Question Sted 1 Deleted Scene - Pegasus

Pegasus (deleted scenes)
by Xaltatun of Acheron
All Rights Reserved

This is fan fiction for the Whateley Academy series. It may or may not match the timeline, characters, and continuity, but since it's fan fiction, who cares?

This is the first story about Sted "Ponygirl" Lancaster. The entire series, at least at the present time, is:

*Pegasus (v4)
*** Deleted scenes <==
*Welcome to Whitman
*** Deleted Scenes
*Fragment from It's A Bird!
*To Train a Ponygirl (up to, but not including, the scenes with Fubar)
*Aftermath
*Ponyglrl's Combat Final (to come)
*What I did on my Christmas Vacation (second edition)
*Lizards (in preparation)
*Fashion Note
*Aspidistra (Version 2)
*Wine Dark Sea

Out of continuity:

*Roommates



Author’s note. Originally, I intended Sted to start in the Winter 2007 term rather than the Fall 2006 term. However, I sent the character in to a contest Babs Yerunkle ran, and she put her into several Faction 3 meetings during the Fall term, so I had to move up Sted’s arrival. That turns out to have been a good thing, considering the glacial pace the universe is proceeding at. These bits were simply too good to ashcan, though, so here they are.


Sted stood on the train platform with his family, waiting for the train to arrive. The blustery January weather didn’t bother him: the hooded cloak, the mid-calf length dress and the knee length boots he’d made protected him from the cold quite well.

What did bother him was the almost two day trip without anyone else he knew. Just then, a uniformed porter came up. “Where to?” he asked Ben as the obvious traveler.

“Just my daughter, to Dunwich, New Hampshire.”

“Ah, you’ll want to be back here,” the man said as he maneuvered the handcart with Sted’s luggage farther along the platform. They followed him to where he left it next to another young girl, a pre-teen from her appearance, standing by herself. “You’ll be changing trains in Philadelphia, and this car goes right through,” he explained before walking off to somewhere else.

Sted’s slowly developing magical senses showed him a pulsing point of violet, almost ultra-violet, light in the center of the girl’s head: the light he had learned was the magical signature of mutant super-powers. As he watched, her hand moved and then the point of light bloomed and seemed to encompass her momentarily.

The girl looked at the four of them, her eyes hesitating as she saw Sted.

“Oh, hi, you’re going to Whateley?” she asked him. “You’re new? I’m Jade, by the way.”

“Uh, yes. I’m Sted, and I’m not sure what I’m getting into.”

“Neither was I. Do you know what cottage you’re going to be in?”

“Uh, Poe cottage. I’m supposed to be rooming with someone named Marty Penn.”

“And I hope you can clarify what’s going on,” Ben said. “They were awfully vague about why they’d assigned our daughter to room with a guy.”

Jade looked a bit undecided. “I’m afraid that’s, what’s the term, need to know information. We simply don’t let it out.” She glanced at Sadie as she said it.

“I don’t think dad has ever said anything without thinking it out first,” Sted said.

“Talk in haste, repent at leisure,” Ben said, obviously pleased at what he regarded as a complement.

“Maybe once or twice,” Marge added dryly, “but not three times. Ben will tell me anything I need to know.” She gestured to Sadie and they walked off towards a concession stand.

“Well,” Jade said, recognizing she had been outmaneuvered, “Poe is the GLBT cottage.”

“GLBT?” Ben said, puzzled at the acronym. Then the light dawned. “Oh! Well, I can see why you don’t want to make the situation common knowledge. I trust the administration knows what it’s doing, young lady.”

“I certainly hope so,” Jade replied. “Marty is, um, kind of Lizzie McGuire with super powers.”

Ben looked at the ceiling of the train shed briefly as if for inspiration. “Well, Sted has always been rather more mature for his age than one would expect.”

“Gee, thanks, dad.”

“Maybe you can clear up a couple of things they’ve recommended for Sted’s class schedule which I’m still confused about.”

“Which ones?”

“Well, there’s a martial arts class, and something called Flight I. It’s described as learning how to fly an airplane.”

“All fliers take Flight I. The airplane is really secondary, it’s just that it’s the standard way to get FAA procedures down. Nobody wants an accident in the air.”

“Makes sense. What about martial arts?”

“Mutants attract a lot of crazies. Even if your daughter isn’t going the super-hero route, she’s got a lot better chance of living to old age if she can see trouble coming and either avoid it or flatten it first.”

“It’s that bad?”

“They tell us that originally about half of the graduates that tried to keep a low profile didn’t live out a year. Now they teach most students to fight, regardless of whether they’re naturally a fighter or not. It protects the investment. And even without the crazies that go after mutants, there are other hazards. My first trip out there, I had to take down a mugger. That was when I didn’t have much going for me besides a martial arts background.”

Ben’s eyebrows rose at that statement.

“Well, part of it is that my travel allowance doesn’t let me get a sleeper, and even if it did you can’t get there from here on one train. I had to find cheap hotels for overnight. I think the mugger survived, but I didn’t stay around to check.”

“I’d think your parents would provide more.”

“I’m an orphan. Trying to get more money out of Child Protective Services isn’t easy, so I make do. I made my own arrangements for the holidays: I stayed with a police officer and his family and worked with him at police headquarters.”

“I’m surprised they let you do that.”

“Well, it’s not on the record. CPS likes the arrangement because they don’t have to find a foster parent, I learn police procedure, the department gets to use my, um, abilities, and everyone knows where I am. It’s a win all around.”

Ben looked puzzled, an expression that he wasn’t all that familiar with. “Police procedure?”

“Well, the difference between a super-hero and a vigilante is mostly a matter of good public relations and a good working relationship with the police.”

“Now that makes a great deal of sense.”

“It’s not like I intend to go into the hero business either. I haven’t made up my mind whether I want a position with a police force, or whether I want to go into the maintenance business.”

“Maintenance?” Ben asked, looking at the young girl with a puzzled expression.

“Most of us earn some money with work assignments; you have to if you’re on a scholarship. Mine is with the sewer plumbers. I’ve got some, um, abilities that are really useful for that kind of work.”

Something obviously connected. “Don’t I remember seeing you on television? That river tunnel problem?”

“Tell me about it! That was me, and I wish we’d have done a better job keeping the news crews away! When Ms. Carson says low profile, she really means low profile.” Jade giggled. “Fortunately, the news crews didn’t make a connection between me and Whateley, so I probably won’t pull a week of detention for it. And the bonus they’re talking about awarding me looks real good, even though I won’t be able to get to most of it until I’m 18 or so.”

“I’d think they’d give you an award! I gather from the news reports that you saved the city several hundred million.”

“Well, it wasn’t going to be as bad as the Chicago Leak, but it wouldn’t have been pretty if we hadn’t gotten that plug in quickly.”

“I admit to feeling a lot better about the situation now.”

“I agree. Traveling with someone is always better. I think we’d best get a room together for tonight. That award isn’t in my purse yet!”

“Sounds like a plan,” Ben said.

“I think so, at least if Sted agrees!” Jade smiled at the hooded girl, and got a smile in return.

“In fact,” Ben said a bit thoughtfully, “I don’t like the idea of lower class hotels. Let’s see what I can pull together.” He flipped open his cell phone and started calling.

The platform started to get a bit too crowded to talk privately as more passengers arrived. Marge and Sadie came back, bearing hot dogs for the two girls.

“You shouldn’t have!” Jade exclaimed.

“Consider it a bribe,” Marge said, a bit of a smile on her face. Jade giggled as she bit into the bun.

A minute later, the train shed filled with the sound of the diesel locomotive as it slowed down the incoming train, punctuated with the hiss of the air brakes releasing pressure. For a few minutes everything was a bit chaotic as the people on the platform tried to jockey for position near where they thought the doors would stop, and then the porters loading the baggage into the compartments by the side of the train.

“We’d better get on if we want a seat together,” Jade said a bit unnecessarily. The two girls pressed forward, each lugging a suitcase.

“Last time I only had a backpack,” Jade muttered. “This is awkward!”

“Isn’t it just,” the taller girl said from beside her, voice somehow sounding a bit hollow coming from the depths of her hood.

The seats were arranged in facing pairs, each pair having a small table between them. Jade looked at the overhead bin and made to climb up on the table so she could reach it.

“Here, let me,” a uniformed porter said as he saw the two girls struggling. A minute later their suitcases were in the overhead bin.

“Thanks,” Jade and Sted said in chorus. Sted held out a dollar, and the porter made it vanish with a smile as he touched his hat.

The two girls slid into the seat, Sted taking the outside as she was the larger. “Now what?” Sted asked Jade.

Jade shrugged. “We wait for the train to get moving, then they bring magazines around. They’re boring, but they’re better than sitting and staring out the window. Too bad we can’t really talk until tonight.”

“I think we can,” Sted said, diving into her purse and rummaging around. “Ah, here it is!”

“What’s that thing? It looks like a compact, but...”

“They tried to make me get one with Hello Kitty, but I put my hoof down on that!”

“I like Hello Kitty!”

“You’re welcome to her! I like having a pony on mine.” Something about the way Sted said that made Jade look at her companion strangely.

“So what is it?” she asked as Sted fiddled with some knobs and sliders.

“A sound dampener. We can talk all we want, and nobody can tell what we’re saying.”

“Kewl! Uh, does it actually work?”

“Kind of. It’ll fall over and die if anyone with real power looks at it crosseyed, and it won’t keep out a real professional, but if anyone like that is interested in us, well….” She shrugged.

“That’s better than I’ve got! So you’re a devisor?”

“Devisor 1. Also Gadgeteer 1 and Wizard 1, and they’re all kind of together and the doctor isn’t all that certain of the numbers. This thing’s kind of half devise and half spell.”

Jade giggled again. “And guaranteed to make Bunny and Fey fight over it. Well, they won’t exactly fight, but it’s going to drive them up a wall trying to figure it out. They might wind up talking to each other about something besides, uh….”

“Sex.” Sted filled in. “So they’re lesbians?” She said it like it was a deep, dark secret.

“Bunny is. I don’t think Fey has made up her mind. And it’s not a secret, at least with us. Nothing we say, and I mean nothing, goes outside of Poe, though.”

“I understand. When dad lays down the law, we don’t talk. Period.”

“Exactly. The rest of the campus thinks that Poe is the cottage for the real weirdos, and it’s just as well. Lets us get away with a lot.”

Sted giggled. “So, how is it organized?”

“There’s seven cottages. We, Hawthorn and Melville are coed. Hawthorn is for the kids with real problems, and I mean real problems. The other four dorms are split; two for boys, two for girls, two for kids that look normal and two for kids that don’t look at all normal.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Jade said as the train finally made its way toward Philadelphia. “They’re only expecting two of us at the hotel, and my older sister will be joining us for the trip from the station.”

“Your older sister?”

“Well, she’s a ghost. She died a while ago, but she still turns up occasionally when I need protection. She’s also a student at Whateley, takes classes and everything.”

“You’ve got a ghost as a protector.” Sted shook her head. “So there need to be two of us when we register. Well, I think I can manage that, as long as they don’t mind pets.”

“Huh?”

“I’m also a shifter. One of my forms is a cabbit. You know...” she paused as Jade almost bent over double trying to avoid laughing.

“A cabbit,” she finally managed to get out. “I’m not laughing at you, I want to see Tennyo’s face when she sees two cabbits.”

“Tennyo?”

“She’s my roommate. She looks just like Ryoko from the Tenchi Ami anime stories. She’s got some of Ryoko’s powers, and she’s got just as short a fuse, although she’s getting a bit better.”

“Oh. Two cabbits?”

“Jann, that’s my sister, can animate things. Get someone to tell you about the great cabbit chase the day we arrived. It’s just too funny.” Jade giggled again at the memory.

Sted giggled with her at the image that it brought up, and then sat up and looked at the gimmicked compact. “We’d better quit talking about secret stuff,” she said. “This is about drained.”

“It doesn’t last?”

“Oh, it’ll recharge in a few hours,” she answered from the depths of the hood. “I havn’t quite gotten the knack of pulling that much power off of the grid without blowing fuses, popping circuit breakers, causing scorch marks and other fun stuff.”

“Now, how do we organize this?” Jade muttered as the two girls got off the train, maneuvering the luggage with some difficulty.

“Just find a ladies and switch,” Sted answered. “I think two stalls together will do.”

Jade frowned and finally shook her head. “I hate walking down that street without Jann, but….” She shrugged. “This ought to do, and it won’t give people questions about where you went to and where Jann came from. Watch this,” she grinned as she pulled a compact out of her purse. “Kitty Compact. Scan!”

Sted’s eyes narrowed slightly as she saw the point of violet light in her companion’s head bloom and enter the compact.

The compact rose in the air and hovered; then it darted off to vanish in the gloom of the train station’s vaulted ceiling. Sted saw the speck of violet light at the center. It looked like…. Well, if Jade didn’t want to spill that secret, it was certainly none of her business. It was also most likely nothing she could ever use.

“If we get into trouble, whatever you do, don’t look at me.”

“What? Oh. You’ve got some kind of confusion spell or devise or whatever?”

“Or something. I don’t want to give away all my tricks.”

“Dad would approve.” She dove into her handbag and pulled out what looked like the handle of a sword.

“What is that thing?”

“Light saber. It’s actually a looped positron beam. Looks neat until it cuts into something.”

“Put it away! You’ve got no idea how much paperwork, let alone trouble you can cause with excessive force!”

“Oh. I guess you’re right. You did say low profile, didn’t you?”

The two girls walked out of the station, the compact darting from one shadow to another above them, making sure it checked out all of the possible places a threat could be lurking.

“So how did you make that thing?” Jade asked in a low voice as she walked along.

“Generating a positron beam isn’t that hard. The trick is getting it to loop back without a lot of expensive, power hungry and heavy equipment. That needed a spell anchored to the devise. It generates a twisted magnetic field for the beam to ride on.”

“Kewl! I bet Bunny would be interested in it.”

“She’s the devisor you mentioned? She could probably make one without blinking.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. She’s more interested in special effects. Flashy stage stuff. If she made one, it probably wouldn’t hurt a fly - except by accident.”

“Now this is living it up!” Jade said as soon as the hotel’s liveried minion had showed them to their room and dropped their luggage on the rack.

“I think Dad wanted to go one bracket lower, but this was the best he could do on short notice. I recognized the expression.” Sted stripped out of her cloak and hood with a sigh of relief. “You don’t know how much I hate this thing --- except when I really need it!”

“Wow!” was Jade’s reaction on her first sight of Sted. “That’s what you really look like?”

“Like it?” Sted pirouetted, tail flying out from behind her dress with the action.

“You’re beautiful! You said you had four forms?”

“Uh huh.” Sted seemed to shimmer and then the cabbit sat there. It bounced into the air and then soared around the room, causing Jade to duck as it buzzed her.

She dropped onto the bed and then shimmered back into girl form.

“You fly? Well, of course, you’re taking Flight 1.”

“Kind of. I’ve got a personal relationship with gravity so I can go up and down, but going horizontal takes something else. I think we’ve got room.” She bounded off the bed to the center of the floor and seemed to shimmer again. The shimmer swirled for a moment, expanded and then condensed into a centaur.

“I’d better not move around too much,” she said. “My shoes will rip up the rug, and the hotel wouldn’t like that.”

“Still Wow! You’re bigger than the pony rides at the park. And that’s a pretty red.”

“It’s called a roan; my mane and tail set it off nicely, don’t you think?”

“Uh. Do you take riders?”

“I might. It depends on the person. Now, here’s the last one.” She shimmered again. A moment later the shimmer condensed into a white horse with a pair of scarlet wings folded along its back.

“Eep!” Jade’s eyes bugged out at the sight.

“Like it?” Sted’s voice echoed a bit in Jade’s head.

“Telepathy?” Jade almost squeaked.

“Oh, good. You can hear me. I couldn’t do all that much testing, but some people can’t. It means we’re compatible.”

“Compatible?”

“You can ride me and stay on. Falling off at 30,000 feet isn’t a real good idea.”

“Uh. I think I’ll take a pass on that, if it’s all right with you.”

Sted whinnied and then shimmered again. A moment later she stood there back in girl form. “All things considered, this is more convenient. Unless I was out in the wilderness somewhere; then the centaur would be better.”

“I like them all,” Jade pronounced. “But you’d fit better into a dorm room. And it keeps you away from Stalwart.”

“Stalwart?”

“Totally potty devisor who’s sweet on Fey. He goes around in armor that he built himself and sounds like a refuge from a RenFaire. He built a horse that keeps breaking down in a shower of sparks.”

“Sounds like he’s studying for the White Knight award.”

“White Knight Award?”

“From Through the Looking Glass. Sequel to Alice in Wonderland. Had his horse loaded down with lots of junk, and kept falling off.”

“That sounds like Stalwart. One of the girls on the second floor had to spend hours with him to get him to sound halfway normal.”

“Sounds weird.”

“You don’t know the half of it! Weird doesn’t begin to describe Whateley. And where did you get those boots? I think half the girls would kill for them!”

“I made them.” Sted sat down and slid the zipper on one of them, pulling a hoof out. “I have to wear them unless I’m outside in the country. My magic teacher had a spell that cushions my hooves, but it’s way beyond me at the moment.”

“You made them? Don’t tell anyone or you’re going to have orders stacked up like fieldstone.”

“If it makes money.” Sted shrugged. “My family isn’t on the top of the heap by any means, and if I can make expenses here I think everyone will be happier. Besides, I like making things.”

“Typical gadgeteer and devisor,” Jade giggled again.

“This looks right rustic,” Sted said. “Like a postcard.”

“The whole town is a tourist trap. Shopping is, um, interesting. No malls; just a street of little shops.”

“You could call it the early version of the mall?”

“Not where they can hear you! But it does look like we’ve got a real problem coming up,” Jade said, looking at the sky with a worried expression on her face.

“It sure looks like a storm,” Sted agreed.

“It’s earlier than they said, and it’s supposed to be a real mess. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to get in now; I figured I might earn some extra with the maintenance crews cleaning it up.”

“I hope the bus gets here soon!”

“So do I. I haven’t got the money to stay in town overnight; besides Ye Olde Lodging House will probably be overcrowded. Let’s get the bags inside and then worry about it.”

The two girls hauled their suitcases inside, to see the station agent standing behind his counter. “The two of you are for Whateley?”

“Where else?” Jade answered for them.

“Well, they just called and said that the storm is blowing up fast enough that they don’t think the bus can make it. They said to try your luck in town.”

“Damn,” Jade said. “I think we need to talk this over.”

“Waiting room’s there,” he hooked a thumb at the door and then vanished into the back.

“Now what?” Jade asked her taller companion. “I could probably make a run for it, but it’d be awkward with all the luggage, and I’m no speed demon in the air anyway.”

“In that wind? I’d be afraid of being blown into a tree or something if I tried to fly. Now my centaur form,” she let the sentence dribble off slowly as she thought. “I could probably make it in centaur form if I tied the bags on real tight and did something to weatherproof them. The centaur is pretty weatherproof. What I’d be worried about is traction. I wonder. Back in a minute,” she said as she eased the station door open and hurried out before the howling wind had a chance to do more than rattle the inside.

“It works,” she said after she came back in. “Shouldn’t be any problem with traction.”

“What did you do?”

“Reversed the float; I got enough heavier so that the wind couldn’t push me around. Never tried that before, but it worked like a charm. Now shifting forms in the middle of the storm isn’t something I want to try again unless I have to.”

“So you’re ready. The luggage won’t be a problem; Jann will take it. I think I want to check in with the school first, though,” she said just as a stronger gust shook the building and the lights went out.

“Damn! Well, it’s a chance to check out the new communicators,” Jade said, looking through her handbag. “Found it!” She screwed the tiny thing into her left ear and said: “Whateley Security.”

“Oh, hi, Sam. It’s Jade. Jann and Sted and I are going to come in through the storm; expect us in about an hour.”

She paused to listen. “In this storm, who’s going to notice?”

“Oh, the two campgrounds. They’re far enough back from the road, right?”

“Check. Report any stalled vehicles to county.”

“Ok, we’ll be cautious. About an hour. Tell Mrs. Horton to expect us.”

“Ok. Jade off.”


“What about weatherproofing the luggage?” Jade said as she dove into one of the suitcases and hauled out a weatherproof overcoat.

“Easy enough,” Sted said, rummaging around inside her handbag. After a moment, she pulled out a roll of a popular kitchen wrap.

“That’s going to withstand this storm?”

“It will after I get done with it.”

“But kitchen wrap?”

“I like kitchen wrap. It’s so much more feminine than duct tape.” Sted giggled.

“You’ll get along with Bunny real well,” Jade threw up her hands in mock horror at the prospect.

Sted ignored her as she wrapped the suitcases in a layer of clear plastic. Then she stood back and muttered something under her breath.

“Now that’s impressive,” Jade said, looking at the bundle. “Kitchen wrap with an attitude! Bet that’s the first time that brand has ever lived up to its advertisements.”

Jade dropped a speaker disk onto the bundle and then bent over to touch it. A moment later, it rose into the air and hovered.

“Well, let’s hit the road,” Jade pronounced after almost vanishing inside of her overcoat and hat.

“Why would we want to do that? The road never did anything to us,” Sted said after she transformed to centaur form.

“A comic, yet,” Jann said as she floated out the door in front of Sted. Jade shut the door behind them, and then the centaur and the little girl vanished into the howling storm, their luggage floating behind.

“I know what Dad would say to that stunt,” Sted said as she nursed a mug of hot chocolate while sitting on one of the comfortable, if a bit worse for wear, couches in the first floor of Poe Hall.

“Oh?” Mrs. Horton said as she watched the two girls relax after the ordeal.

“Too stupid to come in out of the rain.”

“Well...”

“He’d have a point. Being weatherproof doesn’t turn a howling blizzard into a balmy summer day.”

“Growing up is the time to do your learning --- as long as you survive the lessons.”

“I guess I survived this one,” Sted agreed.

“Pretty well, too. You look nice. I didn’t have any idea what to expect when they told me I was getting a ponygirl. Or why this dorm instead of Whitman. But you look good and it looks like you’ll do fine here.”

“I hope so. And I’ll try not to do too much damage to the floors.”

“Oh?”

Sted slid off her boots to reveal her hooves.

“Well, Sara hasn’t managed to damage the floors yet, so you shouldn’t. Which reminds me that your uniforms and such will need to be altered for your tail. Custom tailoring them is a bit pricey, though. There’s a real good seamstress in town, but she’s also very expensive.”

“Oh, I’ll do that myself. I do most of my own clothing, and I did these boots as well.”

“You could make some money with that; just watch out that you don’t overcommit your time.”

“I do that, I’d expect Dad to be on my case even if he never hears about it!”

Mrs. Horton laughed. “Sounds like a man of the old school.”

“He sounds more like he swallowed Bartlett’s.”

Mrs. Horton chuckled. “I know the type, unfortunately. Jade, show Sted around the dorm; I’ll let you into the vault when you’re ready. You can take a pass on the statue until the storm dies down, and the main vault can wait until you go to the Crystal Hall for dinner. And remember,” she fixed Sted with an eagle eye, “nothing, and I mean nothing, that goes on in this cottage gets talked about outside. I expect Jade has already told you that, but I’m just going to emphasize it.”

“Uh, right, ma’am. Jade did mention it, and I’ll remember.”

“See that you do.” Mrs. Horton nodded as the two girls headed toward the staircase.