Chapter 17C

After the walkthrough, he came at me full speed, and before I knew it, he had a grip on my arm and I was rolling over his hip and across his shoulder and into the air.

Anyone else should have ended up on their face on the mat. That was the end position as he had explained it. But as soon as my feet left the ground, my reflexes took over and I curled into a ball and rotated so that I landed on my feet facing him.

Mr. Morris seemed surprised; he cocked his head a little and gave me a brief nod of acknowledgement for having countered his throw.

"Very good," he said. "You have excellent kinesthetic reflexes." He looked at me critically. With my figure, I could hardly have been a member of the gymnastics team.

"I used to be into Cheerleading," I explained. "We did a lot of tumbling and cartwheels and stuff."

"Of course," he said. "All right, would you mind helping me some more with the demonstration? I was going to have your teacher do this, but..."

"I'd be happy to," I said.

"All right, I'd like to show the class how a simple move can be effective against an attacker. Please come at me as if you are going to grab me by the throat. Don't worry about hurting me; just do your best to grab me."

Morris was really asking for it and it was a great temptation to give it to him. I hadn't really had a chance to work with someone who knew how to fight, and the appeal of trying him out was almost overpowering.

He assumed his defensive stance and waited for my attack. His hands were away from his body and he was on the balls of his feet.

I stood straight and gave him a short courtesy bow before taking the stance Master Li had taught us. My hands were high and low, and lined up in the posture we had practiced.

Morris' eyes got that, "Uh oh!" look, like he thought he might have just bitten off more than he could chew, but he waved at me to go ahead anyway.

I shuffled forward quickly, swapping hand positions and feinting with my left and striking out with my right to try to grab the lapel of his pajama jacket. Morris turned his body so my grab missed by a couple of inches and faster than I expected, grabbed my arm while it was still extended. Before he could do anything with his hold, I swept my arm around under his, forcing him to let go. I snapped back into my stance and waited to see what he would do.

Morris stepped back and said, "A ringer! Sue, you set me up. This girl has been studying Kung Fu. I recognize the style."

At least he didn't mention which style, and for that I counted myself lucky.

"Sorry, Charles. I thought it would be better if you did your demonstration with someone who had some experience."

"Sure. She just surprised me. OK, Sam, let's try that again."

"Full speed?" I asked.

Morris' hesitation was just long enough to be noticeable. "Sure," he said, and took his stance again.

I snapped into position and shuffled forward on the attack. Morris kicked at my leading foot, trying to hook me off balance. I picked it up and threw him a forward kick, which made him retreat a step. When I tried to follow up with a palm-strike to his stomach, he tried to grab my arm again, but I snapped it back and dropped to my hands and threw my own version of a sweep-kick at his legs.

He jumped to avoid it, but forward, not back. As I stood up again, he got behind me and got his arm across my chest. I knew what would happen next - he would pivot me over his hip and I would land on my butt on the mat.

I should have let it go that way, but pride intervened. I leaned forward against his arm and shoved with my legs, yanking him off his feet and throwing him over my shoulder. As soon as I did it, I regretted it. Using my strength in this encounter, even without applying any power behind it, was cheating.

Fortunately, Morris recovered beautifully, rolling to his feet and coming back at me fast, his hands windmilling through the air. Before I could think of how to defend myself, he grabbed my left arm with his right and blocked across my chest with his left elbow pushing me off balance. I had nowhere to go but down and I did so very ungracefully, landing on my ass with a thump.

Morris backed away and dropped out of his stance, signaling the end of the brief contest.

I got to my feet rubbing my rear, but it was only my pride that hurt. Obviously, I needed more lessons. My Kung Fu was not yet strong, even if I was.

Morris bowed to me and I bowed back. The class broke into spontaneous applause.

I was about to turn and applaud Mr. Morris too, when I heard Abbie call out "Way to go, Sam!" and a couple of other voices echoed hers. I realized that the class wasn't applauding Morris, they were applauding me. By my reckoning, Morris had won, but the fact that I had held my own for even a few seconds against a professional like Morris was enough to make me the victor in their eyes.

When I turned back to Mr. Morris with an apology on my lips, I saw that he was applauding me, too. I looked at Coach, but she only shrugged and smiled. I had to admit that from her point of view, the demonstration had gone better than planned. She now had a group of girls who knew it was possible for someone with a little training to fight back effectively against an attacker. This was an outcome that was much superior to a class that knew a couple of moves, but might be too afraid to use them.

I was happy, too. I had managed to keep from using my power, and even though I had slipped and exerted more strength than a girl my size should possess, I had been in control the whole time. After all that, I wasn't even breathing hard.

I returned to my place with the class amid a flurry of pats and hugs. Mr. Morris asked for another volunteer to be shown the move he had started to teach me and almost every hand went up.

As another girl went up front of the group, I felt someone's breath on the side of my neck, followed by a kiss on my cheek. I turned around to see who it was, expecting to see Polly or Abbie. Instead, it was Dina McClesky, the smart girl from my Algebra class.

I reached back to give Dina a pat on the knee, but she was scooting up to sit beside me, so I waited until she was even with me and I gave her a hug instead. I was happy to be able to share some of the solidarity with her. We smart girls needed to stick together.

"That was very impressive," she whispered.

Somehow her hand found mine and she squeezed it. I squeezed back, companionably, happy to have her indicate her willingness to get closer to me. You can never have too many friends. When her grip didn't slacken after that, a small bell went off in the back of my brain and I wondered if Dina hadn't been trying to communicate something other than her appreciation for showing the class that you could stand up for yourself in the face of physical danger. Or maybe that was the reason, but it had more significance for Dina than it did for the rest of the class.

I glanced at Coach Simpson. She was staring at me with an intense expression that could have meant the lunch entrée wasn't agreeing with her, or it could mean that she was trying to send me a message about Dina being the girl who was in danger.

I wracked my brain for what little I knew about Dina McClesky. Perpetual Honor Roll member, shoo-in for Beta Club membership in her Junior year, quiet, no known boyfriends — at least none known to me. She was one of those smart girls for whom schoolwork seemed to be everything. Usually that is the sort who also have perfect attendance records, as well, but I remembered several times this year when she had been missing from our Algebra class. She didn't seem the sickly type to me. Except for the glasses she wore — when contact lenses were the universal choice for teen girls whose eyes needed help — and a slight tendency to stoop, she was a pretty, brown-haired, hazel-eyed girl.

When glanced back at Dina, she was also looking at me with a similar intense gaze and I wondered how long I had been missing all these signals that Dina wanted someone to help her.

The time to kick my own butt would have to come later. I looked back at Coach and when I had her eye, I nodded. I stuck up my hand in the time-honored signal for a restroom break and she nodded back, acknowledging both messages. I tugged at Dina's hand to get her to follow me and we crawled through the group to the edge of the mat and then made our way out of the big room and down the hall to Coach's office.

As soon as we were out of sight of the others, Dina's hand found mine again and she hung on with a grip that seemed born of desperation, but was presently fueled by hope. I shut the door behind us and pulled Dina over to sit with me on the small couch opposite the desk. Sitting down negated much of the six inches of difference in our heights and made it easier to talk.

I tossed tact aside and got right to the subject. "What's wrong, Dina? What's the matter?" I asked. I put out a hand, intending to touch her arm in a comforting manner. She needed more than that. She lunged at me and wrapped her arms around me, hugging me tightly and pressing her face into my neck as she began to cry.

While she cried, she sobbed out her problem. It came out haltingly, in bits and pieces, but when I had them all assembled in the right order, it made a picture that turned my stomach.

Dina's father had died in a construction site accident several months ago. I remembered hearing about it at the time. The poor man had been buried alive when a trench he was working in caved in on top of him. Despite heroic efforts by his co-workers and the paramedics, he died before they got him to the hospital.

Her mother's younger brother had moved in with them after that. The insurance money was being delayed on some technicality and the family needed a breadwinner if Dina and her mother were to keep their house. Being gainfully employed, single, and Family, her uncle Greg was asked to help, and had generously agreed to give up his own apartment to move in with them and help them out.

Everything had started out OK. Greg had been a frequent visitor to their house before his brother-in-law's death, and he had seemed to be very fond of Dina, he even played a game with her, grabbing her and tickling her until she couldn't breathe. Dina's parents had thought this was terribly cute, even if Dina had doubts about it being really appropriate behavior for a man who was less than ten years older than she was.

They all got along fine for the first few months. Her mother had found work as a receptionist in an office downtown, but the pay wasn't much and the hours meant that Dina and Greg were at home together for several hours each day and much of the weekend.

It had only been in recent weeks that the trouble had started. It seemed like accidental things at first — Greg leaving his bedroom door open while he dressed and Dina seeing him naked as she walked by. Greg happening to step into the hall just as she came out of the bathroom after her shower wearing a towel. Greg sitting in the living room, watching TV and drinking beer in his underwear, with an obvious erection trying to escape from his briefs, and making no effort to hide it when his niece walked into the room.

Dina had tried to talk to her mother about her uncle, but her mother passed it off as just her brother being used to a bachelor's life and told her to try to make allowances, and that she should go out of her way to show her appreciation for his helping them out like this.

It had progressed to him walking in on her in the bathroom. Even though she made sure to shut the door as an indication that she wanted privacy, he still barged in whenever he wanted and would stand and urinate into the toilet with her right there next to him. His excuse for this was that she took too much time in their one bathroom and "when a guy's gotta go, a guy's gotta go!"

Things had gone as far as Uncle Greg telling her that since he was paying the bulk of the bills now, that he expected certain favors from Dina in return. Sexual favors, as it turned out, meaning a blow job every afternoon before her mother got home from work and almost any other time she was out of the house.

The alternative to meeting his demands would be for him to move out, forcing Dina and her mother to lose their house, which he said would mean that they would have to resort to whoring themselves on the street for money, since Dina's mother was unskilled and her job didn't pay a living wage.

Dina had given in to Greg. Whenever he wanted, she had sucked his cock as well as she could, even following his instructions to be sure to swallow the evidence each time. He even checked her mouth to be sure she had done so. She had resigned herself to doing this chore for her uncle as her part of the payment for having a roof over her head. At first it disgusted her, but as she got used to it and then got better at it, she began to think of it as an opportunity to learn how to make a potential boyfriend happy. 'Potential' because she apparently wasn't dating anyone.

Although she didn't say so, I also got the impression that she had started to enjoy it, too. Her descriptions of the 'disgusting' act were just a little too graphic and detailed about her uncle's cock and how big it was and how it felt and tasted and how quickly it was all over, just when she was about to try some new variation on her technique.

The real crisis for Dina had come ten days ago. While she was doing her duty and orally servicing her uncle's cock, he asked her if she was a virgin, which she was. Then he told her that he thought she would look very pretty sitting on his lap with his cock in her cunt. He told her that she wasn't that good a cocksucker and that if she wanted to keep off the streets, she was going to have to find another way to keep him happy.

For Dina, this was much worse than the oral sex that she had been coerced into performing. She was terrified that Greg would get her pregnant — something he had apparently mentioned in a way that made her think he considered it a desirable outcome — and that would mean she would have to quit school, or at least lose any chance at going to college after graduation. Being turned into a sex slave in her own home was apparently something she could accept, maybe even learn to like, but to have her future taken away because of some incestuous fantasy of her uncle's was the worst thing that could happen to a girl who knew that her education was her only chance at having a good life.

I knew she hadn't been this forthcoming with Coach Simpson about what was happening to her at home. If she had, Coach would have had no choice but to report it officially and Uncle Greg would now be behind bars and Dina and her mother would be up the creek without a paddle. Involving the police in what could only be described as incest would solve just one part of the problem.

The irony was that by confiding this to me, Dina had in fact informed The Authorities about her problem. My badge made me a Law Enforcement Officer and I was going to have to do something about this situation personally or else pass it along to someone who would apply the letter of the law to it.

I smiled as I reflected that being the 'spirit', rather than the 'letter' of the law was just the sort of thing I was best qualified to do. I could have a word with Uncle Greg and see if I could reason with him. I hoped his health insurance was paid up. He might be drawing on it soon.

"Dina, listen to me," I said, gently prying her off me enough so that I could look into her eyes. "I think I can help you. Or I know someone who can help, anyway," I told her, amending my claim to distance my real identity from something I might have to do later in my other persona. If I kept this up, I was going to be flirting with a split-personality disorder.

Her tears had mostly stopped by now, but she was still clinging to me like she very badly needed a warm embrace and a kind voice. The news that help would be forthcoming almost set her off crying again, but I summoned my maternal instincts and kissed the drops from her cheeks. She calmed down some then, but nestled back against me with her head even lower on my chest, somehow getting one hand under my top where it cupped my breast.

I tried to keep a cool head while Dina's warm hand made my nipple swell. I tugged on my top see if I could alert her to the fact that she was fondling me without risking embarrassing her and possibly setting her off on another crying jag.

Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect. Dina pushed my top up with one hand, exposing my nipple and before I knew what was happening, she had latched onto it with her mouth and started to suckle.

The feeling of warmth and love that flooded through me at having Dina revert to babyhood in my arms was intoxicating. I had nursed before, but never someone who needed comforting so badly. The element of need made the experience a totally different one.

There was no question of getting her to stop. No consideration for time or that the door wasn't locked and anyone might walk in on us. I was committed to this until Dina decided that she was over her emotional crisis and didn't need me to comfort her any longer.

Almost as soon as she had my nipple in her mouth, my glands kicked in and milk began to flow. At her first taste of it, Dina made a happy little sound and curled up with her head in my lap, feeding steadily. I cradled her head as best I could so her neck wasn't at an awkward angle and I stroked her hair. After a moment, I found myself humming to her. It was a moment of bliss that I wanted to cherish for as long as it lasted.

While I nursed Dina, I thought about how this maternal act clarified my feelings and my motivation for going into my profession. Here I was, providing the epitome of comfort to someone who desperately needed it. My reward for this wasn't something I would ever be able to adequately describe. It was a bonding, a sharing, a merging with someone at a physical as well as spiritual level. From now on, Dina and I would be connected by this moment. Although physically my peer; from now on Dina would be partly my child.

That epiphany settled my mind about how I would view those people I helped. If I defended them; if I saved them or gave them aid or comfort; it would be the same as nursing them and they would become my children. This concept of symbolically adopting those who needed my help meant that I would look at things with maternal eyes from now on. Those who created problems needed to be chastised and their behavior corrected. Their victims needed comfort and support. If I had to hurt someone to get them to stop an antisocial behavior, I wasn't a vigilante running amok, I was a mother administering a needed spanking to get the attention of an unruly child. This put me much more at ease with my moral grounds for breaking bones. If I acted with a 'this is for your own good' approach, and tried to comfort and console wherever possible along the way, my conscience would be clear and I could stop worrying about whether I was abusing my abilities or overstepping any moral or ethical boundaries.

I reviewed my actions during my recent adventures and I was pleased to find that wherever possible, I had acted in a manner that was consistent with this philosophy. I had mostly been doing the right thing all along, I just hadn't understood why.

The rhythmic sucking on my nipple stopped and Dina opened her eyes and looked up at me. She detached herself from my breast with a trickle of milk running off her chin. It was a terribly cute sight.

Dina lifted her head and jerked it away from me with an embarrassed flush rising to her face. She started to stammer an apology but I stopped her before she could begin.

"Hush! It's all right. Everything is all right. You're fine. Just relax."