Chapter 145: My Body Gets a Guard

Friday, April 29, 2005

We'd gone to sleep about 11:30pm, so I awoke about 3:45am.

Study was enjoyable, as usual. The new computer system is cool, but my enjoyment is mostly because math is such a fun subject. The college courses are a little bit challenging, but only a little. Enough to keep me focused and interested, but never enough to make me sweat. If I hit a problem where the solution isn't included in the material I'm studying, it usually doesn't take me long to work it out from the textbook, or google a solution if it's something normally taught in the 12th grade. Or if it's an issue that's not holding me up and I can't be bothered researching it, I usually just wait to ask Prof over breakfast.

This study session's progress was particularly good, which was very satisfying.

I finished studying fifteen minutes earlier than normal, because I wanted to spend some time talking to Mom and Dad before school. I hurried Julia's and my morning showers and dressing, and headed downstairs for breakfast.

During breakfast, Vanessa passed me the morning newspaper, pointing to an article. The Eaton Incident, of course. The story was fairly prominently placed at the top of page three, so there wasn't much chance that anyone would miss it, unfortunately.

The article only had the official details, presented in a humorous tone. It reported that "A local 10th grade girl's family seems to have taken great exception to the boyfriend she'd brought home, a Mr. Mark Anderson, aged 16" (although I was actually fifteen). The most pertinent paragraph was, "The father and two of the four brothers were knocked unconscious, one with a broken jaw, by Mark Anderson, but not before a third brother, Mr. Gunner Eaton, was stabbed in the stomach in what appears to be a case of mistaken identity, allegedly by the eldest brother, Mr. Don Eaton. Assault charges have been filed against Mr. Eaton Senior, the father, and Mr. Don Eaton. Mrs. Janet Eaton and Miss Katelin Eaton - the young woman whose boyfriend was at the center of the incident - refused to comment beyond confirming the above. Mr. Mark Anderson could not be located for comment. A police spokesperson confirms that no charges will be filed against Mr. Anderson, the victim of the alleged assaults."

I called home, got Mom, checked that she'd seen the article (she had), and then I complained that she owed me a sixteenth birthday present that I hadn't received yet. I also told her, "I'll be coming around a few minutes early, so we can talk then," so it was only a short call.

I imagined it would be hard to get hold of Katelin, but she answered on the first ring (caller ID is a wonderful thing). The Eatons had been inundated with calls, but she'd been letting her mom answer the house phone and she'd been ignoring most of the calls to her cell. Katelin reported that she and Wayne had visited the hospital last night. Both brothers would be fine, and Katelin even cracked a joke with me about Junior's broken jaw. Gunner's stab wound wasn't deep. She'd been told that its shallowness was presumably because Don had realized he had the wrong target and had pulled back. Junior would be home later today, Gunner probably the day after. Both were sporting spectacular bruises on their faces where I'd hit them, especially Junior. Gunner wouldn't be going back to school for a while, which meant I wouldn't have the pleasure of encountering him in a hallway. [When he did finally return to school, he avoided me.]

The police had told the Eatons that they [the police] were still "interested in" Junior and Gunner for assaulting me. The Eatons' lawyer, as they had one now, had scoffed at the police's claimed interest in Gunner. Junior, being an adult, was more at risk, but he hadn't actually touched me so probably nothing much was going to happen to him either.

Katelin said, "My father didn't touch you either, but the tape made him look very bad."

I asked, "You know about the tape now?"

"Yeah. I haven't heard it yet, but our lawyer has. Dad had told the police that you had attacked everyone including him, but the tape proves you didn't. I can't believe how stupid he was to lie about that when he knew you had a tape. Because he lied, he's in even more trouble now."

Mrs. Eaton was also booked in for a police interview and advised to have her lawyer with her. She was in some trouble too, over lying to the police about my fights and Don's alibi. [She ended up pleading guilty and was just fined.]

I didn't want to spend long on the phone with Katelin, so I checked she'd be at school today.

"Yes. Wayne and I both will."

"I'll talk with you there. I've got to go, bye."

[In the long run, Junior and Gunner, escaped with a telling off, Mrs. Eaton with a perjury conviction, fine, and a lawyer's bill. Mr. Eaton was in more serious trouble, for inciting his sons to attack me and for attacking me himself. In the circumstances none of the charges were very serious as his assault on me had been attempted rather than actual, but I was a minor and he had a history of having been involved in several fights before, so he didn't get cut any slack. He got nine months 'inside'. Don was in considerably more trouble, as his "I stabbed the wrong guy" wasn't a great defense. He plea bargained, confessed the burglary, denied he'd been involved in any others (which was a lie a dozen times over), and got four years. I wasn't hopeful that he'd use them to turn over a new leaf, as he'd had too many of his formative years being trained to be violent.]

I called Ava. No one in her family had seen the article yet, as they didn't waste much time reading newspapers. I briefly told her about it, as it was bound to be talked about at school, and left it up to her whether to tell her parents or not. [She didn't at the time, but saved the page until she'd gotten the full story from Julia and me at school, and then she showed her parents the article and provided them with all the missing details, which I thought was pretty smart of her.]

Then I quickly finished my breakfast and we headed off to my home.

I asked to talk with Mom and Dad alone in their room. Once we had privacy, I started telling Mom off, "Mom, in the police interview room you started ripping into me for being so stupid as to get into fights, and all the totally predictable stuff mothers say at such times. You CANNOT talk like that in the middle of a police station! There's far too much risk of you getting worked up and making some loud reference to my special abilities. There's also no way I can answer your accusations without referring to my abilities myself, so the entire conversation was pointless and dangerous.

^-- "We MUST NOT let the authorities know about my abilities, and you were trying to talk about them right in the middle of the most authoritarian building in Corvallis. Not to mention that the cops love phone taps and that sort of stuff, and they could easily have put a microphone in their own room. You thoughtlessly took a completely unnecessary and dangerous risk, just so you could yell pointless and predictable stuff at me. You did much the same thing in the hospital when I had my cast removed. Why do you repeatedly try to get me into serious trouble when we're in the presence of the people who are the most dangerous to me?"

After a little back and forth, Mom's defense emerged, "Okay, I'll admit I should have waited, but you were still incredibly stupid to get involved in so many fights. You should have gotten out as fast as you could, and never come back! You hung around needlessly and got attacked over and over again. You were INSANELY stupid..."

Mom was working herself up again, so I shocked her by yelling, "SHUT UP, Mom!" She did; hardly surprising really. "You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, which is complete garbage..." I continued, and was hard on Mom. I hoped it wouldn't do any harm, and that it would help in the future. I had a feeling I was going to be getting into more fights soon, as the boys at school were getting increasingly envious about me, and there'd be even more envy when I was rich (fingers crossed). So Mom needed to control her mouth around other people much better.

I'll quote part of the ensuing conversation. I told Mom, "You called me 'incredibly stupid', and 'insanely stupid'. My school grades would indicate otherwise, but maybe you have a very good reason for believing your accusations are correct?"

Mom calmly asserted, "It IS stupid to get involved in needless fights."

"They weren't needless fights. I was trying to show Katelin's brothers that thoughtless violence was a foolish behavior. I was trying to help Katelin develop good relationships with them, and the first step had to be to get them to stop being so aggressively macho."

"But you could have been VERY seriously hurt."

"No I couldn't. Unlike your frequent assertions, I am NOT stupid. If there'd been any chance of my getting hurt - especially seriously hurt - I would've been outta there! There was no chance of it, so I stayed to continue to help Katelin. I was perfectly happy letting them attack me over and over again, and I'd still be there now letting them keep trying, if Don hadn't escalated things so far. You're treating me like I'm an ordinary boy, which you know isn't the case. You heard all about how I dealt with the Eatons yesterday, so you know I had no problem taking care of them all. None of them ever laid a finger on me, not even when I was attacked from behind. You can make as many silly comments about me as you want at home, but do NOT lose control of yourself and start yelling stuff that could give me away in the middle of a police station. That TRULY was stupid."

"But he had a KNIFE. You could have been seriously injured."

"Mom, I was laughing to myself when I saw him attack me with a knife. There was no way he could touch me with it. After I knocked him out, I didn't even bother removing the knife from his hand. If he woke up, I didn't care if he had a knife. He might as well have been holding a feather duster!"

"What about a gun? He could have had a gun. I heard you tell our lawyer that you were scared about that."

"I'm hardly going to tell a stranger that I wasn't scared of a gun, am I? That would make ME stupid! There was a SMALL chance that a gun could have hurt SOMEONE, but it was VERY small. Maybe 1% that he would have hit one of us before I took him down. Not a risk I was happy with, because being shot can be bad news, but 1% is still a very, very small number."

Dad said, "Are you really that good? That if he'd walked into the room with a gun, you'd take him down 99 times out of 100?"

"Your math is wrong, Dad. I said there was a 1% chance he'd hit 'someone', so only a quarter of a percent chance of him hitting me. There were four of us, and even if he hit me, it might've been somewhere not too bad, like in the arm or leg. Unless he put me out of action, I'd have no trouble taking him down. You might as well say he had something like one chance in a thousand of beating me. That's similar to the chance of you or Mom having a fender bender in any one day, which is hardly something you agonize over. Someone firing a gun could easily be more serious than a fender bender, but 99 times out of a 100 it would've ended exactly the same as it did yesterday, with Don going down and no one else being touched.

^-- "Mom won't be happy to hear this, but I'm actually GLAD that the Eatons attacked me. It was a great experience for me because I learned some things about myself. I thought I was very good at defending myself, but the truth is that I am VERY, VERY good. I'm never going to be the victim of bullying at school again, that's for sure! Mom's raving at me for taking stupid risks fighting makes as much sense as if she'd raved at ... I don't know, maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger for stupidly risking straining his muscles by picking up a cup of coffee. With my abilities, Mom's raving at me is just as silly as that.

^-- "Mom doesn't know my abilities, so I don't mind her getting upset at what appears to be my stupidity, but I do VERY MUCH mind that she chose to have her rant in the middle of a police station! If you've got a problem, Mom, FOR GOD'S SAKE wait until we're somewhere safe before you start a tirade! Or better yet, give me credit for knowing what I'm capable of doing better than you do. There was no purpose to your yelling in the police station, other than to vent your anxiety, and that lack of self-control could get our whole family locked up in a lab for the rest of our short lives. You heard all the stuff Prof and Vanessa worried about, but still you had to get irrational and loud in a police station. I'm sure Prof and Vanessa would never lose control of themselves like that."

There was a little more back and forth, but Mom's goose was cooked (although I prefer chicken). Mom had to apologize to me, and then I had to apologize to her, because that's how these things work. I jokingly told her, "If you do something like that again Mom, I might have to punch YOU unconscious to protect us all." It was sort-of-a-joke, and sort-of-not, which she understood.

To lighten the mood and to impress Mom and Dad, I quickly reenacted the "hide the hair game" that I'd shown Katelin and Wayne. They had no idea how it got from my left to my right hand, so were impressed by that. Not as much as they should've been though, as we see so much of that stuff on TV. They realized I was using NP when I started the "look in your pocket" part of the show. That was fine; we'd had some fun, and they'd been reminded that I was very unusual.

Dad said, "You could make a good living as a stage magician."

Which reminded me of something. I said, "Dad, you have NO IDEA! Remember that comment and we'll discuss it later." I refused to explain any further. Dad had reminded me of my intended light blob demonstration, which I planned to be the first half of a session with my parents to reinforce the rightness of Carol and me being together, since Mom was having trouble accepting my sex-life. That discussion was so important that I wasn't going to waste the impressive effects of light blobs by demonstrating them now.

I was conscious that I was having trouble finding the time to show my blobs to the four parents. One solution was to show it to all four of them at one time, and tonight would probably be a VERY good time, while the Eaton Incident and my tirade against Mom's tirade were still fresh in Mom's mind. I said, "Mom, remember I wanted to have a chat with you a couple of evenings ago, but it got bumped by Ava's parents' dinner party? I'm thinking about doing it tonight. Are you and Dad free tonight?"

"Yes. What have you got in mind?"

I wasn't going to tell her that, but I said, "I was originally intending to do something with you and Dad one night, then most of it with Vanessa and Prof the next night. There's a bit of it that Vanessa and Prof don't need to see so I was going to do it in two sessions, but there's no reason why I can't do it with all four of you at the same time. Probably even better, come to think of it. I'm thinking that I'll come here for dinner tonight, then after dinner we'll go over to the Williams' and I'll do my thing with all four of you in Julia's bedroom. I like the security aspect of doing it there, as it's soundproof, lightproof, and upstairs so impossible for someone to get close to. It'll probably take half an hour or so. How does that sound?"

"That's fine by us. Are you going to tell us what it's about?"

"Oh no. You'll enjoy it FAR more if you don't know, haha. I need to check if the Williamses will be available."

I called them, quickly explained what little I wanted to explain - using careful language because I was on the phone, and because Mom was listening to me on the phone so it'd be another lesson for her. The Williamses were available, so it was on for tonight.

I apologized to my mother for speaking to her so rudely, she apologized for being so thoughtless (that's how these things work), and I left the room, thinking to myself about whether to do the halo trick, now that the demonstration would be somewhere so secure.

As small final point, Mom mentioned that she'd been called by reporters a couple of times yesterday evening, wanting to interview me and my parents. She'd turned them down, of course. I confirmed to her that turning them down was an excellent choice.

^

In case you think my confidence about facing a gun-armed Don was deliberately deceitful, then shame on you for thinking that I'd deceive my parents! Children should never do such a thing, unless they are big-titted teenage girls sneaking out for an assignation with me.

I should explain a little something that'd happened. #4 had been on duty most of the time we'd been at Katelin's and right through to the end of our interview with Mr. Walker. This was WAY beyond his normal duty time, but there was so much important stuff going on that we needed as much continuity of minds as possible. When we finally let #4 rotate back into being active and were bringing him up to date, the two minds that were briefing him had mentioned how worried they'd been about the possibility of Don having a gun. #4 had asked, <Why?>, like it was no big deal. The rest of us had questioned #4's nonchalance, and he'd answered it was because he assumed we'd do the obvious. The others of us hadn't thought of any "the obvious" way of handling someone coming after us with a gun, so the two briefing minds asked #4 what he was thinking of, as it sounded like a VERY useful thing to know. #4's explanation started a fun discussion, with lots of amusing mental pictures going back and forth between us.

By far the most likely event - if Don had obtained a gun - was that he would've come into the room carrying it. We didn't have much of a problem if he'd done that, because we would see his eyes. He'd reacted so strongly to 1.5 minds' worth of eye poke, so three minds worth into one eye, quickly followed by the other eye, should do the job nicely. Given the way he'd reacted last time - staying in a screaming heap holding his hands to his face for the best part of a minute - he'd probably drop the gun. If he did, we'd NP it away, unless it weighed too much in which case we'd flip it end for end across the floor.

If after being blinded, rather than dropping the gun he tried to use it, we'd NP-tap his shoulder to make him spin around, and NP-push his gun hand around, so he'd end up having no idea where the targets were. There was VERY little chance of someone recently blinded and in that much agony, being pushed around like that, hitting us with random shots. We'd have to be extraordinarily unlucky.

Our greatest threat would have come from his hiding outside in the hallway, sticking his hand around the doorframe, and firing blindly into the room. That would be an extremely unlikely choice for Don, especially as it'd mess up his own home, but if he did that we'd have to stop him. Our major weapon of blinding him wouldn't be possible because he wouldn't be showing us his eyes.

#4's idea had been to use light blobs in this case. We'd fly multicolor light blobs through the doorway. We could also have used NP to bang on the hallway wall opposite the door, and used it to fly sofa cushions out into the hallway. In other words, distract Don terribly. During which time we'd run up to beside the doorway. There'd be a very good chance we could do that without Don hearing us, especially if we used NP to make lots of knocking sounds in the hallway, and even more especially if he was freaked out enough to fire his gun at the flying cushions or blobs. From beside the doorway we could probably proximity sense him through the wall when he was close to it, including knowing where his gun arm was (we would've been able to sense which arm had the gun quite easily, as the act of aiming something causes ki to radiate along the aim). We'd know the right time to whip through the doorway and take him on. Again, eyes first, then hold the gun away if necessary, while we knocked him out. Or whatever other tactic seemed appropriate at the time. Alternatively, if we didn't want to run into the hallway because he was firing at the blobs, we could keep distracting him until he'd run out of bullets, or he freaked out so much that he moved somewhere we could see his eyes. There were lots of options, depending on what he did, so we'd be bound to get some sort of opportunity.

Once we started talking about things like this, we thought of other options. If the gun was pointed somewhere safe, we could use NP to pull the trigger (actually, we'd push the trigger, but it'd produce the same result). Having the gun go off by itself would use up bullets and freak out the possessor. Hopefully he'd look down the barrel to see what was wrong! If he did that, I truly would be seriously tempted, especially because all the evidence would be that he'd committed suicide. With someone like Don Eaton, it would hardly be a terrible loss to society.

We'd already used NP to tap Gunner's shoulder as a distraction, but we could have made that even more distracting. Tapping a guys balls would be certain to get his undivided attention, as guys are REALLY sensitive to touches in that area, especially in fights. One thing we'd learned from Aikido is that when you push someone's hand to the left (say), they'll automatically try to push it back, which takes time. If Don stuck the gun into the room blindly, and we didn't want him to lower his aim, one of the things we could have done was NP the gun sideways. He'd react by pushing it back the other way. That'd occupy him for at least a second, during which time he wouldn't be correcting his aim, could be using up bullets if he was firing, and I could be doing whatever else I wanted to do.

We had other ideas for a non-gun-armed opponent. Create two small, bright-as-possible light blobs immediately in front of each of an opponent's eyes. Small blobs can't be made bright enough to be blinding, but they'd still obscure his vision wonderfully for a second, especially as his eyes would have to refocus a couple of times and he'd be HIGHLY distracted. We had fun imagining how distracting light blobs could be in a combat situation. An opponent should run to avoid them if they looked like they were going to impact on his body, and if we had plenty of time we could even make them seem sentient, like we'd done with the green frog when we'd demonstrated light blobs to Julia and Carol. These ideas assumed we didn't mind our opponent seeing light blobs, so it'd have to be a very serious fight, but not so serious that we wanted to permanently blind the person.

We figured out, or at least hoped, that even in a face-to-face fight with a guy we'd been unable to trip, we'd still have a very good chance of winning. We'd have our proximity sense giving us excellent warning of his intentions, be able to NP-tap our opponent in unexpected places, and maybe conjure a light blob right in front of both his eyes at a critical moment, such as when I was about to hit him in the side of the head. There were quite a few options, depending on how much we wanted him to learn of our special abilities. We wouldn't want to create a history of dozens of people who'd seen funny lights when fighting us, but the occasional incident would probably be okay. Another encouraging thing was that our punches seem to be very good at knocking people out, which is very useful in a fight!

So, if Don had obtained a gun, we almost certainly would've been okay, presuming we'd thought of using light blobs and other distractions in time. Given that Don stabbed Gunner, Don obviously wasn't practicing much self-control at the time, so light blobs and flying cushions should have easily succeeded at freaking him out. Amusingly, a blind person (as he would've shortly become) would have no credibility trying to claim he saw colored balls flying around just before his eyes went pop; especially not a blind criminal.

^

I'd talked to Mom for too long, so we all had to immediately jump into the car and head to school. On the way, my sisters wanted to talk about the article. I repeated my joke about them owing me my sixteenth birthday presents, but don't think it really worked. Oh well, it'd been worth a try.

When they were talked out a little, Carol asked me, "Is there any stuff we shouldn't talk about at school? Any secret Mark stuff?" That shut Donna up!

I hadn't told them about the ankle-taps or how I turned the tape recorder on, so everything seemed fine, I thought. I said, "The only secret thing I can think of is the tape. The police wanted to use that to ambush Mr. Eaton, but I'm pretty sure they would've already done that. It'd probably be best not to talk about it anyway, just to play safe. Other than that, there are no 'Mark secrets' that I can think of. Can anyone else think on anything we need to hide?"

Carol asked, "What if people ask how you managed to beat up so many of them?"

I said to Julia, "You don't have a pressing need to sell me as some sort of martial arts genius, do you? As far as I'm concerned, I'm just happy to say that the Eatons are pathetic fighters. That I hit them once and they fell down. Is that okay?"

Julia answered, "Do you think that's the story Katelin and Wayne are already telling people? They must have had quite a few of their friends call them, and they've probably talked about how good you are. How about just saying you've been training recently, and you're learning fast. That even has the merit of being true."

Donna's subsequent, "Great! I can't wait to tell all my friends all about those fights," didn't inspire much confidence that she'd be modest on my behalf.

"Okay, that'll have to be the way you describe it. Personally I'm going to refuse to discuss the incident, but it seems no one else is going to be so reticent.

^-- "I don't think there are any 'Mark Secrets', so to change the subject, I've invited Mom, Dad and Julia's parents to Julia's bedroom for a private chat after dinner tonight, and to show them something 'colorful'." Donna was in the car, so some discretion was required. It must've been a good hint, because Carol and Julia clearly got it. "After that, I want to talk with them - Mom mostly - about some relationship stuff concerning Carol and me. It's a relationship thing, so only Carol and Julia are invited. You're both free after dinner tonight, aren't you?"

"Yes," x 2.

"Good. It'll only take thirty minutes or so, depending on how much chatting happens afterward."

The girls wanted to know what I'd be saying about my relationship with Carol, so I spent the rest of the trip telling them about it, getting their suggestions, etc. It involved Carol, so she had lots to say. It was a plan to convince people to do what I wanted, so Julia had lots to say too.

Donna asked to be included in the conversation in Julia's bedroom, but I firmly refused that. She didn't push it, knowing she'd ruined her trustworthiness.

After arriving at school, it didn't take long to find out that this was going to be different from a normal day; this was going to be "Macho Idiot Day." Enough guys had read the article, to tell every other guy, so they could all behave like stupid, immature, macho idiots around me. Wherever I went, I was instantly the center of male attention. In my opinion, that's exactly the wrong gender for me to be in the middle of. If I had to be surrounded with idiots at all, I'd still prefer female idiots, because female idiots can grow perfectly nice sets of tits, while idiotic males have no redeeming features at all. All they have is damned annoying behaviors. Not every male behaved stupidly at the sight of me, merely about half of them, which brought the number down to two or three hundred. I find one idiotic male hard to enough to put up with, so you can imagine what I thought of two or three hundred!

Most of them behaved like idiots: yahooing it up, backslapping me, making stupid comments, yelling stupid questions, even louder yelling stupid boasts, and stupid whatever-else-they-could-think-of-to-be-stupid-about. Thank God it's Friday, so the stupidity would have a chance to calm down over the weekend.

What concerned me the most were all the guys for whom behaving as an idiot wasn't enough, as quite of few of them insisted on behaving as over-the-top macho idiots. They obviously thought it'd make them look really cool to be seen getting aggressive with me. I was deliberately taunted, jostled, badmouthed, challenged, and all the rest of the highly sophisticated social interaction repertoire boys use in such circumstances. It was a pain in the ass (metaphorically only, I'm happy to say). All the crap would've been a literal pain though, if I'd not avoided so many of the false-camaraderie punches aimed at my upper-arms, proximity letting me dodge them.

The type of male attracted to this macho competitiveness is not the type who stops when asked to. Quite the reverse, as my asking them to stop only made them do it more. This may seem like males are being illogical, so I need to explain in more depth: They're trying to establish their dominance, so when I say "Stop" - or even worse, "Please stop" - they sense weakness and they push harder to ensure their dominance is unmistakable to everyone. It's quite logical really, and VERY annoying. During class time there wasn't much they could do beyond stupid comments, which the teachers discouraged, but outside of class time the competitive macho idiots were a damned nuisance.