She may have thought that he was going to be cruel to her, or abuse her, or take tremendous advantage of her, but she found out that she was wrong. He did parade her around the campus a little as the students cheered, since it made them feel good, then he went back to his room and took off the chain. She stood there by the door for a long moment as he sat at his desk. He felt her mind brush against his, but she pulled away when she found nothing there for her to grasp.
"Don't do that," he said gratingly. "I don't appreciate it."
"Sorry," she apologized. "Most humans don't even notice it." She gave him a long, steady look. "Well?" she asked in her accented English.
"Well what?" he asked in Faey. "Have a seat."
"Don't I have to clean?" she said in Faey, her face bright that she wouldn't have to chatter at him in English.
"It's already clean," he shrugged. "You'll be doing my laundry tomorrow, but for right now I don't have anything for you to do. So sit down and watch some TV or something."
"That's all? You're not going to humiliate me or make me do dirty jobs?"
"Do you want to?"
"Uh, no," she said quickly.
"Then sit down and watch TV," he said mildly.
"Where do I sleep?"
"That's your problem," he told her. "The bed's mine. You're on your own."
"I'm, I'm not sleeping with you?"
He gave her a direct stare.
"Isn't that part of my punishment?"
"I don't consider that much of a punishment," he said dryly.
"It is if you do it right," she winked with a naughty smile.
"Faey," he breathed, rolling his eyes. "Don't you ever think with your brains?"
"We're the dominant gender, human," she smiled. "We think with our brains as much as human men think with theirs. Imagine a human man's sex drive in a woman as happy to chase dick as human men are to chase pussy, and in a nutshell, you have a Faey."
Her forward, graphic language surprised him, but he made the connection quite easily, and she was right. Imagine a Faey more or less as a human man, and they made sense. "I wonder how either of us ever manage to get anything done," he chuckled ruefully.
"A question for the philosophers," she chuckled. "My name is Symone."
"Jason," he returned. "But don't take that to mean you're not going to really hate me come Monday morning."
She chuckled. "I'll get over it," she promised. "So, what would you command of me, Master?" she said with a grin. "Wash your clothes? Reorganize your closet? Do the Moraki Dance of Forbidden Delights?"
"Keep talking, and you're going to be chained to the outside of my door," he said calmly as he turned on his panel.
"What, you're celibate?"
"On the contrary, I find Faey very beautiful and very sexy," he answered honestly. "But there's a principle here that I can't violate. If it weren't for that, you'd be pinned to the bed right now. You are sexy, Symone, and I'm not dead. I'd be more than willing to give you that punishment you hinted about if not for that. I'd chain you outside the door to remove the temptation."
"Well, it's nice to be appreciated, and I do appreciate your candor," she said with an honest smile. "I'll leave you alone, since there's a matter of principle involved." Then she turned on the television.
He was quite grateful for that. And over the entire weekend, she was true to her word. She did not flirt with him or come on to him, not even once.
Sunday was a very relaxing day, because he had himself a maid. And he worked her.
She didn't sleep very well, because she ended up sleeping in the chair at his desk, with her head and arms laid out on the desk. He woke her up early and got her to work. She did his laundry. She moved all the furniture out of his room and shampooed the thin, worn carpet, then moved it all back in while he and Tim sat on lounge chairs in the hallway and watched. She cleaned the window, inside and out. She stood behind his chair obediently as he and Tim sat out on the green lawn between the dorm and the main Tulane building as boys whistled and stared at her, though this didn't bother her as much as it might a human girl. Though Jason wasn't going to rub it in too much, Tim was more than willing to torment Symone by barking at her like a drill instructor, haranguing her whenever she didn't perform up to his exacting specifications, making her wait on them hand and foot, and once he slapped her on her bare butt as she fetched them beers.
"I'm going to hurt him," Symone growled under her breath as Jason sat at his desk, studying for tomorrow's classes, after Tim went to the bathroom.
"He likes you," Jason told her absently. "He's been sporting a woody since he got here this morning."
"I don't understand."
"English slang," he said mildly. "He's had an erection. He finds you extremely sexy."
"Oh, I noticed that almost immediately," she winked. "Why do you think I've been sticking my tits in his face every time I serve him? I have to get back at him somehow."
Jason glanced at her, then chuckled. "He's actually a pretty good guy, and a good friend. He's just enjoying the moment, that's all."
"What do you mean?"
"A lot of humans resent the subjugation, I'm sure you've noticed."
"Of course."
"Well, this is his chance to boss you around."
"Ohhh," she breathed, then she chuckled. "Well, I guess I can't fault him for that," she said with a wink just as he got back. "Does he speak Faey?"
"Yes," Tim answered in Faey, but not pronounced very well. Tim was still mastering the motor skills required to speak the language.
"Well then, with your permission, I'm going to the bathroom, Jason," she asked.
"Fine."
"We'll see how brave you are on Monday afternoon, Tim," she said with a taunting smile. He jumped in shock when she put the palm of her hand against his shirt and pushed her hand down inside the band of his sweat pants. Tim's face instantly flushed, and he put his back against the door as the bulge of her hand in his sweatpants moved around. "Or even better, how brave you are tonight," she added in a husky tone, brushing up against him as she slid past. She flicked her tongue out and licked the lobe of his ear as she passed, then disappeared out the door.
"Oh, shit," Tim said in a wobbly kind of voice, sitting down at his desk rather hard.
"She won't get back at you, Tim. This is all part of the game for her," Jason chuckled. "Being bossed around is part of it."
"No, I think she wants me," he said.
"Whatever gave you that idea? Her putting her hand down your pants, or sticking her tongue in your ear?" he asked archly.
"Man," he said in a panting tone. "Was she playing with me, or was she serious?"
Jason suppressed a smile. Symone was getting her measure of revenge against Tim already. She was going to put him into a fever pitch for the rest of the day, he knew she would. It was what she did tonight that would tell the tale.
"Probably playing with you," he answered honestly. "I wouldn't take her too seriously. That, or you'd better go back to your room."
"She grabs hold of my dick, and you tell me not to take her seriously?" he asked hotly in reply.
"It's your call," he shrugged.
He was right about that. For the entire afternoon, Symone absolutely tortured Tim by flirting with him, flaunting her assets in front of him, and taking all sorts of liberties with him. It seemed that every time he turned around, she had her hand down his pants, whispering mind-blowing obscenities in his ear. She got him back in spades for the bossing around he'd done to her earlier in the day, that was for certain. Tim couldn't look at her without his face flushing, and eventually, Jason had to take pity on him by kicking Tim out. Symone looked utterly smug with herself after Tim was banished to his room upstairs, but her smug look vanished when he had her stand outside his door with the chain locked to her collar, wrapped around his doorknob while he took a shower.
He got back, towel around his waist, and she was still standing there. "Um, Jason, you think I might go, upstairs?" she asked in a hesitant manner.
"What's upstairs?"
"Tim."
"Why don't you give that poor boy some peace?" he asked.
"Well, I was kind of going to go up there and keep all those promises I made to him," she said with a sultry wink. "You think a girl can do that to a sexy guy all day and not get horny? There were a couple of times there when I was about to pull his pants down and fuck him right on your floor."
He looked at her, then chuckled. "You would have had to clean it," he told her. "I need to study, so do what you want. Just remember that you're not done until tomorrow morning."
"When do you want me to come back?"
"Tomorrow morning. You're going to help me take care of tomorrow's Marines."
"Oh. I don't have a problem with that," she winked. "I get to have a hot night with a sexy guy, and I get to rub some Marines' faces in the dirt. Thanks. For a human, you're not a bad guy."
"For a Faey, you're not a bad girl."
"I'm about to be," she purred as she unhooked the chain from the collar.
Jason chuckled as she sauntered towards the stairs. Symone actually was a pretty OK girl. Faey, but other than that, she was alright. She had a sense of humor, she was quite candid with him, she'd respected his position, which really impressed him, she had a lot of patience, and she'd been a good sport. And her torturing of Tim showed that she certainly knew how to play the game. She was the kind of girl he certainly wouldn't mind calling friend.
But then again, she was Faey. He shouldn't get too cozy with her. After all, he liked Jyslin just as much, if not more, but his position wouldn't allow him to be friends with her either.
Symone came lilting back to his room at about six in the morning, knocking on his door without considering that she might be waking him up. He was already up, however, for he was in the habit of rising early. He was lucky in the fact that he didn't sleep very much, and didn't seem to need much sleep.
She came in behind him as he opened the door for her, then leaned against it sensually and fanned her face with her hand, her eyes bright. "Where have you humans been all my life?" she said in a thoroughly satisfied tone. "Your friend Tim is—wow," she related. "No Faey man ever made me mewl like one of your cat animals."
"I'm glad you had fun," he said dryly.
"Fun? That was more than fun," she said with a grin. "I had to take two showers afterward."
"Two?"
"I took one, then when I came back, Tim mussed me. I had to take another."
He chuckled, but said nothing.
"We're going out tomorrow night. I have a few friends in my unit who are free. Want to double?"
"No thanks," he said mildly.
"It's going to be weird having clothes on around him. It's kinda fun for me when he stares at my tits while we're talking. It makes me feel wanted and very sexy."
"You'll get used to it."
"Trust me, I can get used to feeling sexy all the time," she said with a throaty chuckle.
"That's not what I meant."
"I know what you meant," she laughed. "So, what do you need me to do to get the Marines?"
"You'll find out." He paused a moment. "What makes Tim so much different?"
"Faey men are always so standoffish," she complained. "They make you bend over backwards to get a date with them, then they never tell you where you stand. They're always hinting, teasing, leading you on, and just when you think it's going to get serious, they dump you like yesterday's garbage. Tim was honest with me right off, and he really, really wants me, likes me, despite me being Faey. You have no idea how much I liked that, how much it made me feel wanted."
Strange that she'd say something like that to him, but then again, he had the feeling that she'd be much more forthcoming with him, someone she promised not to flirt with, than a Faey man, or maybe even a Faey woman. "Don't hurt him," he warned.
"I won't," she said in a dreamy manner. "Trust me, Jason. I'll be on his arm as long as he wants me."
"Be careful. He might take some heat because he's going out with a Faey."
"Nobody's going to bother him," she promised. "I know how to be discrete."
"Is he still asleep?"
She nodded, then grinned in a dirty manner. "I wore him out. But he seemed to take it fairly well."
"Take what?"
"Faey can make love with more than just their bodies," she told him. "Faey can join in telepathic communion while making love. It makes it ten times better. Sometimes it's just physical, since both people have to drop their defenses, you know, let the other into their minds, so that takes some trust. First time lovers, people just having casual sex, they don't usually do that. But Tim was alright with letting me join our minds. He said it gave him a little bit of a headache, but it was the most intense sex he'd ever had," she said with a bright smile. "Sex is more fun when you can feel your partner's pleasure," she winked.
"I'll remember that."
"Well, all in all, I'm glad you collared me now," she laughed. "I didn't like the cleaning, but I have a new boyfriend. That's a fair tradeoff."
"Well, I'm glad you didn't mind it all that much."
"Not at all," she said with a smile. "Since I'm going to be going out with your friend, I hope that means we can hang out together, Jason. I like you."
"I like you too, Symone, but I can't do that," he said seriously. "I'm one of those people who object to your presence here. My principles won't let me socialize with people I consider to be the enemy."
She laughed. "You're sitting there talking to a girl who's been with you for two days, naked as the day she was born, who just screwed your best friend until he was a quivering mass of jelly. That's not socializing?"
He chuckled. "Well, it does sort of sound like it, but I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I started hanging out with Faey."
"You object to the Imperium, or the people?"
"The Imperium."
"Well, I'm not the Imperium," she declared. "I'm Symone Zabelle. I'm not even Imperial. I'm a soldier for House Tarlinne. I serve a noble, not the Imperium. I'm what you'd call a private soldier, or a mercenary."
"Does your noble obey the Empress?"
"Of course."
"Then you're a part of the Imperium," he said bluntly.
"Well, what would it take for you to hang out with me?" she asked.
"For the Imperium to leave, put everything back the way it was, then come back and ask us to join," he answered seriously. "If they'd have asked, we might have agreed."
"Well, you certainly don't want too much," she laughed. "Just give it time, Jason. You've seen how the Imperium works. You're not a conquered race, you're a part of the Imperium. As soon as you get used to it, you'll be just like everyone else. You'll be the equal of a Faey. You're not the only alien race that's a part of the Imperium, you know. The Menoda have been part of the Imperium for over two hundred years. They have noble houses and everything."
He gave her a serious look. "We'll never be the equal of the Faey," he said grimly.
She bit her lip, but said nothing.
"I like you Symone, honestly," he told her. "But you're a Faey, and I'm a human. It doesn't matter that you might agree with me. It doesn't matter that I like you, or you like me. The only thing that matters is that your Imperium conquered my world. Did you think we'd welcome you in? Did you think that you dissolving all our nations and moving entire populations around and putting half of us on farms wouldn't matter to us? Do you think that just because we can't rebel, it means we all simply accept your order like weak-minded sheep? Well, it doesn't.
"I can't do anything about the Imperium. I admit that, and in a way, I accept it. But it doesn't mean that I'll embrace your Imperium, your customs, or even your people. I'll go to your school and work for you, but I'll never enjoy it. Whether I'm in a lab or a factory or a farm field, it doesn't matter, because I'll end up working for you one way or the other. I can accept that, so I'll find the place that makes me happiest and stay there. I can't fight, but I can resist in my own way, just to show you that we humans are not just conquered slaves. And I'll do so until the day I die. It means absolutely nothing to the Imperium, but it means everything to me.
"It's not personal, Symone. I like you, and you're not the only Faey I like. The little war I'm having with the Marines is based on the same issue. The Marine likes me, and I admit, I like her. But I won't go out with her, and I won't be friends with her, because she represents the government that took my life away from me and made me nothing more than a slave. I'm sorry if that offends you or hurts your feelings, but it's the truth. If circumstances were different, I'd be dating her right now, and you and me would be going out, getting drunk, and having a blast every weekend. But they're not that way. You're a Faey, I'm a human, and that's all that it takes in my mind to forever put us on opposite sides of a line. I'm sorry."
She was silent a long moment. "I can understand that," she told him sincerely. "And I respect it. I'd try to sound impressive and wise, but that's not very easy when a girl's standing here naked."
He chuckled, and gave her a gentle smile. "Your jiggling notwithstanding, I'm glad you understand."
"I don't jiggle," she said primly. "I undulate."
He gave her a surprised look, then burst into laughter.
Symone was alright. Too bad she was Faey.
She did her part against the two Marines that showed up at dawn, who immediately piled out of their patrol hovercar and set up an observation post out in Audobon Park, out in the open, where there was no way he could get at them without being seen. Her mission was to distract them, and she undertook her mission with great enthusiasm. The Army hated the Marines, the Marines hated the Navy (what the Faey called their starship military service), and the Navy hated everyone. That was how the inter-service rivalries worked in the Faey structure. The Marines were an elite form of combat troop who also served on starships as ship to ship combat troops and ground assault, so the Army resented them. The Navy looked down their noses at the other two branches of the Faey military, even though they were more than happy to have Marines on board their starships as security. Private soldiers, like Symone, who served a house instead of the Imperium directly, were considered part of the Army, but more like the old National Guard or Reserves of America's dissolved army. They were here because their house was the one who had been given possession of Earth. Since the Imperium didn't have enough space available in the Navy, Marines, and the Imperial Army for all the women who served their involuntary conscription, most of them ended up in the private armies of noble houses.
Symone's help proved invaluable in getting the two Marines who showed up today. Her job was to distract, and she certainly managed to absolutely dominate their attention the instant she came out the door. After all, the last thing those two expected to see was a naked Faey women trudging out the front door of the dorm. She spotted them quickly and crossed the street, pulling the dog collar off her neck as she came out onto the grass lawn of the park. She reached them and started chattering at them quickly, talking fast, spinning quite the tale about how her squad lost a bet with Jason, and she ended up in a dog collar as a result. She asked them for some clothes or a ride back to her barracks, and they agreed. She let them go first, towards the car, and she lightly placed two tiny devices on the backs of their armor that had been hidden in the palms of her hands. She gave him a thumbs-up as they took her to his car, then got in it with them and was hurried away.
Mission accomplished.
He reached into his pocket and pressed a little red button on his remote, put it back in his pocket, then went to school.
Those two Marines discovered later, after dropping Symone off at her barracks, that whenever they drove towards the campus, they had sudden fits of terrible itching all over their entire bodies. The closer they got to the campus, the worse it became. Zora and Mil couldn't understand what was happening, but when they realized that retreating made the insane itching ease, they both realized that somehow, some way, Jason had gotten them. Circling the campus proved that it was the campus that was at the center of this strange effect, and the itching started when they got within about a human mile of it. It started off very mild, almost kind of nice, like little feathers ghosting over their bodies, but it was all over their entire bodies, and it got worse and worse the closer they approached the campus.
They parked the hovercar about at the edge of this effect and looked at each other. "He got us!" Zora said, then she laughed. "How did he do it? What did he do?"
"I don't know—hey!" Min said. "That regular was the only one who got close to us! Do you think she was in on it?"
"It's possible, but how could she do anything? She was naked, and wasn't carrying anything."
"Unless she distracted us while Jason somehow did something," Min grunted. "Myri said that you can't sense him at all, that he can sneak up on just about anyone. Did you see him?"
"No, did you?"
"No."
They looked at each other, then burst into laughter. "Should we go pay a little visit to that regular?" Min asked.
"Nah, she was just a part of the game," Zora replied. "Besides, after being Jason's pet for a couple of days, I think she suffered enough, don't you?"
Jason enjoyed his Monday in peace, but Tuesday morning, at four a.m. sharp, he was awakened by a knock on the door. He blearily opened it—he got up at five every morning, so this was a little early for him—and found himself staring at a tall, regal-looking Faey with green hair. Emerald green. He had never seen that color hair on a Faey before. Despite it being green, she wore it in the short, comb-over style that many Marines favored, and it was strangely pretty with her blue skin. She was narrow-faced, almost foxlike in appearance, with large eyes, a long nose, and a narrow, sharp face that looked predatory. She was rather handsome, and it was apparent that she was older than the other Faey who had tasted defeat at his hands in the days past. Instead of armor, she wore a dark blue uniform of sorts, with sleek dark blue pants with a red sash, and a sharply pressed blue jacket that had silver buttons along its front. She had little silver triangles on her lapels, a little starburst design insignia pinned to her left epaulet, and a gold woven rope that was attached to her right, running under her arm.
"I am Lieutenant Lana," she announced as if that meant everything in the world. "And these are yours."
She held out his two little sub-sonic induction devices, which had used extreme high-frequency sound to irritate the skin of the two Faey from yesterday. Their armor conducted the subsonic waves, acting like amplifiers, and they were set to get stronger and stronger the closer they came to his remote.
"Thanks. They took me hours to build. I don't want to lose them," he said with a roguish smile as he accepted the two button-sized devices, painted the same hue of black as a Marine's armor. "How long did it take them to find them?"
"Seven hours," she answered honestly. "We had to use a scanner to find them. They were very devious."
"Thank you," he said with a nod. "So, you're number six," he said as he turned and walked from the door, leaving it open. "At least you're civil enough to come and introduce yourself. 'Hello, I'm Lieutenant Lana, and I'll be your opposition this morning'," he said in a voice that a waiter might use to introduce himself.
She chuckled. "I'm not here as the opponent. I'm here as the mediator," she told him. "I'm here to put an end to this little war, Jason. Before I leave, we'll have an agreement."
"What makes you think I'm going to quit?" he asked. "I'm winning."
"Because I have direct orders from my battalion commander to end it," she told him with steady eyes. "We all thought it was funny for the first few days, but it's starting to foment discord between the Corps and the Army regulars, as their little visit to you on Saturday probably proves to you."
He nodded.
"I'm here to head things off before they get ugly. For you and Jyslin, and also for the Army and the Corps. So, before I leave here, we'll have an agreement on the table, and one both sides will agree to honor. There's no way you'll get out of the date, so be prepared to stipulate that condition right now. But, given how badly you thrashed my Marines, I'm sure you can drag some conditions out of me that will suit you and make them very annoyed," she winked.
"Why help me like that? Aren't you supposed to be on their side?"
"Because I believe you deserve it," she said. "After all, you've stymied my squad for six days now, and that's no mean feat. My unit is good. Very good. But they've met their match in you so far. You are winning, Jason, and because of that, you should get the lion's share in the peace agreement. You will have to concede the main point, but everything else is up for negotiation, and the current conditions favor a strong lean towards your interests."
"Well, I appreciate the praise."
"It's more than that," she said, pointing at the subsonic inducers he set on the desk. "Those little devices were devious, Jason, and it's something I've never seen before. I had a tech scan them yesterday, and she thinks that they have some potential uses in military or civilian applications. She was impressed by the complexity of them, and she didn't believe me when I told her that a second-semester tech student built them."
He wasn't quite happy about that. He didn't build those inducers to be used in war. They were built as a prank to best a pair of Marines, that's all.
"Don't worry, I had their design patented," she told him. "In your name. You invented them, after all. I also submitted the design to the Ministry of Technology."
"What does that mean?"
"That means that if the Imperium uses the idea, you get paid for it," she answered. "And the submission will get you noticed, Jason. You need that. The inducers are just one of three things I've never seen before. I've never seen that chemical you sprayed one Sheleese and Ilia that destroyed their armor without hurting them. I've also never seen anyone use a plasma magnet the way you did, with a magnetic field density sensor on it to control its magnetic force to make the hovercar hang in midair the way it did. Those are brilliant inventions, Jason. Just brilliant, and it makes it even more impressive when you realize that they're coming from a second-year tech student with absolutely no background knowledge of Faey technology. To us, it's like a primitive caveman stumbling on a pile of tools and material and using them to build a PPG. If you can attract the attention of the Ministry, there's a good chance you can get into either black ops or research. That's where anyone in school wants to end up."
He gave her a long, steady look. "Why are you helping me?"
"Because I believe in helping people discover their potential," she answered. "It's my duty as an officer. I think you have what it takes to be in research, and I'll do what I can to get you there."
He was quiet a long moment, not sure what to say.
"Alright, so let's agree right here and now that there's no way you can avoid going out with Jyslin. That's an absolute."
"That's an admission of defeat," Jason told her. "That's what all of this is about."
"You're going to lose this eventually, Jason," she told him. "You'd lose tomorrow, I guarantee it. After you get out of school, Jyslin is planning to arrest you and throw you in a cell full of hand-picked cellmates, and keep you there until you admit defeat or she has to let you go in the morning. Then she was going to arrest you again that afternoon, and again, and again, until you gave up."
Jason's eyes hardened. "I thought she was better than that," he growled.
"They're not criminals," she told him with a grin. "She was going to put you in a cell with a pack of giruzi." Giruzi were massive canines that were indigenous to one of the worlds the Faey owned, which looked like black-pelted dogs who were five feet tall at the shoulder. Their eyes glowed red from some kind of bioluminescent reaction, and they had the capability to administer powerful electric shocks. They had bio-electro organs much akin to the shock glands of an electric eel, but they were much more powerful. A giruzi could unleash a blast of what looked like lightning nearly a hundred feet through open air. Giruzi used them to hunt prey, one of the most effective hunting evolutionary developments he'd ever seen. He'd seen them a few times, because sometimes the Marines used them for crowd control, having trained them to use their shocks to stun instead of kill. Humans might not be too motivated to disperse when faced with a few Faey in armor, but they scattered when a couple of giruzi were brought in to motivate them to be somewhere else.
Jason frowned, then he chuckled ruefully. "That's clever, but it would have backfired. I'm not afraid of giruzi."
"You would be if there's someone giving them orders to scare you," she told him with a wink. "Wouldn't you prefer losing with dignity, or with an animal that weighs twice what you do chewing your clothes off?"
"It'll be on her when my grades go down because I can't study," he shrugged.
"I know, and that's the other reason why I've been ordered to put an end to this," she said earnestly. "It's going to do you permanent harm if we let this go on any longer. This academy is too demanding for you to be distracted for an extended period of time like this."
"I am not going out with Jyslin," he said adamantly.
"You will," she said sternly. "What we're here to negotiate is what happens during the date," she smiled. "And the possibility of dates taking place after the first."
He shouted, he argued, he even threatened, but Lana was absolutely unflappable. She talked him down from his highly confrontational stance, got him to talk. She met his posturing with calm logic, talking him down, talking him down, being utterly reasonable at all times.
She made him see two glaring facts. First, Jyslin was not going to stop until she won. She would be an eternal thorn in his side. And second, that an escalation of the war was going to do real harm to him, and possibly both of them. Where Jyslin and the other Marines failed, Lana succeeded by making him see reason, and that reasoning was that he should try to get what he could out of a bad situation.
So, they sat down in the common room and hammered out an agreement. Jason would go out on one date with Jyslin. That date would entail exactly one dinner at Copeland's (Jyslin pays), going to the opera (Jyslin pays), and a nightcap visit to a small bar or restaurant of Jason's choosing after the opera (Jyslin pays). After that, Jason had the option to have her take him home, or he could decide to stay out with her and do whatever they pleased. That was it. During this date, Jason had to behave in a courteous manner and not cause trouble, and Jyslin would be required to treat him with respect and not grind the fact that she was getting her date in his nose.
After the date, it was agreed upon that no matter what, Jyslin would not attempt to force him to do anything he did not want to the way she had before. She could annoy him, harass him, harangue him all she wanted, but she had to do it herself. She couldn't bring the squad in on it, and she was absolutely forbidden from interfering with his schoolwork. Lana made that abundantly clear to him, and it hit him as rather important. She'd said that some of his little tricks had attracted attention, and now she comes in and admits that someone higher up ordered her to put a stop to it.
He wondered how high up that order came from.
"Are we agreed, then?" Lana asked in a reasonable tone, extending her hand across the table in the common room, which was filled with two couches and three large tables were students could sit and study, or watch the large flat-panel plasma screen TV hanging on the wall.
"I'm not too happy about this, but if it'll get Jyslin off my back, I'll agree to it," he said after a moment.
"Then I think we have a deal," she said. He took her delicate hand and shook it after a moment, sealing the bargain.
It was the first time that a date had been negotiated at the conference table. It was also the first date ever officially condoned and ordered to take place by the Imperial Marine Corps.
And it would take place on Friday.