Chapter Twenty-Three - Concern

Emily knew that the fundraiser might attract the wrong sort of person, so she wasn't all that surprised when Trinity tugged at her jacket and had her looking down. "What is it?" she asked gently.

"There's that explodey hero coming here," Trinity said. "Glamazon, or whatever."

"Ah," Emily said. It really was an 'ah' moment too. Glamazon being here would complicate things. It was entirely possible that she'd catch on to what Emily was doing. Though it wasn't likely. She was probably just worrying for nothing, really, and she knew that, but it didn't stop a pit from forming in her gut.

The rest of the day had been... not great, actually, but she'd spoken to Sam earlier, who had gone on a small psychology rant about the types of fun. Fun in the moment wasn't the same as fun in hindsight, and this entire event felt like it might be one of those 'fun in hindsight' moments.

She couldn't wait for all of this to be a hindsight moment, because it was really dragging on. "Okay, thank you," she said before rubbing Trinity between the ears. She'd noticed that a lot of people were doing that today, and Athena for one had decided to market it, charging people a fiver for the opportunity to rub the feathers sticking out of her head.

People were paying too, and Emily was slightly concerned about the wads of bills that Athena had stuffed in her jacket pocket.

But that was a concern for later.

She noticed Glamazon making her way through the crowd, but instantly pretended that she hadn't. That was helped by the heroine being hounded for autographs by the already primed crowd.

Not that they had a crowd exactly. So far they'd maybe gotten three, maybe four hundred people to show up, but it was over the course of an entire morning and afternoon. At the moment they had about the greatest concentration of people so far, and that numbered around a hundred or so.

Which was still an intimidating number, but nothing like the massive throngs of people she'd seen gathering just to glimpse at some of the A-lister celebrity masks. This was far more tame, which was exactly what she wanted.

"Owlwatch," Emily said, catching her little sister's attention. The girl jogged over, all smiles. "Hey, I'm gonna chat with Glamazon, can you keep your eyes on hers?"

It wasn't the most subtle way of asking, but Athena caught on right away and nodded. "No problem! I'll wanna see what she thinks of all of this."

Emily smiled. "Yeah, I'll bet."

Glamazon waved some fans off, then came to stand before Emily, hands on hips and back straight. "Good to see you again, Boss. And your gaggle of little gremlins too." She said the last with a winsome smile that probably made it look like she didn't mean it to any onlookers.

Emily imagined that she did, and that the smile was entirely fake. "Hi, Glamazon. It's, ah, nice to see you again. You're feeling better?"

"Much," Glamazon said. She stepped in a little closer. "I'll tell you about it once we have a bit more privacy, of course. But I had to get out and do something, and I thought this event might be as safe as it gets." She glanced around at all of their homemade stands and the now-empty concession stand. "Well, to be honest I was expecting something... more?"

"Well, I guess you're used to, um, officially-sanctioned events. This is a bit more... low-key."

"It's cute," Glamazon said with a shrug.

Sometimes... Oftentimes, Emily wished that she had the kind of disposition to call people out on their obvious lies. But she was already working hard not to stare at the ground between their feet.

"I appreciate you being here," Emily said. "We were just about to wrap up. It's getting... well, not late, but the girls haven't eaten, and I don't want them to go hungry for something like this. Do you think you can distract the crowd while we start closing things up?"

"Uh," Glamazon started.

Emily didn't give her the chance to back out of it and immediately turned and headed back towards their pavilion. It was a matter of moment to tell her minions (mostly Sam) to start packing up.

The first thing to go, of course, was the big jar filled with donations. That was carried over to Sam's van, parked just out of sight, and the money was dumped into a nice, convenient large-sandwich bag.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"So," Emily said to Athena as they started on the way back. The money was now safely hidden under the van's carpet. "Did you get anything from Glamazon?"

"She really didn't like that you told her what to do," Athena said. "She also likes you."

Emily tripped over nothing. "She what?" she asked as she regained her balance.

Athena nodded. "She thinks you're friends, because you're both heroes, and because you were nice to her." Athena smiled, extremely smug. "Good job, big sister, you tricked the hero real well!"

"Uh, right. She likes me as a friend, right? Just to be entirely clear."

Athena blinked. "Huh? Oh, yeah, she doesn't like you the way a sister would like you."

"Right," Emily said. She wasn't going to dig into that. In fact she was going to forget all about it, because the other option was to mention it to someone like Sam who would definitely want to dig into the psychology of her sister's interpretation of platonic and familial love.

They returned to find that the minions had been hard at work packing things up, and even with Glamazon distracting the crowd, the event felt over. She noticed Trinity helping herself out of a tree (was that where the third body had been the whole time?) and Teddy was helping the minions by carrying an oversized stack of boxes. She was saying 'I can take more, put more on,' but no one was around to hear her and she couldn't tell because the stack was too high already.

Emily checked up on the minions, told Athena to take some off the top of the pile Teddy had so that they could actually carry it away, then she slipped back over to Glamazon just as the heroine was waving goodbye to some of the last bystanders. "Thanks," Emily said. "I'm not really good at ending events like this, I guess."

"Oh? Yeah, looks like this went fine. Did you have any trouble?" Glamazon asked.

Emily shook her head. "Nothing. It went... perfectly alright, actually."

"That's good to hear! It's nice of you to raise funds to undo what that jerk did," Glamazon said. "Like a little bit of peaceful payback."

"Uh-huh," Emily said, without mentioning that she was going to steal nearly all the proceeds. "Well, thanks for coming?"

Glamazon shrugged. "Like I said, I needed to get out. And the HRF was nearby anyway."

Emily felt her blood draining away. "What?"

"Oh yeah. This kind of thing? Prime target for villains trying to make a name for themselves. So the HRF was on high alert, just in case he showed up."

There was no doubt who he was. Rattles had certainly left his mark on Glamazon's memory. "I'm happy he didn't," Emily said. "Even though we were a little bit prepared for it. It's still better that he didn't show up."

"Yeah..." Glamazon said, voice trailing off. "So, uh... do you do training?"

"Training?' Emily asked.

"Uh-huh. Like, getting better with your powers, mock fighting, martial arts, that kind of stuff."

"Not really," Emily said. That sounded expensive. And maybe a little bit painful.

Glamazon nodded, as if she expected that answer. Then she reached into a very slim pocket sewn into her costume and pulled out a card. It was right next to a seam, so the pocket was nearly invisible. She, of course, couldn't have normal pockets because her costume was one of those skin-tight ones that did everything it could to make Glamazon indecent while still covering everything from the neck down. "Here. This is where I go. It's a little place, pretty quiet. I don't need creeps staring or taking pics while I'm working out, you know? Anyway, they have a big room in the back with padded walls for martial arts training."

Emily stared at the business card Glamazon was holding for a moment before she took it. There was the address for a gym on it. "Thanks?" she said.

"Come tomorrow, if you want," Glamazon said with a beaming grin.

"Okay, but why?" Emily asked.

"Because if I can't take that jerk down, then you're the next best thing, and you won't be able to do much if standing around for a couple of hours and signing some autographs was enough to make you tired."

Emily... had a hard time thinking up a counter for that one.

***