My friend, the temp vil cosplayer, glared at the hench for another moment, then stomped toward the door. At the same time, I crept along behind him, listening to his litany of under-the-breath complaints. He grumbled about everything, from Fursona and me to the whole 3V1L organization all the way to Golden Goose’s attack last year.
It was honestly annoying, but it did cover up the time I stepped on a loose floorboard and knocked a bit of plaster off the ceiling. And it did keep him distracted all the way to the door and onto the cracked sidewalk.
So that was nice.
“Fuck you,” Fake Haze-Matt muttered the whole way out of the house and across the snow-and-weed-covered path. “Fuck this. I’m done. I put my life on the line, and for what? A fucking pink slip?”
As he stomped down the sidewalk toward a beater of an old motorcycle, he read the paper, then balled it up into a tight, crumpled sphere. He threw it into the gutter, where it started soaking up snow-melt water, and climbed onto the motorcycle.
“Fursona, I’ve got a possible lead.” As the bike took off, roaring down the road, I [Pouncing Panthers’d] down from the attic and landed near the paper. Its soaking-wet text was almost unreadable, but I unfolded it and held it flat, then hurried away from the 3V1L outpost before the henchwoman could come out and spot me. That’d be a disaster at this point.
[Badass Move! +1 Badass Point]
“Great.” It didn’t sound great. It sounded like she had her hands full.
“Do you need help?” I asked.
“No!” She paused, took a breath, and continued. “Look, we’re not the only superheroes in Thornton, and I got caught up in some shit. These villains are getting pounded, but you don’t need to get involved. It’s way, way better if you slip out of here.”
“You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Yes,” she said through clenched teeth. “Do not get involved. Just go back to the Green Room, and I’ll meet you there in, say, an hour.”
“Got it, babe. Be careful out there.”
“Har har.”
----------------------------------------
So, back at the Green Room, I spread the soaking wet paper on the conversation pit’s table and sprayed it down with my hair dryer until it started to curl at the edges. Then I peered over it until I found what I was looking for: a date, time, and address.
[Good Thinking! +1 Cunning Point]
[Episode Finished!]
[Episode: Investigative Episode: Thornton on the Outs - PG]
[Penalties: 0x Rating Warnings - No Penalty]
[Episode Finished! +3 of each Style Point]
[Winner Winner! +3 of each Style Point]
[Role Focus: Cunning+Drama - Goal Partaily Met: +5 to Cunning]
[Alias - Understudy] [Archetype - Magical Girl] [Community Rank - 160/523]
[HP 13/13]
[Styles and Skills]
►Archetype Skill - Transformation Sequence
►Combo Skills - Power-Weaving
►Badass (10)
►Cunning (17)
►Drama (28)
► Bit-Part Barrage 2
► Starlance 1
►Flamboyance (20)
►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 (9)
► I-Frame Transform 3
It was…perfect! We had everything we needed. Everything. The Agent was going down, and if not, we’d be able to find where he was from their headquarters. I found it hard to believe they had just handed out that address, and yet…there the paper was, sitting there on my coffee table. I stared at it, trying to figure out where I’d seen it before. 25679 Madrid. 25679 Madrid…
It just wouldn’t click, no matter what I did or how I turned it over in my head. After a minute, I gave up, leaving it on the table. The Episode was over, and it was time to put away Understudy and become Anika again. I untransformed and headed to my apartment’s kitchen for a snack. One granola bar for myself and microwaved pizza pockets for Bianca. She’d love that. I set them up, ready to heat the second she walked through the door.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
After fifteen minutes, I ate my granola bar.
After another ten, I sent her a text and got the automatic ‘I’m in a fight’ response we’d programmed in.
After an hour, I was starting to get worried. She’d never left me hanging like this before. I’d done it to her on occasion, but I’d tried to communicate what was happening. What was happening, anyway?
She finally came home two hours later, just before I finished cooking a quick dinner. The pizza pockets were long since put away, and I’d almost finished the lemon pepper chicken and veggies, when I heard her in the Green Room. She groaned, moaned, and struggled with her suit for a minute. “Hey, babe, I hear you. I can’t leave the stove, but if you come here, I’ll help you!”
“Oh, thank fuck.” A half-unsuited eagle pushed through the door and staggered toward me. I blinked; she reeked. Of sweat and violence, yes, but also of…perfume? Really, really stinky perfume—and not green apples. She stopped at the edge of the kitchen, turned around, and raised her arms. “Help?”
“Okay, babe,” I said, laughing a little as my tension bled off. As I got closer, the…unique…smell wafting off her got all but unbearable. “What did you run into out there?”
“The In-Your-Endos.”
I stopped, trying not to laugh. But she looked over her shoulder, and I couldn’t see an ounce of humor in her eyes. My smile fell. “Oh, shit, you’re serious. And I bet…”
“Yeah. Captain Yiff for four hours. Solid. The only ones who didn’t call me that were Magical Girl [Censored] and A Cat Who Can Talk. The damn cat didn’t say anything, either. Captain Vibration insisted it could talk, but it just looked at me and licked itself. The whole Episode.”
“Jeeze.” I unbuckled her, then turned the chicken and veggies down so they’d stay warm without drying out. “Go take a shower. The food will be here when you’re done.”
She sniffed an armpit, nodded, and started pulling off her top right there in the kitchen. I glared at her and shook my head. “No. Make sure they get right in the laundry before the whole place smells like a Macy’s exploded.”
“Okay, mom.”
“And make sure you get clean.”
“Jeeze,” Bianca stalked off to the shower, and a few moments later, the water started running.
I turned everything down to the lowest it’d go and pulled up a chair to make sure nothing burned. The Triad had warned us about the In-Your-Endos. If it was their zone for Power War Three, why weren’t they on top of 3V1L there? I almost wanted to contact them and ask, but Tele-Portal had been pretty clear: do not mess with the In-Your-Endos.
Wherever their cartoon dick was on the map was theirs and theirs alone. We should have known better. Then again, we’d needed this Episode. And we had gotten what we needed.
By the time Bee finished her quick but thorough shower, I had the table set. I’d even found a candle in hopes of a romantic evening. But my hopes were dashed when Bee came out in sweats and a hoodie, glued to her phone. She sat down across from me, looked at the candle, and smiled. “That’s adorable, babe.”
“Thanks. What’s got your attention?”
“Classes. Same setup as last semester; the teachers are supplying the books and stuff, and our schedules are locked in. We’ve got Episode Manipulation, Power Balancing, Building for Success, and First Aid.”
“Nothing fun, huh?” I served the chicken, and she dug into it gratefully. We ate for a while; she was starving, and one thing I could count on her for was putting away whatever I served. Then, I grabbed my own phone and checked my emails.
Subject: Spring 2043 Schedule
To Magical Girl Understudy
For your final semester in the Associate’s Degree in Superpower Studies program at Tokyexico University, we’ve assigned you to the following classes:
M/W/F 8:00-8:50 - Episode Manipulation
M/W/F 9:00-9:50 - Building for Success
M/W/F 11:00-11:50 - First Aid
M/W/F 2:00-2:50 - Power Builds and Role Optimization
These classes will complement your current knowledge and skills and prepare you for your future post-graduation. They offer an interesting mix of in-Episode flexibility, power-set optimization, and skills to use with Extras both inside and outside of Episodes.
Supplies for all four courses will be provided by the Department of Superpower Studies or, in the case of First Aid, Tokyexico University in general. You don’t need to purchase anything in order to attend.
Thank you,
Doctor Mays
Head of Superpower Studies
Tokyexico University
Dr. Mays’s email was shockingly terse, without any of the goofy jokes he’d filled previous ones with. I understood; he had to be hurting after The Agent had broken his power and shot Dr. Jackson. As far as I could tell, no one knew how he’d done it yet. Mays’s lockdown advertising power was supposed to be unstoppable, with only Jackson able to break it—and maybe The Narrator by narrating him away. Other than that, no hero had ever broken out before.
So that had to be a source of worry for him. Plus, his partner was in the hospital. Or, I hoped, she was in rehab. Taking a shot or two wasn’t something you recovered from quickly, and even a superhero would need some help if they actually got shot without superhero damage.
“Do you think she’ll be okay?” I asked Bee.
“Who, Jackson?” She swallowed, then nodded. “She’s a tough lady. Sure, she hasn’t taken as many hits as you or me, most likely, and she didn’t seem to have superhero damage, either. But Tokyexico General’s solid, and the other hospitals aren’t exactly poor quality, either. Honestly, I’m surprised the Ilneats didn’t just hit her with a healing patch and call it good.”
“Yeah. That is a little odd.” I was quiet for a minute—the food was just too good—before clearing my throat. “Okay. Tomorrow’s the beginning of a new school year. Are you ready for it?”
“You’re hiding something.” Bee’s eyes sparkled, and she looked at me intensely. I shifted, because for a moment, I wasn’t sure what I was hiding.
Then, slowly, I nodded. “Does the address ‘25679 Madrid’ mean anything to you?”
“Yes. That’s Fred Callahan’s address. He was an 3V1L member last semester, and we found all that stuff in his place.”
“You’re right!” I slapped my forehead, then stood up. Bee followed me into the Green Room, where the parts of her Eagle-sona suit she hadn’t waited for me to help her with lay scattered around the room. I showed her the crumpled, mangled paper with the letters whose ink had bled.
She took one look at it and raised her eyebrow. “Really? They built their base under that guy’s house?”
“I mean, it makes sense,” I said. “We found all that stuff and stopped digging. It’s like a weird camouflage. If you’re obviously bad, maybe the heroes won’t look deeper.”
“Yeah. But that’s super high risk. Most detectives and police wouldn’t stop,” Bee said.
“But we’re not most detectives and police. We’re superheroes, and unless the Episode ended there, we wouldn’t bother checking it out further. We’d be off to the next problem—or in this case, to find our sidekick.”
“So they took advantage of our stupidity?”
“Precisely.” I sent a quick text Rocko’s way.
We cleaned up, waited for a while for a text, and played a board game for a while. Then, when Bee got a message that the Episode she’d just been in was airing, we watched that until she couldn’t handle it anymore. When she was dying of embarrassment as Magical Girl Censored and Madame Drench fought McHammer to a standstill, I finally shut it off—much to her relief. Then, as we got ready for bed, I received a text from Rocko.
< Come see us in three days - Rocko 9:45>