Melanie minutely sighed as she read through the last of the PMs from Amy and Vicky. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I wish you had alerted me earlier when Panacea first began messaging you, but it’s better you did so now than not at all.”
“No problem,” I replied breathing out a small sigh myself, though mine was of relief. I half expected her to blow up about this… “I’ll just be going then?”
“So eager to escape my den?” she lightly quipped, leaning forward so her elbows rested on the heavy oak desk in the middle of her office. “How are things?”
Man, fucking jinxed it. “They’re… um…”
“I certainly hope you’re not about to say ‘fine,’” she interjected with an expression that made it clear she knew I was, in fact, going to say that. She pointedly looked at my collarbone, where a bandage was jutting out past where the neckline of my shirt covered. “I should think we are all aware things are not ‘fine.’”
I ground my teeth just a bit at that and saucily bit out, “What do you want me to say?”
“I’d like you to tell me how things are with you,” she evenly rejoined. “There’s no shame in feeling out of sort right now. You’ve been through a traumatic experience, and that’s setting aside this new change in your relationship with Elle. These are big changes, and part of my job is making sure everyone on the crew has what they need.”
I could feel my body tensing, and it was a struggle to not let it show. I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to forget all about Octavia, and I didn’t want to talk about my love life with my friend slash boss. I had been an anxious wreck when I talked to Gregor about it at the Flycatcher, and that was bad enough. Melanie paid me for our jobs and housed me in a building she owned, so the last thing I wanted was to fall apart in front of her—any more than I already had, at least. Her seeing what happened yesterday morning was bad enough.
“I’m sorry for what happened at the Flycatcher, but I’m… I’ve got it under control—won’t happen again.” I wasn’t sure I did, honestly, but what else could I say?
Melanie looked about as convinced as I was, but surprisingly let the matter go. “Very well. Just know that if you feel the need for a discreet therapist, then I will take care of it.”
I was halfway into turning around to leave when her words properly registered with me. “Therapist? Who even does that?”
“Everyone on the team prior to your joining has, at one time or another, partaken in such services. It’s no secret that Elle does even now.”
“Huh? She hadn’t— Wait, you mean the hypnotist?” I found out shortly after the wolf incident that Elle worked with a hypnotist regularly to try and get a better grasp of her unruly power. Before they had started, apparently her power had much more readily spawned creations fueled by her nightmares. It had even been so bad at the start that she hadn’t been able to stay at Palanquin for fear her power might hurt someone.
“Hypnosis is one aspect they work on,” Melanie confirmed, “though I should add that I only know that much because we had to search for a bit to find someone capable of helping Elle. What they discuss or do beyond that I am neither privy to nor wish to be.”
“Huh. Well… Okay? I’ll, um, let you know or whatever.” Smooth, June. “Anyway, Elle and I were gonna go take a walk to the park, so I’ll catch you later.”
“Be safe,” she said as I slipped out.
You don’t need to tell me twice… I thought with a grimace. Danger is everywhere.
It wasn’t a far jaunt down the hall to our room, and I heard Masuyo and Aisha bickering good-naturedly over something I couldn’t quite make out as I approached the ajar door. “Uh, hi you two?” I remarked as I stepped inside. “What’s up?”
“Your cousin,” Aisha began, as if whatever she was about to impart was my fault by consequence of our being related, “is trying to justify not putting ice in her drinks to keep them cold.”
“I just don’t like them being watered down,” Masuyo clarified with a roll of her eyes from where she sat next to Elle on her bed.
“What if it’s water?”
“Well obviously that’s fine. You can’t water down water.”
“You can if it’s salt water!”
“Wha— Why are you putting ice in salt water? Surely you’re not drinking it?!”
Elle and I shared a look, and I could quite clearly read her expression: Save me.
“Well, as, um… interesting as your debate sounds, Elle and I were planning to go for a walk to the park…” I explained in my best approximation of an apologetic voice as I dug my coat out of my still packed bag. Take the hint and get outta here… I wanna take my girlfriend on a nice walk.
“She mentioned,” Masuyo replied before dashing my hopes. “After the long ride in the van, we were hoping we could join you and stretch our legs a bit.”
“That too,” Aisha contributed before adding with a smirk, “But really I’m coming along to supervise and make sure you don’t jump each others' bones behind a bush or something.”
Masuyo and I both groaned, though I imagined for different reasons. “Behind a bush? You really think we’d do that, Aisha?” I said.
“Nah, not really. I actually think El would whip up a king sized bed covered in rose petals or something.”
That got a choked laugh from me, which I felt a bit bad about, since Elle didn’t seem to find it nearly as funny. “Well that won’t be happening either.” I pulled on my jacket and reached out to help Elle stand. “We don’t need you two hovering.”
“Three,” Masuyo corrected as she and Aisha stood as well.
“Don’t tell me…”
My cousin’s phone chose that precise moment to ring, and I knew who was on the other end, even before she said, “Hey, Sabah. We were just about to come down.”
“Hey! No!” I hissed, tapping my arms together as an ‘X.’ “You’re gonna out them!”
“Don’t sweat it,” Aisha assured me, throwing her arm around my shoulder. “She already ran it by us.”
“Wait, what?” I blurted and immediately looked to my side for confirmation from Elle.
She gave me a smile and confirmed, “It’s someone Masuyo trusts, so I don’t mind.”
“And I’ll make her life a living hell if she gives up my identity to anyone else,” Aisha threw in with a smirk and a vicious glint in her eye.
That comment earned a concerned glance from Masuyo, who was still on the phone, and I leaned in closer to whisper to Elle, “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
“If you’re uncomfortable, we can do something else,” she whispered back. “She said this lady already knows you’re Meteor?”
“Well yes, but only by chance…” I blew out a huff of air as my cousin hung up and looked to us inquiringly. “Whatever. I guess if you two don’t mind then it’s okay.” I almost tacked on a plea that they not make things awkward, but I knew better than to say that, since it would all but guarantee Aisha went out of her way to do the opposite. Instead, I hooked an arm through Elle’s, and she took the cue and led us down to the entrance while Aisha and Masuyo followed in our wake. We found Sabah waiting with Pierce, and if the several yards of distance between them and her uneasy expression were any indication, she was uncomfortable around him.
Her demeanor changed the moment she saw the four of us approaching, and she waved broadly with a smile, calling out, “Hey there! Welcome back!”
Elle gave her a shy little wave, and Masuyo hustled forward to give the short woman a hug. “Hey, Sabah! It’s good to be back.”
“Aw, like cousin like cousin, huh?” Aisha teased, prompting a baleful look from Masuyo.
“If you’re just coming along to annoy me, then please feel free to stay here.”
“And miss seeing the awkward-lesbians-mobile in action? Not a chance! You four are gonna be hil-ar-ious, so I don’t mind being the spare tire.”
It was readily obvious that Sabah’s train of thought was derailed by that statement. Her expression shifted from indignation to complete confusion before finally landing on cautious glee when her eyes alighted on my arm through Elle’s. “Wait…”
I rolled my eyes. No sense denying it. “Yuuup. Card carrying and certified now.”
I don’t think any of us were prepared for the squeal of excitement that elicited from Sabah. “Yes!! So much yes!” Nor were we prepared for her to abruptly blanch and quietly add, “Um, I um…Sorry? And… congratulations?”
Aisha was the first to recover, and she devolved into mad cackling for several seconds before asking, “Holy shit, are you bipolar or what?”
“Not how being bipolar works, Aisha,” Masuyo darkly noted before turning to whisper something to the obviously embarrassed Sabah.
Clearly we were never going to get to the park if I didn’t drag us there kicking and screaming, so I firmly—and loudly, so I could be heard over the still cackling Aisha—asked Elle, “Ready to go?”
“Please,” she muttered, taking the lead. It didn’t escape my notice that she had a bit of heat in her cheeks as well.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
I was immensely grateful for my warm jacket, since the cold air outside was being made worse by the breeze blowing in from the bay. The closest park to Palanquin, and the one I had gone to with Elle a few times prior to our trip to Philadelphia—before our trip to Providence, really—was west of the club. That meant the breeze was at our backs, and my hair was blowing everywhere, since I had no hood on my jacket and had forgotten to bring a hair tie.
“Goddamned hair,” I grumbled for the fifth time as we finally entered the park, prompting another round of giggles from Elle. “I swear, one of you could’ve warned me long hair actually sucks ass sometimes.”
“I don’t mind it,” she remarked as she leaned in and pecked me on the cheek. “I think it makes you look wild.”
Aisha, who had been in the midst of saying something that made Sabah blush and Masuyo groan, whirled around and said, “Wait, I missed it! Say it again!”
“Not a chance,” I told her, making my voice extra perky just to rub it in.
“Nooooo! Why must you deprive me of my sole joy in life, Junebug?!”
“I want you to know I’m going to remember this when you get a boyfriend,” I rejoined as Elle steered the five of us towards a small shelter with a table near some trees. “I will play third wheel and go along with you on everything, doing my damnedest to embarrass you at every opportunity.”
“Yes, but will you actually enjoy it like I do?” she countered with a wide smile.
Damn, she’s got a point, I thought as I took a seat with Elle in the shelter. “I’ll enjoy getting revenge.”
“So what you’re actually saying is you’ll go along maybe once then get bored and go back to spending time with El.”
“I’m quite certain I’ll make an exception, if it means bugging the shit out of you.”
The sound of a bird’s chirrup reached my ears alongside a minute gasp from Elle. “June, look!” she whispered. “Second tree from us.”
I looked up curiously and noticed a shock of red among the leaves. “Oh, I’ve seen those before. Can’t remember what they’re called though.”
“Northern Cardinal,” she murmured, transfixed by it. “They represent someone you loved who’s died.”
“That sounds grim,” Sabah remarked from the other side of the table. “Or is it a ‘your loved one is visiting you’ sort of thing?”
“That one.”
I looked back to the cardinal in a new light, unsure what to think of the pretty bird. “Whose is it then?”
“Hm?” Elle finally turned away from the bird and gave me a long, slow blink. I narrowly resisted the urge to frown, recognizing the first signs she may begin slipping back into bad days ahead. “Whose?”
“Whose loved one is it?”
She hummed, sounding unsure as she turned back to the bird, which had flitted to another branch in the same tree. “Not sure.”
When I was younger I had seen couples everywhere in the city engaging public displays of affection, ranging from small things like holding hands all the way up to literally fucking in alleyways behind dumpsters. I had never understood why somebody would do that, but sitting there next to Elle as she smiled brightly up at the cardinal and the other birds in the trees, the breeze occasionally catching her fine, delicate blond strands? Well, I still wouldn’t be caught dead trying to have sexy in a dirty New York alley—or Brockton Bay, thank you very much—but the minor stuff…
I leaned into Elle and rested my head on her shoulder. Her gaze drifted down to me, and her lips curled into a smile as she wrapped an arm around my back, gently tugging me closer.
Yeah. Yeah, I get it now.
“Gaaaaayyy— Ow, jesus fucking shit, that hurt!”
I smirked as I caught the coin I had smacked into Aisha’s forehead. “And proud of it.”
----------------------------------------
I jerked awake in a panic, and for a groggy, disorienting second I wasn’t sure why. I groaned lightly and rubbed at my eyes while I tried to make sense of the mish-mash my thoughts were in.
Graveyard… Ariel…? I’m so confused…
I pried my eyes open and blearily examined my surroundings. Moonlight was streaming down through our window, and I could hear the faint sound of music and activity. I was confused by Elle’s bed being missing, but when a warmth shifted behind me, I remembered we had pushed our beds together. My lips quirked up at the thought of the… activities that had followed.
A nightmare then, I determined, breathing a bit easier now that I knew a skinless Ariel wasn’t going to drag me into the ground. The covers had fallen off of me a bit while I was asleep, and the feeling of the room’s air on my bare skin made me shiver. I wiggled myself back deeper into Elle and pulled the covers up to try and get comfortable again, and when the other girl’s breath briefly hitched, I worried I had woken her. Thankfully, her breathing quickly evened back out, and aside from her arm wrapping itself tighter around my belly, she didn’t respond.
I checked the alarm clock on the nightstand, and the red ‘01:32’ piercing the darkness of the room explained why I could hear music in the distance. The walls were sound-proofed, but the windows weren’t, and that meant you could ironically only hear the music from the club if you listened closely enough at the side of the room opposite from the actual source of it. Massachusetts had a statewide law setting ‘last call’ at 2 A.M., but local governments could adjust that as desired. Sunday through Thursday, Brockton Bay followed the statewide schedule of ending alcohol sales at 1:30 A.M. and closing up on the hour, but on Fridays and Saturdays, an extra two hours were tacked on. Being a Saturday, that meant the hubbub in the club wouldn’t be dying down for several more hours.
Unfortunately, I failed to fall back asleep and watched in growing frustration as the minutes ticked higher and higher. When the clock finally hit 2:00, I decided, Guess I’m not falling asleep anytime soon… Might as well go hang out on the balcony for a bit.
It took me a fair bit of careful wiggling to escape Elle’s arm without waking her, but other than a mumbled, barely audible word that might have been ‘June’ but could just as easily have been ‘moon,’ she wasn’t roused and continued to sleep. I pulled on the clothes I had tossed aside earlier and finger combed my hair to look a bit less like I had just rolled out of bed after sex. I had retrieved my backpack of coins and was just starting to turn the knob when it hit me that I hadn’t grabbed my mask or goggles, so I quickly doubled back to grab them before heading out.
I felt… strange looking at them. I hadn’t worn them since the training exercise in Philadelphia eight days ago, but it felt longer. Likely because it was only a few days ago I had been… convinced to change costumes.
I’m Meteor, I reminded myself. I shivered again, but this time it had nothing to do with the temperature. I tied the scarf in place and pulled the goggles on.
I’m Meteor.
A short walk later, I was stepping through the doorway leading onto the club balcony. The roar of the music properly hit me then along with the flashing lights of the dance floor, and I was unsurprised to find a myriad of unconscious women littering the booths. I was more surprised to find Faultline sitting together with Gregor in a booth while Newter entertained three ladies in a booth closer to the stairs leading down. I gave Newter a friendly wave that he returned before gravitating down towards the other end of the balcony.
“Good evening, Meteor,” Gregor greeted me as I slipped into the booth next to Faultline for the sake of space—Gregor was a great guy, but he was also a large guy and really needed a seat for himself.
“Hey.”
“Couldn’t sleep?” Faultline asked, her welder’s mask and the ambient noise making it somewhat hard to hear her.
“Did for a bit,” I answered as I sent the coins in my bag floating out over the dance floor. The glittering and sparkling of the lights on the metal made the crowd roar with approval as always. “Had a nightmare and couldn’t get back to sleep.”
“Sorry to hear that,” she replied. As ever, her tone didn’t really sound overly concerned, but that was normal for her. I knew her well enough at this point that I knew to take her at face value for statements like that. “I was just about to ask the bar staff to run us up some drinks. Want anything?” The ‘non-alcoholic’ was implied—I knew from experience. Faultline might not be making me go to Winslow and might be a mercenary that would steal candy from a baby if you paid her too, but apparently she drew the line at letting her underage crew members drink alcohol. Even Newter wasn’t allowed for the next several years, or so he’d told me once.
“Eh. I’d like a coke, but that’ll just make it harder to get to sleep. A sprite? That’s non-caffeinated, right?”
“You could always drink water,” Gregor suggested with a laugh.
“Hey, if my drink isn’t supported by millions spent in advertising, then clearly it’s not worth drinking,” I quipped with a laugh of my own while Faultline tapped on her phone, presumably sending down the drink orders. “So what’s got you two out here tonight, especially this late?”
“Celebrating the disaster of Philadelphia being behind us,” Faultline said, “not to mention finally having some solid info on the origin behind Case 53s.”
“Partying at a club is your idea of a good time? I don’t see it.”
“Believe it or not, I used to frequent clubs like this once,” she remarked, sounding almost wistful as she leaned back in the booth and looked off to the side at the dance floor. “It’s one reason I chose to make my own club as a front.”
Huh. Wouldn’t have pegged her as the type, I thought in surprise. “I’ll take your word for it. The rest of that though—I thought we hadn’t gotten any intel, since we never did run an official job in Philly. We got something after all?”
“The original lead ran cold, but we chanced upon another.” The satisfaction in her words was plain to hear.
“Well don’t hold us in suspense!”
“I already told Gregor and Newter. They’ve contributed more to that investigation than anyone else, after all, so it was only fair.” She looked to Gregor, and he shrugged. “Very well. I had been planning to announce the findings at our meeting tomorrow, but—”
Whatever she had been about to say was lost in the cacophony of screams that began when someone started shooting a gun down on the floor. I was caught completely off guard like I had been when Ariel had begun shooting at the zoo, so the first two shots hit their intended targets before I could do anything. Fortunately, the shooter had been aiming for the large strobe lights used for the dance floor, so other than the glass maybe hitting people below, nobody was hurt. I caught and melted the shots that followed the first two using my power and scrambled to my feet far later than Gregor or Faultline—the former having pulled the table up and into basic cover on the balcony and the latter rushing to the stairway. Newter had also already leapt to the wall and from there to the ceiling, and as Faultline ran under him, she yelled to me, “Melt the gun! Disable the shooter!”
“On it!” I yelled back as I felt the shooter eject the magazine and start fishing out another. I melted the gun, the new magazine, and even the spent one for good measure and wrapped the melted metal in their hand around their wrist before dragging them into the air. The main overhead lights used during the day flared into life, giving me better sight of the target, an Asian man in ABB colors. I immediately started wrapping various parts of him in more metal to restrict his movement, and when I glanced up to the ceiling, I saw Newter was already over him and ready to pounce if asked.
“Everyone, please call down and remain where you are,” Faultline’s voice boomed through the club. She was speaking through the same system the DJ used to speak to the crowd, but when I checked the DJ booth, I didn’t see anyone there. An app on her phone maybe? “Our staff have locked down the building and are sweeping for more gunmen. Please bear with us as we work to ensure your safety. If someone near you needs medical attention, then please raise your arms as high into the air as possible, so our staff can attend to you as swiftly as possible.”
It would be generous to say the crowd calmed down after that, but at least the screams settled down into people only mildly loudly yelling at each other. Arms rose into the air at a few spots in the crowd as well. Not all of them were underneath where the lights had been, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if some people got trampled in the panic that ensued.
“Meteor,” Gregor said, drawing my attention to him. “Bring the shooter to the balcony.”
I nodded and hurried to oblige, and Newter tracked the man on the ceiling the whole way over.
“Meteor!” the gunman yelled once he laid eyes on me. I didn’t recognize him, but clearly he knew me. Now that I was closer I could make out finer details: Namely, this guy looked worried out of his mind. As a—presumably—normal man walking into a club known to be run by parahumans and causing a scene, I could imagine why. “I have a message for you.”
Faultline returned up the stairs, and looked to Gregor, asking, “What has he said?”
“He says he has a message for Meteor.”
The man nodded frantically, sweat on his brow. “I do. The great and glorious Lung demands you submit yourself to the ABB—to where you truly belong.”
“Never gonna happen, asswipe!” I snarled.
“H-He said to tell you, ‘If you do not, then everything around you, including your family, will burn.’”
I froze. Masuyo?
Faultline’s phone rang, and she answered it with an imperious, “Report.” I couldn’t see her facial expressions through her welder’s mask when she hung up a moment later, but I didn’t need to guess, since she brought the phone back to her face right after, and I heard her say with the speakers overhead echoing her words in stereo, “Once again, I must ask everyone to stay calm and remain where you are. The building is in lockdown. We must ask you all to remain here until it is safe to leave.”
“Boss?” I asked, unable to help the worry leaking into my words. Do they have Masuyo? “What’s going on?”
“Lung is torching the neighborhood.”