Chapter 7: Battle Station!

Plopping down beside him, I dropped the crop on the table and leaned against him. This, too, was normal, as was his failure to respond to her in any way other than as a platonic friend. I wanted to scream at him to notice me, but I had learned discipline from my years in the Navy. Besides, I knew that it wouldn't have the affect I desired; I'd seen what happened with people who had no self control around him.

I was under no illusions about the man she was lightly pressed against. At least not when it came to how he responded to people lacking self control.

She had personally witnessed two demonstrations of why it was never a good idea to push him too far. One was a case with an ex-girlfriend. She'd never been dumped and he dropped her like a hot potato when he found out that she'd lied to him; hell, she'd cheated on him and then attempted to blame it on him.

He didn't raise his voice, or a hand to her. He simply fixed her with a gaze that shut her up and had her looking like a deer in the headlights. What he said couldn't be heard by anyone else, but you could see her visibly wilt and then break down in tears before running away. She'd finished that semester but transferred out to the Honolulu campus. There were some rumors, but no one ever said anything to, or about him, and most especially not in his hearing about it.

The other time was when Javiar (a dimwit to Gage's thinking) was being abusive towards his girlfriend. She was telling Javiar to stop and saying, "No!" to him over and over. He had been in the lounge, with me, studying between courses and at first ignored it. It went on for a few minutes and no one else did or said anything. That's when he had finally had enough. He closed his book and set it down, turned and faced the pair and stated in a voice that carried through the whole room, and over all the conversations, "She said to stop. Are you deaf, or dumb?"

He made no move. He simply sat there looking at Javiar. From his side you'd think it were a normal conversation, other than the way his voice projected and carried. Apparently being an NCO in the Army really taught one to use a Command Voice. Not everyone can project like that, but he certainly could and did.

You had to know him to recognize that he was anything but totally relaxed. He was flexing his fingers a little, and his nostrils were slightly flared out, but you could not miss the look in his eyes. They were reptilian and cold. He did seem to blink as he stared at Javiar; it felt like time stopped for a moment.

Javiar got up and started towards him; the knuckle-dragger probably expected him to respond but instead he made no move. This fool even got into his face, screaming, and got no response out of him, other than wiping the spittle from his face which seemed to enrage this scumbag even further.

The idiot then started telling him to mind his own business and made threatening gestures, while he just sat there, unmoved and told him again that she had told him to stop and that he needed to respect that. The guy flipped his lid.

Javiar truly was a knuckle-dragger. He became loudly boisterous and stormed around the room. He even threw, well shoved actually, some of the heavy chairs out of his way as he put on his show for all to see and be impressed by. It's possible that to the younger people only recently out of high school it would have been impressive. To anyone who'd been through the military training and discipline people like Gage and I had been through it was laughable. In fact, I snickered at his antics and Javiar actually turned on me. That's when hell broke loose.