Jade 3 – Being a Girl

Whateley Academy   September 7, Thursday

The big day had finally arrived.  Jade didn’t think it was possible to be more nervous.  It would have been bad enough if this were only the first day of high school.  Of course, it always added to the anxiety when you start at a new school, in a new town.  And on top of that, there was the whole “super powers” thing.  Every student and many of the teachers had some sort of weird power.  And on top of that, she and she alone had the major problem that she was still, physically, a guy. 

Her morning shower proved just how much of a problem this was.  Everyone had finally moved in, and today they were all trying to get ready in time for the special morning assembly.  Jade had noticed problems yesterday, but the implications hadn’t really hit her.  It all had to do with how the showers were set up.  The bathroom was claustrophobically small to be shared by fifteen different girls.  This was obviously one of the reasons why the top-floor seniors did their best to “squeeze” as many people as possible into the lower floors.  Fewer girls on their floor meant better bathroom access.  One side-effect was that this bottom floor was always completely full.

There were three modest-sized showers crammed in the very back of the bathroom.  Each shower had its own curtain allowing her to shower in privacy.  She’d been clever enough about hanging her panties within reach.  Between that and using Jinn-in-the-panties to give herself a perfect tuck, no one had seen her naked, and no one had realized that she carried the gross deformity of having guy parts down there.

But now that the floor was finally filled, she was seeing how girls used the changing area.  This was a tile floor with benches and shelves just before the shower area.  And, unlike the showers, this area was completely open.  And while the girls weren’t trying to flash each other, there was nowhere else for them to shave their legs.  Which is how she’d come to know that Tennyo was most definitely female (as if having a period wasn’t proof enough).

The problem was: Did Jade need to shave her legs?  She kind of wanted to, just to feel more girlish.  But she probably didn’t really need to, yet.  Another advantage of being pre-puberty.  And while a couple of girls wore panties while shaving (always to hold their pads in place, she noted covertly), most did not.  Hard to give yourself a bikini trim, if you’re wearing panties.

Jade gulped.  It wasn’t a problem yet, but it might be soon.  Why couldn’t she have just been born the proper gender?

Back in the room, she contemplated her luck in escaping exposure once again.  She’d been living as a girl full-time for a week now, and it was fabulous!  More than ever, she was convinced that this was the right choice.  But her physical problem sapped her confidence.  She compensated by dressing properly, so that she was constantly reassured of her real gender no matter what her stupid body thought.  For example, she didn’t actually need her training bra, but it did wonders for her self-image.  And today, on her first day of school, she was careful to wear her school uniform.  The tailored outfit had finally come in.  She was in love with the pleated skirt, and the way it swished, and how it felt on her legs.  It was more than warm enough.  In fact, she really appreciated having bare legs.  Since it was still (technically) summer, she wore short socks with the outfit.  The blazer was a little too warm, but the way it was cut in at the waist gave her the illusion of a figure, so she was loathe to take it off despite the heat.

Jinn wore a second uniform.  This one was off the shelf, not tailored, but it was sized for Jinn’s body – six inches taller, and two years older than Jade.  Jinn wore her black body-suit under the uniform.  The cost of double-wardrobes was horrible, but Jade hoped her new job would ease the problem quickly.  She still needed to buy a couple more uniforms.

She thought she’d finally worked out how to coordinate her Jade-schedule and Jinn-schedule.  Jinn could last sixty-seven minutes on a charge.  Most classes were fifty minutes long, with ten minutes to get to the next room.  That meant that Jade needed to meet Jinn at least once between every class.  A quick touch should be enough to “charge” Jinn, but if they didn’t touch, Jinn would fade just before class started.

This worked fine at the beginning of the day, and they shared their last class – martial arts.  Even if that was way over in Laird Hall, they’d be heading there together.  In fact, all their morning classes were right there in Shuster Hall.  But during lunch Jade would eat while Jinn (who didn’t need food or rest) would get in an hour’s worth of maintenance work.  That meant that she (Jade) would need to stop by the maintenance room and charge up gloves or something, before lunch.  She hoped that Stan and Morrie wouldn’t smell bad enough to ruin her appetite.

After lunch, Jinn could just pack herself away in the maintenance room (they didn’t need to meet), but Jinn had Powers Lab, which was underground in Arena ‘77 or a large classroom just adjacent to it.  Fortunately, both of their next classes were still here in Shuster hall.

Jade and Jinn both carried backpacks as they left for breakfast.  The two of them looked around at the other girls (and Hank).  Fey, Tennyo, and Hank seemed to have echoed her idea, wearing the uniform for their first day.  She noticed that Fey’s uniform seemed different somehow, and more tailored.  That was before she remembered the problems the fox-faced girl had with synthetics.  That entire uniform was probably custom made.  Jade wondered whether to be jealous of Fey’s high-end wardrobe, or sympathetic for the incredible expense the elven girl had to spend, just to dress normally.

Tennyo looked like someone who was trying to pass as normal, meek, and inconsequential.  Unfortunately, with her oddly colored spiky hair, prominent ears, and cat-slitted eyes, the effort was pretty much doomed to failure.

Jade thought that she herself looked completely normal, and Hank was the perfect picture of a skinny freshman boy.

Toni had dressed fairly conservatively, for her.  A sheer, black sleeveless v-neck top and a matching knee-length skirt.  A gold belt and bracelet completed the image.

“That’s a pretty mild look for you,” Tennyo commented.

Toni shrugged.  “Way I figure it, this whitebread New England school is going to have enough trouble coping with a sister.  No sense going all radical on them, day one.  Besides, wearing a uniform on my first day would be like saying that I’m jealous of the whole WASP culture and identity; I’m just another vanilla freshman.”  She suddenly spotted the uniforms on the other three girls, none of whom fit in the “mainstream white” category.  “Well, I mean, no offense.”

As they headed out the door, Fey asked, “So are you ever going to wear those uniforms you bought?”

“I’ve got to really feel like I’m part of the school before I can wear the uniform.  Doesn’t that make sense to anyone?”

“No,” Jade said.  “I’m Japanese.  We enjoy standing in lines and being part of a hive culture.  We also enjoy racial stereotypes and simplistic generalizations.”

Toni looked at her out of the side of her eyes.  “Nice sarcasm, kid.  Didn’t know you had it in you.”

Jade bobbed her head in an abbreviated bow.  “Thank you, Sempai.”

Scowling, Ayla brought up the rear.  She was the other girl out of uniform, wearing ripped jeans and a T-shirt with enough holes to give occasional peaks at her lacy bra.  “Does it bother anyone else that ninjas always attack on a school night?  How are we supposed to get any sleep, when we’re being attacked by psycho-spies and professional assassins.”

“You’re just mad that we lost our lead on the blackmailers,” Fey commented.

“Hell, yes!  No one threatens me or my family!”

The assembly meant that everyone had to be early, because it came before their first-period class.  Jade marveled again at the deep, dark, richly polished wood at the entry of Shuster Hall.  But this time, it was filled to the brim with students.  Some heading in or out of Crystal hall, some waiting by one of the two huge fires that blazed at each side of the oversized entry.  A good percentage of the students wore the official uniform.

Jade felt a bit like she’d stepped into one of the Harry Potter movies.  That was the only thing she’d seen where students wore uniforms and attended a boarding school.  She blushed anew at the pure pleasure of being a girl in this fantastic scene, of wearing that wonderful pleated skirt, and feeling the cool morning air whisper up her bare legs all the way to her panties.  She breathed in the magical scent of her first day of high school, buoyed by the beautiful girlfriends that surrounded her.  It felt absolutely fantastic to be taking her proper place in life.

There were other similarities to the Harry Potter movies.  The polished oak and mahogany gave the hall a look of timeless splendor, from some era that was centuries past.  And while Crystal Hall was more of a high-tech cafeteria than a grand dining hall, it was reminiscent of the grandeur of Hogwarts.  But, the difference stood out even more clearly.

First, Shuster hall was a brick building, not a stone castle.  And the classrooms tended to be either very modern or rejects from the fifties, badly in need of remodeling.  There were, sadly, no stone dungeons, potions rooms, or gothic-style cathedral windows.

And the variety of students at Whateley was far greater.  She scanned the crowd in the great hall, studying the oddities.  There were several students covered entirely in hair – one that looked like a werewolf, another that looked like a cat.  There was a boy that had to be over seven feet tall and looked like he was made of smooth, gray stone.  A girl with inhumanly large, pure green eyes, and fairy antenna.  And one student that floated over them all in cloud shape (Jade couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl).

Keeping carefully beside the other girls, she followed them into the main auditorium for the assembly.

Afterward, they split up and scattered, as everyone raced to get to their own locker before the crowd got too thick.  Jade managed a last wave for her friends, as she headed up the stairs to the second floor.

“Bye!”

“See you,” Tennyo said, confidently.  “Let’s meet here for lunch.”

Jade nodded as the others waved, before heading off in their own directions.  Now it was just her and Jinn, heading for their side-by-side lockers.  They moved to the far right edge of the wide wooden staircase.  Jade held onto the handrail, despite the fact that it was six inches wide and far too big for her hand.  She gave a quick glance over to Jinn.

“Glad,” she said to her other self, in their abbreviated personal communication.  She was really saying, I’m glad you’re here.  It’s lonely and a bit frightening, as I feared, but you make me feel better, so I’m glad.

“Sister?” came the reply, meaning, Should we go with the earlier plan we thought of, introducing me as your older sister?

“Uh huh.”

They finally located their locker, which was difficult in the crowded hallway.  The locker two over to her right was being used by a mature-looking blonde girl.  As Jade opened her own locker, the other girl turned to look at her.  Jade gasped.  It was Headmistress Carson!  She’d just seen her giving the talk in the assembly!  But – why was the headmistress shorter looking?  And why was she suddenly wearing a student’s uniform?  As she watched, the other girl turned to look at her.  Now Jade saw that it wasn’t the headmistress at all.  In fact, her hair was dark, almost black.

As Jade watched, the girl staring at her suddenly turning into an image of her!  The taller-Jade stifled a cry and went running off before Jade could say a word.

Shrugging, she reached over to give Jinn a last charge, then rushed off to class while Jinn did the same.

“Now class, who can give me a reason to wear a costume.”

There was an immediate deluge of shouted answers.

“Hands please.”

“To protect your secret identity!”

“It’s a contrast, so that when they see you in civilian clothes they don’t make the connection.”

“To show off a killer bod!”

“To hide a deformity.”

“A uniform, so the police and public can recognize you.”

Mrs. Ryan smiled.  “Very good.  And all of these answers are correct.”  She adjusted her thick horn-rimmed glasses.  “Can you think of any others?”

A nerdy-looking boy in the front row raised his hand.  “For armor.  Protection.  In fact, maybe the costume IS your power.”

“Excellent.  More?”

“Uh, freedom of movement.  I mean, street clothes might be kind of cumbersome, if you’re making fast moves.”

Mrs. Ryan nodded.  “Exactly.  Which explains why miniskirts are so popular among female costumes.”  It was a bit of a shock hearing her say this, since she looked to be in her eighties and had both an ankle-length print dress and a shawl over her shoulders.  You didn’t expect a woman like that to be talking about miniskirts.  “Every so often the news goes on a bugaboo about exploitation and role models for young girls.  Honestly.  They don’t expect policewomen or female troops to wear long dresses.  Why should a superheroine?  And if a young girl wants to show off a bit, well, so long as it isn’t vulgar, I say what’s the harm in it?”

She blinked briefly, and Jinn saw a flash of embarrassment-orange.  “In this class – well, to be frank, I’ll insist that ALL your costumes follow this.  Some of you mentioned showing off, some mentioned protection.  This last discussion, about the news and exploitation, reminded me.”  She cleared her throat again.  “Costumes for the girls will be… padded in certain areas.  To protect those areas that are vulnerable.  But it will also tend to emphasize certain things.  And you boys, well, I must insist that your costumes contain a cup.  Which will be somewhat flattering, while guarding against embarrassment, and offering very useful protection.”

There was a murmur around the classroom at this.  Jinn looked at Ayla, beside her, who just shrugged.

“Now, can anyone think of any other reasons to wear a costume?”

Jinn debated, then finally raised her hand.

“Yes, the blonde girl in the sunglasses.”

“To look normal and blend in.”

“Excellent!”  Mrs. Ryan nodded happily.  “All the costumes we’ve spoken about until now are meant to stand out.  They deliberately attract attention.  But there is a completely different kind of costume.  As you can see from your fellow classmates, many of them have slight differences.  Something that noticeably sets them apart from the common press of humanity.  In some of these cases, a cleverly designed costume can conceal the difference, allowing the person to walk unnoticed among ordinary people.  I have a particular fondness for these costumes, since they pose a greater challenge to the seamstress.

“Let me tell you – tailoring in America today is a dying art form.  Certainly in the more upscale clothiers of New York you will find plenty of tailors, drawing a decent wage.  But there was a time when everyone used a tailor.  They didn’t expect to find something off the rack that fit ‘well enough.’  They wanted it to fit right, and make them look good.

“Of course,” she added primly, “that was also before it became fashionable to wear pants that were five sizes too large, before it was popular to show off your underwear, and before t-shirt and jeans became the sole wardrobe for an entire nation.  But I digress.

“Who would like to be my first volunteer?  Who feels they don’t fit in, and would like to have a costume that lets them walk among a normal crowd?”

Many hands went up, including Jinn’s.

“You there!  In the last row.  Yes, the rocky-looking lad.  What’s your name?”

“Igneous.”  The man in question was about six and a half feet tall, and broader than a football tackle wearing pads.  His skin was smooth gray, and looked like it had a stone-like quality.  And although he had a shape similar to a bodybuilder, it really only resembled the contours of human musculature.  It was more slab-like, that almost coincidentally gave definition to the pectoral and abdominal muscles of a human.  Jinn guessed that the fellow should probably be classified as being still a boy, still, but given his size and rumbling sub-base voice, it was hard to see him as anything other than a grown man.

“Igneous.  Well, if you don’t mind my saying so, I think that’s a poor name.  Too close to ‘ignoramus.’  You muscle-types have to fight a constant battle to appear intelligent.  Just an example of stereotypes working against you.  Instead of choosing a name which associates with stupidity, you should go for a different association.  Perhaps ‘Granite’ – which I feel associates with Cary Grant, a fine image.”

“Already taken.”

“Well, perhaps ‘Hudson’, and let people think of Rock Hudson.”  When her target didn’t respond, she continued.  “Now, your current set of shorts can’t help but emphasize your difference, both in physique and in dress.  May I ask why you didn’t wear a standard school uniform today?”

“Tailors are still working on it.”

“As soon as you can, I’d like you to wear your uniform to class.  Now, if you could come up front to model for me, briefly.”

Reluctantly, Igneous moved to the front of the class.  He was clearly putting effort into walking carefully, but his tread could still be felt throughout the room.  When he reached the front, he stood there in strained cut-off shorts, with neither shirt nor shoes.

“Now in your case, young man, there’s no need for a costume to stand out.  Either for recognition or protection or showing off.  Am I correct?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Instead, what we need is a way to make you ‘fit in.’  It’s really more ‘fitting in’ rather than ‘blending in.’  You can’t help being noticed wherever you go.  So, rising to the fashion challenge, our task is to make sure that the statement you make is both a positive and comforting one.  You will be noticed, but in a positive way.  Now, class, who can suggest ways that we might accomplish this?”

“A suit!”

“A policeman’s uniform.”

“A doctor’s white coat.”

“Excellent.  All good examples.  Now, to some segments of the populace, any of those suggestions might possibly be threatening.  But by and large, these people are accepted and stereotyped as both helpful and predictable.  People will see you, judge you by your clothes, and make certain assumptions.  For example, in the suit, they will expect you to be cultured, reasonably polite, and prone to solve problems in a social manner rather than a physical one.  The trick is to look like a businessman, rather than a gangster.

“As for a doctor’s lab coat, I happen to have one right here.  Let’s try it on, and see how it changes your look.”

And although they didn’t get back to her at all, Jinn found the class fascinating.

The rush between classes was chaos.  The strange students didn’t make up a huge percentage of the population, but they added more than their share of disruption.  It only took a couple of seven-foot-tall figures to mess up a hallway, and wings took a lot of room.  As Jade squeezed through on her way to her locker to meet Jinn, the elevator dinged ahead of her.  She saw the door open, and a load of extremely non-ordinary types step out.  It was almost impossible not to stare at the boy who seemed to be oozing slime, or the skeleton in the Whateley uniform.  The skeleton had glowing red coals for eyes, but seemed to have invisible flesh that made his uniform fit correctly.

Jade didn’t really appreciate the new entries.  Not so much because of appearance, but because they made the hallway that much more crowded.  And as one of the smallest and lightest people in the hallway, it was sometimes hard to make progress.  Fortunately, she could sometimes duck around into small openings that the larger students missed.

Finally, though, she made it to her locker.  Jinn was already there, holding the books for both of their next classes.

Jade looked at her other self in jealousy.  Jinn had been to the exciting Costume class, while she’d had to sit through beginning English.  Exciting, mostly because it was her first high school class, but still.

They looked at each other.

“Share?”  Jade asked.  You want to come here and share the memories of costuming class with me?

Jinn didn’t even bother to nod, she just put the books down and deflated.

Even as the wash of memories flooded her, Jade was touching the drooping outfit and restoring Jinn.  They grinned at each other, as the memories of opposite classes settled in, then headed off in their own directions once more.

Professor Filbert Quintain was the lecturer for Powers Theory.  He spoke in a monotone that seemed designed to put people to sleep.  Initially, Jinn thought he was doing it as a joke, but as class progressed, she realized with horror that this was his normal voice.

“You will please notice,” he told them, “that there is a set of three lights below our classroom flag.  These duplicate the flag colors on the main flag flying on campus.  Today, of course, the light is red.  Were it not red, I would welcome you to adopt a decorum that was more appropriate to your individual situations.  Many students enjoy hovering in mid-air, or sitting upon the ceiling.  Still others will prefer to curl up on the floor, like a dog or cat.  I assure you, however, that our floors are quite sanitary, since they are cleaned regularly every evening.  Ha ha.”  He forced a smile at that last, letting them know that he considered it a joke.

With his brief introduction out of the way, he launched into his main lecture.  Jinn found herself simultaneously fascinated and repulsed.  The information was fascinating, but the tone was driving her nuts.  She had already noticed a yawn traveling across the room – an affliction that she was fortunately immune to.

“Super powers, mutations or mutant abilities, or perhaps simply ‘The Power.’  Yes, all these labels have been used to describe people with abilities such as your own.  There is evidence that such people have existed throughout recorded history.  However, with lower population densities, mutants were correspondingly much rarer.  And without training or a basis for understanding their situation, many mutants thought themselves rewarded or bedeviled by supernatural forces.”

He spoke a bit more about ancient history.  He promised to cover a little each class, then moved forward in time, discussing how Hermann von Helmholtz became the first scientist to study mutant abilities, spurred to interest by the blind esper Maria Stoklasa who could sometimes “see in the dark.”  He described in excruciating detail how Helmholtz had used his own invention, the ophthalmoscope, to verify that Stoklasa was not using her eyes in any way and that this new sense operated by unknown physical phenomena.

“Based upon his work with Miss Stoklasa and four other espers that he was able to visit, in addition to historic accounts, Helmholtz created what is still used today as the levels of esper reliability and controllability.”  Using a squeaky piece of chalk, Professor Quintain laboriously wrote on the blackboard:

Level 1:  Flashes, unpredictable

Level 2:  Some controllable periods

Level 3:  Completely reliable, totally controllable

“Miss Stoklasa was, of course, a level 2, which Helmholtz defined as a mutant who can trigger the sense deliberately, or who could control the duration once an unpredictable flash began, or who could steer and target the vision once it began.  In other words, a mutant who had some element of control over the vision.  In Miss Stoklasa’s case, anxiety was the trigger for her vision.  A simple concern for not seeing where she was going.  During such periods of anxiety, she would sometimes have her ‘eyes opened’.  This phenomena would persist for several minutes, during which Miss Stoklasa could shift her viewpoint to anywhere within a five-mile radius.  But once her eyes ‘closed’ again, she was unable to reopen them for at least several hours.  Let’s review then.  In what way was her vision controllable?  Hands please.”

This was particularly interesting to Jinn, since her preliminary classification had been as a Level 3 esper.

“For the different types of senses, Helmholtz hit a wall.  With the research then available, all he could do was to list the various types of senses described, and to postulate that these were all aspects of some sort of ‘super sense’, or ‘divine perception’ as he called it.  He felt that the esper senses were surely some lesser example of God’s omniscience, perceiving the world directly without passing through the gross physical mediums of the body.

“Today, after examining literally thousands of espers, we have made little headway on Helmholtz’s original listing methodology.  Superficially, there would seem to be little relation between a precognitive, a water dowser, and a person who ‘smells’ areas of good and bad luck.  Are these all just specialized examples of the precognitive senses?  If so, what about those who can see waves of magnetism?  And what about empathy, which is still classed as an esper senses, rather than with telepathy.

Quintain continued.  “We are fortunate to have in class a student who is a level 2, and as with many espers, has a unique never-before-seen, ha ha, sense.”  He held a hand out to a boy in the third row.

The kid had a backward baseball cap, long stringy blonde hair, and an oversize T-shirt and jeans.  Slightly embarrassed, he waved at the class.  “Uh, hi.”  He waved again.  When Quintain beckoned him forward, he stepped shyly.  “Uh, I guess you want to know about my sight, right?  Well…” he reached into his backpack and pulled out a tennis ball.  “I can see ricochets.  I mean, I have to wind up and hold it.”  He did so, holding the ball behind him, ready to throw.  “And I have to concentrate just right.”  He scowled.  “And usually… ah, there it is.”  Squinting, he began to describe it to them.  “I see, I dunno, spots sort of on everything in front of me.  Okay, there’s a good one.  It’s like there’s layers.  If I hit right there, the ball will bounce back, hit the corner of the desk, hit the ceiling light fixture sideways, carom off the opposite fixture, and drop down into my hand again.”

He threw the ball hard against the wall, and it bounced exactly as predicted, landing in his outstretched hand.

“Now,” Professor Quintain resumed, “why is this sense considered only level 2, and not level 3?  And can we classify this as a pure esper mutation?  It seems impossible to throw with such fine control without some other element in the mix, such as telekinesis.  Chaos theory alone would predict…”

And the class settled slowly back into their doze.

Jade tried to make her way between algebra and bio, but she had to meet Jinn on the way to give her a charge.  She was sure she’d get the schedule down soon, but for now she needed both her schedule list and the diagram she’d made of where her route crossed Jinn’s route.  It was easier when they both passed by their lockers – they could just meet there.

The hallway was crowded at the best of times, but right now she was being pushed around with almost no control.  She was the smallest person in the hallway, and most of the other students seemed to be in as much of a rush as she was.  She was shoved again.  Like most of the other shoves, there didn’t seem to be anything personal in this, just another big student pushing through the crowd.  Jade was shoved into the side of a taller blonde girl.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

“What?  Why you!”  The girl turned to look at her.  “What do you think you’re doing, you greasy little urchin!”

“I said I was sorry.”

The blonde’s friends suddenly clustered around.  Jade quickly noticed that although they all wore the school uniform, their uniforms were tailored.  Her experience with Jinn’s uniform and her own had shown her how tailoring was required for the better fit.  And Tennyo, Fey, and Ayla had shown her that there were different levels of tailoring.  The basic (like Jade’s) adjusted the fit modestly.  The more advanced tailoring jobs slightly customized the outfit, or (in extreme cases) even used finer fabrics.  That kind of job cost many times as much as one of the regular, cheaper uniforms.

These girls all wore uniforms that spoke of the most expensive tailoring.

“I don’t know why such a prestigious school insists on letting in dirty little foreigners.”

“What?”  Even as Jade said it, she understood.  She’d heard the same thing often enough in Topeka.  It was almost always Anglos, who seemed to believe that they were the only true natives.  It had made Jade a bit more sympathetic to the plight of the real Native Americans, whenever Anglos claimed some sort of special ownership or native status.  But back in Topeka, she’d found there was no really good comeback to this type of ethnic prejudice.

“Really!” one of the brunettes said.  “If they can’t learn to be polite, at least they should learn to keep their distance.”

“I was born and raised in Kansas!”  She began, knowing it was pointless.

“Come, girls,” the redhead said.  “Don’t let the urchin drag you down to her level.”

The four of them hurried off.

“Those of you who signed up for Word Processing have lucked out.  You’ll be the first students in the freshman class to receive your laptops.  Headmistress Carson was supposed to tell everyone during the morning assembly?  Good.  Now, today we’re going to practice the very basics.  You’re going to write a document, swap laptops, and then wipe the hard drive of your companion’s laptop.  Don’t worry!  The real lesson is how to format a system from scratch.  That and the importance of backups.  Now, to begin…”

In the hallway between classes, Jade was even more nervous.  She’d gotten plenty of pushes and shoves as she made her way through the halls.  Now that she was carrying thousands of dollars worth of laptop in her backpack, and she was afraid that someone was going to shove her onto her back, and she’d break the phenomenally expensive computer she was now carrying.  Luckily, the route to her last class took her away from the crowded corridors of Shuster Hall.

Their martial arts class was in the new “Eastman annex.”  Jade quickly met up with Jinn, and the two of them followed the other students as they filed into a large room covered with thick gymnastic mats.  One wall was mirrored, like a dance studio.

It was easy to spot the experienced students.  They immediately lined up and dropped to sit in seiza position, along one edge of the mats.  No one wore a gi, everyone was in street clothes.  There were some shoes by the door, and Jade added hers to the pile.  She also saw a pile of backpacks in a protected alcove, and gratefully added her own backpack to the group, having Jinn float up to place it in the very back, where it was least likely to get fallen on or grabbed by mistake.  That location had to be safer than carrying the expensive computer into the dojo.

She and Jinn moved in to sit seiza at the edge of a mat.  Although they were both in street clothes, Jade carefully arranged her skirt as she sat on the floor.  Jinn prepared identically, sitting beside her.  Someone else sat by her other size, and she looked over to see Toni.  She smiled at the black girl just as the bell rang.

The instant the bell stopped, the far door opened and two people entered.

The first was a tall African-American woman.  Her frizzy hair was done in two large pom-poms, one to each side of her head.  She was slightly over six feet tall, and had a killer figure.  Not dressed in a gi, she wore a skintight black bodysuit.  She looked like she had just stepped off the poster for an action-adventure movie.  Behind her was a short, almost elderly Japanese man.  He looked like he was perhaps an inch or so shorter than Jade.  He wore the wide legged hakama pants that sometimes looked like a skirt to westerners, the wide-sleeved montsuki top, and was adorned with a mon crest that Jade didn’t recognize – a set of three white raindrop/teardrop shapes in an inverted triangle, over a deep blue background.

The black woman stepped forward, radiating a no-nonsense attitude.  “I am Amanda Tolman.  Everyone who wishes to remain in this class will purchase a gi for practice.  Unless otherwise notified, you will change into your gi before class.  When the bell rings, you will begin in seiza position, lined up as you see with the more experienced students here.  We will practice in a variety of situations, including street clothes, costumes, and real-life situations.  However, most classes will be taught here, and you will be wearing gis.  Any questions so far?”

The class was silent, merely nodding at the rapid-fire information.

“The students in this class have a wide variety of skill levels and an even wider variety of powers.  This will require the use of some unique training tools.  Some classes will be taught in the combat arenas.  Some will be taught outside.  In the dojo here, we will use a variety of tools and weapons.  Everything from a simple bo stick –” she held out a hand and the older man swung a quarterstaff toward her that smacked into her hand “— to the bokken to simulate a sword, similar substitutes for knifes, explosives, gas, even guns.  There will be many training tools that you have never seen before, such as the capture cage.”

At this, she gestured to the far corner.  The elderly Japanese man pulled away a curtain to reveal an outlandish set of bars and contraptions, all painted fire-engine red.

“The capture cage is a simulation for a device that can nullify your powers.  I don’t care how that would be done or whether it is even possible.  You will act as if it’s true.  Once in the cage, you are caught, dead, gone, lost.  In some of your training, the object will be to get someone else into the cage, or to keep yourself out of it.  Any questions?”

A student in back finally raised his hand.  “You talked about different powers.  I can make a force field around myself.”  He paused, and barely visible oval appeared around him.  “Nothing can penetrate it,” his muffled voice came through.  “So how can martial arts help me?  What do you have to teach me?”

“Excellent question,” Tolman sensei replied.  “The single greatest benefit of this training is that it teaches you to think.  You will be constantly planning ahead, assessing danger, planning escape routes or attacks.  You will study tactics, learn to sense weakness and danger, and change your view of the world.  This training is more important than the hand-to-hand skills.  You will also learn that any power and any technique has holes.

“This is a good time to mention waivers.  By virtue of the fact that you are here at Whateley, I know that your parents have signed damage, injury, and liability waivers.  That means that I am not responsible if you get hurt in this class!  And you WILL get hurt, every last one of you.  This is a rough class – but it is also worth it.

“You should know that conventional gym, with its own forms of combat training, is still open.  You may transfer out of this class and into gym anytime through next Wednesday.  After that, you will simply receive a ‘FAIL’ in this class.  There are also many more advanced martial arts classes, taught by a wide variety of instructors, in a wide variety of disciplines.  You may ‘graduate’ to those classes, once you have mastered the basic concepts of this beginner’s class.

“Now,” Tolman Sensei focused her eyes on the boy behind the force field.  “A classic mistake is to assume a ‘citadel mentality.’  To assume that your powers cannot be breached.  Remember, even a perfect defense will never let you win a fight.  And I have yet to see a perfect defense.”

She snapped her fingers, seemingly casual.  Aside from a sudden tightening around the eyes, she betrayed no signs of taking action.  But a moment later, the boy behind the force field collapsed to the mat, unconscious.  His force field vanished.

“Remember,” she continued, “what you don’t know, can hurt you.”  She suddenly stepped up to a person in the front row.  “You!  You’ve just been given a magic power-neutralizer gun.  You’re fighting a scrawny kid whose only power is massive telekinesis.  Does the gun let you win?”

“Uh… no?  I mean, I don’t know.”

“Good answer.  You don’t know enough, yet.  For example, is the scrawny kid levitating a safe over your head?  If so, you may not want to neutralize his powers.  If you’re going to instigate the fight, you’d be wise to learn as much as you can ahead of time.

“Which brings us to our first demonstration.  Allow me to introduce my sensei, Tatsuo Ito.”  She bowed deeply, then stepped into the background.

The man who stepped forward looked to be in his late fifties, with thinning white hair.  He had just finished using a cord to tie back the sleeves of his oversized shirt as he stepped forward to face them.

“I am Tatsuo Ito.”  His voice had a slight British accent, and he spoke to them crisply and directly.  “You may call me either ‘Ito Sensei’ which means ‘teacher Ito,’ or ‘Soke’ which means that I am a founder of a new school.

“I was formerly a Hanshi in the shin-shin toitsu school.  However, my exposure to mutants has led me to seeks something much more ambitious.  I am now attempting to blend together radically different techniques.  The goal is to allow normal humans – well trained but normal – to successfully stand against powerful, though untrained, mutants.  And to allow trained mutants to be more than capable of taking care of themselves.  Allow me to demonstrate.”

He came walking forward, directly toward her, Jade thought.  Could he have recognized her skill, just from how she sat?  She’d really only had a few years, but she’d always enjoyed working in the dojo  She was preparing to be both flustered and embarrassed.  She settled for embarrassed, as he stopped in front of Hank.

“Mr. Hank Declan,” Ito Sensei announced.  “My study of the records indicates that you are most likely the most powerful new student in this class.  You are a level three exemplar with strength and reflexes above the human norm, even mine.  In addition, you are a powerful telekinetic, and nearly invulnerable.  You can lift about five tons, and recently fought successfully against a small army base.  Correct?”

Hank nodded, not sure where this was leading.

“However, you are untrained.  I am completely human, ordinary in every way except that I am highly trained.  I wish to fight you, to demonstrate what my techniques can accomplish.”

Hank rose slowly to his feet, slowly shaking out the stiffness.  Even at five-foot six, Hank was taller than the small elderly man, who was about Jinn’s height.

“I don’t want to hurt you by accident, Mr. Ito.”

“Call me sensei.”

“Sensei.”

“Good.  You may attempt to simply restrain me, if you feel that is more appropriate.  If you succeed, you have won the match.”  He held out a hand and the bo stick seemed to fly to him.  A moment later, the students realized that Tolman Sensei had been waiting to throw it to him.

“Since you are a new student, or kohai, let me explain that we begin on opposite side of the mat, here and here.  We bow to each other – but don’t take your eyes off me – then we wait for the referee or Tolman Sensei in this case, to begin the match by saying ‘hajime.’”

The two of them faced each other across the mat.  Hank looked powerful but unsure of himself, while the old Japanese man looked confident and moved with a strangely smooth grace.

“Hajime!” Tolman Sensei said, abruptly.

Hank stepped forward cautiously.  Ito Sensei was more aggressive.  He moved to almost within grappling range.  Then, a moment later, he was behind Hank (it wasn’t clear exactly how he’d accomplished that).  Quick strikes with the spinning staff struck Hank behind each leg, sweeping his feet forward.  The stick struck with a surprisingly loud “clack.”  It sounded as if striking Hank’s leg was like striking a piece of rock.

With his legs suddenly swept forward, Hank began to topple backwards.  He started to spin to land in push-up position, but the blows struck his arms, chest, and then head.  Hank flailed wildly with his hand, striking the older man almost by chance.  Ito sensei was knocked aside as if he’d been hit by a piledriver.  Tucking into a roll and flipping back to his feet, the older man seemed briefly shaky.  He moved back in, closer to Hank.

The class collectively blinked, realizing the first skirmish was over.  Hank lay on the ground, but was completely unhurt.  Ito Sensei was on his feet, but had taken a powerful blow.

The old man took the moment of calm to explain.  “I only struck for the head once I was sure he wouldn’t be hurt.  Note that I physically dominated, but Mr. Declan hasn’t really lost anything yet, while I have taken a hit.  Consider that appearances are not always what they seem.  Also ask yourselves whether you would have fared so well as Mr. Declan.”

Hank had risen to his feet again.

“I’m surprised that I could sweep your feet from you, kohai.  I thought you could fly.  That would prevent a leg sweep from succeeding.”

Hank blinked, then lifted silently into the air.

Ito Sensei struck quickly with his staff, to the chest, groin, and top of the head.  The staff moved in a blur, and the sound of contact was like a bullet hitting a boulder.  Hank blocked the first shot.  While the second two hit, they didn’t seem to do any damage.  Ito Sensei began backing away.

Hank moved forward move aggressively now, flying at the old man.  There was another strike, and this time Hank tried to grab the staff.

Toni leaned toward Jade.  “Sensei just started to use his ki,” she whispered.

Ito sensei raced around behind Hank, striking again, three times, each strike faster than the last.  On the third strike, Hank grabbed the staff and wrenched it away.  He looked at it in satisfaction for a moment before throwing it away.

But the staff had been a distraction.  With Hank’s attention momentarily occupied, Ito sensei seemed to blur.  One moment he was in front of Hank, the next moment he was against the wall.  A white cord spun out and settled over Hank’s right hand.  Before Hank could react, the cord had tightened.

Hank pulled back, hard.  The result was that Ito Sensei literally flew toward him, holding the rest of the cord.  Before Hank could do more than blink, the sensei had rocketed past him, spinning, unwinding, wrapping, winding more cord around Hank.  The sensei reversed the instant he touched down, racing back toward Hank in a blur and striking at Hank’s feet.  This time, the goal wasn’t to sweep those feet out of the way, it was to set a floating target spinning.  Before Hank could respond, he had spun heels-over-head in mid-air, and a dozen move twists of rope had bound him.  His legs were bound together and only his left arm remained untangled.  As he reached over to begin pulling the ropes free, Ito Sensei took the other end of the cord – a loop – and made a perfect cast into the bright red bars of the ‘capture cage.’  The loop settled over a hook which suddenly retracted, and began to reel in at high speed.  Still stunned by the speed of the entire encounter, Hank was suddenly pulled forward.

With a look of surprise on his face, Hank gave up his attempt to loosen the loops of cord.  Instead, he concentrated, using the full strength of his flight ability to pull away.  But the cord wouldn’t break, and the winch motor was too strong.  Somehow, the cord had been looped or tied so that it wasn’t unwrapping at all, but was pulling tighter instead.

And within moments, Hank had been pulled inside the cage.

Ito Sensei stepped forward, careful to stay out of Hank’s reach.  “Do you yield?”

Hank glared, then slumped.  “Yes, sir.”

“Sensei.”

“Yes, sensei.”

Immediately, Tolman sensei stepped forward to begin releasing Hank.

Ito sensei faced the class.  “The winch motor was useful, but not essential.  Likewise, the capture cage was not necessary.  Tying him up, in itself, would not have sufficed.  He could have flown at me, as an intelligent but blunt projectile.  I had to use techniques not merely to ‘rope him’, but also to tie him down.”

“You have just seen a highly trained human gain advantage over an extremely powerful mutant.  Did I use tricks?  Of course!  That is one of the things my school will teach.  There are many tricks to be aware of.  Gas, poisons, flashes of blinding light, ropes, smoke screens, and the ubiquitous gun.  Do not be contemptuous of ‘ordinary humans.’  I hope to teach you that any of you, all of you, can be vulnerable.

“I also hope to teach you speed and control, bare-handed techniques, planning, awareness, and naturally, how to create your own arsenal of tricks and techniques.

“But before that, we will begin with the basics.  Tolman shihan will instruct you, while I examine you individually.  Shihan…?”

It was at the end of class that the real crisis came.  Martial arts is a sweaty and physical process, and like all high school gym classes, it ended with a shower.  Since they hadn’t changed ahead of time, Jade was caught by surprise.  Tolman sensei led the girls into the locker room, assigned them each a locker, and gave them a combination lock.

“Jinn and I can share the same locker, sensei.”

Sensei nodded, handing Jinn the lock, along with a slip of paper that had both her combination and locker number on it.  “I suppose you’ll only need a single towel, as well.”

“Hai, sensei,” Jade reflexively bowed, but her heart was suddenly beating a mile a minute, and her skin had gone clammy.

Jinn looked at her with a blank expression, but Jade knew that to Jinn’s vision, she had suddenly exploded in yellow.  Not needing to converse, the two of them worked slowly at the locker, while the girls around them disrobed for the showers.

It was easier for Jinn to survey the crowd.  Although her eyes subconsciously followed the direction of her gaze, she wore dark glasses, concealing her attention.  In any case, she actually “saw” with her entire face (with her entire body, when necessary), so it was far less obvious that she was studying particular people.

Many girls in the class were freshmen like herself, and many of them seemed similarly reluctant to disrobe in a public place.  On the other hand, the older girls seemed to have little reluctance, and that example pushed the younger girls on.

It was nice to see that there were several other girls who had about the same figure that she had (or rather, that Jade had).  That was to say: none.  Little or no breast development, no curves, no pubic hair, and a training bra worn more for hope than necessity.

There were also girls at the opposite end of the spectrum: D-cup busts and lush figures, completely adult except for age.  And there was everything in between.

More important was surveying the crowd to search for colors of suspicion, or the ultra-violet purple that signaled mutant powers such as a mind-reader.  Such a disaster could be quite literally life-threatening in this situation.  Fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case here.

She noted the care that some girls were taking with their sanitary pads, carefully but inconspicuously wrapping the pads up, for deposit in the trash on the way to the showers.  The oh-so-casual arrangement of panties, concealing both the crotch of said panties (and any tell-tale stains) as well as hiding the new pad that waited there.  It seemed there was an art to making your period as unobtrusive as possible, and at the same time deliberately not noticing the periods of other girls.

More and more girls had left for the showers now, and the situation was becoming critical.  Jinn finished dropping and folding the last of her “self”.  She had already packed away her dress, wig, face, and bodysuit.  There was nothing left but gloves now.  And far worse, her unusual situation had drawn attention, making it even more difficult for Jade to escape notice.  And she didn’t have a clue what to do.

Reluctantly, she dropped her gloves on the pile and vanished.

Jade had been slowly undressing, and growing more and more panicked.  The panty trick wouldn’t work here!  She couldn’t wear panties to the shower.  And if her gross little wiener was exposed to the other girls – she didn’t want to think about what would happen.  If only there was some way to keep tucked in.  When she was tucked, she didn’t look much different from the other pre-pubescent girls.  But what could she do?  It wasn’t like Jinn could hold her.

And then an idea came to her.  What if Jinn could hold her?

At that moment, the gloves dropped onto Jinn’s pile, and the memories filled her.

Jade was already down to bra and panties.  It was time for the moment of truth.  She could charge Jinn into just about any physical object.  What if she cast Jinn into her own wiener?  Then Jinn could hold the disgusting thing up in a tuck, so that she’d look like a proper girl.

With the guise of preparing to remove her panties, Jade reached down inside her underwear and touched herself there.  A moment’s concentration, and she activated Jinn.

For Jinn, there were two ways she could come into existence.  She could be created as a “person”, in which case she felt like she had a physical, ghostly body.  She shifted the pieces of material around so that they became congruent with her skin.  As she did that, the items would appear to inflate, as the began to react as if she were physically inside of them.  The advantage was that she felt like she had an actual body, and could move and react normally.

OR, instead of holding her body solid and forcing the items to conform to her, she could let her body flow like liquid, and fill the item, conforming to it.  She usually did this when she was charged into something like a sheet or blanket, or perhaps a tool like a brush or mop.  This took much more mental effort to coordinate her movements, and she wasn’t as graceful or dexterous, but she could often use her “body” much more effectively, and in ways that didn’t mimic normal human musculature.

Now, she discovered something of a third style, a blending of the two.  Cast into a physical appendage, she flowed and spread, coursing along Jade’s skin until she occupied the entire surface.  Her shape was human, but she was not.  She was a shell, with a “grip” on every aspect of Jade’s skin – and at the same time, she filled Jade’s body – and yet, she was Jinn, not Jade.

And yet, she was Jade, too.

First things first.  Controlling the surface of her skin, she took the offensive appendage and tucked it out of the way, firmly pressing it into the waiting crease until almost nothing showed.  The annoying little spheres that were her testicles were gently pressed until they flowed back into her body cavity (where they belonged).  The empty sac of her scrotum turned out to be surprisingly useful.  Stretching it out, pulling, spreading, it folded back over the tucked position of her nasty organ.  The excess flesh of her scrotum could be pulled and positioned until it formed a set of fleshy lips, covering her nasty thing, and giving the appearance of a normal girl’s labia.  Her all-around vision confirmed that the appearance was correct… provided that she didn’t do something absurd, like spreading her legs wide and giving a view straight up her crotch.  She was judging by the girls she’d seen shaving her legs in Poe.  Judging by that, this disguise looked pretty good.

The thought positively sung with ecstasy.  She’s done it!  I’ve done it!  I’m a girl!

Except that it wasn’t her thought!  That is, it was a Jade-her though, not a Jinn-her thought.  Can you hear me?

What?  Can you hear me?  She answered herself.

She never really thought of herself as “Jade” or “Jinn.”  Those were labels that allowed her to converse with other people.  But she herself never had a problem keeping track of herself.  There was her-here and her-there, whichever form she was in.  Soon enough it would all be just-her, all the memories and events joined together again.  So she didn’t really think of herself as having a Jade-half and a Jinn-half.  It was all just different versions of her.  But to hear the thoughts of other-her … that was weird.

Particularly since there was leakage across all her senses.  She could see in color, but it was only in the forward direction.  She had her normal gray “vision” all around, and the colors associated with emotions, but it was a different sense from vision, and it didn’t go away when she blinked.

She could feel her skin – two different ways.  There was the pressure awareness of being Jinn, bound to every contour and fold in that skin.  Then there was the actual feel of being Jade, and being inside the living flesh.

And her thoughts kept running into each other.  It was like she was thinking for two people at once, but they were very close to one another, thinking almost the same things.

She tried to move her hand, to take off her bra.  At least she could finally take a shower properly.  None of the other girls would look twice at her.

Her hands flopped spastically behind her back, controlled by two separate sets of impulses.

Okay, I can do this!  She concentrated, and both of her moved their hands together.  It was a little awkward, but she accomplished unhooking her bra.  Slipping out of the panties was easier.

It was magnificent to be a girl (almost).  To walk naked into the showers with the other girls, unafraid of how they’d react, the hatred they’d show her.  And although it still felt a little odd to be tucked into place down there, having the proper contours, finally looking like she was supposed to look… it was such a thrill that she practically felt like she was walking on air.

A moment later, she realized she was.  Her feet were an inch above the floor.  She was totally puzzled until she realized that as Jinn, she only pretended to walk.  In actual fact, she floated along at ground height.  And being lifted by every single inch of skin was almost exactly like what it felt like to float in a pool.

Getting back down on the ground was easy, but confusing.  She had completely lost track of which ‘her’ was which.  There were definitely two of her, but they both saw and felt with both senses, and being so closely connected mentally, they both had some access to the other’s motor skills.  Thoughts and emotions bled back and forth between then so that she neither knew nor cared who had thought what.  She/they just worked on looking as natural as possible, as she stood there naked, waiting for a shower.

Fortunately, none of the other young girls seemed inclined to talk.  They were, all of them, taking in the entire scene with wide eyes.  Most of the freshmen like Jade let their hands fall casually, covering their private area.  Jade did the same, almost glowing with the joy of feeling feminine.

Unlike the freshmen, the older girls were speaking and renewing old acquaintances.

“Look like a good class this year?”

“Might be some challenge to it.  I liked that black girl – she looked pretty damn good.”

“Maybe.  I liked the strong guy.  I could beat on him all day long.”

“If he’ll let you.  I think he’s still getting the hang of things, but a couple of times he moved pretty damn fast.  I swear, this time I am finally going to master this class and move up to one of the advanced courses, like Beaumont’s karate class.”

“Fitzgibbon’s Shao-Lin kung fu is cooler.”

Jade’s turn finally came and she reveled in the experience, shampooing her hair, soaping her body up, being just another one of the girls.  She could feel the dream.  This was her identity, this was what she needed.  Oh, there were so many other things she wanted, so many things to do and explore and accomplish, but first she needed to achieve this for real.

That was the heartache mixed with her joy.  A part of her knew that, however good her disguise was, she wasn’t really what she was supposed to be.  She was a freak, an ugly disgusting freak.

But, her other half said, thinking in parallel, is my problem any worse than others have?  Even with her head covered in shampoo, she could still see through her spirit-vision.  The shower was a tall stainless steel column in the center, with four shower heads.  To her left and right were a blonde and brunette (so her memory said, with eyes closed they both had gray hair), chattering away about the class.  They were obviously upperclassmen, and both had been fairly experienced in class.  And directly across from her was another freshman (she thought).  The girl had large, expressive eyes, bright blue with no whites.  Her skin was beginning to show signs that it was turning to scales, and naked in the shower, it was obvious that she was also beginning to grow a tail.  Her fingers and toes were growing more pointed, and her entire head had the first hints of an upcoming wedge shape, with a pointed chin and widening forehead.  In other words, a true freak.

How can I be so concerned with my own minor problem, when other people have REAL issues?

But her problem didn’t seem minor.  It was a need that burned inside her, always and forever.  At times, like now, the dream seemed so close she could taste it, and so far that she would never arrive.

She vowed to herself that she would learn from this.  The world is full of people whose outside doesn’t match their inside.  I need to remember how I feel, and treat others with the understanding and compassion that I’d ask for.

Whateley Academy   September 7, Thursday evening

After dinner, everyone on the floor seemed to gravitate toward the sunroom to do their homework.  Jade was filling out the brief page of English homework (identifying verbs and nouns) while Jinn was reading ahead on physics.

The sunroom wasn’t really large enough, particularly considering how some of the boys liked to sprawl out.  Since most of the students were gay, Jade had expected things to divide up with a guy-side and a girl-side, and maybe the TGs in the middle as a buffer zone.

Instead, there was the TV-side and the study-side.  After a little conflict, the TV-side was sent to the sunroom on the next floor up (which had a bigger TV anyway) and those left behind set up for full-time study.  Shortly after that, a few sophomores and juniors wandered down, abandoning their own sunroom when the television crowd took over.

Jade was getting to know a few of the other students, but she tended to hang around “Team Kimba.”  The problem was, the sunroom wasn’t nearly large enough.  Fortunately, they’d come to an arrangement that only took up one medium table and two chairs.

Tennyo floated upside down.  It wasn’t that she defied gravity so much as ignored it.  Her hair didn’t pay any attention to which way was up, and neither did the rest of her.  So she either stood on the ceiling or floated upside down in a half-sitting position as she did her reading or wrote out homework.  Her only problem was that she had no place to rest her books or papers.

Hank followed Tennyo’s lead.  He was far and away the strongest flyer, but he didn’t have it down to an unconscious act, the way Tennyo did.  So he tended to drift around a bit, and as he got engrossed in his work he drifted back down to the floor.  This tended to drop him into Toni or Fey’s lap.  Although both girls complained, it seemed to Jade that they were really treating it more like a game.

Toni and Fey were both hopelessly grounded.  They took the two chairs and spread out over the table.

Jade spent a while wondering how she’d fit in to the cramped space, but realized that (as Jinn) she didn’t need to be in human form to read.  So, bringing in an extra sheet (and speaker disk, of course), she charged Jinn into the sheet.  Jinn used two corners of the sheet to hold the book, and the rest of the sheet folded into a soft chair for Jade that floated in the airspace above their table.  It was nice because whenever she got tired of the chair, she could twist around and stretch out on a virtual bed.

This made for pretty strange study group, even by Whateley standards.  And while Toni and Fey were ground-bound, they still weren’t normal.  The black girl was idly fiddling with her pencil as she studied, and it could be immensely distracting to watch the wooden pencil as it spun and twirled through her fingers in a display that would have made Houdini envious.  Fey appeared more passive, but one had the sense of dark clouds or bright glows forming and vanishing around her head and hands as she became engrossed in her work.  There was nothing actually visible, but there was the sense of something almost visible.

Oddest of all this strange bunch, though, was Ayla.  She had the corner room, which shared a wall with the sunroom.  Ayla’s power allowed her to phase, becoming intangible.  Furthermore, she could do this to just a portion of her body, such as a hand or arm.  If she lost concentration she didn’t solidify in the middle of another object, causing a catastrophic injury.  Instead, she began to “disrupt” whatever she was phasing through.  This caused different effects depending on the nature of the target.  On her own side, it was apparently uncomfortable, but not severely harmful.  It also meant that if she accidentally relaxed, the mounting discomfort quickly reminded her to pay attention.

For the study sessions, this meant that Ayla left most of her body in her own room.  While lying on her bed (in her room), she let her head and arms protrude through the wall and onto the table.  As necessary, she’d pull a book through the wall and back into her room, then bring out another one.  An even worse problem was that she wore headphones for a truly atrocious band.  Discordant and using individually varying rhythms, the music that leaked out of Ayla’s headphones was pretty nasty.  And since the headphone cord passed intangibly through the walls the actual stereo was back in Ayla’s room, no one else could turn down the volume.

“Hey, Jinn,” Tennyo called, upside down.  “Could you hold a book stand or something for me?”

“Yeah, I suppose,” the sheet answered.  “You need a writing board, too?”

“Well, I didn’t want to sound greedy.”  The spiky-haired girl grinned.  “Besides, it isn’t really fair to tire you out like that.”

“No, it’s okay,” the sheet said.  “I keep telling you guys.  I don’t get fatigue.  It’s not like I’m using muscles or anything.  The only problem is finding enough corners on the sheet to hold things – oh, what an idiot!”

“What?”

One corner of the sheet twisted itself up in an odd gesture.  “I don’t need to use the sheet to hold the book.  It’s better if I just be the book.  Then I can hold it much more easily.  It’s easier to turn the pages, too.”

Tennyo gave a brief cross-eyed look.  “So if you did that to the book you’re reading, would you be reading yourself?”

“Well, it’s a matter of where I spend my concentration…”  The sheet floated down to the floor and forced Jade into a standing position.

“Huh?” the young girl said, having ignored the conversation.

The sheet suddenly dropped, and Jade simultaneously perked up.  “Oh!  Of course.  Just a minute!”  She ran off to their room and came back with a pair or large workbooks, both about 9 x 12 inches.

“We can write on these,” she told her roommate.  “Hey, give me your pencil too, so that it won’t fall if you let go.  And your book, and my book…”  She concentrated for a moment, then the objects all floated back into the air.  Jade climbed back into her “chair”, but this time her book floated in front of her, held in place in mid-air.  At her right side was a workbook with paper, pencil and pen, also held stationary in mid-air.

“Yeah, I can manage this,” the sheet said.  “The trick is, you can’t pull your book or pen or anything too far away.”  Both items floated to four feet above the chair.  “This is my limit.  If you pull them farther than that I’ll have to let go.  All the pieces of ‘me’ have to be in about a six-foot globe.”  For her own part, the book that had been held by the sheet floated now under the sheet.  It appeared to be being read by no one, pages occasionally turning.  Beside the book, a pad of paper floated, and a pencil occasionally wrote brief notes on the paper.

Tennyo took up station to Jade’s left, floating upside down again.  This time the book hovered wherever she placed it, and held itself open and set to the proper page.  Tennyo would occasionally pick her pen up (from mid-air) and fill in a bit of her workbook (also floating).

“Hey,” Hank said, floating over, “That looks really handy.  I don’t suppose you could hold my laptop, could you?  That’s the hardest part of levitating while doing homework.  If I want to type, I need to rest it on something.”

The sheet gave a sighing sound.  “Sure Hank.  Anyone else?”

Ayla looked up from where her head and hands were propped up on the table.  “Well, if it isn’t too much trouble, I could really do with a reading lamp.  I’ve got one in my room.  Oh, and I’ll probably need an extension cord.”  She pulled back into the wall and vanished.

“How about me, too?” Toni asked.  “I don’t really need it, I just think it would be cool to hang my book in the air like that.”

“Yeah, I guess,” the sheet answered.  “Why not?  But remember, everything has to be in a six foot radius.  And I only have the strength to hold one person up.  Well, another eighty pounds after Jade.”

Ayla’s head poked back through the wall.  “What an idiot!  Sorry, I only brought one lamp.  I knew I should have packed a few more.”  Passing intangibly through the table, she plugged the small desk lamp into a socket on the floor.

Fey squinted.  “Ugg.  Halogen?  Isn’t that a little… harsh?”

Ayla snorted.  “Figures.  Miss Sensitive doesn’t like halogen.”

Fey blinked, drawing attention to her unusually large eyes.  “Well, it isn’t uncomfortable or anything, just a little, I don’t know, glaring.”  She thought for a moment.  “You know, if you held my books and things too, I think I could arrange lighting for everyone.”

Ayla gave a sharp laugh.  “This isn’t going to electrocute us or anything, is it?  Or spontaneously create a swarm of homework-devouring killer beetles?”

“No,” Fey said seriously.  “There shouldn’t be any problems with this.”

She made a strange gathering gesture with her hand.  In a moment, she held a velvety golden ball, the size of a ping-pong ball.  The ball danced and pulsed with a beat like a flickering flame, but the light it gave was steady and seemed to have a color closer to sunlight than the artificial lights in the study room.  Fey lifted the ball and placed in the air just above and behind her chair.  The ball remained in place.

“Who else wants one?”

Of course, everyone wanted one.

“Wow,” Jinn said.  “I can actually see that!”

“The light?”

“Yeah.  Except I don’t see light.  I think you left behind a little tangle of mutant energy, somehow.  It’s like a knot of glowing purple string.”

“You know,” Toni decided, “it just isn’t fair that you guys get to float around in mid air while the two of us” she gestured toward Fey “are stuck on the ground like this.”

“Well,” Fey admitted, “I can cut the lines of gravity that connect to me.  I did that last night, when those pesky ninjas were bothering us.  But – I don’t know.  Using that much power left me feeling kind of strange.”

“How about a hammock?” Ayla suggested.  “Aren’t you elves supposed to be sort of arboreal?  I saw Lord of the Rings too, you know.”

“I’m not an elf!”

Ayla waved a hand dismissively.  “Whatever.”

“Besides, it’s not like I’ve got a hammock.”

“Oh, that’s no problem,” Ayla tossed off.  “I brought a half-dozen.  I thought I might fix up my room with them, and silk rolls up so compactly that –”

“They’re silk?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty durable.”

And before they knew it, one thing led to another.  Study was briefly disrupted while they got permission from Mrs. Horton to hang a few items.  Ayla used her abilities to feel through the walls and locate studs and support beams.  Hank pushed nails in with his thumb or twisted in hooks with his bare hands.  Not only did Ayla end up with hooks to hang hammocks in her own room, but one corner of the sunroom has been permanently reserved as the “Kimba Korner.”  Everyone objected to the spelling, but it still seemed to stick somehow.  And this time, when they finally settled back in to study, no one was trapped on the ground.

Jade sat or stretched out in the middle, lying on a sheet that was supported by nothing.  Hank and Tennyo floated, their books and laptop computers floating around them in just the right position.  Wherever they placed something, it stayed.  Ayla was half out of the wall again, but this time she was halfway up the wall, like some bizarrely mounted trophy:  “Student, caught at study.”  A half dozen glowing orbs were positioned just right, providing light for everyone.  Fey reclined in a hammock up at the seven-foot level.  As she worked, she would occasionally pick up her drink and sip through the straw, then set the drink back down in the air beside her hammock.

Toni was too energetic to stay in any one position for long.  She would alternate between the other two hammocks or drop down to the ground to sprawl in a chair.  Her favorite position, though, was hanging upside down like Tennyo.  Only she didn’t ignore gravity, she played with it.  From the ceiling hung a trio of ropes, with loops in the end.  Toni would dangle upside down, suspended by one foot through a loop.  Or she would “stand” upright, her feet in two different loops making perfect splits while she toyed with the third rope for balance and read a mid-air book.

They had finally settled into deep study when the flash went off.

Mrs. Horton smiled as she lowered the camera.  “Just had to preserve that for the scrap book.  I think I’ll call it, ‘Team Kimba settles in to study.’”

When Toni got up to exit the room, leaving all her study materials behind, Jade quietly slipped out of her chair to follow.  She followed Toni out of the sunroom and into the girls’ bathroom across the hall.  Knowing what she planned to say to the other girl, she couldn’t help seeing how incredibly feminine Toni was.  The shape of her hips, the way she walked, the movements of her legs.  Perhaps “feminine” wasn’t the right word.  It had some side connotations of delicacy and passivity that were completely lacking in the black girl’s manner.  No, Toni was more like a panther.  Graceful, female, dangerous, but not a bit demure.

Jade followed Toni into the bathroom, but stopped at the sinks while the black girl headed into a stall.  Jade quickly checked – there was no one else in there.  Then she stared at herself in the mirror.

She really loved this uniform.  The blazer and pleated skirt went so well together.  She pulled back her hair, studying the small jade studs she had in her ears.  They looked okay, but they didn’t exactly go with the outfit.  Then she looked at herself.

It was okay when she glanced at the mirror and avoided looking at her face.  At herself.  Then she could imagine that there was just some other girl over there in the mirror.  The joy of being able to dress like this, like a girl, to live this life and be what she was supposed to be – it still thrilled her.  But when she looked at her face, she couldn’t help seeing him.  Jared Reilley.  A name she’d tried to blot out of her mind.  The poor girl in the mirror had a pretty uniform.  Nice hair, a little plain perhaps.  Her earrings were okay.  No figure to speak of, naturally, although the blazer seemed to give her an okay waist.  And then there was that boy’s face.  His face.  Jared Reilley.  How could she dare to go out in public with that ugly boy’s face ruining everything?

Maybe she could use makeup to hide that ugly face.  But she didn’t know how, really.  She was a little too young to use much, and doing it wrong only brought more attention to her ugly face.  And she didn’t know how to do it right.

She was willing to learn, though.  She’d study for hours, days, weeks.  She’d put in whatever work was necessary to learn how to be a girl… if only she could be one for real.  Was that too much to ask for?

The flushing of the toilet a moment later signaled an end to her introspection.  It was time.

Toni came out and washed her hands, then critically inspected her perfect face.

“Sempai…” Jade couldn’t raise her eyes to meet the other girl’s gaze.

“Yeah?  What’s up?”

Jade had to force out the words.  She’d practiced it to herself, but now the words were getting all jumbled up.  “Back when we were all introducing ourselves, you said that you’d gained all sorts of abilities with your ki.  And you also said that your ki flows had changed, well you sort of said that, and that it was those changed flows that were turning you into a girl.”

Toni seemed to think for a moment.  “Yeah, that’s about right, I guess.  Although the explanation of how I’m changing was in other conversations I think, and had more to do with my body template influencing the ki.”

“Uh, right.”  Jade plowed on, regardless.  “Well, you said you can see the ki flows in other people, and I know that move you pulled on the ninja last night was a ki move, so you can change the flows in other people, too.”

“Uh oh…”

“Sempai… could you somehow change me?  Change my flows?  I need to be more – I need to be a girl.  I have to be.”  It was hard to hold back the tears, but she’d never be able to finish her request if she started crying.  “I don’t care how much it hurts.  I guess it might be a little dangerous.  But I don’t care!  Please, Sempai, can’t you help me?”

There, she’d finished.  Now it didn’t matter so much if she cried.  She held back on the sobs, but she felt the tears starting to fall.

“Um, Jade… Man, how do I explain this?”

Still looking at her feet, Jade felt the other girl reach over for her shoulders.

“Look, I didn’t alter things deliberately.  I, well, I mean, I would have if someone had given me the choice.  Believe me, I know exactly what you’re feeling.  But what I’m saying is that I don’t know exactly how my change happened.  I know why my template is for a girl’s body, I just don’t know how it got that way.  And the ki flows are different, but is that cause, or effect?”

Somewhat tentatively, the taller girl hugged Jade.  “And I can’t just change your ki flows.  First off, triggering a pressure point is a lot different from changing a flow permanently.  I sure don’t know how to do that.  Second of all, even if I could, it would be unbelievably dangerous.  Sort of like severing all your blood vessels and rearranging them, then connecting them back up.  And hoping that things still worked.  I could poke around and try, but there’s about a thousand percent higher chance that I’d make your kidneys fail or something like that. This is very delicate stuff we’re talking about, and we’d have to get it right the first time.”

Jade found it surprisingly comforting how the larger girl was gently rubbing her back.

“Anyway, you don’t need to worry about your ki flows yet,” Toni continued.  “The sure aren’t masculine.”

“Really?  My ki looks like a girl’s?”

“Well, not exactly.  Like a kid’s really, but at least it doesn’t flow like a boy’s.”

“Thank you, Sempai.”  The words were whispered.

“Sure.”  Toni released her.  “And don’t worry.  You have years ahead of you.  We’ll figure something out, I’m sure of it.”

“Homework, please.  Hand it to the student in front of you, and pass it up to the front of each row.”

Everyone groaned.

“I see that some of you apparently didn’t bother with your first night of homework.”

There was grumbling from much of the class, but no one gave a real response.  The teacher waited, as if expecting something.  Finally, she said, “Well, isn’t anyone going to tell me that they have super powers now, and they don’t need to study stupid stuff like nouns and verbs?”

There was more muttering, but no one actually confessed to having that exact belief.

“Oh, come on.  There’s always one.”

Finally, a short, thin boy in back raised his hand.

“Yes?”

He cleared his throat.  “Excuse me, Miss Devlin, but we have super powers now, and I don’t see why we need to study stuff like nouns and verbs.”

The teacher gave him a wry smile.  “Thank you.  Perhaps a touch lacking in sincerity, but I appreciate the effort.”  Turning to look at the class at large, she said, “Even if no one said it aloud, I’m sure many of you believe this.  I – oh, heck, I’m just going to play the tape.  You can see for yourself.”

She stepped over to the television, hanging in the front left corner of the room, and pressed “play” on the VCR under the TV.  After the static cleared, the picture showed a classic live-news scene:  a caped superhero facing off against a villain.  In this case, the caped hero was a large white man, in a red and orange costume with a bright red cape.  He was floating in mid air.  The villain, on the other hand, wore a pinstripe suit in midnight blue, and carried an accompanying top hat and briefcase.

“This was taken sixteen years ago,” Miss Devlin explained.  “The one in the cape is ‘The Flying Bulldozer’ and he’s facing ‘Doctor Debt.’”

On the TV screen, they began speaking.  The ‘Flying Bulldozer’ spoke first.  “You don’t got no chance of gettin’ away from me this time, you stoopid Doctor.”

The man in pinstripes carefully set his briefcase down.  “If you’re implying that my intellect is unable to match your brawn, then I must disagree.  As you must be expecting by now, I have made further improvements in my flight shoes.  In addition, I have a delightful collection of other devices that I’m simply dying to try under actual stress conditions.  My ‘chances,’ you deluded dimbulb, statistically seem to be running about 68% in my favor.

“However, I recently encountered an actuary who has suggested a less risky and more profitable approach.  I’m going to surrender.”

“Dis better not be some kinda trick!”

“Of course it’s a trick, you idiot.  However, it happens to be a trick of jurisprudence.”

Miss Devlin shut off the tape.

“Officially, the battle was won by the Flying Bulldozer.  Doctor Debt gave up and came along passively.  Of course, he did have a trick up his sleeve.  Back in those days, the insurance laws were a bit different.  The Flying Bulldozer was always rather enthusiastic of his pursuit of wrongdoers, and generated quite a bit of what we’d call ‘collateral damage.’  As a result of the lack of damage this time, Doctor Debt received a modest award from the insurance company, which actually made it more profitable for him to give up.  This was one of many cases that helped shape our current laws.

“But I digress.  The true battle was fought in the court of public opinion.  When that segment was shown on the news, how do you think people reacted?  How did you feel?”

Hands went up, and Miss Devlin began calling on people.

“Well,” one girl said, “‘Flying Bulldozer’, how stupid is that name?  And he really did sound dumb.”

A boy in the front row added, “The Doctor was sharp!  Is he still around?  I mean, cape-boy came off like the total fool, man.”

“No, the Doc was deliberately using all those big words.  And FB – who’s going to use his real name? – he might not have done so well, but look at the muscles.  I’ll bet he’s got no shortage of chicks.”

As the consensus passed around the class, most people did agree that the ‘hero’ had sounded fairly ignorant.  Pointed questions revealed that, yes, this would probably affect the amount of respect he received, and impact his career.

Miss Devlin took control of the conversation once more.  “The best part of this story, though, is that the Flying Bulldozer was a graduate of Whateley.  Well, a Whateley student.  He flunked several classes, including this exact English class, back when it was being taught by my predecessor.  He felt that with his powers, he didn’t need to know anything about language or writing or parts of speech.  And you should see his written communications – unbelievable!

“So,” she asked, peering over the class again.  “who still believes the original statement?  Who believes that with super powers, you don’t need to know anything about nouns and verbs?  Hands, please.”

The outcome was obvious.

After charging Jinn into a pair of gloves for her noon job, Jade headed up for lunch, hoping to meet up with at least some of the crew.  She’d missed them in the crowd yesterday.

Entering, she was struck again by the magnificence of the faceted crystalline dome and the garden-like interior with its trees and plantings.  Unfortunately, the splendor of the dining hall didn’t add to the quality of the food.  Cafeteria food was dreck, the world over.  At least Whateley had a better selection than they’d had back in junior high.  She lifted up her lunch tray and looked around.  Then she spotted Mary and Juanita sitting together.  Mary gave her a wave and indicated the seat next to her.  Apparently they were taking the ‘little sister’ bit seriously.  She was almost at the table, when Toni came hurrying into the hall.

Toni looked around and spotted Jade. “JADE!” She hurried towards the smaller girl, carrying a textbook in her arm. “DUDE! Dudedudedude!”

Jade, mortified, hissed under her breath.  “Toni!”

“Okay, Dudette! I got good news!”

Angel looked up, interested. “Oh? What is it?”

Toni looked at the two upperclassmen and then at Jade. “Uhm, I’m gonna tell Jade in private, and then let her decide what she’s gonna tell you.” She led Jade off to another table.

“So, what is it?”

“Well, I started thinking about it after your little meltdown the first night, but last night in the bathroom clinched it.  I mean, I know how you feel.”

Jade looked at the beautiful girl.  “How could you possibly know how I feel?”  It still brought tears to her eyes.  How could her sempai be so condescending?

“How?  Jade, you keep thinking that I was always like this.  But three months ago, I was just like you: on the outside, looking in, desperately wanting to be able to be beautiful and free, like my sisters.”  She lowered her voice and moved in close.  “Jade, three months ago, I was a guy.”  She leaned back and spoke normally again.  “It may not show on the outside, but I still feel it on the inside.  I lucked out.  My mutation saved me.  But I also know that I lucked out BIG TIME.”

Jade blinked. “But – I thought that you were always saying ‘Stuff happens, deal with it, and get on with your life.’”

“Oh, that?  That was just for Fey and Tennyo.  They’re taking all this the wrong way.  But you and me?  We know better.”

“I would,” Jade grumped, “if I were changing into a beautiful girl like the rest of you.”

“Ah!” Toni grinned. “But you could be!”

“What?”

“You could be. Listen up, there’s this really weird girl on campus, they call her ‘Jello’.”

“Jello?”

“Yeah, you’ll probably see her around school.  The thing is, she’s sort of an ‘anti-exemplar’; her power affects her body like an exemplar, but she doesn’t have the body image template that other exemplars have – nobody seems to know why.  As a result, she sort of looks like a wax doll that somebody left next to a hot stove.  Her face sort of sloughs around and her arms and legs kind of dangle.  She can pull herself together so that she looks normal, but she has to think about it, and she sort of loses her grip on it and then it starts slipping again.”

“ICK! But what does all that have to do with me?”

“Well, I asked a teacher about her condition, and the teacher told me to check out this book at the library.” Toni held up the book.  Its title was ‘SUPER POWERS AND YOU: Understanding the Nature of Mutant Abilities’.

“Anyway, I started reading it, and I found this-” Toni opened the book to a part well in the middle.

Jade stared in awe at the huge tome.  “How did you read all of THAT?  It must be four hundred pages thick!”

“It was back while I was waiting to be fitted for my school uniforms and I had some time to kill.  I just sort of slipped into speed reading mode.  Anyway, listen up- ‘Many scientists believe that the ‘exemplar’ and the ‘shapeshifter’ conditions are just different applications of a single mutant trait that allows the mutant to control their body at a molecular level.  There are very few mutants who exhibit both the exemplar and the shifter traits.  Those rare few that do tend to exhibit very high power levels in both traits.  The current theory is that in the exemplar trait, the body form is tightly controlled by the mutant’s Body Image Template, or BIT, which is fixed and unchanging, while in the shifter trait, the BIT is open ended, allowing the mutant to consciously adjust the Template, and thus their body form.  The rigid control of the Body Image Template that the exemplar trait has, allows the body control to give the mutant the superhuman strength, speed, vigor, and intelligence that defines the exemplar, while the shifter trades the advantages of that definition for plasticity’.”  Toni looked up, her eyes asparkle.

Jade looked at her askance.  “Huh? What was all that?”

“Okay, it’s a little thick, but is was written by an academic – anyway what this guy is saying, is that mutants with the trait that causes either exemplar or shifters, control their body using this Body Image Template thing.  This poor girl ‘Jello’ somehow doesn’t have a Body Image Template, so her body control power is sort of stuck in ‘wet clay’ mode.  I understand that she has to sleep in a form fitting tub of water, so that her brain doesn’t get squished by her own weight.”

Jade tried not to look down at her gravy on mashed potatoes.  “That’s all very – icky – Sempai, but what does it have to do with me?  I’m not an exemplar OR a shifter.”

Toni grinned.  “Oh? Aren’t you?”

She tried not to lose her patience with the older girl.  “If I were an exemplar, do you honestly think that I’d still look like a twelve-year-old?”

Toni’s grin almost split her face.  “You would, if that’s what your Body Image Template was set on.  It would even keep you from getting superstrength and all the other stuff, ‘cause all of that isn’t part of the Image.”

Jade’s eyes blinked.  In her mind’s ear, she heard the sploink, sploink! sound effect, as the pieces fell into place.  “You mean – I could be keeping myself from growing up?  This ‘Body Image Template’ that I’ve got in my head is keeping me at twelve years old?”

“That’s what occurred to me.”

The thought was too good to be true.  “But, Sempai, what do I DO about it?”

“Well, the entire point of the ‘shifter’ bit of my info-dump was that the Body Image Template can be changed. Maybe one of the doctors or the mentalists here at the school can help you with that.”

“But – but what if they change the template, so that I can grow up, and I start turning into a boy?”

Toni laid a reassuring hand on Jade’s shoulder.  “You’re missing something important here, Jade- look at yourself.  Do you look like a boy?  Even a twelve-year-old boy?  No.  You look like a twelve-year-old girl.  I think that your Body Image Template was already at work, but then something happened when you were twelve or so, and the shock of whatever it was traumatized you into locking your Template at twelve.

The grin slid off of Toni’s face, and she suddenly grew very serious.  “Now, Jade, this is very important.  If I’m right, there’s more at stake here than your gender.  If your Body Image Template is keeping you from maturing at a normal rate, then it may be putting a lot of stress on your body.  That can’t be healthy for you.  I want you to go to the doctors ASAP, and ask them about it.  That’s an order from your Sempai, am I understood?”

She saluted.  “Hai, Sempai!”

She spent another day braving the crowds between class.  As Jinn, it never really bothered her.  As Jinn, she was as strong as an average junior or senior boy, she couldn’t be knocked down, and she never felt any pain.  Equally important, she felt confident in herself (since Jinn she was a proper girl, even if she didn’t have a body), and Jinn’s emotions were often oddly muted.  Jade assumed that was because Jinn didn’t get any of the biological parts to emotion.  For example, she never felt the classic “adrenaline rush” as Jinn.

But being Jade was an entirely different proposition.  First of all, as Jade she had no powers.  None at all.  All she could do was make Jinn, and Jinn was elsewhere.  So Jade was left powerless.  Second, she was always a bit underconfident, since she knew she wasn’t a real girl.  Third, she was probably the smallest and weakest person in school.

The path between civics and word processing was a tricky one.  That’s where she passed the blond wookie.  He was way over seven feet tall, two or three times her weight, and everyone always gave him plenty of room.  As he passed, he knocked Jade sprawling.  She brushed herself off and hurriedly tried to gather her books.  Another girl, she looked like a sophomore, helped by grabbing the farthest book.

“What did he do that for?” Jade complained.

The brunette shrugged as she handed Jade her book.  “I don’t think he even saw you.  Guys like that, the brawns, they don’t even bother themselves watching out for our type.  Us brains have to out-think ‘em.  A lot of times that means keeping to the edge and out of their way.”

As the girl hurried off, Jade thought a lot about the comment.  She obviously wasn’t a fighter-type.  Did that mean that others would automatically assume she was a telepath or something?

And what should she do to keep from being bowled over by the bigger and rougher kids?  Was she going to have to start slinking along the edge, the way the other girl had suggested?

“Long day today,” Morrie told her.  “We’re going down below.  Here’s waders.  Those small overalls are on the hook where you left ‘em.  You can change in the bathroom there.  Pretty soon, you’re gonna have to buy a couple pair in your size.”

She worried about today’s test.  From the warnings they’d been giving her the last few days, it was obviously a test.  But she resolved to handle it, no matter how rough it got.

Stan was just locking up an extremely heavy cupboard when she came back.  “What about Jinn?,” she asked.

Morrie moved his mouth like he was chewing something unpleasant.  “You can, like, zap her into stuff whenever you feel like it, right?”

“Well, I wait for her to come back before I zap her into something new, but yeah, that’s about right.”

Morrie nodded at Stan.  “Then let’s wait till we get under.  I think a set of gloves would work pretty well today.”

“Right,” Stan chimed in.  “Less to clean.”

With that disturbing assessment, Stan pushed the cart, and they opened the back door of the basement maintenance room.

“These are the ‘physical’ tunnels,” Morrie explained.  “We don’t do much work here – it’s pretty much the guys from the physical plant.  Sometimes the stringers.  We just use ‘em to get to a sewer connect.”

The tunnel was a square concrete passageway, originally ten feet on a side.  Most of that space was taken up by pipe and conduits that stretched out of sight.  Overhead was lit by sodium lamps in protective metal cages.  After perhaps fifty feet, they came to a wider junction.  Here there was a thick steel door set at an angle into the wall.  The door itself wasn’t quite vertical, it was tipped back at about a 45-degree angle, like an old-fashioned cellar door.

“Okay, let’s suit up,” Morrie said.  He put on a miner’s helmet with headlamp, then flicked the lamp on.  He began clipping items to his clothes, such as a separate flashlight.  Finally, he handed a second helmet to Jade.  “Here’s the gloves for your friend.”

“Thanks.”  Jade slipped out a speaker disk, then charged up Jinn.  A moment later, the gloves inflated, then rose to waist height.

“You ready?” Morrie called back to Stan.  He was kneeling by the hatch, ready to unlock the huge padlock that held the massive doors closed.

There was a click-click, then Stan announced, “Ready.”

Jade turned to look, then looked again.  Stan was holding a huge shotgun-like rifle.  That is, there was a huge shotgun barrel, but also a more futuristic barrel mounted above that.  Stan tossed an identical rifle to Morrie.

“Round chambered?” Stan called.

“Chambered.” Morrie echoed, working the rifle.

“Capacitors charged?”

“Charged.”

“Lamp on?”

“On.”

“Then let’s move!”

Morrie finished unlocking the padlock then sprang back and leveled the rifle at the hatch.  “Okay, you two girls open it up.  We’ll cover you.”

“Cover us?” Jade was pleased that her voice hadn’t risen to a shriek.  “From what?”

“Oh, whatever.  Alligators, fugitives, slimies, velociraptors.”

“Real velociraptors are bigger,” Stan reminded.

“Yeah?  Lay off, Professor.”

She thought she was being set up, but still – “What about MY rifle?”

“What?”  Morrie looked confused.  “Aren’t you underage?  You have any experience with heavy c