After our group training session at the ice rink went so well, everyone was in a peachy mood. It felt like we were all gelling and getting along better than we had before, so I had to concede that group training didn’t end up being such a bad idea after all. Granted, I couldn’t convince my aching legs of the same thing for a few days. I swore I’d need a wheelchair to get me to our group meeting before our yacht trip. Everything below my ass felt like it wasn’t connected to my brain for a few days.
Lori’s team and Lizzy’s team both sat at pushed-together tables in Devon Hall, with my sister taking a spot next to me. Lizzy, Lori, and Abigail all stood up on the little stage. Behind them, a screen was pulled down and lit up by an overhead projector. Lizzy was excitedly tossing a small remote between her hands, waiting for something. She looked at us like we were a bunch of chattering kids in a classroom even when none of us were making a sound. We all had our eyes on them or the screen, waiting for the projector to actually project something beyond white light.
“Thank you all for coming.” Abigail stepped up closer to the edge of the stage. On the outside, she looked calm and composed. It was a true testament to how she knew she needed to be seen and how she needed to project herself. There was no way she was back to a hundred percent so soon. She probably wouldn’t ever quite be back to a hundred percent again, to be frank. After clearing her throat, she stepped aside to give Lizzy and Lori the floor. The look on her face told me she was wanting to take over the presentation, but ultimately decided against it.
“How are we all doing today!?” Lizzy got on a knee, gestured toward the screen, and hit a button. A plain slideshow title screen popped up with an uninteresting font title of the same operation. None of us said anything, but all our eyes went to her. “Come on, I can’t hear you! Who’s ready to see half-naked men and women, get blasted to a new planet by the best booze on our planet, and party so hard you won’t remember your name for weeks?”
That did get everyone’s attention.
“See, the first rule of public speaking is to start with your hook in the first paragraph. I would have lost you guys otherwise.”
Given how seriously we were taking the whole thing, that wasn’t anywhere near the case. What it did do was open the doors for a few chuckles to go through the room, draining away some of the tension. Lizzy was a smart girl.
“I’m sure you guys have a good idea of the yacht party. You better, at least. We’re leaving tomorrow. This is just going to be a brief review and planning session of what we hope to do and what we’re expecting.” Lori paused to give Lizzy a moment to return to a more dignified standing position, unable to wipe the grin off her own face. “Does anyone have any questions so far?”
“I have one,” I said, raising my hand up high like I was back in school.
“One that isn’t about Lizzy’s little intro there.” Lori smiled wide at us. Her clarification was completely void of sarcasm.
“Carry on.” I put my arm back down to my side. My comment earned me a brutal glare from Lizzy. I shrugged back, entirely unsure what kind of reaction she had been expecting from the small crowd.
“As you observant folks may have figured out, Lizzy’s silly intro was done to help alleviate some tension here. You know, something goofy to help us mellow out a bit.” It was a good thing Lori was patiently and kindly explaining this to us, because it would have taken years to get it out of Lizzy. “Are there any real questions before we begin?”
“It’s a costume party, right? Are there any kinda rules for it?” Rosie politely raised her hand when asking the question.
“There aren’t any specific themes going into the event. Now, people do follow trends following that first night. If everyone showed up dressed as a mermaid or a merman to kick off the party, it’d be a safe bet the rest of the week would be a mix of nautical and fantastical. The only explicit rule is you must show up in a costume of some kind. Beyond that, you’re mostly dealing with nightclub rules, which is a bigger deal for us ladies.”
It felt weird to know that we were pretty much sitting there to get rules on a silly party after we’d dealt with McLeod forcing us from our last home. When Lizzy flipped to the first actual slide, it made me realize the necessity of it. Based on what Luna could gather from these past events, it was believed that over ninety percent of the party attendees had Anomalies. I knew that they had lots of people with Anomalies there. I didn’t expect it to be nearly exclusively superpowered. The slide mentioned that any incidents had in the past were all minor. If it was being brought up, I figured it was safe to exercise some caution.
“Be on your toes at all times. It’s a party. People will be drunk, and yes, people will be horny. I have a few people here that can attest to how dealing with drunk people can go south before you know what hit you.” Lori gave Alex and me a sheepish grin. No one seemed all that surprised, so the whole Columbus fight didn’t seem to have remained much of a secret. Lori coughed and her face hardened, getting the focus of the room back. “As scary as it may be to have that many superpowered people in the same room together, our biggest fear is how the coordinators knew how to fill it with so many superpowered people. Right now, that’s our top concern.”
“Why’s that the biggest concern?” I asked. Alex shifted a couple of seats down, and I caught him rolling his eyes. Obviously thinking my question was stupid, I blushed and fought the urge to shrink back in my chair.
“It worries us because it means they have tracking abilities that are far greater than ours. Their tracking abilities may be the best on the entire planet.” Lori took a moment to pause and looked toward Abigail. She didn’t acknowledge the frustrated scowl our boss had on her face. “If they can track that many Anomalies and gather that many people to a party twice a year, it puts them in a position to create an army of some kind. We don’t think they have anything do to with McLeod, but we don’t know for sure. Half of this is a sort of recon mission to see if we can figure out if McLeod is involved. The other half is trying to make some friends if he isn’t involved. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, something along those lines.”
“And what happens if they don’t want to hold hands and sing Kumbaya with us, but they aren’t trying to take over the world either? What do we do then?” This time, it was Julio who asked the questions. He looked hyper, like he couldn’t wait to get out on the boat. Seemed like the kid was half a second away from just jumping out of his chair.
“If that’s the case, then just enjoy the party.” Lizzy glanced—maybe glared a little—at her teammate. “And no, you will not be drinking on the boat. If I find out you are, I’ll send you back to the hotel room with an ass-kicking. Oh yeah, we’re going to be doing hotel rooms together. Two or three to each room, and it’s going to be based on who’s on which team.”
Lori stopped Lizzy before she could get too far off-topic by switching to the next slide. It was a layout of the boat, showing exits to the open-air areas. There had to have been a real boating name for those that a mountain hick from Oregon just wasn’t equipped to know. Nautical vocabulary wasn’t something I studied. She showed us the layout for emergency purposes primarily, like if the ship was sinking and we needed to get to a spot to use our powers to escape. It was just a bonus that it showed us the rough locations of the restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues. It was basically a cruise liner compacted into a big yacht with how much it offered.
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“As unmotivating as it may sound, you can think of this as a working vacation.” Lori did her best to make it sound fun with a little pep in her voice. Shame that no one in the room was thrilled to hear it. Julio was the only one who groaned out loud, which made Lizzy point at him and run a thumb across her neck to silence the guy. “Mingle, make friends, have fun with your current friends. Just remember, our goal in this is to try and get some very powerful allies. If you feel like someone might be worth bringing into the fold, you can always ask Lizzy for help. She has a certain...way with people.”
“It’s because I’m hot!” Lizzy yelled with perfect confidence, pumping a fist into the air.
“Yes, thank you.” Lori shook her head at the outburst. “Lizzy has some social skills that will be beneficial, and yes, her looks help a lot.”
Lori went to the next slide, which had all of our names in pairs. “We thought it’d be easier if we broke off into pairs for both the hotel rooms and moving about on the ship. Trying to coordinate about a dozen people around alcohol sounds about as fun as herding cats in the middle of getting a root canal, so Lizzy and I want to keep it simple. You can adjust the pairings as you see fit, just keep it within your teams and make sure everyone is in agreement.”
Through the few murmurs in the crowd, I couldn’t hear anyone complaining about the person they got paired up with. I was paired up with Rebecca, so I was about as happy as could be. Lori and Alex were together, naturally. Lizzy was teamed with Rosie, which left Julio and Braden together to round out that team. Val was slotted in with Abigail and my sister. At the end of that line, I noticed that Megan was put in there with them too.
“We’re really bringing Megan along with us for this?” I whispered in Shelly’s direction, making sure I was reading the name on the slide right.
“Ethan, she just lost her parents and she gets lonely.” Shelly took a moment to write a few things down in a small notebook. When she finished up her writing, she gave me a surprisingly hard look. “You’re young, so I know you’re not used to having to take care of a kid who needs you just yet. When a girl that age loses all the family she has and suddenly gets put in a new home, we can’t be surprised that she wants and needs to be around us all the time. We’re the only thing left in the world that’s shown her love. Do you think it’d be fair to her to just leave her behind while we go out on a boat party?”
“I don’t think she’s there just when it’s convenient,” I said, getting defensive. Even as I said it, I couldn’t stop seeing the scared little girl I’d found in Pittsburgh what felt like a million years ago. “I’m not exactly parent—surrogate or otherwise—of the year. I was just worried about bringing her to a place where there’s a huge gathering of Anomalies. That’s all.”
“She’s not going on the boat, dummy.” Shelly bumped me with her elbow, knocking the serious look I had on my face right off. “Someone will stay with her at the hotel room when you guys are out on the water. Probably me, since I have no powers and she knows me pretty well. That’s the reason why I’m not bothering with a sitter. Don’t need the kid with another brand-new face this soon.”
I nodded, accepting the idea. I still didn’t like it. The idea of putting her in any danger didn’t seem like it’d be worth it just so she could be around people who loved her. I wanted to protest a bit more, so I tried to put myself in her shoes to stop it. It worked well enough so I wouldn’t have a fight with my sister over it.
Once the chattering died down and everyone made sure they were okay with their partner selection, they continued on with the presentation. We’d be in the area the entire week of the event, but we were only going to attend on Wednesday and Thursday. They reiterated that dangerous incidents were uncommon, but they were even more uncommon in the middle of the week. The idea was to give us some time to scout it out, get costume ideas, attend when it was safest, and get out before we ran the risk of being caught when it was most dangerous. Lizzy made sure to add in that it would give us some time to relax after the stress of the attack and being forced to move.
“Can someone explain to me why we’re just now learning about this whole boat party thing?” Julio asked, standing up and leaning on the table.
“Because I never wanted you to hear about it.” Abigail stepped up to the front of the stage before looking each one of us in the eyes. “The White-Cloaked Sentinels, the organizers of the event, are secretive. If you want a secret kept enough, you will find a way to keep that secret. That’s why I haven’t told most of you about them, and the ones that I have told, I gave only vague indications that we were even aware of them. I’ve struck a deal with them so we wouldn’t interfere with each other. I would leave all of their activities a secret from Luna and they wouldn’t invite anyone they knew to be a Luna resident to any of their gatherings. A live and let live proposal, but seeing as times are rapidly changing, reaching out to try and become allies is something I believe to be in our best interest.”
“She only told me their names,” Shelly whispered, a little annoyed. She wasn’t a big fan of being left out of the loop. “She never told me that she’d been in contact with them before.”
“Are we breaking this treaty you set up by going?” Braden spoke up for the first time. He looked nervous, dark hair falling in front of his face like it was trying to keep him hidden from the world.
“No, since you wouldn’t be interfering with anything they’re trying to run.” Abigail stopped and looked toward the ceiling with a sigh. “Okay, you won’t be interfering as long as none of you pick fights with people on the yacht. I shouldn’t have to tell you not to do that, though. Just be normal, have some fun, and take what comes to you. I cannot reiterate enough that this is a learning exercise first.”
“Why does it seem like the importance of this task is constantly wavering?” Alex asked. He folded his large arms across his chest and stared hard up at Abigail. She didn’t back down herself, yet she didn’t have the usual stern look I had become used to either.
“To be perfectly truthful, it’s because I don’t want to undersell or oversell what you’re doing. It is important, yes, though not so important that I couldn’t do damage control after or look for another option later. I’d still like for all of you to take it seriously and try to avoid screwing up, yes. The world doesn’t rest on your shoulders with this.”
“This is what people today would call ‘getting mixed signals’, right?” Rebecca whispered, gently placing her fingertips on my arm while leaning in close to my ear.
She wasn’t off on her assessment, or at the very least, I was getting a similar read on the situation. Depending on who was talking or what the question was, the gravity of the situation seemed to flop around and swing back and forth. Was it just a cute little boat party where we had to do a small amount of work and shake a few hands? Was it something that could have huge ramifications for the rest of the world? Was it a little bit of both, or maybe something completely different? I didn’t necessarily think that Abigail was trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Worse, I didn’t feel confident that she knew exactly what we were trying to get into. I was pretty sure that she wouldn’t send us if she truly felt like it was a danger, but with everything that had happened since they brought me in, I didn’t really know what could even constitute as dangerous anymore. Compared to getting a hole punched in my arm by a torrent of fire? A boat party didn’t seem too bad.
I tried to stay focused on what they were telling me, which wasn’t much. They were rehashing the same points over and over. Abigail took a step back to let Lori and Lizzy take the lead in answering questions and doing the presentation. They weren’t ready for that level of public speaking and presenting. It wasn’t that they did a bad job, they just weren’t quite ready for primetime yet. Lizzy was almost too charismatic for it, which made her lean too hard into the part of charming the audience. Lori was doing her best, clearly getting shier and shier every time she had to answer a question. When it started to get to be too much, she became visibly moody. Her answers to Lizzy’s team were curt and she had to take a deep breath to relax for a moment.
“Guys, there are only so many questions that Lizzy and I can really answer for you.” Lori scanned over the dissatisfied faces in the room. I tried to give her a smile of encouragement. It didn’t last long. Seeing her so obviously frustrated was starting to rub off on me. “Does anyone have any new questions?”
“I do,” Rebecca said, chipping in for the first time. She stood up and cleared her throat, which prepared me for some super important question or point she had to raise. “Are we bringing our costumes with us, or are we getting them there?”