A Whateley Academy Second Generation Story

Duty to the World

by Heather O’Malley

Thus, one who regards her actions as duty to the world is able to care for all below Heaven.
Who takes care of her self as duty the world is able to be guardian of all below Heaven.

Excerpt from Chapter 13, The Great Text on the Perfect Expression of Supreme Reality (Tao Te Ching) trans. Heather O’Malley

Molly laughed as she and Chou walked out of the Administration building at Whateley. Schuster Hall looked much as it had when they'd been students, only the more recent technological and security improvements reflecting that the building had been rebuilt since then. Twice even. Chou just shook her head as her wife cackled over the whole event. She wasn’t the only one who could end up in a fight with students, but completely accidentally?

Chou grumbled a little, “Are you through yet?”

“No.” Molly still shook with laughter.

Students were staring at them, since they were in their combat uniforms. This was intended to be a brief stop before heading out on a mission. Then, they were going to meet the others and take off. A boy with unkempt hair and some sort of gadget projecting a holographic or hard light ferret stood slack jawed and wide eyed at them until one of several girls walking with him swatted him on the back of his head. The ferret laughed at him. The naive, idealistic look in his eyes reminded her for a moment of Lancer... and simpler times.

Chou just walked away from the building, fighting against reflexes that wanted to either head back to Poe or to the Crystal Hall. Neither were something she wanted to do especially after the kerfuffle when she went to get some tea from the cafeteria. “Let’s just go. We promised to meet the others twenty minutes ago.”

Molly wiped a few tears from her eyes with one final giggle as they walked up the path to the main entrance and the teleport pad outside. “If you promise to dance for me tonight, I won’t tell them about what happened.”

Chou stopped and stared at Molly in some disbelief. She then sighed and shook her head. “Fine. I will dance for you. Just don’t tell them. It was embarrassing enough.”

Molly grinned and opened the Gateway out. When it stabilized, she skipped through with Chou following along behind.

In that moment of transition through the pulsating energy kaleidoscope bridging places, something shifted. There was a bright flash of light and they were falling. Chou immediately drew Destiny’s Wave while her mask affixed itself. She flipped over to right herself and landed ready to fight. Molly slammed into the ground and made ow noises behind her.

Standing across from the two of them, were some familiar faces looking rather shocked. Chou, slowly lowered her sword and asked, “Fubar?”

Even years later, it was strange to see the former psychic outside her tank. Most people also struggled with her slim feminine appearance as well, after seeing the male telekinetic shape she'd presented to them over the years; but alum of Poe cottage weren't among them. They were all too familiar with the strange twists that mutant powers brought to their wielders. At her side was her partner, Erin. Esoteric was also looking good, though not as fit and toned as Louise, a unfortunate effect of her BIT that prevented her from benefiting from exercise in the physical world. The couple were dressed in corporate casual.

“Uhm… hi Bladedancer, Gateway. Fancy meeting you here.” Louise seemed a bit nervous and shifted a little under Chou's gaze.

Gateway got to her feet, straightened her clothes and stomped towards Fubar. “WHAT… DID… YOU…DO?”

“Uh…would you believe that we were doing our job? Setting up to do it, anyway.”

Bladedancer pinched the bridge of her nose. This was honestly typical for her life and she was tired of it. “And what job is that?”

“You know Esoteric and I are doing consultation for defensive warding for corporate and government facilities, right?” Louise questioned, looking a bit more comfortable as Chou seemed less likely to attack.

“Fortune 500 corporation's and that sort, if I remember?”

“Mostly, the smaller companies aren't really willing to spend the sort of resources necessary for our work. We’re here so we can set up some barriers for this facility. Once we get through the meet and greet and general briefing part... we haven't done much to get started on the actual work yet.” Fubar replied, a slight bit of frustration clear in her voice.

Gateway growled, “Then how did your barriers pull us here?”

Fubar shrugged, “An accident? I don't know how we could have done it... we really haven't done more than scout and survey the site so far.”

“You accidentally diverted my gateway?”

Esoteric chimed in at this point, "I accidentally had a set of tea and little cakes waiting for guests..."

Gateway looked over at Esoteric and narrowed her eyes, recognizing the attempt at distraction. The air nearly crackled with her irritation but this might be a way out. “What kind of cakes?”

Fubar held her hands up, “It was an accident, I swear!”

Bladedancer sighed and looked off into the distance before glancing over at the building that was being worked on. There was a pull there, something that needed to be done, an imbalance that needed to be corrected before it spun into something larger. Sheathing Destiny’s Wave, she shook her head and headed towards the snacks that had been prepared. “Gateway, relax. It wasn’t them that diverted the gateway.”

Gateway headed over to inspect the promised cakes, and grinned upon seeing a lemon poppyseed cake with lemon curd filling and dusted with powdered sugar. Picking up the plate and a fork, she grinned at Esoteric. “You are forgiven. Wait... so the Tao screwed with my Gateway?”

Taking a sip of the English style black tea, the Handmaiden lowered the cup and added a touch of honey and cream, saying, “That’s what it looks like. There’s something in the building I need to do.”

Fubar headed over, “But we’re warding the building?”

Bladedancer and Gateway just looked at Fubar until she raised her hands in surrender. There were too many memories of what happened to those who tried to get in Bladedancer’s way, and that was just at school. Even more reasons had popped up since then. “Fine, fine. But let the record show I’m doing this under protest.”

Esoteric handed over a cup of tea. “So noted. Tea?”

Fubar took the cup and sipped from it. “How bad is this going to be?”

Bladedancer looked over at the building and started from the bottom, moving her way up. Halfway up the building she felt the pull intensify. “No idea yet. All I know is that it’s in there somewhere around the middle.”

Gateway swallowed and lowered her fork. “What does this company do?”

Fubar shrugged, “They do high end medical research. There are a couple of capes who work with them to come up with better medical interventions and such. They’re pretty good at what they do.”

Blaedancer sighed again, feeling where this was going, but not wanting to do this. “And the middle floors?”

“Those are some of the labs. Its where the work is done.”

“You are dealing with psychic and spiritual warding? Or is it more complete?”

Esoteric shrugged, “Their physical defenses are really good, state of the art. This was to help cover a hole, so no psychic’s or such can breach the defenses. We were going to establish a fairly solid physical world mystic perimeter and then lock down approaches across any adjacent planes, the astral and ethereal and probably some of the nearby spiritual realms and alternates... that's what we were scouting out this morning... anything close enough that you could slip across the Veil here and get into the labs.”

Bladedancer helped herself to a cheese Danish and took a bite. “There is something more going on, but what I’m not sure. Fuck… I did not need this. Right, call the team then call the babysitter. Everything is going to be delayed.”

Gateway leaned over and hugged her wife. “It’ll be okay. I know this is the first mission since the baby but it will be okay.”

“Thanks.” Bladedancer had another bite of the Danish. “Thanks Esoteric, this is really good.”

Esoteric blushed. “Thank you. It just felt like the thing this job needed so I set this up.”

“Maybe we can finish after the job?” Gateway asked, eyeing another slice of cake.

Bladedancer sighed fondly and smiled at her wife. “That sounds good, having a tea party right after a heist.”

Chou got out her phone and started a call, “Winnie? Hey it's Chou. Something came up that diverted things. We’re going to have to delay things a few hours….What do you mean you know?...Really, your compass told you as did MT? Oh…well enjoy the movie, just no spoilers. Molly and I were going to see it this weekend.”

Molly grinned at her. “All good?”

“Yeah, they’re going to see a movie. They were in line for the tickets because apparently, they figured this out. That damn compass.”

Molly chuckled, then cocked her head in thought. “Wait…but...isn't this company about to have a breakthrough of an important medical treatment?”

"I guess, but I think it’s about to be delayed for some reason. We need to help the delay.”

With a nod, Molly looked down at her costume and then over the others, “Okay. So are we going in as us or as bad guys?”

Chou looked over at Fubar, “Sorry Fub, but I guess we need to play bad right now.”

Fubar’s shoulders slumped forward as she sort of deflated. “it's important?”

“Yeah... it is.”

“Fine... wait… you said we. Why does it feel like we’re now part of the us? No, you still need us to get you up there, don't you?”

Chou shrugged and nodded. “Yeah.”

With a groan, Fubar stood upright and sighed in resignation, “Ugh... ok. I hope we don't all regret this...”

“What are we going to wear?” Molly almost chirped when she said this. “Unless you already have bad guy gear on hand.”

Chou turned to face her, eyes narrowing. “Why?”

“I have a few ideas stored up and thought I could use them.” Her smile was nothing but innocence and sweetness, as if butter would not melt in her mouth.

Chou knew this as a danger sign. Rubbing her forehead, to fight the upcoming headache, she asked, “What ideas?”

“Well, I figure I can throw up a masking spell that provides the image templates and Fubar can use her TK to “make” them.”

“I see… costumes from your imagination.”

“Yeppers!” Molly bounced briefly, the movement of her chest momentarily distracting Chou.

Reminded of all the costume ideas that came out of Wondercute, Chou nervously said, “Well can we see these before we have to fight in them?”

Molly walked over to Fubar and began whispering in her ear before they went silent. Fubar stared at Molly a few times, which was concerning. She also blushed once and glanced furtively at Erin. After a minute or so they parted. Molly beamed, “Some corrections were made because of what Fubar can do.”

Fubar said, “Remember this is her idea, but I think I can at least keep this from affecting our reputations, later..."

With that the two worked together and Fub telekinetically shaped the force armoring around the three women to look like something out of a dark fantasy anime. Esoteric shimmered for a moment as she shifted across the Veil and back to appear as an obsidian dagger that lengthened into a monster sized gunsword. Her voice whispered around them gleefully "This is awesome! I look badass!"

Chou said, “Oh... um... you know how much skin this armor is showing?"

Molly beamed at her wife who looked delightfully almost naked despite the black armor. “I think it looks fine.”

Fubar said, “It's all TK. It works everywhere... and they won't be looking at our faces this way. Pretty much RPG armor logic, right?"

It was the first time anyone ever saw a gunblade blush... and Chou sighed and said, “Why do bad guys have to dress like bondage sluts?”

Molly smirked, “Didn’t you get an A in costume class? You should know.”

"Couldn't you at least wear something underneath that hides your nipples?"

Molly, oblivious, " Hm? But the Sexy Librarian look is a key part to my victory strategy"

Knowing better than to argue with her, Chou just shook her head. “So we’re gonna be slutty baddies trying to steal something. We’ll see how it goes from there. You can cancel these until we need them.”

Once the slut wear was gone Chou shook, to try and get the memory out of her mind. With the outfit that came from Molly’s anime soaked mind, she had honestly expected this. It was just that, if she hadn’t lost that baby weight, she would have looked ridiculous. Molly beamed at her, “You’re my sexy babymama.”

With that Molly bounded over to Chou and whispered loudly, “Kiss Ninja!”

Chou was surprised and struggled briefly, before Molly’s kiss deepened, pulling her closer. They were lost in just kissing each other for a few moments before Molly let one hand drift down Chou’s back to rest on her ass.

Fubar shifted uncomfortably, “Can we move onto the crime portion of this… please?”

Esoteric grinned at Fubar, now back to looking more human and less gunblade. Molly blinked a couple times before saying, "That's... new. You being a blade."

"Not really... we just don't do this often in the physical world. I am more solid as a dagger than I am looking like, well…me. I look fine in the Astral and even... more... in the Ethereal. It’s just that since I am more Ethereal and less physical, it is not easy to be in the physical. Stupid BIT stuff."

Chou nodded, straightening her clothes. “Okay. We should get going and do this thing.”

Fubar grumbled, “That did not sound like the enthusiastic voice of crime.”

“This is the I’m tired and done with the world voice that knows that my day is just getting longer.”

Fubar led them to the building and inside. With some fast talk Fubar was able to ensure their entry, and the dazed look on the security guard's face after made it clear that what he remembered wasn't going to be what happened. The air around them whispered with the telekinetic's power, reminding all of them how lucky they were that despite her unlucky years trapped in a tank; the world was incredibly lucky that Louise Geist believed in helping people and not taking what she wanted from the world.

The elevator ride to the top felt slow and the group of them shifted a bit uncomfortably, bothered more by the circumstances than the silence or enclosed space. Chou could feel the draw getting clearer. The elevator dinged on a floor. The pull was still upwards. She gestured to that effect.

Up one floor and the same gesture. Then when the doors opened again, Chou nodded and walked out, following the pull. Fubar groaned as they moved further into the floor, pulling out the card that gave her full access, in case her team needed to do something inside the building. “This is the floor where they are doing the research I mentioned.”

Gateway grinned, “So they’re close?”

“That’s what we were told.” Fubar was starting to get nervous for some other reason and began to look around. Chou felt the same and nodded, “Gateway… we need our disguises now. Esoteric, you’ll be needed as well.”

With some work from Fubar and Gateway working in concert, their impromptu villain costumes flickered into existence. With a swipe of the card, they managed to get into the lab. Bladedancer scanned the room quickly and focused on one of the computers. As she got closer, it narrowed to one USB port. “Esoteric, can you do something about this port?”

"Probably... not really my thing but... wait, let me see if I can get a text to... " The gunblade shifted back into Erin's willowy form, though she was slightly more curvy than she'd been outside. Dipping in and out of the Astral added to her curves... though not nearly as much as spending time in the Ethereal where her BIT resided.

Erin trailed off, typing quickly on her phone. A moment later, she ran a cable from her phone into the port and then nodded. "Great, she was online... and is sending me a couple hacks to install here. Will give them something that looks good for a little while before locking down systems they load it on. It'll also work as a beacon if you decide to track them down later."

Louise smiled as her partner did a little victory dance. "Sounds like we owe someone a nice present?"

Erin thought for a moment, then agreed. "We do have a few bottles of that special rum from the job in the Virgin Islands."

"I'm not sure rum will make a dent in that woman's regen, but I'm sure she'll appreciate the gesture," Fubar giggled as Esoteric slipped the cable from the USB port and then shifted back into her blade form. Fubar carried Esoteric’s blade form over to the computer and let her get to work.

Three women wondered for a moment where Erin's phone went when she shifted. Then, Gateway turned to Bladedancer, “What are you thinking?”

“We need to be searching this lab for something and when the 'unexpected' company comes through, fight and let them get the ‘data’ from the port. Fubar can you run coms for us? Then after they succeed, we disengage. After that, we help Fubar and Esoteric with the warding.” Bladedancer cracked her knuckles and rolled her shoulders, shaking her arms to loosen everything up.

The group of them spread out after Bladedancer moved towards the other entrance to this lab. Fubar asked psychically, “Just how bad is it going to be?”

Sounds from outside the lab were advancing. “I think we might trash this floor, maybe another. We just have to stymie them until they try for the USB port. Then we can just wail on them.”

The door slid open and a very surprised tech person stood there in the doorway, until a telekinetic blast from Fubar knocked them over. The person broke through a wall on the other side of the corridor, and tumbled over a table before falling to the floor. The return fire was quick, literally, as a gout of flame poured through the door after them. Gateway, gave a tiny yelp and ducked. Fubar passed to her, “The TK shield would have stopped it.”

“I don’t like fire coming towards my face.”

“Can we focus people?” grumbled Chou. The ability to talk mentally was really useful.

Fubar’s form chuckled and held Esoteric’s sword form aloft, and said aloud, “Fools, none shall defeat the mighty Tharnax and his minions from their goal.”

“Tharnax?” mentally questioned Chou, as she moved into the hallway, sliding under the fire.

Erin replied with, “He’s a villain in our D&D campaign.”

With another of her unending sighs, Chou replied, “Of course he is. Why is Fubar pretending to be a guy?”

“Amusement value and irony.” Fubar replied, her voice filled with appreciation of her own joke.

“I'm disappointed you aren't...” Erin started.

“Not now,” Fubar interupted her, blushing in the macho muscled form of her current disguise.

Not wanting to get too tangled in intragroup banter, Chou sprang to her feet in the hallway and began to hit the densely packed group there with less finesse than usual, since she was pretending to not be the Handmaid of the Tao, and the enforcer of its will. She was just a fast and agile striker, more there to annoy than harm. The Tao wasn’t with her, but she didn’t need it to deal with these mooks.

The obvious brick just stood there, occasionally swatting at her with his big meaty hand. Their own striker was trying to connect with what seemed like a glorified rapier that doubled as a taser. Those strikes took a bit more effort to dodge as they were fairly good, but honestly, after trying to dodge Sun Wu Kong going for a tickle attack it wasn’t that bad.

Molly managed to mask her doorway when she called several faeries to help fight and distract these people. Since the plan called more for making these people work for it rather than stop them outright, she kept things small. They moved forward into the hallway, where the walls were taking a heavy beating from the various combatants. She had also tried to summon things that she did not usually work with.

The sword fighter of the group went to engage the Mighty Tharnax and Bladedancer let him go. There had been a moment where she could have gotten an attack of opportunity on him but let it pass. She also rolled her eyes some, realizing how much Dungeons and Dragons was affecting her combat talk. Just for that she let Meathead the Fragrant connect with her but timing it so that she ended up being slammed through a section of wall and into the tech person who had been trying to regain their feet. Bladedancer had been braced, tech guy wasn’t. He was knocked into a bank of computers with some force and slumped to the ground again.

Molly was using these tiny intelligent crocodiles she had read about recently, and they were happily swarming and biting the one who had the flame attack. That elicited quite a bit of yelping on their part, which made Molly feel better. She then looked up to see Meathead above her coming down with a two-fisted blow. She dove forward and to the side, avoiding passing through his legs. As he turned, she snapped out a collapsible baton that quickly shifted with the TK fields from Fubar. The strike hit Meathead in the back of the knee and he dropped, bellowing like an injured steer.

The Mighty Tharnax was doing well, as he let Esoteric take over the sword fight. Esoteric was having such fun that she was struggling to not giggle. After a quick telepathic message was sent, Tharnax shifted through the astral to the swordsman’s left. Esoteric almost got a clean hit into the torso, but after a heroic wrench of back and body, their little blade was able to connect with the blow and keep it from causing more damage. Esoteric ended up saying, “Dayum…nice job!”

This unnerved the swordsman a touch. They retreated and let meathead take over the fight with the Mighty Tharnax. As the swordsman was about to get Gateway in the back, Bladedancer was suddenly there and deflecting the sword with a palm strike, opening up the person’s torso for a round of fast punches. Bladedancer dodged the stream of flame from behind and helped Gateway get to a better tactical position with a quick toss.

Acrid smoke was starting to fill the area, as the smaller fires began to grow. Alarms sounded even louder over the sounds of the combat. Feeling that the moment was close, Bladedancer allowed the electrified net to be cast over her, hoping that the insulation in her uniform would help, and maybe the TK masking would divert the current some. It was a hope. Bladedancer passed that on via the telepathic link, only jerking a little under the charge. “Tech guy is up and going for the USB.”

Gateway said, “He’s plugged in. We should start stepping it up.”

Sensing a cue, the Mighty Tharnax slashed with Esoteric’s sword form to open some space from Meathead. “Fools! Only the truly dimwitted stand between the Mighty Tharnax and his desires!”

Esoteric, with a newly added TK field, managed to cut Meathead, blood flying across to hit the swordsman, who had tried to stab the downed Bladedancer. Bladedancer dodged, using a body spin to toss the net from her and towards the flame person, who was only making this whole situation harder. A computerized voice said, “Heptafluoropropane release in twenty seconds!”

“GOT IT!” yelled the tech person, who yelped and leapt away from where the Mighty Tharnax grabbed Meathead by the throat and slammed him through the area where the USB port had been.

Bladedancer moved through more sword strikes and ended up using a slight blow behind the ear with the blade of her hand, stunning the swordsman long enough to be tossed into the fire user as well. “Heptafluoropropane release in ten seconds!”

The tech person yelled, “RUN!”

Meathead helped carry the stunned swordsman and the fire tosser followed behind, sending up a wall of flame to cover their retreat. Esoteric passed, “Grab on.”

Just as the system fired, Esoteric shifted them into the astral plane. The building they'd been in moments ago was replaced by an older one, a remnant from the previous century that had been demolished for the corporation's current headquarters. The astral was funny like that, tending to reflect emotional history and trailing the physical world unless strong context was involved. Erin was back in feminine form as the four stood on a balcony for a moment, the chaos on the other side of the veil not touching them. With a salute and a gesture, Chou and Molly were sent racing across a blurring landscape.

Molly and Chou tumbled free and looked about. Molly said, “Isn’t this Winnie’s backyard?”

Chou looked at the beautiful garden and felt the smoothly flowing dragon lines. “Yes.”

Molly frowned, “I guess they’re still at the movie. And damnit, I wanted more of that cake. I’m heading back to them.”

“Really?”

“Really. That was some good cake. I’ll be right back.” With that Molly opened a Gate and jogged through.

Chou groaned and rubbed her forehead, trying to stop the mounting headache. She walked over to a well placed stone and sat. Maybe meditating would help.