HIGHER EDUCATION by Legion The percussion of a basketball pounding concrete was what drew his attention away from his work - but that wasn't what got Staff Sergeant Patrick J. O'Bannon out of his chair, out from behind his desk of papers waiting to be graded and moving toward the playground. It was a sound he'd heard often, both in his twenty-plus years of service in the United States Army, in his three years of teaching sixth through eighth grades at U.S. Army installations from Kentucky to California - but this would be the first time he'd heard it here at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was the sound of a fight. They were ringed by a circle of their peers, the two combatants, as they rolled and tussled in the neatly trimmed grass that exhaled the verdant promise of oncoming summer. They tumbled - first one on top, then the other - each straining for supremacy in a tangle of limbs and clothing and cheers or shouted strategies from the ring of excited teenaged onlookers taking in this battle of the sexes. The girl, drenched in sweat and shaking with the thrill of the contest, was striking in her formative good looks as she pinned the boy under her, grinning ferally down at him through a wild mane of long dark hair, gray-green eyes shining out of that forest of tangles at him like those of a wild animal. Her limbs - slim, graceful and clad in hand-me-down cargo shorts and old brown Army-issue t-shirt - twined around his, her young breasts and firm abdominal muscles pressing into him with the full weight of her elfin 100 pound frame as she stretched his hands above his head. A bittersweet look shaded the boy's eyes as he fought valiantly to leverage himself free of his predicament, and realized the effort might take more than he had left. He wasn't a weakling, by any means, at five foot eight and one-forty. He had six inches and forty pounds on her, that wasn't the issue - the problem was she was just flat out stronger than he was, pure and simple, and he'd readily admit it if only to challenge any would-be detractor to find out for himself. He really was giving it his best, but she just took it and kept at him for more. The time was rapidly approaching, now, that he just wouldn't have anything left. He contented himself to sneak a glance down the girl's shirt. "Charlie!" she gaped, shocked at his audacity, and instantly released him, rolling off to his side - but smiled, secretly thrilled at the attention, while she was sure he couldn't see it. "Sorry, Jackie." The boy sat up, rubbing the feeling back into his arms. "I... uh... " he really couldn't think up an excuse. A taller boy in the audience called out, "Aaaaaaaaaaaand the winnaaaaaaaar, by red-blooded American horn-dog-nesssssss... Charrrrrrr-leeeeeee Quinnnnnnnnnn!" He started to give a victory whoop as Charlie gathered his feet to stand up - But Charlie didn't quite make it there. Jackie lashed her sneakers around the boy's middle in a sudden sneak-attack, twisting her hips to lay him flat on his back, and turned her hip into him to add her lower body weight to the hold - not squeezing, simply holding him there. Charlie sighed, but didn't panic or try to pry himself free of her smooth, firm thighs. Mostly because he knew he didn't have a chance in hell of actually getting loose unless and until she decided to turn him loose, but also because, over the years they'd been wrestling around like this... well, they'd always enjoyed it. But now that their bodies were undergoing this strange and wonderful adolescent metamorphosis... Well, they still enjoyed it - but the reasons behind that were starting to change quite a bit, now, weren't they? ‘deed so, as Mr. Keller - Jackie's dad - had said to Charlie many a time. Jackie leaned in to speak softly in his ear. "You better give, Charlie." "What for?" he turned his head so that their lips were nearly touching, his brown eyes narrowed in challenge. He wasn't entirely clued in on the signals the girl wrapped around him was sending. He mistook her deep, fast breathing for exertion, the deliberate physical closeness for the same old sibling comfortableness they'd shared having grown up together since toddler-hood, misread the way her hand brushed his face to curl her fingers into his blonde hair at the back of his head for an attempt at intimidation. Mistook the sigh, the mild flush of her cheeks and the roll of her eyes for exasperation, when in truth it was the farthest thing in the world from it. Our boy Charlie thought it was only his mind that was changing about the nature of things between them. So he repeated, "What for, huh? Y'know? This actually kinda feels good." "Grrrrrr!" she clamped down with her surprisingly powerful adductors, lifting her chin and resting it atop his head, which she had drawn in against the brown cotton t-shirt, then pressed more firmly until his mouth and nose were trapped between the already well-developed breasts beneath the fabric. "Give!" Reflexively, she tilted her head back and indulged a pre-orgasmic moan - mercifully managing not to make a sound. But the look on her face spoke volumes to everyone who could see it. Charlie missed out on that. "Whoa!" the tallish, skinny "referee" from a moment ago went slack-jawed at what he was seeing. "Oh, my God..." a pretty young girl blushed, crossed her arms over her own ample young bust, and actually took a step back. Charlie felt himself stiffen at this wholly unprecedented form of attack. He tried to push himself free; this certainly had an effect, but not the one he'd hoped for. Instead of shaking himself loose of her, his exertions only resulted in her tightening the respective holds on him. She moaned again, and this time he did hear it... but, sadly, only misinterpreted it again. Thinking he'd inadvertently hurt her somehow, he gave a muffled surrender, and she, very reluctantly and with not a little embarrassment, let him go. "Gotcha good this time, twerp!" she laughed, winking at the spectators, who only stared back in open-mouthed shock. A few of them started to chuckle, taken in by her open-ended suggestion that she'd been play-acting her arousal. She climbed to her feet. "Okay, twerp, time for the victory dance!" The aluminum common-area door clanged shut just as O'Bannon's regulation-issue boots crunched out into the patch of gravel bordering the basketball court. Thus it was that he only barely caught that certain peculiar sound, making it difficult for him to interpret just what it had been. Two possible identifications occurred to him simultaneously - the first was flatly impossible on a playground full of middle-schoolers. The second was that a girl was being hurt, and badly by the sound of it. His fists balled, blood coursing to his face in an angry rush as a cool Spring breeze whisked over his wide, regulation-shaved scalp as if it could apply any kind of balm at all. "Whoa! Whoa! Check this shit out!" the tall kid announced, as if everyone else couldn't already see for themselves what Jackie called her "Victory Dance". Charlie stepped over her as she waited, a hand braced on each thigh, then sat astride her neck as her hands came up, one under the length of each of his thighs. Then, slowly, she stood, cheers from the crowd encouraging her as she began to dance, slowly, in a lazy circle. Charlie grinned down at her - he preferred to imagine their - fans - but as she came around back to the original direction they'd been facing, he frantically tapped her shoulder. "Down! Jackie, put me down!" "What's the matter, twerp?" she laughed, not seeing what he was seeing. "Huh?! What'cha gonna do if I don't?" "C'mon, Jackie, you gotta put me down right - " And that's when O'Bannon parted the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea. Only Moses hadn't seemed anywhere near that intimidating, from what Charlie and Jackie had heard. Jackie found herself staring up at six foot three and two hundred twenty pounds of angry and confused U.S. Army-issue middle school teacher. " - now..." Charlie finished. She stood at silent attention... or as close a facsimile to it as a depressed and nervous teenage girl was inclined to manufacture. O'Bannon was immersed in typing something - a demerit sheet, more likely than not - only occasionally raising his eyes from his paperwork to fix her with an inscrutable look before returning to his work. This was detention, Army style. She would not sit. She would not speak. She would not alter her posture, her eyes-front gaze or even her breathing, for exactly one hour. At the end of that hour, O'Bannon would bark, "Beat your face!" and she would comply with military pushups until relieved and sent home. She'd never been sentenced to detention in O'Bannon's class before, but even in his short tenure here, many had been. And stories move faster than running feet on a playground. Since she'd first assumed her station near the classroom window, the birdsong from the rec area and beyond underwent an almost imperceptible shift as golden afternoon signaled its acceleration toward ruddy evening. She nearly broke her concentration when, off to her right, the classroom door burst open. O'Bannon looked up from his paperwork, "Mr. Quin, this is detention. Did I order you to detention?" "Sir, no sir!" Charlie's voice shot back instantly. Jackie had to fight the impish grin that tugged at the corner of her mouth - Charlie was clearly being a little smartass, and the impulse to burst out laughing at his "Little Soldier Boy" voice was overpowering. O'Bannon's face reddened. "Then take your little butt out of my classroom, ASAP!" The big man was clearly riled the longer the silence stretched without the sound of retreating 12 year old footsteps. He continued, nearly shouting, his Georgia accent coming out in full force, "Ah told yew to turn that little body around and march it di-rectly the hell out of mah classroom, before Ah - " Charlie shouted back, still in the Soldier Boy mode, but now - badly - imitating O'Bannon's thick drawl, "SAHR, AH CAIN'T DO THAT, SAHRRRRR!" This time, the laughter fought itself free of Jackie's self-control and it tumbled out like water breaking free of a dam. O'Bannon looked like he might boil right over. His breathing was labored, his shoulders hunched, his hands balling into fists, flattening, clenching again - he whipped a hand out, nearly knocking his telephone off the desk before he wrenched the handset to his ear and started dialing. He fixed each of his infuriatingly disobedient pupils with a glare that could melt iron. "Ah... am callin'... your mothers..." he gasped, his face a mask of barely-contained rage. "And yew-all... just stay... raht where yew are... don't yew move... ‘r Ah swear to Gawd..." A faint click sounded from the handset, and a warm female voice Jackie couldn't quite make out. "Yes..." O'Bannon steadied his voice, though his posture remained electrified, trembling. "Missus Quinn, please. Oh, that's - wait, this is Missus Keller? Fine, fine, I need to speak with both of you, actually. Who? This is Staff Sergeant Patrick O'Bannon. Yes, ma'am. Yes, Jackie's teacher. I need to see you and Missus Quinn in my classroom, immediately." Something unintelligible from the other end of the line. "No, ma'am, immediately. Yes, ma'am, both of you. Yes, ma'am, they most certainly are. Fine, fine. Yes, ma'am. G'bye." O'Bannon had turned away during this exchange, his glare coming to rest pointedly on Charlie, and thus didn't notice that the spot where Jackie had been standing like a statue for the past 20 minutes was now empty. What O'Bannon didn't see, however, was about to hurt him. She hit him from behind, leaping up to plant a hand on either side of his bull neck, pulling herself upward to slam her legs around his sides, then screwing on the pressure as he staggered forward and reached down, not entirely comprehending in that first split-second what was happening. O'Bannon instantly regretted having allowed his CQC training to rust so badly as she immediately took advantage of his mistake; with his arms down at his sides, he'd left his most vulnerable spot - his neck - defenseless, allowing her to lock his throat in the juncture of forearm and bicep. Before he had time to correct his error, she'd secured that arm with the other in an amateurish - but nonetheless devastatingly effective - sleeper hold. Each time he tried to muster his arms to pry the sleeper loose, she'd crush in with her thighs, threatening to crack his fragile lower ribs or worse, forcing his hands reflexively back to her legs in vain attempts to relieve the pressure, in turn allowing her to twist the choke hold tighter. The last thing he heard before the sound faded away was the grunts of her exertion, and birdsong from beyond the window. The last thing he saw before the welling sea of unfocused, staticky black overcame his vision was the sight of young Mr. Quinn, goggle-eyed and slack-jawed with shock, seemingly getting taller. Then the carpeted floor struck O'Bannon's knees, and his last coherent thought before unconsciousness swept it all away was the dumb, obvious realization that his pupil wasn't getting taller, he himself was simply hitting the floor. "What are you doing?" "Relax, twerp, our mom's are gonna be here any minute!" "Yeah, and... that's a good thing, how? Man, we are so screwed!" "Watch your language, young man." The door clicked shut. O'Bannon's eyes flickered for a moment - they didn't seem to want to stay open against the brightness shining into them, and it took him a moment to identify that brightness as the classroom's fluorescent overheads. He finally managed to focus, turned his head toward the door and refocused again. Mrs. Keller and Mrs. Quinn stood, hands on hips, fixing him with cool stares. Not bad-looking, either of them. They had the look of most of the Army wives O'Bannon had ever laid eyes on - mature, but so well-preserved through exercise and clean living that the closest one could pin an age to them would be late twenties to youthful early 30s. Mrs. Quinn was the taller of the two; at 5'8", her loose dirty blond hair fell at her slim but solid shoulders, strands relaxed across the straps of a baby-blue tank top, white running shorts showing off Irish hips and firm, tanned legs. Next to her, head-to-shoulder, the shorter, auburn-haired Mrs. Keller looked child-sized, but twice as formidable, all breasts and hips and very well-sculpted thigh and calf in Academy shorts and a light cream ACU t-shirt that, owing to the fact that it belonged to her six foot, triple-wide husband, hung on her magnanimous bustline like an afterthought. "Hi, mom!" Jackie's cheerful voice jolted O'Bannon back to full alertness, but his arms and legs were taking their sweet time catching up. Even the slightest turn of his head brought waves of nauseating disorientation. "Sergeant O'Bannon! Just what do you think you're doing with my daughter?" Mrs. Keller gasped, then - almost as an addendum - managed a passably outraged expression. "It wasn't my fault!" Charlie blurted, backing away from the bizarre spectacle toward his mother. "Hush!" his mother ruffled his hair fondly. "Hey mom, watch this!" Jackie giggled. O'Bannon felt her fingers, hands, then arms shift position, felt the two of them sink as she flexed her knees experimentally, and began to feel a creeping dread as his mind raced trying to forecast her next move. Apparently, he wasn't the only one concerned at the upcoming turn of events. "Oh, sweetheart, don't - " Jackie's mother tried to intervene - too little, too late. Planting one tiny hand, then the other, in the center of his back, Jackie slowly straightened her knees... then her arms. O'Bannon wisely did not move. Didn't even breathe. The two older women were both giving insistent orders to the young ingénue, but O'Bannon could no longer concentrate on that. His back hurt, and his mind was frozen in the sensation of being suspended in midair, surrounded by far too much nothing. Still not daring to breathe, his heart slamming in his chest, he turned his head slowly. Degree by terrifying degree he turned his eyes toward the two women. The altitude shouldn't have bothered him. He was, if anything, seeing the room from no higher than his normal standing height, probably a bit less. It was seeing it from this height sideways that tripped the fear trigger in his mind, though he wasn't in the proper frame of mind to articulate this conscious observation to his unconscious fear reflex. "Jackie Elena Keller! You put Staff Sergeant O'Bannon down this instant." The blissful look on the girl's pretty face faded into a sullen pout. O'Bannon watched, his jaw clenched against the natural response to vertigo his body was trying to force upon him, as he descended on arms that were now beginning to tremble with exertion. "Easy..." Mrs. Keller encouraged Jackie. "Easy..." "Holy shi..." Charlie breathed, then caught himself as he caught his mother's sudden, sharp look. "...shtuff?" O'Bannon's feet finally caught the floor under them. With barely-contained panic, he practically fought his way free of the girl, staggered wildly to his desk, and vomited into his trash can while it was still only barely in range. Jackie backed away from the sight, taken aback. The bitter odor of bile ruined the warm floral scents of summer, seeming almost to push them back out through the half-opened classroom windows. O'Bannon wiped at his mouth with the first thing his hand found on his desk; the demerit sheet he'd written up. He tossed it into the trash without noticing. His chest heaved; his hands shook. His head lowered, he sputtered for a moment, then managed four words: "Expulsion. Both of them." "Mmm." Mrs. Keller shook her pretty head disdainfully. "I don't think so." She seemed almost to glide to where O'Bannon leaned on his hands, his head still down. Mrs. Quinn was right beside her. "Why don't you kids go outside and play." She advised Charlie and Jackie, who quietly, nervously complied. She continued, "That's not going to happen, Staff Sergeant." He looked up, still faintly disoriented. "All due respect, Ma'ams. Yes, that definitely is going to happen, as soon as I've spoken with my superiors." He pushed up off his hands, starting for the door. He hadn't noticed as the two women had approached, hadn't noticed that Mrs. Quinn continued past, then around his desk, and had been standing behind him while Mrs. Keller had his attention. He noticed her now. As he began to move away from the door-side edge of his desk, she caught his stomach with one arm, then secured that arm with the other, planting her own butt on the desk and snaking her long legs out and around his own at the knees. As he began to tilt backward, Mrs. Keller too locked her ankles around and behind Mrs. Quinn's, then wrapped her arms over the other woman's and added her weight to the struggling but hopelessly immobilized man. The weight and mass of the two women combined proved to be just a shade more than O'Bannon could budge in his still weakened state. He was fully at their mercy, and they suspected he knew it; nevertheless, they decided to drive the point home fully. They began to use their leverage against his knees to push away from each other while constricting their arms around his diaphragm, simultaneously stretching his spine. Tighter... tighter still, until his stomach, back and lower ribs burned with a low flame of misery, his breathing was cut off entirely, and his face had turned a dangerous, deep crimson. And both of them were smiling, as if they doing nothing more strenuous than sitting at home watching the whole thing play out on television. The crackling, pins-and-needles darkness was closing down over his eyes again. To Mrs. Keller, of course, it was simply his eyes rolling back in his head; such is the difference perspective makes. In any case, she nodded subtly to Mrs. Quinn. They eased their combined embrace, and Mrs. Quinn blew gently into O'Bannon's ear, then tickled his ribs. He snapped back to consciousness, only to be rewarded with a reminding squeeze before a silky voice whispered in his ear. "Did you miss me?" the lips were close enough that he could feel the exhalation of the words. But the face was right in front of him, that didn't make any... His eyes cleared as his mind righted itself with the world once again. "Now, Staff Sergeant." Mrs. Keller gazed down at him. "You're going to receive some information, and you're going to proceed accordingly. Mrs. Quinn and I arrived here at school for a standard conference with you. Do you understand why?" Stubbornly, O'Bannon shook his head. Then arched his head, a tortured half-wheeze, half-grunt forced from his lungs as the two women briefly and viciously renewed their double-bearhug. His head fell to his chest as they relaxed again. After a moment, he looked up again. "I'm going to explain why, Staff Sergeant. But I'm going to explain why only once, and I suggest that you pay very close attention. Mrs. Quinn and I arrived here for standard parent-teacher conferences with you. When we arrived, however, we found you engaged in unbecoming conduct with my daughter." At this, O'Bannon did not just shake his head in protest - he became enraged. And that, finally, kicked in whatever adrenaline he had left. He struggled like a cornered animal, managing to free one arm, with which he very nearly struck the woman atop him before quick thinking narrowly saved him from actually earning a court-martial. Instead, he wrapped his fingers around the corner of the desk, hauled with as much force as he could muster until he was resting with that arm beneath him, and pushed. Surprising all three of them, he barely got his feet under him. Just then, the door cracked open. "Uh, mom, are - holy shit!" Jackie backed slowly, goggle-eyed and petrified, out the door again, shutting it behind her. That was about as far as O'Bannon got, though, before Mrs. Quinn abruptly released his torso and, with the gift of flexibility imparted by years of Yoga exercise, peeled her own torso back to bridge on edge of the desk, pulling O'Bannon inexorably back, then wrapping him up again despite his throttled howl of protest. A sustained squeeze from both his attackers cut him off, and then there he was, trapped just as before. "Now, then," Mrs. Keller continued. "Where was I? Oh, yes. Now general misconduct would probably just get you the Big Chicken Dinner." O'Bannon's miserable expression was all he cared to reply with. "But this particular variety, well... I think you're looking at Leavenworth, Staff Sergeant. Maybe I'm wrong on that. Maybe not, though. Care to play the odds?" They let up enough for him to speak, but O'Bannon only shook his head sadly. "I didn't think you would. That's why you called Mrs. Quinn and I here for standard parent-teacher conferences. Say it." O'Bannon remained silent... until the expression on Mrs. Quinn's pretty face changed from smiling casual back to the stern, calculating one he'd been seeing for the last few minutes. Wisely, he spoke up, though the words obviously didn't come easily. "I called the two of you here... for... parent-teacher conference..." "Good." She nodded to the other woman. "We're going to let you go now. We're really quite busy. Staff Sergeant..." His eyes widened at the tone of her voice. "We're not going to have any further issues. Are we." He shook his head frantically. "Good." They left him in an empty classroom. They left him educated.