Chapter 4

~o~O~o~

“Oh crap!” Davey moaned under his breath, sliding as low as he could in the seat, as the car pulled into the driveway of the split level house.

“What’s wrong?”

“You, you’re Tommy’s uncle,” Davey’s eyes wide with surprise as he looked up at the detective.

“You know Tommy?”

“He, he’s my best friend.”

“Oh shit,” The detective began laughing, “I should have put it together before now. Tommy is always talking about how his best friend is always building weird things!” Opening the door to get out, “Well come on, not like I have to worry about introductions.”

Davey followed Detective Langson to the door and stood beside and slightly behind him while he rang the doorbell.

“Hi Uncle Harry,” Tommy spoke as he opened the door, then darted past his uncle when he saw who was with him. “OH MY GOD DAVEY” the boy screamed,” You were on TV. They showed the whole thing,” The boy waving his arms as he spoke, “The cops were in a shootout with the bad guys and suddenly, WHOOSH! You jump jetted over that house in your Bushwhacker and pounded the bad guys van with the PPC cannon. You were fracking AWESOME!”

Detective Langson looked down at Davey who looked up with the ‘I got caught with my hand in the cookie jar’ look.

“Tommy what’s going on? Who’s at the door?” Tommy’s mother’s hand covered her mouth when she saw who was standing at the door. “David, Harry?” Looking quickly outside to see if anyone had seen them, “Quickly get inside.” She waved them in closing the door behind them.

Seeing the look in her brother’s eyes, “Tommy, Davey go upstairs. Davey get cleaned up and dressed, and brush your teeth.”

“Yes ma’am.” Both boys answered in unison.

Sitting at the kitchen counter sipping on coffee with his sister, Harry explained about the MCO somehow becoming involved and how no one in their department wanted to turn Davey over to them. He then detailed his plan of hiding Davey away for a bit, until things calmed down.

“Are you sure about this Harry?” His sister’s concern evident on her face, “You could get into all kinds of trouble hiding him from a federal agency.”

“MCO? Federal agency?” Harry chuckled, “The MCO is nothing more than a bunch of glorified rent-a-cops. They don’t have any true authority, they just act like they do and everyone gives them what they want mostly due to the publicity and public image they maintain.”

“Anyways,” Harry continued, “that kid saved our asses last night with that damn robot, he may not admit to doing it, but all of us know who it was. We ain’t handing him over to the god damn MCO, or anyone else for that matter. I don’t give a shit if the president orders us to do it, it ain’t gonna happen!” Taking a deep breath to calm himself, “Friend of mine has this cabin on a lake up in Minnesota. Figured I’d head up there with the boy, maybe get some fishing in while I’m there to,” Harry grinned.

“Letting Tonya know is easy,” Jenny said while sipping her coffee,” I was planning on going up to the hospital to visit them this morning, Tonya and I have been friends for years. For me not to go visit them would seem strange. I can let her know Davey is ok and with you. Are you sure it was the MCO?”

“No I’m not,” Harry sighed, “That guy got there way too damn fast for him not to know what was going down. Shit their nearest office in in Des Moines and that’s a good twenty minutes away. Given any normal person would be in bed asleep when it hit the fan, the time it would take to figure out if there was mutant involvement, which no one believes there was at the station, call him, get dressed and drive down here in just slight more than an hour? No there is something rotten here. We think he was already here in town.”

Harry’s sister gasped, “You think the MCO staged this?”

“I seriously doubt the MCO would have staged the attempted kidnapping, maybe those bastards at Humanity First?” Harry stated into his coffee cup for a moment. “Who knows? Maybe some super villain wants the kid to create sci-fi weapons for his minions. All we know is that we are pretty sure they were after the kid and I’ll be damned if they get him on my watch!”

“Davey is a really sweet boy.” Tammy inflected.

“Yea, yea he seems like a good kid.” Harry chuckled, “Although he was lying to me.”

“He’s scared,”

“Yea I get that, Hell I would be too if I were in his shoes. But this is going to be impossible if I am left in the dark, the kid has got to level with me.”

“I’ll take care of that dear brother,” Tammy reached over and patted her brother’s hand.

Harry was on his third cup of coffee when the two boys walked into the kitchen where he and his sister sat talking. “Looks like Tommy was able to find some clothes that fit you, huh sport?”

“Uh, these are my clothes,” Davey answered.

“Davey has a lot of his stuff here, Uncle Harry, “Tommy interrupted.

“Yes, “Jenny explained, “When Paul and Tonya have to go out of town and Davey can’t go with them, Davey stays with us.” Motioning toward the two boys to come to her, “This is very important boys.”

“Ok” the two chimed as they walked over to Tommy’s mother.
Looking Davey in the eyes, “Davey you know you are family here.”

“I know, Mrs. Stone.”

“Well Harry here is my older brother,”

“I kinda got that when Tommy called him Uncle Harry.” Davey looked down and began swishing his foot back and forth.

“Davey,” She gently pulled his gaze back up to her with her hand, “Family’s look out after each other.”

“Yes ma’am,” Davey almost whispered.

“Harry is my family and so are you,” looking directly into Davey’s eyes, “That makes Harry your family too.”

“Yes ma’am.” Davey whispered.

“And Davey,” She looked very sternly into his eyes, “Families don't lie to each other do they?”

“No ma’am.”

“So when you’re Uncle Harry asks you something, you tell him the truth.” The look she gave him was one only a mother could provide, both authoritarian and compassionate. “Harry needs to know these things so he can look out after you.”

“Don't worry Kid,” Harry leaned toward Davey, “Family don’t tell family secrets to others. Now tell me about that robot you built.”

~o~O~o~

After packing up the borrowed SUV Harry’s sister had loaned him, and leaving the motel. Harry found a place to buy a burner phone and made a call.

“Heya General!” How’s it hanging?” Harry spoke into the phone as soon as he recognized the voice on the other end say hello.

Gunny Bardue immediately recognized the old ‘we may be monitored’ signal in the callers greeting that his old team had set up to use and only seconds after that to recognize Langson’s voice. “Hanging Low and to the left as always. What is a squid like you doing these days?”

Good Langson though as he heard gunny say the correct countersign meaning that the gunny would understand the need to use their old form of double talk and not mention any names. “Oh heading due east trying to ride out those majestic Ocean Currents, wish I had that boat of yours though, you keep the liquor cabinet stocked so much nicer than I can afford on my salary.”

“Well you keep the sails full out, wish I could go with ya, but you know how I hate being that far from land.” As soon as the line clicked dead gunny Bardue yelled, “GET ME CARSON ON THE LINE NOW!”

Chapter 5

~o~O~o~

They had been at the small fishing cabin for a little over a week when Harry spotted the small vee hulled boat approaching with a lone man at the tiller of the outboard motor. Casually he sat down his fishing pole and pulled the binoculars, hanging on a strap around his neck, to his eyes. Focusing the binoculars, Harry exhaled in relief when he saw his old friend in the boat.

Killing the engine Gunny let the boat drift in the remainder of the way to shore and tossed Harry a rope. Heaving on the rope, Harry pulled the boat further up on dry land and then tied the end around a dead log that lay on the beach. Back over at the folding chair he had been sitting in, Harry flipped open the cooler, reached in and tossed gunny a cold can of beer before retrieving his 1911 colt from the shelf inside the cooler and stuffing it behind his belt in the small of his back.

“So what’s with the mayday call?” Gunny popped the can open and took a swig.

“You see the news with the giant robot down my way?”

“Yep, impressive but we have a whole group of kids that play with robots.”

“They arm them with working particle projection cannons, jump jets and a multi barreled fully automatic railguns that fires fifty cal slugs at Mach seven?”

“Well some of that maybe,” Gunny did a double take, “Did you say, full auto railgun?”

“Yep,” Harry took a swig out of the beer in in hand. “Sixty-six rounds per minute.”

“As in a fifty caliber linear accelerator capable of sustained automatic fire?”

“You got it.”

“Holy shit First, what have you gotten yourself in the middle of?”

Harry began telling the story, including Davey’s parents being the owners of Wiley Enterprises, Davey’s robots, His sister’s family involvement and what he little he knew of the attackers. Gunny listened, holding any questions until his old friend had finished.

“So do you think the kid is a mutant?” Harry had been Gunny’s first Sergeant when they served together and Gunny still referred to him as ‘first’.

“I don’t know Gunny,” Harry scratched the back of his head, “You got to admit that it’s weird how smart the kid is. I mean, he built a real life Battlemech, weapons, armor, even a damn fusion reactor to power it, from scratch!”

“But from what you’ve told me the boy has always been this way. Mutations of that sort usually only hit during puberty. And you even admit that with how the MCO showed up so fast it was probably a fake ID and probably wasn’t MCO at all.”

“Yea Gunny, we may be a backwoods farming town, but that MCO guy was there way too quickly to be legit.” Harry frowned, “Especially with there not being any talk at all about mutants.”

“Yea, that is the kicker isn’t it?” Gunny asked, “Why would either of those groups of bigots think this kid was a mutant? Everything you have told me so far leads me to believe that while he may be some kind of super-genius, nothing even hints at him being a mutant.”

“Well even though,” Harry swallowed, “I knew you worked with mutants and thought you might be able to help seeing how you know the ins and outs of kids in his type of situation.”

“Yea,” Gunny grimaced, “Not sure what the kid is, but I can’t stand seeing anyone try to railroad a kid. I’ll make some calls once we get to Whateley.”

“Whateley?” Harry asked.

“Yea First,” Gunny explained, “Whateley Academy, It’s where I work with those mutant kids. I’m in charge of the rifle and heavy machine gun range there. I also teach tactics.”

“You have a heavy machine gun range at your college?”

“Oh Whateley isn’t a college,” Gunny chuckled, “It’s a high school. Grades nine through twelve.”

“You teach high school students how to operate heavy machine guns?” Harry gasped.

“Harry what you need to understand is that we are preparing mutants to survive in the real world.”

~o~O~o~

“Uncle Harry, I don’t feel so good.”

Resting the back of his hand gently against the boy’s forehead, Harry realized the boy was burning up with fever. Looking toward gunny, ”What the hell, he was fine an hour ago?” Seeing Gunny pull a cell phone from his pocket, “No good, no reception around here gunny.”

“This isn’t an ordinary cell,” Gunny grinned as he dialed a number on it. ”Yes Miss Carson, This is Bardue, I have a medical emergency at my location. Do you have someone that can teleport? Ok hold on a sec.” Gunny turned his phone and took a picture of the boy lying in the bunk, then tapped a few keys and put the phone back to his ear, “Yes I sent a picture of where we are. Ok I’ll call you soon as they arrive.” Looking over at Harry, “Help is on the way.”

“Woah, What a rush!” an African-American teen in dreadlocks shouted when he and a girl suddenly appeared in the middle of the room from out of thin air. The boy was wearing what looked like some type of powered armor but painted white with a red cross on the chest. The girl was wearing a white and blue skin tight spandex superhero outfit complete with a cape. The spandex left very little to the imagination and her figure would make sports illustrated models jealous.

The boy began tapping his white cane against the ground as he walked toward the bunk, “Jericho, drop the act!” Gunny ordered, “that boy needs help.”

“Aye mon cap-i-tan” the boy replied as he dropped the cane and pulled a fanny pack around and opened it. Pulling out an instant read thermometer the boy pushed it into Davy’s ear and hit the button.

“One one seven point six.” A digital voice sounded from the device.

“Looks like a case of burn-out Gunny,” The boy put away the thermometer.

“Can you transport him straight to medical?” Gunny looked at the girl.

“Yes sir,” She walked over to the boy and picked him up like it was nothing, “See you back on campus Jericho.” And she vanished.

“What the hell…” Harry looked up at Gunny.

“She’s a teleporter,” Jericho chimed in. “Give her a picture of where she wants to go and poof, she is there.”

“So what’s your story?” Harry asked.

“Oh that’s easy, only a blind fool would teleport with her.” Jericho smiled, “And just so happens I am both blind and a fool.”

Bardue groaned,” I didn’t schedule our pick up until after dark so we may as well get some fishing in while we wait.”

“Woohoo,” Jericho jumped up and down, “I have always wanted to go fishing!” putting on his blind man routine once again Jericho began pawing Harry’s face with his hand. “Please mister can I go fishing with you and Gunny?”

“Jericho,” Gunny barked, “Do you want to be the bait?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then knock off the blind man crap!”

“Yessir!” Jericho jumped to attention and saluted gunny with his palm facing outward, then picking up his cane he tapped his way out of the cabin.

“He is blind isn’t he Gunny?”

“Technically yes, but he can sense everything around him and I mean everything. So while his eyes don’t work he can see better than us for the most part. The kid loves hamming it up though.”

“What did he mean by Exemplar and manifesting Gunny?” Harry reeled in the slack on his line while Jericho stood down the beach a little ways with his back to the lake, pretending to cast his pole toward the trees and ‘accidentally’ casting it into the lake. What made it even worse is the young teen had already reeled in more fish than Harry and Gunny together.

“Your boy is a mutant.” Gunny stated.

“I’ll take your word for it Gunny,” Harry’s face contorted a bit, “You are the expert in that field.”

“I may not be an expert, but I deal with them on a daily basis.” Gunny hooked a finger towards Jericho, “But if that clown over there says the boy is going through the exemplar change, then I would tend to believe him. Jericho may be the biggest clown on campus, but he is dedicated to helping others and knowing how.”

“So what about the change?”

“When an exemplar hits puberty their bodies go through a change, some sudden, some take months to change.” Gunny explained. “The ones that get it suddenly usually run high fevers and unfortunately lots of pain involved too, They can even go into what they term as burnout, which can kill them. The way it was explained to me was that every exemplar has a picture deep in their subconscious as to what they should look like, This is called the body image template or BIT for short. When they hit a certain stage of puberty their body goes through a metamorphosis, changing them into that image.”

“So what’s burnout?”

“Well a kids powers, their mutant ability or abilities, come to life during the manifestation. As you have seen from supers, some have tremendous power, and some of the time that power is too much for their body to handle and it overloads the body and mind. In really bad cases it can leave the kid a vegetable or even worse.

“That sounds like some heavy shit.”

“It is,” gunny frowned, “you may not be able to even recognize him once the change is complete. Then there are the extreme cases of GSD that look like something out of a horror film. So what can you tell me about this robot the boy built?”

Suddenly Jericho dropped his fishing pole and raced to the two men, “Was that her mech?” Jerica interrupted. “That was so fracking cool!”

“I thought you were fishing?” Gunny winced.

“Yea but if that girl built that, I am gonna be her bestest, best friend in the whole wide world. What kind of power source does it have? What’s it output?”

“Whoa kid,” Harry motioned with his hand for Jericho to slow down, ”First off, I do realize you are blind so I can see how you could make the mistake, but Davey is a boy."

Jericho’s eyes narrowed as he tilted his head to the side,“ Um, I must have been mistaken, easy to do as I was most concerned with his immediate condition.”

Gunny pursed his lips, thinking how unlikely Jericho to make that kind of mistake when it came to medical triage.

Not allowing his questions to be derailed, “Ok so what type of power supply does her, I mean his robot have?”

“That one I do not know, but he says it was perfectly safe. No way it could go boom and leave a crater.”

“Well the color of the flames of the rocket assist would lead me to believe there was a hydrogen fuel mix on those. But is that just stored fuel or is it a byproduct of osmosis through its main power supply?”

“I thought you could not sense colors Jericho,” Gunny squinted his eyes at the boy.

“I can’t Gunny, shoot I couldn’t even watch the video on TV. But all the other devisors told me what they saw. That mech has been the talk of the labs ever since it aired on TV. And the left arm weapon? the one that he did not use looked like some type of heavy caliber minigun.”

“ That one I do know. It’s called it a Gatling railgun.” Harry answered.

“Rail gun? As in linear accelerator?”

“Yes he said that.”

“Holy crapola.” Jericho whistled, “The designs on those are like super-secret pentagon stuff. How in the world did he hack into their computers and get those without getting caught? And to build it into a multi-barreled automatic, wow, just wow!”

“He didn’t have to hack the pentagon,” Harry had a hard time keeping his chest from swelling with pride as he answered the teen. “The pentagon uses his design.”

“Ok enough with the questions Jericho,” Gunny interrupted, “You want to know more you can ask the boy yourself when he gets out of medical. But I warn you,” Gunny paused for the full effect, “That boy is not to be played in any of your games, am I clear?”

“Clear as a bell Gunny Bardue!” Jericho stood once again at attention and gave the incorrect salute. “Anyone screws with this boy they screw with Me and Razorback!”

“Who’s Razorback?” Harry looked concerned.

“Remember when I said some kids can change into something totally non-human?” Gunny stated.

“Yes.”

“Well Jericho’s friend Razorback would put you in mind of a velociraptor.”

“I guess you do deal with some unusual kids Gunny.” The whole time Harry was praying that Davey’s change would not be so drastic.

"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 Whateley Academy at (http://whateleyacademy.net)"

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the Author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.