FSE

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Hello there!

This is a little story of mine that I've had kicking around in my head for a while now. It actually began as a dream I had ... oh it must have been a year ago now. Haha it was interesting obviously, since I can still remember it.

There will be adult situations, fighting and combat ... it's basically an action adventure/slightly romance story.

I am open to suggestions and ideas, though I do have a firm idea of where I'm going. Anything you'd like to see or read about I'd be glad to consider. I'm about half way through writing and editing chapter two, so i hope to have it up in a day or so, work and life allowing.

Let me know youre thoughts.

Chapter 1: A Question of Self

Kami help me, this class could be so boring.

Apparently there were several hundred years just before the twenty second century when most 'civilized people' just dismissed anything magical or so technologically advanced it seemed to appear as magic. Even such simple things that we now take for granted were thought to be impossible back then, things such as interplanetary travel, Cybernetics and other species of people.

Guess how much I managed to care.

As I sat there in history class and gazed at a dot near the clock I vaguely wondered if there was ever someone alive at that time, like me, being bored out of their mind in history class. I could almost see some poor kid sitting at a terminal much like this one and reading about this war and that advance. Really what are we ever going to use this for? A little box pipped up in one corner of the little monitor on my computer. I looked down at the paper thin screen that was strapped to my forearm and clicked a few buttons, setting the homework assignment to alarm after supper. I couldn't wait to see what fantastic subject I would be looking into.

Oh the joy.

Unless I'm thinking about a career as a historian, I do not think I will ever need to know the site of the first lunar city or the name of the first monkey given an experimental cybernetic heart. Really who cares? But meh, what the hell was I going to do about any of that? It's not like I could just stop coming to class.

At least we're going to get the afternoon off for the 'evaluations'.

The summer break was coming up and everyone was expected to participate in the SIE's for at least the minimum two weeks. The name was meant to be an clever initialism that stood for 'Social Interaction Exercises', but most people just referred to it as Summer Camp, which it pretty much was. It was first designed years ago after the success of the NIS programs.

It was found that when people stopped making sex such a taboo the younger generations acclimated to it quicker, made better choices regarding it, and even did better in school work than those who still saw it as something forbidden. Incidentally teenage unplanned pregnancies had dropped nearly four hundred percent.

Who knew?

Well, anyway, this would be the first year my school participated in the program, simply because it was still being introduced into all the school districts and Neil High was a little ways down the list.

I must confess I was getting a little excited and a lot nervous as more and more people began talking about it all. There were the usual over blown rumours, but very little was actually known aside from the fact that we would be 'examined and placed' this afternoon.

Three bells chimed in my earpiece and there was a mad rustling of papers and sudden explosion of voices as everyone got up and began moving towards the door like a single entity. "Remember to read over the files I sent you tonight. There will be a test sometime this week."

A loud groan was heard over the noise. I packed up my papers a little slower than most of the others just to avoid standing around in the the traffic jam that always ended up in the doorway. When I finally got into the hall it was already filled with people. I weaved around a group of giggling girls and sidestepped a jock in his yellow and black sports jacket.

A topless cheerleader walked past me and I barely noticed her perky breasts bouncing along. Well, almost, I'm still a guy but a casual glance was a normal occurrence from most people. I heard that there was a problem with sex in the halls somewhere up north when the NIS was first implemented, but nothing like that happened down here. Most if us were too busy blushing, looking and trying to secretly give ourself a little rub to do anything else.

Two fully nude girls leaned forward and hugged, a jock staring at them lustfully as their breasts squished together in a rather interesting way. Across the hall a Neko girl with a cute furry face walked past wearing only a mini-skirt. Her fur was a soft earthly brown and her ears flicked around, looking for the sources of passing sounds. Her tail was long and weaved behind her almost hypnotically.

Pretty much everyone else just gave them a look and continued on. Oh, you could still spot the occasion guy or gal making a little memory to put away into the wank-bank, but all and all it was just taken as course. Like I said, once the 'Naked In School' program was started and the taboo of sex was lifted it just became another fact of life. Of course it was all voluntary and although there were quite a few people walking around totally naked most people were at least partially dressed. Only about two thirds of the student body went around topless, while you had to search to find someone without bottoms or underwear. Well, unless it was at a cheerleader rally.

I swear those girls have never heard of clothing.

I'm fully clothed if you were wondering. Nothing special. A pair of worn blue jeans and a plain red T-Shirt that had a ring of yellow circles around one of the sleeves. I don't think it was supposed to mean anything, but I could just be uninformed. I wore thin glasses and although I could probably go without them, I still needed them to read anything at a bit of a distance.

I looked mostly Basic, aside from a few features. I had rich blue hair, my natural colour by the way, that always grew a little wild. I usually got a pretty close haircut to keep it under control, so today it only stuck up in a half dozen places in what my friend Erica calls a 'rather handsome look' so I guess I wasn't a beast. My eyes were also a very, very light shade of pale yellow. Most people would say I had grey eyes unless they looked really close, or I was mad. For some reason they darken, just a little, when I'm pissed off.

Around my ear was the same little node that everyone was issued on the first day of classes, for a small fee. It was connected wireless to a small screen that was placed over one of the eyes and could display information such as class schedules, homework papers, ebooks, and even porn if you kept it in a hidden folder. It came in several colours and the screen could fold down on itself with a command and become a small coloured dot just beneath the eyebrow, that could be taken off and stored or just wait around to be called upon again to expand and display whatever you might need. My Vis-board was incorporated into my glasses so I didn't have to deal with loosing it.

Slowly, so slowly that I almost didn't notice it at first, a feeling began to tug at the back of my mind. It was hard to describe, but if I had to I'd say that it was kind of like a cooling, soothing feeling, like taking that first sip of water on a hot day when the sweat ran down your back, mixed with the subtle feeling of stiffness.

For as long as I remember I have always been getting these feelings around people and places. I have learned what some of them mean, for instance I knew that my best friend was behind me without even looking, but I'm mostly at a loss for what was causing them. With all of the other races of humans around now, it was very likely it all came from some distant relative, and if I had a few days I could get a DNA scan done to discover exactly who they were, but I just never really seemed to have the time.

"Alex, would you just look at those dirty hoes bouncing around and rubbing against each other. Yes, everyone is looking, you can all stop now."

"I don't think they heard you," I said casually as I turned around.

I've known Erica for years now. Our mothers knew each other through some reading group or PTA group and we were always around one another, usually in the care of one of the other women's daughters while the others had their club meetings. When we started school we didn't know anyone else so we stuck together for a while, but we still stayed good friends. I suppose it's a little weird for a guy to have a girl for a best friend, but who cares.

I don't think much of most people's opinions.

I don't mean to be mean, but I find a lot of people's opinions to be rather dumb, ill thought out, and more often then not, regurgitated right from Vids or adds promoting things. Really, it's like they have no opinions of their own. The elections are coming around? You can bet you'll hear pretty much every add and mudslinging campaign being thrown at you when you ask them who their voting for. But say 'yes, those commercials were all very expensive and planned for weeks, I'm sure, but what do you think?', and all you get are blank stares or more lines from adds.

"They annoy me," she said through gritted teeth.

"I know, but what can you do?"

"I could walk past, carrying a large tray of hot coffee. Then it's just a matter of 'oh no, I tripped,' and they'll all wish they had worn pants."

I looked at my best friend a little oddly for a second before busting out laughing, and was joined a second later. Erica was a spitfire and anyone who was lucky enough to earn her attention would be in for one hell of an interesting relationship. Sadly Erica, though she would never admit it, was a little uncertain about her own body. I suppose that's normal for everyone, even me, but I didn't really understand why she felt that way. She was, for all intents and purposes, a knock out.

She was a Basic and her skin was naturally very pale. No amount of time outside in the sun could tan or even burn her skin. It was really a bit of a mystery. Her eyes were very dark and could almost be called mysterious in the right light. Her hair was black, cut to her shoulders and had a little bit of natural curl to it. If she wore more more make up she could probably become a cheerleader on looks alone, but she preferred to have a little more of the Goth style.

Today she had on slightly baggy black pants held up with a metal studded belt over top of high laced shoes - also black. Her top was sleeveless and only showed a little of her chest and no cleavage. Displayed on the little expanse of pale skin was a plain silver Ankh that she had worn for as long as I could remember. Like I said, she was beautiful.

Years ago, back when we were both really young, we were playing hide and seek one summer day. I'm a champ at hide and seek. Anyway, I was the one seeking and as usual I was trailing one person after another and taking them down before they could get back to the 'base'. I suppose Erica really had to go to the bathroom and couldn't wait, so she just wandered off and went. Seconds later I came crashing though the bushes trying to scare her like I did sometimes and caught her. For an instant we both just stared doe-eyed at one another before I looked down and saw it.

We were both young so it took me a second to understand that I was seeing a half naked girl. By this time the taboo on sex was being lifted so there were books on the human body available to anyone who was curious, no matter the age - of course they kept the more ... descriptive books for the older kids - but I knew what a vulva looked like, and I could see one between her legs. But just above it, where the little arrow usually pointed to a little bump called a 'clitoris' was something that I knew personally.

There were so many different races of people in the world now that evolution had gone in a few unexpected directions over the last thousand years.

Erica was what was called a Herm. Basically that meant she had fully functional girl parts, but with the addition of a penis and set of internal testicles. There was also a second type of Herm who had external testis held in a sac just above their cleft, much like a man.

Herms weren't that rare, hell there were three open ones at Neil Armstrong High alone, plus about a dozen who just kept it to themselves and their close friends. Erica had nothing to be ashamed of, but I suppose she was just a little uncertain. Most guys our age were insecure and could be very hurtful when they wanted to be.

"So, when is your evaluation?" I asked conversationally. Across the hall Hinata waved at us and we both waved back. Her father was a Husky-Anthro so, although she looked mostly basic, she did have pointed ears and a long fluffy tail that the little kids liked to play with. Hinata's mother ran an day care service so Hinata always seemed to have a story about some little one or another.

"I'm at one thirty in B wing."

"Ah, I got two o'clock upstairs."

"Excited?" she teased with a grin.

"More nervous than anything really," I said, trying my best not to blush or stutter. "Have you heard anything more about it?"

"Just the usual crap." We started off down the hall, heading toward the lunch room. I wonder what I should get today. "Some idiot keeps talking about just giving everyone an aphrodisiac and letting them go to town in the gym. Then there's talk about how this is all some plot to give one 'worthy' person mind control powers, so that that can have sex with anyone they want. And I'm sure there was some jock talking about something else just as stupid. Why is it that so many of these guys are talking about controlling women or tying them up. It's almost as if they just want a pussy with no mind."

"I dunno," I answered truthfully. "It doesn't make much sense to me, but I'm just the 'fag'.

"Hey, faggot!"

Almost perfectly on cue too.

I felt a little cold sensation settling into the back of my head. It was like a lie told through gritted teeth, and the taste of bacon fat and bile, but deep inside like a burp that just wouldn't come up ... Jayson then.

"Hey, faggot, I'm talking to you!"

"I assumed so," I replied not turning around, knowing that it was a stupid thing to say, but saying it anyway.

"Going off to suck you're boyfriends dick again, faggot?"

Erica tensed beside me, reacting to the double insult. I felt a familiar heat set in just behind my eyes and everything seemed to snap into sharper focus. Talk all the crap about me you want, but you do not attack my friends.

"Hey, are you deaf. I'm talking to you faggot, or are your dumb as well a deaf?"

"No, I'm not deaf," I replied turning around, a little louder then I intended.

Jayson was standing between two of his buddies, all three of them had at least a foot on me and looked like they had been bottle fed steroids. All three wore pants, but no shirts beneath their football jerseys. Fluttering around them like little harpies were their three nude girlfriends.

"Oh, testy aren't we?" Jayson asked mockingly, nudging his two chuckling friends. "Maybe it's sexual frustration? Did we interrupt you two on your way to another ass pounding? I wonder who'll be on the bottom?"

"Lets just leave the Neanderthals to their tarts and leave," Erica whispered from beside me, already trying to tug me away. But I was angry, and the pain that I could only just hear in her voice made it worse.

"I think you're just jealous that I don't have to pay for it like you do."

A dark storm cloud rolled over Jayson's face and the three harpies cried their terrible song. Or it could just be that they were yelling at me, but with their faked high squeaky voices I couldn't tell. "Are you getting smart with me, Walker?"

"It's a little difficult with you and your buddies lowering the IQ of everyone around, but I'm sure I'll manage to talk at a second grade level - slowly, just so that you can keep up."

I felt that little hot, sick feeling that you get deep inside you; that feeling that tells you that you've just done something stupid.

I suppose I should have run.

I felt Erica tense next to me.

I noticed the number 6 on Jayson's jersey.

I watched a fist coming at my head.

I watched the floor rising up to meet me.

-

I woke up in the nurses office with a deep burning sensation on my face. The walls were bleach white and the window was open. I smelled fresh cut grass, and could even hear the mower in the distance. Outside a tree blew gently in the breeze, dancing lazily beneath the gold and blue swirling sky. Fluffy clouds drifted across the sky, tinting either the yellow of old pages or the colour of the sea as the sky continued to move and shift like it had for nearly a thousand years.

Since the Terra-forming that is.

Beautiful.

Huh, I guess some of that history stuff finally sunk in.

"Oh, you're awake!" a cheerful voice said from next to my head. I turned and saw a bubbly girl in a uniform hovering over me. Her name tag said Irene. She pushed a few buttons on the head of the bed and a light began to slowly make it's way down my body, scanning to check for any damage. Usually it was Claire who worked in the nurses station when Nurse Carl wasn't around - yes, he was a male nurse, they have those.

A happy beep sounded form above me. I have been in here enough to know that that was the good sound. "You took a nasty bump on the head Alex, but it's all cleared up now." She moved around me checking and rechecking the monitors that were wirelessly scanning my vitals, and brain, and who knows that else.

"Alright you should be fine to go as long as you take it easy for a little while."

"Sounds good," I mumbled, only half listening.

"Now, Principal Skinner said that you were excused from the exam if you were unfit to take it, but I see nothing wrong with you, so you can leave anytime."

I tapped a button on my wrist and the time flashed up in a corner of my glasses. 1:39, I would have to leave now if I wanted to get upstairs. I thought about asking the nurse if I could stay here, maybe complain about a headache and let her scan and bustle around a bit until I was too late to go. I sighed and got up. They'd only make me go another time. Might as well get it over with now.

-

"Alexander Walker?" called a small Mouse girl. I'd seen her around the school many times before. Her name was Claire and she worked as an assistant to the school nurse. I think she was trying to become a full nurse herself, but I haven't talked to her in a few weeks and I was much to nervous too strike up a conversation right now. As usual her eyes were large and doe-like, making her seem a lot younger then she probably was, and today, like every other time I've seen her, she was wearing bright cheerful colours. They were the kind that you usually saw in hospitals and the like. Her large grey ears poked up above her fluffy hair and flicked from side to side as she smiled at me invitingly.

"That's me," I called out reflexively as I got up and followed her. She lead me down a quiet hallways hallway and I followed her, watching her tail as it flicked back and forth. We must have pasted a dozen doors and I could just hear the voices filtering through the thin wood.

"-damn that's gross, that girl needs to shave."

"Next question, do you shave any part of your own anatomy?"

"No, what do you think I am? A queer?-"

"-And this next one?-"

"-What does being intimate mean to you?"

"Well, like he has to be hot, and know what he's doing.-"

"-What is your opinion of this next picture?"

"Wow, man the harpoons."

"You find her unattractive"

"She's so fat! She needs to diet or go to the gym or something."

I shook my head a little at the people I was overhearing. I knew there there were many different kinds of people and everyone had their own little turn-on's and turn-off's, but I never understood those people who seemed to have some messed up idea of perfection in their head.

An idea that was mostly surgery and airbrushing.

"Just in here Alex, and the examiner will be in with you momentarily."

I thanked her and went into the room. Claire closed the door behind me and I was enveloped in a bubble of quiet. If I tried I could just make out the voices in the rooms on either side of mine, but the new room held my attention like no shallow souled people could.

The walls were a soothing shade of green that was no where near the sun faded puke green you sometimes see in older offices. There was no desk, but rather a lounging bed, kind of like a psychiatrists couch, positioned in front of a deep red, leather backed chair.

The leather chair - where I'm assuming the examiner sits, was facing the couch where I was apparently meant to sit.

There was also a projector set up behind the couch and a screen set up on the opposite wall behind the red chair. I suppose they would want to observe my reactions to different things. I was just wandering over to inspect the projector when the door opened and I looked up to see who would be examining me.

It was a woman, who looked to be about thirty years old. She had a kind face and hair that was pulled up into a tight looking bun. She wore a plain pant suit and walked with a back that was perfectly straight. It all gave her an almost sophisticated air. In her hands was a file that I assumed was my own. It didn't seem to have many pages inside it, but judging from the stack of paper she held along with the file, she had plans to mend that.

"Hello Alexander, please take a seat. My name is Jean Lukawitz."

"Hi," I said as politely as I could, reaching out to shake her hand. When our skin met I got the feeling of heat, but not much, like that of a lighter or other small flame. I smelled a few different kinds of spices, burning wax and - this was a new one - my ears felt odd, almost like someone had pinched them. I had long since gotten used to feeling these things from people on the occasions that it happened. Although it didn't happen every time, I had long since gotten tired of explaining it all every time so I usually tried to ignore it.

It would appear that this Jean Lukawitz had different ideas.

"I would assume that was what your file refers to as your 'feelings'?"

"I suppose," I said slowly. As a rule, I didn't like talking to people about my little ability. They always thought it was something 'cool' and wanted to know everything about it. Thing was even I didn't know what the hell it was. Worse still were the people who thought that it was an invasion of privacy that I had control over. I would never forget Susan, whom in seventh grade decided that I had tried to 'mind rape' her and tried to get me arrested.

"I understand that you do not usually like talking about it, but it might help your placement if we were to understand it a little better."

"That would be great, and not to be rude, but I don't know anything about it. I can't tell you anything more then that file would already say."

"Really?" she asked softly. A smile that seemed amused, without being mocking spread across her face. "Did you know that your file say that your feelings give you insight into things about people that you could not possibly know?"

This was new.

"If they suspected this, why wasn't I ever told?"

"Because they could never prove anything. You remember the tests they gave you years ago when Ms Rodriguez accused you of mind rape? Well those tests said that you have no mental abilities what so ever. According to the tests, you are completely Basic, even though your physical attributes would hint at some background. Yet when you were in the facility for those three days you described your feelings of one of the people there, a Mister," she refereed to the file in her arms.

"A Mister Yosoph, as being that of a ticking clock. You even said that you could smell the dust, like the clock you were imagining was quite old."

"Yes, I remember that," I said, nodding. I could still see the shock on his face when I told him that. His eyes grew wide and for a moment it seemed like he had stopped breathing. "Mr Yosoph said that he was surprised because he had just found an old grandfather clock in his father's attic."

"I'm sorry to say that was a bit of a white lie," she said kindly, with an understanding look on her face. "Mr Yosoph is actually a Psionic who has the ability to step backwards in time for up to three minutes. He told you that lie because the laws on Crono-Psionic's working with medical patients was only just lifted last year."

I remembered that law. Years and years ago there was a sudden uproar when someone realized that a Crono-Psionic's could grope, or in the case of more powerful abilities, rape someone and then simply step backwards in time to erase that even from ever happening. It was only after someone had created a spell that could play memories, even those of erased time-lines were Crono-Psionic's allowed to have jobs that put people at a disadvantage to them, providing that their memories of the entire day were download and reviewed by an A.I. Program.

"Wait, are you trying to say that I felt his Ability?"

"At the moment, that is the working theory," she said, much to calmly for the situation if you asked me. "If that were the case you'd have a very rare talent indeed. There have only been three other people recorded with abilities that allowed them to sense the strengths and special qualities of other people."

"What do you mean, 'if that were the case'?"

"May I call you Alexander?" she asked nicely, walking fully into the room and guiding me down onto the couch facing her.

"I prefer Alex."

"All right, Alex," she corrected. "The ability to sense other abilities is rare, but rarer still is the ability to sense more about people. Impossible would be the word used. Things like favourite foods, or injuries that they had years ago."

A cold sweat had broken out across my back and I was swallowing past a cotton ball. "I haven't done anything like that."

"I have here written reports of every 'feeling' you have admitted to your instructors. Off the record reports of course, used only for this placement, they would never breach your privacy."

All I could do was nod dumbly.

"April fifth, Karen Marlwen, Alex reports having the 'feeling' of strawberries when I inquired into his ability. My favourite snack is strawberries dipped in chocolate. September ninteeth, Jack Nerton, Alex reports the 'feeling' of a sore knee and hearing the ring of metal when we shook hands. In my second year of collage I wrapped my right leg around a goal post and somehow also managed to bang my head. All I remembered before waking up in the hospital was the ringing of the goal post."

"That could mean anything," I rationalize, trying my best to brush it off as nothing more then coincidence. "I've seen stage magicians doing this same trick before. If you make a broad enough statement and the people want to believe in you, they fill in the rest themselves."

Ms Lukawits smiled at my and her eyes darted down to a spot at the bottom of the page. "My husband and I have been trying to have a child for six years. The doctors said that I was sterile. On January sixteenth Alex said that he almost felt like he heard a babies gurgle when he bumped shoulders with me while helping me pick up some fallen papers. He also admitted to feeling a soft blanket and what he could describe as the colour pink. Three weeks later my doctor told me that I was pregnant with a baby girl."

I think I was doing a pretty good impression of a goldfish right about now.

"You predicted her pregnancy; even the sex of the baby."

"It can't - no it's not - not possible."

"I agree with you, but these facts do not lie. Somehow you have developed an ability that is completely beyond the scope of what we understand. If you need further proof, what did you feel from me when I walked in?"

"Candles, and um... spices? And it sort of felt like someone was pinching my ears."

"Would it interest you to know that my great grandmother was a Witch? An Elven Mage to be exact?" she said, as though she weren't just talking about me sensing her genetic history through a hand shake. "If you need further proof, tell me how many Herms are currently attending Neil Armstrong High?"

"Sixteen," I answered offhandedly. After a revelation like that I wasn't sure what to think any more. I was running over every feeling I have ever had one at a time. Was I feeling more then I believed? I thought it was just an odd thing that happened sometimes when I touched someone. In the cases of people I knew a littler better, like Erica, I just had to be near them to feel something. Was there more to all of this, and if so, what could it mean?

"Now ask yourself how you know that?"

"What?"

"How did you know that there are sixteen Herms currently attending this school?"

"I - I don't know."

Ms Lukawitz consulted a page that she took from her stack and read across it. "Obviously, for privacy reasons I cannot tell you the names of any the students here, but I can confirm that there are sixteen people of the third sex in the student body. Now ask yourself how you know that."

"Well, some of them are kind of open about it," I said bluntly, remembering the first time I saw Yuki walking down the hall way, fully nude, her breasts and penis both bouncing along merrily as she laughed at something or other. I actually had to look twice before I noticed the shaved lips beneath. She was a cheerleader, and the only Herm on the team.

"Yes, but what about the other thirteen?"

"Well, I've known Erica all my life," I said, receiving an encouraging nod. "The rest? I dunno. They don't really advertise. They usually only tell their close friends and ... I suppose their families know."

"That is all true, but are you a close friend of theirs?"

"Excuse me?"

Ms Lukawits leaned forward in a way that was obviously meant to be supportive and placed her hand on my knee. "Alex, if you are not a close friend of all of those girls, how could you possibly know that they only tell their friends, let alone what their secret is?"

The entire floor fell out of the room, and I suddenly had trouble breathing. No, this was impossible. How. I looked up at Ms Lukawits, probably looking pretty vulnerable as the most difficult questions I had ever dealt with chase themselves around my head.

"Just breath. I know this is all a pretty big blow, but you can rest assured that we expected something like this. I was assigned to you specifically, not only to help place you, but to help you get a bit of a grasp on all of this. I took this job as a placement advisor just last year, but I have been a psychologist specializing in cases like this for years. I have seen many people who, just like you thought they were Basic for their whole lives before something in their genes activated. I have no other people to see this afternoon. Take as long as you need to work through all of this. Okay?"

Is it possible that I was feeling more them I was conscious about? Is it possible that some part of me just accepts this information and stores it away like a memory, for me to access later? What else have I learned, that I forgot about or simply take as a fact without asking myself where I learned it?