When I got home I saw the clothes bag sitting inside with a note leaned up against it. Leaning down I pick up the note:
Hey Cy.
I hope you enjoyed today. I did, I got through the roadblock okay and dropped everything we bought for you here. If you got home okay shoot me a message on Twitter. I’ve gone back home. Keep safe and hidden.
Miura
I tucked the letter into my jean’s pockets and sat down on the sofa, mentally turning on the TV, forgetting I’d left it on the local news channel.
“Two men are gravely injured after being viciously attacked by a superpowered individual they describe as a superpowered female with super strength. One of them described a woman who had bright white hair. They currently remain in A&E for the time being, any attempts to have gotten CCTV footage of the brutal fight has resulted in extreme amounts of visual inference with the cameras, the police have very few leads other than the accounts of the men. If you know anything please step forwards and give your information to the tipline below so the Army or the Police can catch this dangerous individual”.
It took me a minute to detach myself from the chair. I had been gripping it so tightly in my hands that my tougher fingers had broken the armrest cover. “They were harassing me! They deserved it, they deserve it like everyone who pick on the weak and vulnerable deserve swift punishment” I growl to myself. It then strikes me, an idea. I’m going to go and find out where they took Glenda’s son. I can do a good deed for the world, instead of beating up some cretins. I can let her know her son is safe and well. “Yes! Thats it”
I grabbed my phone from the computer desk, there was someone I needed to contact, and I had a hunch about this power of mine. I looked down at my name in the contact list and made a mental note to ignore it. “I guess...thats my deadname now. I gotta keep the act up though”...
***
Sylvester had just finished duty for the day when he’d gotten a text from his brother, Cyrus. He had been part of the military since he was of the proper age to enlist and had been in the Cadets since he was 12 year old. He had a decent ranking and was older than his brother by about 5 years. He always thought it was a shame that his brother didn’t follow him into the Cadets and then into the Army, but he had done well for himself to gain that fancy job and enough money to live well for himself. He looked down at his phone and read the text:
Cyrus: Hey Syl. I’m sorry for not texting sooner. I’ve had to deal with some friends affected by that storm. Some of them even switched genders! They’ve been through the whole system I saw on TV that the government set up though. I’m fine if you’re asking. It didn’t affect me at all.
He sat on the bunk of his room in the base and shot a text back, feeling extremely glad his brother was okay. Sylvester had been worried ever since he hadn’t heard from Cyrus the morning before what the higher ups are calling the Emergence happened.
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Sylvester: Cy! I’m so glad to hear from you. I hope everything went well and your friends have returned home. We’ve had….difficulties with some of these emerged.
Difficulties was putting it lightly, Sylvester thought. A lot of the ‘people’ they had discovered and...confiscated had tried to fight back. Sylvester shuddered at the thought of one of his colleagues being run through by a younger one. It would have been him too if he didn’t put his sentimentality aside to do his job, He put that one down himself. The buzz of the phone distracted himself from the grisly memory.
Cyrus: Oh man, that sucks. Happy you’re fine and once again I’m so sorry I couldn’t contact you sooner.
Sylvester felt his phone warm significantly, but thought nothing of it.
Sylvester: Yeah well. I have a job to do. I need to go to bed man. I’m up early in the morning. They want me out searching for this white haired woman. She’s said to be dangerous. Keep safe Bro.
And with that he turned the phone off and went to bed.
***
I spat in disgust. Not wanting anything to do with that name anymore. It had begun to frustrate me more and more whenever it came up on screen next to my messages. The job was done now. I knew that the army was dealing with the ‘Emerged’ as Sylvester called them, and therefore they were probably at the base. “Well Bro. Thanks for all that valuable information. Lets cool down and play some video games”
After about two hours of racing about virtual tracks I noticed the sun had gone down. I turned off the console and stared out of the window at the lights of the town, which lead up to the far away other hilltop. I smirk and wonder what to do. I was bored, and most definitely not prepared to go sneaking around some military base. Then I remembered the car in the garage downstairs. “Right, lets sort that out, if they find that they might connect it to when I...nearly killed that man” Shaking my head I tried to put that incident to the back of my mind, maybe fixing the car would help me separate that memory and forget it.
I walk into my bedroom and take off my new sweater and jeans, slightly transfixed by the sight in the mirror of myself in lingerie. I was too busy secretly enjoying the shopping trip to remember that I needed some overalls and tougher clothes. Regretfully I had to put on an old T-shirt and some dark overalls that pretty much hid my figure. Good for a disguise, bad for when I wanted to admire who I’ve become.
Sighing, I grab all the keys and head outside to fix up the car. I wasn’t planning on making any noise so hopefully I should be able to clean it up without being disturbed, and so the rest of my evening was spent making her look spick and span once again. It had been a second long day and I was utterly spent. Making my way up to the bedroom having gotten the car to a point where I was satisfied with its condition; I had only enough juice left in my batteries to wiggle out of the nasty work-clothes and collapsed into my bed, still in the bra and pantie set that I’d only purchased that morning. The welcoming embrace of sleep claimed me.
The next couple of days were spent practising to see how far I could reach with my psionic abilities, turns out that while I could before only really see just a couple of feet away from me now, the trip out with Miura and the short text interactions with my disgusting brother felt like they have expanded the radius tenfold. I also discovered that, a bit like a car antenna mine could grow and retract. I’ll be honest, I had breathed a hefty sigh of relief when I found that out. No more hats to spoil the fun of dressing up. I had also been out managed to pick up a much smaller set of overalls to wear whilst working on the car. There was just one job I had finally decided to do today. I pulled the car around to the stairwell underneath my apartment and opened the boot. I ran up the stairs and grabbed all my old clothing. My old phone and anything related to my old self and shoved it into the back. I then roared off down the road, I had scouted out the place I was going to do this the day beforehand so I knew the way around the roadblocks. Once out into the countryside I pulled off the road down a dirt trail, being slow as to not scrape the bumpers or hurt the wheels, at the end of the trail was a small clearing. I pull the handbrake once at a stop, and almost giddy I emptied the contents of the car’s boot onto the ground a good yard away from the car. Placing the old phone on top I used another new trick I’d learned, my antenna rise and I hear a buzz grow louder. If anybody was watching me they’d see a yellow spark of electricity dance between the two antennae. Feeling very much in the ‘moment’ I yell out loud “Overload!” and the yellow spark darts at my intended target: the old phone.
A fizzling sound begins to erupt from the old mobile as its internal cores are riddled by the spark I sent towards it, and suddenly it bursts into flames, the clothes below it catching just a second later and starting the bonfire up. It was time for a new start. A new me, nobody’s punching bag. I’m Cynthia now. Cyrus Sutton is dead.