* * * Community's IRC channel

<Lauri> We have a new problem: somebody logged onto the wiki as Sinikka from Lappeenranta.
<Nate> You mean that that person is not in fact Sinikka? Could it be the usual suspects?
<Lauri> Sinikka is enjoying a smoke on her porch. Jamie and friends are enjoying pizza in front of their fireplace. Our mysterious stranger is enjoying his attempts to find the highway after getting lost in Kouvola. None of them are in front of a computer.
<Nate> I could never understand how a person with Sight can get lost. It's like always having a map with you.
<Lauri> Easily. Some people suck at reading maps.
<Sarah> Hi.
<Nate> Hi Sarah.
<Sarah> What's new?
<Lauri> Short story: Sinikka had them over, except Timo, Elina somehow managed to fix Katie's mind long-distance, Sinikka says Tarja is a potential and Jamie, Katie and Rudy are all a bit fucked in the head but not dangerously so, and yesterday's bomber tried to shoot them in their cottage but Jamie killed him. Also Mira seems to have elemental Skill of iron. Yeah, and there is a new guy with Skills and probably with Sight who doesn't answer any communications and is driving towards Lappeenranta right now.
<Sarah> Did you guys find Michael and Dana?
<Nate> No.
<Lauri> Yeah, and somebody is logged into our wiki from Lappeenranta using Sinikka's password. Not Sinikka, not Jamie or his friends. There is nobody else there.
<Sarah> Except like thousands of normals? I heard some of them know how to use the Net. :)
<Nate> Could also be somebody from somewhere else who'd broken into a computer in Lappeenranta.
<Lauri> Heh, Else just called Jamie with some grandmotherly advice: "don't worry, dear child, I've killed a lot of people in my time, you get used to it". He doesn't look like he appreciated that.
<Sarah> I think it's a good thing that he didn't appreciate.
<Lauri> I wonder what the police will make out of it?
<Sarah> They called the police?
<Lauri> Yeah, and the police was "WTF, a gun melted in the guy's hands."
<Sarah> Morons.
<Nate> Police or Jamie & Co?
<Sarah> Both.

* * *

"We should be prepared," says Rudy, taking his new katana and threatening an invisible enemy.
"You do realize that the guy with the Sight can see our preparations, right?" I ask.
"Can't a man have fun around here?"
"I can understand the Fight Club where guys who'd never fought in their lives are trying it out, but you are a karate champion, what's your problem?" asks Katie. "You beat people up five days a week and get paid for it!"
"Rudy's work morale puts us all to shame," says Timo solemnly.
"I am not a champion! I only got bronze twice!"
"That's hardly a reason to attack people with swords," says Jamie, devouring the last pizza slice.
"I just got Skills today, I wanna have fun! And unlike yours, mine are proper superhero superpowers." Rudy smiles. "I don't really wanna hurt anyone. Come on, let's have fun! Let our hair down... so to speak," he adds, as everyone with hair long enough for 'up' and 'down' to be a meaningful concept is actually putting their hair up.

Rudy sighs.

"Come on," he tells Jamie, who is the one and only person in the world who bothers listening to his fashion rants before completely disregarding them. "The whole idea of long hair tied back is that it comes open during the fight, looks cool, all women go 'squee!'. Not putting it up in a tight bun like some librarian."
"And then the opponent drags me by the hair, I go 'squee!', and my scalp is sore for two days," says Jamie, who's had long hair for all his adult life, practiced martial arts for much longer than that and is generally well aware of the problems of combining the former and the latter.
"You really should get in touch with your inner femininity."
"He is in touch with his inner femininity, honey," says Tarja. "It's just that his inner female is Granny Weatherwax."
"I thought he was more of a Nanny Ogg kind of guy," says Timo.
"At least take your swords, assholes," sighs Rudy. "Tarja, take the living room window. I'll take the door. Jamie..."
"...I'll take some tea," answers Jamie, laughing.
"You are aware that the guy just left Kouvola and is not gonna be here for a while, right?" I tell Rudy, but he is on a roll.
"Jamie, can I borrow your sword?" asks Timo.
"Be my guest."

After a few seconds fully equipped Timo salutes Rudy.

"My captain. Sir. If we are really getting medieval I feel I should be fully prepared, shield and sword and helmet and all."
"For fuck's sake. Put the wok down and take the saucepan off. Can't you guys take anything seriously?" From the way Rudy is doubled over, I figure he lost his capacity for taking anything seriously as well.

He takes a sip from a bottle of Koskenkorva, which he has gotten from Sinikka after making cute eyes at her. Timo takes some too. I pour a bit in my tea.

Katie makes a lot of little flames come out of her right hand and forearm and starts playing with them. She finds out that the fire doesn't hurt her and seems to protect her from the regular fire, but otherwise behaves like the regular fire. She opens a bag of marshmallows - where did Rudy find those in the middle of Lappeenranta? - and also finds out that she is almost as clumsy at roasting them on a Skills-generated fire as on a regular one.

Jamie borrows some of her fire and starts playing with it too. This leads to some bickering over whether he has regained enough strength to use energy like that, whether he should ask permission first, and who is worse at roasting marshmallows, during which I confiscate the marshmallows for their own good. After that they find out that they can't hurt each other with the fire, either, and wonder whether it has anything to do with the fact the both fires ultimately come from Katie. Jamie also finds out that scratching one's stomach with a fiery hand is a bad idea unless one wants holes in one's t-shirt.

Tarja asks Jamie to look for her potential Skills. He still doesn't know how to see them, but he tries to use them blind, by guessing, and finds telekinesis. Timo tells them to make themselves useful and get him a beer from the fridge, and they do.

Jamie's mind feels weird. One would expect that a person would feel guilty after killing somebody like that, or the opposite, bloodthurstily triumphant, if they are so inclined, which Jamie usually isn't. There is no guilt whatsoever in his mind, nor barbarian sense of triumph, just somewhat belated and highly misplaced compassion for the bomber. Weird. If I had killed that store-bombing asshole I'd probably feel guilty, but not sorry for him at all.

Rudy decides to give another inspirational speech:

"People! There is that guy coming over, and we don't know what the hell he wants, and it looks like the Community doesn't either. How do we know that he is not coming to kill us all? We have met a lot of new people today, and most of them weren't exactly bringing us flowers. We can take the fight to him, we can fly there and... Jamie! You set yourself on fire one more time and you'll be spending the night in the shithouse! Timo! Is there a shithouse somewhere around here? Good. We fly there...no, Mira, to the highway, not to the shithouse, and we set his car on fire..."
"...and then we ask questions from the corpse!" cheerfully continues Timo.
"No, we just set the car on fire and then ask questions from him when he gets out of there."
"Unless he sets us on fire in response," comments Tarja.
"Nobody is setting anyone on fire until I tell you to," says Katie. "Jamie, that includes you. Now look what you've done!" She points at a hole in his t-shirt. "We monitor the situation, if he becomes hostile, we attack."

Right. I am the only one who actually can monitor the situation.

"You said you could give the energy, too, and maybe Skills," I tell Jamie. "Now is the time to try this out. I want some of Katie's fire."
"Not the third arsonist in the house!" groans Rudy.

The feeling is unpleasant but not really painful, I don't think he has given me much. I wish a little flame to come out of my left index finger, and it does. Feels warm. I start roasting the marshmallows.

The man is still driving, close to entering Lappeenranta. I tell them as much. Five pairs of eyes are all around me looking at my properly roasted marshmallows with a puppylike expression.

"All right, all right," I say, and share the marshmallows.

Suddenly my Sight fades. Can't really See the man in the car, or anything around him. This happens just maybe for 20 seconds or so, and then I See him again. He is still driving towards us and looking around in a somewhat bewildered way, as if he has also sensed some disturbance in the Force. I look at the place he just passed, and I still can't See it. This is strange, because the wiki was very explicit about the fact that there is no place hidden from the Sight, but there seems to be. At least from my Sight. I wonder for a second whether to follow the Sight disturbance or tell somebody about it, then decide that the man who's gonna be here in about five minutes is a much higher priority.

"Tarja," I say. "I am sorry. There might be some things I'll have to say telepathically. He is parking at the entrance parking now, about 500 meters from here, and now that he is not driving he is surely looking at us."
"OK."

He is walking towards us.

"I am getting a really strange vibe from him now," I say, forgetting all about discretion and telepathic communication. "It's getting stronger and stronger!"
"Like what?" asks Timo.
"Like he is not real! Not from this world! Doesn't belong here!"
"That's some science fiction bullshit," starts Rudy. "Uhm..." he shuts up under the withering glances of pretty much everybody else.
"300 meters," I say. The unreal feeling grows.

"Feels real enough to me," says Jamie after a few seconds.
"Your mind-sense extends that far?"
"Yeah, and there is a real human being walking down that road." And then he adds telepathically: "She doesn't match the image Sinikka has shown us, though, and she is most certainly not a man."

Now I can see the intruder with my mind-sense, too. The Sight sees the eerie man, the mind-sense a somewhat weird young woman. I move towards the door to peek outside and find out what my physical eyes would see, but Timo grabs my hand and I think better of it.

The door opens without any knocking, and the person comes in. My Sight still sees a tall brown-haired man of about thirty. My eyes, corroborated by the mind-sense, see a very young woman, short, thin and with a Middle-Eastern look, black hair, brown eyes and tanned skin.

Whatever the creature is, it likes men and is very horny. The eyes stare in frank appreciation at Jamie's almost-flawless skin and shiny hair, then turn to the muscles on Timo's arms, his sharp cheekbones and blue eyes - she or it seems to have a thing for blue eyes, and then stop at Rudy, in total delight and rapture, the woman's mind open and very sincere about what it is exactly that she'd like to do with Rudy right here on the table. Jamie and Katie make a heroic but insufficient effort to maintain straight faces and shielded minds.

"She can't be more than eighteen," I think, rather irrelevantly.
"Twenty-one," comes the telepathic correction. I close my mind, although I am pretty sure that won't really help if she wants to read it. Jamie was wrong about us being the biggest concentration of power. The real power has just walked in.

She turns her eyes away from Rudy with a bit of difficulty, and addresses all of us:

"My name is Dana Kahan. I am here to rescue you."

Her mind is fully open, but most of what she is thinking is in Hebrew, which makes it a lot more difficult to read. I do my best to switch my own thinking to Finnish, and be as verbal as possible in my thoughts. I am sure Jamie is doing the same in Icelandic.

"From whom?" asks Katie.
"From the Community. They are not what they seem." Dana sounds like this should be obvious.

I take a very deep breath before addressing her. It's easy to stand up to Jamie or Katie or somebody else extremely powerful whom you'd known for years; it's a totally different thing to mouth off to some weird horny girl who'd just walked in and probably can destroy half the city with one fart.

"Speaking about things that aren't what they seem, why is my Sight seeing you as a man? And I suppose everyone else's Sight, too."
"I can make illusions for the Sight," the girl shrugs and rolls her eyes.
"The wiki says this cannot be done."
"There's a lot of things wiki says cannot be done. People with rare and unique Skills often don't mention them to others, and you shouldn't have either," she tells Jamie. "Which is one of the things that's wrong with the Community."
"I suppose the people who are watching us right now are hearing a totally different conversation?" asks Tarja.
"Naturally. My illusory papers are in the name of Matthew Adams. When I am here and awake, I can make an illusion for anyone who wants to See us. When I am away or asleep you will refer to me as Matt."
"Are you the only one who can do that?" asks Tarja.
"I wouldn't know, would I?" She rolls her eyes again.
"I am sure everyone who can hide themselves from the Sight in any way will show up here in the next 24 hours," says Jamie.

Dana turns towards him. "You are not what I expected." She sounds very disappointed.
"Sorry about that."
"You are so..." she stops here, and the word she thinks but doesn't say is "adult".
"Dana, since I've been the main topic of discussion on your IRC channel since Wednesday you must have known that I'll be 35 next Friday."
"Yes, but you didn't seem that way. Why do you behave like a teenage girl most of the time if you are an adult man? You read manga and play computer games and spend half your time wagging your tongue..."
"My dear child, what do you think adults do most of the time? Talk about blood pressure and income taxes?"
"Don't you call me a child! I am an officer in real life, and you are spending your time flying spaceships in an online game!"
"No, you are currently a first-year student of computer science, who is a bit young for her age and whose development wasn't helped much by having spent time in the army. I, on the other hand, am a real adult with a wife, a job, an income, a degree, an apartment and so on, and I don't need to pretend to only like serious things in order to be considered an adult anymore. Tried that for about a week when I was 17, by the way. Didn't work out even then."

The girl, somewhat deflated, snarls and opens her mouth, but Rudy interrupts her:

"Would you like some tea? Or maybe coffee?"
"Coffee, please." She inhales while talking, the way some Finns often do. "Do you have milk and sugar?"

I consider reading his mind, but then think better of it. The fact that he is really glad to meet her is obvious from looking at the strategic point on his trousers. I can see Tarja looking in the same direction.

"Remember what I told you about making you propose to Paavo Väyrynen?" I ask him telepathically.
"Oh, for fuck's sake!"
"I meant it literally."

"Oh, thank god," says Dana after tasting the coffee. "That British Airways stuff was totally horrible."
"You can't fly by yourself?" asks her Timo.
"Of course I can."
"Why British Airways, then?"

She rolls her eyes again. Must be her favorite gesture. Or expression, or whatever it is.

"You can walk, right? But you probably wouldn't wanna walk all the way to Israel, even if Syria weren't in between."
"Did it cost a lot on such a short notice?"
"You don't imagine that I paid for the ticket, do you?". Another eye roll.

"But please continue. What's wrong with the Community, and how do you intend to rescue us?" asks Jamie.

The girl looks at him suspiciously, like a child at an adult from whom she expects some dirty trick.

"They are all fake. Like you. They pretend to work for the common good, and each one of them only works for himself."
"I am shocked," says Tarja dryly. Dana glares at her.
"As you know, we are not a hierarchical organization and are not supposed to have a leader, and Michael Hamilton is that leader that we are not supposed to have. He'd sell his grandmother for an interesting scientific experiment, and probably has."
"What is the basis of his leadership?" asks Katie. "Is he the one with most powerful Skills?"
"No, that would be me," thinks Dana, but she says "It's hard to measure who is the most powerful in general, because you'd have to compare different Skills, you know. But the usual measure of the dick length in the Community is the range of one's Sight, and Michael has the Sight that can see anywhere on Earth. How far can you See?" she asks me.

I extend my Sight westwards. I can see London clearly, and a very hazy outline of Dublin. Nothing beyond that.

"I can almost see western Sweden!" I say proudly, shielding my mind. Dana believes me.

"I can see Israel," she says, even more proudly. "And most of North Africa, too."
"Is seeing the penguins in Antarctica enough to make one a leader?" asks Katie.
"No, Michael has other things working for him. He has a wide range of other Skills, and he has his own lab outside of Sidney, and a research grant, and is studying Skills there, even though the grant is for something else, so everyone thinks he knows more about the Skills than anyone else. He thinks he is really smart," she says with contempt.
"People who have their own labs usually are," says Katie, who does have her own lab as well. "And he really might know more about Skills than anyone else."
"Yeah, but he never tells anything useful to anyone else."
"Is there any status attached to being born with Skills, as opposed to acquiring them later?" asks Katie.
"You mean like being wizard-born and muggle-born in Harry Potter?" asks Dana and suddenly stops, blushes and puts her hand to her mouth.
"Go on, we have all read Harry Potter," Jamie smiles encouragingly and actually does something to her mind to put her at ease.
"Well, no, there is no status attached to being born with Skills, but there is some to having had Skills for a long time as opposed to having just acquired them. Knowing stuff about the Skills also gives you status, and Michael probably does know something, but he is not saying, or is lying anyway when he does say things. He just likes being considered a great authority, that's all. Elina, on the other hand, doesn't care at all for being considered a leader, or status, or any of that, as long as everyone is doing whatever she wants them to do. She generally wants peace at any price, especially if somebody else is paying."

Everybody is trying not to smile, but Dana continues without checking for reactions:

"Else is an old fox who doesn't give a shit about anyone or anything and spends all her time sailing. She actually set Michael on fire when he came to talk to her. Although knowing Michael I can understand her," Dana adds. "She is the kind of person who could do a lot for the Skill research, but doesn't want to. Perv is a real warlord, with an army and all, who wants to own all of the Central Asia."
"What did he offer you?" asks Jamie.
"What makes you think he offered anything?"
"He offered me a lot of money, a palace, and ten nuclear warheads. You are quite a bit more valuable."

What? Nuclear warheads? He never told us!

"Asshole! He offered me only five! Men always get better offers! I should ask for fifteen!" rages Dana mentally.

"I take it you are still thinking his offer over?" asks Jamie.
"And you are not?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I already have enough money, I can always get more without becoming a Central Asian warlord, I don't like the palace's location and I can't think of any personal use for the nuclear warheads, especially ones mounted in Pakistan. What am I gonna do, point them at Delhi and tell them 'bring me your best curry or else'?"
"You could transport them here."
"And keep them in our flat in Pasila? Damn, and here I thought Katie is annoyed enough by all the other martial art supplies under our bed. What do you need them for?"
"For my country."
"I think your country already has some. Are you gonna contact your high command and tell them 'hey, I got us a few nuclear warheads'?"

Dana, who has clearly intended no such thing, blushes intensely.

"Anyway," she continues. "Wei would like to be the emperor of China, but is currently having troubles sorting out his mom, sister, three girlfriends and employer. Alicia is mostly into making money, nobody knows how. She becomes quite aggressive if you ask her. Diego is sort of OK, I guess, except for being really old and really hypocritical, but at least he tries to be nice."
"How old is he?" asks Tarja.
"Forty," answers Dana, then looks at Rudy and blushes and covers her mouth again, obviously remembering that he is thirty-six. Jamie puts her at ease again, rather forcefully, and she doesn't resist.
"Sinikka is all into politics and would do anything to get elected," continues the girl, and goes on to describe various faults of the other members of the Community, from Gilad the sex maniac to Olafur the prudish hypocrite, from Jessica the stupid American cheerleader cow to Paul the Liberian war criminal.

"Sorry," says Katie in the end. "They sound like, uhm, people. Except for a couple of them, anyway."
"But they keep lying! And pretending! And hiding stuff from each other"
"That's what people do," points out Jamie. "You surely must have noticed. Matthew."

The girl sighs and concedes the point. I concentrate on following the illusion that she is creating for the Sight. In the illusion the adult and male "Matthew" is talking with us about the weather. Oh, dear...

"Are there any nice people in the Community?" asks Jamie.
"Yeah... I guess... Sarah Morelli, Nate, Peilin, Sachiko, Xiulian, John Russell, Jacqueline, Mary O'Connor, Inez, Siu-Kwong, Renate, Mark Henderson, Sophie... Hanne is not bad either, even though she is a bit of a wet hen..."
"You've just given me a list of the active and semi-active Community channel users who are about your own age. With the notable exceptions of Yossi, whom you've met in person, and Wei, who keeps trying to flirt with you."

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Lauri> What the fuck is going on? This doesn't make any sense at all.
<Jessica> Are they still talking about the weather?
<Lauri> No, they switched to Manchester United, and they keep getting it all wrong.
<Nate> I'd get it all wrong too, if I were talking about Manchester United.
<Lauri> Yes, but Rudy and Jamie were talking about it yesterday morning, too, and then they knew what they were talking about, or at least Rudy did.
<Elina> Maybe we found a new Skill: making people stupid.
<Sarah> Or making them forget everything they know about soccer, cool!
<Lauri> Oh, shut up...
<Sarah> What does this Matthew guy want?
<Elina> World peace and a lot of money.
<Sarah> Now I have Coke in my nose and in my keyboard. Thanks a lot.
<Else> Come on, I also want world peace and a lot of money.
<Yossi> I'd take local peace and a small raise, too.
<Elina> A better question is where this Matthew came from. He doesn't sound like Skills are a new thing to him, but nobody's seen him before.
<Nate> Maybe he'd had Skills for a while, but just got the Sight recently?
<Else> That would explain it.
<Sarah> What have they been talking about? I mean, about Skills, Sight and stuff like that?
<Hanne> They haven't.
<Lauri> Let's see: the man acquired the Sight, Saw another person with the Sight, flew there, drove there, and is not talking about it?
<Sarah> They have probably been talking about it telepathically, and the whole spoken conversation is just a decoy.
<Lauri> A pretty pathetic decoy if you ask me.
<Jessica> I guess they didn't ask you. :)
<Sarah> Or did not expect an MU fan watching them.
<Elina> The fake Sinikka is still reading the wiki.
<Else> Are you sure it's not the real Sinikka?
<Elina> Positive.
<Else> Any trace of Michael and Dana?
<Nate> None whatsoever. Could they have gone somewhere together?
<Elina> Where, the moon?
<Nate> How deep can the Sight see through the Earth?

* * *

"I'll make more tea and some sausages," says Jamie. "Sorry they are not kosher, but they are pretty good."
"I don't care about fucking kosher," says Dana aggressively.
"Better manners would serve you well," he points out.
"We Israelis have no use for manners."
"I've been to Israel many times and people there have as much use for manners as everyone else. They have little use for formality, but this is not the same thing. For example most Israelis I know would have expressed disdain for kosher rules with pretty much the same words, but in a totally different tone. 'I don't care about fucking kosher,'" he makes a fairly good imitation of my cousin Lior. "Here 'fucking' is used to indicate a sort of laid-back attitude and familiarity. The way you use it is 'how dare you imply that I might want something kosher'. You meant it that way, too."

She stares at him incredulously.

"So what if I did?"
"First of all, it's unwarranted, since we have no idea about your possible relationship with kashrut," answers Katie for him. "Second, it makes people think worse of you. Third, it elicits lectures on the appropriate use of the word 'fucking'."
"I think the people who pay attention to such things are fucking fucked in the head."
"As opposed to people who ignore the reality in favor of how things should be?" asks Katie.
"Leave her in peace," sighs Rudy, struggling with an erection and blushing.
"Dana," says Jamie, in a fairly friendly tone, "you are not very good at it, but you can learn."
"I obviously cannot."
"Of course you can. It was always harder for you than for most people, so you figured it must be a useless skill. I understand. I feel the same way about driving."
"One thing, though," I say, "you apparently can't read expressions or voice tone or body language well, but you have had your Skills for a couple of years now, so you can see the feedback directly when you are talking to someone. Why don't you learn from that?"

She starts crying.

"Because it's absolutely horrible! People keep lying and lying and never say what they mean, and hide stuff from each other all the time! I try not to read people's minds if I can help it."
"You are right. People need their privacy. But since you can't read their reactions to whatever you are doing in their faces, it would make some sense to read them from their minds," says Jamie.
"Don't encourage her to read our minds," I hiss at him telepathically.
"Privacy is just for people who want to hide the horrible things they do! Decent people don't need privacy if they have nothing to be ashamed of! You only need privacy because you are a pervert and do unspeakable things in bed!"
"Very loud ones, too!" adds Rudy, grinning. Tarja elbows him.
"They are fairly enjoyable unspeakable things," says Jamie, "and you did not read about them in my mind now, you read about them in a BDSM forum where I post under my own name. Which should have probably told you how private a topic that is for me."
"You want private and shameful? How about that your sister used to fuck you when you were a little kid?"

This is apparently rather shocking news to everyone except Katie and me.

"This was private, yes, and you shouldn't have said it," says Jamie coldly. "This isn't shameful, not for me personally. For my sister, yes, and I am sure she'll thank you if our grandmother was listening in on this."
"She wasn't," reminds him Timo. "Sight illusion."
"Good. And speaking about non-consentual sex and shameful things, the only time you had sex in your life was last year, just to see what it was like, with a guy named Yuval, while being his commanding officer. He only agreed because he was afraid of you, and you know it."

Dana starts sobbing again and lets her mental shield, which was not very good to begin with, down. Among the many images that are on the surface is as image of herself as a bride in a western-style wedding. Given out by Jamie. To Rudy.

"I need to talk to you!" hisses Rudy, and drags Jamie outside.

"Dana," says Katie. "No offense, but if you lay one single finger on my brother, I'll kill you."
"You meant your husband, right?"
"I meant what I said. My husband, despite all the appearances that he likes to cultivate to the contrary, is perfectly able to take care of himself. My brother, on the other hand, and also despite all the appearances to the contrary, is a fairly fragile person recovering from a serious depression. He really doesn't need more excitement in his life right now."
"I don't know if you can read my mind now, but thanks for saying this, even though it won't help," thinks Tarja.
"But we are made for each other!" thinks Dana. "Does this warning mean that I actually have a chance?" She cheers up.

"Your warning has been just taken as an encouragement," I tell Katie silently.
"Shit. You don't think we can talk sense into her, can we?"
"Don't know. Try. Jamie might. She is thinking of him as some kind of a father figure. But please don't kill her."
"Wasn't thinking of it. But it's gonna be hard. You have surely noticed that Rudy is attracted to power, and she is power."

I try to follow the conversation outside all the time. I am using my Sight, but they are almost loud enough to be heard without it.

"What are you doing?" hisses Rudy! "You are not her father!"
"Whoever is her father is clearly not doing his job!"
"It's not up to you to decide! You let your real daughter be raised as an Irishwoman!"
"Megan is not my daughter and you know it!"

Rudy is just being mean. Megan is a girl who was born to Jamie's ex-girlfriend Diane about 9 months after their break-up, and whose facial features bear very strong resemblance to Jamie's own, and Diane understandably tried to name him as a father. He maintainted that he wasn't, and a DNA test confirmed that he wasn't. He tends to get angry when the issue is raised.

"Anyway," says Rudy, "I am really falling in love with her." I assume he means Dana and not Megan. "Please don't get in the way."
"First of all, you are hurting Tarja. Second, you will end up hurting Dana. Third, she will hurt you. She is very young, very powerful and very inexperienced. With all due respect, a young girl's first experience of a relationship shouldn't be you."
"And anyone's experience of a father figure definitely shouldn't be you. I love her. Do you know what the word means?"
"Yes, I do. You love Dana, you love me, you loved Debbie and Rebecca, you love anyone who has a lot of power."
"Uhm. Speaking about Debbie. She might show up in Helsinki."
"What? You summonned the Chaotic Evil? Why the hell?" Debbie was Rudy's first wife. 'Chaotic Evil' is a very appropriate name for her.
"We were talking on IRC, and I told her we were going to St. Petersburg, and she told me she was gonna be there too during the weekend, and we agreed to see each other. And now we are not there, and I told her I can't see her after all, so she said she wants to see me anyway and is coming to Helsinki."
"Rudy. Last time I saw her I said that next time I'll kill her. It was not a figure of speech."
"Do you have to scare away all my women?"
"Only dangerous ones."
"You don't have to see Deb."
"You better pray I don't."
"I think she is afraid of you."
"She is not afraid of anyone. Rudy, don't start it with Dana either. It will be a disaster."
"OK, I won't."
"You are lying."
"Of course I am." Rudy smiles, hugs Jamie, and goes back inside. Jamie sighs and follows.

We are still drinking and eating inside. Dana doesn't touch the sausage, for whatever reason. After the meal she starts to recite Birkat Hamazon, the after-meal blessing, silently.

I start the prayer out loud, but she snarls at me.
"Shut up! Why are you saying it? You don't even believe in God!"
"I find it a socially pleasant habit."
"Well, I don't!"
"Do you believe in God?"
"No."

Whatever. I shrug. Rudy draws Dana's attention away from me, for which I am thankful.

"Can you help me decipher the religious and patriotic subtexts?" asks Jamie telepathically. "All I understand is that she was raised in a religious family, that she resents it, and that she is a lot more proud of her army service than most Israelis are."
"I am not sure I understood the religious subtext myself, and I am afraid to read her. But she comes from the part of Israeli society that does not normally serve in the army, that's why she is so proud of it. Act of rebellion, you know."
"Here is what I've read, but I don't fully understand it." He shows me some of her mind from memory.
"She was born to two very religious people from two very different religious communities, Lubavicher and Baladi Yemenite. I am not sure how her parents happened to get married, but it has probably caused uproar in both families. She used Lubavicher liturgy right now, but thinks of herself as a Baladi, except that she really would like to think of herself as an atheist but there is a lot of residual religion there."
"She has a very strong picture of romantic love in adversity as a norm."
"She would," I sigh audibly, which I probably shouldn't have.
"I'll try to do something."
"I don't think you can. Don't piss her off, she is more powerful than you."

Jamie makes some coffee and invites Dana to the sofa in the corner, and she comes quite eagerly, especially considering that she'd much rather have sex with Rudy. They talk about life, and I see her opening to him, smiling, even playful. She even lets him try to borrow some of her Skills, and together they figure out that shielding her mind from his reading also works to shield her from his attempts to borrow her Skills and consume her energy. At some point she opens, though, and he borrows some of her flying Skill and promptly flies his ass into the ceiling lamp, without much damage to either.

After that they become more serious and start talking about sex and relationships. Jamie actually gives her a lot of pretty good advice. Dana listens to him, is overjoyed at both the attention and the advice, files it for future reference, and has no intention whatsoever to follow it in this particular case.

"I can take care of myself," she says.
"You think so, but you can't. The difference in power is too great."
"You don't seem the type who thinks women are much weaker than men."
"I don't. The power doesn't come from gender, of from some authority of an older person, but from experience. He has seen a lot of young women in his life; you have a lot less experience with middle-aged men. Or any men, for that matter."
"How do I gain the experience if I never do anything?"
"First you either need to become comfortable with a particular man, or comfortable with the idea of casual sex. You are neither, so far. You also need to learn how to have fun. Young people are so serious, and you are more serious than most."
"Were you serious at my age?"
"Not as serious as you, but a lot more serious than nowadays."

She really is very touched by his concern, but at the same time she is shamelessly flirting with Rudy telepathically. Rudy has that expession on his face from which you usually know that a man has an erection without looking at his trousers. I suddenly feel like doing something very undignified to him, like throwing whipped cream in his face. Fortunately - or maybe unfortunately, I need some kind of a release - unlike Jamie, I have no illusions that I can stop two horny people from fucking each other.

Tarja and Katie seem very annoyed, but Tarja is taking this much better than I expected. She believes that old age and guile beat youth and enthusiasm.

"I'll go for a walk," I say and get up.
"There is nothing here," says Katie.
"Yeah. I know. I just need to have a little time by myself." I have actually checked that there is nobody in the little forest between the holiday cottages and the nearest residential neighborhood.
"I'll go with you!" says Timo enthusiastically.
"The words 'by myself' mean that I want to go alone, honey. But if you want to go for a walk with me, we can do that when I get back. I won't be long."
"At least take the girl's best friends with you," he takes two pistols, checks that both are fully loaded, and hands them to me.
"There is nobody there. I checked." I take the pistols for his peace of mind. "I can read minds. And see very, very far," I remind him as I go out.

Weird. We've known each other for eight years, and Timo has always been a gun enthusiast and visited a shooting range at least once a week. In all that time, I have never heard him refer to guns as means of self-defense, only as the equipment used for his favorite sport. On the other hand it's not suprising that he is paranoid, considering the today's events.

The forest is small and boring, but not scary at all. It smells of early spring. There are no people in the forest or in the other cottages. No large animals, either.

I am not trying to use my Sight for anything, but I notice at once when it is suddenly extinguished. WTF? I've only had this sense for a few hours now, but it feels weird and blind without it. Mind-sense feels like it probably still works, but there is nobody within its range.

Except that now there is. A figure is standing about 30 meters from me, probably a man but might be an illusion. He (or she?) is shielding his mind and at the same time preventing me from seing him physically properly, so I only see a large dark silhouette. I shield my mind, and the illusion dissipates, but it's still to dark to make out anything.

I try to reach out with my mind-sense to Jamie's but it's too far. I am on my own, and I back down from the figure, all the time screaming for help telepathically and realizing that my telepathy only works within the mind-sense range too.

The dark figure charges me physically, lunges, trying to get a hold of me. I grab a gun and put four bullets in the center of the attacker's mass. He (she? it?) is at least woundable, the shielded mind cries out in pain, and disappears, together with the body.

My Sight is instantly back to normal. From our cottage I see Dana flying towards me, followed closely by Timo with another two guns and Rudy with a sword. Jamie, Katie and Tarja and all running down the road, armed with a sword, knives and frying pan. I smile at the thought of Katie, who can make lakes evaporate and people combust, grabbing a frying pan as weapon.

"What happened? Are you OK?" everybody is yelling.
"Somebody appeared out of nowhere and attacked me. I shot them, and they disappeared. They did something to my Sight, too. I couldn't See anything. I mean the Sight that I got today, not my eyes."
"What did they look like?" asks Rudy.
"Looked like a big guy, but might have been an illusion. I didn't see the face, and the mind was shielded too. The attack was purely physical, though. He just jumped at me."
"What did he want?" asks Katie.
"He didn't say, I didn't ask."

Dana is silent, the look of intense concentration on her face. I realize that she is searcing the area with her Sight.

"Nothing here," she says. "And nobody. The nearest person with Skills is Sinikka and she is at home."
"Except if there are people with Skills who cannot be seen as such," reminds her Katie. "Like us."
"Did you notice a place where the Sight doesn't work when you were driving into town?" I ask Dana. "I was, uhm, following your progress, and at some point I lost you for a second, and when I found you again you looked like you noticed something weird."
"Yeah. I thought it was some glitch in my own mind, but I just looked there now and the spot was still there."
"Maybe we should go check it out?" I ask, and fail to see enthusiatic support of this idea on anyone's face.
"Haven't you watched any horror movies?" asks Rudy. "A bunch of daft people go to check out something scary and get eaten."
"Can we wait till Elina is here?" asks Katie.
"The neighbors have probably called the police," says Jamie. "Maybe we should go home. Maybe we should call the police too."

Tarja calls the police and tells them that we heard something that sounded like shots. "It's probably nothing, but there was one guy shooting here today already, so we are understandably scared, sorry about that." After that we probably have to pretend to be scared, which in my case isn't very difficult, and go back to the cottage and hide the guns.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Elina> Holy shit!
<Diego> What happened?
<Elina> A whole area of about 50-meter radius was invisible to the Sight.
<Lauri> This shouldn't be possible.
<Elina> And the prize for stating the obvious goes to...
<Diego> What's happening? What are they talking about?
<Elina> Somebody who can block or divert the Sight appeared and attacked Mira, she shot him or her, and the person disappeared.
<Diego> Ugh.
<Elina> Now they are wondering what happened, and they say that there is a spot somewhere in town that you can't see by Sight.
<Sinikka> I found it! I am gonna go check it out.
<Elina> Sinikka, don't.
<Diego> Or at least take some of the others with you.
<Elina> She ran off. Bloody Rambo. I'll try to talk sense into her.
<Diego> What is this Matthew guy doing?
<Lauri> He'd been talking with Jamie about computers.
<Diego> Does he actually know anything about them?
<Lauri> Hard to say, without any of the computer people present.
<Elina> After Matthew arrived all the conversation there seems a bit psychedelic, I think they are really just talking telepathically about anything improtant.

* * *

The police come in less than five minutes, visit the cottage briefly, realize that we haven't seen anything, and search the little forest with no results. They return to the cottage, tell us to call them if we see or hear anything more, and go away.

Everyone wants to know if I am all right, and I sort of am, for a person who just shot somebody, anyway. A very creepy somebody.

Rudy promptly hands me the remains of his booze, saying that I need it more than he does. Love Rudy. Dear cousin.

Dana thinks we should post some kind of guard, and volunteers for the first shift. Nobody is very enthusiastic at the idea, partly because everyone wants to sleep, party because they find Dana more suspicious than whatever can come from outside - although after the appearance of the Sight-extinguishing person I beg to differ, but on the other hand I did shoot him four times, so he probably has other stuff to do now - partly because we know we are being watched 24/7 anyway, and partly because even Dana herself is not taking her watch too seriously, but instead has a cunning plan to commandeer Jamie's laptop and all the episodes of Firefly contained therein and spend her watch watching Firefly instead of the mysterious attackers. Tarja pretends to volunteer for the second guard shift, and Dana pretends to promise to wake her up.

Jamie starts to snore, and Katie orders him to bed, and also goes to their room herself. He seems to have some trouble undressing and falling asleep, or at least figuring out the proper order of those two actions, and she helps him out. He opens one glowing eye at her.

"Now that the scars in my ass have miraculously healed, do you think we should try one of those unspeakable things tonight?" he asks sleepily but hopefully.

Katie's response to that is eminently speakable but totally unprintable, and a minute later they are both fast asleep.

Rudy is still sitting in front of the table with his erection face on. Tarja is glowering at him. Dana is looking hopeful.

"You guys can go to bed," thinks Tarja, who has finally figured out that she can do the telepathic communication at least one-way with anyone who has mind-sense.
"You sure?" I try to convey with a facial expression.

She makes a gesture that means sleeping and points to the two of us.

"I think we should go to bed," I tell Timo.
"But I am not sleepy!" he lies.
"Good. Then we are gonna do unspeakable things."

We are not really in the mood for any unspeakable things, or at least I am not, and Timo doesn't insist.

"Are you sure it was a good idea to leave those three alone?" he asks me.
"I asked Tarja, and she thinks it is."
"We should get rid of the little sociopath."
"She is not a sociopath, she is a teenager."
"Is there a difference?"

I hug him, and he buries his cute pointy nose in my neck, his soft blond hair tickling my breasts. He falls asleep almost immediately, and a whole three seconds later I fall asleep with his buttock in my hand.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Sinikka> Hi.
<Hanne> Sinikka, are you OK?
<Elina> Sinikka, I told you not to go there!
<Sinikka> What's the big deal, the spot just disappeared when I got there.
<Wei> Good morning everyone!

* * *