This choice: Keep your old body in play • Go Back...Chapter #70The New Captain's First Decision by: Seuzz   "If we're going to have our own gang," Jonathan says, "Shouldn't all of us be active? I don't think you could develop your own skills unless you were moving around inside your own body."
You grunt. That is a point.
And there's be the irony, the delicious irony, of running things from your old body. Will Prescott, the despised social pariah, secretly managing the school from his outcast station.
Or you could restore his social standing. Chelsea Cooper likes a challenge, and you feel her own ambition rising at the thought of manipulating the pecking order in just that way. You destroyed him; couldn't you also lift him to the heights?
"Okay," you say at last. "We'll bring him back. Somehow." You nibble thoughtfully on your thumbnail. "In the meantime, I'll be myself in bits and pieces, eating and taking some exercise. But I'm gonna have to spend most of this week finding spots for you two. Even if you're not going to become Gordon," you say to Frank, "I want to turn him into a golem. He needs managing."
"Can't you manage him, looking like that?" Jonathan chortles, and makes the "pussy whipping" noise.
You glower at him. "Yeah, but it's no fun. He likes to crawl all over Chelsea." You shudder. "And, anyway, I got the hex off myself. When I go back to school, Black and them will make things even harder for me without that thing for protection. I need to make sure Gordon treats me the way I want him to treat me. So--" You turn on your heel with sudden determination. "How many masks and things have we got on hand?"
"We got one for Gordon, if you want to do that tonight," Frank says.
"I can pick up supplies tomorrow and make all we want," Jonathan volunteers.
"Excellent!" You clap your hands and take out your cell phone. "I'll get him out here, tell him all about that awesome party Jonathan wants to throw!"
* * * * *
Gordon Black--that towering slab of muscle and bad attitude--is surly and taciturn when he shows up, and growls in your ear that he doesn't want to waste any time dealing with "Eastman homos." With a brittle smile you chide him pull him toward Straussler's suite. Gordon's partisanship may be real, but you can also sense there's another cause for his behavior: He's jealous of the immense wealth on display; that, you guess, is why he sneers that "No one needs a palace like this."
"I'd love to live in a place like this," you say. He stiffens, and it's probably not because of the way you tighten your arm around his hips and dig your fingernails into his flesh.
Once inside Jonathan's living room you don't waste any more time. As with Chelsea, Frank grabs Gordon in an invisible embrace, and this time you let him throw the knockout powder into your victim's face. Frank and Joe carry the recumbent Black into the library, where you strip him of his imago long enough to paint a remote sigil onto his substantia. You use Chelsea's own hair in the sigil; when you put his imago back on him, that makes him into the same kind of golem Will Shabbleman had been: a golem without masks or bands, under Chelsea's control. His attitude isn't any better, though, and he curses long and hard until you force him to stop.
"Yeah, I really want to turn myself into that," Frank says sarcastically.
"There's other people," you say with a casual airiness. "Of course, it has to be somebody that we can be seen with--" You hug Gordon tightly and ignore the way Frank and Jonathan roll their eyes. "Who do you like to hang out with, pookie?" you ask Gordon.
"Huh?"
"Huh?" Jonanthan mimics him cruelly.
"Who do you like to hang out with?" you ask Gordon again. "I mean, besides Steve and Jason?" You gag on the names.
"Psht. Steve-o's moving to Eastman," Gordon grumbles.
"What?" You and the others exchange startled glances.
"Yeah. He told me the other day that he was gonna transfer."
Vertigo overwhelms you. "Why is he--? Why didn't you tell me?"
"Not everything's your business, Chels."
You blink back sudden tears of anger and frustration. "If you don't tell me things, Gordon--!" You stamp your foot. "Dammit! I try to help you out all I can--"
Out of the corner of your eye you catch Frank and Jonathan exchanging a glance. It almost sets you off.
But instead you close your eyes and master yourself. Jeepers, Chelsea is going to be a handful, even when you're running her from the inside.
"Well, that clears out a spot up in the loft, doesn't it," you say more calmly. "If we can get rid of Jason we can start over from scratch. Start hanging out with people who aren't assholes."
"They're my friends!" Gordon turns red.
"Not if I say they're not!"
"Maybe we should leave you two alone," Jonathan murmurs.
"Shut up! I'm thinking!" you bark.
The Westside student body, in all of its relations and hierarchies, seems to appear before you. You blink and concentrate on it. So many pieces, there for you to pick up and arrange however you like.
"Team players, that's who we want," you murmur to yourself. "Guys who'll use the loft the way-- Well, the way you and your friends like to use it. Laurent Delacroix? Cameron Huber?" Gordon groans. "Erik Carstairs and his friends?"
"Stereotypes," Frank snorts.
"Look at who you are, Frank," you retort. "I want you with a face that suits a warrior. Oh!" You gasp and feel your eyes widen. "But if that's what we want, and I want you close--" You grin wickedly to yourself. "You can be Jordan!"
"Jordan who?" Frank looks at Jonathan, who shrugs.
"My brother! Chelsea's brother! You remember him, he graduated from Westside only two years ago."
Frank cocks an eyebrow. "I remember being at Westside, dude-who-is-also-me. But we didn't pay a lot of attention to the senior class until we were seniors."
You are momentarily baffled and hurt. How could anyone not know who Jordan Cooper was? Your own psyche breaks briefly into warring camps: Will Prescott, who pays as little attention to Chelsea and her business as he can; and Chelsea Cooper, who demands the attention. "Oh well," you say, shrugging it off. "The point is that Jordan is perfect for you, Frank. He's big and strong, he plays lacrosse for Keyserling, and he lives at home still--bleagh!--so we could train every night. We got another mask?" you ask Jonathan as you take out your phone. "Unless he's being stupid I can get him out here--"
Frank wrenches the phone from you. "I know you're in charge, dude. Doubly so when you're pretending to be Chelsea. But don't I get a say? This fucker-brother of Chelsea's sounds like a slope-headed avalanche--"
"Perfect for you, Frank!" Jonathan chortles.
"--so I'd like to scope him out ahead of time."
You put your hand on your hips. "How?"
"Let me make a mask of Chelsea. I'm already sick of being cooped up here. Let me go home as Chelsea tonight. Look around with her eyes, do some thinking with her brain, see if what you've got in mind would really suit me."
You gasp. You just got Chelsea for yourself, and already one of your erstwhile partners is trying to wrench her away from you.
But internally, you smirk to yourself. So what? You could do his thinking for him. You just have to bring up the control sigil, plunge inside of him the way you've been doing to him and Joe for the past few days. Put on Chelsea's mask, and then as Frank-pretending-to-be-Chelsea go back to her place. Report in the morning that Jordan would be perfect.
You're on the verge of doing just that when you pause.
It would be a transparent ploy. Frank would know that's what you did to him. He'd tell Joe, if Joe himself didn't figure it out instantly.
But that's the point of having remote sigils inside them, isn't it? Keeping them on a tight leash? Keep them on their toes? Keep them paranoid?
It's exactly the way that Chelsea would run things.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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