Chapter Twenty-Two - Plastic Bear Masks

E-Wright: Hello?

Mel: Yeah?

E-Wright: It’s Emily. We met yesterday? I thought we could meet again?

Mel: Good timing.

Mel: There’s a cafe on Main and 6th. I’ll be behind it.

E-Wright: Okay. Thank you. I’ll see you soon.

Emily slid her phone into the pocket of her jacket and took a deep breath. The air outside was quite a bit cooler than inside, and not nearly as stuffy, though there was the added bonus of smelling like... well like air in a city did.

“Where are we heading to, Boss?” Teddy asked. She had a hand in Emily’s and was looking about with big motions of her head, mostly because her hoodie was cutting off her line of sight.

“Main,” Emily said. “We’ll have to take the bus.”

“Alright. I’ve never been on a bus before.”

Emily smiled down at Teddy. It had only been a couple of days, but she’d kind of gotten used to the little summon being... around. She still liked her privacy, and talking--even to Teddy--was a bit exhausting, but it was growing to be like... like talking to her mom or dad. Easier than with others.

She wondered as she started to make her way towards the nearest bus-stop, if that was just her getting used to Teddy, or if the power she had over the bear-girl had anything to do with it.

Her new position of dominance seemed to ease her into liking Teddy as much as she did. Emily had never had power over people before. It was amusing.

She shook her head and banished the thought. It wasn’t a very nice, or very heroic, way of thinking. Power over others was just a disguise for responsibility. Teddy might have been her summon, and that might have meant that Teddy listened to her, but it also meant that Teddy's welfare was Emily’s responsibility.

They arrived at the bus-stop and sat down on the least sticky part of the bench while Emily fished out her phone and looked up the time tables for the city buses. They ran on a half-hour rotation across part of the city all day, but that schedule only worked as long as they didn’t run into construction or roadblocks, and there were both of those everywhere all the time.

“You okay, Boss?” Teddy asked. She was looking at Emily with obvious concern.

Emily shifted her backpack a bit. “I’m fine?” she said.

“Alright,” Teddy replied. She didn’t sound so sure of it, but she didn’t look ready to push either.

The truth, Emily considered as she boarded the bus when it came around and stopped before them, was that she wasn’t all that fine. Her hands would both have been trembling a little if one of them wasn't in Teddy’s firm and somehow reassuring grip, and she had the impression that her insides were twisting about.

She had never dealt all that well with uncertainty. In fact, it was quite the opposite.

Now she was heading out to... do something. No plan, no idea, no expectation of what would go down.

She kept having to suppress her own imagination as it came up with increasingly dire predictions on what would happen to her, or of what she would have to do.

“It’ll be fine,” Teddy said a few moments later when they were both seated at the back of the bus where it was quieter.

Emily had paid for a pair of tickets in cash. Cash that they’d gotten from Alea Iacta and that she had counted out to nearly four hundred dollars in loose bills. Not an enormous amount, but enough to keep her afloat for a month or so. Teddy wasn’t exactly expensive, but it did mean having to buy a bit more food.

Maybe if they did more volunteer work they could skip having to buy a few more meals, and she could grab more free lunches.

Clothes would be a problem eventually, but those could be bought bit by bit over time.

So all that was left was... finding a way to get Teddy into some sort of school?

Emily figured that that wouldn’t be possible without some sort of bureaucratic help. That meant registering Teddy as... a citizen? Was that something that was doable? Emily didn’t know the first thing about that.

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If she approached one of the big heroic organizations and revealed that Teddy was a summon, she was sure that they had some sort of precedent on the matter. She couldn’t remember any heroes with human-like summons, but there were some with strange creatures before and one notable anti-hero called the Stray Cat who had a flock of cats as part of her power.

All that was contingent on her being able to slide into a more heroic disposition in short enough a time that it didn’t look suspicious.

That, or she could wait until the next year and pretend that she’d gotten her powers then?

That didn’t seem likely to work at all.

She was so deep in thought that she almost missed their stop and had to squeak out an apology to the bus driver just as he was about to shut the door and move on.

Stepping out onto a broad commercial street, Emily took a moment to reorientate herself, then started walking down the avenue.

There were a lot more people here, with shoppers and people looking through windows and even the occasional mascot calling out for attention. A lot of the posters she saw called people’s attention towards the reveal of new heroes coming soon. That meant that there would be new merchandise hitting the shelves in a few weeks.

New merchandise meant new books and films and toys and cartoons for the kids. New heroes tended to hog the spotlight for the month or two after Power Day, but they faded out for old favourites soon after.

She wasn’t any more versed in the marketing side of things than that.

Some searching found a little dollar store that she pulled Teddy into. She always felt weird entering that kind of place with a backpack on, like she was there to rob the place even though she’d never had that kind of intention before.

A quick dip into the children’s section at the back found an entire wall covered in hero stuff, from knock-off gadgets-toys to generic costumes and--as she was hoping--masks.

The masks they had weren’t anything special, just over-large plastic domino masks and full-faced ones made to look like some popular heroes and heroines. She recognized Silver Fox’s visor, and Melaton’s sharp red faceplate, and Wi-fire’s strange angular mask, and a few others besides.

“Look, a bear!” Teddy said. She was arm-deep in a rack filled with the more generic sort of mask.

“Can-can I see?” Emily asked.

Teddy nodded along and let go of her hand to better pull out the mask she’d found.

It was a big cartoonish bear-face, down in browns and blacks with paint that had run a bit on the edges. Teddy pressed it to her face and looked up at Emily. “How do I look, Boss?”

“Intimidating,” Emily lied.

“Cool. We should get this one.”

She nodded along, then picked a few plain cloth domino masks too. Then, because she was there, she went around and bought a few other things she kinda needed for the dorm. Mostly more utensils and some sealable containers that would inevitably find their way into the trash.

Emily didn’t want to arrive at the counter with nothing but masks, that would have been far too suspicious.

Once everything was paid for, they left the store and shoved everything into Emily’s backpack a few meters away from the entrance and off to the side where they wouldn’t be in the way of the passing crowds.

“Okay,” Emily said. “That’s all we need for that. Now, um.”

“Now what, Boss?” Teddy asked.

“Now I suppose we go find Melanie and see what we can do about... that man.”

“You mean Homie?” Teddy asked.

Emily sighed and nodded. “I was trying not to say his name,” she said.

“Oh,” Teddy said as the realization hit. “You were being all sneaky-like. I can do that too sometimes. Bears are real stealthy predators. That’s why nothing attacks a bear. Because we’re sneaky and we’d eat anything that tried.”

“I’m certain,” Emily said. She reached her hand out and it was almost instantly grabbed by Teddy. “Come on. I guess we should get this over with.”