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From: Rass Senip <rass_senip@usa.net>
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Subject: {ASSM} Tim, the Teenage MC - Chapter 21 (h/j) NEW!!
Date: Mon,  3 Dec 2001 04:10:05 -0500
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Tim, the Teenage MC
By Rass Senip
Chapter XXI: Fall 89 - Summer 90
Part 6 - A Lover, A Dreamer, That's me  (continued)
(no sex)

Tracking down Tony while awake was easier than I thought.  I only had to close
my eyes and attempt to recall what he felt like, and there he was.

Three blocks away, Tony was nervously holding the apartment's entrance open for
Darwin, partially hoping something would happen and Darwin would chicken out
like the last time he had gotten himself into the same situation.

I dived into the memory he kept thinking pieces of, finding that after tennis
practice one day in his freshman year of high school, he and his friend had
messed around in the locker room.  It started seeming very innocent, the two
boys making sexually slanderous jokes in reference to their tennis skills,
throwing each other's sweaty shirts into the other's faces, and other macho
locker room activities.

But just as his friend was setting up to pull his shirt over Tony's head to
gross him out while his back was to him, Tony turned around quickly intending
to jab his friend in the gut with his right hand only to find themselves in
each other's faces.

Tony was instantly hard, and hovered over his friends face as they both
realized their arms were sliding down the other's still slightly slick bodies.
When his friend's hands rested on his hips for more than a second, Tony
initiated his very first kiss, which lasted for nearly ten minutes before they
heard someone coming and broke apart.

Hormones raging through their bodies, they quickly finished getting dressed and
walked to Tony's home in near silence.  But after Tony unlocked the back door
and held it open for his friend, his friend chickened out, and afterwards
wouldn't have anything to do with Tony ever again.  

After the sizzling sensation of touching his friend like that filled his
fantasies over the summer, he found himself attracted to the guys more than the
girls when he went back to school the following fall.  That scared him into
repressing those feelings and focusing on getting a girlfriend to lay, which he
successfully did, or at least until I had brought those feelings back to the
surface that day.

Once Tony and Darwin were inside his apartment, Tony tried everything he could
think of to distract them from what they both knew what they had gone there
together for.  

Turning on the TV seemed like a good idea until they sat down on the sofa
together, so he asked Darwin if he wanted something to drink so he could have
an excuse to get back up.

Darwin politely declined, but Tony got himself a soda, then ended up sitting
back down next to Darwin after Darwin smiled and patted the cushion next to
him.

After a few minutes of watching the tube, Tony held on to the soda with
increasing shakiness as he felt Darwin's hand slowly wander up his thigh.

Eventually Darwin took control of the situation by taking the soda from him and
setting it down on the coffee table.  But by the time he looked back up, Tony
was getting up, excusing himself to go to the bathroom.

Darwin's hand snagged the back of his shirt and tugged him backwards onto the
couch where Tony surrendered himself to Darwin's approaching mouth.

Once they got into their exchanging of saliva, I closed my links from feeling
like a peeping Tom.  The temptation to just close my eyes and let myself drift
back into Tony's mind was tremendous, so I left and went to the only place I
could think of that could distract me from my hormones running high.

I spent several hours watching and talking to the people working with the
cleaned ex-slaves.  To my surprise, two of the three people who escorted the
mentally numbed forty-ish woman that had just been cleaned were in fact
ex-slaves themselves who had only been cleaned four or five months earlier.
Part of their treatment included working with others who had had similar
experiences, and after walking along with them through the cold March evening
air, I saw that despite their outward normal appearances, they still had some
problems to deal with.

As we entered the hospital-like building where the listless woman would
probably live the next year of her life, I sensed it was home to nearly a
hundred ex-slaves recovering from their enslavement.  While the nurses didn't
wear uniforms or white hats, nor were there any gurneys or wheelchairs to be
seen down the halls, the place looked and operated just like a hospital.

Numbered rooms with medical charts clipped to the foot of the beds, nurses in
civilian clothing manned counters at the intersection of every hall, and you
could tell by the people's body language they were ready to scramble into
action whenever there was a pause or a surge of static in the music playing
over the intercom.

You could say I gained a lot of respect for Sarah.  That place was funded by
the Eta antibody harvesting project's profits and her other medical
enterprises, and that included paying for the released patients' tuitions for
those who hadn't attained a degree yet.

My respect got knocked back down a bit after learning the details of their
release.  By the time a person was deemed ready to live on their own again,
they had been literally brainwashed into partially repaying the university back
for their treatment.

The few who had a degree of some sort already ended up giving nearly a third of
their net income to the "Harrison Foundation" for three years, while the rest
were conditioned to seek a degree of their choice from Central State first
before doing the same thing for five or more years depending on how much it
cost to fund for their education.

The thing that really blew me off was these people were not allowed to contact
their families while they were living at the hospital.  Can you imagine the
distress that had on the families of those ex-slaves who had actually been
allowed to maintain their family's contacts during their enslavement?  I really
had a hard time accepting that, but I eventually just made myself not think
about it since I wasn't in a position to do anything to change it.

I got back from the hospital just after midnight and went straight to bed
without even taking a shower.  My mind stayed in my head through the night, and
I even managed to refrain from peeking inside Darwin's skull in the class I had
with him the next morning.

Suz and I went home for the weekend, and to my relief, Michelle, Richie's
nanny, had the weekend off.

That didn't mean I had a stress free visit with my family, no sir.  After
having been away from the twins for nearly three months, I found myself drawn
to them like a moth trying to ignore a TV in a dark room showing a sunny,
snow-blanketed landscape.

It was more than just seeing their naked, curvy, sexually-divine bodies every
time I turned around.  It took me half the day Saturday to realize it wasn't
the usual sexual frustration driving me nuts, but something deeper, something
that must have been induced into my psyche by Gladius's twins.

I don't know who stuck to me closer while I was there, Richie or the twins, but
either way, I knew it was going to be hard leaving the next afternoon.  Anyway,
Richie threw a fit when I tried to get him to leave the twins and I alone for a
while, and it wasn't until after dinner that my dad managed to distract Richie
long enough for the three of us to slip away to my room.

The twins didn't believe my problem was anything more than frustration until I
looked Honey in the eyes and let them feel me out.  They seemed baffled at
first, but then confirmed it was similar to the seeded impulse that they and
the other empathic twins would plant to get a male to return to them on a
regular basis.

The moment they sensed my anger rising, Joy softly caressed my left cheek with
her hand and successfully drew my full attention to her face and sent a shiver
of excitement down my spine.

In her eyes she explained that none of Grandfather's twins would have planted a
control like this in one of their own.  

In one of their own.

One of their own.

That thought kept echoing in my head as Joy stroked my cheek again and again,
my legs eventually getting wobbly from the shivers and shudders her simple
touches produced.

I wasn't helpless like the average Joe would have been.  I mean, the average
Joe hadn't spent their previous summer resisting the brainwashing fucks of
Gladious's twins like I had.  Yet I didn't resist when they laid me on my back,
removed my shirt, and I even consciously lifted my butt off the bed allowing
them to pull off my jeans and underpants.

You see, I understood that they could not betray my trust any more than they
could betray each other.  One of their own.  When I drank that potion the
previous summer and was paired with Eric, he and I essentially became twins, if
only for a short period of time.  Empathic twins couldn't betray another,
therefore they wouldn't betray me.

I'm not sure when I lost touch with my surroundings, but I can clearly recall
how the twins hands felt as they stroked their hands from my cheeks down to my
shins in perfect unison.  They sent me into a semiconscious state where I
drifted for a time, then suddenly recognized Eric's mind as I drifted towards
it.

I nearly broke the trance they had me in from the fear of what touching Eric's
mind might do to him, or me for that matter.  But I trusted them, therefore I
trusted them.  That might not make sense at first, but I think you can see how
it does.

And as it turns out, there was no danger involved because it wasn't the real
Eric Roberts I was feeling, but the part of his personality I had apparently
reabsorbed myself during our brief but emotionally intense phone call.  

Drifting through my own head like that answered questions I hadn't even
consciously formed, yet had been there waiting for an answer for some time.

My recent increase of attraction to men, gay men in particular, was from Eric's
own restored attraction towards them.  I had been unknowingly picking up on
their signals and subconsciously sought them out like Eric would have on the
conscious level.

I also realized the pull I had felt towards the twins had just been my ever
present need to be twinned again getting excited by their own twinning.

Richie found us at some point, but surprisingly didn't try to interfere.  If I
had known he was in the room, I wouldn't have agreed to the twins suggestion
that they bring me off.  They didn't betray my trust because they didn't
conceive why I would be upset by Richie witnessing me orgasming again, and
after they gave me what felt like the best damn hand job I ever had in my life,
I was too exhausted and sedated by the post orgasmic bliss to notice right away
my little brother had a strand of my cum in his dark hair.

I'm going to take this time to boast about my little brother's smarts.  He was
not even two yet at the time, but my mom and Michelle had begun teaching him
his ABCs and 123s, and my jaw fell to the floor when he had sang the alphabet
song for me that morning.

Richie had an excellent memory and wanted to learn about everything he came in
contact with.  When I had left for college, he had only started asking "What's
this?"  The last time I had been there, Michelle had fielded most of the
explanations for me, but this time, I was having to explain everything to him
myself.

So there I was, dazed, totally spent, and utterly satisfied when my little
brother climbs up between my legs on the bed and grips my yingyang with both
hands and starts to pump.

"Richie!" I screamed, sounding a lot like I had before puberty from it being in
such a high-pitched voice.

"Do it, Timmy!  Do it again!"  he said, not understanding my alarm.

I sat up, grabbed his wrists and made him stop, then as I started calming down
and he started getting upset, the twins each took a cheek, and in seconds,
Richie was flat on his back on my chest as they soothed us both with their
empathic tender caresses.

The instant they stopped, Richie rolled onto his tummy and cuddled on top of
me.  He knew he had done something wrong, but like so many other times, he
hadn't known that it had been wrong, and so I just sighed and just tried wiping
the cum out of his hair I had finally noticed.

The questions were boiling in his little head by the time I given up and just
rubbed the rest in.  When he lifted his head to begin his assault of questions,
I groaned from feeling the wet spots down the back of his shirt with my hands.

He was already asking if my wee wee could make more white pee pee when I sat us
up, so I avoided the question by telling him we were going to have to take a
bath because we had gotten the wee wee all over us.

Oh the questions he had.  Why did girls like daddy's wee wee so much?  Did
white wee wee taste good?  Why wouldn't I or mommy let him taste some?  How
come he couldn't make white wee wee?  Why didn't girls like yellow wee wee?

Then there were the more normal questions.  Will my wee wee get as big as
yours?  Will I have hair around my wee wee?  Why does my wee wee get hard?  Why
does my wee wee feel good when it's hard?

All those came out before we even got to the bathroom, and as he paused to
watch how I would turn on the jet bath, I quickly decided on the shower
instead.

I got his mind off of wee wees by getting playful as I soaped him up, but even
though I turned my back when I did my crotch in hopes he wouldn't be reminded,
when I turned back to him, he was playing with his little hard pencil.

His questions remained innocent, so I relented and answered them as best I
could, let him feel mine (it was soft), felt his when he requested it, and even
did my best to bring him off after his curiosity got the better of my own.

I don't feel I did anything irresponsible or acted in a perverted manner by
doing these things.  He was my little brother, and I was only trying to satisfy
his natural curiosity.  There was nothing sexual about it for either of us.

I admit he was more familiar with the concept of sex than he should have at his
age, and if I had known that during the next month my little baby brother would
lose his virginity because of my explanation why girls liked boys wee wees....
Actually, I don't know what I would have done.  And it would only be the first
of many shocking blows concerning my little brother and his unnatural curiosity
into these things that were too old for him to truly understand.

Since Richie only slept in his bed about half the time, my mom and dad had
apparently patched things up enough where they took advantage of Richie
spending the night in my bed rather than in theirs.  When they weren't up by
the time Richie and I came down for breakfast, Richie insisted we go sneak into
their bed and wake them with a big hug and kiss.  But when we entered the room,
the sent of sex was still heavy in the air, and I barely grabbed Richie's arm
before he was out of my reach.

The twins found us as we were eating breakfast, and we spent the morning
together, the twins surprising me with some of their more creative ways of
entertaining Richie.  I was pretty appreciative of them wearing clothes that
morning, and before I left I gave them both a hearty kiss on the lips.

My mind stayed in my own skull at night that week, but that's probably because
I never got in until after midnight from spending my evenings working on my
private research at the old admin building and the hospital.  My real school
work started to become an irritating burden, for I really didn't need to sit in
the classes to learn what I needed to learn and get the grade.  So, on Thursday
and Friday, I selected a few people in each of my classes who needed some extra
motivation to bring their grades up, and in exchange I planned to leach off
what they had learned the day or two a week I'd go to class.

Shelly's frustration over her roommate was starting to wear off, and she even
surprised me after class Friday by asking if I wanted to go see a movie that
weekend.  I quickly agreed, even though it was contrary to what I had planned,
but then when she asked what day was good, I quickly suggested that night to
which she responded, "Okay, sure."

I was convinced she didn't know she was doing it, but three times during our
not-a-date date she looked me in the eyes and triggered a momentary empathic
connection.  I kept my hold on the situation, and afterwards I didn't feel the
anticipation like I had last time, so I wasn't too worried about going to bed
that night.

The moment my eyes were closed, I felt it coming.  This time there wasn't any
dream intro to it, just a feeling of crossing a distance to where she was, and
then finding my eyes coming back into focus on the huddled over figure of my
beautiful roommate.

"She's crying?" I asked myself.  "Why?"

"I don't know.  She won't tell me," I answered.

I gently sat down next to her and extended my arm behind her back in empathy,
only for her to repel from my touch, crushing my already broken heart.

I started crying too, her rejection having carried to much weight and knocked
me off my emotional feet.  I loved her, but I revolted her.  She had made me so
happy when she was my friend, but now she doesn't even trust me to touch her.

I leapt across to my bed, buried my face into my pillow, and bawled with all my
heart and lungs.  I was so utterly destroyed, it felt even worse than when Kurt
dumped me the year before.  

I didn't realize my blubbers were anything more than that until Vanessa gently
shook my shoulder and...  and...

"I'm sorry, Shelly...  I..."

I didn't know what to say, so I just stared at her, making it very clear she
was the reason I was feeling this pain.

Everything blurred a moment, then I found myself staring in a mirror... 

No, it wasn't a mirror.  It was Shelly's face.  I felt like shit for making her
cry when she was only trying to make me feel better after...

"Tony was cheating on me," I said, my eyes blurring with tears.

"He was?" Shelly croaked out.

I couldn't look at her and say it, so I looked back at my bunk and blurted out
as best I could, "He...  met someone else..."

"I'm sorry, Vanessa," she said honestly.

"It was another man..." I whimpered, covering my face with my hands to muffle
my returning spasms of despair.

She didn't say anything, just sat up and hesitantly put her arm behind me
again.  

I didn't pull away this time.  I wanted to be comforted by someone, I just
hadn't been prepared to be touched last time.

She's crying again.  Crying for me?  She is..  She's crying for me.

"You're crying for me?" I sobbed.

She made this most pathetic sad face with her chin shuddering and fat lower lip
for an eternity before finally whimpering, "Yes ..."

I hugged her, she hugged me back.  We cried together.  I never had felt so
close to someone before.  Nobody had ever cried for me before.  Nobody ever lov
....

"You love me?" I whimpered into her shoulder.

"I love you," she confirmed into mine in a squeaky voice.

"I think I love you too," I wept, then cried all the harder when she really
started to bawl.

I don't know how long we sat there holding each other after we stopped crying.
I started crying again twice, and she started it once, but we didn't cry very
long because we didn't want the other to start crying too.

Shelly shivered making me realize that all our tears and perspiration were now
chilling us both as they dried.  My heart started racing thinking what I might
be getting myself into, but I couldn't hurt her like Tony had me.  I couldn't
hurt anyone like that purposely.

So I slowly disentangled myself from her limp arms, then as I opened my mouth
to tell her to get under the covers, her head fell in rejection and she turned
away to hide herself from my gaze.

I couldn't stand it.  She shared my pain and now thought I didn't feel hers?  I
knew what I had to do, but it went against everything I was brought up to
believe in.  But I couldn't let her feel this way any more.

I got up, flipped off the lights, then shook in a mixture of nervousness and
the spreading chill of the air as I took off my clothes as silently as I could.

"Shelly?" I said, standing beside her bed, shivering so hard my voice quivered.

"What?" she pathetically asked, not turning towards me.

"I'm cold, Shelly.  Let me get in your bed?"

"What?" she asked, turning her head then staring at me as I wrapped my arms
around me to help keep me warm.  It didn't occur to me by doing this I was in
effect pushing my boobs up.

"Shelly..." I whimpered, my nervousness coming back as her eyes wandered over
my body.

She started sobbing again as she anxiously sought the top edge of the sheets
beneath her pillow, then in a single motion pulled the sheet and cover open for
me, and even wrapped them around me as I crawled in between them.

My teeth were chattering as my whole body shook, yet Shelly just laid on top of
the covers staring at me in disbelief.

The side of the bed I was on was cold and I could just barely feel the warmth
coming from underneath her.  I couldn't move to get closer to her without
getting uncovered, and I think she was too scared to move herself.

I looked her in the eyes, begging her to warm me up, and it only took a few
moments for her to understand me.

Shelly was shaking almost as hard as I was as she carefully got under the
covers with me and cautiously pressed her clothed body against me.  As the
sudden chill of the cold air she had brought with her faded and her warmth
started to soothe me, I felt my own warmth growing towards her, an affectionate
warmth.

As soon as I stopped shivering, I turned towards her and embraced her in a
loving hug.  She tried to start crying again, but she was all cried out.

So we just hugged each other, silently, body to body, girl to girl, broken
hearts helping each other to heal.  I couldn't understand what I had been so
afraid of, to not have let this happen before.  How many times had she told me
how I had been the only person to make her feel better after that jerk Kurt had
dumped her?  Why couldn't I see it before now?  She wasn't a pervert.  She
needed me.  And now I needed her.  But it isn't natural for a girl to need
another girl like that, is it?

"Vanessa?" she whimpered.

"Hmmm?" I said, squeezing her supportively.

"Why are you...  naked?" she whispered.

"I..."

What could I say?  I did it to show her I trusted her...  That I loved...
her...

"Because I love you too," I said clearly, my voice surprisingly steady and not
quivering like my guts were.

She kissed me on the cheek, so I kissed hers, then I realized the feel of her
clothes against my flesh didn't feel right.

"Take off your clothes," I said firmly, releasing her from my arms.

"Are you sure?" Shelly asked, wide eyed as she leaned away from me to look me
in the face.

Her eyes...  her face...  her lips...  So sweet.  So tender.  So full of love.
My only answer was to press my lips against hers and shared my new feelings
with her the only way I knew how.

The only softer and more delicate sensation than feeling another woman's breast
brushing against yours is the feel of infant cuddling on top of you.  I knew
this sensation well, yet from the perspective I shared with Vanessa at the
time, I only had the short and brisk experience from the first time with Shelly
to compare, and it was nothing as near as nice as this.  

This was different.  This was love.  Two women who needed each other, each
wanting to fill in the hole someone else had left in their hearts, knowing it
would just be until they were ready to trust someone else once again.

So when Shelly pushed me onto my back and broke our kiss, I sighed, letting
myself be loved and pleasured by the only person on this earth I trusted to do
so.

Her lips and tongue did things to my nipples I had never experienced before.
The few times I had let Jay, my old boyfriend in high school, suckle on my
breasts, it never had brought me enough pleasure to sustain me very long.  I
knew men liked them, so that was the only reason I had let Jay take my shirt
and bra off those nights in his car last summer.

But Shelly...  It must be because she's a woman.  She knows how to make it feel
good.  I wonder if I could do that to her too.

When Shelly's mouth and tongue grew tired, she crawled off and cuddled up
beside me.

"In the morning, you won't tell me this didn't happen, will you?" she asked as
I gently kissed her down the bridge of her nose.

I simply kissed her again on the lips while sending my left hand down to her
crotch.  It took me a moment to find her little button, but when I did, she
stiffened, then melted, just my touch having been enough to make her cum.

As they drifted to sleep in each other's arms, I felt myself separate from
Vanessa's mind and drift away.  For the rest of the night I slept drifting
among the hundreds of minds around me, sensing how there would be rich and
fertile new experiences for me to share and enjoy... all in due time.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I awoke the next morning feeling refreshed and eager to start classifying the
different symbol groups I was getting a feel for, and got to the old admin
building around eight o'clock. 

I must have been just a few seconds later than the last time I showed up that
early, for as I walked down the hall towards the stairs, a door just ahead of
me to my right opened and this time I saw the coffee momentarily float in mid
air before it plopped to the floor as the familiar "SHLING" sound filled my
ears.

I froze, carefully dodged the cane as it came flying at my head, then held my
arms up in the universal sign of surrender and only barely saw the blur that
was Perry as he lunged.

The next thing I knew, Perry had his legs forked around my midsection as I was
falling backwards.  I think if he hadn't recognized me at that instant, he
wouldn't have curled both legs around me.  I realized later that if he had left
one of his legs straight and landed on one foot, his other leg could have
caused my back to snap into two.

So instead of a broken back, I got a bruised tailbone and another three good
raps on the top of my head while cleaning up his spilt coffee.  I swore to
myself I would be prepared the next time.

Once I limped my way upstairs, I made myself at home on the couch and started
studying some of the less heavily damaged streams in a couple of ressy's.

Almost two hours later when the first of the three group members showed up for
the game, I was discouraged as hell from finding that so many different
combinations of symbols that could form a segment that I couldn't keep track of
them all.  To make matters worse, one of the voices that had tried to taunt me
into a mind-hopping race two months earlier walked in to play.

Terence Wishmaker was British and probably one of the best offensive voices the
Group had.  Unfortunately, his big voice came with a big ego, and he loved
proving he had one of the strongest voices on campus.  Joey and Neil both
separately tried to put him into his place by challenging him to a telepathic
duel, but Terence managed to take down their shields before they could do the
same to him. 

Both of us seized this unexpected opportunity, Terrence challenged me, I
immediately accepted, and quickly we agreed the showdown would be at high noon,
Sunday, in front of the old cathedral.

Big ego or not, I had to respect Terence for his skill and strength.  But to me
what was more important was the circumstances of how he had come to be apart of
the group.

Terence had just begun to experiment with his telepathic abilities when another
much more experienced voice discovered him and enslaved him.  After convincing
his family Terence was too despicable to speak too, the man brought Terrence
back to the states with him.  He taught Terence a lot, drilled him constantly,
and perhaps this was the reason Terence was so good at the duels.  But he spent
five years serving this man like any other slave, having no real life of his
own.

So when he and his master attempted to enslave the Group, thinking there were
only a handful of them to deal with, they were quickly disabled and brought to
Sarah for judgment.  Sarah quickly saw Terence's situation, and after removing
the rather simple commands the man had enslaved Terence with, Terence eagerly
accepted her offer to join them, deeply afraid he would become someone like his
ex-master if left to defend on his own.

Like I said, I respected Terence for making that decision and adhering to the
group's rules when he could have left and used his abilities freely.  He had
seen the corruption that kind of thing does to a person, and didn't want that
to happen to him.

What Terence hadn't known was I had immediately seen through the ego he used to
hide behind, and saw his fear of being enslaved again.  While Terence may have
physically been twenty years old, in many ways he was only fifteen.  He had
been enslaved at the ripe age of fourteen, and essentially his social
development had stopped while his body continued to grow for those five long
years serving his master without a care about himself.

Terence refused to allow me to stay for the game that day.  I understood his
feelings, and left without much of a fuss, but you could say I was more eager
to teach him a lesson after he used his inflated ego like a club on me to get
me to leave.  He made it sound like I was worried he'd break through my
defenses and try and enslave me, which as everyone knew by then, I would most
likely die before that could happen.  Hmph... Like any trick he could have up
his sleeve would be less effective by my observing how he cleaned minds.

Joey's car was parked behind mine when I returned to my apartment building, so
I went up to Suzi's and found they had just got back from apartment shopping
with Jason.

"So how come he's suddenly looking for an apartment?" I asked Joey while Suzi
was in the bedroom changing clothes.  "I thought he liked living in the frat
house."

"That was before he was known as the brother to princess Suzi," Joey snickered.

"Princess Suzi, huh?" I grinned.

"That's what he had called her.  I think it was supposed to have been an
insult, but you know Suz."

I nodded, then said, "What about Johnson's apartment downstairs?  He's moving
out at the end of the semester."

"The prick doesn't want to be in the same building as his overbearing meddling
sister," Suzi said as she came out wearing tight jeans and a cut off t-shirt.

"Shit, Suz.  You feeling randy or something?" I said, personally loving seeing
a bare tummy exposed to the public like that after the long winter.

"No, I'm just horny," she said off handedly, then walked over to me and asked
sweetly  "Timmy?  Can my boys use your bathroom again tonight?"

"Sure thing, sexy," I said, giving her a kiss just to the right of her bare
belly button.

"Stop that!" she said, slapping me on the top of my head.

"It was only a kiss!" I protested, then issued the old 'down boy' command
silently.

"Well, just don't kiss me when I'm like this," she said, frustrated.

I sighed, realizing that because she was horny, those damn commands Joey put in
her head would probably kick in even at something as simple as a hug.

Man, she was horny too.  When I started telling them about Terence's challenge,
Suzi sat down on the opposite side of Joey, plastering herself against him as
she listened, her hand absently wandering up and down his chest.  Joey was
trying to listen, and Suzi was too, but even I wasn't really paying attention
to what I was saying by the time Suzi was teasingly running her finger between
his legs and watching his crotch move with his heart beat.

"I, uh..  think I'll be going," I said getting up after everyone had stopped
talking for over a minute.

I expected someone to say something, but all I heard behind me was the anxious
meeting of lips and deepening breaths.  I closed her door behind me with a lump
in both my throat and my pants, and left the building without even stopping off
at my apartment.  

I was halfway across the street when Joey thought to me, "Hey, wait up."

To my surprise, Joey came jogging up asking, "So where we going?  Back to the
old admin building?"

"I can't go back there today.  Terence, remember?"

"Oh," he said, accepting that he had missed the reason while Suzi had been
petting him.  "So what about the hospital then?"

"I don't...  feel like it," I admitted, frustrated in more ways than one.  "How
come you left Suzi like that?"

"I didn't leave her.  She ordered me out.  She didn't want her mood used up
before tonight.  Besides, she knew I wanted to see what you've been working on
all week."

I sighed with my frustration, finding my hopes of what I was trying to do were
diminishing out of the sheer number of symbol groupings I would have to
memorize to accomplish it.

"Tim, what's the matter?  Did that shit head Terence..."

"No.  Nothing like that," I quickly assured him.  "Come on.  Let's go to the
hospital and I'll show you."

I was shocked to realize I had never shared the vision of the symbols with Joey
before then.  We spent hours just...  rediscovering the majestic beauty and
grace of the symbols, something that I had forgotten to appreciate for quite a
long time it seemed.

By the time I got around to showing him the details of how impossible it would
be for me to memorize the different possible arrangements of simple symbol
segments, I was starting to feel the drain of being in that kind of a link for
so long.  After I closed the link, we remained sitting on this padded bench
down a hall for quite some time, my eyes shut while I rested and his mind spun
frantically with his forming ideas.

I never got to ask him what he was thinking, for suddenly he jumped to his feet
and quickly said to me, "Red alert.  All hands to battle stations.  Got to go."

As my grin faded from my face, I closed my eyes again and laid down in the spot
he vacated, then ignored the increasing bursts of telepathic noise nearby as
the group assembled to track down and fight off another power hungry voice.

I dozed off a while, and when I woke, I was surprised to find the search still
going on.  I then bumped my head on the fucking arm of the bench when I checked
the time and saw I was late for my Saturday night drinks.

Strangers were sitting at our usual table, and I slapped myself on the side of
my head for not remembering the newbies were confined to their quarters during
an attack.  So I decided if they couldn't come to Rave, I could bring a little
bit of the Rave to them.

Unfortunately, I found the elevator refused to go to that floor as it
apparently had been locked out.  When I tried one set of stairs and found the
second floor's door locked, I noticed a swirl of symbols just outside the other
staircase's door on the opposite side of the building.

I cheerily climbed the first set of stairs to the landing between floors, then,
as I turned the corner and recognized the guard's face, the gorilla noticed me
and did the same.

"YOU!" he yelled.  "COME'ER, FAGGOT!"

I bet my face was as white as ash, and as I turned to run back down the steps,
I heard this electrical buzzer going off above and below me followed by two
slams somewhere above me and clicks from what I guessed were electrical locks
closing on all the doors to that stairwell.

"You can't get away this time, bed wetter," he snarled.  "You're going to pay
for making me miss my lunch."

I turned towards him, seeing my trapped-like-a-rat expression in the reflective
sunglasses he wore.

"Look, I don't think you know..." I started to explain, then got cut off as he
grabbed me by the throat and threw me against the concrete wall, winding me and
knocking me momentarily senseless.

"When I get done with you, bed wetter, you'll wish you had stepped in front of
a locomotive instead of running into me."

"I already do," I gasped, then snapped my sprawled legs together and tried
hooking his left foot out from under him.

"Looks like I need to beat some more sense into you," he laughed after I failed
to pull him off his feet.

"Shit.  Perry makes it look so easy," I muttered to myself as he dropped to his
knees, pinning me between them.

As he raised his arm to commence with his promised beating, I looked him in the
glasses, desperately trying to look behind those damn mirrors he wore, and
said, "I'm here to see the newbies!"

"The fuck you are!" he exclaimed after his moment of surprise passed.

"I was supposed to meet them at the Rave!" I shouted, barely moving out of the
way as his fist came down at me.  "God Damn it!  I'm a voice!"

"And I'm a silencer!" he barked, hitting me this time squarely in the gut, the
impact not only rearranging my organs in very uncomfortable ways, but also
jarred his sunglasses off his face and partially into my open mouth.

It took me several seconds to realize what I was nearly choking on, then just
as he grabbed them with one hand and raised the other to finish me off, I made
eye contact and "ZAP!" he was out for the count.

The twins would have been so proud of me.  Heh.  Of course I can't take all the
credit.  If the gorilla hadn't done such a good job inducing the terror I had
felt,  I probably would have only been able to stun him for a few moments.

Once I stopped holding my guts in agony and helped all my organs to go back
into their regular assigned spots, I was strongly tempted to give the asshole a
couple of kicks in his gut for the trouble.  But I didn't, finding it against
my code of honor to injure someone while he was down, not to mention not
wanting to risk waking him up and having to relive the terror again.

After inspecting around the door he had been guarding and not finding anything
to release the locks, I carefully searched the gorilla's pockets and found what
looked to be a garage door opener in the left one.

Once the doors were unlocked, I was tempted to strip the fucker down and take
off with his cloths, naturally locking the doors behind me.  But the buzzer had
made him stir, so I didn't take any chances and just got the hell out of there.

The telepathic activity was still going strong as I made my way towards the
dorm building Shelly lived in.  I was puzzled.  What could have been taking
them so long to track down the intruder, for that's all they had been doing
since I had awakened from my little nap.

I knew Shelly wasn't in the room when I knocked on her door, but Vanessa was,
and my curiosity got the better of me.

"Hi, is Shelly in?" I asked when she opened the door.

"She ran to store for some stuff," Vanessa said with a cautious tone.  "Are
you... Tim?"

"Yeah," I blurted, actually surprised she knew my name.  "Uhm, I was just..."

"Come in, I guess," Vanessa said with uncertainty.

"Thanks," I said, stepping past her and momentarily grinning at the sight of
Shelly's unmade bed.

"So you're Tim," she said, motioning me to sit on her bed as she turned down
the volume on a twelve inch black and white TV set sitting on the study table
at the foot of her bed.

"And you're Vanessa," I said, keeping my humor of the situation from showing on
my face.

She looked at me like she suspected something, then as she discarded the
thought with a yawn, I had front row seats watching her raise her arms over her
head and her braless breasts tried to poke through her t-shirt.

She caught me admiring her bust, and instantly went on the offensive by asking,
"Are you planning to get serious with Shelly?"

I blinked a few times to reinitialize my thought processes, then said, "I
didn't plan on it, no.  She didn't want to get involved with someone else so
soon."

"So you're not out to get into her pants?"

"Excuse me?" I said, mocking my taking offence at the suggestion.  "I'm not
trying to get into anyone's pants.  I'm engaged!"

"Oh.  Sorry!" she winced.  "She never said you were... Uhm.  Engaged."

"Even if I wasn't engaged, I wouldn't be trying to get into her pants without
her wanting me too!" I said, still playing mad.

"Sorry!" she said in aggravation.  "I just got dumped by a guy I...  I guess
I'm just feeling protective."

"Tony dumped you?  Why the hell would he do that?"

"You know Tony?"

"I doubt he'd know me, but yeah, I know him."

"Oh," she said slightly disappointed.

"Pardon me for asking, but why did he dump you?"

"I'm not going to tell you... that," she said, looking me in the eyes and
suddenly sensing something familiar.

"Have we met before?" she said, blinking after I glanced over at the TV a
moment.

"Not in person, no.  I've seen you around though."

She looked me in the eyes again, this time triggering an empathic connection.

"Why do I feel like I know you," she asked softly.

Curious to see where this was going, I didn't break the connection and asked
her again, "Why did Tony break up with you?"

"You... You already know why," she gasped.

"Tell me why Tony broke up with you," I insisted.

"Because...  He said he fell in love with...  another man," she said shakily.

"What else did he tell you, Vanessa?  How did he tell you?"

"All week long something was bothering him, and when he was late picking me up
to go to the Rave last night, I tried kissing him in the car to try and soften
him up so he'd tell me what was bothering him.

"He didn't kiss me back right, and when I stopped and looked him in the face,
he got this big guilty look...  He told me he met this guy last week... And...
Tony's gay!" she blubbered, breaking the link and throwing herself forward into
my shoulder.

I gently rubbed her back as she recovered her self-control, then sheepishly
scooted away from her when Shelly came in and caught us like that.

"What's going on?  Tim, what are you doing here?" Shelly exclaimed worriedly as
she closed the door with her foot while holding two sacks in her arms.

"My plans for tonight fell through, so I stopped by to see if you wanted to do
anything.  Vanessa was just telling me how she had picked out a fruit as a
boyfriend and..."

"Don't call him that!" Vanessa objected, then lightened up a little and giggled
slightly.

"You told him?" Shelly said with mixed feelings.

"I... I guess I did," Vanessa stuttered.  "I don't know why.  I just..."

"You didn't give her any coffee ice cream, did you Tim?" Shelly asked
nervously.

"No, silly.  As far as I know that only works on you," I said, looking her in
the eyes to see what would happen.

"Shelly, did you tell him?" Vanessa suddenly asked.

"Tell him what?" she asked even more nervously.

"Anything about... things?"

"I uhm..."

"It never happened," I quoted, looking Vanessa in the eyes.

"Yes it did," Vanessa said with a sudden burst of emotion.

I looked up at Shelly to see the same surprise on her face as was probably on
mine, then as I got up to leave I said, "Well, then...  I guess you two uhm...
Look, I'll just see you in class on Monday, 'k?"

"You're not going to...  Say anything still, are you?" Shelly said worriedly,
following me to the door and opening it for me.

I smiled at her and pretended to zip my lips closed with an invisible zipper,
to which she gave me a peck on my cheek and slowly shut the door.

"What to do, what to do..." I sighed as I left their dorm building.  "It's
Saturday night and there's nobody left for me to hang out with."

I was tempted to just go to the Rave, but I wasn't in the mood to deal with the
crowds, especially if I wouldn't be able to dance while I was there stag.

I walked around the quieter parts of campus until I noticed the group's probes
were starting to spread out across the whole campus.

"I wonder what took them so long to try that," I said out loud, then nearly
jumped out of my skin when a motorcycle with two people on it came speeding
down the walkway and I had to hop out of their way.

"Why don't you fucking watch where you're going, you morons!" I yelled after
them, then watched as two more went down a walkway on the other side of the
yard.

Within five minutes the group had formed a perimeter around the entire campus,
and after watching them slowly make their way inwards for a while, I got bored
and tried a tiny little pulse that I estimated they wouldn't sense from their
distance just to see if the intruder was hiding anywhere nearby.

When nothing came back and the others' search pattern didn't change, I just
started hopping around people's heads looking for anything unusual, making sure
I kept out of the range of the Group's probes.

I didn't really expect to find anything that way, and I didn't.  You could say
the intruder found me, but it was really just chance that she probed the person
I had just popped into and instantly attacked my mind through the link.

That was something I had never had happen before.  I never had someone attack
me through a link I had formed to another person's mind.  She nearly succeeded
in worming herself into my head through my own remote sensory feed streams, but
I cut them off the moment I recognized non sensory symbols within the streams.

I barely got a fix on her before she stopped emitting her command streams at
the person I had just disconnected from.  Seeing she was still effectively
boxed in by the group's shrinking perimeter, I just watched her streams from a
distance as she moved briskly towards their northern-most flank.

By the time I realized where she was heading, she was physically too far away
from me for me to catch up with her in time.

"She's heading for the Rave," I urgently broadcasted across the whole campus.

"Tim, what are you doing?" Joey thought to me.

"The intruder accidentally scanned me while I was hopping around heads, and
I've been watching her.  She's heading right for the Rave.  I'll lose her if
she goes into that crowd."

"Are you sure it's her?"

"Yes, I'm sure.  You want me to stop her?"

"Just a sec.... Yeah.  Go ahead."

I focused my symbolic vision on her and discovered she didn't seem to have a
shield or protective barrier up, and with a simple command stopped her fast in
her tracks.

I had expected some kind of fight, probe, or something, but it never came, so I
probed her and found out the reason why.

"Joey, whoever it was, was just using her as a relay.  She doesn't have voice."

"Good thing I didn't call off the search then," he replied before closing the
thought channel.

After examining the young woman's mind a bit more, I made sure I knew where I
could find her if I wanted to scan her in more detail later, then sent her back
to the Rave where apparently she had been before whoever it was had borrowed
her body for some scouting.

They didn't find the real intruder that night, and it was doubtful the intruder
had ever actually set foot on the campus that night, or the other nights during
the two weeks previous that someone had detected a suspicious probe and hadn't
been able to locate the source.

I was relieved to hear that they had easily ruled out myself as being the cause
of some of these mysterious ghost voices, but then I wasn't all that pleased to
know how easily Suzi could detect when my mind was drifting around outside of
my skull.

Suz had canceled her planned night with her slave boys, but that's not to say
she didn't have any fun that night.  After their climaxes and things got quiet
upstairs, I drifted off to sleep without knowing it, and found myself cuddling
Suzi on top of me as I stroked her long sweaty hair.

My cock was still hard and deeply embedded inside her, and ever once in a while
she'd stir and readjust her hips to get it in deep again.  My balls were
getting a little sore for having fucked so much without cumming, but then they
were used to this, and Suz never forgot to take care of that before going to
sleep.

I closed my eyes to enjoy the slutty sensations Suz was sending to me through
our share link.  I loved being her instrument of pleasure.  I'd do anything she
wished without question or hesitation.

She's thinking about it now...  She's going get me off in some really perverted
way.  I know her.  She hasn't been this horny since before Tim came here.

She's getting ready.  I can always tell because her cunt gets wetter as she
thinks about it.

But then she snapped her head up, looked me in the eye with a suspicious look
and said, "Timmy?  Are you in there?"

"What?" I asked.

"You ARE!  Get out of his HEAD, TIM!"

"What are you talking about, Suz?" I...  Joey asks as I found myself drifting
slowly away.

"Go on..." Suzi thinks to me.  "Go find somebody else to haunt.  If you want to
have sex with me, you come up here in your own body and do it.  I don't like
SNEAKS."

Well, excuse me for dreaming.  Shit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

"Good morning," Joey said with false cheeriness when he opened Suzi's door the
next morning.

"Morning," I said, not sure what to make of his mood.  "Suz still mad at me?"

"Nah," he scoffed, closing the door behind me.  "I think you just surprised
her, that's all."

I looked him in the eyes suspiciously, then as he let his concerns show on his
face, I said, "But you're upset about what happened last night."

"Kind of," he admitted.  "Tim, I didn't sense you doing that.  You were in my
head, but I didn't..."

"Joey... I'm ready," Suzi called from the bedroom.

"Coming," he immediately responded and left to join her.

I sat down at the breakfast table to think about what Joey had said, but got
distracted watching his symbols flow about his body as he dressed Suzi.

Joey's and Suzi's mental signatures were as familiar to me as the feel of my
own body.  I could even recognize them by their symbolic streams, and I had
never really studied their streams in that great of detail to do that.

"Suz, how did you know I was connected to Joey when Joey didn't?" I asked her
when they came out.

"I felt you watching me," she said, shrugging.  "I didn't sense anything else."

"I didn't sense anything at all," Joey pointed out.  "That's really starting to
freak me out."

"Well then I want to try something before we go eat."

"All right, but hurry up.  I'm starving," Suzi said.

"I bet.  You put out more energy last night than the whole football team does
in a game," I remarked.

"Well at least I don't sneak around spying on people to get my jollies," she
snapped back playfully.

I smiled at her comment with my eyes closed, focusing my mind on just her
symbols.  I imagined I was like a camera with a zoom lens, going nearer,
focusing, going a little closer, focusing...

"Timmy...  This is feeling weird," Suzi said a bit nervously.

"What is?  Damn it, I can't sense anything!" Joey huffed in frustration.

"What does it feel like?"  I mumbled out.

"He said what does it feel like," Joey repeated for me.

"I feel like he's looking at me under a microscope," she said, clearly starting
to get rattled.

I opened my eyes, took a deep breath, and said, "It didn't feel like last night
then?"

"No, not even a little," she said shakily.  "Maybe you should try it on Joey."

"I thought you were hungry?" I asked.

"I'm not any more," she said with an uncomfortable expression.

"Sorry, Suz.  I didn't think it would upset your stomach," I said, noticing the
difference in her digestive stream.

"How did you know my tummy was upset?" she asked.

"I can see it," I explained simply.  "Let me try this on Joey, then I'll
explain."

"He just likes holding us in suspense," Joey thought privately to Suz.

"I do not.  I'm keeping the conditions the same.  She didn't know what I was
doing, so you shouldn't either."

"Remind me to encrypt this thought channel later," Joey thought to Suz as I
closed my eyes again.

Focusing in on Joey seemed easier, but that might have been because I had a
little more practice.

"I think I can feel it," Joey commented.  "I feel like I'm standing up on stage
in a packed house and forgot to wear pants."

"I wish that's how it felt to me," Suzi said.

"So you feel it too?" Joey asked.

"No, I meant when he was...  Timmy...  What I felt was much more subtle.  I
think you're trying too hard."

So I backed off, then just studied his streams as a whole for a while.

"I don't feel anything now," Joey updated.

"Neither do I," Suzi added.

I took another deep breath, then tried relaxing in hopes to reform that
drifting feeling I got before and after my little mental romps.

"Tim, I'm getting hungry again.  Can't this wait until after breakfast?"

I opened my eyes and yawned, "Yeah, I guess."

We went to Denny's, and after getting seated, I closed my eyes and let my
senses wander around the room to see if I could recreate the conditions of last
night without actually falling asleep.

There was this little girl about three who was idly playing with her dolly
while her family waited for their breakfasts to arrive.  I enjoyed listening to
her thoughts for they reminded me a lot of Richie's, yet they were different in
the sense that Richie didn't really go for dolls.  I guess he was too spoiled
to need to pretend dolls were people to keep him company.

A couple of times I got close to that drifting state, but never quite got there
enough to drift into her head.

"I give up," I finally announced, opening my eyes and finding my breakfast was
already in front of me.  "Shit, why didn't you tell me the grub arrived?"

"We did," Suzi said with her mouth full.

"Yeah," Joey said critically.  "You ignored us, as usual."

"Sorry," I said, cutting my pancakes up with my knife and fork.  "Anyway, I
think the reason you didn't sense me in your head, Joey, was because I wasn't
in your head."

"Well that's good.  But then how were you able to know what I was thinking and
feeling?"

"'Could see your streams," I said between mouthfuls.

"What, through my shields?" he asked worriedly.

"They make it harder," I simply said.  "But if I concentrate, I can usually
make out enough to get the gist of what someone is thinking.  Especially you
and Suz."

"I guess your dad was right," Joey thought out loud.

"Right about what?" Suzi queried.

"When we were down in Venezuela together, Tim's dad said the reason why Gladius
teamed teens together was because they would form stronger links with each
other than other people could.  Or something like that.  His dad was convinced
I would be able to feel Tim out no matter where he was because we did so much
together when he started getting the hang of his voice...  Holy shit.  Remember
when those two assholes at the mall handcuffed me and then raped you?  Tim, you
said you felt something was wrong that night and that's why you called me."

"Yeah.  And I was inside the Nursery too when I felt it."

"Shit, that's right."

"What's so special about the Nursery?" Suzi asked.

"The walls have this wood in them that blocks telepathy," Joey explained.
"That's how Gladius hid him from everyone there.  Including me."

"So what does this have to do with what happened last night?" Suzi sighed.

"Yeah, Joey."

"I don't know.  I just thought it was interesting," Joey said with a
disappointed shrug.

"Well then I'll tell you what it has to do with it," said after munching on my
bacon thoughtfully a minute.  "I think what's happening while I'm asleep is I'm
just tuning into someone else's streams enough that my dreams become
reconstructions of what I make out from them."

"Yeah, but then I should be able to feel you probing me," Joey objected.

"Do you feel me probing you now?" I said, looking at Suzi while I had my
attention on Joey's streams.

The both hesitated for they weren't sure who I was talking to, then Suzi opted
to answer since I was looking at her.

"Not you silly," I said before she could speak.  "Joey."

"No," he said just as I recognized his digestive streams working to expel some
excess air from his system.

"Excuse you, Joey."

"What?" he said, burped, then said, "Excuse me."

Suzi and I both chuckled, then when Joey realized the joke was on him, he had
this expression on his face I hadn't seen since our freshman year of high
school.  Then Suzi and I just looked at each other knowing we had both been
thinking the same thing.

"Just don't go waiting for Wishmaker to burp before embarrassing him today,"
Joey said as his slight blush started to fade.

"Embarrass him?  You know that's not my style," I said, feeling a little edgy
about the impending conversation.

"I just can't wait to see his face..." he said with a grin.

"You both aren't planning on watching this thing, are you?"

"Well I'm not," Suzi said as she absent-mindedly probed some fresh meat that
had just come in the doors.

"Why?" Joey asked me cautiously.  "You don't have a problem with spectators, do
you?"

"Hell no.  The more the better.  But..."

Joey was pretty upset that I didn't want him present for the showdown at noon.
He didn't see how he being there would make him appear to be my backup in the
unlikely event that Terence actually was able to penetrate my defenses.  I
trusted the integrity of the group not to let it go as far as my life being in
danger, but with Joey there, it might complicate things. 

Plus Suzi had taken a serious interest in two frat boys who were eating a few
tables away, and Joey and Suzi ended up going back to Suz's apartment with them
while I kept myself occupied off campus by shopping around town.

I felt odd as I wandered around the strip malls, yet I couldn't put my finger
on what exactly felt odd.  It wasn't until I was driving back to campus for the
telepathic dual that I noticed I felt a bit stuffed up, like I was coming down
with a cold.  Yet that wasn't quite it either.

The cathedral's clock's larger hand was halfway between the 9 and 10 when I
reached the square in front of it.  I was thrilled to see over fifty people
were waiting to watch the duel, some of the voices having brought their...
companions.

"I don't know what you said to Joey, but you sure pissed him off," Neil said,
suddenly beside me.  "He broke the share link with me when I said I was coming
to watch."

"Sorry," I simply said, feeling a bit apprehensive, even a little nervous about
the upcoming dual.  "He'll get over it though."

"Yeah, I guess," he said, resisting his urge to press me for more info, or at
least probably until after the match was over.

I passively scanned crowd, finding for the most part they expected me to win,
but hoped it wouldn't be too quick of a battle, or too long.

"So what do you think?  Should I just go for the kill right away, or see what
tricks he has first?" I asked Neil without looking at him.

"Hmmm...  A quick kill would definitely deflate the hot air in his head, but it
wouldn't be as fun."

"Agreed," I said, giving Terence a confident smile just as he happened to look
at me, and noting the flash of uncertainty pass through his eyes.  "Besides, I
don't want to disappoint the crowd.  They're expecting a good fight."

Slowly, the hands of the giant clock moved to the upright position, and on the
first strike of the bell, Terence released a quick resonating probe of pure
energy that surprised me enough that I couldn't bring up my shields before it
returned to him with the information he sought.

"Nice one, Terence," I called out loud to him.  "I don't think knowing what
strategy I WAS going to use is going to help you any though."

"We'll see," he cautiously shouted back.

"'scuse me," I said to Neil as I formed my first blanketing illusion and
disappeared from the crowd's sight.

The gasps and general turmoil caused by the crowd made me want to giggle as I
walked briskly to ten feet away from Terence at approximately thirty degrees to
his right, then as Terence and a few others in the crowd scanned for my
position as well as for how I was deceiving their eyes, I manipulated their
scans to show my position to be forty-five degrees to his left and altered the
illusion to show me popping up there as well.

"Surprise," my illusion said as Terence stabbed at it with a fast telepathic
blow, then it disappeared again.

"No, no... Over here," my image said as it blinked back into existence ten feet
behind him.

After he threw another telepathic jab at my image, I could tell he wasn't going
to fall for the same trick again, so I dissolved my blanketing sensory streams
and said, "What's the matter, Terence?  Can't figure out what's real?"

He took a deep breath like he was going to yell, but instead quite surprisingly
used the energy to generate a low level pulse I had no hopes of deceiving.

I just grinned at his indecision after the pulse didn't reveal my location
being anywhere he hadn't already sensed me to be.  Despite the energy barriers
protecting his mind, I could see the thoughts running through his head just by
watching his face as he came to realize I was really standing right where he
perceived to me.

This time when he probed me, I raised my barriers up long enough to protect my
altered plans, then felt the first tingling of discomfort deep within my brain
as he attacked my mind with not one, but two command streams.

"Say, that's pretty neat," I commented as I canceled the two streams as they
emerged from his barriers.  "Let me try that."

I formed two, then added two more streams when he seemed quite able to handle
the first pair.  I was impressed at how he was able to continue emitting his
two control streams while at the same time maintaining his barrier.

I, on the other hand, was expelling significantly less energy than he was
simply because I wasn't having to maintain a barrier to shield my mind.  Yet I
was starting to feel a bit drained, and every once in a while I would feel this
sudden throb in my head, which was really starting to concern me.

"Terence, I wasn't planning on making this so short, but I think I'm coming
down with a cold or something," I said as I turned up the intensity of my
streams and inspected his barrier for a weak spot.

"It's not over until it's OVER!" he growled and threw practically all of the
telepathic energy he was using for his barrier directly at me.

I only had an instant to react to raise my barriers again to absorb the
telepathic fireball, and was already forming the new command stream to seize
control of his mind while his barrier was so weak when it hit me and sent a
blinding flash of pain through the inner recesses of my brain.

My scream startled everyone, including Terence who stood there dumbfounded as I
started to get up from the crouched position I had fallen down into.  Just as
my finger pressed against this strange foreign object in my left nostril,
Terence started pounding me with bursts of telepathic energy.

Pain shot through my head with each blow, and between that and feeling the
familiar sensation of blood running out my nose after the foreign object in my
nostril burst under pressure, I suddenly realized the true extent of the damage
the group's attack in January had done to me.

In a desperate surge of fear, remorse, and anger, I transmitted this
realization in a pulse to everyone there.  Terence at first thought it to be a
ruse and pounded me with two more pulses before watching me fall to my hands
and finally noticed the blood coming out of my nose.

Even after he stopped sending them, the pulses kept ringing in my head and
stimulated new bursts of pain that shot throughout my body as well.

Like a survivor instinct, I knew I had to get to Joey as quickly as possible,
and as people started closing around me trying to sense or ask me what was
wrong, I lunged myself in the direction I knew Joey to be.

I was barely aware that it was Neil who helped me back to my feet after another
jolt of pain tripped me to the ground the third time.  After I tried to shake
him off me, he looked me in the eyes and said, "I'll help you."  All I could do
was nod my head before shutting my eyes as my head exploded again.

It took us ten minutes to reach the apartments on foot.  Neil was extremely
annoyed with Joey's refusal to answer his telepathic messages, but he didn't
say a word about it when Joey opened the main door of the apartment building
when we approached it.

Joey and Neil helped me into my bedroom, then after Suzi called Neil out, Joey
shut the door and came over to me.

"Hey," Joey said in my face to get my attention.  When my eyes met his, he
said, "Remember the Alamo."

Just like that, the pain stopped and my mind cleared.  I laid on my bed a few
moments blinking as I sorted through what happened, then looked Joey in the
eyes again and said, "Thanks."

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

"I take it it worked?"

"Couldn't have worked better," I said, rubbing the left side of my nose before
remembering the empty capsule of fake blood was still up there.  "Can you hand
me a tissue?"

"So was it worth it?" Joey said as he handed me the box of tissues from my
dresser.

"I hope so.  I hate to think I went through all that for nothing.  Shit, Joey.
That pain felt real!"

"Shh.." Joey said, reminding me that Neil was in the next room with Suzi.  "I
guess I haven't lost my touch then," he said grinning.

After pulling out the empty capsule from my nostril, I got up and went into the
bathroom to wash the fake blood off my face saying "Nope.  From the moment we
split up at breakfast to the moment you said the trigger phrase, I had no idea
my perception had been altered."

"Who says it still isn't," Joey kidded.

"The fact that I'm still breathing does."

"Like I couldn't figure out away around that," Joey said.

"Well, don't go out of your way trying to work out how since I'd never let you
try it in the first place."

"Hmmph.  Oh ye of little faith."

"It's not about faith, Joey," I said as I returned to the bedroom, sat down
beside him, and put my arm over his shoulder.  "Or.."

"If you say the t word, I'll puke all over you," he said seriously, yet with a
touch of humor in his eyes.

So I didn't say it in words.  I just shared it with him empathically, very much
like how the twins would communicated to us without actually making eye
contact.  

To my frustration, his natural response to this triggered Suzi's commands,
causing him to turn away uncomfortably saying, "We better go.  Suzi won't be
able to distract Neil much longer."

I let a frustrated sigh escape as I got up to follow Joey out, but was
completely distracted from this the moment I entered the room with the others
and sensed Neil had already figured things out.

"Feeling better?" Neil asked.

"Lots," I said truthfully.

"Joey to the rescue," he said somewhat sarcastically.

Suzi's glared at me a moment, reminding me that she hadn't liked the whole idea
from the beginning, and that now she wanted me to fess up to Neil before he got
any angrier than he was.

"I guess.  But you helped me first...  Thanks."

"Yeah...  Good old gullible Neil," he said, looking Joey in the eyes a moment.

"Aw... Come on, Neil..." Joey said apologetically.  "It wasn't like that."

"No?...  No, I guess not.  You probably didn't expect me to help him
afterwards.  You wouldn't have done such a crappy job of acting afterwards if
you had planned to use me like that."

"Blame me for it, not him," I defended Joey.  "This was all my idea, and you're
right.  I didn't even consider what you might do.  For what it's worth, I'm
sorry.  I didn't intend for you to get caught in the middle of..."

"I don't fucking care!" Neil blurted out.  He turned to Joey and said heatedly
"I don't care you lied to me, I don't even care if you all used me or not!  The
point is I always come second!  I'm fucking sick of working my schedule around
Tim's when most of the time it doesn't matter because he's always out doing his
own thing anyway!  But I guess it shouldn't surprise me at all that you
wouldn't include me in on something like this.  I bet you didn't even think of
letting me in on it, did you?  DID YOU!"

When Joey's guilty face could only stare at the floor, Neil said, "FUCK,"
turned, flung the door open, and left.

"Neil!  Neil don't go like this!" Suzi cried before yelling at me, "I told you
this wasn't a good idea!" and ran out after him.

"Suz!" Joey protested, then let out a frustrated groan while pitching himself
onto the couch.

"I'm sorry Joey.  I shouldn't have asked you to help me with this," I said
guiltily.

"I started the mess.  It was right for you to ask me to help you undo it.  It's
not your fault Neil wants to have a hissy fit about it."

The lump in my throat grew as I opened my mouth and said, "You don't really
work your schedule around mine, do you?"

"Nah... He's exaggerating.  There were a couple of times when I thought you and
I would have time to do something together that I told Neil I wouldn't be able
do stuff then.  Suzi's the only I really base my schedule around."

"Then why are you feeling so guilty?"

"Because I did consider letting him in on it, but I also wanted him to be there
in case something went wrong.  I knew he'd be pissed at first, but not like
this."

"Joey," I began cautiously, breaking a lengthy period of silence between us.
"Ever since I first met him, Neil has purposely avoided making eye contact with
me.  I've had people do that before, but sooner or later I catch them off guard
and after they experiencing it, they realize they don't really have anything to
hide that's worth the trouble."

"But not Neil," Joey concluded for me.  "That doesn't mean he's hiding
something from you.  He's just being defensive."

"Yeah, that's what I had figured too.  But...  Now, I'm not so sure."

"What do you mean?  You think he's a spy or something?"  Joey said incredibly.

"No, nothing like that."

"Then what?"

"I don't know, but I think it has something to do with why he reacted like he
did to this."

Joey let out a long sigh before looking me in the eyes and asking, "What was he
feeling?"

After my eyebrows shot up in surprise, Joey said, "Come on.  I know that's what
you're basing your assumptions on.  What was he feeling?  Betrayal?  Jealousy?"

"Disgust... Anger...  and I think he was restraining some fear."

"Fear?  What kind of fear?"

"He's very careful not to let out too many signals for me to feel him out all
the way, and I've never sensed any malevolent emotions from him, so I don't try
to pry into his emotions while he obviously doesn't want me to..."

"But ..."

"But...  I'm fairly certain he's hiding something.  Something he doesn't want
us know about.  And now I think its more specific to hiding it from you."

"Me?  What could he possibly have to hide from me?  Are you sure you're not
getting your wires crossed?"

"No.  Like I said, he purposely makes it hard for me to read him.  But Joey, I
am sure of one thing."

"Great.  What?"

"You're his best friend."

Joey eyes had a touch of guilt in them when they connected with mine for a mere
instant before rolling north as he sighed, "Share links do have that affect,
don't they."

"Among other things," I said before going over to the kitchen for a glass of
juice to give him a moment to his thoughts.

Sometime in late February during a long hard freeze, I had come across a few
birds in the back yard of our apartment building trying to find something to
eat.  When I had sensed how truly hungry they were, I rushed outside with the
remaining quarter loaf of bread I had on hand and summoned all the hungry birds
in the immediate area for a meal.

Suzi had to lure me back inside with her own half loaf before I would stop
driving my organized chaos of feathers long enough to put a coat on.  After
having no bread for a week due to the expectant hopes of my newfound friends,
Suzi and I went out and bought a half a dozen bird feeders for the back yard.

As I drank my orange juice, I peered out the kitchen window at the bird
feeders, automatically reaching out with my mind to feel out the birds pecking
through the scattered seed that earlier birds had purposely knocked out of the
feeders while digging for the sunflower seeds.  They were obviously disturbed
by the presence of a nearby threat, and it only took a moment to recognize the
two clusters of swirling streams of symbols and realize Suzi and Neil were
standing outside at the back fence watching the birds as well.

Looking out through one of the dove's eyes, it was obvious Suzi had done her
magic and had calmed Neil down enough that she got him to break into a grin
momentarily.  In fact, I quickly realized his guard was down and that my
empathic senses were picking up his true feelings a little clearer even through
the rather psychedelic vision the dove had.

When Neil noticed my stare, I suddenly found him innocently looking me straight
in the eyes.

Natural empathy largely relies on the subconscious processing of the miniscule
but definitive bits of emotional data given off by the human body, and the
generation of responses to enhance the desired emotions of another.  The
problem was, a dove's body, especially its face, doesn't have the appropriate
features to generate the correct signals for a human, so I ended up amusing
Neil and Suzi with strange feather arrangements and head bobbings as I tried to
dive into his soul with my empathic sense.

"Timmy, you better stop that before you hurt the poor thing," Suzi said to the
dove after I lost my/the dove's balance for a moment.

Slightly offended by her lack of faith in my bird-skills, I had all five doves
raise their wings as high as they comfortably could go, prance around each
other in a circle, then do a curtsy before I released them and they flew off in
an explosion of wings beating air.

Just as I finished rinsing out my empty glass, Joey suddenly rolled off the
couch exclaiming "Red Alert!" before leaping across the room and out the door.

"So much for a relaxing Sunday afternoon," I said to myself as I watched the
three of them pile into Suzi's car and drive off.

Over the next week or so, the group was on constant alert as they kept
detecting one or more people's probes on campus.  Even I sensed a few, and I
wasn't trying to.  The probes were so short and so well targeted that by the
time you realized it was a probe and reached out to trace its source, the probe
was finished and the telepathic signal was gone.  

At first I was absolutely mystified as to how anyone could direct a probe so
accurately without having to broadcast a wide field probe to discern their
target's location.  But then it hit me that I could do the exact same thing
using my symbolic vision, and you can guess what I concluded from that.

The response I got from the group when I told them what they were dealing with
was discouraging to say the least.  Even Suzi didn't find this news upsetting
as I felt it should have.  Apparently I had never really considered what it
would be like to go up against another with the sight before, where everyone in
the group had ever since that morning I demonstrated it by taking down a third
of them while they were already at full alert.

I didn't see Joey or Neil at all that week, and only saw Suzi when she came
home to shower and change clothes... with my favorite gorilla accompanying her
every time.

Suzi had told me he had been bugging her about getting to meet me for weeks,
and he apparently hadn't been able to go to the duel the previous Sunday
because everyone else had gone.  So when Suzi notified me she and Rich Bugle
were going to swing by my place after she showered, I rushed around in a near
panic to prepare.

I purposely had my back turned when Suzi opened the door, then after Suzi
introduced me, I twirled around with my hand out for a shake saying, "Also
known as slippery Tim."

Oh, the satisfaction...  It was pure bliss.  His jaw hit his chest so hard when
it opened that he nearly lost is sunglasses from the jolt.  And just as Rich
recovered enough for his anger to kick in, I anxiously grabbed the Ruma's deli
sack from the table and held it out as calmly as I could saying, "Peace?"

His grumbling stomach calmed his anger enough that he didn't break my arm as he
snatched the bag from my slightly wavering hand, then after inspecting the
contents, he muttered, "Thanks," before giving Suzi a dirty look while saying,
"We need to go."

After bravely saying goodbye to both of them as they left, I stood frozen in
place sweating for nearly a whole minute before I sat down from my shaking
adrenaline soaked muscles and finally just busted out laughing. 

Encouraged by Suzi's observation that Rich had been somewhat appeased by my
food offering, I went out of my way to make sure I would have something hot,
tasty, and because he was an Eta, not too greasy available to me on short
notice. (Etas have special restrictions to their diet so their bulk is as close
to 100% lean muscle as possible, and that meant they didn't get to eat fast
food very often.)

So whenever Suzi was about to run home after sleeping in the medical complex
like everyone else in the group, she would let me know so I would have enough
time to either get something run over to me or fix something myself to feed the
gorilla while Suzi showered and changed.

The more I learned about him, the more threatening he became to me.  Sarah had
three graduates assigned to keeping Rich in the best shape he physically could
be, and she continuously tested him in various ways, many times without
warning.

Sarah's cloak and dagger testing had forced Rich to adopt the "assume everyone
is hostile" attitude, and that somewhat explained why he had acted as he did
when we first met.

Finding out that he had even fought off three Eta's single handedly once, I
found I could no longer think to myself, "he could rip me in half," and know I
was exaggerating.

Anyway, all my trouble and work definitely had an effect on his disposition
towards me, but not the kind I had hoped for.  I don't call him gorilla for no
reason.  Animals can smell your fear, and this telepathically immune gorilla
definitely smelled mine.  

I couldn't help it.  He was so large, so powerful, and my only true defense was
dependant on knocking his sunglasses off which now had half circle earpieces on
the ends of the arms to help prevent them from falling off.  I wanted get along
with everyone there, and I didn't like the concept of having someone like Rich
holding a grudge against me.  The knowledge that I had gotten away from him
twice before didn't comfort me anymore since now he knew where I lived, and I
knew revenge was very high on his list of things he liked to do.

After the first couple of meals, he mentioned he liked tuna fish cheese melts,
then when I made that for him the next day, he started telling me what he
wanted to eat the next day.  I only humored him the first time, but then when I
had takeout Chinese instead of whatever it was he had asked for...  Well, it
wasn't pretty.  He belittled me, tripped me once, and then just before he left,
he grabbed me by the neck and mouth and made me promise him I'd have steak with
all the trimmings for him the next day.

The worst part about all of this was, the sensations I felt through Loretta,
the gorilla's ex-girlfriend, kept coming back to me.  After he left the
building and I finished thoroughly cussing out his entire ancestry, I had to
take a cold shower to stop the crazy erotic thoughts I was having.

The probes stopped the next morning, but Suzi wasn't allowed to leave the
medical complex due to the threat of an imminent attack.  I offered to bring
her a change of clothes, but I wasn't allowed to do so for the same security
reasons she wasn't allowed to leave.

But that didn't stop Rich from calling me that evening and telling me he wanted
his steak dinner brought to him.  Outraged, I barely managed to say, "It'll be
about an hour," before slamming the phone back on the hook and headed for the
kitchen to start cooking.

Steak wasn't the only thing I was cooking that evening.  Part of me was saying
I needed to stand up to him like a man, and another part of me wanted to just
do what I had to do to appease him and leave it be.  But I knew better than to
listen to my emotions.  Fight or submit.  That's what he'd expect me to do.
That's what all bullies expect you to do.  But those are never your only
options.

When he finally came out of the medical complex's loading dock door an hour
later, he was surprised to find I had set up a little table with a setting for
two.  The weather was unusually warm that night, so it was perfect for a dinner
for two under the stars.

"What's this?" he asked suspiciously.

"Your steak dinner with all the fixings," I said calmly.

"And who's the other plate for?" he asked threateningly.  "You?"

"Let's just say it's a surprise."

"Just make sure it's a good one," he said as I went over to my car, his eyes
watching me carefully, then turned to his food.

Rich was so involved with his steak that he didn't notice the limo drive up
until the door opened and the occupant exclaimed, "Are you starting without
me?"

"Lori?  What the hell are you doing here?"

"I came for dinner, stupid.  What did you think?"

I walked up with a champagne bottle saying, "I thought you might enjoy some
female company with your steak.  Was I wrong?"

He eyed me carefully a moment, then smiled broadly as he turned towards Lori
and tried to grab her like a piece of meat.

Again, the satisfaction of watching her flip him onto his back was most
rewarding, and best of all, she had done it all on her own.

"Playing hard to get again, eh?" Rich gasped as he desperately sucked his
breath back into his lungs.

Lori winked at me as she sat down in her seat, then after I scooted her in, I
started poring the champagne.

Rich sat down and started to eat again, but it was obvious that his attention
was so split between Lori, myself, and everything else around him that he could
have been eating cow manure and wouldn't have known the difference.

I waited on them like a faithful manservant, speaking only when spoken to, and
even called them ma'am and sir as I served them their desert.  Rich had finally
relaxed enough to enjoy the double fudge cake, and he was actually being very
charming to Lori who was for the most part receptive to his act.  All in all,
the dinner lasted an hour, and I was almost forgetting whom I was dealing with
by the time the limo returned and announced it was time for Lori to go.

Anticipating I was about to spring my trap, Rich walked Lori to the limo with
one hand around her and the other clenching into a fist then relaxing
repeatedly.  I could feel his presence in the air as he kissed her good night,
his senses fully alert for whatever was to come.

But nothing came except the wind following the limo's departure, and after
standing there for several moments ready to leap in any direct, he finally
barked, "What the fuck are you up to?"

"Up to?" I said innocently, then took a deep swig of the champagne straight
from the bottle and said "What makes you think I'm up to anything?"

"How did you know about Lori!" he demanded, walking up to me with a fast and
powerful stride.

"She has such a nice athletic build.  I can see why you like her," I commented
confidently.  

So confidently that it made him stop in his tracks and ask in a cold, almost
nervous voice, "Are you threatening me?"

"Did you enjoy your steak?" I asked with earnest, looking myself in my own eyes
through the reflection of his sunglasses.  "Did you have a good time?  Or were
you so paranoid about what I was planning that you couldn't?"

"You tricked me!" he said, leaping to the conclusion I was trying to obtain.

"I didn't have to," I said honestly into my own eyes.  "But at least you didn't
make a fool of yourself like I thought you might.  I'd say you scored some
pretty good points with Lori.  Especially since she thought the dinner was all
your idea."

"What?  Why?" he choked.

"She broke up with you because she thought you were as romantic as
sledgehammer, remember?"

"What do you want from me?" he said tensely.

"An apology would be nice," I said daringly.  "But if you can't manage that,
I'll settle for you leaving me alone.  I don't like kissing peoples asses.  Or
at least not ones as big as yours."

"And if I don't?" he said menacingly while stepping forward to tower over me.

"Lay a finger on me again, I'll sue your ass for everything its worth," I said
coolly and without a hint of fear in my voice.

He stood there expressionless for several long moments before poking me in the
chest with his finger and saying, "Stay out of my way, and stay away from Lori,
and I'll pretend you don't exist."

And with that he went back inside, leaving me to clean up the mess.

Besides not being my style, revenge always seems to have this way of making
things worse, and I believe that most people got what they deserved sooner or
later.

Take Steven for example.  This man brainwashed my best friend into being my
worst enemy, made Suzi into a mindless sexual animal, and did numerous
unspeakable things to other people I cared about not just to torture me, but
because he also liked to do it.  Suzi, Joey, Dana, and Jerry all have his dark
nightmare living within them, effecting them in different ways, and it will
haunt them for the rest of their lives.  

Joey's guilt about the things he did as Joseph and later while recovering his
identity had made him so unconfident about his own decision making abilities
that it was only natural he found comfort in letting someone else make the
decisions for him, that person naturally being Suzi.  He also tends to blame
himself for any unhappiness Suzi or I experience whether he had anything to do
with it or not.

Steven's greatest mark on Suzi was removing every last trace of sexual
inhibition to the point where even rape is just another form of sexual
intercourse to her.  This only reinforces Joey's guilt since it was Joseph who
had raped her time and time again while she was under the influences of that
drug.  Joey and I both share this fear that Suzi may someday forget herself
while playing with her boy toys and seriously get herself hurt or even killed.

Dana has this fixation on getting pregnant by Jerry, while Jerry constantly
struggles with his ingrained need to have sex with her every chance they get,
pregnant or not.  I called them from time to time just to see how they were
doing, and I'll never forgive Steven for what he did to them from hearing them
cussing each other out horribly in anger followed by their mad fuck, which was
their way of settling any disagreement.

Yes, I wanted and still want Steven to pay for his crimes and all the pain he
has caused.  And while I was his prisoner, I wouldn't have given it a second
thought about killing the bastard with my own two hands if I had been given the
chance.  But that was because he was a deadly threat to not just me, but many
others, and that would be the only reason I could ever use deadly force on
another.

After Joey shot him in all four limbs, this proving his hold over Joey had
finally been broken, I wanted nothing to do with the man.  Oh, I checked to
make sure he would never be able to harm me or anyone else again, but I didn't
waste any more of my time on him after I was told his telepathic abilities had
been permanently disabled and he would most likely never walk without the aid
of a cane again.

To inflict suffering upon a crippled and defenseless man, no matter what he may
have done to me in the past, was, and still is, wrong.  To seek revenge puts
you on their level if not beneath them, and invites retaliation by not just
your target, but by others who would never otherwise involve themselves in your
business.

Rich was still somewhat a threat to me, and I was pretty pissed having to clean
up everything myself after quite frankly bending over backwards to befriend the
big ape.  But I wasn't about to do anything to seek retribution for all my
trouble.  The guy just better never push his luck with me again or I'd follow
through on my lawsuit.  

Either that or sick the twins on him.  Once they seeded him, I wouldn't have
minded homing my empathic controls by making Rich the toy dance around in a
tutu and having him serve me a steak dinner or two.  As entertaining as that
was, I doubted I would go that far.  He would really have to piss me off for
that to happen.  Lucky for him, he never did.

Suzi came home the following night, looking more tired than I had ever seen
her.  She invited me in, and after sitting down on the couch with a glass of
Gatorade, she asked me to go turn on the shower for her, which I did without
giving it a thought.

She kind of surprised me when I came out and found her laying on her back
topless while struggling to pull off her jeans with one hand.

"You want me to go?"

"Not unless you want too," she grunted, then violently shook her legs in an
attempt to fling the loosened pants off them.

"Here, let me do it," I insisted, then when she didn't object, I not only took
her jeans off, I took her panties off and carried her to the shower.

"Where's Joey when you need him," I said as she got in and I started to walk
out.

"He's probably even more tired than I am," she said just before I heard the
soap hit the floor of the shower.

When she sat down in the stall with a sigh and didn't get back up, I hesitated
by the door undecided whether to offer to help her or not.  

When she dropped the soap again and groaned with frustration, I took a deep
breath before asking, "You want some help in there?"

"What?"

"I said, "Would you like some help?""

"What, you mean, like washing my back?"

"If that's what you need help with," I said, trying to restrain my excitement.

The soap bounced around the stall again before she answered, "I guess.  I'm not
getting anywhere in here.

"Down boy," I commanded as I probably broke my own personal stripping record.
I had to pause a moment to deflate before opening the shower door, then forgot
all about it from the sight before my eyes.

I suppose it was her dripping wet hair that made her look so... pitiful.  I
washed her with the same tenderness and... professional manner as I did my
little brother.  The little pecks on her forehead were the only actions I
desired to give her, and once I tucked her in her bed and got dressed myself, I
felt really good about how innocent it had remained.

An hour before dawn that Saturday, I headed over to the old admin building to
do some comparisons between ressy and non-ressy symbol streams after a bolt of
inspiration hit me in class the day before.  This was the first time I had
returned to the admin building since the duel with Terrance, and I wanted to do
my scans and leave before that day's contestants showed up to keep appearances
up that I was ashamed of my defeat.

I sensed Perry's clouded mind still apparently asleep as I entered, so I took a
moment to marvel at how thoroughly hidden his thoughts were even while he was
fast asleep.  I didn't do that long, however.  I wouldn't have been surprised
if Perry could somehow detect a telepath's attention upon him, and I could only
guess what he'd do if he caught me examining his privacy shield.

I quit my scans a little before eight, frustrated this time by just how complex
and numerous the symbol pattern differences between ressies were, let alone the
differences between them and the non-ressies.  Different ideas of how to start
recording and classifying these differences were spinning around in my head as
I made my way down to the ground floor on those squeaky steps, but my attention
snapped completely onto the door opening ahead of me as I left the staircase
and headed towards the exit.

Right on cue, the "SHLNG" was followed by the slight whooshing of Perry's cane
as it came at me.  Minding the razor sharp blades protruding from the end, I
managed to catch it, spun it on my finger in a 270 before holding it out to
Perry who calmly hobbled towards me, carefully sipping his coffee.

Perry took his cane, retracted the blades with a twist of the neck, and
continued towards his office without breaking his stride

But he did grunt, "Not bad, Branson.  There may be hope for you yet."

Branson?!?

"Not bad yourself.  You didn't even drip your coffee."

He grunted an acknowledgement, then as he unlocked his office's door, he added,
"New board's up if you want to sign up."

I was about to say no thank you, but then thought twice as "Branson" echoed
through my head.

There were only four names on the board, two on one day, two on another, so I
picked out the next Saturday, rather curious to see who would sign up to
challenge me.  There were only two weeks of classes left to the semester, and
since about half of the voices would go home for the break, most would try to
squeeze themselves in before finals.  Someone was bound to sign up on my day if
for no other reason than to squeeze it in.

Okay, I admit I'm not the neatest penman, especially when writing on the
chalkboard.  Last month when I signed up, the d and t kind of got overlapped,
and if you blurred your eyes, it did look somewhat like a deformed s, mostly
from the way I make my ds.

Anyway, this time I carefully printed my name, "Timothy Brandton", fitting my
last name under the first so it all fit in the box.  I would have put my middle
name as well, but it wouldn't have left much space for anyone else to sign.

Perry had left his office before I had decided on a day, but returned as I was
walking out.

I said, "See you next week, Perry," then got the grunt acknowledgement I
expected as I headed for the building's exit.

But just before I reached the door, I heard Perry...  Well, it sounded like a
dog trying to bark while wearing a collar three sizes two small, but in Perry's
case it was a choked gasp, and was followed by the sound of his coffee cup
shattering on the floor.

"Perry, you alri..." I exclaimed before stopping dead in my tracks from the
ashen color of his face and the intense vibe of fear he emitted when he looked
over at me.

His left hand was covering his heart while the other abandoned his cane for the
edge of the desk to steady his wobbling frame.  I immediately thought he was
having a heart attack, and when he didn't respond to my question asking him
this, I reached over to the phone and dialed 911.

The 911 operator had just answered when Perry laid his hand over the cradle
disconnecting me, then firmly rasped, "I'm fine.  Please go."

"But," I said, noting his color wasn't quite back to normal.

"OUT!" he bellowed, reasserting his control over the situation.

"Okay, okay..." I said, walking out of the office, but hesitating at the
building's exit unsure whether I should leave him alone.

His phone rang, and he answered it with his usual friendly demeanor.

"What do you want!?"

.....

"No, I dialed the wrong number!  Who the hell decided on using 911 in a town
with 991 phone numbers anyway!  Don't you people have any...  Hello!  HELLO!
<clang> Morons."

"I said GET OUT!" he shouted a moment later when he came out of the office,
probably to get a mop to clean up the coffee on the floor.

I didn't have to be told a third time.

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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