Season 1, Episode 4 - The Microwave XVI - "The Roller Derby"

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That Sunday. While Esther was out somewhere, Louise sat behind the front desk of the Academy, rubbing her hands through her blonde hair.

Since it was Sunday, it should've been a peaceful morning in the Academy lobby like always. Louise would've yawned, leaned back in the seat, arms behind her head, listening to the best big band rock hits of yesterday, the newer Asian big band hits out of Shanghai, or maybe even a baseball game.

Instead, on this Saturday morning, she wiped her forehead, feeling overheated from the mental exertion as she tried to decipher the work Esther had left for her.

I know Esther left me instructions – pretty detailed instructions – on how to do all of this, but it’s still so confusing!

Louise murmured the various phrases and titles as she looked through the workpapers. “Color-charged chromodynamic Rddhi usage? Exponential eight-model circuitry? And why do none of these values go above the first circuit...the vegetative-invertebrate circuit? Is that even English? Translate first-level circuitry to the metaphysical-biological cartesian scale corresponding with the...Right View? Is there a left view?”

Whatever Esther was working on, it went way above Louise’s head. Esther told her to mark things in red she didn’t understand...Louise sighed when she realized entire pages were now covered in that color.

What I'm looking at now, is this really what the Rddhi is about? Even though it doesn't make sense to me, it makes sense to her...which means one day, it could make sense to me.

She turned the radio down to better focus on the work, but the distant sounds of approaching faculty members pulled Louise out of her thoughts. Even though they were teachers, not students, it was a pleasant surprise; it wasn't often Louise got to see people on Sundays.

Louise saw two teachers round a corner and enter a hallway leading into the lobby. From the dark clothes on the man and the nurse’s outfit on the woman, Louise realized the two faculty members were Mr. Shokahu and Ms. Mogami, respectively. As they approached, Louise could hear bits and pieces from their conversation; it seemed like Mogami did most of the talking while Shokahu occasionally grunted or simply said “yeah”.

They arrived at the front desk. Mogami stopped, so Shokahu did as well.

“How’s it going, Louise?” Mogami asked. Mogami mainly worked with Rddhi users, but she did have duties as a normal school nurse as well. Louise had only been at her office once, just for a headache that just wouldn’t go away, but Mogami seemed to remember all her students.

“It’s been quiet, at least,” Louise said, sighing in quiet frustration at her lack of progress on her work. “Has it been a busy day for you guys?”

Mogami shook her head. “I came in just to do some paperwork today. And any day is a great day when Frank’s here!”

Louise looked at Mr. Shokahu. “...Frank?”

He sighed.

Ms. Mogami seemed to recall memories of the past and playfully bobbed around on her feet. “To everyone else, he’s Shokahu, but to me, he’s Frank! We go way back like that.”

“Did you know each other before you two worked here?” Louise asked.

“Did I know him? I made him!” Mogami grabbed his arm; Shokahu sighed again. “We went to school here together!”

Louise looked back and forth between them, struggling to imagine the world-weary Shokahu or, for lack of a better phrase, the fully-developed Mogami as high school students. “You guys went here?”

Mogami nodded excitedly. “Yep! Back then, this was just a normal feeder school for the Presidential War College. There were only three Rddhi users there, so we had to stick together through thick and thin, you know?”

She gripped his arm tighter. “That’s why I’ll be with him forever!”

“Not on your life,” a voice called out, approaching from a hallway in another direction.

When the figure arrived in the lobby, Louise recognized her as Ms. Essex, the school’s leading researcher, in charge of the Support Department. She was dressed in a long, white lab coat and her blonde hair was cut short in a bob.

"Speaking of the three Rddhi users," Shokahu said quietly as Essex joined him and Mogami.

“Erica!” Mogami cried out. “Come to steal my man again, just like you tried to at the roller derby?”

Essex crossed her arms, her body radiating smugness. “Tried? I seemed to remember him rolling around the track with me that night."

Mogami jabbed a finger at her. “Only when you hurt a random elementary schooler, forcing me to step aside and heal him!”

Essex knocked her hand away. “Nobody ever found conclusive proof of that!”

After a moment, the two women laughed like old friends.

“Roller derby?” Louise asked.

“Oh, that’s right, you never got to experience it," Mogami said in fond reflection. "It went the way of skinny dipping and ragtime. Sometimes, I feel sorry for you kids. Living in the shadow of war and all that. I mean, we did too, but nobody back then realized how bad war could really be. Nobody felt like roller derbying anymore after three years of trench warfare.”

Lessons from class popped up in Louise's mind. "But I thought war is good. Rejuvenates the soul. Gives us a national goal and all that."

Beneath the mellowness, Shokahu looked a little sadly at her. "Hopefully, neither you or your friends will have to see what war is really about."

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Seeing the look on his face, Louise felt a little ashamed about her patriotism. Or was it nationalism? Or was it naivety? She had never fired a gun in her life, yet she knew that if New England were to be attacked, the Presidential Administration needed to her to pick up a rifle, a sword, a sharpened branch, or even her bare hands if that became necessary to protect the homeland. It's a hard thing, reconciling abstract teachings and Shokahu's reality. Louise didn't know how to reconcile them, so she simply offered, "...I'm sorry?"

Mogami’s eyes were dreamy and distant, still thinking of life as a teenager before the First American War. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. The lights went out before you were born, and you may not see them lit again in your lifetime. Lights, of course, referring to those nights after school when me, Frank, and Erica hit the malt shop and then the roller derby, singing along to the Strawberry Rock...”

Louise didn't understand all these references from before her time. “The Strawberry Rock?”

Mogami clasped her hands together. “The Strawberry Rock! It’s something shocking, when you feet just can’t keep still!”

Essex looked into the distance. “You know, I never knew me a better time and I guess I never will.” She closed the gap between herself and Shokahu. “Except for when I’m with Frank, of course!”

The two women playfully pulled Shokahu in a tug of war. The look on his face indicated he had been through this routine countless times.

A broad-shouldered Technical Serviceman – one of Stockham’s security personnel – let two men inside the building. Louise didn’t recognize them, but they were both tall, walked in a disciplined mmaner, and wore the familiar brownish-green uniforms of the Military Police. Though Louise was not as much of an academic as Esther was, she still knew her stuff, especially local history.

Following the unofficially known Pulaski Coup – the officially known National Awakening - that seizure of power that placed General Pulaski in charge of New England, the Military Police absorbed local police units and took over their duties in most of Narragansett. In the past decade, the Military Police still maintained their grip on large parts of the city. Some Military Police units directly worked with the State Police, while others maintained a more distant relationship. The relationship between the Military Police and State Police in the Pond, of course, was as distant as possible. Some MPs were good men, others ran little exhortion and mob rackets of their own, at least according to the Coyote Pete pirate radio broadcasts Louise listened to once in a great while.

Of course, as the saying goes, no police is good police, but any police besides the State Police is great police. Not that Louise would ever, ever dare say that out loud.

The two MPs joined the growing circle of people in the lobby, Louise still behind her desk.

“Captain Kelb,” Shokahu greeted. Mogami waved and Essex nodded in turn.

“Shokahu,” Kelb answered.

Wow, everyone really does call him Shokahu, Louise realized.

Kelb gestured to the man next to him, who had slightly messy brown hair when compared to the neatness of Kelb's. “This is Nikolai Dimitrij, my right-hand man."

Nikolai shook hands with the three of them. Louise felt surprised when he reached over the counter to shake her hand – not every adult noticed a student, especially one without powers.

“What brings here on a Sunday?” Shokahu asked. “Stockham’s visiting Admiral Zivkovic at the Naval College today, if you needed him.”

“Fortunately, I don’t need him, but I do have an urgent matter I need your help on,” Kelb answered.

Shokahu raised a dry eyebrow.

Kelb glanced over at Louise; Louise felt a little embarrased, unsure if she should get up or not.

"It's alright," Essex declared. "You can let her know."

Louise wasn't sure why Essex vouched for her, or if Essex had the authority to vouch for her, but she kept her mouth shut since she certainly did want to know.

Kelb quickly gave the group the rundown – there was a killer microwave on the loose that could activate at any moment if someone applied the Rddhi to it.

“Due to security reasons, I’ll have to get the file of Rddhi users and look through it myself, but I’ll do it as quickly as I can.” Shokahu turned around and darted – darted! - down a staircase into the bowels of the Support building.

Mogami’s mouth was agape.

Even Essex looked at his disappearing frame in shock. “I haven’t seen him run that fast since the Pulaski Coup...”

Apparently, Essex didn’t care about official history that much.

Mogami smiled. “He really does care about his students.”

With Shokahu gone, the five people remaining realized they had reached a moment of awkward silence. Louise went back to her paperwork – the relation between circuitry elevation and inhibitory gnosis, whatever that meant. Mogami saw Dimitrij look at her and gave him a closed-eye smile; Dimitrij rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly and looked away.

Essex pondered on whatever the hell Kelb was doing.

Is he just...is he just staring at the wall? There’s nothing on that wall. What’s he staring at? What’s so interesting about a blank wall? How long is he going to keep doing that?

Kelb wondered if he left the stove on at home.

Fortunately, Shokahu returned a moment later with a large manila envelope. He placed himself behind the front desk and flipped through the file. “What’s her description?”

Kelb answered. “Long blonde hair...medium height...and she apparently never stops talking.”

Shokahu immediately closed the file. “Audrey Adzinoki.”

Kelb looked confused. “Are you sure? Just off of that?”

“If you only told me she never stopped talking, I would’ve already known," Shokahu answered plainly. "The blonde hair and medium height is just a bonus.”

“Um...” Louise said. “Is she related to Esther Adzinoki?”

“She’s her sister,” Shokahu explained, putting the file away.

“Esther has a sister?”

Shokahu looked at Louise in dry surprise. “You didn’t know she had a sister?”

Louise shook her head. “She’s never mentioned her at all. I mean, we haven't talked much...come to think of it, Esther hasn't really talked at all...but you figure our class would've known she had a sister by now. Mentioned at least in passing or something like that."

Shokahu wondered about that for a moment. He knew Esther was a workaholic and never really talked about personal business...but to never mention a sister who also attended the same school? To never eat lunch with her in the cafeteria, to never get together between when school lets out and before training starts?

To be fair, he never heard Audrey talk about her either, but something told Shokahu that if a fun-loving, talkative girl like Audrey never mentioned her, Esther must’ve had something to do with it.

But those would be thoughts for another day. There were more pressing issues at hand.

“Do you know how long she’s had the microwave for?” Shokahu asked.

“The sale was around three weeks ago,” Dimitrij answered.

Shokahu sighed. “I’m surprised it hasn’t gone off already. We need to move, fast.”

Kelb nodded. “I’m with you, Shokahu, but what’s the deal with this girl? She's a Rddhi user. Even if it'll be a surprise, do you think she could hold her own against it?”

Shokahu narrowed his eyes. “It pains me to say it, but I'm not sure. Audrey is one of my favorite students, but she has a tendency to fold right when she needs to be strong. In her last two fights she needed someone with her to keep her from giving up. So, if she activates the microwave while she's alone..."

Kelb and Dimitrij looked at each other with worry.

“Here, call this number,” Shokahu said, writing down Audrey’s home telephone number for Louise. “Tell her not to use that microwave under any circumstances.”

Louise nodded and began rotating the dial on the rotary phone.

“I’ll put this away, then let’s go,” Shokahu said, darting (darting!) back down the stairs.

Fortunately, any awkwardness was prevented by the two women and two men watching Louise dial the number...well, it still felt a little awkward for Louise.

Louise heard the dial tone ring...and ring...and ring.

“She’s not picking up,” Louise said, placing the phone back into its receiver.

“Maybe that means she’s out of the house?” Kelb proposed.

The real issue was that they were just a little too late.