Chapter 30
A finger slides across the smartphone screen. The ancient device — which Prizm had proudly called "a relic from the IBM Museum" — handled its functions perfectly well, and beyond that—
I couldn't have cared less what anyone thought about my phone. Especially right now.
My heart was singing. My lips still remembered the bright, dizzying taste — the pressure, the small bites, the heat that had temporarily simplified my brain function to very basic operations.
With the face of a pubescent teenager who has just seen his first pair — I was walking down the street, sending neighbors fleeing. The image from last night kept surfacing and disrupting my ability to form coherent thoughts.
It was showing up in my actions. That morning I'd confused sugar with laundry detergent and destroyed the washing machine, nearly poisoning Grandma. I'd picked up the TV remote instead of my phone. I'd poured whiskey into my coffee thermos instead of coffee. I'd somehow picked up a cat along with the dirty laundry and put it in the basket without registering the screaming until the poor animal had been yelling for some time.
I found out about all of this later. Right now—
The finger slides across the screen. I push the plug firmly into the jack.
Music starts in the cheap earphones. Making no effort to hide the smile, I move — swaying, shoulder-rolling, hands drifting loosely from side to side — aware that from outside I probably looked approximately as dignified as Tobey Maguire's jazz scene in Spider-Man 3, but—
"Don't care." I delivered this loudly and cheerfully to the full street, immediately accumulating disapproving looks. Mothers covered children's ears. Old men shook their heads. I kept going — no, I was floating — in the direction of the SDS office.
Reaching a new intersection, free from the reproachful stares, I stepped up onto the nearest mailbox in one motion, spread my arms, spun on one foot, and let drops of water release from my palms in a wide, gentle spray.
The sunlight caught them one by one. Children's delighted shouts from nearby, and several bright rainbows appeared on the street.
I hopped down, fired one enormous jet of water into the sky as a final punctuation mark, and turned the corner onto the direct path to the SDS building.
Colleagues kept appearing. Other heroes, dispatchers, maintenance staff. Each one received my full attention. The first got a firm handshake. The blonde walking slightly ahead was lifted off the ground and spun, to her very reasonable protest about her skirt and the laws of physics.
An enormous Hawaiian-looking man with arms the diameter of my torso and elaborate tattoos was given a full embrace — I barely reached his wide shoulders, he was that large. He awkwardly hugged back, laughing and uncertain how to respond.
A few pedestrians on the other side of the street who had begun watching with visible alarm received a polite wave, with drops of water flying off my hand. I was leaving a notable wet trail the entire way — the California sun not quite managing to keep up.
The office doors opened welcomingly. Chase, standing at the coffee machine with Robert's fat dog in his arms, went still with his mouth slightly open, pinning me with a look that contained contempt, bewilderment, and something approaching supernatural unease. The Black Einstein actually gave a small involuntary shudder.
"Hey, Waterboy, what's—"
I didn't let him finish. One step, I picked up Chase — who had approximately two-thirds my height — held him at arm's length, and squeezed him into a full embrace, which, along with the muffled swearing, produced a compressed cough from the old man. The only thing he'd managed to do was lift his arms with the dog over his head, though Baconbits nearly escaped and was now dangling upside down between us, tail going enthusiastically and tongue finding both our faces with democratic affection — particularly Chase's disgruntled one. At some point the old man apparently decided resistance was futile and began the slow pat on my shoulder.
"Alright, alright, I get it. Come on, kid." Feeling my grip only tighten, Chase dropped his head back in resignation. "Damn it. Was going to have tea first."
We stayed like that for another full minute before the grumbling old man was released, and I bounded up the stairs, still moving, still dancing, shoulders and arms operating on their own schedule while music from the previous century played in my ears. I'd never gotten around to updating the playlist — Grandma, for all her rapid adaptation to modern life, remained a committed conservative on the subject of music.
"Hey, Waterboy." Robert, coffee in hand, deep in what appeared to be a cheerful conversation with our superhero manager, watched my dancing for a few seconds before speaking. "Someone's in a good mood."
"Just happy, Rob." I pulled out my coffee thermos, swung it firmly against his cup in a toast — splashing a solid few mouthfuls into his drink — and nodded. "Bottoms up. Hope you don't choke."
Under Blond Blazer's and Robert's shared expression of profound confusion, I drained three hundred grams of genuinely excellent whiskey in one pull, returned the thermos to my bag without any change of expression, gave my boss a thumbs up, winked at Robert with the cartoon grin of a Tom and Jerry cat, and kept walking.
"Did he just drink at the start of a working day? In front of me?" My supervisor's voice behind me carried exactly this question, which was the last thing I caught before I turned toward the Team Z break room.
The door had barely opened when two bodies landed on me from behind. Specifically, female bodies — a detail I barely registered, which was notable given that two separate pairs were pressed against my head from different directions.
"Right then, little punk." Invidiva had a firm grip on my neck and my arm — coordinating with her companion, the two of them herded me toward the couch and deposited me on it, under Sonar's expression of complete neutrality. My friend showed no sign of wanting to help, continuing to eat a suspiciously aged burrito. "Start talking."
"Talk about what?" I looked around, reflexively crossing my arms, feeling the unusual pressure of the situation. "Why is everyone suddenly so interested in me?"
"As if you don't know."
"And surely you can't object to the company of such dazzling women, little Hermi?" Prizm settled to my right, pressing close and looking up at me through her color-shifting glasses.
"Grandma always said this happens to all the pretty boys—"
"Enough jokes! Turn here." Invidiva produced a butterfly knife, opened it with practiced efficiency, and directed the point toward my anatomy. "Now. The truth. Or I'm taking one of those as a trophy."
"Why specifically one?"
"I'll make it a pendant," Prizm answered the question directed elsewhere, already repositioning. "Tell us. What was all the dancing about since this morning? I almost choked on my coffee watching you. I genuinely thought you were having a stroke."
"I mean, that's a little harsh—" I moved the knife aside gently — the genre conventions around these situations did not end well, and I was familiar enough with them. "And honestly, why does it concern you? Good mood, that's all—"
"Sure, buddy." Prizm was already on her phone, navigating to someone's Twitter, and turned the screen toward me. "Something bigger than this, you think?"
The photo was of two people kissing on the ground. Taken as a selfie, apparently, during the kiss — which looked even more intense from outside than it had felt from inside.
Our bodies tangled together, one of my hands on her waist, the other moved to her hip, her free hand gripping the back of my neck, her whole body appearing to try to press into mine while her legs were involved in the effort—
But if you looked past the kissing, the rest of the photo was not exactly conventional. The general atmosphere leaned heavily toward infernal, especially with the body of the knife-wielding psycho visible in the background — mercifully face-down, so the condition wasn't obvious — plus craters, water, smoke, a fire that had made it into frame, several distant bodies, and the remains of a building.
"Well—" The girls' eyes were saying everything that words would have been redundant to express. For all the crude jokes and the boundary-testing flirting, these were — probably — my friends, and they appeared genuinely pleased, in their particular way. "Fine. Fine, I surrender—"
"So the red-skinned little thief finally got what she was after?" Prizm grabbed me by the shirt, and then, without excessive deliberation, by something considerably lower, producing a somewhat undignified noise from me. "Did the flower get picked? The first train leave the station?"
While I oscillated between red and blue, Invidiva laughed — the bright, uncomplicated kind.
"Easy, don't damage the goods. The horned mother will be annoyed—"
"Pfft." She released me — I made a sound I will not transcribe — then casually tried to wipe her hand on Invidiva, who began evading with kicks and elbows without stopping laughing. "I'm going to grow her actual horns. Some women get everything."
With theatrical sorrow, Prizm found comfort in her vape, and within two minutes was back in her phone.
Invidiva, however, settled cross-legged on the couch and kept looking at me.
"What?" I was the one who cracked first. And as always, I made the error of assuming the active humor portion was over and that nothing damaging would follow.
"Just thinking — if you can satisfy an actual demon, I might book you for a few evenings a month." Glad I wasn't drinking anything. "If things don't work out with you-know-who, of course."
"Interesting thought," Prizm contributed, hiding her growing smile in vapor.
"Can we please talk about something other than this?" I stood up from the couch, turning to face them. Minimal reaction. Invidiva was examining her nails, Prizm was in her phone. "That's all you're interested in—"
"Sure, that dirty filthy sex, spawn of Satan—" Invidiva dropped her visibility, reappeared beside me, and mildly startled me. "Relax, Ginger. Just jokes. It's just that ordinary options without accessories have lost their appeal, so the mind wanders."
"Agreed," came a voice I didn't need to identify.
"Have you tried lotion?" Sonar interjected, which no one had asked for, accompanying this contribution with an extremely illustrative pantomime. "Works well for me. Particularly in bat form—"
"Charming," Invidiva said, face completely blank, redirecting. "Anyway. You understand. You're probably the same. How old are you again? Twenty-five?"
"Twenty-four—"
"Right. By now you've probably gotten tired of—" She stopped. Her eyes had sharpened on my face. She tilted her head left, then right, and when she spoke again something had shifted in her expression. "Wait. You do do that, right? At least a few times a week?"
"Indeed," the bat contributed, apparently done with his burrito, "in prison you never once—"
"You were doing it for both of us," I replied, with what dignity I had left, catching the sidelong looks from colleagues. "And what? Now I'm abnormal because I'm not an enthusiastic self-pleasurer?"
"I just thought — with your powers it would be so much more convenient, efficient, and—" Invidiva shrugged, shifting almost imperceptibly away from me. "And also — haven't things gotten uncomfortable physically by now—"
"Please, that's enough." I covered my face with one hand. My cheeks were absolutely on fire. "I'm not saying I never do it. But mostly I train until there's nothing left."
"You don't do what?" The voice came from behind me. I answered on reflex, immediately regretting it.
"Masturbate — you know — self-pleasure—" I turned and made full eye contact with the rest of the team, who had apparently arrived during the conversation. The collective reaction was, genuinely, nothing. Criminals with no moral complications to speak of.
"Ha." Coupé nudged her small companion in the shoulder. "I said so. Twenty, please."
Colm produced the crumpled bill with visible irritation.
"Magnificent confession, Waterboy." Flambé walked past with his hands already up in a defensive gesture, facial expression suggesting he had personally witnessed something deeply unsanitary. "I'm never shaking your hand again—"
"Don't stress, man, it's normal," Colm said, arriving and briefly hesitating between a shoulder pat and something else before choosing the former. "Perfectly normal. Like being lower-middle-class — nothing to be proud of, nothing to be ashamed of. Either way you end up with calluses."
Golem walked past silently, but stopped beside me, and the joker among us squeezed a small quantity of debris from his palm, sorted through it for two seconds, and with great enthusiasm handed me a travel-size moisturizer.
"Lovely—" I examined the lotion without fully processing it, and only at this point noticed that most of the team had dispersed, leaving me with—
Actually I felt it before I saw it — the tail pulling me sideways, closing the distance quickly. A red, flexible limb wrapped around my chest, lifting me almost off my feet, and I was deposited face-first into a confidently presented chest. A pair of muscular arms settled around me in a not-particularly-gentle embrace.
"Well, hello." I was fairly sure my breathing stopped, reacquainting itself with that specific perfume and the heat radiating off her. "Didn't expect to see you today—"
Her words knocked me slightly sideways. I looked up, met the yellow eyes, and spent a few seconds staring at Mal before the thought fully arrived.
"Why not?" She released me and stood with her arms folded, that sharp smile in place, tilting her head and sending the black hair shifting. "Working day, and—"
"You do remember swearing you'd attend the medical training sessions so you can actually treat the injuries you absorb?" My eyes went wide. Under her understanding nod, I was already beginning to look around frantically, but Mal had preemptively opened a portal and was closing the distance in one step. "I don't create portals for free—"
The particular quality of her voice at that moment produced immediate physiological responses that I was not going to acknowledge out loud. I settled my hand on her waist, caught the questing tail with the other, and leaned toward her ear.
"Then I'll owe you?"
"Yes—" She smiled, freed the tail with a single smooth motion, and pushed me gently toward the portal — catching me with her last words just as I was about to step through, spoken with an inflection that made every thought about medical training, concentration, or anything approaching professional focus quietly pack its things and leave.
"And I already know exactly how you're going to pay."
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