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Note that using the forums for stories is now considered for experimental projects or for new authors who want some feedback from other authors before exposing their work to the reading community. Of course, anyone is welcome to continue to post their material here... but we hope authors will take advantage of the site features for displaying their stories to more than just the forums community.
Question Triumvirate
8 years 6 months ago - 8 years 6 months ago #1
by Paradox
Posts:
31
Gender:
Unknown
Birthdate:
Unknown
- Paradox
-
Topic Author
8 years 6 months ago #2
by Paradox
Posts:
31
Gender:
Unknown
Birthdate:
Unknown
- Paradox
-
Topic Author
8 years 6 months ago #3
by Paradox
Posts:
31
Gender:
Unknown
Birthdate:
Unknown
Triumvirate
Book 3
By Paradox
Wolf Springs, Wyoming, McKinnon Residence
The faint, haunting sound of Sarah McLaughlin’s dulcet tones floated through the air as I slowly scrolled through the information displayed on the screen on my laptop. I know it sounds cliché, the angsty teenager listening to McLaughlin while pondering deep, world issues, but really I just liked some of her music. For me, it created a soothing kind of background noise that helped ease the world away just a little bit and allowed me to focus on what I now considered a very important task.
Choosing a school.
While Mom had suggested attending the local all-inclusive school when I first moved in with her, I could tell it was done out of consideration not to pressure me into choosing the more likely of institutions for mutant teens like me: Whateley Academy. While I had looked into it on occasion, meeting and befriending Aiden had made me wonder if a regular high school would be able to offer me the services I needed. This wasn’t only speaking to my mutant power, though that was a significant factor. No, a bigger part was attending a school that was capable of coping with my own still largely out of control emotional issues. I didn’t even really need to look into our local school, nor any other school in the country for that matter, to know that they lacked the staff or the necessary training to be able to deal with a frightened mutant girl with a history of severe physical and mental abuse by foster parents as well as torture by a crazy doctor and a rogue MCO agent.
At the time, that left Whateley. According to their public website, they offered a full range of classes and services designed to both educate and train their students in the use of their mutant abilities while offering a very widespread student support system that included psychological assistance by highly trained and licensed practitioners. I was still more than a little leery about seeing a professional about my issues, the memories of torture by Doctor Taylor were simply still far too fresh, but I was self-aware enough to know that I would need to see someone about this sooner rather than later. By all accounts, Whateley seemed to have everything I could possibly want or need.
Then I saw some of their requirements. It wasn’t the education aspect or even the power training portion of the curriculum that bothered me. In fact, those aspects of it were actually quite inviting considering it would not only teach me how to better use my power, but it offered courses that lined up perfectly with my ultimate goal of going into medicine. The problem was with one of the other standard student requirements.
Combat training. I didn’t know about them at first until I talked about Whateley with Mom and that’s when she mentioned the combat classes, the training teams, and the combat finals. Apparently, one staple of Whateley is that everyone has to take these classes and even form teams for the purposes of arena-style combat. If you didn’t choose or form a team on your own, you were essentially forced into one of the school’s choosing. Now I had always been against violence and my time in San Francisco with the Smiths and the MCO hadn’t changed that. It would have been easy for me to come away from those experiences with the attitude that no one would ever hurt me again and I would be happy to use the reverse effect of my power and literally rip someone to pieces by turning a papercut into a flesh-tearing, nightmare-inducing experience. But that was exactly why I didn’t do that, it would be so easy to do it terrified me. I’d always been a person who really abhorred violence in all of its forms. While I certainly understood it existed and even that it was necessary, I wouldn’t even be there had it not been for Ashe’s extremely violent intervention, I still avoided it at all costs. To me, committing violence against someone directly violated my basic principles of offering life, first through medicine and recently through my gift of healing. To be told that if I went to Whateley I would be forced to go against my very principles was tantamount to putting a gun to my head.
The alternative of registering as a ‘non-combatant’, as they put it, held no appeal for me either since it would require me to wear a very specific armband at all times identifying me as such. I know it isn’t really a fair comparison, but to me that felt very much akin to the Jews being forced to wear Stars of David sewn into their clothing during Nazi Germany. It would only serve to paint a target on me for bullies and not for a second did I believe that their security would ensure my safety.
After Mom had told me about these requirements, an extensive search online finally hit pay dirt when I was able to locate a message board of sorts where people who had attended Whateley in the past talked about their experiences there. It was no surprise that I saw multiple references to the very things I feared, that being bullying was quite common, particularly because the school took in not only normal citizens and people aligned with heroes, but kids that came from villainous backgrounds as well. That part truly instilled a sense of fear in me about the school itself. While it touted itself as a place of neutrality where the only goal was education, I had to wonder how they could feel good about themselves when they were only making supervillains stronger and more intelligent. I suppose, if asked, they would say they were seeking to ‘enlighten’ them or perhaps get them to change their outlook on life, but unfortunately I knew from very personal experience that you can’t change those that are evil.
After reading through these recounting of events at Whateley, and realizing it was, in fact, not the safe haven for mutants they made it out to be, I made the very difficult decision that I had to find another alternative. Unfortunately, there really was no kind of alternative when it came to schooling catering to the very specific needs of mutants learning how to use their powers. I had actually resigned myself to going to Whateley simply because of a lack of options.
That was what I had been doing that morning before going on the run Aiden, Kitty, and I had planned. The school’s website had been on my laptop screen and I had been looking at it with a sense of defeat when I decided to try one more attempt at searching for alternatives. I hadn’t done it in a while now and I figured if I didn’t come up with anything this time I would just bite the bullet and hope it didn’t end up exploding out the back of my head.
After typing in the standard ‘Alternatives to Whateley’ in the search bard and clicking on the go button, I once again scrolled down through the various links displayed, all of which pretty much said there was no real alternative. I was just about to give up when the last hyperlink on the page caught my eye.
It wasn’t very innocuous, in fact it only said ‘A better alternative to Whateley’, but I couldn’t recall having ever seen it before. Intrigued, I clicked on the link and was immediately brought to the home page of a Tearmann Institute. On it’s face, it looked like just about every other private school out there, but a quick look through the opening statements on the home page quickly made me realize there was something very different about this particular school.
By late that morning, I had long since called Aiden to tell her I wouldn’t be able to make it to our run so I could pore over the various and extensive information that was provided about Tearmann. The more I read, the more I was amazed that A) this hadn’t been on the top of the search list, and
the school hadn’t been more extensively advertised to the mutant community.
The first impression I had upon reading the information on their home page, Tearmann was simply another Whateley, offering a place for mutants both for educational and power learning purposes. However, once I got passed the home page it quickly became evident that the two were quite different from one another. For one, while combat training was indeed offered, it was in no way a core curriculum nor was it a requirement for all but the most non-violent of students. Secondly, no student that was affiliated with a criminal organization, or had any kind of serious criminal history, would be admitted to the school. So, unlike Whateley, this was a place where students could go to learn and not have to worry about the kid sitting next to them in class making plans to take over the world either before or after they’d graduated.
It was a rather unique approach to mutant education and I wondered why I hadn’t heard of it before now. By all accounts, this place was my dream school. Modern, bleeding edge facilities and technologies, a staff with many years of training and experience both in the classroom and the field, the most up-to-date information on every subject being taught. How were people not flocking here?
The icing on the cake was the dorm facilities. One thing Mom had told me about was how the students were all separated into seven different dorms, and those separations were done on the basis of personal wealth, ideals, and even because of sexual preference or physical sex change. That last one was actually a closely guarded secret, that being the Poe dormitory, but Mom told me that a while back one of her friends who hadn’t been effected by the apparently magical ward that prevented people from talking about Poe informed her about the reason for the singular dorm. Instead, they were viewed by the general student population as being a house of psychotics and potentially dangerous.
That in and of itself turned me off of Whateley right from the beginning. You can’t claim to be a supposedly all inclusive learning environment that educates criminals and supervillains alongside good and decent people while at the same time segregating their students because of sexual preference or sex change. Magically forcing them not to speak about it as well, essentially telling their students that if they didn’t conform to society’s heterosexual sexual biological standards, whether it was by choice or because it was forced upon them through their mutation, they should keep themselves and who they were hidden away from others. It smacked of gross discrimination and, quite frankly, disgusted me.
So when Tearmann advertised that their dorms were based upon class year vs. any other criteria, I was greatly relieved. There was no separation based upon wealth, power, sexual identity, or anything else. Everyone from that class year roomed in that dorm for all four years. While it did end up creating a separation regarding the upper and lower classmen, that was pretty standard for any private school and they had done quite well for decades. In conjunction with this, there were very strict policies in place that precluded any student from being discriminated against based upon race, species(?), gender, sexual preference, and even personal wealth. Basically, it ensured that students were treated on an individual basis rather than lumping them into some generalized category. It also didn’t cause discrimination as a by-product, i.e only certain types of students were housed in certain dorms because of whatever reasons. There was one particular dorm that was separate from the others and wasn’t determined by class year. More it was a specialty dorm for those possessing powers that were not yet under control and had great destructive capabilities. According to the site’s literature, this dorm was designed not only to be identical to the others while also possessing extra layers of protection and security, but as a strictly temporary measure until the particular student attained proper control over his or her abilities. At that point, the student would be relocated into his or her appropriate year’s dorm. It was a good idea on paper, though how it worked in practice was a bit of a mystery since there weren’t really any testimonials.
The other interesting thing about the school was its location. Unlike Whateley, which was within the United States, Tearmann was actually located in Canada, on the west coast of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. A quick search on the island province revealed that while it generally had quite a low population, only around five hundred and thirty thousand people living on an island over one hundred and fifty-six thousand square miles, it was the leading provider of energy resources for both Canada and the United States. This was largely due to the fact that it was mostly undeveloped, meaning it was composed of around ninety-five percent wilderness with only the remaining five percent being cities or towns. Because of this, a great amount of solar and wind farms had been established while creating very minimal impact on the environment as a while. From what I could tell, these farms, of which at last count there were at least one hundred separate locations containing at minimum fifty windmills or solar windows, both of which were gadgeteer-design so they were easily one hundred times more efficient than traditional ones, only comprised about one percent of that total five that referenced human interference in nature. In layman’s terms, the whole of the island was still completely untouched by human hands as far as building and infrastructure went. Since Newfoundland had some of the highest and most consistent wind speeds in the world due to their location within the Jetstream, this allowed for their windfarms to be even more efficient. The end result was that while it possessed a low population, it was easily one of the wealthiest provinces in the nation.
By the time the afternoon had rolled around I had pretty much devoured everything I could about the Tearmann Institute from their website, twice. I tried looking for anything else on it on the Internet but there was a surprising lack of it. Since both the school and its location seemed to be, at least in my eyes, ideal, it was very odd that they weren’t touting their facility every chance they had.
That made me suspicious.
Closing my laptop, I leaned back in my chair and stretched out the kinks that had formed in my back and shoulders from hunching over the computer for so long. A quick glance at the time told me I’d been going over all of this information for four hours without even realizing it. A low growl in my stomach also reminded me that I’d only had a few pieces of toast and a cup of tea for breakfast and that it was long past time to have lunch.
Leaping up from my chair I bounded down the steps to the kitchen where I found Mom putting together a few turkey sandwiches. “Hi Mom,” I called as I skipped in.
“Hi honey,” she replied with a smile as she finished the third sandwich on the plate, “I’m guessing you’re probably hungry.”
“Uh huh,” I said, snatching one of the yummy looking sandwiches with a playful grin and taking a healthy bite.
“I thought you were going running with Aiden and this new girl you met yesterday,” she remarked, setting a tea kettle on the stove to heat.
“I was,” I admitted, “But then I found something really interesting on the Internet. Have you ever heard of the Tearmann Institute?”
Her lips pursed slightly as she considered the name before shaking her head. “No, I can’t say that I have. What is it? Some kind of medical facility?”
“No,” I said around a mouthful as I took another bite, “It’s a school in Canada. Apparently it’s a lot like Whateley.”
That seemed to catch her attention before her gaze, which had been leisurely glancing at me now and again sudden sharpened and focused on me with much more intensity. “Oh?”
Her sudden interest didn’t escape my attention, but then Whateley was her alma mater so it was pretty understandable. “Yeah. It offers the same benefits as Whateley does, but without all of the drawbacks.”
“And what drawbacks might those be dear?” she asked in a deceptively sweet voice that I wasn’t buying for a second. I was about to insult the school she’d graduated from so it was understandable that she would want to defend it.
“Well for one,” I pointed out in a very reasonable manner, “There’s no separation of students based upon wealth, power, sexual orientation, etc.”
The sigh she gave was the same as before when we’d had this discussion. From the very beginning I had been very vocal about my disapproval regarding their student segregation in this manner while Mom usually defended it as being character building. “Honey, we’ve been over this.”
“Yes we have,” I countered, “And quite frankly it still pisses me off. How would you feel if I went to Whateley and you were told that because my mutation caused a change in my sex and sexual identity that I would be forced to live in a dorm where I was magically prevented from telling anyone anything about it? Not only that,” I continued even as she opened her mouth, “But I would instantly be labeled as some kind of freak or pariah just because I lived there.”
As expected, Mom couldn’t refute this argument just like she couldn’t the other times. Since she herself had been housed in Melville Cottage, which by and large had been considered the ‘rich kids’ dorm, she hadn’t had to endure the kind of stigma one could easily achieve simply by their place of residence. It was a cruel aspect of society in general that, quite frankly, Whateley seemed to do little about curtailing.
“Well what about this Tearmann Institute?” Mom countered mildly, “How do their rooming assignments differ?”
“For one,” I ticked off on a finger, “The students are all housed with their own class year the entire time. It doesn’t matter of you’re straight, gay, rich, poor, or an alien, you all live in the same dorm facility. There’s no segregation of students based upon any of those, so there’s no stigma of living in such-and-such dorm so you must be a freak.”
“What about students that have out of control powers or are considered Ultra Violent?” she challenged.
“There is a dorm specifically for students like that,” I admitted, “However, it is deemed only as a temporary measure until the student is properly taught how to control their powers or violent tendencies. Then they join their class’s dorm.”
“Interesting,” Mom mused as her gaze turned distant for a moment while she considered what I had said, “And what about the curriculums?”
“Apparently they are very similar to Whateley’s, only they don’t have a specific combat requirement. Combat courses are offered, but they aren’t mandatory and students who choose not to take them aren’t branded as Non Combatants.”
That caused her to wince slightly, as I’d made my feelings about the whole issue of wearing an armband to signify oneself as non-violent or a non-combatant very well known in the past. “Okay,” she said carefully, “So this is a Whateley-esque school in Canada. Which province is it in?”
“Newfoundland, on the west coast.”
“Hmmm,” she said thoughtfully. “You know, I can’t ever recall ever hearing anything about Newfoundland before. Then again, all we usually hear about regarding them is Toronto, Ottowa, and maybe Nova Scotia.”
“It’s their eastern-most province,” I recited, remembering the information I’d gleaned on the information website regarding the province itself, “It has a pretty low population given its size and it’s the single largest energy supplier for the country and many of the states as well.”
“Interesting,” Mom commented, clearly impressed by this fact, “That must make them a rather wealthy province.”
“I think so, but from what I read it seems like a lot of the population still live a simpler kind of life. Fishing is still a big part of their culture, apparently.”
“So how does a school like Tearmann become established in a place like that?” she wondered aloud.
“Well,” I reasoned, “It kind of makes sense. There’s more power to run the school than they’ll ever need, and that’s if they don’t have their own power source. Plus, it’s in a more isolated region while still having full societal amenities. Kind of like Wolf Springs.” I smiled at the sudden inspirational comparison.
“I see you’ve really thought hard about this. Is this why you canceled your run with Aiden? Because you were looking at all of this information all morning?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, but without a shred of regret.
“Well, it certainly sounds like this is an excellent school. What is the cost for their tuition?”
“Well,” I said hesitantly, “That’s kind of the tricky part. See, they don’t advertise that on the website. Apparently you need to book an appointment for one of their representatives to come out and meet any perspective students first and if you’re considered a proper candidate for enrollment you’re told the tuition fees.”
“That sounds rather clandestine,” Mom noted worriedly, “I was fully ready to pay for you to go to Whateley, but that’s because I went there myself so I know all about it. This Tearmann Institute is quite unknown and honestly how do we know they are what they claim to be on their website?”
“We could always request the interview and find out from the representative that they send,” I suggested hopefully. I know it was probably stupid since in reality I didn’t know all that much about the school, but I was genuinely excited about the prospect of going there. That was something I hadn’t dreamed would happen when it came to Whateley.
“We could,” Mom admitted, “But what if they aren’t on the up and up? I don’t mean to frighten you sweetheart, but what if Tearmann is just a front for something we don’t want to be involved in?”
That was something I actually hadn’t considered and the thought of willingly throwing myself to a group that could possibly want to do me harm sent chills down my spine and instantly had me rethinking this whole idea.
“I have an idea,” Mom said when she saw the look on my face and picked up the phone. I frowned in confusion as she started dialing and I wondered if she was calling Tearmann right now. Then I realized she couldn’t be since I hadn’t given her the phone number yet. So who was she calling? “Hi,” she said into the phone, “Do you have a few minutes? Oh I should have known,” she said with an exasperated roll of her eyes and a sigh that bordered on a laugh, “Yes she’s right here.” With a pleased smile on her face she handed me the phone.
“Hello?” I asked timidly into the receiver.
“Ashley,” a very familiar voice greeted me in a low, gravely tone.
“Ashe!” I cried happily, “It’s so nice to hear you.”
“It’s good to hear from you too,” he acknowledged and it actually sounded like he meant it. “I understand you’re curious about the Tearmann Institute.”
“How?” I stammered, “Mom and I were only just talking about that.”
“It’s a good school,” he went on, completely ignoring what I’d just said, “I vetted them and I can tell you it’s not a villain training academy and it’s not a clandestine organization of criminals masquerading as an educational institution to try and get their hands on mutants.”
“But-”
“If you’re interested in going there I feel confident in recommending it.”
“I am interested,” I said quickly, hoping I could get a word in, “Mom and I were just worried about how vague they were about tuition costs and stuff.”
“It’s for security purposes,” he explained, “They don’t like to advertise since they are quite selective in who they allow to attend so they aren’t flooded with applicants and end up having applicants slip through whose explicit goal is to go on to be super villains after graduation.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” I muttered.
There was a pause on the other end of the line and I thought I actually heard him sigh. Ashe? Sighing? “Ashley, listen,” he said, and immediately I noticed the change in his tone. Gone was the cold, rough, business-like demeanor that seemed to be such a part of him and in its place was a warmer, caring tone that I didn’t even think he possessed. “You and I have history. Yes, I saved your life, but you saved mine right back. I’ve never forgotten that and I never will. Don’t think for a moment that I wouldn’t suggest something for you that I wasn’t beyond one hundred percent sure was in your best interests. I understand your hesitation when it comes to Whateley. I have even more reservations about that school than you do. That’s why I’m glad you found Tearmann. For someone like you, it really is the far superior place to not only get an education, but to learn about your powers as well. If that is where you want to go for school, make the call to book an appointment.”
“I will,” I said with a smile. “But one question, why do you think Tearmann is the better school for someone like me?”
“You’re Irish, right?”
“Yes,” I replied with a bit of confusion, “What does that have to do with it?”
“Tearmann is the Irish word for ‘Sanctuary’ or ‘Refuge’.”
I smiled then, realizing that more than likely Ashe had this all planned from the moment he’d met me. I shouldn’t have been at all surprised to begin with. The man always was countless steps ahead of everyone else. “Thanks Ashe,” I said in a quiet, grateful voice.
“My pleasure. I look forward to seeing your progress reports,” he finished, his voice resuming his normal brusque, business-like tone before he disconnected.
“Well?” Mom asked with a knowing smile.
“Let’s make that call,” I said happily, right before there was a pounding at the front door. “Now who is that?” I wondered with a bit of irritation that this moment was being interrupted. Rising from the table I walked to the front door and threw it open, ready to send whomever was standing there packing.
The last thing I expected was to see Aiden and Kitty standing there in their workout clothes, both looking rather dirty, with Aiden supporting what appeared to be an injured Kitty by the waist. They both gave me meek smiles as I exclaimed, “What the hell happened to you two?”
All Aiden said was, “We need to talk.”
Chicago, Illinois
No sooner had the call been disconnected than a second number was immediately connected to, this one possessing an area code that did not exist within the United States. The line rang twice before a smooth and cultured European voice intoned, “Good afternoon, Tearmann Institute, this is Dr. Wellman, how may I assist you?”
“Drop the act Scott,” came the mildly stated command, “I need to talk with you.”
“Ashe!” the man on the other end of the line said, now with a much more youthful exuberance and a distinct Midwestern accent, “How the hell are you?”
“Busy,” he said shortly, “I’ll be brief. You’re going to be receiving a phone call requesting an interview for Ashley Logan in Wolf Springs. That interview time will be expedited, as will the follow up calls you’ll be receiving on behalf of Aiden Connors and Kitty Blake, also in Wolf Springs.”
“Christ Ashe,” the man on the other end of the line, Scott, said as he was clearly writing things down in a hurry, “What the hell have you been doing, holding recruitment meetings?”
“Send Rebecca,” the dark man continued as though the other hadn’t even spoken, “And fast track their applications through the process. Once they’ve been processed as accepted you’ll find the full tuition, book and housing costs, as well as a stipend for the commissary deposited into the institute’s account for Ashley Logan with a subaccount specifically designated for commissary and surplus use.”
“Goddammit Ashe,” Scott growled, “Did you hack our systems again? What about the other two?”
“They have the financial means to pay for themselves. I’ll also suggest they be roomed closely together.”
“Suggest?” Now the educator’s voice was full of disbelief, “Since when do you ever suggest anything?”
“Look Scott,” Ashe said, dropping the formal tone of his voice in exchange for one that spoke of many years of familiarity, “Ashley is my primary concern, but the other two have formed a budding friendship with her that she is in desperate need of. You’re good at your job, that’s why I’ve supported you for so long when you approached me for advice on the Institute and why I won’t tell you how to do it-”
“Other than forcing prospective students on me,” Scott quipped snidely.
“Ashley will receive little benefit from Whateley,” he explained, “She’s strictly non-combat and non-violence and her attendance there would only serve to aggravate her existing trauma regardless of their psychological program.”
“What kind of trauma are we talking about here Ashe?” the educator asked, his tone becoming very professional and serious.
“She was the girl who was kidnapped and tortured by the physician and MCO agent in San Francisco. They were intending to conduct experimentation on her followed by dissection to learn the secret to her abilities.”
“I remember seeing that story,” Scott said, “This is that girl huh? Yeah, I can see why you sent her my way. Aggression and combat-based education would only send her running instead of encourage her. Should I be worried about sudden, violent outbreaks triggered by PTSD?”
“No, the opposite. Her pattern behavior is to close herself off from outside contact and affect a flight response when triggered.”
“All right,” Scott said on a sigh, “Once we get the request for interviews I’ll send Rebecca like you asked and fast track the applications. I assume you want them roomed close together because of their friendship?”
“It will be necessary for Ashley to have an emotional anchor close by in the beginning and at least one of them has already established that kind of bond.”
“Jesus Ashe,” the man breathed in disbelief, “Did you fucking bug her or something? Why the hell are you watching this girl so damn close?”
There were a few moments of silence on the line as the man of darkness considered his words carefully. “I have my reasons,” he finally allowed, “Get it done and let me know if there are any problems.”
The other had just started to reply when Ashe broke the connection. He knew there was a great deal more he could have done in this matter, but he also was well aware that it people did not take kindly to having their lives strictly controlled. All he’d done was lay the groundwork to give Ashley and her friends the opportunity they needed to succeed and thrive, along with a small nudge. Other than that, it was up to them to see it through. That was a gamble, given that human nature was fluid, and perspectives and outlooks could change simply from one bad day, but his instincts told him this was the right choice and they had yet to fail him.
A brief flash in the corner of his eye drew his attention and his gaze shifted to see the proximity warning alarm he had established three days ago was activated. Just as he’d suspected, the man who had been systematically raping and killing college girls taken from the U of I Chicago campus had returned to what he’d deduced as his ‘lair’, the very building upon which he was perched atop. A quick thermal scan through the roof into the apartment below indicated the target was not alone and was in fact repeating his established M.O. of dragging a handcuffed victim into the apartment with him.
As the suspect threw his victim onto the couch near the window, Ashe sprinted silently across the rooftop, leapt into the air, fired a tether line into the building’s eve, swung through the window three feet from the target, and got back to work.
Wolf Springs, Wyoming, McKinnon Residence
“So, let me see if I’m understanding this right,” Aiden said, “You’re telling me that Whateley, the premiere mutant school in pretty much the entire world, sucks?”
Ashley nodded from her reclining position on her bed and took a sip of orange juice. After Aiden had explained that Kitty knew about both of their mutations, and that Kitty herself was a mutant, the redhead hadn’t hesitated to use her power to heal Kitty’s injured ankle. Kitty actually suspected that she wouldn’t have hesitated to do so even if their mutations hadn’t been revealed simply because by this point she could tell it was simply Ashley’s nature to help those in need regardless of the cost to herself. It was an admirable trait, but a risky one as well, especially how weak the girl had been after using her power. If simply healing a sprained ankle took that much out of her, she couldn’t see how Ashley could use her power on more severe injuries.
“That’s what I’m saying,” Ashley told them in a voice that was still slightly strained. “I’ve been looking into them for a while now and since Mom attended Whateley herself I’ve been asking her about it too. On it’s face, it’s not a bad school, with lots of great classes both in education and power use taught by staff who are, by all accounts, very experienced. The problem I found,” she stated as she heaved up into a sitting position, assisted by Aiden, “Was the way they handled the student body.”
“How do you mean?” Kitty asked, unconsciously crossing her legs and tilting her body so it was shown off to its sexiest advantage. Since she was wearing a short, silk robe borrowed from Ashley’s mother while hers and Aiden’s clothes were washed and dried, it was very easy for both girls to mistaken the sexy brunette for a top-class Victoria’s Secret model.
“Yeah,” Aiden wondered as well, adjusting the more modest, yet still silk, robe borrowed from Ashely, “From everything I’ve ever read about the place, they treat their students great?”
“You have to really dig into it,” Ashley explained, “Like you guys have probably already noticed from random web searches and maybe even T.V, Whateley has the reputation of being a great place for mutants. When I really looked at how they do things on their website, however, it kind of made me worry. For one, the students are separated into housing cottages based pretty much on either sex, wealth, influence, powers, and even sexual preferences.”
“Hmmmm,” Kitty mused, “Well sex I can understand, most private schools don’t have co-ed dorms, but what do you mean by the rest?”
“Okay,” Ashley sighed, “It’s like this. If you’re filthy rich or have a lot of political or business influence, you get to go to Melville, which is basically a five star freaking luxury hotel and the people housed there know it. If you’re considered someone out of control or dangerous, you get stuck in Hawthorne, or what everyone there calls the ‘Freak House’. For people like us who have flipped sexes or are homo or bi-sexual, we get stuffed into Poe, which is co-ed.”
“Well that doesn’t sound so bad,” Aiden observed, “I mean it’s kind of nice that you’d be around a bunch of people who have gone through similar experiences and can support one another.”
“Oh sure,” Ashley said sarcastically, “It sounds great, until you’re told that you can’t tell anyone about the fact that Poe was built specifically for that reason and you have a magical spell cast on you that stops you from talking about it with anyone other than someone from Poe. Everyone else in school things the place is full of psychopaths waiting to explode.”
“Seriously?” Kitty exclaimed, forgetting about her sexual posing and leaning forward with interest, “That’s how the students at Whateley look at Poe?”
“Yeah,” Ashley said with clear ire in her normally sweet voice, “For some reason, and I’d love to debate the faculty on this, they seem to think that it’s perfectly okay to essentially punish students for their personal sexual preferences or changes in sex, even if they didn’t choose it and it was caused by their mutation.”
Though Kitty hadn’t known the redhead long, she definitely didn’t like hearing that tone coming from her. It wasn’t a disapproving kind of thing, it just didn’t fit the girl at all. Kindness, absolutely, sweetness, you bet, even sadness was something that she could see coming from her since her ethereal beauty would just make it seem achingly tragic. But anger? No, that simply didn’t mesh with the girl she’d come to know recently. “Christ,” Kitty whispered, “That sounds like-”
“Something out of Hitler’s Nazi Germany,” Aiden finished for her in a growl, and unlike Ashley, Kitty thought this girl’s anger fit her like a glove. Then again, she was a creature of the wild, so raw emotions came with the territory. “How is it possible that they’ve let this go on for so long?”
“That’s not all of it either,” Ashley continued in a dejected-sounding voice. “For people like me who completely abhor violence and refuse to engage in combat training and combat finals, we’re forced to wear arm bands identifying us as non-violent or non-combatants.”
“Holy fuck,” Aiden exclaimed, having gotten so worked up at this point she had leapt to her feet and was starting to pace like a caged, furious animal, “What the fuck is wrong with these people? Don’t they realize that paints a target on people’s backs big time?”
“I don’t know,” sighed Ashley, taking another sip of orange juice, “Hell, the only reason I even know about Poe is because one of Mom’s friends somehow managed to avoid being effected by the magic ward and told her the real reason for Poe.”
“Wait a second,” Kitty said, holding up a finger, “Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to let the student body know that Poe was created for students dealing with transgender issues stemming from their mutation, or that they have alternate sexual identities and preferences, and that Poe was basically one big support group? Hell, colleges do it all the time with LGTB groups and such.”
“Well,” Aiden reasoned, “You also have to remember they have students that come from both hero and villain backgrounds as well as some that don’t fall into either camp at all. My guess is this was their way of just dealing with homophobia issues so they could focus instead on the students not killing each other.”
“Which was another huge issue I had with it,” Ashley put in. “How am I supposed to expect a decent education and training in my powers if the staff are constantly needing to worry about one of their students turning into the next Gizmatic.”
“That’s an excellent point,” Kitty acknowledged, “When you are forced to divide your attention in that way, the education and training you can provide for your students suffers greatly. What?” she said when the two looked at her with wide, disbelieving eyes before sighing, “What part of ‘used to be a brilliant scientist’ is confusing to you guys? I’ve still got the same intelligence level from before my brain scramble, just not the previous knowledge that I’d learned back then.”
“Anyway,” Ashley said, clearly still trying to cope with the myriad of information she’d been told by Aiden and Kitty regarding the brunette’s past half an hour ago, “I’d pretty much wiped Whateley off my list of schools to attend for those reasons and plenty more that I really don’t want to go into right now. So I tried finding alternatives because, well, let’s face it, a regular school isn’t going to me, or you guys for that matter, much good.” That received twin nods of agreement. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything as far as an alternative school goes. Then, just this morning, I’d logged back onto the Whateley site and was resigning myself to having to go there when this little popup appears redirecting me to another site. That’s when I found this:” Moving to her desk chair, she flipped open her laptop to reveal the website for Tearmann Institute. “Take a look,” she offered and scooted out of the way so the other girls could lean over and look through the site.
“Where the fuck is Newfoundland?” Aiden mumbled.
“It’s a province in Canada,” Ashely explained from behind them, “I’ve got its Wikipedia page open in the other tab.”
Both girls quickly looked through the information displayed on the Institute’s web page before clicking over to the Wikipedia entry and looking over the information displayed on Newfoundland.
“It sounds like it’s hick central to me,” Kitty grumbled.
“I think it sounds great,” Aiden countered, sounding almost dreamy.
“You just like it because it’s ninety-five percent wilderness,” Kitty accused, but without any heat.
“Damn right,” Aiden agreed with a grin that had Kitty smiling as well. “Plus, this school sounds a hell of a lot more progressive than Whateley does. No villains or criminals allowed to attend, inclusive living spaces so there’s no segregation, experienced staff-”
“And it was highly recommended to me,” Ashley concluded.
“By who?” Kitty asked with a frown. Considering all three of them had only just learned of this school today and even Ashley’s own mother had never heard of it, how in the world could she have gotten anyone to recommend it?
“You know that guy who rescued me from Doctor Taylor and Agent Jacobs?”
She nodded. During their little airing-out session where they revealed everything about themselves and their mutations with one another, Ashley had briefly recounted the events of her capture and torture at the hands of her attending physician and her subsequent rescue by a mysterious and very lethal man. “Ashe, right?”
“Yeah. I talk to him after I read up on Tearmann and he told me he was going to suggest it over Whateley for me to go to.”
“That guy really seems to get around,” Aiden muttered, recalling her own experience in Indiana and only realizing after Ashley told her own story that it had been Ashe who had partially facilitated her own rescue from her grandfather.
“So Ashe is a real do-gooder huh?” Kitty remarked with a twisted smile.
While Aiden only smirked a bit, Ashley shook her head with a very serious expression on her face. “He’s not so easy to label. What I do know is that he is probably one of the deadliest people on this planet and he won’t hesitate to put his life on the line to help someone that needs it.”
“He’s that good huh?” Kitty asked, clearly impressed by Ashley’s description.
“We’d both be here if it wasn’t for him,” Aiden put in, casting a look over at Ashley who nodded her agreement. “And based on what I saw when I met him, yeah, I’ll agree, that’s one badass I don’t even want to think about trying to go up against.”
Kitty hummed in consideration. Obviously these two had some pretty serious opinions about this Ashe, but were they colored by their experiences? Did they think this man was so great simply because he’d saved them, or did he really deserve this practically legendary reputation? She’d have to ask Angela about it later.
“So anyway,” Ashley said in a brighter voice, “I was just about to call them and request an interview when you guys showed up.”
“Do you think we should all ask for an interview?” Aiden wondered aloud. “I mean, I was kind of half considering Whateley because of being a mutant, but now I’m thinking that’s a really bad idea.”
“Personally,” Kitty put in, “I hadn’t really even considered school. Since I still retain my former intelligence I was figuring I’d just self-study and try to get myself back up to where I used to be from before.”
“But that won’t help you with your powers,” Ashley pointed out. “Sure, you can test them and teach yourself, but these schools are specifically designed to not only test your abilities, but help you master them in ways you’d probably never figure out on your own.”
“That’s an interesting point,” Kitty conceded, “But I should probably consult with Angela about it. She’s still got all of her memories from beyond two weeks ago so I’d like to see what she has to say about it.”
“Well, I’m going to call my parents,” Aiden decided right there, “If they okay it, I’ll talk to them with Ashley right now and ask for an interview too.”
“Here,” Ashley said, handing Aiden her home phone, “You can use the house phone. Kitty, why don’t you go ahead and call Angela on my cell.”
Giving her a nod of thanks, Kitty picked up the cell off of her desk and stepped out of the room so she could have some privacy while dialing Angela’s cell. It only took two rings before she answered with a distracted, “M’yello?”
“Hey Angela, it’s Kitty, can you look up something for me?”
“Kitty,” the girl sighed over the phone, “You do know you’re fully capable of using a computer yourself, right? We’ve already established you still have that kind of knowledge.”
Rolling her eyes, she snapped, “I’m not talking about a Google search, Miss Saucy Bitch, I need you to actually check something out and see if it’s legit.”
“All right,” she said slowly with cautious interest. Clearly the many times she’d asked about how to spot a fake Louis Vuitton or Prada product had begun to weigh on her patience.
“Ashley was just telling us about a school specifically for mutants that is an alternative to Whateley. She’s claiming someone she trusts told her it was legit but I was wondering if you could do some digging for me really fast?”
“An alternate to Whateley huh?” she mused while the sounds of rapid typing could be heard distantly in the background. “I know there’s been a few that tried in the past but they were all horrible and ended up closing down. What’s the name of it?”
“Tearmann Institute.”
“Okay, hang on.” There was more typing in the background before she mumbled, “Huh, when did he do that?”
“Do what?” Kitty asked, anxious to find out what her friend had discovered.
“Huh? Oh, nothing. Okay, so it looks like this Tearmann place has been in operation for a while now, ever since Newfoundland went on the rise with their dramatic energy production increase. From the looks of things, they’ve kept really far below the radar. In fact, how did Ashley even get on their website? It’s encrypted so only authorized users or guests provided passwords can…oh hell,” she muttered, “That son of a bitch.”
“What?” Kitty asked, suddenly worried that her suspicions that this was too good to be true were about to be proven right, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Angela sighed, “Just now figuring out exactly why a friend asked me to do him a favor. Look, the schools legit, and if it’s who I think it is that verified that to Ashley you can pretty much take that to the bank. Wait,” the hacker said, clearly grasping the whole situation now, “Are you thinking about applying?”
“Yeah,” Kitty admitted, “I know I’ve still got my original level of intelligence from before, but I don’t have the knowledge to go along with it. Plus, I still don’t have good control over my powers and self-teaching can only go so far. I was actually thinking about Whateley but after talking with Ashley and Aiden I don’t think it’s such a good idea anymore?”
“Why’s that?” Angela inquired, sounding genuinely curious. “I always though the place had a pretty stellar reputation with the mutant community.”
Without going into too much detail, Kitty relayed the conversation the three of them just had regarding Whateley and why Tearmann looked like a better choice. By the time she was finished Angela couldn’t help but agree. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “I’d never really considered the angle that Ashley looked at it from, but now that I do it really makes a lot of sense. I mean, I’ve never been to the place myself since I’m not a mutant, but I’ve talked with people who had.”
“Were they unhappy about the place?” Kitty wondered.
“Not in so many words. They usually had good things to say about it but they would talk about things quite a bit that really fall in line with Ashley’s opinions. I think maybe they were just too wrapped up in nostalgia to remember all of those bad things.”
“And what about this Tearmann Institute?”
“Well,” the hacker sighed, “There’s actually not very much on them, but that’s because they keep really quiet about their operations. I did take a quick look at the stuff behind the scenes and everything is above board and they’re really very strict about who they admit. No villains, no children of villains currently aspiring to their parents’ goals, no one with serious criminal histories…it looks like they’re only allowing decent folks into this place.”
“So you think it’ll be okay to at least ask for an interview?”
“I’d say so,” Angela confirmed, “I mean there’s no harm in just talking with someone from there face to face, and based on their tuition costs we’ll be able to swing that without even noticing at this point.”
The issue of money never even occurred to Kitty, but that was due to the fact that their initial acquisition of the funds stolen by Sinclair was huge to begin with and growing all the time due to smart investments. However…
“All right, I’m going to set up an appointment along with Ashley and Aiden. There’s something else I need you to do…”
A few minutes later, Kitty walked back in the room just as Aiden was hanging up the phone. From the look on her face it was pretty clear that her parents had okayed her own request for permission to ask for an interview as well. “Go good?” she asked unnecessarily.
“Yeah,” Aiden smiled, “After I explained everything and they talked to Ashley they were all for it. It was actually kind of a load of their minds because they were going to suggest Whateley to me soon anyway.”
“So should I make the call?” Ashley asked anxiously as she held up the phone with a giddy smile on her face.
The answer was a resounding affirmative.
Wolf Springs, Wyoming, Nature Walk Hotel
As Tome and his friends walked through the halls towards their assigned rooms, he had to admit he was pretty impressed with the hotel. Despite it being rustic in appearance, particularly from the outside, the interior was plush and its appointments were clearly done by a person of taste. While the color scheme mirrored the surrounding areas, that being primarily greens and browns, the manner in which they’d been adapted to the hotel’s design provided a homey, comfortable feel with a wealthy appearance. More than once he thought that the place would give some of the higher end hotels in New York a run for its money when it came to an appearance of wealth. While there weren’t the vaulted, jewel-encrusted walls, ceilings, and chandeliers one would find in the Ritz Carlton, the more intimate feeling of Nature Walk actually made it seem more inviting instead of having a museum-like quality.
As the three separated to go to their individual rooms, Tom was once again struck by how much the proprietors of this hotel really wanted their guests to feel at home. While he’d seem pictures of the room online back at the fraternity house, the welcoming feel of the room was even further enhanced by actually standing in it. “Not bad,” he muttered as he went about unpacking his suitcase and properly putting the various items in their place within the room. He had just finished assembling his toiletries on the bathroom sink when there was a knock at his door. Moments later, Jake and Jeremy were lounging on the couch in the sitting room area while Tom changed his travel-weary shirt.
“So where to first?” Jeremy asked anxiously, practically bouncing in his seat. That was something Tom would have to watch. Out of all of them, he had the least amount of impulse control. While he was just as successful when it came to scoring a piece of pussy for the night as the rest of them, he also struck out more than the rest, and he never took it well. More than once he and other members of the frat’s leadership circle had had to pull his ass out of a fire of his own making.
“We’ll go slow,” Tom decided, “Maybe take a walk through downtown first and get the lay of the land. If we’re lucky, we’ll meet some of these fabled hotties and strike up a conversation or two. No dragging them off to your room tonight,” he warned, sending Jeremy a pointed look, “There’s no point to this if you’re just going to grab the first girl you see and bang her on the first day, we won’t have anything else to do for the week.”
“Yeah,” Jake agreed, “It’s not like this place is a hotbed of action or anything, unless you like nature walks that is.”
“Maybe one of the girls around here is a real nature buff and can give us a private tour or something,” Jeremy suggested with a grin.
Tom hummed at the idea. “That has some potential, but you have to make sure you pick the right girl. We don’t want to have to send out search parties to find you because you get lost trying to get some pussy.”
“Yeah yeah,” Jeremey waved away the concern as his gaze had already turned slightly far-off, a sign that he was already envisioning some kind of wilderness fuck-fest in his mind, “I’ll find some hippy, earth-child chick that knows the area or something. They’re usually tigresses in the sack anyway.”
Tom caught Jake’s gaze and the pair rolled their eyes in unison. Yeah, it was going to be one of those kind of trips again. “All right, let’s get going,” Tom announced before leading the trio from the room and out of the hotel.
Fortunately, a small town like this meant they didn’t need to go back to their car in order to get anywhere. While it was certainly spacious and well built, the downtown area itself was perhaps only a mile in length with one centralized street that had stores, restaurants, and the sparse bar or club on either side of it. The club in question was currently closed while the bar did appear to be open, but only for food service. A sign on the door they passed stated that alcohol would not be served until six P.M. on a daily basis.
“What kind of horseshit is that?” Jeremy sneered, thumbing at the aforementioned sign, “These people got something against drinking?”
“It’s probably an effort to keep alcoholism down and prevent people from driving drunk when children are out and about,” Jake reasoned.
“It’s stupid if you ask me,” Jeremy muttered, “How the hell do the expect to make money?”
Tom was tempted to tell him that it was likely the food, and that the reality was most people in this town certainly didn’t seem to be hurting financially, but he refrained from bothering. In the end it would probably just send the moron off on some other kind of tangent and draw unnecessary attention to them.
As they were casually perusing the available stores on the main strip to see if there were any interesting specialty shops to browse as a means of killing time, some movement out of the corner of his eye grabbed Tom’s attention. Turning his head, he saw sleek, black car slip into an open parking space right before three of its doors swung open. He was just about to return his attention back to his friends with the suggestion of peeking in a woodworking shop to find some new spanking paddles for the frat when he froze.
Exiting the car were three of the hottest girls he’d ever seen. While clearly they were teenagers, even the least attractive easily outshone pretty much every girl back on campus, and there were more than a few hot ones there. Since he knew that any kind of direct staring would be noticed by probably everyone in the immediate area, he chose not to alert his cohorts to his finding and instead surreptitiously continued to watch them while silently evaluating and assigning them to his brethren. That was how things usually worked within their group. While Jake could be pretty smooth and Jeremy exemplified the stereotypical pretty college guy who knew just how handsome he was, Tom had a different kind of knack when it came to women. For as long as he’d been sexually active, which was just after puberty, he’d been able to tell just what kind of guy a girl would be drawn to after observing her for a brief period of time. It not only allowed him to adjust his approach to her to maximize the chances of him getting to fuck her, but also enabled him to pair girls to his friends as well so they would have the same opportunity.
The brunette he tagged for Jeremy immediately. She was cheery, vivacious, and practically exuded sex appeal through her pores. Her manner of dress also seemed to exemplify this aspect as she currently wore a low-cut top that exposed quite a generous amount of impressive cleavage and a short skirt that showed off legs that just seemed to go on forever. Every movement she made from the way she tossed her hair to the subtle roll and sway of her hips that caused her skirt to twitch enticingly when she walked practically screamed ‘fuck me!’. Since Jeremy was rather low in the smoothness department, he shouldn’t have much trouble getting that one’s legs spread.
The black-haired girl looked more rough and tumble, having a somewhat serious expression on her face that relaxed and even brightened when one of her companions said something or made a joke. Her simple jeans and T-shirt, while not highlighting her shape, did nothing to hide the alluring feminine contours of her young, lithe body that he suspected could ride a guy into oblivion and keep wanting more. This one was definitely for Jake. He possessed the smoothness to chat her up and the rough, rugged background to keep her interested instead of boring her with pedestrian exploits.
The redhead…she practically had Tom stopping in his tracks. The first thing that caught his attention was her bright, vibrant hair that could only have come from a bottle. When she turned to look at one of her friends, however, it was her eyes that were particularly arresting. They a bright green that almost seemed to glow with their own inner light. He’d seen people possessing that kind of nearly glowing quality eye color before, but typically the color was blue and they were on T.V so special effects and lighting might have played a big part. With this girl there was none of that, and yet they were still almost unnaturally bright. When she laughed, something that made her seem utterly enchanting and almost fey-looking, he thought for sure his heart had skipped a beat. There was no denying the innocence that radiated from this fragile-looking creature of femininity and the tightening in his crotch was damn near painful. All of this coupled with a simple, one-piece dress that fell nearly to her ankles in a single, snug column of what had to be taupe-colored silk showed off the sweet, delicious curves that practically had his mouth watering, especially when every step she took revealed slits in the side of the skirt that showed off a generous amount of toned, shapely leg. This girl was his, no question, and already he was thinking of countless different ways to begin his seduction that would result in hearing her screaming in pleasure.
While his two partners in the quest for pussy continued talking about what they could possibly do in this place, Tom watched the girls enter a sporting goods store several doors down. Once they’d disappeared from sight he quickly turned, bringing his companions to a sudden halt. “What’s up man?” Jake asked with a raised eyebrow at the sudden, anticipatory expression on his fraternity president’s face.
Tom merely smiled.
Wolf Springs, Wyoming, Rough Terrain Sporting Goods
“Guys, seriously, I’m fine with what I have.”
Casting a knowing look at Kitty, she merely smiled and shrugged at me as though to say: I told you so. “Aiden, listen,” I said patiently, turning back to her as she looked over the racks of workout clothes as though they might attack her at any moment, “I’ve been in these woods a lot and Kitty got a pretty good idea about them this morning. What you were wearing just isn’t right for going on wolf runs.”
“Well I usually just have fur,” she muttered, quickly looking around to make sure no one else heard her.
“You won’t when we all go together,” I countered, “And the stuff you were wearing today just isn’t going to cut it. It’s far too loose. If you were just going for a jog down main street you’d be fine, but racing through trees and brush you’re going to end up tearing your clothes apart.” Her quick blush of embarrassment didn’t escape mine or Kitty’s attention.
“It’s already happened before, hasn’t it,” Kitty accused mildly.
“Maybe,” Aiden mumbled, shuffling her feet a bit as she looked down at them. “A couple times when we were on the road and I couldn’t risk shifting but I wanted to run,” she admitted.
“See,” I pointed out, jumping on the opportunity to prove my point, “You won’t have any workout clothes at all if you keep it up. For this kind of running you need form-fitting workout clothes that won’t flap or flutter around and catch a stray branch or get caught in a thicket.”
“But they’re just so…revealing,” she finished in a whisper, fingering a pair of lycra pants experimentally.
“I know,” I told her sympathetically, “And believe me, I was pretty hesitant to wear similar stuff the first time too. Remember,” I told her, dropping my voice so no one outside our little group could hear us, “I used to be a guy also, so form-fitting clothes felt really weird to me in the beginning too. But I got used to it,” I continued at a more normal volume, “And actually, I like it now. Maybe not as much as Kitty does,” I quipped, sending her a pointed look that resulted in her sticking her tongue out at me, “But I’m proud of my body and how I look. I don’t show it off like I’m on a runway but I’m not ashamed of it either.”
“Hey,” Kitty snarked, “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.”
“Down girl,” I muttered.
“I just…” Aiden sighed as she seemed to struggle to find the right words, “I know I look good, okay? I’ve seen myself in the mirror and you guys might remember I did kind of have the makings of a boyfriend back in Indiana, but I’m still just not all that comfortable looking so…sexy.”
I was getting ready to try a different tact when Kitty walked over and put her hand on Aiden’s shoulder. “I get what you’re saying,” she told her, “You’re kind of embarrassed about the attention you get because you’re pretty. Believe it or not, I am too.” That got a look of shock not only from Aiden but from me too. “Oh knock it off,” she snorted, “Yes, I know, I walk around like a one nine-hundred number advertisement, but remember that’s largely programming. Inside, I still cringe a little sometimes when I see guys looking at me like I’m a piece of fine-cut meat. The only reason I can think of why I keep showing off and dressing like I do is because it’s like a programmed habit. You know, like how you like to…run,” she said, careful not to spill the secret of the wolf-girl’s mutation. “You can control it most of the time, but that urge is there and a lot of times it comes out in your personality.”
“I guess I kind of see what you’re saying,” Aiden admitted, “But why do I have to dress how society expects me to?”
“In this one case,” I told her, “You’re not. This is about practicality, not fashion or showing off your body. If the only thing you ever want to wear is jeans and T-shirts, that’s fine, but for doing our runs you need to wear appropriate clothes that won’t get ripped or torn all the time. Believe me, if you were a guy I’d be telling you the same exact thing and we’d be looking at those skin tight running shorts that put a guy’s package on display.”
As I gestured in the direction of the racks in question I noticed the front door open and three guys walk in. Instantly I knew they weren’t local since I didn’t recognize any of them. Each of them were rather handsome and were clearly in college based upon how old they looked. It wasn’t so unusual for students from the surrounding major cities to come visit our town during the summer to go on nature hikes or maybe even do some animal watching, so that wasn’t what really caught my attention. It was the way they briefly looked at us. I wasn’t overly experienced when it came to men, but there was absolutely no mistaking the keen interest in their eyes when their gaze paused in our direction before continuing on towards the hiking gear on the far wall. One of them in particular, a dark-haired boy with penetrating brown eyes, gave me a very brief, crooked smile that actually sent a quick little thrill up my spine.
“I bet you’re wondering how his package would look on display,” I heard muttered in my ear.
Gasping in both surprise and offense, though I really couldn’t pull off the offended part, I spun around to see Kitty grinning wickedly at me. “What? No!” I assured her.
“Honey, you might want to wipe your chin, you’ve got a bit of drool there. I have to say,” she said as I quickly checked my mouth for the imaginary drool, “Those are some pretty hot guys.”
“I suppose,” I mumbled before focusing my attention on going through the clothing rack in front of us.
“Hmmmm.” Kitty’s sound of consideration immediately had me worried that she was starting to plan something.
“Don’t even think about it,” Aiden said quietly as she stepped over to join us, “The smell of testosterone coming from those guys is through the roof right now and the last thing I want to deal with right now is some jackasses pulling some caveman bullshit to prove how manly they are.”
Finding a set of workout clothes that seemed perfect, I got a sudden flash of inspiration and smiled as I turned and presented them to Aiden. “So go hide in the dressing room for a minute. Here, you can try these on while you’re in there,” I told her and shoved the outfit into her arms while she stood there blinking in surprise with her mouth opening and closing. I’m sure she wanted to fire off some witty retort, but in the end she just stomped off to the dressing room with the clothes, grumbling all the way.
“She’s going to take some work,” Kitty observed, “If we plan on getting her to shed that tomboy persona of hers.”
“We don’t,” I asserted firmly, drawing a curious lift of an eyebrow. “Aiden is her own person. If she wants to be more feminine that’s her choice and hers alone. Just because we’ve been able to embrace it doesn’t mean she has to. If she wants to spend the rest of her life without ever wearing a dress I have no problem with it, and neither should you if you really do want to be her friend.”
I’m not sure anyone had ever really put their foot down to Kitty like that before because her shocked expression and lack of retort clearly meant she was trying to figure out how to come back from that. My guess is the friend comment was what hit her the most and was probably causing her to re-evaluate how she approached friendship in and of itself.
“All right,” a muffled voice said on the other side of the changing room door, “I’m coming out.”
“Thanks for the warning,” I quipped, “Should we cover our eyes now or later?”
“Ha, ha,” Aiden deadpanned as the door swung open and I couldn’t hold back my gasp of surprise. The outfit I’d chosen had been a pair of leggings and a sports bra top done in black with printed graphic images of tears in the thighs of the leggings as though made by claws. I thought the imagery was perfect given Aiden’s wolf persona, but her standing there wearing it went beyond my expectations.
I knew Aiden was very pretty, but the skin-tight workout wear truly showed off her physique to perfection. While she didn’t have the voluptuous, sexy curves that Kitty had, or the soft, slim, yet curvy figure I myself claimed, there was absolutely no doubt that the lithe, athletic body Aiden possessed was distinctly, and sexily, feminine.
“I look like shit, right?” she asked dejectedly as she saw our expressions of amazement.
“No!” I told her quickly, “You look fantastic. Look, I know it kind of embarrasses you, but you look really hot in that.”
“You think?” she asked, turning to look at herself in the door mirror while inadvertently showing us how she looked from behind.
Kitty quickly stifled her giggle when I elbowed her in the ribs, but unfortunately Aiden’s very sharp hearing caught it and she spun around. “What?” she asked anxiously.
Before I could stop her, Kitty laughed softly and told her, “We can see your panties.”
The dark-haired girl’s mouth fell open in shock and she started spinning around trying to see where the suspected wardrobe malfunction was located. “Aiden,” I told her, “Stop. You’re not sticking out anywhere. Kitty means we can see the outline against your pants.”
Blinking for a moment, she turned and craned her neck backwards to look at herself in the mirror from behind to see that indeed her panties were clearly outlined against the tight material. “Shit,” she hissed, “This is exactly why I don’t wear this kind of stuff.”
“It’s fine,” Kitty assured her, hurrying off to another nearby section of clothes before coming back. “You just need to wear these instead.”
“No,” Aiden stated firmly, “Absolutely not. Not only no but hell no.”
I sighed and looked from her, to the black thong Kitty was holding out to her, then back to her again. “Aiden, unless you want everyone to see your underwear through your pants like that, you need to wear a thong, at least for the workouts.”
“You wear one then,” she snapped in agitation, already inching back towards the dressing room.
“As a matter of fact,” I told her nonchalantly, “I am.” The look of surprise at my clearly unexpected statement made me smile. “That’s what I normally wear. I found I liked them after trying them for the first time.”
“Ditto,” Kitty put in, “But then I’ve got the excuse of ultra feminine mental conditioning.”
“Are you telling me you enjoy walking around with a wedgie all the time?” Aiden accused.
“It did feel pretty weird the first time I tried them,” I admitted, “But I found out pretty quick that I liked them. They make me feel pretty and sexy even though no one can see them. And I don’t wear them all the time,” I corrected her, “Just most of the time. Besides, we’re not saying you have to either, just when you’re wearing your workout stuff. You could rock a pair of granny panties the rest of the time if you want, we don’t care.”
“Speak for yourself,” Kitty said, lifting her nose and adopting a sarcastic, snooty attitude, “I simply can’t be seen with someone that chooses to wear…granny panties,” the last being said with a very clear note of humorous disgust.
“Oh for god’s sake,” Aiden muttered, covering her face with her hand while I couldn’t help but giggle at the act. “All right, fine,” she conceded, “I’ll get them and give them a try on our next run. But if I don’t like them,” she warned in a serious tone, “Never again.”
“Deal,” I agreed with a smile and she disappeared back into the dressing room to change.
“Think she’ll change her mind and find she likes them?” Kitty asked quietly.
I shrugged a little. “Maybe. We’ll just have to wait and see the next time we go running.”
“Uh huh,” she said quietly, “And do realize those three guys that walked in about five minutes ago have been standing in earshot the entire time we’ve been so wonderfully open about our preferred choice of panties?”
Instantly I felt my face grow flaming hot even as my eyes widened in horror. “Oh dear god, please tell me you’re joking,” I whispered, my entire body stiffening as I kept my gaze rooted on the closed dressing room door for fear of turning and seeing those three guys grinning at me.
“Nope,” she said with a mischievous grin in her voice.
I could feel a sudden flash of panic shoot through me and my knees started to shake with the desire to take off at a sprint and get far away from here. Without even realizing it, I had been openly discussing my personal choice of lingerie and why I chose it. Good lord, those guys heard me say I wore thong panties because they made me feel pretty and sexy! Even now I was sure they were undressing me with their eyes to the point that was all I was wearing while their hands were roaming over my vulnerable flesh until they slipped up between my legs and-
“Ashley!”
Aiden’s sharp, harsh whisper snapped me out of my sudden, fear-inspired delirium to focus on her concerned expression. When had she come out of the dressing room? I’d been staring right at it. “Talk to me,” she whispered urgently.
“I have to get out of here,” I managed to squeak out, though at that point I didn’t know if my legs would actually work. They felt like lead weights that I didn’t think I could move.
Kitty nodded and started to move to my side to help me when Aiden put out her hand to stop her. “Ashley, listen to me. I want you to breathe. Just breathe. In and out.”
“I want to go,” I whimpered fearfully as my eyes started to burn from tears threatening to leak out.
“I know you do,” she acknowledged gently as she squeezed my hands, “But I want you to just breathe. Listen to my voice and just breathe. In and out. In and out.”
Without realizing it, I found myself breathing in time with Aiden’s coaching as I looked into her eyes. Those unique, amber/gold eyes stared back at me with strength and compassion, letting me know without saying a word that I would be all right and they she was there to protect me, Soon, the two of us were taking slow, even breaths in time with one another until I felt my racing heart ease back down to just slightly above what could be considered a normal rate. When I finally let out a slow, even breath she asked me softly, “You okay?”
“I think so,” I responded just as quietly, “How long was I…out of it.”
“Not long,” Kitty assured me, “Maybe ten seconds. I moved you over a bit so the clothes racks blocked us so no one noticed.”
Taking a long, shuddering breath I rubbed my face with my hands. “At least I didn’t run away screaming this time,” I grumbled sarcastically.
“That’s right,” Aiden affirmed in a serious, no-nonsense tone, “You didn’t, and that’s a huge step so don’t you dare think it isn’t okay?”
Nodding, I straightened my spine…in pride perhaps?...and slowly turned my gaze towards the three college boys that were still looking through the hiking supplies. When one of them, the one I’d noticed before, glanced over at me and smiled slightly I actually found myself offering a shy smile in return before quickly ducking my head and looking away.
“Well look at that,” Kitty commented mildly, “Our little Ashely’s flirting with our town visitors.”
“I only smiled a little at him,” I defended, flushing deeply, “That’s not flirting.”
“So says the girl who’s never flirted before.”
The last person I expected to say that was Aiden, so it was a little shocking to hear those words come out of her mouth. “Since when do you flirt?” I challenged.
Grinning slightly, she pointed a thumb at herself, “Boyfriend, remember?”
Rolling my eyes, I walked up to the register with my friends so Aiden could pay for her new workout outfit along with a couple of more that we’d picked out once we’d gotten her proper size and several thongs that Kitty sneaked into the bundle. As we hurried from the store, with Aiden and Kitty laughing with one another as only teenage girls can, I cast one last glance back at the college guys. Whether it was due to a morbid curiosity as to whether or not they’d seen my almost meltdown or to see if they the one guy was still checking me out I’m not sure.
As it turned out, all three of them were watching all three of us leave, but it was the smile and the gleam of interest in the one guy’s eyes that left me feeling like I’d just received a full-body caress.
The scary part? I kind of liked it.
Wolf Springs, Wyoming, Connors Residence
To Aiden, the ring of steel on steel was a song that even the most expertly crafted and performed symphony ever created couldn’t even hope to compete with, while the meticulous swinging of the hammer and bringing it down on a bar of red, almost white hot, metal was far more relaxing and therapeutic than the most exclusive spa on the planet. This was the very thing she’d lived for ever since she’d possessed enough strength to do it back when she had been a young boy. With the intense heat of a propane-powered forge roaring at her back, she brought the hammer down on the steel again and again, meticulously drawing out and shaping the steel into a form that matched the design she’d drawn up days ago.
The smile on her face spoke of utter joy, and not simply because she was doing what she loved. That afternoon, after departing from the company of her new friends and returning home for dinner with her new workout clothes and underwear (she was still a bit miffed Kitty had snuck those thongs into the purchases), her parents had surprised her by revealing the completion of her own forge at the back of the house. The workshop with its industrial-grade equipment was still being built, but her father had asked the workmen to take some time away from the project. Not only did they get her forge, anvil, and quench barrel in place, but they’d erected a modest, shed-type enclosure that would allow her to continue her blade craft even during the cold of winter, something she’d never been able to do back in Indiana.
The reveal had nearly been cause for a trip to Ashley for medical treatment as Aiden had hugged her parents nearly hard enough to crush bone even as she wept with joy. Now, two hours later, the young girl was bringing her brand new forging hammer down on the steel that was starting to give the vague appearance of a knife blade. She didn’t even pause in her movements when her nostrils flared and she smiled.
“Hi Dad.”
“Dammit,” he muttered as he strolled over and slipped his hands in his pockets. “I’m never going to be able to sneak up on you again huh?”
“Try approaching from downwind next time,” she suggested, placing her steel back in the forge now that it had cooled to the point it was barely red anymore. “What’s up?”
“Just seeing how you’re liking the forge,” he explained, “Is everything arranged right for you?”
“Perfect,” she said approvingly with a smile.
“Good,” he said, though it was clear to Aiden both in his voice and in the way he was constantly looking around without actually focusing on any one thing that he was distracted. Either that or he was stalling.
“Dad, what is it?”
Casting his eyes back to his daughter once more, he peered at her as though contemplating his words before sighed and taking a seat on one of the beach chairs she preferred for relaxing between forgings. “Got a few minutes?” he asked.
“I think I have a few I can spare,” she quipped with a levity she wasn’t feeling at the moment. She and her father had a very good relationship and it had always been clear to her even before her mutation had enhanced her senses when something was bothering him. “What’s up?
“We haven’t really had a chance to talk about what happened back in Indiana,” he said and managed to avoid wincing at the sudden hardness that appeared in her eyes. “I know it was really hard on you and I wanted to give you some space for a little while and not force anything, but I think we should talk about how you’re feeling about it.”
Turning, Aiden walked over to the mini fridge that had been set up in her forging area and took out a can of Coke before popping open the top and taking a long swallow. “What’s there to talk about?” she bit out after wiping her mouth, “Grandpa betrayed our whole family just for some crazy bloodline purity crusade and it ended up with a boy I liked getting killed. He was an asshole and I’m glad he’s dead.”
The cold, uncaring tone of her voice did make Terry Connors wince this time and he stood. He didn’t go to embrace his daughter like he wanted to, instead he went and procured his own can of Coke before returning to his seat. “So that’s it? Grandpa was an asshole and you’re glad he’s dead? Nothing more to say about it?”
“What’s there to say?” Aiden countered angrily, “That it absolutely broke my heart when Grandpa showed he didn’t actually care about me, that he didn’t actually love me? That my life felt like it was completely shattered when Henry died because of me? How about that I feel responsible for us needing to uproot our entire life and leave the entire fucking state just because that fucking asshole decided preserving the fucking werewolf bloodline was more important than his own goddamn FAMILY!” By this point Aiden was long passed the point of cold detachment and was screaming wildly, enough that her mother had come running up from the house, not that the enraged girl even noticed. “I never asked for this!” she yelled, though up to the heavens instead of at her parents, “I never asked to be one of your precious fucking wolves and I sure as hell didn’t ask to be some kind of goddamn wolf messiah! So why did you have to totally fuck up my life?” she cried, and by this point it was clear to Terry and Maddy Connors it was her grandfather she was calling out to.
As they stood by, holding one another when what they truly wanted to do was hold their daughter and make the pain go away, they let her unleash all of that pent up anger and rage at the world. “I was okay with turning into a girl, I’d actually managed to accept that. I was even okay with liking guys. But then you had to come and fuck all of that up just because you though I was some kind of fucking Wolf Jesus. Why? Why couldn’t you have just left me the fuck alone!”
“Because he wasn’t right.”
Whirling about, a low growl seeping from between her teeth, Aiden glared at the man who dared interrupt her furious tirade. While her mother gasped softly in fear, her father continued to look at her steadily, though now his gaze sharpened slightly as he looked for any signs that his daughter might be starting to lose control. “Your grandfather was a good man. He showed love and affection to both me and to you up until the end. But in all that time, he did have a kind of obsession with maintaining and strengthening the Connors wolf bloodline. It didn’t take away from the love he showed to his family, but it was a driving force for him through the years.” Gently disengaging from his wife’s embrace, he slowly walked towards where Aiden stood breathing heavily and struggling between retaining control of her anger and wanting to just unleash it upon the world. “When you manifested the way you did, that obsession took control and became too much for him to hold back anymore. I think he thought he’d found our family’s salvation and his mind just snapped. I can’t excuse what he did, I absolutely refuse to. Like you said, he betrayed our family in the worst way imaginable and I will never forgive him for that. But just like he was your grandfather, Aiden, he was my father.”
By this point, Terry was standing before Aiden, looking down at her with tears shining in his eyes. Aiden could perhaps count on one hand the number of times in her life she’d seen her father cry and the implications of the sadness he was experiencing brought all of her anger and hate to a screeching halt as though it had hit a brick wall. “He raised me to be a good man,” Terry continued in a voice choked with the effort to keep his now raging emotions in check, “He taught me how to forge a blade, how to hunt, and how to treat a woman with the dignity and respect she deserves. He was my hero, the man I looked up to all of my life as the perfect role model. What he did to us, to you, is something that we’re going to have to live with for the rest of our lives. But I don’t want what he did to force you to become someone you’re not.”
Gently, he placed a hand on Aiden’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Before everything went to hell, I saw a change in you that I didn’t think would ever happen. You were engaging with other people your own age instead of shutting yourself off from the world behind your anvil, you were accepting and adapting to your change into a girl by not limiting yourself to the most basic, unisex type of clothes, and for the first time in a long time you seemed to be happy. I don’t want you to lose that happiness Aiden. I think you’re starting to get it back since you made friends with Ashley and Kitty, and your mother and I couldn’t be happier, but I hope you won’t keep hiding behind this gruff outlook on life. No, I’m not asking you to turn into a girly girl,” he assured her with a watery smile when she opened her mouth to protest, “And I’m not saying I want to see you in nothing but dresses from now until eternity. But you were really starting to accept being a girl, and you were happy with it. I just don’t want to see you lose that because of one sick, misguided man’s insane decisions.”
For a time, Aiden could only stand there staring up at her father with tears slipping down her cheeks. While she knew intellectually that her father had been hurting because of the events back in Salem, the sight of his own tears leaving wet tracks down his face truly drove home the reality of how much pain he had been forced to endure. He had stayed strong this entire time not because he was some emotionless shell, but because he’d had to, for his family. They’d needed him to be strong, to be their rock for them to cling to when all of that pain and hurt came bubbling out, but he hadn’t allowed anyone to be there for him. Now, as her father’s soul was laid bare before her, Aiden let go of the tight leash she’d maintained on her feminine instincts and embraced her father tightly while the two of them cried quietly against one another.
They remained that way for some time, offering the other support while taking comfort in the same that was received. At some point Maddy had joined them, turning a tight embrace into a warm group hug of love and caring. By the time their tears had dried and their sobbing gasps had faded, a warm glow seemed to have formed around them, binding them tightly in a way that they truly were a pack. Eventually, Aiden looked up at her mother and father and gave them a still slightly watery smile. “I guess I need to do a little shopping, huh?”
Her mother gave her a knowing smile that had Aiden realizing she was already a few steps behind. “No need honey, I’ve already taken care of it.”
Wolf Springs, Wyoming, one mile north of the McKinnon Residence
While I certainly didn’t possess Aiden’s close bond with nature, I’d always found a sense of peace wandering through the wonder and beauty of the deep, lush forest that our town was nestled within. It was why I often chose to stroll through it when something weighed heavily on my mind, my emotions were becoming a bit too raw, or like this evening, simply because I found it enjoyable. This particular time of day, when the sun was starting to dip beneath the lip of the horizon, always seemed especially enchanting to me. Unlike other times of the day, when dusty gray slowly gave way to brilliant like, everything seemed so much more sharp and clear as dusk settled over the forest. The light had yet to completely flee and on certain days the deep red of the setting sun made it seem like everything was bathed in a warm, comforting glow. This happened to be one of those days and I found myself humming a Celtic lullaby as I thought back to what could quite possibly be the beginning of either one of the scariest or greatest moments in my life.
Once Kitty and Aiden had been given the go ahead by their respective households, I’d put in a call to Tearmann Institute to request an interview. A very nice and polite sounding woman had taken down all of our information and informed us that they would be sending one of their representatives to come speak with us in the very near future. No sooner had I hung up the phone than a new email appeared on my computer confirming that a woman by the name of Rebecca Stanhope would be arriving at my house in four days at ten in the morning. Interestingly enough, the email also requested Aiden and Kitty be present for the interview as well. I thought that was rather strange since one would expect interviews for a school like this would be done on an individual basis and my friends echoed this sentiment. Still, this was a school for mutants, so maybe they did things different when three friends living in the same town were looking to attend together.
The little trip into town to get Aiden some new workout clothes brought a smile to my face, despite the small panic attack I’d suffered during it. That was one thing I was quite proud about. I was starting to be able to put those kinds of events behind me and not let them control my life to the point that I was nearly agoraphobic. I’d like to say it was my own will and determination that was the cause, but I was pragmatic enough to know that a large part of it was due to the support I had from my new friends, particularly Aiden. Ever since that moment I’d fled to me secret place and she’d followed me, I’d found I was able to let myself relax more and more when in public when she was with me. The scientific, analytical part of my mind dedicated to medicine warned me that I was potentially just replacing the Mom with Aiden as an emotional crutch, and I acknowledged that could very well be the case. I needed to start getting out on my own more to prove that I was getting better, for myself if no one else.
I was so deeply in thought about my own self-improvement that I almost didn’t hear the snap of a twig not very far to my right. I did hear it however, and instantly spun about. I didn’t panic since I’d been through these woods many times before and it wasn’t uncommon for small animals like squirrels or chipmunks break a tree branch or something in their seemingly never-ending quest for food. Instead I just looked for the source of the disturbance so I could watch yet another aspect of nature in its rawest form.
What I got was the sight of the boy who had been checking me out in town turning around with a confused and clearly lost look on his face. Even as I silently dropped into a crouch behind a small thicket cluster, I watched him trying to pick his way through the forest with little success. Whoever this guy was, he clearly wasn’t at all experienced when it came to working in nature because he was still wearing his rather upscale Docker pants, white and black checked button down shirt, and what were probably obscenely expensive sneakers so white they shone like beacons, or at least they would if they hadn’t been streaked with mud. Already his clothing showed signs that he’d fallen at least once, muddying his knees, and there seemed to be a small tear in one of the sleeves. He was muttered to himself as he drew closer to my hiding place and eventually I was able to make out what he was saying.
“Damn trees. Why the hell are there so many? And why does it have to be so muddy around here, it hasn’t rained or anything. And why do-”
Whatever his last complaint was going to be was cut off the branch he’d just shoved out of the way suddenly snapping back and slapping with a face full of leaves. The surprise of it was enough not only to have him let out a funny yelp, but to send him flying right off his feet to land squarely on his back in the dirt. The whole thing couldn’t have been more comically scripted if it had been in an old Chevy Chase movie and I couldn’t help but giggle at the antics. I immediately slapped a hand over my mouth to stifle the sound but it was too late.
“Phah!” he spat out some dirt from his mouth and rolled onto his hands and knees before looking around. “Is someone there?” When I didn’t move or even dare breathe he got to his feet and swiped the dirt from his shirt and pants with annoyance. “Come on,” he wheedled, “I heard you giggle and I’m pretty sure animals don’t giggle around here.”
Already I could feel my chest growing tight as the fear of being discovered rapidly rose to near-panic. While he didn’t seem dangerous, there was no doubt that this guy had shown interest in me back at the sporting goods store. Yes, I will free admit that being looked at and considered desirable had given me a little thrill, but I had been safe then. I was with my friends, we were leaving the store, and we were in a public place so there was no chance of anything happening. Now, I was alone, no one knew where I was, and I was in the presence of this same guy. What would he do if he found me? Would he simply laugh at me being such a timid little girl afraid of her own shadow? Or would he realize that with no one around he could simply do whatever he wanted, grab me, rip off my dress, and…
“Hey,” he said with a smile as my growing, frantic gasps had become loud enough that he’d been able to hear them and zeroed in on my location. “What are you doing over there?”
My heart was in my throat and racing to the beat of the snare drum from Wipeout. I wanted to yell or scream but the only thing I was able to accomplish was my mouth opening and closing silently. I think he might have realized just how terrified I really was because his expression immediately changed from pleasantly surprised to serious concern. “Hey, are you all right?” he asked as he slowly started stepping towards me.
With that first step I scurried backwards until my back came up hard against another tree, the bark digging into my back through the thinness of my dress. Looking around wildly, I tried to figure out what would be the safest way to run while over and over again wishing I’d gone along with Aiden and Kitty on their run earlier so they could have taught me some tricks. Not that it would have done me much good since my dress was so tight in the hips and thighs I probably wouldn’t have been able to do any significant kind of maneuvers.
“Hey, hey,” he said soothingly, holding his hands up palm out to show he didn’t mean any harm, “I’m not going to hurt you, okay? I just got kind of lost walking around here. Look.” As if to signify his good intentions, he slowly lowered himself to the forest floor where he sat cross-legged with his hands in his lap. “See? I’m not going to do anything.”
“Wh-who are you?” I managed to finally squeak out.
“My name’s Tom, Tom Borland, what’s yours?”
“A-Ashley,” I stammered out, not bothering to tell him my last name.
“Nice to meet you Ashley,” he said with a disarming smile. “Do you come out here a lot?” When I nodded he looked around. “I can see why. It’s beautiful out here. You get many lost idiots falling on their ass coming around these parts?”
The self-depreciating smile eased my panicked mind slightly and I allowed myself to relax fractionally. “Most people are smart enough to know that when you push a tree branch it’s going to swing back at you.”
“Well,” he said with a chuckle, “I never was much of the outdoorsy type. I’m more at home in the city.”
“Then what are you doing out here?” I asked suspiciously while my mind screamed at me: to rape you!
“Just taking a bit of a vacation with my friends,” he explained, “We heard about this place so we decided to check it out this year. You’ve really got yourselves quite a spot with this town.”
“It’s quiet,” I confirmed, “Not many people come around here. It’s not like there’s a lot of bars and clubs and events like in the city.”
“Well that’s kind of what we were looking for,” he said, “Somewhere off the path where we could get away from that frantic city life. I know I needed some time to just slow down and relax after finals.”
“You’re in college?” I asked, though really it was pretty obvious from when I’d seen him before that he was.
His nod confirmed it. “Uh huh, University of Wyoming in Laramie.”
“What are you studying?” I asked, fully realizing I was basically interrogating him at this point and not caring one bit.
“Business,” he told me without hesitation, “And economics. My Dad runs a pretty big manufacturing company that I’m hoping I can take over one day.”
Rich kid. That made sense given his high-end choice of clothing. Chances were daddy paid for his college education plus gave him a huge allowance on the side. It wouldn’t surprise me if the guy drove a Mercedes or something too. Wait, why was I being so callous all of the sudden? I mean, yeah, the guy probably came from a wealthy family, but that didn’t mean he was a rich douchebag too. Just because someone came from money didn’t automatically make them a bad person. Just look at Mom. She was wealthy, inherited it from her parents, and was one of the kindest people I’d ever met. Who was to say that this guy wasn’t the same.
“So do you come out here a lot?” he asked, breaking into my thoughts, “In the woods I mean.”
“Yeah,” I admitted, “It helps clear my head when I’m thinking too much or get stressed.”
Looking around at the nature that surrounded us and cut us off from the rest of the world he nodded in understanding. “I can see that. It’s really peaceful out here. You’re actually pretty lucky to be able to walk through here whenever you want. The closest I usually get is a couple of trees planted on campus.”
“Sucks to be you,” I snapped, then immediately winced at my sudden loss of control of my emotions and shook my head. “I’m sorry, that was bitchy. I’m…not really good with…people.”
“It’s all right,” he told me, not appearing offended at me biting his head off, “I guess being out here cut off from the world you probably don’t see many strangers.”
“We’re not cut off from the world,” I pointed out, “We’ve got just as many amenities as the city does here.”
“I meant your population,” he clarified, “And the fact that the town is kind of out of the way so I’m guessing you don’t get many folks passing through.”
“That’s true,” I admitted.
“Look, do you want to maybe go sit on that log over there?” he suggested, pointing to a large one a short distance away. “I’ll stay right here if you want but I’m guessing shoving your back against that tree against your back has got to hurt a bit.”
Looking over at where he’d indicated, I had to admit the bark was starting to irritate the exposed skin on my back and shoulders where the dress didn’t cover, and the log would undoubtedly be more comfortable, but…
“All right,” I conceded carefully, “And you don’t have to keep sitting on the ground. You can sit there too. Just…stay on the far end of it, okay?”
He nodded his agreement and we both stood up, brushed ourselves off, and walked over to the rustic seating choice in question. While Tom did as I asked and took a seat at the very edge of the log, I perched myself on the opposite end with one foot firmly planted on the ground and the other lightly pressed against the log itself.
The positioning of my feet wasn’t an accident. Over the course of the last two months I’d taken quite the few walks through the forest. During that time, it hadn’t escaped my attention, particularly since at the time I was still operating under the mental status of rather extreme paranoia, that anyone could just snatch me up while I was lounging on a riverbank or a fallen tree like I was now. Because of this, early on I’d tested out a variety of quick-fire methods of regaining my feet so I could be in a full sprint barely after my feet had touched the ground. When it came to sitting on logs, or benches as the case may be, I’d found this was the most effective method for thrusting myself into a dead run at a moment’s notice, very much like the positioning an Olympic sprinter might take in the starting blocks. So, yeah, I was still more than a little paranoid about strangers, but at least I hadn’t run like a bat out of hell the moment I’d spied Tom. That was an improvement, right?
“You mind if I ask you kind of a stupid question?”
Glancing over at him, not that I’d taken my eyes off for him for a second to begin with, I brushed some hair out of my eyes and tucked it behind my ear. “I suppose.”
“If you walk in the woods so often, and you’re really leery of strangers, how come you’re wearing such a nice dress?”
That was by far one of the last things I’d expected him to ask me. What I did for fun, what was there to do in this town in the middle of nowhere, what’s your sign, all of those would have pretty much fallen right in line with how I expected our conversation to continue. My clothing choice certainly hadn’t been the direction I’d anticipated it would go.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he continued while I tried to get my thoughts in order, “It’s a real pretty dress, I just wouldn’t think you’d wear something like that on a leisurely stroll through the forest when it could get ripped or something.”
“I guess because I’ve been through here so many times I know where most of the tricky spots are,” I explained, “And I didn’t feel like changing before coming out this time.”
“Reasonable enough,” he acknowledged, “Obviously I’m kind of lacking in your knowledge and skill of this place and paying for it.” He smiled and lifted the sleeve of his shirt to show the slight tear in it from where he’d been whacked by a branch.
“Well City Boy,” I drawled with a bit of a superior smile, “That’s what you get when you think you can take on Mother Nature.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled, though he smiled when he said it, “Next time I think I’ll plan ahead and wear something a little more serviceable.”
He opened his mouth to say more, but apparently thought better of it and closed it once again. Of course, this only fired my curiosity of what he had been planning to say to me. I tried to resist but the not knowing was simply too much. “What?”
“No,” he said, waving his unspoken words away, “It was a bad line and I don’t want to insult you.”
Now he really had my curiosity up. If it was a line, that meant that perhaps he was trying to charm me. Did I want him to do that? Sure, so far he’d presented himself as a pretty nice guy, but that was just on the surface. I knew better than anyone that darker things tended to lurk beneath the surface when it came to people and their intentions. Still, I’d relaxed my caution a little before and it had earned me two new really good friends. Maybe it was time I started lowering my guard a little more.
“No,” I coaxed him, “Go ahead, say it.”
He had the grace to look a little bashful as he keep his eyes on his shoes when he said, “Maybe next time you could kind of act as my guide?”
As far as lines went, it was pretty bad, and expected, but the way in which he’d said it was pretty cute and I found myself easing a bit more. “So you want me to be your tour guide?” I asked, casting him a knowing smile.
“Maybe,” he hedged, “I mean, I have no clue how to get around in this place and it’s pretty likely I’d get lost in a heartbeat without someone who knows the area.”
Again, it was clearly another line, but dammit if he wasn’t being so boyishly charming about it and it was starting to make me feel a little pool of heat forming low in my belly. Whether it was the fact that he was an older guy showing interest in me or the fact that he was so cute I’m not sure, but the end result spoke for itself. Still, I wasn’t planning on letting him off wooing me quite that easily. “So then,” I asked, pinning him with a knowing look, “How exactly how did you plan on getting back to your hotel today if you don’t know how to get back?”
The expression on his face clearly told me he’d realized I’d found a pretty big hole in his little plan and he had the grace to blush. Digging into his pants pocket, he pulled out his cell phone and held it slightly aloft. “GPS.”
“Ha!” I crowed with victory. Strangely enough, the idea that this complete stranger had potentially followed me into the woods wasn’t filling me with the numbing dread I would have expected.
“Okay, okay,” he said, holding his hands up in defeat, “You got me, I was wandering around myself and saw you and wanted to talk with you. I know it’s kind of creepy doing it in the woods when it’s starting to get dark but for some reason I just couldn’t resist. The way you had this faraway look to you while you were walking through this forest like you were a part of it was just…I don’t know,” he admitted, “Magical? I just couldn’t resist wanting to get to know you.”
That was probably another line, but damn if it didn’t work and make me melt a little. Since my change in both sex and sexual preferences, I had yet to really explore myself beyond a couple of rather pleasant dreams. While I knew I still liked women, I’d also come to learn early on that I liked men too, which made me bi-sexual I guess. Unfortunately, the events in San Francisco had created too strong of an aversion to strange people to let me really open up enough to fully examine my new thoughts and emotions when it came to dating and relationships.
Now, as I was being thoroughly charmed by this handsome college guy, I realized that not only could I now confirm that I most certainly did like guys, but that this one in particular was doing a pretty good job at charming his way passed all of my carefully maintained defenses. The really strange part? I didn’t exactly mind it.
“So you think I’m magical do you?” I challenged with a teasing smile.
“I think you’re beautiful.”
The smile instantly fled my face, not because of any kind of sudden fear, but because of the sudden pulse of heat I felt in my chest. I’d been given the label of beautiful before, but that had been by Mom and she was undoubtedly biased. Don’t get me wrong, I’d seen myself in the mirror so I knew I wasn’t some grotesque beast. In fact, the first time I’d looked at myself in the ER in San Francisco I’d used the exact same word to label my new, feminine appearance. However, calling yourself beautiful and having a hot guy do it were two completely different things entirely.
Of course, his frank manner of complimenting me caused an instant blush to form and I quickly looked down at my sandaled feet. “No I’m not,” I mumbled, wondering why my immediate reaction to a compliment was to deny it even when I knew it was true.
“You are,” he insisted, but not in that over-the-top, forceful way you often see on T.V when a guy is clearly trying to work his way into a girl’s panties. “I guess you probably haven’t let too many guys close enough to tell you that huh?”
Lifting my eyes to his, I actually felt a tiny fissure of worry that this guy was able to read me so damn easily. From the moment we’d met he’d pegged me as being introverted and unsocial, but then I’d probably given him some pretty obvious cues when it came to that. You’re telegraphing Ashley, I told myself, Just relax and take the damn compliment. “Not really, no,” I admitted.
“You know,” he said candidly, “You’d hear it a lot more if didn’t keep everyone at arm’s length.”
The mention of distance made me realize that at some point during our conversation he’d scooted closer and was actually within arm’s length at this point. There was a sudden flash of panic that I fought down and through sheer force of will kept from bolting right then and there. I couldn’t help stiffening, however, and Tom seemed to notice.
“Ashley,” he told me quietly, “I’m not going to hurt you. Whoever it was that did, that’s not me.”
“I know,” I whispered in a slightly hoarse voice, “It’s just…instinctive.”
When I felt his fingers touch the back of my hand I actually jumped a little. “Shhh,” he soothed, as though trying to calm a skittish horse, “I’m not going to hurt you and I’m not going to do something you don’t want, okay?”
I nodded, but my eyes stayed firmly on those fingers just barely grazing my skin. When I didn’t pull away they began lazily moving back and forth, gently caressing the back of my hand even as my fingers tightened on the log slightly. For some time, I’m not sure how long exactly, he continued doing only that, gently stroking with his fingers until slowly, inch by inch, I started to relax. This wasn’t so bad. In fact, it felt kind of nice. When it came to, shall we say, intimate contact I was very inexperienced. The most I’d ever really had with someone outside of Mom, Aiden, and Kitty was really just a friendly handshake. This light, feathery skimming was something new and I had to say I was liking it so far.
Eventually, with a very faint nudge of Tom’s fingers, I turned my hand over so his fingertips were caressing the palm of my hand, tracing concentric circles over and over before reversing and doing the same in the opposite direction. By this point I had become so loose and relaxed there was a bit of danger that I might slide to the ground in a puddle. It was no surprise then that I couldn’t stop the faint moan of pleasure I experienced in the form of a throaty hum.
“Good?” Tom asked quietly.
“Mmhmm,” I mumbled, vaguely flexing my fingers so he knew I wasn’t falling asleep on him.
“So did you want to give me that tour sometime then?” he wheedled and when I opened one eye I hadn’t even realized I’d closed I saw him smiling with a hint of slyness.
“Mr. Borland,” I said in a voice that was low and throaty, “Are you trying to seduce me just to go on a date?”
“That depends,” he hedged, “Did it work?”
Slowly coming back to myself now, I stood and brushed off the back of my dress while he continued to sit and looked up at me with the most adorable expression of hope. “I expect the full, romantic picnic treatment,” I informed him in as much of a lofty voice as I could manage, which meant not at all and it was clear I was just being teasing. “Complete with a wicker basket, red-checked blanket, and delicious food.”
Tom stood himself and folded his arms with a cocky smile. “What, no candle in an old wine bottle too?”
“Heavens no,” I gasped before tossing him a wink, “I wouldn’t want to accidently start a forest fire after all. Besides, a candle would be pretty pointless around noon.”
“Fair enough,” he acknowledged, “Tomorrow then?”
It suddenly struck me just how far I’d gotten and how fast it had taken place. In the span of…how long had Tom and I had been talking?...I’d gone from terrified and ready to run to actually being asked out on a date and not only accepting, but making pseudo demands regarding it. The reality of it had me drawing in a little on myself and I actually wrapped my arms around my midsection in a self-hug. Tom seemed to pick up on this because his expression grew concerned and he took a step towards me before stopping. “How about the day after?” He suggested gently, surprising me by not just flat out canceling the date before it even had a chance to form. The fact that he still wanted to go out with a head-case like me both surprised me and sent little pleasant tendrils of warmth through my belly.
“I think the day after would be best,” I told him quietly, offering him a shy smile to show him I wasn’t chickening out yet.
“Great, I’ll see you then,” he said with just enough excitement to let me know he was definitely interested in me but wasn’t going to really push.
He just started to turn away when he paused and looked back as though considering me. I was about to ask what he was thinking when he suddenly moved. By this point my emotions were so all over the map that I simply wasn’t prepared for him to do anything. I should have been furious with myself for letting my guard fall so completely but by this point it was too late and there was nothing I could do to stop him. Instead, all I could do was stand there embracing myself tightly as he closed the distance between the two of us before I could blink…
…And kissed me on the cheek.
It wasn’t just a fast little peck either. While he’d moved in fast, the press of his lips to my skin was slow and gentle, nearly a caress. In fact, it actually seemed like his mouth parted ever so slightly before closing on my cheek, gently drawing a fraction of my skin between his lips for him to taste. It caused a delicious little shiver to run down my spine both from the feeling that I was so desired that he would risk my anger just to give me a rather chaste touch on the cheek and that he would do so in a manner that truly pushed the boundaries between chaste and sensual.
In fact, I was just about ready to turn my head so my lips could meet his in a gentle kiss when he suddenly back away with a shy little smile and said, “Meet me at the hotel day after tomorrow? Noon?”
The only thing I could do was nod mutely while I stood there like an idiot with my mouth open blinking stupidly, which I continued to do when he started back through the woods while pulling out his cell phone to guide him back to the hotel.
I stood there staring at where he disappeared into the woods for a while after that, trying to simply get my brain to process everything that had just happened. I’d just let a boy ask me out on a date and not only had I accepted, but I’d let him kiss me. As far as red-letter days went, this was a pretty big one. Up to this point I hadn’t even considered the possibility that I might one day engage in any kind of man-woman activity like dating despite the fact that I knew I was attracted to guys as well as girls. My emotional issues had been so debilitating up to this point I figured I might never be able to get passed the basic fear drive that kept me from being social in general. Apparently that wasn’t the case any longer. I had a date.
I had a date!
Spinning around, I raced back the way I came towards the house so I could call Aiden and tell her everything.
* * * *
Having paused a short distance after Ashley had lost sight of him, he watched from a position of hiding within a thicket as the girl spun around hugging herself before racing bac through the woods. He assumed she was probably heading home and if the ecstatically happy grin on her face was any indication, she’d probably be telling her two friends all about their upcoming date.
The meeting had gone almost exactly as Tom had intended it to. From the first moment he’d seen the beautiful redhead in the sporting goods store he knew he had to have her. He also knew from the way she always seemed to be nervously looking around as though expecting to be attacked at any moment that she carried some serious baggage with her. That was why it had been crucial to get her alone in a place where she seemed relatively comfortable before making his first move. Experience had taught him that when it came to skittish girls, you always wanted to approach them in a place where they felt safe so they wouldn’t instantly rebuff any advances simply because they weren’t comfortable.
That was why he’d chosen to approach her during her walk through the woods. While she had seemed cautious an unapproachable in town, alone in this deep forest her demeanor had changed to one of peace and contentedness. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told her that she looked so beautiful it was almost magical. Had he merely stumbled across her for the first time he might have suspected she was some kind of beautiful wood nymph or forest goddess. She would be his perfect conquest.
Which was why he was so confused. True, their whole conversation had been his tried and true method of getting a repressed girl to open up. He had used it countless times before and it had been wildly successful not only in getting a girl to open up emotionally, but to open up her legs at the same time. While he wasn’t planning on going quite that far with this first encounter, had to keep up the thrill of the hunt after all, he had been surprised when halfway through their talk he’d found himself becoming warmer and gentler with the lovely girl. Ordinarily, after having gotten a girl like her to start talking and become more engaged in the conversation, he would steer the topics towards more sensual or sexual matters. It was a good way to get a feel for how experienced the girl was and what kinds of things really turned her on.
With Ashley, however, he had found himself wanting to make her feel more at ease. He wanted her to be comfortable and for her to appreciate him rather than desire him. He wanted that look of peacefulness and happiness to wipe away the fear that he had seen shining in those amazing eyes of hers. And when that finally happened, the sense of accomplishment he felt was more rooted in happiness rather than furthering plans of carnal conquest.
In fact, he was actually looking forward to their date with a sense of giddy anticipation he hadn’t known since he was a young boy just beginning to understand how wonderful girls were. It really didn’t even bother him that, as he headed back towards the hotel, he was thinking about how to best provide sweet and caring romance rather than abject seduction and objectification.
For the first time in he didn’t know how long, the idea of not having sex with a beautiful girl didn’t seem to matter to him at all.
- Paradox
-
Topic Author
Triumvirate
Book 3
By Paradox
Wolf Springs, Wyoming, McKinnon Residence
The faint, haunting sound of Sarah McLaughlin’s dulcet tones floated through the air as I slowly scrolled through the information displayed on the screen on my laptop. I know it sounds cliché, the angsty teenager listening to McLaughlin while pondering deep, world issues, but really I just liked some of her music. For me, it created a soothing kind of background noise that helped ease the world away just a little bit and allowed me to focus on what I now considered a very important task.
Choosing a school.
While Mom had suggested attending the local all-inclusive school when I first moved in with her, I could tell it was done out of consideration not to pressure me into choosing the more likely of institutions for mutant teens like me: Whateley Academy. While I had looked into it on occasion, meeting and befriending Aiden had made me wonder if a regular high school would be able to offer me the services I needed. This wasn’t only speaking to my mutant power, though that was a significant factor. No, a bigger part was attending a school that was capable of coping with my own still largely out of control emotional issues. I didn’t even really need to look into our local school, nor any other school in the country for that matter, to know that they lacked the staff or the necessary training to be able to deal with a frightened mutant girl with a history of severe physical and mental abuse by foster parents as well as torture by a crazy doctor and a rogue MCO agent.
At the time, that left Whateley. According to their public website, they offered a full range of classes and services designed to both educate and train their students in the use of their mutant abilities while offering a very widespread student support system that included psychological assistance by highly trained and licensed practitioners. I was still more than a little leery about seeing a professional about my issues, the memories of torture by Doctor Taylor were simply still far too fresh, but I was self-aware enough to know that I would need to see someone about this sooner rather than later. By all accounts, Whateley seemed to have everything I could possibly want or need.
Then I saw some of their requirements. It wasn’t the education aspect or even the power training portion of the curriculum that bothered me. In fact, those aspects of it were actually quite inviting considering it would not only teach me how to better use my power, but it offered courses that lined up perfectly with my ultimate goal of going into medicine. The problem was with one of the other standard student requirements.
Combat training. I didn’t know about them at first until I talked about Whateley with Mom and that’s when she mentioned the combat classes, the training teams, and the combat finals. Apparently, one staple of Whateley is that everyone has to take these classes and even form teams for the purposes of arena-style combat. If you didn’t choose or form a team on your own, you were essentially forced into one of the school’s choosing. Now I had always been against violence and my time in San Francisco with the Smiths and the MCO hadn’t changed that. It would have been easy for me to come away from those experiences with the attitude that no one would ever hurt me again and I would be happy to use the reverse effect of my power and literally rip someone to pieces by turning a papercut into a flesh-tearing, nightmare-inducing experience. But that was exactly why I didn’t do that, it would be so easy to do it terrified me. I’d always been a person who really abhorred violence in all of its forms. While I certainly understood it existed and even that it was necessary, I wouldn’t even be there had it not been for Ashe’s extremely violent intervention, I still avoided it at all costs. To me, committing violence against someone directly violated my basic principles of offering life, first through medicine and recently through my gift of healing. To be told that if I went to Whateley I would be forced to go against my very principles was tantamount to putting a gun to my head.
The alternative of registering as a ‘non-combatant’, as they put it, held no appeal for me either since it would require me to wear a very specific armband at all times identifying me as such. I know it isn’t really a fair comparison, but to me that felt very much akin to the Jews being forced to wear Stars of David sewn into their clothing during Nazi Germany. It would only serve to paint a target on me for bullies and not for a second did I believe that their security would ensure my safety.
After Mom had told me about these requirements, an extensive search online finally hit pay dirt when I was able to locate a message board of sorts where people who had attended Whateley in the past talked about their experiences there. It was no surprise that I saw multiple references to the very things I feared, that being bullying was quite common, particularly because the school took in not only normal citizens and people aligned with heroes, but kids that came from villainous backgrounds as well. That part truly instilled a sense of fear in me about the school itself. While it touted itself as a place of neutrality where the only goal was education, I had to wonder how they could feel good about themselves when they were only making supervillains stronger and more intelligent. I suppose, if asked, they would say they were seeking to ‘enlighten’ them or perhaps get them to change their outlook on life, but unfortunately I knew from very personal experience that you can’t change those that are evil.
After reading through these recounting of events at Whateley, and realizing it was, in fact, not the safe haven for mutants they made it out to be, I made the very difficult decision that I had to find another alternative. Unfortunately, there really was no kind of alternative when it came to schooling catering to the very specific needs of mutants learning how to use their powers. I had actually resigned myself to going to Whateley simply because of a lack of options.
That was what I had been doing that morning before going on the run Aiden, Kitty, and I had planned. The school’s website had been on my laptop screen and I had been looking at it with a sense of defeat when I decided to try one more attempt at searching for alternatives. I hadn’t done it in a while now and I figured if I didn’t come up with anything this time I would just bite the bullet and hope it didn’t end up exploding out the back of my head.
After typing in the standard ‘Alternatives to Whateley’ in the search bard and clicking on the go button, I once again scrolled down through the various links displayed, all of which pretty much said there was no real alternative. I was just about to give up when the last hyperlink on the page caught my eye.
It wasn’t very innocuous, in fact it only said ‘A better alternative to Whateley’, but I couldn’t recall having ever seen it before. Intrigued, I clicked on the link and was immediately brought to the home page of a Tearmann Institute. On it’s face, it looked like just about every other private school out there, but a quick look through the opening statements on the home page quickly made me realize there was something very different about this particular school.
By late that morning, I had long since called Aiden to tell her I wouldn’t be able to make it to our run so I could pore over the various and extensive information that was provided about Tearmann. The more I read, the more I was amazed that A) this hadn’t been on the top of the search list, and
the school hadn’t been more extensively advertised to the mutant community.The first impression I had upon reading the information on their home page, Tearmann was simply another Whateley, offering a place for mutants both for educational and power learning purposes. However, once I got passed the home page it quickly became evident that the two were quite different from one another. For one, while combat training was indeed offered, it was in no way a core curriculum nor was it a requirement for all but the most non-violent of students. Secondly, no student that was affiliated with a criminal organization, or had any kind of serious criminal history, would be admitted to the school. So, unlike Whateley, this was a place where students could go to learn and not have to worry about the kid sitting next to them in class making plans to take over the world either before or after they’d graduated.
It was a rather unique approach to mutant education and I wondered why I hadn’t heard of it before now. By all accounts, this place was my dream school. Modern, bleeding edge facilities and technologies, a staff with many years of training and experience both in the classroom and the field, the most up-to-date information on every subject being taught. How were people not flocking here?
The icing on the cake was the dorm facilities. One thing Mom had told me about was how the students were all separated into seven different dorms, and those separations were done on the basis of personal wealth, ideals, and even because of sexual preference or physical sex change. That last one was actually a closely guarded secret, that being the Poe dormitory, but Mom told me that a while back one of her friends who hadn’t been effected by the apparently magical ward that prevented people from talking about Poe informed her about the reason for the singular dorm. Instead, they were viewed by the general student population as being a house of psychotics and potentially dangerous.
That in and of itself turned me off of Whateley right from the beginning. You can’t claim to be a supposedly all inclusive learning environment that educates criminals and supervillains alongside good and decent people while at the same time segregating their students because of sexual preference or sex change. Magically forcing them not to speak about it as well, essentially telling their students that if they didn’t conform to society’s heterosexual sexual biological standards, whether it was by choice or because it was forced upon them through their mutation, they should keep themselves and who they were hidden away from others. It smacked of gross discrimination and, quite frankly, disgusted me.
So when Tearmann advertised that their dorms were based upon class year vs. any other criteria, I was greatly relieved. There was no separation based upon wealth, power, sexual identity, or anything else. Everyone from that class year roomed in that dorm for all four years. While it did end up creating a separation regarding the upper and lower classmen, that was pretty standard for any private school and they had done quite well for decades. In conjunction with this, there were very strict policies in place that precluded any student from being discriminated against based upon race, species(?), gender, sexual preference, and even personal wealth. Basically, it ensured that students were treated on an individual basis rather than lumping them into some generalized category. It also didn’t cause discrimination as a by-product, i.e only certain types of students were housed in certain dorms because of whatever reasons. There was one particular dorm that was separate from the others and wasn’t determined by class year. More it was a specialty dorm for those possessing powers that were not yet under control and had great destructive capabilities. According to the site’s literature, this dorm was designed not only to be identical to the others while also possessing extra layers of protection and security, but as a strictly temporary measure until the particular student attained proper control over his or her abilities. At that point, the student would be relocated into his or her appropriate year’s dorm. It was a good idea on paper, though how it worked in practice was a bit of a mystery since there weren’t really any testimonials.
The other interesting thing about the school was its location. Unlike Whateley, which was within the United States, Tearmann was actually located in Canada, on the west coast of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. A quick search on the island province revealed that while it generally had quite a low population, only around five hundred and thirty thousand people living on an island over one hundred and fifty-six thousand square miles, it was the leading provider of energy resources for both Canada and the United States. This was largely due to the fact that it was mostly undeveloped, meaning it was composed of around ninety-five percent wilderness with only the remaining five percent being cities or towns. Because of this, a great amount of solar and wind farms had been established while creating very minimal impact on the environment as a while. From what I could tell, these farms, of which at last count there were at least one hundred separate locations containing at minimum fifty windmills or solar windows, both of which were gadgeteer-design so they were easily one hundred times more efficient than traditional ones, only comprised about one percent of that total five that referenced human interference in nature. In layman’s terms, the whole of the island was still completely untouched by human hands as far as building and infrastructure went. Since Newfoundland had some of the highest and most consistent wind speeds in the world due to their location within the Jetstream, this allowed for their windfarms to be even more efficient. The end result was that while it possessed a low population, it was easily one of the wealthiest provinces in the nation.
By the time the afternoon had rolled around I had pretty much devoured everything I could about the Tearmann Institute from their website, twice. I tried looking for anything else on it on the Internet but there was a surprising lack of it. Since both the school and its location seemed to be, at least in my eyes, ideal, it was very odd that they weren’t touting their facility every chance they had.
That made me suspicious.
Closing my laptop, I leaned back in my chair and stretched out the kinks that had formed in my back and shoulders from hunching over the computer for so long. A quick glance at the time told me I’d been going over all of this information for four hours without even realizing it. A low growl in my stomach also reminded me that I’d only had a few pieces of toast and a cup of tea for breakfast and that it was long past time to have lunch.
Leaping up from my chair I bounded down the steps to the kitchen where I found Mom putting together a few turkey sandwiches. “Hi Mom,” I called as I skipped in.
“Hi honey,” she replied with a smile as she finished the third sandwich on the plate, “I’m guessing you’re probably hungry.”
“Uh huh,” I said, snatching one of the yummy looking sandwiches with a playful grin and taking a healthy bite.
“I thought you were going running with Aiden and this new girl you met yesterday,” she remarked, setting a tea kettle on the stove to heat.
“I was,” I admitted, “But then I found something really interesting on the Internet. Have you ever heard of the Tearmann Institute?”
Her lips pursed slightly as she considered the name before shaking her head. “No, I can’t say that I have. What is it? Some kind of medical facility?”
“No,” I said around a mouthful as I took another bite, “It’s a school in Canada. Apparently it’s a lot like Whateley.”
That seemed to catch her attention before her gaze, which had been leisurely glancing at me now and again sudden sharpened and focused on me with much more intensity. “Oh?”
Her sudden interest didn’t escape my attention, but then Whateley was her alma mater so it was pretty understandable. “Yeah. It offers the same benefits as Whateley does, but without all of the drawbacks.”
“And what drawbacks might those be dear?” she asked in a deceptively sweet voice that I wasn’t buying for a second. I was about to insult the school she’d graduated from so it was understandable that she would want to defend it.
“Well for one,” I pointed out in a very reasonable manner, “There’s no separation of students based upon wealth, power, sexual orientation, etc.”
The sigh she gave was the same as before when we’d had this discussion. From the very beginning I had been very vocal about my disapproval regarding their student segregation in this manner while Mom usually defended it as being character building. “Honey, we’ve been over this.”
“Yes we have,” I countered, “And quite frankly it still pisses me off. How would you feel if I went to Whateley and you were told that because my mutation caused a change in my sex and sexual identity that I would be forced to live in a dorm where I was magically prevented from telling anyone anything about it? Not only that,” I continued even as she opened her mouth, “But I would instantly be labeled as some kind of freak or pariah just because I lived there.”
As expected, Mom couldn’t refute this argument just like she couldn’t the other times. Since she herself had been housed in Melville Cottage, which by and large had been considered the ‘rich kids’ dorm, she hadn’t had to endure the kind of stigma one could easily achieve simply by their place of residence. It was a cruel aspect of society in general that, quite frankly, Whateley seemed to do little about curtailing.
“Well what about this Tearmann Institute?” Mom countered mildly, “How do their rooming assignments differ?”
“For one,” I ticked off on a finger, “The students are all housed with their own class year the entire time. It doesn’t matter of you’re straight, gay, rich, poor, or an alien, you all live in the same dorm facility. There’s no segregation of students based upon any of those, so there’s no stigma of living in such-and-such dorm so you must be a freak.”
“What about students that have out of control powers or are considered Ultra Violent?” she challenged.
“There is a dorm specifically for students like that,” I admitted, “However, it is deemed only as a temporary measure until the student is properly taught how to control their powers or violent tendencies. Then they join their class’s dorm.”
“Interesting,” Mom mused as her gaze turned distant for a moment while she considered what I had said, “And what about the curriculums?”
“Apparently they are very similar to Whateley’s, only they don’t have a specific combat requirement. Combat courses are offered, but they aren’t mandatory and students who choose not to take them aren’t branded as Non Combatants.”
That caused her to wince slightly, as I’d made my feelings about the whole issue of wearing an armband to signify oneself as non-violent or a non-combatant very well known in the past. “Okay,” she said carefully, “So this is a Whateley-esque school in Canada. Which province is it in?”
“Newfoundland, on the west coast.”
“Hmmm,” she said thoughtfully. “You know, I can’t ever recall ever hearing anything about Newfoundland before. Then again, all we usually hear about regarding them is Toronto, Ottowa, and maybe Nova Scotia.”
“It’s their eastern-most province,” I recited, remembering the information I’d gleaned on the information website regarding the province itself, “It has a pretty low population given its size and it’s the single largest energy supplier for the country and many of the states as well.”
“Interesting,” Mom commented, clearly impressed by this fact, “That must make them a rather wealthy province.”
“I think so, but from what I read it seems like a lot of the population still live a simpler kind of life. Fishing is still a big part of their culture, apparently.”
“So how does a school like Tearmann become established in a place like that?” she wondered aloud.
“Well,” I reasoned, “It kind of makes sense. There’s more power to run the school than they’ll ever need, and that’s if they don’t have their own power source. Plus, it’s in a more isolated region while still having full societal amenities. Kind of like Wolf Springs.” I smiled at the sudden inspirational comparison.
“I see you’ve really thought hard about this. Is this why you canceled your run with Aiden? Because you were looking at all of this information all morning?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, but without a shred of regret.
“Well, it certainly sounds like this is an excellent school. What is the cost for their tuition?”
“Well,” I said hesitantly, “That’s kind of the tricky part. See, they don’t advertise that on the website. Apparently you need to book an appointment for one of their representatives to come out and meet any perspective students first and if you’re considered a proper candidate for enrollment you’re told the tuition fees.”
“That sounds rather clandestine,” Mom noted worriedly, “I was fully ready to pay for you to go to Whateley, but that’s because I went there myself so I know all about it. This Tearmann Institute is quite unknown and honestly how do we know they are what they claim to be on their website?”
“We could always request the interview and find out from the representative that they send,” I suggested hopefully. I know it was probably stupid since in reality I didn’t know all that much about the school, but I was genuinely excited about the prospect of going there. That was something I hadn’t dreamed would happen when it came to Whateley.
“We could,” Mom admitted, “But what if they aren’t on the up and up? I don’t mean to frighten you sweetheart, but what if Tearmann is just a front for something we don’t want to be involved in?”
That was something I actually hadn’t considered and the thought of willingly throwing myself to a group that could possibly want to do me harm sent chills down my spine and instantly had me rethinking this whole idea.
“I have an idea,” Mom said when she saw the look on my face and picked up the phone. I frowned in confusion as she started dialing and I wondered if she was calling Tearmann right now. Then I realized she couldn’t be since I hadn’t given her the phone number yet. So who was she calling? “Hi,” she said into the phone, “Do you have a few minutes? Oh I should have known,” she said with an exasperated roll of her eyes and a sigh that bordered on a laugh, “Yes she’s right here.” With a pleased smile on her face she handed me the phone.
“Hello?” I asked timidly into the receiver.
“Ashley,” a very familiar voice greeted me in a low, gravely tone.
“Ashe!” I cried happily, “It’s so nice to hear you.”
“It’s good to hear from you too,” he acknowledged and it actually sounded like he meant it. “I understand you’re curious about the Tearmann Institute.”
“How?” I stammered, “Mom and I were only just talking about that.”
“It’s a good school,” he went on, completely ignoring what I’d just said, “I vetted them and I can tell you it’s not a villain training academy and it’s not a clandestine organization of criminals masquerading as an educational institution to try and get their hands on mutants.”
“But-”
“If you’re interested in going there I feel confident in recommending it.”
“I am interested,” I said quickly, hoping I could get a word in, “Mom and I were just worried about how vague they were about tuition costs and stuff.”
“It’s for security purposes,” he explained, “They don’t like to advertise since they are quite selective in who they allow to attend so they aren’t flooded with applicants and end up having applicants slip through whose explicit goal is to go on to be super villains after graduation.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” I muttered.
There was a pause on the other end of the line and I thought I actually heard him sigh. Ashe? Sighing? “Ashley, listen,” he said, and immediately I noticed the change in his tone. Gone was the cold, rough, business-like demeanor that seemed to be such a part of him and in its place was a warmer, caring tone that I didn’t even think he possessed. “You and I have history. Yes, I saved your life, but you saved mine right back. I’ve never forgotten that and I never will. Don’t think for a moment that I wouldn’t suggest something for you that I wasn’t beyond one hundred percent sure was in your best interests. I understand your hesitation when it comes to Whateley. I have even more reservations about that school than you do. That’s why I’m glad you found Tearmann. For someone like you, it really is the far superior place to not only get an education, but to learn about your powers as well. If that is where you want to go for school, make the call to book an appointment.”
“I will,” I said with a smile. “But one question, why do you think Tearmann is the better school for someone like me?”
“You’re Irish, right?”
“Yes,” I replied with a bit of confusion, “What does that have to do with it?”
“Tearmann is the Irish word for ‘Sanctuary’ or ‘Refuge’.”
I smiled then, realizing that more than likely Ashe had this all planned from the moment he’d met me. I shouldn’t have been at all surprised to begin with. The man always was countless steps ahead of everyone else. “Thanks Ashe,” I said in a quiet, grateful voice.
“My pleasure. I look forward to seeing your progress reports,” he finished, his voice resuming his normal brusque, business-like tone before he disconnected.
“Well?” Mom asked with a knowing smile.
“Let’s make that call,” I said happily, right before there was a pounding at the front door. “Now who is that?” I wondered with a bit of irritation that this moment was being interrupted. Rising from the table I walked to the front door and threw it open, ready to send whomever was standing there packing.
The last thing I expected was to see Aiden and Kitty standing there in their workout clothes, both looking rather dirty, with Aiden supporting what appeared to be an injured Kitty by the waist. They both gave me meek smiles as I exclaimed, “What the hell happened to you two?”
All Aiden said was, “We need to talk.”
Chicago, Illinois
No sooner had the call been disconnected than a second number was immediately connected to, this one possessing an area code that did not exist within the United States. The line rang twice before a smooth and cultured European voice intoned, “Good afternoon, Tearmann Institute, this is Dr. Wellman, how may I assist you?”
“Drop the act Scott,” came the mildly stated command, “I need to talk with you.”
“Ashe!” the man on the other end of the line said, now with a much more youthful exuberance and a distinct Midwestern accent, “How the hell are you?”
“Busy,” he said shortly, “I’ll be brief. You’re going to be receiving a phone call requesting an interview for Ashley Logan in Wolf Springs. That interview time will be expedited, as will the follow up calls you’ll be receiving on behalf of Aiden Connors and Kitty Blake, also in Wolf Springs.”
“Christ Ashe,” the man on the other end of the line, Scott, said as he was clearly writing things down in a hurry, “What the hell have you been doing, holding recruitment meetings?”
“Send Rebecca,” the dark man continued as though the other hadn’t even spoken, “And fast track their applications through the process. Once they’ve been processed as accepted you’ll find the full tuition, book and housing costs, as well as a stipend for the commissary deposited into the institute’s account for Ashley Logan with a subaccount specifically designated for commissary and surplus use.”
“Goddammit Ashe,” Scott growled, “Did you hack our systems again? What about the other two?”
“They have the financial means to pay for themselves. I’ll also suggest they be roomed closely together.”
“Suggest?” Now the educator’s voice was full of disbelief, “Since when do you ever suggest anything?”
“Look Scott,” Ashe said, dropping the formal tone of his voice in exchange for one that spoke of many years of familiarity, “Ashley is my primary concern, but the other two have formed a budding friendship with her that she is in desperate need of. You’re good at your job, that’s why I’ve supported you for so long when you approached me for advice on the Institute and why I won’t tell you how to do it-”
“Other than forcing prospective students on me,” Scott quipped snidely.
“Ashley will receive little benefit from Whateley,” he explained, “She’s strictly non-combat and non-violence and her attendance there would only serve to aggravate her existing trauma regardless of their psychological program.”
“What kind of trauma are we talking about here Ashe?” the educator asked, his tone becoming very professional and serious.
“She was the girl who was kidnapped and tortured by the physician and MCO agent in San Francisco. They were intending to conduct experimentation on her followed by dissection to learn the secret to her abilities.”
“I remember seeing that story,” Scott said, “This is that girl huh? Yeah, I can see why you sent her my way. Aggression and combat-based education would only send her running instead of encourage her. Should I be worried about sudden, violent outbreaks triggered by PTSD?”
“No, the opposite. Her pattern behavior is to close herself off from outside contact and affect a flight response when triggered.”
“All right,” Scott said on a sigh, “Once we get the request for interviews I’ll send Rebecca like you asked and fast track the applications. I assume you want them roomed close together because of their friendship?”
“It will be necessary for Ashley to have an emotional anchor close by in the beginning and at least one of them has already established that kind of bond.”
“Jesus Ashe,” the man breathed in disbelief, “Did you fucking bug her or something? Why the hell are you watching this girl so damn close?”
There were a few moments of silence on the line as the man of darkness considered his words carefully. “I have my reasons,” he finally allowed, “Get it done and let me know if there are any problems.”
The other had just started to reply when Ashe broke the connection. He knew there was a great deal more he could have done in this matter, but he also was well aware that it people did not take kindly to having their lives strictly controlled. All he’d done was lay the groundwork to give Ashley and her friends the opportunity they needed to succeed and thrive, along with a small nudge. Other than that, it was up to them to see it through. That was a gamble, given that human nature was fluid, and perspectives and outlooks could change simply from one bad day, but his instincts told him this was the right choice and they had yet to fail him.
A brief flash in the corner of his eye drew his attention and his gaze shifted to see the proximity warning alarm he had established three days ago was activated. Just as he’d suspected, the man who had been systematically raping and killing college girls taken from the U of I Chicago campus had returned to what he’d deduced as his ‘lair’, the very building upon which he was perched atop. A quick thermal scan through the roof into the apartment below indicated the target was not alone and was in fact repeating his established M.O. of dragging a handcuffed victim into the apartment with him.
As the suspect threw his victim onto the couch near the window, Ashe sprinted silently across the rooftop, leapt into the air, fired a tether line into the building’s eve, swung through the window three feet from the target, and got back to work.
Wolf Springs, Wyoming, McKinnon Residence
“So, let me see if I’m understanding this right,” Aiden said, “You’re telling me that Whateley, the premiere mutant school in pretty much the entire world, sucks?”
Ashley nodded from her reclining position on her bed and took a sip of orange juice. After Aiden had explained that Kitty knew about both of their mutations, and that Kitty herself was a mutant, the redhead hadn’t hesitated to use her power to heal Kitty’s injured ankle. Kitty actually suspected that she wouldn’t have hesitated to do so even if their mutations hadn’t been revealed simply because by this point she could tell it was simply Ashley’s nature to help those in need regardless of the cost to herself. It was an admirable trait, but a risky one as well, especially how weak the girl had been after using her power. If simply healing a sprained ankle took that much out of her, she couldn’t see how Ashley could use her power on more severe injuries.
“That’s what I’m saying,” Ashley told them in a voice that was still slightly strained. “I’ve been looking into them for a while now and since Mom attended Whateley herself I’ve been asking her about it too. On it’s face, it’s not a bad school, with lots of great classes both in education and power use taught by staff who are, by all accounts, very experienced. The problem I found,” she stated as she heaved up into a sitting position, assisted by Aiden, “Was the way they handled the student body.”
“How do you mean?” Kitty asked, unconsciously crossing her legs and tilting her body so it was shown off to its sexiest advantage. Since she was wearing a short, silk robe borrowed from Ashley’s mother while hers and Aiden’s clothes were washed and dried, it was very easy for both girls to mistaken the sexy brunette for a top-class Victoria’s Secret model.
“Yeah,” Aiden wondered as well, adjusting the more modest, yet still silk, robe borrowed from Ashely, “From everything I’ve ever read about the place, they treat their students great?”
“You have to really dig into it,” Ashley explained, “Like you guys have probably already noticed from random web searches and maybe even T.V, Whateley has the reputation of being a great place for mutants. When I really looked at how they do things on their website, however, it kind of made me worry. For one, the students are separated into housing cottages based pretty much on either sex, wealth, influence, powers, and even sexual preferences.”
“Hmmmm,” Kitty mused, “Well sex I can understand, most private schools don’t have co-ed dorms, but what do you mean by the rest?”
“Okay,” Ashley sighed, “It’s like this. If you’re filthy rich or have a lot of political or business influence, you get to go to Melville, which is basically a five star freaking luxury hotel and the people housed there know it. If you’re considered someone out of control or dangerous, you get stuck in Hawthorne, or what everyone there calls the ‘Freak House’. For people like us who have flipped sexes or are homo or bi-sexual, we get stuffed into Poe, which is co-ed.”
“Well that doesn’t sound so bad,” Aiden observed, “I mean it’s kind of nice that you’d be around a bunch of people who have gone through similar experiences and can support one another.”
“Oh sure,” Ashley said sarcastically, “It sounds great, until you’re told that you can’t tell anyone about the fact that Poe was built specifically for that reason and you have a magical spell cast on you that stops you from talking about it with anyone other than someone from Poe. Everyone else in school things the place is full of psychopaths waiting to explode.”
“Seriously?” Kitty exclaimed, forgetting about her sexual posing and leaning forward with interest, “That’s how the students at Whateley look at Poe?”
“Yeah,” Ashley said with clear ire in her normally sweet voice, “For some reason, and I’d love to debate the faculty on this, they seem to think that it’s perfectly okay to essentially punish students for their personal sexual preferences or changes in sex, even if they didn’t choose it and it was caused by their mutation.”
Though Kitty hadn’t known the redhead long, she definitely didn’t like hearing that tone coming from her. It wasn’t a disapproving kind of thing, it just didn’t fit the girl at all. Kindness, absolutely, sweetness, you bet, even sadness was something that she could see coming from her since her ethereal beauty would just make it seem achingly tragic. But anger? No, that simply didn’t mesh with the girl she’d come to know recently. “Christ,” Kitty whispered, “That sounds like-”
“Something out of Hitler’s Nazi Germany,” Aiden finished for her in a growl, and unlike Ashley, Kitty thought this girl’s anger fit her like a glove. Then again, she was a creature of the wild, so raw emotions came with the territory. “How is it possible that they’ve let this go on for so long?”
“That’s not all of it either,” Ashley continued in a dejected-sounding voice. “For people like me who completely abhor violence and refuse to engage in combat training and combat finals, we’re forced to wear arm bands identifying us as non-violent or non-combatants.”
“Holy fuck,” Aiden exclaimed, having gotten so worked up at this point she had leapt to her feet and was starting to pace like a caged, furious animal, “What the fuck is wrong with these people? Don’t they realize that paints a target on people’s backs big time?”
“I don’t know,” sighed Ashley, taking another sip of orange juice, “Hell, the only reason I even know about Poe is because one of Mom’s friends somehow managed to avoid being effected by the magic ward and told her the real reason for Poe.”
“Wait a second,” Kitty said, holding up a finger, “Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to let the student body know that Poe was created for students dealing with transgender issues stemming from their mutation, or that they have alternate sexual identities and preferences, and that Poe was basically one big support group? Hell, colleges do it all the time with LGTB groups and such.”
“Well,” Aiden reasoned, “You also have to remember they have students that come from both hero and villain backgrounds as well as some that don’t fall into either camp at all. My guess is this was their way of just dealing with homophobia issues so they could focus instead on the students not killing each other.”
“Which was another huge issue I had with it,” Ashley put in. “How am I supposed to expect a decent education and training in my powers if the staff are constantly needing to worry about one of their students turning into the next Gizmatic.”
“That’s an excellent point,” Kitty acknowledged, “When you are forced to divide your attention in that way, the education and training you can provide for your students suffers greatly. What?” she said when the two looked at her with wide, disbelieving eyes before sighing, “What part of ‘used to be a brilliant scientist’ is confusing to you guys? I’ve still got the same intelligence level from before my brain scramble, just not the previous knowledge that I’d learned back then.”
“Anyway,” Ashley said, clearly still trying to cope with the myriad of information she’d been told by Aiden and Kitty regarding the brunette’s past half an hour ago, “I’d pretty much wiped Whateley off my list of schools to attend for those reasons and plenty more that I really don’t want to go into right now. So I tried finding alternatives because, well, let’s face it, a regular school isn’t going to me, or you guys for that matter, much good.” That received twin nods of agreement. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything as far as an alternative school goes. Then, just this morning, I’d logged back onto the Whateley site and was resigning myself to having to go there when this little popup appears redirecting me to another site. That’s when I found this:” Moving to her desk chair, she flipped open her laptop to reveal the website for Tearmann Institute. “Take a look,” she offered and scooted out of the way so the other girls could lean over and look through the site.
“Where the fuck is Newfoundland?” Aiden mumbled.
“It’s a province in Canada,” Ashely explained from behind them, “I’ve got its Wikipedia page open in the other tab.”
Both girls quickly looked through the information displayed on the Institute’s web page before clicking over to the Wikipedia entry and looking over the information displayed on Newfoundland.
“It sounds like it’s hick central to me,” Kitty grumbled.
“I think it sounds great,” Aiden countered, sounding almost dreamy.
“You just like it because it’s ninety-five percent wilderness,” Kitty accused, but without any heat.
“Damn right,” Aiden agreed with a grin that had Kitty smiling as well. “Plus, this school sounds a hell of a lot more progressive than Whateley does. No villains or criminals allowed to attend, inclusive living spaces so there’s no segregation, experienced staff-”
“And it was highly recommended to me,” Ashley concluded.
“By who?” Kitty asked with a frown. Considering all three of them had only just learned of this school today and even Ashley’s own mother had never heard of it, how in the world could she have gotten anyone to recommend it?
“You know that guy who rescued me from Doctor Taylor and Agent Jacobs?”
She nodded. During their little airing-out session where they revealed everything about themselves and their mutations with one another, Ashley had briefly recounted the events of her capture and torture at the hands of her attending physician and her subsequent rescue by a mysterious and very lethal man. “Ashe, right?”
“Yeah. I talk to him after I read up on Tearmann and he told me he was going to suggest it over Whateley for me to go to.”
“That guy really seems to get around,” Aiden muttered, recalling her own experience in Indiana and only realizing after Ashley told her own story that it had been Ashe who had partially facilitated her own rescue from her grandfather.
“So Ashe is a real do-gooder huh?” Kitty remarked with a twisted smile.
While Aiden only smirked a bit, Ashley shook her head with a very serious expression on her face. “He’s not so easy to label. What I do know is that he is probably one of the deadliest people on this planet and he won’t hesitate to put his life on the line to help someone that needs it.”
“He’s that good huh?” Kitty asked, clearly impressed by Ashley’s description.
“We’d both be here if it wasn’t for him,” Aiden put in, casting a look over at Ashley who nodded her agreement. “And based on what I saw when I met him, yeah, I’ll agree, that’s one badass I don’t even want to think about trying to go up against.”
Kitty hummed in consideration. Obviously these two had some pretty serious opinions about this Ashe, but were they colored by their experiences? Did they think this man was so great simply because he’d saved them, or did he really deserve this practically legendary reputation? She’d have to ask Angela about it later.
“So anyway,” Ashley said in a brighter voice, “I was just about to call them and request an interview when you guys showed up.”
“Do you think we should all ask for an interview?” Aiden wondered aloud. “I mean, I was kind of half considering Whateley because of being a mutant, but now I’m thinking that’s a really bad idea.”
“Personally,” Kitty put in, “I hadn’t really even considered school. Since I still retain my former intelligence I was figuring I’d just self-study and try to get myself back up to where I used to be from before.”
“But that won’t help you with your powers,” Ashley pointed out. “Sure, you can test them and teach yourself, but these schools are specifically designed to not only test your abilities, but help you master them in ways you’d probably never figure out on your own.”
“That’s an interesting point,” Kitty conceded, “But I should probably consult with Angela about it. She’s still got all of her memories from beyond two weeks ago so I’d like to see what she has to say about it.”
“Well, I’m going to call my parents,” Aiden decided right there, “If they okay it, I’ll talk to them with Ashley right now and ask for an interview too.”
“Here,” Ashley said, handing Aiden her home phone, “You can use the house phone. Kitty, why don’t you go ahead and call Angela on my cell.”
Giving her a nod of thanks, Kitty picked up the cell off of her desk and stepped out of the room so she could have some privacy while dialing Angela’s cell. It only took two rings before she answered with a distracted, “M’yello?”
“Hey Angela, it’s Kitty, can you look up something for me?”
“Kitty,” the girl sighed over the phone, “You do know you’re fully capable of using a computer yourself, right? We’ve already established you still have that kind of knowledge.”
Rolling her eyes, she snapped, “I’m not talking about a Google search, Miss Saucy Bitch, I need you to actually check something out and see if it’s legit.”
“All right,” she said slowly with cautious interest. Clearly the many times she’d asked about how to spot a fake Louis Vuitton or Prada product had begun to weigh on her patience.
“Ashley was just telling us about a school specifically for mutants that is an alternative to Whateley. She’s claiming someone she trusts told her it was legit but I was wondering if you could do some digging for me really fast?”
“An alternate to Whateley huh?” she mused while the sounds of rapid typing could be heard distantly in the background. “I know there’s been a few that tried in the past but they were all horrible and ended up closing down. What’s the name of it?”
“Tearmann Institute.”
“Okay, hang on.” There was more typing in the background before she mumbled, “Huh, when did he do that?”
“Do what?” Kitty asked, anxious to find out what her friend had discovered.
“Huh? Oh, nothing. Okay, so it looks like this Tearmann place has been in operation for a while now, ever since Newfoundland went on the rise with their dramatic energy production increase. From the looks of things, they’ve kept really far below the radar. In fact, how did Ashley even get on their website? It’s encrypted so only authorized users or guests provided passwords can…oh hell,” she muttered, “That son of a bitch.”
“What?” Kitty asked, suddenly worried that her suspicions that this was too good to be true were about to be proven right, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Angela sighed, “Just now figuring out exactly why a friend asked me to do him a favor. Look, the schools legit, and if it’s who I think it is that verified that to Ashley you can pretty much take that to the bank. Wait,” the hacker said, clearly grasping the whole situation now, “Are you thinking about applying?”
“Yeah,” Kitty admitted, “I know I’ve still got my original level of intelligence from before, but I don’t have the knowledge to go along with it. Plus, I still don’t have good control over my powers and self-teaching can only go so far. I was actually thinking about Whateley but after talking with Ashley and Aiden I don’t think it’s such a good idea anymore?”
“Why’s that?” Angela inquired, sounding genuinely curious. “I always though the place had a pretty stellar reputation with the mutant community.”
Without going into too much detail, Kitty relayed the conversation the three of them just had regarding Whateley and why Tearmann looked like a better choice. By the time she was finished Angela couldn’t help but agree. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “I’d never really considered the angle that Ashley looked at it from, but now that I do it really makes a lot of sense. I mean, I’ve never been to the place myself since I’m not a mutant, but I’ve talked with people who had.”
“Were they unhappy about the place?” Kitty wondered.
“Not in so many words. They usually had good things to say about it but they would talk about things quite a bit that really fall in line with Ashley’s opinions. I think maybe they were just too wrapped up in nostalgia to remember all of those bad things.”
“And what about this Tearmann Institute?”
“Well,” the hacker sighed, “There’s actually not very much on them, but that’s because they keep really quiet about their operations. I did take a quick look at the stuff behind the scenes and everything is above board and they’re really very strict about who they admit. No villains, no children of villains currently aspiring to their parents’ goals, no one with serious criminal histories…it looks like they’re only allowing decent folks into this place.”
“So you think it’ll be okay to at least ask for an interview?”
“I’d say so,” Angela confirmed, “I mean there’s no harm in just talking with someone from there face to face, and based on their tuition costs we’ll be able to swing that without even noticing at this point.”
The issue of money never even occurred to Kitty, but that was due to the fact that their initial acquisition of the funds stolen by Sinclair was huge to begin with and growing all the time due to smart investments. However…
“All right, I’m going to set up an appointment along with Ashley and Aiden. There’s something else I need you to do…”
A few minutes later, Kitty walked back in the room just as Aiden was hanging up the phone. From the look on her face it was pretty clear that her parents had okayed her own request for permission to ask for an interview as well. “Go good?” she asked unnecessarily.
“Yeah,” Aiden smiled, “After I explained everything and they talked to Ashley they were all for it. It was actually kind of a load of their minds because they were going to suggest Whateley to me soon anyway.”
“So should I make the call?” Ashley asked anxiously as she held up the phone with a giddy smile on her face.
The answer was a resounding affirmative.
Wolf Springs, Wyoming, Nature Walk Hotel
As Tome and his friends walked through the halls towards their assigned rooms, he had to admit he was pretty impressed with the hotel. Despite it being rustic in appearance, particularly from the outside, the interior was plush and its appointments were clearly done by a person of taste. While the color scheme mirrored the surrounding areas, that being primarily greens and browns, the manner in which they’d been adapted to the hotel’s design provided a homey, comfortable feel with a wealthy appearance. More than once he thought that the place would give some of the higher end hotels in New York a run for its money when it came to an appearance of wealth. While there weren’t the vaulted, jewel-encrusted walls, ceilings, and chandeliers one would find in the Ritz Carlton, the more intimate feeling of Nature Walk actually made it seem more inviting instead of having a museum-like quality.
As the three separated to go to their individual rooms, Tom was once again struck by how much the proprietors of this hotel really wanted their guests to feel at home. While he’d seem pictures of the room online back at the fraternity house, the welcoming feel of the room was even further enhanced by actually standing in it. “Not bad,” he muttered as he went about unpacking his suitcase and properly putting the various items in their place within the room. He had just finished assembling his toiletries on the bathroom sink when there was a knock at his door. Moments later, Jake and Jeremy were lounging on the couch in the sitting room area while Tom changed his travel-weary shirt.
“So where to first?” Jeremy asked anxiously, practically bouncing in his seat. That was something Tom would have to watch. Out of all of them, he had the least amount of impulse control. While he was just as successful when it came to scoring a piece of pussy for the night as the rest of them, he also struck out more than the rest, and he never took it well. More than once he and other members of the frat’s leadership circle had had to pull his ass out of a fire of his own making.
“We’ll go slow,” Tom decided, “Maybe take a walk through downtown first and get the lay of the land. If we’re lucky, we’ll meet some of these fabled hotties and strike up a conversation or two. No dragging them off to your room tonight,” he warned, sending Jeremy a pointed look, “There’s no point to this if you’re just going to grab the first girl you see and bang her on the first day, we won’t have anything else to do for the week.”
“Yeah,” Jake agreed, “It’s not like this place is a hotbed of action or anything, unless you like nature walks that is.”
“Maybe one of the girls around here is a real nature buff and can give us a private tour or something,” Jeremy suggested with a grin.
Tom hummed at the idea. “That has some potential, but you have to make sure you pick the right girl. We don’t want to have to send out search parties to find you because you get lost trying to get some pussy.”
“Yeah yeah,” Jeremey waved away the concern as his gaze had already turned slightly far-off, a sign that he was already envisioning some kind of wilderness fuck-fest in his mind, “I’ll find some hippy, earth-child chick that knows the area or something. They’re usually tigresses in the sack anyway.”
Tom caught Jake’s gaze and the pair rolled their eyes in unison. Yeah, it was going to be one of those kind of trips again. “All right, let’s get going,” Tom announced before leading the trio from the room and out of the hotel.
Fortunately, a small town like this meant they didn’t need to go back to their car in order to get anywhere. While it was certainly spacious and well built, the downtown area itself was perhaps only a mile in length with one centralized street that had stores, restaurants, and the sparse bar or club on either side of it. The club in question was currently closed while the bar did appear to be open, but only for food service. A sign on the door they passed stated that alcohol would not be served until six P.M. on a daily basis.
“What kind of horseshit is that?” Jeremy sneered, thumbing at the aforementioned sign, “These people got something against drinking?”
“It’s probably an effort to keep alcoholism down and prevent people from driving drunk when children are out and about,” Jake reasoned.
“It’s stupid if you ask me,” Jeremy muttered, “How the hell do the expect to make money?”
Tom was tempted to tell him that it was likely the food, and that the reality was most people in this town certainly didn’t seem to be hurting financially, but he refrained from bothering. In the end it would probably just send the moron off on some other kind of tangent and draw unnecessary attention to them.
As they were casually perusing the available stores on the main strip to see if there were any interesting specialty shops to browse as a means of killing time, some movement out of the corner of his eye grabbed Tom’s attention. Turning his head, he saw sleek, black car slip into an open parking space right before three of its doors swung open. He was just about to return his attention back to his friends with the suggestion of peeking in a woodworking shop to find some new spanking paddles for the frat when he froze.
Exiting the car were three of the hottest girls he’d ever seen. While clearly they were teenagers, even the least attractive easily outshone pretty much every girl back on campus, and there were more than a few hot ones there. Since he knew that any kind of direct staring would be noticed by probably everyone in the immediate area, he chose not to alert his cohorts to his finding and instead surreptitiously continued to watch them while silently evaluating and assigning them to his brethren. That was how things usually worked within their group. While Jake could be pretty smooth and Jeremy exemplified the stereotypical pretty college guy who knew just how handsome he was, Tom had a different kind of knack when it came to women. For as long as he’d been sexually active, which was just after puberty, he’d been able to tell just what kind of guy a girl would be drawn to after observing her for a brief period of time. It not only allowed him to adjust his approach to her to maximize the chances of him getting to fuck her, but also enabled him to pair girls to his friends as well so they would have the same opportunity.
The brunette he tagged for Jeremy immediately. She was cheery, vivacious, and practically exuded sex appeal through her pores. Her manner of dress also seemed to exemplify this aspect as she currently wore a low-cut top that exposed quite a generous amount of impressive cleavage and a short skirt that showed off legs that just seemed to go on forever. Every movement she made from the way she tossed her hair to the subtle roll and sway of her hips that caused her skirt to twitch enticingly when she walked practically screamed ‘fuck me!’. Since Jeremy was rather low in the smoothness department, he shouldn’t have much trouble getting that one’s legs spread.
The black-haired girl looked more rough and tumble, having a somewhat serious expression on her face that relaxed and even brightened when one of her companions said something or made a joke. Her simple jeans and T-shirt, while not highlighting her shape, did nothing to hide the alluring feminine contours of her young, lithe body that he suspected could ride a guy into oblivion and keep wanting more. This one was definitely for Jake. He possessed the smoothness to chat her up and the rough, rugged background to keep her interested instead of boring her with pedestrian exploits.
The redhead…she practically had Tom stopping in his tracks. The first thing that caught his attention was her bright, vibrant hair that could only have come from a bottle. When she turned to look at one of her friends, however, it was her eyes that were particularly arresting. They a bright green that almost seemed to glow with their own inner light. He’d seen people possessing that kind of nearly glowing quality eye color before, but typically the color was blue and they were on T.V so special effects and lighting might have played a big part. With this girl there was none of that, and yet they were still almost unnaturally bright. When she laughed, something that made her seem utterly enchanting and almost fey-looking, he thought for sure his heart had skipped a beat. There was no denying the innocence that radiated from this fragile-looking creature of femininity and the tightening in his crotch was damn near painful. All of this coupled with a simple, one-piece dress that fell nearly to her ankles in a single, snug column of what had to be taupe-colored silk showed off the sweet, delicious curves that practically had his mouth watering, especially when every step she took revealed slits in the side of the skirt that showed off a generous amount of toned, shapely leg. This girl was his, no question, and already he was thinking of countless different ways to begin his seduction that would result in hearing her screaming in pleasure.
While his two partners in the quest for pussy continued talking about what they could possibly do in this place, Tom watched the girls enter a sporting goods store several doors down. Once they’d disappeared from sight he quickly turned, bringing his companions to a sudden halt. “What’s up man?” Jake asked with a raised eyebrow at the sudden, anticipatory expression on his fraternity president’s face.
Tom merely smiled.
Wolf Springs, Wyoming, Rough Terrain Sporting Goods
“Guys, seriously, I’m fine with what I have.”
Casting a knowing look at Kitty, she merely smiled and shrugged at me as though to say: I told you so. “Aiden, listen,” I said patiently, turning back to her as she looked over the racks of workout clothes as though they might attack her at any moment, “I’ve been in these woods a lot and Kitty got a pretty good idea about them this morning. What you were wearing just isn’t right for going on wolf runs.”
“Well I usually just have fur,” she muttered, quickly looking around to make sure no one else heard her.
“You won’t when we all go together,” I countered, “And the stuff you were wearing today just isn’t going to cut it. It’s far too loose. If you were just going for a jog down main street you’d be fine, but racing through trees and brush you’re going to end up tearing your clothes apart.” Her quick blush of embarrassment didn’t escape mine or Kitty’s attention.
“It’s already happened before, hasn’t it,” Kitty accused mildly.
“Maybe,” Aiden mumbled, shuffling her feet a bit as she looked down at them. “A couple times when we were on the road and I couldn’t risk shifting but I wanted to run,” she admitted.
“See,” I pointed out, jumping on the opportunity to prove my point, “You won’t have any workout clothes at all if you keep it up. For this kind of running you need form-fitting workout clothes that won’t flap or flutter around and catch a stray branch or get caught in a thicket.”
“But they’re just so…revealing,” she finished in a whisper, fingering a pair of lycra pants experimentally.
“I know,” I told her sympathetically, “And believe me, I was pretty hesitant to wear similar stuff the first time too. Remember,” I told her, dropping my voice so no one outside our little group could hear us, “I used to be a guy also, so form-fitting clothes felt really weird to me in the beginning too. But I got used to it,” I continued at a more normal volume, “And actually, I like it now. Maybe not as much as Kitty does,” I quipped, sending her a pointed look that resulted in her sticking her tongue out at me, “But I’m proud of my body and how I look. I don’t show it off like I’m on a runway but I’m not ashamed of it either.”
“Hey,” Kitty snarked, “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.”
“Down girl,” I muttered.
“I just…” Aiden sighed as she seemed to struggle to find the right words, “I know I look good, okay? I’ve seen myself in the mirror and you guys might remember I did kind of have the makings of a boyfriend back in Indiana, but I’m still just not all that comfortable looking so…sexy.”
I was getting ready to try a different tact when Kitty walked over and put her hand on Aiden’s shoulder. “I get what you’re saying,” she told her, “You’re kind of embarrassed about the attention you get because you’re pretty. Believe it or not, I am too.” That got a look of shock not only from Aiden but from me too. “Oh knock it off,” she snorted, “Yes, I know, I walk around like a one nine-hundred number advertisement, but remember that’s largely programming. Inside, I still cringe a little sometimes when I see guys looking at me like I’m a piece of fine-cut meat. The only reason I can think of why I keep showing off and dressing like I do is because it’s like a programmed habit. You know, like how you like to…run,” she said, careful not to spill the secret of the wolf-girl’s mutation. “You can control it most of the time, but that urge is there and a lot of times it comes out in your personality.”
“I guess I kind of see what you’re saying,” Aiden admitted, “But why do I have to dress how society expects me to?”
“In this one case,” I told her, “You’re not. This is about practicality, not fashion or showing off your body. If the only thing you ever want to wear is jeans and T-shirts, that’s fine, but for doing our runs you need to wear appropriate clothes that won’t get ripped or torn all the time. Believe me, if you were a guy I’d be telling you the same exact thing and we’d be looking at those skin tight running shorts that put a guy’s package on display.”
As I gestured in the direction of the racks in question I noticed the front door open and three guys walk in. Instantly I knew they weren’t local since I didn’t recognize any of them. Each of them were rather handsome and were clearly in college based upon how old they looked. It wasn’t so unusual for students from the surrounding major cities to come visit our town during the summer to go on nature hikes or maybe even do some animal watching, so that wasn’t what really caught my attention. It was the way they briefly looked at us. I wasn’t overly experienced when it came to men, but there was absolutely no mistaking the keen interest in their eyes when their gaze paused in our direction before continuing on towards the hiking gear on the far wall. One of them in particular, a dark-haired boy with penetrating brown eyes, gave me a very brief, crooked smile that actually sent a quick little thrill up my spine.
“I bet you’re wondering how his package would look on display,” I heard muttered in my ear.
Gasping in both surprise and offense, though I really couldn’t pull off the offended part, I spun around to see Kitty grinning wickedly at me. “What? No!” I assured her.
“Honey, you might want to wipe your chin, you’ve got a bit of drool there. I have to say,” she said as I quickly checked my mouth for the imaginary drool, “Those are some pretty hot guys.”
“I suppose,” I mumbled before focusing my attention on going through the clothing rack in front of us.
“Hmmmm.” Kitty’s sound of consideration immediately had me worried that she was starting to plan something.
“Don’t even think about it,” Aiden said quietly as she stepped over to join us, “The smell of testosterone coming from those guys is through the roof right now and the last thing I want to deal with right now is some jackasses pulling some caveman bullshit to prove how manly they are.”
Finding a set of workout clothes that seemed perfect, I got a sudden flash of inspiration and smiled as I turned and presented them to Aiden. “So go hide in the dressing room for a minute. Here, you can try these on while you’re in there,” I told her and shoved the outfit into her arms while she stood there blinking in surprise with her mouth opening and closing. I’m sure she wanted to fire off some witty retort, but in the end she just stomped off to the dressing room with the clothes, grumbling all the way.
“She’s going to take some work,” Kitty observed, “If we plan on getting her to shed that tomboy persona of hers.”
“We don’t,” I asserted firmly, drawing a curious lift of an eyebrow. “Aiden is her own person. If she wants to be more feminine that’s her choice and hers alone. Just because we’ve been able to embrace it doesn’t mean she has to. If she wants to spend the rest of her life without ever wearing a dress I have no problem with it, and neither should you if you really do want to be her friend.”
I’m not sure anyone had ever really put their foot down to Kitty like that before because her shocked expression and lack of retort clearly meant she was trying to figure out how to come back from that. My guess is the friend comment was what hit her the most and was probably causing her to re-evaluate how she approached friendship in and of itself.
“All right,” a muffled voice said on the other side of the changing room door, “I’m coming out.”
“Thanks for the warning,” I quipped, “Should we cover our eyes now or later?”
“Ha, ha,” Aiden deadpanned as the door swung open and I couldn’t hold back my gasp of surprise. The outfit I’d chosen had been a pair of leggings and a sports bra top done in black with printed graphic images of tears in the thighs of the leggings as though made by claws. I thought the imagery was perfect given Aiden’s wolf persona, but her standing there wearing it went beyond my expectations.
I knew Aiden was very pretty, but the skin-tight workout wear truly showed off her physique to perfection. While she didn’t have the voluptuous, sexy curves that Kitty had, or the soft, slim, yet curvy figure I myself claimed, there was absolutely no doubt that the lithe, athletic body Aiden possessed was distinctly, and sexily, feminine.
“I look like shit, right?” she asked dejectedly as she saw our expressions of amazement.
“No!” I told her quickly, “You look fantastic. Look, I know it kind of embarrasses you, but you look really hot in that.”
“You think?” she asked, turning to look at herself in the door mirror while inadvertently showing us how she looked from behind.
Kitty quickly stifled her giggle when I elbowed her in the ribs, but unfortunately Aiden’s very sharp hearing caught it and she spun around. “What?” she asked anxiously.
Before I could stop her, Kitty laughed softly and told her, “We can see your panties.”
The dark-haired girl’s mouth fell open in shock and she started spinning around trying to see where the suspected wardrobe malfunction was located. “Aiden,” I told her, “Stop. You’re not sticking out anywhere. Kitty means we can see the outline against your pants.”
Blinking for a moment, she turned and craned her neck backwards to look at herself in the mirror from behind to see that indeed her panties were clearly outlined against the tight material. “Shit,” she hissed, “This is exactly why I don’t wear this kind of stuff.”
“It’s fine,” Kitty assured her, hurrying off to another nearby section of clothes before coming back. “You just need to wear these instead.”
“No,” Aiden stated firmly, “Absolutely not. Not only no but hell no.”
I sighed and looked from her, to the black thong Kitty was holding out to her, then back to her again. “Aiden, unless you want everyone to see your underwear through your pants like that, you need to wear a thong, at least for the workouts.”
“You wear one then,” she snapped in agitation, already inching back towards the dressing room.
“As a matter of fact,” I told her nonchalantly, “I am.” The look of surprise at my clearly unexpected statement made me smile. “That’s what I normally wear. I found I liked them after trying them for the first time.”
“Ditto,” Kitty put in, “But then I’ve got the excuse of ultra feminine mental conditioning.”
“Are you telling me you enjoy walking around with a wedgie all the time?” Aiden accused.
“It did feel pretty weird the first time I tried them,” I admitted, “But I found out pretty quick that I liked them. They make me feel pretty and sexy even though no one can see them. And I don’t wear them all the time,” I corrected her, “Just most of the time. Besides, we’re not saying you have to either, just when you’re wearing your workout stuff. You could rock a pair of granny panties the rest of the time if you want, we don’t care.”
“Speak for yourself,” Kitty said, lifting her nose and adopting a sarcastic, snooty attitude, “I simply can’t be seen with someone that chooses to wear…granny panties,” the last being said with a very clear note of humorous disgust.
“Oh for god’s sake,” Aiden muttered, covering her face with her hand while I couldn’t help but giggle at the act. “All right, fine,” she conceded, “I’ll get them and give them a try on our next run. But if I don’t like them,” she warned in a serious tone, “Never again.”
“Deal,” I agreed with a smile and she disappeared back into the dressing room to change.
“Think she’ll change her mind and find she likes them?” Kitty asked quietly.
I shrugged a little. “Maybe. We’ll just have to wait and see the next time we go running.”
“Uh huh,” she said quietly, “And do realize those three guys that walked in about five minutes ago have been standing in earshot the entire time we’ve been so wonderfully open about our preferred choice of panties?”
Instantly I felt my face grow flaming hot even as my eyes widened in horror. “Oh dear god, please tell me you’re joking,” I whispered, my entire body stiffening as I kept my gaze rooted on the closed dressing room door for fear of turning and seeing those three guys grinning at me.
“Nope,” she said with a mischievous grin in her voice.
I could feel a sudden flash of panic shoot through me and my knees started to shake with the desire to take off at a sprint and get far away from here. Without even realizing it, I had been openly discussing my personal choice of lingerie and why I chose it. Good lord, those guys heard me say I wore thong panties because they made me feel pretty and sexy! Even now I was sure they were undressing me with their eyes to the point that was all I was wearing while their hands were roaming over my vulnerable flesh until they slipped up between my legs and-
“Ashley!”
Aiden’s sharp, harsh whisper snapped me out of my sudden, fear-inspired delirium to focus on her concerned expression. When had she come out of the dressing room? I’d been staring right at it. “Talk to me,” she whispered urgently.
“I have to get out of here,” I managed to squeak out, though at that point I didn’t know if my legs would actually work. They felt like lead weights that I didn’t think I could move.
Kitty nodded and started to move to my side to help me when Aiden put out her hand to stop her. “Ashley, listen to me. I want you to breathe. Just breathe. In and out.”
“I want to go,” I whimpered fearfully as my eyes started to burn from tears threatening to leak out.
“I know you do,” she acknowledged gently as she squeezed my hands, “But I want you to just breathe. Listen to my voice and just breathe. In and out. In and out.”
Without realizing it, I found myself breathing in time with Aiden’s coaching as I looked into her eyes. Those unique, amber/gold eyes stared back at me with strength and compassion, letting me know without saying a word that I would be all right and they she was there to protect me, Soon, the two of us were taking slow, even breaths in time with one another until I felt my racing heart ease back down to just slightly above what could be considered a normal rate. When I finally let out a slow, even breath she asked me softly, “You okay?”
“I think so,” I responded just as quietly, “How long was I…out of it.”
“Not long,” Kitty assured me, “Maybe ten seconds. I moved you over a bit so the clothes racks blocked us so no one noticed.”
Taking a long, shuddering breath I rubbed my face with my hands. “At least I didn’t run away screaming this time,” I grumbled sarcastically.
“That’s right,” Aiden affirmed in a serious, no-nonsense tone, “You didn’t, and that’s a huge step so don’t you dare think it isn’t okay?”
Nodding, I straightened my spine…in pride perhaps?...and slowly turned my gaze towards the three college boys that were still looking through the hiking supplies. When one of them, the one I’d noticed before, glanced over at me and smiled slightly I actually found myself offering a shy smile in return before quickly ducking my head and looking away.
“Well look at that,” Kitty commented mildly, “Our little Ashely’s flirting with our town visitors.”
“I only smiled a little at him,” I defended, flushing deeply, “That’s not flirting.”
“So says the girl who’s never flirted before.”
The last person I expected to say that was Aiden, so it was a little shocking to hear those words come out of her mouth. “Since when do you flirt?” I challenged.
Grinning slightly, she pointed a thumb at herself, “Boyfriend, remember?”
Rolling my eyes, I walked up to the register with my friends so Aiden could pay for her new workout outfit along with a couple of more that we’d picked out once we’d gotten her proper size and several thongs that Kitty sneaked into the bundle. As we hurried from the store, with Aiden and Kitty laughing with one another as only teenage girls can, I cast one last glance back at the college guys. Whether it was due to a morbid curiosity as to whether or not they’d seen my almost meltdown or to see if they the one guy was still checking me out I’m not sure.
As it turned out, all three of them were watching all three of us leave, but it was the smile and the gleam of interest in the one guy’s eyes that left me feeling like I’d just received a full-body caress.
The scary part? I kind of liked it.
Wolf Springs, Wyoming, Connors Residence
To Aiden, the ring of steel on steel was a song that even the most expertly crafted and performed symphony ever created couldn’t even hope to compete with, while the meticulous swinging of the hammer and bringing it down on a bar of red, almost white hot, metal was far more relaxing and therapeutic than the most exclusive spa on the planet. This was the very thing she’d lived for ever since she’d possessed enough strength to do it back when she had been a young boy. With the intense heat of a propane-powered forge roaring at her back, she brought the hammer down on the steel again and again, meticulously drawing out and shaping the steel into a form that matched the design she’d drawn up days ago.
The smile on her face spoke of utter joy, and not simply because she was doing what she loved. That afternoon, after departing from the company of her new friends and returning home for dinner with her new workout clothes and underwear (she was still a bit miffed Kitty had snuck those thongs into the purchases), her parents had surprised her by revealing the completion of her own forge at the back of the house. The workshop with its industrial-grade equipment was still being built, but her father had asked the workmen to take some time away from the project. Not only did they get her forge, anvil, and quench barrel in place, but they’d erected a modest, shed-type enclosure that would allow her to continue her blade craft even during the cold of winter, something she’d never been able to do back in Indiana.
The reveal had nearly been cause for a trip to Ashley for medical treatment as Aiden had hugged her parents nearly hard enough to crush bone even as she wept with joy. Now, two hours later, the young girl was bringing her brand new forging hammer down on the steel that was starting to give the vague appearance of a knife blade. She didn’t even pause in her movements when her nostrils flared and she smiled.
“Hi Dad.”
“Dammit,” he muttered as he strolled over and slipped his hands in his pockets. “I’m never going to be able to sneak up on you again huh?”
“Try approaching from downwind next time,” she suggested, placing her steel back in the forge now that it had cooled to the point it was barely red anymore. “What’s up?”
“Just seeing how you’re liking the forge,” he explained, “Is everything arranged right for you?”
“Perfect,” she said approvingly with a smile.
“Good,” he said, though it was clear to Aiden both in his voice and in the way he was constantly looking around without actually focusing on any one thing that he was distracted. Either that or he was stalling.
“Dad, what is it?”
Casting his eyes back to his daughter once more, he peered at her as though contemplating his words before sighed and taking a seat on one of the beach chairs she preferred for relaxing between forgings. “Got a few minutes?” he asked.
“I think I have a few I can spare,” she quipped with a levity she wasn’t feeling at the moment. She and her father had a very good relationship and it had always been clear to her even before her mutation had enhanced her senses when something was bothering him. “What’s up?
“We haven’t really had a chance to talk about what happened back in Indiana,” he said and managed to avoid wincing at the sudden hardness that appeared in her eyes. “I know it was really hard on you and I wanted to give you some space for a little while and not force anything, but I think we should talk about how you’re feeling about it.”
Turning, Aiden walked over to the mini fridge that had been set up in her forging area and took out a can of Coke before popping open the top and taking a long swallow. “What’s there to talk about?” she bit out after wiping her mouth, “Grandpa betrayed our whole family just for some crazy bloodline purity crusade and it ended up with a boy I liked getting killed. He was an asshole and I’m glad he’s dead.”
The cold, uncaring tone of her voice did make Terry Connors wince this time and he stood. He didn’t go to embrace his daughter like he wanted to, instead he went and procured his own can of Coke before returning to his seat. “So that’s it? Grandpa was an asshole and you’re glad he’s dead? Nothing more to say about it?”
“What’s there to say?” Aiden countered angrily, “That it absolutely broke my heart when Grandpa showed he didn’t actually care about me, that he didn’t actually love me? That my life felt like it was completely shattered when Henry died because of me? How about that I feel responsible for us needing to uproot our entire life and leave the entire fucking state just because that fucking asshole decided preserving the fucking werewolf bloodline was more important than his own goddamn FAMILY!” By this point Aiden was long passed the point of cold detachment and was screaming wildly, enough that her mother had come running up from the house, not that the enraged girl even noticed. “I never asked for this!” she yelled, though up to the heavens instead of at her parents, “I never asked to be one of your precious fucking wolves and I sure as hell didn’t ask to be some kind of goddamn wolf messiah! So why did you have to totally fuck up my life?” she cried, and by this point it was clear to Terry and Maddy Connors it was her grandfather she was calling out to.
As they stood by, holding one another when what they truly wanted to do was hold their daughter and make the pain go away, they let her unleash all of that pent up anger and rage at the world. “I was okay with turning into a girl, I’d actually managed to accept that. I was even okay with liking guys. But then you had to come and fuck all of that up just because you though I was some kind of fucking Wolf Jesus. Why? Why couldn’t you have just left me the fuck alone!”
“Because he wasn’t right.”
Whirling about, a low growl seeping from between her teeth, Aiden glared at the man who dared interrupt her furious tirade. While her mother gasped softly in fear, her father continued to look at her steadily, though now his gaze sharpened slightly as he looked for any signs that his daughter might be starting to lose control. “Your grandfather was a good man. He showed love and affection to both me and to you up until the end. But in all that time, he did have a kind of obsession with maintaining and strengthening the Connors wolf bloodline. It didn’t take away from the love he showed to his family, but it was a driving force for him through the years.” Gently disengaging from his wife’s embrace, he slowly walked towards where Aiden stood breathing heavily and struggling between retaining control of her anger and wanting to just unleash it upon the world. “When you manifested the way you did, that obsession took control and became too much for him to hold back anymore. I think he thought he’d found our family’s salvation and his mind just snapped. I can’t excuse what he did, I absolutely refuse to. Like you said, he betrayed our family in the worst way imaginable and I will never forgive him for that. But just like he was your grandfather, Aiden, he was my father.”
By this point, Terry was standing before Aiden, looking down at her with tears shining in his eyes. Aiden could perhaps count on one hand the number of times in her life she’d seen her father cry and the implications of the sadness he was experiencing brought all of her anger and hate to a screeching halt as though it had hit a brick wall. “He raised me to be a good man,” Terry continued in a voice choked with the effort to keep his now raging emotions in check, “He taught me how to forge a blade, how to hunt, and how to treat a woman with the dignity and respect she deserves. He was my hero, the man I looked up to all of my life as the perfect role model. What he did to us, to you, is something that we’re going to have to live with for the rest of our lives. But I don’t want what he did to force you to become someone you’re not.”
Gently, he placed a hand on Aiden’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Before everything went to hell, I saw a change in you that I didn’t think would ever happen. You were engaging with other people your own age instead of shutting yourself off from the world behind your anvil, you were accepting and adapting to your change into a girl by not limiting yourself to the most basic, unisex type of clothes, and for the first time in a long time you seemed to be happy. I don’t want you to lose that happiness Aiden. I think you’re starting to get it back since you made friends with Ashley and Kitty, and your mother and I couldn’t be happier, but I hope you won’t keep hiding behind this gruff outlook on life. No, I’m not asking you to turn into a girly girl,” he assured her with a watery smile when she opened her mouth to protest, “And I’m not saying I want to see you in nothing but dresses from now until eternity. But you were really starting to accept being a girl, and you were happy with it. I just don’t want to see you lose that because of one sick, misguided man’s insane decisions.”
For a time, Aiden could only stand there staring up at her father with tears slipping down her cheeks. While she knew intellectually that her father had been hurting because of the events back in Salem, the sight of his own tears leaving wet tracks down his face truly drove home the reality of how much pain he had been forced to endure. He had stayed strong this entire time not because he was some emotionless shell, but because he’d had to, for his family. They’d needed him to be strong, to be their rock for them to cling to when all of that pain and hurt came bubbling out, but he hadn’t allowed anyone to be there for him. Now, as her father’s soul was laid bare before her, Aiden let go of the tight leash she’d maintained on her feminine instincts and embraced her father tightly while the two of them cried quietly against one another.
They remained that way for some time, offering the other support while taking comfort in the same that was received. At some point Maddy had joined them, turning a tight embrace into a warm group hug of love and caring. By the time their tears had dried and their sobbing gasps had faded, a warm glow seemed to have formed around them, binding them tightly in a way that they truly were a pack. Eventually, Aiden looked up at her mother and father and gave them a still slightly watery smile. “I guess I need to do a little shopping, huh?”
Her mother gave her a knowing smile that had Aiden realizing she was already a few steps behind. “No need honey, I’ve already taken care of it.”
Wolf Springs, Wyoming, one mile north of the McKinnon Residence
While I certainly didn’t possess Aiden’s close bond with nature, I’d always found a sense of peace wandering through the wonder and beauty of the deep, lush forest that our town was nestled within. It was why I often chose to stroll through it when something weighed heavily on my mind, my emotions were becoming a bit too raw, or like this evening, simply because I found it enjoyable. This particular time of day, when the sun was starting to dip beneath the lip of the horizon, always seemed especially enchanting to me. Unlike other times of the day, when dusty gray slowly gave way to brilliant like, everything seemed so much more sharp and clear as dusk settled over the forest. The light had yet to completely flee and on certain days the deep red of the setting sun made it seem like everything was bathed in a warm, comforting glow. This happened to be one of those days and I found myself humming a Celtic lullaby as I thought back to what could quite possibly be the beginning of either one of the scariest or greatest moments in my life.
Once Kitty and Aiden had been given the go ahead by their respective households, I’d put in a call to Tearmann Institute to request an interview. A very nice and polite sounding woman had taken down all of our information and informed us that they would be sending one of their representatives to come speak with us in the very near future. No sooner had I hung up the phone than a new email appeared on my computer confirming that a woman by the name of Rebecca Stanhope would be arriving at my house in four days at ten in the morning. Interestingly enough, the email also requested Aiden and Kitty be present for the interview as well. I thought that was rather strange since one would expect interviews for a school like this would be done on an individual basis and my friends echoed this sentiment. Still, this was a school for mutants, so maybe they did things different when three friends living in the same town were looking to attend together.
The little trip into town to get Aiden some new workout clothes brought a smile to my face, despite the small panic attack I’d suffered during it. That was one thing I was quite proud about. I was starting to be able to put those kinds of events behind me and not let them control my life to the point that I was nearly agoraphobic. I’d like to say it was my own will and determination that was the cause, but I was pragmatic enough to know that a large part of it was due to the support I had from my new friends, particularly Aiden. Ever since that moment I’d fled to me secret place and she’d followed me, I’d found I was able to let myself relax more and more when in public when she was with me. The scientific, analytical part of my mind dedicated to medicine warned me that I was potentially just replacing the Mom with Aiden as an emotional crutch, and I acknowledged that could very well be the case. I needed to start getting out on my own more to prove that I was getting better, for myself if no one else.
I was so deeply in thought about my own self-improvement that I almost didn’t hear the snap of a twig not very far to my right. I did hear it however, and instantly spun about. I didn’t panic since I’d been through these woods many times before and it wasn’t uncommon for small animals like squirrels or chipmunks break a tree branch or something in their seemingly never-ending quest for food. Instead I just looked for the source of the disturbance so I could watch yet another aspect of nature in its rawest form.
What I got was the sight of the boy who had been checking me out in town turning around with a confused and clearly lost look on his face. Even as I silently dropped into a crouch behind a small thicket cluster, I watched him trying to pick his way through the forest with little success. Whoever this guy was, he clearly wasn’t at all experienced when it came to working in nature because he was still wearing his rather upscale Docker pants, white and black checked button down shirt, and what were probably obscenely expensive sneakers so white they shone like beacons, or at least they would if they hadn’t been streaked with mud. Already his clothing showed signs that he’d fallen at least once, muddying his knees, and there seemed to be a small tear in one of the sleeves. He was muttered to himself as he drew closer to my hiding place and eventually I was able to make out what he was saying.
“Damn trees. Why the hell are there so many? And why does it have to be so muddy around here, it hasn’t rained or anything. And why do-”
Whatever his last complaint was going to be was cut off the branch he’d just shoved out of the way suddenly snapping back and slapping with a face full of leaves. The surprise of it was enough not only to have him let out a funny yelp, but to send him flying right off his feet to land squarely on his back in the dirt. The whole thing couldn’t have been more comically scripted if it had been in an old Chevy Chase movie and I couldn’t help but giggle at the antics. I immediately slapped a hand over my mouth to stifle the sound but it was too late.
“Phah!” he spat out some dirt from his mouth and rolled onto his hands and knees before looking around. “Is someone there?” When I didn’t move or even dare breathe he got to his feet and swiped the dirt from his shirt and pants with annoyance. “Come on,” he wheedled, “I heard you giggle and I’m pretty sure animals don’t giggle around here.”
Already I could feel my chest growing tight as the fear of being discovered rapidly rose to near-panic. While he didn’t seem dangerous, there was no doubt that this guy had shown interest in me back at the sporting goods store. Yes, I will free admit that being looked at and considered desirable had given me a little thrill, but I had been safe then. I was with my friends, we were leaving the store, and we were in a public place so there was no chance of anything happening. Now, I was alone, no one knew where I was, and I was in the presence of this same guy. What would he do if he found me? Would he simply laugh at me being such a timid little girl afraid of her own shadow? Or would he realize that with no one around he could simply do whatever he wanted, grab me, rip off my dress, and…
“Hey,” he said with a smile as my growing, frantic gasps had become loud enough that he’d been able to hear them and zeroed in on my location. “What are you doing over there?”
My heart was in my throat and racing to the beat of the snare drum from Wipeout. I wanted to yell or scream but the only thing I was able to accomplish was my mouth opening and closing silently. I think he might have realized just how terrified I really was because his expression immediately changed from pleasantly surprised to serious concern. “Hey, are you all right?” he asked as he slowly started stepping towards me.
With that first step I scurried backwards until my back came up hard against another tree, the bark digging into my back through the thinness of my dress. Looking around wildly, I tried to figure out what would be the safest way to run while over and over again wishing I’d gone along with Aiden and Kitty on their run earlier so they could have taught me some tricks. Not that it would have done me much good since my dress was so tight in the hips and thighs I probably wouldn’t have been able to do any significant kind of maneuvers.
“Hey, hey,” he said soothingly, holding his hands up palm out to show he didn’t mean any harm, “I’m not going to hurt you, okay? I just got kind of lost walking around here. Look.” As if to signify his good intentions, he slowly lowered himself to the forest floor where he sat cross-legged with his hands in his lap. “See? I’m not going to do anything.”
“Wh-who are you?” I managed to finally squeak out.
“My name’s Tom, Tom Borland, what’s yours?”
“A-Ashley,” I stammered out, not bothering to tell him my last name.
“Nice to meet you Ashley,” he said with a disarming smile. “Do you come out here a lot?” When I nodded he looked around. “I can see why. It’s beautiful out here. You get many lost idiots falling on their ass coming around these parts?”
The self-depreciating smile eased my panicked mind slightly and I allowed myself to relax fractionally. “Most people are smart enough to know that when you push a tree branch it’s going to swing back at you.”
“Well,” he said with a chuckle, “I never was much of the outdoorsy type. I’m more at home in the city.”
“Then what are you doing out here?” I asked suspiciously while my mind screamed at me: to rape you!
“Just taking a bit of a vacation with my friends,” he explained, “We heard about this place so we decided to check it out this year. You’ve really got yourselves quite a spot with this town.”
“It’s quiet,” I confirmed, “Not many people come around here. It’s not like there’s a lot of bars and clubs and events like in the city.”
“Well that’s kind of what we were looking for,” he said, “Somewhere off the path where we could get away from that frantic city life. I know I needed some time to just slow down and relax after finals.”
“You’re in college?” I asked, though really it was pretty obvious from when I’d seen him before that he was.
His nod confirmed it. “Uh huh, University of Wyoming in Laramie.”
“What are you studying?” I asked, fully realizing I was basically interrogating him at this point and not caring one bit.
“Business,” he told me without hesitation, “And economics. My Dad runs a pretty big manufacturing company that I’m hoping I can take over one day.”
Rich kid. That made sense given his high-end choice of clothing. Chances were daddy paid for his college education plus gave him a huge allowance on the side. It wouldn’t surprise me if the guy drove a Mercedes or something too. Wait, why was I being so callous all of the sudden? I mean, yeah, the guy probably came from a wealthy family, but that didn’t mean he was a rich douchebag too. Just because someone came from money didn’t automatically make them a bad person. Just look at Mom. She was wealthy, inherited it from her parents, and was one of the kindest people I’d ever met. Who was to say that this guy wasn’t the same.
“So do you come out here a lot?” he asked, breaking into my thoughts, “In the woods I mean.”
“Yeah,” I admitted, “It helps clear my head when I’m thinking too much or get stressed.”
Looking around at the nature that surrounded us and cut us off from the rest of the world he nodded in understanding. “I can see that. It’s really peaceful out here. You’re actually pretty lucky to be able to walk through here whenever you want. The closest I usually get is a couple of trees planted on campus.”
“Sucks to be you,” I snapped, then immediately winced at my sudden loss of control of my emotions and shook my head. “I’m sorry, that was bitchy. I’m…not really good with…people.”
“It’s all right,” he told me, not appearing offended at me biting his head off, “I guess being out here cut off from the world you probably don’t see many strangers.”
“We’re not cut off from the world,” I pointed out, “We’ve got just as many amenities as the city does here.”
“I meant your population,” he clarified, “And the fact that the town is kind of out of the way so I’m guessing you don’t get many folks passing through.”
“That’s true,” I admitted.
“Look, do you want to maybe go sit on that log over there?” he suggested, pointing to a large one a short distance away. “I’ll stay right here if you want but I’m guessing shoving your back against that tree against your back has got to hurt a bit.”
Looking over at where he’d indicated, I had to admit the bark was starting to irritate the exposed skin on my back and shoulders where the dress didn’t cover, and the log would undoubtedly be more comfortable, but…
“All right,” I conceded carefully, “And you don’t have to keep sitting on the ground. You can sit there too. Just…stay on the far end of it, okay?”
He nodded his agreement and we both stood up, brushed ourselves off, and walked over to the rustic seating choice in question. While Tom did as I asked and took a seat at the very edge of the log, I perched myself on the opposite end with one foot firmly planted on the ground and the other lightly pressed against the log itself.
The positioning of my feet wasn’t an accident. Over the course of the last two months I’d taken quite the few walks through the forest. During that time, it hadn’t escaped my attention, particularly since at the time I was still operating under the mental status of rather extreme paranoia, that anyone could just snatch me up while I was lounging on a riverbank or a fallen tree like I was now. Because of this, early on I’d tested out a variety of quick-fire methods of regaining my feet so I could be in a full sprint barely after my feet had touched the ground. When it came to sitting on logs, or benches as the case may be, I’d found this was the most effective method for thrusting myself into a dead run at a moment’s notice, very much like the positioning an Olympic sprinter might take in the starting blocks. So, yeah, I was still more than a little paranoid about strangers, but at least I hadn’t run like a bat out of hell the moment I’d spied Tom. That was an improvement, right?
“You mind if I ask you kind of a stupid question?”
Glancing over at him, not that I’d taken my eyes off for him for a second to begin with, I brushed some hair out of my eyes and tucked it behind my ear. “I suppose.”
“If you walk in the woods so often, and you’re really leery of strangers, how come you’re wearing such a nice dress?”
That was by far one of the last things I’d expected him to ask me. What I did for fun, what was there to do in this town in the middle of nowhere, what’s your sign, all of those would have pretty much fallen right in line with how I expected our conversation to continue. My clothing choice certainly hadn’t been the direction I’d anticipated it would go.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he continued while I tried to get my thoughts in order, “It’s a real pretty dress, I just wouldn’t think you’d wear something like that on a leisurely stroll through the forest when it could get ripped or something.”
“I guess because I’ve been through here so many times I know where most of the tricky spots are,” I explained, “And I didn’t feel like changing before coming out this time.”
“Reasonable enough,” he acknowledged, “Obviously I’m kind of lacking in your knowledge and skill of this place and paying for it.” He smiled and lifted the sleeve of his shirt to show the slight tear in it from where he’d been whacked by a branch.
“Well City Boy,” I drawled with a bit of a superior smile, “That’s what you get when you think you can take on Mother Nature.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled, though he smiled when he said it, “Next time I think I’ll plan ahead and wear something a little more serviceable.”
He opened his mouth to say more, but apparently thought better of it and closed it once again. Of course, this only fired my curiosity of what he had been planning to say to me. I tried to resist but the not knowing was simply too much. “What?”
“No,” he said, waving his unspoken words away, “It was a bad line and I don’t want to insult you.”
Now he really had my curiosity up. If it was a line, that meant that perhaps he was trying to charm me. Did I want him to do that? Sure, so far he’d presented himself as a pretty nice guy, but that was just on the surface. I knew better than anyone that darker things tended to lurk beneath the surface when it came to people and their intentions. Still, I’d relaxed my caution a little before and it had earned me two new really good friends. Maybe it was time I started lowering my guard a little more.
“No,” I coaxed him, “Go ahead, say it.”
He had the grace to look a little bashful as he keep his eyes on his shoes when he said, “Maybe next time you could kind of act as my guide?”
As far as lines went, it was pretty bad, and expected, but the way in which he’d said it was pretty cute and I found myself easing a bit more. “So you want me to be your tour guide?” I asked, casting him a knowing smile.
“Maybe,” he hedged, “I mean, I have no clue how to get around in this place and it’s pretty likely I’d get lost in a heartbeat without someone who knows the area.”
Again, it was clearly another line, but dammit if he wasn’t being so boyishly charming about it and it was starting to make me feel a little pool of heat forming low in my belly. Whether it was the fact that he was an older guy showing interest in me or the fact that he was so cute I’m not sure, but the end result spoke for itself. Still, I wasn’t planning on letting him off wooing me quite that easily. “So then,” I asked, pinning him with a knowing look, “How exactly how did you plan on getting back to your hotel today if you don’t know how to get back?”
The expression on his face clearly told me he’d realized I’d found a pretty big hole in his little plan and he had the grace to blush. Digging into his pants pocket, he pulled out his cell phone and held it slightly aloft. “GPS.”
“Ha!” I crowed with victory. Strangely enough, the idea that this complete stranger had potentially followed me into the woods wasn’t filling me with the numbing dread I would have expected.
“Okay, okay,” he said, holding his hands up in defeat, “You got me, I was wandering around myself and saw you and wanted to talk with you. I know it’s kind of creepy doing it in the woods when it’s starting to get dark but for some reason I just couldn’t resist. The way you had this faraway look to you while you were walking through this forest like you were a part of it was just…I don’t know,” he admitted, “Magical? I just couldn’t resist wanting to get to know you.”
That was probably another line, but damn if it didn’t work and make me melt a little. Since my change in both sex and sexual preferences, I had yet to really explore myself beyond a couple of rather pleasant dreams. While I knew I still liked women, I’d also come to learn early on that I liked men too, which made me bi-sexual I guess. Unfortunately, the events in San Francisco had created too strong of an aversion to strange people to let me really open up enough to fully examine my new thoughts and emotions when it came to dating and relationships.
Now, as I was being thoroughly charmed by this handsome college guy, I realized that not only could I now confirm that I most certainly did like guys, but that this one in particular was doing a pretty good job at charming his way passed all of my carefully maintained defenses. The really strange part? I didn’t exactly mind it.
“So you think I’m magical do you?” I challenged with a teasing smile.
“I think you’re beautiful.”
The smile instantly fled my face, not because of any kind of sudden fear, but because of the sudden pulse of heat I felt in my chest. I’d been given the label of beautiful before, but that had been by Mom and she was undoubtedly biased. Don’t get me wrong, I’d seen myself in the mirror so I knew I wasn’t some grotesque beast. In fact, the first time I’d looked at myself in the ER in San Francisco I’d used the exact same word to label my new, feminine appearance. However, calling yourself beautiful and having a hot guy do it were two completely different things entirely.
Of course, his frank manner of complimenting me caused an instant blush to form and I quickly looked down at my sandaled feet. “No I’m not,” I mumbled, wondering why my immediate reaction to a compliment was to deny it even when I knew it was true.
“You are,” he insisted, but not in that over-the-top, forceful way you often see on T.V when a guy is clearly trying to work his way into a girl’s panties. “I guess you probably haven’t let too many guys close enough to tell you that huh?”
Lifting my eyes to his, I actually felt a tiny fissure of worry that this guy was able to read me so damn easily. From the moment we’d met he’d pegged me as being introverted and unsocial, but then I’d probably given him some pretty obvious cues when it came to that. You’re telegraphing Ashley, I told myself, Just relax and take the damn compliment. “Not really, no,” I admitted.
“You know,” he said candidly, “You’d hear it a lot more if didn’t keep everyone at arm’s length.”
The mention of distance made me realize that at some point during our conversation he’d scooted closer and was actually within arm’s length at this point. There was a sudden flash of panic that I fought down and through sheer force of will kept from bolting right then and there. I couldn’t help stiffening, however, and Tom seemed to notice.
“Ashley,” he told me quietly, “I’m not going to hurt you. Whoever it was that did, that’s not me.”
“I know,” I whispered in a slightly hoarse voice, “It’s just…instinctive.”
When I felt his fingers touch the back of my hand I actually jumped a little. “Shhh,” he soothed, as though trying to calm a skittish horse, “I’m not going to hurt you and I’m not going to do something you don’t want, okay?”
I nodded, but my eyes stayed firmly on those fingers just barely grazing my skin. When I didn’t pull away they began lazily moving back and forth, gently caressing the back of my hand even as my fingers tightened on the log slightly. For some time, I’m not sure how long exactly, he continued doing only that, gently stroking with his fingers until slowly, inch by inch, I started to relax. This wasn’t so bad. In fact, it felt kind of nice. When it came to, shall we say, intimate contact I was very inexperienced. The most I’d ever really had with someone outside of Mom, Aiden, and Kitty was really just a friendly handshake. This light, feathery skimming was something new and I had to say I was liking it so far.
Eventually, with a very faint nudge of Tom’s fingers, I turned my hand over so his fingertips were caressing the palm of my hand, tracing concentric circles over and over before reversing and doing the same in the opposite direction. By this point I had become so loose and relaxed there was a bit of danger that I might slide to the ground in a puddle. It was no surprise then that I couldn’t stop the faint moan of pleasure I experienced in the form of a throaty hum.
“Good?” Tom asked quietly.
“Mmhmm,” I mumbled, vaguely flexing my fingers so he knew I wasn’t falling asleep on him.
“So did you want to give me that tour sometime then?” he wheedled and when I opened one eye I hadn’t even realized I’d closed I saw him smiling with a hint of slyness.
“Mr. Borland,” I said in a voice that was low and throaty, “Are you trying to seduce me just to go on a date?”
“That depends,” he hedged, “Did it work?”
Slowly coming back to myself now, I stood and brushed off the back of my dress while he continued to sit and looked up at me with the most adorable expression of hope. “I expect the full, romantic picnic treatment,” I informed him in as much of a lofty voice as I could manage, which meant not at all and it was clear I was just being teasing. “Complete with a wicker basket, red-checked blanket, and delicious food.”
Tom stood himself and folded his arms with a cocky smile. “What, no candle in an old wine bottle too?”
“Heavens no,” I gasped before tossing him a wink, “I wouldn’t want to accidently start a forest fire after all. Besides, a candle would be pretty pointless around noon.”
“Fair enough,” he acknowledged, “Tomorrow then?”
It suddenly struck me just how far I’d gotten and how fast it had taken place. In the span of…how long had Tom and I had been talking?...I’d gone from terrified and ready to run to actually being asked out on a date and not only accepting, but making pseudo demands regarding it. The reality of it had me drawing in a little on myself and I actually wrapped my arms around my midsection in a self-hug. Tom seemed to pick up on this because his expression grew concerned and he took a step towards me before stopping. “How about the day after?” He suggested gently, surprising me by not just flat out canceling the date before it even had a chance to form. The fact that he still wanted to go out with a head-case like me both surprised me and sent little pleasant tendrils of warmth through my belly.
“I think the day after would be best,” I told him quietly, offering him a shy smile to show him I wasn’t chickening out yet.
“Great, I’ll see you then,” he said with just enough excitement to let me know he was definitely interested in me but wasn’t going to really push.
He just started to turn away when he paused and looked back as though considering me. I was about to ask what he was thinking when he suddenly moved. By this point my emotions were so all over the map that I simply wasn’t prepared for him to do anything. I should have been furious with myself for letting my guard fall so completely but by this point it was too late and there was nothing I could do to stop him. Instead, all I could do was stand there embracing myself tightly as he closed the distance between the two of us before I could blink…
…And kissed me on the cheek.
It wasn’t just a fast little peck either. While he’d moved in fast, the press of his lips to my skin was slow and gentle, nearly a caress. In fact, it actually seemed like his mouth parted ever so slightly before closing on my cheek, gently drawing a fraction of my skin between his lips for him to taste. It caused a delicious little shiver to run down my spine both from the feeling that I was so desired that he would risk my anger just to give me a rather chaste touch on the cheek and that he would do so in a manner that truly pushed the boundaries between chaste and sensual.
In fact, I was just about ready to turn my head so my lips could meet his in a gentle kiss when he suddenly back away with a shy little smile and said, “Meet me at the hotel day after tomorrow? Noon?”
The only thing I could do was nod mutely while I stood there like an idiot with my mouth open blinking stupidly, which I continued to do when he started back through the woods while pulling out his cell phone to guide him back to the hotel.
I stood there staring at where he disappeared into the woods for a while after that, trying to simply get my brain to process everything that had just happened. I’d just let a boy ask me out on a date and not only had I accepted, but I’d let him kiss me. As far as red-letter days went, this was a pretty big one. Up to this point I hadn’t even considered the possibility that I might one day engage in any kind of man-woman activity like dating despite the fact that I knew I was attracted to guys as well as girls. My emotional issues had been so debilitating up to this point I figured I might never be able to get passed the basic fear drive that kept me from being social in general. Apparently that wasn’t the case any longer. I had a date.
I had a date!
Spinning around, I raced back the way I came towards the house so I could call Aiden and tell her everything.
* * * *
Having paused a short distance after Ashley had lost sight of him, he watched from a position of hiding within a thicket as the girl spun around hugging herself before racing bac through the woods. He assumed she was probably heading home and if the ecstatically happy grin on her face was any indication, she’d probably be telling her two friends all about their upcoming date.
The meeting had gone almost exactly as Tom had intended it to. From the first moment he’d seen the beautiful redhead in the sporting goods store he knew he had to have her. He also knew from the way she always seemed to be nervously looking around as though expecting to be attacked at any moment that she carried some serious baggage with her. That was why it had been crucial to get her alone in a place where she seemed relatively comfortable before making his first move. Experience had taught him that when it came to skittish girls, you always wanted to approach them in a place where they felt safe so they wouldn’t instantly rebuff any advances simply because they weren’t comfortable.
That was why he’d chosen to approach her during her walk through the woods. While she had seemed cautious an unapproachable in town, alone in this deep forest her demeanor had changed to one of peace and contentedness. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told her that she looked so beautiful it was almost magical. Had he merely stumbled across her for the first time he might have suspected she was some kind of beautiful wood nymph or forest goddess. She would be his perfect conquest.
Which was why he was so confused. True, their whole conversation had been his tried and true method of getting a repressed girl to open up. He had used it countless times before and it had been wildly successful not only in getting a girl to open up emotionally, but to open up her legs at the same time. While he wasn’t planning on going quite that far with this first encounter, had to keep up the thrill of the hunt after all, he had been surprised when halfway through their talk he’d found himself becoming warmer and gentler with the lovely girl. Ordinarily, after having gotten a girl like her to start talking and become more engaged in the conversation, he would steer the topics towards more sensual or sexual matters. It was a good way to get a feel for how experienced the girl was and what kinds of things really turned her on.
With Ashley, however, he had found himself wanting to make her feel more at ease. He wanted her to be comfortable and for her to appreciate him rather than desire him. He wanted that look of peacefulness and happiness to wipe away the fear that he had seen shining in those amazing eyes of hers. And when that finally happened, the sense of accomplishment he felt was more rooted in happiness rather than furthering plans of carnal conquest.
In fact, he was actually looking forward to their date with a sense of giddy anticipation he hadn’t known since he was a young boy just beginning to understand how wonderful girls were. It really didn’t even bother him that, as he headed back towards the hotel, he was thinking about how to best provide sweet and caring romance rather than abject seduction and objectification.
For the first time in he didn’t know how long, the idea of not having sex with a beautiful girl didn’t seem to matter to him at all.
8 years 6 months ago #4
by Paradox
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8 years 5 months ago - 8 years 5 months ago #5
by Paradox
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Unknown
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- Paradox
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8 years 5 months ago #6
by Paradox
Posts:
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Unknown
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- Paradox
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