"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? To see the canon Whateley Stories, check out either Sapphire's Place (http://www.sapphireplace.com/stories/whateley.html) or the Big Closet (http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/taxonomy/term/117)."

Plus this is still a work in progress, I have tried to get the spelling and grammar correct, or as correct as MS Word thinks ;) However if you spot a glaring error please shout out.

Part 2

The building in front of me was much smaller than the manse where I had come from, a low structure made of baked clay solids, the whole thing looked rather like a T’nkt Quen though rather larger, immediately in front of me was a path again covered in Calcium Carbonate this time with no binding hydrocarbon. The path led up to another door this one covered in once again a hydrocarbon based substance in a shade of red. These humans seemed to be rather reliant on hydrocarbons, I wondered where they came from, some animal byproduct I supposed.

I reached the door and tried the opening mechanism but the door was immobile, locked sprang to mind, I was unsure on how to proceed. After some small amount of time I head footsteps that sounded like they came from the other side of the door so feeling rather foolish I raised the amplitude of my voice, “Excuse me may I come in?” The footsteps stopped then after a moment and a rattling noise from the door it swung open to reveal a man, he was about 2 mets tall with a long nose and blue eyes, that was all I noticed before he grabbed me and pulled me into the building.

“Why n hell are you standing around out there girl, don’t you know that fugitives don’t stand around taking in the air?”

“I’m sorry sir I was unable to proceed as the door was immobile.”

“Hmm you’re a strange one for sure, look sorry for being abrupt but I already have two mutties (ed. slang term plural of mutants? in a non bad way ie not freaks) in here with me and I don’t want the locals to come round for a while. Lets start again shall we, I’m John Phelps you’re?”

“Sunspark, you may call me Spark though.”

“And you’re an alien yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Okay can’t say I’ve ever met one before and the ones I’ve seen sure don’t look as good as you do, is that some sort of disguise?”

“My host?”

“Host. You’re not some sort symbiotic creature or parasite or something are you?”

“No, I. My people are non-material, we can project ourselves into matter beings, so we can see wells from the bottom so to speak.”

“Ah so the girl who lived in there before you took up residence what happened to her?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You say your some sort of projection into this body?”

“Yes, my true form would destroy this well, I would absorb it, even if I didn’t want to, only the best trained of our teachers can travel in the wells without causing damage, I’m only a Ntrl in earth terms still young 14 earth years maybe. I have still lots to learn before I can rejoin my family.”

“Yeah but what happened to the person who was in that host before you were? Is she still in there?” Ah.

“No the body was created, my alfather created it for me, dominant species, dominant gender, just as I requested.” The man made a noise that I took to be laugher.

“I was beginning to think you aliens must be a bit powerful but to make that sort of mistake,” he carried on laughing.

“What mistake was made, I am sorry but I do not understand?”

“Dominant gender, listen kid how many genders do you got where you come from?”

“We have five true genders and some more uniques, but not all of us are able to couple with the uniques.”

“Well us humans have only two genders male and female,” So I know this. “female is generally the less dominant, so your dad made a big booboo didn’t he.”

“It would seem so, may I not change my hosts gender?”

“You can do that?”

“Of course, it would take some doing but the sexual characteristics are not too difficult to absorb, I have already made some non gross changes to facilitate usefulness.”

“Um what did you change?”

“I improved my visual perception and changed my radiation emission to retain warmth, oh and I also thickened the epidermis on my feet to prevent injury.”

“Well I suppose those aren’t to big a change, but the change from female to male is quite a bit bigger than that, how much biology do you know?”

“Almost none, but I will learn over time I’m sure.”

“Well don’t make any snap decisions, I’ll tell you what why don’t I introduce you to your traveling companions I think one of them is similar to you.”

~@~

We had been standing in one of the rooms in this building some sort of work room, I supposed, a long central table with lots of chairs all in a deep brown dead organic, the room smelt a little of mold, hmm; Any of various fungi that often cause disintegration of organic matter. Well my memories were certainly integrating nicely, I just hoped that I could soon know what fungi was.

John Phelps led me into another room, I assumed that this must be the refectory due to the large amount of edibles on various surfaces around the room. The room also contained two more humans and to my relief not as I had thought more Mrntls like myself. Both were similar to the reverend that I had met earlier their life signs blazed with power, a veritable feast on some of the planes I knew, perhaps if enough of these could be found the eaters may come here after all, I hoped not.

“Spark I’d like to introduce you to Vivienne Dream she is a latent empath and shifter, she is heading to Haven where she is to be trained by one of the mystics there.” Vivienne was female like my host but larger and I think older than me, she had almost blue hair, her eyes glowed with a pale blue fire. She had been looking at a food stuff when I entered but now focused her attention on me.

“Hey nice to meet you kid, call me Viv though Vivienne makes me sound old.” She grinned at me in again what I hope was a friendly way, some of the human body language was at once familiar and so weird. My attention was pulled back to the other occupant in the room, he and I assume he was, was huge three or even four times the size of me… My host. Luckily he was seated or the room would have appeared full.

“This Joe, he’s what we call a manifestor he’s also got some TK and other bits and pieces, have a talk to him about your gender issues, he’ll know what to do about it won’t you son?”

“Yes sir, ahm pleased ta meet yous kid.”

“Well this is Starspark she’s some sort of alien, and our dear friend the reverend would dearly like to get his hands back on her.” John Phelps said with what appeared to be some relish.

“She’s the angel?” Vivenne stood up and loomed over me.

“Hey Viv calm it, s’not her fault, see I got the low down on her from Donald, she was found in a field out east somewhere, then the reverend got his sticky mitts on her, but she’s been asleep up until today.”

“Okay, sorry, its just…”

“Viv we know already, just chill.” With one more stare in my direction she sat down again and resumed looking at one of the foodstuffs.

“Okay gang because the reverend will be doing his nut as soon as our fried her is missed, we’ll be leaving after lunch okay, if you need to get your things together I suggest you do. I’ll go and get the warp device ready. Joe can you dig some food out for us all, maybe Spark can help you.”

~@~

Joe was huge but moved with great ease, if my memories were working correctly the manifestation part of his skills meant he could create things out of the air, the TK stood for telekinesis, and I hadn’t been told about the other skills he had. Apparently though this was what Donald, Helens daddy I think, had meant people who were different.

“Spark you’s an alien huh?”

“Yes.”

“So’s that body ah disguise huh?”

“Um something like that yeah, but I have to wear it all the time,” see I was learning, maybe I could just say I was a mutant, “Joe what can you manifest?”

“This.” He held out a hand that became quickly covered in C60, to say the least I was unimpressed I could do that, well I should be able to. What did impress me was his seeming lack of energy uptake, in fact looking at his energy it didn’t even seem connected to the production of the molecule. “Cool huh, betcha never seen this stuff before.” He grinned at me.

“C60, An extremely stable, sphere-shaped carbon molecule, C60. The molecule can superconduct, lubricate, and absorb light. Look I can do that too.” I too held out my hand and slowly covered it in C60. when I had a bare handful I felt weak at the knees and had to stop, and I had smaller hands than Joe.

Joe who was now staring at me with an open mouth, “Can you do diamonds?” He asked.

“What is diamonds.” I asked, thinking that if I didn’t consume something soon I would have to start on the gasses in the space around me, and I hate eating gas, it just doesn’t fuel the body.

“Y’ dunno what a diamond is huh.” The C60 on his hand vanished and was replaced by a lump of what must be diamond C57 (ed. not sure if that’s correct), that’s a diamond, I can do lots of them but ma pa says it would be bad to make to many as lots of people lively hood are dependent on them.” He gave me another grin and closed his hand on the diamond.

“Can you do other elements?”

“Naw, just carbon though Doc. B reckons I should, I never really needed to, hows about you, can you do other stuff?”

“I can do any element though some won’t be stable here, or they might react with the environment. Joe is there any lead around I really need something to eat soon.”

“Uh yous want lead, the metal lead?”

“Yes please, or something else quite dense.”

“I only does sandwiches now, you can ask John if he has any he’s just down the passage there in the work room.

~@~

I made my way carefully out of the room and down the passage in the indicated direction, the room it led to also had a lot of food sources including some I couldn’t readily identify. “John Phelps, can I have some lead please I am hungry?”

“Jeez you walk quiet kid, next time knock or you’ll give me a heart attack.”

“Sorry, how do I knock?”

“You uh hit the door with your hand, gently to make a noise to announce your presence. Um did you say you were hungry?”

“I was um showing off to Joe and expended more energy than intended, I need to replace it soon.”

“Thought Joe was making sandwiches, you’d be surprised at him, guy that big he’s a good cook.”

“He was playing with organics when I left him, do humans eat organics a lot?”

“Kid that’s all we eat, well I suppose we eat inorganics too but only because they’re in the organics. What do your folks eat?”

“We can eat energy or matter, but I prefer metallic elements the denser the better. Do you have any lead, it should be stable in this environment.”

“You can eat organics if you have to though?” He said already rummaging around in some containers along one wall.

“Yes, though most organics are inefficient at replacing spent energy, I could if in desperate need eat gasses too but that would mean changing the body somewhat.”

“So you can eat all matter, from Hydrogen down?”

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t got any just lead, I have some old Nickel Cadmium batteries and a lead acid battery, are they any good to you.”

“May I see them?”

“Sure,” he hauled a container out from the ledge it was resting on and placed it on the table in front of me. “there you are, anything in there you want, or I can find you some iron or maybe some steel.”

“No no this will be fine.”

The box was full of small cylinders, a mixture of nickel and cadmium, some mercury, plenty of hydrocarbons, and several other less common elements, I quickly absorbed what I needed, then on impulse absorbed the rest, I could store it internally and maybe not have this same trouble again.

Absorbing that mass had taken some time approximately half an earth hour, by the time I was done the other two travelers were in the room with me. John Phelps was explaining how his Warp Device worked, Joe looked disinterested and was playing with an energy device, Vivienne looked bored and impatient. John Phelps’ device seemed simple though I wondered why it was inside, I modeled it in my head and created a smaller one in front of me, startling the three humans when I sent my dinner container crashing against the wall.

“Jeez, what’d you do that for?” John Phelps said.

“I am sorry I was trying to work out how you send things through your warp device, when I do it they just hit the wall.” He looked at me in disbelief.

“How did you know how it worked?”

“Well its sort of obvious, is you use gravimetric stresses like that things will be accelerated in that way, do you use an Altspac to move things beyond the Mainspac?”

“Um you lost me kid, what is an Altspac or Mainspac?”

“We are in a Mainspac now it is a reality of matter and energy, Altspacs are more normally associated with one or the other, or sometimes something else, I come from one.”

“Well I always thought of the place things went through after I sent them off with this as being a sort of hyper space, the distances there are not the same as here, and we humans can only remain in it for about a tenth of a second. Which is good, because the Warp Device only takes about one hundredth of a second to send you anywhere in the universe. Of course I haven’t tested it off this planet.”

“It is an Altspac, how did you discover it?”

“Um I didn’t I just made the machine, I knew it would work and it does, you’re the first person to see it and know how it works.”

“I am surprised the basic principal is simple, have you not shown it to other scientists on earth?”

“Um kid I’m just a devisor, it probably wouldn’t work for anyone but me.” John Phelps stopped talking and started to look panicked, as he said this, someone was knocking on the outside door.

“MR PHELPS CAN YOU OPEN UP PLEASE WE’RE LOOKING FOR A RUNAWAY, ONE OF YOU NEIGBOURS SAYS SHE SAW THE GIRL IN YOUR YARD.”

“Shit, quickly Spark you first, when I say step into the archway there, its quite safe. But here won’t be for much longer. Joe when you get to the other end give the letter I gave you to Doc. B, okay Spark good luck kid. Ready, step through.” I did.