Just A Bit More

Lucy came by the next day and the secret service shooed the sheriffs deputies out. From that day on I went through an INTENSE training program in basic diplomatic procedure and magic while they did THE most thorough background check known to the mind of mortal man. The state department went over EVERYONE and EVERYTHING in my whole life: even that time my mother hauled me into Mister Colman's store and made me hand over my piggie bank because I'd stolen a roll of rainbow dots. (God, did they fucking HAVE to bring THAT up? I still miss that cute little plastic pig which flashed a green light every time you put a coin in! I called her Jane...)

But apparently, early career as a candy thief not withstanding, I passed muster and was given the go ahead to go on this one way mission not just as a private citizen, but as an official representative of the United States. Of course I couldn't TELL anyone, officially I wasn't GOING to "The Norical Imperial Republic" nor had they found anyone with sufficient security clearance that they could spare to accompany me as an ambassador, let alone enough staff for an embassy, but I would have Diplomatic papers of introduction asking that I be treated as a permanently resident alien from the United States and extended all possible courtesy, and warning them that the United States scrying corps was among the best anywhere and I would be under near CONSTANT surveillance.

The Trial was wearing but towards the end of it Jason made everything up to me when the defense called him as a character witness. He never said an untrue word but on cross examination the prosecution knew EXACTLY what to ask to bring out ALL the dirt on the five members of the Football team who attacked me. By the time Jason was done painting his verbal picture of the Centerville Timber-Rattlers HE had to be taken into protective custody as the star witness in a series of trials against everyone from the Football Coach down to one of the janitors and up to Mayor Waldron on twenty or thirty different charges including both **** (NOT just 'attempted'.) and Racketeering!

I never actually spoke to him personally but I did send him a letter thanking him for having the guts to come forward.

Graduation was a kind of odd affair that year, not just because all the male sports coaches were under arrest but because security was being provided by a hundred members of the state highway patrol and overseen by the Secret Service thanks to our 'Class President' who the federal government apparently considered of comparable importance to the ACTUAL President, and the more I learned about her the more I understood WHY.

Lucy gave this heart wrenching 'more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger' speach about how Centerville High had to move past, yet never forget, the reprehensible actions of an isolated and now thankfully excised group of cancer cells within the student body. She apologised for being too wrapped up in her personal and professional life to give her job as Class President for the four years she held that position for each grade in succession enough attention to identify and remove these problem individuals before it came to THIS. (The town without a Mayor and both the principal and chief of police having resigned in disgrace.) In that moment I think I alone understood her full meaning.

For anyone else this would have been arrogant self aggrandizement by a budding politician, but for Lucy this was from the heart. She genuinely BLAMED herself for not seeing signs that to everyone else had been, (and in many cases still were,) imperceptible, then using her vast intellect and resources to swoop in and save the day before seven girls, (that we knew of so far,) had been subjected to the ultimate injustice. Her uncanny ability to see patterns and avenues of thought which no one else could had failed her, and it was not herself who paid the price but those who she considered her charges to protect. That was tearing her up inside, and this speech was the one safe way she had to express those feelings.

The next day, clad in the best set of civilan all weather clothes the federal government could provide, I entered the 'movement chamber' and after a sixty second count down was flung sideways across the barriers of time and space that divide my starting universe from that in which I now found myself...

When I arrived I fell the seven feet to the floor of this cavern and struck my head. I have no idea how long I was **** but now it seems I am on the way to meet the head of the local village and it's priestess. I just hope one of them can read...