors were required to keep for the Lab so the teachers could track their progress. After finding the prize the figure slipped out of the lab, relocking the heavy doors on the way out.
Yes, this overlapping TK Brick energy field the boy had developed would be perfect for another project, one no one needed know about
(Outcast Corner, Take Two)
By Joe Gunnarson
Now I will tell you what I've done for you
Fifty-thousand tears I've cried
Screaming, deceiving, and bleeding for you
And you still won't hear me
Don't want your hand this time, I'll save myself
Maybe I'll wake up for once
Not tormented...Daily defeated by you
Just when I thought I'd reached the bottom -Evanescence 'Going Under'
Monday, November 6th, Whitman Cottage...
The dream always starts the same, me running skyclad through a beautiful garden This place is heavenly, a vision of perfection drawn from my own mind and served to me on a platter. Everything safe, everything serene, save one tree. I knew it's forbidden to touch it, but I had my bouts of curiosity and would slide up under it's shady branches and look up at the bright yellow fruits hanging from the branches amidst the leaves. The snake was there, as always, slithering like a terrifying nightmare of scales and fangs, too long to be real, and as wide as my hips. Even though I know what will happen I can't stop it. Screw what everyone tells you about lucid dreams and being in control. You can realize you're dreaming and still have no say about the nightmares your subconscious mind flings at you when it really wants to.
The snake slithered low on the branches and began speaking, whispering honeyed words of secrets and defiance. After all, who would know if I only took a small taste? As always the fruit comes away easily, too easily, as if breathing a breathy sigh of freedom. I put the soft flesh of the fruit to my mouth and took a bite. The taste was so sweet I couldn't stop until I had devoured the whole thing. Tree of knowledge, hah. Only thing I learned in this particular dream was just how screwed I could get.
The snake struck, sinking it's fangs into my shoulder and slipping back into the branches, chuckling softly at my stupidity. I fell to the ground and tried to run, then stumble, and finally crawl away. I could feel my body shutting down as I lost all strength in my limbs. I lay there, on my belly for who knows how long when I felt something warm and soft sliding around my legs, drawing me in. I could feel the fangs inside the mouth, drawing me into the snake's gullet. All I could do was panic and whimper as the thing enveloped my feet, my knees, then my hips, and seemed to pause. Then the creeping sensation began anew, and I wanted to scream. You'd think I'd have woken up by this point, but no. I never get that particular easy out.
When I was able to move I stood, only to find myself balanced on a trunk of a powerful serpent, scales covering my body and fangs pressing into my gums. God stands before me in the image of a Baptist preacher with a bald spot and eyes going white with glaucoma. Every cell in my body screamed in denial every time that thing spoke to me.
"As the serpent in the Garden, so shall ye be cast out, and be unclean. Leave this place, you are no longer welcome here."
I can't really say anything, don't want to say anything. I also don't want to slither out into the crowd gathered beyond the gates, all bedecked in cowboy hats and shit-kicker boots, carrying shotguns. One of the boys was even kind enough to make me a necktie, the kind that has six very distinctive loops and is made out of rope. Somewhere in the background the Devil's laughter echoed out at a slow, steady rhythm.
"Goddammit Diamondback, shut your fucking alarm clock off!" The illusion shattered and I open my eyes to realize the devil's laughter actually belongs to the beeping of the most obnoxious alarm clock known to man, the voice to a girl I had come to know and loathe. Trisha never shuts up once she gets started. "Just because you have to run your scaly ass under the fucking shower for an hour and a half doesn't mean you have to wake me up every morning!"
"Fuck off Trisha, not all of us can be deer to the hart like you." My voice is snarly, and I'd long since passed my tolerance level with this bitch, letting my other side show up.
Trisha is another animalistic GSD case like me, only in her case covered in downy, tan fur, with a short tail and deer-like legs. Other than the fact that she didn't have any skin showing she could have passed for human. Most girls at Whitman are paired off one more or less normal-looking girl to each freak-out like me. Lucky me, instead of a girl who could pass for normal on a bad day I got stuck with Bambi's bitchy baby sister.
"Least I don't look like a goddamned snake-freak."
"Shut up and go back to sleep."
"Don't tell me to shut up you hopeless.."
I hissed at her, showing off those lovely fangs of mine that I hate so much. She jolted back against the wall on the far side of her bed as I uncoiled from mine. I got good and tangled up the night before, and spent a good two minutes in a bleary haze untangling myself, and letting my tail slide off the matress and onto the floor. As I wrapped a towel around myself and grabbed my various soaps and sundries I looked at Trisha, who was huddled in a ball, whimpering. I felt guilty, but that girl had made my life pure hell for the last couple months and I was finally sick of it. People who look like venison factories should not mouth off to obvious carnivore types. It's not a bright idea, and she's lucky I don't have Razorback's temper, Bloodwolf's love for violence, or Phobos and Deimos' penchant for terroristic behavior.
Ok let me go back a bit. Trisha is scared of snakes, and I mean deathly scared. Unfortunately she didn't bother to tell anyone, and Ms. Savage has this nasty habit of wanting students with problems to bring said problems to her themselves. I can understand the logic, but in this case I wish she'd make an exception when I ask her to move that little nightmare away from me. Or me away from her. Either way, I don't care. So she's afraid of snakes, and she has begun to deal with that fear by channeling it into hating me and making my life miserable. I tried to help her, tried to be understanding, tried to not feel the creeping horror pouring off her in waves, but by the end of our third week she'd already taken to doing her level best to make sure I felt less than human. It worked more often than I care to admit.
I have no idea why or how she has convinced Ms. Savage that she's fine when she's blatantly hostile and terrified of me. Maybe she's convinced out house mom that she's trying to get over her fear. Fine, but she can do that elsewhere. Just being around her makes me fucking miserable. But I hadn't needed to slam it into her face, just yet. Unfortunately not all of me agreed on that point, and it's kinda hard to argue with yourself.
You didn't need to do that, I whispered silently in my mind.
No, but it stopped the argument, and might give us some peace and quiet for a little while, Ryan's voice whispered back.
Remind me not to talk to you before we've had Jericho force coffee down us in the morning.
I agree, I'm feeling a bit pissy. I think we're going to have another shedding party soon. The boy's voice in the back of my mind receded as I felt Ryan go back to watching and listening. No matter wether we disagreed on the methods, we invariably came to the same conclusions, just mostly from weird angles from one another. I'd known that sooner or later it would come down to putting the fear into Trish, I just hadn't been eager to do it. Never mind my conscience was riding me something fierce. No, Ryan is not my conscience.
At five in the morning no one but me is up and awake. Ok, strike the awake part and replace with mobile. I'm really not capable of much beyond slithering when I first wake up, or apparently delivering wordless death-threats. The mirror showed a nightmare of hair and scales, so I started slithering to the bathroom with all my gear to try and make my appearance somewhat less freaky. This takes a lot of work.
I get up and five in the morning to shower and clean up because I and the other Whitman girls on my floor have a routine. I go to the bathroom bright and early, most of the others wait until Phobos or Deimos give the all-clear. It's not a pleasent thing, seeing how most kids, wether they admit it or not, are either creeped out or terrified by nineteen-foot-long anacondas, even if said anaconda has a human torso, arms and head instead of the traditional reptile version. So I stand about five foot eight off the ground when I'm upright, then I have a bit over thirteen feet of tail trailing behind. I don't have legs anymore and I'm starting to forget what they feel like, honestly. Not like slithering and having too much body has gotten normal-feeling though, it's still creepy weird when I actually think about it.
I got into the big shower and started scrubbing. This process is involved, and it takes a while to get my whole body cleaned up, but when I do the brilliant greens of my scales shine through, as well as the glossy black diamond patterns that give me my codename. I don't have a single patch of human skin left on my body. I'm completely covered in scales, of which the belly scales of a snakes, or scutes as the biology teacher said, began right below my breasts. Oh yeah, being half snake's a creep-out and a half.
Once I finally got done I begin working on my waist-length, thick mop of reddish-brown hair. This is the only part of my body that looks human, still, so I take care of it. Shampoo, conditioner, good god I still don't know how the other girls do it with long hair. It takes forever to clean, then dry. I do it, because I like long hair. I just don't like cleaning long hair, but I do it every day or so.
Then again, maybe I'd have noticed the loose patches of scales and skin that had gone ghost-white on my back and the underside of my breasts if I hadn't been so focused on getting my mop clean. It's not like shedding hadn't happened before, and I became a screaming bitch when it did. You think I'd have learned to watch for it better by now.
When I finished I spent the requisite half-hour blow-drying and brushing out the long mane and look at the mirror. My face has green scales creeping in from my hairline, that fade into an almost human color. My eyes are still Ice-blue like they were before, when I thought I was just another normal kid in texas, but they have reptilian slits instead of normal pupils. As always, morbid fascination makes me open my mouth and inspect the fangs. They're long enough to press into pockets in my lower jaw, and hollow, with channels for some pretty nasty neurotoxic venom, which I can pump straight into my mouth and spit a fair distance. My tongue is forked and smooth, again like a snake, but it's still pink. Whenever I stick it out and bring it back in I can smell everything, so I wind up cloising my mouth in rapid order. Bathrooms are NOT the place to get a bloodhound's scenting power, no matter HOW clean you think they are. It's enough to gag a maggot.
On my way back to my room I nodded to Deimos, a friend of mine who was waiting to sound the all clear. The panicky types didn't want to be around me, I didn't want to feel the creeping horror and disgust rolling off them in waves. Being an empathic reciever is NOT fun sometimes, and I only pick up strong emotions, so it's like wading in a pool of whatever someone is feeling, and it creeps into my moods as well. Physical contact is a whole nother ballgame, as if I'm touching your skin I can feel every emotion running through your skull. I really can't say it's not useful, but some days I could do without it.
Trisha's gone when I arrive, and for that I'm grateful. While I get ready for breakfast and class I poke around and check all the security measures Jericho helped me install. For the last couple days some smartass had been creeping into the dorms and stealing panties. Whitman had already been hit, and I think I was the only girl on campus besides Sylene who didn't have a couple pairs taken. Kinda hard to wear the things without legs.
My clothing consists of a bunch of skirts and tops, as well as my Whateley uniforms. I really can't afford much, especially since my monetary income consists of my job as a lab assistant in the Science department. Most of that goes to defray the cost of my tuition. Beyond that I'm pretty much on my own. One black halter top and black skirt later and I'm out the door with all my books and things for the day. I spend as little time as possible in my room, makes Trisha's presence that much easier to stomach, and gives me time to calm down after our normal runs of screaming matches. I gave her one of the antivenom syringes I carry around, just in case she does ever piss me off enough to bite her. I hate her guts, but I'm not willing to risk a loss of self-control.
Hopefully no one gets curious enough to inject one of the damned things. Unlike most antivenoms, unless my undiluted venom is in your system, wether I bite you or spit it in your eyes, it will kill you. We found this out when one of the stoner girls nicked it thinking it was a heroin needle primed and ready to go. Don't ask me why she thought that, but she did. I got called into the medical labs and actually had to use my venom to counteract the shit that was tearing her nervous system to ribbons slowly. She was on the brink, so I wound up having to bite her arm. Not a pleasent experience for either of us. Washing the taste of human blood out of your mouth is just not fun and, contrary to Bloodwolf, it does NOT taste happy and it takes hours to get rid of it.
Ahh, the sweet sweet November cold. Lucky for me I'm warm-blooded, unlike Razorback, and part of my exemplar package came with a resistance to temperature extremes. It'll take a while for me to cool off enough to really notice, but when I do it is a rough time getting warmed back up again, so no, I'm not immune to temperature extremes, just resistant. Fire is not something I like to play with any more than normal humans.
First thing I notice when I get outside is this pale blue glow under the snow. I really wasn't sure what the hell it was, but I'd been noticing them all over campus sporadically. It was driving me nuts trying to figure out what I was seeing. I can't just leave well enough alone, nooooooo. I always have to poke until I understand it. This is not always the brightest thing in the world. My friend Cait swears I'm going to get caught in a faerie ring or something like that one of these days because I can't just leave things alone.
So this glowy shit under the snow has had my curiosity for a while. I swept the snow away from the spot where it was with my tail, clearing a four-foot circle of indistinct blue shit on the ground. I got low and poked at it a bit, but didn't really affect it much. Extending my senses like they showed me in beginner's magery, AKA Magic Theory for Newbies, got a faint echo of some kind of warding magic, but it was indistinct, like an echo in the dark. I always got the impression that the glow had a shape, or at least had one at some point in the past. I tried rubbing away some dirt and ice, but nothing became clearer. So I scratched at it and the whole damned circle winked out of existence. For all I knew I just blew the seventh seal of the fucking apocalypse. Way to go me. I gave up and started slithering towards the cafeteria. I needed food and my stomach, which extends through about four feet of tail, began growling.
Most of the other students coming and going to the Crystal Hall, or returning from the night classes give me a wide berth. It's the same deal as with Trisha on a much smaller scale. You'd think that mutants who could plow through entire mobs of normal people without getting winded wouldn't be afraid of a goddamned snake, even if it is as big as I am, but noooooo. Fortunately I don't get physically harassed very often, and the verbal harassment is sporadic. Mostly I'm just a pariah, save for a small handful of people who actually like me.
Speaking of liking me, Phobos and Deimos caught up to me and walked beside me, giving me just enough room to slither between them. The two are identical twins, save Phobos has flame-red hair as long as mine, and Deimos' hair is jet black. Both of them have three eyes, all a pale green color, and four arms, one pair right below the normal two. They had a pair of three-foot long reptilian tails each, and their legs were digitigraded, with dainty cloven hooves at the ends instead of feet. No matter where they go a creeping feeling of unease follows them. When they start getting mad that feeling drives straight through to terror, as their aura kicks in hard. It takes a fairly strong will to keep from running scared when they get going. Both of the two are beautiful, if not a little disturbing and mildly creepy to look at. Jericho says the same about me, and it's his way of complimenting me, but I don't see it.
Me and the Fury twins walked quietly to the Crystal hall. We never really said much to one another, but all three of us were empathic, so none of us needed to say much. Long and short of it was we felt safe around one another. No violent urges from me, and no fear from them. Add to that we have some level of respect for each others' abilities and personalities and you don't really need much else. Oh yeah, they're called the Fury twins because they do this crazy conjoinment thing into a monster straight from a demon's nightmare, all arms and heads and pure-pissed-off-reality-shredding horror. They're called Fury collectively when they do the merging thing. There is nothing pretty about that monster, just terror and pain. Only a few people can square off against Phobos and Deimos much less Fury.
Me and Razorback are two of them.
When we get into the Crystal Hall, we wait in line to get our food, let the Alphas cut in line and I load up my requisite trays of meat and begin hauling them over to Outcast Corner, the name of my training squad, and what we call our little slice of space that no one wants to intrude on. Phobos and Deimos invariably go to their own places to eat, as they are a bit... messy when eating. And by messy, I mean I've seen coyotes ripping apart a carcass with less gusto.
Word to the wise with those two. Never, ever start a fight with them in the area. They will beg, they will plead, they will try to defuse the situation. They are desperately terrified of what happens when people make the violence around them. As empath recievers if people around them start getting mad, they get mad, if people around them get violent, they feel violent. After a point it overwhelms them and you have two snarling exemplar 4's whipping and bouncing around tearing the everliving shit out of anything that comes within reach. After a point they will invariably merge into Fury, and then the fun really begins. Me, Jericho and Razorback had to shut down one of their rages last week, after getting the wounded bystanders the hell away. It wasn't fun as Jericho had to drop Razor as well to keep him from killing everyone in the area.
Upshot? Razorback got downgraded as a threat on the Ultraviolent list, and doesn't have to carry an armband and tracker bug. Downshot? Both Phobos and Deimos were still feeling really guilty. Unlike Razorback, both of them could remember what happens after they flip out and go crazy. Never mind several students had to be rushed to the infirmary because Bannockburn and Hela just HAD to start a fight and suck the twins into it. The two idiots weren't injured, lucky for them, but several bystanders were, especially since Hela can't freaking aim her magic properly.
Per usual, Razor and Jericho are both there already, tearing apart their trays in typical guy fashion. Razor's like me, a complete carnivore, and he eats as much as I do. That's impressive since I have to eat about thirty pounds of meat each day to sustain my metabolism. If I were cold-blooded, that same amount would keep me going for a few weeks. HIS metabolism is just insane. I figure if he were warm-blooded his blood would be classified by octane, rather than by plasma type.
As I sit down and coil my tail around the chair I notice that they're both looking haggard and worn out, like they haven't gotten enough sleep. Wonderful, it was going to be one of those days...
It doesn't help that I felt like a complete bitch by exploiting Trisha's fears like that. Yes, unlike my two compatriots, I have a conscience. Hell even my other side, Ryan, feels guilty about that. I just sat there wishing my two best friends would talk to me rather than be half-zonked from playing their guitars until oh-dark-stupid in the morning, after we had a simulator run against the Masterminds last night. Don't ask me why but our team seems to get the heavy simulator load. We've been up on the schedule more times than anyone else. We have another one scheduled for tonight, against the Wild Pack. I am NOT looking forward to tussling with Stormwolf.
"WAKE UP YOU TWO!" I finally yelled at them, and both Jericho and Razorback jerked as if slapped.
"Dammit Sandra, we were up all..." Jericho began. I, of course was having none of it, and fully intended to blame my hormones for what was me just being sadistic.
"I know, Jericho, you guys had a long night. I can't imagine how hard it is playing guitar till THREE IN THE FUCKING MORNING!" I started so sweetly, but yeah, raise a couple decibels and every guy in three tables cringes.
Razorback started signing and I held my finger up to stop him. "Now boys, we all have our oddball weekend classes today, and then we have another simulator run, this time against the Wild Pack." Razor and Jericho's jaws dropped. They were getting just as sick of the rapid-fire sim drills as I was. "So, we need to be awake tonight, because I don't wanna be the one that gets caught by Stormwolf without backup!"
Both of them dropped their heads sullenly, and something rather similar to "yes mother." slipped from Jericho's mouth. We all were beginning to hate the sims. We won against most opponents, but we lost to the heavy-handed players, like the Grunts, the Wild Pack and the so-called New Olympians more often than not. We did, however, have a rep for driving our enemies insane trying to pin us down.
"So Sandra, why are you in such a good mood this morning?" Jericho growled out between bites. "Normally us being fragged wouldn't bug you."
I looked at him, he was right, I was taking this far much more seriously than I should, and I was about due for my monthly AND I was already overdue to start shedding, according to the docs. Yes friends, screw the double-whammy of misery, I had the triple-play. Add in Trisha and I was in a really foul mood that morning.
"Roommate problems," I said as evenly as I could, but sure enough the old Texas twang was showing in my voice. She must've pissed me off more than I thought.
Jericho shook his head, "Why don't you talk to Ms. Savage about her? Jesus Diamond, this is getting bad. You after dealing with Trisha's worse than you with PMS jonesing to bite someone."
"I've tried! I've begged, I've pleaded, I've explained until I was blue in the fucking face! The only way I'm getting free of her is if I somehow develop a sudden need to be housed in Hawthorne, or learn to shift to a more human look and get moved to Dickinson or Poe or something!" I was exasperated, yeah anyone listening could tell by the southern-girl accent coming out like a tide, but this had been going on since school started.
-Why would you want to live in Poe? All the head-cases live there. You wanna live with Hippolyta, or the Kimba freakazoids?- Razor, always putting the bright spin on things, per usual.
"If it's for head-cases why isn't Joe in there," I gave Jericho a pointed look as I invoked his real name, "and you're the one with the poster of the pointy-eared redhead from the kimbas, you great crazy iguana! Don't be calling people freaks who yer fantasizing about dating."
"She's got you there, Razor." Jericho put in mildly. I don't know why, but him agreeing with me was more infuriating than anything else.
It dawned on me right then when I felt a splitting sensation on my back, and the joyous feling of raw, unhardened scales rubbing against linen that my mood was due to the fact that I was about to start shedding after all. I stood up, looked at them, and took a deep breath.
"Guys I'm shedding, just started. I'm gonna go see the docs and hide for a couple days." I didn't point out that I was suddenly mad enough to spit on the spot, or on them. They hadn't done anything to earn my anger, and they certainly didn't deserve to have to put up with me in pain being a bitch.
When they nodded solemnly I slithered out of the Crystal Hall, and towards the Infirmary. I actually had to spit a mouthful of my somewhat famed neurotoxin into the grass when my jaw clenched. I'd gotten the lovely feeling of skin tearing across my breasts, and wanted to scream. Instead I clenched my jaws and flooded my mouth with poison. Mental note: Do not kiss anyone for the next three hours. Not like I'm in any danger of THAT.
Friday, November 10th, Outside of Crystal Hall...
Four days, one period and a supersized bottle of midol later, I came out of my room willingly. Please don't make me describe in detail what it feels like to shed your entire skin. It's gross, it's messy and it hurts like hell, especially when combined with PMS like this episode was. I left the old skin in Trisha's bed by accident and went to the bathroom. It was just the tail part which had come off like an organic body stocking. Apparently she was not amused. Ok so it wasn't an accident, she'd been threatening to skin me on and off, so I thought I'd just give it to her. Ms. Savage wasn't amused either.
I'd spent the entire time huddled in my bed, trying not to move, breathe or think too much for fear of the splitting sensation and the feel of raw, unhardened scales rubbing on everything. I managed to avoid killing Trisha because she caught sight of me peeling away a good chunk of skin on my arm and whimpering. I'd almost swear I felt a twinge of sympathy coming off her, but I chalk it up to hallucinating. In any case she left me alone and didn't talk to me or bitch at me the whole time.
Good old Whateley. I was actually in a good mood since the new scales were just hard enough not to be bloody raw to the touch, and I now had a coloration akin to a neon sign that would last for another week before I settled back to my normal coloration. Upshot? I looked fresh as a daisy. Downshot? That was the two days of misery that I was over with at this point. Not much of a downshot once you sneak past that bit of stupidity.
So yeah, the Crystal Hall. I'll admit it's impressive, one of the Senior class legacies of another year at Whateley Academy. Every class likes to make it's mark, and tradition demands that each class build something lasting for the school. The Crystal Hall is one such Legacy, as is Arena 99, and the tunnels running to the three freak dorms.
Oh don't get pissy about me calling them the Freak Dorms, I live there too. It's not like most of us Whitman girls are gonna win the goddamned Miss America pageant any time soon. Hell, look at me, I'll be lucky if I can go out in public without small children screaming and running away from the monster. Never mind the adult reactions, which seem to be a more mature version of the kiddie emotional response.
Oh, the brawl with the Wild Pack in the simulators went about as expected, but without me. With the mood I was in the docs doped me up on antidepressants and painkillers and excused me from the Simulator exercise. Probably for the best, since I came within an asshair of biting or constricting a few people over those four days. That would not be happy, proving my folks right after all.
Oh yeah, I never told you about my folks. Painful subject so I'll try to keep most of the hatred from creeping into my voice. My folks are a pair of whitebread hicks from Kilgore, Texas who love the President, no matter how much a dingbat the president at the time may be, and attend Humans First! chapter meetings. Yeah, I was born to the H1 movement, lucky me.
My twin brother, Matthew, and I were identical twins until I got sick after one of Pastor Ferris' Hellfire and Damnation sermons about mutants. It was his favorite one, about how mutants are evil akin to the snake in the Garden of Eden. He's also a woman-hating Cheauvanist, so Eve got pretty well thrashed as evil rather than merely naive. Needless to say I got to hear this sermon a lot, to the point where I can recite it in my sleep. Jericho and his family heard it twice before they ceased going to church. Jericho going blind and developing weird science powers probably added to this.
Me and Matt were always tight, and did all the weird twin things you hear about on TV and in books, finishing each others' sentences, disguising ourselves as each other, the whole nine yards. Yes I am well aware of the fact that Twins cannot be identical when one is male and one is female. Weren't you listening to Jericho's story earlier? Why do you think Me, Jericho and Razor got tapped to break you in, our stunning good looks and record for golden-boy behavior? No, we got tapped because like you we're of the sexually dysfunctional crew just like you all are. Well, I'm pretty sure Jericho's dysfunctional after seeing his halloween costume. A friend of ours suggested it to Carson a while back so we could get ourselves some support and not be all alone. She'd be here, but she's riding herd on a thornie who's in the same boat and has problems only she and a few others can deal with easily.
So back to me and Matt. The two of us were a pair of lanky boys with reddish-brown hair and a love for pranks, moreso than Jericho there. Yeah, I got a bit subdued when I changed. Matt saw me first, saw my skin crawling and warping, saw my eyes go slitted. He screamed. I don't blame him, but I'll never forget the look of abject terror in his eyes when he saw what was happening to me. Mom and Dad heard him and came roaring up the stairs like God on a bad day. They screamed too.
I wound up running like I was a death row escapee that day. Mom, Dad and the Pastor rounded up a posse to find the demon masquerading as their son. It wasn't easy getting away, considering that three of the local deputies were in said posse. I wound up finding out just how flexible I was, and how strong I was becoming in rapid order. I'm not proud of it, but I left three grown men in the hospital, one is still in a coma.
Jericho found me running in terror from a group, and about crapped his drawers when I got caught by a guy and proceeded to throw him into the trailer of a passing Semi truck, through the walls. I'm still not sure what happened to him. Needless to say I bolted to Jericho's with him while he pelted me with questions, the answer to which was always "I don't know!" It took his parents about thirty seconds of watching my body shift to decide that letting the Churchies find me was about the same as signing my Death Warrant.
I spent a month in the basement, eating, sleeping and hiding. I changed from normal human boy to Snakewoman inside a month and a half, and the Turners were nice, but my appetite went from normal boy, which is bad, to about fifteen times my daily food intake almost overnight. They couldn't afford to feed me, especially after my body went fully carnivore. I tell you to this day green food makes me ill if I hold it too close to my face. I found out what happens when I actually DO eat it the hard way.
I found out from Jericho that Matthew was doing well, and feeling guilty as hell about outing me to the 'rents. Me and him went Wiccan three years before and never looked back. He thought I was going to die and it was all his fault. The Turners have promised to keep an eye out for him for me. They're also keeping an eye on Zach, Jericho's baby bro. Word on the street is when one kid goes mutant in the family it's a good bet you need to keep a close eye on the others. There is no doubt in my mind that Matthew will be a mutant. I can only pray he doesn't wind up like me.
Where was I before I got sidetracked? Oh yes, getting food, take one bilion and three. I slithered into the Crystal Hall late, as I'd stayed to do some extra credit in Mrs. Chulkris' class. Come to think of it, I'm usually the last one to Outcast Corner at any given time. Today it's probably just as well. One thing I noticed as I slithered into the Hall, Chief Delarose was there, with a girl with spiky blue hair that defied gravity, looking at the screens for a moment. I looked at the big announcement screens right on cue as they all clicked on at once, and Mrs. Carson's face appeared on the whole deal. Everyone got really quiet all at once.
"“Your attention please! Due to a recent altercation a student was nearly killed on Wednesday. Thanks to the quick intervention of some talented students this situation ended on a better note than we’d normally expect and the student in question has recovered from their injuries. It was ONLY the fast actions of the students there that saved the injured students life. Our investigations have shown it was due to a misunderstanding and a regrettable accident. In order to prevent any further accidents and the likely fatalities and serious injuries that would follow we are activating Section 33 of the Whateley Charter and declaring that ANY student or member of the Faculty attacking or engaging the student known as Tennyo in any but a properly supervised combat event or in provable self defense will be expelled and or prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law permissible. This applies to everyone!”
A picture of Tennyo appeared on the screens. After a few moments Mrs. Carson’s face reappeared.
“This action is not taken lightly. I have only done so after careful consultation with the other teachers and Supervisors. This is a serious situation and you will be expected to abide by this ruling. I repeat. If you attack or threaten this student you can and will be expelled from this school along with anyone else associated with the conflict. That means anyone encouraging someone who is ignorant or suggestible enough to be encouraged to do so. We are serious. This is no joke. Now go back to your dinner and good luck with your classes.”
I stopped and stared at the spiky haired girl and just wondered what could make her so dangerous that an announcement like that would come down from on high. Sure, she looked odd, and attractive, but nothing gave away some big super danger vibe. I could feel her creeping unease at being the sudden center of attention, but none of the markers that would pin an Ultraviolent personality on her. Whatever it was, I decided pushing and investigating might not be the brightest maneuver, so I followed her discretely until she sat down with her friends.
Ah yes, the Kimbas. A pack of hot girls and one cute guy who looked vastly out of place at the table. Color me petty, but I think they got off easy and can't help but feel a stab of jealousy whenever I see them. At least they could fit in with normal people for the most part. Their appearances wouldn't set small children off, screaming. Ah well, want in one hand, shit in the other, which one fills up first? I'm not going to waste time and effort hating people for getting genetically lucky. Never mind that's a level of petty that I'm really not capable of reaching. Jealousy, yes. Hatred, no.
I slithered over with my trays of meatstuff to the Outcast table to find Jericho and Razor in full gear, chortling and speculating on why Tennyo was on the no-fight list. I swear, once those two get going, there's no slowing them down.
"So I figure it's the fact that the docs are finally on to her secret diet of beans and Habenero peppers. One punch and she explodes, nuking and gassing the school." Of course, Jericho WOULD come up with that one, disgusting bastard that he is.
Razorback gave that oddball barking laugh of his and commenced the sign language. The remains of yet another of his vodors was sitting crushed into unrecognizable bits next to his tray.
"Break another one Razor?" I asked mildly as I coiled my lower body around the bottom of my seat so random passers-by and not so random assholes wouldn't stomp my tailtip.
-I hate those goddamned things. I broke it and suddenly I felt so much better.- Trust Razorback to come up with a post-destruction justification for his actions.
"We were just discussing the possible reasons for the Kimba kid getting on the short list today." Jericho smirked around a mouthful of food. I could feel the waves of self-satisfaction rolling off him like a bad tide.
"Out with it Jericho," I smirked, "you can fool Razor but you can't fool me. I can feel it, you're too smug. You know why."
Jericho snorted. "No I don't. All I know is Hippolyta was run into the Infirmary like she was gonna die Wednesday night. That redhead over at the Kimba table and Chaka right next to her did some woodgy mystic shit that pulled her ass out of the 'gonna die horribly and in great pain' closet. I got to help stabilize her, lucky me." He rubbed his left ribs lightly.
"You hurt?"
"Just a couple cracked ribs. I managed to twist outta the way at the last second. Tennyo did her a bad one there, and from what I got out of the grapevine, the only believable explanation's been accidental. I saw Tennyo's face when they hustled her off to Hawthorne. She looked like she killed someone and felt guilty." Jericho pulled his hand away from his ribs. "I dunno what the hell happened but it wasn't pretty."
-You said that the ribs got injured at work, not picking one with Hippo.- Razorback's signing was sharp and jerky, a sure sign he wasn't happy.
"Razor I work in medical on my off-time. Besides, she didn't do it on purpose. Shit happens around here."
"So why you two making cracks about Tennyo?" I was actually curious.
-Bored.-
"Keeps my mind off the ribs, and besides, what am I supposed to do, share dark speculation that Tennyo's homicidal? I don't buy it. Dangerous, maybe, but not homicidal."
I didn't question him more about it. When Jericho makes these judgement calls about people I seldom argue. He was usually right, and when he's not smarting off at God and all creation he's actually pretty insightful.
I WAS, however, irate that he hadn't told me about the ribs. I'm a novice mage, but I can heal cracked ribs in a couple of hours of channeling, instead of him living with the pain for a few weeks. The longer I'm a girl, the less I understand the boys. But this time he was gonna sit his ass down and let me fix him. I fully intended to make him suffer since he'd sat on the damned injury for two days, however.
I don't know why I came to Thuban's little meeting room he was setting up for his Faction Three group that he was pushing that night. I'd already had enough problems with the house mythologicals. The kids who looked like they were fantasy art rejects, and called themselves The Freakshow like it was just a big gag. I can't stand being around the lot of them for long. One at a time, yeah, but not all at once.
After classes were over and done with I slithered into the room quietly as you please and looked at the motley group gathered within. I recognized Jana and Sted on sight from Whitman, Skinner from Twain, Montana, and a few others. Thuban was there already, organizing the movie night, of course, and he positively reeked of satisfaction and anticipation. Of what I have no idea, nor am I sure I wanna find out. Both Razor and Jericho are leery of him for good reason, or so they say.
"Ah, Diamondback, ssso happy you could join us." Thuban was a smooth talker, even with a simple sentence like that. His entire body was covered in golden scales with eyes that were somewhere between mine and Razorback's on the reptilian scale. The oriental robe reminded me of nothing more than a Jedi's robes from Star Wars. In case you are wondering, yes, I think Jar-Jar needed to die, badly.
"Hello Thuban." I was more than willing to be polite to him while I tried to filter out the low undercurrent of fear from a few of the others in the room. My snakelike appearance does not go over well with most people, as I've mentioned. Most people really have to work through their gut fear of snakes.
Thuban walked over to me and smiled in that conniving way I've come to recognize over time. "So can we expect to see your friends tonight?"
I shook my head. "I'm here alone, Thuban. Jericho's working in the infirmary tonight and Razorback's just not really interested." There was a sigh of relief from a few of the Twain kids, including Montana. I like Razorback, I really do. He's a great guy. Most of the other students do not share my opinion of him. Then again most of them think I'm crazy for talking to Phobos and Deimos too.
Thuban's carefully neutral expression was undone by the sharp flash of disappointment and irritation. He WANTED Jericho and Razor here for some reason. Most folks would rather see them leave.
"No matter. Perhaps when they have time they'll come around." All I could do was nod to dragon-man and join the others.
I shuddered, and a feeling of creeping unease flowed over me like a cold wave. This part of the tunnels always gave me the willies before, but this time it was almost tangible, like a creeping feeling that something was shifting below, waiting for the right time to kill and eat you. Never mind I catch sight of some sickening green glowing flickers of light and a serious DO NOT TOUCH ME vibe in areas here and I really do not like the location Thuban picked. As they say in real estate, location, location, location. Ah well, any port in a storm. I decided after a few minutes standing silently that I should probably go and at least make an effort to pretend I was feeling social.
I wandered about for a bit, said hi to Jana and Sted, both of whom were wearing their Centaur forms at the time. I swear those two were thick as thieves some days. Jana was dark haired and Sted was blonde. Neither would be competing for the Whateley top 10 beauty queens, but then again, neither would I.
The TV in the corner was playing a video, old one at that. Some B-Grade horror movie with a monster, Yawn. Unfortunately that about sums up my first impression of Faction Three.
A couple of the boys I recognize looked at me with that odd mix of hope and fear that you get when they're debating asking someone out. I'm still not sure how to take that. Skinner didn't even bother with hopeful, and his emotions hit my shields like a battering ram. Skinner was miserable, with a capital M. His skin had gone completely transparent, leaving muscles and guts visually exposed for the world to see. Not pleasent by any stretch, and I just can't describe the intensity of how he felt. As soon as I felt his emotions hit mine, my mood took a turn for the worse.
My usual disquiet came to the forefront of my mind, and I suddenly realized that besides Skinner I was the top runner for the most creepy mutation in the house. I suddenly wanted to run and hide, and not come out until my skin became normal, my legs came back. If there had been a mirror in the room it would have been destroyed the second I laid eyes on it. As it stood, the eyes of the Faction Three kids seemed to reflect their emotions as it all crashed down on me.
Fear, Self-Loathing, Boredom, Disgust, anger, contempt all roared through my mind, drowning me, except for one, peace. I slammed my shields out, hard and focused on the feelings of peace and came to a boy about my age. I grabbed his outstretched hand and the emotions of the others slammed away, as if locked into an impenetrable vault. Yay for being an empathic reciever. Yay...Me. Now you know why I don't hang out with the GSD Hate-the-world-cliques. It can get pretty bad.
"You ok?" His voice seemed worried, after all I'd been reeling across the room. Fortunately physical contact drowns out the background noise and sort of locks me into one person's emotional fix.
"Yeah, I'll be ok," I managed to keep my voice from being too shaky. Yay me.
"You feel it too?" For a kid who'd been invited to a Faction Three meeting, he looked almost normal. The only things that set his pimply face apart from the norm were the thin spines that lay pressed against his face. Blonde hair was done in a spiky look that seemed almost impish when saddled with the rest of his face.
I nodded, what the hell am I supposed to do? Lie to the guy who's emotional state I'm using as a lightning rod to drown out the rest of the crowd? "Name's Diamondback. Thanks."
The boy smiled a bit, and didn't try to remove my hand from his. "I'm Frag. I just came to check out Thuban's little party. Gotta say, so far I'm not horribly impressed. Nothing different here than hiding under the local rocks if you ask me."
"Yeah, that's what Jericho and Razor said about it." I semi-smirked, looking around again. The other kids were kinda milling about, not saying much. Jana and Sted were talking to each other of course, but there was something missing. It was like there was nothing to help break the ice between the other kids so they sort of milled about, looked at each other, pretended to have a good time and were quiet.
"Jericho? The crazy Devisor who actually scammed a spot in the Sophmore floor at Twain?" Frag was looking somewhat stunned.
"Yeah, we been friends since we were like, in diapers."
"Did he always dress like that? Or did he suddenly lose his mind?" Frag's tone was light and joking.
Meh, I could be nice, but I decided to be a bit pissy. "No. He went blind when his devisor schtick kicked in."
"Ouch, so that's why he carries the cane?"
"Among other things." I looked over at Skinner again. He was staring at us talking away from everyone. I didn't need to be an empath to see the hurt there. I'd only been here for a few minutes, and because I couldn't handle the emotional backwash, all I wanted was to leave.
Frag looked around. "Hey, I'm headed to the Library. Care to tag along? This place... Nice idea, but I think it'll need some work before it's really a good place to hang."
I looked at him and nodded, reluctantly sliding my hand away from his as I did my best to shore up my mental shields. The emotional outpouring was pretty bad, but I was expecting it this time. Kinda pisses me off still that I couldn't muster the gumption to go talk to them, and maybe help them get their spirits up. There's nothing really wrong with the Faction three kids themselves besides being dealt a bad hand by genetics. Unfortunately, I don't think I could handle much more of the negative emotions. I really hoped Thuban could make this work, but he could count me out.
Frag and I left quietly, neither of us were particularly interested in sticking around for the rest of the meeting, and I found myself slithering along next to a boy who was lanky as hell with blonde hair and a few zits. All in all he wasn't bad looking if you discounted the little spines all over his face.
The library was quiet enough, with about ten people wandering about, looking through the books all told. Frag dropped his pack on a table and sat down. I coiled up around a chair and settled in while he watched. I didn't know why at the time, but every time I come into the reading area I can hear what sounds like dozens of voices reading, some excerpts from books, others whispering poetry, and all forming a maddening cacaphony that always goes silent when I feel about ready to scream. No I really don't want to get into why right now, it's bloody complicated.
"So what brought you to the Faction Three meeting?" Frag asked cheerfully.
"I don't know. I got the invite and decided to come and have a look. A couple friends of mine helped set up but they think it's a bad idea the way Thuban's setting it up. I wanted to see for myself."
"So, what do you think?"
I thought carefully for a moment and sighed. "I think it's going to fail if something isn't done. It's like there's too much nervousness and not enough..." I paused for a minute. "It's like a refugee camp in there, not a gathering of kids, ya know?"
Frag nodded and smirked. "Too much shit in one place, not nearly enough positive things to balance it out."
I don't know what..." I stopped for a moment when the whispering began again. The library seemed colder, darker somehow as I looked around. I felt anger directed at me and it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. I looked over at Frag and saw that his eyes were seeming to fade into dark pools and his skin began cracking and flaking away, leaving something visible beneath, and what I was seeing made me want to scream.
"Dammit, looks like the meddlers caught on early. Gotta do this the hard way."
I snapped away as the spined, dissolving boy lunged forward towards me, flipping the chair I had been using across the library's reading area. The thing that tore away from the false skin wasn't human, wasn't mutant and was definitely not something that belonged at Whateley Academy. It looked humanish with black orb eyes and claws. It's mouth and nose were something akin to a Lamprey and it STANK.
It lunged again, trying to hook it's claws into my arm, and I freaked. I did NOT want that bastard touching me for anything so I swung wide and clocked it with a backhand that caused a good portion of it's ribcage to collapse with a gasping wheeze. It didn't even slow the bastard down. The claws came almost too fast for me to dodge away from, and where they struck it left some kind of sick, blackened energy residue. I didn't stop to discover what that residue was, seeing how I was rather intent on not being disembowelled.
I could regale you with a story of an epic battle or something like that but it was short, brutal and left me more confused than anything. I hit the thing with my tail and wrapped it, squeezing hard and the thing just... popped. One minute it was there, shrieking and thrashing like something being electrocuted, the next I got sprayed by this clear, foul-smelling transluscent goo that seemed to boil away on contact with air. I was dry after a moment.
When I looked around it was like the whole library had changed for a brief instant, with glowing blue spots that for a brief second coalesced into some kind of rune working I didn't recognize, and everything seemed somewhat alive. As it faded I saw the lamprey-thing flow back into existence as this creepy vision faded. It was looking at me with absolute and utter hatred when the Valkyrie crashed into it, spear blazing and shrieking a war cry. Then all of this faded to the normal library to which I had become accustomed over the last few months. The wood of the reading table where the thing's claws had scored looked weathered and aged, like they were hundreds of years older than what they should be, and still rotting as the black crud seeped into the wood.
As I looked around at everything sitting in the normality of the room I could only ask what the hell was going on. And I couldn't see any answers to those questions.
Valkyrie slammed her spear into the Caliban Skin-Walker, finally discorporating it into the aether. The bastards were always nearly impossible to ferret out at Whateley, since when they materialized their deformities helped them fit right in with the GSD crowd, and when they weren't they were remarkably adept at hiding, and weakening ward-barriers to the point where they could come and go as they pleased. The damned things were subtle until they had what they wanted, and usually erupted in an orgy of violence to attain whatever it was they wanted. The devil-things were definitely not high on her list of favorites when it came to the supernatural nasties of the Astral. Unfortunately, where there was one, you could usually find three more, and they fed on fear and hatred, which they were remarkably adept at instilling in their victims.
She recognized the girl the Caliban had been with, and was a bit stunned. Diamondback was usually one of the most cautious and reserved kids on campus, much less among the GSD crowd, even though she hung out with known Ultraviolent types like Razorback and the Fury twins. For a minute there, she would have sworn that Diamond was projecting, but she had faded out to where she was much like any other exemplar on campus, and her aura was blazing with a mix of fear and confusion, giving no sign that she was aware of the Astral guardian's presence.
Valkyrie had come into the library, tracking the thing's trail from the Faction Three meeting area just in time to see it attack Diamond and get it's physical manifestation ripped apart by the snake-girl. She had walked with the thing willingly, and if she called it, there was trouble because if she'd had to rip it apart then she had no control over the things. If she wasn't the one who called it, then it had been interested in her, which could be just as bad. Valkyrie needed to find out why.
"Diamondback!" She was irritated to see the girl gave no indicator that she heard or saw Valkyrie.
A few minutes of trying to get the girl's attention as she blithely slithered out of the library only garnered the Astral Squal member a lot of frustration. She'd seen Diamond looking right AT her when she attacked the devil that had glommed onto her. She had stared right AT the thing after it's physical form when she'd torn it up. Now she was ignoring Valkyrie, and it was frustrating as hell.
It was stupid impulse and frustration that caused Valkyrie to lash out. She never expected anything to come of it, and was shocked that it actually did anything, and she regretted giving into the impulse as soon as she did. It was unwarranted and unprofessional. The punch rocked Diamondback forward and threw her off-balance. Valkyrie stared in shock that she had actually affected the girl. She was equally shocked by the response, and how quickly the girl recovered.
Valkyrie picked herself back up off the astral ground, dazed and shocked. She'd never seen ANYTHING recover and move that fast in place. Diamond had whipped about so hard and fast, both fists and tail whipping through the seemingly empty space behind her. Valkyrie had caught a glancing hit from the girl's tail and been knocked a few feet away. When she recovered, Diamondback was cautiously scanning the area around her for her assailant, seeming to rock back and forth weirdly as her gaze passed right over Valkyrie three times before it registered.
Diamondback couldn't see her, and she was interacting directly with the Shadow World reflection of the physical world. This wasn't good. They already had their hands full keeping an eye on that newbie Heyoka, who was a class-A troublemaker, and now they had an exemplar gliding about while interacting with both sides at once, and likely not aware of it. It was kind of like wearing a giant "Kick Me" sign for every spiritual parasite, predator and opportunistic thing under the sun. She turned and sprinted towards Melville, looking for A.D. He might have some idea of what to do about this.
I was only about five hundred feet away from the when I felt someone clock me in the back of the head and pitched forward. It didn't really hurt, but DAMN it startled the hell out of me. I spun and lashed out with everything I had, feeling an impact with something before I realized that there was no one around for me to see. I figured it was one of the invisibrat types having fun with the GSD kid. I hoped I knocked them stupid. I kept looking for a few minutes, seeking the telltale signs of an invisible person. You know, sudden movement of plants, odd dust bits, footprints coming out of nowhere. Nada. It was like looking at a great big picture of nothing except normality.
After a few minutes I started slithering towards the tunnel access to Hawthorne. I knew Jericho and Razorback would be down there, as usual, jamming on their guitars at full volume, as usual.
I was right, and the two had a small audience of the usual suspects. Sue and Rhianne of the Underdogs were both there, cheerfully dancing with Nate. Jimmy Trauger was there with Chimera, just chilling and snogging a bit out of sight, per usual since Halloween was over. At least something good had come of that nightmare. Slab was standing watch, looking all disapproving of the two Outcast boys as they rocked out on their guitars never realizing his head was bobbing up and down in time with the music and he was actually enjoying it. Olympia of all people was banging on a wall in an unsteady rhythm, which she must have thought brilliant, but Jericho and Razor played on oblivious to her "help."
Razorback was wearing another of his savaged Pantera T-shirts and shorts, and he was ripping the riffs out at a fast pace that always threatened to snap the strings of his guitar like cut twine with his claws. Jericho was wearing a kilt...again... Only this kilt was a hideous mix of blue and green. Combat boots and a Hawaii Palm tree T-shirt finished off his latest protest against the fashion word. At least he wasn't in drag again. THAT had been fucking painful. I STILL hear people talking about the horror of the pink wrap and orange bloomers.
Razor and Jericho were doing a rendition of a song called "Let's go all the way," and were showing no signs of losing steam, so I found myself a seat, coiled up and just listened to the music and waited for the crowd to wander away so I could talk to the two of them. My day had been fucking weird and I needed to talk, badly.
It was about an hour and ten songs later when everyone finally cleared out. Razorback took the liberty of escorting the two Underdogs back to Melville. None of the Underdogs could really stand up to many people on campus on their own, so they tended to glom onto some of the other kids who had nasty opinions of bullies. Razor was one of those, and one or two of the Grunts did the same, as well as a couple of the Capes and most of the Wild Pack. They tended to be a bit antsy about just me, but any port in a storm. Besides, I hated bullies too.
"This has got to be the weirdest day I have had here yet, outside of that clusterfuck on Halloween." Ryan's voice echoed in the back of my brain.
"No shit" I murmered, "And I'll thank you not to bring back those fun memories when I'm trying to talk to Jericho."
"Oh quit whining. It's not like we have to go through THAT again any time soon, but damned if that Frag thing doesn't remind me of something."
Ryan had a point. There WAS something familiar about that Frag-thing, although I'm not so sure what. It's like one of those things you see once out of the corner of your eye or something. Seemed familiar, but escaped definition. My mental conversation was stopped short when Jericho came over.
"Sup Sandra? You been looking like something tried to chew on your tail again." Jericho must have seen my expression, because he wasn't trying to smartass his way into conversation.
I just started talking. I told him about the weird feelings, the Faction Three meeting, the blue glowing shit I keep seeing around campus, frag, and getting attacked by an invisible opponent outside the library.
"Damn, Sandra, I don't know what to say about all that. About the best I can do is hit the grapevine and see if anyone's been running prankster games and causing hallucinations and shit."
I looked at Jericho. "Yeah, well whatever is causing it, I'd like to stop now. I got enough problems with Trisha and her ever-present pain in my ass."
Jericho nodded. "Tell you what. Go get some sleep. I'll fill Razor in on what's up and put my ear to the ground for ya. If we figure out who's screwing with you I'll put the prank master act on them, and if that don't get 'em we can arrange some quality time with Razor and Jimmy or Phobos and Deimos."
I nodded, never really wanting to think about turning my Ultraviolent buddies loose on the unsuspecting, but at this point I was more than willing. I slithered into my room and passed out, ending yet another fun-filled day at Whateley. I pine for the days when something normal happens around here sometimes.
The two Calibans looked at the sleeping forms of the two girls and smiled. Each one slid their astral claws into the mind of the doe-like girl and began gleefully filling her mind and dreams with images of killer anacondas and of things without limbs eating her alive. They smiled as the girl's defiant nature twisted that fear into out and out hatred, and they gleefully replaced the anacondas with her roomate, and let things progress naturally from there. This was almost too easy, setting this one against the snake-girl, who would be their next target when they'd worn out this one.
Trisha screamed in her mind while the dream of the giant naga thing that was Diamondback picked her up and dropped her into it's mouth, swallowing her whole...
Saturday, November 11th
I guess the screaming the day after the whole Frag incident got everyone's attention. Perhaps it was me flying into the hallway upside-down to hit the wall just outside my room. I tell you now, I hate living with a telekinetic some days. I woke up to Trisha screaming and panicked, for a moment thinking we were under attack. Silly me. No sooner than I was up I found myself flying out through the doorway. Lucky for me Ms. Savage was already there to investigate the source of the screaming. Not so lucky for me in that I didn't have the nice door to slow my impact with the reinforced concrete wall.
I was dazed and confused, Ryan was pissed off and I was rapidly getting there myself, and I wound up fast-sliding back into my room screaming invective at the top of my lungs. Scared or not, confused or not, the TK toss was the last straw! I will admit, not my brightest maneuver, charging back to pummel my roomate while Ms. Savage was watching. Also not a bright idea to try to get close enough to pummel a telekinetic into the ground. I found myself blasted out of the room again, and the cries of "BRICK FIGHT!!!!" shot up and down the hall. Some kids were running for cover, some were coming to watch.
I was dimly aware of Ms. Savage yelling something, but my ears were ringing and my head was hurting. Oh, did I mention my lovely little roomate can lift upwards of three or so tons with her mind? And that a telekinetic jolt from her was only slightly LESS aggravating than getting hit by Lancer? Oh yeah, Lancer, you'll see him around sooner or later. He's hard to miss.
So back to getting nowhere, I finally snapped and started hissing out a long string of syllables I had learned to use to focus my will in magic lab, and a bright sphere of yellow light began pooling in my hand, bursting into flames and growing from the size of a pea to something roughly the size of my head over the next ten seconds or so. I managed to shrug off two more blasts and keep my concentration until Phobos and Deimos, the two lovely little maniacs tackled me and began dragging my thrashing, screaming ass away from the burgeoning firefight. Unfortunately they also broke my concentration, causing the head-size ball of fire to explode in a shower of four-inch tall pirate-things that screamed "Arrrrr!" and darted down the hallway, attempting to loot and plunder the young women gathered around the room. I heard Trisha scream again.
Did I mention the little pirates looked a lot like Jericho, and instead of cutlasses they were swinging around blind-man canes? Yes, it actually was as ludicrous as it sounds.
Phobos and Deimos, the two maniacal little angels dragged me away and were working on calming me down quietly. The pair of them had gotten the bright idea that letting me burn Trisha alive probably wouldn't be the grandest idea in the world, even if she RICHLY deserved it. I love my friends, I really do.
Ms. Savage had taken my absence as an opportunity to rush into the room and start calming my erstwhile roomate down. I take it she was fairly successful as the woman with eyes in the back of her head did not take a ballistic path into the wall where yours truly had hit. So I got to start yet another day of screaming, violence, wailing and gnashing of teeth with a bang. Yup. It must be Saturday.
When I got my temper reined in I stood up, balancing on my tail and waited. Phobos and Deimos put themselves between me and everyone else as a precaution. They don't like violence, but god forbid you went after their friends. Some days I really miss Phobos. She was a good friend, even if she was fucking terrifying as hell. Deimos is still around, and we hang out a lot, but she's still stressed.
Ms. Savage came trucking out of the room, shaking her head quietly and came over to see me. It was going to be one of those days. I could tell.
"Sandra are you ok?" At least Savage actually CARES wether or not you're hurt, or if you were in the wrong.
"Yeah, fine. Just a bit dazed. What the hell was that all about? One minute I'm asleep, the next minute I wake up to Trisha screaming like a banshee. I thought we were under attack, so I got up and suddenly the secrets of flight were revealed to me till my head hit the wall." Yeah, I was disgruntled and cranky.
"Apparently your roomate had some night terrors that hit her pretty hard. When she woke up she was panicked and hadn't realized the dream was over yet."
Deimos coughed in the background. I'd almost swear her cough sounded like "bullshit!"
Savage looked over at Deimos and then back at me. "It would probably be for the best if you gave her some space."
"Ok, can I get a new room and new roomate?" I asked for perhaps the trillionth time.
Savage sighed. "Sorry. We're still having problems getting the other rooms fixed. The whole third floor is shot to hell, and we don't have the space to shuffle anyone around."
"Please? I'll take a room with bullet holes in it! Anything! Just get me out of that room!" Oh yeah. some of the more opportunistic attackers on Halloween invaded Whitman on the sly. They blew the hell out of the third floor when they found the female Ultraviolents, including my two dear friends, skipping the party in favor of relaxing and listening to music and pounding the crap out of each other for giggles. They found the attackers to be highly entertaining. I still don't have the guts to ask Deimos what the hell they DID to those sons of bitches.
"No Sandra. You're just going to have to deal with things until everything gets fixed up. Quite frankly I can't understand why you two can't get along."
"Maybe because Trisha's a self-absorbed, egotistical little bint who's got less brainpower than your average rabbit?" Me and Ms. Savage both looked over at the twins. Phobos sat there with a beatific smile on her face, and Deimos added to the pile.
"Come on, I dunno what the hell's up but Trisha's been on Diamond's case since day one. And I don't mean in the friendly rivalry way she keeps telling you. I know what I feel and it's hatred and fear."
"No shit, why do you think we won't come over to this wing when we know both of them are here at the same time? " Phobos asked. "Every time we do the tension's so thick you could cut it with a knife, and we start imprinting homicidal fantasies because of the two of them. This is bullshit."
"Phobos! Deimos! That's enough out of you two! Go to your room and stay there until this is sorted out, or better yet, go to the Crystal Hall. Take Diamondback with you." I don't fucking know why oh why Ms. Savage always ignored us. It made no damned sense whatsoever.
I was getting mad, the Fury twins were getting mad, and we were beginning to feed off each other's rage. The whole three-way empathic reciever bit was a sreaming bitch to deal with some days.
The three of us left without another word. I was only wearing a nightgown and a bathrobe, but fuck it. If I went back into the room and saw Trisha I was going to bite her. In fact the idea was feeling more and more happy by the minute. Me and the twins did the right thing in the end, all three of us leaving Whitman in our bathrobes to go to Crystal Hall.
We got a few stares and antsy looks. When GSD girls blithely walk into the cafeteria sans clothing except their bathrobes it's a universal sign that all is not well in Whitman Cottage. The three of us collected our respective trays of dead animal product and went over to my team's little slice of space, dubbed Outcast Corner. Jericho and Razorback probably wouldn't wake up until right before lunch, so Phobos and Deimos sat with me.
I eyed the heaping piles of eggs that the cafeteria was always foisting on me. Turns out four dozen eggs costs less than a twenty-pound slab of ham. Screw them. I took the slab, too. I glanced up at my compatriots, who were already angrily shoveling food into their faces. Unlike me the two of them CAN eat vegetable matter. I miss the taste of simple things like apples and oranges, I tell you what.
"God I can't BELIEVE that bitch!" I let loose and it felt good. "I dunno what the fuck is wrong with her but goddammit I'm so sick and fucking tired of putting up with her I could spit!"
"Don't do that. You'd have to eat whatever you killed by accident." Deimos quipped with a sly smirk.
I just looked at her. "Ha...Ha..."
Phobos grinned. "Careful Diamond, your inner Texan's showing."
I began grumbling something about obnoxious friends making fun of me.
"Hey, it could have been worse, D. At least you don't have to go reporting to Delarose every four or so days."
Phobos had a point. Ultraviolents don't get much slack at Whateley. Hell, I got three living examples of why you shouldn't try to get into too many fights among my friends. Hell, most of my friends are more violent than I am. Phobos and Deimos weren't anywhere near the top of the UV list like Razor was, but they were still on the blotter.
"Yeah, Adrienne, I know, but I still wish someone would fucking listen to me once. It's like someone's interfering to make me as miserable as possible." Oh yeah, Phobos' name was Adrienne. Deimos is Janine. They hardly ever used their real names at school though.
Deimos finished shredding her tray first. Watching the two of them eat is not exactly pleasent, but then, Razorback's just as bad. At least Phobos and Deimos can chew with their mouths closed.
"So Diamond, what's going on? You've been on edge for the past day or so, and you're not shedding anymore."
I stopped. "Shit I don't know Jan. Just been having a rough time of it." As I began telling them about the weird blue glowy shit, and Faction Three and the weird-ass Frag thing I realized that Phobos was right. My inner Texan WAS showing. My southern-belle accent kicks in whenever I get really aggravated, and it only got worse during the telling.
"Damn, Sandra that's fucked up." Deimos nodded as her sister talked. I had just finished telling them about everything when we all heard Peeper's voice live, loud and in stereo.
"HEY LADIES!"
The three of us turned in unison and Greasy's camera went off rapidly, catching good pictures of us sitting there, slack-jawwed and stunned. None of us even had the presence of mind to pull the tops of our bathrobes tighter so the two little pervs couldn't get shots of our cleavage. As we sat there, Peeper smiled. We should have known better than to go to chow in our bathrobes.
"All right Greasy, pack it up. I think we have what we came for."
Greasy saw eight eyes narrow at once first, then the three of us stood in unison. He began backing away rapidly.
"Oh hell no." The words just slipped from my lips in a cold fashion that could only be later described as murderous.
"We're going to kill them." Phobos and Deimos were speaking in perfect unison.
I suppose I should thank Peeper and Greasy someday. They gave me and my two friends something to vent our anger on. About an hour of chasing, catching, and chasing some more I felt much better. Security found Peeper and Greasy, minus their camera equipment stuffed into a recycle bin about three hours later. Somehow each one was wearing a form-fitting sheath of metal that forensics determined had been a metal trash can before they were jammed inside in the fetal position and the cans crushed around them and crimped off to keep them from moving. I heard the screaming and whining was of epic proportions. And I will deny all knowledge of how those two dipshits came to this fate. I will say though, Greasy's a good photographer on the fly. Those pics were goooood. Too bad we're not letting them go. Ever.
When I slithered back into Whitman, I looked around and saw Stunner coming out.
"Hey Stunner, is Ms. Savage in right now?"
"Na she went out to go to the House moms meeting. Why, do you need something, Diamond?"
I smiled without flashing my fangs somehow. "Nah, just wondering. Thought I'd just talk to her a bit more about this morning. Get some things off my chest."
I slithered in to my room, opened the door and went inside. Trisha was there, of course, sitting at her desk, doing her homework like the good little princess that she is.
I can't believe you're actually going to do this, Ryan whispered in the back of my mind.
Gonna try to talk me out of it?
Oh hell no. Been waiting for this for MONTHS.
I let the bathrobe slip off and got dressed in my white skirt and matching halter. Trisha made a very big point of ignoring me. Ah well, her mistake.
Trisha may be a telekinetic and a powerful one at that, but she's not nearly as strong as I am, or as fast, in close quarters. I just reached over and grabbed her by her uniform, hoisted her out of her chair and flicked her onto her bed. I was on top of her before she could even figure out what was going on, much less what to do about it. I pressed an illusion of a skinning knife that I conjured up to her throat and hissed at her, letting my tongue flick out and tap her nose. Her eyes went from incredulous to absolute, paralyzed panic in two seconds flat.
"Now listen up, roomie and listen good," I was barely speaking above a whisper. "You're a fucking bitch. I can handle that, even though I have no fucking clue what your problem with me is. However, if you EVER attack me again I will cut you, string you up and gut you like roadkill in hunting season. You get me, venison? This is your final fucking notice. Do it again and you are food."
I didn't HAVE to lick her cheek with my forked tongue like I was tasting her. She was already panicked and whimpering, and when I did that she froze, solid. I let the knife fade away and slithered out the door quietly. When I got to the cottage front door, Trisha had composed herself enough to cut loose an ear-shattering shriek of pure terror. Meanwhile, I was slipping off to the bushes next to the cottage to puke my guts out.
I hate bullies, I really do, and what I did, felt like nothing but being one, never mind the look in her eyes when I told her I'd eat her if she pushed me again. By the goddess, she actually believed I'd do it. No doubt in her mind, whatsoever. To her it was as real as if I were ripping her arm off and stuffing it in my mouth, and the thought actually made me ill, hence the barfing. She actually believed I intended to kill her and eat her. The terror bleeding off her had been that primal.
A hand tapped me on the shoulder, and I spun, a little too fast, feeling woozy.
"Woah, woah, kid, calm down." The young man standing next to me wasn't exactly handsome, but he wasn't bad either, with dark hair and grey eyes. "I ain't here to start shit."
I nodded and went back to my bush and barfed up yet another load of meat and bile before my stomach was blissfully empty once again.
"Rough day I take it?"
All I could do is nod.
"Well I hope it gets better. I'm A.D. I'm with the senior class. You're Diamondback, right?"
"Yeah, I have that distinct misfortune." I slithered away from the stinking mess and wiped my mouth off. "What can I do for you?"
"Just came by to ask you about what happened in the library." A.D. saw me tense up and held his hands out disarmingly. "Look, you ain't in trouble and I'm not here to lecture you. I'm just trying to puzzle out what happened and why you got attacked. If it makes you feel better, FUBAR asked me to come talk to you, one of the psychic teachers if you haven't met him."
I stood there for a moment and for the second time, spilled my guts about the weird sights, sounds and the freak kid attacking me in the library after I met Faction Three. A.D. had that patronizing "I'm a senior" look down pat, but he didn't interrupt, listened intently and asked small questions every now and again.
"So you see and hear weird things all the time?" He asked, "Or is it really sporadic?"
"I dunno, seems to come and go. Just over the last couple days the weird-o-meter is spiking through the roof. But it's not all the time or even all the senses at once. It's just weird. I don't understand what it is."
A.D. looked thoughtful. "Well, I can't say for sure, but one or two of the teacher types are worried that you're starting to pull spirit attention somehow. I imagine it's true and they're fucking with you. I'd go talk to your magic teacher and find out some quick spells and warding bits to give the boot when you get a weird spike."
I nodded, it sounded reasonable. "All right, thanks for the advice. I'll go do that."
"No problem, Diamond, stay safe."
I'd actually found Earth Mother in the cafeteria about twenty minutes later. She was more than happy to provide me with a few books on spirit protection spells and other bits. Apparently she thought I'd be able to pick up on the advanced concepts pretty fast given my performance in her class, which while not stellar, was pretty well-grounded. I had an easier time than most getting the concepts dowen and the magic right even though I couldn't muster a lot of power except in certain spots around campus. Now if only Arena 99, range 5 to the gun monkey teachers, was one of those spots during the sim drills me and the boys were always being jacked through.
When I got back to Whitman I found myself slithering to my room and I heard crying. As I got closer I realized it was coming from my room. This couldn't be good. The door was cracked open and I heard Trish practically bawling and Ms. Savage's voice came through, unconcerned and calm as ever. She always used that tone with me, but never with anyone else I was aware of.
"Now Trisha I'm sure Diamondback would never do anything like that." I froze solid, remembering the little terroristic stunt I'd pulled earlier.
"But Ms. Savage, please! I can't stay with her anymore." From the sounds of it, Trisha was well beyond tears at this point. "I can't sleep, the nightmares are getting worse, and Diamond's fucking scary. Please can I get another roomate or another room?"
Was I feeling guilty? Oh hell yes. Was I going to go into the room while this was going on? Oh hell no. I was, however, going to sit in and listen quietly. I didn't know the little brat was having nightmares, I thought that her attacking me that morning had been just her being a little bitch and trying to cover her own ass.
"I'm sorry, Trisha, we can't move anyone around and until the third floor is fixed we're not going to be able to do anything about this."
I dunno about Trisha, but I was beginning to smell bullshit. This whole deal was beginning to taste sour and when I thought about it, there had been quite a few roomate shuffles in the time when me and Trish started fighting in our room.
A few minutes more of whining and cajoling, and Ms. Savage assuring her that nothing was wrong left me feeling a bit pissed. Something was starting to stink in Freak House Femme and me and my roomie seemed to be at the center of it. Wonderful. Now I was really starting to regret having threatened her with imminent death.
When Ms. Savage came out I had to shake my head to clear the image from my brain. For a second she looked like her eyes and ears were covered by some kind of gauzy substance, like a blindfold of some kind. When I blinked a few times everything was as it should be. She simply smiled at me and wandered on by.
When I slid into the room, Trisha saw me and froze. She had the same deer in headligfhts expression she had when I tossed her and my guts twisted into a knot when I saw it. I hadn't exactly meant to do her quite this bad. Bad, yeah, but only enough to make her leave me alone, not paralyze her. The raw terror bleeding off her was painful to feel.
"Trisha, turn, face the wall, take five deep breaths and count backwards from twenty." I spoke quietly, in as neutral a tone as I could manage. Thank god she could do that much. When she had taken some time, rather than being rigid and petrified she was shaking like there was an earthquake and sobbing.
"Can I turn around now?" Her voice was painful.
"I wouldn't just yet." I slid onto my bed and looked at her. "How long have you been asking Ms. Savage to get you into a new room?"
She didn't answer for a moment, stiffening up a bit. "Just answer Trisha. I'm not going to hurt you, been asking her to split us up myself since about the second week of school."
Trisha looked back at me, startled. "But she said you told her that there were no problems." Her voice was about as surprised as you can get.
"Told me the same about you, actually. I don't know what you think, but I'm empathic. Feeling you hate and fear me all the damned time hurts like hell and it isn't exactly fun. I want a new roomate. I been half-tempted to go bunk with the Fury Twins."
"But if you want to leave, and I want to, why is Ms. Savage not listening to us?"
I paused a second. "No idea, but it's really getting me pissed off. Something hinky's going on and I'm really not liking it."
"So what do we do?"
"Until we can get someone to listen we're stuck gutting things out. So may I suggest that we just try not to interact? You don't get snarky with me, I won't act like some kinda vicious bitch." Ok I still think she was the vicious bitch, but in this case I'm more than willing to compromise to get some peace.
"You're not gonna..."
"What, eat you? God, you fucking kidding me? One, that's still cannibalism, and two, eww. Once again, for good measure: Eww."
"I'll try."
"That's about all I can hope for, Trisha, go get some food or something. I need to study, and I don't need to have Jericho and Razor heckling my books while I do."
"Shouldn't they be getting ready to meet their folks?"
"What do you mean meeting their folks?"
I heard Trisha's low-voiced disbelief as she put two and two together. "Jesus Christ Diamond you forgot today is PARENT'S DAY???"
My jaw hit the floor and I think something akin to a whimper escaped from me for a moment.
The Caliban smiled as it reset the mask on the adult in the building. So long as it could maintain the gauzy film on the woman she'd be blind to it's activities with the snake and deer girls. It finished and reset the illusion to mask the power from the damned Astral meddlers on campus and began backtracking, picking up it's own trail in the building and cleaning up the mess. Wouldn't do to have the meddlers find the nest...
No, thankfully my folks didn't show up for Parent's Day. Jericho's did, as did Razorback's family. It was like our own twisted little reunion with mayhem. I gotta say that Razorback's baby brother was adorable, always harping at him to get a Dinosaur Ride. Jericho being mothered relentlessly by Mrs. Turner was a crack up and a half. But that's another story for another day. For now, I'm done, even though I leave more questions than answers, and believe me, there were no easy answers. Cleaning that mess up took a while, but I did get it cleaned up with some help.
Some people say we're the children of God, or Gaia, or the spirits. For me things never seem cut and dried and every question answered begets another question. making sense of everything is an unholy bitch, so I guess that makes me the Child of Confusion. That about described my mental state for a very long time.
Wednesday, November 15th
Several days later A.D. looked ridiculous standing in the room at Whitman in his astral bathrobe. He and Weaver looked down at the two sleeping girls, who were both thrashing fitfully. The snake girl's body seemed to shift and shimmer, fading into and out of seeming solidity while she moved and thrashed. Her aura was a pale mirror of her roomate who reeked of fear, in the throes of a nightmare, and the aural emotions seemed to be bleeding over.
"Hate to ask you to do this, Weaver." A.D. sipped his coffee.
The dark-skinned girl looked at him distastefully. "You sure this is the best way to do this, A.D.? This feels wrong, no matter how you cut it."
"I know, but this one's too unstable. She can't control it and I'm willing to bet that she couldn't stop anything on this side from hurting her except by accident. Besides, we've tried everything else and talking to her about this might get a bad response, and we gotta contend with her in the physical then. Not my idea of a happy day."
"So locking her out of the Astral's going to help?"
"It might. Valkyrie says this kid's smart as hell, cautious as all get out, and would be a good add if she could pull it together. As it stands she is more likely to get herself hurt."
Weaver sighed. "So when can we let her out?"
"That's just it. The way she's going we're looking at a Astral Exemplar who's active in both worlds at once. She may learn to control it, or she might wind up like Synergy. I hope she doesn't wind up like that, but you can't tell."
"If she does, then me binding her might not mean shit in a couple months. She'll just shred the bindings by herself. They're strong, but they can't hold someone with her kinda strength."
"The idea is to keep her protected from this side and protect this side from her until she stabilizes. We're probably going to have to keep a watch on her to repair the webs that tear." A.D. took a sip from an ever-full mug of coffee. "Never seen an astral exemplar who wasn't tampered with, or at least seriously fucked up."
"Wonderful. As if I don't have enough headaches watching over Heyoka."
"If you want, have Heyoka keep an eye out for her. Be a good task to keep that one occupied and out of trouble."
"Maybe. I'd like to get Heyoka figured out a bit more before I set him on anything like this. There's still too much about that kid I don't understand."
"Yeah, well, we been here too long. Let's get this done with."
"Wait, A.D. I think we should show this to Heyoka. He needs to see this."
A.D. paused and pondered for a few moments. "Agreed. I'll go get him, and FUBAR. I need to let Loius know what's going on." Without another word, A.D. flickered and vanished, a trick he said all the Astral Team would figure out sooner or later. Distance in the Shadow World was meaningless, according to him and Fuub.
A few tense minutes later, Heyoka entered, along with Louis and A.D. at a more "normal" pace.
"Oh Damn, and I thought I was screwed up," Heyoka looked down at the terminally GSD kid in front of him. Feathers were mixed into his dark hair, and he was the picture of surprised when he saw Diamondback's form twitching, coiling and uncoiling, becoming more real to the senses and fading out, sometimes in patches. The whole process was uneven and unnatural, though it resembled what happened when he slipped halfway through occasionally.
"Louis, A.D. thinks we need to bind her." Weaver looked a bit disgusted at the thought.
Fubar nodded solemnly. "From what I see here it's probably for the best. Be careful here. There's a lot more to this girl than what we're seeing, and I'm seeing something that looks odd. I need to talk to Lodgeman. I'm going to suggest that you keep an eye on her, see how she's developing. Be cautious, this girl's riding a storm, almost like she's dreaming two dreams at once that come together and mesh."
When FUBAR flickered and left, Heyoka looked up. "Binding?"
Weaver nodded while A.D. watched impassively, sipping at his coffee mug. "This is Diamondback. It looks like she's changing somehow, or maybe starting to wake up. She can see the astral and interact with it while awake, and moving. Unfortunately she's unstable, and she drifts in and out like the tide, only randomly. If we let her go as is she might kill herself, or get worse done to her before she can be stable."
"So you're binding her." Heyoka nodded. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"I'll explain." A.D. let his mug fade and he walked to Weaver and nodded.
Weaver went silent, seeming to be a statue, as hundreds of tiny spiders seemed to swarm all over the unconscious snake-girl on the bed. Each one began producing tiny strands of silvery silk, and began wrapping the girl. Where the silk touched, she seemed to fade, with the silken cords, becoming less real, and more a phantasm in the shadows. Even as A.D. talked, Heyoka was mesmerized and a bit horrified as the reality sank in as the girl slowly became a shadow wrapped in a translucent coccoon.
"Every now and again we have to deal with someone who's powers place them in too much danger here, and can't be taught, Diamondback is one of them. She's too intermittent. And every now and again, we find someone who is too dangerous, or won't follow the rules that keep this place safe. Weaver binds them with her spiders, keeping them unable to see the Astral plane on any level. No looking across, no talking to the spirits, no projecting. Mind and spirit become locked to the flesh. It's how we deal with people who are too dangerous to themselves and others to be allowed to run unchecked." A.D. looked very pointedly at Heyoka.
Heyoka stared at A.D., a look of fear and horror in his eyes as he realized what, exactly the point of this demonstration was, beyond having him see the effects of the binding on someone who could be hurt or killed by accident. "It isn't permanent, isn't it?"
"Not for her," Weaver said, looking upset as she sealed the girl's fate, "If her spirit catches up to her flesh we are going to have a wild one here. The bindings are strong, but they can't take the kind of force an Exemplar brick like her can lay down. She'll tear loose and there won't be a damned thing we can do to keep her out. But for others, yes, it can be permanent, though we usually undo it after a time." She looked at Heyoka pleadingly. "I hate doing this. Please don't be the next one Heyoka."
Jamie tried to talk, and failed, ending up nodding solemnly, and watching with creeping unease as the heavily GSD girl slipped and faded from sight almost entirely.
The end?
(Outcast Corner, Take me away)
By Joe Gunnarson
Whateley Academy, September, 2007
Razorback looked at the small motley assembly in front of him as Diamondback finished her story. The expressions on the kids' faces ranged from wonderment to a trace of fear. The three kids all had laughed their asses off when Jericho had rolled through his tale of random Whateley mayhem, and had been startled, shocked and a bit unnerved by Diamond's rendition of some of her weirdest and most confusing moments early on during the pair's freshman year. It was his third year at the academy, and he didn't expect life to get any saner.
He looked up as the kids talked to themselves when Eldritch walked into the room under Hawthorne that the Outcasts used for their impromptu music practices and mini-concerts for whoever decided to pop by. This could range from nobody to half of Hawthorne, Whitman or Twain at any given time. Today, however the instruments weren't in attendance, as they had new freshmen to break in.
Eldritch led in an unassuming but fairly pretty girl, and settled her in next to the other three kids. Two girls, one boy and one somewhere in between but moving towards the male spectrum of life sat fidgeting and nervous. The girl Caitlin was leading in was already showing signs of severe GSD, as her legs were seeming to split at the bottoms and her ass seemed to expand into a white-furred spider-like abdomen that he knew would probably grow to terrifying proportions. The boys looked fairly normal and were probably going to be paired off with some of the heavier GSD freshmen who they would likely get along with, as was the tradition of Twain and Whitman.
The other girl was pale and gaunt as a vampire, in fact that was pretty much what she was at this point, given her fangs and sensitivity to sunlight. She hadn't yet shown signs of needing to drink blood, but everyone seemed to think that was the direction that she would go in. She would be housed in Whitman, while her spider-like compatriot would have to live in Hawthorne.
"So what'd I miss?" Eldritch was in a fairly cheerful mood, even though her charge seemed somewhat apprehensive.
"Not much, we got done showing off the basics, did the tour of the Whateley 'I'm cool so it's mandatory that you see my stuff' exhibit." Jericho ticked off fingers as he talked. "We got bored waiting for you so me and Diamond both told stories about the kinda crap that happens around here at the school, all before we met you of course. You're just too normal to make good conversational material."
Razorback about barked out with laughter at that. Among the Outcasts Caitlin tended to make Jericho look sane and stable. Her and Razor both sported bright red armbands with UV stamped in black. Both of them were on the Ultraviolents list due to their... temper issues.
"Well, we were going to have Razorback tell one with his vodor when you walked in." Diamondback grinned. She and Eldritch tended to be thick as thieves whenever they got together.
-Maybe we should have introductions for our fourth lunatic.- Razorback signed, pointing at Eldritch.
Jericho grinned and pointed to the tattooed amazon, "Freshmen, meet Eldritch, Eldritch, meet freshmen. There we go. Eldritch is yet another contestant on the gender bender game. Hence why we dragged you lot in together."
"You're enjoying this far too much. So you all said Razorback was going to tell a story?" She looked very pointedly at the blind, dredlocked black boy with the fashion sense that could sink the Bismark.
Razorback put on the necklace with the vodor, and moved up to center stage while his three friends sat back and grinned.
-Eldritch can go next.- The vodor was tinny and emotionless but it got the point across when combined with body language.
"Oh hell no lizardman. I can't tell a story for shit. You all hired me for the drums, not my vocal talents."
"You know for such a big girl, you can be a real wimp sometimes," Diamondback grinned.
"Yeah yeah, laugh it up oh poisonous one. By the way the Freshmen are looking kinda like deer in headlights. What have you been telling them?"
"Mostly to avoid Nex and the Ultraviolents."
"Gee, that's helpful."
Jericho nodded sagely. "All right, once Razorback finishes we can do the support-group-chat thing. Ready Razor?"
-No.-
The blind kid laughed. "Good to hear, now regale us or it's the cattle prod again."
Per usual he brought out nervous giggles in the freshmen. Razorback just sighed and shrugged, then began the windup for his story.
Monday, November 27th, 2006
There are days when I absolutely hate being a student here at Whateley. Little did I know it was going to be three days in a row of stress and screaming before all was said and done. It's no big secret that us Outcasts were on the short list for near-constant simulation drills at Arena 99, or Range 5 depending on who you talk to. It's supposed to be Arena 99, but the Range psychos and the Crisis Simulation Team invaded and now it's an eternal argument over what it's called depending on who's in charge at the time. I think it's Gunny Bardue's idea, personally. Him and that Smythe nut seem to take great joy in driving the tech-heads buggy without causing actual problems.
But like I said, well known fact that we're currently the most heavily drilled team in the school right now. How is it well known? We bitch about it loudly in the Crystal Hall and to whoever will listen. It's a stress-relief thing. So far during our first year we pretty much had a sim run three nights a week, minimum. Word from the Underground is that we actually have permanent statistics on the betting boards in Vegas because of it. Social underdogs we may be, but pushovers we are not.
This latest run had already been going for thirty minutes when the Grunts team finally rooted out the first signs of our presence in the simulation of the Chicago cityscape. I love Chicago, lots of places to creep, skulk, ambush and hide. I needed every one of them because these guys were good. Out of about eight runs against them so far we have had our asses fed to us on a platter eight times. It was rapidly apparent that we couldn't beat the odds in a straight-up fight so we started getting sneaky and mean. So far it's worked, but it means we lose about two or three hours of our free time every time we hit the sims with one of the power teams while they try to root our asses out, and avoid me and Diamondback playing movie monster thrill-killers. They also have to contend with Jericho's lattice of booby traps he sets for fun, amusement and the Outcast way.
"All right, the jerkeys are moving in on the target now," Jericho's voice came through on my comm set. He'd built the three subspace transmitters himself, and while not exactly subtle, they could get a lot more range than most communications microbeads. "Wait for them to get their two-man patrols going before we set the trap network live and start hunting. They'll put Mule on guard watch again, since he's the best for it."
"Think we'll beat these assholes this time?" Diamond sounded mildly bitter and irritated. I couldn't blame her. We tended to wind up outnumbered on these runs because of our mutations and methods.
Usually Whateley set up training teams around the traditional four-man super squad. A brick, a blaster, a brain and a speedster was the archetypical setup that they followed so that students could get used to the idea of working with other mutants who have dissimilar powers. We get to keep our three-man format because our powers have so much overlap. Well, except me, as I'm built exclusively for speed and in-your-face slashing and biting. Diamond's the strong Brick-type, but she's smarter than me and Jericho combined, and she can play blaster with magic if she can find a breather long enough to gather the energy for each spell. It's impressive, but it's freaking slow. Jericho's our devisor and gadgeteer. Of the three of us he's the weakest in physical combat, but he makes up for it by being a genius with booby traps and low, animal cunning. He also snaked a concussion blaster from another devisor that he helped build the power system for.
"Dunno about beat, Diamond, but I can say we will severely ruin their day." Jericho paused a moment and came back over the comm. "All right they're splitting off like usual. Breaker and Slapdash are patrolling along the west side of the battle area. Bomber and Bunker just took the north. Mule's on the target building with that giant cannon of his and Deadeye's nowhere to be seen, per usual. He'll be somewhere unobtrusive with his crosshairs on the prize no doubt."
"All right, so how we gonna play this?" Diamond seemed quiet.
I really hated being the only one who can't speak. All I can do is make dinosaur noises from this fanged muzzle of mine. Fortunately my ability to move like Speedy Gonzalez and hit like a jackhammer makes up for it... a lot.
"All right, let's mix this up a little. Every time we do this our heroes move in a patrol pattern that allows them to come back to the target zone fast. Razorback, I want you on Breaker and Slapdash. Keep that little shithead off my trap network, or better yet, run him into it. Diamond, you got Bomber and Bunker this time. Take out Bunker at all costs. If that little rocket-lobbing psychic gets into play we're screwed."
"Gotcha. What are you going to be doing?"
Jericho's voice carried a level of evil glee that was almost disturbing, until you compare it to the evil clown-cum-ambulance-driver outfit he was wearing. "I'm gonna ferret out our sniper. Deadeye's proven to be too much of a threat to let go in the past."
Diamond's voice hissed through the comm. "All right, I'm in position. Bunker's street-stalking while Bomber provides cover."
"All right you two, let's see how they handle this one. Targets are Bunker and Slapdash. Once they're down regroup at the rally point and bring the other two with you. Engage Breaker at point-blank so Bomber can't use his little cherry bombs. Diamond, do some mumbo-jumbo and make him fall down or something. That'll leave us with Mule and Deadeye."
I clicked my comm and moved out, ghosting to the western edge of the battle area as Jericho popped the lid on his traps. To my senses the area came alive with an electric humming noise and odd vibrations as well as metallic chitters as Jericho's presents activated and went live. Three seconds later, all hell broke loose.
Murphy's law states that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. I wanna find this Murphy guy and throttle the life out of him, then hire a necromancer to raise his corpse so I can use it for an eternal punching bag.
Holographic pedestrians and passers-by scattered when Jericho's toys began bouncing around and spraying streams of high-energy laser light everywhere. Don't let him bullshit you. He says he doesn't build weapons, but he's damned good at it. He just never uses them outside the simulators. Probably for the best since his idea of combat tricks tend to involve a lot of uncontrollable mayhem. I love it when a plan comes together.
I found Slapdash and Breaker separated about fifty yards apart trying to shoot down the sudden swarm of microlaser turrets and arachnoid things with mini-chainsaw bladed maws that kept trying to jump on them, or crawl up their legs and eviscerate them. You couldn't tell who was under the matte black riot armor and tinted visors under the helmets except by the powers they use, although Slapdash's heavy combat/power rig is rather distinctive he's not always the one driving it.
The storefront and skyscraper landscape took a pounding too and the crowded streets of the Chi-town cityscape erupted in chaos as holographic civilians dove for cover. The little mechanical nightmares attacked everything that moved, in keeping with our supposedly villainous intent on this run. I'm really getting sick of being the bad guy in these runs though. I will admit that watching one of Jericho's doberman-sized spider-hunters unloading an electron arc into a Macy's storefront and blasting out a good chunk of it was amusing as all hell. It was chaos, glorious and unfettered as cars were destroyed and the street seemed to come alive with things that had been using alleyways, rooftops and sewer grates as cover burst from their hiding places to help ransack the area.
Even as Slapdash blew off one of his EMP grenades and Breaker pulled his personal shockwave blast that more or less annihilated the little toy monsters crawling all over them I was halfway to my target, and thinking I might actually pull off this part of the mission without a hitch. Silly me.
I never even got close to Slapdash when both of the grunt boys' assault rifles began spitting bullets at me on the run. Whoever trained these jokers had definitely taught them how to do their jobs. Wish I could get our team an in-house combat trainer. I took four bullets in the side and got driven down an alleyway by the murderous fire. I shrieked and began to see red as my wounds began closing and I began hacking up the 7.62 millimeter slugs that liked to bury themselves in my ass whenever we squared off.
Keeping it together was almost impossible through the pain. I felt my rage rise and my inner beast began roaring for blood as my heartbeat tripled. I actually managed to hold out through the pain for a few seconds before my vision went red and I blacked out.
First thing you gotta remember about me and half of the fools wearing the various variations of the Ultraviolent armbands: we are damned close to incapable of controlling our tempers, to the tune of if you piss us off, we will probably try to kill you. This ain't a threat, or some kinda cocky bragging bit. It's a warning. Red armbands mean we have tempers that aren't anywhere near this side of the human norm. They call us ragers and any day we don't maim or kill someone by accident is a damned beautiful day.
Upshot of the rages? I don't have to remember what I did when I was out, and the docs say it causes my regeneration ability to spike through the roof. Downshot of the rages? I don't remember what happened so I could very well hurt someone I care about and never realize it. In the sims it's weird. I can't really hurt anyone, but I never know whether or not I'm still in the game until the red haze lifts.
In this particular case I came to while chasing an unfortunate car that happened to make the mistake of moving in my field of vision. I was in the process of ripping the roof off the holographic Chevy when I regained my senses while the holographic occupants screamed.
"Razor, Razor are you there?" Diamondback's voice was a welcome distraction as I leapt away from the wildly swerving car with it's panicked occupants.
I clicked the Mic once while I tried to get my bearings As I padded back in the direction I last saw Breaker and Slapdash I saw the shredded holographic corpses of no less than a dozen bystanders along the way, with clawmarks that I didn't need to look at closely to recognize my own handiwork. I really hate this rager crap. I can only be thankful that this is only a sim, and I'm supposed to be the bad guy.
"I got Bunker easy, but I'm pinned down in the sewers. Jericho got tagged by Deadeye, so he's out. Slapdash came back, Breaker's missing and I got the rest of the Grunts crawling up my ass! I need help!"
I clicked the comm again and put on my cruising speed of sixty miles per hour. I found Breaker's simulated dead ass where I'd left leave of my senses. I was a bit shocked at that, since Breaker's one of the mighty exemplar-fives in the school. Either he screwed up,. or I become a lot more deadly when I'm pissed off. In any case, I had to go find Diamond.
One manhole cover popped up later and I was in the storm drains, trucking off to hunt my favorite prey: Fools in the dark. I could hear screaming and shouts echoing through the storm drains as I cruised low and quiet through the tunnels. The voices were controlled but nervous. This was the part of the game the Grunts hated. This was the part where me and Diamondback got creative and played Sudden Death by Movie Monster Attack.
Except for Deadeye we'd gotten every single one of them at one time or another, just not enough of them to win. Problem with the grunts is they're really cagey and very coordinated. Unfortunately for yours truly, unless I have Jericho or Diamondback in support or I have some very specific circumstances in my favor, there's several of them I cannot touch.
Deadeye is the Grunts team leader and resident ninja. To my knowledge no one on campus has been able to ferret him out of his snipers' nests since his Sophomore year. If it weren't for the fact that he never misses with a firearm he'd be considered one of the low powered mutants on Whateley. Jericho checked his records once. In four years of Whateley Academy Deadeye has fired somewhere in the neighborhood of seven-hundred-fifty thousand rounds. He only has only missed eighteen times that the records show.
Breaker's the team's number two man, and he's a thundering hardass. As an Exemplar five he's probably the epitome of the words "shock trooper." Couple that with his ability to cause a twenty-meter detonation of concussive force that can rip concrete in all directions from his body and you have one nightmare fight on your hands. The fact that he's the tactics man of the Grunts only makes things worse.
Bomber's untouchable by me unless I can engineer things so I have the advantage. He's a flyer who can hit the four-hundred miles an hour mark, and has the capacity to create and throw or drop plasma balls that are powerful enough to vaporize some of the Bricks on campus. He's also a card-carrying nutcase. The only reason he's not an Ultraviolent like me, or in jail is because he's latched onto the Grunts as what he should model his behavior after.
Slapdash is the devisor, and while I've gotten him in the past, Diamond's the only one of us that can thump him on a regular basis. Word on the street is he's probably going to wind up the next Grunts leader even though Bomber's a Junior. He's a weapons devisor and some kind of electricity manifestor. Everyone dismisses Devisors and Gadgeteers as hired help at Whateley. From personal experience I know better.
Mule's the brick. Dear god that boy's not the most powerful TK on the planet but he's one of the best at what he does. He's like the everlasting gobstopper. No matter how bad you chew his ass up he keeps coming back for more. Add to his physical toughness the fact that he resists magic and psychics about as well as he soaks up bullets and you'll realize he's a rough one to deal with. Unfortunately Jericho's our only guy who can reliably put Mule outta commission, and Jericho got dropped by Deadeye.
Then there's Bunker, dear little bunker of the fiery temper and the mouth of a drill sergeant. The girl's not as disciplined or experienced, but she's a package deal psychic. Her worst trick is her ability to cause people to completely lose touch with reality in a wave of confusion, miscommunication and hallucination. Fortunately, like most psychics she's long on mental defenses, short on the realization that mages can screw her world up because she's not ready for them. Unfortunately she has a knack for exploiting the reverse tendency in mages. With Bunker and Diamond it's always the question of who gets the first shot off. Oh yeah, and some twit's been giving her a quad-tube rocket launcher with thermobaric rounds lately. Not fun.
Be glad you're not an Outcast. This is the kind of opponent spread we routinely get thrown up against by the wonderful sadists on the Whateley Teaching Staff. Oh shit, I'm off track, again.
So as I'm stalking the corridors of the Chi-town underground I hear the sounds of gunfire and screaming, then the audible blast of one of Bomber's plasma baseballs going off. Hope Sandra's not out of it, because if she is I'm screwed. Silence reigns for about five minutes before I hear the distinct sound of Slapdash screaming. Sweet, Sandra did the movie monster thing.
I hit all fours and started pouring on the speed when I came around a corner. There was Diamond, grappling with Slapdash, or more accurately, squeezing him with her tail while she fired his sidearm down the corridor to keep the Grunts' heads down. As I watched, Slapdash flickered and faded, then re-solidified. Good, that meant according to the sims he was dead, and it evicted him, leaving a holographic corpse in his place. It also meant Sandra had twice as many takedowns as I did. This couldn't fly.
As I came closer I poured on the speed as hard as I could then hit the circular storm drain wall at an angle, causing me to run up the wall, over the ceiling and down the other side in a crazed corkscrew maneuver into the two remaining Grunts in the tunnels. Gunfire pinged all over the place while they tried to track me. Sandra moved forward and I heard a loud BOOM from further down the tunnel and a large flash. Something flopped into the muck behind me as Diamond succumbed to Deadeye.
Shit, well this was it, it was more or less over, so I hit Mule like a sack of hammers and proceeded to tear his armor apart, trying to get past him and onto Deadeye. No such luck. He grabbed me and screamed something and my vision filled with the bright blue-white light of the plasma flare that took us both.
Her cohort looked over at her. "Yeah I did. Kinda a disappointing run for the Outcasts, but they did manage to do some damage."
"Hey as long as the bookies in Vegas keep wanting the three of them on the show it's all golden. Razorback's stunt running along the walls and ceiling in the Storm Drains down there was something straight outta Aliens."
"Agreed. And speaking of which, our account just cleared another check from the bookies and they're requesting another run."
"They'll have it tomorrow night. Bardue's been predictable, and no one realizes the Outcasts aren't supposed to be on the Active track for the sims."
"Who they up against?"
The girl looked down at the computer and grinned. "Oh this should be good. Bardue's got them up against another unconventional group. The Goobers."
"That'll make things interesting. What's the spread?"
"Five to one the Outcasts paste them. The three of them have been getting visibly pissed off over the last couple weeks in the sims. I'm setting up the Arena 99 feeds for the run tomorrow night."
"Put me down for twenty that Jericho actually nails someone this time."
"Done."
As the bright spots faded from my vision I realized the sim was over and done with from the blank, hex-grid room with all manner of sensors and emitters clustered all over. Finally. That was another hour of my life I would never get back, burned off to the combat training gods who oversaw the sadistic training schedule here at Bizarro High School. After the glare blindness faded I palmed the keypad and walked out into the hallway. After a year and a few months at Whateley I knew my way around so I trucked over to the ready room for the post-action debrief.
Outside the ready room I heard the three dead grunts before I saw them. Sure enough there was Breaker, Slapdash and Bunker, in the push-up position, counting out push-ups with a rather severe looking instructor with buzzed black hair and old-school camouflage uniform with a black beret overseeing, while smirking at them. Must be one of the range guys. I've seen him before around campus quite a bit, but never really talked to him. I never had much reason to talk to the Whateley gun monkeys anyway.
I suppressed a chuckle that would have sounded wrong anyway and went inside to see the rest of today's Sim course victims all present and accounted for. Apparently my arrival was the signal for the three downed Grunts to get up and come in as well. The instructor didn't follow us.
All of us were decked out in our heroic and villainous best, courtesy of the costuming classes we all have to take, which I think is retarded. Even with the best costuming on Earth, there's no way me or Diamondback will ever be mistaken for anything but ourselves. But rules are rules and Arena 99 has a Masks Required policy to protect our identities, so here I am decked out in matte black armor plating with red runic markings that Diamondback came up with. My mask looks like a form-fitting piece that covers the upper part of my face, above my jaw.
Diamondback was all decked out in a blood-red skin-tight robe with a hood and white skull mask, in keeping with the whole evil dude look. It looks eerie the way her tail flows out from under the robe. Ok she was lazy when she made it. Like me, she sees little point in it as she's probably one of the most easily recognizable people in the freaking world, outfit or no. Her scales and tail are a dead giveaway.
Jericho was decked out in an EMT uniform, complete with an evil clown painted mask that was currently sitting atop his dreads. The name tag read Pennywise. Trust Jericho to be a thermonuclear smartass in all things.
The Grunts all wore matching Matte black body armor with matching helmets and shaded visors, thusly obeying the Masks rule. Word on the street is the armor is something called Dragonskin. I'd believe it, considering how much effort it takes to destroy the armor enough to get to the chewy center.
Gunny Bardue was already there, along with Mr. Andrews, the head tech on the Arena sim. Both of them nodded to each of us as we entered and took our seats. The grunts looked smug, as always. So far they were undefeated in the sims and they knew they had bragging rights on most of the school, having even taken down the Wild Pack, the Capes, and the "normal" training squads where students got mixed and matched according to the arcane training schedule. Personally I think they cheat, but I can't prove it.
It was unusual to have a group like me, Jericho and Diamond on regular sim runs together. Most of the time it was by Whateley Academy's team formula, which I believe is a load of crap anyway. How often are ya gonna actually find a balanced fight in real life? Six-on-three against the Grunts was actually realistic. It's how I'd have done it. But for some reason some of the Cliques like the Capes and occasionally the Turks would do the sim runs together. I dunno why it happened, and no one's ever bothered to tell me.
"All right settle down," Gunny Bardue began, "We'll get started with our bad guys for this run. You Outcasts have anything to say before we get to it?"
Hell yeah I had a lot to say, beginning with 'this is bullshit,' and ending somewhere with 'I need my beauty sleep.' Being as sexy as I am takes a lot of talent. What, you think these scales polish themselves?
"Yeah, why the hell is it every time we come in here we're outnumbered?" Jericho didn't even bother to raise his hand.
Bardue smirked. "Luck of the draw. Besides, watching the battle recordings of the lot of you if we gave you more teammates, you wouldn't be challenged as much."
I leaned over to Diamondback in the seat next to me. -And of course we couldn't have the Simulator champs challenged in earnest too often now could we?- I signed.
Diamond gave a slight smile. -There's gotta be more to it than that. That answer is loaded with 'I'm the teacher and this is a secret' bullshit.- She could sign back, and was better than Jericho at it, which was no surprise., Jericho liked to just get by, the lazy ass that he is.
"Cool, can we get a damned even fight one of these days?" I was a bit surprised. Jericho wasn't normally this blatantly belligerent, but then he'd had bags under his eyes for the last three nights trying to catch up in his schoolwork and getting his project in the Devisor lab up and running.
"Boy do you have a problem with my training schedule?" Even being blind as a bat, Jericho's weird-o-vision couldn't miss Bardue's expression, or his tone. And he wasn't daft enough to want to go cleaning up the messes in Hawthorne.
"No sir. Sorry, I'm just tired." Jericho's response just goes to show you. Never underestimate the intimidation power of a sixty year old black man, who happens to have been a Marine Drill Sergeant or something. Or Drill Instructor, whatever. Military terminology isn't exactly my high point. My experiences with the military are limited to getting shot at with automatic weapons. Long story. Don't ask.
"Thought so." Bardue turned to the viewscreen and pulled down the image of me charging Breaker and Slapdash while Jericho's little nut-bots were doing the crazy-shoot-me thing. "Breaker what the hell were you thinking here? We've seen this twice now, and each time you've gotten eaten by Razorback."
The Chinese exemplar took off his helmet and sighed. "I got caught up Gunny. Razor was going for Slapdash, and we needed to be able to neutralize Jericho's battle-bug things or we'd have gotten picked apart. Dragonskin armor only does so much against low-power laser-burns and if you get enough of them we'd have been cooked alive. Needed Slapdash functional until Deadeye took out Jericho."
Bardue nodded, seemingly satisfied, and turned to Jericho. "All right, you're supposed to be the leader here. why'd you split your team into singles? I understand the whole death by a thousand frustrations bit, but the three of you would have been a lot more effective as a cohesive unit."
"We're working on it, but we keep bumping into the same problems with that. Nine times out of ten we're outnumbered and outgunned." Jericho was really tired, speaking slowly and having a hard time keeping his eyes open. "Never mind that on any given team we've fought the ones who thrash us consistently have something that can take us out johnny-one-shot style. The Grunts have two of those."
"Explain."
The rest of the grunts leaned forward. Deadeye was taking notes in the corner and Mule was leaning against a wall, alternately keeping an eye on me and Bomber. Bunker was trading evil looks with Diamondback, and the rest of the Grunts looked bored. Me, I was just wanting the training schedule to slow down at this point.
Jericho managed to look somewhat awake and hostile. "You got two teams and two floaters in the Grunts. Breaker and Slapdash and Bomber and Bunker on one team with Mule and Deadeye floating. Bomber does that plasma thing and as the sim shows, even Razorback can't do much against atomic level vaporization. Then you got Bunker with her psychic schtick and confusion aura. But that's not her worst trait. The worst part is what she's usually armed with those thermobaric rounds she packs in that four-shot launcher of hers that can burn out an entire building."
Bardue nodded. "So you had Diamondback take her out first."
"Yeah, She's tricksy, but she keeps making the mistake of discounting mages. Diamond may take a while to charge up a shot, but Bunker's usually not ready for it, and vice-versa."
Diamond cut in at this point. "And Bunker's quicker on the power draw than I am, so we're at a serious disadvantage here. Gotta drop her first or the rest of us are screwed and we get mopped up like happened the first time we played sim chumps with these guys."
Bunker, of course, got a smug look on her face.
"Did it ever occur to you all to simply sneak in and take the objective while the Grunts were patrolling?" Bardue pulled up the battle map and pointed at the building Mule had been guarding until the fracas had escalated to the sewers. "The objective was item retrieval, not "wipe out the home team."
-You try slipping past that bastard sometime. He looks big and dumb but outside Deadeye he's the best at catching sneakers. Never mind he's smarter than he looks.-
"Ok what the hell did he just say?" Bardue pointed at me. I repeated, Jericho translated.
"Gee, thanks Razor, you're a pal." Mule grinned widely when I flipped him the middle-finger salute. Me and him get along pretty well after last year. Moreso than most, but only because we both have this thing for pounding bullies that crop up around campus. Mule's a total Boy Scout type, but don't hold that against him. He can be a decent human on occasion.
All in all us Outcasts and the Grunts manage to keep things civil. We just don't run in the same circles, and occasionally we do something wiseass that tickles their funny bone. They are somewhat less amused by our antics in the sims, since we have come fairly close to stomping them once or twice. Ok ok, we kept getting our asses handed to us. Jesus, let me enjoy my delusions!
"In any case," Bardue began, pointedly ignoring the rude gesture, "Jericho found out that Deadeye was also covering the target zone. Speaking of which, Jericho I recommend you find yourself some kind of armor. Of all the people who run these sims you're one of the most vulnerable."
"Working on it. Shi... Stuff's expensive and I have to live on a budget. Not all of us have wealthy mommies and daddies."
This time it was Breaker who gave Jericho the finger.
"All right, children, I want to keep this short and sweet. Outcasts have sims tomorrow night against the Goobers, their first time in the sims as a group, and the next morning against the capes." Our three cries of protest were firmly ignored. "Go get some sleep."
He turned to the Grunts. "As for you little rats, I'd yell at you, but I want to get home to my beer, so I'm delegating your ass-chewing. Go see Sergeant-Major Smythe on Range 4 for your full debrief and analasys. He's wide awake and looking forward to your arrival. And since he owes me for covering him last month he's missing his rugby game on the tube for the benefit of your education."
A near unanimous cry of "Oh shit." "Goddammit!" and "Jesus you Outcasts always get us in trouble," rang out in the room as Grunts and Outcasts gathered up our gear and wandered off to our rooms and "Incentive training."
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006
When I arrived at the Crystal Hall the next morning I recieved a treat to the senses. That's right, Jericho in his flaming weird best sitting at the traditional table wearing his kilt, penny loafers and a bright pink shirt with "FUCK YOU!" in blue lettering emblazoned across his chest. Yup, Jericho was in a grand mood, I could tell.
I sat down, grumbled to myself and proceeded to assault my tray of meat in various forms ranging from "egg product" to "well done" with a smattering of still screaming and bleeding. I decided that today would be a good day to shred through it, and I did so. Then I went back for seconds. Then I went back for thirds, all while my partner in crime sipped coffee from his gynormous sixty-four ounce coffee mug. By all rights he should be dead from caffeine overload.
By the time Diamondback arrived things were starting to become normal. Jericho was looking somewhat awake, and I was ready to assault the day and all contained within. I wonder if Delarose is cued into my weird little moods. It might explain his near-psychic knack for predicting the days I was going to have a blowout.
"How you doing, guys" Diamondback slid into her customary seat and began tearing apart HER pile of meat foods and we played the carnivore game while Jericho stared at his pathetic, untouched plate of two eggs, a slice of bacon and a grapefruit half.
"Tired. So very tired." Jericho took another pull on his mass-dose of coffee while starting at his plate disgustedly.
Sandra and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes and I picked up Jericho's plate and dumped the bastard, bringing back a real breakfast rather than this diet crap he's been going on with. I'll give the boy credit, since apparently he's lost about a hundred pounds, but he's also doing sim runs that are stressful as hell, and I've been helping him in the weight rooms to strengthen up. This california anorexic diet shit has gotta go, otherwise he'll kill himself.
I dropped the plate in front of him and he looked in my general direction, confused.
-Eat, jackass. You're starving yourself too much.- I signed at him once he realized what I had done.
"I'm trying to lose weight." Jericho shouldn't have been THIS tired. He'd gotten enough sleep after the sim run. He'd slowed down on the weight loss a lot, and seemed to be holding steady. I'd talked to the docs and apparently this kinda thing was normal, but Jericho's level of activity was probably causing malnutrition at this point.
"No Joseph, Razor's right," Sandra cut in, invoking the dreaded 'real name,' "This diet was working just fine for you up till we started the heavy sim runs, and you started pounding the weights with Razor and running a lot on your off-time. But it's not enough to keep you going. So eat. Please."
Jericho looked at his plate, rather annoyed for a few minutes before slowly starting to pick at it. Diamondback watched dispassionately for a few moments, then held up five fingers, dropping them one by one on a countdown. I'd seen her pull this kinda shit with Jericho before. It's both creepy and uncanny. Sure enough as her last finger fell away Jericho tore through the food on the plate with a gusto I had rarely seen outside a pack of energizers.
I feel for Jericho, I really do. Nine times out of ten he's just another fat kid in a high school full of pretty people. Never mind he never picked up any powers beyond the devisor/gadgeteer slant, so in most normal fights he has all the terrifying power of the average, normal fifteen-year-old. He always blows it off but it rankles. You can tell. What REALLY burns his ass is the fact that by and large, the devisors and gadgeteers are largely seen as second-rate heroes and villains, or hired flunkies. The kid who's been dealing with various social stigmas all his life gets yet another social stigma in a new place.
And you were all wondering why he's so warped in the head.
"Oh god I feel so much better." Sure enough, Jericho was coming around and alert. I've been hungry enough to feel sick and tired before myself. Stupid thing is, eating causes and immediate recovery. The human, and not-so-human body is creepy like that.
-See? I told you Jackass.-
Diamond immediately threw in with "Your starvation diet privelages are revoked. You will eat like a normal human from now on."
"But how will I maintain my girlish figure?" Yup, he was back to being Jericho again. The bloody smartass.
-Not my problem, mate. You're the bugger who wants to fit into a dress.-
"Gee Razor, you're a pal. So are we on for our torture session tonight?" Jericho hated working out, but he saw it as necessary.
-Of course. Tonight's schedule we do your favorite thing. Two mile run.- I love watching hope die. I really do. It's funny as hell and the expression on Jericho's face was priceless. I wanted a camera.
"He's kidding Jericho. We have a date with this Goober crew, remember? More fun with the sims under Arena 99." Diamond smirked as Jericho breathed a sigh of relief.
I nodded a bit. -Much as I love watching you gasp and puke on the track we have to be ready for whatever these goobers can throw at us. Do we know anything about them?-
"Just that they work for King Fundie." Diamond, being a pagan, has no love for Reverend Englund's Hellfire and Dalmatians sermonizing.
"Great. Well they can't be as bad as the fucking Grunts." Jericho let a small smile. "Oh my if they're Englund's pet geek squad we might be able to play 'em. I'm gonna hit the Devisor Lab and see if I can't whip up something to draw attention. I'm gonna keep the Rafe Armor in reserve until we get tossed at another confirmed power team."
I grinned, which more or less amounts to hanging my jaw open slightly and showing off my meat-tearing choppers. -Confusion and chaos time?-
Jericho shook his head. "Not this time Razor. Let's throw something that looks suitably demonic at them. Once we get their attention let's hit 'em as hard as we can. Screw this pussyfooting around. You two are powerful enough on your own to handle a good number of goons on campus. Let's abuse this. I'll take a page out of Deadeye's book and play shock-rifle sniper for their benefit."
Diamond nodded, and uncoiled herself from the seat. "All right, while you two do that I'm going to see what the Whitman girls know about these goobers."
"Good idea. Razor, go poke around Twain. Get intel from Thuban if you have to but don't promise that shifty bastard anything ambiguous. Make him spell out terms from the get-go."
-Got it. I might be able to weasel something out of his info network. Probably won't be much though.-
"Something is better than nothing. Let's get to it."
I should have known better than to think I could just get to Thuban and get the info without something stupid or crazed happening. It was a green flag outside, and everybody and their freaking brother was out enjoying the freedom to be ourselves with no reservations or stigma. Well, mostly no stigma. Us GSD types still have to put up with prejudicial assholes like anyone else.
Sadly, there are worse things to be at Whateley than heavily GSD. Being blessed with shitty, nearly nonexistent powers is one of those things. I get odd looks, scared stares and generalized contempt. What I don't get is bullied for the most part. This is partly because I'm as nasty as I look in a fight, partly because everyone who's been at Whateley for more than a year knows I'm an ultraviolent rager. Some kids don't even have that, and me and one or two others around campus make it our personal mission in life to make sure they don't get tortured much by the powerhouse students. An exemplar 1 with no other powers is easy meat for most of the rest of campus.
I bring this up because my post-breakfast activity was noting four of the Underdog girls trying to leave the Crystal Hall area and being blocked by Aries, that hackwit jackass speedster who I damned near maimed permanently my freshman year when he decided to pick on the GSD freak.
Sure enough, Sue, Lucille, Rhiannon and Anna were tightly packed and giving the bullying shithead as much space as they could. It wasn't much considering Aries is faster than I am by a fair margin, and he has this nasty habit of slipping just inside your personal space-bubble when he's least wanted. He never would lay a hand on the girls in a place this public, but he wasn't above intimidating and harassing, since he could be on time to class from here with thirty seconds until the bell rang.
In short, he's a fucktard.
Who are the Underdogs? As I mentioned before, they're the kids with suckass powers. Hell, I think Anna's an Avatar with a squirrel spirit or something rediculous like that. They take the phrase "sucks to be you" and give it a whole new spin.
"Come on Anna, I just want to see what Squirrel powers are. C'mon, you can show me." Aries was using his greasy, mocking tone of voice as he made sure he was in the girls' collective space bubble and leering.
"Aries we need to get to class!" Bless Sue's heart. She's the bravest of the lot, even if she's about as powerful as one of Jericho's tracker-cat robots. "Let us go."
"Very well. You may go. She has to stay until I see the mighty squirrel power!" True to Alpha form, he was so intent on the victims of his asshole behavior that he never considered that someone like Me, or Mule, or Jimmy T might decide to punk him. Nobody messes with the Alphas, right? Right. And if you believe that I got some naked pictures of your mom I wanna sell you.
"Back off, Aries, you don't know what you're up against." I saw Sue's quiet smirk and damn near lost it to a chuckle as I crept up right behind Aries and settled in for some fun.
"Oh I'm sure, and exactly what are you going to do to stop me?" Cocky Alpha asstick.
"Not us... Him." Sue let out a beatific smile as I exhaled sharply through my nostrils, hitting Aries' neck with a short blast of hot, stinky, carnivore-breath-smelling air.
Aries stiffened and turned a mite slowly and looked to see me crouched low, in an attack posture, with my spines upright and primed for violence, claws extended seemingly for him.
Poor Aries. He downplays our little encounter last year as just another thing, trying desperately to keep his Alpha cool rep intact, but when I catch him off-guard... Hooo baby! Perhaps shrieking in his face with my jaws wide and showcasing the teeth with bits of breakfast meats still stuck in them was a bit overboard. Nah. Watching him go ghost-white and bolt in a panic was just so worth it.
I think it's a law of the universe that if you make a bully shit himself, no one who matters will be around to see it. Me and the Underdogs got ourselves a good chuckle at Mr. Alpha's expense of course, but there really wasn't anyone around to whom it would matter in any way that Aries would care about.
Check that. While I was laughing I saw Delarose standing about fifty paces out with a slowly shaking head and a look of mild disapproval directed at me. Oh yeah. I wasn't supposed to pull shit like that on campus. A simple twitch of his head in the direction of survival class and a pointed finger later and I got the hint and bugged out. He was letting me off the hook IF I immediately followed his unstated but very clear instructions.
A few days later Sue told me that as soon as I bailed Delarose actually smirked, started chuckling to himself and wandered off whistling to himself obnoxiously. I swear one of these days I will figure out what his angle is, and the arcane methods he uses to determine wether a situation is worth his intervention. Then I'm gonna have me a heyday stomping some new mudholes in Alpha asses without breaking his rules. HEY! I can dream, can't I?
I wasn't able to link up with Jericho until after dinner, and Music class wound up being too frantic to talk once someone decided it would be a brilliant idea to rewire the amplifiers to cause nausea through sonic amplification. I was not happy.
Jericho was sitting across from some exemplar chicka at our usual table and me and Diamondback didn't feel like enduring the freaked stares of one of the pretties. It was almost surreal. She had been there at both lunch and dinner. I didn't get close enough to have a look. Me and Diamond just grabbed a to-go barrel and wandered out to eat our heap of dead thing in private.
Thuban was a bust. The draconian sonofabitch wouldn't lay out terms or even admit to knowing anything useful, and when I finally had had enough of both him and my vodor driving me bugshit with that shards of salt under my scales feeling I finally left. I imagine the Vodor MIGHT have survived the full-strength throw into my room as I passed, but I was neither counting on, nor hoping for it.
Yeah, I know, I'm using a vodor now, but this one doesn't have the same... maddening feeling I get when I used most of them in the past. I really can't describe it, but I can say whenever I used to use them it left me on the verge of a maddened frenzy. Hell, my freshman year I DID go into a frenzy because of it, a couple times.
But when we got together it was a jeering sneer-fest. "New girlfriend Jericho?" Diamondback asked archly. I knew damned well she didn't care beyond the girl taking up our accustomed space.
"Huh? Oh, yeah. Sorry guys. Met a new girl to the school. She's just starting and she didn't gimmie the standard level of love, so I got curious and distracted." Jericho didn't look the least bit apologetic.
-Yeah, sure, distracted... By her boobs I'll bet.- I couldn't resist.
"Hey! That was uncalled for!" Jericho began.
"But it's true." Sandra interjected.
"Although I will admit, they were pretty nice."
Sandra just rolled her eyes as we entered our favorite hiding place under Hawthorne. The large stone room was a junction area for electrical systems around campus, and Jericho had taps on the lines for our guitar amps. Our guitars were, of course elsewhere as we hadn't come to practice. We were here to brainstorm. And if that failed, to make sarcastic remarks until our tongues fell out. Whichever comes first.
"So, what we got for information?" Jericho began the official portion of the little meeting without fanfare or ceremony. Thank god. He can get obnoxious when he works at it.
I replied quicker. -Not a whole lot. Thuban was being his typical, mysterious prick self. He was alluding to the idea that certain parties should become regular attendees over at Faction 3.-
"Like hell." Diamond wasn't fond of said meetings, even though Thuban CLAIMED that things were improving by leaps and bounds.
"I agree, so I take it you didn't commit us to his cult of lack of personality?" Jericho asked smoothly.
-No. I've no interest in the damned GSD pity party. Besides, I have far more fun asking Phoenixfire out every couple of days while she tries to be polite letting me down. It's a little game in my twisted mind.-
Jericho chuckled while Sandra just shook her head. Like hell I'm going to a damned pity party. I figure if people can't take me as I am, I'll just ignore their stupid, shallow asses and truck on. Although harassing Phoenixfire's starting to get old, and she's starting to catch on. Maybe I'll go bug that elfy girl, Fey. I'll have to do it with Stalwart in the area for maximum fun and sputter factor. I don't expect anything to come of it anyway. What girl in her right mind is willing to date a big velociraptor anyway? Oh well, No fear, no regrets.
Shut up you guys, I don't want to spoil that story just yet.
"Alright Sandra, you get anything?"
Sandra grinned, showing off her fangs and nodded. "Oh yeah. You'd be surprised at just how much Silvermoon will chat about her team and that wonky old right-wing fart who's teaching them to become monster-hunters." She looked pointedly at me, "And she still thinks you're a rabid animal that needs to be put down, sorry."
-No worries. The fact that she thinks the same about Bloodwolf takes away some of the sting.-
She nodded, knowing full-well I could care less what the werewolf bint thought of me. "But what we got is a hodgepodge of oddballs, led by Nightbane."
"That Buffy wannabe?" Jericho groaned. "Jeez, what did we do to deserve her lackwit humor?"
-You were born, now shut up.-
Jericho, of course gave me the finger.
"You boys want to hear this or not?"
Both me and Jericho apologized and got attentive quick.
"Now we've got Silvermoon, who's almost a carbon-copy of Bloodwolf, power-wise but with better control. Ecto-Tek, you'd know more about, Jericho."
Jericho thought for a minute. "Yeah, Ecto's an odd duck even for the devisor crowd. Not as odd as Jobe by any stretch but still odd. Most of his gadgets revolve around supernatural detection or combat. He's a specialist type. Always talking about things from Lovecraft novels and shit. He claims that that Sara Waite chickadee who hangs with the Kimbas is one of the Great Old Ones' daughter."
"Sounds about right." Diamond nodded. "Anything we need to worry about?"
"Not so much. I mean he's all coked up for spirit-detection and stuff but we don't have any Avatars in the three of us, since both you and Raz are Exemplars." Jericho thought for a moment. Really all we should have to worry about from him are the usual devisor bag of tricks like robots, laser cannons, for lack of a better term, and force fields. Those are beatable."
Sandra nodded and coiled up her body and went into her weird sitting position on the floor. "Next we have Beacon, who does this funky light-thing that's pretty useless but he claims is like sunlight to a vampire against spirits and demons and stuff, so again, no huge worries there. He is a lowbie Exemplar, so watch out for his right cross."
Me and Jericho nodded.
"Last on our list is Oak, that tree-kid from Twain."
-Oak's a good guy for the most part. A bit sarcastic, but a good guy. Got fused with some kinda demon-weed before he came here, so he's like a cross between a TK brick, an exemplar and a regen, all bundled up into a tight wad of fun. He'll be a tough nut to crak. We might have to use fire, but that could get out of hand really quickly.-
"Let's try to avoid deadly force unless we have to." Diamondback didn't much like fighting, but she was pretty frightening at it.
"Ok, I have something cooked up thyat'll get their attention pretty solid. I just need to go talk to Bardue about running a scenario we choose this time." Jericho mused.
-YEAH! We get to pick one scenario type per month in the sims if we do more than five.-
"We do?" Diamondback asked, surprised.
"Yeah, it's all part of the whole Whateley emphasis on self-defense. We can get some say in our training pogrom, I mean program."
Diamond snickered.
-So we hit 'em hard this time rather than playing "pick off the stragglers?"-
Jericho nodded. "Yup. I got something that'll get their attention and then we slam 'em while they're trying to figure out what the hell is going on."
"All right," Diamond said, "let's get ready for this."
Bardue had cackled evilly when we brought him our scenario request. Since this was the Goobers' first run in the sims as a team we decided to welcome them, Outcast style. So we found ourselves hooded and masked in the center of New york's Central Park in the main arena above the linked sim rooms.
OH! sorry, I forgot you're not familiar with Arena 99. Well, up top you got the big stadium, also known as the Thunderdome to the more crass among the student body. In there, automated construction units build, demolish and rebuild the terrain into anything from a cityscape to a moonscape. There are bleachers, an announcer's area, all very Roman gladiator colliseum-esque. The terrain's fully destructible and there's a force-field there to protect bystanders. The place is goddamned impressive. It's also wired to hell for those mutant deathmatch games that Vegas shows. Yes friends, Whateley's the source of those broadcasts.
Down below the arena you have the interlinked sim rooms. Each room is meant to house one student in an interlinked scenario formed of solid holograms. Basically it cuts you out of the sim if the computers determine you would be fatally wounded or incapacitated. Don't think it's safe. If you fall you can break your neck. The laws of physics are not suspended in the eyes of superscience, and a bullet that hits you in a nonlethal spot will still tear your ass up.
So like I said, we were up in the main arena with these black and gold robes that Diamond borrowed from the magic department that were supposed to be some sort of mystic power focus. I hesitate to say steal since we gave them back in the condition we got them. I prefer Cait's definition. A Field Expedient Acquisition for Nefarious Purposes. And you couldn't get more nefarious than demon-summoning in central park to welcome the newest simulator bitches into the fold.
We heard them arguing before we saw them, and I about gagged. They were arguing about plans of attack and ambushes, and what we were up to. Jericho had a disgusted look on his face when he caught them in earshot after I did.
"Amateurs." His one word about summed up what we were all thinking at the time, since we had to learn the hard way with the other teams about being stealthy. These guys might as well have been carrying road flares and singing Hymnals.
"I got a signal, a spirit-lock." It was that Devisor, Ecto-Tek talking as they started shifting in our direction. Weird, there shouldn't have been any spirits around us, and none of us were Avatars.
"Showtime." Sandra breathed as Jericho handed her the trigger on his little toy and me and him took our positions, bobbing up and down like the good little cultists we were. Sandra began a long intonation in her sexy alto and began the so-called ritual that was the Goobers' mission to disrupt.
We saw them while Sandra was facing away from them, her tail trailing a ways behind, and her skull-mask not visible to any of us. Me and Jericho, however, had a clear view as the lot of them crept slowly out of the treeline along a bike path, coming towards the lake we had chosen for our nefarious purposes. I will admit, some days I love being the bad guys.
Sara Waite was bored out of her mind when she walked into the Arena area. Between getting her work finished for class and a severe lack of desire to socially interact with anyone today she found herself at loggerheads. Hippolyta was busy with her martial arts practice, Gypsy was doing something with the other Fortune-tellers of Whateley, and she wasn't going to be visiting Merry in her hidey-hole for another two hours once she got the all-clear from Fey that she wasn't being watched to follow her off-campus.
She was also troubled by other events, like Lenston, and Merry's instability and fear of snakes that she couldn't even pin down. That girl was going to take some adjusting. On top of that was the sneaking feeling that something big was about to go down, and the fact that she couldn't pin the feeling down to a source was aggravating to say the least.
She picked the arena on a whim, and wandered in, noting the various students there doing homework, or watching the occasional bout down below the force field. Bloodwolf, Maggot and Killstench were leaning over the edge of the arena practically drooling at the potential for bloodshed. Idly, and on a whim she leaned over and looked down.
Lo and behold some of her least-favorite people on Whateley campus were readying to mount an attack on the three chanting figures by the lake, standing in a crudely drawn summoning circle. The robed figures seemed oblivious to their danger as Ecto-Tek levelled his blaster and fired while the others charged forward in something resembling a formation pattern. The liquid-green energy discharge exploded on an unseen barrier between the two groups, and the ground around the oncoming attackers suddenly boiled and erupted as small, skittering mechanical monstrosities erupted from the earth around the Goobers.
The little monsters were spiderlike or centipede-like and carried a strange mix of blades and energy attacks. The most disturbing part of the little chromed monstrosities were the faces draped over their bodies like obscene clothing, all wearing makeup. It was like they'd ripped off all the faces of the people in clown makeup in a hundred miles and were wearing them for a party. The mayhem, panic and confusion was beautiful, with the Goobers' attack choking and stalling as the murderous little things shot, stabbed and chewed on anything that moved.
The ritual continued unabated, and while there was a trickle of power from the figure in the center of the circle, female by the voice, with a long snakelike tail where her legs should be. It wasn't enough for what the ritual LOOKED like, but the Goobers were going nuts trying to get at it. It was almost formulaic. By the time the Goobers subdued or destroyed the little bug-monsters the ritual ended, and Sara saw a pinprick of energy as the ritual leader released the power she had been building slowly over a minute. The field became a rampant scene as the shadows seemed to animate and come alive, caressing the goobers and making distorted images in the tree line.
The Circle erupted and from the water a giant mass of whitish-yellow knotted tendrils erupted as a giant mass of what looked like oversized spaghetti noodles dripping marinara emerged from the water. A pair of gigantic meatballs were firmly ensconced in the noodle-monstrosity's "face" and the two eyes on noodle-like stalks were just icing on the cake. Sara started giggling as she recognized the Flying Spaghetti Monster of Internet fame, as big as a house and writhing and whipping about like some mad thing. The Goobers looked confused for a moment and went wide-eyed.
It was too tempting, and too easy. Sara took in a great lungful of air and shrieked out excitedly, carefully watching the goobers' confusion turn to horror as they stared up at her.
"DADDY!"
I'm not sure what triggered the giggling and laughter first, the demon-girl Sara screaming DADDY!, or her quiet and smug "oops, my mistake" that I'm pretty sure only I heard, the growing look of horror on the Goobers' faces when the implications began to sink in, or Diamondback's immediate toss of a salute/wave to Sara while yelling "Thanks for the help!" without missing a beat. Whatever it was, while the holographic spaghetti-thing floated towards the Goobers I couldn't stop laughing like a maniac, sounding like a wounded seal caught in a blender.
While I dropped to all fours, laughing, Jericho was doing a very good impression of a villain with his laugh, although it was ruined by the absolute mirth in his voice. Diamondback just started giggling like she'd lost her damned mind, holding her stomach and letting the laughs flow. The humor must flow. The humor is the soul. The soul is the humor.
It could have cost us a lot in this battle were it not for the fact that the Holographic monster was more or less invulnerable, being composed of solidified light bands trapped in a forcefield. I dunno how it works and Jericho's explanations always give me a headache.
The Goobers found their resolve and attacked with gusto while we rolled about like a buncha thunderstruck idiots. Ecto-Tek was the first on the ball as he unloaded the green-energy-blasting ray gun in his hands into the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which triggered a roar of outrage and an immediate response as the hologram wrapped a tentacle around Oak and pitched him across the park. Give the verdant bastard some credit, because he got right back up and charged, howling like a lunatic with rage or something.
Nightbane was up and attacking in a flash, whipping a katana with golden-colored etchings at the holographic horror, slicing away a tentacle that wrapped around her waist and eliciting a disgusted shriek. The tentacle bubbled and dissolved as it hit the ground. "Kalamari anyone?" I can personally do without her weak-ass Buffy-wannabe humor, and apparently so could me compadres.
That broke the giggling mood as Silvermoon shifted her body to the hulking, silver-furred wolf-woman with claws, fangs and mucho ferocity and began bouncing around like an enraged ping-pong-ball with motive and intent, slashing at the tentacles that threatened to hurt her friends. Beacon began blazing away with his oddball beams of light that seared through the body of the hologram and closed just as fast. Jericho had programmed his scientific minion well.
Beacon was the first "casualty" as the noodle-tentacles wrapped around him and pulled him up to be absorbed into the writhing mass of noodles and marinara. the whole "body" of the beast writhed and wriggled like it was digesting while Beacon let out panicked screams from inside.
"BEACON!" Nightbane yelled and her teammates all added oaths and curses to the mix. "All right you tentacled thing! let Beacon go!"
Right about then the sound of a belch and a bubbly voice going "Yum!" sounded out from our technological terror.
Oak charged and leapt at the Flying Spaghetti Monster from the side, his momentum knocking it from the sky as more tendrils erupted from the noodle mass to ensnare all of the Goobers, who thought they were fighting for their lives against a real demon.
"Think now's a good time to do our thing?" Sandra asked lightly from within her hooded robe.
Jericho smiled. "Sandra you take Oak. I got Ecto-geek. Razor, keep Nightbane and Silvermoon occupied till me and Sandra get our thing done. On me."
I heard Ecto-Tek mutter "it's not real" while staring at one of his instruments. He raised his voice to say "Hey GUYS! It's not..." Whatever he was going to say got cut off when we threw the robes off and Jericho fired his shock-rifle at the poor devisor geek. The untested weapon worked like a charm, throwing him on his ass and scattering his myriad bits of gear around like confetti. Sadly it didn't knock the little geek out as it had hit a personal forcefield.
In any case we didn't give him the chance to warn anyone as Sandra slithered over to Oak and gave him a tail-slap that sent him reeling. Now you'd think a Brick's a brick, but Exemplars, TK's and whatever Oak is are odd, varied and hardly ever operate as straightforward power-wise as most folks think. Oak got up, shook off the dazed look and dove straight at Diamond, only to run afoul of her stupid-fast reflexes as she grabbed him and sent him spinning into the dirt, digging a furrough five feet long. Then Jericho and Ecto-Tek started exchanging fire, blasts hitting and caroming off both their personal forcefields, and things got confused right quick.
I took the opportunity to charge Silvermoon full-tilt and drive her into the rapidly recovering Spaghetti-monster's writhing noodle body. I bounced off her, kicking her into the thing and charged Nightbane, driving her into the ground and causing her to lose her grip on her sword. While Silvermoon was trying to fend off the emerging noodles to keep from becoming engulfed, I rolled with Nightbane on the ground, each of us trying to get a grip on the other when her hand grabbed my snout.
I'd like to speak of my grand personal bravery in the defeat of my goody-good foe, but when she touched me skin-to scale it hurt! The pain lanced through my body and started my muscles convulsing so hard that I kicked her away and bolted on all fours away from them as fast as I could go. When I recovered my senses from instinct I had a scant moment to reflect that whatever she'd done had fucking HURT!
Silvermoon extricated herself and the two goobers darted out of reach, squaring off against me. Oops, they were catching on to the more or less harmless nature of our noodly god-demon-thing. I darted back in and grabbed the sword, pitching it into the lake as they charged at me. One less implement of dismemberment for their side as I proceeded to bounce between the two, and running circles around them. I put my claws to good use tearing out Silver's hamstrings, but they knitted back together almost as fast. Almost as fast as mine were prone to doing in fact, which put her ahead of Bloodwolf on the regen tree by a slight margin.
Change of plan. I dove on Nightbane, slamming the blonde to the ground and pummeling her for all I was worth, pain or no. And it WAS painful to say the least. Every time I hit her that searing agony lanced up my arms and legs, threatenting to take me away to oh-shit-Razor's-gone-berzerko-again-land. Not right here, not with my opponents being living, breathing humans even if they were the competition and the fundie apprentices.
Unfortunately it wasn't meant to be as Silvermoon hit me like a freight train, claws tearing into my scaly ass like jagged razorblades and tearing strips from my hide. I lost it. I saw red, tasted blood and felt nothing, punctuated by flashes of consciousness and the knowledge that I was savaging Silvermoon for all I was worth before her claws or her jaws sent me back into rage again.
The last time I came conscious it was to the feel of a Mack truck hitting me in the side and pitching me like a rag doll across the lawn area. As I shook myself awake I saw Jericho aiming his shock-rifle at ME. I was about to shriek at him when I saw Silvermoon lying flat-out on the grass, gasping shallowly, while her wounds knit painfully slowly to mine eyes, even though her healing rate far exceeded a human's. Even creepier was I didn't even feel like I had a bruise, even though the armor plating of my costume had been rent and bent badly and I was dripping blood.
Nightbane was on her butt a few yards away, wincing and holding her upper chest where there were three horizontal slash marks right below her neck that were a shoe-in for my toe-claws. Oak was on the ground, out cold, his wooden carapace cracked and healing visibly, evidence of Diamondback's handiwork in a close-up. She was pulling Beacon out of the rapidly fading mass of our noodle monster, while Ecto-Tek was face-down on the ground and out cold.
We'd won.
Bardue was both amused and annoyed when he talked to us while the Goobers got packed away to the infirmary. None of them had been seriously wounded, but they were shaken up quite a bit. Nightbane hadn't been actually torn up that badly to my knowledge, and Silvermoon wasn't in grand shape despite her healing ability and her frequent ass-kicking sessions with Bloodwolf that somehow never made the school blotter. Oak would recover easy. He was just winded and bruised after Diamond had crushed the air out of him in her coils. Nightbane gave the lot of us some truly nasty looks while they were being patched up. I guess, rather like us in our first sim run, they were expecting to waltz in and clean house. Welcome to reality. I have frequent flyer miles here.
"Jericho are you trying to make a mockery of my sim runs?" Bardue asked while we cleaned up our stuff.
"I've decided that my strength is psychological warfare, sir." Jericho smirked without missing a beat.
"Which aspect, trying to kill the staff by making us laugh or by making our brains implode from looking at your clothing choices?"
"Yes sir."
Bardue shook his head. "All right smartass. I just came down to say good work. I was surprised by how you handled that even if the Flying Spaghetti Monster schtick was a bit much. I also came down to tell you that your next sim run is tomorrow morning, and your opponents will be chosen right before you arrive from the groups in the mash."
"In the morning?" Jericho's jaw dropped. "What time?"
"Four AM."
All three of us stood there with our jaws hanging open in disbelief for a few minutes even after Bardue left. Then the swearing began.
Wednesday, November 29th
I don't even want to go into the morning run in the arena. It was a disaster and a half. We got teamed off against most of the capes at the last minute, which left us painfully outnumbered and outgunned, per usual. The thing that sticks in my craw is the fact that we were tired and off our game enough that the capes managed to sweep us up without taking a single casualty. Fortunately the Capes weren't feeling mean so we found ourselves hogtied and restrained rather than beaten mercilessly.
In any case I found myself at breakfast staring at Jericho over my plate of meats. I was watching a certain metallic-haired brunette who was seething and sparking like some kinda energy generator from hell as she wandered over to load up a tray of food.
"Twenty bucks says beyond being a bit startled she doesn't bat an eye." Jericho smirked as the girl started walking away from the food line and in our direction.
-You're on.-
I watched the girl and noticed a few oddities that weren't connected to her black, seemingly chromed hair or her steely, runed eyes. First was the thought that no way was this girl a tenager. She had to be fully developed, and adult. I mean exemplars are all hotties for the most part, but they don't have that "finished growing" look to them yet. The second was the fact that this girl's walk was all wrong, like she was primed for a fight at any moment, and not even Hippy could have matched that particular bit of posture. The last was that before she saw me, she was scanning the crowd in that way you see trained cops and soldiers looking for threats. They don't realize they're doing it, they just DO it. All in all this one was an odd package from the get-go even before we met.
She stopped and looked startled when she laid eyes on me sitting across from Jericho. No surprises there. Most people have to do a double-take when they see me for the first time. What surprised me was she shook it off and continued moving forward like she had a purpose in life, with that blitzed out energy field snapping along her body and clothing like something living.
What really surprising when she put her tray on the table and unceremoniously plopped into the seat next to me. Jericho was wearing his patented shit-eating grin, and she looked at us both. I realized that Jericho might possibly, just MAYBE have found a keeper.
The girl looked confused for a moment. "What?" She asked.
Jericho's grin got wider. "Pay up Razor."
"Oh great, I'm now the subject of a betting pool." She looked a bit rueful. "Razor huh?"
I nodded, mildly amused.
"Yeah. Caitlin, this is Razorback, one of my friends I was talking about before..."
Whateley Academy, September 2007
-And that was when I met this bloody amazon here, which led to even more chaos than usual.-
"Oh admit it, you'd be bored without me around." Caitlin smirked as the vodor spit out Razorback's story ending.
-True. I'd have no one to stare at except the usual exemplar ornamentation. Speaking of which I haven't ogled Fey since school ended last year.-
Diamondback shook her head. "Boys. They never grow up."
"Nope, we're against this whole growing up thing." Jericho put in.
The new froshes had relaxed a lot since the Outcasts started the story round robin, and were beginning to look a bit tired and hungry from the long day of introductions to the school. The spiderlike girl was looking at the Outcasts with a mix of nervousness and relief, the latter of which seemed to be echoed by the other four.
-Come on Freshlings. Let's go get you some chow and get you lot settled in. Tomorrow's gonna be another busy one.- Razor's vodor and sign language spurred the kids to hop up and start moving as the big lizard, who had grown a few inches in height and spine length, began heading towards Crystal Hall.
When the newbies had gone, Jericho looked over at Caitlin. "God I hope this helps. Those kids need a bit of support. Not a one of them's prepared for this kinda shit."
Diamond nodded. "I am glad that we're allowed to help, but damn! Four TG's in one year? I thought there was only supposed to be like one for every hundred mutants or so from the books."
"Yeah. I was thinking the same thing," Caitlin said quietly. "It should be only about four-to-seven kids in that boat on-campus in any given year, but lately..."
"You thinking something's going on, Cait?" Jericho asked.
"I'm actualy starting to think some kids are being tampered with. There's way too many if you only include the ones we know about, and add these five..."
"And you start seeing a pattern." Diamondback started her thinking game, playing over scenarios. "Are we thinking genetics, magic or other for tampering?"
"Dunno yet," Caitlin mused, "but it's starting to look like something unnatural is going on here."
"Maybe I should see what I can do about getting some DNA scans done to check for alterations." Jericho stood up as he spoke.
Diamondback looked at Caitlin seriously. "Even if we find out that there IS tampering, we haven't asked the question that needs to be asked."
Caitlin nodded. "Why the hell would someone set up kids to go through that, and are any of us a part of it without knowing it?"
It was at best, a coldly sobering thought.