19:00 Robertson Estate

Wednesday evening was pretty uneventful. Paul was slightly more talkative but barely so. He did at the very least acknowledge John’s existence. Aaron was quizzing John on his investment strategy and how he came to his investment position on AgriArm. John basically provided the insider information he had but avoided explaining how he came upon that information. He was aware of a couple announcements that helped boost the steak. Terry was giving Alice no shortage of shit over her sleep talking in the car but was very careful to not share what was actually said.

Andrew Robertson had called in the evening when his flight was cancelled. The Robertson children could fly private but opted to fly commercial. He opted to reschedule the next morning and come home with Marcus. Aaron and Paul had retired to the study to discuss business. Kate was talking with the chef and maids about tomorrow’s plan. Terry, John and Alice headed over to the gym to work out before calling it a night.

Terry hadn’t witnessed one of John’s normal workout sessions before. He was in shock with how much weight he was repping. John’s physique didn’t look like a body builder or strong man, but his musculature was very defined. An hour later they were resting on the different benches listening to Terry tell some stories about their fleet operations.

“Rear Admiral Nelson is an idiot. Did he not realize how close he was to starting a bloody war?” John was shaking his head.

Assuming Terry wasn’t embellishing anything the good admiral was a literal rat’s fart away from starting another interstellar conflict. The Alliance never got along with the Confederacy, and there had been two conflicts already, but this was a near miss to start a third.

“Well, he was lucky he kept his battlegroup. But he’s no longer being fast tracked for his own fleet or promotion to full admiral. That action likely ended his career at rear admiral. Command was really not happy about that and wasn’t afraid to tell him as such.” Terry was no fan of the admiral. “Alice, decide your focus yet?”

“I did.”

“You did?” John looked up.

“Medical. Though not decided yet on pre-med or nursing. Got time to figure that out over the next year. John I am ready for a shower and a bed, so you’ll be escorting me home.”

“Roger. Cya in the morning Terry.”

“Evening.” Terry turned the lights off and headed back to the main building.

Alice and John held hands as they walked to her home. They both hopped into the shower together. The surprising thing was that they didn’t do more than squeeze or slap various body parts. John was obviously raring to go, which Alice did appreciate but basically said that wasn’t happening tonight. The recent workout was catching up with them just compounding the general soreness they were already feeling. They crawled into bed and slept soundly until the next morning.

Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. 07:00 Alice’s Mansion

John woke up first. He slid his legs off the bed and onto the ground. As he did that Alice yawned and hugged him from behind.

“Morning. Man, that sleep felt great.”

“You’re telling me, though that shower kinda sucked in a way.” John smirked.

Alice snorted. “Yeah, you were ready to go. I kinda wanted it too, but I was still hurting.” She rolled out of bed and kissed him. “Let’s go for a jog, then maybe we make up for that shower last night.”

Alice winked at him as she said that. John chased after her through her room. He kissed her when he caught her. The couple changed into some gym clothes and headed out for a quick hog around the estate. Forty-five minutes later they were walking back into Alice’s mansion.

They both ran into the shower, holding off on taking off their clothes until they were in the bedroom. The couple wasted no time getting down to business. Eventually the separated themselves from each other and got cleaned up.

As they were getting changed Alice got a message from her mom that breakfast was being served at the main mansion. The concept of having multiple mansions and leaving one to go to another to have breakfast was just confusing to John. They did however locate a golf cart like vehicle that they could use to move from building to building on the estate. When the couple entered the main mansion, they were guided to the dinner room by the butler in the entry way.

“Morning.” John said as he sat down next to Alice.

“Good morning, we were wondering when you’d get here.” Aaron said. He was spreading some jam on a slice of toast.

“Yeah, we went for a couple laps around the compound. Good way to get the day started.” John said, he started with the bacon that was on his plate.

“Marcus and Andrew just messaged us; they’ll be here shortly. They are both looking forward to seeing you, Alice.” Terry said.

“What exactly did you tell them?” Alice wasn’t trusting Terry’s sincerity.

“Well, in truth they are more interested in meeting your boyfriend. Your brothers know you already.”

“Funny.” She poured some syrup on her pancakes.

“John, who do you have winning the games today?” Terry asked.

“Cowboys over the 49ers. Vikings over the Bears, and I want both the Packers and Patriots to lose the game tonight.” John’s plate was near emptied of food, he had inhaled his food. “First game kicks off in a couple hours, right?”

“Sure do. You’ll love the theatre we have here.” Alice smiled.

Paul came in, exchanged some pleasantries then started talking business with Aaron. Nothing unusual or major. Advanced Equipment company was brought up as a potential for investment. John laughed when he heard that company name.

“Wouldn’t invest in them if I were you.” John said as he said his utensils down.

“And why is that? They have a great history of producing the Navy with all sorts of equipment and gear that’s used.” Paul didn’t like his decisions being second guessed, but his mother made it clear that the newcomer was far more intelligent than he let on.

“I’m aware of that. I’m also aware of said gear’s shit quality. No one wants the crap they produce. Naval Intelligence and all special forces groups flat out refuse to use their gear. I wouldn’t be surprised if the marines in general aren’t far behind in saying no more. Full disclosure, I haven’t done any research into that specifically, but I wouldn’t be caught dead using anything they produce.”

Paul made a note on his tablet to investigate this more and possibly find another company to invest in.

“Thank you for the firsthand knowledge, John. Paul and I need to do a little work before the games start up. We’ll see you all in a couple hours.”

Kate then began asking Alice all sorts of questions about where they met, when they started dating, when she first noticed him and on. Terry was absolutely no help in this line of questioning and just made Alice more and more embarrassed. John wasn’t all that comfortable with this line of questioning either, he was rather oblivious to Alice’s attraction until the last day of boot camp.

John had found out that Alice started looking at him after he told Patrice to fuck off after yelling at a couple recruits in their platoon during the first week. She wasn’t able to get any closer to him throughout most of the wargames as Patrice viewed Alice as a prize to be had. John didn’t know this, but she kneed Patrice in nuts after the third wargame finished after he used her as a human shield. Terry and John both winced at that.

Just then the door opened. Terry, Kate and Alice got up to greet the other boys. John finished his tea and got up.

“Hey Terry and Alice. Where’s your boyfriend? Is he real this time?” Andrew asked punching his siters shoulder.

“If he’s not real you owe me twenty bucks.” Marcus added.

John started to laugh in the other room, he had heard that voice before.

“Markie, get into any bar brawls lately with fourth fleet?” John said as he was walking into the entryway. He had a big grin across his face.

“Ah shit, you. I KNEW it was you that she was dating. I thought that name was familiar. How’s it going man? She doing anything to embarrass you yet?” Marcus walked over and shook John’s hand.

“As a matter of fact.” Terry laughed.

Alice was glaring daggers at Terry.

“You know it.” John smiled; Alice redirected her glare at John.

“Nice to meet you, John. Apparently, I wasn’t dumb enough to get into a big enough bar brawl to bring in Intelligence into things.” Andrew and John shook hands.

“Takes a special kind of stupid to piss off fourth fleet marines and the locals at a dive bar at the same time. Though his smart mouth ended up getting the locals to side with the sixth fleet marines he was with. Too bad for them we gave them a choice, loss of leave or the brig. No one was quite drunk enough to take the brig. Worst part about the whole damn mess was I had to be up all night and damn near missed my flight to Terra Nova.”

“Sounds about right for him.” Terry said.

Andrew and Marcus dropped their stuff in their rooms, then met Terry and Alice in the theatre. The pregame shows were on longer today, so may as well get started on relaxing. The group was very relaxed and enjoying time off from the daily grind. Alice got out of her chair and sat down next to John on his chair. The chairs had plenty of space for her and John to comfortable sit together in one.

“If you start kissing him, I’m leaving.” Marcus said, in response the couple kissed immediately. “Ugh. I do not need to see my sister kissing guys.”

John snickered. Alice laughed. Terry even started laughing at that.

“Terry, what do you know?” Marcus got up and was pointing at his brother.

“More then I’d cared to due to some sleep talking. But my lips are sealed.”

Alice got super embarrassed and scrunched in next to John and was squeezing him.

“Wow, she is like super embarrassed, Alice, what’d you say.” Andrew piped up from the row in front of them.

“You can all piss off.” She buried her face in John’s shirt.

The badgering went on for twenty minutes. The other two brothers decided to drop it when she refused to say anything. John told them it wasn’t anything they wanted to hear, and that Terry was likely somewhat scarred for life for hearing what she in her sleepy haze said.

Around noon the family sat down in the dining room and had the traditional turkey meal. The table had numerous plates and different food options. John only had three things on his plate: mashed potatoes, turkey, and gravy. Stuffing wasn’t his thing, nor were beats or vegetables. All of the military men sitting at the table had near identical plates. Alice and Kate were judging all of them silently with the looks they were sending. Alice had her work cut out for him on changing John’s diet habits.

After the meal the family retired to the theatre and watched the football games. The late morning game was not overly interesting. During halftime they walked down the hallway to the game room and played a couple games of pool. During first quarter on the afternoon game some of Alice’s friends from high school came over. There were random squeals and girlish laughs coming from the back of the theatre.

“There’s a part of me that wants to know what’s being said.” Marcus was directing that comment at John.

“Yeah, I don’t think you do.” John winced. “Good lord that was a nasty hit.”

“John’s right. Nothing good can come from finding out what they are saying.” Andrew said.

At halftime the military men walked down the hall and started to play another game of pool. There was no shortage of bullshit and dumb stories being told between the group. They were all relatively surprised at how serious both John and Alice were treating this relationship. The Robertson boys would all come to the same conclusion that he may be the one for Alice. John wasn’t aware of this at the time, but he had the full support of three Robertson’s at that point.

16:00 Robertson Main Mansion, Theatre Room

The rest of the afternoon was pretty uneventful. Alice’s friends were peppering her with questions, mostly of the inappropriate type. The Vikings lost in rather ugly fashion. John was pissed about that. Just once he’d like to see them win something important. But no, they could never pull through for a full season. Leftovers were enjoyed for an early dinner. Aaron brought out a rare thirty-four-year-old Papi Van Winkle that the men enjoyed. A maid came in and brought a couple fancy looking bottles of wine for the ladies. Aaron and Paul left to go into the office to do some work as something came up unexpectedly.

Midway through the first quarter John felt something odd in the back of his mind. He reached out with his mind and began searching the estate. He discovered four men had entered the compound. They weren’t supposed to be there. Kate was able to infer what John was doing and had noticed them as well. John sent a telepathic message to Kate: ‘Order your guards to guard this room. I’ll deal with them.’

“Gotta piss, I’ll be back.” John got up and left the room.

Alice noticed something was off with John and got up and ran out after him. She ignored her mothers’ commands to stay there. When she got to the hallway John had already run out of the mansion. She followed behind him. She caught up to him while he was kneeling before a retaining wall a couple moments later.

“Damnit Alice, you should have stayed in there.” John whispered.

“I’m not a weak flower, I can handle myself.” She quietly retorted.

John reached out with his mind and noticed the four intruders weren’t that far away. “Four dickheads that way.”

“Be careful, let me be the target then.”

Alice followed behind John. They crept behind a wall and got closer to the intruders. When they were roughly six feet away John jumped onto the retaining wall and leapt towards the intruders. He did a spinning round kick and struck the closest on square on the head, which instantly knocked the poor bastard out. John caught the stun gun that was floating in the air and tossed it back at Alice and subtly used his telekinesis to guide it into her hand.

John closed the distant to the man at his left by lunging at him and kneed him in the rib cage. Alice fired a stun cartridge at the man to the right dropping him. John kicked the back of the man’s knee which gave him the leverage to through him over his shoulder. Alice shot the other man with a stun cartridge while John hopped over to the man, he just throwed and knocked the man out with a left hook as he was trying to get out.

John turned around and to his horror there was a fifth man who was behind Alice. They were drawing a pistol on her. Alice had just fired another stun cartridge at the first man she had shot.

“Alice, down now.” He was too slow to warn her.

She was slow to react to John as the man began to fire shots in their direction. Two things happened in an instant, the air in front of Alice was shimmering and rippling with an unknown but visible blue energy while John’s eyes were radiating a similar ethereal blue color from them. The bullets struck this field and fragmented into thousands of small fragments that were directed back in the general direction of the shooter or into the ground.

“Big fucking mistake.” John growled the words; someone had the gall to threaten Alice.

John’s eyes began glowing much brighter. He reached his arms out grabbed the other man with his telekinesis. He lifted the hapless intruder two feet off the ground and squeezed him uncomfortable tight. The intruder would feel like he was under hundreds of feet of water. John drew him closer as he was running towards him. He let go of ethereal grasp of the man as he jumped and did another spinning round kick. The kick struck the man’s humerus bone in his arm and with a horrifying crack he broke in two places. He followed that by a vicious knee that broke a few ribs. He grabbed his head and forced him to the ground hard. He was now concussed and knocked out by the force he was slammed to the ground.

“Forget that fight.”

A faint blue flash of light left John’s eyes. The real pain was just inflicted to the robber. John had forcibly removed the memories of the last five minutes. Telepaths had to be very careful about doing this to be to ensure collateral damage wasn’t done. John wasn’t so careful about what we had done. It’d take weeks for the man’s headache to subside from such a violent attack to his mind.

John reached out with his mind once more and asked Kate to send their security guards to their location to handle this mess.

“Holy shit John, you can...”

Alice was shocked both at his telekinetic abilities and the glowing eyes. She knew the latter was something only whispered about and was incredibly rare.

“Yes, and I’m sorry we’re not going to talk about those abilities either. Keep that memory buried deep in your mind.”

John went over and hugged Alice. He thanked her for her help. She did make taking them down easier, but John was enraged over the last mans attempted murder of her. By the time the guards had made it to their location a couple minutes later the glow in his eyes had completely subsided. John advised that one of them had a broken arm and the others may have broken bones too. The guards simply said they’d take care of it. None of them were looking all that happy as these five were able to get onto the estate undetected.

Kate didn’t let anyone know what was going on back in the theatre. Alice’s friends were confused by her leaving so suddenly. But they left shortly after Alice got back to the house. The military boys were wondering what was going on but had their suspicions. They asked John who answered honestly.

“Hell, I wasn’t targeted for a change. That was a nice change of pace. Not sure what they were trying to do here.”

“Yeah, it happens from time to time. Usually, it’s corporate espionage.” Terry said in a way that implied this was common to them.

“They are damn lucky I didn’t kill them. Fucking idiots. At least one ended up with several ribs and his arm broken. Pretty sure he got a concussion too. Play stupid games.”

Aaron learned of the attack after Paul and him had finished up their business in the office. He asked to speak to John privately for a bit. He was a bit annoyed that Alice was in danger, but John was quick to point out that she ran towards the danger, and her presence there meant the five intruders were alive instead of dead, which would make covering up the incident far easier. Aaron wasn’t happy with the resolution, but he couldn’t fault the young man’s logic.

The mood had shifted in the theatre slightly as a result of the evening’s attack. The game resulted in a rare tie. As the game signed off Alice and John said their good nights and headed to her home. John did a more thorough scan to see if there was anyone else in the estate that shouldn’t be there.

19:00 Robertson Estate Grounds

Alice directed them towards a gazebo that overlooked a small pond on the way to her mansion.

“Thanks for saving me again.”

John smiled. “I was worried that you’d get hurt. We were lucky this time. You know it’s ok to not rush into danger.”

“But I’m not a helpless damsel in distress. I can hold my own weight.”

“I mean, your weight class is pretty tiny.” John snorted.

Alice simply rolled her eyes at him. Despite his smartass comment she was hugging him. She didn’t want to let go of him.

“So are we really not going to talk about what you did to those bullets and that guy.”

“Sorry but no, that information cannot be shared with anyone.”

“Fine, at least we didn’t get hurt so everything worked out in the end. I’m just bummed that you have to work over winter break.” She stopped hugging John and stood in front of him. “I’m pretty sure I know the answer, but I’m going to ask anyways.”

John knew what the question was before she asked it. She was practically screaming it out from her mind.

“I am honestly very serious about us. I think you are too, but I’d just like to know if this is one sided or not.”

“Yes, I’m as serious about this relationship as you are.” He assuaged her fears with his answer.

Alice was overjoyed with John’s confirmation.

John continued. “I can’t ask to marry you yet. But I think can see us getting married in the future.”

“I love you.” Alice put her arms around John’s neck, and shared a lover’s kiss

Friday. 06:00 Alice’s Mansion

John woke up before his alarm at 06:00 to an empty bed. He tossed on some gym clothes and went on a jog. Fifty minutes later he hopped into the shower and put on some clean clothes. Alice was still gone. Then it dawned on him, today was a popular day to go shopping.

“Fuck me, I need to get her a present of some sort for Christmas.” John muttered as he walked to the main mansion for breakfast.

Terry and Marcus were at the table already. The chef saw John enter the room and asked him what he’d like to eat. The chef got to working on an extra plate of food for John after he finished Terry and Marcus’ plate.

“Mister Lief, your breakfast will be ready shortly.” The maid then set the plates in front of the pair.

“Morning. Hey guys. What should I get Alice for Christmas?” John asked as he took a seat.

They looked at each other and smirked. Terry answered, “What can you buy for the girl that has everything?”

“Hence the question.” John deadpanned the response back

“As sappy as it sounds, she’d probably excited to receive anything you give her.” Marcus said as he was staring down some bacon.

“Agreed. I wouldn’t spend all your money but don’t be cheap either. Cheap jewelry looks terrible.” Terry said.

“Looks like I’ll have to go shopping next weekend.” John’s food arrived and he dug in. “So, are they shopping?”

“Yup. They said they’d be back by 12:00. Andrew is out shopping too for his girlfriend, I think. Alice already packed her gear so she’s aware of her flight this time around.” Terry grinned at John.

“Are you two going to tell me what she said?” Marcus was irritated that he was on the outside of the joke.

“Ask John.”

“Not happening. Besides she’d kill me if I told.”

Some idle chatter was had by the men. Eventually John headed back to Alice’s mansion to pick up his gear. It was just so weird to think that about multiple mansions at one estate. He had noticed her bag was by the front door, he picked that up too as he left her mansion. He dropped them off at the front door of the main mansion.

After that he was killing time in the study responding to a few messages from their classmates. Andern was having a good time at home, despite an unexpected and unwelcome blizzard that rolled through the previous night. His flight got delayed because of the conditions. Jessica and Theresa asked John for shopping advice for Andern and Kevin respectively. His suggestions were less then helpful.

Director LeCroix had called him earlier and gave John some unexpectedly good news. He was given a week off after Christmas. John ordered a bottle of very expensive brandy to be delivered to his office shortly thereafter as thanks for the very welcome news. Alice was going to be elated that he could spend New Year’s Eve with her instead of being stuck in Miami the whole time. He started to do some casual searching trying to find where they could go.

Eventually Alice, her mom, and a pair of cousins he hadn’t met came back to the mansion after their shopping spree was finished. Alice shoved two packed retail bags into her travel bag. Looks like she purchased a few gifts for people. They couldn’t stay long, in just over a couple hours they’d be on a flight back to Annapolis and the academy. Aaron and Kate saw them off. This hadn’t been a long trip, and while it did start off on the rocks, John was feeling this was a successful trip and he had conducted himself well. Alice committed a rather egregious faux pas but at least that was to her brother and not her father.