If this was a movie the corny line this short mujer delivered would have been met with a radiant smile from the main character, maybe a zoom in on their clasped hands as he was helped to his feet, and then a quick - CUT - to the headquarters or warehouse containing the secret training facility, maybe hidden within or underneath some speciality goods store like a tailor.
That's not what happened here though.
I stared at the woman whose name I still didn't know with a blank look, devoid of any emotion or hope.
"That is a horrible name," I said.
Her brows knitted into a frown as she refuted me. "It is not." She said, "It's what goes after the story, right? I thought about this. If we are gonna help get these stories written then we are working towards the Epilogue, the "after story" in a way." Her voice struck with finality, gaining confidence and weight with each spoken word, her hands keeping pace like she was instructing an orchestra.
She was passionate enough about it that I took pity on her and decided to quell my protests.
"So the name of our team is the Epilogue?" I asked as I rose to my feet and walked to the front door, closing it. Her eyes traced my passage like how a hunter seeks prey.
"Well it's-"
**MROW?**
My fat ginger cat interrupted our discussion. Her purr was like the acceleration on a Pete Davidson motorcycle, loud enough to shake the windows and so disarming it could date a Kardashian.
"Oh what a cutie-pie! Aren't you a smushy-wookems!" She squealed, kneeling to the ground and taking Toosey's head into her hands. The purrs grew in intensity as Toosey leaned into the embrace, marking this new being as *hers* with the cat's scent.
"Are you overfeeding her? She's so fat!"
"I'm not! I don't know how she's getting so fat, she probably bothers the neighbours down the street or something. She sometimes disappears for days at a time but I leave the food out for her anyway and it always disappears." I said in my defence.
Ignoring my platitudes, she continued. "I've always wanted a cat Psy, you know that. How come all this time you never told me you had one!" She was somehow more annoyed than when I dissed the team name.
And then what she said struck me.
"All this time? Wait... Are you AxE?" I asked.
She smiled widely as she nodded. "Yep! She admitted, "Amaia is what I go by but you can call me AxE if you like. It's how we've chatted to each other over the last three years. What is your real name anyway?"
"You know my address but not my name?" I spluttered, incredulous. How had I been hunted down?
"You don't use a VPN, like an idiot. It wasn't hard to find your address. You also weren't very circumspect about whereabouts you live in chat so-" She shrugged, "- it would have been easier to find you if you didn't move so much so... Eh, I enlisted the help of a friend. It wasn't hard to flex my need for help." AxE's muscles bristled with the word flex as if to add emphasis. I have no idea if this was on purpose, but it brought a significant question to the fore that I really *really* should get to the bottom of.
"So you have superpowers? And more importantly can I get some?"
"Name. First." AxE demanded.
"I'm Simon. Simon Bastien."
"Ok, nice to meet you Simon. Uh, well..." She paused, her confidence visibly wavering, as if deliberating how much to tell me.
Instead of telling me how to arrange for me to be bitten by a altruistic radioactive spider at an appointed time that works for both of us the conversation went in a direction I hadn't expected.
"Want to go on a date?"
~~~
We bundled in to the back seating area of a quaint Greek bakery in Newtown that doubled as a café because every store in Newtown doubled as a café. I'm sure the local law firms have both baristas and barristers on staff.
The bus ride was awkward as I didn't exactly live close by. The 30 minutes of travel was made weirder by AxE's insistence that we bring Toosey along. By some miracle of untold proportions Toosey actually sat still long enough for me to put on a collar and lead, the first time I had ever used them. I was expecting Toosey's passage to be blocked by the bus driver but he didn't even glace at the ginger ruffian, almost like he couldn't see her. Toosey spent the ride on AxE's knees, perfectly content to molt all over her, staining AxE's dark jeans a scattered orange.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Looking across the pine wood table at AxE and the almond croissant she was butchering, I stifled a laugh as my imagination wandered. *"How Did I Meet Your Mother? Well kids, it all happened when a short tanned Latina woman with superhuman strength invaded my home, stole my cat, and took me to a tiny Greek bakery."*
"What are you thinking about?" AxE asked, breaking me out of my reverie.
"Nothing important." I said, exerting superhuman will to keep my face cool and expressionless.
Appearing disinterested, she continued to pick at the almond croissant for a time more until she got down to business. Her steel cutlery clattered on the plate as if to announce the beginning of the act.
"So you asked about my superpowers?" She said.
"Should we be talking about this in an public place?" I asked, my eyes darting over to the yiayia at the front counter.
"This place checks out. Thalia is cool with it." She nodded her head to the old lady at the front and was met with an explosion of Greek words I couldn't quite catch.
AxE answered with what I assume were Greek pleasantries before she returned her attention to me, stroking Toosey's back absentmindedly. The cat sat on the table and yet the yiayia Thalia did not protest.
"Thalia is on our side. She used to be a philosopher in the 60's and wrote a bunch back then, before drifting into writing cookbooks. Interesting stuff too. Bit avant garde for the time."
AxE leaned in conspiratorially. "Have you ever heard the phrase that 'the Pen is Mightier than the Sword?'"
I nodded, very confused where this was going, but I leant in anyway.
"Did you think that was just a cute saying, Psy? The reason for the focus on reading and writing in the final years of schooling in most countries is the hope that hints of superhuman powers will show and can be grown. Ever get accepted into a gifted and talented program or similar as a kid? Kind of the same thing."
She waited for the reality of what she said to sink in.
"Writing... Gives you superpowers? That's ridiculous." I said.
"It *can* give you superpowers, it doesn't always... If I was to ask a random person off the street to name the most fraught period of human history where humanity was closest to death, they would probably say the Cold War. And in a way they would be right. A miscommunication, an inopportune rise of anger in a person with power, and **Boom**. End of life and existence as we know it." As if to punctuate the gravity of what she was saying she took a very deep sip of her oat milk latte. Having whet her palate she continued.
"Well, they would be wrong. The earth came closest to its demise twice in written memory. Once was during the Renaissance in Europe. The second was the cultural revolution in China. That's not to say that the historical events that took place happened *because* of the writers phenomenon. The writers phenomenon happened in tandem. It didn't cause these events but it may have exacerbated them, or accelerated clashes between groups. All because of the powers that be."
She had lost me, and she could see it on my face. Neurons tried and failed to fire, to take it all in.
She changed tack, switching to an area I knew much more about.
"Have you heard of Battle Royale?" She asked.
"You mean like that video game, Bi-weekly?" I said.
AxE sighed so deeply I could hear the window by the front counter of the bakery vibrate, followed by the sound of Thalia scrambling around and making sure that nothing fell.
"In a way, yes, except that flossing back then was the use of a dental health tool rather than a dance move. The game style is derivative of the book Battle Royale which released in Japan to much controversy. Anyway, the premise of the book is that a bunch of school kids are released on an island and are told that only one will survive - and so they kill each other until only one survives. Many pieces of media since then with a one-winner-takes-all theme have attributed Battle Royale as an inspiration in their work, like that popular Korean MeshFlix show... Uh, what was it called. Squid? No, it was Calamari Games."
She spoke in a rush but I hung on every word. Also Calamari Games was a great show, you should watch it.
"You ever notice how the number of apocalypse and zombie movies exploded in western media after the 9/11 attacks?"
"Uhhhh," I said intelligently. She had lost me again. What did this have to do with falling into a vat of radioactive sludge and gaining superpowers?
"Well they did, you can look it up. Media, be it writing or art or film or whatever, it often echoes the sentimentality of its time. Add on human made climate change and the ever present possibility of nuclear war and you have a desire for post-apocalyptic pick me ups. Sure the world is dead but at least there is some hope for some of us right? We can rebuild, right?" she said.
"Ok, ok, ok. I get it. What the hell does that have to do with superpowers?" I finally asked.
She grinned, the Cheshire cat returning once again, only to disappoint me. "We don't know?"
"What?"
"Well we don't know, not fully. We know a bit. We think that it only seems to happen from writing and not other media, or at least that it's most common in writing. The superpowers you ask about are more like Lexiconicy or Pentifery. We can use our words to manifest powers and affect the physical space about us."
My mind worked overtime. I could see AxE biting back a laugh as gears turned in my head that hadn't turned in years, rusted over and dulled by monotonous menial work. I could *feel* the strain and struggle as my mind dusted itself off, whirring into action.
"So..." I said, begging my mind to keep up with my words. "What you're saying is you are a writer?"
I could hear a the beginnings of a giggle being stifled by the front counter.
"That's the first thing you want to ask!?" AxE's brows knit itself back into a frown I was soon becoming familiar with. It would be kind of cute if her superhuman strength didn't mean she could rip me limb from limb. Or maybe that made me more into it? Geez just what am I into - it's been too long since anyone has been into me romantically. Was she into me romantically? What the hell Simon, get it together!
"Don't be so surprised!" She said, shocking me back to the present and away from my horny thought-whirpool of doubt.
"You know my username right AragonxEragon? The Yuri fanfic I wrote is really popular, so I have kept it going."
Another pause. They were becoming quite common now.
"You got your superpowers from. A. Yuri. Fanfic?" I said, labouring over each point like a builder pouring cement.
"What, like it's hard?" AxE said, channeling the movie Solicitor Brunette to the tee.
She took another sip of her latte as I took a moment to collect myself. Again. Why was she saying this? Writing can cause superpowers but it doesn't always?
"So... Our fave authors were killed because they developed super powers?" I asked, slowly putting pieces of the puzzle together. I think.
"Mmmm, not usually. They are often kidnapped and made to sign a contract with either a Lexiconicy or Pentifery Publisher. We can explain that more when you meet the rest of the crew."
Kidnapping. I guess that's Reason 11 then, a new one. One I had jokes about but never really listed.
Then it hit me and I understood. I knew why they needed me. The words had left my mouth before I had even considered them, filtered them, made them appropriate for the audience. But by her microexpressions I knew I had hit the bullseye. They *needed* me and *many* more like me.
She feigned mock surprise at my response and before she could furnish an add-on I spoke. "Before things went to shit I did a Science and Arts degree at University, majoring in Biology and English. I understand the scientific method at the bare minimum, Axe. Not my fault the government defunded research."
I paused, *hoping* it added some level of gravitas.
"Bottom line: You need test subjects and I volunteer."