It didn't take the Ministry long to get back to me after that. Soon, my phone was buzzing and I looked at the caller ID. It simply read, ‘Answering Requested Meeting’ where the number and name should have been. Which was a little impressive, but honestly, them having that much control over the phone system wasn't exactly surprising. I was just glad I was still using the phone that Wren had set up to bounce the signal all over the place. They wouldn't be able to track where we were if they tried. And even if they were being relatively ‘polite’ at the moment, I would have been completely shocked if they weren’t doing everything they could to get information about us, just in case. As far as I knew, they didn’t have anyone embedded in our group yet.
Well, technically, they did have a very important person to the Ministry in this group. They just didn't know about me yet. And I was determined to keep it that way.
To that end, I made sure my voice changer was active before answering. “Yo, if this is that pizza delivery dude again, I told you to stop being such a wuss and just climb that fire escape. It's not that far to the roof.” Yeah, maybe it was silly or even dumb to answer that lightly considering everything that was happening, but this whole thing made me nervous, and making jokes helped ease my own tension. That might’ve been a condition I should have talked to someone about, come to think of it.
There was a brief pause before a voice spoke simply. “You claim to have information regarding the situation with the Scions.” It wasn’t a question, more of an invitation--or possibly an order-- to explain further. Which… was it weird that I immediately wanted to tell this guy to ask nicely? Yeah, we absolutely did not have time for me to play games like that. Not with so many lives at stake and Pencil apparently right on the brink.
So, I pushed instinct aside and replied, “Yes, but like I said before, I won't talk about it over the phone. It's too dangerous. We need to meet somewhere. And don't send anyone you don't trust one hundred percent. I need to talk to someone with some authority.” Belatedly, I added, “I promise, this is something you’ll want to hear.”
Once again, there was a moment of silence from the other end. It dragged on long enough that I was starting to worry that the call had dropped, and I had just begun to take the phone away from my ear to check when the voice came back. “First, prove you are who you say you are. Do you remember the names of the Touched who were searching for you the first night you encountered our people?”
Grimacing at the thought, I replied, “Two-Step and Lastword.” Of course I remembered. But that also implied that they knew I had seen them. Which… yeah, okay, that just made sense. They had to figure I had hidden myself somewhere and managed to watch the people looking for me. It was basic common sense. I didn't have to freak out about it, no matter how much I hated the idea of them putting anything about me together at all. I didn’t even want them to think about me. But that, of course, was completely impossible.
“Good,” came the response. “Go to the roof of that building, the one where you first encountered our people. Your contact will meet you as soon as you arrive.”
Oh. Oh great, of course. They wanted me to meet at the motel where this entire thing had started. Fantastic. That was exactly what I wanted to do right now. Still, I pushed down that bit of bile that tried to rise in my throat and replied, “I’ll be there soon. I’d tell your guy to bring a pizza while he’s at it, but honestly I probably wouldn’t eat it anyway. I bet you guys have shit taste in pizza.”
With that, I disconnected and turned to look at Peyton, with Qwerty sitting on top of her head. Rubi, Murphy, and Roald were up here too, having joined us while I was on the phone. All of them were watching me expectantly, as I took a deep breath. “Right, okay then. Qwerty, you should stay here and go help Wren, Paige, and Sierra work on the machine. I have no idea how long she’ll be able to work before she needs to crash, but maybe your power can spot something important. Murphy, Roald--”
“We’re going.” That was Roald himself, standing in front of his older sister as though he was the one protecting her. “If you want Rubi to talk to the Ministry people, we’re going to help make sure they don’t… you know…”
“Take her,” Murphy finished for him, voice flat. “Because maybe they get some big idea about trying to take more information out of her, or they think her power is too useful.”
“Guys, it’s okay.” Rubi herself spoke up, her voice immediately falling into that ‘big sister’ tone, though it was still clearly a bit overwhelmed by this whole thing. “I'm not going anywhere with them, I promise. We're just… we’re just gonna give them the same information I gave you, so they can actually do something with it.” She hesitated before looking at me with a visible gulp. “I was going to say we could just spread the word over the Internet, but that's probably a bad idea, isn’t it?”
My head bobbed quickly. “I mean at first thought it sounds good, but there’s no way of being certain that anything we said would be listened to. They’d just think it was more rumors. You’ve seen how many people out there claim to have super-secret information about Touched, especially people like the Scions. And that’s every day, let alone right now, with all this. We’ll just look like idiots trying to get attention.”
“And, best case scenario, if they did believe us,” Rubi noted, “it would just make Pencil fly off the handle even more than he already has. Right now he's probably already close to losing it because his sister is hurt and he’s worried that there’s someone out there who can actually hurt him. But he doesn’t know I figured out what his weakness is. He probably just thinks I’m really strong or something, that I punched through his defenses. If he looks online and sees a whole bunch of people talking about how to beat his power, he might just…” She winced. “... do something drastic.”
She was right, of course. That was yet another reason not to simply throw this information out into the wide open ocean of the Internet. Even if it was believed, we would've probably just ended up making the situation worse. As soon as Pencil had nothing to lose, he would… yeah, it would be bad. Plus, even if he didn’t completely blow up, he would adjust his defenses, probably rely even more on staying out of sight. The best way to handle the advantage of knowing his weakness was to give that information directly to people who could actually use it to stop him. Which…
“You know they’ll probably use this to try to kill him,” I pointed out in a soft voice, my eyes on the older girl. “I mean, you said people deserve a trial, not an execution. But they’re not going to try to catch him with this. If we tell them that shooting him enough times will eventually get through, they’ll bring a machine gun and go to town.”
Rubi was silent for a few seconds. She just stared at me, a wide variety of expressions crossing her face as she worked through several emotions. Finally, she gave a short nod. “Yeah, and I'd prefer he be brought in. I really would. But I'm not delusional. He's killed hundreds of people and he’s responsible for even more as the leader of a gang of serial killers. I’m not going to let my preferred morals completely stand in the way of stopping him from killing even more innocents. State Of Michigan v. Ellard Orvis AKA Deathspiral established that when a Fell-Touched within the state is determined to be an ongoing immediate threat to a great number of innocent lives, any person who kills them will not be subject to criminal prosecution beyond a cursory investigation. The United States v. Daniel Rhodes AKA Fastcall upheld that and several other states’ similar decisions, and established that any Fell-Touched with a body count over ten who is deemed to be a current, active danger to society is fair game to be stopped by any means necessary. With, again, an investigation to ensure no more innocent lives were put at risk in the process. Legally, Pencil falls completely within all those decisions. He’s killed far more than enough people, he’s made it clear he’ll keep killing more, he’s made direct threats against innocent people recently, and it’s completely within reason to believe he’ll both follow through on those threats, and cause even more death as he spirals out of control if his sister’s condition deteriorates. He’s basically the textbook definition of ‘all force is reasonable.’”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
My mouth opened, then shut before I shrugged a bit weakly. “Right, you really do want to be a lawyer. For the record, when you pass the exam, I’m totally retaining you. Come on, let's get to that meeting before they start to think we were pranking them.”
“Wait, here.” Murphy held out a ski mask and pair of gloves toward the older girl. “Trust me, you don’t want those people to see your face or pick out your fingerprints, even if we’re all being nice and friendly allies right now. Just to be on the safe side.”
So, we all made sure we were suited up before moving out. Qwerty dashed back inside to join the others, with Peyton joining him to help out with the grunt work down there as much as she could while the rest of us moved closer to the edge of the roof. And I got my first real glimpse of what Rubi’s power looked like. She seemed pretty nervous and awkward about it, but said she wanted to show us something. With that, she braced herself like a runner getting ready for a sprint. The next thing I knew, she was racing those last few steps before leaping. We all watched as she sailed a good forty feet from this roof to the next one, landing in a somewhat awkward roll. Murphy, Roald, and I exchanged looks before I gave them some purple and green paint, along with a shot of blue on the edge of the roof so we could all run and jump that way ourselves. As we came down all around Rubi, I asked, “How many repetitions was that?”
“I jumped forty times,” she replied, expression hidden under the simple ski mask. “Did you notice anything like… that could give that away?”
The rest of us exchanged looks before I shook my head. “Nope. From our end it just looked like you ran and jumped. I'm pretty sure Pencil won't be able to figure out exactly how you hurt him. And not knowing is probably freaking him out pretty bad. Even if he wasn’t already freaking out because of his sister.” Part of me wanted to be glad he was having a bad day, but on the other hand, he would definitely take that out on everyone else. So I couldn't exactly be too happy about it. He was like a rabid dog, one who needed to be taken down.
Now that we had seen how well Rubi’s power worked for jumping from roof to roof all by itself, I gave her a bit of paint so we could test that. As it turned out, the answer was pretty well. When I gave the girl a purple thumbs up across her back, she was able to make a similar jump with only fifteen repetitions instead of forty. And what’s more, because she froze time to do so, she could manage multiple jumps like that all in a row without running out of paint. And when I added green for her to move faster, she said it worked even within her timestop. In other words, being sped up with green allowed her to do those repetitions more quickly. And the paint didn’t wear off while time was frozen so she could keep doing it even though technically her ‘time spent within the time-stop’ was far past the ten second limit. Which didn’t really affect anything in the regular world or whatever, but did allow her to do more of them without being stuck in her own frozen time for so long.
We didn't really have a lot of time to explore how well that worked, not with the representative from the Ministry sitting around waiting for us at the motel. Still, it meant we all got there pretty quickly since she caught on to the whole jumping from roof to roof thing so easily. Or maybe it was just that she had plenty of private time while using her own power to get the idea. Either way, she was actually really getting into it, whooping now and then with a particularly long jump. Something told me she’d been under a fair bit of stress lately--or maybe for quite awhile, and this was one of the first times she’d actually been able to let it out. She came off as the responsible older sister who wanted to be a law student at first, but then she had a chance to cut loose a little bit and it was like she was almost as wild and impulsive as… well, me.
And if she liked this sort of thing, boy did I have a few suggestions for her. Maybe once we were through all this important stuff, I could pull her aside and give her some ideas about how she could really relieve that stress. Some of which would involve her power and others were just things anyone could do.
Well, anyone who wasn’t a complete baby about things like ‘potential death and dismemberment.’ Very, very small chance of either, like seriously stop freaking out Mom and Dad.
Even that slight inward joke to myself backfired, as it reminded me of what my actual mother and father were doing right then. Sobering instantly, as we landed on the roof across the street from the motel in question, I held a hand out to stop the others. “Calvin, wait here and be ready. Hobbes, the second anything goes wrong, you grab both of us and teleport back here.” I wanted Roald to stay out of sight to avoid letting any reaction he gave toward Rubi from giving away their relationship. If we were going to keep her identity secret, as well as obscure Roald’s connection to us if they did learn who she was, we had to be careful.
I could tell that he wanted to object, but he knew it was for the best. So, swallowing back his reaction, the boy simply nodded once. “You should have a signal, just in case.”
He had a point, so I nodded toward Murphy. “If I paint a peace sign anywhere you can see, or hold up my hand to make the sign with my fingers,” I replied, “that’s your signal to grab us and jump back here.”
“Wow,” Rubi murmured while staring at us. “You guys really are a team. Like, a real--I mean… you… you’re just…” She swallowed audibly. “I thought you were running drugs or something and you’re actually… I’m sorry. I should’ve known better, but you were just being so mysterious and you had money and--and I’m sorry.”
Roald shook his head. “It's okay. You didn't know what was going on. You were just trying to look out for us and stop us from doing something stupid. We get it, right?” He glanced toward Murphy then.
“Yeah, duh,” she immediately agreed. “We were being pretty mysterious about the whole thing. Probably should've come up with a better cover story. Or at least brought you to the store so you’d believe we were just working there, or… something.”
Rubi made an uncertain noise in the back of her throat. “But if you had, I wouldn't have gone over to those apartments to try to talk to your coworker, and I never would've found out about Pencil’s weakness. Or… or gotten these powers.” I could tell she was giving a somewhat weak, but still positive smile under that simple ski mask. “And they’re pretty cool. I mean, I’m pretty terrified about the whole ‘now the Scions want to kill me and probably you guys too’ thing, obviously. But the powers are… I know, I know that’s weird--”
“It’s not weird,” I assured her. “Believe me, I get it. You can think having superpowers is awesome, and still be terrified, freaked out, and just… emotionally ripped by all the circumstances surrounding them. It’s not contradictory or crazy or anything.” Grimacing at my own conflicting thoughts, I gestured. “But right now, we really do need to get down there.”
So, the three of us jumped off this roof while leaving Roald behind. Even after seeing how much Rubi embraced the jumping from building to building thing on the way over here, I still expected her to have a bit of a problem with jumping off this roof to fall a good thirty feet to the one we were aiming for. But nope, she just waited until I said we were good and then instantly leapt out like she had been born to do this. Honestly, I was thinking about adding her to my list of personal heroes Or possibly asking Murphy and Roald if they minded if I asked her to adopt me as an honorary sibling.
As we descended in a wild drop, I used yellow paint to slow our fall until we landed smoothly, a quick activation of orange on each of our shoes making sure we made it without any trouble. And just like that, we were standing on that roof, looking around. I felt… well, weird being back here. Instinctively, I looked back toward the side of the building where I had gone out the window all those weeks earlier.
“A lot happens in a short time, doesn’t it?”
The voice came from the top of an air conditioning unit nearby, and we all spun to find ourselves looking at--
“Th-tha-that’s a raccoon,” Rubi managed, pointing. “That’s a Touched Raccoon in a business suit. Unless I’m hallucinating.”
“Oh don’t worry, you’re not hallucinating,” I assured her. “This is uhh, Minister Gray. One of him, anyway.”
“Err, one of him?” Rubi managed a bit weakly.
“Yeah, don’t freak out. And don’t you try to hug me, I see that look.” He was pointing at me. “You’ve been warned. Just call me Price. Now Fisher’s gonna come out, but I want you to calm down. Don’t freak out and go falling off the roof, he ain’t gonna hurt you.”
I started to warn Rubi about what was about to happen, but just like that, there was a burst of smoke with the glowing pyramid shape, and Price the raccoon was replaced by Fisher the bear, who loomed over us.
“Good evening,” he announced. “Such a pleasure to meet you.”
“I… I…” Rubi opened and shut her mouth a couple times, staring up at the massive furred figure. She’d been doing really well so far, but I thought she was gonna freak out at least a little bit right then. And yet, that’s not what happened. At least, not in the way I expected.
“Oh my God he’s so fuzzy!” With that sudden exclamation, Rubi made as though to lunge that way, before catching herself. A weak little noise of conscious restraint escaped her for a couple seconds as she stared that way, until Fisher gave a long sigh and opened his shaggy arms in a gesture of acceptance. And just like that, the other girl lunged that way to literally hug the massive, suit-wearing bear as tightly as she could.
Okay, forget me being adopted by her, were we absolutely sure this girl hadn't already been adopted out of being my blood relative to begin with?