Question Sted 2 - Welcome to Whitman

All rights reserved, except for those ceded to the Whateley Academy Author’s Group.

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

*Pegasus (v4)
*** Deleted scenes
*Welcome to Whitman <<====
*Fragment from It's A Bird!
*To Train a Ponygirl (up to, but not including, the scenes with Fubar)
*Aftermath
*Ponyglrl's Combat Final (game 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





Monday, September 4.

The Grand Miskatonic Shuttle slowed with a hiss of escaping steam, and pulled to a stop at the station outside the picaresque little town of Dunwich. At least, Sted thought, it had to be picaresque. Every other small town they’d gone through on the way up from where she had changed trains in Concord had been picaresque. As in picture postcard pretty.

Sted joined the milling crowd of teenagers on the platform, and looked around curiously. Not, she thought, that there was all that much to see. One train station, looking like it had never expected to handle a crowd of this size. Trees. Lots of trees. Also lots of students. And one superhero type, complete with cape, hovering a couple of feet off the ground, looking the crowd over.

As soon as the porters got all the luggage neatly lined up on the platform, the train pulled out. An older man got up on a small platform and raised a bullhorn.

“All right students,” he announced. “I’m Mr. Dixon, the Assistant Dean of Students for Whateley Academy. If you’re not headed for Whateley Academy, please go into the train station until your taxi or train gets here; we don’t want to take chances. I’m required to say this: your insurance will not cover accidents due to paranormal activity in a hazardous area after being warned: this is officially a hazardous area today. Parents or guardians are fine, everyone else off the platform.”

A couple of people looked like they were going to complain, and then thought better of it when the super drifted up behind Mr. Dixon, arms crossed. They picked up their luggage and went into the station.

“The next buses,” he continued, “are for returning students for Melville, Dickinson, Emerson and Poe! Pull your luggage out of the stack and get it lined up so we can get the buses loaded and out of here quickly! If there are any new students for Melville, Dickinson, Emerson or Poe, please use the last bus. Then line up so I can check you off.” He waved what looked like a high end PDA.

“The next bus will be for Whitman, the one after that will be for Twain. Then we repeat.”

The mess on the platform got sorted out in short order. Three buses pulled up, and the returning students managed to get on without too much hassle.

“OK kids, this is for Whitman. Whitman is a girl’s dorm. Twain is a boy’s dorm. You ought to know which dorm you’re in. Get your luggage lined up so we can load it fast, and then form a line so I can check you in. When I check you in, I’ll give you a letter and a number. The letter will be a B, an M or a G, the number is your room assignment. B, M and G do not mean both, male and girl! They indicate how much Gross Structural Distrophy you have. B means you look like a baseline, M means mild Gross Structural Distrophy and G mean major GSD. The letter M means you’ve got a fairly mild case of GSD; you’ve still got two arms, two legs and one head in the standard locations. In other words, you’ve got a good chance of passing for a baseline human, at least on a dark night if you’re dressed right. The letter G means you have no chance of passing.

“Once you’ve gotten settled a bit, you can shuffle rooms by asking Ms. Savage or Ms. Hollingsberry, who are your house mothers in Whitman. There’s one rule; we’d really prefer that two kids with the same letter not share the same room. There have been exceptions; it’s your house mother’s call whether to allow it.”

Sted looked around and shrugged a bit. There were a lot of students that didn’t look like baseline to her! It didn’t seem like keeping the monk’s robe on was necessary, so she slid out of it, folded it carefully and put it in her purse.

Sted walked over to the line of trunks and suitcases the porters had left and located her trunk. She grabbed the handle and swung it over her shoulder as if it weighed almost nothing. Then she carried it over to the bus line, apparently not straining in the least.



The bus ride took around 30 minutes, winding its way over a bridge and through the little town of Dunwich before turning into the forest. Dunwich looked like it ought to be on a picture postcard.

Sted noticed the gargoyles on the school gates. They seemed to be looking at her. Must be some kind of a spell. Stone couldn’t look all by itself. Could it?



The crowd piled out of the buses and managed to get their luggage into the front room of Whitman cottage while three adults and one late teen watched.

As soon as the commotion died down, one of the women cleared her throat. “Good Morning, students,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Shugendo, the Dean of Students here at Whateley Academy. If you came in on the train, you’ve already met the Assistant Dean, Mr. Dixon. Ms. Savage and Ms. Hollingsberry are your house mothers. If you have problems, see one of them. If you’re a problem, they’ll see you.”

Ms. Savage looked the students over silently for a moment. She didn’t need to say anything; something about her seemed to say that riding herd on a group of super powered teenagers simply wasn’t a problem.

“Welcome to Whitman,” she started. She read off the dorm arrangements from a checklist. There were three residence floors plus an attic, two meeting and study rooms and a library, laundry, kitchen and exercise room.

“If you came in from the train, you’ve already got your room assignment. A couple of you just came in by car; see me and I’ll give you your assignment. You can ask me to switch rooms after you’ve been here a couple of weeks. If you need to switch before, you’ll need a real good reason.” She didn’t have to add that whatever your reason was, it was unlikely to be good enough.

“Your student guide for today is Stephanie Frim. She’s a senior, and she’s your guide for today and might be available later if you run into trouble or need advice. Don’t worry, she doesn’t bite. Much.”

“Gee Thanks. I think,” the older girl laughed, spreading a handsome set of utter black bat wings. “You can call me Steph. Don’t call me Bats where I can hear it unless you want to explain yourself to me.” One of her hands glowed briefly. Then a ball of lambent energy appeared. She juggled it a moment and then tossed it over her shoulder, where it vanished with a soft “plop”. She smiled seraphically, showing a set of oversized and very sharp canines.

“Now that we’re introduced, let’s get the luggage upstairs and into your *assigned* rooms. Don’t bother to unpack anything except bare necessities. We’ve got a number of things to do, and we’re on a schedule. We’ve got new students coming in for here, Twain and Hawthorn, and returning students for the other four dorms. The rest of the crowd comes in tomorrow; we want to get you all settled today. Stairs are at the ends of the corridors. Let’s get to it.”

Sted swung her trunk onto her shoulder and carried it into 204, which was her assigned room. Then she stopped, startled. One of the two beds was occupied by a ... creature.

“Uh, sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. I’m Sted, you’re?”

“Derala,” the black blob on the bed said. As soon as it shifted Sted suddenly recognized it as a bird. An enormous black bird with a girl’s head. “I do startle people! I don’t know if I’m the GSD prize or python-girl down the hall is the GSD prize. Or maybe the Fury twins. You,” Derala stood up on the bed, showing that she had two heavily muscled bird’s feet, “look almost normal. I need some room to get off the bed.”

Sted moved aside, and Derala managed a double step that got her onto the floor. Once she was on the floor Sted saw that she looked almost exactly like an oversized hawk. An oversized hawk who wore some kind of harness.

“Uh. No hands?” Sted asked.

“Nope.” Derala grimaced. “Whatever did this to me left them out. They turned into these absolutely useless wings.” She spread them slightly; Sted could see that there was no way she could spread them completely in the room. “Fortunately I can do this.” The pillow levitated off the bed and came hurtling across the room. Sted picked it out of the air and sent it back. A moment later the two strange girls had broken into a short fit of giggles.

“I think,” Sted said, “we’d better head out. Steph said she wanted to get the tour started right away.”

“Yeah, she did say that,” Derala answered. “After you.” As Derala left a backpack floated out of a cupboard and attached itself to her harness.

The two girls walked into the hall. Sted noticed a number of girls had joined them who hadn’t been there on the first floor. The snake-girl that Derala had mentioned was quite obvious; from her waist up she looked like a pretty normal girl who had scales instead of skin; from her waist down she looked like a python or like a cobra that was ready to strike. There were also a pair of what looked like twin girls, each of whom had three eyes and two tails. She felt a vague aura of dread just looking at them. Those must be the Fury twins. She hoped they would be easier to get along with than they looked.

Then there was the girl who looked almost normal, except for a light coating of fur, deer-like legs and a short tail; she could have been one of Bambi’s relatives.

All told, there were almost 30 girls, in a wild diversity of shapes and sizes, in the hallway.

“It looks like we’re all here,” Steph said in a loud voice from one end. “Answer when I call out so I can get some idea of who everyone is. Please.” She called the roll from the clipboard in her hand.

“Great. Now let’s start our walkabout. The very first thing we’re going to do is take the freight elevator down. While the stairs are faster, some of you aren’t built to use them. Please note that we don’t have a passenger elevator; this elevator is for freight and you shouldn’t use it unless you absolutely have to. I know some of you aren’t built to use stairs, but if you are they’re a lot faster most of the time.”

She pressed the big red down button on the wall. A moment later they heard a creak from above them, and then a rattle as the floor indicator over the elevator door slowly made its leisurely way down to the second floor.

“We’re going to have to do this in several stages,” she said as the door finally opened. “Ten of you on the first trip.” Sted and her roommate managed to crowd into the elevator.

“Now look at the controls a moment. There are buttons for basement through roof, right? We’re going to go past the basement into the tunnel system. Right now your question is undoubtedly: ‘What tunnel system?’ Hold that question until we get everyone down here.

“One of the tricks is that the tunnel system is not on the elevator control panel. You get to it by pressing any of the other buttons, and then close, alarm, close, alarm rapidly. Like this.” She pressed basement and then her fingers blurred between the two buttons.

The elevator wheezed its way past the first floor to the basement, and then suddenly dropped silently to a lower level where the doors opened smoothly onto a large tunnel.

“All out,” Steph said. “Wait here until we get the rest of the kids. And don’t turn off the lights. They tell me they’re still hunting grues; they leave eggs in the darndest places.” The doors closed and the floor indicator showed the elevator rising silently.



Once they’d gotten the group back together, Steph addressed them again. “All right, freshies, this is, rather obviously, a tunnel. Now that we’re here, I’ve got a few more things to pour into your waiting brains. The first question is: why tunnels?

“Part of the reason is that a lot of Whateley is underground. We go to a great deal of effort to look like a fairly normal prep school on the surface; most of the really interesting stuff is below ground. I’m going to show you some of it on our little walkabout.

“One of the traditions around this place is that the senior class usually leaves some kind of a legacy for the school. These tunnels are the Class of 1974’s legacy. They built the tunnels from here, Twain and Hawthorn to the main buildings. There are stairs to the tunnel system from the three dorms; there are NO stairs to the tunnel system in most of the other buildings. All of the elevators work the way you just saw. You either use the elevators, or you don’t get down here.

“This part of Whateley is strictly need-to-know. You do not talk about it except to other students and staff. You’ll be issued a little pinger shortly.” She held up something that looked somewhat like a bead and somewhat like a pearl. “This is your passkey for secure areas. It’s individually coded, both for the areas you’re allowed in and for you. Take someone else’s pinger and it not only won’t work, it’ll raise an alarm if you try to use it to get into a secure area. Lose it and you’ll get a stiff fine for replacement. You might want to put it into a piece of personal jewelry, like a ring. You can have that done when you get yours issued or in the campus store.

“One thing it’s not is a campus wide tracking system. The administration seems to feel that the easiest way of keeping students from hacking a tracking system is not to have one.

“That brings up a slightly different question: there’s no really obvious reason why the dorms are connected to the tunnel system. Walking outdoors is supposed to be healthy. The class of 74 did the tunnels to the dorms first. Why? The reason is simple, although not very pretty: it’s so that those of us whose appearance would disturb the norms can get to and from class without having to be outside. I agree that it sucks, so what else is new?

“There’s a set of rules about when you have to take the tunnels and when you can enjoy the fresh air. The code is arranged like traffic lights: green, amber, red. You may have noticed that each of your rooms has a little display with a few buttons. There are bigger displays in the outside corridor and here in the tunnel system. The school flag has either a red, amber or green border. There are a few wrinkles for the vision challenged: the lights are always in the same order as traffic lights, and the flags are quite different in gray scale.

“Green means that either there are no outsiders on campus, or the ones that are here are cool with everything. When it’s green, you can walk around however you look and display your powers openly. That doesn’t mean you can violate school regulations, tribal, county, state or federal laws!

“When it’s amber, there are outsiders on campus. They think they’re cool with what goes on here, but the administration doesn’t agree. That means two things. First, if you’ve got a G rating, you stay in the tunnel system when you’re going between buildings. If you’ve got an M rating, it’s up to you whether you want to act normal or tone it down a bit. Just don’t get in anyone’s face!

“The other piece is that you don’t display anything except the most routine and boring powers. Anyone who’s here on a yellow thinks they know the score, so the occasional hover in midair is fine. Just don’t overdo it.

“Red means that there are outsiders on campus who shouldn’t be faced with what we’re really like. That means that even if you’ve got an M rating, a fair number of you should stay in the tunnels. Those of you who don’t stay in the tunnels should practice whatever it is you do to pass among the unwashed masses. It also means NO display of powers.

“Regardless of the flag setting, anyone here in the tunnels ought to know the score, so it’s always green down here. The dorms might be different from outside, so always check before going out and when coming back. Regardless of the flag setting, you can be in the cafeteria, the classrooms and so on and so forth; you shouldn’t display any powers unless it’s either permitted by the class or the flag setting.

“There are a lot of things down here that I’m not going to show you right away. As I mentioned, quite a bit of it is restricted; try to go into an area you’re not authorized for and you’ll be in a world of hurt. What happens depends on the area; it could be anything from a siren to a force field to getting stunned. Or worse.

“Once you’ve been issued your laptop and been connected to the school’s system you can check the map. There are a lot of things that are only on the system; they aren’t on hardcopy anywhere. That’s intentional. If you’ve got problems reading computer screens, and a lot of our students do, we’ve got alternative devices. Make sure someone knows you need them!

“This is all explained in detail in the online portion of the student handbook. Now let’s walk, fly, ooze or slither down to the next checkpoint. Take the conveyor belts if you want; they aren’t there because they look pretty!”

A few minutes later the cluster of students stood in front of a bank of elevators. “Now,” their guide said, “before we go further, there are a few things to notice. One is that the color on the walls changed when we got here. The tunnels are color coded; the codes for the areas where you’re allowed are in the online and restricted part of the student handbook. Right now we’re under Kane Hall, which is Security. There’s a reason for stopping here: this is where you get your student ID, your pingers, your preliminary schedule and your laptop if you’ve got someplace to put it. If you don’t have anyplace to carry your laptop you can pick it up at administration later. If you’ve never used one, there are classes and they’ll issue them.

“If you don’t have a pinger on your person, you won’t be able to get into the tunnel system from any place other than the dorms. Notice that today is a yellow flag day; as I said earlier, some of you are required to use the tunnels to go between buildings. Tomorrow will be a red flag day because new students will be coming in for Melville, Dickinson and Emerson. Those are all the pretties, and some of them will have totally clueless parents or guardians with them that we don’t want clued in. Yet.

“These elevators work like the one I showed you in the dorm; they’re part of the camouflage. When you get in, you’ll notice that there are buttons for only three floors: first, second and third. As usual, there’s no button for the tunnel system.

“To repeat, to get down here from anywhere except the dorms you’ll need a pinger; that’s the little bead I showed you. Then you press any floor and then close door, alarm, close door and alarm rapidly. Then it’ll take you down here. When the elevators are down here, they’re nice, modern high speed elevators. When they’re above ground they’re old rattletraps that make you wonder why they weren’t replaced a decade ago. Take the stairs; they’re a lot faster.

“Before we go up, there are a few things I need to tell you about these laptops. Ms. Carson, that’s our Headmistress, will say pretty much the same things at the Freshman Assembly on Thursday, but you need to know this now. First, they’re for schoolwork. Supposedly you’re not allowed to put other stuff on them, but everyone does. The reason for the rule is that you’ll get no sympathy if you manage to screw one of them up by putting outside software on it. You also won’t get any help.

“They’re built for hazardous environments so it’s pretty hard to damage them. Not impossible, just difficult. They’ve got super batteries that will last for about three days on a single charge; they’ve got 200 gigs of solid state storage instead of disks and they’ve got several gigs of RAM. Remember that a lot of the staff has never quite figured out the whole computer thing; some of them will tell you these puppies have disks! Ignore it, it’s not worth the hassle trying to bring them up to speed.

“The big thing is that they’ve got what’s called a security kernel built in. You can’t replace it. It’s proof against any kind of normal hacking attempt. Let me emphasize the word normal. It’s not proof against stupidity, and it’s not proof against devisors or mages. School policy is that you will not attempt to hack someone else’s laptop or the school’s servers. Getting caught is an expulsion offense, and the administration is very serious about that. If you want to learn hacking, we’ve got classes and servers you can practice on.”



“Now,” Steph said after the group had finished up at Security and had gotten to their next stop, “we are under Schuster Hall. Schuster Hall includes Administration and the Crystal Hall, which is the dining area. It’s got the campus shop and the Homer Gallery, which is our next stop.”

In a few minutes, the gaggle of new students had reassembled on the first floor. “Now, this is the Grand Hall of Schuster Hall. The fireplaces and general ambiance make it a great place to hang out on a cold winter night with a boyfriend, assuming it’s not too crowded, which it usually is. It can be quite nice if you have to stay here over Thanksgiving, Christmas Break or Spring Break.

“The next thing we have to do is the Homer Gallery. This is our famous alumnus display, and it’s one of the things on the absolutely need to know list. First, you don’t talk about this to anyone who isn’t a student or staff. Second, if you are a student here you’re supposed to see this on your first day. In other words, you have a need to know this, nobody else does. Got it?”

“Uh?” One of the students started. “What if someone asks?”

“Lie. I mean it. Every school has some kind of famous alumnus display, and most students find it just as boring as the statue of the founder or the history of the school. The statue of the founder is out on the quad, by the way. Lying about this isn’t hard; just say you didn’t bother looking.”

Steph stuck her head into an office on the side of the hall. A moment later a woman came out and opened a concealed panel that led into a gallery.

“This, kids, is the Homer Gallery where we keep mementos of a number of our alumni. Some of them famous, some of them infamous, and a few who are legends only in their own eyes. Everything in here has a story to tell. We’re on a schedule, so we’re just going to hit the high points. If you want to look at it more, there will be tours later when all the visitors are off the campus and we’ve got time to catch our breaths.

“First, We’ve got Champion’s original uniform here. The original Champion wasn’t an alumnus; he predates this version of Whateley Academy by quite some time. The current Champion is actually the sixth. There’s a story behind that for another time.

“Moving right along, we’ve got Lord Paramount, the mutant ruler of Wallachia. There are two things to know about him. First, he’s a major contributor. Second, one of the conditions of his bequests is that all new students will be shown this. Is he on the dark side? You’d better believe it. Is he acceptable in polite company? Yep. Is the Mutant Commission Office after his ass? No. Think about this. It may save your life some day.

“Now here’s the third thing. It’s one metric ton of bullion quality gold. It’s from Gabriella Guzman, who’s a tycoon in Mexico. If you keep track of the world’s wealthiest people, you know who she is. She’s not the wealthiest person in the world. Yet. She started life as the child of penniless Mexican peons and went here to Whateley on a scholarship. This pile of gold bullion is supposed to be a statement. Either you understand it or you don’t. If you do you don’t need an explanation. If you don’t, an explanation won’t help. Is she on the light or the dark side? Hard to tell. Is she acceptable in polite company? Yep. Is the MCO after her? Of course not. Look at this and think about it, and remember one thing: she remembers her roots, she sponsors kids here, and she does not take kindly to other people abusing her people.

“OK, that’s the abbreviated tour of the Homer Gallery. There’s one more thing to see that we’re not going to see today, and that’s the statue of Noah Whateley. You can’t miss it if you’re above ground. Noah was the original founder, back sometime in the 19th century. His school was mediocre at best and eventually had to close down, presumably from lack of interest. A group of superheros and supervillains got together and bought it from the bank, and here we are. Notice I said both superheros and supervillains. This is neutral ground. The administration is aggressively neutral about which way you’re going to swing. It’s the only way we can operate. If this was a training ground for just the good guys, every bad guy in the world would be trying to infiltrate it, obliterate it, subvert it or whatever, and vice versa. Being neutral ground usually keeps it, and us, from being a target.”

“Usually?”

“Face the facts. There are a lot of people who think that the rules apply to other people, not to themselves. Quite a few of them have really exaggerated ideas of their ability. They aren’t all on the dark side, either. We keep our status as neutral ground by having really good defenses and by being ready to flatten anyone who violates it. Then we use what’s left of them as compost. Look up the history of Switzerland sometime.”

She herded the students out, and made sure the gallery was locked and the entrance hidden.

“Now for the main event!” she said grandly as she led them through a pair of doors on the far side of the main hall. “Behold the Crystal Hall! The cafeteria is on the right; let’s eat!”



“Now that was a tour,” Sted said to Derala as they got back into their room. She spent a moment admiring the new ring on her left hand and then dropped her purse on her desk.

“I’m going to watch you unpack,” Derala said helpfully as she settled on her bed.

“You’ve already unpacked?”

“Yep. It’s real easy when you don’t have a lot of clothes.”

“That’s got to be convenient.”

“Truthfully? It sucks. I’d rather have my old shape back. I like clothes. Lots of clothes!“

Sted giggled. “There is that.” Then she turned serious. “This may be a bit personal, but you said your wings didn’t work?”

“Oh, they work. They won’t hold me up in the air. Something about a square-cube law. The doctor laughed when I said I wanted a lawyer.”

Sted nodded. “Right. Mass goes up faster than surface. Have you ever looked at an assist?”

Derala grimaced. “Nothing works. Either it’s got straps that can’t be adapted for my body shape, or it’s a volume effect thing that needs a devisor or mage to make it work or stay stable.”

Sted frowned. “I need to think about that one. I’m a gravitational warper so I don’t need anything to stay up, but I do need a devise to go sideways. Or at least to go sideways quickly. I built the gizmo myself. I might be able to build something for you.”

“Oh, could you?” Derala said excitedly. Then her face fell.

“What’s wrong?”

“That idiot brother of mine kept calling me a tarn.”

Sted laughed. “And he wanted to be able to ride you. I’m sorry, it really isn’t funny. The thing is three of my four forms really are rideables.”

“You’re a shifter?”

“Well, sorta. What I do doesn’t match the book. Besides this, I’ve got a flying cabbit, a centaur and a winged horse, and I need to practice flying in all four forms.”

“Let me guess. It’s not possible to ride the cabbit.”

Sted giggled at the image. “It’s too small, and anyone who even thinks of trying in this form is likely to wind up with a serious case of dead. The other two? If the right person shows up, I might think about it, although the centaur is a bit small for an adult.”

“Someone could ride you in that form?”

“It’s possible; my skeleton and musculature are adapted for a saddle harness. It’s not going to happen.”

“You’re sounding rather vehement.”

“You’ve never run across the ponygirl fetish community?”

“No. Should I have?”

“Only if you’re seriously kinky.”

“Oh. I’ll take a pass. Anyway, I wouldn’t think a winged horse would fly any better than I can.”

“I’m a warper. I cut my gravitational mass way down. Then my wings are fine, at least if I don’t have to change direction quickly.”

“So you think you could?”

“Do something for you?” Sted paused to think. “I make it four pieces. First, I’d have to build the devise, and I’ve never done one that handles gravity. Yet. Then we’d have to do something to stabilize it for you. You’d have to work through your ambivalence, or it might quit working. Finally, I think some kind of an implant would work better for you than something you need to clip to your harness. Now that I think of it, doing an implant for my flying horse form would be a good idea as well.”

Derala considered the list. “Work though my ambivalence?”

“Magic and devises work the same way: the mage or devisor imposes his will on the universe. It works the way he thinks it will, not the way the rest of us think it should. That’s why devises don’t work well for other people: once it leaves the original creator’s hands other people’s opinions about how the world works start having an effect.

“The real gotcha is that purity of intent is critical. It doesn’t matter what you say you intend to do, or think you intended to do, it’s what you actually intend to do. As long as you’re not absolutely certain that being able to fly is worth the hassle of people wanting to turn you into their personal riding bird, you’ll eventually mess up any spell or devise anyone builds for you. Unless, of course, the mage or devisor intends to turn you into her riding bird.”

“Humph! So that’s why you’re so vehement about not being ridden?”

“Not really. As I said, this body is structured for being ridden. I let my sister ride me a few times until she got tired of it, and it felt quite natural. With the right person and situation, why not? The reason I’ve blasted the line in the bedrock is that the ponygirl fetishists have a lot of other stuff that comes along with their idea of what a ponygirl is and how she fits into their worldview, and that’s what I object to.”

“Oh.” Derala paused a bit. “I thought spells required something besides just thinking about it. Haven’t I seen mages write spells on the telly?”

“Only if they wanted to fix the telly!” Sted giggled at the image. “Seriously, it depends on how the mage thinks magic works. There are mages for whom the right wording is important, there are mages for whom words mean exactly nothing. Most mages follow a specific school or tradition because tradition is important. The more people who’ve done magic a particular way, the more likely that way is to work the next time. Like the wards I’m going to put up shortly: they’ll be geometric designs and words of power. Many magicians over thousands of years have used that particular system, so it works reliably - for mages that work in that particular school.”

“If you’re going to put up wards, I’d better let you get to it. I’m going to watch. And giggle a bit.”

Sted laughed and then pulled a notebook out of her purse.



“What are you doing...” Ms. Hollingsberry’s voice said from behind Sted. Then she followed it up with “Hmmm.”

“Uh,” Sted said as she turned and dropped back to the bed. “I’m putting up wards.”

“So I see. Do you have a plan, or are you winging it?”

“Here.” Sted held out the notebook page.

She looked it over. “Good work for a novice. Your dossier said you had a tutor?”

“Yes. For about five months.”

“It shows you studied. You need to make two changes, one of which you should have thought of.”

“Oh?”

“You have a roommate; this is both of your spaces. You need to put in something so Derala’s comfortable in this room, probably about here, here and here.” She took out a pencil and lightly indicated some locations on the diagram. “The other thing is something you can’t be expected to know. There are some guardians here that you shouldn’t ward against. You’ll need to put something here.” She made another mark. “Make the first change and see me in an hour. I’ll give you the changes so the guardians can come in. Then I’m going to inspect it when you’re done.”

She handed the paper back. “I think warding your space is a very good idea; there are too many kids who think magic is something to play pranks with — until it turns around and bites them in the ass. However,” she paused to emphasize it, “the next time you want to do something like this, see me first.”

She turned to leave. “Oh, one more thing. Give the sheet to either Circe or Mrs. Chulkris when you see them in class. They’ll probably have more to say about it.”



Tuesday, September 5.




Powers testing had been a trip and a half. At least they hadn’t found anything new! Now she had the rest of the day free.

Wandering around, Sted almost stumbled into Range 2. Her father thought that learning to shoot would be a good idea, but wanted her to wait until she got here. Soonest begun and all that….

She walked in and spotted the front desk right away. “Uh, miss,” she asked the girl to attract her attention.

“Hi, I’m Stacy, you’re?”

“Sted. Do you give shooting lessons?”

“Sure. You bring something, you want to rent or buy one, you want a class or just lessons when you show up?”

“I brought something, but I want to rent a regular gun.”

“Pistol or rifle?”

“Pistol.”

“Fine.” Stacy pointed at a sign. “Look at the range rules.”

Sted looked at it. “I suppose that means Cpl. Mahren needs to look at this?” She took her light saber out of her purse.

Stacy looked at it. “What the heck is that? You built it?”

“It’s a light saber. I built it.”

“He sure does.” She stood up to look around, and let out a deafening shout. “Hey Eric! Weapons check! New student!”

A powerfully built man walked over. “Whatcha got?” he asked.

Sted handed him the featureless wand.

“Hmmm.” He looked at it, turning it over. “let’s go to one of the ranges. Before we do, you need hearing protection.” He handed her a set of ear protectors.



A minute later Eric Mahren had set up a range. He held the wand out and suddenly a bolt of eye-searing blue occurred between it and the target. The target vanished in a satisfying explosion.

“Whoa, Nelly!” He looked at it again, and then pointed. This time the beam stopped half way down the range. It curved a bit, and then tied itself into a knot.

He handed it back and picked up a clipboard. “This is not a light saber. What to call it? How about ‘thought-controlled anti-matter beam weapon’?”

“OK.”

He wrote a bit more. “You made it yourself?”

“Yes. At home.”

“And your home is still standing? That’s doing good, kid. At least it works the way you intended. Since you don’t seem to have killed anyone or blown up anything I guess you’re OK to carry it around. Put a safety on it before using it anywhere. Range 4 only; show this to Gunny Bardue. He’s the crisis simulation team leader, anyone can point him out to you. I assume you’ll be in Devisor Lab? Show a copy to your Devisor Lab instructor.”

“Uh, right.” Sted made a couple of notes on the back of the inspection sheet.

“Now, you wanted to learn how to shoot a conventional weapon?”

“Yes. She said something about renting a gun?”

“Pistol, please. Or rifle. Or just weapon. All us retired grunts appreciate using the right names. I assume a hand weapon? let’s look over the selection and find one that’s right for you.”

He paused. “Are you signed up for the Range Safety course yet?”

“Uh, no.”

“Well, sign up for it. You won’t be allowed on the ranges to practice without it.”


Wednesday, September 6.


“Now this,” Mr. Dawson said to the young ponygirl sitting demurely on the other side of the desk, “is going to be an interesting schedule. We don’t usually have students with quite so diverse an array of powers. Fitting the absolutely must have right away first courses into six periods is going to be a challenge.

“You said you had a magic tutor for five months? What about your gadgeteer and devisor skills?”

“They’re actually one talent, which had Babushka going for a while figuring it out. She showed me a few things and Dad let me experiment in the basement as long as I agreed to try not to blow up the house. Or the church.”

“Let me guess. Rant and rave fundie?”

“Pretty much.” Sted giggled.

“Did you bring anything you built with you?”

“Well, there’s this.” Sted reached into her purse and drew out a long wand.

“Magic wand?”

“I called it a light saber, but Cpl. Mahren didn’t agree.” Sted pointed it away from both of them and triggered the featureless wand. A meter long rod of eye-aching blue shot out one end, as the odor of ozone filled the room.

“Whoa!” Mr. Dawson said. “Now that’s different! How’s it work?”

“It’s a positron beam, with a spell to twist the magnetic field so the charge stays balanced. Then it does this.” Suddenly the beam bent. Then it went out.

“Did it fail, or was that intentional?”

“I turned it off.”

“Good. Just about every Devisor kid makes a light saber, but most of them are a force field rod that glows as a special effect.”

“Oh.” Sted thought a second. “I could add the force field I suppose, but then...”

“You said Eric Mahren looked at it already? What did he say?”

Sted rummaged in her purse a moment and handed him the sheet.

“I see. Yes, you’ll have to put a safety on it. Mention that to whoever’s got your Devisor Lab section. Why did it bend?”

“If I want to get at something around a corner. Makes a good weed whacker as well.”

Mr. Dawson laughed. “Did you do any other projects?”

“I’ve got an inertial mass neutralizer that I wear as part of my utility belt.”

“It doesn’t have a warp drive or anything?”

“Uh, no. I don’t need one; I can generate about one foot per second squared of acceleration myself.”

“Is that a constant or a force?”

“It’s a force; I can do about a half g in my cabbit form. It’s the same force in all four forms.”

“Which is why you built an inertia neutralizer. I take it that’s your work? Good. So we can put you in Devisor Lab. Let’s get back to your flight ability. How fast can you fly? And how do you stay up?”

“I can adjust my gravitational mass so I can go up and down like a rocket; I need the belt to do anything reasonable horizontally. I don’t know that I have an upper limit; I can keep the acceleration up indefinitely. Then I have to eat a lot.”

“OK. That’s the warper and energizer. You only need that for flight?”

“I also power all my spells from the energizer battery; I don’t seem to be able to pull in outside magical energy for spells. At least, not yet. Babushka says I might be able to do that some day, especially since I do seem to pull something she’s not at all clear about in my cabbit form.”

“You’re going to need Flight I.” He made a note on the terminal. “Now how much did your tutor do on the theory of magic?”

“She concentrated on control, shielding and a bunch of useful cantrips and spells. She gave me enough ritual magic so I could do wards and said that the rest of the theory could wait until I got here. She gave me a copy of Meditation and Control, and also the texts for Powers Theory I and Theory of Magic I. Ms. Hollingsberry helped me a bit setting up the wards on my room.”

“Good. So that’s definitely Magic Lab. Now you’re going to need Powers Lab. The only kids who get out of that are the pure gadgeteers, devisors and mages. Everyone else needs it because we have too many variations to have specialty classes.”

He looked at the screen a moment. “That should be it. Here’s the deal. With your array of powers, you absolutely need six practical courses: Magic Lab, Powers Lab, Devisor Lab, Flight 1, Costume and either Martial Arts or Survival. Two of those also have theory courses: Powers Theory I and Theory of Magic. That’s going to take up your first term; in fact you’re two courses over. We can defer Costume to the spring term, and we might be able to squeeze it down by one more. I’ll talk about that in a minute. First you need to decide between Survival or Beginning Martial Arts. Which do you want?”

“What’s the difference?” Sted asked. “The course catalog wasn’t really clear.”

“Intentionally. Survival is how to survive long enough to run away so you can survive to run away another day. Martial Arts gives you the option of clobbering the bastard if that seems appropriate. It also leads to more advanced fighting courses when you’re ready.”

“I’ll take Martial Arts.”

“I thought you would.”

“Oh?”

“Kids with conservative religious backgrounds usually don’t have any difficulty with the idea of smiting the ungodly hip and thigh. Or anywhere else they can get a shot in.”

Sted laughed.

“Now on the academics. Here’s the key question. Your doctor said your intelligence took a jump to about 145, and our testing agrees with that. They want to do a more thorough test later. You said you stayed in school for a few weeks before you were pulled for home schooling. Did you notice any difference?”

“Yeah!” Sted brightened. “Everything was getting easier. Then I really started moving through stuff at home. At least once I figured out that some of the stuff that didn’t seem to make sense really didn’t make sense.”

“That supports what they saw in testing. Now the other question is whether you want to take standard classroom courses or take the Independent Study track. Your intelligence strongly suggests that you’ll be a lot better off with Independent Study.”

“I saw it in the catalog, but none of us were clear on what it really was.”

“And you parents most likely wouldn’t have approved?”

“Not without knowing more.”

“That’s understandable. Independent study, especially in high schools, has a rather checkered reputation. It has to be done right, and it’s only appropriate for students with enough maturity and motivation to actually dig in and do the work. Here’s the major factor. At an IQ of 145, your intelligence is in the top fraction of a percent of the general population. It’s in the upper third or so of our students. If you remember any really bright kids from before, how did they get along in regular classes?”

“Um. Horribly,” Sted said thoughtfully.

“Exactly the point. Nobody likes them because either they ruin the classroom environment for normal kids, or they get totally bored and start getting into trouble. The normal classroom environment is designed for kids of relatively normal intelligence. It’s also best for kids that are relatively close to each other. Putting a kid who’s too far from the rest of the class’s average in there causes all kinds of problems.

“Whateley Academy is really unusual in a lot of ways. One of them is that we have what’s technically called a bi-modal intelligence distribution. That is, about two thirds of our students fit the usual intelligence curve for high school students, the other third are off the top end because they’re Exemplars of one degree or another. The traditional high school curriculum and organization works for the first group; it’s a disaster for the second group.

“A typical suburban high school has maybe a dozen students that are in the high intelligence group; that’s too few to create a decent program just for them, so they suffer. At any time we have between 150 and 200 in that group, so we have enough to create an appropriate program. That’s what Independent Study is about.

“The way it works is that you do a series of assigned projects. Some of them will be by yourself, some of them will be with small groups of kids working on the same project. Most of them will be to study something, write a report and pass an exam. The exam may be written, oral or both. Various faculty members supervise the projects; you’ll also have juniors and seniors on some of the projects who are learning how to teach and lead project groups as well as firm up their grasp of the material.

“Most of the projects, especially at the beginning, cover the same material you’d get in the regular classes. That’s intentional. Independent Study isn’t intended to let you create your own curriculum; it’s intended to let you go at your own pace, which at your level of intelligence should be quite a bit faster than you could do in a classroom.

“Because it covers the same material as regular courses your transcript will show that you took those courses, and your grade will be based on how well you did on the projects from those courses. You’ll be studying everything that the New Hampshire Department of Education requires, that the accreditation boards require, and that is needed for college admission, as well as everything that’s needed to support your array of special powers.

“The first course is Introduction to Independent Study. Since you need both Powers Theory and Magic Theory, a lot of your projects this semester will be drawn from those two classes. You’ll also learn how to work in small groups, how to organize your study time, and lot about expository writing and formal presentations.

“Passing Introduction to Independent Study requires that you do well on assignments, and also that you show you can work independently, write readable papers and make intelligible presentations.” He hesitated a moment. “The alternative is regular classroom courses.”

“I’ll take Independent Study.”

“I thought you would,” Mr. Dawson said. “As I said, we can defer Costume to the spring term, especially since it says you can do a full body illusion?”

“You mean like this?” Suddenly a startlingly beautiful blond girl sat in the chair.

“Wow! How long can you keep it up? How thorough is it?”

“Between two and three hours now. It’s just sight. And cameras. It doesn’t affect touch; I have to make sure my tail doesn’t brush anything accidentally.”

“Great! We need to get you an after school job. Being able to pass for normal will open up some possibilities. If you can keep the illusion stable we might be able to get you one off campus. Although the people in Dunwich are used to odd looking students, we don’t place kids who can’t pass for normal in outside jobs. Since you’re also a gadgeteer, we could place you with one of the repair shops in Dunwich or Berlin that love to have gadgeteers. Your usual look is good enough that the shop people won’t mind as long as you can keep a good illusion in public and with customers. Your letters of recommendation did say you were steady and responsible.”

Sted grimaced. “Repressed is more like it. I’m growing out of that, but I do know the first rule of keeping a job: the boss is always right.”

“And the second law?”

“The boss is allergic to hassles.”

“You’ve got it. However, that illusion doesn’t look like a gadgeteer.”

“She’s more the run fast enough to let the boys catch her type,” Sted giggled. “How about this one?” The figure changed into a mousy brunette.

“Um.” Mr. Dawson’s head tilted slightly as he considered the illusion. “That would probably work outside if you didn’t want the boys chasing you, but it’s way below average for here. We’ve got lots of Exemplar girls.”

“OK.” Sted’s image shifted again. Her hair acquired a bit of gloss and tumbled around her shoulders; her breasts expanded from a modest B to an enthusiastic C. Her face shifted subtly as well.

“That’s better. If you want to be invisible in plain sight around here, that will do. You can keep it up?”

“I’ve practiced it a bit, but it’s still slightly rough around the edges.”

“You need to practice them?”

“A lot. I’ve got to work out how they move; it isn’t automatic. The second one is the one I’ve practiced most; she’s close enough to my size that I can go clothes shopping and not cause questions by buying things in the wrong size. It also lets me wear a real outfit, rather than projecting one as part of the illusion.”

“That’s good. If you could shift her just a bit so she looks more like a college student than a high school student, it might be better for outside.”

“That makes sense,” Sted said.

“Good. They’ll work with you on that in Powers Lab. Do you have any other illusions?”

“One more.” Suddenly a prepubescent boy sat in front of the counselor. “This is how I used to look.”

“I see. So you didn’t hide in your house for five months.”

“Oh, I stayed in most of the time, but I did go to church and some other places once I stabilized that look, and I did one of the girl looks when I went shopping.”

“Any particular reason why he isn’t older?”

“Two reasons. First, I don’t really want a male persona; it was too tempting until I adjusted to being a girl, now it simply isn’t me. Second, my illusions don’t cover voice; I’ve never figured out how to do a male voice. There’s more to it than a lower tone.”

“Makes sense. So let’s see your class lineup.” He looked at the screen and then pushed a button. A moment later the printer whirred briefly, spitting out a piece of paper.

“I’m going to give you 6 classes. In the morning you’ve got Flight I, Introduction to Independent Study and Powers Lab. In the afternoon you’ll have Magic Lab, Beginning Martial Arts and Devisor Lab. Now for your work assignment. If we get you something in Dunwich or Berlin three days a week it’ll probably go through dinner.”

“So I’d have to eat there. Not the world’s worst fate.”

“Then we have to get you there and back. There’s a van that runs about once an hour between here, Dunwich and Berlin.”

“Oh. I can fly.”

“We do want to keep a low profile, young lady!”

“I can do it this way!” Sted laughed and got up from her chair. A moment later a cabbit hovered in midair. It wiggled its nose at the counselor and vanished. Mr. Dawson stared at the spot where Sted had been until she suddenly reappeared.

“So that’s how you shift? That’s what the cabbit was? Then vanishing was an illusion?”

“Right.”

“So why didn’t you shift rather than do illusions earlier?”

“I can’t. I’ve got four fixed forms, and that seems to be it. I don’t really shift either, at least I don’t seem to do it like the book says. My forms seem to replace each other, including what they were wearing last. Unless I want them to be wearing something different.”

“Now that’s bizarre.”

“So they said. Then they couldn’t make up their minds what I was; they seemed to be baffled by the combination of a shifter and exemplar.”

“Um, yes. It has to do with the BIT.”

“That’s the Body Image Template?”

“Right. Exemplars and GSD cases almost always have one; that’s what determines their form and is also the base of their regeneration capability if they have it. Shifters almost never have one. What’s got them puzzled is that a BIT usually specifies exactly one form; you have four so there’s something very strange going on. They’ve got you classified as an Exemplar 3 because of the intelligence boost, a fast although not really notable healing capability, good strength and good looks.”

“This looks good?”

“You look quite good; you just don’t look like a baseline human. You’re very well put together. Great symmetry, excellent complexion, good waist to hip ratio for your age, very well formed face, your mane is shaped really well and so is your tail.” He looked at something. “They comment that both of the horse type forms have really good show conformations as well.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Berlin is about 10 miles flying. Can you make it in your cabbit form?”

“Easily. I’ll have to scout out the routes; from the map it shouldn’t take more than ten to fifteen minutes. It’s not like I’ll be following the roads.”

“Well, talk it over with your Flight I instructor. You’ll have to take the van until he agrees you’re ready.”

Sted grimaced. “I guess that does make sense. Flying ought to be faster.”

“Quite a bit; the van to Berlin takes between a half hour and 45 minutes.” He nodded. “I think that does it. I’ll notify Student Services that you’re approved for work in Dunwich or Berlin. You’ll have to see them to make the final arrangements. Make sure you get there quickly or the good stuff will be gone.”

“Makes sense.”

“Now, do you have any questions?”

“Um, yes. Where can I find a farrier?”

“A what?”

“A guy who shoes horses. I can do my own hoof care in this form, but I can’t in either the centaur or flying horse form.”

“I haven’t a clue, girl! Horses and I don’t get along. Ask at Student Services.”

“OK. What about churches?”

“Rev. Englund holds Sunday services here on campus. He’s very good at his real job, which is helping to protect Whateley against a wide variety of occult and demonic menaces, as well as doing that in other places. Unfortunately, that has given him a rather black and white viewpoint on religion; a lot of kids tend to find him a bit strident. I’d suggest you attend a couple of his services and see whether you like him. If you don’t, Dunwich has a number of Christian churches. The Catholic parish has a full time priest and several nuns. There’s a Unitarian church if you want to broaden your horizons beyond Christianity. Their minister and Father Rico are both accomplished mages specializing in things that go bump in the night.

“The one rule is to come as you are; they’re all pretty much cool with mutants and GSD kids; what they don’t like is coming in under false pretenses. They all take the viewpoint that part of their ministry is try to keep kids with powers on the side of good.”

Continued in part 2

All rights reserved, except for those ceded to the Whateley Academy Author’s Group.

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?


Thursday, September 7.


The first day of school started with the Freshman Assembly. Well, it technically started with the Freshman Assembly. She supposed that if she was Jewish the day would have started with the fight the previous night. The shout had woken her out of a sound sleep, and had broken the window on her dorm room. She’d zipped out in invisible cabbit form to see what was going on. She managed to see most of the fight, and then watched the ninjas break and run. The redhead was obviously a really powerful mage, the girl who looked like an anime character could have been one for all she could tell, and the black girl was some kind of martial artist who was way too good for her age. Two bricks, a little girl who very sensibly stayed away from most of the fight, and something that wasn’t a ghost but sure acted like it rounded out the home team. They had at least four fliers, and whoever had come up with the teeth that plagued the ninjas showed a touch of true genius for mayhem.

The ninjas were getting the worst of it when she arrived, and their side of the fight went downhill from there. The denouement as the group’s mage stopped the ninja’s escape with a magical force field and a tangle of vines before handing them over to Security gave her lots of food for thought. The real pity was that she hadn’t managed to get close enough to the ninja’s devisor to figure out what he was doing. He’d been trying to fix something when another of the ninjas had run right through him while fleeing from the not-ghost. Whatever he had been trying to fix shorted out spectacularly.

She sat through the assembly patiently, trying not to giggle at what a group of girls several rows in front of her were saying during Mrs. Carson’s speech. It was the same group of girls that had been in the fight the night before. They sounded like a fun crew; pity they weren’t Whitmaniacs.

Mrs. Carson’s speech wasn’t exactly a surprise. Her magic tutor had made sure that she knew what Whateley would be like, and had made sure that her parents knew as well. There weren’t, she thought, any real alternatives.



Whateley Field, she found, was a field. Literally. It was covered with grass, wildflowers and weeds. As a city boy, well girl, she knew grass and weeds. Wild flowers, though, were something that she hadn’t had all that much experience with. Except dandelions. Fortunately, today wasn’t the day to make their acquaintance.

The instructor, Mr. Buttons, was an older, balding man a bit on the dumpy side. He went through the class setup, and then started asking the students how they flew.

“Sted? How do you do it?”

“I’m told oddly. I kind of diddle with Newton’s Law of Gravity, I’ve got a devise that does the same thing with Newton’s second law, and then I can generate a small force myself.”

“Break it down a bit.”

“OK. I can adjust my gravitational mass by a factor of two. That means I can accelerate at about 2 g either up or down but not sideways. Then I can adjust my inertial mass downwards to where I’m inertialess. That’s the devise. Then I generate a relatively small force; it’s enough to accelerate at about one foot per second squared if I don’t diddle with my inertial mass.”

“And if you do?”

“I can get any acceleration I want, right up to hitting terminal velocity almost immediately.”

“Is that all or nothing?”

“Uh, no. I can shift all three factors through the entire range in this form. I can’t use the devise in two of my forms. I do need to learn to fly in all four forms.”

“So you need to learn control.”

“Yes, sir. I wasn’t able to practice all that much.”

“Let’s see the other forms, please.”

Sted shimmered a moment, and then the cabbit hung there in midair. It circled the group, going faster and faster until it was almost a blur. Then it wobbled a bit as it did a fast stop. One could almost see the skid marks.

It shimmered and turned into a centaur. The centaur floated up and then did the same circle around the group, however it went from full speed to a dead stop almost instantly. It shimmered and turned into a winged horse. A large winged horse; it stood about 18 hands, that is six feet, at the shoulders. It trotted far enough away from the group for its 18 foot wingspan, sprang into the air and flew around in a very sloppy circle. Then it shimmered in midair, turning back into the ponygirl form, who floated gently to the ground.

Mr. Buttons turned to address the rest of the class. “Sted seems to have one of the more complicated flying talents. Some fliers are instinctive fliers: they just do whatever it is they do, and they learn how to do it better the same way anyone else learns how to walk, run, dance or fight better. Others have tech gadgets like rocket belts that they need to learn to control. In this class you need to learn the standard situations and maneuvers, and practice them until they’re second nature. This class is about handling yourself in the air in normal situations. It’s about air safety, not about stunt flying.

“What that means for Sted here is that she’s going to take this class in her current form, since that’s the one she’ll mostly be using. Learning how to handle herself in cabbit and centaur forms is something she can do in Powers Lab. The flying horse is an interesting question. Can it talk?”

“Uh, no. It’s telepathic with some people, but not with others.”

“Since it can’t talk, it can’t talk with FAA flight control. That means that there is no point in her taking this class in that form, at least by herself. If, and this is a big if, she’s interested in finding a rider and finds one she likes, the rider is the one that would have to take the course and get the FAA flight certification.

“This isn’t the class to learn how to wring everything you can out of a flying talent. Stunt flying and mid-air fighting is better learned in Powers Lab or one of the specialty combat courses. This course is to teach you the rules of the airways so you don’t bump into airplanes accidentally. Or for that matter so you don’t run into trees, buildings or mountains.

“And don’t think that hasn’t happened. We haven’t had a mid-air collision with a commercial plane yet, and we want to keep it that way. What we do have is several kids a semester who fly into a tree or a building and damage themselves. Our medical department says it looks just like getting clubbed over the head with a tree branch. Including the concussion.

“Staying safe isn’t difficult IF you can handle yourself in the air, you keep your wits about you *and* you know the procedures. This class is the equivalent of driver’s ed for fliers. At the end of it you’ll get a pilot’s license for small private airplanes. That isn’t so much so that you can pilot an airplane; it’s because it’s the only way to get your FAA flight certification. The written tests all assume you’ve learned how to fly a small plane, and that you know airport procedures. There are no separate tests for fliers.”



Introduction to Independent Studies was listed as being in one of the underground classrooms. Sted managed to find it without difficulty. When she got there she discovered why it was underground: the room itself wasn’t particularly special, except that it had a conference table and chairs instead of the individual chairs she was used to in classrooms.

She pulled up a chair, spun it sideways so she could sit comfortably, pulled her laptop out of her purse and prepared to take notes.

The instructor hurried in and everyone settled down. “Good Morning,” he said. “Since you found the room, you undoubtedly know that a Mr. Jones is supposed to be in charge of second period Independent Study. For once the schedule is right; I’m Mr. Jones.” He paused a moment. “All fourteen of you seem to be here. Let’s take a few minutes and introduce yourselves. Let’s limit the intro to one minute each. Say your name and something relevant.” He waved his hand and an hourglass appeared. A very small hourglass. “If you take less than a minute, that’s fine.”

“Now for the class intro,” he said after they’d gone around the room. “As you discovered, there are four juniors and seniors here who are teaching assistants. The other ten of you are freshmen. We’ll be meeting here several times a week on an irregular schedule. The rest of the time you’ll either work in small groups, or you’ll work by yourselves. The teaching assistants, and occasionally other instructors, will be available for individual tutoring and helping you through problems.

“When we do meet, it’ll almost always be for a presentation. Several of you will be scheduled to present your current project; the rest of you will be here to rip the poor thing to bloody shreds and leave it twitching on the floor. By the end of the term, hopefully most of you will be able to give a presentation that will survive the tender mercies of your classmates.

“Why presentations? Look around you. If you can look past the GSD and the sexy mutant powers, you’ll notice something: you’re all very intelligent people. In fact, you’re all in the upper few percent of the general population. What that means is that you’re either going to be leaders, senior advisors to leaders or desperately unhappy when nobody understands you. It doesn’t matter whether you take the superhero route, the villain route, work for one of the agencies that wants talented people, or go your own way as an independent. Even if you look exactly like the people around you, your intelligence will make you stand out.

“A lot of your success will be due to exactly the same things as baseline humans: you’ll need to convince investors to give you funding, you’ll need to convince various officials to issue licenses and permits, you’ll need to make out police reports, argue with insurance companies about damage and manage your court cases. You’ll need to make sure that whoever’s handling the finances isn’t cheating you. The number of very talented people who died penniless because their advisors took their money is legion.

“One thing we’re going to concentrate on is organization. It’s kind of a tradition with students to ignore stuff until just before the exams, and then try to pull all-nighters to catch up. Well, that doesn’t work in the real world. If you’ve got to get your booth set up at a show, meet a deadline or any number of other things, you’d better be ready with enough slack to handle the unexpected last minute hassles.

“When you get hit with a special assignment, saying ‘aww, man’ isn’t anywhere near as effective as being able to say: ‘Sir. This will take 15 hours. I’ve now got 60 hours of work that’s due Friday. What do you suggest that I try to postpone so I can get this assignment done?’ Supervisors are mostly rational; they’ll work with you to adjust your workload — *if* you can justify your estimates, and *if* you’ve got a track record of getting things done when you say you will.

“Formally, you’re taking either three or four classes all rolled up into one. Everyone is taking Introduction to Independent Study, English I and Powers Theory I. Mages will also be taking Introduction to Magic. Whether fliers do their book work here is at the discretion of your Flight I instructor; discuss it with Mr. Buttons. Gadgeteers and Devisors will undoubtedly have assignments as well that will be passed out during the lab sessions.

“That’s the course content for Introduction to Independent Study: presentations, reports, study habits and time management.

“Now for English I. How many of you have been studying Strunk and White’s Elements of Style?” Six hands went up.

“Burn it.”

He grinned at the reaction. “I’m not entirely joking. Granted it’s popular. It’s also seriously out of date and a lot of the advice is either muddled or just plain wrong. It may help you to know a bit about the history. The original was written in the early 20th century by William Strunk, who was a composition professor at Cornell University. It was a book of advice for what he expected students to know before they showed up in composition class. It’s perfectly adequate for the early 20th century if you keep his intent in mind. Its copyright expired in 1946 so you can find it in several places on the net.

“What seems to have happened is that a publisher picked it up and had a popular author update it so he could get a new copyright. There was at least one other author before he gave the job to E.B. White. Now, there are a lot of good things you can say about Mr. White. He was a pretty decent author with several children’s classics to his credit, including Charlotte’s Web. He was a long time contributor and literary editor for the New Yorker magazine.

“What he wasn’t was a classroom composition teacher with years of experience in how to actually teach good writing. He also wasn’t all that familiar with formal English grammar. This shows up in the book — his advice on style makes perfect sense if you already know it, but is pretty darn opaque to students that it’s supposed to help. When he gets to grammar he’s just plain wrong much of the time. His grammatical advice is so bad that a rather bombastic linguistics professor who specializes in grammar has labeled it The Toxic Little Book.

“As an example, a lot of advice givers will tell you to avoid the passive voice. If the passive voice wasn’t useful for something, it wouldn’t be there. Languages don’t retain useless features. In any case, you can’t eliminate passives if you can’t identify a passive clause, and many advice givers can’t manage that reliably. Even worse, you can’t tell when it’s appropriate to use a passive construct if you haven’t read enough analytically to know when good writers use it, when they don’t, and what they do instead.

“They’ll tell you not to use a preposition at the end of a sentence. That’s bullshit. Prepositions at the end of a clause are standard English grammar, and have been for centuries. They’ll tell you not to split infinitives. Likewise bullshit; there are times when where you put the adverb changes the meaning, sometimes radically.

“What’s going on is something that you’ve probably figured out for yourself: most of that advice, even when it’s right at least part of the time, was written by someone with no teaching experience. People really do overuse the passive voice when it’s not appropriate, they really do split infinitives when there are better ways of saying something, and what people do with function words boggles the mind. Frequently. This version of English I isn’t for people whose aspirations end at not looking stupid. It’s for people for whom saying and writing things well is a major success factor.

“There’s a video in the regular English I class that tries to make that point. Feel free to look at it. Notice your reaction to each of the characters and imagine how other people you know would react to each of them, and why.

“Bad advice in English grammar is all over the net. You’re better off without it; there’s less to scrub out of your brains. You’ll be getting a lot of assignments in analytic reading, you’ll be doing a lot of writing, and we will track how well your writing improves over the semester. Several of our TAs are real experts in writing; they’ve sold both fiction and articles. They’ll be available for coaching if you run into trouble.

“Your Powers Lab and Magic Lab instructors will give you your assignments for Powers Theory and Theory of Magic; you can expect real practical exams on the material. They’re not going to settle for your being able to repeat what the textbook says; they’re going to expect you to be able to apply it. Sometimes they’ll keep pace with the classroom course, sometimes they’ll have you skipping around in the texts.

“One more point on the standard classes. They’ve frequently got lots of demonstrations. There are students in Hawthorn who can’t attend classes, so they get them on a video feed, and the demonstrations are recorded. You’ll want to get the recordings and look at them.



Friday, September 8




Sted snapped the lock on her locker in the Devisor lab, and made a note that she had to get a better locking system, at least if she expected stuff to stay private. Fortunately, she had her purse for anything she really didn’t want to get out.

“Hey, leaving so quick?” Jerry asked. Jerry was a typical pimply-faced teenage boy who seemed to be a budding hacker as well as a devisor. At least, he had started working on some kind of computer monitoring or break-in thing as his first project.

“Have to, Jerry,” Sted answered. “I’ve got to make the 4:00 van to Berlin. Work assignment.”

“That sucks. See ya,” Jerry waved as she left, already buried in the haywire gadget he had on his bench.

Sted trotted out of the underground lab and took the tunnel to Schuster Hall, stopping in a lady’s room on the way to freshen up and run a brush through her mane and tail. Then she took the elevator up to the ground floor and picked up a to-go dinner at the Crystal Hall. She made it to the van pickup with a couple of minutes to spare.

Once she got settled, she pulled her laptop out of her purse and checked the homework assignments. Circe had assigned several pages in one of the Theory of Magic textbooks for the Independent Study kids in Magic Lab. The instructor for Powers Lab had made a number of individual assignments. And then there was the first project for Independent Study, and organizing all the material Mr. Buttons had passed out for Flight I. The labs themselves didn’t seem to be a problem, although the Devisor Lab instructor had passed out some material on lab safety. No homework for Martial Arts. Thankfully.

Eventually the nondescript Whateley van pulled to a stop in an equally nondescript strip mall in Berlin.

“Around 10:00?” the driver asked.

“About that,” the pretty brunette said.

“That’s the last van, what happens if you miss it?” the driver asked.

“I can fly back without getting noticed, but I don’t have authorization yet.”

“Got it.”

Sted turned and waved as the van drove off.

Ye Olde Antique Sales and Repair Shoppe was pretty easy to find; it was nestled in between the Grime Be Gone Laundromat and Lacy’s Diner, which looked like a neighborhood restaurant. Sted walked in, putting a slight bit of sway into her step. The bell rang as she opened the door.

She looked around, curious. The shop had an amazing amount of knickknacks and brick-a-brack. It looked like the prototypical tourist trap. The one thing that everything seemed to be was old. Instant heirlooms, she thought with a grin.

A man hurried toward her. “May I help you, miss?”

“I’m Sted, I presume you’re Mr. Stonemeyer?”

“You’re Sted?”

“You were expecting a guy with coke bottle glasses and a screwdriver behind one ear?”

He laughed. “Or in a pocket protector. They did say you’d look a bit unusual, but they didn’t say how.” He turned to the door to the back of the shop. “Hey, Fred,” he called, “We’ve got our new intern.”

A heavyset man walked out of the back. “Great.” Then he blinked.

“Oh,” Sted said, “this isn’t really me, but you’ve got a customer.”

“Right. Let’s go back, Mary can handle the sale.”


“They did say you’d look a bit unusual. That isn’t it?”

“Nope. That’s an illusion. We’re supposed to keep a low profile in public,” Sted said. “This is really me.” She dropped the illusion.

“Whoa!” Fred said as he stepped back. “You know,” he said, “I think I’ve seen something like you on the net somewhere.”

“On porn sites, no doubt,” Sted said dryly. “Ponygirls seem to be popular. Keep Jessica Rabbit in mind: this is how I look, not how I am.”

“Good,” Mr. Stonemeyer said. “I’m Daniel, by the way. Call me Dan. The hot chick is an illusion? How long can you keep it up?”

“Between two and three hours at a stretch. Then I need an hour or so to recover. I’ll be fine as long as I spend most of my time back here working. Besides,” she grinned, “*this* is the hot chick.” She shifted in the blond bombshell.

“Wow!” Fred said.

“The other one’s better,” Dan said thoughtfully. “If you have to help with a rush of customers, we want them looking at merchandise, not at you. Insurance regulations don’t allow customers back here. As long as you look normal when you’re in the front of the store or out on the street, I’m fine with it.”

“If you can do the work, I don’t care what you look like,” Fred added. “In fact, the Missus will be a lot happier if I’m not attracted.”

Sted laughed.

“Well, let’s get to it. Here’s your workstation.” He pointed at a stool in front of a bench that had a rack of tools on the far wall. “Let’s start out with,” he paused as he looked at the shelves of stuff that needed fixing, “this.” He picked up a clock.

“This is a German clock; the manufacturer went out of business a couple of centuries ago, and there are no plans. It’s a two window clock where the little birds pop out on the quarter hour. Fixing it without plans takes too much work to be profitable; that’s why we like gadgeteers.”

Sted took it and turned it over curiously. “Hm. Pendulum and weight setup,” she mused as the way the device worked slowly came clear in her mind. “Looks like it needs cleaning.”

“Definitely. We got it at an estate sale; it was in the attic. It’s probably been broken for years.”

“Let’s take the back off and see how bad it is.” Sted pulled up a stool, sat down and took a screwdriver off the wall. Fred pulled up a stool next to her. A moment later the two of them were bent over the device, lost to the rest of the world.

Dan looked at them and nodded. Except for the tail draped over the stool, she looked like a girl with a Mohawk. And Spock ears. He’d seen worse at the local mall. Lots worse. At least the only piercings were for earrings. One in each ear. He headed back to the showroom.



“Now that,” Fred pronounced as soon as Sted got the back off successfully, “is one mass of corrosion.”

“Sure is. I can probably fix it, but I’ve got no idea how long it’s going to take.”

“Oh?”

Sted looked around, and then slid a piece of paper onto the bench. She held the clock so the open back was downward, and then sank into her telekinetic ability. The interface between the corrosion and the good metal in the box became clear, and she carefully separated them. Two minutes later she came up for air to see Fred staring at the pile of blue and white gunk on the paper.

“How did you do *that*?”

“That’s my telekinetic talent. I’ve got control down to the molecular level, but only a few inches from my body. That clock’s about the biggest volume I can work with. I could get all the corrosion at once because it was the same thing in the entire volume. Fixing those gears is what’s going to take the time, because I’ll have to remake them one by one, unless we’ve got replacement parts.”

“Now that we’ve got it open,” Fred said, “let’s see if we can identify the clockworks.” He moved to his computer workstation and called up a program. He pointed out the traditional Station House design on the front as being from the Black Forest of Germany.

“This seems to be one of the rarer Black Forest cuckoo clocks. By this time, a lot of the individual gears were in standard sizes, so we can order about half of the parts rather than build them ourselves. Any idea how long it’d take you to refurbish the works if you did the whole thing yourself?”

Sted looked at the mechanism. “Maybe 50 gears, at a couple of minutes per gear. The cuckoo mechanism needs to be replaced. Then there’s the frame; those screwholes are tiny! Plus teardown and rebuild time. I’ll have to do it in several sessions; I have no idea how long I can manage that kind of trance per day.”

“Figure four hours,” Fred said. “Have to ask Dan if it’s worth spending the time on. He’ll probably say to go for it, although we’ll most likely put it on the specialty antique market rather than try to sell it from the showroom.”


“It looks like break time,” Fred said.

“Good. I brought dinner with me.”

“Don’t bother, we normally call an order in to Lacy’s Diner so they have it when we get there. We’ve got a menu in the break room.”

Sted laughed. “I eat a lot. Dinner out sounds great; I’ll save the takeout for a snack on the way back. Hm. If we’re going to be seen together, I’d better use a different illusion. How’s this one?” She shifted to the dowdy brunette.

“I think consistency is better,” Fred said thoughtfully. “Besides, if you’ve got to help out front, the boss would prefer the other one.”

“Oh?”

“It’s not PC to say it, but a woman needs to look good to have much credibility. Especially a young woman. Of the three illusions, the pretty brunette has the most instant credibility, and she also reflects well on the shop itself. The blonde would distract from the sale.”

Sted laughed. “Not even counting what they say about blondes.”

“Well, let’s head over to Lacy’s. We can order when we get there.”



Friday, September 8

Lacy’s Diner turned out to be a nice small family restaurant with booths along two of the walls and square tables in the center. It didn’t have a jukebox, a fact for which Sted was grateful.

The waitress took their orders.

“Big meal?” Fred asked at the size of Sted’s order.

Sted shrugged. “I’m an energizer; that means that I eat a lot and convert it directly to stored energy.”

The two of them sat back and talked a bit about the antique repair business while Sted idly watched the other customers. Their order was almost ready when a guy dashed in and stuck a gun in the cashier’s face.

A couple of guys she’d noticed that looked like army, or possibly marines, sat up straight. One of them held the other’s arm to keep him from jumping in.

Sted looked at the tableau and then at the gun. As usual, how the gun worked filtered into her mind. It didn’t seem to be all that different from the ones she’d seen at Range 2. Lots of parts to jam! She focused and felt the familiar sensation as the universe around her shifted slightly.

The gunman screamed and his hand convulsed. He dropped the gun. It didn’t go off.

The two military types moved out of the booth rapidly. One twisted the gunman’s arm behind him. The other bent to pick up the gun.

“Hey, guys! that’s evidence,” Sted called across the diner.

“Oh, right. Thanks, miss,” the second guy said. The sound broke the mood and everyone started talking as the cashier picked up the phone.

She held up a hand to stop Fred from talking as she looked at the gunman thoughtfully. Then she sent a small spell his way.

“What did you just do?” Fred asked.

“With the gun, or with him?”

“Either. Both?”

“Well, I jammed the gun’s mechanism, and then made the handle feel like really hot peppers taste.”

“So he dropped it. Then you let those two guys handle it?”

“They wanted to, why should I get publicly involved? The school’s policy is to keep a low profile.”

“Good thought. You did something else?”

“I’ve blocked his ability to be affected by drugs.”

“Why? Criminals like that deserve what they get.”

“As the Book says, judge not, lest you be judged. Society works because we’ve got rules; the rules say that it’s judges and juries that decide on guilt and punishment. They also say that robbery is illegal, and pointing a loaded gun at someone is unsafe! So I took his gun away. Society can handle the rest.”

“Humph. Well, I suppose. Why did you block drugs, though?”

“He’s taking *something* and getting money to feed the habit could be why he did something stupid like taking to robbing stores. I’ve heard enough about addictions, and seen enough people trying to give up smoking, to know that it’s not easy to kick one. Now he takes whatever it is, it won’t do anything for him. I’ve given him a chance. What he does with it is up to him.”

“You’re right, that’s more than I’d do.” They looked at the tableau on the floor for a moment. One of the guys was looking around for something to draw a line around the thief, who was lying on the floor, face down and arms spread out. One of his shoulders looked like it was at a strange angle.

“Here,” Sted fished a marker out of her purse and tossed it at them. “Photos are good, too. And I hope you called an ambulance. That looks like a dislocated shoulder.”

“Ai-yup,” the larger of the two said as he plucked the marker out of the air.


A few minutes later the police and ambulance had arrived, and the ambulance had left with the unsuccessful thief. The police busied themselves getting their own photographs and taking statements. The senior cop looked more and more puzzled; he clearly wasn’t buying the idea that the thief had screamed and dropped his gun without any provocation. Especially when several of the people said they had seen his hand spasm and heard the click as the gun didn’t fire.

Eventually he settled on going around the room and asking each person who they were and where they lived and worked. Eventually he got around to Fred and Sted’s booth.

“Fred Periwinkle,” Fred answered. “I work next door at the antique shop repairing antiques. Sted’s an intern from Whateley who’s working with me on repairs three days a week.”

“I see,” the cop said, taking Fred’s card and making notes on the back. “Sted, if you think of anything that might help, tell someone at Whateley Security; they can get back to us with whatever we need to know.”

The police finished up and left after talking to a few more people.


The van dropped Sted off at Kane Hall. She hitched her purse on her shoulder and walked in.

“So you’re Sted, right?”

“You’ve memorized us already?” Sted giggled.

She laughed. “Not yet. The Berlin police called and mentioned that you were at the scene of an attempted robbery. I try to make sure I can recognize the kids I expect to be walking in. Anyway, Chief Delarose wants to talk to you.” She turned around. “Hey, Charlie. Take Sted back to see the Chief.”


“Well,” Franklin Delarose said after they’d finished discussing the incident, “you did one really good thing: you made sure the gun wouldn’t fire before you made him drop it. I like that kind of forethought. If more people considered consequences, it would save an amazing amount of trouble. In fact, if you’d have stopped there, it would have been a win.

“However. You didn’t think far enough ahead to understand that making him drop the gun would violate the school’s low visibility policy. Regardless of the way the media portrays them, cops are not stupid. The scenario would have screamed ‘mage’ to any cop with enough experience with paranormal affairs, and the ones around here certainly have that level of experience!”

“What should I have done?” Sted asked. “I certainly didn’t want him to get away!”

“Well, two things. First, you should have let him continue to where the cashier handed him the money. Judges and juries like the additional evidence, which means that the cops and the prosecutors do too.”

“Oh. Right.”

“The second is work really hard to make whatever you did look like an unfortunate accident. While cops aren’t stupid, petty criminals usually are. Doing a holdup in plain sight of several dozen people is really stupid. If he’d tripped over his own feet on the way out the door, nobody would have thought anything of it, especially since he was on some kind of drugs.”

“Hmm.”

“I’m giving you two days of detention in Hawthorn for a minor violation of our low profile policy. Don’t worry about it. Mrs. Cantrel doesn’t hand out the worst tasks for little stuff; you’ll probably spend a few hours helping some kids that really need it.”

“Oh. Well, there are worse things than helping people.”

“I thought you might see it that way.” The Chief stood up to usher her out of the office.