With Doctor Jackson safely handed over to the med students and professors, and the camera drone in tow, I headed for the Student Union Building’s door. All I wanted was to get back to the action, figure out where The Agent had disappeared to, and end this Episode. I was still furious—no, I was more furious—with him, and minor league or not, I wouldn’t stop until he was done. Not just exposed as a slime-ball, but done.
But I hadn’t even gotten to the shattered doors when that dream was dashed.
[Episode Finished!]
[Episode: Power War: Back with Avengeance - R]
[Penalties: 0x Rating Warnings - No Penalty]
[Episode Finished! +3 of each Style Point]
[Call it a Draw! +2 of each Style Point]
[Role Focus: Flamboyance+Badass - Goal Partially Met: +10 Flamboyance Points]
[Alias - Understudy] [Archetype - Magical Girl] [Community Rank - 172/523]
[HP 7/13]
[Styles and Skills]
►Archetype Skill - Transformation Sequence
►Combo Skills - Power-Weaving
►Badass (32)
►Cunning (46)
►Drama (46)
► Bit-Part Barrage 2
► Starlance 1
►Flamboyance (43)
►Signature Skill - Adaptive Armoire 3
►Stored Costumes: (Rainy Day, Copy Cat, Lab Assistant Panic)
►Solar Wing 1
► Quick-Time Change 3
► Improvised Ovation 1
►Grit (42)
► I-Frame Transform 3
It wasn’t a win, that was for sure. The campus was trashed, and my stomach sank as I surveyed the damage. Between Roth Arena’s windows, the fighting outside of the Student Union building, and the now-finished battle at Walnut Tower, I had no illusions that this was the second most expensive fight TU had seen since I started here. Worse, it had definitely hurt the most people.
How had that happened? It wasn’t supposed to have been like that. The fight was supposed to have happened in Mid-Town, not at TU.
By the time I got back to a tunnel and sneaked my way back to my secret elevator, I knew Fursona and I had miscalculated. But that wouldn’t happen again. I rolled my skills as the elevator carried me to the Green Room.
I waited in silence for the elevator with the camera drone hovering in my face. Hopefully, Bee would be there. We had some serious strategizing to do, and we had to do it before Rocko called.
Because the Ilneat would be calling. A draw wasn’t a win, and they’d be…a bit peeved…that we hadn’t won our season finale. I needed to make a plan to handle that. I needed Bee to help me make a plan for that.
The elevator door opened.
“Is she okay? Holy shit, he used a gun! Heroes don’t use guns! What the hell happened there?” Bianca said. She was halfway out of her Eagle-sona costume, and I helped her with her buckles before untransforming myself.
“The Agent’s got some sort of power-breaker. He cut through Mays’s power like it was nothing. It felt a little like when Professor Bagges ignored Monologue, but that shouldn’t be possible. We have no leads, no hunches, even, about where he went, and he tried to kill Doctor Jackson. For all I know, he set up McHammer and Lord Destructo so they’d draw the professors’ fire, but he came here for me, and I don’t know what to do about that. He came here for me. Not to campus, but here!” The words wouldn’t stop coming.
“We’ve gotta deal with him, but we watched him try to murder Doctor Jackson. Everyone’s going to see that. He didn’t try to take her out with powers or in a flashy way. It wasn’t good TV. It was just him shooting her! If he hadn’t run away, what would have happened? He had everyone beat right there, and we couldn’t do anything to stop him. And now we’ve got nothing.”
“Okay. Deep breath, Annie. We got a draw this time, but we’ll win the next one. The Council of Heroes will know he’s not to be trusted; he’ll finally be blacklisted from everywhere in Tokyexico—at the least. It’s a draw, but it’s really a win. Less than a half-dozen of 3V1L’s henches got away, and without The Agent, they’ll be powerless.”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“Alright.” I took a couple of shaky breaths. “Alright. We’ve got another problem, though. Rocko’s going to—“
My phone buzzed.
“—that,” I finished awkwardly.
We both stared at the phone awkwardly. It rang and rang, upside down, on the table, then went silent. Fursona—Bee—spoke first. “We’ll tell him it’s a win. 3V1L’s a long-term villain for us, and even though we’ve struck a blow against them today, defeating them wasn’t likely. Even Golden Goose couldn’t do it, after all. We’re going to need more than a couple of months.”
What about The Agent?”
“He doesn’t matter. He’s not in our rogues’ gallery. The One L is, and they’ve disappeared. If The Agent shows his face in Tokyexico City again, the professors will be on him.”
“Yeah. Yeah, Mindstorm was ready to hunt him down just now. That’s a real threat, even to a meta-powered super like him. And he’s probably the weakest against someone like her, so maybe she’ll deal with him. But if not, we need a plan. We need something.”
“We have something. We’re dealing with The Agent’s minions while he’s gone, and that’ll be a blow to whatever rebuilding he wants to do. We’re going to beat him in public perception, too. We can put the whole assault on him, and even APPEAL can’t say that Magical Girl Undergrad caused all this damage—not when so many cameras saw Mindstorm do it. We’re okay, Annie. Take some breaths. We’re okay.”
“I’ll toss us on speaker when Rocko calls again, then,” I said, taking those breaths and rehearsing the impromptu script over and over in my head. It’d work. It had to.
The phone rang again, and I picked it up quickly. “Hello, Rocko.”
“Anika, what’s going on over there?” Mom’s voice echoed in the Green Room, and the plan fell apart.
◄▼►
As I finished explaining everything that had happened, Mom cleared her throat. “Your dad and I are driving over tomorrow.”
“We sure are, Dot,” Dad said.
Bianca and I looked at each other, and I broke into a smile through my tears. I’d finished ugly crying a couple of minutes ago, and now the tears were the quiet kind. But then I shook my head. “You can’t. The Power War—“
“You know who I was. I’ll have you meet me at the gate with my suit if I have to, but they won’t stop me. Make sure there’s room for us. We can sleep on your pull-out couch if we have to, but there’s no money for a hotel, so unless you’re paying for it, we’re sleeping with you, Anika.” Mom’s voice didn’t leave any room for argument, so I made a sound of assent as she kept talking. “Besides, we missed Christmas last year, and I’m going to guess you’re not coming here?”
“No. We’re going to be too busy after this.” It was true; I was willing to bet I already had emails from TU’s administration about my involvement here. I’d be up for suspension or on behavior probation again; either that or Mindstorm’s un-retirement had taken the spotlight off me.
“Well, your business will have to wait until after Christmas, Dot,” Dad said. “We’ve been worried about you. You don’t call as much as you used to, and it sounds like you’ve been superheroing a lot. Your career’s important, and it sounds like The Agent’s a ton of trouble. You’re going to have to deal with him, but don’t forget about your friends and family. Let’s set aside your work for a couple of weeks.”
“Okay, Dad,” I sniffled. I wished this conversation wasn’t on speaker or that Bee wasn’t here. She looked worried about me, too, but her parents weren’t coming up from Tortuga West.
I talked with them for almost an hour, expecting to be interrupted by Rocko at any moment. By the end, we’d caught up pretty well, and Dad was throwing his clothes in a bag like they were going to leave right this minute. It took almost ten minutes to get Mom off the phone, and she made me promise I’d have her supersuit ready, ‘just in case.’ I didn’t want her anywhere near the Madame Shockwave Costume, but she was insistent like only Mom could be. Eventually, though, we said our goodbyes, and I was finally able to hang up.
“Well, looks like the apartment’s going to be crowded,” I said, laughing nervously. Bee had kept herself together the whole time my parents talked about coming for Christmas, but now I’d see her real reaction.
She smiled sheepishly and poked me in the side. “Yeah, maybe more than you’d expect. I was going to tell you a couple of days ago, but I came out to my parents. They know I’m a super now, and after this, they’ll want to see me, too. So, uh, we probably need to figure out how to host four adults for a week or two.”
I groaned. “I guess we can say goodbye to our bed.”
◄▼►
Wednesday, December 15
- - - - -
We’d covered the whiteboard in scribbles and sticky notes as we furiously tried to avoid an inevitable conclusion. We’d tried every possibility and plan we could think of to keep at least one set of parents out of the Green Room, but the only option besides opening up my secret base to Extras was…worse. Doable, but worse.
But at least it was distracting. Sort of, in a horrifying way.
I hadn’t thought about The Agent, Rocko, or superhero work once in the last three hours because I was too busy rooting through Bianca’s pigsty of a room, trying to make it livable for the two of us for a week. I’d taken one look at my girlfriend’s abomination of a dorm room and vetoed the plan to have her parents stay here. There was no way we could get it clean enough for other people; if we were lucky, we’d survive living there ourselves.
“No wonder you’ve been spending all your time at my place!” I complained for the fiftieth time as I shoveled dirty clothes from who knew how long ago into a hamper. “Bee, this isn’t okay!”
“I know, I know,” she said miserably from the sink. The dishes were a loss; she had a garbage can full of cups and filthy plates. “I’ve been doing better at your place, but I was going to eat the deposit here and—“
“No. We’re getting it cleaned up and spending the next week or two here, and we’re going to like it—even if it kills us.” I wrinkled my nose at the incredible pile of sports bras and socks in the corner. All my work, and I’d barely made a dent! “It’ll probably kill us.”
“Oh, shut up.”
I stretched, and my back popped loudly. “Fuck, that feels good. Okay, we’ve got our parents figured out, assuming we can get this mess in order before your folks fly in. They can have my couch, my parents can have our bed, and all the Christmas stuff can happen at Walnut Tower. That way, we don’t need to make this spotless—just livable.”
“Oh, thank god. I thought we were going to be here all day.”
“We are.”
“Har, har.” The room went quiet as we both attacked our assigned jobs.
Then Bee cleared her throat. “So, we still don’t have any idea where The Agent went?”
“No. And you know what? I don’t care about that right now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I think my parents are right. He’ll turn up again. He’s not done with me. But we don’t have any leads, and we’re not going to get any until next semester, so for now, let’s focus on my parents, your parents, and 3V1L. They’re leaderless, powerless, and ripe to be beaten. We’ll make a plan, sweep into the Poudre Districts after the break, and wipe them out; maybe they’ll even have a lead to The Agent. But for now, no more shop talk.”
Bee laughed cynically. “When has that ever happened?” I tossed a filthy spaghetti-strap shirt her way, and she ducked. We both laughed when it hit the wall with a faint slapping sound.
“I’m serious. Unless our parents or TU bring it up, we’re not talking about work. We’ll have to manage the administration, but I need a break.”
Bee washed her hands and wiped them dry on a rag that wasn’t completely filthy. Then she shot me a look and winked. “I know exactly what you mean.”
I laughed and pushed her away. “Not until this place is cleaned up.”
She acted disappointed, but I ignored it and focused on cleaning up my girlfriend’s dirty laundry. As much as I hated to admit it—and especially as much as I hated cleaning up Bee’s dorm room—I needed the time off. Winter break couldn’t start soon enough.