Question Sted 7 - What I did on my Christmas Vacation

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 fifth 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
*Aftermath
*Ponygirl’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

This is the second edition of the seventh story in the Sted “Ponygirl“ Lancaster series. Large parts of it have been rewritten.

Friday, December 22, 2006.

“Are you sure you’ve packed everything?” Derala asked helpfully from her perch.

“Ought to have,” Sted replied as she looked at the trunk a bit doubtfully. “Presents, clothes, flight instrument package. If I’m missing anything, then I’ll deal with it when I get home.”

“At least you’ve got a home,” Derala said, an edge of bitterness in her voice.

“Yeah, not being able to go back has got to suck,” Sted answered as she dropped her purse on the bed and opened it. She took a roll of a popular kitchen wrap and covered the trunk. Then she stood back, face blank with concentration as she slowly traced a sigil in the air. The wrapped trunk shimmered and shrank. She dropped the miniature trunk and then the instrument package into her purse and snapped it closed.

“I just hope I can keep going back,” she continued the thought. “Neither the neighbors nor the church know I’m a mutant.” And let’s not even mention that they think I’m a boy, not a girl.

Derala shook her head. “Yeah, different problems. I still can’t figure how you got the IFR certification to fly back!”

“Must have been a mistake,” Sted laughed. “I wanted Invisible Flight Rules, and they gave me Instrument Flight Rules instead. Seriously, Mr. Buttons suggested I study them when I raced ahead on the small plane and VFR stuff. I was still one surprised ponygirl when they came through! Especially when they certified the changes I made to my flight package!”

Derala shook her head. “Well, I can’t complain. The devise you made for me works great. I’ve got Flight I next semester.”

“Give you a chance to spread your wings; you deserve it.”

“Really! Being a flightless bird is no fun.”

“Well, yeah. Have fun with the rest of the kids that are staying,” Sted walked over and kissed her roommate on the cheek, gently running a hand down the black feathered back of the big bird with the girl’s head.

Derala laughed. “Oh, I will. Not having all the pretties around will be nice for a change.”

Sted hitched her purse on her shoulder and walked out the door. Derala looked at her roommate as she left, scarlet tail sticking out the back of her black uniform skirt, shirt with the deep V in back to accommodate her scarlet mane and the ever-present boots that covered her horse’s hooves. Sted flicked an ear as she closed the door.


Fifteen minutes later, Sted stood on Whateley Field, waiting for Wall Flower to tell her she was good to go. Wall Flower was doing the controller bit for the half dozen students who were going to fly home under their own power before she left for her own vacation. While she waited, Sted looked around and remembered her first sight of Whateley Field, back when it was covered with grass and wildflowers. Today, of course, it was covered with the snow from the last several snowfalls. The one thing it did not look like was any kind of an airport. Unless it was one from over a century ago.

She made sure the instrument package was settled properly with the eyepiece positioned to give her a heads up display.

Her turn came and she fell into the sky, stopping at her assigned altitude of five miles. She turned on the bubble that eliminated air friction and moved forward at around 600 mph. She checked the readouts on the instrument package, making sure she was exactly in the center of her assigned slot.

It was really a quite nice package. It kept track of everything a hundred miles in every direction that was over a half mile up. She could switch the HUD through a number of views, including a table top view of that hundred mile circle with everything nicely labeled and with flight paths projected as colored lines.

And, all modesty aside, she knew why she’d gotten the certifications. A large part of her package had come from the government’s and manufacturer’s development labs as part of a long term program to move as much air traffic control from ground control to the aircraft as they could manage safely. The regulators liked the idea of having their new systems tested by fliers who could handle problems when they arose. They’d be analyzing her flight recorder and notes in detail. Together with every other long distance flier who was in the scheduled airlanes.

Three hours later she’d landed at Forbes Field and handed in the flight data recorders. She paused to consider what to do next. She hadn’t actually used her old illusion for four months, and it was a school day. Her father, Ben, and her sister, Sadie, would still be at work and school respectively. Her mother, Marge, would be home, most likely decorating and making Christmas preparations and presents for friends, family and church. Which illusion? She shrugged.

“Hi, mom!” she said when her mother answered the phone.

“You got here?”

“I’m at the airport, I can get home in about ten minutes from here. Which illusion should I use? I’m dithering between the college girl and the one that looks like me without the GSD.”

“Why the question? I’d think the one that looks like a normal 15 year old.”

“Well, it’s a school day, and the neighbors don’t know I’m a girl.”

“Uh, well, actually they do. Your dad decided to share that with them when they asked a few too many questions about where you’d gone to.”

“I suppose I’d better talk to him and get the story straight.”

“That would be a good idea,” her mother said. “You said ten minutes?”

“About that. Love you.”


“Before I get too settled, I’d better call the parish, mom,” Sted said when they’d finished hugging each other.

“Parish? Oh, right. You did say you were converting to Catholicism. Now that’s got to be a story.”

“Yep. It has to do with my being a mage more than anything, but then some other things happened. Lots of stuff, and some of it I can’t talk about. Phone call time.”


After a couple of rings, a pleasantly neutral voice answered. “New Hope Parish, Sister Eliza. How may I help you?”

“Hi. I’m Sted Lancaster. I converted to Catholicism while I was away at school. St. George’s parish in Dunwich, N.H. said they were going to notify you. I’d like to come around and talk before Sunday Mass and Midnight Mass.”

“I did see something. Just a sec, honey.” She paused for a moment. “Now that’s strange. They said you’d be coming, but they didn’t say much else. No address, not what you look like.”

“I hope you’re sitting down.”

“OK, what is it?”

“I’m a mutant. I don’t look at all normal.”

“You’re wh….” She stopped in mid exclamation. “Oh. Kay. Father Bennington will want to talk with you.”

“It’s not quite as bad as you’re probably imagining,” Sted assured her. “I do a decent illusion so I’m not going to bother anyone. St. George’s doesn’t allow using an illusion. The parish priest told me that the Vatican doesn’t have a policy, so it’s up to the parish or the archdiocese.”

“Let’s see.” She paused a moment. “Somebody upstairs must like you. He’s got an opening in fifteen minutes. Can you make it?”

“Fifteen minutes? Sure. I’ll probably be there in five.”

“Good. Ask for me.”

“Will do Sister Eliza. Thanks.”


Father Bennington stuck his head out of his office just as Sister Eliza led Sted into the anteroom. “You’re here? Great. You’re Sted? I was expecting someone a bit more unusual looking?”

“Oh, this isn’t me; it’s an illusion. I didn’t want to get the place stirred up until you had a chance to see what I look like and decide how you want to handle it.”

“You’re 15?”

“Yes.”

“OK. Sister, please join us.”

Once they were seated, Fr. Bennington started: “I’m always glad to meet a new parishioner. The reason Sister Eliza is here is a personal policy of mine. With all the sex scandals in the Church, as well as some other churches, I’ve found it prudent to establish a policy that I will never be alone with any parishioner younger than 21.”

“Dad would approve. ‘There’s enough trouble in the world; don’t put out the welcome mat for more’ is what he’d say.”

“That’s an excellent point of view; prudence, after all, is one of the virtues. Is there any chance he would consider converting?”

“I doubt it, but then Dad never says what he’s going to do until he does it.”

“That’s as it will work out. Now, Sister Eliza said you said you don’t look normal?”

“Oh. This isn’t me. This is.” Suddenly the ponygirl form sat there.

The priest backed up slightly and then leaned forward. “Sorry, you startled me. You look good. Not normal, but still good. Would you stand up so I can see the rest?”

“Sure.” Sted stood up and spun around slowly.

“I see. Hooves as well?”

“And a horsehair coat below the knees. I wear these boots to protect the floors from my horseshoes.”

“Makes sense. St. George’s didn’t send us very much information. Do you mind if I look you up?”

“Not at all.”

“The Vatican got us all access to the Mutant Information data base,” he explained. “I’ve never quite understood why until today.”

Sted reached into her purse and got out her MID.

“First time I’ve seen one of these since seminary,” the priest said as he riffled in a file and pulled out a sheet of instructions. He carefully typed things from the sheet and then pressed enter.

“Ah. Temporary code name is Ponygirl? I’d suggest you change it if you want to keep a secret identity. Let’s see. You’re going to have to explain all the codes. FAA flight certifications. Three police incidents, positive evaluation. Deputized in Berlin, N.H. Federal concealed carry permit. You were kidnapped once and escaped?” His eyebrows rose. Then “you killed four invaders during an armed invasion of your campus?” His eyebrows tried to rise farther.

He looked at her. “I presume you’ve already gone to confession and seen a psychologist for any post action disturbance for that incident?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He turned back. “Vatican certification for an unnamed special project?”

“My parish priest is a member of an Order with mystical training. The Church keeps an eye on the entire Miskatonic Valley; there are entirely too many weird and creepy things around there for anyone’s peace of mind. They don’t want me to talk about it.”

“Quite all right. He can hear your confession if it’s necessary. Now for these codes. Exemplar-4?”

“Exemplar 4 is supposed to be above top human performance, and I’m at the bottom of the range. I can pull around a ton and carry around 500 pounds. I have truly amazing stamina. It goes down from there. My IQ is 145, which is in the 99th percentile, but you’d be pushing it to call it genius level. My reading speed and memory have improved as well, but they’re still in the normal human range.”

“Shifter-5?” His eyebrows rose again.

“That’s one I can’t really explain. I shift between four different forms under full control, and that’s it. The -5 is because my forms have different mass, so they think there’s something else going on that might justify the rating if they ever figure it out and I get control of it. So far, nada. At the moment, SH-3 would be more appropriate.” She shrugged slightly. “Unfortunately none of my forms is a baseline human. This one is the closest.”

“Warper-2:gi?”

“That’s my flight ability. I’ve got personal control of how gravity affects me, but nothing else.”

“Mage-3?”

“You need to put the mage, gadgeteer and devisor talents together; they’re actually one talent. Devisor is the mad scientist thing. The gadgeteer part of it lets me understand machines, spells and procedures. The simple stuff is intuitive, the more complicated it is the more I have to study it before it snaps in. The dash three means I’m pretty accurate and consistent, but there are lots of people better than I am at the individual pieces. It’s the combination that’s unusual.”

“I see. Then there’s energizer-2?”

“It means I eat a lot and store the energy somewhere for my magic, flight and stamina. The connection with flight and stamina is pretty usual for an energizer; the magic isn’t. I also don’t have most of the other things that go along with energizer. No energy blasts or that kind of stuff.”

“TK-2g?”

“I’ve got a TK shell. It’s kind of wimpy -- I’m actually stronger as an Exemplar than using the shell. Mostly it’s the base of my illusion ability. I’ve also got some really fine control at the molecular level. The illusions are visual only, and I have to practice each one to make it flow naturally.”

“So you’re not suddenly going to start impersonating anyone?”

“Not without a lot of study. They’ve had me try a few times in class; it isn’t easy. Impersonating someone has a lot more to do with movement patterns, mannerisms and speech patterns than it does with looks; I’m not interested in putting in the effort to learn how. I’ve got way too many other things to do.”

“Avatar-2?”

“Well. Kind of. It’s actually not a standard Avatar -- it’s more of a Paladin, but that’s not really correct either. That’s one of the things I’m working with Father Rico on.”

“Hum.” Father Bennington dismissed the report and sat back.

The presence that Sted was frequently, if very vaguely, aware of in the back of her mind reflected for a timeless moment. It considered the nodes of probability, what might be, might not be, could be, probably couldn’t be, the probable, improbable, probably inevitable and the vague foreshadowings. The rather weird human she was indissolubly -- and involuntarily -- bound to was beginning to shape up nicely after Halloween, but she was still going to take a lot of work before she really exemplified the Archetype she’d chosen. It reached out and adjusted a probability.

“That’s interesting; at least I know somewhat of what I can expect. You need to file the deputization with the police.

“Now St. George’s said you were studying the catechism and church dogma, and coming along quite well, and that they had a priest who was teaching you the rituals. That usually doesn’t take a priest?”

“I’m a mage, and all church ritual is supposed to be based on theurgical magic.”

“Ah. So when you take part in the liturgy, you’ll put some punch behind it. Absolutely right, you need to know how to support the liturgy properly.”

“He’s also teaching me some of the rituals I might have to use in extremis, as it were.”

“Good. That explains that. Since you’re not going to be here most of the time, we should let St. George’s handle it. Which brings us to the real issue. I can understand why St. George’s didn’t send me particulars, but it puts me in a quandary. I agree with St. George’s; people should not be coming to God’s House under false pretenses, however the parish is simply not prepared for someone who looks like you. That doesn’t mean we’ll have major problems; this is one of the more liberal parts of town. Our parishioners are more likely to get involved with gay and transgender rights groups than they are with anti-mutant hate groups. We still need to prepare the soil properly so the right plants grow.”

“Um. Something else St. George’s probably didn’t tell you.”

“I don’t really need to know your sexual orientation.”

“Oh, it’s not that. Less than a year ago I was a boy.”

Father Bennington shook his head. “Since you’re going back to school in a couple of weeks, I don’t think you want to get involved with the TG support group.”

“It’s probably not a good idea anyway, Father. It was part of the mutation; I just changed. It took about three months. The doctor recommended against standard transgender groups. My problem was adapting after the change; theirs is working up to the change. Not the same experience at all.”

“I’m going to have to ask the archdiocese how to proceed. How long can you hold one of your illusions?”

“All day if necessary, but it’s definitely draining.”

“You’re certainly welcome for Mass. Confession is tomorrow afternoon, Sister Eliza can give you the schedule.”

“There is,” Father Bennington said slowly, “one more thing. This is utter secret, however you might be able to help quite a bit.”

“Secret. Got it.” Sted said.

“There’s a deep underground emerging mutant support group.”

“And you want to make sure it stays secret from Humanity First.”

“Exactly. I know very little about it myself, for obvious reasons. What I don’t know I can’t leak.” He looked at Sister Eliza.

“And you’d like me to look at it?”

“If you would.”

“I’ll need to call Whateley and get their advice. The Headmistress wants us to keep a low profile, and I’m pretty sure some of the people in my old church have Humanity First connections, so even if they give me the go-ahead, I’m going to have to tread very cautiously.”

“Well, let me know if you’ve got any progress at confession tomorrow.”

“Will do, Father.”


Sted walked across the lobby of the police headquarters building, toward the uniformed officer in the information booth.

“Hi, Miss. How can I help you?”

“Father Bennington told me I needed to register these,” she said as she slid the deputization across the desk, followed by her MID.

“We don’t...” he started to say. Then he saw the MID. He looked at it as if he wasn’t quite sure if it was going to fly up off the desk and attack him. He picked up the hush phone and made a call. When he finished he said: “Paranormal Services is on the third floor. Ask for Lt. Jackson.” He slid the documentation and her MID back.


Lt. Jackson turned out to be a middle-aged man, his brown hair just beginning to thin a little. He looked at the documents and then played machine gun on his terminal for a few minutes.

“You’ve got a Federal Concealed Carry Permit?” he suddenly turned and asked.

Sted took the card out of her wallet and slid it across the desk.

“What are you carrying?”

Sted took out a slim rod and two pistols.

“Hum,” the lieutenant said, looking at the rod. “At your age I’d expect a light saber, but I’ll bet it isn’t.”

“Well, I thought it was, but Cpl. Mahren called it a thought controlled anti-matter beam weapon.”

The lieutenant’s eyebrows went up. “Ever use it?”

“During the Halloween campus invasion. That’s what I got those four mercs with.”

“I see.” He sat back. “I’ve heard rumors, but anyone who knows anything is keeping their mouths shut.”

“One group was some Syndicate mercenaries called the Sabertooths. The Chessmen were also involved, and so was Deathlist. Those were the ones I saw personally, although I was a bit too busy to watch Lady Astarte pounding Deathlist into scrap metal. Beyond that there are so many rumors going around campus that I quit listening.”

“Deathlist is dead?”

“I haven’t heard of an award, so I think he escaped. Two billion dollars is a lot of money.”

“Sure is. Four. How’d you do it?”

“Using this.” She touched the rod. “From ambush. The beam ionizes the air pretty heavily; I found out right away that it points back at me. I had to pick my spots really carefully to avoid getting wiped out by return fire. Those suckers had reactions from hell.”

“Why only four?”

“It ran out of power.”

“Hm. So it’s not that useful.”

“Depends. I can see a bunch of specialty uses, but it’s not the best general weapon. It sure told me why there’s a lot more to effective weapons design than making a cool looking shooter.”

“Good observation.” He slid it back across the desk. “We’ll pretend I didn’t see this; your permit doesn’t include that class of weapon.

Now this,” he picked up the odd looking pistol, “I don’t recognize. You built it yourself?”

“Yes. About half of the devisors in class make some kind of shooter; it’s a standard project although the results aren’t.” She grinned. “This one takes the same loads as the Cobra linear accelerator although it works on a different principle. I mostly use standard loads, although I have to tweak some of them a bit. The magazine can hold 30 rounds of six different types. The power pack can handle a couple of hundred shots before it needs recharging. It’s got a targeting beam and tactile aiming feedback.”

“Interesting weapon. You didn’t use it on Halloween?”

“I built it afterwards. Those two incidents were kind of a wake-up call that I needed to pay more attention to weapons.”

“So you’ve only had it for a month or so.” He turned it over and looked at the base. “CAT-1? That means it’s a devisor special? Not reproducible?”

“Right. I could probably make another one and adjust it so it would work for whoever I made it for, but I’m absolutely not going into the weapons manufacturing business.”

He put it down and picked up the other pistol. “Glock 22, right? Unmodified, I hope?”

“Yep. I started with that when I got to school. They won’t let me practice with the beamer except on the heavy weapons range, and I didn’t have the other one at the time. Besides, using a standard weapon is better for learning.”

“Someone’s thinking. It’ll help keep up your identity; you can practice without using your special.”

“That’s what they told me.”

“The captain will have to sign off on this. Before he does, though, we’re going to go downstairs to the target range. Regulations require that everyone does regular practice sessions. I assume you practice regularly?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We need a form from a certified rangemaster to keep the permit active.” He led the way to an elevator, which promptly dropped them to a basement level.


“Let’s start out with the Glock,” Sergeant Bean said, holding out his hand.

Sted fished it from her purse, being careful to hold it so it pointed downrange, away from any people. The Sergeant looked it over, muttering to himself. “Safety on. Good.” He made a couple of checkmarks on his form. “Now let’s see one round in the target.”

Sted brought it up, thumbing the safety off. She used the two handed grip, brought it up to where she could line up the sights and fired. The sergeant nodded, noting the slight hesitation as she sighted it, and also that the shot had gone in about an inch left of center.

“Good,” he said, making some more check marks. “They teach the FBI stance?”

“Sure do. They try to keep making the point that it’s not the first shot, it’s the last shot that wins a gun battle.”

“True. A lot of our people have trouble standing up that way.”

Sted laughed. “A personal force shield helps.”

“It would. I wish we could afford them. That’s enough on that one.” He held up the clipboard again. Sted pointed the pistol at the floor and shook it; a small blob of black gunk fell out. She gestured and it vanished.

“That’s all to clean it?”

“Minor spell. I’m a mage, Sergeant.”

“Good point. Now the other one.”

Sted pulled out her special and handed it to the sergeant. He turned it over, inspecting it. He made a note of the weapon’s registration number and then handed it back. “One shot.”

She set the selector to a solid round and then brought it up one handed. A targeting beam shot out, painting a red sighting outline on the target. She shot, holding the weapon at waist level.

“Dead center,” the sergeant said, writing some more. “You always use the targeting system?”

“If I’ve got the time. It’ll shoot where I’m looking, but it can be as much as a foot off if I’m in a hurry and don’t use either the sights or the sighting outline.”


“Now,” Captain Thorndyke said after they’d been seated, “I’ll approve on one condition. You’re a police auxiliary, you’re on call. You’re under age, so we’re not going to be calling you for a lot of stuff, but if we need a super for low hazard duty you can expect to get called. You can definitely expect to do something New Year’s Eve.” He frowned slightly. “Probably monitor high school parties.”

Sted shook her head. “I’d rather be at one, but that wasn’t going to happen.”

Captain Thorndyke raised an eyebrow.

“Too much difference from the kids I used to go to school with.”

“Well, we take what we can get. I can wish for a local superhero group, but wishing doesn’t seem to get anywhere.”

Sted replied: “You expect favors, you’ve got to return favors, as my dad would say. I’m in.”

“Good. Raise your right hand and repeat after me...”


“Here’s the packet,” he said after the little ceremony. “Badge and manual for police auxiliaries. This gives you authority in three districts: here in Topeka, the North East Kansas State Police district, and the Kansas City Special Administrative District, which includes both parts of Kansas City. You won’t get called for Kansas City, and the only thing the State Police call out the auxiliaries for is major disasters like snowstorms and tornadoes where they need people for searching. Now the next thing is communications. We don’t give auxiliaries standard communicators, but I doubt that you want your home phone on record.”

“Right,” Sted said, pulling out her cell phone.

“That’s a devisor special?”

“Built the mods myself. You can get stuff like this on the underground market, but it’s very expensive, and it has a tendency to break down. This should be able to hook into all three systems at over a hundred miles.”

“Good enough for us. That’s way out of our jurisdiction.”

“I presume you’ve got a special call signal?”

“Sure do.” They talked for a couple of minutes as Sted carefully put the frequencies and signals into her phone.

“The next piece. You’ve got a federal concealed carry permit, but you do need to review the state regulations. You don’t need to take the state exam, but you should so you see what it’s like. The next exam is, um,” he entered a quick query, “in about a week and a half, right after New Years. Make sure you pass it.”

“Right.” Sted dropped the manual in her purse and made a mental note to look up the actual text on the net.

“Now, there are a couple more conditions. You’ve already been told about needing your weapons practice certified by a rangemaster, right?”

“Yes.”

“We also want you to take a police procedure course. Your school has one, right?”

“Yes. The Berlin police department strongly suggested it as well. I’m not sure about next term though; we were still trying to work out a class schedule when I left for the holidays.”

“Well, see if you can manage it. Now the last bit. We’ve got an arrangement with the Capital City Gun Club for our police auxiliaries to practice. We don’t have a lot of auxiliaries who are under 18, but we do have some, and the arrangement lets you be there on the ranges without an adult -- as long as you don’t abuse the privilege. If you practice there, they’ll send us the logs.”


“Whateley Academy’s offices are closed for the holidays,” the mechanical voice on the phone said. “Your call is very important to us, please leave your name and a number where you can be reached, and we will get back to you.”

Sted rolled her eyes and punched in the security extension.

“Whateley Security,” the bored professional voice said. It paused long enough to look at the magically enhanced caller ID screen. “Sted Lancaster?”

“Right. I’ve got what might be an opportunity; I need to run it by someone in administration to see if it flies or crashes.”

“Just a sec.” He paused. “Ms. Hartford is holding down the fort today; she’s still in the office.”

“OK.”

The phone tweedled a moment. “Amelia Hartford,” the voice snapped. “This had better be important, Sted.”

“I may have a support and recruiting opportunity.”

“Continue. And make it short.”

“My parish priest says there’s an underground emerging mutant support group, and he suggested that I might want to make contact. I told him that I’d need administration approval.”

“Exactly correct.” Sted heard the rattle of a keyboard being exercised almost to its limits. “We don’t have anyone in Topeka. You’re one of our more reliable freshmen. I hope I don’t need to emphasize that you’re to exercise extreme caution. I’m going to express you five enrollment packets, our publicity fliers, five copies of Meditation and Control, and several other books. Where do you want them?”

“Send them to Topeka Police Dept, Paranormal Services, my, or rather Ponygirl’s, attention. I’ll tell them it’s coming.”

“Good. I take it you registered your deputization?”

“Yes. They want a rangemaster to certify my weapons practice, and they also want me to take a police procedure course.”

She heard the keyboard being tortured some more. “Got it. Ask them to fax us copies of the documentation and what they want for the rangemaster certification. Then tell whoever’s at the Range 2 desk that you need your practice logged. That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“Hartford off.” The click as she hung up had a sound of finality.


“What I don’t understand,” Sted’s father, Ben, said at dinner that evening, “is why you switched to Catholicism?”

“Well, a couple of reasons,” Sted answered. “First, Reverend Englund is even more fire and brimstone than our own pastor. He’s actually a demon hunter and heavily involved in keeping Whateley secure; he’s not that good as a pastor. I’d rather have some guidance about what to do rather than what not to do. You know the verse that says to do what’s right and ignore the rest.”

Ben nodded thoughtfully.

“I looked at what was available in Dunwich, and it came down to the Catholics or the Unitarian-Universalists. The Catholics appealed because I’m a mage, and the Unitarians because they insist you have a spiritual practice, but don’t prescribe what it is. I really don’t like someone else to tell me what to believe. I’d rather make up my own mind.

“I picked the Catholic parish because I’m a mage, and Catholic ritual is really based on theurgical magic, not that most parishioners know that, or that most priests are very good at it. That’s turning out to be really interesting.”

“Well, it does make sense,” Ben said. “Your class report was kind of interesting. Nine courses? That’s a lot!”

“Well, my power set drops me into the Advanced Technologies program, the Magic program and the general talents program. They didn’t think they could defer any of them since I’d already started on developing both the Devisor and Magic talents with Babushka. Then I had to take Flight I and a Phys Ed course, so he decided to see how I did with Independent Study. That let me take Presentations for the English requirement, and I added Accounting I.”

“All those were lectures?”

“Well, I had 15 minutes a week with the instructor for the courses I took on Independent Study. The Accounting course had a real good TA.”

“Oh?”

Sted thought a moment. “This is something that shouldn’t be mentioned.”

“Something secret about accounting?”

“The TA was one of the Goodkind kids.”

Ben’s fork stopped halfway up. “That’s….” He thought a moment. “So that’s why Trevor dropped out of sight.”

“Probably. It’s not a secret around campus.”

“But it shouldn’t be mentioned otherwise.” He looked at Sadie, who nodded. “How was it?”

“Ayla, which is what she’s calling herself now, has a real interesting view from the top.”

“I’ll bet. What about the other courses?”

“There are kids that can’t leave their rooms for class -- it’s too dangerous. The classrooms are wired so they can attend remotely, and those of us on Independent Study get to look at the recordings of the demonstrations. There aren’t that many in the lecture courses. And we had lots of practice in the Presentations course.”

“Beginning Martial Arts? You got a B? Why that course?”

“It’s partly Aikido and partly combat. The choice is that, Survival or a standard Phys. Ed. course. Survival is how to run away so you can live to run away another day, and that’s not me. Although I may take it later; it turns out to have some interesting stuff.”

“Good. Part of wisdom is knowing when to stand up and when to keep your head down.

“Looks like you had a good term. Now.” He paused.

“I’m not going to be able to make Christmas Dinner at your Uncle Abner’s and Aunt Lois’s this year. I hope you’re prepared for it.”

“Uh,” Sted said, flustered. “They know I’m a girl, right?”

“I shared that with them a while back. It seemed like the easiest way to explain why you went off to school somewhere else.”

“And you don’t want them to see my ponygirl form,” Sted stated, rather than asked.

“That would cause more trouble than it’s worth.”

“In a lot of areas.”

Continued in part 2 of 4

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



Monday, December 25, 2006, Christmas Day


“Oh, I didn’t decide to,” Sted said to Uncle Abner as she took another helping of Aunt Lois’ turkey dressing. “Sometime around last March the Fickle Finger of Fate pointed at me and said: ‘You Will Become a Sorceress!’ I didn’t even know it at the time; it just started happening.”

“Couldn’t you have done something?”

“I’ve never heard of anyone being able to stop it once it starts, Uncle. Besides, I’ve never liked either Job or Jonah. Job’s too whiny, and Jonah is a sermon for five year olds.”

“When life hands you a lemon,” Teddy, one of her cousins, began.

“You haul out the recipe book and look up things that need lemon,” Sted finished for him.

“Your dad showed me a picture,” Uncle Abner continued. “I saw something like that recently.”

“Hm...” Sted reached into her purse and pulled out a small photo album. She selected a picture and then hesitated. One of the other pictures seemed to be right as well. She handed them across the table, face down.

Abner looked at the one and nodded. “That’s your superheroine costume?” Then he looked at the other one. His face blanked.

“Where did you get this?” he asked.

“That’s what happened the week I vanished, although the pic is off their sales site.”

“You father does like to keep a closed mouth; he didn’t mention it.”

“I didn’t tell him exactly what went down. There was nothing he could do about it. Where did you see it? I thought the Feds were keeping it very far under wraps.”

“They are. It was an asylum and we’re managing the publicity. We’re going to have to talk. Later. In private.

“Needless to say,” he said to the room at large.

“Keep our mouths shut,” the rest of the kids chorused.

“Superheroine costume?” Melanie asked tentatively.

“I suppose it’ll come out later anyway,” Sted said as she pushed back her chair enough to float away from the table. “Ta-da!” There was a muted flash of light, and she stood there in costume.

The outfit was a leotard in the style that seemed to be favored by many of the young women in the superhero business. The garish green somehow managed to mesh with the scarlet of her mane and tail. She had a light devouring band wrapped around her head that covered both her eyes and the bottoms of her ears; somehow her mane seemed to meld with the back of the band rather than sitting under it. It was a carefully built devise that not only gave her the ability to shift her vision into the infra-red and ultra-violet at will, it provided a variety of visualizations. It also protected her from sonics, did echo location and a number of more esoteric sound processing tasks. Not incidentally, it integrated her communicator. She had a holstered pistol hanging from her utility belt, and she’d turned her purse into a backpack. And, of course, the ever-present boots. A little bit behind the times, but so what? She wasn’t intending to compete in a superheroine beauty contest.


“That’s ... Wow!” Melanie exclaimed.

“A bit garish, isn’t it?” Donna, Melanie’s mother, said.

“It was a hurry up job; I haven’t had Costume I yet. That’ll be spring term. I didn’t know I needed one for the combat finals until a couple of weeks before they started. The upperclassmen seem to think that keeping combat finals secret from us frosh is great fun.”

“Combat finals?”

“I won mine, I got a B+“.

“Still...”

“It’s a hostile world out there if you’re a mutant. The word is that you won’t survive a year unless you’ve got good training. They will let you take a regular gym class, but they really prefer if you take either Survival I or Beginning Martial Arts. I took Martial Arts. Like my advisor said, I’ve got no problem smiting the ungodly hip and thigh.”

“Or anywhere else, I’ll bet.” Teddy laughed. “Where did the horse stuff come from?”

“That’s really me,” Sted said. Another muted flash of light occurred, and then she stood there in ponygirl form. “I’ve got four forms, but this is the closest to a baseline human. Everything else is an illusion.”

“You go about like that on campus?” her mother asked.

“Either this or in centaur form on green flag days. I stick to this on yellows and at church in Dunwich; I’ve got several illusions I use off campus and on red flag days.”

“Red flag days?”

“Those are days where we’re supposed to practice looking normal.” She waved her hand, and her image changed to a drop dead gorgeous blonde.

“Gaaa.” Teddy said.

“Isn’t that a bit much?” Aunt Lois asked.

“Whateley simply isn’t normal; a Hollywood talent scout would think he’d died and gone to heaven. About a third of the students are Exemplars of one degree or another; there are over 80 girls on campus who’d absolutely rule a normal high school. We kind of blend into each other. Peeper has my illusion at number 32 on his hot babes list, not that anyone can figure out what his ranking system means.

“Of course, I don’t use that off campus. I use this one.” She switched in the college student image.

“Lots better,” Lois said. “That won’t get noticed on the street.”

“That’s what my advisor thought. It works really well in Berlin.”

“What are your powers?” Teddy asked.

“I don’t think the codes would mean a whole lot to most of us. Let’s just say I’m a flying mage-smith and leave it at that for the moment.”

Suddenly a cavalry bugle call rang out from the vicinity of her purse.

“Oh, drat. That’s the bat-signal!” She grabbed the phone and had a hurried conversation.

“Sorry people, gotta go. There’s something going down that the police are mobilizing the SWAT teams for, and they want to find out if I can contribute anything besides occupying space. I ought to be back before the party’s over.”

“Are they going to need anyone else?” Uncle George asked.

“You’re an auxiliary? A couple of crazies did a home invasion and are holding the people for ransom or something. It’s typical SWAT work.”

“They may need crowd control once it gets on the news.” He shrugged. “They’ve got my number.”

“In this weather?” Sted laughed as she pulled her coat off the rack and headed for the door.


Five minutes later Sted, invisible in her cabbit form, swooped down near police headquarters. She looked around for a good place to change and found a shadowed building entrance in an office tower that was closed for the holiday.

She shifted back to her ponygirl form and appeared, illusion firmly in place. This was one of the new outfits she and Sadie had designed the day before. This time she looked like the fifteen year old girl she actually was, with just enough subtle differences in her face and skin tones so nobody would make her as being a member of the Lancaster clan. She was dressed in a holiday version of a cow-girl’s outfit, complete with the fringed and beaded shirt, the tasseled skirt and a wide brimmed hat. And, of course, a pair of lavishly decorated mid-thigh cowboy boots that moved like they were painted on. Not that anyone who actually worked on a cattle ranch would dress like that. However….

She walked to police headquarters and slid her police auxiliary ID across the desk. “SWAT. I’m expected.”

“Called you out of a party, eh? Head on up; it’s on the 4th floor.”


She got out of the elevator and switched to her superheroine costume in plain sight of both the security camera and the guy at the desk. She wanted the cow-girl outfit firmly associated with her as Ponygirl in the public mind.

She waved at the stunned desk clerk and and lifted the front part of the band so he could see her cornflower blue eyes.

The desk clerk recovered quickly. “You’re Ponygirl? You sure got here quick. There’s some television reporters inside.”

“Yes. I’d better do the whole bit for them.” She pulled the front of the band back down and walked through the double doors into SWAT territory.


The two television reporters pounced immediately. “Marla Davidson with KCCC,” the reporter announced herself. “Our viewers would like to know….”

Ponygirl held up her hand. “Your audience might like to know a great many things, but right now there’s something that needs dealing with. Interviews afterwards. Also, I’m 15, and there are laws about how much you can and can’t broadcast about minors without permission.” She turned away from the open-mouthed newswoman and looked for whoever seemed to be in authority.

“Captain Matheson. I’m Ponygirl. You called?”

“Glad to meet you. Let’s go look at it.” He walked into the next set of offices. Ponygirl nodded; this looked a lot more like a working paramilitary operation. She lifted the front of the headband again.


“Right now we’ve got the house surrounded, but we can’t get in real close and the equipment we’ve got doesn’t give us that much detail. All we can tell is there are several heat sources moving around inside, and even that’s darn difficult; it’s insulated really well. Can you do anything for us?”

“If you’ve got an open space without a rug, sure. I’ll see what I can do with some scrying.”

“Ah. The memo said you were a mage. Hey Jeffers!” he called across. “See if you can clear that space. Our mage needs it to do some scrying.”

A minute later Ponygirl floated over the floor, carefully drawing a diagram in different colored markers. She got back up and studied it, frowning. She pulled a crystal out of her backpack and looked through it. Then she made a couple of adjustments and nodded. She energized it with a gesture.

A roil of mist formed above it and then cleared to show a ranch house on a suburban plot.

“That looks like it,” one of the men said from behind her.

She made a gesture, and the scene expanded until they were looking into the living room from slightly above. There were a man and a woman, gagged and tied to chairs, and two men walking back and forth.

“Frank!” one of the people looking at the scene said as he moved toward a computer system. “Give me the Identi-Kit codes.”

A few minutes of consultation later, the guy at the system said: “Got it! It’s those two clowns.”

“Clowns?” Ponygirl asked.

“I don’t think they’ve ever gotten official code names. We call them Pop Corn and Captain Flakes. They’re all over this part of the country and they’re smooth enough that we don’t usually recognize them until afterwards. They pop up somewhere, do something, and then vanish.”

“Let me look at the readout,” Ponygirl floated over to the system, the image behind her temporarily forgotten.

“It says Pop Corn is a PDP. Telepath 2, projective empath 1, telekineses 1. He’s good at picking locks, slamming doors, clouding men’s minds and the whole haunted house gig. Captain Flakes is a TK superman. Lifts about a half ton, flies at around 30 mph. At least that’s what intel has managed to put together.”

“How are they on defending against magic or chemical attacks?”

The guy looked at the readout. “Doesn’t say.”

“Well, let’s check.” She walked back to the image and wrote something on a piece of paper. It hovered between her and the image of the two criminals, and then flared. A glyph floated in the air where it had been and then dissolved like a wisp of smoke.

“Wide open. No wards, no nothing. So here’s the idea. We’re too far for me to do anything directly, so I’ll send a remote to work through. I plan to disable their weapons and stun them. Then your people can move in.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

She rummaged around in her backpack and pulled out a mechanical bird. She stroked its head and back, and it came alive and perched on her shoulder.

“That’s?”

“The Bluebird of Unhappiness. Got to take it outside so it can get there.”

“Jackson! Take her down to the dock.”

“Right, boss.” One of the officers moved toward the door.


Ten minutes later they’d gotten back to the SWAT team’s offices. The image was beginning to fray a little. Ponygirl reenergized it and waited until her magic missile entered the scene and lit on a tree outside of the house.

She wrote something on two slips of paper and cast them into the image. They drifted downwards until they hit the two criminals. The images of the miscreants promptly crumpled to the ground. Then she wrote something on two more slips of paper and cast them to where they gently lit on the two tied up figures. The ropes binding them to their chairs unraveled.

Captain Matheson looked at it. “Give them a call,” he ordered.

A half minute later the crisis officer who made the call gave them a thumbs up.

“OK. Tell Lt. Mugridge to move in. And tell him to mind his prepositions this time.”

“Mind his prepositions?” Ponygirl asked as a couple of the men around her chuckled.

“He confuses knock on and knock down when there’s a door in front of him.” Captain Matheson said shortly. “We don’t need the damage bill.”

He took a last look at the scene. “Get rid of it. We wait for Lt. Mugridge to give us the all clear. Then the press conference, then the reports.”

Ponygirl gestured at the scene. It vanished. She aimed a housekeeping spell at the floor and watched the symbols slowly dissolve.


The police headquarters press conference room looked different from inside, Ponygirl decided. She had, of course, seen it innumerable times while she was growing up -- on television. Seeing how things were set up brought back memories of presentations for the camera in her English I class.

Captain Matheson opened by announcing that the perps were in custody and would be transported to the Federal secure facility outside of Kansas City. Mr. Rogers, who’d just arrived from the MCO, made some bland comments about excellent police work. Then it was her turn.

“Ponygirl. That’s an interesting name,” Marla started.

“Well, the Fickle Finger of Fate decided I should look like this.” She flicked an ear at the reporter. “Either you get out ahead of it, or you suffer. Especially in high school.”

“Earlier you said you were still 15. You’re in high school? Where?”

“That’s need to know information. All I’m authorized to say is that some of the rumors about a ‘Mutant High’ are true, and some aren’t, and I’m not going to say which.”

“Let me fish a bit. Is there any truth about it being funded by the CIA?”

“I don’t know the details, but I’d have to say it’s very, very unlikely that they contribute much, if any, unrestricted funds.”

“You’re not starting a superhero team here?”

“I’m not even here most of the time! I’m here for the holidays. Anyway, I’m still a minor; the Kid Sidekick laws have got some exceptions, but I don’t fit any of them.”

“How hard was it to take them?”

“They’re small potatoes. I could have taken either of them in a straight-up battle without problems. Assuming the intel the police had on them was accurate. Of course, that would have put the hostages in danger and caused some property damage, not to mention that since I’m still a minor there would be some criticism about the police putting me in harm’s way. So I did it the sneaky way.”

“Oh. How?”

Ponygirl smiled at her under the band concealing her eyes. “A girl’s got to have some secrets.”


“That came off quite well,” her Uncle Abner said after she’d rejoined the party. “You’ve been studying presentations?”

“Yes. My English course is focused on writing and presentations. The critiques are, um, vicious.”

Abner laughed. “That’s how you learn to think on your feet.”

“There should be an easier way,” she muttered. “So how’d you like your presents?” she asked brightly.

“This is beautiful,” Aunt Lois said as she held up a ruby pendant and watched the sparkle as the gem slowly twisted. “It must have cost a fortune.”

“Well, you could have it appraised; I’ve only got a rough idea of what it’s worth. I traded a girl who makes jewelry and settings so it actually cost me very little.”

“What did you trade?”

“Oh, I made the gems. It’s one of my powers.”

“You made the gems?” Uncle Abner said.

“Yep. There are about a dozen of us that make gems. It’s an easy way to make money legally as long as we don’t flood the market. They’re all nicely signed and numbered in the usual place where they put the laser IDs for large gems.”

“Don’t other people make gems?” Teddy asked.

“Good question. Yes, but they’re either not very large or very good. It’s uncommon to find an artificial diamond larger than about 2 carats that we didn’t create. It’s been done, but they’re either lab curiosities, or it costs more to make them than they’re worth. Diamond coatings, yeah. If you’re willing to pay an arm and both legs you can get quite large stuff coated with clear diamond, but those aren’t gems.

“Larger rubies and sapphires are pretty easy; in fact that’s what non-scratch lenses are in real high end watches: clear artificial sapphire. It’s easy enough to spot large lab-grown emeralds if you know what to look for: there’s a reddish tint, and they’ve usually got lots of flaws.”

“Enough on the details, cous!” Teddy held up his hands to surrender. “You said combat finals?”

“Hey, let’s let her open her own presents first!”


Soon there was a pile of wrapping paper littering the area under the big Christmas tree. Sted had gone through them with the appropriate oohs and ahs, while keeping an eye on the last present. It was really big, about two by three feet, and maybe two feet high. The package had air holes, and she could hear an occasional bit of rustling from inside it.

She tore off the wrappings and looked. It was a terrarium. She looked at in puzzlement until a little head poked out and looked at her with beady eyes.

“Oh! Italian Wall Lizards!”

“We know you liked them,” Aunt Lois said.

“They’re great. But I can’t have pets.” She frowned. “I’ll think of something.”


“Can we get back to the combat finals,” Teddy almost whined.

Sted laughed. “Everyone does them, whether they’re a fighter or not. They’re trying to teach you what real world fighting is all about. I brought the video of mine.”

Suddenly everyone’s eyes were on her. She laughed. “One word of warning; the guy doing the announcing is probably the worst teenage sexist pest you’ll ever hear. Fortunately, he’s afraid of me.”

“Oh? What did you do to him?”

“I took him up about a mile, gave him a good look, and dropped him. I caught him before he hit the ground. Unfortunately. The guy’s incorrigible.”

“What did they do to you for that stunt?” Uncle Abner asked.

“I got a couple of weeks detention in Hawthorn cottage. If I’d been tempted to feel sorry for myself, that certainly cured me! Some of those kids really need help.”

She dropped the DVD into the waiting slot. The title came up on the big screen: “Ponygirl vs Pampas.”

“Pampas? What kind of a name is that?”

“He’s South American from the wide open cattle spaces, and he never lets you forget that South America is where the real beef comes from. Or that there are more Portuguese than Spanish speakers down there. He’s a combination PDP and TK superman.”

Suddenly the sound kicked in. “Uh, Greasy, you want to take this one?”

“Why, Peeper, you scared of her or something?”

“Or something. Go ahead.”

“Next up we’ve got Ponygirl versus Pampas. Here comes Ponygirl. She’s wearing her centaur form today. Here’s Pampas; Pony just switched to her costume with a hand wave for the extra credit. Now that’s garish. Peeper?”

“She’s wearing your basic grass green leotard and boots, with a light-sucking band wrapped around her head. She needs a style consultant; that green and her scarlet mane makes her look like a Christmas present.”

“It’s not as bad as Jericho.”

“Nothing’s as bad as Jericho. Except maybe Jade’s Hello Kitty fetish.”

“I remember her working on that headband in the Workshop. She didn’t talk at all about what it was for.”

“They just started. Pampas takes to the air, and Pony vanishes. Pampas looks puzzled. Now what? He’s going after a bird? I’ll bet she’s faked him out.”

“And that’s exactly what she did. She just appeared behind him and threw a strappy contraption, and it knocked him right out of the air and has him all tied up. He’s struggling, but it’s holding.”

“That’s some gadget; he’s rated at about two tons. Does it have a name?”

“Yeah, I remember her saying something about it in the Workshop a few weeks ago. I think she called it a Bolo. I’m not sure why; it doesn’t look like a tank. Now she’s sashayed into the spindle, and there goes the bell. Ponygirl wins. Now what’s she doing?”

“She picked him up and trotted off with him over her shoulder.”

“I’ll bet they mark her down for showing off.”

“She wants to play the Amazon, I’m not going to complain. The Peeper likes forceful women.”


“And that’s why I got a B+; they marked me down for showing off, and also for using special weapons.”

“Special weapons?”

“The bird and the bolus. Sensi’s got a point; you depend too much on gimmicks that are created for a specific opponent, you’ll be caught short when it doesn’t go the way you expect. I argued him out of the bird, but he didn’t allow the bolus. Although I didn’t make it just for Pampas.”

“Oh?” Uncle George said.

“Well, I only had a couple of weeks warning, and there are close to 400 freshmen and sophomores on campus. The matchups are supposed to be random. I’m about in the middle of the pack for the end of my first term, so I made up a few things for some of the more common talents. Pampas happened to be right in the profile for one of them.”

“Your Sensi’s right; you carry too many special weapons, you’ll wind up looking like the White Knight,” her Uncle George said.

Sted giggled, thinking of Stalwart.

“Not much of a fight,” Teddy said.

“I don’t like to fight. I’m trying to build a reputation for being easy to get along with unless you’re trying to score at my expense. I prefer talking things over and negotiating. If that doesn’t work, then I prefer hitting them in their weak spot from ambush.”

“That’s not fair, couz.”

“Fair gets you dead. Or worse. Seriously. I much prefer talk, negotiation and settling differences over a nice, steaming pizza. However, when some idiot is trying to score fight points at my expense, I’m going to take them down fast.”

“That centaur was pretty. That’s you, too?” Melanie asked.

“Yes, I’m a fixed form shifter. I use the centaur form around campus on green flag days; it’s a lot easier to get around campus when you’ve got some weight. Especially in the snow. I started using it, well no matter why, and then I found I like the form.”

“Why’d you use it for the combat?” Uncle George asked.

“Well, there’s something about Arena 99 that a lot of people don’t know. That’s where the Mutant Death Match underground pay-per-view comes from. I gather they edit it before showing it, but it’s still masks required. The school is the only place I do the centaur form, so it’s harder to associate it with me.”

Both George and Abner leaned forward. “The school lets them do it?”

“Long story, but not willingly. They haven’t been able to find the taps on the arena feeds, and as long as they’re not blowing kids’ secret identities, it’s not a real high priority.”

“You’re getting paid for appearing, right?”

“I wish.”

“We need to talk about this. Later,” Abner said.

“Now here’s a different one,” she continued, pulling another DVD out of her purse. “Remember that you didn’t see this.”

“Uh, why?” Teddy asked.

“It’s in a different arena; it’s not supposed to be on the Mutant Death Match pay-per-view, and the kids involved weren’t protecting their identities. A bit of background; this is a revenge match between two teams, or rather one and a half teams. The half team is the challenger, nobody in their right minds would go against the full team.”

The screen cleared to show a view with four kids standing in a loose square, faced off against eight kids. The family looked at the still picture for a moment.

“Isn’t that girl kind of young?” Sadie asked.

“That’s Generator. I know her from one of our social clubs. She says she’s 14; she’s got a bad case of arrested development. Or something.”

The announcer said: “Team Kimba challenging The Turks. Match will begin in 60 seconds.” The tension built as one of the Turks made a snide comment and suddenly Generator’s backpack erupted.

“The new player is named Shroud; she’s a ghost and also Generator’s older sister. Very protective. Also keep your eye on the other two gadgets that came out of her backpack.”

The lights flickered, and suddenly the Turks looked like they’d switched places and changed their postures.

“What just happened?”

“The Turks had a hologram covering their actual arrangements. I’m not sure what Team Kimba did to turn it off.”

“That’s legitimate?”

“Yes. This arena has hologram generators. It wasn’t going to work, though. You see the black girl in the second row? She’s a super martial artist, and she would know instantly that some of the holograms didn’t have any ki, or the wrong ki, behind them. That’s life force,” she added. “Odds are their mage, that’s the redhead wearing the bronze armor, knew where everyone was as well. I don’t know that, but I do know the mage well enough to say hi when we meet.”

“Oh.”

Sted grinned and started the video again. The counter reached zero and the scene exploded into action. The boy who had been in a sprinter’s crouch almost vanished in an eye-blurring burst of speed, bounced off of a previously invisible barrier that flared in a complicated green pattern which vanished too swiftly to identify, hit the ground and then floated upwards, thrashing wildly. The bird-girl behind him swerved up to avoid the previously invisible shield. The screen split into several views. One panel showed the bird-girl fighting something floating in the air. The floating device looked like it was supported by a tiny rocket, and it was a bit blurry.

Another showed the giant lumbering forward, preceded by another flying girl. However, the ghost glided forward at the same time and shot something into the giant’s foot before engaging with another of the Turks.

The martial artist and swordswoman stepped forward to engage the flying girl. They threw her into the giant’s path, who obliged by falling onto her while trying to get the spikes out of his foot.

There was a flash of light, and the three people in the Turk’s back row suddenly acted like they’d been blinded. Then the little girl stepped forward in a gunfighter’s stance and targeted the pile of equipment in front of one of the boys. It exploded spectacularly. She fired several missiles from a wrist gauntlet; they nicely took out the other two Turks in the back row. Then she pulled out what looked like a pistol and fired a round at the speedster as he dropped to the floor. It promptly expanded into a web of tangle cords. She walked back to the kid staring at the pile of wrecked equipment and said something. He attacked her, and she promptly threw him and pinned him to the ground.

At the same time, the ghost battered her target into submission, the flying gadget took out the bird-girl, and the two martial artists managed to get the flying girl on the ground with a sword at her throat.

The armored figure in the front row walked to the back and said a few words to the other back row guy. He threw a punch that she brushed aside; then she counter-punched him in the solar plexus.

The announcer declared Team Kimba the winner.

“Thirty seconds?” Uncle George said, sounding stunned.

“I’d say the Turks were really overmatched. You say this was only part of the team?” Uncle Abner added.

“Yep. The others are two flying bricks and a flying blaster. As well as a demon who’s loosely associated with them.”

“If they were that badly overmatched, why’d they accept the challenge?”

“I’m not sure. Partly because Chaka laid it on real heavy in front of the whole school during lunch. They’d have lost a lot of face by ducking. Partly it’s because they didn’t know how badly they were outclassed. The Turks aren’t a real training team: they’re a social group of typical overconfident high school bullies. Team Kimba is a real training team.”

“It shows,” George said. “That looked like they put some real thought into their ops plan. Toss me the remote.” He fiddled with it a moment.

“That reminds me. Are you taking a weapons course?”

“I’ve got two different pistols I practice with on the light weapons range. Uh, why?”

“I’ll take you to the gun club. I usually go once a week to stay in practice.”

Continued in part 3 of 4

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


Wednesday, December 27, 2006


Sted studied her reflection in the mirror, trying to ignore the feeling that something was going to go wrong. At least, she thought as she probed it like a bad tooth, it didn’t feel like a total disaster. Close, but not quite.

What she saw in the mirror looked like a parody of her normal looks. A bad parody. Her hair looked like a wig, and her normally eye-stopping scarlet mane looked like a badly, or at least hastily, dyed part of the wig. Her ears looked like they were artificial, and her tail looked like it was held on with some kind of harness.

She had no idea why her father had decided that she should come out of the closet to a couple of her old school friends. It wasn’t like him. However, he undoubtedly had his reasons. She hoped it wasn’t just that they were old enough to drive her and her sister, Sadie, to the comics convention. She shrugged. What was done was done.

She tried to shift back to her teenage illusion, and winced slightly. She had to shift her tail inside of the PK shell that maintained the illusion, so she moved it inside her skirt. It wasn’t the most comfortable location, but she was used to it by now.


There, that was a lot better. She nodded in pleasure at her image. The image nodded back, her long, lustrous brunet hair moving smoothly to compensate for the motion. Her PK shell made it look like she had a full head of hair; the individual strands were actually little tendrils of PK energy.

She had a few minutes, so she decided to do a bit of divination and see if she could isolate the feeling of a disaster about to go down. She pulled her own personal set of Tarot cards from her purse. It was, as far as she knew, completely unique. It had started out as a standard Waite deck before she did an energizing spell as part of her Magic Lab course. Then it had changed. Now the four suits were the whips, chains, chariots and bridles, and the court cards were the owner, trainer, groom and ponygirl. The Major Arcana was even worse: some of the cards were the same, some were different, and they seemed to still be changing. She’d never gotten a consistent list of 22 cards, and they certainly weren’t in the astrologically determined order of the original deck.

The first card, from the Trumps, was of a stage. This was the first time she’d seen that one! Well, that made sense, she was going to a convention and there would be a lot of presentations. The next card was another Trump, the Magician, reversed. That didn’t help! She turned a third card to see what a productive approach would be. The six of whips. She recalled the numerology sequence she’d learned. Six was responsibility, and whips was taking control, teaching or making things happen. In other words, she shouldn’t stand back and hide. She needed to do something about whatever it was.

Well, time to head on out. She put the cards back in her purse. Confidence, she reminded herself, was everything.


Tim and Nancy pulled up in front of the house, Tim’s ancient Toyota sedan cruising to a stop right on schedule. Tim bounced out and stopped to stare. “Uh, Sadie, would you introduce us?” he managed to get out.

“You don’t recognize Sted?” Sadie giggled.

“You’re Sted?” Tim managed to find his voice as Nancy got out of the car.

“I didn’t think….” Nancy said as she poked Tim in the ribs with her elbow.

“I didn’t either,” Sted shrugged. “One day the Fickle Finger of Fate said,” and she dropped her voice two whole octaves, “You ... Will ... Become ... A ... Sorceress.”

“It did?”

“It might as well have, all the choice I had in the matter. The ‘rents had to pull me out of school and home school me for the rest of the semester, and then they sent me to a private school.”

“So that’s what happened. And you didn’t tell us,” Nancy looked at Sadie accusingly.

“When Dad says to keep it zipped….”

“You don’t talk. Figures,” she said disgustedly. “I suppose that means you want me to keep my mouth shut.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Sted said. “Seriously, knowing anything about mutants in certain circles can be ….”

“Dangerous. Got it.” Nancy said. “So spill it. What were your classes like?”

“Well, nine classes and an after school job.” Sted rolled her eyes just thinking about it. “I’d rather not say a whole lot about most of them; I get real itchy if outsiders know too much about my power set.”

“Figures,” Nancy said.

“Anyway, I did a lot of classes on Independent Study; we’ve got way too broad a range of talents to try to herd everyone through the same classes! I had a really strange Martial Arts class and a bunch of powers classes. Since I’m a mage and devisor, I’ve got my own bay in the Workshop, so I spend lots of time there, as well as some time practicing on the light weapons range.”

“Devisor?” Tim asked after a moment of silence while he turned the list over in his mind and homed in on the unfamiliar word.

“Mad scientist stuff. You wouldn’t be too far off if you thought of me as a flying mage-smith with a few other things thrown into the mix. What I’m not is really powerful. Anything I can do there are probably a dozen or more kids at school that can do it better, faster and with more punch. After I finish school I’m thinking of a job in a research lab.”

“And here I thought we might have a start on a super-hero team around here. We need one.”

“You mean you can’t handle Melodious Silvertongue?”

“Melodious Silvertongue?”

“Keep your eye on the road!” Nancy told her boyfriend as he accelerated up the ramp to I-70 east.

Once they’d merged successfully, Sted answered: “That’s the guy who holds up banks by talking people into freezing and giving up their money. I know another kid from around here who ran into him while he was holding up a bank. Whatever he does didn’t work on her.”

Nancy said: “Oh. Him. He’s the reason we need a superhero team.”

“A superhero team to handle one not very powerful supervillain?”

“Put that way….”

“Besides,” Tim said, “he’s small potatoes compared to the state legislature.”


Sted wandered around the various displays, presentations and vendors’ booths, looking more at various kids’ cosplay costumes than at the rest of the scenery. Playing herself was a gas -- she’d had a number of questions about exactly what she was supposed to be, with several wild guesses. Eventually, she found a magic show.

The guy was a great stage magician, spicing up his act with bits of real magic. Sted nodded in appreciation; she liked the sleight of hand tricks even more than the magic. If he was a mutant at all, he was probably a Wiz-1. So far, she hadn’t seen a real magic trick that hadn’t been dead obvious, at least to her, although he was wowing the rest of the audience.

The show drew toward its close, as the magician’s pretty assistant wheeled out an enormous candlestick, with a gigantic white candle.

“So you want to learn magic, eh?” he asked in a stage whisper. “It starts by,” he thundered, “lighting the candle!” He made a mystic pass, and the candle ... just sat there, not lit. Not even a bit of smoke curled up.

“If at first you don’t succeed,” he plucked a flame thrower out of the air. It didn’t light either.

He looked at it in obvious frustration.

“Will someone show me how to light this thing!” he said, cajoling one of the audience to come up and have a try.

In a minute there was a line of kids trying to light the candle. She added herself to the line -- it wouldn’t do to stand out by not going up there!

Most of them were just doing funny gestures and making faces; he rewarded all of them by making the candle light. Sted noted one girl who almost got it; she got a small curl of smoke before the magician lit it over her efforts. Sted shook her head in disbelief; waiting another couple of seconds couldn’t have hurt!

Then it was her turn. She palmed a cigarette lighter, keeping the back of her hand to the audience. She waved her hand in front of the candle and lit it in the instant that the wick wasn’t visible. After the gasp from the audience, she turned her hand to show the lighter.

“Sensei says: If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying hard enough,” she tried to intone portentously, and then giggled. She tossed the empty lighter to the magician as she walked off the stage with a flirt of her tail.

“That’s one way,” the magician laughed.

She walked back to her seat, and then giggled to herself as she heard a boy trying to explain to his girlfriend how she’d done it.

A few kids later a boy managed to light it before the magician got in. Sted marked him too. Another few kids faked it, and then a just barely pubescent boy ascended the stage.

Sted got a good look at him. She barely had time to think “Holy Mother of“ before the room burst into flame. A bare instant later the sprinklers cut loose, and the alarms in the center’s security center went off.

She put out the fire by pulling the fire energy into herself. She giggled at the rush of energy. “No din-din tonight,” she heard herself thinking. She pulled herself together and went invisible. She shifted to her fancy cow-girl costume and went visible, hovering in the air as she turned off the sprinklers.

Sheesh, talk about what panic can do for power! As soon as she got her heart back under control, she hit the center’s security emergency number on her cell phone’s speed dial. “Ponygirl here. We just had a blast of magefire in the Rose Room. I put the fire out and turned off the sprinklers. We need medics. I’m going to try healing the worst injured.”

She hung up and fished the crucifix out from under her shirt. She took a deep breath, steadied herself and began the ritual that Father Rico had taught her to request healing for another.

Fifteen long seconds later a dim halo of white light seemed to surround her. She dropped lightly to the floor next to a woman who was moaning in pain.


A moment later one of the convention center’s security guards rushed in the door. “Holy ...” he bit off as he took in the scene. He reached for his emergency phone as he tried to sort out what had happened.

The kid surrounded by white light who was holding up a crucifix while the woman she was holding slowly healed was kind of obvious. The rest? Burned furniture, burned people and panic. Fortunately if there was a fire, it was out.

“Chief. Emergency in the Rose room. We need the medics with burn packs. Um. Looks like a couple of dozen, maybe more.”

He listened a moment.

“Some kind of fire blast. There’s a healer working. No, fire’s out.”

“I’m not an idiot! Of course don’t bug the healer!”

“Sheesh!” he said as he put up his phone and started looking for anyone who could tell him what had gone down.


A minute later the first of the medics arrived, accompanied by a tall, thin man dressed in casual clothes. As the medics started assessing the wounded, he walked over to the security guard.

“Dean Notting. MCO,” he said as he flashed his blazer. “What happened?”

“We got an emergency call from someone who said she was Ponygirl that there was magefire and a lot of burn victims, and she was going to try to heal some of them.”

“That’s her, then,” he nodded at the girl with the flickering white aura.

“I guess so,” the guard said. “We haven’t had a chance to talk.”

“Don’t I recognize the code name?”

“Probably,” the guard said. “Topeka, Christmas day.”

“Right,” Dean said, snapping his fingers. “Two points in her favor.”

The aura around Ponygirl flickered and went out. She got up and had the woman she was working on do a simple stretching exercise. Then she looked around, got a somewhat remote look and put the crucifix away.

“You’re Ponygirl?” Dean asked. “I’m Dean Notting, MCO.”

“I assume you want my ID,” Sted laughed. “Here.” She handed him her MID and paranormal auxiliary police ID cards.

“Great.” Dean looked at them and handed them back. “What happened?”

They talked for a couple of minutes.

“I want all three of them,” Dean said.

“But...”

“I know only one of them did it, but all three are emerging mutants. I want them.”

“Nothing happens to them, right?”

“It’s a Clear and Present Danger...”

“There are too many rumors about what happens when the MCO gets its claws on an innocent teen,” Sted ground out.

Dean took a deep breath and let it out. “You go to, um, Whateley?”

“Yes.”

“They’ve got a decent rep.”

“Yes, we do. Agreed?”

“Yes. He goes to Whateley. The other two we look at.”

“Ok. Let’s round them up and get them out of here so the medics can work.”


Sted looked at the small crowd that had piled into the security offices with her. Three kids, two of them hastily bandaged up, the magician and his assistant, one MCO guy, three convention center security people and a medic to make sure the dressings on the burns stayed on.

At least the security people and the medic seemed to be competent. One of the ladies at a desk in the corner had lined up the three kids’ IDs and started calling parents, after finding out what was urgent and what wasn’t.

“All right,” Dean, the MCO guy, was saying. “You run with it for a while. Just remember, that kid, Dennis, right? is not going home.”

“Not after that stunt,” Sted agreed equitably. “At least unless someone with more experience than I have can certify that he’s safe. I need to call Whateley and then make sure my people know what’s going on.”

“I need to call my office and get the traveling bureaucrat’s kit sent over,” he said.

She pulled out her cell phone and punched in the Security office’s number.

“Whateley Security,” the voice answered. It paused a second to look at the advanced caller ID. “What’s up, Ponygirl?”

“We’ve got a bit of an incident and a possible new student. Is anyone home in Administration?”

“Just a sec,” he answered. “Ah. Ms. Hartford is holding down the fort today.”

“You might as well stay on the line, I’ve got the MCO looking over my shoulder.”

“Let me put the Lt. on as well, then.”

The school’s new telephone system warbled for a moment, and then a professional sounding “Lt. Forsythe,” mingled with a grumpy “Now what?”

“We’ve got Ponygirl on the line with a possible new student and a situation in Kansas City,” the security guy at the desk said. “Oh, there’s an MCO guy listening in as well.”

“Great,” Ms. Hartford sounded even less happy. The machine-gun clatter of an overstressed keyboard sounded for a moment. “Um, Ponygirl, what happened, and keep it short.”

“We’re at a comics convention at the Kansas City convention center. I was watching a magic show when the guy doing the show invited kids to come up and try to light a candle. One girl got a bit of smoke, one guy lit it, and then this kid comes up and blasts the room with magefire. Over 20 casualties. I got the fire out, healed a couple and now we’re in the convention center’s security offices.”

The silence spoke more eloquently than words. “You’ve got all three of them?” Sted heard a muted warble in the background as Ms. Hartford added a few more people to the call.

“Yes. Parents are being notified to come in.” She caught the eye of the woman making the calls and gestured at the clock on the wall. “Between a half hour and 45 minutes.”

“So.” Ms. Hartford thought a moment. “You’ve still got packets?”

“Five full sets.”

“Great. Get one signed and fax it in. Dr. Hewley?”

“Here.”

“Talk to Ponygirl and see what you can do with a remote test; we’re probably going to have to put a new kid in Hawthorn a lot faster than we’d like.”

“OK.”

“Conference call in about an hour. Should give the parents time to get there and get settled. Hartford off.” The click of the hung up phone said everything necessary.

“Ponygirl?” Dr. Hewley said, sounding a bit distracted. “Oh, good. You’re a mage. Put everyone in the picture and see if you can find a shielded room with a speaker phone. I’ll stay on the line.”

“OK.” Sted paused and then addressed the people in the room.

“I was just talking to Ms. Amelia Hartford, our assistant Headmistress.”

“Enough authority to deal,” Dean Notting nodded.

“She wants to do a conference call in about an hour to give the parents time to get here. Before then she wants Dr. Hewley from our Powers Testing center to walk us through a quick preliminary evaluation so our construction people know what they need to shield Dennis’ room. He’ll be going into Hawthorn cottage, which is the dorm for kids with really special needs.”

“Good.”

“He wants us to find a shielded room and a speaker phone. A candle probably wouldn’t hurt either.”


The shielded room was more than a little bare, Sted thought. She found a hook on the wall to hang her phone, and then put it into speaker mode.

“Dr. Hewley?”

“Here. Everyone ready? Put me in the picture, I came in a bit late. Oh, code names only from this point. How many do we have?”

“Three.”

“Um. Use BF003, BF004 and BF005. That’s Baker, Fox, zero, zero, three. Now tell me what we’re looking for.”

“Mages,” Sted replied. “There was a magic show and the guy let the kids come up and try to light a candle. The first one got a wisp of smoke, the next one lit it, and the last one burned the room out; the EMTs are busy dealing with the casualties.”

“OK. Let’s take them in that order. Pony, since you’re in the magic program, give them a quick overview of how it works.”

Sted took a moment to organize her thoughts. “You can think of this as the Intro to Magic 101. There are really two things to know. First is that you don’t have to be a mutant to do magic. Most magicians throughout history have been baseline humans with no mutant talents whatsoever. What you need is a good teacher and a lot of pure, out and out titanium steel confidence and determination that the universe is going to do what you want. Being a bit crazy on that point doesn’t exactly hurt.

“The second thing is that, once you connect, it’s going to do what you’ve told it. Not what you thought you told it, not what you wanted to tell it, but what you actually told it. If you get sloppy or lose your focus all kinds of strange things happen.”

“Excellent!” Dr. Hewley said. “Now I’m going to have each of you try to light that candle while Pony watches and tells me what she sees on a mystic level. That’s the best I can do without all the instruments we’ve got here in the testing center; it should be enough for a first cut. I’ve got enough of Pony’s test results so I can interpret what she sees. Now I’m going to label the first one as BF003.”

“She’s a 12 year old girl, Dr.”, Sted said.

“Good. Just about the right time. Now, did this just happen, or have you been practicing?”

Sally looked a bit scared. “The ‘rents will kill me. A group of us have been doing rituals and trying to make magic work for a couple of years.”

“Great! So this isn’t something that just happened. Now just look at the candle, and do what you did before.”

A few seconds passed, and then a small curl of smoke occurred. A small glow appeared, and then the candle lit.

“Got it!” Sted said. “About 5 seconds to smoke, another three to a visible glow, then another two to ignition.”

“Aura?”

“No sign of violet, some red around the third and sixth chakra areas.” She paused a moment. “No sign of either a mutant powers complex or a BIT on the energy levels.”

“Great! Pretty decent for a novice baseline human mage without a good teacher. I think I can certify that, at least at this time, she is not a mutant.”

“Could you send that result to our office?” Dean asked.

“That’s MCO in Kansas City? Sure. Give me the details later. Now the next one. That’s code BF004.”

“13 year old boy, just beginning adolescence.”

“Good. Now just step up and do what you did before.”

The candle burst into flame.

“Pony?”

“About a second. Definite violet and red in the aura.” She hesitated again. “Definite mutant powers complex, no sign of a BIT.”

“Did this just happen, or were you practicing?”

“It just happened,” Jason answered.

“Fine. Tentative Mage-2 at least. You’ll need an evaluation, we can discuss that during the conference call with your parents present. You’ll need a mentor as well. We’ll discuss whether you need to transfer here for the next term. Now for the next one I want everyone out of the room except the subject and Pony. She can protect herself. I don’t want her to try to protect anyone else; it’s too much of a risk.”

“I’ll stay,” Dean said.

“You’re the MCO rep? It’s on your head, guy.”

“Understood.”

“Now,” Dr. Hewley said once the other two kids had left, “what I want you to do is something different. I want you to get a firm idea of exactly how big a flame you want on that candle. So big, not bigger, not smaller. Got it? Now, keep that firmly in mind and make the candle light.”

Sted floated between Dean and Dennis, just to make sure.

Suddenly a small ball of fire occurred a foot away from the candle.

“Wow!”

“What just happened?”

“We’ve got a ball of fire, about an inch across, and about a foot from the candle. Lots of purple in his aura, no red at all.”

“Flame manifester, eh? Now, can you move that ball to the candle?”

The ball moved hesitantly and then lit on the candle. It ignited with a soft whoosh.

“Now release it.”

“Uh, how?”

“Think of it kind of evaporating.”

“Oh.”

“It’s gone, candle’s still lit,” Sted reported.

“Now, how long have weird things been going on at home?”

“Uh. About three months,” Dennis said a bit hesitantly. “The ‘rents are talking about calling in an exorcist.”

“They can save the money,” Dr. Hewley said. “We’ll give it a tentative Manifestor-3 rating. We’re done here. With that level of manifestation you need to be somewhere you can be trained properly. We’ll talk more at the conference call. Pony? Dean?”

“Fine with me,” Sted said.

“Talk later,” Dean added.


Dean, Dennis and Sted walked out of the back room into pandemonium. At least, that was Sted’s first impression. More people had joined the mob. Two older women, who had to be in their late 30s or early 40s at a glance. A pair of media reporters. A young man wearing a suit and carrying a fairly heavy looking briefcase. And finally a redhead and a younger Asian girl who she knew all too well. Both of the girls were wearing convention badges. Sted said the first thing that popped into her head.

“Real names or code names?”

“Huh?” Fey said, startled. Then her hand quivered slightly and the badges vanished.

“A couple of healing spells would help a lot,” Sted said, nodding to the two kids who were still bandaged up. “So would some introductions.” She drifted up a couple of feet as Fey walked over to the young girl. She noticed that the young man had given the case to Dean Notting, and was heading out the door.

“People, let’s quiet down and get some introductions. Then let’s find a conference room. I’ll start off. I’m Ponygirl, I was in the Rose Room when everything blew up. I’m trying to hold things together enough so that everyone gets treated fairly. Just to make sure we’ve got the legalities out of the way, most of the participants are under age; all the regulations about what you can’t disclose without parental permission apply. There’ll be a conference later; admission is strictly need to know.” She looked at the two reporters.

“With me is Dean Notting, from the Mutant Commission Office. Dean?”

“Dennis, here, managed to burn out the Rose Room and sent a couple of dozen people to crisis facilities with second and third degree burns. Fortunately Ponygirl healed several of the worst burn cases, but the others are still being treated. Dennis is a Clear and Present Danger to the community; I’m here to make sure that he gets to an Appropriate Facility without causing any more damage.”

The taller of the two women, a 40ish blonde who was holding Dennis, exclaimed: “YOU’re claiming MY SON did WHAT!”

Fey grimaced and made an almost invisible gesture, dispelling the tension.

The other women waved. “I’m Debbie Fairgrave; I’m from the Convention Center’s public relations office. How many of us are there so I can get a conference room.” She rapidly counted heads and pulled out her cell phone.

“It’s not as bad as you’re probably thinking,” Ponygirl put in. “The ‘appropriate facility’ that Dean mentioned is the prep school I attend. I happen to have the brochures and application forms with me. We’ve got a conference call scheduled with the school administration in about,” she looked at the clock on the wall, “40 minutes.” She reached into her purse and pulled out one of the packets. “We’ve already done a very preliminary powers assessment and they’re setting up a shielded room for him.”

“Oh. I’m Muriel Dannon,” she said. “Dennis’ mother,” she added, placing a proprietary hand on her son’s shoulder. She paused, looking at the packet Ponygirl was holding out to her. “How come you’ve got an admissions packet all ready?” she added suspiciously.

“Special project,” Sted answered. “I’ve got five packets with me, and several texts. I came across a recruiting opportunity earlier in the week, and the administration expressed them to me. Better to be oversupplied than caught short.” She made it sound like a proverb. “In any case, if I didn’t have them handy, we’d be imposing on our host’s fax machine to print one out. As we’ll discuss in the phone conference, there really aren’t any alternatives.”

Debbie spoke up again. “We’ve got the conference room. Let’s get out of Security’s way.”


Debbie had not only gotten them a nice conference room, the staff was just finishing putting out a spread of not quite over-age rolls. Well, it was late in the afternoon, Ponygirl thought as she acquired several.


The conference table, Sted thought, was definitely getting a bit crowded. She’d taken the head with Dean on her right and Murial and Dennis to her left. Dean had pulled a late model laptop and printer out of the briefcase.

Jade sat with Sally and her father, Nate, while Fey sat with Jason and his mother, Alice. Jade hadn’t brought a laptop, so Ponygirl passed Sally copies of “Principles of Magic I“ and “Meditation and Control.” Sally dived into the Principles of Magic book so fast Sted could almost hear the splash. Her father started leafing through the other one at a much more sedate pace.

“Arkham Research Corp. Textbook Series?” he asked.

“I wondered about it, so I asked. Arkham Research does a lot of contract work for the Federal Government in paranormal affairs. They publish Whateley’s specialty textbooks so the Whateley name doesn’t appear anywhere.”

“Keeping it secret,” he nodded.

“Does this place have a web site?” Muriel asked.

“Sure. We can use my system,” Sted answered as she fished her laptop out of her purse.

“What is that thing?” Muriel asked as she saw it.

Sted laughed. “It started out a month ago as a high end mil-spec rugged environment NEXT. We put a few improvements into it. It’s the standard laptop the school issues to its students. It runs like a bat out of heck.” She keyed in the school’s URL and stood back.

“Before we get into it, there’s one other thing we have to do,” she said as she looked at the home page. “This version is for the general public that’s surfing the net. We try to keep a low profile, so unless you’re authorized all you’ll see is a mid-level prep school whose only claim to fame is being far enough in the mountains to have really bad winter snowstorms.”

“I’ll call,” Fey said as she pulled her phone out of wherever she kept stuff.


“Before we get started,” Ponygirl started off, “let’s make sure we’re secure.” She took a cube out of her purse and set it on the table.

“That’s Knick-Knack’s work?” Fey asked.

“Yep.” She pushed the button. It turned a baleful red.

Fey made a sweeping motion with her hand, and something swept out to encompass the room. Sally frowned as if she had almost sensed something; Jason looked startled. Sted pushed the button again. The light turned green.

“We’re secure,” she said.

Dean spent a few minutes getting coordinated with the Whateley document system and the lawyers.


“Before getting to your questions about Whateley,” Ms. Carson said over the speaker phone in the middle of the table, “I want to discuss Miss Firth. Is that all right with you?”

“We go first? Fine with me,” Nate Firth answered.

“The reason for starting with you is that your daughter should not come to Whateley now, and it’s very likely that she won’t come here ever. There are several reasons, not least of which is that Whateley is a very stressful environment, and at her current power level she’d be on the absolute bottom of the pack. I have several other students I wish I could transfer to another school for that same reason: they’d do much better elsewhere.

“I need to cover one basic issue. There are actually six prep schools here in North America that teach children with paranormal abilities. One is in Karedonia, another in Mexico and a third is in Quebec. The other three are here in the U.S.

“The academy in Karedonia is mostly for Emperor Wilkins’ subjects; they don’t usually accept foreign students although there have been exceptions. The one in Mexico is officially to train mutants for government service; if you know much about Mexican politics you know that it’s not that simple. The one in Quebec is similar.

“The other two in the U.S. are officially for baselines who are studying magic or psychic powers. In fact, about half of their students are mutants, but they don’t mention that and they don’t accept kids who don’t look like baselines or who have real obvious powers. That means that they deal with mostly gadgeteers, devisors, low level exemplars, psychics and mages. None of their students are fliers, the highest level of exemplar they accept is Exemplar 2. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

“Whateley Academy, on the other side, is expressly chartered for mutants. We’re equipped to handle just about anything, including students that pose extreme danger to themselves or others. We have had baseline students in the past, and we undoubtedly will in the future, but they were all special cases involving extreme power levels or other very unusual circumstances. Your daughter simply doesn’t fit into that category.

“I wouldn’t suggest enrolling her in one of the other schools at present. Instead, you should find her a mentor. Both Fey and Ponygirl had mentors before they came here, and they were able to hold their own from the first day. A mentor will be able to advise you as to when it would be appropriate to enroll her in one of the prep schools, and which one.”

“Do you have a list?”

“Not for your area.”

“Dad had a list he got from the doctor when I changed,” Ponygirl put in. “I’ll check with him and get the list to you.”

“Great!”

“Now let’s get the testing paperwork out of the way.” There was a moment of silence while several of them looked at the documents on their workstations.

“Would it be appropriate to have a block on there for Fey to put notes?” Ponygirl asked.

“Good thought,” Mrs. Carson said. “Fey, is that all right with you?”

“Sure.”

Fey took a long look at Sally that had her squirming slightly, and then entered something into the form on the computer. The printed copy rolled out of the printer. Dean signed it, Ponygirl signed it and then Fey signed. She added a line under her signature in weird characters no one had ever seen before and passed the document to Dean.

He looked at it and asked: “What’s the weird characters say?”

“It says roughly: ‘Attested by Aunghadhail, Daughter of the Burning Oak’ and a couple of titles. ‘Modify this at your peril’.”

He looked around. Generator grabbed it and went to the copy machine.

“Now for Jason Kindle.”

“Before we move on,” Dean interjected, “Federal regulations require that everyone with abilities significantly beyond baseline must be registered with the Federal Government’s Department of Paranormal Affairs. I’ll get you the paperwork to get that process started. You’ll need to come into the office to have a MID made.”

“She gets a MID? I thought you just said she’s not a mutant.”

“The Department of Paranormal Affairs maintains the records, but it uses the MID as the identification card so it gets into the international system.”

“Ah. I see.”

“Excellent,” Mrs. Carson continued. “Now, Mrs. Kindle, your son is an emerging mage; our preliminary assessment is Wiz 2. Fey, do you have anything to add?”

Fey looked at him and added a comment into the system. “This just happened today. Now that he’s discovered he can do magic, he should develop fairly fast. I wouldn’t recommend my mentor, but I may be maligning him. His and my talent set didn’t really match all that well.”

“Babushka ought to be able to handle him,” Ponygirl put in.

“Your mentor?” Fey made a subtle gesture and looked at something that only she could see. “She should be able to. She’ll know whether he should come this term or wait until Spring or Fall term.”

“What about power level?” Dean asked.

Fey looked at Terry again. “Ask Babushka after she’s had a chance to look him over.”

“OK,” Dean said. He turned to Mrs. Kindle. “Make sure you get the evaluation in the next few days. I don’t want him here if there’s any chance of things going screwy.”

“I suppose that means I’d best get the paperwork lined up,” Alice Kindle said. Ponygirl pulled another of the enrollment packets from her purse and slid it across the table.

“You know your son,” Mrs. Carson said. “However, all we really need for an emergency enrollment is your signature; the rest of the paperwork can be filled out later. A check would be useful as well. One of the lame jokes around this place is that the only way we resemble Sky High is our tuition. Fortunately for family budgets, we’ve got a lot of scholarship and assistance money for the kids without really rich parents or some kind of corporate or organizational sponsorship.”

“I’m surprised you don’t want the paperwork up front,” Dean put in.

“We’d certainly like it, but we’re not going to stand on paperwork in an emergency. There aren’t any alternatives; it would be kind of silly of us to pretend we’ve got academic or diversity admission filters, for example.”

“Doesn’t that compromise your academic standards?”

“Not really. We’ve got two academic tracks. One is a normal prep school curriculum, the other consists of accelerated classes, many at the university or post-graduate level. Quite a few of our courses also have self-study variants. We’re fully accredited, which means anyone with a diploma from us will have no difficulty with continuing on with a university. On the bottom end we’ve usually got a couple of students each year that we have to graduate with a GED instead of our regular diploma because they didn’t meet standards.”

“I see.”

“Great! Now that brings us to Dennis Dannon. Dean, I can certainly understand your viewpoint after the disaster earlier today. However, that does put us in a bit of a quandary; I don’t have a good way of getting him here this quickly. We don’t have a long distance warper on staff, and since it’s the holidays I might not be able to get one right away. There are some other options, but most of them would require favors from places I’d rather not be beholden to. At worst, since Ponygirl’s right there I could ask her to fly him in, but she doesn’t have a passenger certification.”

“We’d have to leave most of the luggage behind,” Ponygirl added. “The two of us would be getting close to my weight limit.”

“That’s an FAA certification?” Dean asked.

“Yes.”

“I could probably get an emergency waiver.”

“It may come to that, but I’d like to offer an alternative. Fey, could you put a binding on Dennis so nothing would happen for the couple of weeks before the Winter term starts?”

“A binding? Sure.” Fey answered. “First I want to make sure everyone understands what’s going to happen and get their agreement.”

“Could you do it?” Dean asked. “I mean, Ponygirl is sort of a known quantity, you’re not.”

Ms. Carson sounded like she was holding back laughter. “With all due respect to Ponygirl, she’s at an appropriate place in her development for someone with her power set halfway through her freshman year. She won’t be studying bindings and geases for another year or so, and that only if she’s interested; that’s not part of the core magic curriculum. Fey, on the other hand, is probably the best mage student currently enrolled, and possibly the best we’ve ever had.”

“This is a relatively simple binding and geas,” Fey said. “It’s strictly temporary. It will keep him from using his manifestor powers, and will insure that he does everything legitimately possible to get to Whateley for the beginning of the next term. It won’t last more than three weeks, and will come off in any case when he gets to Whateley.”

“Good. You do the binding while we get the paperwork set up,” Dean said.

“We have to do the paperwork first,” Fey said. “Since we need a legal waver it’s going to be part of the binding -- the wording has to be exact, because everyone’s understanding of it is what’s going into the spell.”

The paperwork took a while as Dean, Dennis, Fey, Mrs. Dannon, Whateley’s lawyer and the MCO’s lawyer haggled over the exact wording. That didn’t mean it took all that long to produce the two documents: one on MCO letterhead describing the problem and assigning Dennis to Whateley, and one on Whateley letterhead describing the binding. It meant that the binding was quick.


“Fey,” Sted laughed, “you really should learn to use a little bit of theater.”

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Kindle asked suspiciously.

“Fey is good enough to do things very quickly and unobtrusively that I’d need a fully developed ritual for. That’s one reason I didn’t do the binding or the wards on the room: I’d have had to look up the procedure, draw mystical diagrams and check them to make sure I’d done it right. It’s impressive as heck if you don’t know how much effort a procedure ought to take.”

“So Fey is really at that level of expertise?”

“Really.” Ponygirl took a slip of paper and drew something on it. She held it in the air between herself and Dennis. It flared, leaving a bit of smoke in the shape of a rune.

“It took,” she pronounced as the rune dissolved into the air.

Fey laughed. “I see what you mean.” She turned to Mrs. Dannon. “What Pony just did was a quick scrying spell to check if Dennis had a binding on him. You learn dozens of those little cantrips as part of learning magic; putting them on paper stabilizes them.”

Dean added: “I think we need a different check.”

“At least a more obvious one,” Ponygirl said. “Dennis, try to create that little ball of fire you did earlier. Put it right over the center of the table, about at eye level.”

Dennis’s brow furrowed. “Nothing’s happening. I think I felt something last time, and this time it isn’t there.”

“Good. Now how do you feel about going to Whateley?”

“I’m going, of course,” he said as if the question was, at best, silly.

“Do you remember how you felt about it when this meeting started?”

“Um. I was being rushed into something?”

“So that’s the geas?” Mrs. Dannon said. “I thought they were, like, compulsions?”

“They are,” Fey said. “You may be thinking that there has to be an internal conflict. There can be, but that means that the mage didn’t take the time to make it fit smoothly. Or it doesn’t fit with the person’s concept of themselves or what’s likely in the situation.”

“Which is why the legal paperwork,” Ms. Carson said.

“Exactly. I think we’re pretty much done here?” Dean said.

“It looks like it. We’ve got the paperwork on Dennis and we’re starting on a shielded room in Hawthorn cottage.”

“So what’s next?” Mrs. Dannon asked.

“You go home with Dennis and start making arrangements,” Dean said. “Sally and Jason can continue with the convention if they want. Ponygirl and I have a press conference to organize, and we’ve got a bunch more paperwork to wrap this up.”

“Need to know was a great line in your last conference, Ponygirl,” Mrs. Carson said. “Say as little as possible while being truthful. Fey, Generator, you weren’t here. Does everyone understand that?”

Nate Firth asked: “I take it this is all utter secret, but I’m not sure why?”

“Protecting the public,” Mrs. Carson replied. “Whateley Academy is a very dangerous place; we don’t want incidents. It’s not like anyone who needs to know is in the dark; we keep tripping over recruiters who don’t quite understand what ‘only at the Job Fair’ means.”

Concluded in part 4 of 4.

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


Thursday, December 28, 2006

The sign on the door to Uncle Abner’s office suite was the same as it had been the last time she was here: Lancaster and Associates Publicity: The Right Publicity to the Right People at the Right Time. And not, she thought amusedly, to the wrong people at any time.

This time it looked different, somehow. Before she’d been here as a child being shown where her family worked; this time she was actually doing something with one of the family’s businesses. It made her feel grown up. She hastily suppressed a giggle at the thought.

The thing that didn’t make her feel grown up was “proper office attire.” She didn’t have any, and since “proper office attire“ for women in a staid business office that wanted to impress its clients that it was both reputable and solid as well as aggressive and creative involved short skirts, lots of leg and spike heels, she wasn’t likely to have any either. Hooves and tails didn’t seem to be on anyone’s list of “proper office attire.”

She suppressed another giggle. Her ‘teenager around town’ illusion was going to have to do. It still felt like playing at dress up rather than being dressed up. It at least had the advantage that she looked like herself, minus, of course, the ears, mane, tail and hooves.


“Miss Lancaster?” the girl at the receptionist’s desk asked as she walked in.

“Yes, um, Betty,” Sted answered as she noticed the name on the young woman’s badge. The receptionist took Sted’s coat and put it in a tasteful rack which somehow blended with the rest of the office decor.

“Dr. Nabokov and Ms. Seals are already here; your uncle is running a bit late,” Betty said as she led Sted down a corridor to a conference room.


Dr. Nabokov turned out to be a solidly built man in his middle 40s, who was dressed in a conservative business suit. Ms. Seals, on the other hand, seemed to be only in her middle 20s. She wore a tasteful silk blouse tucked into a soft doeskin skirt. Sted’s magical senses promptly identified her as a rather unusual mage.

Introductions over, Sted helped herself to several of the rolls on the side.

“I’m not entirely sure why Mr. Lancaster wanted us to meet,” Dr. Nabokov started out.

“Um. Before we start, let’s make sure we’re secure,” Sted said, taking a cube out of her purse. She pressed the button, and it turned a baleful red.

“Someone’s listening in. I’ve got to talk to Uncle about his security. We need to put up an anti-evesdropping ward.” She looked at Natalie Seals.

“I’m not all that good at wards,” she replied to the unspoken request.

“Well,” Sted fished in her purse for a moment and came out with her dog-eared copy of “Elementary High Magic.” She leafed through it a moment, and then turned it so Natalie could see one of the pages. “You think this would do?”

Natalie considered it. “Ought to.” The two mages spent a minute carefully tracing the diagram onto a piece of paper, and then energized it. Sted touched the cube again. It showed a brilliant green.

“All secure.”

She turned to Dr. Nabokov. “I’m not totally sure either. I showed Uncle Abner this at our family’s Christmas party, and he said we had to get together.” She handed the picture over, face down.

“I see,” Dr. Nabokov said as he passed the picture to Natalie.

“I’m the one that got away. I’m surprised you don’t know that.”

“I knew someone had escaped from their training facility, but the authorities have been utterly uncooperative.”

“Sted’s under age, Doctor,” Natalie Seals put in.

“Which they’ve been keeping under wraps as well. I’m surprised; whoever’s behind all of this did seem to be staying away from minors. Why they broke their policy ...?”

Sted laughed and dropped her illusion. “I suspect I was just too tempting a target.”

Dr. Nabokov’s eyes widened. “That was a pretty good illusion, young lady.”

“Thank you! I had to put a lot of work into it.

“As far as I know, I’m the only real ponygirl around. We’ve got several shifters and an avatar on campus that do one, but they’re all riffing off of my template. I think they’re grateful to have something besides kittygirls, other kids and the local wildlife to try to imitate.”

“You go to Whateley, of course,” Natalie said, as if confirming an obvious fact.

“I didn’t think there were any options,” Sted answered. “Besides, I thought you were an alumnus as well.”

“You caught on?”

“You’re a Sidhe mage. I’m a mage, and there are several Sidhe on campus, including one of the Greater Sidhe. The aura is unmistakable if you know what to look for. Besides, your outfit doesn’t have any synthetics or any raw iron.”

“One of the Greater Sidhe is back? How do you know?”

Sted laughed. “Once you know the signs, she’s kind of obvious. Besides being drop dead gorgeous, she’s got a real Fairie Glamor, she’s already got her court around her and rumor has it that she’s fought The Necromancer to a tie. Twice. She’s so far out of my league as a mage that there’s no comparison.”

“This is all very interesting,” Dr. Nabokov said, “but the real question I’ve got is how you managed to escape. We haven’t gotten anywhere on removing those collars; we haven’t even gotten anywhere trying to analyze them.”

Natalie’s expression said everything needed.

“And you managed to kill a couple of the victims while you were experimenting.”

“Unfortunately, yes. It’s a real show-stopper, especially since none of the mages we brought in can find the protective spell.”

“There isn’t one. It’s a devise. If you go in with the wrong set of assumptions about how it works, it goes unstable. The way it’s designed it’ll most likely take the victim’s head off.”

“Which is exactly what happened. We’ve had to stop experimenting. So how did you do it?”

“It’s not supposed to come off. Fortunately there’s an opener routine and several hidden back doors that are keyed to two specific people and will only work if they’re wearing it at the time. I think the head mage and head devisor don’t trust each other.”

“Then how?” Natalie asked.

“It only suppresses mutant powers. It doesn’t suppress either magic or psychic powers for a baseline human. I had to learn how to do magic without my Wizard talent to provide Essence. Fortunately my Exemplar ability, which wasn’t affected, provided enough Essence for really low power workings, which was probably what kept it from taking my head off as well as keeping their head mage from finding out what I was doing.” She shrugged. “Then it was just a matter of time before my Gadgeteer talent analyzed it sufficiently to find the back doors. I faked it out to think I was the mage it was keyed to. Then I ran like all heck was after me.”

She shrugged again. “If they hadn’t left the opener and the back doors, and I hadn’t known about baselines being able to do magic, I’d still be there. I have a suspicion that Lady Morigan wanted me as her personal riding ponygirl.”

“Morigan Le Fey? I knew her! How’d you find out who she was?”

“We looked them up in the school’s data base. Their head trainer was unmistakable; we started with him. The three of them hung out together and then vanished when they graduated. You may need to take precautions; there are some indications that they’re taking their revenge against everyone who slighted them in school.”

“That would be just like her. She may have some kind of record for holding a grudge.” Natalie said.

“I’m still puzzled about why they didn’t tell us when they broke it up.”

“Probably because they didn’t break it up, Doctor. I poked a hole in their illusion when I left, so the Feds got some real juicy satellite photos during the hour or so before Morigan repaired it, but they’d left by the time the Feds staged the raid. They took everything with them. Their mage fired off a real powerful cleansing spell right in the attack team’s face, so they couldn’t get anything by scrying either.”

“That makes sense.” Natalie put in. “If they’d broken it up, we’d have gotten more of their victims for rehab. It would be helpful if we could rehab them! Something is keeping us from doing even the little we should be able to do without removing the collars. Also, that no talk spell is not helping. Do you have any ideas about that?”

“Yes and no. I’ve got a suspicion about what’s interfering, but I have no idea what to do about it. I’ve taken some parts of the collar programming apart, so I know how those work. That won’t help you; they’re anchored to the rest of the collar. You can’t get to them without making it go unstable.”

“That’s not good. What’s interfering?”

“There’s a goddess involved. It wants to keep them as they are.”

“There’s a WHAT?” Dr. Nabokov leaned forward as Natalie’s eyes narrowed in concentration. “Explain, please.”

Sted laughed. “You’re clear that Class 2 entities are knots of magical energy that got imprinted with an archetype or pattern so that they’re more or less stable?”

“Yes, that’s ghosts.”

“Most of them, anyway. A god type Class 2 entity is one that got imprinted with a group archetype instead of an individual archetype, and learned that having worshipers scales a whole lot better than scaring people. Like The Almighty Dollar or Manifest Destiny. That means it can have an enormous number of worshipers, each of whom contributes a little energy. I’m not sure how many worshipers this one has, but it’s somewhere in the low five digits.”

“That doesn’t sound like much,” Dr. Nabokov said.

“It doesn’t, does it? Think of it this way: that’s the number of worshipers a second or third tier regional goddess would have had during Roman Empire times.”

“Which puts a different complexion on it,” he said.

“Precisely. You could pray to Zeus or Hera if you wanted, but most people preferred a god or goddess that was a bit more local. They were more likely to be listening.”

“Could that be why they picked you up?” Natalie asked slowly.

“Yes. I’m a ponygirl; according to its archetype I’m supposed to be trained and have an owner. It manipulated probability so I wound up there to be trained. Fortunately, it’s still young and not all that good. My mentor detected that something was interfering with me, so she taught me how to do wards against it. My rooms at Whateley and at home are warded.”

Dr. Nabokov said: “Back to the collar. It’s got a universal power nullifier? I thought that was impossible?”

“I wouldn’t say universal. It’s fairly close to what someone with the powers negator power can do. It doesn’t block stuff that’s actually built into the body, or that’s something that baselines can do with training. So while it blocked most of my abilities, it didn’t block my Exemplar or Regen. That got built into my body by my BIT. While it kept me from accessing my usual power sources, it didn’t prevent me from doing magic. I was just limited to the essence a baseline would have.”

“So you know how it works?”

“No,” Sted lied smoothly. “Senior faculty decided that it wouldn’t be socially responsible to release it, so they made sure that the powers nullifier piece couldn’t be analyzed.

“In fact,” she continued, “there are four very different pieces. I originally thought there were three, but the collar maintenance routine, the powers nullifier, the psychic null and the speech and dexterity suppressor are separate pieces. I analyzed the psychic null and integrated it with my shields. I haven’t really looked at the speech and dexterity suppressor.”

“How effective is the null?” Natalie asked curiously. “I know I can’t get anything from you.”

“Our most powerful psychic says that trying to get through it gives him a headache. Not that he can’t manage it, but the average psychic sure can’t. It also keeps me from disturbing some of the more irritable empaths. It also seems to work well against ‘drive you insane’ type class X entities, and blocks the glamor that several students project.”

“That’s good!”

“Well, yes. Since I copied it from the collar, it’s got about the same abilities.”

“I’m surprised it has a powers nullifier,” Dr. Nabokov said.

“I think you’ll find that several of the girls in your stable are mutants, Doctor. They do something to obfuscate the genetics so you can’t trace them; I know mine had been changed.” Sted shrugged. “They did a few other things as well; most of them I’m keeping.”

Dr. Nabokov looked at Sted strangely. “We don’t keep them in a stable. That’s….”

“Unthinkable? I know what you mean. Look at it from my point of view a moment. I’m a ponygirl; my mutation means that I’m inextricably linked to that god type Class 2 entity I mentioned.”

“Law of Similarity,” Natalie murmured.

“Partially. I’m also a Paladin. Anyway, destroying it isn’t an option, I can’t disconnect, and I’d go nuts if I thought the archetype it embodies was unacceptable. At least, more nuts than I am already!” She laughed. “The archetype says ponygirls live in stables. So wherever you’ve got them is, by definition, a stable. I know that’s circular, but I still have to watch myself to keep from calling my dorm room a stable. People might get the wrong idea about my housekeeping.”

Natalie chuckled. “Paladin? That’s a new one on me.”

“It’s not in my Powers Theory textbook either. It’s kind of loosely related to Avatar, Channeler and other stuff that has to do with Entities. It’s got the same relationship to a god type Class 2 entity that an Avatar has to a regular Class 2 entity. Avatars can’t deal with god type Class 2 entities: they’re simply too big. They’d burn out if they tried to absorb one. A Paladin has a different kind of connection. I can call on her power if I’m willing to accept the consequences; as long as I stay reasonably consistent with her she can’t get rid of me. The other end of it is that a lot of her attitudes leak over onto me, and she can have me do things if I don’t block her out.”

She paused slightly. “I’m pointing out that they’d be a good deal happier if you trained and exercised them properly. Some racing contests might be good, too.”

“Hm,” Dr. Nabokov said as he thought a moment. “In other words, familiar surroundings and activities would reduce the stress level? It might at that, but I don’t know what to do about busybodies.”

“That’s part of Uncle Abner’s job. Also,” she said after a slight pause, “you might want to consider shielding the place so it doesn’t look unusual from outside.”

“Indeed. I’m still in a quandary about how to proceed on the main problem: how to get those collars off.”

“The problem is the instability. You need a combination gadgeteer and devisor with a rather special ability: he’s got to be able to synchronize with someone else’s set of assumptions, without knowing what they are at the beginning. That’s the only way of keeping it stable while you’re analyzing it. I have no idea where you’re going to find one; apparently it’s quite rare. Most devisors are more into imposing their own ideas than getting into someone else’s.”

“Well, that gives me a start on where to look for a specialist. Other than that I think I’ve got what I need for the moment.”

“There’s one other thing that’s bugging me,” Natalie said. “We’re having difficulty replacing their hooves with feet. Now that I know what’s interfering I can understand it, but I’d like some ideas.”

Ponygirl paused, and then her face went a bit slack as she looked upwards. When she came back, she said: “If you feel you have to, how about a prosthetic socket on the end of the leg which fits both a prosthetic foot and hoof?”

“If it works, it’ll solve one problem,” Dr. Nabokov said. “Why do you think it’ll work?”

“The ponygirl goddess doesn’t have a really crisp, well defined definition for a ponygirl. Her worshipers have a wide range from full time, total immersion in the role all the way to a girl who’s playing part time, and the vast, you could say overwhelming, majority are on the part time end of the spectrum. Hooves aren’t consistent with the part time end, but removing them is moving away from the core definition, especially since the girls in your stable have been trained to be full time.”

“I think I see. You think that as long as there are hooves, and they’re used regularly, there shouldn’t be any interference. It’s worth a try.”

“There won’t be any interference. It was her suggestion.”

“Oh. So that’s what happened. Is there any way I can get you out to our installation for a while?”

“Um.” Ponygirl paused for a moment. “She thinks it would be a real good idea. Talk to Uncle and the school, and we’ll pencil it in for either the break before the Spring term or the Spring Break. The approvals will go through like they’re greased.”

“Good. Now, if we follow your suggestion about exercising them the way they’re used to, we might have serious publicity problems.”

“Hm. Talk to Uncle about that -- publicity is his business! You could also use a shield like Morigan had.”

“That level of seeming is way out of my area of expertise,” Natalie said.

“I don’t think Morigan built it herself. I think she got it from someone like Sin deRome’s Mercenary Emporium.”

Dr. Nabokov frowned. “I can see how a shield would be useful, but trying to get a black market purchase past the accountants.... I’ll have to think about that one!”

“Talk to Uncle. He might have some suggestions.”

“So he might. Well, I think we’re done here.”

“Likewise.” The two mages took the sheet with the crazy looking diagram and burned it.



Friday, December 29, 2006.

“Not again!” Sted thought as she began to prepare for the emergent mutant group. As soon as she’d started preparing, worry had hit her like a wet blanket. She sighed and pulled out her special deck of Tarots, uttering a silent prayer of thanksgiving for the unheeded warning two days ago as she shuffled the deck, and a prayer for the detachment to see what the cards were really saying when she cut it.

The first card was the Sun, reversed. Something hidden. That could be the underground emerging mutant group, but... She turned another card, forming a question for more information on what was hidden. The Chariot, reversed. The war card. She had a bad feeling about this. She turned another card, asking for information about who was making war. The Hierophant, reversed. The bad feeling congealed. Was it Humanity First? She turned another card. This was another one she’d never seen before, but the gaunt face and burning eyes hardly needed the legend at the bottom: “The Fanatic“.

She thought of moving on, and then it occurred to her: which fanatic? The world contained lots of fanatics, most of whom were working at cross purposes. She turned a card. The Owner of Chains. She looked at it a while. That didn’t seem to be Humanity First, it was more like the ... MCO? She turned another card to clarify. The eight of bridles. Power and guidance. Much more likely to be the MCO than H1.

Now, what, if anything, should she do about it? She turned a card. The seven of chains. Seven was knowledge, and by extension, magic, and chains represented a binding. Therefore ... she turned another card. Two cards came up: the Devil and the Wheel of Fortune. She was supposed to bind a demon? And what was the Fate card doing here?

A thought occurred to her. If the ponygirl goddess could manipulate probability sufficiently to get her picked up by Lady Morigan, then it might be able to manipulate probability so that the MCO strike force didn’t. She opened herself to the presence that lurked in the back of her mind, and laid out what she wanted, or rather didn’t want, to have happen. A timeless time passed as she ruthlessly simplified what she wanted until she felt the subtle signs of the world’s probability structure shifting around her. The sense of unease fell away. The sense of gleeful anticipation which replaced it was almost as disquieting.


Sted flew slowly down the street, invisibly checking out the neighborhood for anything strange looking. The address she’d been given turned out to be a Unity church, and there didn’t seem to be any unusual activity, like vans of Humanity First thugs, in the neighborhood. She didn’t notice the slightly disarranged curtain obscuring a window in a house across the street from the parking lot at the back of the church.


Now, how to get in, she wondered as she circled. She noticed a car drive up and a woman and early teen get out and walk toward the church. She swooped in behind them and tailgated through the doors. She listened for long enough to determine she was in the right place, and then decided to make an entrance.

She found a spot where nobody was looking, and transformed to her superheroine costume. “Is everybody here?” she asked.

Pandemonium erupted. Well, maybe not quite; there were only six people in the room, seven counting herself. Two adults and four teens. Not quite enough for real pandemonium; even so, they did a good job of it.

She held up her hand. Instant quiet. “Hi people. I’m Ponygirl. Rather obvious, what?”

“How’d you get in here?”

“I tailgated with one of you. See?” She vanished and let the pause grow a moment. Then she reappeared in her cabbit form and wiggled her ears and nose at them. She vanished again, and then reappeared a few seconds later in the holiday cow-girl costume.

“One of my powers is invisibility.”

“So you flew in here looking like a ... cabbit? You could do that anywhere!”

“I’m a fixed form shapeshifter; that’s one of my shapes. And I couldn’t do it anywhere. My invisibility is strictly to electromagnetics‚ that is, light, radar. There are a lot of ways to find me when I’m invisible. Some of the equipment isn’t all that hard to get: standard home security motion detectors are quite adequate. They’re regularly deployed in places that would be, um, interesting.

“Let’s do some introductions. All I know is that this is an emerging mutant support group; the only person I’ve met is Mrs. Williams.” She made a slight bow toward the lady. “So let’s get names out of the way and then go around and each of you say a couple of words about yourself and what you’ve discovered happening.”

“Uh. I’m Melanie,” a cute 13 year old said. “Melanie Stott, actually. Mom decided not to come with this time.”

“So what can you do and how did you discover it?”

“Well, I was weighing myself, and wondering if I could lose a few pounds.” She blushed. “The scale went down! Then I wondered how far it could go down, and I found myself floating!”

Sted laughed. “I can see it! What else can you do? Stronger, smarter, move things with your mind?”

“School and gym have both gotten easier.”

“Let’s try something.” Sted reached into her purse and pulled out a meter long rod. “Let’s see how much weight you can lift.”

One of the boys, Jerry, tried to lift it, and failed. “What’s that thing?”

“And how did it fit in your purse?” Tom added.

“The purse was a gift from my mentor; think of it as a bag of holding with some protective spells on it. I made the rod while I was playing with gravity and inertia. Do you know how to do a bench press, Melanie?”

“Sure.” She found a spot on the floor and lay down. Sted put the rod in her hands. “Now I’m going to make it heavier, you just put it up and down. Tell me when it gets too heavy! I’m not looking for an exact measure, just whether you’ve got enhanced strength.”

Melanie pushed it up and down a few times as Sted made encouraging noises. “OK, stop,” she said, taking the rod out of Melanie’s hands.

“I could have gone more!” the surprised girl said.

“Yes, but you were beginning to strain a bit, and it was up to 800 pounds. That’s right around the world record for an unassisted bench press by a baseline. You’ve obviously got enhanced strength; we can leave the details for Powers Testing. You’re at least an Exemplar 3, which puts you out of the range for the two low level schools.”

“Low level schools?” Mrs. Williams said. “We were looking at Haile Village.”

Sted felt a touch of real horror at the name. “Something’s wrong. Let me call our Security department.” She fished her phone out of her purse.

~Whateley Security,~ the professionally bored voice said. There was a slight pause as he looked at the enhanced Caller ID. ~What’s up, uh, Ponygirl?~

“I’m told there’s some place called Haile Village that claims to be a mutant training school. I’ve got a real bad feeling about it. Do we know anything?”

~Just a sec.~ She heard tapping on a keyboard, and then an ‘oh, shit!’ ~Let me see if I can find Lt. Trout. Meanwhile log in and I’ll route you to the intel data base.~

“Will do.” She pulled her laptop out of her purse, flipped the cover and turned it on. Two seconds later the Whateley Academy home page appeared, showing an image of the academy with several neatly uniformed students walking purposefully down well maintained paths between manicured lawns.

~You’re on,~ the voice on the phone said. The picture on the screen changed to a classroom where several students were hovering near the ceiling, and a couple more looked decidedly non human.

Then it shifted to a full screen menu that said: “Intelligence Data Base. UserID: Ponygirl Temporary Authorization: Whateley Security.” That shifted to a search screen. The entry field filled itself in, and then the screen shifted to a split view. Haile Village’s home page showed in the center, while there were menu items on the side and bottom. The top had a blinking red legend: Potempkin Village.

“What’s a Potempkin Village?” Mrs. Donaldson asked.

“False front,” Sted answered. “Comes from Catherine the Great’s reign as Czar of Russia.”


“This looks awful,” Mrs. Williams said. “Um. How do we know which is which?”

Sted shrugged. “I know which school I go to, and it isn’t that one.”

“Um...”

A muffled crack sounded. “Did you hear that?” Bethany asked.

Another muffled crack sounded, then a sound like ripping paper.

“Gunshots?” She looked at the controls for the projector and pressed a couple of buttons. The view from one of the outside security cameras replaced the screen from her laptop.

A pair of nondescript vans blocked one end of the street. A vaguely military vehicle blocked the other end. As Ponygirl watched, fascinated, someone in the military vehicle lobbed an object toward the vans. It blew up halfway there, putting more holes into the cars parked along the previously quiet tree-lined street.

She fiddled with the controls again. “Hey, look what’s going down right outside our door,” she said into her phone.

There was a pregnant pause. ~Oh, SHIT! Hey Sarge, look at this. Where’s the f’ing Lt.~

“I’m going to put you on hold and call it in,” Ponygirl said. “However...” She punched another number into her phone and listened for a minute.

“I don’t believe this!” She looked at her phone and carefully entered a 29 digit sequence.

~KCCC, how may we help you?~

“If you’ve got a chopper up, you may want to look at the 2100 block of Severin St. There seems to be a pitched battle going on, and the police 911 number is telling people it’s a couple of kids with firecrackers. This is Truthissomewherearoundhereifweonlyknewwheretolook out.”

She fiddled with the controls on the projector. The screen split to show an evening sitcom. “Let’s see whether they take the bait.”

It was only a minute before a “breaking news“ banner appeared. A few seconds later a grainy picture of the carnage outside came on, with Marla Davidson giving a breathless introduction. The camera lovingly focused in on two burning cars, several downed trees and the two groups at either end of the street which were still exchanging fire.

“Do you have enrollment forms?” Mrs. Donaldson asked.

“I’ve only got three sets left; we’re going to have to get one copied. Just a sec.” Ponygirl switched back to Whateley Security.

~You’re back. Anything new?~ the no longer bored voice said.

“If you want a laugh, tune to KCCC in Topeka, Kansas. Meanwhile I’ve got several new students, and I need to know if there’s someone in administration to fax the applications to.”

~They’ve gone home for the night,~ he said. ~We still haven’t found Lt. Trout. Meanwhile, here’s our incoming fax number.~

She quickly wrote it down and handed it to Mrs. Donaldson. She heard a muffled tappity-tap, and then an ‘oh, shit!’ followed by, ‘hey, guys, you’ve got to see this!’.


Sted’s phone suddenly emitted a cavalry bugle call. “Drat! That’s the bat-signal, guys.” She held a hurried conversation. “It looks like the police want paranormal assistance. I’m not sure what for, it looks like they’re done out there.” She hurriedly stuffed the phone and several other things she’d had out back into her purse. “I’ll be back in a while.” She shimmered a moment, and suddenly a cabbit floated in the air where she had been. It vanished.


Ponygirl circled the area swiftly and noted two groups of men that seemed to be recording the action. Two stunned groups of men. She gained a bit of altitude and flipped through visualizations until she got one that overlaid the locations of the police cars.

~ Car 54, there’s a group of two men taking a video of the action from a tree on the 2000 block. Car 45, there’s another group about half way down the 2200 block. Forensics would undoubtedly like a look at what they got. ~

~They sure would~, the dispatcher added. ~Not to mention the prosecutors. Everyone else on crowd control, there’s probably unexploded ordinance littering the area. SWAT is coming in to do a sweep.~


Ponygirl was starting another sweep when she caught a flash out of the corner of her eye. Her display shifted to a telescopic view of a man holding a rifle and sitting in a tree. She saw two more flashes, followed by the snap of the rifle firing a couple of seconds later. The display in her visor located it in the 2000 block, behind the three burning vans. The helpful display located the targets: two policemen on the ground.

~Officers down! Car 54~ she snapped into her communicator. ~Sniper. I’m on him.~ She did a power dive using the friction eliminator and inertia reducer, and then smoothly shifted the friction eliminator off to stop dead behind the sniper. She grabbed him by the collar and slammed him up against the tree trunk. Then she nailed him to the trunk with two tangle cord rounds. She looked around and spotted the two cameramen trying to get away. She nailed both of them with tangle cord rounds as well.

Two more patrol cars came up and skidded to a stop as the patrolmen almost erupted from them, guns drawn. Two of them looked around and then, holstering their weapons, pulled out first aid kits and hurried over to the downed patrolmen. The other two walked over to her.

“There’s the sniper,” she pointed to the man bound to the tree, “and there’s the two guys with the camera.”

“Humph. Tangle cord?” One of them said, holstering his weapon. “What do we cut them down with?”

“You’re going to need power tools,” she answered. “Now I’d better see if I can do some healing on the other two.” She walked over to where the two policemen lay on the ground and focused on her Paladin talent to see if there was any god-type entity with an interest that could channel healing energy through her.

It seemed like there was: the spirit of the Protector of the Community. As she knelt next to the two officers and placed a hand on each of them, she got the impression that it had been known by many names in many different times and places.

The flow of energy practically jolted her upright, it was so strong. She watched the bullet holes close under her hands, to be replaced by healed scars. Color slowly returned to the two troopers’ faces. One of them struggled to sit up.

“Wait for the ambulance, guy,” a second trooper said.

“But...”

“Let the medics deal with it. We aren’t under fire, we’ve got enough officers here. Let the medics do their jobs.”

“But... Oh, all right.” He laughed weakly.

“Scars?” the first officer asked her.

“Well,” she replied. “I don’t actually do healing myself. I have to ask Higher Powers to channel healing energy through me, and they do it their own way. This particular Higher Power is a warrior type; a warrior’s scars are battle honors. It also thinks that if a warrior gets injured in battle, he should have to work a bit to get back into shape. Like, make it too easy and you get into bad habits. Healing from wounds is simply another battle.”

“I’d rather have the bad habit,” the other officer she’d just healed said. He laughed weakly. “Seriously, I don’t know how I can thank you for saving my life. I thought I was gone for sure.”

“If you were Catholic, I’d suggest a prayer of thanksgiving to the Archangel Michael. And a donation to your Benevolent Association. Anyway, here comes the ambulance, and I’ve got more to do to finish this mess. Be well.”

She got up from her crouch and looked over at the clump of officers. Damn, she thought and then chided herself for using a curse word, that looks like Mr. Rogers.


Ponygirl walked up to the little clot of officers.

“You healed them?” the Lieutenant asked.

“They’ll survive. They’ll need recovery time: they lost a lot of blood. They’ll have some scars, and they’ll need a bit of physical therapy, but they should be fine.”

The Lieutenant nodded. “I know it sounds cold, but scars are good when it gets down to insurance, lawsuits and all that messy stuff.”

“That’s what came through. I quit asking Higher Powers why they do things the way they do a while ago. It’s not that they won’t tell me, it’s that most of the time I don’t understand.” She shrugged. “They’ve got a much wider view of things that I’d rather not understand, frankly.”

“Which is a perfect opening for me,” Mr. Rogers said. “There’s a supposedly secret emerging mutant support group meeting in the church over there. If you’ll give me one of your CSI people, I want to take Ponygirl and talk to them.”

The Lieutenant looked at the devastation around them. “You know, I think that’s a very good idea.”


The three of them carefully picked their way across the holes in the street to the church door. They found two figures standing in it. The one wore an scarlet suit of old-fashioned knight’s plate armor, complete with a strange looking helm and a white cross on the breastplate. The other wore a conservative suit and looked like a personification of Positive Intention. “Well, reverend, it looks like the fun’s over, and your church is still standing,” the knight said. “So I’ll be going.” He promptly vanished.

The minister recovered quickly. “Gentlemen, lady, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Mr. Rogers showed the minister his badge. “I understand there’s an emerging mutant group meeting downstairs that we’d like to talk to. The reason ought to be obvious.”

“You think they had anything to do with this?”

“I seriously doubt it,” Mr. Rogers said. “However, as it’s said, ‘collect data first, speculate later’.”

“A good thought. I sometimes wish more people would honor it. I’m Jason Dannon, this congregation’s minister.”

“Good to meet you, Rev. Dannon,” Mr. Rogers stuck out his hand.

Pleasantries over, the minister lead the group downstairs.


“I think we’re all kind of curious how it happened,” Ponygirl said to Mr. Rogers. “Let’s see what I can do with a location spell,” she added a bit doubtfully.

“You don’t sound all that confident.”

“Hey, the spells I used on Christmas were covered in the first semester. This is one I’m going to have to look up.” She pulled a dog-eared copy of Elementary High Magic out of her purse.

“I’d think you’d look it up on the net?”

“Can you imagine the kind of havoc that having accurate spells on the net would cause?”

Mr. Rogers shuddered.

She carefully drew three concentric circles and then five smaller circles around them, connecting the five circles into a pentagram. She scooted back and made a gesture; the diagram lit up for a moment.

“So far, so good.” She put a bit of shrapnel she’d collected from the H1 vehicles in one of the circles and made another gesture. The circle glowed green briefly. Then she put a bit of junk from the other set of vehicles and tested again. She put an H1 pamphlet, her MID and her Topeka Police ID in the other three circles, adding a few symbols to connect the proper aspect of each item to the diagram, and tested after each one. Finally, she took out a standard Tarot deck and put the Hanged Man in the center circle. The final test showed green.

“Let’s see what happens.” She eased back and held a cone that had fine multi-colored sand over the diagram. As it fell, it separated into different colors. Four of the colors formed lines radiating out from the center circle in different distances. The other colors neatly formed little piles.

“We have four traitors? What’s the scale?”

“It’s a log scale. Let’s try a visualization next.” She drifted over to the diagram and carefully scribed a symbol just outside of the outer circle. Then she drifted back out and made a gesture. The space over the diagram showed a roiling moil of colors, and then cleared to show ... a wall.

She backed the visualization up a bit, and discovered that it was the wall of the room they were standing in. Then she had it move inside the wall.

“Hmm,” the CSI man said. “I’ll bet that dingus is a bug.” He took a gadget out of his case and walked to the opposite wall. He ran the gadget up the wall. About halfway up it began to beep excitedly.

He looked at the wall closely and nodded. Then he took pictures from several different angles using different filters.

“Reverend?”

“Go ahead.”

He carefully cut a section of the drywall and popped it into an evidence bag. Then he took a few more pictures. He extracted a flat black box that had several leads, and popped it into another evidence bag. “That’s that,” he said in a satisfied tone. “Next?”

Ponygirl gestured and the scene was replaced by more shifting colors, and then an image of a man dressed in a business suit.

“I think I know him,” Mr. Rogers said. He pulled out a notebook and wrote something. “Send the report and photos to MCO Internal Investigations. Next?”

The next scene was of a rather harsh-faced woman peering out of a window, hidden by an artfully arranged curtain. Ponygirl backed the image up until they could see the front of the house with the house number.

The next scene was of a police officer. “I know him,” the CSI guy said. “He’s in the 911 response unit. What’s that about?”

“Someone had the emergency line telling callers that the mess outside was a couple of kids setting off firecrackers.”

“Oh, really. Do we have any more?”

Ponygirl made a gesture and the image vanished. “Nope, that seems to be it.”


Wednesday, January 3, 2007

“We’re here,” Uncle George said as he pulled into a parking space at the Capital City Gun Club.

“So I see,” Sted answered.

He picked up the box with his pistol as Sted made sure her guest pass was showing.

“George Lancaster!,” a stout lady exclaimed as they walked into the office building. “And your niece?”

“Yep, Martha,” he answered. “You should have the request from the Topeka Police Department on her by now.”

“Sure do. Let’s step into the office.” She nodded in the direction of one of the closed doors that punctuated the wall.


“Let’s get the paperwork done. I need to see your police and school IDs.”

“Time to put the cards on the table,” Sted grinned. “Let’s see. Kansas ID. Topeka Police Auxiliary. Federal concealed carry permit.” She arranged them in a vertical column. “New Hampshire ID. Berlin Police Auxiliary.” She arranged them in a second column and then hesitated slightly before she laid her MID at the top of a third column, placed neatly between the first two. “School ID,” she said as she put her Whateley Academy student ID under it, followed by the Topeka and Berlin Paranormal Auxiliary police cards.

Martha stared at the MID for a moment as if she was hypnotized. Then she shook her head and picked it up very carefully. She looked at both sides and handed it back, together with the two Paranormal Auxiliary cards, without saying a word.

She spent a few minutes entering codes into the system. Then: “What experience do you have?”

“I took the weapons safety course at school. They don’t let you on the ranges until you’ve taken and passed it. It’s taught by retired military personnel. Then I’ve been spending a half hour a day three days a week practicing for the last three months.” She hesitated. “One of the range people suggested I might like Basic Rifle, but my dance card is pretty full. I don’t think I’ll be able to take Basic Rifle until next year.” She answered the unspoken question. “That’s patterned on Army Infantry and Marine Corps light weapons training. It’s taught by retired military drill instructors.”

“Interesting,” she said. “We’ll say you’re taking a military academy program.” She went back a screen and added a check mark. “That ought to do it.”


Monday, January 8, 2007


Sted dropped out of the sky in front of Whitman Cottage. Mrs. Savage spotted her as she crossed the lobby. “As soon as you get settled, Chief Delarose wants to see you.”

“Wilco,” she answered as she headed for the stairs and the freshman floor.


Sted walked into the security area of Kane Hall and waved at the guy at the desk.

“You’re in trouble already?”

Sted laughed hollowly. “I sure hope not. Chief Delarose wanted to see me.”

“He ought to give you the morale booster award for the week. That video of the MCO and H1 shooting each other up still has almost everyone laughing.”

“What makes you think I had anything to do with it?”

“You’re a student here and you were on the scene. Also you need to practice that expression more. Head on back.” He waved toward the back of the office.


“Well, Miss Lancaster, you seem to have talked yourself into an interesting position,” Franklin Delarose said. “The Headmistress thought you did reasonably well, and even Ms. Hartford allowed that you weren’t too awful. However...” he let the pause continue.

“However?”

“I don’t expect you’re going to stay out of the public eye, so you need to learn the Whateley Academy publicity guidelines and talking points. I looked up your family. You can discuss them, in confidence, with your Uncle Abner if you feel the need for additional guidance. You need to get right on that; you’ll be quizzed on them by our public relations staff in a few days. That’ll include quite a bit of role play in front of the camera.”

“More work,” Sted said a bit theatrically.

“Of course. Now Administration forwarded this request for you to have a police procedure course. You’ll have the police procedure course we have for the Cape Squad and other interested students. Since you did well with Independent Study last term, we’re going to load your schedule with the basic legal courses. For the rest of your courses you’ll see your regular counselor.”

“I figured I’d have one,” she said.

“Now the last piece is confidential for the moment. Understand?”

“OK.”

“We’re getting a bit of pressure from Dunwich, Berlin and other local areas to open up a bit. We’ve got students going to Dunwich and Berlin on a regular basis; they’d like us to join some of the student activity mixers with the rest of the local high schools and prep schools, as well as have some of our own security people who can handle our students if they get a bit obnoxious. The administration is approaching the first suggestion with extreme caution, but the second has more than a bit of justification. So you might, and I have to emphasize might, be on the peacekeeper team for Berlin.”

Sted shook her head.

“You don’t like the idea?”

“It’s like I’m being pushed into the superhero role, and that’s not where I saw my life going. I’m still more interested in a tech career.”

“You’re also still young enough to change your mind another several times.”

“I guess.”

“Well, think about it.

“As far as what you did in Topeka, I think you did a great job for being hit with it cold. No detention.” He stood to usher her out of the office.


“How’d your vacation go?” Derala chirped as Sted walked in the door of the dormitory room she shared with the big black bird with the girl’s head.

“It was, um, interesting,” she replied as she shrugged her purse off her shoulder and began pulling things out of it and piling them onto the bed. “What happened downstairs? It looked like a battle zone!”

“New girl got into it with Tisiphone.”

“She survived?”

“Yeah, both of them survived. Murphy is going to be an interesting add to the floor.”

“She has a code name?”

“That’s her code name.”

“Meaning she’s either a plumber or a bad luck nexus.”

“The latter. She’s rooming with Grabby. Um. Couldn’t you just dump your purse out on the bed?”

“I’m afraid if I did it would look like Fibber McGee’s closet in here.”

“I don’t wanna know,” Derala muttered. “Interesting is all?” she chirped.

“Well...”

“Come on, three television appearances, on the scene of the MCO vs H1 shootout and you’ve got a command appearance with Chief Delarose? Besides not being that far from Kansas City. That’s just ‘interesting’?”

“Well... You know I’ll have to write a paper about it for English. What I Did on my Christmas Vacation.”

“Of course. This is High School!” A pencil floated up off of Derala’s desk and waved back and forth for emphasis. “So give! Howcum the MCO didn’t haul you off?”

Mrs. Savage stuck her head in the room.

“The Headmistress just called; she wants to see you in her office right away.”


An hour later Sted staggered back into the room.

“You look beat!”

“Well, when the Headmistress negotiates, she negotiates.

“Oh?”

“Well, let’s see. Gems. Tuition. Superhero antics. Italian Wall Lizards. The Mutant Death Matches. I barely missed getting put into Team Tactics.”

“Oh, why not?”

“She bought that the rest of my team wasn’t ready for it.”

Derala almost said something, then she paused. “What’s that?” The floating pencil pointed at Sted’s right shoulder.

Sted looked. “Captain Flypaper, I believe.”

“What is it?”

“It’s an Italian Wall Lizard. I got four of them for Christmas. They thought I’d like a touch of home.”

“They’re letting you have pets?”

“Well, I claimed that I was going to use them next term when I take Devisor Biology.”

“Oh. Well, if it works. Italian? I thought you were from Kansas!”

“I am. They’re native to Topeka.”

“Just a minute. Italian Wall Lizards are native to Kansas?”

Sted laughed. “I gather they escaped from a pet shop and colonized the surrounding area. I’m not sure how they survive the winter, but if they can survive a Kansas winter, they can survive a New Hampshire winter. Not that I’ll let them out--that’s one of the conditions.”

“Well, make sure they don’t start running around the room, please. So what did she want to know about the gems?”

“She wanted the school’s cut for what I made selling them. 7%.”

“With everything we’re already paying?”

Sted laughed hollowly. “Oh, we negotiated a deal. I pointed out that, since I wasn’t allowed to go to New York by myself to deal with the people in the Gem trade, I wasn’t likely to sell enough to matter. The Bursar didn’t like to hear that! Then I pointed out that, if I made enough, I could pay my own way instead of having to have assistance for part of my tuition. The Bursar liked that idea, so the Headmistress said she’d take it up with the Supervisors.”

“So you’ll be going to New York regularly?”

“I suppose if the Supervisors lose their minds, yes.”

<b>The End</b>