Chapter Twenty-Five - Masks Off

"You came!" Glamazon said. She spread her arms wide, as if expecting Emily to just... walk up and hug her.

Emily volunteered not to. She didn't... dislike Jezebelle, even if the woman was a consummate extrovert, but she wasn't inclined to hug at the best of times and Jezebelle wasn't Emily's favourite person. "I came," she said instead. "A friend suggested that I come. Exercise is important for, uh, our line of work."

The gym was a rather modest little place, tucked into the side of one of those outdoor outlet malls. It was just out of the way enough to give the illusion of privacy. The big windows at the front looked out onto one of those enclosed golf ranges, with a row of residential homes across the street. The name, Masks Off Gloves On, was written in bold letters across the front.

"Yeah, you bet it is," Jezebelle said with a grin. "Silver Fox keeps saying that a good cardio regimen is the most important thing you can do, after having good hair, in order to be a good hero."

"Because of all the running away?" Emily asked.

Jezebelle snorted. "Or the running towards problems. Can't forget that," she said. "Anyway, come on in. I talked to the owner, we should be good for the day."

"Uh, even with all of us?" Emily asked. She gestured to her sisters, who were being surprisingly well-behaved. The promise of ice cream and snacks was keeping them in line for the moment.

"Yeah, don't worry. The owner's cool. He's an ex-mask," Jezebelle said as she turned back towards the door and held it open.

"An ex-mask?" Emily asked. "Wait, he had powers?"

"Huh? No, he still has them," she said. "Just that he doesn't really use them. It happens a lot more than you'd think."

"Really?" Emily said. She could totally imagine herself getting powers and not ever using them. If her powers were closer to Glamazon's for example, summoning exploding balls of distracting light? That could be hidden. Never used and kept under wraps. Her power was a lot harder to hide, however.

Jezebelle nodded. "Yeah. You remember visiting the HRF a while ago? Like, maybe a week after Power Day? I remember you being there with a bunch of others."

"Yeah, I remember that," Emily said. She'd gotten to meet Quantum Mothman, which had been neat. Then she worked with a bunch of new wanna-be heroes. Cheatah and Hindsight and Slaymaker. Had there been more? She couldn't quite recall. It was several eventful weeks ago.

"Well, Cheatah moved to a busier city, but the others? Basically quit or joined some corporation to do advertising or testing. The whole hero thing isn't for everyone. Especially not the way we do things. Wearing costumes and fighting villains. A lot of folk that get powers either keep to themselves, find work they can do with their powers, or just pretend that they're normal."

"Lucky," Emily said.

Jezebelle gave her a look at that, but didn't comment.

Emily's sisters stood by the entrance of the gym and stared around, slack-jawed and in awe of all the machines laying around the room. There were only two others using the room at the moment, an older man in denim shorts and a tanktop and someone who looked like she might be an instructor or worker at the gym.

"Owner's not here right now," Jezebelle said. "Come on, there's a room off to the side we can use. There's equipment there. Do you need to get changed?"

Emily nodded. Teddy was carrying a duffle bag at the moment which was packed with all of the clothes that Emily decided were gym-worthy. Mostly it was shorts and loose shirts. Cheap stuff that could get sweat-stained and would breathe easily.

Jezebelle pointed them to the locker rooms, and Emily made sure everyone was changed and ready.

She felt a little underdressed as she stepped out and looked Jezebelle up and down. Jezebelle had some sort of tight pants and a shirt that exposed a slip of her stomach, all in the same colour and clearly designed for exactly the kind of activity that they were going to get up to.

"Alright," Jezebelle said, clearly unaware of Emily's sudden wave of self-consciousness. "There's medicine balls and jump ropes over here, and the room can be closed off. It'll be nice and private. Do your, uh, sisters know how to stretch?"

"I don't think so," Emily said.

Jezebelle smiled. "I'll show them, then."

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So Jezebelle led the entire group through a series of stretches. Mostly lunges and bending this way and that. Emily felt awkward the entire time, but she was still somehow more coordinated than some of her sisters.

Seeing Maple stumble through everything was as endearing as it was cute, but Emily didn't say anything except to encourage her. Teddy was surprisingly flexible for someone so stocky, and Athena was all elbows, which Emily knew rather too well. Trinity, however, was practically a little gymnast, and Emily suspected that she was double jointed.

Then Jezebelle split them up into groups of two. Trinity with one of herself and also Athena, Teddy with Maple, and Emily with Jezebelle herself. That was after she showed them what to do. Mostly they were rotating between jump ropes, doing floor exercises like pushups and situps, and tossing a medicine ball back and forth.

"This is... harder than... it looks," Emily said as she caught the heavy ball, grappled with it for a moment, then tossed it back to a grinning Jezebelle.

"It's great for your arms though, and your core. Spread your legs a little more, let the impact bounce through your knees. Yeah, like that."

Emily nodded along. Her back was already damp with sweat, and she was regretting not bringing something stronger to hold her hair back because it was slipping out of her ponytail and across her face.

"So, did you... want to talk... about something else?" Emily asked between panting breaths.

Jezebelle nodded. "Yeah, a bit. I mean, the workout doesn't hurt, right? The kids look like they have a ton of energy to burn through."

"You have no idea how much," Emily said wryly. Her sisters were treating this like a game, which was fair, they were having fun, and hopefully they'd be burnt out by the time they got back home. "They can be a handful."

Emily wanted to press Jezebelle, ask her what she wanted to talk about, but they'd already moved past the subject, and she wasn't sure how to turn things back around.

Then Jezebelle did it for her. "So, I wanted to talk about Rattles."

"The villain?" Emily asked. She flushed. How many other people called Rattles were around? Obviously Jezebelle was talking about the villain.

"Yeah, that as-- uh, that jerkhole," Jezebelle said. She clearly wasn't over her anger at the guy. "So, you know that the HRF doesn't look past people's costumes, right?"

"Uh, they don't?" Emily said. She kinda knew that. People who wore costumes were usually tried as their costumed selves. It was like having a whole new, second identity, in many more ways than one. She'd always thought that the government didn't really care too much about that beyond the surface though.

"Well, they don't, publicly. Some villains have known civilian IDs, but everyone just pretends that they don't know. Mostly because a lot of heroes have the same, and it's like... returning the favour, sort of. You don't reveal mine, and I won't reveal yours, and if we meet at our kid's ball game, we'll glare at each other instead of throwing fireballs around."

"Uh, alright," Emily said. It made a sort of sense, but she was pretty sure there were some glaring issues with that. "And what's this got to do with Rattles?"

"Well, Rattles has been around for a while, and he's changed masks. Anyway, the HRF doesn't spy on people, but they also totally spy on people," Jezebelle said. "And I... might have stolen some very private documents about Rattles' past."

Jezebelle reached into one of the tight pockets of her pants and tugged out a small thumbdrive.

Emily looked at it for a moment, considered how illegal that probably was, then recalled that she was literally a villain and took the drive. "Thanks," she said.

"Don't mention it. Literally, don't."

"Why are you giving me this?" Emily asked.

"Because it might give you an edge against Rattles. I didn't find anything, but there might be something that'll help you fight him. And if nothing else, seeing all of his life laid out as a series of increasingly awful crimes might give you the right motivation to do something about him."

"Oh," Emily said. That made some sense. She looked around, then darted over to their duffle bag and tossed the thumb drive in.

She wasn't sure what she'd do with the information it held, but she wasn't going to discard any advantage she was given so easily.

***