Worm's shoulder devil 4

Blackwell immediately asserted her authority by speaking first. “Mister Hebert.” She said, “Now that everyone’s here, we can begin. We’re here to discuss incidents where one of our students has been victimized.”  She looked down at the folder she’d picked up as she began, “Miss Hebert?”

“Yes.” Taylor said calmly, still staring intensely at the bureaucrat. 

“The individuals accused of misconduct are also present, Sophia Hess and Emma Barnes.” Blackwell gave the first of those an annoyed glance. “You’ve been here before, Miss Hess. I just wish it had more to do with track instead of detention.”

Sophia mumbled something that seemed more like a quiet nasty comeback than agreement. Tanya, having manifested as a ghost for this conversation, stepped closer to the bully so she could hear her more clearly. 

“Now, “ Blackwell continued, “Miss Hebert has already given a statement that has been recorded, so I’ll begin by reading it out.” She took the report that the nurse filled out from the folder. “EM + SH, that’s you two, blocked door to force conversation. Insults exchanged-”

“That is not what hap-!” Emma protested, but was silenced by her father. 

“Forgive my cli- daughter, Ms. Blackwell.” Alan Barnes said, “Continue.”

Blackwell grunted in acknowledgement. “As I was saying, the testimony as per Miss Hebert’s original complaint, insults exchanged, punched from the side, presumed SH, no faculty, secured recording from two witnesses, then reported to nurse’s office.” Blackwell looked Taylor in the eye once more. “Is this correct?”

Tanya had coached Taylor throughout the day for the most obvious, predictable answers, so she immediately nodded. “Those are the most relevant points, yes.”

“Now, I believe Miss Barnes objected to Taylor’s description of the conversation?” Blackwell said, turning everyone’s attention to the girl. 

Emma’s father took point. “Calling what Emma said insults grossly mischaracterizes the conversation they had.” He said firmly. Hm, the question was, was he also being misled by the younger Barnes, or was he just running damage control? 

Still, the conversation had yet to deviate from Tanya’s coached script, so Taylor calmly recited the correct line from memory. She had a quite good memory, Tanya had noticed. “Ms. Blackwell, I’m sure, as an educator and a teenage girl yourself at some point, are aware of how insults can be veiled in statements that sound innocuous if you lack the proper context, correct?”

Blackwell’s lips quirked in what microbiologists may interpret as a smile. “You would be correct, Miss Hebert. I’m well acquainted with the habits of teenage girls.”

“Right, so me and Emma-” Taylor’s voice quaked here, and she took a second to compose herself. “-we used to be friends, and now we can’t really stand each other. So whenever we have a conversation, many such insults are exchanged. While it's been hours, so I cannot recall the exact words, the essence of the exchange was thus: First, I said hello, and then goodbye, attempting to go through an unblocked door.” She gestured to her left, and Tanya could see Blackwell’s eyes dart to the bruise, on the same side. “Sophia moved to that side, telling me I was being rude.” Sophia’s advocate, whoever she was, narrowed her own eyes at that. 

“You’re doing great.” Tanya said, as the girl looked like she could use some moral support. 

It was actually kind of pathetic how much those words affected her mood. “Emma then called me a drug addict, I called her unlikable, she called me a gang member and a druggie again, I called her a coward and a whore, then…” Taylor jerked her head to the right, “That was the end of the conversation.”

That seemed to anger Mr. Barnes, who looked volcanic. “You called her what!?”

Uh oh. Think fast… “Remind him that you didn’t say it directly.” Tanya said. 

“I didn’t use those words, of course.” Taylor said quickly, “Neither than Emma, but she wasn’t particularly subtle about it.” Good job getting back on script. “She literally accused me of ‘hanging out with gangsters and druggies’. I do no such thing, as that would imply I have friends, which thanks to her, I do not.” She blinked, and her eyes darted to Tanya’s position near Sophia. 

Tanya gave her a thumbs up. “I know what you meant.”

“The fuck?” Sophia murmured, noticing the odd interaction. That could be a problem…

Relieved, Taylor wrapped up her rebuttal. “Either way, I’m the one stuck with a bruised face for the next week or two, and I didn’t throw a single punch. I already sent you the recording proving that Sophia was the one who did it, and as Emma was the one blocking the door, she is also culpable.” She waved her hands towards the other two girls. “Do something about it.” 

“I would like to see this recording.” The woman behind Sophia said. 

Blackwell sighed. “As much as I’m sure you would wish otherwise… it is quite damning. Here you are.” Blackwell turned her monitor around, a substantially better model than any other Tanya had seen in the school. 

The resolution was horrible, of course, as the video needed a fair bit of compression to be sent to a public email address. Tanya was vaguely impressed that the smartphone was capable of such a thing on the fly, but video sharing was quite the popular pastime for those with smartphones, so it did make sense that someone would put effort into making that easier, even if she couldn’t recall anything so smooth back in Japan. Tanya chalked it up to be a subtle technological difference between worlds. 

The video didn’t start at the stop, it began after Sohpia had moved into position, but not long after. Emma’s look of sadistic glee was too subtle to really be distinguishable, but her shock at Taylor’s comeback was easy enough to spot. It turned quickly into anger, and Sophia slipped slightly away from Taylor’s peripheral vision, which really demonstrated a substantial deficiency in awareness on her part, and then slugged Taylor in the side of the head, as per the bruise. 

It was vaguely interesting seeing the transition between Taylor and Tanya, the recovery wasn’t anything special, but Tanya had done a very poor job of holding her stance like Taylor would, in hindsight. The difference was rather obvious, now that she was looking for it. Tanya had slipped into a firm military stance, hands now behind her back as she would when intimidating recruits. A second later, Emma was retreating, with Sophia choosing discretion as the better part of valor. Tanya, wearing Taylor’s face, then glanced around, looked straight at the camera with a hungry expression, and then the video cut out. 

Danny shivered, which Tanya attributed to the uncanny valley. She should really get better at impersonating her new friend if she’s going to make a habit of possessing her. 

Sophia, on the other hand, was giving Taylor some very strange looks. She looked up to her advocate, gesturing to the video. “You seeing what I’m seeing?” She whispered. 

The advocate leaned in close, whispering back. “Seeing you violate your probation in a way that I can’t just wave away? Yeah.”

“Not that!” Sophia hissed. “She acted completely different after the punch! This looks like an MS situation to me.” What’s an MS situation? 

“Would you like to step outside?” Blackwell offered, seeing two of the relevant parties having a sidebar conversation. 

“Let me see the video again.” The advocate said. It wasn’t a very long video, only twenty seconds or so, so Blackwell obliged. “Give us a moment, please.”

“Of course.” Blackwell said pleasantly, without a trace of the annoyance she had when speaking to anyone else in the room. 

Tanya walked through the wall. “I’m going to listen in, Taylor.”

Once they were outside of the Principal’s office, and as school had let out the hallway was deserted, they could speak, quietly, without being overheard. Except by a ghost. “Okay, I saw it the second time.” The advocate said, “You’re not seriously thinking of crying Master for your little slip up?” 

“There was a thing earlier in the meeting, too. Hebert looked at something that wasn’t there.” She elaborated, before looking unsure. “You think it’d work?” Sophia asked, in a way that suggested it was very much not a rhetorical question. 

“Luck of the draw.” The advocate, who Tanya was now beginning to understand, was more of a probation officer, only… not an officer. So… social worker? Yes, let’s go with that. “Any violations that don’t immediately land you in a jail cell needs to go through a review process. Depending on who picks up my report, and what I put in the report, you could be fine, you could be screwed.” She took a moment to think through her next words. “This is very bad, but it’s also pretty minor, so it also depends on how bad your punishment is. Getting suspended wouldn’t be so bad, you’ll be given shit duties and mandatory tutoring to make up for the loss, but getting detention means they’ll have to reshuffle patrol schedules, and that means Piggot will want to know why.”

“If we point out the MS?” Sophia asked. 

“Claiming that you were influenced is a lost cause.” The social worker said bluntly. “If we’re lucky, the possibility would lessen your punishment, but that’s not going to work if we try to push that interpretation. Bringing it up at all will guarantee that this crosses Piggot’s desk, which is a gamble: if there really is a Master, she’ll go easy because you got results. If there isn’t, she’ll come down twice as hard.”

Sophia scowled. “...Okay, let’s shoot for suspension, and leave the MS out of it for now.” She decided, “This is gonna suck, but I think I’m going to need to talk to Ethel.”

The social worker had a similar look of disgust. “Don’t call her by her first name.” 

“She insists.” Sophia countered. 

The social worker gave an aggravated sigh. “Damn hippie. We can probably just threaten to call the Youth Guard, but… It’s going to take some waterworks to get out of this one, kid.”

“I know…” Sophia said, resigned. 

“Okay, we have our game plan.” The social worker said, “Let’s go.”

Very interesting…

------------------------

Tanya phased back into the room at a full sprint, which gave her a few seconds. “Taylor, shoot for after-school detention. It’s what they want least.”

Taylor subtly flashed a thumbs up at an angle no one else could see. She was sitting now, having clearly been speaking quietly with her father. 

“They had a very strange conversation that I’ll want to discuss with you later,” Tanya continued,  “-as they used some local parlance that I’m unfamiliar with, other phrases I am familiar with but don’t make much sense in context,” Shit duties? Patrols? Why did it sound like Sophia was in some kind of military organization? She was still a minor, right? This wasn’t the Empire… “-dropped some names that we could look up on the internet, etcetera.”

Sophia’s social worker came back inside, followed by the girl in question. “We’ve discussed it, and first things first: Sophia?”

Sophia walked straight in front of Taylor and, after a deep breath, said calmly and evenly. “I’m sorry for punching you. I was mad about what you said about Emma, but that doesn’t mean I should have done that.”

Taylor was at first shocked, but got angrier and angrier with every word. “What.” She said flatly. 

The dark-skinned girl’s demeanor shifted, clearly liking where this was going. “I said I’m sorry.” She said smugly. “That’s what you’re supposed to do, you know, when you wrong someone.” Sophia’s unspoken ‘so you should apologize to Emma right now’ was very loud, hung in the thick silence. 

“You mean to tell me.” Taylor said icily, “That after slightly over a year of shoving me, tripping me, stealing my books, destroying my mother’s flute,” Danny, who had been patiently seething for this entire time, looked confused for a moment. “-now that you’ve been caught with video evidence, you think you can just apologize?”

Tanya pinched the bridge of her nose. Oh no… she was doing so well… bringing up the past incidents will not help here… 

The other people’s reactions were mixed. Blackwell and the social worker seemed similarly aggrieved, Emma was thinking she had won (she might have, to be honest), while Alan had schooled his features. 

“This has been going on for how long?” Danny asked, his voice becoming a shout halfway through the sentence. 

“Calm down, Danny.” Alan said, “We’re here for what happened today. Don’t get distracted, you remember what I told you about people getting too tied up in minutiae?" Whil true, this kind of reminder is known as ‘don’t think about the thing that makes me look bad’, a classic lawyer trick. 

Blackwell actually seemed surprised at this, looking straight at Danny when he admitted to not knowing about the past incidents. “Mr. Hebert, please calm down.” She said. 

Danny, in the way that only those who have attended anger management seminars could manage, took a deep breath, holding it in for ten whole seconds before releasing it. Which was a bit like watching a bomb timer tick down on a “disarmed” explosive. She only ever had to see that once, and it was not something she’d like to repeat. 

Taylor was still visibly angry, but less so after the break, and she was still more or less in control of herself. “Well?” She asked, “What’s this bruise worth?”

“As an educator, I like to think I’m pretty good at spotting out guilt.” Blackwell said, “So I can believe this wasn’t the first time, at the very least. Just the first she could prove.”

Surprise overtook Taylor’s anger for a moment, and tears started forming in her eyes. Yeah, rage’ll do that. Tanya recalled a few incidents where she had to root out some particularly vile communists in urban warfare, with “civilians” in their midst. She was so angry she couldn’t stop the tears as she tore them apart with her bare hands. Hm… Actually, where’s the wastebasket? Taylor might need a vomit bucket at this rate. 

“So,” Blackwell continued, “I’ve already decided that both Miss Barnes and Miss Hess will be punished, with Miss Hess’ punishment being twice as harsh.”

“Hey now, Emma didn’t actually do anything except get defended.” Mr. Barnes protested. 

Blackwell looked at him drily. “She was in the doorway in the video, Miss Hebert’s testimony that she was blocked from advancing by Miss Barnes is proven enough for my books.” Idly, she picked up a box of tissues on her desk and offered them in the Hebert’s direction; Danny took it from her and brought it closer to Taylor, who started wiping her eyes. 

The social worker spoke up: “I think a four day suspension sounds fair.”

“You want to give her a- a vacation?” Taylor hissed, hiccuping in the middle of it. “No, do not reward her for this!”

“I assume you have a counter proposal, then?” Blackwell asked, subtly leaning back to make sure that Taylor’s aggression continued to be pointed at the social worker and not at her. 

“After school detention.” Taylor said confidently, “You want to punish her? Keep her here. Take her off the track team.”

Blackwell frowned. “Sophia’s one of our best runners.”

“I really don’t care.” Taylor said, voice dripping with contempt. 

‘What kind of message would it send, to put athletics over discipline?” Tanya asked rhetorically. 

“You giving her special treatment because of sports is why she thought she could punch me in broad daylight.” Taylor added. “Prove her wrong.”

Blackwell hesitated, but after a moment, she nodded. “Very well. After school detention for both of them. Four days for Emma, eight for Sophia. Instead of track practice, she’ll get to sit in a room and do her homework in the company of all the other delinquents in this school.” She looked Taylor straight in the eye. “Are you satisfied?”

Taylor took a page from her father’s book and took a deep five second breath. “...No.” She admitted, “But at this point? I’ll take it.”

“Then this meeting is done.” Blackwell pronounced. “You may go now, Miss Hebert. Mr. Hebert.” Tanya stayed behind, a little trick they had figured out: as long as she doesn’t move her feet, she can stay further away from the type 95 if Taylor takes it away. Blackwell turned to the other two pairs. “Now, you two: I don’t know what you have against Miss Hebert, but it ends today.” She looked higher, at Mr. Barnes’ face. “You’ve threatened to sue me three times since you got here. Miss Hebert made a very good point, I think. Children, especially teenagers.” She gave a meaningful glance at Emma. “Need to know that they can’t simply do whatever they want. Complain all you want about unfairness, but this was done strictly by the book.” That must have been a very flexible book. “She blocked a door so her friend could punch someone, and that, at least, had video evidence. If there’s a next time, you will find me significantly less inclined to require ironclad proof, as there was here.” Blackwell’s eyes narrowed. “Do you understand?”

Alan returned the woman’s glare, but if there was an actual resolution, Tanya missed it because she suddenly found herself colocating with Taylor once more, as Danny drove her past the extended tether that little trick allowed for. 

“Tanya?” Taylor’s mental voice called, “I think I felt you arrive that time.”

“I am here.” Tanya replied, “Blackwell told them to back off. As I said, now that the bureaucracy has a proper disciplinary record attached to your conflict, they cannot simply brush further incidents under the rug. It’s just a battle, not the war, but it’s a battle that we’ve won.”

Taylor teared up again. “Thanks.”