Cadet mounted his bike and smiled to himself. Firewall had already left the scene, transferring himself away by travelling down the electrical cables to meet Bethany at her grav-van. The others would travel back to Claremont with her but Cadet enjoyed the freedom his bike provided.
This had been his third visit to the grounds of the Pryde Foundation Preparatory Institute, or at least to their Sydenham campus in South London. The ‘real’ PITT training facility was ‘discovered’ to be actually located near a scenic village called Polzeath in Cornwall a month ago, by him.1 It subsequently turned out to be in another abandoned factory building on the village outskirts or at least it was abandoned on the surface, underground was a different matter. The school used some form of mass teleporter to transfer their teachers and the more ‘promising’ pupils instantaneously between the two sites. No wonder they had been after Claremont’s ARC Fusion Reactor, as any teleporter device with that range had to be very energy-intensive.
However, since his initial reconnaissance a month ago, the Schadenfreude Society 2 had avoided any contact with the Cornish site or gone anywhere near the old grey stone factory in the Sydenham grounds.
Instead, the Claremont students had focused their ‘Operation Shitstorm’ on the school buildings that were the public face of the Pryde Institute. Most of the students that actually attended that facility had only minor powers; the school’s more powerful students were really being trained in the PITT, the underground facility in Cornwell, leaving the other students to act as a public smokescreen.
Several Claremont students had visited covertly a few weeks before, to set up a series of pranks. After that infiltration, the school had quadrupled their security mainly around the ‘deserted’ factory in the grounds. Not surprising, given what the staff found next morning.
After all, having everything from the teachers’ lounge transported and perfectly replicated outside had caught their attention, especially as everything had been transferred out of a locked room, carried through a patrolled school and then recreated perfectly in the car park. Then their teaching staff had discovered the furniture in all the classrooms had been fixed to the ceilings, with everything glued so it looked the same just upside down, even the lights had been taken off the ceiling and remounted on the floor.
Of course, all the evidence pointed to these being elaborate pranks carried out by their own students – the glue used had been taken from the school supplies, the washing up liquid in the toilet cisterns that foamed up the toilets when flushed had also come from their own kitchen supply room.
The school disciplined their students then, despite all the evidence of this being an inside job they tightened their security, primarily around the factory in response. The original security staff were sacked immediately and replaced with ex-mercenaries.
Then the undiscovered pranks began to surface; rotting fish stashed behind radiators began to stink out the school, multiple trial subscriptions to ‘Adult Nappy-User Monthly’ started to turn up and they discovered the floor of the canteen had been coated in something that, after a few days had turned sticky and bound everyone’s shoes to the floor if they stepped on it. The school responded by once more doubling security, again with the focus on protecting the old factory.
Cadet smiled, tonight had been a return visit, once again to the main building and then the plan was to back off for a couple of months. That level of intense security could not be maintained at that level forever, at some point people will start relaxing and assume it had just a series of student pranks after all and then they would strike; at the Cornish site.
Tonight, over a dozen Claremont students had taken part in the assault; including Bubbles.
The NeXt team had headed off to deal with the teaching staff while they slept. Seven planned to Cling film them in their beds while dipping the tips of their fingers in warm water to see if that would result in creating a psychological need to go to the toilet. That particular stunt had to be perfectly timed though otherwise they would wake up and raise the alarm. Presumably she had succeeded.
Firewall had carried out an assault on the school intranet. He’d moved all the school files around so that they were transferred into different, unrelated folders some of which were randomly encrypted, leaving behind very subtle clues that Browser had been behind it all, which of course given that his nickname used to be browser he really was. He made sure that no information was copied off the system, after all what would a PITT student want with that? Then he scrubbed all the night’s security footage and replaced it with really bad martial art films. He’d wanted to use gay porn but he’d been outvoted by Bethany, Raven and Seven.
Meanwhile, Raven was busy planting fake clues as to who was responsible for the pranks, a bit of understated misdirection – a partial fingerprint of the head boy was placed inside a much too small heating vent, another student’s prints were left on the inside of some disposable gloves dumped in a toilet waste bin.
Velocity, a Claremont sixth year student, changed all the locks over around the school. They would now have to match the lock to the key before they could open any rooms. He then laid hundreds of paper cups all throughout the school corridors and carefully filled them with water. No one will be able to get to their classroom without risking getting wet feet as a result.
Cadet had put stickers over the light-emitting diodes on the teacher’s computer mice. The same stickers that had been planted on a student during their previous visit. He’d then fitted alternative signs over all the school’s emergency notices, each now stated slightly outrageous alternative actions to do in the event of a fire. He also changed the gender signs on all male and female toilets and put an ‘Out of Order’ sign on the teacher’s toilets! That was coupled with the tasteless laxative that he planted in the teachers’ coffee machine.
Meanwhile, Bubbles filled the student lockers (and even some classrooms) with long-lasting bubbles but only after setting off a small incendiary device in each location to melt some random components so it would look like some sort of device had been responsible for generating the bubbles.
Misdirection was the name of the game and they were careful to ensure that either the pranks either matched the powers of the school’s own students or there was a logical explanation for the effect.
Kilowatt was involved in releasing two piglets (dressed in nappies and numbered 1 and 3) in the head teachers’ office even as Seven placed one of the teacher’s partial footprints on the office windowsill which was two storeys up the building (she’d deliberately chosen the shoe of a teacher that was far too unfit to have climbed up there).
Others had covered everything in the teachers’ lounge in tinfoil and erected estate agents signs saying ‘for sale’ outside the school gates – the contact phone number on the signs (for Lyons Estate Agents) was the London Zoo’s. Another of the Amazon’s had spread Vaseline on the inside of all the exit handles and Firewall had rigged the fire alarm up to a timer so they would go off irregularly over the next few hours.
Even Outrage had been involved, snapping all of the bolts holding the tables together in the cafeteria so that if anyone bumped or touched them the tables would fall apart.
Only Hocus Pocus’ suggestion of again hiding rotting fish behind the radiators again had been ruled out because they’d already done it once and their staff was sure to check. Why waste time on a practical joke that wouldn’t succeed?
The others had left and it was now time for him to go as well; the security guards would wake up soon from their unexpected ‘snooze’ thanks to Hocus Pocus’s influence and would then immediately notify the teaching facility that something had occurred.
He set off, thinking he really needed to pass on Ashen’s latest series of updates to Firewall, he seemed to be enjoying his time training under the Commander, especially the one-to-one school tuition and was considering staying on there when the next school year started. Commander was teaching him to be less stressed and loosen up a bit while being more effective with his powers. Cadet have certainly benefited from Sir Bryan’s training so why shouldn’t Ashen?
There was even talk that Sir Bryan had finally persuaded the Welsh Dragon to form a local HCP-authorised team in Wales 3 and Ashen had hinted that they might take him on as an Intern though he knew from experience that wasn’t as exciting a prospect as it sounded.
Damn, pity it was a school day and he needed to be in class in about four hours’ time, he would have enjoyed a day of just cruising around on his bike.
- See Bluebook-session-13a-breaking-and-entry/
- See Bluebook-session-11a-the-schadenfreude-society/
- Cymru Dragons – consisting of the Welsh Dragon, Mighty Oak, Red Kite, Seismic (Intern) & Ashen (Intern)
Growing up Meta, UK-Style! 