SOCK DUTY - PART V

Meganie still looks cute in the oversized jumper and longer skirt, sailor collar neatly draped over the top, but I’ll never forget those few glorious moments of the uniform being tighter and shorter in all the right places.

Honestly, just getting to see her as a girl and not a genderless science blob was refreshing. Nothing sexual either. Just an appreciation of my colleague for more than her mind… OK, so a little sexual, just a bit. 

We take turns infiltrating the high-school in generic current year approximation to my own timeline.

I coach Meg – her alias for the day – through pretending to be a lost transfer student, the nano machine transceivers working overtime as a walkie-talkie system. I monitor her from across the street with binoculars, while wearing the perviest cargo shorts and string vest combo I could scavenge.

If you’re going to be doing something sketchy you might as well look the part. 

Thankfully, neither of us are rumbled by the time my little rookie spy has a good feel for the layout of the school. Of course she’s already looked over floor plans to prepare, but there’s always a difference once you’re in the field. 

After she’s securely sequestered in the library – her natural habitat, I feel, in a school setting – I open the rooftop fire exit and return to one of the Agency's transporter arrays.

Quickly changing into my business casuals in front of some perplexed technicians, and actual heroes on their way to slay a lovecraftian horror that's ended up in a world of puritanical pacificists and is making them do all sorts of naughty things beyond their prudish comprehension, but they look at me like I'm the weird one for swapping outfits.

OK, fine, the creeper combo I came back through in kinda deserve the derision.

Then, as the last of my audience dissipates, I queue up the science equipment storage cupboard, on a different floor to Meganie in the school, and effectively teleport across the street with only a minor pitstop.

“I’m in!” Always wanted to say that. “Are you receiving me? Over.” 

Smirking to myself while I fill a trolley with titration tubes and various solutions.

Precipitate experiments generally get people more excited, because Bunsen burners equal fire, and fire is cool, but titrations are boring liquid ratios with lots of math, so no one will pay me any attention out of fear its for their lesson. Meganie would definitely be into it though.

If I have to go as far as actually doing a session for my cover, I’m sure I can remember enough to bluff my way through, but it’ll keep a lot of eyes off me otherwise. Even thinking about molarity equations is mind numbing. I’ll be invisible. 

“Mm, er… y-yes?” My trainee sounds awkward and adorable in my ear, her hushed voice almost like ASMR from being in the library “D-do we have to say ‘Over’ at the end?” 

I consider teasing her, making a whole song and dance about it being mandatory on mission, but I alleviate her concerns that I was just having a bit of fun. Our first team outing needs to go well, so it felt like a suitable occasion to bust out the operative lingo.

It’s still early, school proper hasn’t started yet, so we post ourselves by windows overlooking the entrance to try and identify our target.

Instead of a certain killer notebook, some magical mind control memo pad has been dropped into a relatively normal dimension by a mischievous minor deity looking for some action. Real take over the world kinda stuff if used by the wrong person, and as there was no alert from our system about it existing here inert for however long, it must have only recently been picked up by someone to get flagged now. The threat is real!

“Research pinpointed this school as the epicentre of events.” Unfortunately the memo has already been used a few times. Enough to trigger a disruption in this timeline’s trajectory, “We just need to work out who has the pad and retrieve it. You copy?” 

I busy myself setting up lab equipment at each bench in the random classroom I’ve chosen as my vantage point. There’s no timetables anywhere, so I could be dead wrong about there being a science lesson here first thing, but I can make excuses about it being my first day if I’m caught. A tongue lashing by a slightly inconvenienced teacher is nothing to a seasoned customer service worker. Gotta be thick skinned to deal with the public, especially during sales. 

“Uhm…” uncertainty fogging Meganie’s mind, “how do we do that?” 

Fair point.

We’re in a school. Everyone is going to have several notebooks. We can’t screen every bag as they’re coming in, wait for someone to dip, and collar them to find out why- 

Actually, that’s exactly what we should do!

“Has anyone seen you yet?” I leave the room of half set up clamp stands and hurry to the nearest doorway. 

“Th-the librarian, a couple of early morning club members, and-“ I cut my colleague off.

“Damn, alright... Come to room 302 and put away the lab equipment for me. I’m changing the plan. No time to explain.” In a flash, I’m back at the Returns Agency. The dithering confused sounds of my ex-supervisor fumbling to make sense of the situation echo in my ears, interdimensional distortion be damned.

It takes a while to sort everything out, but my return to the high-school in another world is basically instantaneous. Meganie hasn’t even had time to leave the library yet, while I’ve been busy procuring tables, scanners, and a whole new costume.

“Keep an eye out for anyone that tries to evade the queue I’m going to make for getting into school, OK?” She’ll be my spotter in case I miss anything. Can’t do everything myself. That’s what teammates are for.

* * *

“Uhm, excuse me?” The first trickle of confused students make it to my barricade at the entrance, “What’s happening?” 

To them, I look like a police officer manning something like airport security. Pretty intimidating first thing in the morning.

“Good morning,” it’s only right I try to put them at ease and paint a kindly picture of law enforcement, “we’ve had some reports of illicit items being brought onto the premises.”

Staying vague means I can cast a broad net and inspect everything. It’ll take a long time, especially during the rush right before the bell, but I can flash a badge and staff should leave me alone.

The girls look concerned, but I smile and wave them forward. “Can you empty out your bags and pockets into a tray, then pop it into the scanner please. Just think of it like when you’re going on holiday.”

Even if it is still school, it'll give them something to gossip about.

I pick up a prop workbook and flick through to show how I’ll even need them to take items out from between the pages, to see that they’re not trying to hide anything inside. Gives all the spy cams and sensors a chance to pick up anything unusual on the pages, like a list of names for example. 

As expected, the screening process takes hours. Teachers come and go, confused about my being on campus, demanding my superior’s information to check the legitimacy of everything. I am already well prepared for this. Fake warrants, an automated hotline response stating that this is part of a larger ongoing operation, and local police are so busy right now that no one can be spared to answer their call on the matter. It’s deceitful as heck, but it keeps our cover intact. 

Other than staff being disgruntled and students getting an excuse to skive and chatter, even with being a little put out by the invasion of privacy, there’s no real disruption or push back throughout the morning.

“A-another one’s leaving the back end of the queue.” Meganie chirps up in my ear every so often, taking pictures with her smartphone like any normal school girl, like should would normally on her tablet.

Same as everyone else filtering into the classrooms and gathering at the windows anyway. Perfect social camoflague.

“That makes, what, ten? The follow up searches should be pretty quick. Most of them’ll only be cigarettes or whatever.” I smile and hand over the boy’s backpack I’ve just finished rifling through, he accepts it with a grunt. 

As expected, we turn up nothing with the screening process, other than a shortlist of follow-ups. Though a part of me had hoped it would be successful. 

Unexpectedly, even the follow-up individual searches net us nothing but vapes and a couple of porn mags. Who even buys these anymore? Confiscated for our archives of course, the inter-dimensional library of Alexandria. 

“Well damn…” I kvetch while packing away all the ‘police’ equipment. I’d have thought some arrogant antagonist would have made a move by now. No matter how smart, getting cornered like this should have prompted some reaction, “What do we do now?” 

Meganie has been roped into a tour of the school by some classmates. To maintain her cover as Meg, a potential transfer student checking out the campus before settling on where to enrol, she has to go along with it. 

Ah, the charmed life of a high-school girl… even though she’s older than me.

“Ken! Ken! I wanna go here! Can we sign the enrolment form? Please!.” She comes barrelling up to me as I finish sending things back through a cupboard… using my real name! 

“Err, are you talking to me?” Gotta keep up the facade, cannot let it slip that we know each other. Operational security and all that.

Meganie blinks in mock dismay, pouts adorably, then starts tugging on the webbing of my police uniform, “Of course I’m talking to you, Ken, I need you to come sign the paperwork for me.” She turns on these big pink puppy dog eyes – I melt – while trying to drag me down the hallway. 

“Hey, I think you have me confused with someone else!” I try to emphasize the confused part, because for her to break the fourth wall and acknowledge my existence on mission, that’s no good.

However, my uncharacteristically bubbly trainee pouts even harder. “But, I need a parent’s signature to go here, and I really want to attend, but I’ve got no one, and you’re the only person I know so…” she sulks like a teenager not getting her own way. 

She’s acting as if she really is a high-schooler! The Mind Control Memo! It's on campus. Either whoever has it snuck some scraps through inside their watch, or… 

“…it’s not a student!” the words tumble out my mouth.

I never thought to search staff.

I’d fixated on the notebook’s user being a student, because, well, what would you expect in a high-school. But, there was no signs of some dumb adolescent boy turning the female cohort into his own personal harem, no mass public humiliation of bullies and popular kids by the socially ostracized, none of the usual insane over the top stuff you’d expect to have happen.

Meganie's eyes glitter red, turning to the point of tears.

“Oh, it’s OK...” I comfort her as best I can, feeling awkward about what would look like a cop inappropriately touching a child on school grounds, “...take me to the office and let’s get you enrolled, aye?” 

She blubbers for a few more moments then smiles more earnestly than I’ve ever seen from her. “Thank you, Ken. N-now I’ll have somewhere to belong…” sniffling through every word.

I'm guided through the corridors with purpose, the sounds of after school clubs wrapping up for the day as the sun begins to blush the sky. I feel a nostalgia for my own youth tug within me.

She doesn’t take me to the staff room.

My adjusted deduction proving almost correct.