Ayla #4: "Ayla and the Tests" By Diane Castle

Ayla #4: “Ayla and the Tests”

- a Whateley Universe Tale

by Diane Castle (with oodles of help from the whole Whateley crew!)

Obviously, word had already gotten around that Team Kimba had gotten into another major battle. The morning showers were the warriors returning to their loved ones. Bugs was hugging Fey. Rip was checking Chaka for injuries. Reeeeeally thoroughly. And, lo and behold, Vox came over and hugged me hard.

She kissed me senseless before she held me at arm’s length and snapped, “What is it with all of you? One of you’s gonna get hurt bad one of these days!”

I let her hold me like that, and I snarked, “It’s Peter Parker Syndrome. We just attract bad guys. Pheromones or something.”

Bugs agreed, “Yeah, Ayla. All of you could’ve been hurt or killed or something!”

Before Jade could ‘helpfully’ relate how Matterhorn had stomped Tennyo into the asphalt, Billie put a hand over Jade’s mouth. Jade even put up with that. If it had been my hand, Jade probably would have bitten me. Or cast Jinn into my arm and made me smack myself a couple times.

I just barely had time to eat one of Chef Peter’s apple dumplings with cinnamon and vanilla bean. Then I grabbed a to-go cup of the good coffee and hustled over to World Lit class.

As I walked toward the classroom, I saw Pendragon chatting with a couple of the other Capes: his girlfriend Glorianna, and Iron Star. I didn’t realize they were waiting there for me.

“Of course,” I said. No point in dissing the Cape Squad. Besides, Pendragon was a good guy.

Iron Star put in, “We just saw a report on your trip to Boston. Could you fill us in on what you noticed about the supervillains you fought?”

“Like what?” I wondered. “Strengths, weaknesses, fighting style, M.O.? That sort of thing?”

“Exactly,” Glorianna purred in an upper-class British accent that might or might not have been real.

Captain Tilley had filled us in on the identities of the hired guns we had pummeled, so I could actually identify the people we’d fought. I asked, “Was it a Boston P.D. report, or a Whateley report?”

I said, “I can tell you about some of them, but you’ll get much better intel if you talk to all the rest of Team Kimba. Start with Fey; she can tell you more about the Necromancer than anyone. This is the second time she’s gone one-on-one against him, and he’s had to run away both times. Talk to Chaka about the Arch-Fiend and Lycanthros. Lancer can tell you about the Anti-Paladin. Generator’s probably your best source about Ironhawk and Lady Darke. Bladedancer can tell you about Nightgaunt.”

Maybe that sounded more impressive than I thought, because they exchanged a look among themselves.

Pendragon said, “We need to get into class. Could you perhaps eat lunch with us and give us some more details?”

I nodded, “Sure. Be happy to.” The more favors they owed me, the better. And the more they liked me, the more I could get out of them in turn. Plus, Glorianna was a major hottie, and she was all decked out in her skimpy little superheroine costume.

I had already turned in my paper on Pope’s Rape of the Lock, and we had a great discussion group. Most of the class had done the Germanic epic Niebelungenlied instead. So some of the class learned about one, and some learned about the other. I had read both, as Pendragon and several others had obviously done.

I hated to admit it, but Majestic had obviously read both, and had good commentary on both epics. I didn’t like her, but when she wasn’t being a nutcase about Hera and Juno, she was an impressive scholar.

Then I walked over to the caff with Pendragon. He was content to talk about Alexander Pope instead of superhero battles. That was fine with me. He was well-read, and had an interesting perspective on Pope that Americans didn’t usually see.

Glorianna and Mister Mystic met us just outside the cafeteria. Glorianna was still in her superheroine costume, and Mister Mystic had gone with the costume too. That didn’t surprise me, since the Cape Squad was usually in full regalia whenever I saw them walking around campus. Heck, Megs wore her costume when she was studying in her room!

Okay, I didn’t have a lot of room to complain. I was wearing my utility belt under my Whateley blazer.

In addition to the Big Three of the ‘Future Superheroes of America’, I saw several more Capes already eating their lunches. Iron Star was sitting in between Mega-Girl and Magni-Girl. He was flirting with Magni-Girl, seemingly oblivious to the efforts Marty was making to interrupt the two of them. Lady Liberty was across the table from them in her ultra-patriotic ‘stars and stripes’ costume. She was chatting with Saladin about something that had her excited enough that she was waving her soupspoon as she talked. But she was casting suspicious glances over toward Iron Star and Magni-Girl now and then. What was up with that? I was glad to see that G-Force wasn’t there; I still wasn’t happy with that jerk.

Pendragon seated Glorianna carefully before taking his own seat. He had me sit between him and Mister Mystic. Then he announced, “Everyone? This is Phase. I believe Iron Star has passed around copies of the Security report? She has graciously consented to talk with us about some of the supervillains they faced.” He turned to me, “Phase, let me introduce everyone.”

He went around the table and everyone welcomed me or at least nodded politely. Marty gave me a huge grin.

Lady Liberty said, “You’re a Goodkind, aren’t you? It must be so interesting to be part of one of the great old American families that has made such a contribution to this country!” She reminded me of a super-patriot type running for office in a wealthy, highly-Republican district. Well, she looked Asian, but she had a ‘stars and stripes’ costume, and the codename Lady Liberty, so she probably was a super-patriot type.

Magni-Girl smiled and said, “I was really impressed by the job Team Kimba did against some very dangerous professional criminals. I’m hoping some of your group will consider the Future Superheroes of America in the coming terms.” Hmm. I had heard that Iron Star was supposed to be the next head of the Capes, but Magni-Girl sure sounded like she ought to be running the group next year.

Saladin smiled, “Welcome. I was most interested to read in the report about Fey’s battle against the Necromancer. Do you think she would be willing to meet with us and discuss it?” I told him that I was pretty sure she would.

They actually let me eat my salad niçoise before they started asking questions. I ended up explaining how I beat Matterhorn using my extra-dimensional Warper ability.

Mister Mystic scratched his chin and asked in a middle-class English accent, “Do you think an inter-dimensional Warper could do the same thing?”

I answered, “I just don’t know. Dr. Quintain had a theory that turned out to work in practice, so he could probably tell you. Off hand, I’m going to guess ‘no’, or a lot more Warpers would be doing this.”

He said in Shakespearean tones, “Alas and alack! Minions of evil hast escaped me yet again!” Then he broke into a silly grin.

Glorianna and Saladin just shook their heads, so I figured he did this kind of stuff a lot. I asked him, “So, are you an inter-dimensional Warper, or were you just curious?”

I said, “Then definitely avoid the Necromancer. He’s a big-time mage, and a nasty one at that.”

Saladin said, “That is interesting. I have also heard a claim that the Necromancer is merely a deviser pretending to be a mage.”

I told him, “I think it’s worse than that. I think he’s a seriously dark wizard who also uses really nasty devises he’s acquired from Major Nasties who are not of this planet.”

Magni-Girl leaned forward, “And how do figure that? That sounds pretty hard to believe.”

I said, “I wouldn’t have believed it either. But he used a poison dart on Heartbreaker the first time we faced him. The locals had no idea what it was, just that he’d used the same stuff plenty of times before. Carmilla recognized it at once. So did Fey. They both knew it was extra-terrestrial in nature. Something called Mi-Go. I’ve seen him in action. He’s a mage. He uses these things as his holdouts.”

Glorianna frowned in thought. “I don’t wish to sound rude, but I think I’ll want to talk with both Carmilla and Fey about this to confirm your beliefs.”

I didn’t get upset. I thought she was doing the right thing, anyway. I told her, “That’s a good plan. Don’t take the word of a Warper who hasn’t even taken the intro magic classes. Carmilla knows the Necromancer. Fey knows the stuff he was using. They can tell you things about the Mi-Go that’ll curl your hair. But it’s something you need to know about if you ever face him. I mean, you’ll expect him to throw heinous spells at you. You’ll expect him to wear that same old hokey costume with the skull mask. You might need to know that he’s actually wearing extra-terrestrial power armor of unknown capabilities.”

“Oh, I think you could take him,” I said. “He’s got a badass suit of armor, but I was massively unimpressed by him. And then – get this – he tried the old ‘I have a hostage’ bit holding a knife against Generator, and she used the opportunity to take over his armor with some gizmo of hers, and she flew him around like a remote-controlled toy.”

“Yep. That ought to be really good for his rep. Taken out by a little girl while trying to use her as a hostage. Then she used him to smash into Matterhorn. At that rate, pretty soon he’ll be known as Ironschmuck.”

I shrugged. Then I lied, “I don’t know. I think she slapped something onto his armor. She’s a deviser, so there’s no telling what she’s invented, and what she can make it do. I mean, I still don’t understand how the Shroud thing works. She builds an autonomous robot with tons of weaponry in it, and then she somehow does something that also puts her dead sister’s spirit into it? That sounds more like magic than devising.” If that didn’t confuse them about Jade’s real powers, then I didn’t know what would.

“He’s a Warper,” replied Pendragon. “According to his MCO file, he’s a Warper-4:rb2. That means he can warp reality for his own body, and also space-time within a distance from himself of more than twenty centimeters, but under a meter.”

I ventured, “It looked like he mainly used his reality warping power to make it impossible to beat him in a fight. I don’t what else he can do with it. But he really tied Tennyo up, and I’d say she’s up in the Lady Astarte class most days. She couldn’t hit him, even though she’s pretty good in martial arts, and her really dangerous stuff just went right through him. Or around him. Or something.”

I shrugged, “I cheated. Every time I tried to hit him, he warped parts of his body out of the way of the blow. It’s pretty disturbing punching a guy and your fist goes right through a big hole where his chest used to be. So I used a holdout to momentarily blind him, and then when he couldn’t see what I was doing, I punched him. That worked. I also hit him with Matterhorn. It took me three tries, even with something as big as a house. But he doesn’t seem to have any martial arts skills. If he can do other things with his talent, like warp through a nearby door or wall, I haven’t seen it. But he’s got to have something else he can do if he’s got a rep as a major mercenary Probably a bunch of other things that he just didn’t have the opportunity to use.”

Man. I’d love to know what that was all about. Was Iron Star stringing three different Cape Squad girls at the same time? If so, it wasn’t his star that was made of iron. I wouldn’t have the nerve – or the unmitigated gall – to try something like that.

Maybe Marty would tell me if I asked her sometime away from the other Capes. Or maybe Delta Spike would spill the beans; I’d bet Megs tells her a ton of girltalk stuff.

Glorianna said in her ‘Brit princess’ voice, “Yes, I’d like to hear about Vamp also. She’s supposed to be extremely new on the supervillain scene.”

I nodded, “From what Captain Tilley told us, she’s not any older than Megs or I am, and she already has a Murder One want on her, along with a ton of other charges from hanging with the Children of the Night. The first time we were in Boston, she took on Bladedancer pretty effectively, but Carmilla creamed her. This time, I saw her in action. She seems to specialize in the cheap shot and the sneak attack, pretty much like Nightgaunt does. She’s probably an Exemplar, so expect strength and speed. She’s also an Energizer. Sara said she’s an absorber, and she’s best at absorbing energy from people, so watch out for close personal contact. Which is the other problem, because she’s also a Psi or something, because she can do this ‘lust’ effect that’s pretty tough to handle. She’s hit Bladedancer with it, and Lancer, and also me. So she’s pretty much omnisexual. And I’m pretty sure she’s used it on Skyhawk, so she has no taste either.”

“What happened when she gave you the old lust power?” Iron Star asked. He was obviously really interested, while the three girls glared at him.

I looked him in the eye. “You do know that I’m not what I appear to be, right?”

I rolled my eyes, “Oh come on, the entire school knows about this! It’s why people keep attacking me. I’m intersexed. I look like this, but I’m a boy with a really weird BIT. I still have a… Well, I still have male privates between my legs. It’s just that the rest of me looks like a girl.”

Oh God, this dork couldn’t be making a pass at me too, could he? What a maroon. I reminded him, “Star? Boy here? Not interested in hearing that I look like a girl.”

Marty sniggered into her hand. Pendragon and Glorianna exchanged looks like the parents of a wayward boy.

I said, “Vamp jumped me from behind while I was waving Matterhorn around. She gave me the ‘hot nasty lust’ routine, which I admit was pretty distracting. But she obviously thought I was a girl. When she groped me down there and found out differently, she lost her train of thought and I was embarrassed enough to get my act together.”

“You dropped a multi-ton giant on her? Weren’t you worried you’d kill her?”

“No,” I told them. “She’s strong. Ten tons of Matterhorn pancaked her, but she just wiggled out from underneath him. She probably got some bruises and scrapes out of it, but that’s about it. She’s tough. In a stand-up punchfest, she’ll be tough to stop unless you’ve got Lancer-level power. Go with ranged energy attacks or something like that.”

Saladin said, “I am interested in this Nightgaunt. Isn’t he supposed to be a superhero?”

I said, “Captain Tilley of Boston SWAT has a theory about that. He thinks this Nightgaunt killed the original and hijacked the costume as well as the ability to travel from one shadow to another. Without that talent, he’s pretty much just a hired assassin. But that talent makes it near impossible to catch him, or even predict where he’s going to be next. So he pops up in a shadow behind any vulnerable member of your team and clubs them. Or shoots them. He popped up in a shadow next to Lancer and stuck a bomb on him.”

“He didn’t,” I admitted. “It exploded at point blank range. Lancer got a couple bruises from it.”

“Yeah, Lancer’s pretty damned tough for a frosh. As Kodiak and a couple other people have found out the hard way. Lancer’s been at Whateley for less than three months, and he’s faced.. let’s see.. Kodiak. Screech. The entire Whateley Martial Arts Cheerleader pack. Nightgaunt and Lady Darke. Matterhorn. The Anti-Paladin. He took on the Masterminds with that S.T.A.R. League Jr. gang.”

“Yeah, but that’s something personal she’s got going. Lancer would drop the feud in a second, if he didn’t enjoy fighting her. I’m surprised Poe survived a couple of those tussles. He may not be the strongest PK superman around, but he’s tough. And he’s definitely one of the good guys. He’d make a really good addition to the Cape Squad.”

Pendragon grinned, “Normally, people are giving us sales pitches to get themselves into the group. You have a fairly versatile power and an interesting reputation. Have you considered pledging?”

I shook my head no. “I don’t really plan to be one of the spandex-wearing set when I grow up. I’m more of a financial planner. Maybe you should all consider how you’re going to be making a living and investing your proceeds when you’re superheroing. You’ll want to be able to retire if you get injured too seriously, and you’ll want to have ways of shielding your assets from lawsuits. So maybe you should think about hiring me as support staff. Teams like the Empire City Guard and the West Coast League usually have support staff who do devising, but they often need help with the day-to-day things like employment, finances, long-term asset and debt management, getting a house built while maintaining their secret identity.. those sort of things.”

Iron Star waved me off, “We’re only teenagers. We don’t need to think about that junk until we’re old.”

That was so stupid and short-sighted. No wonder so much of the United States has to resort to Medicare and Social Security.

I was about to jump all over him about that when Pendragon flagged me down. “Phase, can we get back to the original topic for a few more minutes, before we all need to get going? I was talking to Mister Mystic, and we’re interested in Lady Darke. What can you tell us about her?”

“Not much, I’m afraid,” I admitted. “She’s supposed to be a PDP, but she’s got a really unusual version of the usual PDP power set, and she’s a pretty high-level PDP at that. She blacked out the entire battlefield. I don’t know exactly what she did, but she incapacitated every single good guy except Shroud. Okay, I don’t know if it affected Tennyo either. But it was impressive. I was in essence completely blind and deaf. I couldn’t even smell anything. And when it happened, I couldn’t tell whether she blanketed the entire battlefield, or just targeted me. Fortunately for us, Shroud took her out before she realized that Shroud was even a real threat. If we run into her again, she’ll know better.”

Lady Liberty grinned, “That may be a while. Your team captured half the Children of the Night and most of those mercenaries. Nobody’s done that well against them before. Lady Darke’s in a federal lockup now.”

I snorted, “Yeah, and how long will that hold ‘em? The Arch-Fiend’s been caught before. Every single time, The Necromancer found him and busted him out. I figure that a guy with a micro-management style like his will have to bust all his employees out, just to show them that they can’t get out from under his thumb no matter what.”

When we had discussed most of the major baddies at the battle, Magni-Girl wrapped it up, “So, while Speed Queen and Foxfire and Silver and Jetstream were trapped in a magical cage, Team Kimba took on The Necromancer and all the Children of the Night, plus four major mercenaries: Matterhorn, Jabberwock, the Anti-Paladin, and Ironhawk? And won? With no major injuries?”

“Well, I have some really impressive teammates,” I said as I picked up my tray and departed. It wasn’t the best exit line I’d ever heard, but it sufficed.

There was a special delivery envelope waiting for me in my mailbox when I walked back to Poe. It was from the Townshend Publishing House in Nashville, Tennessee. But the cardboard envelope was obviously only bulky enough to be holding a few sheets of paper. I couldn’t imagine what this could be.

I took it up to my room before opening it. Inside were two things: a note, and a two-page contract.

The contract was an agreement giving me 35% of the entire company in exchange for the $147K I had already given Peril. The note said:

We were at our wit’s end, when Robbie called and said you were giving us the money in exchange for a favor he was going to do for you. No mere favor can cover this. You have saved our business, and our good name. We were about to have to declare Chapter 11 because we wouldn’t be able to meet our payroll or our tax obligations. We talked it over, and we decided that we owed you a piece of the company. You now own 35% of our publishing house. May Jesus bless you.

Hmm. What could I do with 35% of a struggling publishing company based in Na-yush-vee-yull? I’d have to look into their capabilities, and see if I could grow their business or enhance their business model. Chou would probably know something about the area, since she was a Knoxville girl. She wouldn’t know details of the publishing industry, but ‘Robbie’ could tell me what he knew, and I could find out about the rest through other sources. I’d have to look into opportunities for publishing firms. Maybe the internet…

I spent the next couple hours studying what I could find out about the publishing industry in general, and Townshend Publishing of Nashville in particular. They looked like a mid-sized publishing firm that didn’t have anything that would let them grow into a larger firm. If they wanted to get bigger, they needed some help from a financial expert and a publishing expert.

Fortunately, Chou dropped in with Molly. Otherwise, I would have stayed lost in financial planning and maybe missed my two appointments that afternoon: Cecilia Rogers and Hawthorne.

This time, I had an anonymous shuttle pass from Mrs. Horton. After some of the crap that Ms. Hartford had pulled, I had no doubt that she’d yank me off the shuttle using some ultra-lame excuse, just to be a bitch. She’d certainly done it before. Surprisingly, Mrs. Horton had agreed with me and had given me a shuttle pass without my name on it.

The shuttle driver had a clipboard with a printed list of names on it. He was asking each person to show him their pass, and he was checking over his list before letting people on the shuttle. I wondered why, until a mean-looking guy showed him a pass, and the driver said, “Strongarm. You’re on the list. You can’t go until you get a separate permission slip from Admin.”

Srongarm glared at the guy but didn’t intimidate him. So Strongarm trudged off in the direction of Admin. Like Hartford was ever going to give him a pass.

When it was my turn, the driver look at my anonymous pass and said, “Codename?”

“Bogus,” I lied. Bogus was a Shifter, and one of the Alphas. I figured that Hartford would never put one of her precious Alphas on that shitlist. Also, everyone knew that Bogus liked to walk around campus posing as other people, just to cause trouble.

As I walked past, I took a little peek at the list. Right after Packrat and just before Quarrel was ‘Phase’. Great.

Fortunately for me, no friends of Bogus sat beside me to ask Bogus what he was doing riding into Dunwich posing as Phase. Frankly, I had no idea if he had any friends. As far as I knew, he was just one of those Alpha hangers-on whom they used for pranks and revenges, then discarded when convenient.

Once we reached Dunwich, I hurried down the street to Rogers’ Fabric Boutique. Cecilia was waiting for me. “I saw the school shuttle, so I thought you’d be here fairly soon.”

I grumbled, “Well, I wouldn’t have been, if Mrs. Horton hadn’t given me an anonymous pass. Admin has a ‘no-fly’ list for the drivers, and Hartford had my name on it.”

Since I had a fairly limited amount of time before I needed to be back at the shuttle, we got right to work. I showed her the drawings and pictures of the Costume Class uniform that I wanted. She showed me what she had available, including a few yards of four different kinds of deviser fabrics.

So she made me a costume out of real super-suit materials. The material was bulletproof up to a .45 caliber revolver round, and was designed so that it reinforced my own body strength. It also had enough Insular in the weave that it would be somewhat resistant to a variety of Energizer frequencies. We’d have to see how well that worked in practice, since Energizers had a pretty wide range of functioning frequencies, and the suit might work better against some Energizers than others.

She designed in a simple back zipper, like for a wetsuit. She added in kinetic-reactive gel body armor for the padding over the breasts. That still was going to bump me up from an A cup to a B cup. Ugh. She also designed an athletic cup into it with some subtle padding around the cup so that it hid the contours of my privates and I didn’t have a big ‘look at my dick’ bulge. I hated my stupid body, but it was better to be able to pass as a girl than to be unmistakably intersexed. Looking like a freakazoid only got me into trouble.

Okay, looking like a freakazoid got me into more trouble. I seemed to be able to find enough trouble no matter how I looked.

Unfortunately, the extra curves around my boobs and at my groin also meant that my regular clothes wouldn’t fit over the costume. So I needed a special ‘wear only over super-suit’ blouse and blazer and pants too. I needed the Whateley clothes over my super-suit to be well-cut, and yet just loose enough that I could phase out of them for my quick-change. Cecilia did her usual perfect job with the uniform.

To go with a pair of specially reinforced ‘Doc Marten’ look-alike boots, and black gloves, Cecilia also whipped up a ‘spidey’-style headmask that was black, except for a roughly heart-shaped gray area over the face. Over the eye areas were black polarized flexible lenses that Cecilia made in a distinctly feminine eye shape, so they were like horizontal teardrops.

I hadn’t discussed the costume eyes with anyone, but I had decided this point a long time ago, when I had seen Lily in her Wall Flower uniform. She had a black mask, and she added about a pound of black mascara and eyecrayon to blend in with the mask. I was totally not interested in having to apply makeup just to wear my uniform.

The body of the suit had dark gray arms and legs, with a nice gradation in the color. The light gray torso that had black trim. My white utility belt would go around the light gray waist. The boundaries between dark gray and light gray were blocked with straight lines, so the torso looked like a polygon. There was a straight horizontal border across my collarbones, with diagonal borders from there to my underarms so the blocking at the shoulders looked like ‘cap sleeves’, as Mrs. Ryan called it.

I had time to try it on and check the fit. It was perfect, of course. It looked great. If only it didn’t make me look like a hot chick. Still, I looked at myself in the mirror and I just had to grin. It came out so well that I decided to wear it in my Combat Final.

After all that, I had to rush to get back to the shuttle on time, but at least I didn’t have any trouble with the driver on the return trip.

I got back to Whateley just in time for my ‘detention’ at Hawthorne. Since I was running late and it was a ‘green flag’ day, I jumped out of the bus when it was reasonably close to Hawthorne cottage, rather than waiting until it stopped in central campus.

I said to the driver, “I’ll get off here. Don’t bother to slow down or anything.”

The bus was only going about twenty-five then, as it curved around on the campus roads. So I sprinted full-speed toward the back of the bus and went light.

My relative velocity was maybe two or three miles an hour in the direction I was running, since I could sprint a bit faster than the bus was moving at that point. So, when I went light and my velocity jumped, I flew out the back wall of the bus at only thirty miles an hour or so. That was extremely manageable. I just stayed light and flew in a gentle curve all the way over to Hawthorne. At that speed, I could make some small course changes, so it worked really well.

You know, when flying works, it’s great. I needed to practice this stuff a lot more. If I could take a jogging start at, say, eight miles an hour, and then go light to move up to roughly a hundred miles an hour, I could probably make this pretty useful. The ‘three hundred miles an hour and absolutely no control’ routine just sucked rocks.

The only downside was that Phlegm and Antenna and Slab saw me fly up to the front door. Because I had been running and I had jumped through the back wall of the shuttle, I had kept my pose so I didn’t have any nasty surprises from the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum. So I had been flying with my right arm and left leg extended, but my right leg pulled up so my knee pointed downward. They gave me major shit for ‘flying like a (Super) girl’. At least I was wearing pants, so I didn’t give everyone in sight a look at my butt.

Next time, I’m going to start working on my flying posture. Hank and Billie never have this problem.

Mrs. Cantrel sent me off to Puppet’s room first, and I put on the smallest MOPP suit to clean her floor before I sat with her and helped her work on her American Lit paper. She was writing an essay on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, so we spent a lot of time saying “The horror! The horror!” to each other and laughing like ordinary high schoolers.

After a while, there was a knock at the door, and Mrs. Cantrel looked in on us. She beamed, “Melissa, it’s good to see you smiling again. A pretty girl like you needs to smile more.”

Puppet blushed. Well, I think she blushed. It was pretty hard to tell when her blood was green, so her cheeks couldn’t do more than get a little more green than usual. But she curled up her shoulders and ducked her head in that “I’m embarrassed” way, so I figured it was a blush. She muttered, “Ayla was just helping me with English.”

Mrs. Cantrel said, “I sort of doubt English papers are supposed to be that funny, but I’m glad you two are having fun with it. Unfortunately, I need to pry Ayla out of here and send her to do some REAL work.” She turned to me and said, “Would you scoot on over and help Claire some more with her math? She’s stuck on her homework again.”

“Sure. I’d be happy to,” I told her. Then I smiled at Melissa, “I’ll be back tomorrow, so I’ll see you then. And I’ll probably have some really juicy gossip.”

Static Girl was having a miserable time with some of the trigonometric identities, so I never got around to working on her room. We spent the entire time going over trig homework I’d already done a couple weeks earlier. Her trouble with algebra was still giving her a lot of difficulty. Even though she could now do most of the algebra she needed, it was taking her a lot longer than it ought to.

After that, it was time to go to dinner. I took the tunnel to the cafeteria with a bunch of Thornies. Then I found Team Kimba. Of course, they were sitting at the usual table, with something insane going on. Some things never changed. That night’s dinner conversation was particularly loud, as Chaka seemed intent on making sure that Peeper and Greasy could hear all about my ripping the dick off of some guy who pissed me off. I had to wonder what the hell Peeper had done this time.

Once I returned to my room, I changed into a clean, pressed school uniform and cut through the basement to get to the Hawthorne tunnel, instead of hiking along the outside paths. The weather was pretty crappy, and I wanted to look presentable when I arrived.

There was a pretty good crowd of Golden Kids by the time I got through the atrium and to the reception. I smiled at several people and moved toward the tables.

That was when I spotted the geisha girls. Hatamoto had the serving girls dressed like geishas, down to the fancy kimonos and carefully-styled wigs. That went with the refreshments. He had hot green tea and a Japanese mineral water for beverages. At the table, a cook was preparing a variety of piping-hot tempura: I picked out a shrimp, a slice of sweet potato, and a couple green beans.

The waitresses were walking around with trays of sushi too. I took some unagi. I noted that there were a couple kinds of vegetarian sushi there for the less adventurous eaters.

I strolled over to where Hatamoto was conferring with his sushi chef, who was apparently a senior I didn’t know. I waited until he finished complimenting his chef on the presentation. Then I moved forward slightly and said in Japanese, “I also find your presentation most impressive. Your hosomaki are very well made, and your futomaki look as good as they taste.”

The chef bowed slightly and replied, “Thank you. It is always a pleasure to prepare food for those who can appreciate it.”

Ken introduced me to his sushi chef, who was codenamed Gunkan. Interesting. Gunkan was not only a type of sushi, but in Japanese it literally meant ‘warship’. So, was he a brick? A blaster of some sort? A heavy weapons specialist?

We strolled off and let Gunkan get back to work. Ken said, “Unfortunately, the caterers we used to use do not want to deal with us anymore. Apparently, Traduce went back to them after the last meeting and screamed at them until they made her leave. So we will have to make do, until someone can find a new caterer of sufficient quality that we will be happy with their work.”

I sighed, “Why am I not surprised? I don’t understand how Traduce and her entire family missed out on the basic lessons of working with other people. I mean, even Tansy Walcutt isn’t this bad with staff… At least you’ve found a way around the problem. Very well done, too. The refreshments are good, and the presentation is outstanding.”

He bowed his head slightly and said in Japanese, “Thank you very much. A simple compliment from some is worth far more than effusive praise from others.”

I grinned and said, “Thanks. But whoever has the next meeting is going to consider this a hard act to follow.”

I went and found Tabby, who was chatting with Premiere and Macrobiotic. I asked Tabby, “Did you hear from Hatamoto? Traduce cost us our caterer.”

She shrugged uncaringly, “Hey, it’s going to be months before it’s my turn, and someone will find a good caterer before then.”

Premiere groaned, “I should have known. Unicorn warned me, but Traduce seemed so responsible when we talked to her…”

I said, “Don’t worry about it. Lots of people talk a good game. At least you learned the truth about her over something minor, like crappy food at a private soiree.” I would have been beating myself up about this one too, so I knew just how Premiere felt.

Premiere nodded, “At least Hatamoto found a couple student workers to do set-up and clean-up and break-down. And I really like what he did for refreshments.”

I said, “He has two students as chefs – the sushi chef is really good, and the other one is just frying tempura – and he has half a dozen students as waitresses.”

I took a mushroom and a green bean from the tray, and I said, “Domo arrigato.”

The geisha looked at me in confusion from behind her white makeup and black wig, and asked in a Midwestern accent, “Uhh, is that Japanese?”

“Oh. Okay. I don’t know any foreign languages. I didn’t even do that well in Spanish class.”

Tabby waited until the waitress moved off to another group before she said, “Well, that answered that question.”

I hadn’t really thought that Ken had been able to find six cooperative Japanese girls at Whateley who would play waitress for the evening. I wasn’t even sure that there were six Japanese girls in school, unless you counted the entire J-Team. Whateley was still very centered around America and Western Europe. And I had a nasty suspicion that most Japanese girls who manifested mutant powers got snapped up by the Yama Dojo.

I decided to do the polite thing, and I walked over to see Glitch. I mean Overload. He was well through his usual bottle of Krystal, and looking miserable.

He fussed, “Damn teachers. Nothin’ I do ‘s ever good enough… Bet father’s on ‘em, makin’ ‘em do all this shit to me…”

I really doubted that Carson would let anyone, even Ren’s parents, get at her teaching faculty. And, since some of the teachers were retired supers themselves, I had a feeling that leaning on the Whateley teachers was generally hazardous to your health.

But saying that to Ren wasn’t likely to help anything. He wanted to gripe. He didn’t want to have people tell him he was his own worst enemy. I wished I knew how to help him. He had to have a counselor. Maybe his counselor could get him steered into some psychiatric therapy. And I had to wonder if Whateley had a drug-and-alcohol abuse treatment program. We had a campus full of supers and Superman wannabe’s, so there were probably people around campus who were also abusing steroids, as well as illegal steroid-like deviser drugs like Androthrust and Boosterin.

I let him gripe for a couple minutes about his parents, and his classes, and his annoying roomie. Apparently, the roomie was still striking out with the deviser chick. But the roomie was now trying to get one of the campus groups to rush him, so at least he wasn’t in the room as much.

I had a feeling that the roomie was doing everything in his power to avoid their dorm room as much as was possible, given what Ren had said before. I suspected that Ren was making the unknown roommate a lot more miserable than said roomie was bugging Ren. I wasn’t going to say that either.

As I was chatting with Unicorn and a couple other ‘East Coasters’, another waitress brought around a tray of gunkan-maki and futomaki. I took some well-prepared roe gunkan-maki and one of the thinly-sliced futomaki.

Just as the waitress walked off, Traduce sidled up to our group. She looked at the sushi on my plate and grated, “I wouldn’t eat that if I were you. Hatamoto probably used some really cheap fish to keep his expenses down. You know he’s like that.”

Once Traduce had walked off to say something hateful to another group, Unicorn sneered, “She’s really got her claws out tonight.”

Corrosive just shrugged. “Doesn’t seem much different than usual to me,” she said unkindly. “She’s always got her maw open, trying to sink her fangs into someone.”

Corrosive blithely said, “Oh, same as always. Stuck-up frigid bitch… Older brother Biff’s dumb as a post… Between the two of them they’ll drive the family businesses into the ground… You know.”

Damn. Corrosive was really enjoying getting to stick the knife into Brenda. It sounded as if ‘corrosive’ applied at least as much to her personality as it did to her powers.

Then Corrosive turned to me and smiled nastily, “Oh, and Traduce has been saying such interesting things about you.”

“I’m content to let things like that slide by,” I said. Not that I thought that would stop her.

Corrosive insisted, “But you ought to know the awful things she’s saying about you. Really. Gossip can be so destructive.”

Said the one spreading the gossip and simultaneously blaming someone else. “That’s really very thoughtful of you, but I’m simply not interested,” I said archly.

She went ahead and said the things, of course. She couldn’t keep the evil gleam out of her eyes as she spoke. “Now dear, I just hate to think that you’re unaware of the scurrilous things she’s saying about you. That the Goodkinds disowned you. That you’re actually flat broke. That you killed one of those Yama Dojo ninjas. That you’re some sort of pervert, running around in girl clothes, even though you’re a boy. That you like to hang out at Freak House to make yourself feel better about your icky body. That you get into fights constantly, and you ripped poor Peril’s dick off.” She took a sanctimonious breath. “Those sorts of things.”

She was obviously trying to get a rise out of me. I made sure that she failed. Now, if she’d said something about Vox, I would have let her have it. I smiled, “Well, if those sorts of confused rumors are all she’s been saying, then I really don’t need to pay attention. Besides, I don’t have to get mad. I can get even. Actually, I can get far more than even. Didn’t you hear about Fireball?”

“Everyone heard that nutcase Alexis turned into some sort of demon,” she said airily.

I smiled nastily, “Then surely you heard that I did it. It’s one of my powers. I can take good-looking Exemplar types – for example, someone like you – and shred their BIT and turn them into hideous things that no one wants to be around anymore.”

“Oh really,” she said with shock in her eyes. “How interesting…” Then she made her excuses and left.

Tidewater cut in, “You won’t believe this, but Traduce had the unmitigated gall to tell me that Hatamoto made each of those girls put out before he’d hire them for this.”

I said, “Impressive. She just told us that he was cheap, and was using unsafe food.”

Tabby walked up and said, “Oh, really? She told me that Hatamoto was having gay sex with that sushi chef he hired, and I’d probably get AIDS if I ate any of it.”

Macrobiotic walked up just in time to hear that too. She gasped, “Oh my God, I can’t believe she’d say that! Although she did try to tell me something sleazy about the waitresses, and I just put her off.”

“Honestly, is she just making stuff up off the top of her pointy little head?”

Premiere strolled up and laughed, “Let me guess. We’re talking about Traduce.”

Unicorn said, “It could have been about Corrosive. She was at her worst a few minutes ago.”

Tidewater smirked, “Sometimes it seems as if she needs to live up to her codename in every way. Whose clique was she corroding apart this time?”

“Classic,” said Tidewater. “Just classic. Traduce was blaming Corrosive for the disaster at the last meeting. Seems Corrosive gave her a lead on her current secretary. Since Traduce is blaming the secretary for everything, it had to be an evil plot on Corrosive’s part. So Corrosive’s out to get her.”

“Oh, Corrosive has evil plots. They’re just not that complex. They all involve telling Person A what Person B said about them in such a way that Person A and Person B have a monumental falling-out and never speak to one another again.”

I looked around, and on the far side of the room Traduce was haranguing yet another group, no doubt telling them that Hatamoto was in league with The Kellith, or Hatamoto pissed in the rice before the sushi was made, or something equally stupid. She didn’t seem to realize that everyone else was walking around telling what lies she had just told them. In the long run, this was going to hurt her a lot more than the bad food and drinks at the previous meeting.

Premiere looked at Tidewater, who nodded. So Premiere smiled, “Since Phase and Tabby are both here, I’ll just take this opportunity to announce that Phase will be running the January meeting, and Tabby will be running the February meeting.” He looked at me and clarified, “That means you’re responsible for the servants and refreshments during the meeting, the Security before and during the meeting, and also the set-up and break-down and cleaning. Just as we discussed before.”

Tabby added, “Same here.” The gleeful look in her eyes told me that she couldn’t wait to surprise her parents with the bills for the February party. Then she turned to me and grinned, “And no showing me up with something over the top in January, got it?”

I blithely said, “Well, I was planning on asking Bill and Melinda Gates if they’d be willing to serve drinks. But if you think that’s too much…”

It suddenly dawned on me that I could use this as an intelligence source. There were Golden Kids who didn’t talk to me, or who didn’t say what they knew in front of me. But if I talked Vox and Generator and a couple others into playing ‘servant’ and listening in on conversations, I might be able to find out some useful information. Jade and Jinn would probably enjoy playing ‘French maid’, and Jinn could read emotions while she did it.

On the other hand, Vanessa would probably tell me to go to hell. But I’d ask anyway. I knew she could ‘voice’ just about any of the Golden Kids into cooperation. And maybe she could voice Glitch into putting away the Krystal for an hour or two.

Plus, there were a couple TGs like Delta Spike and Megs who were really enjoying getting to be a girl now, and might really go for the ‘sexy French maid’ look that they couldn’t wear anywhere else. I’d even spring for the costumes.

I already knew exactly what finger food I wanted André and Peter to prepare, starting with those amazing little diamonds of pâté with the Medjool date puree on top. I thought I might have a good lead on some decent non-alcoholic ‘champagnes’ too, thanks to Goodkind connections with Charmer’s family business.

But set-up and cleaning staff… Oh! I’d bet the J-Team could do set-up and break-down faster than any five baselines could, since Jade could just cast the J-Team into the tables and chairs to set them up or put them away. She’d probably jump at the money she could earn for one evening’s work doing set-up and waitressing and then break-down.

As I left the meeting that evening, I stopped and chatted with the Security guards. “Guess what? I’ll be running the January meeting of the Golden Kids. So just let me know what Saturdays won’t work for you. And then tell me how much to pay you for the security work, and how to make the payments.”

Sunday morning was one of those mornings that make you glad to be alive. I woke up to Brass Monkey. I looked out the window at a gorgeous display of newfallen snow. That I wouldn’t have to walk through.

I walked into the bathroom just in time to see Fey undress and step into the shower. Wow. I was never going to get tired of that.

Then Bugs stepped naked out of her shower because her towel had fallen off its hook. Wow again.

I zipped through my shower and did my usual drying-off trick, so I was at a mirror before Fey stepped out of her shower naked, summoned up lines of power, and magically dried her hair. While still starkers. Extreme wow.

Then I got to watch Bugs shave her legs while I flossed and cleansed my face and everything else I could think of as a stalling tactic.

Plus, I got to see Riptide and Scrambler come in and shower. All in all, another great morning in Poe. If it wasn’t for this body that I hated, I’d be stuck in some place like Melville, having to shower with a bunch of ugly guys.

I took the Hawthorne tunnel to the caff, and I found another little bit of heaven. Chef Marcel had something special for me to try. A spinach and shellfish omelet. The spinach was lightly sautéed with onions and leeks, then combined in the omelet with fresh, steamed mussels and just enough coarsely shredded Parmesan cheese. The omelet itself was lightly seasoned with sea salt, coarsely-ground white pepper, and a subtle hint of tarragon.

As I was enjoying my omelet, along with a small bowl of Chef Peter’s version of ambrosia and a cup of the good coffee, Chaka noticed.

“Hey Ayles, you’re enjoyin’ your food too much. Again. Did your personal chefs whip you up somethin’ again?”

She thought it over for a few seconds. “Well, if it tasted like ass, you wouldn’t be over there moanin’ like Vox was givin’ you the sump’m-sump’m. Gimme a taste.” She paused and corrected herself. “I mean: pleeeeeeeeez?” She even tried the Big Sad Puppy Dog Eyes, but she couldn’t be sad enough to make it really work.

I still gave her a bite from the center, where it would be piping hot and fragrant.

“Mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm! That can’t be spinach and mussels! That’s way too good for spinach!”

You know, sometimes the only way I know what Chaka is saying is from her tone of voice.

She turned to Fey. “Hey Nik. I vote we keep Phase on our team when we graduate. On the condition she brings her chefs with her too.”

Tennyo chipped in, “I gotta admit, those sandwiches when we went to Boston? The best breakfast ever. My mom’ll kill me if she ever hears this, but those Irish breakfast sandwiches are WAY better than mom’s egg-and-bacon sandwiches.”

Hank added, “Ayla’s got the logistics end down cold. An army travels on its stomach. And a superhero team would too. ‘Specially if it’s got a couple big eaters, like we do.”

Chaka finished her bites of omelet and asked, “Hey Ayla, do we get our own super-jet and submarine and everything?”

“Oh, sure,” I said, “I was thinking about asking Jericho to build a small jet. Of course, it’d be painted some color combination that would make you puke before you got onboard…”

From there, the conversation went crazy, as everybody started speculating on Jericho’s color choices for a ten-person jet.

After breakfast, I went to the library and spent a productive morning reading for my World Lit class. Because of the Thanksgiving Day holiday, we weren’t having a class this coming Saturday. But we had optional reading for the week, which Professor Zinn had assigned back in September. So I spent the morning reading through most of the ‘optional reading’ list. I read the French Song of Roland and the Spanish Song of the Cid. Pendragon and Silver Serpent and Majestic had already checked out the three copies of Dante’s Divine Comedy, but I’d read it in junior high school at Chilton. Stunner was sitting in a chair reading Tasso’s Gerusaleme Liberta, so I waited a little while until she finished, and I traded Song of the Cid for her copy. The copy of Camões’s Lusiads was checked out too, but it was on two-day loan, so I figured it would be back soon.

None of those epics were allowed for our final research papers, but that wasn’t a problem for me. I’d already decided on Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. I’d already read the book, and written most of the paper as well.

After lunch, Mal caught me and said, “I talked to Jobe. If you want to meet with him, now’s the time. I’ll take you down to the secure bio-labs, and you can talk to him before he buries himself in more work.”

It didn’t even occur to me until much later, but I could have been walking into a really nasty trap. It wasn’t. But it could have been. I was just naively assuming that the person with me was my old pal Mal, and not Techno-Devil the son of the dreaded Dr. Diabolik.

Mal led me down through the tangle of tunnels that represented Deviser-Land. Man, I’d seen bowls of spaghetti that weren’t this labyrinthine.

Finally, we came to a lab entrance with a nerd pacing back and forth in front of it. A short, skinny little geek with a face like a weasel – assuming, of course, that you didn’t mind insulting every weasel in North America. A dweeb in almost-fitting Banana Republic clothes. Plus the standard Whateley labcoat, decked out with ten pounds of assorted gadgets and doohickeys.

The arrogant little son of a bitch didn’t even have a real codename. He was just ‘Jobe’ in the Security files. Of course, he probably didn’t need one. It wasn’t as if he needed to protect his family. His father was the supervillain Gizmatic, AKA Joe Wilkins, AKA Emperor Wilkins of Karedonia. Anyone stupid enough to attack Gizmatic would get exactly what he deserved. And I had no idea if he even had any other family. Given the pictures I’d seen of Joe Wilkins, I had to wonder if Jobe wasn’t a clone of dear old dad.

He turned and looked at us. He smiled, “Malachai, hi!” And then he recognized me from the Weapons Fair. “Phase. The P.C. girl.”

“So, did you want to correct my English some more? Perhaps make sure I stopped saying ‘manhole’ and changed it to, umm, ‘person-outlet’?”

I didn’t care what he did with his own manhole. But I didn’t say that out loud. I knew the benefit of not ruining your own negotiations by pissing off your fellow negotiators. Obviously, Jobe didn’t. I doubted he’d ever been in a situation where he needed to. Not when he’d spent his whole life being Crown Prince Jobe of Karedonia.

I told him, “I’m not particularly interested in being P.C. It tends to clog communications almost as thoroughly as switching to Defense Department terminology. I just wanted you to leave Generator alone. She’s my friend.”

“Whatever,” he muttered. But he was licking his lips and staring at my chest. “By the way, did I ever tell you that you have a really nice ass? I like ‘em more rounded myself, but I’ve seen a lot worse.”

He probably expected me to say ‘thank you’ for that. I could see Mal’s point. Working closely with this jerk would be nigh impossible. Fortunately, I didn’t plan to work alongside him in any capacity.

I stared at him, “Which brings me directly to the reason I wanted to talk to you. I have a bio-deviser project in mind, and I want to know if you could do it.”

“You’re certainly the best bio-deviser under thirty. But the study I commissioned ranked you at number eleven,” I said.

I raised one eyebrow. “Really? Are you telling me you’re a better bio-deviser than Doctor Bubonic?”

“Oh,” he backpedaled. “You didn’t tell me you were including all the now-dead bio-devisers too.”

“Well, if he isn’t he probably wishes he was,” explained Jobe. “He got away in a sub, but when it was found by… Umm, well I can’t say who found it, that might violate some confidentiality issues… The group who found it recognized what it was, and wisely realized that they didn’t have the bioweapon containment facilities needed to open it up safely. So they sold the sub and contents to the Prionator. He opened it up and found about a dozen empty sets of clothing.. and roughly the same number of protoplasmic slimes oozing about the floor of the sub. He’s studying the slimes, but he thinks one or two of those slimes may be Doctor Bubonic.”

Yuck! I didn’t think I wanted to know how Jobe had this kind of supervillain gossip. So I wasn’t going to ask. Particularly when Jobe had this look in his eye that suggested he was dying for me to ask, so he could slap me down.

Instead, I pushed, “All right, my list was supposed to include only living bio-devisers. So let’s drop the good doctor. That makes you number ten with a bullet. Are you as good as Igor Gellmar?”

He actually thought it over. “Perhaps not at this moment. But Dr. Gellmar is in his forties. I’ll be clearly superior to him before I reach thirty.”

Jobe actually snorted. “That quack? He came up with one good gimmick, and he’s milked it to death in twenty years of work. Gene transform research is light-years past that now.”

“Definitely over-rated. The only difference between him and the cold-war Bulgarian biological weapons programs is that Influenza actually uses the weapons, and has built some decent delivery systems.”

Jobe’s eyes flashed. “Now there’s a true genius! Unfortunately, he’s chosen a ridiculously narrow field of research. But that’s his prerogative. I’ve corresponded with him about practical uses of prions. Very insightful.”

“Practical uses of prions?” Okay, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. So sue me.

He went on, “If it weren’t for protein agglutination problems and prion deterioration syndrome, I would have managed to build a prion-based supercomputer the size of this desk that could be used as a modern quantum computer that was roughly 32 qubits. And that’s just the start. Prions have a phenomenal amount to teach us about protein folding, tRNA transcription algorithms, you name it!” His eyes were getting starry as he got excited about his subject.

Okay, I was willing to admit it. This kid was good. Still, I thought I’d press a couple more buttons.

“Nucleotide? Pah. The man has delusions of competence. Over twenty years working for Bayer, and he has what, four or five pharmaceuticals to his credit? That’s pathetic.”

I was willing to give him that one. After all, Jobe nearly had that beat, and he was only fourteen.

“Okay, then can you work with BITs?” I asked. “Plenty of bio-devisers won’t touch ‘em, and there isn’t a respectable wizard anywhere who will.”

He shrugged blithely, “BITs? That merely adds some sophisticated complications. Are you looking for a way to manipulate someone’s BIT?” Suddenly he had that mad-scientist look in his eyes, as if he couldn’t wait to find a way to turn a host of Exemplars into frogs and snakes.

I cleared my throat. “I’m specifically interested in altering one specific BIT. My own.”

He looked me up and down. He wondered aloud, “I don’t suppose your problem is just with the half-and-half thing, is it? Hmm? If so, I’m finishing work on what might possibly be the world’s finest woman. Lose the wiener, and I could make you into a truly fine piece of ass. Whaddya think?”

He seemed to have no concept that his words might be incredibly offensive. I insisted, “No thank you. Back to normal. That’s all I want. I won’t say no to a few improvements, provided that they’re MALE improvements.”

I glared at him, “Let me put it this way. Are YOU interested in the ideal woman package?”

I clenched my teeth. “I live next to Nikki Reilly. Sometimes I shower next to Nikki Reilly. Believe me, I KNOW.”

He shook his head, as if he were having trouble explaining something obvious to me. “But this package has a lot of advantages you’re not seeing…”

Jobe ignored him. “Sidhe immortality and eternal beauty. Regen level five healing. Superior strength and resistance to temperature extremes. And a capacity for intimate sensation that’s unbelievable!”

He dragged us into his lab. I glanced around. It didn’t look like the typical lab around here. Everything looked organized and protected. There were experiments behind sealed glass, and fancy stuff that looked like it was isolating a stack of Petri dishes.

Jobe clicked on a holographic projector. A naked black elf appeared in mid-air, surrounded by more DNA helixes and text boxes than I could track. It was a drow. Man, was Jobe just a D&D junkie?

Jobe began blathering on about the esoteric details of the DNA construction, all the while getting more excited until he was nearly bug-eyed over his dream girl.

I interrupted the drool-fest. “Jobe? Not interested. Got that? Not. Definitely not. So, are you interested in my project? It would be a hands-off project. I’d supply blood samples, I’d let you scan me with whatever you needed, then you’d work without any annoying supervision from me. We’d draw up a rational contract that we’re both happy with, and we’d stick to it. You’d get all the intellectual properties.”

“Naturally,” he said, while still admiring his imaginary woman. “But I’m not interested right now. Check back with me in a couple months, when I have the gene sequencing properly tailored for my drow, and the regenerator stem-spores designed. I’m sure there will be a huge list of women vying for the chance to be my wife, and while I’m studying the list of applicants, I’ll probably have time to review your little problem.”

The Crown Prince was done dismissing the peons, so I left. There wasn’t any point in doing anything about his attitude, if I was going to be depending on his skills in a couple months. Once he cured me, THEN I’d see about pounding some sense into his head. Or maybe I’d just avoid him altogether.

I walked out of the lab and said to Mal, “Do you think he’ll actually have all this done in a couple months?”

Mal shrugged, “Wouldn’t surprise me if he got it all done over the holidays. He’s got a hell of a great lab in Karedonia. Even better than here. And he doesn’t have the Whateley restrictions on test subjects and such.”

Ugh. Did that mean what I thought? Because I so didn’t want to hear about Jobe testing things on humans or disposing of dead bodies or whatever creepy stuff he did back home.

Mal added, “And he won’t have to put up with classes or tests or dorm parents griping about his late hours or any of that crap. He can get way more done back home.”

After that, I was actively looking forward to detention at Hawthorne. I took the tunnel to Hawthorne, since I was already down in the tunnels.

As I walked to Hawthorne, I told myself not to get discouraged. Jobe was an arrogant asshole. But he was a competent arrogant asshole. Both he and Knick-Knack might be able to work with me by spring. I could wait a couple months. I could focus on other things, and wait until spring.

I tried not to think about all the things that could go wrong with deviser processes. I tried not to think about Sara’s understanding of the complications of BIT-manipulation. I tried not to think about Vanessa’s reaction if I stopped being the half-girl half-boy weirdo that she seemed to prefer.

When I got to Hawthorne, I received something else to think about. I hardly had time to step out of the tunnel before Fubar was in front of me. He frowned, “I need you to stay right here for a few minutes, Phase.”

“He sighed, “We have a small crisis going on upstairs. Spoof manifested some monsters, and we’re trying to get them under control before anyone else gets hurt.”

Suddenly I was floating a foot above the stair step, spinning my wheels like Wiley Coyote just before he realizes he’s run off the edge of the cliff. Fubar had me in a telekinetic grip.

I fumed, “Look Foob, I’m not really on detention, and I can help up there! So stop wasting your time on me, and go help up there, and let me help out too!”

A voice that sounded like Slab bellowed from upstairs, “FOOB! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?!?”

But he did his vanishing act, and the TK hold on me vanished. If I hadn’t gone light in a useless effort to escape his TK grip, I would have crashed onto the stairs.

There were half a dozen huge things coming down the stairs. Horrific octopoid things with bodies like nine-foot spheres, oozing down the steps on some of their tentacles, while grabbing people with other tentacles. Slab was fighting off the two that had made it the farthest down the stairs, but one of them had two tentacles as thick as Slab’s leg wrapped around him, pinning one of his arms down while he grappled with another tentacle using his free arm. Chaka had told me that Slab was supposed to be able to soak up a lot of kinetic force, but just being wrapped up like that wasn’t supplying him with the kinetic impacts he needed to do whatever he could do.

Some of the other things had other kids. One had Ricou all wrapped up in a tentacle, and Ricou’s breather mask was smashed, with water dripping out and Ricou gasping for oxygen. Another had someone who looked like a movie scream queen, except that she was melting as she struggled. Oh crap, it was Jello.

Fubar was obviously hard at work, because the front two octopoids were struggling to push forward against a powerful invisible barrier that was keeping them from moving onto the main floor. Unfortunately for Slab, he was on the wrong side of that barrier.

Every time one of the things got a tentacle around the left side of Fubar’s barrier, Antenna zapped it with a few gazillion volts and burned the extended part off. Every time one of the things got a tentacle around the right-hand side of the barrier, Mrs. Cantrel shot some sort of laser beam out of the front of her not-a-wheelchair and burned a hole in it. Or else Compiler fired off a small cannon-shaped thing she was cradling in one arm, and a beam of red energy shot out to burn a chunk of tentacle.

Those things were terrifying. And hideous. But everyone here needed my help. I had to do something!

Whatever those things were, they seemed to be ordinary matter. Not magical hobgoblins. And I had something I could do to ordinary matter. All I had to do was get around the Foob’s TK barrier.

I was still light, so I went straight up. I came out in the second floor hallway, where Frostbite had an ice wall up screening off the last of the things. She had Phlegm and a couple other kids behind the ice wall. One of the kids was down with a nasty bruise across his face. It was Spoof. That meant that Spoof couldn’t make the things go away, and he couldn’t control them. And if he had to wake up to make the things vanish, we were in trouble.

“Phase! Look out!” Frostbite screeched a warning from the other side of the ice wall, just about the time one of the things tried to wrap a tentacle around me. The tentacle went through me, and I went heavy. It hurt as I disintegrated the length of slimy tentacle that had passed through me, but it wasn’t too painful. On the other hand, the octopoid shrieked in pain and jerked its stump back. Since I was heavy, I dropped to the floor with a resounding thud.

I jumped over the railing and landed on the tentacles holding Slab. That ripped one of them in half. I hit Slab as hard as I could in the chest, telling him, “Hope this helps!”

Another couple tentacles went for me, so I went disruption-light and leapt away from the TK barrier, right through a couple of the things. That put me through the stairway wall, and into someone’s room. I went straight up, into another room, and then back into the stairwell.

That put me above the things I’d jumped through, and level with the octopoids at the top of the stairwell. The two octopoids I had jumped through looked like they were melting into goo. I was still disruption-light, so every tentacle that lashed at me got the same treatment.

He was standing on the stairs now. He was having a much easier time with the tentacle in his hand, and there seemed to be a thick PK field all around him. The tentacles that were trying to ensnare him couldn’t get within a couple inches of his body.

I flew disruption-light down through another octopoid, making it shriek as I went. Then I went heavy and punched Slab as hard as I could in a one-two-three-four combination of flying fists. His field just got stronger. And thicker. And colder too. I could feel it even when I was heavy. Man, I was glad I didn’t have to fight this guy in aikido class. With every punch, his field grew.

While I was heavy and punching, a tentacle wrapped around my waist. Dang, those things were strong! I waited until I was done with my combination, and I went light again. The tentacle fell through me and hit the stairs with an icky plop.

“Thanks. I needed that,” Slab said. And he demonstrated that he wasn’t kidding. That tentacle he’d been grappling with? He ripped it right off the octopoid and used it to smash the thing beside it.

The third octopoid was turning to goo also, so I went disruption-light and flew through another monster that wasn’t holding anyone.

Then Slab grabbed Ricou and tore away the tentacles wrapping him up. Slab looked up at me and yelled, “Can you fly him outta here?”

“What I figured.” He punched that octopoid so hard that it bounced off the back staircase wall. I flew disruption-light through it and fried it.

Slab and I did the same routine on the remaining octopoids. He’d rip the student free first, then I’d phase through the monster and melt it. It took us no time before the stairwell was just a couple hundred gallons of greenish goo oozing down the steps. I was glad I could fly over that instead of wading through it.

We spent the next few minutes carrying injured kids to the lobby area for the EMTs. Spoof had a concussion. Ricou was bruised, and nearly in oxygen starvation. Jello was just scared and confused. One kid had a couple cracked ribs, and another had bruises purpling up all around his torso.

While Slab and Fubar and I transported injured kids, Fubar and Mrs. Cantrel chewed me out for going into a dangerous situation without backup and without enough information.

“Of course I did,” I insisted. “Fey told me Spoof’s stuff is manifested matter, and not magical. If I hadn’t been able to phase through it, I would’ve gotten out of there.”

“This was the worst incident with Spoof we’ve had since September! You could’ve been hurt! You could’ve endangered other students!”

Oh man, I didn’t want to know what had happened in September, if that was worse than this one.

“Look Foob, you were wrong. This time. You wasted time trying to keep me out of the battle when you were needed up here. And I had an ability that was potentially useful, so you should have given me the sitch and let me get to work.”

Exasperated, Mrs. Cantrel snapped, “And I thought Chaka was going to be the biggest problem we had in your group!”

I tried again. “Look, I could see Ricou. He was dying. I could see what was happening, and I could see what I needed to do. I didn’t go in half-cocked. I made a plan first. I knew what Fey had told me about Spoof’s creations, and I knew what Chaka had told me about Slab. You didn’t have Kali or Gotterdammerung, so you needed to settle for what I could do.”

“Phase, you’re not Lady Astarte, you know! You should have followed orders.”

I insisted, “Look, they’re my friends! I’m not going to stand around and let them get killed just because someone’s worried about me, or because I’m scared!”

Mrs. Cantrel suddenly stopped and stared at me. “Phase, do you realize what you just said?”

She just stared at Louis. Louis slowly faded, which probably meant that he was doing a lot of psychic communicating with Mrs. C.

Finally, she said, “I think we’ll drop this for now. You did a brave thing, and it worked out well. Even if you weren’t supposed to. So I’m going to have to talk to Mrs. Carson this evening-”

“-and we’ll change the cottage protocols for handling Spoof’s manifestations to include you.”

I told her, “Then you should change the cottage protocols to include ALL of Team Kimba.”

She frowned, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I can certainly see Lancer and Fey, but I think Tennyo might be a little more collateral damage than this old woman can bear.”

I groaned, and defended my teammate. “Oh, come on. Billie’s got a bad rap because of a couple things that weren’t even her fault. And her control’s gotten WAY better over the last couple months.”

Fubar said, “Even if we allow Tennyo, I don’t think it would be a good idea to put Chaka and Generator and Bladedancer on that list.”

I told him, “Okay, I can see Generator. Shroud could tangle with those monsters without any risk of getting hurt, but not Jade. But Chaka’s been using her Ki techniques to bust up Spoof’s creations for weeks now. And Bladedancer’s got a sword that can cut through anything. I think you’re seriously underestimating them.”

Mrs. Cantrel shook her head ever so slightly. I caught it out of the corner of my eye.

Fubar said, “I don’t think that everyone on your team wants to play superhero at the drop of a hat.”

I frowned, “Then you need to eavesdrop on them more. You should have seen them in Boston. Both times.” I took a breath. “And I don’t see it as playing superhero. I don’t want to be one of the spandex set. I just…” I had to think about it for a second. “...I need to help people. It’s my upbringing. Goodkinds are raised to think about how their actions affect others. We’re raised to.. well.. if we were royalty, it would be called noblesse oblige. We run a large portion of the planet, and we know that people depend on us. We have an obligation to help those people. Just because it’s inconvenient, or difficult, or something we’d rather avoid, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. I can’t look at something like those monsters and just say ‘oh let someone else get it’. That’s not how I was raised.”

Louis smiled, “With great power comes great responsibility? That sounds like a superhero credo to me, Phase.”

I sighed, “I’m not Peter Parker. Let’s re-phrase that as: ‘with great economic power comes great social responsibility’. Better?”

Mrs. Cantrel sighed, “Just git on up to Melissa’s, and try not to get into any more trouble for a while.”

At least Puppet was glad to see me. I told her all about the meeting of the Golden Kids. I talked about Hatamoto’s motif, with the geishas and the green tea and the sushi. I told her all about the things that had happened, and who had said what about whom. I made sure to point out how big a bitch Traduce had been about Hatamoto running a successful soiree, and how nasty Corrosive was being. I even told her that I was going to be running the meeting in January.

“Me too,” I said. “Maybe we can talk to Mrs. Cantrel about letting you out for that? It’s only a couple hours…”

She winced, “I wish. But I can’t. It’d be like taking a bottle of nitroglycerin to a rock concert. It might be fine at first, but you know, sooner or later… Boom!”

She pouted, “No. I’m worse. I’m a leaky drum of poison gas. Everyone who comes in to see me is in danger. Except that Sara character that everyone says is a demon.”

“No, really,” I explained. “Genetically, I guess she’s all demon. But her dad is a real demon named Gothmog who’s a child of one of the Great Old Ones. On her mom’s side of the family, it’s supposed to be even freakier.”

I shook my head, “No, it’s a really icky family tree. I think her closest living relative is The Necromancer. The Necromancer! Her mom died as she was mutating into a huge fish-thing that has something gruesome to do with the Deep Ones and Cthulhu. I don’t want to know any more than that, unless I have to.”

Okay, that last bit was a lie. I was dying to know more, but I didn’t feel like I knew Sara well enough to pry more, and I was kind of worried that at some point the knowledge I accrued would literally drive me insane.

She smiled a little, “Kinda makes our family problems look pretty minor, doesn’t it?”

“Oh yeah.” I winced, “Compared to her family, our family’s The Donna Reed Show, or one of those other old black and white sitcoms Uncle Theo likes.”

I came downstairs and saw that the staircase was now pristine. It was just sparkling and immaculate. What, did Mister Clean do housecalls?

Antenna saw me staring at the steps, so he walked over. “Hey there, Ayla. The stairs? Mrs. Cantrel got Plasmoid and Jimmy T to slurp it all up.”

He grinned evilly, “Yeah, if you ever get mold and mildew problems in your shower, just get Jimmy to shower in there for a couple minutes. Just don’t watch, unless you want to lose your lunch.”

Mrs. Cantrel flew over and sternly said to me, “Phase, the Headmistress is expecting you in her office. Now.”

I sighed, “Yes, ma’am.” I headed down the steps, since the tunnels would probably be slightly faster than the surface paths.

I took the elevator up to Admin instead of floating up through the floors. I figured that a little warning would be a polite gesture. I could hear the strains of Puccini lilting from Carson’s office, so I called out, “Mrs. Carson? It’s Phase!”

She opened her office door and said, “Come in.” Then she walked back into her office and the music stopped.

I tried making small talk. “You didn’t have to turn off the music. I like Tosca. It’s not my favorite Puccini opera, but…”

She stopped me with a raised hand. She gave me an I-know-this-ruse smile and said, “Unfortunately, we’re not here to discuss tastes in opera. We’re here because you seem to be unable to stay out of trouble, in one way or another.”

I kept quiet. She seemed to think I’d just incriminate myself if she gave me an opening.

She finally continued, “Louis gave me a fairly detailed report. He seemed to think that your arguments were cogent and relevant. But this is not a school for superheroes, and it is not a place to risk your life unnecessarily.”

“I understand that. I even grasp the concept that teenagers are not immortal.. Carmilla notwithstanding.”

She didn’t smile. Well, I hadn’t really expected her to. She was too good at this sort of thing.

I pressed on, “Louis told me to stay out of it, and I didn’t. But I have defense abilities that most students don’t, and I have escape abilities that most students don’t. Once I saw the situation, I realized that I could help in ways that they couldn’t. I knew I could get hurt. But Fey told me that Spoof’s manifestations are ordinary manifested matter, not hobgoblins or magically-created creatures. And I trust Fey’s expertise in areas like this. So I knew I could help. And I could see that Ricou needed help.”

She glared, “Let me press upon you the need to learn control and restraint. We live in a world of baselines, where we are outnumbered so severely that even someone like your friend Tennyo could be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. We need to learn self-control, so that we are not exposed. So that our loved ones are not exposed. So that the world can accept that we exist, without having to live in fear of our actions.”

She took a deep breath. “I believe that I shall have to give you a punishment that will get your attention, since detention at Hawthorne has become too entertaining for you. I am going to tell the chefs not to give you anything special this week.”

And how the heck did she know that the chefs were giving me little treats now and then?

I sighed and said, “You’re the Headmistress. You make the rules. I’ll abide by your decision.” After all, it could have been worse. She could have made me clean those bio-hazard toilets in Hawthorne all week. Or clean Musk’s room all week. Or clean up in the cafeteria for a week.

Or work as Traduce’s personal secretary for a week. That would probably drive me insane.

I went back to Poe and joined the study group for a while before dinner. I read well into Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, but I could tell I was going to need some help. The Chinese ideographs weren’t too bad – even if I knew Silver Serpent could do a much better job of digging out their nuances. I was good with the Latin and ancient Greek. But I needed some help on the Italian, and I needed to find someone who could translate the Basque.

I solved that problem by deciding to send out an email to Pendragon, Silver Serpent, Stunner, and a couple other of the better students, offering to swap translations.

When I turned on my computer and logged into the Whateley email server, I found that I was behind the times. Pendragon had beaten me to it by several hours.

Silver Serpent had already responded with a PDF file of the ideograms in the book, their meanings, and what she saw as their connotations. She must have had a file already assembled.

Pendragon was volunteering to translate either the Greek or the Latin, as needed. So I sent everyone an email volunteering to handle the Latin if Pendragon took the Greek.

I already had the Latin in the first three sets of cantos already translated, so I got to work. I sat down at my computer with the book and typed every bit of Latin, followed by the translation, any references that came to mind, and in two cases, a possible cross-language pun that Pound might have had in mind. Pound was that kind of guy. I got all the way to the start of the Rock Drill Cantos before the gang dragged me off to dinner.

Chaka waved away my explanation of what I’d been doing. “No, I don’t wanna know. English is bad enough. This sounds like if the Olympics had English Lit as an event.”

I finally threatened, “If you guys don’t knock it off, I’ll do dramatic readings of this stuff during every study group!”

Dinner was good, too. Chef Marcel had an awesome dessert treat for me. Bosc pears poached in white wine, with a dark chocolate ganache. He murmured in French, “So this will have to hold you for several days.”

I sat down with my food, and Fey groaned, “Oh my Lord, not more secret gourmet food!”

Chou murmured, “I do not think that anyone at this table would have stayed put and not tried to help.”

Tennyo put it into perspective. “So your punishment is you just have to eat the same stuff as everyone else for a couple days? Is that really a punishment?”

Lancer pointed out, “Maybe it’s not supposed to be a punishment so much as a tactical maneuver. She’s letting you know that she knows what’s going on, and that you’re not really getting away with as much as you think you are.”

My ‘intelligence network’ project? I wasn’t discussing that out here. But he wasn’t really asking me to. I said, “I’ll let you know. Some other time.”

Meanwhile, that poached pear with ganache was awesome. But I figured I could survive for a few days without another.

After dinner, I spent almost an hour doing more Latin translations and then sending a file off to Pendragon’s cc: list. Stunner already had the Basque translations mailed off, but there was a lot less Basque than Latin. And one of these days, I was going to find out how she knew Basque.

I read more Pound, until Chou slouched in. She just seemed really down in the dumps. I knew that Parents’ Day had been a problem for her in more than one way, because we’d talked about it several times at bedtime. Fitzgibbons was out of the hospital and her sponsors had paid for repairs to the building, but she still felt they had let her down. Now she wasn’t even getting any sword work, and that really worried her.

I let her talk it out for a while. The best suggestion I had was for her to go spend more time smooching with Molly.

Toni stepped into the room and grinned, “Hey! Us girls think about it a lot too!”

Then there was a nervous knock on the doorframe behind Toni. She gracefully slid to the side and turned so she could see who it was.

Vox was standing in the doorway, looking as nervous as an Enron executive in a courtroom. She was wearing a lot more makeup than usual. Plus, she was wearing a clingy cotton minidress and high heels.

Chaka looked her over and said, “Da-yum, Ayla! That girl got all kind of floss goin’ on! Git movin’!”

Chou stood up, “Yes, I believe I need to hurry before I am late meeting Molly.”

Toni gave me a lewd wink and said, “Got more homework, so I gotta get goin’ too.”

I smiled and waved her into the room. “That’s okay. But I want you to know something. I don’t need you to get all dolled up like this. I mean, I love it! You look hot! But you look gorgeous every day.”

She sat on Chou’s bed and carefully crossed her legs. “Sharisha said if I really wanted to apologize, I should dress really hot, so you’d say you forgive me and you wouldn’t yell at me or anything.”

I told her, “I was going to forgive you anyway. And you ought to know I wasn’t going to yell at you. You were really upset. Maybe you need to tell me about your family so I’d understand why, but I’m not going to yell at you or hit you or anything.”

She worried, “I was just so mad! It was like things were starting up all over again and I couldn’t stop ‘em! I don’t wanna be making the same mistakes mom made, or Auntie Lucy, but I didn’t know what to do!”

I went over and sat next to her on the bed and hugged her. Then I told her I was sorry I hadn’t understood about things. She apologized for getting so upset. I apologized for not understanding. Then we had a long, long talk about her father.

It sounded to me as if she and her mother were a lot better off without that big jerk hanging around. But no one wants to hear that, so I kept my mouth shut on the subject. Afterward, we lay down in one of my hammocks and did the ‘kiss and make up’ part.

I didn’t tell her that – with any luck at all – by the end of spring term, I wouldn’t be the same intersexed shemale that she liked to cuddle. I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

I woke up to the sounds of Brass Monkey. I looked around to see if Chou was in the room, because she really hated it.

So I left “Stab My Eyes with Synesthesia” playing while I got out of bed and got going. I was pretty sure Destiny’s Wave wouldn’t complain to her about it when she got back.

I was in a much better mood, now that Vanessa and I had made up. And the morning shower routine was always great. Vanessa gave me a kiss before she stepped into the showers, so I got a fabulous view of her in the buff. Wow. Nikki came in looking sleepy, so I ‘politely’ let her cut in front of me. Getting to watch Nikki take off her peignoir and nightie, then step naked into a shower? Priceless. I managed to get into the next shower, clean up and dry off, then be at a vantage spot before Nikki stepped out naked and dried off her hair. Then I faked working at a sink when Bugs and Riptide came in, so I was able to get in a lot more ogling.

Breakfast was decent, considering that I was exiled from the good stuff for the week. I got a bowl of Chef Peter’s granola and a flaky, hot croissant. Those, plus a cup of the good coffee, and I was set for breakfast. I made do with the regular cafeteria fare at lunch as well, and so I had no trouble getting to aikido class in plenty of time.

Golden Girl was back in class. She didn’t look all that great, and she seemed to be spending a lot of the before-class time staring at me, psychically trying to maul me. Too bad she wasn’t psychic. Ito had her partnered with Charmer during practice, and he had her spar against Gila, so he let her off pretty easy.

That made me think about the way Ito had handled me after some of my injuries, and I had to wonder if I was doing something wrong. Ito just seemed to be determined to pummel me, while he was apparently coddling her. Was it me? Was I the problem around here? It wasn’t like I could get a straight answer from Ito or Tolman, so there was no way I was going to be able to fix things.

After classes, I went straight over to detention at Hawthorne. I wasn’t sure how Mrs. Cantrel and Fubar would greet me when I got there. I mean, I understood that they had rules, and they were trying to protect students, and everything else. But they had needed my help. Hell, for a couple minutes they had been pretty close to needing help from half of Team Kimba.

Mrs. Cantrel met me at the front door, and she wasn’t smiling. Okay, if she called me “Goodchild”, I’d know I was in deep doodoo. I’d probably get Fubar’s pool, or the biohazard toilets. Or perhaps the supposedly cannibalistic Jimmy Trauger.

“Phase,” she said flatly. “Please go upstairs and help Static Girl with her math homework, then go clean Puppet’s floor and see if she wants some help with her homework.”

“Yes ma’am.” Well, that wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Still, it was a long way from being called ‘Ayla’ and getting a nice smile. Crap.

Okay, I wasn’t going to beat myself up about this. I had done what I thought was right, and I had helped people who needed help. I hadn’t done it to get a big pat on the back, so I shouldn’t care that I wasn’t getting hugs and kisses. Not that there were many Thornies I wanted to kiss me. And I already knew that many times the right thing to do was not the popular thing to do, so I had to expect this sort of reaction now and then. Still, it would have been nice if I had found a way to help without getting Mrs. Cantrel and Fubar upset with me…

At least Claire was glad to see me. We spent most of my detention time working on algebra, so she could do the steps needed to complete her trig homework. Apparently, she was getting a little help on her geometry from Frosty. I must be doing pretty well as a tutor if Frostbite was up to helping other people with geometry.

And when we weren’t working on her homework, we were chatting about yesterday’s monsterfest. Apparently, the slime that the monsters left behind them was wet enough that Frostbite was able to use all that water to build her ice wall. I’d wondered where she got that much water. Also, Claire had heard that Spoof slipped on Frosty’s ice and knocked himself out on the ice wall. The octopoids hadn’t touched him.

Then Mrs. Cantrel sent me over to Puppet’s room. But someone had already cleaned up the floor. All I had to do was sit and talk with Melissa about European History. And the monsterfest.

“So who cleaned up the floor?” I checked. “I thought that was going to be one of my tasks.”

She smiled a little. “Ricou came in and did it. He said there was no way he was letting you get punished for saving him.” She giggled a little, “Actually, he said ‘for saving my scaly butt’.”

She paused. “You know Ayla, there aren’t many people who would’ve jumped in to help a bunch of Thornies, like you did.”

I told her, “First off, every single person on my team would have. Team Kimba’s just like that. And half of them would have been way more effective than I was.”

“MORE effective,” I insisted. “Tennyo and Bladedancer could have sliced those things into calamari in a couple seconds. Lancer could have ripped those things to shreds without breaking a sweat. Fey could have cast a spell and turned ‘em into lemmings or something; plus she could have healed most of the injured kids on the spot. Chaka? God only knows what she would have pulled out of her.. chakras, but I bet she could have used her Ki to shred those squidlets. Shroud? Already dead and can’t be hurt, so you know she’d be effective close in. As for Generator, I have no idea if she has a devise to handle stuff like that.” Well, I wasn’t going to tell t