Question Calling out the troops. (Call for readers aid)

Kristin Darken wrote: No... I have that. It wasn't in it.

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The Top Gear Get-Away Affair (Teaser)
A Whateley Academy Story
By
E. E. Nalley

Canto I
The Mechanic's Daughter's Tale

January 28, 2007
Arena 99, Kane Hall Tunnels, Whateley Academy

Elaine lay on her back in a fantasy. Below her, riding softly on her anchor was a computer generated copy of her sail boat, Picket's Revenge. She was tucked quietly into a recreation of Ranger Cove off Lake Allatoona in a simulation of a perfect summer's day. A soft breeze hummed through the sloop's rigging even with her sails furled and reefed tightly. A few dozen yards away a family of Ants in a Chris Craft were swimming in the shallows of the cove while a barbecue on shore in the picnic area was painting the summer air with the sweet smell of baby back ribs brazing.

Ranger Cove had been Elaine's retreat since her father had given her the Catalina 27. Well, technically he'd given the sporty little twenty seven foot yacht to both of his children, but as usually happened when he tried to connect with his son, he'd found an eager and grateful apprentice sailor in his daughter and only vague disinterest from his son.

Steve had only set foot on the sail boat twice and then under coercion both times.

So Elaine had diligently learned to sail the fiberglass mono-hull that was older than her parents by herself, to be content in her own company and, when faced with a difficult decision, she came here. A Southern Girl in every sense of the word, Elaine fled to her roots and her favorite time of the year to try and decide when and how she would face Kodiak. Clad only in a bikini top and a pair of cutoffs, Elaine looked up at the clouds drifting by her mast and day dreamed. The fiberglass of the foredeck of the little yacht was warm against her skin and if she let herself, she could almost believe she was where the arena was trying so diligently to convince her she was.

"Oh...my...God, I'm going to melt!" declared a strident voice from the boat's little cabin beneath her.

Loophole sighed. "Hello, Jo."

"Is this a sauna?" the Alaskan demanded as she clamored up the companionway into the cockpit of the little yacht, shedding layers of winter clothing as fast as she could. "Or are you trying to acclimatize yourself to hell?"

"Welcome to the South," drawled the red head with a quirked smile. "Or at least the best recreation thereof." She paused for a moment as Murphy carefully made her way forward clearly uncomfortable on the narrow, moving boat.

"How long have you been a masochist?" Gunnarson demanded.

"There are lots of folks who consider this vacation worthy past times," Elaine shot back testily. "You lost," she added after a long moment.

"You assume we're playing the same game," the pale skinned girl shot back. The two girls smiled at each other and fell into a companionable silence for several minutes. "Your first, huh?"

"Yeah."

"How was it?"

"That's a little personal, don't ya'll think?" Elaine exclaimed.

"Like you're not dying to talk to somebody about it," Murphy snorted. "That fake sun isn't full spectrum, is it? Am I gonna get sunburned out here?"

"Ah never have," the other replied. After a long moment she looked out over the lake towards the Dam and finally said, "It wasn't floating on the ceiling on a pile of rose petals, if that's what you mean." Murphy merely waited until, just over the lapping of the lake against the hull came, "...but it was close."

A single eyebrow ascended Murphy's forehead and disappeared under her purple colored bangs. "My, my, aren't we the stud?" Elaine's fist shot out and tagged the younger Alaskan in the shoulder. "Ow! Watch it, Exemplar girl!"

"Sorry," the other mumbled, her face bright scarlet from blushing.

Joann sat up and looked around while rubbing her shoulder to take the sting from it. "I wouldn't have thought of you as a boat bimbo, but knowing you now, I'm sure you know everything about this pile of rope and plastic."

"Fiberglass," corrected Nalley, one corner of her mouth up in a smirk. "Mah dad was in the Navy and even after he got out, well let's just say Ah grew up on the water. Picket's Revenge here was one of his many tries to connect with Steve."

"This is a real boat?" the other demanded.

"It's a copy of mah real boat," Elaine elaborated. "Steve wasn't interested so she's mine by default. Let's me get alone time and think things out." She sighed again and stood up. "Ah'm thirsty, ya'll want a beer?"

"Never mind the fact that it's Sunday and neither of us are twenty one, exactly how will you provide beer?" The red head threaded her way through the mast lines aft with the grace of lesser primates and disappeared down the companionway. Murphy's sharp ears heard the dorm fridge she remembered passing on her way out of the little interior of the boat open and close, the clink of glass bottles touching each other and the sigh of pressure being released by a church key.

"By virtue of a simulator that's too exact for it's own good," she replied as she returned and presented a bottle of Sam Adams. "When Ah created the simulation file last summer of Picket's Revenge Ah used the optic-laser camera Dash invented her freshman year."

"Dash...Dashboard?"

Elaine nodded as she took a pull off the beer and leaned back against the pulpit rail at the bow of the boat. Murphy had seen enough pinups from her brothers to be more than a little jealous of the shapely curves of her friend and the unconscious sex appeal of the pose she'd affected. "Anyway, Ah used it to make a perfect copy and since there were two six packs on board when Ah took the scan..."

"Every time you call this thing up you get free beer?" demanded Murphy as she choked down the strong, bitter brew. It didn't matter that the beer didn't actually taste good, it was illicit, adult and breaking the rules. That made it ambrosia as far as she was concerned. Elaine only smiled and took another pull off her beer. "That's just sick!"

Elaine shrugged and looked away down the lake again. Joann watched the older girl drink from the bottle and as her face didn't flinch knew that she'd drunk enough beer to acquire a taste for it. Murphy forced her face to relax and let the bitter fluid flow over her tongue and down her throat. It was cold, but the flavor kept it from being refreshing at all and, despite her best effort, her face pinched up at the flavor. "If you don't like beer Ah'll be happy to get you a coke or something," she said with a smirk.

Murphy bit back on her temper. "What are you talking about?" she demanded. "I love beer! I can drink you and two like you under the table!"

"It's your first?" Elaine asked with a smile.

Joanne took another gulp and made a face. "Third," she admitted. "Gawd, how do people drink this?"

"Hold your nose and drink half," the red head instructed. With a dubious glance, Gunnarson pinched her nose shut and tipped the bottle back. It wasn't as bitter with her taste buds restricted, but still wasn't a flavor she'd ever think about desiring. Finally half the bottle was empty and she forced the cold lump down her throat. Looking up, she opened her mouth to demand what that would prove and the world did a lazy circle around her.

"Whoa," she breathed and despite her iron resolve, a giggle escaped her throat. Joanne hadn't giggled for two years and that had been a matter of iron will power.

"Now you know," managed Elaine around her own giggle.

"So, you beat the snot out of him, you did him, and now you're sulking in here," Murphy observed. "Wanna tell me why? Didn't you enjoy it?"

"Oh, Ah could get used to it," Nalley replied. "Hell, who am Ah kidding?"

"He knows how, eh?"

"Girl, he knows more than you're old enough to know about!" she said with a sigh.

Murphy only snorted and forced another drink of beer. She found that it wasn't as bitter as the first sips had been, there were actually a collection of flavors she was only just now starting to suss out from the cacophony of bitter and a very pleasant warm feeling was beginning to spread from her stomach. "So, why are you in here?"

Elaine looked down at her bare feet and back to the tree line of the lake. "Ah'm afraid," she admitted.

"Of what?"

"What he'll say," she said after a long pause. "What he'll do. What if he calls me a whore? What if he just says thanks for a good time, Red, but that's all it was? What if he just pretends he doesn't see me?" she ended in a whisper before her voice was drowned by a long pull from the beer. "In the history of science," she said with a smile that was obviously forced. "Not a single answer to a mystery of the universe has been found in the bottom of a bottle, but it hasn't stopped us from looking...!"

"Don't change the subject," Murphy ordered crossly. "And that's not what you're afraid of! He knows better than to do any of that shit, and with the sole exception of Tansy, from what I've heard every girl he's broken up with says he was such a nice guy about it that they'd probably take him back!"

"And the stories of the many notches in the belt?"

Murphy looked a Elaine with that "you're kidding right?" expression. "The telling story is the one you're not hearing. How many girls, the notches in the belt, are the ones telling the story? You know and I know, if he were to do that to either of us there would be tears and we'd blast him from now to forever."

"Yeah but that's us."

"And every girl under the sun who's ever had a bitch streak Elaine. Go to the source. If a girl's been burned hard, she'll be more than happy to share the hate and you know it. Betcha twenty he hasn't gone all the way with half the ones the stories claim."

Elaine snorted and took another drink. "Right, I'm sure he's a paragon of virtue and chivalry."

"You didn't lust after him for a year and a half because he was trying to top Pendragon in the shining armor department," Murphy shot back. She took another drink of the beer and was overcome with a giggle fit. "Man, you have it bad don't you? You're not afraid of him ignoring you or calling you names you want to be his whore, you've had it and you like it and that's what you're afraid of!"

"Hey, Ah'm not any man's whore...!" she shouted, her face flushed with humiliation.

"The hell you're not!" Murphy managed around her giggle fit. "You couldn't tell him no, could you? However he wants it you're up for it!" She went to take another drink and found the bottle to be empty. "It's like a damn porno movie! Hi Kody, Hi Elaine, bow chica bow wow...!"

"Excuse me," interrupted one of the Ants that was the 'father' character. "My family and I don't appreciate this kind of ..." he started before Elaine shouted to the heavens,

"Computer! Remove characters!" The human facade vanished from the robot that joined the crowd of his fellows filing out of the simulator. That handled, Elaine turned to further vent her rage on her friend only to find her snoring on the fore deck. "You don't know anything," she whispered at her sleeping friend. She took the empty bottle from her slack hand and vented her remaining anger on it, flinging it yards away until it vanished with a splash into the waters of the lake. "I'm not a whore," she told herself again. "I'm not."

* * *

Phoenix Spiritus wrote:
*Blink*

You don't drink?

All that was done sober?

Everything in the list?

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