Chapter 76
“A dozen shots of Tequila, please.” Bobby sat on a barstool as he ordered the round of shots while Bailey sat in the seat next to him. “And, please, none of that cheap stuff. We happen to be celebrating an almost victory on this fine evening. Oh, and could you bring them to our group over in the VIP? I wanna talk to my friend here for a bit.” The bartender nodded and started preparing the selection of shots.
“Oh. Um, look. You are cute and sweet, Bobby, but not really my type,” she started.
He cut her off before the unfortunate misunderstanding went any further, “Darling, no. That’s very much not it. I just need to talk to you about a few things.” The small marble-sized floating cameras began to amass around them, forcing Bobby to wonder whether they were programmed to pick up on certain body language and keywords to ascertain when something interesting was about to take place. This was going to be a bit tricky. He had important things to talk to Bailey about, but only some of them were appropriate for a viewing audience or for The Show and his team to see.
He continued, “So, I noticed something while we were fighting in Handimorph’s castle of demented minions.” Bobby pretended to think hard. He knew exactly how he wanted to handle this part of the conversation, but he wanted Bailey to think it was a spur-of-the-moment idea. He leaned over when the bartender was distracted and grabbed a small stack of cocktail napkins from the top of the pile behind the bar. He then grabbed the pen that was left behind by the couple next to them who had used it to pay their bill before leaving. “Mind if we do a little experiment?” He didn’t wait for an answer, pushed two napkins in front of Bailey, and politely ordered, “On the top one, write glow.”
Bailey looked at him, bemused.
“Please?” he urged, eyebrows raised. “I promise this is going somewhere.”
Bailey nodded and wrote G-L-O-W on the paper square. As she was finishing, Bobby placed a napkin close to her body, right under the one she was currently writing on. “Okay, now write glow again. This time, do it as slowly as you can. Painfully slow.”
“Grimm, what is all this?” Bailey asked with a sigh. “It’s been a really long month, and your games are a little tedious. Are you trying to distract me from something?” She patted her pockets to make sure nothing had been stolen while she sat here with the devious punk.
“Wow. You really think I’m an ass. I promise, if I’m right, this won’t waste your time. Think of it as a belated birthday gift.”
“Fine,” she rolled her eyes and started writing.
Bobby clicked start on his phone’s stopwatch and watched her scribble in cursive, but she was already halfway through, and for his little exhibition to work, it was going to have to be obvious. “Not too fast: continual writing, but as slow as you can.”
It took her about 45 seconds to finish writing the short word.
“Okay, now empower the top one, the first one you wrote,” he eagerly instructed. Bobby didn’t know why he was so giddy. There was something to the discovery of new abilities that he hadn’t felt for a really long time.
Bailey was still slightly annoyed, but she complied. The word began to glow like a small flashlight and then quickly burned out. It took about four seconds for the luminous effect to subside and the word to disappear from the napkin.
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She shrugged. “Okay, glowing napkin. Cute. Not like I haven’t used that one before. It was one of the first effects I used as a kid when I was scared of the dark. Remember those glow worm toys? Well, mine ran out of batteries within a month. I was able to light it up using my powers, though. It's a nice little trick, but not super functional. The glow doesn’t last long enough to matter.”
“You were scared of the dark? I didn’t think you were actually scared of anything.”
“I mean, I’m not still scared of the dark. It was a phase. Tell anyone, and I will kill you. Need I remind you, I have other words… dangerous, painful words.”
Bobby ignored the threat and smiled, “Now do the bottom one.”
“I’m guessing we are approaching your point?” Bailey pushed her power through the bottom word to activate the word glow and then sat back and watched as the napkin glimmered with the same intensity as the first. It lit up and shone. And then it just kept shining. All the while, the word started to slowly erase itself from back to front, just as Bobby had noticed when they used detonate to take down the tower in War Games. Bobby timed the effect on his phone as the word shrunk. It happened oh so slowly, all the while maintaining the glowy effect… for about 45 seconds until there was no longer any trace of the word glow on the cocktail napkin. Bobby tilted his phone’s face to show Bailey the stopwatch. It read 45.4232 seconds.
“Oh. My. Gosh.” Bailey’s eyes were wide. “I can’t believe I never figured that out. This is so embarrassing.” She clearly had another realization, “That’s why my power was glitching out on the phone! My copy and pasting was happening in an instant. So, the effect was also only lasting for a split second.”
As though it wasn’t already obvious, Bobby spoke the conclusion out loud, “The time it takes you to create the word is the ultimate duration of the effect.” Bobby considered the nearly endless possibilities that had now become apparent to the meta-wordsmith. She could now depend on the length of her effects. She could prepare words like fly for different durations. If she had known this in the cave, she could have phased both women out through the rocks safely.
And then Bobby saw it dawn on her. The real question surrounding their little tete-a-tete. “Why?” she questioned seriously. “Bobby, we are competitors. Why are you helping me so much? This is… it’s huge! Game-changing!”
For a few moments, he didn’t answer, letting her important inquiry linger in the air. Bobby looked down at the shot that had been placed in front of him during their experiment and reached into his pocket. “I know that you know that I never knew my parents.” He paused again with his hand in his pocket and changed his approach. Nervous energy radiated off of him. “Let me start again. When we first really met outside of any trials, at the Basketball game, did you think it was odd that we both had literary-based powers?”
“I mean, it was a little odd. But there are alot of adaptive powers out there.”
“Yeah, but how many do you know that are that similar to yours?” He continued speaking without waiting for a response. “You showed me something on your birthday.” He pulled out the card that had been left alongside him in the plastic storage container when he had been abandoned as a baby and slid it over to Bailey.
She read the note. For the second time in a matter of minutes, her mind was blown, and her eyes showed it. If they had bugged out any further, she would have needed to be taken to a hospital for fear of ocular explosion. “But how?”
Bobby knew that this was where their conversation would become tricky. “I know you have a ton of questions, and so do I. I’m gonna find you later when we are back home. We can talk then, okay?” The implied “in private” was obvious.
Bailey ignored it. “No. Not okay! What is going on, Bobby?” She looked over at the emo boy, who was maybe her brother. Maybe her twin? But Bobby didn’t have a ton of information. He did, however, have some educated speculation. Speculation that he couldn’t share in front of a studio audience.
He widened his eyes and nodded at one of the cameras to reiterate the need for privacy. She finally got the hint and gave in.
“Soon? Promise?”
“Soon,” he promised. “I get how important this is. I don’t know much, but hey, how could I keep secrets from you, right? He smiled a smile that Bailey had never seen on the emo boy–soft, yet tinged with sadness.
Bailey threw back the shot that was sitting in front of her, “Damn right!” Bobby mirrored her. Still, he needed a few more before he could shut his mind off and enjoy the rest of the evening. As though the gods were listening, Ashley came over and grabbed Bailey by the arm.
“Come on! I love this song,” Ashley urged her new pal. “Let’s dance!”
“Fine,” Bailey was pulled from her barstool with an unexpected force and gave Bobby a wink and a farewell, “See you later… bro.”