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That lecture, you think to yourself as you quickly collect your books, had to have been the longest month of your life. NYU might have some great professors, but the guest lecturers suck. Where did they get that fossil?

You shake your head to get the cobwebs out -- your mind has been in a dozen places in the last ninethy minutes, none of them remotely near your body -- and try to recall your schedule for the rest of the day. Hey, you remember, no more classes! A free afternoon is just what you need.

You decide to grab some lunch in a small restaurant on "campus." Being a city school, there really isn’t such a thing, but there’s a loosely defined area where the buildings and residents that are associated with the school outnumber those who aren’t... campus, for lack of a better definition. There are some great restaurants, and being in the "Village" you can expect a good time (and as much alcohol as required) at any of them. Being lunchtime, though, you decide to skip the alcohol. After that class, one drink will put you out like a light for a week anyway. If you’re going to have ANY fun today, you’d better be sober for it.

You eat lunch alone, occasionally skimming the paperback that you pretend to be thoroughly engrossed in. The people around you are invariably more fun than fiction, even the dull ones. The restaurant, being on ’campus’ is filled mostly with students, some of whom you recognize. Your schoolmates are generally all alike... good for a laugh every now and again, but generally uninteresting as people. As victims... hey, a gal has to have some fun. You especially like the "I’m so deep because I write poetry for the college literary magazines" type, at least three of which are currently engrossed in a loud and animated debate about nothing remotely relevant to anyone but themselves in the far corner. If you can hear them from where you’re sitting, in a crowded restaurant -- even with your keen hearing -- you know that they’re talking about nothing useful. The louder this type gets, the dumber the topic. Gods help us all if they ever shut up...!

The waiter who serves you is snotty, and spends half the time trying to look down your blouse. You casually tweak his perceptions to make the $5 tip left for him at the next table a $100. He gleefully stuffs it into his pocket -- and will probably hurl himself headfirst against a wall when he finds out that it’s missing. Pushing him like that was effortless, you note. He’s got almost no will to speak of. Must be from out of town.

Well, fun’s fun -- and this just isn’t it. You finish off your lunch and try to flag your suddenly-cheerful waiter down for your check. He happily bounces over to you and you realize with a sinking feeling that you’ve made him happy enough in the here-and-now that he might just ask you out! Ick!

He doesn’t, though. He hands you your check and scurries off. You wonder why only briefly when the answer slides into the seat across from you, uninvited. A very severe-looking guy, with a crewcut, a nosering hooked directly to his earring (Ick again!), and more tattoos than you’d care to count, who has apparently decided to pick you up... this must be what ran the waiter off. Good luck getting change, you think. He’s never coming back.

"You’re a fox," the guy says, and you restrain the simultaneous urges to run, fight, or fry his mind with such an acid trip set of hallucinations that he’ll wonder if you were ever real at all. He *might* just be using out-of-date slang. You’ve heard it before, even if it is so... eighties.

"Excuse me?" you say, icily. Does this guy look familiar? It would be hard to forget a face like this, even if you tried.

"I said, ’you’re a fox,’" he repeats. His voice is like a steel blade, cold and sharp. This guy’s intense. His eyes bore clear through to the back of your head, it seems. You’re *sure* you’ve seen him before... duh. He was in that stupid seminar. A half-dozen seats or so to the right, and a row or to behind you. You saw him on the way in.

"That’s nice," you say, dropping the temperature in your voice another ten degrees. Get the hint and go away, you think. Your oldest sister would have handed this guy his balls in a shotglass by now. The next oldest would be doing him on the table... no wonder you don’t speak to either of them.

"I’ve been watching you," he says.

WOW, that didn’t sound good! you think. Your very first stalker; Mom would be SO proud!

Ickickickickick quick think through the possibilities--one, a guy with the social skills of the Unabomber is trying to pick me up. Might not be all bad. I need some new jewelry. Two, a guy with the social skills of the Unabomber is trying to blow my cover. All bad. I haven't built up this cover for twenty years so some goit with a Ferdinand the Bull wardrobe and a "Fodor's Guide to the Little People" can blow it and score points with his buddies in the ghostbusters' club.

As I think about Option Two, rage builds up inside me. Who is this asshole? What's he trying to prove? I'll bet he thinks he's dangerous, and I'll bet he thinks I'm the perfect way to prove that he's dangerous. And I'll bet he doesn't care how badly he hurts me to prove that he's dangerous. And now I'm burning.

I don't show a flicker, though. Let's not give anything away. In fact, let's make that the motto for the evening. Ferdinand here probably knows something about what I am, but chances are, he doesn't know much, and who knows what evidence he has? I'm going to play it cool, not tip my hand. He's going to have to work for it.

I give him my most sympathetic look and gently say, "I'm very flattered, but I'm a lesbian."

(Just after I say that, a small voice in the back of my head says, "You know... he probably *is* dangerous.")

You tell him you’re a lesbian, and make a quick stab for access to his mind. He has no Mind Shield that you can detect, but your attack is rebuffed nonetheless. Unlike the waiter, this guy has a Will of iron. And, as he’s concentrating his full attention on you, he’s rather focused. You’d have to batter your way in to control him, or seriously distract him first. As it is, you’re not getting through. Fortunately, he either didn’t notice -- or failed to recognize -- your attempt. What you just *said* to him, however, has made a distinct impact.

He looks genuinely hurt. The sad-puppy expression seems out of place on what would otherwise be a rather harsh face, and you try not to laugh. That would be bad.

"You are not," he says in a low voice. "I’ve been watching you, remember? Why would you lie to me?"

You struggle for an answer, but before one occurs to you, he stands up.

"You don’t think I’m up to your standards, is that it?" he says. "I’ll have to show you."

"That really won’t be necessary," you say as he turns to leave.

"That guy your boyfriend?" the waiter asks, returning from whatever rock he crawled under.

"Bite me," you say, packing up your stuff. You think ’Mister Ick’ turned left when he exited the restaurant... good. You need to go right, anyway. Hopefully you won’t see him again. [Note: Robin would never say "Bite me."]

Until the next lecture. Gods! That jerk is in one of your classes! Are you going to need to nail one of your female classmates right on the podium to convince this guy...? Might be fun anyway... nah. He’d probably be sure it was just a show for his benefit -- which it would be -- and remain decidedly UNconvinced.

Fifteen minutes later, you’re walking past Washington Square Park, still completely lost in this train of thought, when your attention is snapped upwards by a bright flash. About a hundred feet up, a human being (well, human-looking -- who are you to make that determination?) has burst into flame.

You’ve seen this guy before, you realize. He calls himself Joyride, and does an aerial (levitation) show in the park. He’s good. Bursting into flame isn’t part of his act, though, as far as you know.

Crashing into the ground from 100 feet up isn’t, either. Barring the possibility of spontaneous human combustion, it looks like someone didn’t like his act.

Half the crowd in the park runs towards the body. The other half runs away. Typical New Yorkers.

Only one person isn’t moving. Across the park, leaning casually against a tree, is Mister Ick. He doesn’t seem to have noticed you, though, as he is staring intently at the flaming body in the middle of a growing crowd.

Two thoughts cross your mind: Either this guy had something to do with Joyride’s death, or he’s just enjoying it too much. Either way, he’s a major sicko.

A major sicko who’s been watching you.

The ice starts in my chest and trickles through my veins until I shudder. That's disgusting. It's *wrong.* Most mortals are simple, blind, clumsy things; unleashing a killing power like PK on them is... It's not sporting. Mortals should have a chance to escape.

So Ferdinand the Bull is proving to me that he's in my class. Which means, since I'm a fox, that I'm in the amoral-killer class. Which means that he's neither done his homework nor watched me very well.

He seems to know some of my secrets, which makes him a liability; and he's foul, which makes him disposable. It's time this game was stopped, and stopped hard.

But--wait. I'm going to keep my mind open even if I have to use a crowbar. Ferdinand might be just your basic sick-and-twisted loner who wants me for a sidekick. His idea of "proving himself" might involve staring, creeping out my friends, and calling me up at 3 o’clock in the morning with a bellyful of Bud to share whatever’s on his mindlet. Okay, so he's watching the corpse like it's the best show since American Gladiators went off the air, but I'm not having the most normal reaction myself.

If I treat a mundane creep like a pyrokinetic killer of the lowest breed, I might make the situation much, much worse. There are easier ways to get rid of his kind. The books say that the best strategy is to ignore him; and, of course, there’s always the classic "get him all hot and bothered in the back of a car, let him unhook your bra, and vomit live centipedes out of the gaping holes where your breasts should be" maneuver. My little sister loves that one.

And if Ferdinand *really* loves me, my problem is solved, because he’ll die soon. Urgh... not good.

But chances are that, that... crowbar time. Chances are that I'm dealing with a fiercely determined man who thinks that he loves me. My first priority is to get him off me. After that, if he turns out to be a deranged killer, I can take him down.

But if he's a deranged killer, and I treat him like an ordinary freak, I run the risk of watching my friends turn into charcoal. And if he really knows I'm a fox, I run the risk of being outed. Yick, I'm sick of waffling. I've got a thousand things to do--homework, laundry, scoping out where the Elvis crowds are going to be so I can make my rent. But first, I have to find out what Ferdinand is.

I wander around the edge of the park, making a grab for Ferdinand's mind when I get close enough. If he doesn't notice me, I circle until I'm seven or eight feet behind him, then stop and stare holes in the back of his head until he turns around. If he does notice, I walk right toward him and stop seven or eight feet away. Either way, when I have his attention, I tip my head to the side as though I'm studying him, and say, "What were you planning to do once you impressed me?"

Unless he starts shouting secrets, I stay polite, noncommittal, and public. No wandering off to secluded alleyways to chat. No admitting that I'm a fox--even to get him off my back. No letting him think that he's impressed me, either--I just want to know what he wants with me and how far he's willing to go to get it.

You manuever around the edge of the park, keeping the crowd between you and him for as long as possible, and try to make your way behind him. About halfway there, you realize that he’s no longer watching the crowd.

He’s watching you.

You cut across the park to walk directly towards him, sidestepping the satyr who’s grabbing people at random and demanding to know what happened, backpedaling to avoid being knocked over by the juggler who’s probably running away home in terror, and generally trying not to be trampled by people fleeing or rushing in to see the charred corpse. As you approach, his expression goes from smugly amused to uncomfortable, to horrified.

He turns and runs just before you clear the bulk of the crowd.

You decide that this is the best chance you’ll have of snagging his mind, slip quickly past the last few people blocking you, and take a stab at his mind. This time, you slip through his natural mental defense with some effort, and plant a small hook in an unused part of his brain. The instant that you set the hook, though, he passes out of range and the line breaks.

Well, you *can* get into his head. If only you could keep it in one place.

Well, that was strange. I read that most stalkers actually fear confrontations with their stalkees, but really, Ferdinand and I have just begun a stalking. The foundations of our stalkerdom are still unset. How is the flower of our obsession supposed to burst into full bloom when its roots are dug into such soft soil?

Just like a man. Sigh. I'll bet he's afraid of commitment. In the back of his mind, he still thinks that somewhere out there is the perfect stalkee, and he'll miss out on her if he settles for me.

Now I'm insulted.

(I give a quick peek over my shoulder just in case Ferdinand was actually running from, say, the animated burning corpse shuffling along behind me. No corpse? Good. How 'bout a policeman? No? Good. Just checking.)

My rage is dissipating a little; his running away completely threw me. He's seeming less like a lovestricken psychopath now, and more like a yutz. Yutzes I can deal with.

I'm going to follow him, and if I get another hook into his mind, I'm going to put something in his path--a truck backing up or some such--to slow him down. If I can't catch him, I'll run until he's tired, then let him think he's lost me, dodge into an alley or restroom or something, and shapeshift into someone inconspicuous so I can follow him a bit farther. (*That* should be a good test of whether he knows I'm a fox.) I won't confront him unless I look like me, though, unless he gives a clear sign that he knows the shapeshifted form is me.