My morning started off really well.  I just happened to walk down the hallway to the bathroom at exactly the same time as Vox, and she wasn’t in a big hurry to get to a potty.  She looked sleepy, and sexy as hell.  So I stopped her and gave her a ‘good morning’ kiss that definitely woke up a part of me.  Vanessa leaned in against me and sleepily kissed me back until I was seriously wishing I could go back to bed.  With her in tow.

“GET a ROOM!”

“Morning to you too, Sharisha,” I muttered.

“Fuck you, bitch-boy!”

“Nice to see your Prozac prescription is working so well,” I whispered to myself.

Vox playfully batted my arm, “Stop it, that’s not nice.”

I fussed, “Well, what she said wasn’t exactly heart-warming.”

She pouted, “I know, but she’s having a hard time this term.  Cut her some slack.”

I kissed her and murmured, “It would be a lot easier to cut her some slack if she’d cut us some slack.”

Vox nodded, “I know.  I’m working on it.”

She was still snuggling up against me as we slipped into the bathroom, so I still had a boner you could use for a towel rack.  She didn’t want to stop kissing me, which ordinarily I would have been thrilled about, but we were in a crowded shower area and we needed to get going.  She really picked a lousy time to want to be all kissy and cuddly.  I peeled off her bathrobe and scooted her into a shower.

Okay, so I took the opportunity to put my hands on her behind.  So sue me.

Sharisha stepped out of her shower while I was still standing there holding Vanessa’s bathrobe.  I asked her, “Why’s Vox so…”

“So sleepy?  And horny?  Like you don’t know.  It was that goddamn demon downstairs.  Nessa was moaning like she was in heat, ‘bout half the night.  Kept me up, too.”

I told her, “Well, it’s not like we were sharing those dreams you, know.  If you don’t like it, go complain to the demon.”  Okay, I’d had some pretty arousing dreams last night too.  But there was no way I was talking to this jerk about them.

Her eyes got big and scared at the mere idea of confronting a demon who ate live animals in front of the whole cafeteria, and was rumored to eat babies like popcorn.  “Oh yeah, like that’s ever gonna happen.”

And then breakfast at the TK table was even more bizarre than usual.  Apparently, Sara had done something to Hip last night.  The Poe lesbian posse was on Sara’s case about it.  Well, they just wanted to know what the hell had changed with Hippolyta, who wasn’t her usual angry self.

Well duh.  How could they NOT figure out what had happened?  Sara and Hip were so gooey and saccharine that I was surprised my body didn’t erupt in an instantaneous case of Type II diabetes.  Watching Hip be all cutesy-poo was sort of disturbing.  But watching Sara The Demon being all cutesy-poo was just plain freaky.

I had a list of things to do, so I left before either Hippolyta declared undying love or else the Grrl Power Gang tried performing an exorcism right there on the cafeteria table.  I didn’t think I could stomach either.  I took the elevator down to the Workshop levels, and I went looking for Knick-Knack.

I knew I was going to have to find someone who would help me, because the underground Workshop and lab levels were a massive rabbit warren.  And if devisers had been secretly claiming some of the old, unused tunnel areas as their illegal lab areas, it would probably take five or ten years to search the entire thing.

I made my way to the large labroom where Automa-tech and Triaxial had announced the Weapons Fair.  I knew how to get there from the testing labs, and I knew there were likely to be people there.

Bingo.  There were seven devisers and/or gadgeteers hard at work at various tables.  Thanks to my table-crawl at the Weapons Fair, I even knew a few of them.

Back in the far right corner, isolated from everyone else, was a tall, thin figure working away while a bizarre octopoid robot handed him tools.  Mega-death.  Was he being paranoid, or were the rest of the labkids avoiding him?  Maybe both.

It hadn’t been that long ago that I’d been feeling totally depressive and wretched, so I had an idea how he was feeling.  And it hadn’t been that long ago that I wondered if MD needed a friend who could tolerate his going off the deep end now and then.

I took a deep breath and strolled over to his table.

He didn’t bother to look up from his arc-welding.  “No, you can’t borrow my phase-meter again.”

“Not really interested, Harvey,” I smiled.

“Huh?”  He stopped and looked up.  He peered in confusion for a couple seconds before he remembered to lift up his heavily-smoked safety glasses.  When he could see, he broke into a huge grin.  “Ayla!  Hi!”

I said, “Hi.  I was just in the neighborhood, and I thought I’d stop and see how you were doing.”

“Umm, well, I don’t have that forcefield scrambler ready,” he winced.

“Harvey, that’s not what I meant,” I jumped in.  “I stopped by to see how YOU were doing, not how your work was going.”

He groaned, “Well, I only had three major ‘drick-outs this week, so that’s an improvement.  Maybe it’s the new meds they’ve got me on.  But they make me just feel edgy all the time.  I hate it.”

“You seem okay to me.”

“Besides me almost biting your head off when you came over?” he complained.

I grinned, “I’m crankier than that most of the time.  Just ask my team.”

He smiled back.  Then he frowned, “But I was working on a couple forcefield scramblers for you.  They’re just not working, and I don’t know why.  Sometimes devises are just like that.  You can make something really amazing, but when you go back, your devise just isn’t all there.”

I told him, “Look, it’s okay.  Really.  If you get one or two, let me know.  If nothing works right, give it up for a while.  This isn’t something I need, and it isn’t like I already paid you for it.  So relax.”

He nodded an okay.

“So, what are you working on?” I asked idly.

“Oh, this.  It’s an arithmantic calibrator, for…”

Okay, frankly, he lost me right around “it’s”.  All I got out of five minutes of geek-speak was that this was a sophisticated tool he wanted to build, to make it easier for him to build more sophisticated tools later, which would then be used to build even more sophisticated devises.  I let him rattle on a bit, because he had this excited, unleashed look on his face as if no one ever let him talk about his work and he’d had this pent up inside for months.

Man, did this boy need some friends!  Why did everybody in school have to be such assholes to him, just because he had Diedrick’s?

Finally he wound down and blushed, “I.. umm.. you probably didn’t want to listen to all that.  Did you?”

I shrugged, “It’s okay.  You’d probably hate to have to listen to me rant about microeconomic fallacies and consumer education, or risk factors in stock market derivatives.”

“I don’t even know what you just said,” he grinned.

“See?  We’re even.”

He snorted in amusement, and asked, “What can I do for ya?”

I said, “You don’t have to do anything for me.  But if you happen to know where Knick-Knack is likely to be, I’d appreciate it.  Otherwise, I’ll just ask around.”

He scratched the top of his head as he thought.  “Jean-Paul’s probably in Secure Lab 7.  That’s where he is most times, these days.  He’s one of the guys who have access to that Yama Dojo ninja devise, the ‘variable interface’ that’s got that phenomenal process throughput.  Everybody’s talking about it, but hardly anyone gets to work with it.  No one’s been able to reverse-engineer it yet, but Knick-Knack’s figured out how to use it as a high-throughput bus, and he’s got funding from somebody for something major.  He’s got Kew on it, she’s really good on inter-dimensional size manipulators, and Sonex, he’s great on bio-mechanical interfaces.  Go down one level, head toward the large electro-mechanical labs, and look for an area with a Security guy guarding it.”

“Thanks, Harvey.  I appreciate it.”

He smiled like no one had thanked him for much lately.  I had a really uncomfortable feeling that I wasn’t far off the mark.

I followed Harvey’s directions – as much as I could – and made my way down a level, then off toward the larger labs.  But it took me a while to find an elevator that went down to the lower levels.  And the corridors weren’t arranged in a nice, orderly rectangular grid.  Plus, there were more detours and security doors and squirrelly widgets than you could shake a stick at.  Although some of them might have gone into self-defense mode if you did shake a stick at them.  After a while, I really could have used that Exemplar ‘direction sense’ that I didn’t have.  Boy, calling this place a rabbit warren was an insult to rabbits everywhere.

Fortunately, I finally found a guard.  He directed me down a couple corridors, to another guard standing in front of the entrance to Secure Mechanical Labs 1 through 8.  That guard – officer Vane by his namebadge – wouldn’t let me go in.  Well duh, that was his job.

“I understand that you can’t let an unauthorized person wander through the secure labs,” I pressed, “But that’s not what I’m after.  I only want you to call Knick-Knack and tell him I’d like to talk with him about a project.  Oh, and if Sonex and Kew are in there, they can come too if they’re interested.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about this for someone who’s not a deviser and isn’t cleared for the secure labs,” he glared.  He had a London accent that wasn’t quite like Stunner’s, but I couldn’t place it exactly.  At least he wasn’t faking that upper-crust accent like Belphegor and Hazard were.. not to mention most of the other Brits at Whateley.

I rolled my eyes.  “It’s not a secret where he is, or who he asked to work on his project.  Everyone in Workshop knows that much.”  He frowned.  I tried again, “Look, just call Knick-Knack and tell him Phase – Ayla Goodkind – wants to talk to him for a couple minutes about a potential project.  That’s all.”

He had to think it over a bit.  Holy crow, it wasn’t like I was asking him to unlock the security vaults so I could rummage around in them!

He finally made the call, using a videophone system right there on the wall beside him.  Which was obviously there for situations like this.

He cleared his throat and called, “Knick-Knack?  It’s officer Harry Vane.  Excuse me, but there’s someone out here to see you.  Phase.  She doesn’t have clearance to come into the lab without.. umm.. someone else’s permission.”

Hmm.  Was that a particular ‘someone else’?  It sounded that way to me.

“Phase?  Umm.. I don’t remember a Phase…”  Knick-Knack’s voice came back, sounding puzzled.

I went heavy and leaned into officer Vane enough that I could talk into the videophone too.  “Hey Kew!  It’s me.  Ayla Goodkind.  Remind Knick-Knack where we met, before I have to say so in front of officer Vane here.”

Maybe she wouldn’t do it.  If officer Vane were getting paid by a ‘someone’ to provide special guard services, then he’d probably keep quiet for his patron about things like the Weapons Fair.  But he might be a straight arrow who would file a report with Security.  And I had embarrassed Kew in front of her Spy Kidz buddies, so she might be holding a grudge.  In the long run, that might prove to be a strategic error.

I tried something else.  “Hey Rafael, it’s me.  Clue the absent-minded professor in on me, and send him out so I can talk to him for a couple minutes and let all of you get back to work.”  I moved back out of officer Vane’s way, and waited.

He turned off the videophone and turned to me, “You’re stronger than you look.”

I’d put on a couple pounds since I came to Whateley, but I was still fairly thin, on a girlish five-foot-nothing frame.  I shrugged, “Sorry.  I just wanted to get a word in.  And it’s not like you have to look like the Headmistress to have super-strength around here.  I hear there are little old ladies around here, like Ms. Dennon, the martial arts instructor for bricks, who can knock over buses.”

Hank had told me about her one day in Kimba Korner while we were supposed to be studying.

He smirked, “Well, it’s what makes working security around here interesting.”

He had a military look about him, and I’d heard about the people that Whateley accepted as security officers.  Navy Seals, Army Rangers, and so on.  I took a wild guess.

“What, the SAS wasn’t interesting enough for you?”

He blinked twice.  “Psychic too?”

Okay, so that was a ‘yes’.

“No, just a lucky guess,” I replied.

He raised one eyebrow and said, “That sort of lucky guess usually falls under the Esper category, doesn’t it?”

“Not really.  It’s more of a deductive gift.”

He opened his mouth to say something in reply, but the secure door behind him slid aside to reveal Knick-Knack.  Behind him were a smiling Sonex and a glowering Kew.  There was no mistaking Sonex.  Rafael Eagan’s porcupine hair stuck out oddly, no matter what he tried to do with it.

I was figuring that Knick-Knack was really having trouble placing me, and not just blowing me off.  So I pulled from my utility belt the little snooping-detector cube I had bought from him at the Weapons Fair.  Which was only a week ago.  I held it up in my left hand, while I put out my right hand for a handshake.

He shook hands, while focusing completely on the little cube in my left hand.  I was expecting the ‘you are a dainty girl’ handshake that so many guys gave me, but he forgot.  He was concentrating on the cube, and he squeezed.  I quickly went semi-heavy so he didn’t crush my fingers.  He had a hell of a grip for a non-brick.  What the heck did he do in his spare time to get a grip like that?  Blacksmithing?

“How is the detector working?” he asked.

I pressed the button and turned it on.  It immediately went a deep red.

“Hmm,” he thought out loud.

Kew snapped, “Officer Vane, please conduct another sweep immediately.”  Then she reached into her labcoat and pulled out a big monitor topped with a swiveling radar dish.  Now that definitely wouldn’t have fit in her labcoat pocket.  So either she had pockets like Möbius did, or she was an external size manipulator, like Holdout.

Wait a minute.  Holdout was another one of the Spy Kidz.  So there was yet another possibility.  Perhaps Holdout had shrunk things for the other team members to pull out and use.  Or else Kew had been studying Holdout’s Warper talent, and had synthesized it.  Or…

“Phase?  Did you want something?” Knick-Knack asked grumpily.  “I was in the middle of something important.”

I stalled, “Is it safe to talk here?”

He waved away the glowing red cube.  “Oh yes, we’re not going to discuss my project out here.”

Kew insisted, “That’s still very lax security, if you ask me!”

“Okay, I’ll keep it general and non-specific,” I said.

Kew was focusing on her devise.  She murmured, “Good, good…  That’ll help us zero in on it…”

I said, “I’d like to hire you for what might be a long-term project.  Do you work with BITs?”

All three of the devisers froze.

Rafael Eagan asked a little too calmly, “Why do you ask?”

Hmm.  So that’s what they were working on.  Something involving BITs.

Only now they were all antsy about my interest.  Crud.

I snapped, “Why do you think?  Look at me, for God’s sake!  I’m one of the biggest freakjobs on campus!  Every gaybasher for two miles has tried to punch my face in.  I want to hire you to devise a way to fix my BIT!”  I glared at him, “Why?  What did you think I was talking about?”

“Oh nothing, nothing at all,” Kew lied.  Really badly.  Man, I hope she never needed subterfuge skills as part of her Spy Kidz work.

Then her dish locked onto something up on the ceiling, right about the time that Rafael’s gadget beeped.

“Gotcha!” Sonex yelled.

Knick-Knack already had in his hand the ‘Harry Potter’ wand he had showed me at the Weapons Fair.  He fired at the spot where Kew’s dish was pointing.  A beam of red light hit…  And after about a second, there was a shimmer, as some sort of cloaking system failed.  What had appeared to be ordinary ceiling suddenly transformed into a weird black oval about three inches long.

The beam began weakening, and then winked out.  Well, he said it had a limited power supply.

Sonex pointed a small ‘hand phaser’ type of weapon at the disk, and a wave of something rippled through the air, hitting the black oval and making it short out.

The cube in my hand suddenly changed from bright red to clear green.

Kew pointed another weapon, this one shaped like a maraca, but with transistors glued all over the ovoid part.  A high-pitched ping erupted from it, and – whatever it was doing – it made the oval fall from the ceiling.

Officer Vane pulled out a latex glove and a plastic bag.  He pulled on the glove, popped the devise into the bag, and sealed it up.  Then he made notes on the bag.  He murmured, “Hmm, funny none of our sweeps picked it up…”

Kew looked at the gauges on her devise and said, “Not surprising.  It’s part magic and magic devise.  It had a magical stealth system, instead of a physical one.”

Officer Vane asked her, “And who’s capable of building that?”

She thought for a second, “My first suspect would be Nephandus.  He’s a deviser and mage.  After him, Techno-Devil.  Then if it wasn’t either of them, I’d widen my search to include any mage who consorts with a deviser.”

I added, “And isn’t a good enough mage to scry without help.”

Officer Vane nodded, “Good point.”  He scribbled even more into his notebook.

I asked Rafael, “Why would Nephandus be bugging the hallway out here?”

He said, “I’m only guessing, but that thing’s probably mobile.  It managed to get here somehow without any of our detectors spotting a person putting it in place.  So maybe it just needed to wait until we opened the door for long enough, and it could sneak in and get into the lab so it could listen to us talking about the project.”

Kew firmly said, “Which we are not talking about out here.  Right?”

“Right,” Sonex agreed.

Knick-Knack had an “oh yeah I forgot” expression on his face, so I supposed it was a good thing that Kew was a stickler for security.

I pushed, “I see that you have a project going on right now.  But I can offer a lot of perks.  Remember, I’m a Goodkind.  Plus, being able to fix one person’s BIT could have a lot of utility for a lot of people around here.”

He didn’t even need to think it over.  “My patron can provide all the resources we’re likely to need.  And this is already going to be a generalist approach.  When I’m done with this devise and he’s satisfied with it, I’ll have time for your project.  I’ll get back to you then.”

Rafael pointed at his own chest and mouthed, “I’ll let you know.”

I gave him a terse nod.  I was glad that someone besides me had noticed that Knick-Knack wasn’t exactly Mister Daytimer.

Knick-Knack pulled from his labcoat pockets another anti-snooping cube, and a snowglobe.  Yeah.  A snowglobe with a little snowman in front, and what I thought might be the Canadian Parliament building in the background.  The cube glowed green.  The snowman turned back and forth several times before waving its arms and going back to his normal posture.

Knick-Knack looked at his devises and announced, “No more snooping, and no intruders.  Let’s get back to work.”

They turned and went back into the secure lab.  I thanked the officer and strolled off down the corridor.

Now what did I know?  Knick-Knack had a rich patron.  Rich enough that the Goodkind name didn’t tempt him.  Just one.  Male.  A hands-on manager, apparently.  But not a deviser or gadgeteer, or else - as a hands-on manager - he’d be in there with them.  And someone who was also interested in fixing BITs.  Not a specific BIT, but a ‘generalist’ approach that would probably be applicable to a lot of bad BITs.  Not an outsider, or else someone other than three high-school kids would be involved.  Not a Whateley staffer, for the same reason.  Okay, I had a prime suspect in mind, along with two other students as less-likely possibilities.  But if it wasn’t Thuban, I’d be surprised.

Plus, if they got this up and running, maybe it would be the answer for my problem.  And I needed to tell Jade about it.  But I’d wait until it was really working properly.  There was no point in getting her all excited about something that might not even pan out.  I knew just how painful it was to get your hopes up about something this important, only to find out that it was a dead end.

Rather than struggle with finding my way back out of this maze, I just went light and floated up to the surface.  Then I made my way over to Hawthorne.  Melissa was going to love all the dirt that Traduce had dished, not to mention the saga of Glitch and his roommate, and everything else I’d heard.

Lunch was a spicy little treat.  Jana casually strolled out with a bowl of Chinese dumplings in a rich brown sauce.  Of course, ‘casual’ is in the eye of the beholder, when a centaur is bringing you your food.  She handed me the bowl and whispered, “I helped Marcel with these.  They’re Mandarin pork dumplings with a spicy Hoisin-garlic sauce.  I hope you like it spicy.”

I murmured, “Thanks, Jana.  Tell Marcel I appreciate it.”

Then I fixed myself a salad, got an extra-large glass of cold milk just in case, and settled down to enjoy my lunch.  Of course, lunch was the usual Team Kimba ‘kraziness’.  I walked up to hear Jade discussing feminine hygiene with Toni.

As soon as I reached in and touched Fey’s anti-eavesdropping charm, the conversation changed.  Abruptly.

“Well, what if they have more than just those four?  There’re a whole bunch of kids in the Goobers.  What if England sicks all of ‘em on Sara?”

Toni snorted in derision, “Have you seen those losers?  Most of ‘em couldn’t fight their way out of their own bedsheets.”

I took a deep breath and savored the aroma of the dumplings.  Man.  Then I interjected, “There’s a deviser I’ve met.  Ecto-Tek.  He’s supposed to be pretty hot as a deviser.  And he’s totally obsessed with weapons against non-humans.  Anti-werewolf, anti-vampire, anti-spirit, you know…  If he’s building weapons for them, they might have some nasty stuff.”

Fey shrugged, which made her chest bounce, and I nearly lost the thread of her reply.  “…in magic class was talking about him, and his stuff is always designed to be safe against humans.”

“I’ve seen that.  But that doesn’t mean he can’t build something to use on us in case we try to support Sara,” I argued.

“Ooh, good point.”

Then I spent some time ignoring the conversation and concentrating on those dumplings.  The sauce was a rich Hoisin sauce with extra goodies.  Lots of mashed garlic, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, some sort of spicy chili oil, and something that gave it an extra burst of exotic flavor I couldn’t identify.  The dumplings were filled with pork and diced bok choi and chopped water chestnuts.  They were redolent with ginger and scallions and Chinese red pepper.  They were really spicy, but really delicious.

I had to go chat with Marcel and Jana about them.  It turned out that Chef Peter made his own Chinese hot chili oil.  He made it about a gallon at a time, and the cooks used it for some of the Asian dishes whenever they needed that kind of spicy chili pepper condiment.

My entire mouth still had a peppery bite when I left the cafeteria.

I spotted Mal walking out with his buddy Nephandus, so I hurried to catch up with them as they ducked into the elevator.  I sank down through the floor and the ground, to end up in the underground hallway just as the elevator doors opened.

They stepped out and froze when they saw me. 

Nephandus shifted his grip on his walking stick and glared at me.  “What are you doing?”

I smiled blandly.  “Waiting to talk to Mal for a minute.  But it’s not anything secret, so you can listen in.  Which apparently is one of the things you like to do.”

He looked dreadfully affronted.  If he had looked completely befuddled by my comment, I would have wondered if he was behind the listening devise this morning.  But he gave me the ‘I would never’ look instead, so I was guessing it was him.

Mal looked at me, “What do you want?”

I explained, “Nothing major.  I’m thinking about asking Jobe to work with me on a project, and I wanted to know what you thought about him.  You know.  His skill set, his work ethic, his reliability, how he adheres to a contract, that sort of thing.”

“Jobe?” Mal asked.  “Are you sure?”

“No, I’m not.  That why I wanted to ask you.”

He pressed his lips together.  “Jobe’s a genius.  There’s no getting around that.  If it’s biology, and he works on it, he’s going to do an incredible job.  He’s definitely the best bio-deviser I’ve ever met, and that’s saying a lot.  But look…  I’m probably the best friend Jobe’s got.  I’ve known him since before I knew you, and I’ve known him for all those years I was out of your life.  And I can’t count how many times I’ve wanted to just punch him in the head.  Some of those times, I actually did.  Although I usually used a blunt instrument.”

I had to laugh.  “You know, I haven’t even really met him, just heard him all over the place at the Weapons Fair, and I’ve already wanted to punch him in the head about five times.”

He just nodded, “He’s like that.  All the time.  Frankly, you were a lot like him when you were in second grade.  That Goodkind ‘tood you had.  You still have it, even if it’s not so blatant anymore.  You were a cool second grader.  That whole ‘when I run the planet I will not tolerate this’ kind of stuff.  Jadis used to say you’d have made a hell of a supervillain.”

“Uhh, thanks.  I think.”

He shrugged, “But you two going head to head?  I don’t see it working.  First, Jobe works on what he wants to.  You can’t bribe him, and you can’t force him, and you definitely don’t ever want to trick him or cheat him.  He may not be Gizmatic, but he gets even.  He gets way more than even.  Let me give you just one example.  He’s rooming with Oak.  Second week here, this senior Exemplar was giving Oak a hard time in the hall and Jobe told him to lay off.  So the senior smacked Jobe a good one.  Knocked him halfway down the hall.  Gave him a concussion and a lot of bruises.  Jobe came back to the dorm two days later and said ‘stuff happens’.  People thought he was just going to roll over and play dead.  Two nights later, the Exemplar wakes up in the middle of the night, with about a hundred spiders crawling all over him and biting the hell out of him.  After he stopped screaming, they rushed him over to the clinic.  He needed twenty different types of anti-toxin, and he was sick as hell for a week.  Any non-Exemplar would have died.  The guy came back to the dorm and told everyone he was going to rip Jobe’s face off.  Jobe coughed on him.  That was all.  The guy made a fist…  And passed out.  When he woke up in the clinic, he had four legs and four arms, and he was turning into a giant spider!  He had to beg Jobe to turn him back, and he has to take an antidote from Jobe every week to keep from turning into a two hundred pound black widow spider.  He’s basically Jobe’s slave now.  If Jobe dies or gets hospitalized for too long, that kid is fucked.”

I said, “I think I get the point.”

He frowned, “I hope so.  Jobe’s annoying, and arrogant, and overbearing.  But he’ll expect you to stick to the contract, no matter what.  He’ll expect you to do what you’re supposed to, with no cheating and no welching.”

I told him, “Of course!”

“I knew you’d say that.”

I went on, “But that’s exactly what I’m looking for.  A hyper-competent bio-deviser who will stick to the contract and perform without oversight.”

He shook his head, “I don’t know.  I just don’t see this one ending well.”

I sighed, “Okay.  Thanks for the advice.”

Then I walked off toward Hawthorne, so I could take my private shortcut into the Poe basement.  But Mal had me worried.  Even more worried than I was before.  If Mal was Jobe’s best friend, and a supervillain-in-training too, and he said those things about Jobe…

Well maybe tomorrow I’d have a breakthrough with the hypnosis, and I wouldn’t need to depend on a bio-deviser.

Yeah, and maybe Vanessa would walk into my room with Fey and they’d propose a hot ménage á trois.  I figured I had about the same odds of that happening.

I woke up to the chorus of “I Hate the Supermodel” by Brass Monkey.  There’s nothing like waking up to the masterpieces.  I tried to sing along to Pete’s vocals for the main guitar line, as I floated out of my bed and drifted over to my bathrobe.  This song had two clashing guitar lines to the same drum and synthesizer line, and four overlaid vocal tracks, two to each of the guitar lines.

You know, it’s murder trying to sing along when there are four rocking vocal tracks going on simultaneously.  Plus, there was no way I could fake the four-octave range that Lena Pereille was covering, and I couldn’t lower my voice to the range of any of the guys.

Not to mention that when I sang along to Brass Monkey in the halls and the bathroom, people tended to throw stuff at me.

Okay, maybe it was just that I was a lousy singer.

I showered quickly, so I could get a sink and stare into the mirror as Fey dried off behind me.  Man, I was never going to get tired of that.

Verdant was shaving her legs, only she was trying something new.  She was slowly gaining control over her real mutant power, which was an ability to secrete pretty much anything you could think of, in any way a human body could secrete.  It seemed like she was secreting some sort of scented shaving lotion from the pores on her legs, so she could shave without messing with applying lotions or foams or anything to her legs.  And she had a great rack - even if her skin was sometimes green - so it was always worth watching when she shaved all the way up and gave herself a Brazilian trim, because she usually did it naked.

There was a tap on my shoulder.  It was Chaka.  “Phase, quit ogling everyone and get a move on, so I can brush my teeth.  You’re hoggin’ the sink.  Like always.”

So much for my subtle tactics.  Well, she was probably using her Ki abilities to tell where I was really focusing my attention.

Okay, I’d keep doing it until Chaka actually told everyone what I was doing.  Then I’d move to a different technique.

So I moved.  I slowly gathered up my stuff and left the bathroom, taking enough time that I got to watch Chaka stand naked in front of the sink so she could brush her teeth, do her hair, apply body lotion, and paint her toenails.  All at the same time, while standing upright.  Not only was there some outstanding jiggling involved, there was also some totally unbelievable, totally hot, body movement.  Some day in the future, Thunderbird was going to find out that he was a very lucky boy.

Breakfast was pretty ordinary, but at lunch there was another great tidbit for me.  Chef André had a slice of real quiche Lorraine for me.  Plenty of restaurants offer what they call ‘quiche Lorraine’, but the real thing is clearly better.

And then, after classes, it was time for my appointment with Dr. Bellows, and round two of Fun With Hypnosis.  Once again, Jade met me in the Admin area and cast Jinn into my skin and clothes.  This time, Jinn didn’t need to do her little checks with my clothes and my eardrums.

Dr. Bellows ushered me into his office, “Come in, come in.  Have a lie-down on the couch.”

Once I was horizontal, he said, “I talked this over with your doctor at the clinic, and we think that perhaps you need something to relax you a bit more, and make you a little more suggestible.  I’d like to try giving you an injection of sodium pentothal.  Now I know people think it’s some kind of truth serum.  It’s anything but.  It’s a legitimate pharmaceutical.”

Well, I knew from my check on him that he had a medical degree to go with his psychiatric one.  So I wasn’t worried about his prescribing drugs or anything.

And I already knew sodium pentothal wasn’t a real truth serum.  There weren’t any reliable ‘truth serums’ out there.  Even the best deviser drugs, like Veritol, only worked about twenty percent of the time, and usually on the twenty percent of the population you could have gotten to talk without using the drug.

So I said, “I’m good with this.  Let’s do it.”

He had me sign a form that I had agreed to the treatment, and we went to work.  I lay down on the couch, rolled up my sleeve, and let him give me an injection in my arm.  Then we just talked about my week until he was sure the drug had kicked in.

We tried for an entire hour to get me into a hypnotic state.  He tried five standard techniques, and he even tried walking me through a basic self-hypnosis regimen.  Nothing worked.

He finally gave up, “Okay Ayla, it’s time to stop.  I’ll see what our options are, and prepare some new ideas for Friday.  But the drug won’t wear off completely for another couple hours.  Who would you like me to call to come get you?”

I was kind of dopey, but not too dopey to admit I had Jinn on hand.  I said, “Why don’t you call Vox?  If she can’t come, try Fey, and Tennyo, and Lancer, and Chaka.  If none of them can come, I’ve got more names.”

Vox and Fey weren’t available, but Billie flew over in no time.  One thing about Billie, she might have been a bit gruff about my choice of treatments, but she was a great bodyguard.  Jinn made sure I didn’t wobble (much) as we walked back, and as soon as I was lying down on my bed, she vanished.  Then Jade was dragging people into my room moments later, telling them all about the sodium pentothal and the lack of success with the hypnosis.

Chaka had to try and see if I’d tell the truth while under the influence.  “Okay Ayla, who do you stare at the most in the showers?”

I pretended to be groggy and said, “I try not to stare at anyone anymore…”

Billie flatly said, “She’s lying about that one.”

Chaka shrugged, “Well it was worth a try.”

Jinn stayed with me while everyone else went off to eat, and Fey brought a nice to-go meal back for me.  I noticed that it was a to-go box about three times bigger than I would have gotten for myself.

She opened the box and explained, “Everybody wanted to pick something for you, so we ended up with a lot of stuff…”

“Hey, thanks,” I said.

“I picked the sliced beef in oyster sauce,” volunteered Billie.

“And I picked the ravioli with marinara sauce,” said Toni.

“And I picked the chicken breasts with green onion thingies,” Hank added.

“Well you all know I’m a breast man,” I smirked.

“Yeah, we’ve noticed.”

Jade chipped in, “I thought you liked those chicken legs instead.”  Most of us turned and stared at her.  “What?”

Billie did an ‘Emily Litella’.  “Never mind!”

“I hate it when you guys don’t explain those jokes,” Jade grumped.

There was way more than I could eat in one sitting – or even two sittings - but I had Billie and Hank on hand, so nothing went to waste.  One of these days, Billie’s just going to eat the styrofoam food container too.

Jade left, saying, “I’ve gotta finish the costumes.  Ayla, yours won’t be ready ‘til tomorrow.  Sorry.  Chou?  Nikki?  Get Rip and Bunny.  I need you to try on your costumes and see if they’re ready.  Okay?”

Well, I couldn’t miss that.

Actually the best part was sitting back on Billie’s bed watching as the girls changed into the costumes.  None of the costumes were revealing.  Nikki was going as Ayeka, while Jade was going – of course – as Sasami.  Jade had the outfits multi-layered to give the look of the outfits in Billie’s OAVs of Tenchi Muyo.

I asked, “Hey Nikki, isn’t Ayeka supposed to be dark-haired?”

She just smirked at me and closed her eyes in concentration.  Whatever she was mumbling seemed to echo around the room in a weird way.  And then suddenly her hair changed to a cartoon-like blue-black.

“Impressive.  Is that an illusion, or did you really change your hair color?”

She smiled, “An illusion might not hold up, especially if someone interferes.  So it’s a real color change.”

Then I got to see Chou and Rip’s costumes.  Wow.  I was just glad that I wasn’t having to go as Mihoshi or Kiyone.  Chou looked really good in those high-heeled boots and that miniskirt.  They both did.

Then Bunny was going as Washu.  Jade had the outfit, which looked really good on Bugs.  Especially the tights, showing off those legs.  Bunny had already constructed the special effects for Washu, including two shoulder puppets and what looked like an anti-grav system hidden in a large pillow.

I didn’t want to find out what they had for me, but I knew it was inevitable.  I’d promised I’d go to the costume party no matter what.  After all, this wasn’t just a party, it was likely to be a battle against people trying to kill Sara.

Well, I’d find out soon enough.

Tuesday, October 31

You’d never know it was Halloween.  Well, maybe there were a few subtle hints.  Like the cafeteria having Halloween-themed meals.  And Costume Shop spending the entire hour on Halloween-themed costumes.  And Señor Ramirez spending the whole class talking in Spanish about Halloween-related holidays in Hispanic cultures.  And Quintain talking about Class 1 entities that looked like Class 2 entities for various reasons.  And everyone chattering about their costumes as they walked between classes.

At least Ito and Tolman got a grip, and didn’t have any hokey Halloween crud in BMA class.

After trig, I walked back to Poe to face the music.  Still, I couldn’t believe the costume they had for me.

It was the costume for Tsunami.  Which was four layers, over a gray supersuit.  Plus a super-long bright-blue wig, and a leather bustier to hold everything in place.

Okay, they had suckered me.  They had known I’d kick up a fuss if they showed me the costume, so they waited until I had no time.  I had to either skip the costume party, or wear the costume.  But I didn’t want to wear a damned dress!

Well, it wasn’t like they were going to let me be Tenchi.

So I had to go to the stupid Halloween party in a stupid floaty layered dress.  With makeup!  And a stupid wig!  Could this be any worse?  At least they didn’t make me wear high heels.  Oh no, they had these stupid shoes that no real Japanese girl would wear.  And then I had to go out in public looking like this!

I looked over at Hank, who was blushing with embarrassment in his Tenchi costume, and I murmured, “Could this get any worse?”

I really shouldn’t have asked that question.

We gathered up Sara and convoyed her into the fieldhouse.  That was when I spotted Vox.  Vox came as - get this – the original Black Canary.

She had the bustier-style leotard, and the fishnets, and the pirate boots, and the unbuttoned black leather jacket.  She even had the 1940’s style blond wig.  Of course, the DC Comics versions of the Black Canary were all white chicks.  So this was pretty damned funny.  Several of her friends - all black - had also come as 1940’s DC superheroes, who had all been dorky whiteys.  But the Black Canary was the best of the group.

Okay, maybe I was biased.  A bit.

The only problem?  I was going to have to phase out of these floaty layers in order to dance with Vox.  And I was supposed to look helpless.  Phasing through the outfit would tip off our targets that I wasn’t helpless.  So I had to stand around while the Black Canary danced with a buff black Johnny Thunder.  Crap.

At least I got to tease Chou and Molly a little.

Before I could really give them a hard time, the entire building was hit with some sort of sonic Puke-o-matic.

That damned sonic weapon they used made me feel like Emil Hammond was using a high-speed dentist’s drill on my cerebrum.  It had me vomiting my guts out and phasing uncontrollably.  If someone had come by and tried to help me, I could have disintegrated chunks out of them.  Just like I actually did to half my costume, and a table, and part of the concrete flooring.

Of course, my teammates were unstoppable, while I was lying on the floor puking and crying.  Tennyo and Chaka and Sara and Chou and Jinn were all kicking ass and taking names, while Lancer managed to tough it out too.  So only Fey and Jade and I were totally taken out.  Along with 99% of the rest of the crowd.

Maybe I should think of it differently.  Instead of worrying about being so outclassed by my teammates, I should laugh about being on a team with the toughest bitches in the whole school.

Once Tennyo and company took out the sonic Puke-o-matic, I took out a few cyborgs and stuff.  But so did plenty of other kids.  I didn’t do anything special.  Once Security had everything wrapped up, we adjourned to the Crystal Hall.  Vox sought me out and just clung to me.

And, when we got back to Poe, the place looked like Tennyo had been fighting.  With Godzilla.. and the entire U.S. Army.  There was a massive hole right through the wall, and down into the dorm vault.  Which was supposed to be impregnable!

I didn’t know who had done it, but I was once again reminded that there were a LOT of people around here who could kick my ass from here to Saskatchewan.

Fortunately, Mrs. Horton was already out there, calmly fixing stuff, like someone had merely knocked a baseball through her window.  She was using her magic and spreading deviser tarps over the holes, then sealing the tarps at the edges so they were air-tight, at least until repair people could fix things.  Half the magic users in the cottage stopped and bibbety-bobbety-booed things into place.  Apparently, once the tarps were in place and taut, and they were sealed to the building at the edges of the hole, you sprayed a fixative on them, and they went rigid.  Mrs. Horton said each tarp had an R value of 12.  That was probably more than the R-value of the wall of my dorm room.

Vox was a lot more shaken than I was.  She hadn’t been hammered as badly by the sonics, which didn’t surprise me any.  After all, she was a siren.  But she’d been scared shitless by armed maniacs and armed Chessmen.  She wanted to be held, so I lifted her into my bunk bed and held her for the rest of the night.  Nothing sexy, other than Vox herself.  I just held her, and let her cry onto my pajama top.  Having her want to be held – and want to be held by me - made me feel a LOT better.  I hadn’t felt that manly in a long, long time.

Wednesday, November 1

I took my time waking up, since I had Vox in my arms.  She was snuggled into my collarbone, her breasts pressed erotically against my chest.  Okay, I had a flagpole that was trying to rip its way through the bedsheets.  But that was okay.  I hugged her as long as I could, until she woke up and wanted to use the toilet.  Immediately.

I went light with my pajamas, floated up through her and the bedclothes, and drifted down to the floor.  Then I lifted her out of the bed and let her rush off to the bathroom.  Frankly, I’d been hoping for more snuggling, and maybe some serious necking.

Classes were cancelled for the day, but the cafeteria was open all day long, for people who were having trouble coping with things.  Someone had bombed the senior party with a nasty but non-fatal gas, and some of the seniors were still pretty sick from that.  Then there were some kids who had overdone it and needed extra sleep, and some kids who just hadn’t slept well after all that had happened.

I talked with Dr Bellows for half an hour and felt a lot better.  I made Vox go talk to her counselor too.

Apparently, a lot of the students - particularly the bricks and Exemplars and the high-end Energizers, as well as most of the really powerful Wizards and Devisers - hadn’t felt vulnerable in years, and this was really screwing with their brains.  I hadn’t ever felt invulnerable, or even safe.

I had never felt like my powers protected me from anything, since the first thing my powers had done was make me lose my family and my home.  Then my powers put me in a torture chamber in a testing lab from which I couldn’t escape.  Then my powers put me in the basement of a hovel, turned me into a half-girl freakazoid, and ruined all the clothes I owned in the world.  Then my abilities put me into a confrontation with a super-bimbo and nearly got me char-broiled.  Then they got me sent to Whateley, where half the student body wanted to beat me up, and a large fraction of those bozos actually could pound me into pulp.  What else?  Oh yeah, my powers had nearly killed me a couple of times, and had done horrific stuff to other people.

Come to think of it, Halloween hadn’t been nearly as bad for me as that trip to Boston.  I still had occasional nightmares about being trapped underground with no air and then being attacked in the pitch-dark by hundreds of zombies.

Of course, Halloween had been extraordinarily bad for a lot of Whateley.  Kane Hall looked like the U.S. Navy had used it for gunnery practice.  A lot of Whateley Security people were dead or seriously injured.  There were already a couple construction crews on-campus, cleaning up wreckage and rebuilding.

I made some mental notes on the companies.  If the headmistress trusted these guys to build on the Whateley campus, I was going to consider using them when I needed some private construction done.

That evening, I spent a long time trying to talk Vox into repeating last night’s arrangement.  No such luck.  You know, sometimes there’s a real downside to having a girlfriend with morals.

Thursday, November 2

At breakfast, the big buzz was the prank that had been played on all of Melville.  Every single girl in Melville had been pranked, with someone stealing some, if not all, of every girl’s panties.  And there were a lot of very hot babes in Melville, even if some of them were major bitches.  Half a dozen of the panties had been hung on the top of the flagpole.  Some of the guys at a table behind me were saying that there was a pair of ‘My Little Pony’ panties that no Melville girl was willing to claim.

Someone was asking for a major bruising with this one.  There were plenty of girls in Melville who were not going to put up with that kind of crap.  I could just see what some of the Melville bitches like Hekate and Majestic were going to do when they found out who was behind this one.  Not to mention Pariah, Sizzle, Alakazam, and a host of other hotheads and jerks.

I looked over to the main table.  The Alphas were having some big, angry discussion.  Hekate and her peons Conjure and Spellbinder were fussing away.  The Don was actually looking concerned.

Whoa.  Wait a minute.  The Alphas weren’t behind this one?  The Alpha girls sure looked pissed off.  None of the Alphas looked smug this morning.  So who had pulled this one off?

And what kind of dimwit could pull off something this involved, and not realize that a lot of superpowered girls were going to be looking to rip him a new one?

That thought immediately had me looking for Peeper and Greasy.  I spotted them, about five tables away.  Peeper was busy ogling Fey and Carmilla.  He’d better not ogle me, or I’d put the hurt on him.  I realized that nearly every Melville girl on this half of the caff was glaring at Peeper, as if he were wearing a big sign that said “PANTY THIEF HERE”.

And how could a guy like Peeper pull something like this one off?  People like Hekate and Majestic would be scrying away, magically looking to see who did it and how it was done.  Clairvoyants and other Psis would be doing the same thing, non-magically.  Peeper had a deviser sidekick, but he’d need a teleporter to get in and out of all the rooms, and a really good mage to cover their tracks from magic users, and probably a clairvoyant to check for traps, and maybe several other powers.  And I wouldn’t want to try hitting every girl’s room in Melville without a Psi or Energizer or Deviser who could make sure that the girls in any given room stayed asleep while I rummaged around.

Plus, I knew from my contacts that Thuban ran Twain.  He wouldn’t let a ton of Twain boys get involved in something like this, unless it was some major payback for something serious that the Melville girls had done to Twain or Whitman.  I hadn’t heard of anything like that, even if the Dickinson girls had played a big prank on several Whitman girls just about a week ago.  Which was pretty much the standard: if a couple Dickinsonians weren’t playing a prank on a couple Whitman girls, then a couple Whitmaniacs were playing a prank on a few Dickinson girls.  Also, if Thuban was doing that, he wouldn’t let a loose cannon like Peeper run the op.  Well, I certainly wouldn’t, and my sources told me that Thuban was quite competent.

So who had done it?  And why?  I mean, I could see some pervert-slash-prankster like Flux or Risk doing this to Nikki or Zenith.  Or even to Hank or Sonex, given that both Flux and Risk were very bi.  But why hit Melville?  That made me wonder if the culprit was already in Melville.  Some major Melville dork, maybe even someone who already had a rep for stealing stuff…

Belphegor.

I wondered if Belphegor could be behind this.  If so, I really doubted he could hide his activities from major mages like Hekate and Majestic.  If he showed up tomorrow with a donkey’s head, or with most of his floating chair inextricably rammed up his ass, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.  On the other hand, ol’ Belph didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who had the cojones to hit every girl’s room in Melville.

All day long, I heard people gossiping about the Perverted Panty Purloiner.  No one had a good suspect.  Most people were convicting the usual suspects on no evidence whatsoever.  The Alphas.  The Ninjas.  Pranksters like Risk and Flux and Jokester.  Peeper and Greasy were making the list too, mainly because every girl on campus hated them.

My Accounting I TA work went a lot more smoothly.  People like Aqueous and Cueball were willing to come ask me questions without being forced to by Mr. Marley, and plenty of the questions were fairly interesting.  Okay, the interesting questions were more along the lines of ‘how do we use this in the real world’ or ‘what do you do when this is not enough’.  Somehow I ended up discussing how to handle accounting problems across several incorporated entities within a conglomerate, and the session ran long.

Dinner at the TK table was its usual wackiness.  Particularly when Chaka decided to make a case for “Ayla Goodkind, world’s greatest panty thief”.  She figured that if I hired a deviser to flood Melville with sleeping gas, then paid a wizard to build a trap-checking charm, I could walk through people’s walls and phase through any traps.

“So…  How would I sneak out of the room and back without tipping off my roomie?”

But there’s no stopping Chaka when she’s on a roll.  “Aha!  Of course, you hired her to help you!  She could use the Tao to check for traps and people who weren’t asleep and stuff!”

“And how would I keep my floormates from sensing my emotions about the subject?”

She bore down, “You paid them off too!  Starting with Fey, and…”

But that was what I was waiting for.  I cut in, “And I’d have to pay off anyone with special Esper talents…”

“You know it.  So…”

I wrapped up, “…like the ability to read Ki…”

“Hey!”

I smirked, “So you confess, do you, Toni Chandler…  Or whatever your real name is, you dangerous criminal.”  I turned to the side, “Hank, Lily, I think you better cuff her and haul her in for questioning.”

Lily said something relevant.  “I think everyone’s missing the real question.  Why do this?  This is a major undertaking, and it’s upset a lot of people.  Why are the perps doing this?  It’s stupid and childish.  Because if they can do this, they could rob an upscale apartment building in New York City instead, and walk off with millions in one night.”

I thought that was the best point I’d heard all day.

I spent a couple hours re-thinking and re-writing my paper for World Lit.  I just didn’t think that what I had so far was a good paper, and I was aiming for another ‘A+’.  Well, actually I wanted an ‘A’ without having to write another journal article.

It was snowing pretty heavily by the time I got into bed that night.  We’d had cold, nasty weather already; after all it was November in the Presidential Mountains.  We’d had flurries before.  But this was the first serious snowfall.  I was glad I wasn’t one of the people who had to clean off the walkways.

Friday, November 3

I woke up to the urgent strains of the Dead Kennedys scrabbling out of my alarm, and I looked out the window.  Wow.  It looked like there was a four-inch blanket of snow on the ground.  I was glad I’d gotten Jody to help me weatherproof my window.  In addition to the double-glazed window that was already in place, we’d put a clear plastic insulator over the inside of the window, sealed it around the edges, and filled the space in between with Freon.  So my window had a much higher R-value than before.  I’d suggested that everyone else on the floor do likewise, but no one except Jody had taken me up on it.

And it certainly felt colder in the bathroom.  The hot water didn’t seem as hot as usual, so I rushed through a shower and did my phasing trick to dry off.  At least my heavy bathrobe was nice and warm.

I dressed for the weather, even though I didn’t plan to be outside much.  I figured that some of the classrooms would be pretty cold.  So I started with long underwear.  Silk, of course.  It’s not as bulky as the cotton stuff, and it feels better, and it does a great job of keeping you warm without making you get clothes a size larger.

Then I avoided going outside.  I took my usual shortcut to the Hawthorne tunnel to go to the cafeteria.  I chatted with Phlegm and a couple other Thornies as I walked down the tunnel, so I got to the caff about the same time as the rest of TK.

Chaka waved me over.  When I walked up to her, she asked, “Hey Ayles, ya think you could do that super-light stuff while holding me, and carry me along with you to the tunnel?”

I asked her, “Why don’t you just use some of that ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ Ki stuff and run on top of the snow instead?”

Fey glowered, “She already did.  She and Chou started flicking snow at each other, and the next thing you know, they were flicking snow on everyone else too.”

I looked at her.  She looked remarkably pristine for someone who’d had snow flicked all over her.  She got my drift, or picked up on my emotions.  She smiled naughtily and made a two-handed gesture that made my eyes hurt.  Suddenly a translucent green bubble surrounded her.

“Oh.  Right.  Magic,” I lamely realized.

Jade grumped, “But she didn’t protect the rest of us!  I had snow down my blouse, and snow all over my legs, and snow in my hair…”

I looked at her, and she didn’t look snow-covered either.

Oh.  Right.  That cast-in-your-clothes bit she did.  She had probably cast into her clothes and the snow, and just flung the snow off her.

Solange stomped past us, still trying to comb the remains of a massive snowball out of her no-longer-immaculate hair, while her posse fussed around her.

As we got in the food line, Lancer smirked, “Wonder who clobbered Tansy?”

Tennyo suggested, “Better question: who wouldn’t?”

I grinned, “Yeah.  If there’s, say, 562 students at Whateley this term, I think the suspect list is probably about 555 students long.”

Fey smirked, “That’s pretty generous of you.  A whole six other students who wouldn’t want to hit Tansy with a snowball?  I can only come up with about two.”

Jade started counting off on her fingers.  “Flicker, Fade, those two girls on the floor below Tansy that she loans clothes to and they run errands for her…  Okay, I’m stuck, I can’t come up with more than four.”

At breakfast, everyone was talking about the big news.  Whitman had been hit last night by the Perverted Panty Purloiner.  Every single girl in the cottage had lost at least a few of her panties.  Given what some of the Whitman girls looked like, that had to be a very kinky panty thief.  Even if I were perverted enough to be stealing all those panties, I didn’t think I’d be interested in a lot of the girls in Whitman.  Okay, so there were some cuties over there.  But Diamondback?  Psydoe?  Arachne?  Deimos and Phobos?  I liked Phobos, but as a friend, not as a girl I wanted to date.  And could someone with a body like Diamondback’s even wear panties?  Okay, I didn’t want to know the answer to that one.  But there were a lot of girls over in Whitman who just didn’t sound like primo panty-stealing territory.

Plus there was the interesting news that a bunch of the Whitman girls had prepared traps, just in case the Panty Purloiner decided to descend upon their dorm in the middle of the night.  Several girls had put traps on their doors and windows, and some had traps on their bureaus or their panties.  None of the traps had been triggered.  Not the magical ones, not the devises, and not the plain old baseline-style booby traps.  And a couple girls were angrily complaining that the thief had stolen their panties off them while they slept!

Also, there were no incriminating footprints through the snow outside the dorm.  But Whitman had tunnel access, so that might not mean much.  Even if the tunnels were supposed to be monitored with security cameras.

All that put a whole new spin on this operation.  Whoever was behind this was good.  Really good.  I wondered if someone was doing this as an advertisement of their skills, or as a test to get hired by someone big.  I could see a heavy hitter like a Syndicate honcho making some high school kid demonstrate his skills in a very public way, before the kid would be considered high-level henchman material.  I just couldn’t see a Syndicate honcho picking this kind of silliness as the demonstration.  So why was someone doing this?

The chefs must have thought the weather was extra-cold too, because they had a lot of comfort food on the menu.  And there was something special for me, too.  A gorgeous gallinelle e polenta, which is fricasseed game hen with polenta.  The Cornish game hens were quartered and sautéed in what tasted like a mixture of fresh butter and extra-virgin olive oil.  Then they were cooked in a white wine with porcini mushrooms and some wild mushrooms and fresh rosemary and diced roma tomatoes.  Then Chef Marcel did a gorgeous presentation, smearing a layer of polenta over a flat plate and making a well in the center for a quarter of the hen plus a ladle of the thickened mushroom-tomato sauce, plus a little fresh rosemary and fresh wild mushroom as a decoration around the game hen.  The sauce was pungent with rosemary and the earthy mushrooms, so it went marvelously with the creamy polenta.  I had to go chat with Marcel about the sauce, to find out how he got such a rich mushroom earthiness to it.

After classes were over, there was a big snowball fight going on in front of Poe.  A powered snowball fight, of course.  Quake used her powers to put up a wall of snow as a snowfort.  Then Troika split into three behind their fortification and started throwing snowballs as fast as Quake could make them.

I packed a snowball until it was about a foot across, went heavy with the snowball, and heaved a fifty-pound, hundred-mile-an-hour snow cannonball that ripped their snowfort apart.

I got pelted in the back of the head for my trouble.  There was no mistaking Chaka’s laugh.

I ducked behind a tree, went light, dove down through the ground, came up behind Chaka…  And got pelted with half a dozen snowballs as soon as I went solid.

She laughed, “I could feel your Ki when you slid under the ground, under me!”

Just about the time she was done laughing, three snowballs caught her in the back of the head.  We could hear Tennyo and Jade laughing uproariously.

I had to quit early, since I had another appointment with Dr. Bellows.  I had been hit with twenty or thirty snowballs, since every time I stopped being light I got pummeled.  So I had to change my outerwear before I went off to my session.

Once again, Dr. Bellows tried to put me under.  He tried subsonics, he tried a devise, and he tried an alpha-wave generator.  It didn’t matter.  I just didn’t go under.

He finally sighed, “Ayla, there are lots of people like you.  Their will is so strong that we can’t get them into even a light state of hypnosis.  So there’s no way we can work on your BIT using hypnosis.  But that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything you can do.”

“I understand that,” I said.  “I’m looking into other options too.”

He nodded, “But if you can’t change your BIT, then I want to work with you on changing your outlook.  There’s no reason you can’t have a happy, complete life while looking just the way you do now.  There are a lot of people here at Whateley who are never going to be able to pass as a normal person.  Even your friends Fey and Tennyo are having to adapt to that.  And there are a lot of people here who are never going to be able to control their powers enough to do things that you’re taking for granted.”

“Like being able to walk out of my room when I feel like it,” I said.

“Yes.  Or go to the movies, or walk down a city street without risking a riot, or a lot of other simple things.  You can have a normal life.  You can have a family – I checked your medical records, your sperm count is higher than normal.  There are few things that you cannot do.  You just need to learn to accept that you can’t have everything in life.”

“That’s part of the problem,” I told him.  “I’ve spent my entire life, up until a couple months ago, learning that I could have everything.  That I could literally have everything on the planet.  Un-learning that is hard.”

He sort of smiled, “Yes, I can see that.  But I have confidence in you.  You’ll get there, in time.”

After dinner, I had homework to complete.  I was still re-writing part of my paper for World Lit.  That made me late to the sleepover.

I had been telling myself that it was something silly that only girls would like, but I actually had a great time.  Of course, once Sara and Destiny’s Wave started competing to see who could tell the scariest ghost story, I knew things would get out of hand.  Destiny’s Wave knew some pretty horrific stories, but it was up against a master horror writer who had died and become a real half-demon.  Sara won their ‘friendly’ competition with a story so terrifying that I was surprised no one wet their panties.

I told Chou and Molly they could have the room for the night, and I’d sleep in the sleepover room.  They kept thanking me, like I was making some huge sacrifice.  They deserved a little private time together.

Well, it wasn’t like this was a huge hardship for me.  I had a Nieman Marcus inflatable camping mattress and a really good sleeping bag that even had a battery-powered heating system if the weather was bad.  I had my pillow and my backup alarm clock from my room, so I was all set.

Except for all the flack I got from Toni for having a ‘camping mattress’ that was better than her real mattress.

Saturday, November 4

In the morning, I had to get up while everyone else – except Sara – was still in a deep sleepover-induced coma.  I had a class to get to.  I got showered and dressed with as little contact with the snugglers in my room as I could manage.  Chou was awake when I slipped in to get my bathrobe and bath stuff, so I reminded her about my class and told her to let Molly know they had all morning.

The showers were nearly deserted this morning, which was a rarity.  Still, I’d rather be in a crowded room full of half-naked hotties.  Okay, I would really rather be in an extremely crowded room full of totally naked hotties, but you can’t have everything.

Molly slept through my grabbing a set of clothes, and I dressed in the bathroom so I wouldn’t wake her.  Then I cut through to the Hawthorne tunnel and trotted off to breakfast and class.  I was really tired, so I took two of the large to-go cups of coffee with me.  I figured that in the worst case, I’d have a painfully full bladder to keep me awake in class.

Since I hadn’t gotten my paper finished until last night, I had to hand it in when I got to class.  That was the first time for me.  Most of the class was in the same situation.  At least next week’s paper, Lucan’s Pharsalia, was going to be a much faster read.  Nine books of about a thousand lines each, and a tenth book, cut short at about 700 lines, because Lucan got ‘cut short’, if you know what I mean.

Class that morning was fairly interesting.  I had to admit it, Majestic was a pretty impressive scholar when she wasn’t getting all distracted by her ‘Greek and Roman Gods’ issues.  And Silver Serpent had much more of an Eastern-cultures slant on things than the rest of the room, which really helped put things in perspective.  I would have loved to hear what Silver and some of the other Whateley kids from that part of the world really thought about the material.

I bugged Silver Serpent after class, and she was willing to talk to me about the Asian perspective of such works.  We took the elevator to the tunnel system and walked through the tunnels to the cafeteria, instead of trudging through the nominally-cleared walkways outside.

I didn’t find out until I visited Static Girl after lunch, but the panty thief hit Hawthorne last night.  Claire lost her favorite panties, too.  She was blushing a bright red and didn’t want to admit what they were.

“Oh come on,” I pushed.  “They can’t be worse than those ‘My Little Pony’ panties from Melville that ended up on the flagpole!”

It took quite a while before she admitted that she had a pair of really racy black lace panties that were sheer over most of their surface.

I teased her, “Woo-hoo!  Claire Pierce, the naughty hottie!”

“Oh shut up,” she blushed furiously.  “I knew you’d tease me about ‘em.”

It turned out that every girl at Hawthorne lost some panties.  Man, who on earth would go into Musk’s room and steal HER panties?  And who could go into Puppet’s room and not get poisoned by any of her blood on her clothes?

Did that mean our thief was immune to poisons and didn’t have to inhale?  Hey, maybe it was Sara, with help from her posse.  I could see a lust demon stealing panties like this.  I just couldn’t see someone as smart as Sara pulling something so obvious.

That only left Dickinson and Poe.  Three down, two to go for the Peculiar Panty Purloiner.

Sunday, November 5

I was on my way back from visiting Melissa in Hawthorne, when a big guy jumped out of a tree to land in front of me.  He was nearly six feet tall, and maybe 180 pounds of solid muscle.  He wasn’t all bulked-up like a weightlifter, but he looked strong.  Whateley strong.  He had bronzed skin, red eyes, and jet-black hair that was pulled back in a ponytail.  He had a sharp-featured, vicious face that reminded me of a hawk.

It was Counterpoint.

Crap.  I’d asked around about both him and Powerhouse, after Chief Delarose’s little warning.  Counterpoint was an Exemplar and a really strong power mimic, who just happened to be totally psycho.  He’d picked fights with a ton of kids already, and he’d won nearly every one of them.  The kids who beat him the first time, just had him taking them on with more and more powers until he finally won.  The last thing anyone needed was this nutbar getting a copy of my powers.

I told him, “Counterpoint.  I’ve heard of you.  I’m not fighting you.”

He sneered, “Are you scared, little girl?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am.”  I was damned scared that he’d be able to mimic my powers and do some serious damage with them.  And he was an Exemplar, so I was not about to phase-KO him, even if I hadn’t had that major worry that he’d be able to get my powers in the process.

“You’re a pussy!” he blazed.

I just said, “Look, you’ve won this fight.  We’re done.”

He yelled, “What is wrong with you?”

I calmly said, “I don’t want to fight you.  I’m scared to.  So you win.”

He bellowed, “That’s not the way it works!”

Just then, Imperious strolled up.

Oh crap.  I so didn’t want to fight another nutbar, and especially not one who hurled lightning bolts like You-Know-Who.

Imperious smiled at Counterpoint, “What is the matter my friend?”

Holy crow.  He thought of Counterpoint as a friend?  But Imperious was like Majestic.  They thought that they were avatars of the Greek Gods.  They didn’t deign to deal with mere mortals.  But that meant…

Psycho.  Always looking for fights.  War-like.

Oh crap.  Counterpoint had to be their psychotic little equivalent of Ares.  Were they all reinforcing each other’s loony-toon delusions?

Or was something even worse going on?  Nikki had merged with Aunghadhail, who apparently was The Queen Of The West.  Billie had merged with The Star Stalker.  Sara was The Kellith.  Was it possible that these fruitcakes really WERE avatars or merges of the Greek Gods?  Oh crap.  I’d have to keep an eye out for them.  AND whoever they allowed to hang with them.

Counterpoint fumed, “The little bitch won’t fight me!”

Imperious looked down up on me, just like a loon who thought he was Zeus ought to be looking down on some mere mortal.

I said, “I’m too afraid to fight him.  Why would I, a mere mortal, choose to fight Ares, God of war?”  Then I tossed out a quote in ancient Greek from a play by Euripides.  “It is not for us to fight against the Powers from Mount Olympus.”

Imperious easily translated, “‘It is not for us to fight against the powers of Mount Olympus.’  Ah, it is so long since I have heard anyone else speak the ancient tongue.  And you are?”

“Phase.  Ayla Goodkind.”

He smiled regally, “Since you know who we are, and you know not to fight against us, it would be churlish of us to insist on fighting you.  Come, Counterpoint.  I want to talk to you about Prism.  Once again, he refuses to come to our discussions, and his opinions would be most valuable now…”

They walked off, and I felt a massive knot coiling up in my stomach.  He spoke ancient Greek, or at least understood it.  I was just quoting a Greek author.  That made him more than just a nut who thought he was Zeus.  And he had the powers of Zeus too.  Super-strength and lightning bolts, and who knew what else.  He could lead Counterpoint around by the nose.  But if he was Zeus, and Majestic was Hera, and Counterpoint was Ares, then what about Prism?

Let me think…  Energy powers, stronger in sunlight, and a Healer.

Sunlight.  Healing.

Oh crap.  Prism had to be the god Apollo.

Holy crow, how could so many Greek Gods just be showing up all of a sudden at Whateley?  Were there more of them?  Was something so horrific going on that the Greek Gods were returning to Earth?  Or could it be that this was the first chance they had to merge with human bodies that were strong enough to hold their energies, and had the ability to manifest their powers?

How could I find out the truth?  Because either there was an entire flock of super-powered loons loose at Whateley, or else…

Or else there was an entire flock of super-powered Greek Gods loose at Whateley.

I couldn’t stop from shivering at the icy lightning running down my spine.  I couldn’t decide which of the two would be worse.

One thing was for sure.  I could NOT let that psycho Counterpoint get a copy of my powers.  Not when I was only a conscience away from being Tinsnip.  Even if he could copy my powers temporarily just by being near me, he couldn’t learn how to use them like I did, unless I showed him.  So I definitely wasn’t going to fight him and reveal what I could do.  That fruitcake would have no compunction about disintegrating chunks out of people, or ripping holes in people, or shredding BITs, or doing every horrendous thing that I was afraid might happen around me, even by accident.

I went back to Poe.  I figured that I needed to talk to an expert about this.  I made a beeline for Nikki’s room.

I knocked, and walked in when she told me to.  She was at her desk, working on homework of some kind.

Chaka was busy doing a one-armed handstand, balancing on one leg of an upside-down chair, and throwing her minuscule darts at her teeny dartboard.  And she still wasn’t missing.  She turned around and waved ‘hi’ without losing her balance.

Nikki looked at me and said, “What’s got you all upset?”

Empaths.  Oh brother.

I flopped down on her bed.  “Counterpoint and Imperious.  And Majestic, for that matter.  They’re either completely nuts, or else they really are the ancient Greek Gods in some way.  Could they be avatars or channelers or merges of the real Greek Gods?  Or something?  I figured you’d know, if anyone would.  You or Aunghadhail.”

Nikki leaned back in her chair and thought out loud, “Let’s see, we’ve got me and Billie and Sara on campus.  There are some other Sidhe.  Circe teaches here.  Hmm…  Could be.”

Then she sat up straight and became.  She didn’t become something else, she just became more Fey-ish.  Watching Nikki switch over to Aunghadhail was always interesting, and frankly freaky.  She went from being a casual teenager to being a rigid queen.

Aunghadhail tilted her head regally and spoke, “The Gods of recent Greek myths, as the child remembers them.  They would be mere children.  Younglings who are too new and too immature to handle their powers as they ought.”

Then Nikki was back.  I could tell by the change in her posture.  “I hate it when she thinks of me as a child!”

“I imagine she thinks of Circe as a baby, and she’s old,” I ventured.

“Yeah, I know she’s right, but I still don’t like it,” Nikki insisted.

“So.  What does the Queen of the West really think?” I asked.

Nikki shrugged.  “She doesn’t know either.  Not that she’s going to admit it.  So is it just those three pains in the ass?”

I admitted, “Maybe not.  They think Prism is one of them.  He’s a really handsome Exemplar-”

“Ooh!  Our little girl is going het on us!” crowed Toni.

“As if,” I snapped.  “He’s stronger in sunlight, a major Energizer, and he’s a Healer.  Pretty damned powerful one, too.  Right up in your league,” I pointed out to Nikki.  “And he didn’t want to join their council.  I think that makes him Apollo.”

Toni thought for a second and said, “Ayles, you’re jumpin’ to conclusions here.  You say he doesn’t wanna play nice with ‘em?  So maybe they just think he’s like Apollo, and he thinks they’re loony-toons.”

“Good thinking, Toni,” agreed Nikki.

“Toni?  Thinking?  Do those go together?” I added.

“Hey!”

Nikki giggled exotically, then said, “I really think she’s got a point, Ayla.  You may be reading way too much into this.  We’re on an entire campus of super-powered people who look like Exemplars.  There’s got to be a bunch of people who’d fit pretty much any of these archetypes.”

Toni added, “And since they’re the Greek Gods, you gotta start with them being Exemplars.”

I said, “Well, all of them except Hephaestus.”

“Heh-who?”

I glared at Toni.  “Hephaestus.  Vulcan, in Roman mythology.”

“Oh.  Okay,” she said.

I went on, “God of the forge.  God of blacksmiths and artisans.  God of technology.  The cripple-legged God, son of Hera, who was married to Aphrodite by Zeus.”

Toni grinned, “Sounds like a deviser to me.”

“Yeah, I…  Oh crap.  I know who it is.  It’s Knick-Knack,” I groaned.  I thought about his crippled leg and his powerful shoulders and his awesome grip.  Could be…

Nikki shook her head, “You’re doing it again, Ayla.  Just because you can make it fit, doesn’t make him one of their crowd.”

Toni chipped in, “Yeah.  Try Venus.  I mean, Aphrodite.  Smokin’ babe who acts like a love goddess.  I bet there’s a hundred girls on campus who fit that.  Startin’ with Fey and all of Venus, Inc., and Sahar, and dozens of other hotties around here.  Includin’ Solange, and I really hate to admit that one.”

“Ugh.”  The thought of Tansy Walcutt as the avatar of Aphrodite just made me want to hurl.  But it did fit.  A stunning blonde who could really crank up the “I’m all that” vibe, not to mention having psychic powers that made her ultra-desirable and better in bed.

Nikki looked at me and then poked me in the arm.  “You’re doing it again!”

“Sorry.”

She said, “I like the idea of someone like Poise as the avatar of Aphrodite.  Or Lifeline.  She’d be a really good fit.  Or Charmer.  She’s really pretty, and her magical abilities are impressive.  Who else?”

I said, “Well, Apollo has a sister, Artemis – that’s Diana or Luna in Roman mythology – who’s the goddess of the hunt and all wild things.  She a virgin goddess, and-”

“A virgin goddess?” Toni snickered.  “She don’t do the humpty dance with the guys?  Well, if she’s a lesbian, she’d be in Poe.”

“Feral,” Nikki said suddenly.  “She’d fit.  She’s a lesbian, she shifts into predator forms, she goes out at night and hunts live animals…”  She realized we were both staring at her.  “What?  Sara told me!”

“Suuuuuure…”

“Well, Feral sure is a ‘wild thang’.  And she’s an Exemplar too.  So she does fit.”

I said, “Okay, what about Athena?  Stern goddess of justice.”

“Sounds like Batman,” smirked Toni.

“Athena’s female, remember?” I huffed.

“Okay.  Batgirl.”

Nikki giggled out loud.

Toni shrugged, “Okay, okay, lemme think.  Stern goddess of justice type.  Umm…  Half the girls in the Cape Squad.  Hippolyta.  Shrike.  Adamantine.  Bombshell.  Golden Girl, from what you been sayin’.  A-Plus.  Aztecka.  Mindbird.  That nutcake Nightbane.  Ya want me to keep goin’?”

“No,” I sighed.  “That’s plenty.  I think you proved your point.  This is Whateley, after all.”

The more I thought about it, the less I was certain that I wasn’t just reading way too much into this.  After all, Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, could be any of the girls on campus with plant or nature powers.  Hermes?  Good grief, there were way too many speedsters around here.  Poseidon?  Tidewater or Aqueous or any of the guys around here with water-related powers.  Dionysus, the god of wine and festivity?  Ninety percent of the Dylans, plus dozens of serious party animals all over campus.  Hades?  Any of the guys with shadow or darkness powers, or most of the Goths, or even that depressive kid Stygian who was a manifestor or something.

But the bottom line was that Fey thought that the Whateley kids really could be avatars or merges or channelers or something of the real Greek Gods.  That didn’t make me feel any better.

Okay, if she’d told me she thought they were total fruitloops who were deluding themselves, that wouldn’t have reassured me either.  With those nuts, this was a strictly lose-lose situation.

As I was going to bed that night, I realized that there was also an Option C: maybe one or two of these guys were real Greek Gods, while the rest were enjoying having someone feeding into their psychotic little delusions.  Maybe that was actually worse.

Monday, November 6

I woke up to the alarm clock, and I had a sudden urge to check whether any of my underwear had vanished overnight.  I repressed that and got moving.

While I was waiting for a shower stall - and ogling everyone else - Chaka walked into the bathroom.  She called out, “Everyone still got their panties?”  Most of the room laughed.

Rip fluttered her eyelashes at Toni and teased, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Sharisha walked out of her shower and muttered, “Fuckin’ boybitch.  Wouldn’t surprise me any if you Kimbos were doin’ it.”

“Oh come on, that’s not very nice,” Bunny fussed.

Yeah.  And if we were doing it, we certainly wouldn’t bother with your panties, you cranky lardball.  I had enough sense not to say that out loud.  But Punch turned and stared at me for a second, so she must have picked up on my angry emotions.

We trekked off to breakfast.  The walks were all clear, so I grabbed my heavy coat and walked with the gang.  I went light for most of the walk, since pranksters were flinging snowballs all over the place, especially around Melville.

Nikki just murmured something that echoed oddly between my ears.  Then she made a fluid hand gesture, and all the snowballs suddenly reversed direction and chased down their hurlers.

“Goddamn magic users!”  That was some guy who had just taken one of those snowballs, right in the kisser.

“Nice aim, Nikki,” whispered Chaka.

“Not really,” Fey admitted.  “I was trying to make the snowballs fly down into their underpants.”

Ooh.  A snowball right in the crotch, inside the clothes.  My knees almost locked together at the thought.

The big news in the cafeteria was that Dickinson got hit last night by the Perverted Panty Purloiner.  That left Poe.

A number of girls around the caff were looking at some of the Poe troublemakers as potential panty-thieves.  Risk and Flux seemed to be getting the most focus, even if Michelangelo was a bigger pain in the ass in my opinion.

I wondered who was behind all this.  And I wondered about some guy rummaging through Solange and Sahar’s panty drawers in the dead of night.  Or through some of the other panty drawers there.  I mean, there were a ton of hotties over in Dickinson.

Lunch was excellent.  Not only did I have a marvelous treat from Chef Marcel, but I got to watch a dozen angry girls rough up Peeper and smash gooey desserts onto his head.  Security had to break it up and lead Peeper away for his own safety.

At the end of trig class, Unicorn led me down the hall until we had a little privacy.  She said, “Tonight, come over and eat dinner with me and Tidewater and the rest.  We want to talk to you about handling a future Golden Kids meeting.”

I told her, “Okay.  I’ll be there.  Anything to avoid the catering we had last time.”

She shook her head in disgust, “I told them Traduce couldn’t follow through on her promises.  She never does.”

I smirked, “Yeah, but I’ll bet she has a really interesting story about how it’s someone else’s fault and they’re out to get her.”

Unicorn grinned.  “Yeah, she’s already on about how her secretary has been sabotaging her for months as part of some fiendish plot.”

“Yeah, it couldn’t possibly be that Traduce treats her people like cattle, and then they quit and tell everyone about her, so she can’t get good help after that.”

She said, “My mom says Traduce’s mother is exactly like that.”

So I missed the usual wackiness at the TK table, and had dinner with some of the Golden Kids instead.

Tidewater and Premiere were obviously running the meeting.  And the table.  Premiere had two serving girls in regular Whateley uniforms fetching beverages and desserts for everyone.  Both girls looked like sophomores, but I didn’t know either one.

Premiere said, “I’d like to extend a welcome to Phase and Tabby, two of our most impressive up-and-comers.”  We received a host of smiles and nods.

He turned to the two of us and continued, “The reason we invited you to eat with us, is that we want to sound you out.  Would you be willing to listen to us discuss what’s involved in putting on one of the monthly meetings, and then let us know if you’d be willing to run one?”

“Sure,” she said.

“Of course,” I added.

He smiled in acknowledgement.  “Good.  We’ll have one more meeting this term.  It’ll be on the 18^th, and there won’t be a meeting in December.  Meetings when everyone’s sweating over finals never work well.  Hatamoto’s going to be handling the next meeting.”  He looked over at Hatamoto, “Ken, do you have anything you want to talk about before we open it up?”

Hatamoto nodded, “Yes, I do.  First, after having to deal with Traduce, the caterers are very upset with us.  We may have to give up on the caterers we’ve been using for the last several years.  I’ll see if I can talk them into working with us at least once more.  I’ll know more about this later.

“Second, there are two staffers who are always willing to earn some extra money as serving staff.  Although Ginger was really upset with the way Traduce treated everyone, so we may lose her.  Still, we usually prefer four to six staffers, so each person in charge ends up talking a couple students into being waitstaff for one evening.  You have to follow the Whateley handbook on this, or you’ll be hearing from Ms. Hartford or Mrs. Carson.

“Third, the room is ours, regardless of when we schedule the meetings.  But our security staff likes to have a couple hours to sweep the room before the meeting.  And the meeting has to be at a time when they’re officially off-duty.  Typically, that means there’s one Saturday a month when they can’t do it.  Accommodate them.  They define the pay scale, you merely pay them as they request.

“Fourth, the cleaning before and after the meeting, plus the set-up and break-down of chairs and such, has usually been handled by the caterers.  You have to make sure that’s part of the arrangements.

“And finally, the part everyone sees.  The foods and beverages.  For Heaven’s sake, try to do better than Traduce!  Those little things in dough were utterly dreadful.  If you can’t find a halfway decent non-alcoholic beverage, try mineral water.  That’s what I’ll be serving this time.”

Premiere nodded, “Thank you, Ken.  That was well-presented.  Anyone else?”

Unicorn muttered, “Yeah.  Try to get that bottle away from Glitch without his going ballistic about it.  He shouldn’t be drinking.  He’s underage.  One of these days, he’s going to get us in trouble.”

While people brought up points they’d discovered when they were running the Saturday night meeting, I ate my dessert.  Premiere’s serving girls brought around a fairly decent coffee, so I had a cup.

When they had covered the issues, Premiere looked at me and Tabby and asked, “So, are either of you willing to handle one meeting sometime during the rest of the school year?”

I said, “Definitely.  Sign me up.”

Tabby said, “Oh, mother would have a fit over the expenses!”  She switched to an evil gleam and said, “I’m in too.”

Finally, Tidewater wrapped up the meeting.  “Are there any other questions?”

I said, “I only have one.  We go by ‘Golden Kids’, but that’s what everyone else calls us.  What’s the official name of the group?”

Unicorn covered her face with her hands.  Premiere groaned.

Tidewater said, “You’re not going to believe this, but our official title is ‘The Superior Court of Kings and Queens of the Golden Circle and Platinum Diadem and Silver Crown’.  That’s why we all call ourselves the Golden Kids.”

“Okay, you’re right.  I don’t believe you,” I replied.

He sighed, “I didn’t either.  But you can look it up.  Official clubs have to be registered with Whateley Admin.”

Premiere volunteered, “When I was a frosh, Coronet explained it to me.  Of course, Coronet liked to make up a lot of stuff, so take this with a grain of salt the size of a salt mine.  He told me that what he was told was that it started out as the Royal Kings of the Golden Circle, and so the group was known as the Golden Kings, which got labeled the Golden Kids by everyone else.  But in the late 60’s, there was a kid here who actually had the codename Golden Circle, and so they changed the name to the Royal Kings of the Golden Circle and the Platinum Diadem.  Then, in the 70’s, the feminists of the group insisted on a change, so it became the Royal Court of Kings and Queens of the Golden Circle and the Platinum Diadem.  After that, in the 80’s there was a big ongoing economic fight about the gold standard vs. the silver standard, and so the ‘Silver Crown’ part got added on.  Then in the 90’s, the Americans dominated the group and decided to replace the ‘Royal’ part.  No one’s made the name any worse since then, but that’s why none of us call the group by its real name.  ‘Golden Kids’ is enough.  The real name is just plain embarrassing.”

“Okay.  I’m sorry I asked,” I told him.  Actually, I was glad I’d asked.  This was something that could be fixed.

As I got up, I thanked everyone for the invite, and told them I appreciated the offer.

Chou caught me as I left the caff.  “Ayla, you missed dinner.”

“No, I was eating with the Golds.”

She tried again, “I am sorry.  I meant that you missed dinner with us.  Lancer has a new roommate.  Heyoka.  We met at dinner.  Let’s go back to the room, and Hank will introduce us to Jamie.”

“Heyoka?  What sort of name is that?”

She bowed her head slightly, “I will let Heyoka explain that.  It is some sort of American Indian word.”

“That’s okay.  I’m tired of most of Whateley acting like all codenames have to be in English.”

She grinned, “Says ‘Phase’ to ‘Bladedancer’.”

I laughed, “Well, it is kind of stupid sometimes.  Most of the Europeans have English codenames, or at least codenames that are also English words.  Even a bunch of the Beret Mafia do it.  Charge and Migraine and Kismet all have names that are also English words, even if they’re pronouncing them the way they sound in the original.”

“Oh,” she said.  “I thought their names were pronounced ‘charj’ and ‘MY-grayn’, not ‘sharj’ and ‘me-grain’.”

“I guess you’re still a Knoxville kid inside that body.”

She sighed miserably, making me sorry I’d brought it up.  “I wish it were so.”

I nudged her, “Hey, look at it like this.  If it wasn’t for that sword, you wouldn’t have Molly…”

“True.”

“Or the coolest roommate in the country.”

She giggled and said, “It is very nice rooming with you.  And I do not have to fight hobgoblins every day, or argue with my roommate over bringing another four trunks of deviser gear into the room, or worry about my roommate accidentally blasting part of the room.”

I agreed, “Yeah, I’m just glad I don’t have Scrambler for a roommate.  Or Tempest.  Or Michelangelo.  Or…”

“Yes, there are many people who would not be as good a roommate as I have.  I do appreciate that.”

I told her, “Well the only way I’d be happier with my roommate sitch was if my roomie were Vox, and she was ready to get serious.  But that’s not happening, so I’ll stick with you.”

“Gosh.  Thank you so much,” she complained.

Right after we got back to my room, there was a strong knock.  Hank called out, “It’s me.  With Jamie.”

I called out, “Come on in.”

Hank opened the door, and stepped in with a good-looking kid of obvious Indian heritage.  The odd part was that the kid was really good looking, but in a really androgynous way, so you couldn’t tell he was a guy.  If he was a guy.  The name ‘Jamie’ wasn’t exactly gender-defining.

Hank said, “Jamie, you met Chou already, and this is Ayla.  Ayla, this is Jamie Carson, who goes by Heyoka.”

I smiled and said, “Welcome to Poe.  I take it you’re one of us.  By the way, I approve of a non-English codename.  We’ve got way too many non-WASP and not-American kids with ordinary English names.  Like, say, Bladedancer.”

Chou stuck out her tongue, just to show how she was truly one with the Tao.

Jamie cautiously explained, “It’s Lakota.  It means ‘sacred clown’.”

“Oh?  Like the medicine man character in the movie Little Big Man?”

Jamie looked sort of uncomfortable.  “I don’t know.  I haven’t seen that one.”

Hank said, “Man, that’s a great movie.  Action, adventure, comedy, the Indians are the good guys and General Custer is a dick, the hero’s supposed to be an old Indian fighter but it turns out he was one of the Indians himself…  Dustin Hoffman is really, really good in it.  I’ll have to show it to you sometime.”

Jamie thought it over.  “That sounds pretty neat.”

I told Hank, “I’ll go ahead and get it and download it, so it’s ready when you are.”

Jamie seemed like a nice kid.  Shy, but that was to be expected when being thrown into a new school that was completely different culturally as well.  But was he a boy or a girl?  And he didn’t seem to care which sex he was, or even which sex you thought he was.

That really bugged me.  How could you not care whether you were a boy or a girl, and how could you not care that people were guessing wrong about your gender?  It just ate at me that I had to live with the identity of a girl, and people really thought I was a girl.

Granted, I had far fewer people trying to punch my lights out when they thought I was a girl, instead of an intersexed transgender freakfest.  But I would have vastly preferred to be able to pass as a boy.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t come close, unless I was buried under ten layers of clothing.. and a parka.. and I didn’t talk, or walk, or do any of the other things that tipped off people that this body was clearly not male.

Jamie explained a bit about his sitch.  And, since this was Whateley, the truth was even weirder than I expected.  Jamie used to be a girl, but she’s now intersexed like me; and she shifts back and forth depending on weird shit that’s out of her control.  Holy crow!  The thought of waking up with a slit between my legs just made me shudder.  The thought of waking up covered in feathers, or scales, or fur, or God only knew what…  Ugh.  Okay, so I didn’t have it as bad as plenty of people at Whateley.  I already knew that.

Tuesday, November 7

I woke up, and the first thing I did was check the bureaus.  Mine and Chou’s.  No missing panties.  At least they looked like everything was there.  I wasn’t going to go all OC and count them.

Things in the showers were more tense than the day before.  People were really expecting to get ripped off.  No one laughed when Chaka did the same “Everyone still got their panties?” bit.

Chaka confided, “Fey put so many hexes on her stuff, I was almost afraid to get clean lingerie this morning.”

Fey muttered, “Yeah, like you weren’t asking me to put the same charms on your side of the room…”

As we walked to the cafeteria for breakfast, just about everyone we met wanted to know if we’d been raided.  Then they wanted