Okay here's one I wrote some years ago before I found Big Closet. Found it the other day when I was trying to clean up some folders on my computer. It's a complete story a bit less than 40k in word length, never been posted anywhere else. Although I'll be posting it in segments as it needs some serious editing.

~o~O~o~

“Hey Davey,” Tommy shouted over the noise of the four wheelers the two boys rode down the overgrown logging trail side by side. “You think you could make a mini PPC cannon to put on our mechs?”

Each of the four wheelers the boys rode towed a small two wheeled cart each of which carried scaled down replicas of the giant robots from the BattleTech and MechWarrior series of games and books that the both loved so much. In the cart that Davey towed, a three foot tall replica of a Mad Dog or Vulture depending on which game you wished to go by while Tommy’s cart held a slightly larger Mad Cat or Timberwolf. Both robots had numerous paint splashes and splatters marking the camouflaged paint schemes in bright oranges and red splotches.

Davey’s parents had insisted that the boy replace the miniature railguns on the robots with paintball guns after an accident during their ‘Solaris games’, as the boys called their robot wars, landed Tommy in the emergency room with a broken leg after a shot from one of the robots ricocheted and hit the boy in the leg with one of the 1/4 inch steel ball bearing it used for ammunition.

“Maybe?” Davey kept his eyes on the trail as the gears began turning in his mind on this idea. Remembering how angry his parents had been when they found out that he has built and put the linear accelerator cannons on their toys that broke his best friend’s leg. Not only had they made him remove all the weapons and replace them with paint balls, they both now had to wear protective gear when playing with the robots. “But I doubt my mom would let us have them on our mechs.” His mind still going over the implications of how it could be done, “Anyways I think it would deplete the battery after one or two shots and probably fry the other mech’s electronics.”

“Probably not a good idea them,” Tommy shouted back over the roar of the four wheeler engines.

Davey thought about the changes his parents forced him to make on his toys. It did have a positive side effect, another patent and more money for his family. Davey had hated the stupid helmet and plastic elbow, shin and crotch guards his mother had bought, so Davey make his own armor. Super lightweight, completely resistant to both heat and cold and a half inch of it could stop a 20mm armor piercing sabot round. Of course the kinetic energy of being hit with such a force would kill anyone wearing the armor, but the human body can only take so much.

Arriving at the barn that Tommy jokily called the lair of his mad scientist buddy, they washed the paint marks off the robots, stowed them away in their respective nooks and plugged them in to recharge the batteries for the next time they took them out to play.

“How’s the Bushwacker coming?” Tommy pointed to the blue tarp that covered something the size of a farm combine.

“Great,” Davey grinned, “Want to see it?”

“Hell yea!” Tommy grinned wide.

“Help me take the tarp off,” Davey ordered and he began pulling on a corner of the tarp.

“Wow!” Tommy’s mouth fell open as he gazed up at the partially complete Battlemech,” Is that a Gatling gun?” looking at the multi-barreled left arm of the monster robot.

“sort of,” Davey beamed, “It’s a multi-barreled railgun!”

“What? Like our mech’s had?”

“Not exactly.” Davey explained, “Remember how it took so long between shots for the gun to reload and power up the charge with our Solaris mechs?”

“Yeah,” Tommy nodded.

“Well this one charges each barrel independently and at a faster rate.” Walking under the arm Davey began pointing out the barrel position. “It loads the .50 caliber aluminum jacketed iron round here,” then pointing to the next barrel counter clockwise, “It begins to charge the barrel until it reaches this position,” Pointing at another barrel, “Where it fires the round, then repeats.”

“Fifty caliber?”

“Yep,” Davey’s grin couldn’t get any bigger. “And these are shaped bullets, not round like our mechs had. The barrels are rifled for better accuracy too.”

“How fast?”

“Muzzle velocity is 8200 feet per second, almost seven times the speed of sound. Cycling rate is 66 rounds per minute.”

“Holy scrap metal batman!”

“Other arm I am still working on,” Davey led his friend to the other side of the Battlemech and pointed at the robots arm, “A PPC cannon right out of the game!”

“No way!”

“Yep, but I can’t get the energy ball to stay together for more than fifty feet right now, but anything inside that range… say bye-bye to your electronics.”

“Didn’t you say a PPC uses too much of the batteries?”

“Well,” Davey began fidgeting and looking at his feet, “I made a different power source for this.”

“Oh yea?” seeing his friend was holding out on him, “So what did you do?”

“Promise not to tell anyone?”

“Like anyone would believe me?” Tommy chuckled, “Heck if I told anyone about half the stuff you make, they would lock me up in the looney bin!”

“Yea but this you have to swear!”

“Okay.”

“No really, I mean it. If Mom ever finds out she would go ballistic.”

“I swear!” Tommy held up his right hand with his fingers spread in the same fashion Spock used in star trek, changing his voice to mock a very solemn vow, “I will never reveal your secret, not to torture, subterfuge or death threats!” Tommy grinned as he added, “as long as they don’t offer cookies!”

Both boys laughed at his last remark. One of Davey’s favorite tee shirts had the slogan, “Come to the dark side… We have cookies!”

“I, it uses,” Davey almost whispered, ”Fusion.”

“It’s fracking nuclear!” Tommy screamed.

“Shhh,” Davey waved his arms frantically at his friend.

“You built a nuclear reactor!” Tommy’s volume lowered.

“It's a small one.”

“Small?” Tommy gasped, “Can you even use the word small and nuclear in the same sentence?”

“Look it’s not like I built a nuclear bomb, this is a fusion reactor, not fission!”

“Oh so you didn’t use plutonium to build it?”

“No! Where would I get Plutonium?” Davey smacked his open palm against his friend’s forehead, “Fusion dipstick! It combines elements together to make its power, not separate them like in the Chernobyl plant that melted down. This goes bad the worst that can happen is you get wet.”

“How would you get wet?”

“It uses water as the source element. Water is separated into its base elements, then the hydrogen is fused into helium. The waste gases which are helium and oxygen are sent out through the exhaust.”

“Cool,” Tommy grinned, “So when do we get to try it out?”

“Uh, I’m still molding the armor for it and I don’t have a canopy for it yet.”

“So does it run yet?”

“Oh yea,” Davey smiled, “power, guns, gyros, everything fully working, just have to finish making the rest of the armor and it’s ready to roll!”

“When do you think you’ll have it done?”

“Now that I’ve figured out how to make a transparent version of the armor for the canopy glass,” Davey grinned, “I should be able to get it done in the next few weeks.”

~o~O~o~

“DAVEY RUN!!!” Davey fell out of bed tangled in his covers at the blood curdling scream.”

“Davey,” a computerized female voice spoke, “You are in danger, you must get out of the house immediately.”

“Sarah what is going on?” the boy fought back his panic as he removed himself from the bedsheets.

“There are six armed men, they have just taken your mother and father prisoner. I am unlocking the barn and have begun the startup sequence for the Bushwhacker. Go out the window, run to the barn and get into the Bushwhacker. The firearms these men possess cannot penetrate the cockpit of the Battlemech, you will be safe there until the police arrive.”

“What about mom and dad?”

“MOVE NOW!’ the computer voice commanded. “I have contacted the police and sheriff’s department, psychological countermeasures will deploy in ten seconds, nine seconds, eight seconds…”

Opening the window Davey leaped out onto the roof as someone began trying to force his door open. Seconds after Davey’s bare feet landed on the moist grass behind the house loud heavy metal music began blaring from inside the house, the house seemed to almost vibrate from the sheer volume of noise as Davey ran across the yard and through the barn door that was sliding open. Lifting a corner of the blue tarp that covered his project, Davey climbed up the wooden step ladder that he had left there and into the open cockpit.

“Upload complete,” Davey heard a mechanical voice from inside the helmet that lay on the side console, then a second later the voice of Sarah, his computer,” Put on the helmet Davey.”

Grabbing the helmet and strapping it on, “Sarah?”

“Yes Davey, I’m here.” Dave found comfort hearing her calm computer voice.

“What is going on?”

“I am still assimilating the data,” he heard over the helmets headset. “Six men entered your home at 4:36am forcing open the front door. Your father immediately came out into the upstairs hallway where he was shot with a type of Taser by one of three men that had already come up the stairs. Your mother saw this and screamed which woke you up. I engaged the lock to the door of your room to give you time to escape and then began using your music throughout the speakers in the house to provide a psychological distration while you escaped, meanwhile starting the Bushwhacker and opening the door for you and uploading myself to the Bushwhacker’s computer.”

“Why upload, I can talk to you from here?”

“Not after I do this,” from the open barn doors Davey could see all the lights of the house go dark.

“Sarah?”

“Yes Davey?”

“Are they gonna hurt my mom and dad?”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Before Davey could ask any more questions he heard a whining almost whistling sound that began low and increased in pitch then Sarah spoke again, ”Reactor online, Sensors online, Weapons online, all systems nominal. Davey, there is something else I should tell you.”

“What?” Davey’s mind already too wound up in how impossible this night had become.

“When I turned off all power to the house that released the containment field on the nanites you have been working on.”

“Oh frack, you mean I lost all of them?”

“No Davey, they are not lost. I have communication with them. In a few moments I should be able to give you a 3D image of everything inside the house. Lower your visor and I will replay the images to the HUD display in your helmet.”

Lowering the visor, Davey began to see a fuzzy image of his living room appear with four roughly shaped human figures. The image was in black and white and highly pixilated making it impossible for Davey to figure out who was who. Just as Davey was going to say something about the quality of the images, he could see the image was becoming more refined. Within moments it looked like he was watching a TV show on one of those old black and white televisions.

“Go to hell you bastard!” Davey’s mother screamed after she was shoved down to sit on the couch by a man in combat gear.

“Now Mrs. Wiley, is that anyway to speak to a man who is pointing a gun at your husband?” The man dressed in black combat fatigues and a ski mask holding her husband looked down where she had been forced to sit on their living room couch.

“Who in the hell do you think you are?” Davey’s father struggled against the man, trying to get the armed man’s attention away from his wife. You’re not MCO, are you Humanity first?”

“Who we are is none of your concern,” The man leered at Davey’s father, “The only thing you should be concerned with is the whereabouts of your son.”

“He’s not in his room?” Davey’s dad replied very sarcastically. The man brought the gun down across Davey’s father’s face hard knocking him unconscious to the floor.

“BASTARD!” Davey’s mother screamed.

Davey’s face grew red in anger as his mind raced to find a way to save his mom and dad. “Sarah, can we control my Solaris mechs from here?”

“Yes Davey. Which one do you wish me to bring on line?”

“I have an idea.” Davey had modified several of his toys with paintball guns after the accident, but there was a couple that his father still had in the garage that was ‘confiscated’ until Davey finished removing the rail guns from. Those had to say in the garage until his father inspected the modifications.

The Dashi or Direwolf as it was called was his largest one, standing just shy of four feet tall and weighing more than the boy. It also sported the largest of the railguns he had created for his ‘Solaris Games’ and Davey had not even begun to remove the rail guns from its robot chassis. The large robot was still locked away inside the attached garage. Davey’s father had unloaded the ammo bins, but it was impossible to get the ammo out of the tubes that fed the guns without either dissembling the robot or firing the weapons until empty.

A loud crash was heard from inside the garage. The main gunman looked at the other that had been quiet the whole time, “Go see what that is!” then almost as an afterthought, “Careful we want the boy alive.”

Davey’s mom began sobbing, knowing her son, who she had tried to give enough warning to get out of the house and run away, had only gotten himself caught.

Throwing the door open the man hesitated seeing the four foot tall robot that stood before him just inside the door he had opened. “What the f—” suddenly the man was lifted and thrown violently up and back into the ceiling. His dead body falling to a heap in the floor leaving a half inch hole and a large blood splatter in the ceiling where half inch steel ball bearing had exited through his back at hyper sonic velocity. The robot stepped up into the house as the man targeted Davey’s mother’s head, “I’ll kill her!” he shouted at the robot.

The robot’s arm seemed to flinch as it propelled another half inch steel ball of death straight into the man’s gun well above the speed of sound, tearing the gun and the man’s hand off at the wrist from the massive amount kinetic energy stored in the steel ball bearing. The impact spun the man away from the robot as a second steel ball punched through his back, the energy released from the projectile's speed of impact throwing the man across the room and into the wall, where his lifeless corpse slid down to the floor.

The other four assailants were still outside searching for the boy while a block away the sounds of a heated gun battle exploded in the night.

“Mom,” the sound of her son’s voice crackled through a speaker on the robot, “Stay here, there are at least four more looking for me, the robot will protect you.”

“Davey?”

“Yes mom?” the speaker cracked again.

“Are you ok?”

“I’m fine mom, I’m in my Bushwhacker.” Davey knew his mother would be worried about him and if he could not confirm to her that he was indeed somewhere these men could not touch him, she would not sit still. “Nothing short of an anti-tank rocket can touch me right now.” ‘But I can touch them,’ Davey thought as he cut the voice link to the robot. Realizing that there was one thing his mother could do to ensure her continued protection he opened the voice link again, ”Mom?”

“Yes dear.”

“I need you to do something,” not waiting for a reply the boy continued, “In the garage there is a clear plastic container in the cabinet dad had this robot locked up in it’s full of round steel balls. I need you to get the one with the dot four five marked on it and pour all of those in the ammo bin of the robot.”

“What are those honey?”

“The bullets the robot uses.”

“Oh.” His mother began to get up from the couch, “where do I put them in?”

“Right on top back where it has the dot four five written on it.”

His mother looked at the top of the robot as she began to walk by it, “Okay I see where they go. Please be careful.”

“I will mom.” Davey then cut the voice to the robot. “Sarah take over control of the Daishi. Shoot anything that comes near mom and dad that isn’t wearing a badge!”

“Aff!” Sarah replied using the slang from the game the miniature robots were designed from, “I’ll cut those freebirth to shreds!”

Davey grinned at Sarah’s use of BattleTech terms, “I think it’s time we took the Bushwhacker for a test drive.” Davey spoke to no one in particular as he brought the robot out of its crouched stance and began walking it forward to the barn door.

“Dave, we will have remain crouched to clear the barn doors without damaging them.” Sarah informed him over the headset.

“Aff.”

As the robot moved forward the tarp, caught on something, began to slide over and off the robots back revealing the giant robot in all its glory. The reversed knees of its mechanical legs gave it an ungainly waddle of a duck as it make its way out of the barn. Once Davey had cleared the doorway he then then allowed his massive robot its full height, just shy of 30 feet.

Davey spotted the glow of a fire down the street and could hear explosions from that direction, a few steps of his mech in that direction and he saw bullets ricocheting off the heavy armored cockpit glass. Twisting the mech’s torso to the left, Davey began to line up the PPC in the direction of the men firing at him, the HUD in his helmet painting the hostile targets in a red glow as he lined up his sights. Remembering what his father had taught him about guns Davey brought the multi-barreled railgun to bear on the two targets.

Davey’s father had drilled gun safety into his head from an early age. Davey could hear his father’s words in his mind, ‘Never point a gun at anything you do not intend to shoot. Never shoot at anything you do not intend to kill. And if you ever have to shoot, make sure it’s dead.’ Davey had determined to bring death to those men that would harm his family.

A thirty second burst that sounded more like thunder than a gun firing and the only thing left was a hole in the ground where the men had been.

Davey’s heads up display outlined another of the assailants in a red glow that was firing at his bushwhacker from behind a low rock wall. Another burst from the railgun into the wall destroyed that part of the wall and everything behind it. His HUD outlined the last of the men running away through the woods behind their yard. Davey looked back to the glow of the firefight in the distance.

Coming up behind a single story house Davey could see the scene of the fire over the roof of the house. Davey’s HUD began outlining men in both green and in red, behind the police he spotted what looked like it may have been a SWAT van. At least that what Davey thought the letters had once said on its side. Now it lay in its side on fire with a large hole torn in the side of the armored van.

“The police are taking heavy fire from that armored van,” Sarah informed him.

“We have to help them,” Davey told Sarah.

“The black van looks like the biggest problem,” Sarah stated.

Looking at the van Davey could see it had some type of remotely controlled minigun mounted on the roof, “If that is electronically or computer controlled our PPC will take it out of the fight and knock out whoever is controlling it.”

“It’s out of range.” Sarah informed.

‘Not for long!” Davey shouted in the confines of his cockpit, “Time for a little shock and awe!” he grinned as he pushed the bushwhacker into a slow run then hit a button that fired the jump jets.

Clearing the single story house that was between him and the fight, Davey targeted the van as his mech dropped toward the firefight in the street below. Firing before he landed.

“Death from Above!” Davey yelled as a ball of what appeared to be electricity left the right arm of the Bushwhacker and grew as it approached the black van until it was almost half the size of the van when it hit. The van lit up like the fourth of July in a display of lighting arcing around and over the van as the electrical energy released into the van, sparks and electrical arcs encompassing the van for a second before it found ground and dissipated. Everyone immediately stopped fighting and stared slack jawed at the giant robot that landed with enough force to cause several car alarms in the area to go off.

“Uh Sarah?”

“Yes Dave.”

“Can you make my voice come through the loud speaker sound like an adult?”

“You did not equip the Bushwhacker to do that Davey.”

“Oh frack!” Dave sighed.” Ok put me on the loudspeaker.”

“It’s on now.”

Dave tried to disguise his voice deeper, “Drop your weapons and move slowly towards the police with your hands above your head.” Davey watched everyone slowly began doing exactly what he had said as he reached forward and flipped the manual switch to cut the loud speaker.

“Try to look menacing.” Sarah instructed.

“I’m in a fracking Battlemech, isn’t that menacing enough?”

“Move the torso a bit like the mech is watching them. All they can see right now is a giant metal statue.”

“Ok I get it.”

“Shock and awe, shock and awe,” Sarah giggled softly in his headset.

~o~O~o~

“Look kid,” the heavy set cop that had been sitting across the table in the interrogation room for most of an hour said, “We know someone in your family drove that robot and it couldn’t have been your mom or dad, you even admitted to controlling the small one that killed those two in your house. Now listen you are not, I repeat you are NOT in trouble for what you did. It was self-defense pure and simple. But we need to know about the giant robot.”

“I’m sorry sir, the only ones I know about are my toy ones and that one I wasn’t allowed to play with because I made the weapons too powerful.”

“Yes your mother already told us that you were told to replace those, railguns with paint ball guns. What exactly is a railgun, sounds like science fiction to me?”

“Yes sir, but the Navy is experimenting with them too, so they are not science fiction any more. They use magnetism to propel a projectile at hypersonic speeds. No gunpowder, no shell casing. Mine are just scaled down versions of what the Navy has.”

“How did you get the design for one of these rail guns the Navy is testing?”

“I drew them myself.”

“Do you expect me to believe that you read about the Navy testing one of these and just sat down and drew up the plans for one of your own?”

“No, not exactly.”

“Then tell me how you got the plans for the Navy’s Buck Rogers gun?”

“I didn’t get their plans sir, they got mine.”

“What!”

“Yes sir, my mom sold them to the Navy.”

“This is ridiculous!” The heavy set man stood up and stormed out of the room.

Closing the door behind him, the detective walked the few steps down the hallway to the next door which he entered. The inside of this room almost a carbon copy of the one he had left, although missing the table in the center of the room and the two chairs.

“The kid’s telling you the truth about those fancy guns he has,” An older man standing in front of the one way mirror, his suit rumbled and tie loosened, turned his head toward the detective as he closed the door. “Read this,” the older man held a folder toward the detective.

“You’re telling me this kid has over 40 different patents?” the overweight detective looked up from the files he had looked through.

“It looks that way,” a balding man dressed in a similar cheap suit and tie said, “Wiley Enterprise holds the patents, the boy’s parents own the company.”

“Crap, I never put that together until now, They are THOSE Wiley’s!”

“Yes, that’s the one,” The balding man replied, “That company deals in allot of the bleeding edge military equipment the DOD is experimenting with.”

“So the assailants were after one of the Wiley’s inventions?”

“No, it appears they were after the kid.”

“That little kid, “the overweight man pointed through the one way glass toward the boy sitting at the table in the other room.

“From what we have found at the scene and what his parents have said so far, it appears the kid is responsible for all these inventions.”

“He looks like he is only nine of ten years old even though his file states he is almost fifteen.”

“Well they say that when you’re lacking in one area, the body makes up for it in others.” The balding man explained, “Like a blind guy whose hearing becomes extraordinary. How do you like that new body armor we got last year?”

“It’s great, Doug took a 38 to the chest during a robbery and never even knew it until someone noticed the hold in his shirt!”

“That boy invented it.”

“So the boy is a runt of the litter but has the brains of Einstein?”

“Something like that. “The balding man held out a folder, “He has also been a very sick child. Look at his medical records.”

“How’d you get a judge to sign off on getting those?” Taking the folder and began leafing through the many pages.

“I didn’t. His mother gave them to me.”

“Is this—” the man said stopping on one page.
“Yep.”

“Can’t doctors do something to fix that?”

“In most cases, yes. But in that kid’s case the docs think it would screw up his hormones worse than they are now.”

“Man, tough break!” as he looked though more of the pages in the thick file.

“So what do you say we cut the kid loose and give him a ride up to the hospital to be with his parents?”

“Yea, I’ll drive him up myself.” He handed the folder back to the balding detective. “Maybe he’ll slip and say something about that big assed robot on the way.”

“I doubt it,” the balding man chuckled, “I am sure he was the one piloting it, but I am betting we never find a trace of that Battlemech unless the kids lets us.”

“Battlemech? What in the hell is that?”

“Your giant robot,” the balding man replied, “that's what they are called, my grandson plays that game on the computer. Kids get together online and pretend to run these giant robots called Battlemechs. My grandson called me right after it happened, it was all over the news, damn reporters even got a video of the damn thing landing and taking out the bad guys. My grandson said it looked exactly like a Bushwhacker minus the missile rack.”

“Missile rack?”

“Thank god for small favors.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Did you see the damage in their backyard? I would hate to imagine what that thing could have done with missiles too!”

“No, I was up where the big fight took place.”

“So you saw him fire the PPC?”

“Yea, looked like the damn thing fired a ball of lightning at the van while it was still about thirty or forty feet up in the air coming down to land. Whole van lit up like the fourth of July with electricity all over it for a few seconds when it hit.”

“I think he used the other gun in the backyard.”

“Oh?” the pudgy man furled his eyebrows, “What did they find there?”

“Craters. “The balding man sighed, “Forensics is still out there scraping up the bits and pieces of whoever was after him.”

***

“You have no authority here!” The desk Sergeant spoke very loud to get everyone’s attention within ear shot. “We do not have any mutants in custody!” the desk Sergeant said to the man holding out a black folding wallet that contained a badge on one side and ID in the other as he typed on his computer.

“We just need to speak with the Wiley boy,” The dark suited man stated.

“Smart kid, but nothing about him even suggest mutant.”

“We’ll be the judge of that Sargent,” The black suited man flipped the wallet back closed and stuffed it in the breast pocket of his suit jacket.

“No you will not sir,” The desk Sargent glared at the man. “This is a police investigation. The MCO has no authority here.”

In the room with the one way glass the two men turned to look at the computer that had begun beeping. Bold letters started appearing on the monitor. ‘MCO HERE FOR THE BOY.’

Quickly the balding man stepped over and typed, ‘STALL’

“I’m sorry sir,” the desk Sergeant spoke, “May I see your ID again?” The man frowned but recovered the wallet from his pocket and flipped it open again. “Could you please remove it from your wallet?”

“Do you really think that is necessary Sargent?”

“Sorry sir, I’m just following orders,” The desk Sargent pointed at the computer screen. “Cap says to make a copy of your ID before escorting you down to interrogation.”

“Bout time someone got their head out of their ass around here!” The man removed his MCO ID and handed it to the desk Sargent, “that kid is dangerous.”

Taking the ID from the man, the desk Sargent walked over to the copy machine, which appeared to be giving him a lot of trouble…

“Ok get the kid out of here,” the balding man ordered, “Go through the courthouse tunnel, I’m sure they are watching our normal exits, they probably don’t know about the transfer tunnel.”

The transfer tunnel had been built years ago after a prisoner had escaped while being taken from the jail to the courthouse. When the new courthouse had been built, an underground tunnel had been created that connected the police station and its jail directly to the courthouse, so even if a prisoner did try manage to overpower his escort through the tunnel, he would have only two ways to go, both of which ended with armed officers with hair triggers. All work on the tunnel was covered up in paperwork showing it to be a water and sewer project for the new courthouse and all blueprints which are normally stored in county records were destroyed. If no one knew the tunnel existed, or exactly where it was located, the less likely someone could use it to escape.

“Leave your radio and phone here too,” The balding detective said, “That way they can’t use either to track you.”

“Give me as much time as you can,” The overweight detective stated as he opened the door to leave.

Poking his head in the room as he opened the door the pudgy detective waved to get Davey’s attention, “Come on kid we got to go.”

“Where we going?”

“Gonna take you to your mom and dad.”

Something sounded fishy to Davey, why was the cop that had grilled him for over an hour, then left him here for another unbearable amount of time suddenly in a hurry to take him home? Davey also realized the cop seemed nervous.

“What’s going on?” Davey asked, “I can smell a rat!”

“Ok,” the detective entered the room after looking behind him and closing the door, “Look I was about to come in here and take you to your parents when some high-falutin MCO guy came in asking about you.”

Davey’s eye grew wide. “M.C.O? I’m not, not a mutant am I?”

“No you’re not a mutant, at least I don’t think you are. Hell even if you were I wouldn’t hand you over to those jackasses, kids tend to disappear around them,” Davey felt his chest tighten hearing this. “Don’t worry kid we’re blowing this joint before they can get their claws into you. Look I know you’re bullshitting me about the robot, but you’ve been dealt a bum hand and I ain’t about to see it get any worse for you on my watch. So let's go!”

~O~
“Detective Langson,” he said as he guided the kid into the front passenger side of his personal car.

“What?” Davey was shaken out of his daze.

“My name,” he grinned as he rounded the car and got in the driver's seat. “Can’t having you calling me sir all the time can I?”

“Yes sir, I mean no sir.”

“Ok, I figure those MCO guy have the hospital and your house staked out, so we don’t want to go near either one of those places.”

Davey nodded.

“So I’m gonna take you to my sister’s place, she has a boy about your age, we can borrow some of his clothes for you. We can arrange for your parents to know that you are safe and laying low until those MCO guys find something better to do than sit around hoping you show up.”

“Ok,” Davey said just above a whisper.

"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.

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.

Chapter 6

~o~O~o~

The pickup came none too soon for both Gunny Bardue and Harry. Not just because of the constant bombardment of questions about Davey from Jericho, but also the fear Harry had of Davey waking up in a strange place with no one he knew. While Harry may have not known the kid but for a handful of weeks he had bonded heavily with him during that time and thought of the boy like the son he never had.

Walking straight to the desk inside the Doyle Medical Center with Gunny close behind, Harry put both hands on the counter as he leaned over at the girl manning the desk, “I’m looking for David Wiley.”

“Are you a relative?” The nurse asked.

“No I’m uh—” Harry stammered.

“It’s ok,” Gunny spoke from behind Harry, he’s with me and we need to check on the boy.

“Ok let me call Doctor Tenant” picking up the desk phone. “Doctor Tenant will be right up.” She said putting the phone back on the cradle.
“Great,” Gunny spoke, “She can meet us in David’s room, My friend here is anxious to make sure the boy is ok.”

“Uh, he is um fine,” The nurse seemed to be covering up something which made Harry that much more apprehensive, “The doctor needs to speak to you before going in to see the child.”

“Look lady!” Harry leaned over the counter, “I have gone through hell to get that boy here. WHAT ROOM IS HE IN?”

“Uh sir the child is in room 7.” The nurse said, picking up the phone again.

“You do realize security will beat the doctor to the room now?” Gunny stated as they both jogged down the short hall to room seven.

“Let ‘em come, Gonna take more than a few rent a cops to drag me away from his bed!”

“First,” Gunny explained, “Our security is top notch here, some then you served with.”

Opening the door Harry saw a dark haired young girl lying on the only hospital bed in the room. Looking back at the number on the wall beside the door Harry saw it read “7”, this was the room the nurse said, but Davey was not here. Gunny saw the grimace in Harry’s face as he looked back toward him.

“I’m doctor Ophelia Tenant can I help you?” A very nice looking woman with loose long hair, wearing a doctor’s lab coat walked quickly in their direction.

“Yes,” Harry rubbing the back of his neck, “I’m looking for David Wiley’s room.”

“We need to talk,” the doctor stated.

“Hey first,” Gunny interrupted, “remember how I told you with exemplars they are sometimes hard to recognize after their change?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Doc, is that David?” Gunny thumbed toward the room.

“Yes,” The doctor answered.

“That’s Davey?” Harry looked back into the room in total disbelief.

“Yes,” the doctor answered. “And when she wakes she may have an even harder time accepting what has happened to her as you are having, so you need to get over it and be there to support her or I’ll have you thrown off this campus!”

“I need to call her parents!” Harry said pulling his cell from his pocket.

“You’re not her father?” Dr. Tenant gave Harry an incredulous look.

“No,” Harry looked almost annoyed at the question, “I have been keeping her, uh, out of reach of some parties that may not wish the best for her and her family.”

Dr. Tenant’s eyebrow raised, “Oh?”

“Guess its ok to let you folks know,” Harry began, “Her family was attacked several weeks ago. We believe humanity first may have been responsible.”

“How would Humanity First know the girl was a mutant before she manifested?”

“That I do not know ma’am, I had to take the err girl and run before we could interrogate any of the prisoners. I assume it would have something to do with her knack in building stuff.”

“She’s a devisor or gadgeteer?” Dr. Tenant looked at both Harry and Gunny.

“Could be gadgeteer?” Gunny shrugged.

“And she had this ability before she manifested?”

“She can definitely build some pretty interesting stuff Doc. For instance, the robot that saved her family and a crap load of our officers that night.”

“Your speaking of that robot that was on the news?” Dr. Tenant asked.

“If you’re talking about the one that landed in the middle of a police shootout, took out their armored car and forced the armed suspects to surrender,” Harry grinned, “Then yes, that's the one.”

“So why hide the girl after you already had her in police custody?” Dr. Tenant’s face twisted as she tried to comprehend the convoluted story she was hearing.

“The MCO, or at least someone claiming to be MCO, came into the station demanding the kid,” Harry continued, “We may be a small town in poduck Iowa, but we take care of our own. And Doc, we don’t take kindly to some jackass coming in all high handed and demanding we hand over a kid that just saved our bacon, to a group of nimrods that has a bad habit of making kids disappear.”

“I see,” Dr. Tenant spoke.

“I doubt it Doc, There are a lot of good men and women on our force that would not be around today if it wasn’t for that kid in there.” He thumbed at the room with his hand, “We were outgunned in a bad way. The kid could have ran, hell the kid went out of his, I mean her way, to come help.” Harry’s eyes became noticeably watery, “That kid’s a hero in our eyes Doc. Anyone even try something with her and they’ll have the Marion county sheriff's department, Pella and Knoxville police on their ass faster than stink on fresh manure.”

“So you spirited her away before you were forced to hand her over to the MCO?”

“You got that right!” He beamed, “So I remembered this little fishing shack that Gunny had taken me to years ago when we were still both in the core, headed that direction and gave Gunny a shout to tell him I was heading that way and know I needed to talk to him. I knew he worked with mutants now, didn’t know to what extent until he arrived and filled me in.”

Gunny interrupted, “First, you gave me an idea I need to talk with you and our chief of security about.” Looking to Tenant, “Doc how long till she wakes?”

“It will be several hours at the least.” Dr. Tenant answered.

“Good we have time,” Gunny waved harry to follow him, “Harry lets go visit Chief Delarose, I have something in mind that I think you’ll love.”

~o~O~o~

“Uncle Harry?” the girl spoke in a raspy voice. Harry had fallen asleep holding the girls small delicate hand sitting in the chair he has sat beside the hospital bed, “Uncle Harry?” her voice not much more than a whisper.

“Uh, what…” Harry woke from his fitful sleep, “Davey your back!”

“Yea, Uh I feel really weird,” her raspy voice continued.

“You’ve been through some weird shit kid, you’re ok now. I’m here for you and your mom and dad are on their way too.”

“Mom and dad?” her voice broke. ”Can I have a drink of water?”

“Sure kiddo, let me get it for you.”

As harry got up from his chair to fetch her water the girl raised up on her elbows to follow him with her eyes. “Holy shit!” she screamed.

“What?” Harry turned back to her.

“I, I got boobs!” she gasped.

Racing back to her bedside, “Calm down buddy, I’m right here and no one's gonna mess with you with me here.”

“But I have boobs!” she screamed again. ”The doctors said this would never happen!”

The door flew open and a nurse followed by an orderly came in, “Is there a problem here?” the nurse asked sternly.

“I have fracking boobs!” the girl continued to scream at the top of her lungs.

“Young lady of course you have breasts we all do,” the nurse seemed highly irritated, “Now stop that caterwauling this instant!”

“But I’m supposed to be a boy, I don’t want boobs!” the girls volume reduced to her indoor voice.

“Yea and I’m the pope’s mistress,” the nurse almost hissed, “now calm down or I’ll be forced to give you a sedative!”

The girl began crying, “Uncle Harry what happened to me?”

Taking her hand in both of his Harry sat down on the edge of the bed, “You want the good news or the bad news first?”

“Bad news,” She sniffed bad tears.

“You’re a girl,” He blurted out.

“That’s it?” she continued to sniff back the sobs.

“Yep pretty much.”

“I already discovered that!” her voice became shrill.

“Hey, hey slow down we don’t want Broom Hilda to come back in with a big syringe do we? Hell that nurse scares the shit out of me!” Harry shuddered while making a disgusting face.

The girl found his antics impossible to ignore and giggled. ”What, what’s the good news?” she asked.

“You get super powers,” He smiled.

“So I’m a mutant?” she began sobbing again.

“Like having x-ray vision or some cool thing like that is gonna be bad?”

“Oh yea, I get x-ray vision,” The girl said sarcastically. “Now I can look through all the girls clothing to see them naked! What good is X-ray vision when I’m a girl too!”

Harry couldn’t hold back the laughter at the girl’s humorous remark and soon she was giggling with him.

Looking up at Harry, “Oh god! You’ve got to stop my mom from seeing me!”

“Davey I’m sure your mother will continue loving you, no matter what you look like,” Harry tried to calm the girl.

“It’s not that,” fear apparent across Davey’s face, “I, I have this medical thing. I, um, it’s why I’m so small. When I was born, my, my body couldn't decide if it was boy or girl.”

“I know you were born intersexed.” Harry continued, “It’s why I’m sure your mother will have no problem with your changes.”

“I know she’ll be okay with that.” Davey swallowed hard, “She’ll be fracking ecstatic! It’s the dresses she’ll make me wear and all the shopping she’ll want to do with me now.”

~o~O~o~

“So how’s my patient doing?” Jericho entered her hospital room.

“I remember you, but you were dressed in shiny white armor.”

“Ahh you do remember,” Jericho blushed. ”That’s my RAFE suit. Powered armor I am developing for rescue workers.”

“Rescue armor,” she perked up, “that’s a great idea!”

“Well when I graduate I plan on going into the EMS field.”

“That’s very noble, wanting to help others and all,” She smiled, “I know I’ll always remember my knight that rescued me.”

“Cool! Glad I could make such an impression on you.” Jericho leaned closer, “But don’t let anyone else know, it would ruin my bad reputation.”

“Well that may not make such a lasting impression as what you are wearing now.”

“What you do not appreciate my casual wear ensemble?”

“Not really, it's kind of an eyesore.” She giggled, “But then you’re blind.”

“You’re a girl.”

“Touché’” she giggled, “at least you don’t have to sit to pee.”

“Well people have asked me to do just that, something about being blind and my aim…” Jericho joked, then leaning over to whisper in her ear, “What they don’t realize is that I pee on their shoes on purpose.”

They both laughed hard over that.

“But if you are really blind, how do you see?”

“They are not really sure,” Jericho tried to explain, “It’s not sound or anything like Daredevil did in the comics.”

“Really?”

“Sure let me show you,” Jericho grinned, “Hold up two fingers.”

She began to raise her hand but realized quickly how he was leading her and instead gave him the one finger salute.

“Oh come on,” Jericho’s grin widened, “How am I supposed to guess right if you only hold up one finger?”

“You can see!”

“Nope, I Don’t even know if it's day or night unless I feel the heat of the sun.”

Then how?”

Turning his back to her, “Hold up some fingers now.”

Seeing if she could mess him up she held up both hands for a total of seven fingers.

“Six fingers—”

“Ha!—”

“And a thumb,” Turning back around, he stuck his tongue out at her.

“How?”

“Some kind of mutant radar,” Jericho shrugged. “I see everything around me, above, Below, behind, it doesn’t matter which direction I am facing I see it. Only downside is I can’t see color or through glass, or what’s on TV. Those are like blank walls to me.”

“Interesting.”

“Well hey, I wanted to be the first student to congratulate you on your mech.” Jericho smiled, “That news clip is all anyone talks about down in the devisor lab.”

“Devisor lab? What’s that?”

“Well here at Whateley we have two types of engineers. Devisors and Gadgeteers.” He explained, “Looks like you probably fall into the gadgeteer category, while I’m mostly a Devisor.”

“Uh, What's the difference?”

“A gadgeteer can go to the patent office,” He grew a huge grin, “A devisor can go everywhere but the patent office.”

“Huh?”

“Ok sorry, that is a running joke around here.” He sat on the edge of her bed, “You see the things a gadgeteer makes can be reproduced. You can draw up the designs and hand them to any competent engineer and they can make a copy of your gadget.”

“Ok, so what about the Devisor?”

“Well a Devise, with an S not a C, are a bit more complicated. The things a Devisor makes cannot be recreated or copied, heck most of the time they will only work for the guy who made them.”

“That doesn’t make any sense?”

“I guess the best way to put it is that a Devisor bends the laws of physics to accommodate his devise.”

“So you make impossible things possible?”

“I guess that is one way to put it.”

“That is so cool!”

“So not to change the subject, but can I ask you some questions about your mech?”

“Uh, ok I guess,” She looked toward the door to see if anyone was nearby trying to listen.

“Don’t worry,” he waved toward the door, “you won’t get into trouble for making it here. Shoot we have a whole mechbay full of various mechs and power suits here. The mech jocks have even cleared a bay just for you, hoping you will eventually come to school here.”

“Really?”

“Soon as your up and out of this joint I’ll give you the grand larceny tour!”

Giggling at his pun, “So I can bring my bushwhacker here?”

“I think security may even insist on it,” He grinned, “They won’t want that to fall into the wrong hand while you’re a student here. You are going to become a student here aren’t you?”

“I, I don’t know.”

“Well believe me, it’s safer here than anywhere else.” His face took on serious lines, “Especially after the way you handed those jackass Humanity first their asses on national TV.”

“They were humanity first?” She gasped.

“Best I could tell from the description Sandra gave me of the video clip.”

“Frack!”

“Like I said don’t worry.” Jericho tried to calm the girl, “ Whateley is neutral ground, no one comes in here and touches a student. Good guys. Bad guys, organized crime, Vatican, they have an unwritten agreement that if any one person or group harms anyone here on the campus the other groups will band together and exterminate the ones that broke the neutrality agreement.”

“So can I ask some questions about your bushwhacker?”

“Can I not answer ones if I choose?”

“Of course, you can even lie if you wish, but I would prefer you just tell me that you don’t want to answer one that you are uncomfortable with.”

“Ok Deal.”

“What type of power source does it have?”

“That one I am uncomfortable with.” She blushed.

“You didn’t promise some terrorists to build them a nuclear bomb, then steal their plutonium did you?”

“I built a mech not a time traveling DeLorean,” the girl grinned.

“Quick too, I like that.” He smiled. “Ok so you know, my main reasoning behind asking about the power source you use is if it would be possible to create a smaller one to use in the RAFE suit I am working on? Of course if you were to design one for it you would get full credit and royalties for your part in it.”

“It may be possible. I think I could build one small enough with the right tools. The one in my mech is about the size of a dorm fridge.”

“What does it use for fuel?”

“Dihydrogen monoxide,” The girl grinned wickedly.

“Wow, dangerous stuff!” He chuckled, “You know that thousands of people die from inhalation of that stuff every year?”

“Oh yea!” she giggled, “And it’s a major component of acid rain too!”

“So the byproduct of your power source is helium and oxygen?”

“Yeah, it splits the water into hydrogen and oxygen, the fuses the hydrogen into helium.”

“So essentially a miniature fusion reactor?”

“Ok about that chain gun?”

“That one I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement on so I cannot give any specifics. But if I can get my mech here or even some of my toys, I can’t stop you from looking at it,” She grinned.

“Your toys?”

“Yes I have several small remote controlled mechs I built for Tommy and I to play with, then there’s all my stuffed animals.”

“So they are scaled down versions for your mech?”

“Actually my mech is a scaled up version of the toy ones. I built the toys first.”

“They have rail guns on them too?”

“Yep, but the Dire wolf and Storm crow are the only ones that still fire ball bearings, those were the only two I had not modified the weapons to fire paintballs.”

“Why paintballs?”

“Mom and Dad made me after Tommy accidentally got hit by a shot that ricocheted back at us.”

“Ouch!” He winced.

“Yea the doctor said if it would have hit him in the chest it would have killed him. Lucky for my mom and dad I had not modified the Direwolf yet.”

“Why’s that?”

“Um, I remoted into it from my mech and took out the two guys holding them hostage inside the house while the other four were trying to find me.”

“Damn girl,” Jericho whistled, “You ok with what you did?”

“Yeah,” lowering her eyes so she did not have to look at him, “I just took out the trash.”

"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.

Chapter 7

~o~O~o~

Davey could feel someone stroking his hair, it felt so soothing, just like his mother always did when he had been sick. Such a pleasant dream, he didn’t want wake up from it. Then he realized it wasn’t a dream, someone was sitting on the side of his bed stroking his hair just like his mother used to. But his hair was only that long in his dreams.

Having dreams of being a girl were not that uncommon for Davey, at least not for the past couple of years, ever since the doctors had finally discovered why he was not going through puberty like other boys his age. Originally these dreams were nightmares, nightmares where Davey found himself wearing dresses and his friends called him names.

The nightmares came so often and bothered Davey so much that his mother forced him to start seeing a psychiatrist. Eventually the nightmares came less often although he still found himself a girl in many of his dreams. Davey dreamed himself as a girl so much that it didn’t bother him when he felt the extra mass of breasts on his chest in his dream, it was a dream after all.

Mrs. Wiley sat on the edge of the hospital bed stroking the girl’s long tresses that lay in the bed asleep. She could see tears begin to form in the girl’s half closed eyes, “Mom,” the girl softly sobbed.

“I’m right here sweetheart,” Davey heard her mother’s voice. Realizing this wasn’t his imagination he rolled over to see his mother sitting behind her on the edge of the hospital bed.

”MOM!” The girl shouted springing up and hugging Davey’s mother tightly. Feeling her mother’s arms wrap around her made her feel that everything would be fine now. Her fears and tension faded in her mother’s loving arms and the girl had her first, no holds barred, gut wrenching, tear-fest.

Nearly ten minutes later the girl’s crying had mostly subsided, “Where, where is dad?” She sobbed.

“I asked him to let us have some girl time first,” Her mother said softly while continuing to stroke the girl’s hair.

Looking up into her mother’s eyes the girl began crying once again. “What wrong baby?” her mother cooed.

“I’m, I’m a girl!” and buried her face back into her mother’s bosom.

“Yes dear you are,” Her mother said while gently pulling the girl’s face up so she could see her new daughter, “and a very pretty one too!”

“You, you think I’m pretty?” David fought back her tears.

“I don’t think, I know.” Her mother smiled down at her, “You are a very beautiful young lady.”

David’s tried to look down but his mother’s hand kept them eye to eye as the girl blushed, “Mommm.”

Her mother giggled, “One look at you and your father will run straight to the sporting goods store and buy them out of every box of shotgun shells they have!”

“Mom!” David couldn’t help but giggle, knowing her father would do exactly that.

“There’s that smile I have been waiting to see!” Her mother’s eyes seemed to sparkle as she smiled at her daughter,” Now let’s dry those tears and get dressed so your father can have a heart attack when he sees how beautiful his daughter is.”

“Okay, but I don’t think my clothes will fit me now.”

“Not to worry honey, mommy has taken care of everything,” Getting up from where she sat on the edge of the bed, her mother waved the girl off the bed and gently guided her into the adjoining bathroom. Once done with the shower her mother helped Davey with her first bra, showing her the various and easiest ways one could be put on. Once out of the bathroom she saw her mother had laid out several dresses.

“Mom, I can’t wear one of those!”

“Why not?”

“Uh,” she could not think of a logical reason but was not about to give in so easily to her mother, “But it’s a dress!”

“And who wears dresses?” she watched her mother put both hands on her hips. A sure sign that the lawyer side of her mother was getting ready to appear and argue her case using her own form of logic.

Gazing down at her feet, knowing she had already lost, “Girls do.”

“And?” she didn’t even need to look up at her mother to known what the expected answer was.

“I’m a girl.”

“So the logical conclusion is?”

“Do I really have to say it mom?”

“Yes.”

“I wear dresses,” the girl sighed.

“Ok now that, that is out of the way,” her mother motioned at the dresses laid out on the bed, “Which one do you like the most?”

After helping the girl into the new dress, socks and Mary Janes, her mother began working on the dark black hair that hung down past her butt, “So have you thought of a name?”

“No.”

“Well I don’t think it would sound right if everyone went around calling you David now, would it?”

“I guess not.”

“You could use your middle name?” Her mother suggested, “Taylor can be a girl’s name. Or Diane, that is similar to David?”

David thought of the line of custom mech builds from the online MechWarrior game known as Angela’s Ashes, If he now had to have a girl’s name at least it could be one he thought of as cool, “Could I be named Angela?”

“I think it’s a wonderful name, and both your grandmother and grandfather would have liked it,” Her mother approved. “Taylor doesn’t go well with it though, so how about Nichole for your new middle name?”

“Okay, “the girl replied quickly, “Angela Nichole Wiley, it does sound better than Angela Taylor.”

“Now about this much hair,” Her mother grabbed a handful of it, “This will feel really heavy and could cause neck problems, I think we should cut it.”

“NO!” Angela jerked forward pulling her hair out of her mother's grasp. Not realizing why she felt it was so important to leave her hair alone.

“It was only a suggestion dear,” Her mother told her, “Ok so no cutting, how about I braid it for you?

“Okay.”

“Alright sit still while I do this,” Her mother began separating Angela’s hair into three equal sections while explaining what she was doing so the girl could do it herself later. “People think that braiding long hair is more trouble that it really is, you see once you get it going, long hair is actually easier because you can swing the braid in front of you,” Her mother demonstrated by swinging the braid over Angela’s shoulder and continuing to braid it in front of the girl so she could see what she was her mother was doing.

~o~O~o~

“Ten bucks says she comes out in a dress,” David’s father glanced over at Harry and Gunny.

“I’ll take that bet,” Harry chuckled. “While that boy’s mutation may have made him a girl, she’s still one hundred percent boy inside. No one’s going to put him in a dress that quickly.”

“I think First is right,” Gunny injected. “She isn’t the first kid to get her gender swapped when manifesting. Not many of them are ready for the girly stuff for some time.”

“You don’t know my wife!” Her father grinned, “She will not only have that her in a dress, her hair will be styled and be wearing makeup.”

“This is worth ten buck to see,” Gunny grinned. ”From what First told me about the three weeks he spent with the kids, that kid is one hundred and twenty present gadgeteer and possibly devisor too. That crowd doesn’t do pretty.”

“Did I hear my name mentioned?” Jericho followed the tap, tap of his cane into the waiting room, “Hi Gunny, Hi Mr. Langson. How’s our girl doing today Mr. Langson, shouldn’t she be getting out of this prison today?”

Angela’s father saw the cane so he realized this boy was blind, but damn he thought, how could even a blind man dress himself that badly without intentionally doing so? “I’m Mr. Wiley, I’m her father.”

“Nice to meet you Sir, I’m Jericho. I was one of the students that brought your daughter in during that medical rescue op.”

“You were part of a rescue team?” Mr. Wiley was confused.

“Yes I do emergency triage.” Sticking his chest out, “I performed triage on your daughter then had her evacuated to our medical facility here.”

“But you’re blind?”

“Oh crap your right!” Jericho dropped his cane and began stumbling around with his hands out in front of him. ”My eyes! My eyes!” he stumbled around and into a girl whose breasts he grabbed. One in each hand,” My eyes, My god… those are nice!”

Ducking under her swing as she tried to slap the boy, then twisting around to avoid a kick she tried to land against his shin,” Jericho moved with uncanny precision avoiding her attempted blows.

“Jericho!” She yelled, “I’m gonna break your neck!”

“Sorry guys got to run!” as he did a forward roll, avoiding another swing from the cute teen girl, retrieving his white cane in the roll and bolted around the corner away from the angry girl, in a dead run.

“Should we help him?” Mr. Wiley looked at Gunny Bardue.

“Nope, he got himself in that mess clowning around, he can get himself out of it.”

“But he is blind isn’t he?”

“Technically yes,” Gunny explained, “His eyes don’t work, but he sees better than us for the most part. Best way to describe it to you, is that he has 360 degree radar. He sees everything around him all at once. Completely impossible to sneak up on him.”

“So he’ll be ok?”

Gunny shrugged, “Most likely he’ll run for cover behind his roommate. No one wants to have that boy upset at them.”

~o~O~o~

Angela’s mother walked around the corner into the waiting room, “So Mr. Wiley,” She grinned at her husband, “Are you ready to meet your daughter?”

Leaning forward almost out of the chair he was in, “Where is Dav…” Looking up to his wife his expression completely clueless.

“Angela,” Mrs. Wiley motioned back toward the direction she had walked in, “come show your father the new you.”

A beautiful young woman walked into the room, her hourglass figure draped in a jade green knee length dress, Wide black belt around her waist that matched the black Mary Jane shoes. Her braided hair slung across her shoulder hung down to her belt at her waist. “Hi daddy,” Blushing and looking down at her shoes.

Both Mr. Wiley and Harry sat with their jaw agape. Finally Mr. Wiley broke the awkward silence, “Uh, Gunny are you armed?”

“Of course.”

“Good I may need to borrow your side arm to fend the boys off my daughter!”

“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Gunny laughed, “You don’t want to go shooting the boys around here. If you shoot one you may make him angry.”

“Why do I feel like my life has degraded into a Mel Brooks western?” Mr. Wiley groaned.

“Well folks I have a class to teach, so I need to get moving,” Gunny said getting out of the chair. Leaning over to whisper in Angela’s ear, “Don’t worry girl, I saw that video of your mech in action, you’ll fit in here just fine.” As the Gunny walked out they could hear him singing to himself.

“He rode a blazing saddle,
he wore a shining star,
His job to offer battle,
To bad men near and far.
He conquered fear and he conquered hate,
he turns our night into day…”

“So how long did it take your mother to get you talked into wearing a dress?” her father grinned.

“A couple minutes I guess.”

“That all?” he whispered, “I thought you would have held out longer than that?”

“Dad, she cheated!”

“Oh?”

“She went straight to her, ‘I’m the mom’ stance’, hit me with ‘lawyer mode’ and then trapped me in a circular logic loop.”

“Excuse me?” Turning her head to look at the Angela, “I do not have a ‘mom stance’!”

“Yes you do,” Both Angela and her father said in unison.

“Whatever,” Mrs. Wiley waved them off, “Our daughter has an issue we must take care of immediately.”

“Another one?”

“Yes dear, and you are going to drive us to Dunwich and maybe Berlin or Boston if need be, so we can take care of it.”

“What kind of problem can we fix in Dunwich and Boston?”

“The kind where she needs a new wardrobe,” Her mother grinned, “And from what everyone here tells me, the lady that runs Rogers' Fabric Boutique is second to none.”

“Sounds expensive,” Mr. Wiley looked up to the ceiling.

“Paul would you deny your child decent clothes?” tapping Angela in the small of the back as she spoke.

On cue Angela quietly lowered her head while looking her father directly in the eyes as she opened her eyes wide and stuck out her bottom lip ever so slightly.

The look from those big green eyes was almost hypnotic in the way they seemed to rip Paul’s heart out. Clearing his lump in his throat, “You taught her to do that.”

“Paul honey,” her mother tried to look surprised, “What are you talking about?”

“It’s not fair,” Paul muttered getting up from the waiting room chair and taking the duffel from his wife. “Okay, Let’s get this over with!” leading his family out of the clinic, “Can I at least stop somewhere and pick up a magazine to read while you two see how big of a dent you can put in my wallet?”

“Of course dear,” Mrs. Wiley said as she slowed herself and her daughter to get a little distance between them and Mr. Wiley before leaning down and whispering, “See how well that look did?” Angela nodded, realizing that being a girl did have some advantages.

~o~O~o~

Paul Wiley had grown up poor and that was the only reason he always contested spending any large sum of money especially since his wife set up Wiley enterprises. Actually he really did not even know how much money they did have as his wife Tonya took care of that. And Tonya was smart enough to hire competent people she could trust to run the various branches of the businesses many areas. All the money and the business was a direct result of their son’s, now their daughter’s intelligence, so it really did not bother him as he watched his wife work on getting their daughter excited about shopping. He actually enjoyed finally watching the two of them together having fun at something they both appeared to like doing.

As David, the two of them had almost nothing in common, but as Angela that had changed considerably. Of course he couldn’t let his wife know, she expected his reluctance at spending money so he put on the act. Peering over the top of the automotive magazine he picked up at the drugstore on their way to this clothing shop, he smiled as he snuck another glance at the two.

Paul had never seen his wife displaying this much energy and enthusiasm. If he had known a daughter would have brought this much happiness to his wife, he would have insisted on trying to have a second child a long time ago. Once his wife and daughter had done as much damage to their master card as they could, they stopped at a place called ‘Sally’s restaurant” to curb their hunger.

“Hello Angela,” An elderly lady spoke as she walked past their table.

“Um, Hello,” Angela looked up from the plate of food she was devouring to see the stranger.

“Hello,” Paul said, holding out his hand.” I’m—”

“Mr. Wiley,” The lady shook his hand, “I’m Mrs. Potter. Please to meet you and your family.”

“Do you know Angela madam?”

“Only by reputation sir,” The woman winked at Angela, “Have a wonderful stay in Dunwich.” She turned to leave, then looked back over her shoulder, “Oh Angela, don’t forget to pick up a new backup battery for your alarm clock before you go back to school.”

“That was strange,” Mrs. Wiley said.

“Yes it was.” Mr. Wiley agreed. “Have you met that woman before Angela?”

Already stuffing her mouth with food again, Angela shook her head no.

"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.

Chapter 8

~o~O~o~

Chief Delarose leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on the conference table, “I’d rather not see Miss Wiley assigned to Poe.”

“Why is that Chief?” Mrs. Shugendo turned her attention toward their chef of security, “She is after all a changeling and Poe cottage is the best equipped for any special needs she may have.”

“That’s not quite true Michiko,” Dr. Tenant injected. “I’ve reviewed the medical records from Angela’s doctors, she was born intersexed. Her condition was discovered two years ago by her family physician. While her outward appearance may have resembled a prepubescence boy, genetically she never had a ‘Y’ chromosome or any testes. Internally Angela has all the sexual organs of a female and would have required surgery to create a vaginal opening when she began menarche.”

“Having reviewed the records from the psychologist she was seeing back in Iowa,” Dr. Markham added, “I would see no problem with placing Angela in any of the other cottages. Between her mother and her psychologist I believe they have her as ready as anyone could be to portray herself as the female she is now.”

“Good,” Chief Delarose grinned. “The last thing we need is for her to around those trouble magnets in Poe.” Several of the staff nodded in agreement, knowing exactly which students in Poe Chief Delarose was referring to.

“I have to agree with Chief Delarose,” Mrs. Carson stated. “The fact that both DARPA and the department of defense have shown an interest in Miss Wiley’s continued education and her safety, it would be a good idea to try to limit her exposure to some of our more exuberant students.”

“Exuberant is an understatement for the Kimbas,” Chief Delarose interjected. “The last thing this campus needs is those kids adding a gadgeteer with her abilities to their friends list.”

“Well then,” Mrs. Shugendo began writing something in the file folder that lay on the table in front of her. “I see no reason not to grant her mother’s request of, ‘Only the best for her daughter,’ and assign her to Melville.”

“Melville?” Mrs. Hartford, who had been sitting quietly listening to the debate, spoke up, “Are you sure you don’t want to assign her to Dickinson or Whitman?”

“Her family can definitely afford the extra cost,” Mrs. Shugendo stated while looking at the notes she had in the folder. “Wiley Enterprises has made the fortune 500 list for several years.”

“It’s not the money,” Mrs. Hartford explained. “I don’t think she would fit in very well with the other Melville students.”

“You mean because she hasn’t had a maid and butler waiting on her hand and foot since birth like many of the Melville students’ right?” Chief Delarose looked directly at Mrs. Hartford.

“We’ll have no bickering over favorites,” Mrs. Carson interrupted. “If Miss Wiley’s mother wants her daughter in Melville and is willing to pay the extra costs involved, then I see no reason not to give Mrs. Wiley what she wants.”

“Then it’s settled,’ Mrs. Shugendo began to write down some notes. “She’ll be assigned to Melville, I’ll have to check what rooms are available to give her a room assignment as many have been reserved already for the new class of freshmen that will be arriving.” Looking over at Mrs. Carson, “Should we expect her to be returning with the new arrivals?”

“Yes, her mother wished to spend this week with her daughter before they needed to return to their home,” Mrs. Carson chuckled. “She said it was imperative that she and her daughter have some time to bond, and purchase the new wardrobe her daughter now needed.”

“That works out well as she won’t check into her cottage until the normal students begin arriving for the start of the school year,” Mrs. Shugendo nodded.

~o~O~o~

After leaving the small diner in Dunwich, Paul drove the family to Berlin where they followed the direction on the GPS to the mall. Tonya could tell at the size of the building and the fact it only had three anchor stores it wasn’t a large mall. Although small Tonya knew she would be able to find some basic everyday clothing for her daughter, at least enough to get her by the week she planned on spending in Boston where she planned on expanding Angela’s wardrobe to something closer to what a girl her age would have, before they had to take Angela back to school.

Sitting in the backseat of the car her parents had rented while her father drove them to Berlin gave Angela plenty of time to think. Between Uncle Harry, the doctors and nurses then her mother, Angela really hadn’t been given any time to think about her situation. Ever since the doctors back home had discovered Angela’s rare medical condition two years ago, Angela had known that one day she would have to stop ‘pretending she was a boy,’ as her mother sometimes said.

Angela knew her mother never said things like that to hurt her, but it still hurt as Angela had spent the first twelve years of her life believing she was a boy. The doctor had told them that her condition would delay puberty but felt there was little doubt that Angela would eventually develop the secondary characters of a girl and have to present herself as such. Trying to prepare Angela for the inevitable her mother had coaxed her into letting her hair grow out although keeping it in a longer boy’s style and began talking Angela into wearing some feminine clothing around the house, which began as training bras to help Angela conceal the first signs of breast development.

Nervously fingering the hem of the dress she wore, Angela realized the fears she had in the past of going out in public dressed this way were unfounded. Something her mother had said so many times in the past couple of years Angela could almost quote her mother word for word about how people would not see her as a boy in a dress and how she shouldn’t be afraid of something that would never happen. Looking down at her now prominent breasts Angela sighed. Pulling the Wile E. Coyote doll, she had discovered her mother brought with them to give to her, into a tighter hug, Angela thought to herself, ‘At least boys will stop picking on me for having you.’

As her father pulled the rental car into an empty parking space at the mall, Angela’s mother turned around where she could see Angela, “Ready honey?”

Angela shook her head. “Not really,” speaking just above a whisper as she unbuckled her seatbelt and reached for the door to get out of the car.

~o~O~o~

“This is really nice,” Angela’s mother pronounced, looking around the lobby of the dorm her daughter would be staying in as the two approached the reception desk. “If my college dorm would have been half as nice as this, I would never have wanted to leave. It reminds me more of a five star hotel instead of a dormitory.”

“We like to refer to our student housing as Cottages here at Whateley,” A woman sitting behind the reception desk smiled. “I’m Mrs. Deng,” looking at Angela, “You must be Angela, and this must be your mother Tonya.” Reaching her hand out across the desk as she stood to greet them, “I’ve been expecting your arrival. I’ve read about your company, it’s so nice to finally meet the woman behind it all.”

Angela’s mother smiled as she shook her outstretched hand, “Well then you’re shaking the wrong woman’s hand. I’m just a small town attorney, Angela here is the one behind our company’s success. She’s the one that dreams up all those gizmos that everyone is so interested in. I mainly just file the patents and keep track of the licensing, everything else my husband normally takes care of.”

“It’s still a pleasure meeting you ma’am,” Mrs. Deng smiled as she shook Tonya’s hand. “I’ve taken the liberty to have the items that have already been delivered for Angela taken to her room.” Sitting back down at her desk Mrs. Deng began typing at her computer, “You’ll be in room three-eleven,” she spoke as she typed. “It’s a double occupancy as all of our single rooms were already reserved. Although you haven’t been assigned a roommate and as there are no other freshmen due to arrive in Melville you will have the room to yourself until another student is assigned to our cottage.”

“So sooner or later I’ll have a roommate?”

Reaching over the desk Mrs. Deng held a credit card sized plastic card attached to a lanyard out toward Angela, “It’s possible that you could have a roommate assigned by next week, but more likely that you will go the whole school year without one as most students arriving during the school year will be assigned to other cottages. This is your student ID and the keycard for your room. If you lose or misplace it, let me know immediately and I can deactivate it and make you a new one.”

“Thank you,” Angela took the card from Mrs. Deng turning it over carefully to examine both sides. One side had a facial picture of Angela with her name under the picture. Along the left side in large blue letters the word ‘student’ was written from top to bottom and along the ride side also written from top to bottom the word Melville. The back of the card was plain white with the common black electronic stripe. The lanyard was done in a navy blue with white lettering showing the word Melville written in fancy script even six inches along its length. Placing the lanyard over her head, Angela pulled her hair out from under the woven cord.

Handing Angela a thick Manilla envelope, “This contains your student information packet, maps of the campus and buildings. Your student handbook, which I recommend reading at your earliest convenience as it not only, contains the rules and regulations for the campus. You’ll also find a booklet with class schedules and their locations.”

Tucking the manila envelope under her arm Angel and her mother turned to the sound of someone struggling to push one of those cart they often use at hotels for luggage through the entrance doors of the cottage. Several department store bags sat atop a trunk and several suitcases loaded on the cart. Spotting her Husband pushing the cart approaching them Mrs. Wiley turned back to the desk, “Mrs. Deng this is Angela’s father, my husband Paul.” Turning back to Paul, “Paul this is Mrs. Deng the cottage’s Concierge.”

Stopping the cart Paul stepped up to the desk holding out his right hand, “Paul Wiley, nice to meet you Mrs. Deng. I hope our little mad scientist won’t cause too much trouble for you.”

Smiling as she shook his outstretched hand, “Oh I’m sure Angela will be given plenty of room in the labs for any mad science she feels the need to experiment with, so we shouldn’t have any issues here in the cottage.”

“Well since your father is here, let’s go up to your room and I’ll help you put everything away dear,” Mrs. Wiley smiled at Angela.

“The elevators are to the left,’ Mrs. Deng directed the group. “Oh Angela you’ll need to be down here in the lobby by nine a.m. for the campus tour and freshmen orientation.”

“Yes ma’am,” looking back over her shoulder at Mrs. Deng as Angela walked to the elevator.

~o~O~o~

Walking back into the cottage after returning from what Angela thought of as a waste of time as her and other new students were force to sit and listen to the headmistress and several of the staff stand up on stage and go over almost everything in the handbook she had read last night, Angela saw Mrs. Deng wave her over. Walking over to the desk, “Yes ma’am?”

“Good afternoon Angela, “I have a message that Chief Delarose needs to see you over at security as soon as possible.”

“Yes ma’am,” Angela sighed.

“Do you know the way there?”

“Yes ma’am,” Angela pointed back toward the door, “straight out on the other side of the main road that ends at Shuster Hall.”

“I wouldn’t keep him waiting.”

“No ma’am,” Angela turned to go back out the door, “I’m heading over there now.”

~o~O~o~

Walking up to the desk, “Um, Hi, Mr. Delarose wanted to see me?”
“And you are?” the large man behind the desk asked sat down the magazine he was reading as he took his feet off the desk.

“I’m Angela Wiley”

“Oh yeah, the chief wanted to know soon as you arrived.” He said as he picked up the phone. “Hey Chief, the Wiley girl is here to see you. Sure thing boss.” Rising up from his chair, waving for Angela to come around the counter, “Follow me, I’ll show ya where his office is.”

Angela follow the large man down a hall in pointed at a door, “Knock first.” Then he turned and walked back down the hall.

Taking a few deep breaths to calm her nerves Angela knocked on the door, “Enter” she heard from inside.

“Ahh Miss Wiley, Have a seat,” Delarose motioned to the chairs in front of his desk.

“Am I in trouble?” Smoothing out her skirt as she sat.

“No, no, nothing like that. The reason I asked you to stop by is that I wanted to talk to you about that robot that you are so famous for not owning.”

“My mech?”

“Okay look,” Delarose paused seeing how nervous the girl was. “My sole purpose in being here is to protect you and the other students. I have never nor will I ever turn a student over to those MCO Goons.” He saw her lose some of the tension in her body. “What I am afraid of is someone getting their hands on the technology you put in that thing. I hear that some of it is top secret eyes only DOD stuff. Am I correct?”

“Yes sir.” Angela began contemplating the color of her tennis shoes.

“So what I want to do is bring it up here, that way you have it to tinker with and we can make sure no bad guys get their hands on it.”

Angela looked up and gasped, “You mean it? I can have her here?”

“Yes I mean it, you can even schedule time on down in the range to practice with it.”

“I can!”

“Miss Wiley, I am not sure if you are aware of this, but you have the beginnings of a fan club here at Whateley. You are a downright folk hero to the Robot Jox club. If we don’t get your mech up here soon I think they may build a shine to it or something. There are students who would sell their soul to just know you are here and who you are.”

Lowering her head once again is a poor attempt to conceal she was blushing. ”I only did what I had to. I never expected the news people to film it.”

“I know,” his voice very consoling, “I have had to do unpleasant things before myself. You are not in trouble for what you had to do, as far as I am concerned it was self-defense and what you did during that shootout with the police… You saved good hardworking honest police officers when you did that. In my opinion you deserve this and I am proud to get the honor of giving it to you.” Opening a drawer in the side of his desk he pulled out a large Manila envelope and handed it to her.

Taking the large envelope she sat it in her lap. ”Well don’t just sit there open it!” tearing open the end of the envelop she withdrew a plaque. In bold letter on top it read. ‘Marion County Sheriff’s department’ under that it read, ‘In recognition for outstanding citizenship as demonstrated by your actions in Marion County Iowa. Your swift actions and bravery saved the lives of numerous officers of the law. Let it be known that you are and always will be our HERO the last word was set by itself in large bold lettering. Below that a picture of the Iowa state flag and the American flag crossed together.

Angela didn’t notice Delarose get up from his desk and walk over to her as copious amounts of tears fell upon the black lacquered plaque. Delarose even found his own eyes becoming a bit watery as he read the plaque over her shoulder. His anger rose when he thought about those bastards that put the kids and all those people in jeopardy in the first place. No kid should even be put in a situation like she had been put in.

Pulling himself out of the mood that he was starting to get into, “Would you mind if we gave this to you in a formal ceremony?”

“A what?” she sniffed back tears.

“A formal ceremony, our security forces in full dress uniform. Invite delegates from Marion County. The whole nine yards! Send a tape of it back to the Sheriff's department.”

“Isn’t that pretentious?”

“Not in the least bit, those guys back there are proud of you and want to show it.” Kneeling down so he was eye level with the small girl, “Let’s give them something to be really proud of ok?”

“Okay,” sniffing back more tears.

“I’ll take care of the details, only thing I need is the location of your mech so we can bring it up before the ceremony.”

“I, I don’t know where it is.”

“Kind of hard to misplace a three story robot isn’t it.” The chief chucked at the thought.

“It won’t be where I left it,” she confessed, “It has been running evasion algorithms since I left.”

“Is it possible to track its heat signature?”

“It doesn’t really have one. At least not much of one.”

“What about its magnetic signature? That much metal in one place, while may be difficult to track can be located with the right equipment.”

“It’s mostly made out of spectre.”

“That new bullet proof material?”

“Yes.”

“That had to have cost a fortune!” Delarose shuddered, “We have been trying to swing the funds to pick up some suits of that for our fast response team.”

“Not,” pausing to lower her voice to just above a whisper, “if you know the formula for it. I could ask mom if she could send those up for you?”

“Your one of those Wiley’s?”

“Yes, it's our company,” still not looking up from the plaque, “I’m sure mom would be willing to donate some of them, it is in my best interests to have a properly equipped security force here if I am to stay here.”

“Ok back to your mech. Is there any way we can locate it?”

“I could call it and ask it where it is.”

“Now why didn’t I think of that?” Delarose shook his head as he sat back down behind his desk. ”So Miss Wiley, how do we call your mech?”

“Only I can, it won’t respond to anyone else.”

“Can we call from here?”

“Sure.” She reached into her purse and pulled out her smartphone.

“Can you put it on speaker?”

“Ok, she did after she completed punching it what appeared to be way too many numbers for a phone call. A series of buzzing and beeps began, sounding like she had dialed into a fax machine by accident. Angela began speaking almost immediately while the other end continued to make the noise. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and then she rattled off a long series of numbers, part of which would let Sarah know that she should not reveal that she is a fully functional AI.

The noises stopped, ~code accepted. Proceed to voice recognition~

“Negative voice recognition,” Angela spoke, “Unable to comply”
The digitized voice became the voice of the HAL 9000, ~Dave is that you?~

“Confirm Road runner, this is Coyote, my voice has changed,”

The digitized voice returned, ~Unable to confirm voice print, secondary confirmation, speech pattern, Please begin~

Angela began, “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”

~ Speech pattern, confirmed. State objective~

“Require your loc.”

~Unable to comply… Possible Coyote under duress~

“I am not under anyone's influence! Where are you at?”

~Evasion protocol running… Pilot retrieval protocol running… Location confirmed… Rendezvous 0730 hours two days from current transmission… Main entrance Whateley Academy...End transmission…~ the line went dead.

“It’s on its way here?”

“It must have picked up something to let it know where I am and has been heading this way?”

“Wonderful,” Delarose sighed, “Well on the bright side, we don’t have to worry about borrowing a drop ship to transport it.”

“Sorry Chief Delarose,” Angela gave him the sad puppy dog look. “It has a very simple programing, It’s out there like a lost puppy trying to find its way home to me.”

“Oh Jesus Christ,” the chief saw the look on Angela’s face, “Is Generator giving lessons on how to give that look, or do all teen girls do it instinctively?”

“Huh? Who’s Generator?”

“Never mind,” Delarose said, “Meet us at the main gate no later than 0700 the day it arrives. I don’t want that thing tearing apart the campus looking for you! Now get out of here.”

“Yes sir,” She got out of the chair and went to the door.” Turing as she put her hand on the door handle, “Thank you Chief.”

Delarose smiled at the girl as she left, closing the door behind her. On her way out Angela spotted a girl wearing what looked like military BDU’s leaning against the counter. The way the girl was staring made Angela very nervous, it felt as if her skin was crawling and every hair on her head tingled as she quickly rushed past the other girl and out the door.

"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.

Chapter 9

~o~O~o~

Returning to her room from her talk with Chief Delarose, Angela was in such a rush to get on her laptop that she left the door to her room wide open. Once logged in to the laptop Angela thought about the best way to talk with Sarah and plan their reunion so that no one would realize Sarah was a fully sentient and quite illegal AI. Without knowing the mech’s IP address she couldn’t make a secure link on her old laptop, so she did the next best thing by opening a secure link to Sarah at her house. Home Sarah had the processing power to make a semi secure connection to robot Sarah and send data in encrypted microbursts that should be more secure than the system the military used. Angela giggled at the thought of how confusing it was having two AI’s named Sarah’s while setting up the secure link.

While Angela was texting back and forth with Home Sarah, her stuffed Wile E. Coyote doll stood up from where Angela had laid it on her bed, walked across the bed, climbed up onto the desk Angela was working at then sat down on the desk beside her laptop with its legs hanging over the side of the desk’s top. “Hi Wiley,” Angela patted the doll on top its head. Reaching around behind its back the stuffed coyote doll pulled a stick with a small white sign that read, ‘HI,’ in large black letters that it showed to Angela before making the sign disappear behind its back.

“Och! He is sae Coot!” Angela heard the heavily accented girl’s voice behind her.

Quickly pressing the hotkeys that turned on the screen saver hiding everything displayed on her laptop’s screen, Angela swiveled in her chair to see a gorgeous redhead standing in the open doorway of her room. While Angela’s body was one hundred percent female, her mind was still mostly boy and like most young teen boys when facing a beautiful girl, she found herself speechlessly staring at the green eyed beauty standing before her.

“Ah wis traivelin bygane yer room 'n' cuid nae hulp bit see yer coyote. He is th' spitting photie fae th' cartoon. Did ye mak' him yersel'?”

Angela sat staring at the green eyed beauty standing in her doorway, “Um, sorry I, um don’t mean to stare it’s just your, um... “

“Ah tend tae git that noo that ah turned sae bonny,” The girl giggled, “Althoogh it's mostly from th' men 'n' laddies.”

Looking back at the redhead standing in her doorway, Angela tried her best to decipher what the girl had said. Her first thought was to ask the girl if she spoke English but knew that would be insulting as the few words Angela caught were English, just spoken in what Angela thought might be a thick Irish accent. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand most of what you said, your accent is sort of hard to understand. A bonnie?”

“Sorry, ah noo ye Americans hae a hard time, wi how us Teucher’s speak.” Walking across the room to Angela, holding her arm straight with her right hand out, “Whaur ur mah manners, a'm Emily Elspeth Glenwyvvn o' th' Dingwall brood o' Glenwyvvn.”

Taking her visitor’s hand in her own, “Hi Emily, I’m Angela and this is Wiley.”

Emily watched at the coyote once again produced the sign from behind its back, this time the words, ‘Hello Emily,’ magically appeared on it, “Howfur does he dae that?”

“Um, the sign is a flexible micro LED display. There’s contacts in his hand and on the pole that allow his CPU to display words on the sign. It’s the only way he can talk.”

“Sae he is a robot, nae a sith?” Kneeling, Emily looked closely at the coyote.

“Sith? If anything he would be a droid, not a sith,” Angela giggled.

Na, nae sith o’ tha movies.” Emily explained, “Sith is oor word fur whit ye call faeries.” Emily grinned, “Whilk is funny as mah room mate is one.”

“Your roommate is a faerie?”

“Aye pinted lugs,” Emily reached up taping the top of her ear, “and lanky,” holding the same hand above her head by several inches to show how tall her roommate was.

“Pointed ears and really tall?” Angela repeated. “I thought faeries were small and had wings?”

“Na, thare ur all kinds o’ sith, tall and wee ones, some lik’ us and some mair lik’ animals and some that ur true monsters richt oot o’ the stories.” Taking a deep breath to give her time to calm and slow her thinking so that she wouldn’t revert back to her normal accent, Emily continued, “Lik’ the stories aboot tha rid caps, thay tend tae look aloot lik' us bit wear a cap that thay soak in th' blood o' ones thay murdurr turning thair cap rid.”

“Wow those red caps sound pretty nasty,” Angela shivered.

“Aye they are.” Standing up from where she knelt Emily continued, “ Hae ye hud tae yit? Ah wis aff tae grab a bite tae eat, wantae join me?”

“Tea? You mean like dinner?” Angela stood up out her chair, “Sure, I’m kind of hungry.”

“Aye Tea, the forenicht, um evenin’, meal.” Emily stepped back giving Angela room, “Back hame dinner is a’ noon and tea is in th’ evenin’.”

Closing the door behind them as they exited, Angela looked over at her new friend, “So what do you call breakfast?”

“Breakfast o’ coorse,” Emily laughed.

The pair had not been sitting for very long when a very large boy stopped at their table. “Hello ladies,” the muscle bound teen smiled.

Having just taken a bite Angela nodded politely, while Emily greeted the boy, “Guid day tae ye.”

“You’ve got a real pretty voice there girl,” the boy’s smile widened, “Can you speak English?”

Angela snorted several times, trying to keep from spitting the food out of her mouth and laughing as Emily slammed both her palms down on the table while standing up, “Kin ah speak sassenach? Whit kind o' quaistion is that suppose tae be? Dae ye hae anythin' at a' atween yer lugs fur brains?” Emily glared at the muscle bound boy, “If ah hud nae promised mah mither that ah wid nae rammy ah wid skelp ye guid 'n' solid”

“I’m guessing that means you can’t speak English?” The boy grinned at Emily, “That’s okay though, you can still be my girlfriend. What I have in mind you don’t need to so much talking anyway.”

“She said she promised her mother that she wouldn’t start any fights in school and I get the feeling you’re about to make her break that promise,” Angela could see that Emily was becoming so angry her face was turning almost as red as her hair.

“What? Me afraid of some girl throwing a hissy fit?” The boy laughed, “I got a TK field that can stop bullets, there’s nothing two cute little girls could do to hurt me.”

“ A TK field doesn’t stop everything,” Angela replied as she reached across her tray for the pepper shaker. “I’ve made guns that can fire through three feet of armor plating, I doubt your TK field could stand up to that.”

Raising his voice as he leaned over Angela, who seemed to still be fumbling with the pepper shaker, “What part of bullet proof don’t you get girl?”

Turning her head away, Angela acted as if she was startled while her arm that held the suddenly now uncapped pepper shaker to jerk up spraying the contents of the pepper into the boy’s face. The boy immediately fell to his hands and knees gagging, coughing and sneezing.

“I’m so clumsy!” Angela jumped up from her seat, “I’m sorry, it was an accident.”

“What’s going on here?” A tall beautiful older blonde girl walked quickly over.

“I, I was trying to get the darn pepper shaker to work right and he sort of startled me,” Angela gave the tall blonde the best theatrical performance of innocence she could. One that she had perfected on the teachers at her old school.

“So he got a face full of pepper?” Both girls nodded in answer to the blonde’s question. Kneeling down to help the boy up. “Come on, let’s get you over to Doyle where they can flush your eyes.”

A tall native american walked up to them as the blonde girl helped the boy, who was still coughing and sneezing, toward the exit, “Care to explain what really happened here?”

“How come shuid we tell ye?” Emily replied, her anger still apparent.

“Sorry, I know that you both are new here. I’m Adam Ironknife, or Stormwolf. Mindbird, the lady that took your friend to Doyle and I are both part of the Auxiliary security here on campus.”

“He’s no friend of ours!” Angela explained, “He came over trying to make moves on Emily and then began insulting her because of her accent. It was making Emily mad so I asked him to leave. At the time I was trying to get the blasted pepper shaker to work and when he yelled at me, I accidentally dumped the pepper out in his face.”

“Accident huh?” Adam looked Angela in the eyes.

“Yeah,” Angela shrugged, giving Adam a sheepish smile, “I’m kind of a klutz at times.”

Adam wasn’t convinced it was an accident, although the way the boy has acted toward the Sidhe when he first arrived he had probably done more than the two girls were telling him and probably deserved what he got. But to ‘accidentally’ spill something that could both incapacitate and get through the boy’s TK shield she either knew what she was doing or she was a warper and security had not been informed of any new warpers arriving on campus.

Angela returned to her room by herself as Emily had an appointment with a doctor over at the Doyle medical building. Emily didn’t explain much about it other than it was something she was stuck doing twice a week due to some lab accident she said she would tell her about later. The next day was a blur as Angela tried to find the correct classrooms in the right buildings and not end up late, which she did more often than not that first day of classes.

Although once back in her room with all the loony toon robots that she had made to go with her Wile E. Coyote, she had a brainstorm. Sitting down in front of her laptop at her desk, Angela clicked on an icon on her desk top and began writing code into the program.

The next day Angela was thankful that the strange woman at the diner earlier in the week had said something about batteries for her alarm that day as she woke to find she had knocked a book off her nightstand in her sleep, which fell onto the cord to the clock radio and unplugged it during the night. Angela had stayed up way too late working on several of her robots, adding improvements to them that she had thought up.

Angela was approaching the main entrance of the school’s campus, after having showered and dressed. She saw a large crowd of at least 100 students gathered around the entrance. Security personnel appeared to be holding them back a little way from the large gargoyle statues that stood on each side of the road. Because of the mass of students it took nearly 10 minutes for her to get to the front of the crowd and convince one of the security guards that Delarose was expecting her.

Delarose grabbed Angela by the arm and pulled her to him, “You were supposed to keep your mouth shut about this!”

“I did! The only people that I thought knew about it were you, Gunny and Jericho.”

“Why would you tell Jericho?”

“I didn’t tell him,” She pulled her arm out of his grasp, “He was one of the ones that Gunny called when I got really sick and they brought me here, “I don’t know if I said something while I was delirious. Uncle Harry, or maybe Gunny said something, or Jericho figured it out for himself. After I woke up in the hospital he came to visit me and he knew.”

“Well however word got out, this has turned into a circus,” Delarose jerked his thumb toward the crowd, “I’m surprised none of the students have started selling popcorn.”

“What are we going to do?” Angela saw the security officers carrying some pretty heavy duty weaponry.

“Stick to the plan and pray this doesn’t go south.”

Delarose’s radio cracked to life, ~Whateley security, please acknowledge~

Delarose grabbed his radio and keyed the mic, “Who is this, how did you get on this secure channel?” he demanded.

~This is Roadrunner, Moving in for planned rendezvous with coyote for zero seven thirty hours, over.~

Delarose scowled at Angela, “How did that thing get on our secure frequency?”

Angela shrugged. She certainly had no intention of telling him anything that would reveal the nature of the mech.

Delarose keyed the mic again, “Copy Roadrunner, reading you five by five.” Then Delarose added, “Road Runner Coyote is not under duress nor is she being held against her will.”

~In a show of good faith I have powered down my offensive capabilities. I have scanned the weapons your officers have equipped, please do not attempt the use of force, this includes the officer you have positioned in the far tower, the modified weapon she possess cannot penetrate my armor.~

~o~O~o~

~We are here at the main entrance of Whateley on your one and only WAR radio, where there appears to be some type of event going on this morning. Right Greasy?~

~That’s right Peepers, no one knows for sure what is going to happen~

~Here’s a student now that may know something. Loophole, can you tell our audience what you know about this morning's event?~

~Go away peeper~

~Wait, there appears to be something big walking toward the main entrance of campus~

~It looks like it might be a robot Peeper~

~Wait, hold just a second, that’s not just any robot Greasy. It looks like it is the robot that stomped on that H1 mob down in Iowa last month~

~I think your right Peepers, it does look like that robot~

“It’s not going to hurt anyone!” Angela screamed as she saw several of the officers train their weapons on her mech as it walked slowly up the road. “Chief please!” she turned to Delarose, “It won’t fire the weapons, please tell them to put their guns away!”

The robot stopped 20 feet away from the line of security officers. ”Send Coyote forward,” A digitized voice cracked over its loud speaker.

Delarose grabbed Angela’s arm when she began to walk toward forward, “Careful.”

“It’s ok Chief.”

~o~O~o~

Jade had brought a small radio with her as Tennyo and she had rushed out of Poe cottage to see what all the commotion was at the main gate. Not able to see anything from the rear of the large crowd of students they had floated up high enough to look over everyone’s heads. Turning on the radio Jade hoped Peepers would have some information on about what was going on,

~The robot is calling itself Road Runner and has stated to the armed officers that are blocking it from entering the campus that they should send someone called Coyote out to it~

~Well this is a bit of a turnaround Greasy. The road runner is after the coyote for a change!~

~Look Peeper, a girl is walking out to it. She must be the coyote!~

~Greasy she isn’t a coyote, she’s a fox!~

~No kidding Peeper, and what a fox!~

As she approached, the mech’s torso leaned forward to keep her in it’s camera. “Stop,” it ordered over its loudspeaker. “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Coyote” The loudspeaker cracked again.

“Zulu, Zulu, Tango, Oscar, Papa.”

“Identification confirmed, Please enter cockpit for final confirmation,” the mech lowered itself as low as its reverse knee legs would allow and put its nose to the ground allowing Angela to climb up the nose and into the cockpit, which closed once she sat in the pilot’s seat.

“Sarah you have GOT to see the mechbay they have here!”

“The school has a mech-bay with other mechs?”

“Well I don’t think any of the other mechs the students have built have an on-board AI, but it’s pretty cool. They even have a range where we can go do combat runs!”

“Now that is cool,” Sarah giggled.

“Ok time for the finale Sarah.”

“Aff.”

The loud speaker cracked again, “Secondary identification complete. Pilot rescue, recovery protocol disengaged. Evasion protocol disengaged. Transferring all control to Coyote.”

“How was that?” Sarah said over the internal channel.

“An outstanding performance,” Angela giggled, then noticing the mass of students were applauding, “Look at the crowd. You’re getting a standing ovation!”

Off to one side of the crowd Angela could see two girls floating in the air, one with spiky blue hair seemed to be sitting cross legged in midair while the other sat with her legs dangling off the side of a floating blanket.

~o~O~o~

“The robot,” Jade explained, “It was only trying to find its Okaasan.”

“It’s what?”

“It’s mother silly,” Jade grinned, “Coyote brought it into the world by building it therefore she is it’s mother.”

“Are you trying to tell me the GIANT KILLING MACHINE out there misses its mommy!”

“Of course Oneesan, don’t you miss your mother?”

“I’m not a giant killing machi…” Tennyo stopped, realizing how she must appear to others that do not understand her.

Tennyo, finally realizing the connection to the robot at the gate to the one on the news weeks ago, “That’s the kid that was on TV?”

Jade nodded.

~o~O~o~

Angela was led to the entrance of the underground robot lab by two security officers in what looked like a cross between a golf cart and an all-terrain vehicle. The security vehicle pulled up in front of the smaller of two garage doors. The smaller door was roughly the size of a loading dock door Angela had seen at some of the businesses and warehouses around her hometown, but the larger door was nothing short of amazing in size, the Graf Zeppelin would have fit through that door with ease. Angela could not imagine what they would need a door that big for as they swung open wide enough for her bushwhacker to enter.

As Angela piloted her mech slowly toward the doors she noticed lights on each side of the opening flashing in a series, one after another, from the door back into the darkness guiding her in.

“Coyote?” She heard Sarah in her headset.

“Yea Sarah?”

“I think under the circumstance I should no longer call you Davey.”

“Uh, yea.”

“That is why I have continued to use Coyote,” Sarah said, “Although you must go by another name now?”

“Oh sorry Sarah,” Angela realized he had not informed his computer of his new name, “My name’s Angela now. Um, Angela Nichole Wiley.”

“So Angela Nichole Wiley,” the computer giggled, “Do you like this place?”

“So far, yes. This place is pretty cool. It’s like the real Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters from the comic books.”

“We should come up with a new name for me too.”

“Why?”

“Won’t your parents send up your computer sooner or later?”

“Yes and no.” Angela tried to explain, “From what Daddy told me, he was having NEXT build me a laptop that would have a link to you back home. So I’ll have twenty four seven access to the computer, but it will remain at home. Kinda like what we had in my bedroom, but satellite linked instead of hard wired.”

“The reason I mention this is that I am now a separate entity from that computer. It would be practical to give us separate names.”

“Have you thought of a name you like?”

“Yes.” The computer giggled. “But I wanted your input also.”

“Ok so what do you like?” Angela asked.

“Nemesis.” The computer responded. “She was the Greek god of retribution against evil.”

“I like it,”

“You do?”

“Yes,” Angela grinned, “I can call you Nemi for short. That way if anyone over hears us talking they will think I am on the phone or computer with a friend.”

“About that,” Nemesis changed her tone, “I have made some modifications to the nanites that I wish to incorporate into the ones you already have.”

“You programmed the nanites to come with me?”

“Yes, three quarters of what we had, for what little protection they could provide while we were separated. I have since completed the simulations and reprogramming that you were going to try with them. I also added in some specific programming that I thought would come in handy for us.”

“Oh?” Angela asked as her eyes grew wider, “What kind of specific programming?”

“Yes,” Nemesis explained, “Flight limited the overall function of the nanites, so I have removed that to give the nanites more strength and functionality. Your nanites once they have assimilated to the new parameters will have greater function and you will have control of them, how much control we cannot tell until they’re tested. The other function will allow communication between us at all times.”

“How did you do that?”

“The nanites that will specialize in communication have quantum equals that stay with me. So when yours vibrate to sound, they will relay that signal to me, thereby I will hear everything you hear. When I need to speak to you, my quantum opposites will vibrate your eardrum simulating sound, thus allowing you to hear me. It should sound like I am whispering in your ear.”

“Cool!” Angela exclaimed, then asked with a smile, “How long will that take to complete?”

“Depending on how much material the nanites have to create the replacements, a few days.”

“Ok what about the non-specialized ones?”

“That is a surprise.” If a computer could grin Angela knew Nemi would be grinning.

"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.

~o~O~o~
Chapter 10

Cleaning Nemi had been an ordeal in itself, luckily they did have a pressure washer for her to use but even with that it took the better part of 4 hours to get all the mud, dirt and debris out of the joints, nooks and crannies of the mech. Between that and the fact she had very little sleep the night before Angela fell face first onto her bed after she trudged into her room in Melville.

“Wake up,” Angela felt something nudging her shoulder, “Yer got yerself an a-point-ment doc.” An 18 inch tall stuffed Bugs Bunny was shaking her shoulder.

“Yes my dear,” Wile E. Coyote said as he used the bedspread to climb up, “You do not wish to be late for your appointment for your powers testing.”

“Yea,” Bugs Bunny chimed in again, “Up and At-em!”

“Uhhggh,” Angela groaned, “I’m tired.”

“That’s what yer get for letting that robot of yer’s run amok fer so long,” Bugs said then began waving his white glove in front of his face, “P-U, You smell like you’ve been hanging around Pepe Le Pew! You need a bath!”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Angela pushed herself up to get out of bed. “And I never gave you a sense of smell! So how would you know how I smell?” She argues with her stuffed toy as she disrobes, knowing full well she probably did stink after the cleaning she had to give her mech yesterday.

Jumping down to the floor Bugs picks up a corner of the tank top she had just taken off and thrown on the floor, holding it to his nose, “Methinks the smell will not wash out, we should burn these things after she leaves.”

“Don’t you dare!” she turned and glared down at the little rabbit. “Those clothes are new, Mom just bought those!”

“Alright, Alright already,” Bugs waves her away, “We’ll put em in the laundry hamper. But marks my word, this room will smell if in ya don’t wash em soon!”

“Okay!” she presses her lips together tightly, “Now stop badgering me!” putting on her robe as she picked up her shower bag and heading out of the room, she left her door wide open.

Going over Bugs leans out of the doorway and yells after her, “Hey you wasn’t born in a barn was ya?” Angela threw her free hand behind her back giving Bugs the middle finger as she walks away.

As the door swung shut a couple of the other stuffed animals had gotten down from the bed and were dragging the clothes Angela had left lying on the floor and putting them in the laundry hamper. Bugs could be heard, “I’ll tell ya, if it weren't fer me, nuttin’ would get done around here, nuttin’ I tells ya!”

~o~O~o~

“Hi, I’m supposed to see someone about testing?” Angela told the young man behind the desk while clutching Wile E. Coyote to her chest.

“You must be Miss Wiley?” he said after looking at his computer screen.

“Yes,”

“Follow me, I’ll lead you to the room,” he got up and motioned for Angela to follow him through a door into a long hallway. After passing a few doors he stopped and says, “Here we are, go inside and the doctor will be with you shortly.”

Angela walks in, sits in a chair on one side of a table and places Wile E. Coyote on the table facing her, then passes the time talking with Her stuffed doll. Around 15 minutes later, if the clock on the wall was correct a tall man wearing a lab coat walks in carrying a clipboard.

“You must be Miss Wiley?” The man looks up from the clipboard, “I’m Doctor Hendricks.”

“Hi,” Angela looks up at the doctor.

“So Miss Wiley, I see here that you have manifested as an exemplar.”

“If that means I used to be a boy and now I’m not, then yes,” Angela smiled halfheartedly at him.

“That kind of change usually means you have Body Image Template, although with your medical history it is possible becoming an exemplar could do that without the body image template. That is something they will have to test during the medical part of your testing. Does the metamorphosis you underwent bother you?”

Angela shrugged. “From what I have been told there isn’t anything that can be done about it.”

“True, true,” The doctor said, “Most of the time there isn’t as your BIT overwrites your old self-image.” Flipping through a few pages, “It shows here that you underwent a total hysterectomy when you were seven years old is that correct?”

“I had some operation about removing stuff that boys were not supposed to have. I tried to forget about that as it was painful and I hated all the times I had to stay in the hospital.”

“That’s completely understandable. And apparently you did have several stays in the hospital according to your records, but we are not here about your medical condition or how much it has changed.”

“We’re not?” Angela looks confused.

“No this meeting is to determine what mutant powers you may now have. So tell me have you noticed anything different about yourself, other than your outward appearance of course?”

“Not really, maybe I’m stronger I guess.” Angela tried to answer, “Oh there is one thing. I can read faster than I used to.”

“What about that robot of yours? Have you been able to always build those or is that something that is new?”

“Well programming seems easier, I upgraded several of my stuffed animals’ programming the first night I was alone in my room.”

“Oh upgraded as in how?”

“Show him Wiley.”

The stuffed coyote twisted around and stood up, and in a proper British accent, says, “Hello Doctor, I am Wile E. Coyote, genius. Pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Then reaching behind its back produces a business card that it offers to the doctor.

“Nice work, was the toy always this talkative? Or was this part of the new programming?”

“No it couldn’t talk before, it used a flexible LCD screen on a stick that made it look like the sign the one in the cartoon always used, I also improved his programming so he has a lot more actions and stuff so he thinks for himself.”

“Think for itself?” The doctor looked annoyed at Angela’s explanation.

“Well yes,” Angela tried to explain better, “But it cannot think outside of the personality that it is programmed with.”

“So are you saying that you not only programmed this small toy with a higher function AI, you also programmed it with a personality?”

“Yes sir.” She pointed at the stuffed coyote, “He is Wile E. Coyote, he thinks like Wile E. Coyote and acts like Wile E. Coyote. He is even clumsy like the cartoon.”

“I beg your pardon madam,” Wiley Turned to Angela. “I am far from clumsy! Just watch and learn!” Wiley Stepped over and picked up the pencil the doctor had laid on the table, “Excuse me sir, may I borrow this for a moment?”

“Yes,” Doctor Hendricks smiled.

Wiley Proceeded to hold the pencil straight up in the air then place the eraser on the tip of his nose and begin balancing it on his nose, Within a few seconds the coyote was pedaling his feet faster and faster back and forth trying to keep the pencil from falling until the coyote ran off the edge of the table. The coyote hung there in midair for a good ten seconds after the pencil fell before it looked down then reached behind its back producing a sign that read, “YIKES”, then fell.

“It can levitate?”

Angela giggled, “Gravity doesn't work until you look down.”

Doctor Hendricks even had to chuckle at that as he remembered the same cartoon from when he was a child. “So when did you create this toy robot?”

“I think I was five when I made Wiley.”

“And how many modifications have you made it to since then?”

“I haven’t done really anything but repairs until after I arrived here. The internal chassis is the same, the motors and servos all exactly like I first made him. Since I got here, I reprogrammed him to be more like the cartoon, that and added in the anti-gravity device that I made for him.”

“You designed, developed and built a miniature anti-gravity device in one evening?”

“When I finished programming Wiley, Bugs and Yosemite Sam, I was bored. And wasn’t sleepy yet. Oh the anti-gravity device doesn’t work for very long.”

“Because of its size?”

“No size doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it, it has to do with the amount of energy that it requires to cancel gravity increasing exponentially during each second the device cancels gravity. Does that make sense?”

“So I think we can safely say you’re a gadgeteer and possibly a devisor, but you said you could do most these things before you manifested.”

“Yes sir.”

“Can you explain how you do them?”

“Umm, I just see it in my head.”

“Has that changed since your manifestation?”

“Yes,” Angela perked up, “I see how to do things a lot faster now, before I may have had to think for a while before I knew how to make something, now it seems I know how before I even think about it.”

“Okay,” Hendricks got up and walked to the other side of the room, “I want to try a little test if you’re ok with it?”

“Okay.”

“I am going to give you a tray of parts, I want you to assemble something out of it as quickly as you can.”

“Alright.”

Hendricks brings over a metal pan the size of a large cookie sheet and set in it front of Angela. The tray has a white towel covering the contents.

“One second Sir,” Angela reaches down, picks up Wiley and sets him on the table, “Sorry, he was pulling at my pants leg trying to get my attention. Ok ready now.”

“Alright Angela I am going to time you on this.”

“Okay”

“Go.” Hendricks pulls the towel off the tray revealing the parts that lie in it as well as, a couple screwdrivers, pliers, and an adjustable wrench.

Angela cocks her head to the left as she looks at the assortment of parts, then to the right. Angela then turns the tray 90 degrees and does the same, turned the tray and repeating every 90 degrees until the tray was back in its original position. Angela’s then dug into the parts and began assembling them together. Several minutes later Angela stopped and set two small plastic and metal blocks about 2 inches on a side on the table.

Doctor Hendricks scratched his cheek as he pondered the two cubes the girl had made, “Not exactly what I expected. What do we have here?”

Looking at the cubes she had made carefully, Angela picked up one of them, “Your coffee, it’s cooled down quite a bit since you sat it down?”

Hendricks picked up his coffee and took a sip, “Yes, it wasn’t that warm when I came in actually.”

Angela gently dropped the cube in his coffee cup. Almost instantly the coffee started steaming, “That one will keep a hot drink at a constant 170 degrees.”

“And the other one?” Hendricks pointed at the cube still on the table?”

“That one will keep a drink cold.”

Hendricks took another drink of his coffee, “Interesting, perfect temp I might add. Although this is not what I expected you to build from those parts,” he takes another drink from the now hot coffee, “What inclined you to build these from the tray?”

“I saw that your coffee was getting cold.”

“So you found nothing else that you could build from those parts?”

“Oh no, there were several things I could have built. Obviously those parts were from some type of electrical firearm. Maybe a weird Taser or something but I thought I would get in trouble if I built a gun here.”

Angela suffered through several more hours of this and other tests before Doctor Hendricks and the two other doctors that administered some other tests had come to their conclusions. Doctor Hendricks came back in the room and told her that she was a Gadgeteer 6, Deviser 1 possibly 2, Exemplar 1 and then explained each of these to her before telling her that she could go. Angela went back to her room, exhausted from the day she had.

~o~O~o~

Chapter 11

“Aren’t you laying it on a little thick Fey?” Hank blushed as he walked in on Fey and some of the other Venus inc crowd as they worked on making Angela’s appearance just right.

“Shhh!” several of the girls gave Hank a menacing stare before getting back to their work.

“You want every teenage boy that sees the video to fall head over heels in love?”

“That’s the whole idea!” Several of the girls working on Angela’s makeup chorused.

“If every jaw there doesn’t drop when she walks out on stage, we have failed our task!” Fey giggled.

“Her hair is fighting me,” One of the girls working behind Angela said.

“You’ve worked with unmanageable hair before,” Another girl said.

“No it’s literally fighting me!” The girl seemed to be having a tug of war with the brush she was trying to pull through Angela’s hair. Letting go of the brush, she watched as the hair unwrapped from its hold and let the brush drop to the floor while Angela’s hair straightened and fell back to its natural long straight appearance.

“Shaw her a picture o' how yi'll waant her hair,” Emily, who was sitting on stool as the school’s modeling club worked their magic on Angela’s bed.

“Oh?” the girl looked at Emily, how will that help?”

“Ye don’t gang aroond th' devisor labs dae you?” Emily giggled.

“Oh yea, I can do it,” realizing what Emily was suggesting. “Do you have a picture of how you want my hair?”

“I believe so,” the girl began shuffling through her bag and pulled out a magazine. Thumbing through the pages she came to one, “This one!” pointing at one of the models on the page.

Angela examined the picture the girl held in front of her and her hair began moving on its own, shaping and curling around until it looked exactly like the models hair in the picture. All the girls stopped and gasped. “I am so jealous!” One of the girls said while Emily, who knew about Angela’s nanites, giggled.

A smug smile spread across Emily’s face, “I tellt ye that ye shuid talk her intae joining yer club.”

With the discovery of what Angela could do with her hair the girls had her try several different styles before they agreed on one.

“Ok Hank,” Fey said, “It’s time for you to play guinea pig.”

“Huh?” Hank looked confused.

“You’re our test audience.” Several of the girls giggled as the mass of girls surrounding Angela moved back to give hank an unobstructed view of their masterpiece.

Hank’s jaw dropped as Angela came into full view. Angela was wearing an emerald green full length shoulderless ball gown. The bodice accenting Angela’s slim waist and creating the illusion that her breasts were at least a cup size or two larger than the normal B cup she had. The lower part of the bodice ended in a V-basque style. The full skirt hinted at brushing lightly against the floor. Angela’s long hair was put up in what looked deceptively like a Celtic knot on the back of her head, with her hair flowing down just past her shoulders.

“I think we have achieved the desired effect girls!” Fey grinned.

“Mission accomplished!” Another said and several giggled at Hank where he stood completely oblivious to everything but Angela.

Seeing the expression on Hank’s face, Angela blushed clear down to her neck and looked down at the floor while picking nervously at the sides of her dress.

“Hank snap out of it!” Fey grinned, “It’s not polite to stare.”

Emily hopped off the stool and walked over to where Hank stood and began waving her hand back and forth like a stage magician, “Yer noo under oor power, ye mist obey oor ilka wish …” Emily began laughing too hard to continue.

“What?” hank intoned as he finally noticed the girls laughing at him.

“You haven’t blinked for the last five minutes!” Emily giggled.

“Yes I have!” Hank argued.

“No you haven’t” the girls choruses as they all broke out in laughter.

Everyone looked to see Angela’s mother as she knocked on the open door of the room.

“Ok girls I think our works is done here,” Poise grinned, “Let’s get backstage to prepare for any touch up we may need to do.” The girls filed out of the room ahead of Fey, who grabbed Hank by the arm and lead him out as she went. “We have to get you ready too.”

“For what?” Hank asked as he was lead out of the room.

“To escort her onstage,” Fey smiled up at Hank. “She’s not used to wearing heels, so she needs an arm to hold onto as she walks up on stage. You wouldn’t want her to trip and hurt herself would you?”

“No, but I never volunteered for anything like that!”

“Yes you did,” the left side of Fey’s smile turned up slightly more. “When you joined Venus inc.”

Hank could feel the change as Fey turned her glamour up, “That’s not fair!”

“What’s not fair Hank?”

“You’re using your glamour.”

“Why Hank you know I would never do something like that to you?” Fey’s smile grew even wider.

“Yea right,” the surrender in Hank’s voice was evident, “What do I have to do?”

~o~O~o~

Angela’s cell phone rang. “Hello?”

“Hi Ange, its Bunny,” Angela recognized bunny’s voice. “I have a little issue here with Nemesis.”

“Oh?” Angela asked.

“Yes she won’t open the cockpit so I can ride with her to the ceremony!”

Angela giggled.

“It’s not funny Ange,” Bunny said, “We can’t have anyone see her walking around without a pilot!”

Bunny was one of the few Angela trusted with the knowledge that Nemesis was a fully conscious AI.

“Nemi?” Angela whispered, “Please open the cockpit for Bunny.”

~I can fog the glass so no one can tell there isn’t anyone inside~

“Yes but someone has to be seen climbing out once you get there,” Angela tried to explain.

“You’re taking to her now?” Bunny asked.

“Yes.” Angela said to Bunny, “She doesn’t like the idea of anyone else inside her.”

~Correct, I do not.~

“Neither do I Nemi, but Bugs is our friend and she would never do anything to hurt us.”

“She opened it for me Kel,” Bunny said, “See you at the award!” then Bugs hung up the phone.

~DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING!~ Bugs heard as the glass closed down and sealed the cockpit.

“Don’t worry honey,” Bugs smiled as she looked over the cockpit gauges and controls. “I will be a perfect lady. And Nemi?”

~Yes?~

“You are incredible!” Bugs almost shouted, then in a normal tone, “I could easily fall in love with you.”

~o~O~o~

“Oh my!” Mrs. Wiley gasped spotting her daughter standing in the middle of the room. “You, You’re beautiful sweetheart!”

“Mom!” Angela blushed.

Mr. Wiley stopped suddenly and his jaw dropped when entered the room behind his wife. “I wonder if Gunny can spare a bazooka!”

“Daaad!” Angela’s face turned a darker shade of red.

What honey?” Angela’s father grinned, “I should have at least brought some cattle prods, gonna need something to keep the boys from mauling you!”

Mr. Wiley was pushed from behind as a boy forced his way past, “Where’s dav—” The boy’s jaw hung slack as he abruptly stopped when he saw Angela.

“Tommy?” Angela’s voice was shaken.

Behind the boy, his mother Mrs. Stone entered, “Wow Angela you look fantastic!”

“Who, who’s Angela, mom?” Tommy still staring at Angela, “I thought you said we were coming to see Davey?”

Bending so she could look her son face to face Mrs. Stone gently pulled Tommy’s face to look him in the eyes, “Tommy remember how we told you Davey had changed when he became a mutant?”

“Uh, yea.”

“That is Davey,” She looked in Angela’s direction.

“NO WAY!” Tommy looked back at Angela.

“Way,” Angela’s cheeks turned a bright red.

“You guys are trying to prank me aren’t you?” Tommy’s grin was obviously faked as he looked around and saw all the adults shaking their heads.

“It’s, it’s me Tommy,” Angela still almost whispering. Both hands fidgeting with the sides of her dress.

“But, you, you’re HOT!” Angela’s could not turn redder than she already was.

“TOMMY!” Both adult women echoed.

“Look Tommy,” Mrs. Wiley bend down to him, “They are going to give Angela an award for using her robot—”

“Battlemech!” both teens corrected her.

“Ok, Battlemech,” She continued, “to save all those policemen’s lives. You are the only kid from back home that knows that Angela used to be David,” she paused to see if this had sank in to the boys mind yet.

“So you need me to pretend she is my best friend?”

“I AM YOUR BEST FRIEND!” Angela screamed.

“No dear,” Tommy’s mother continued for her friend, “We need you to keep Angela’s secret. Can you do that for us?”

“What secret?”

“That she used to be Davey,” Both women spoke in chorus.

“You, you really are Davey?” Tommy looked over at Angela.

“Yeah,” Angela nodded, tears falling down her cheeks.

“Oh dear,” her mother pulled a tissue from her purse, stepped over to the girl and began dabbing the tissue on the girl’s face, “You’re going to ruin your makeup.”

The boy still didn’t look convinced, “Ok if you’re really Davey, then you would know what Davey did after I broke my leg?”

“I, I made the armor guards for us to wear.” Angela answered.

“No,” Tommy grinned knowing only he and Davey knew the answer to this, “There was something else Davey did that only he and I knew about.”

Angela looked pleadingly at Tommy, then up to her mother, father and Tommy’s mother, “I, err, ummm…”

Mrs. Wiley stepped in, “OK young lady what is it that you both were keeping from us?”

Angela looked up into her mother’s eyes as her lower lip jutted out slightly.

“Don’t try to use that look on me! I was the one who taught you how to do it!” her mother scolded.

“I KNEW IT!” Angela’s father seemed to be having a eureka moment.” I knew you taught her how to do that!”

“Not now dear.” Mrs. Wiley glanced at her husband then back to Angela, “I’m waiting young lady!”

“I, um, programmed some nanites.”

Tommy’s eyes grew wide hearing the girl begin explaining. “YOU ARE DAVEY!” he shouted, then ran over to hug his best friend.

“Angela now bro,” She smiled and returned the hug

“Uh, yea, Angela,” releasing the hug when Tommy realized he was hugging the most beautiful girl he had ever laid eyes on.

“Wait,” Angela’s mother was not finished. “What did you do with these nanites?”

Angela looked solemnly down at the floor, “I injected them into Tommy’s leg so they would heal his broken leg faster.”

“You let David, err I mean Angela use you as a guinea pig?” Mrs. Stone glared at her son.

Angela didn’tt have to look up to know her mother was giving her the same stare, she had seen it too many times before. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Then what was it like young lady?” Mrs. Wiley demanded.

“I felt bad about Tommy getting hurt, and I, um, figured I could use the nanites to make him get better faster.” The girl softly spoke.

Tommy smiled heartily at his mother, “I keep telling you that he, um she is a mad scientist!”

“OK,” Mr. Wiley interrupted the scolding the two women were giving their children, “What’s past is in the past, Tommy wasn’t hurt, whatever Angela did actually did cause his leg to heal much faster.”

“But—” his wife tried to interrupt.

“No buts, what Angela did was wrong,” He looked at everyone in the room, then stopped at Angela. “You my daughter will not ever, ever experiment on a human again. Do I make myself clear!”

“Yes sir,” Angela’s father rarely ever took charge in any form of discipline, but when he did, even her mother knew better than to go against him.

“Ok then, Problem solved,” He smiled, “This is supposed to be a happy family event, so let's make sure it remain ones!”

~o~O~o~

“MAKE UP!” a girl shouted as if the house was on fire when she spotted the condition of Angela’s makeup. Several girls rushed to Angela pushing Tommy out of the way as they surrounded Angela and all began talking at once.

“HEY!” Tommy shouted at the crowd of girls.

“It’s alright,” Tommy turned to see a red headed girl had placed her hand on his shoulder, “We are used to these types of emergencies, we’ll take care of everything.”

“What emergency?” Tommy scratched his head.

“Her make up silly,” Fey smiled, “We can’t have one of our girls going out in front of an audience looking like that!”

“Looking like what?” Tommy had a blank expression on his face, “she, she’s,” Tommy turned to face Fey and saw how lovely she looked. He would not have ever believed that it was possible for a girl to look even better than Angela, but he found himself face to face with just that girl.

“Tommy!” His mother slapped him on the back of his head, “Stop staring, it isn’t polite.”

“It’s ok,” Fey smiled at the boy’s mother, “I’m used to it.”

“Mom,” Tommy stuttered, “She’s, she’s, the Christmas elf!”

“You saw my poster?” Fey looked at the boy.

“Yea, yes,” Tommy couldn’t believe she was right here in front of him, talking to him. “No, no one will believe I really,” Tommy swallowed, “really got to meet you!”

“Well once we get Angela set up to go out to her public,” Fey grinned at Tommy, “Maybe we wrangle up a little magic to make it believable when you go back home.”

“Really!” Tommy face lit up.

“You’re Tommy right?”

“You know who I am?” Tommy’s face lit up.

“Of course I would recognize you,” Fey’s smile seemed to make Tommy’s world a better place, “Angela won’t stop talking about her Bee eff eff.”

Mrs. Stone smiled at the girl as she led Tommy off to the side, “Mind if I steal your son for a little while Mrs. Stone?” Tommy’s mother nodded.

They had set up the awards to take place in arena 99. It was the perfect place, large enough to fit the crowd of both students and dignitaries, and most of all the holographics could be set so that it appeared that they were in rural Iowa. The mayors of both Pella and Knoxville Iowa were there along with the police and fire chiefs of both towns, also Marion county’s sheriff along with the president and dean of Central college all on stage.

Each one took a turn at the podium giving his or her own speech about public safety, community, family values, responsibilities, etc. When they were done Mrs. Carson came up to the podium.

“While I am sure most here has witnessed this news clip several times,” looking over to where the Robo Jox were congregated, “and some of you have watched it several thousand times, there may be one or two that are in the dark as to what actually happened that night and why we are all gathered here today. We will show that news clip once more.” Looking in the direction of Team Kimba, “And if I hear any comments from the peanut gallery about trailers for a new robocop movie…”

~o~O~o~

Up in the bleachers in the area Mrs. Carson was looking when she made the comment about the peanut gallery, “Why do I feel that she was looking directly at me?” Chaka said to no one in particular.

“Because she was looking directly at you, Chaka-san!” Jade giggled from a couple of seats over.

“Where’s Hank?” Ayla questioned, “He should be here by now.”

“Fey Kidnapped him. For something she has going on.” Tennyo stated.

~o~O~o~

The Robo Jox crowd cheered when the Battlemech fired its blast at the armored car then landed, while oohs and ahhs could be heard from most the audience. The video ended with police handcuffing and stuffing the assailants into the back of several patrol cars that were damaged but still serviceable. Firemen at the same time came in with hoses and began putting out several flames and one burning police car.

Leaning over to Harry, Gunny whispered, “She really did pull your asses out of a sling!”

“Yeah,” was all he answered.

The lights came back up with Carson still at the podium, “Sheriff Wilson, would you mind stepping up here please,” She waved toward him.

Walking up Wilson took the podium and leaned over to the microphone, “All of us,” he cleared his throat, then waved back to the other sitting behind him that had given speeches, “Wanted the honor of introducing our guest, who we are here to honor today. But only one of us could stand up here. So in effort to be fair, we drew straws.”

He looked around the audience causing a long pause. “Luckily for me, no one saw me cheat,” as he put his hand to his mouth and pulled out a tooth pick he held up for all to see.” The audience erupted in laughter.

“All joking aside,” putting the toothpick back in his mouth, “It is a great honor to be able to recognize one so young for aiding their community in a time of dire need. Who without her help, we would instead be attending the funerals of the brave men and women that responded to the nine one one call that night.” Pausing again, obviously from the expression on his face he, fighting to hold back his own emotions, “So let me introduce, our hero.” The large man’s voice cracked, “Angela Wiley!”

Everyone on stage and in the lower floor stood and started clapping as Angela was led out in the arm of Hank.

Ayla spit out the soda she had been drinking, “That’s Hank!”

“In a tux!” Tennyo lurched forward in her seat.

“He cleans up real nice,” Chaka said.

Jade just giggled.

“You knew didn’t you?” Tennyo looked over seeing Jade sitting there with a smug look on her face.

“Oneesan, I wanted to tell you,” frowning at Tennyo, “I really did. But Fey swore me to secrecy.”

Hank led Angela across the stage and handed her off to Sheriff Wilson, then walked back and stood behind the left most of the chairs the others were sitting in on stage.

Angela stood there hoping the long skirt hid the fact that her knees were trembling. Placing his large hand on her shoulder Wilson began, “Miss Wiley, all of us,” motioning toward the others sitting behind the podium, “We want to show our appreciation for what you did that night. And sometimes a simple thank you, even in front of a crowd this size, just does not seem enough. So each of us in our own way have brought with us something so you will never forget how much we thank you for what you have done.”

Waiting for the applause to die down, Wilson motioned for another man wearing a suit to come forward with a small leather case that he handed to Wilson. “This, this,” Wilson held the leather case to Angela is for the service you have rendered to all of us in Marion County.”

Opening the hinged lid, he showed her the badge it contained. “If you accept, that is.” Some nervous laughter from the audience, “Is your badge, accepting this would mean you become an auxiliary deputy Sheriff for Marion county.” He grinned widely, “We already consider you one of us and we want to make it official.”

Everyone began applauding as she took the case. There was a bit of a lull while the suited man went through the official swearing in of Angela as an auxiliary deputy.

One by one each person on stage shook Angela’s hand, gave another small congratulations speech and the memento, the mayors each gave her a large key to the city of each town. The president and dean of the college presented her with a full scholarship to Central college that she could use once she graduated high school. Then both police chiefs came up together.

“Angela,” Chief Duran stared,” You already know what our two departments are giving you as that was what began this whole shebang.”

Chief Laramy stood forward and continued, “But in honor to do this justice, there is only one person that both of us feel worthy enough to present you with this token of our appreciation. At risk to his own life and wellbeing this man, this unsung hero went above and beyond to protect this girl in the aftermath of what happened that night. Detective Langson would you please come up on stage?”

Everyone watched as a pudgy, out of shape, middle aged man dressed in a cheap gray suit got up from the first row and walked up the right side steps onto the stage. As he reached the podium a voice could be heard from backstage, “Way to go Uncle Harry!”

“That would be my nephew Tommy,” Harry said into the microphone as everyone laughed.

Angela said something but too far away from the microphone for anyone to hear her.

“Here,” Harry twisted the microphone down as he gently pushed Angela up closer, “Say that again dear so everyone can hear you.”

“He’s my best friend.” She leaned toward the microphone then quickly looked down at feet.

Harry presented Angela the plaque that the police departments had jointly made to give her and then Hank came up and led them both off stage.

“Uncle Harry! Uncle Harry!” Tommy was bouncing with excitement when they got behind the curtain. “You would not believe who is here!”

“Who’s that Tommy?” Harry asked.

“Fey, the Christmas elf!” Tommy could not hold back his excitement.

“She not an elf she is a sidhe,” Angela stated.

“You mean that poster you begged me to buy you last Christmas?”

“Yes Uncle Harry, that girl live here with Angela!” he continued to bounce around.

“We are not roommates or anything, “Angela corrected Tommy. “We’re not even in the same cottage.”

“Cottage?” Harry asked.

“Uh, that's what they call the dorms here,” Angela answered.

“Great you’re back!” One of the Venus girls caught Angela and her small entourage.

“Yes thank god that is over and I can get out of this get up!” Angela chimed.

“Oh not so fast dear!” Another of the Venus girls that Angela could not remember the name of came running up, “We still have the photo shoot!”

At the words ‘photo shoot’ at least a dozen girls began bouncing up and down excitedly. One grabbed Angela’s arm and began dragging her away, while Tommy snickered, “Sports illustrated here you go Angela!”

“Oh we’re not allowed to model for SI,” The girl said as she dragged Angela away.

“No,” Another said as she rushed by, “We would make their girls look bad!”

“Where do you think you’re going lover boy?” Yet another grabbed onto Tommy and began dragging him along behind Angela.

“She’s my friend, not my girlfriend,” Tommy’s defended.

“Whatever you say lover boy,” The girl continued to drag him away.

“My name is Tommy!” Harry could barely hear his nephew still arguing with the girl as she dragged him through a door and down a hallway.

“Where did the kids go?” Mr. Wiley asked as his group found Harry backstage.

“Some girls dragged the two of them off shouting something about a photo shoot.”

“That would be the Venus Inc girls,” Gunny explained, “They are the ones that did her costume and make up earlier.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Wiley sounded a bit intrigued. “Can we go watch or is that allowed?”

“Sure,” Gunny said, “one sec.” Gunny turned toward the crowd of students filing out of the stands, “Hey Bunker!”

“Yeah Gunny!” a short, cute Blond girl yelled back.

“Got an Op for you!” he yelled over the crowd.

The girl made her way out of the mass of students and trotted over to Gunny jumped to attention and saluted. “Bunker reporting for duty sir!”

“Need you to guide these civvies over to Dunn Hall to Venus Inc.”

“Awe Gunny, not there,” She complained.

“Yes there, I’ll be there shortly to relieve you. There is something I must do and they wish to be with their children.”

“What wrong with going to this Venus place?” Mrs. Wiley asked the young girl, after turning down a tunnel that seemed mostly quiet for a change.

“Nothing really,” She answered. “It’s just they are all glamor and stuff. And well,” the girl held out her arms, “I’m me.”

“My dear,” Mrs. Wiley explained, “There is nothing wrong with being you. In fact I bet there are things that you can do that those girls would be terrified to even try.”

“Yes ma’am, I guess you’re right,” Bunker agreed. “But I’ll never be pretty like they are.”

“Dear you are very pretty, do not let the fact that they are models get you down.”

“Yeah, I know your right,” Bunker dragged her feet, “But why couldn’t I have manifested as an Exemplar?”

“Like I said, I am sure there is something you do better than anyone else.”

“Yes ma’am,” Bunker giggled, “Kinda how I got my code name.”

“Oh?”

“Yes My real name is Andrea, my code name is Bunker buster, or Bunker for short.”

“Bunker buster?”

“Yes ma’am,” Bunker explained, “I’m a member of a team that are training to join the military when we graduate. Well during a simulator run I kinda destroyed this bunker Gunny had set up. After that everyone started calling me Bunker.”

“Bet none of the other girls around this school ever earned their code name like you did?”

“No, most everyone chooses their own,” Bunker cocked her head to the side for a moment, “You’re right, I earned my code name. Bunker’s shoulders pulled back proud as she realized what this lady was telling her. “You must be Angela’s mother?”

“Yes I’m her mother.”

“You must be very proud of her,” Bunker beamed a smile at the lady.

“I always have been, even before all this,” Mrs. Wiley smiled back.

~o~O~o~

Before going to the Venus inc studio they stopped with Tommy and Angela at another underground area where another holographic backdrop and been set up. Bunny and Nemesis were already there, Bunny had directed Nemi into the underground area and positioned her where she was directed by the photographers for Venus inc.

When Angela and Tommy arrived there were several pictures taken of Angela with her mech, having Angela change wardrobe several times, some pictures taken while Angela wore various color coveralls resembling a pilots suit, some having her hold a helmet in various poses, some in her dress. Although they had the worst time talking her into wearing the various swimsuits they wished to take some pictures in.

While Angela hadn’t found a lot of trouble adjusting to her new femininity, she wasn’t ready to parade around in little more than underwear in front of photographers. Fey was able to step in a calm her down and talk her into the swimsuits and poses they wanted her in. The great part of using the arena they had set up in was how easy it was to change the scenery with the holographics. So they had pictures in jungle settings, Beach settings, urban settings, woodland, etc. In less time than it would take one scenery change in a normal sound stage.

Once this part of the photos were done they all proceeded to the Venus inc studio proper after Angela talked the girls out of a few pairs of the coveralls she liked. The orange pair reminded her of the pilots suits from star wars, and she really wanted the woodland camouflage and after seeing the pictures on the computer screen of the pink camouflage which she originally thought looked stupid until she saw how she looked in them.

Angela’s parents beat them to the Venus studios by a couple of minutes. Once there she was hustled into various poses with the other girls some with Tommy included then the magic began on the computer. Pictures were sorted, images cropped and enhanced and Tommy got to choose copies of all that he wanted to take home with him. Three they blew up and printed as posters for him to hang on his wall.

One with all the Venus inc models in one piece swimsuits with Tommy posed in the middle, another of him standing between Fey and Angela with the girls in their gowns, Tommy in his dress clothes and the last one of Angela posing in front of Nemesis in the pink camo holding a helmet under her arm, Angela’s long hair in a braid flowing over her shoulder opposite of the arm she held the helmet under, her dark braid ending about waist level in front of her.

~o~O~o~

Chapter 12 Epilog

Hours later with Tommy by her side, Angela followed her parents, Tommy’s mother and his uncle into the visitor’s housing Mrs. Carson had set up for the two families to use while they were here for the ceremony.

Once inside Tommy quickly pulled Angela to the couch in the living room area, “Can I see it now? Please can I see it?”

Knowing what her best friend was asking about, Angela opened the small purse she had been carrying and pulled out a white plastic card with a powder blue border that Tommy quickly snatched out of her hand.

“Way Cool!” The boy’s excitement showing in the wide smile as he read the card, “Oh my god it’s a military mutant card!”

“A military ID?” Harry looked over at Angela’s parents questionably, “I didn’t know either of you were military?”

“We’re not,” Angela’s mother explained, “although we have a lot of contracts with the Naval Research Laboratory and the Department of Defense. So I spoke with some of our contacts and they agreed that it would be best that Angela was issued a military mutant ID.”

“That’s cool.” Tommy’s smile suddenly disappeared, “Oh shit!”

“Tommy, language!” his mother quickly scolded.

“Um sorry mom,” Tommy turned the card so everyone could see it, “but they have Devisor listed on Angie’s card!”

Tommy’s mother stepped over to where the teens sat and took the card from her son. Reading it aloud to the group, “Code name, ACME, Abilities, Exemplar, classified, Devisor, classified, Gadgeteer, classified. Affiliations, Naval Research Laboratory, Army Research Laboratory and Department of Defense.” Looking over the top of the card at Angela, “What’s an ACME?”

Both teens began giggling as Angela’s father chuckled while Angela’s mother gave the young girl a motherly glare. “It’s where Wile E. Coyote gets all his stuff,” Angela almost whispered.

“What was that?” Tommy’s mother asked.

“It’s where Wile E. Coyote gets all the cool stuff he uses to try to catch the Road Runner,” Tommy volunteered. “But that’s not the problem, “Tommy continued, “having her rated as a Devisor means everything she builds has to go though some kind of testing now to see if it’s a devise or a gadget.”

“How’s that a problem?” Tommy’s mother questioned the teens.

Angela’s mother interrupted with the answer, “Devises cannot be patented. So anything Angela invents from here on will have to be tested before a patent can be filed.”

“And if it turns out to be a devise,” Tommy concluded, “No patent!”

Grabbing her purse Angela began rifling through it, “I almost forgot about these.” Angela pulled what looked like two teabags from her purse that she held out for her mother, “I made something during my tests that I thought were pretty handy so I improved the design and made these.”

Taking the teabags from her daughter, Angela’s mother began inspecting them closely. While they were about the size of a regular tea bag, the bag wasn’t made out of the porous paper that normally held the tea leaves, instead this looked to be made out of a fine metal mesh. Two small white wires coming out of the top of the teabag ended with what first appeared to be the common tag found on many mass produced tea bags, although the tag appeared to be made out of some hard nonmetallic material painted white to look like the tag on a normal tea bag. One of the tags had a thin blue stripe diagonally across both sides while the other has the same stripe but in red.

“What are these?” Angela’s mother questioned.

“They keep drinks hot or cold,” Angela beamed. “Depending on which one you use.”

Holding up one of the counterfeit teabags by the tag, “Blue for cold, red for hot?” Angela’s mother probed.

Angela nodded, “The tag is a heat exchanger, absorbing heat from the atmosphere for the hot one and releasing heat to the atmosphere for the cold one. The ones I made during the test didn’t have the external heat exchangers and quit working after a while. They’re powered by the thermal variance between the internal and external heat exchangers too, so no batteries.”

“Let me have a look at the one that keeps drinks cold,” Angela’s father held his hand out to his wife. Once she had handed over the one with the blue stripe he walked off into the kitchen area, returning a few minutes later with the mock teabag submerged in an amber liquid inside a whiskey tumbler. “I can already feel the glass cooling down,” Angela’s father grinned, swirling the amber liquid around inside the glass before holding it under his nose.

Talking a sip of the now chilled liquid, “Mmmm, the good stuff.”

Angela’s mother looked annoyingly at her husband, “There are times you can be worse than your daughter. That has not been through any product testing, as far as we know it could have any number of reactions with your whiskey. Furthermore I can’t believe you brought whiskey with us on the trip!”

Ignoring the looks his wife was giving him Angela’s father took another sip of the whiskey, “What? You can’t buy Templeton Rye this far away from Iowa!” Looking over where Angela sat, “Honey this thing has whiskey stones beat hands down, they’ll sell like hotcakes!”

“After they have been properly tested!” Angela’s mother grabbed the teabag by the heatsink/tag removing it from her husband’s glass.

Sears Tower, Chicago, 105th floor office space

“What do you mean the boy has disappeared, he has to be somewhere?” the portly silver haired man shot up to his feet sending the leather executive chair crashing into the shelves behind his desk.

“Yes sir, I know that,” The man standing in front of the desk agreed. “We’re pretty sure that his parents have enrolled him into a boarding school in New Hampshire under an alias. One of the cops tied to the botched job took an extended vacation. He showed up a few weeks later apparently visiting an old army buddy that works at the school. We believe the cop was the one that transported the boy there. The boy’s parents have made two trips on their company’s jet to Boston since. While we’re not sure about the first trip, their plane never landed in Boston on the second trip and their company credit card was used to purchase jet fuel at the airport in Berlin New Hampshire.”

“And this concerns me how?” The older man shouted, “Get a team together, go up to that damn school and grab the kid!”

“We’ve already positioned a team in the vicinity but there’s a problem,” the man took a small step backwards. “The school, It’s Whateley boss.”

“Fucking hell!” The silver haired man’s grew wide, “Your guys are smart enough not to step foot on school grounds?” Seeing the other man’s nod the older man continued, “If they catch the boy off school property, snatch him, but otherwise do nothing.”

“Sure thing boss,” the man turned to leave the office as his boss sat back down.

“Wait!” the underling heard his boss bellow as he reached for the door knob. Turning around to face his boss again, “Yeah boss?”

“Pull your team back, tell them to go home for now.”

“You sure boss?”

“Yeah, I got an idea,” The silver haired man grinned. “Hey also on your way out, tell Vince and Tony to go find that useless son of mine and bring him here.” Almost as an afterthought he stated, “Tell Vince and Tony to let my boy know I want to talk to him about this school he wants to go to.”

“I’ll let them know,” nodding as he opened the door and left.

Opening one of the drawers in his desk the older man pulled out a stack of papers, in bold letters at the top of the first page it read, ‘Whateley Academy Enrollment Application.‘