 as the grayish smoke ate at their armor like acid, then they both seemed to relax when they realized that it was doing _them_ no harm. The gray cloud was some kind of chemical that only reacted with the metal of their armor, eating it away, but doing nothing to harm anything other than their armor.

"Have fun finding new clothes," he said over his shoulder as he walked towards the door, intending to head to the cafeteria for breakfast.

Much to his surprise, instead of angry cursing or them running after him, they were both laughing. It was laughter mixed in with the clunking of pieces of destroyed armor hitting the floor, but it was most certainly laughter. Delighted laughter.

Faey were _too_ weird, he thought to himself as he turned out of the hall into the building's atrium and headed for the door.

                                        * * *

Thus came the fatal flaw in this particular plan.

The two Marines were utterly unaffected by what he thought last night would be a devastatingly effective tactic to make them leave him alone. They marched into the cafeteria about ten minutes later wearing nothing but their helmets with the visors down, to hide their faces, but not hiding much of anything else. They were also carrying their rifles, slung behind their right shoulders. All activity in the cafeteria absolutely _stopped_ when they marched in, followed by fierce whispering and buzzing as the two rifle-toting, naked Faey positioned themselves solidly behind Jason's chair, to either side of him, and simply waited.

"Couldn't find clothes?" he asked in what he hoped sounded like an unruffled manner, though he was privately quite disturbed by this little upping of the ante here.

"We figured this would embarrass you more," one of them replied in a low whisper, in Faey, and her words were absolutely dripping with sadistic amusement.

"I can take it if you can," he shrugged casually, going back to his breakfast of a ham omelet. "I'm not the one whose bare ass is going to be fueling human men's fantasies for the next few weeks."

"So long as they don't know who I am and they can't see my face, why should I care how much of the rest of me they see?" the other one returned with a chuckle.

He had no real defense against that particular angle of attack, so he fell silent and went back to his breakfast.

They followed him all over school all day, stark naked, and drawing absolutely every eye to him. They decided that just being there was all it took to make him uncomfortable, so they never talked, never annoyed him, never did anything other than follow him everywhere he went-except inside classrooms. And that meant _everywhere_. The two of them nearly caused a riot when they marched right into the men's bathroom behind him after his second class.

Jason had no other prepared tricks, and to be honest, their incredibly bold move had put him off kilter, so he did nothing more than go through the motions that day and endure it. He couldn't just give up, though, because then they'd know that they found something that got to him, and they'd _all_ start showing up naked every morning to escort him around class.

Jyslin had to have a long arm, since the professors and other school administration did nothing to intervene. They just watched from a distance and enjoyed it, like everyone else did.

So, he did pull tricks to get away from them after each class, but they weren't up to his usual standard, and they didn't get him very far from them. Sneaking out a window on the first floor, hiding in a cabinet and slipping by them as they came in to search for him, and in once case climbing through a large air conditioning duct allowed him to sneak past them, but he didn't go very fast, and allowed word to get back to them very quickly concerning his location. In actuality, he didn't want them to get too far away from him, so he could keep them under control. Two naked Faey had the potential to cause unmitigated chaos on a campus attended by human students, and he wanted to minimize the potential for multi-car pile-ups, broken noses from walking into streetlamps, and bicycles crashing into pedestrians. So he steered them away from the largest concentrations of students and didn't go anywhere _near_ Saint Charles' Avenue, confining himself to the Plaid, the cafeteria, the library, and the main campus building, using the sidewalks well away from the street.

One thing was for sure. The boys on campus were _very_ happy for this odd occurrence.

After his last class, in a sort of grand finale, the two of them sidled along behind him as he walked back to his dorm, clearing the path in front of him and causing a traffic jam behind them as people stopped to look, then walked along behind to keep looking. He reached his dorm and went up the steps, then turned around and looked at them. "Have fun with your sunburn," he told them as he reached into his pocket and took out the little black remote once more.

"We're done here," the taller one told him with a sly smile, just visible under the mirrored visor.

"Not quite," he said, then he pushed the button.

There was a sudden squeal of metal against concrete, and their hovercar suddenly flipped over on the side of the street, making sparks on the asphalt as the metal ground over it, then vaulted up into the air. It went up nearly fifty feet, then simply stopped, hanging upside-down in midair.

"Have a nice walk," he told them, then turned and went into the dorm.

To his surprise, to the sudden applause and whistling of the people who had followed them back to the dorm.

                                        * * *

Both the Marines stood there in chagrin and looked at their hovercar, hanging in midair well out of their reach, as the humans around them laughed and clapped and whistled.

Up until that point, the Marines had been _winning_, damn it all. It didn't take telepathy to see that their counterattack of going around naked all day had him on the ropes. They were but one more task of walking him home to come away the victor in that day's skirmish, and he gets them right at the end! Trust that clever Jason to have the final trick up his sleeve!

Sheleese laughed. "Well, not only will the squad be coming to pick us up, but we'll have to explain how he got us out of our armor," she told Ilia.

"How did he _do_ that?" Ilia said aloud, in English no less, staring up at the floating hovercar.

"I'm sure the techs'll explain it when they come to get it down," Sheleese said with a cheeky grin. "Until then, we're naked and without a ride back to the barracks."

Ilia laughed. "Jason three, Marines zero," she admitted.

"This is starting to get a bit ridiculous," Sheleese declared. "The honor of the Corps is at stake here, and he's playing with us like we're just babies."

"Maybe Yana and Myri will have better luck tomorrow."

Sheleese chuckled. "The way things are going, he'll have them in dog collars by lunchtime."

Ilia giggled girlishly. "What a man," she announced.

"Jyslin has all the luck," Sheleese agreed with a nod.

                                        * * *

Back in his room, he sat down and blew out his breath, looking up at the ceiling.

What a day!

Those damn Marines were starting to play dirty. He was pretty sure that they could tell that their stunt had thrown him off, but on the other side of it, he was _positive_ that his retaliatory stunt got them and got them good. He took out his panel and brought it up, then had it contact the address of another panel with a few touches on icons on his screen and a few quickly typed commands. He knew that that panel was now ringing like a phone, waiting for its owner to answer his call.

Tim's face appeared on the window holding his call program. "Hey," he said. The view behind him told him that Tim was in his room, which was one floor up from his own.

"Thanks," he said.

Tim laughed. "I almost got in trouble, but that's alright."

"What happened?"

"An army chick caught me planting that plasma magnet," he answered. "She had me dead to rights, so what could I do? I told her I was helping you play a trick on the Marines, and she let me go ahead and do it. I think she doesn't like Marines," he chuckled.

"You can always count on inter-service rivalry," he answered with a short laugh.

"I'm surprised it picked up that hovercar."

"I'm more surprised that magnetic field density sensor worked," he answered. "If it had malfunctioned, they would have had to send a shuttle to retrieve it from orbit."

Tim laughed. "Man, you have any idea how popular you are at school now?" he asked. "Two blueskins following you around like lost puppies, naked as jaybirds? That was fantastic!"

"They were trying to embarrass me."

"Think you could convince them to try to embarrass you again tomorrow?"

Jason chuckled. "They'll be back, but two different ones. And I think if they found out how much the men on campus enjoyed the strip show, they probably won't do it again." He explained how they had come to be naked quickly, and his short chat with Ailan. "I found out that Faey aren't too solid on our idea of modesty, but if they find out that the humans think they were funny because they were naked, they won't do it again. That's digging into their pride, and these Marines have a great deal of that."

"What are you going to do tomorrow?" he asked eagerly. "Half the school is already laying bets on what's going to happen."

"I'm not sure yet. I'll think of something, though." He looked at the box of components laying on his bed, cast-off supplies and things that instructors had given to him to allow him to experiment on his own. So far, every device he'd built came out of that box of junk, but the pickings were starting to get a bit thin in there. He'd already used up most of the choice components. "It may not be very good. I'm running out of ideas and expendable equipment."

"Say the word, and I'll get anything you want or need," he said immediately.

"No, this is personal," he replied. "I cheated a little using you to plant that magnet, but I don't really want to get anyone else involved in this. I can deal with the Faey. I don't want others getting in trouble because of me."

"I'm already in it," he grinned. "I'm not afraid to be your gopher, Jayce. And a second pair of trap-laying hands will keep them off balance. After all, they're coming at you in pairs, so why not have an extra set of hands?"

"No, Tim, I'll handle it myself."

"Well, alright. But everyone's cheering you on, Jason, so do us proud."

Jason was a little surprised at that. "Why?"

"Because this little war between you and the Marines makes us all feel better," he answered. "Everyone looks at you and sees someone willing to take on the Faey, and so far, you've beaten them like red-headed stepchildren. After all the abuse they've put down on us, seeing them get theirs feels _very_ good."

Jason said goodbye to him after that and turned on the TV, feeling a little foolish, and suddenly feeling quite dutiful. If his war with Jyslin made the other students feel better, then he wouldn't disappoint them. He had to study, but this had priority. He went over to the box of parts, rifling through them and seeing what he might be able to come up with.

He pondered on it a while, and came up with something that would at least get him through tomorrow. He set that aside and stood up, mentally telling himself that he'd have to get some new parts tomorrow at school. They went to school six days a week, a highly accelerated schedule, with only one day off. But, on the other hand, they got two weeks off between semesters.

It was a long, stressful day, and he felt dirty. He pulled his clothes off and threw his towel around his waist, then grabbed his shower kit. A long shower would be perfect just about now.

The door opened, and Jyslin stepped through, out of her armor, in the black tank top and shorts she wore when she worked out. She closed it behind him, then burst out laughing before she managed to get it closed all the way. "Jason!" she wheezed. "You're _awful_! _Wow_," she breathed in admiration as she looked on his bare torso. Jason practiced martial arts and he used to play football, so he was very well developed. But because he _did_ play football, he was much, _much_ stronger than he looked. Jason could bench press nearly four hundred pounds. His arms were muscular, but they weren't very large. His arms and body held a deceptive, monstrous strength that shocked most of his students.

"What?" he asked.

"Well, I'm looking at a dream, for one," she told him with open admiration. "But what you did to Sheleese and Ilia was _awful_! Throwing that stuff on them that destroyed their armor and making them walk around naked? That's vicious! Hilarious, but vicious!"

"They decided to do that themselves," he said defensively, "to embarrass me."

"True, but I'm talking about you doing it in the first place!" she said with another burst of laughter. "I thought you using that chemical spray on me was bad, but this, this is worse! You're _terrible_!" she accused, then she laughed even harder.

"Why is it so funny if you think it's so bad?" he asked testily.

"Faey love jokes," she said with a wink, "even when they're pulled on _us_. I knew you were smart, but you're proving to be a cunning little monster. Tomorrow it'll be Yana and Myri. If you can beat them, it'll be Zora and Mil on Monday, and on Tuesday, if you _still_ haven't knuckled under, our Company Commander, Lieutenant Lana, is going to take a crack at you. Wednesday, you're mine. And on Wednesday, it's _over_. I guarantee it," she said with a wink. "Then it's our date on Friday."

"Keep dreaming."

"I am. Of you in high heels, of you in a maid's apron and nothing else, of you in a bra and panties, a dog collar, and of course, you covered in sweat and with a totally rapturous look on your face while we squeak the bedsprings."

Jason picked up a conduit bridge and threw it at her half-heartedly, which made her slide to the side and chuckle. "Behave," she teased him.

"Out," he barked, pointing at the door.

"You're no fun today," she taunted. "Then again, I feel a little jealous that you stared at Sheleese and Ilia all day, and you've never actually seen me naked. Just a memory of it." She reached down and grabbed the hem of her shirt meaningfully. "I'll take mine off if you take yours off," she said with a throaty purr.

"Out," he repeated sternly.

"Then again, I have two and you have one. That's hardly fair." With a quick motion, she whisked off her tank top, exposing her lovely, full breasts for his eyes to enjoy. "There, that's more even," she said with merry eyes, tossing her tank top onto the desk and hooking the waistband of her shorts with her thumbs. "Now then, do you dare take up the challenge, Jason?" she said with a wicked smile, pulling down on the waistband sensually, letting it ride down lower and lower on her hips, until the upper edge of the dark red hair under those shorts began to peek out over the waistband. "I want to see you, all of you," she breathed in a husky voice. "Show me your beautiful body, and I'll show you mine."

It was all he could do not to swallow and gape at her like a dying fish. She was _evil_! She was baiting him with the one thing he couldn't easily ignore!

"OUT!" he thundered, pointing at the door imperiously.

She pulled up her shorts with a seductive smirk, and half of him bitterly regretted that. Part of him-_most_ of him-wanted her to go all the way, to take those shorts off and let him see for himself what she'd teased him with yesterday. But if she took off those shorts and got the towel off of him, got both of them naked, he _knew_ that they were going to end up in that bed. She left no doubt in his mind that she wanted him, and he had to admit that he wanted her. And he couldn't allow that to happen.

She gave him a victorious, wicked little smile as she pulled her tank top back on, then she opened the door and sauntered through in a _very_ seductive manner, making sure her hips swayed like a boat rocking in a hurricane as she took those three steps out the door. Then she turned to face him as she grabbed the door.

"See you on Wednesday. Wear clean underwear," she winked. "You won't be in them long." Then she closed the door.

Evil, evil woman, he grated to himself. That stunt of sharing the image of her nude body had caused him to admit to himself that he was attracted to her, both mentally and physically. And now she was starting to tighten the noose by getting more and more sexual with him, by making statements that he both did and did not want to hear, pulling off her shirt and letting him see what she was offering. She was right before in that his objection to her was _philosophical_, not personal. Truth be told, he rather liked Jyslin, but his pride and his sense of duty to the ideals he held dear would not allow him to associate with her. To get around that, she was using his attraction to her like a cudgel to beat the resistance out of him. Jyslin was beautiful, she was sexy, and she had a body most human women would kill for. And the fact that she was more than willing to strip and shove all kinds of exotic parts of her anatomy in his face made it very hard to ignore her.

But something told him that she wasn't going to push him. She was teasing him, baiting him, enticing him, but she wouldn't force the issue. She wanted him to come to her. That was why she didn't whisk off her shorts, yank off his towel, and use some highly aggressive techniques to try to seduce him. Had she done that, both he knew and she knew that she would have succeeded. No sane, healthy, heterosexual male could say no to a woman _that gorgeous_. She wanted to hear him say _yes_, and that meant that she wouldn't push too hard, so hard that her victory might be in doubt because of her own aggressiveness.

It would be a sweet loss, that was for sure. He couldn't deny his attraction to her, but at least he'd enjoy the agony of defeat. But he wasn't going to roll over and die just because he was attracted, because he wanted what she was offering, because he also wanted to maintain his ideals. A tryst with Jyslin would be a blow to those ideals, fraternizing with the enemy as thoroughly as one could fraternize.

He'd learn their language, he'd go to their school, but they wouldn't conquer him. No matter how long he lived. If he wasn't free in body, he'd be free in spirit, and part of that freedom was the right to say _no_.

Shower. Showering would be good right now. And he'd better make it a _cold_ one.

                                        * * *

Yana and Myri arrived an hour before class was to start, and they weren't taking _any_ chances.

This one was as cunning as a _tibaxi_, and there was no telling what little surprise he had waiting for them outside of that dorm. After what happened to the others, they both agreed that staying _in_ the hovercar until he came out and trailing him to the campus was the best move possible. After he got there, they could get out and start following him around, when he was surrounded by the other students and had fewer opportunities to get them.

It was funny, but on another tack, this was starting to get a little embarrassing. This little game had leaked out all over New Orleans, and the Army whores were starting to dig on them because they couldn't control a single native. Marines generally held the Army in contempt, because they were the grunts who didn't have what it took to be a Marine. Many of them were _provisional_, the personal troops of whichever noble controlled a sector, where the Marines were _Imperial_, serving the Empress directly. The Marines were here in part to make sure that the nobles and their troops did what the Imperium expected of them. If there were no Marines here, there was no telling what those greedy nobles would try to get away with.

Nobles always had to be watched. If they thought they could get away with it, they'd steal the Empire blind, and there had even been instances of nobles breaking away from the Imperium, trying to establish their _own_ empires. Faey history was rife with civil wars, as much as it was little private wars between nobles who took offense to one another. Terra was under the control of the house Trillane, which was related to the throne by blood. That was the main reason they were given Terra, because they were very well trusted by the Empress Dahnai. The house sent a Duchess to rule Terra, Duchess Gwyn Trillane, and she had brought in her six children to govern the six continents. North America was the domain of Baron Olen, the youngest of her six children, and every state of the three major former nations were under the control of a Baronet or Baronen, with Olenas or Olenens controlling the provinces within those states. Zarinas and Zarinens were minor nobles that watched over cities or interests within those provinces, the lowest rung of the noble hierarchy.

Nobles. Sometimes Myri thought that the Imperium would be better off without nobles.

"Alright, what's the plan?" Yana asked. Yana was the youngest in the squad, just coming out of boot camp and still looking like a teenager with her relatively flat chest and narrow hips, but she was very smart, and she had awesome talent. Yana's telepathic powers outstripped just about everyone in the company. Despite that, she rarely used them, for some odd reason. Where most Marines sent nearly as often as they spoke, Yana virtually never sent.

"We wait," Myri answered. "I'm not getting anywhere near him until we're sure he's not packing a surprise."

"I thought this was a game to force him out on a date with Jyslin," Yana giggled. "When did it turn into a war?"

"The moment that little Army whore said that if _they_ were doing this, they'd have him in a dog collar," she answered bluntly.

"They don't understand the rules."

"That doesn't matter. He's making a fool out of us, and we have to put a stop to it, even if we have to cheat."

"Where's the fun in that?"

"It'll be better than hearing those Army bitches ragging on us for the next six cycles," she growled. Myri was the oldest of the squad, the other squad Sergeant, and she had quite a reputation for a foul mouth.

Yana was about to say something, but something hit the roof of the hovercar with a _thud_, and almost immediately, water began pouring down over the windshield and side windows. They both looked around quickly, and found nobody around. "Some joker's throwing water balloons," Myri snapped in irritation, sending her mind out to find the little jokester. In the mood she was in, she felt that a serious chastisement was in order.

Odd... all she could find were human minds watching on in unsuppressed glee.

She started getting a little suspicious when the water cascading down the windows _stopped_, like it was frozen in time. Myri quickly reached for the door release button and pressed it, then pushed at the door to open it--

--and found it stuck fast!

That damned _human_ dropped into sight from the roof of the hovercar, walking down the hood and to the ground with his pack slung over his shoulder. "Good morning, ladies," he said in a casual manner. Once on the ground, he turned around and held out a molecular cutter, then used it to carve a neat hole in the hood of their car!

"Hey, we signed this out!" Yana shouted at him angrily. "If you mess it up, it's our asses!"

Nonplussed, the human pulled the freed circle of hood away from the hole and reached his hand inside boldly. The car was running! Didn't he realize how dangerous what he was doing was!? Myri scrambled to turn the car off, but all the lights suddenly went out, and the car dropped to the ground with a _clunk_, clicking Myri's teeth together from the jarring impact.

The human pulled his hand out, and in his hand was the phase exchanger that fed power into the car's onboard computer. Without that exchanger, the car wouldn't do _anything_.

Without changing his expression, he put the piece of hood back exactly where it had been and annealed it back together. Then he took the exchanger and set it on the hood of the car, carefully placing it so they could see it, and it wouldn't slide down the sloped hood and drop to the ground.

Myri beat her shoulder against the door, but it was stuck fast, almost as if he had annealed the doors. But it wasn't annealing, it was that water, or whatever it was. It was unmoving, solid, and it was covering the top of the hovercar, preventing the doors from being opened.

He'd _trapped them in their own car_! And what was worse, he'd disabled it so they couldn't just drive back to the motor pool!

"Have a nice day," he concluded with two fingers to his forehead in some kind of salute, then he simply walked past the car, past the driver's side door, and started towards the campus.

Yana looked around wildly, looked at Myri, then burst into laughter.

Myri glared back over her shoulder, then she chuckled ruefully. "We didn't even make it out of the car," she sighed in lament.

Yana laughed a little more, then gave an amused sigh. "Oooh, my," she breathed. "Well, what do we do, Sergeant?"

"Send for help," she said with a rueful chuckle. "What else can we do?"

"True. I think Zora and Mil had better bring a tool bag with them on Monday," she said, then she burst into laughter again.

"They might need it," Myri agreed, then succumbed to the humor of it herself. "I just want to know one thing," she said after a moment.

"What?"

"How the hell did he get on top of the car without us noticing?"

"This one's full of surprises," Yana laughed. "What a man! Jyslin's got the luck of Zanya!"

                                        * * *

School went in a blur, but at least it was a peaceful one.

The boys on campus were a little crestfallen that he wasn't going to have two naked Faey following him around, but the applause he got when he came on campus told him that they didn't mind all _that_ much. Everyone on the street had seen him come out of the second story window of someone else's dorm room and circle wide around, then climb onto a large utility control box and jump over onto their car, which was parked right beside it. He'd used a little something he'd remembered from physics, adding a compound to the water in the large jug he'd brought with him that caused it to instantly "freeze" and turn into an extremely hard solid, like a super-strong ice. Just like ice, it would "melt," as the chemical broke down, which would allow them to get the doors open in about a half an hour or so.

They didn't come back until after his last class, Xeno I, where he spent all class practicing spoken Faey. In that one class he'd managed to get a firm grip on the pronunciations, and he could speak the language surprisingly well. Jason's mother grew up in France and as a result spoke French in addition to English, so he'd learned French as a child, and it had many similar sounds as Faey.

After class, he ran home, changed into his sweats, and rushed back to the campus gym, where his class was waiting for him. He'd missed their last appointment, but not this one. They bowed to him as he came in, wearing sweats, shorts, whatever they could find that was loose and comfortable. There were five men and three women in his class, and Tim was one of them. "Sorry I'm late," he said as he bowed in reply. "Now, let's stretch, and then we'll begin."

After stretching, he started them on their exercises. They were all beginners, so what he was teaching them first was how to _fall_, how to go to the ground without getting hurt, and how to control their bodies to be able to spring back up immediately. It was a critical skill in Aikido, protecting them from injury as they practiced the forms, and also giving them a powerful defensive weapon to use in case they were knocked down in a fight. After that was done, he instructed on the basic forms of wrist-locks, one of the more important ways to lock an opponent and force him to bend to their will. Aikido was a martial art of gentle persuasion, not an aggressive one, which used an attacker's own body and motion against him to control him and make him unable to do harm. He was well versed in much more aggressive martial arts, but Aikido had always been his favorite. Aikido allowed him to protect himself without doing anyone any permanent harm. It gave him an outlet to deal with braggarts who mistook his mild nature for cowardice. When a fellow was third string on a college football team, that happened more than he cared to admit. They didn't understand that he could have easily been _first_ string, but he was more interested in the education than he was the football.

The familiar rhythms of teaching, of falling back into the Zen-like mental state required to practice the art, they relaxed him a great deal. It was a welcome break from the stresses of school and the building insanity concerning Jyslin and the Marines.

After their proscribed hour's use of the gym, they stretched once more and bowed, just in time, as the pick-up basketball had the gym in fifteen minutes, and the players were already starting to arrive. The Wednesday class took place out on the campus lawn, since they didn't have the gym, but the Saturday class they got one hour and fifteen minutes of gym time, from five o'clock to six fifteen. There was a fifteen minute cushion, then the pick-up games had the gym for the rest of the night.

"What you doing tonight?" Tim asked as they broke up.

"Dunno," he answered, cracking his knuckles.

"Want to go down to the quarter?" he asked. "I feel like getting drunk tonight."

"That actually sounds like a good idea," he said with a nod. "I think I'm in the mood for Patty O's."

"Piano bar?" he asked with a grin.

"You know it," he replied.

"I still can't believe they tried to get you to work there," he laughed.

That much was true. His mother was a music teacher, and because of that, her son absolutely _had_ to learn how to play the piano. His very first memories were sitting on his mother's lap, looking at the keys. That was the one thing she had given to her son, the skill that defined his relationship with her, just as learning to fly planes had been the defining aspect of his relationship with his father. His mother had been so gentle, so kind, so beautiful. It had bee