Chapter Nineteen - Charity Case

Emily imagined that hiring someone like Sam would either be entirely impossible, or cost far, far more than Emily could ever afford.

In under a week, Sam had set up and created... basically an entire charity.

Emily had helped, of course, but she felt entirely rudderless next to Sam who seemed to always know what the next step was. Most of the time, Emily's job was to just be there when Sam was doing the actual work, and while that was occasionally very intimidating, it was still doable.

What was less doable, was keeping up the pace that Sam had set.

Every day, right after classes finished, Emily would join up with Sam and they'd get to work on something. That either meant getting into costume and working with her other minions while keeping only the thinnest veneer of having a secret identity, or doing endless paperwork to make sure that everything was set up and ready for the big event, or worst of all, going from shop to shop asking for help setting up the charity.

They'd visited most of the places paying them for protection and a dozen more shops besides, and Emily was... a little overwhelmed by how generous people were.

Just for the price of a shop being allowed to advertise themselves as helping, they were willing to give Emily (well, Sam, really) all sorts of things. Tables and chairs, coolers and mobile stoves, a printing shop helped them make some decently professional-looking banners and a local bakery agreed to provide the cakes and muffins they were going to throw out anyway.

It was all coming together at about the same speed as Emily was coming apart.

The schedule they'd kept up had been insane. Five or six hours of work a day, but on top of school, homework, and taking care of her sisters.

Emily was burnt out by the time Friday rolled around, but she'd borne it without any complaints, because complaining would have required that she tell someone that she disliked something and it might have brought down the mood.

"Damn, I'm pooped," Sam said as she crashed back onto Emily's couch.

"Uh," Emily said. She was in casual clothes now, because as nice as her costume was, it wasn't exactly comfortable for any more than an hour. She was considering an upgrade at some point, for herself and her sisters, but that would be expensive.

But she was about to get a lot of money... from robbing a charity she was working to set up herself.

Emily gave in and crashed on the couch opposite Sam's. "I'm also pooped," she declared feebly.

Sam chuckled. "Well, we're nearly done. I'll send out some messages tonight. Lucas is pretty good with computer stuff, said he could post things on a few forums and message boards and whatever. Plaster ads all over Acebook and Yspace, you know?"

"Yeah," Emily said. Her eyes were closed and her head was tilted way back to stare at the ceiling. She heard something clang in the kitchen, and she knew that Trinity was over there making a mess, but taking care of that was for someone with more energy than her. "Sunday, right?" she asked.

"Sunday," Sam agreed.

It was the best time to do anything. More people off from work and school. If they aimed for early afternoon, around lunch time, then it would be too early for people heading out to party or whatever, and just in time for the big lunchtime rush.

The plan was relatively simple. They would put up some decorations in one of the closed off roads usually used for farmer's markets. It was a block away from an elementary school, a few of the oldest churches in Eauclaire, and a couple of nice restaurants.

Both sides of the road had parks. One with gravel and a bunch of jungle gyms and the other a dozen old trees with some well-trod paths between them.

It was a fantastic place to get people to show up... if they had anything to attract people there.

And unfortunately, they only really had one thing that could convince the average Joe to show up.

"So, did you practise your autograph any?" Sam asked.

Emily whimpered. It was a bit dramatic, but that was how she felt.

The entire thing was a 'charity signing for the benefit of Eauclaire's heroes.' As far as anyone was concerned, they were raising money both to help the reconstruction of the shops

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damaged by Rattles, and for the HRF.

The idea of doing the charity for two groups was Liam's.

By saying they'd donate the proceeds to two different groups, they could short both of them, and then claim that it wasn't a 50-50 split.

It was devious, and a small part of Emily was both thrilled and horrified that she, a Villain trying... somewhat not to be a Villain, was going to steal from money meant to help fund the local heroes.

"I'll figure something out," Emily said. "It doesn't have to be nice, does it?"

"You could do like you did for the kids," Sam said.

That had been Chloe's idea. Mostly after she saw Teddy and Maple's signatures.

Maple wrote like she had a doctorate in scibbology, and the less said about Teddy's signature the better.

Athena's "Owlwatch" was nice. A cursive but clearly legible scrawl, and she liked turning the O into a bird-like eye. And Trinity was actually a fantastic artist. She liked adding some flourishes to "Bandit" but they were usually pretty cute and somewhat inoffensive.

So for both Teddy and Maple, they'd gotten a set of stamps made in a hurry with their heroic names on them. Ursa Minor, with a hammer and sickle overlay (she'd insisted) and for Maple... well, she lacked a heroic name, but after much debate, back and forths, and a few arguments, they'd settled on one.

Eager Beaver!

They'd even added a few little flourishes to her stamp, turning the end of 'beaver' into the eponymous animal with a pair of buck teeth.

It was a much, much better name than some of the suggestions Emily had had to veto. Dam Hammer and Bark Stripper had been awful ideas from the start.

"I think I'll just practice writing 'Boss' down a few dozen times. It's four letters, how badly can I mess up?" Emily said.

She knew, deep down, that she shouldn't have been so lazy, but she was exhausted at the moment and didn't have the energy to care.

Then there was a loud clang that made her jump. It had come from the kitchen, of course. She sat up and met Sam's eyes. Neither of them wanted to check.

The sound of Trinity laughing had both of them bolting to their feet and had Emily's stomach knotting up.

"Trinity," she said as she walked into the kitchen.

What she found was a scene of utter chaos.

All of her sisters were there, and only some of them had the good grace to look guilty. Maple was staring at the floor, and Athena was slowly backing away as if she could get out of there without being noticed.

Teddy and Trinity, on the other hand, were caught white-handed. One of Trinity was holding an open bag of flour which she and Teddy had clearly been emptying by the handful. There was a cloud of flour lingering in the air.

"What," Emily said.

"We're testing!" Trinity said. She threw a handful of flour towards the middle of the kitchen, as if to show what she meant.

Emily wondered if the thing Trinity was testing was her nerves when she noticed the flour hit something and then... fade away. Some of it wafted out into the air and... and there was a pair of legs on the ground that lead up to nothing at all.

"I'm flour-proof!" an invisible Trinity said, the ends of her hands poking out from thin air as if she had her arms spread wide.

Emily pinched the bridge of her nose. "Whose idea was this?" she asked.

Teddy put one handful of flour back in the bag. "Uh," she said. "It wasn't mine."

"Don't put the flour back in the bag," Emily whined.

Teddy blinked, then threw the other handful at the invisible Trinity.

That hadn't been what Emily meant either, but she decided to surrender while she was ahead. "Um, it was my idea," Maple muttered. "I'm sorry. We needed to test if the cloaks would still work against airborne particulates and things that could stain them."

"That's actually kind of clever," Sam muttered. "I mean, fights get dusty, right?"

"I saw it in a cartoon," Maple said with a bit more confidence.

Emily pinched the bridge of her nose. After this weekend, she decided she was going to take a vacation.

***