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Intermission Interlude - Arleigh (Part One)

  Wren’s Nest. That was what the sign over the shop said. Reading it twice to make sure she had the right place, Arleigh Fosters took a breath. This was so dangerous. If anyone knew she was here, if people managed to recognize her… but no, there was very little chance of that. She had come in disguise, just in case. A can of temporary hair dye left her as a brunette rather than a blonde, at least for the afternoon. Beyond that, she was also wearing rather different clothes than anyone who actually knew her would expect, in the form of baggy jeans with ugly patches all over them, a flannel shirt, and an ugly old gray jacket that she’d picked up at a… eugh, a thrift shop. To top off the ensemble, she had thick glasses with a pink plastic frame. The glasses were fake, the lenses clear without any prescription to them. But they absolutely helped disguise the girl’s face.

  That was a thought that made her look both ways reflexively. Disguise or not, if someone saw her go into this place and realized who she was, it could be catastrophic. Everything would be ruined. Peering up and down the street, she watched for anyone who might be paying too much attention, anyone who might seem a little too interested in what she was doing. No one stood out. All she could see were people going about their business, heading for cars or into stores.

  She didn’t trust that. Not for a second. In this city, you could never tell who might be up to something, or how dangerous they were. And you definitely couldn’t be too careful when it came to--

  “Do you need some help?” Those simple, unexpected words came from right in front of Arleigh, from the doorway of the shop itself. There was a young kid there, a small blonde child standing with the door held open as she looked up at her curiously. “I mean, is somebody chasing you?”

  Doing her level best not to jump right out of her skin, Arleigh blinked at the kid and reflexively snapped, “What the hell are you talking about?” Where the fuck had this freaky little ninja girl even come from? Why didn’t Arleigh hear the door open? She wasn’t that distracted, was she?

  Offering a bright smile, the ninja kid just replied, “You seemed nervous. And you kept looking all over the place, like you were afraid someone was following you. Do you want us to call the cops? We have a phone.” She turned, looking back into the shop. “We have lots of phones.”

  “What? No, fuck no, don’t call the cops.” Arleigh had to stop herself from cursing even more than she already was. She was pretty sure people didn’t like it when you cursed at a kid. That would probably stand out. Wait, damn it, she was supposed to be some flannel-dressed loser nerd, not a badass girl who would curse out anyone she wanted. Fuck, Arleigh, get your head in the game. Be a lame nerd for just a few minutes and act all casual and shit. You can do that, right?

  Shaking off those thoughts, Arleigh forced a goofy, awkward giggle, making her voice squeak a bit as she stepped past the kid and into the shop. “I mean, we don’t need cops around here, right?” Something else occurred to her then, even as she was looking around the pawnshop. “Wait, we? You said ‘we’ have lots of phones? Do your parents own this place or something?”

  “They did,” came the easy response, as the kid let the door shut and walked back in. “But they died. Now my uncle runs the store. I’m Wren, what’s your name? I mean, can I help you find something?” Her chirpy, cheerful tone was at odds with the blunt way that she simply announced her parents had died before immediately moving right on to play the helpful little shop employee.

  “Jessica,” Arleigh lied. No way in hell was she going to give her real name around here. Not when she’d gone to such lengths to make sure she wouldn’t be recognized. No one was going to find out she had come here. And they sure as hell weren’t going to find out why she was here.

  Okay, so the kid would have to know. And the guy behind the counter who was only half-paying attention while clearly engrossed with his magazine. It was time. All the effort Arleigh had put into hiding her identity, in making sure no one followed her, in lying to everyone about what she was doing and where she was going, it all came down to this. It was time to ask the question that would completely ruin her life if anyone heard it come out of her mouth.

  “Do you have a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress?” She managed to get those words out before she could talk herself into simply turning around and leaving, though it was a very close call.

  That Wren girl blinked at her a couple times as though doing her best to digest the rather confusing question. “Um. As in the World War 2 Bomber Airplane thing? Do we have one of those? You mean like, in the garage or…?”

  Oh great, now Arleigh was blushing. Why was this so hard? “No, the model kit, d--” Don’t curse at the kid anymore, don’t curse at the kid anymore. “--dude. It's a model from Franklin Mint, the 1/48th scale B17. It’s worth like a thousand dollars. It's got working propellers and landing gear, it's so--” She had to stop herself from going on and on about the model, the urge to gush like an idiot almost overwhelming. “Look, I just like models, okay? Somebody told me you had that one sitting around in a sealed box around here somewhere.”

  “Oh--oh!” Wren brightened, her confusion vanishing. “Yes, yeah, we have models, right, Uncle Fred? Do we have that one? I forget which ones we have, but if that’s one of the expensive ones, we probably still have it. People haven’t exactly bought a lot of those model airplanes lately.”

  Dropping his magazine on the glass counter, the man stood up and beckoned. “Yeah, the better models are up on the higher shelves. Come on, let’s see what there is. I think I remember seeing one of those bombers, and it was pretty expensive when I checked the almighty internet.”

  It took a minute to locate, but eventually it was there, in Arleigh’s hands. She had the unopened, pristine model kit in her hands. Or rather, clutched to her chest. She didn’t care about the price. Who would? It was a perfect Franklin Mint B17! Before the kid or the old guy could haggle about it, Arleigh was already shoving a thousand dollars in their hands. That was a fair amount of the petty cash she had squirreled away that her family didn’t know about, but whatever, she’d just rob a bank or something. All that mattered was that she finally had the model. God, she’d been looking for one of these for so long. The ones that came up online always went too fast, or they were sketchy as shit. No way would she throw a thousand bucks away just to get a worthless empty box or whatever.

  But this one wasn’t empty. This wasn’t a scam. It was sealed, completely unopened, and she could even hear and feel things rattling around in there when she (rather gently) shook it just to assure herself of all that. This was the real deal. Finally, she would have a replacement for…

  Images flashed through her mind, even as she left the shop. Images of herself a few years back, when she was twelve. She’d had this model, along with a dozen others, all in the shed out in the garden. She wasn’t allowed to have the models inside where they could get in the way, so she built them in the shed and displayed them there, for herself. It was better there anyway. She could stay out of the house where all the shouting kept happening, and just build her models. She liked that. She liked following the instructions, and seeing the airplanes come together out of all the little pieces. It was soothing.

  Or it had been, until Micah showed up all pissed off because his girlfriend had dumped him. He heard Arleigh giggling in the shed while he was fuming over that and had proceeded to storm in and start throwing all her models in the trash can. Then he dumped a can of lighter fluid in there along with a lit book of matches, all while she was pleading with him to stop. But he didn't stop. He grabbed her arm and forced the twelve-year-old girl to watch as her models were burned. While it was happening, he kept going on about how this was what happened when you cared about things. They just got taken away. He was really pissed about getting dumped.

  That had been a bad day. But it had also shaped the rest of her life, because while she was screaming at Micah for burning her models, leading to him twisting her hair to shove her face so close to the flames that it almost burned her, two of those orbs had shown up. One for each of them. One of the orbs had seemed to be staring into the fire in the trash can, until Micah touched it. The other had been floating a couple feet back, near where Arleigh had been unceremoniously shoved as soon as her brother saw the orb. It was right there, and she had hesitantly put a hand on it.

  That was how both of them got their powers. It happened on the same day, at practically the same moment. Micah had never really forgiven her for butting in on his big thing by Touching at essentially the same time that he had. He kept going on about not being able to have anything for himself, as if she had somehow forced the orb to appear in front of her. Really, if she had that sort of control, she definitely wouldn't have let one of them appear anywhere near him.

  For the past few years, gradually and without letting anyone back home (especially Micah) know, she had been collecting replacements for all of those old models. She wasn't keeping them in the shed anymore. Absolutely not. Instead she had a storage unit that she was renting under a false name. That was where she kept everything she didn't want Micah to destroy.

  Now she had the real prize of her entire collection. She finally managed to find the bomber, and this time she was going to keep it safe. No one would know that she had it. Not her older brother, not anyone in her family. Well, Errol and Sequoia were both probably okay, but still. It was better to be safe than sorry. You really couldn't trust anybody. Micah had succeeded at teaching her that, if nothing else. You couldn't trust anybody, and you sure as hell couldn't depend on anybody. You had to take care of yourself. And if there was something you liked, something that someone else might take away from you, you had to either defend or attack.

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  That was why she had attacked that Jae chick at the start of the school year, when Price (her stupid ex-boyfriend) had called the albino girl cute and exotic. Arleigh had liked Price, and he had, at least as far as she was concerned, expressed interest in another girl. That made Jae a threat, and meant Arleigh had to deal with that threat the only way she knew how, by attacking.

  Weird, why was she even thinking about that girl? Arleigh had to ask herself that while waiting for the city bus. Yes, she was taking public transportation. There was no way she was going to risk anyone seeing her car around here to make them start asking questions, and she wouldn't call for an Uber either. Not when there was a possibility of someone back home checking her account history. Micah would absolutely do that just to find any weakness he could try to exploit.

  Besides, it turned out that riding the bus wasn't such a bad thing after all. Really, she had expected it to be so much worse when she had started taking public transportation to hide her trips to that storage facility. But it was fun, especially since it meant she could just chill and listen to music in her earbuds. No pressure, no one messing with her or demanding anything, and no need to watch the road. She could simply close her eyes and lose herself to the beat for a little while.

  Or, at least, she normally could. But just as the girl was really getting into the latest single from Melancholy Canvas, the entire bus screeched to a rather violent halt with very little warning. That was just a blaring horn and then squealing brakes as Arleigh and several other passengers were thrown out of their seats. Just like that, she found herself squatting on the floor with her hand in some used gum. Okay, maybe there were problems with taking the bus.

  But that wasn't the end of the problems, not by a long shot. Right when she was starting to pick herself up to bitch out the driver for being terrible at his job, something slammed into the side of the bus and knocked the whole thing over onto its side. Worse, the part that was hit was just a little bit down from where she was, meaning the bus fell onto its other side. Arleigh fell with a yelp, along with about fifteen other passengers, as the bus slammed onto its side and went skidding noisily along the pavement. The whole wall of the bus where it had been hit was dented inward.

  Okay, seriously, what the fuck was going on? Whatever gang was out there starting shit, she was going to… oh right, she wasn't going to do anything. She didn't have her costume, because she wasn't here as Clime. She wasn't even here as Arleigh. She was supposed to be anonymous, and it had to stay that way unless she wanted her family to ask pointed questions.

  Right, so she just needed to get the hell out here and let whatever this was play out without her. It wouldn't be too hard. The other passengers were already fleeing and seemed to be doing so safely enough. Whatever or whoever had hit the bus wasn't paying attention to them.

  Once she had safely clambered out, following the stream of fleeing passengers, Arleigh proceeded to ignore them completely. They were rushing down the street, like idiots. Instead, she went right through the nearest doorway, into what turned out to be some sort of sportswear shop. The owner was saying something, but Arleigh just gestured over her shoulder and shouted, “Touched fight, you wanna yell at someone for screwing up your business, try them! I’m sure they’re very sorry!”

  With that, she went right through the door marked for employees only, and started to continue on toward the rear exit to the alley beyond. Great, now she was going to have to find another way to get to her-- oh motherfucker! The fucking box, the model, it was still back in the bus, god damn it!

  Well, fuck that noise, she sure as hell wasn’t leaving that thing behind. Not after spending all that money on it. Not to mention the amount of time it had taken her to find a pristine one after her stupid jackass brother burned the last one. Everything she had put into finding a new one and she loses it five minutes later thanks to whoever the fuck was fighting outside? No way.

  There, right at the door leading into that alley was a box of sporting goods, including ski masks and goggles. With everyone heading out for vacations to get away from Detroit now that the damn quarantine was over, many of them were going skiing. That would’ve been harder to do in June before the resorts started using Touched-Tech snow machines, but now they could go all year.

  Either way, all that mattered was they were still selling ski shit, and had a whole box right there. So she grabbed a dark green one as well as a pair of neon blue goggles, pulled them on and adjusted the things so she could see. With that done, Arleigh went right back the way she’d come. The disguise she’d been wearing before was good enough to not be recognized in a casual environment, but she couldn’t risk someone taking pictures of her if this turned into a fight. She was already going to have too fucking much to explain if her dad found out she had been around here. But whatever, she would just claim she was scouting out a place to hit or something. As long as she didn’t get herself recognized and blow her secret identity with this, it would be fine. Just fine.

  The store manager was already on her way through that doorway to bitch at her for barging in and going through the employees area, only to step back with a yelp when she saw Arleigh there with the ski mask and goggles on. She started babbling about cash being in the register.

  Reflexively, the girl started to tell her to shut the fuck up. Then she caught herself. If she had to use her powers out there, it would be obvious that, whatever costume she was wearing, she was Clime. Her power was too distinctive. And if she didn’t act like her Clime identity always did, it would… ugh, that could be bad. This bitch could spoil that part of identity, could tell people she acted completely differently in her store. She couldn’t risk that, especially when she was already risking enough just by doing this shit in the first place. If it wasn’t for that damn model kit… fuck.

  Okay, well, all she had to do was run out there, deal with anyone who was in her way, and grab that kit. Then she could be done with this and just fucking leave.

  Leaving the frightened store manager behind without chewing her out the way she wanted to, she ran right out to where the overturned bus was. Only then did she really notice just how big the dent in the side was. Whatever had hit that thing had really done a number on it, damn. She glanced down the street to look for any sign of the person responsible for that while starting to climb in. The box, she just needed the box.

  Then she saw them. Just down the street, the Minority were right there. It was all of them, including those new kids. The sight of the group sent a flash of annoyance through her. That had been her chance. She had tried to convince her dad that having eyes inside the Minority would be really useful, and right when they had been so limited on members would have been the best chance for Clime to have a change of heart and join up. She could have made it work. But no, now they suddenly had three new members so they wouldn't be nearly as desperate to let someone switch sides.

  The whole new team was arrayed around a trio of masked figures that she didn't recognize at all. Mostly because they weren't wearing colorful costumes. It just looked like three people in simple masks not unlike the one she was wearing. Either way, after three were outnumbered and surrounded.

  Great, now she had to watch them be heroes and get all the adulation. Or maybe not. Maybe she could just ignore them, grab her kit, and get out of here without being forced to see any of that.

  But just as she started to climb in the bus, there was a bright flash. Her head snapped up to look that way just in time to see all three of those mysterious figures, as well as the Minority themselves, vanish into thin air. Well, at least she didn't have to watch them. Some sort of teleportation device?

  There, she was on the bus, and her model was right where she'd left it. With a sigh of relief, feeling a little silly that she'd even bothered to put this mask on, she started to crawl that way.

  Then she heard it. A girl was screaming. Lifting her head to look back out the cracked window of the bus, Arleigh realized that not all of those masked figures were gone. There were two more of them, one an obvious short woman wearing army camo fatigues with that same dark mask, while the other seemed to be a very hairy black man standing in a strange, almost hunched over position. He was wearing a tank top and baggy pants, with long hair sticking out from under his own mask.

  Both of them were stalking right towards a couple children who were cowering on the ground. The kids look like they couldn't be older than eight or so, siblings probably. There were a couple bikes laying next to them, where they had apparently fallen off. Probably thanks to the big chunk of concrete that had been flung that way and was resting against the nearby wall. Obviously those girls had been riding their bikes before one of the two masked figures threw that debris and made them fall off. Now they were there, clinging to one another as they cried out for help.

  Too bad the Minority had already disappeared. Maybe someone could have helped these kids. With a shrug, Arleigh reached out toward her model kit. Right there. All she had to do was grab it and bounce. There was no way she was going to throw down with a couple mysterious Touched whose powers she didn't even know. Especially when one of them was strong enough to throw a chunk of concrete that size. It would’ve been suicide. Besides, she wasn't a hero. Maybe it would've been cool to see what it was like from the other side, but like this? No fucking way.

  The sound of the hairy man's voice reached her then, as he taunted the girls about the terrible things he was going to do to them. His voice was guttural and sent a shiver through Arleigh.

  Some good Samaritan, a man with a baseball bat, went to intervene just as she grabbed her model and straightened up. With a model tucked under her arm, she looked that way just in time to see the short woman grab the bat from the man's hands, break the thing into splinters with a casual squeeze of her hand, then grab him and throw the guy so hard into a wall that he very clearly didn't survive. His body simply shattered and… and basically liquefied with a sickening crunch. That was how strong the bitch was.

  Those little girls screamed again, now that it was very clear that this wasn't some twisted game. These two weren't just scaring them for fun. They had casually killed a man for standing against them. They were going to take those girls, and they were going to do terrible things to them. Worse, these two were powerful. That woman had to be unbelievably strong to do something like that in one casual toss. It didn't even look like she was meaningfully exerting herself.

  No, trying to stand up against those two without knowing anything about them other than the fact that the woman was strong enough to do that was idiotic. It was a stupid, stupid thought. Only a fucking moron would go out there.

  So why exactly was it that, just as the hairy man reached out to the screaming girls once more, he was interrupted again? Why was it, exactly, that the interruption in question was Arleigh herself? The model kit was still back on the bus where she had dropped it. Just as the man reached for those kids, she jumped out of the bus, thrust her hand that way, and encased the man in an eight-foot forcefield bubble. In the bubble, a tornado appeared, battering the man with powerful winds.

  “Hey!” she called. “Why don't you leave those kids alone?

  “And pick on someone who can actually fight back, you fucking cowards.”

  (To Be Continued Next Chapter)

  Joke Tags: Anyone Who Wants To Point Out Arleigh Can’t Be Right About The Entire Minority Being There Because We Know Raindrop Is Out Of Town? She Didn’t Take A Head Count

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