Wonder City Stories

Sorry about my post-fail last week. It's been a little rough weather here. But so is it rough weather in Wonder City.


Partying the Hard Way

Tam Lane was pressing her up against a cold metal wall, bending over her, his long auburn hair shading their faces. "Come on, baby," he was whispering, pulling her hand against the bulge in his jeans. "Do it."

Before Nereid could say anything past her horror, Tam was dragged away from her and thrown to the ground. Sophie brought a baseball bat down on the man's pretty face. There was a crunch, and a wail, and Nereid turned away.

A warm hand pressed against her back. "It's okay, Pacifica," Lucid's sympathetic voice said. "It's just a dream."

Nereid turned back to look at her, slowly rising into lucidity through her paralysis and confusion. "Really?"

Lucid smiled at her. "Yes, really. I should know, right?"

Nereid looked toward Sophie, who was still plying her baseball bat, even though most of the dream was fading away around them. Lucid said, "Sophie, time to go."

Sophie dropped the baseball bat with a little grimace and nodded, pushing some of her hair out of her face.

They walked silently away from the disintegrating scene, Lucid keeping an arm around Nereid's shoulders. Shortly, they came to a train station and mounted the steps into one of the waiting silver cars. They sat down along the side of the subway car, and the train started into motion, the rubber loops swinging silently with the motion of the car.

Nereid blinked, and took deep breaths, and looked down at herself. She was wearing her uniform, the swirling blues and greens in close-fitting spandex. She ran her hands over the fabric and forced herself to feel the texture, still breathing deeply. She'd done this a number of times, visiting Lucid's Dream Party, but it had been a while since their last trip.

"Just a baseball bat this time?" Lucid was saying curiously to Sophie as the train slanted downward into a dark tunnel.

"I've got a lot of anger issues right now," Sophie said.

"Apparently," Lucid said. "How've you been doing, Pacifica?"

Nereid blinked hard and smiled. "All right, I suppose, Leah. Wonder City is just kind of... hard."

Lucid nodded. "Seattle's no bed of roses but at least we're not having a modern-day Les Mis, like in California."

Nereid looked at her and said, "Les Mis?"

Lucid smiled briefly and bitterly. "Food riots. Water riots. Police declaring martial law and killing people left and right. It isn't just the LAPD, but that's where it started."

Something flickered in the window opposite Nereid. It was one of those advertisements consisting of a series of stills posted on the subway tunnel wall that become a little animated movie when the train rushes past them. This one only had a man's face in the center of a bright starburst. He was a handsome thirty-something with short, sleek ash-blond hair and bright, earnest blue eyes. He was speaking in the image, enunciating carefully so, Nereid supposed, someone could lip-read what he was saying.

Almost against her will, she was drawn to stare at his mouth, trying to puzzle out the words.

Lucid got up, walked across the car, and yanked down a window blind that Nereid hadn't seen there before, breaking the spell. "I am so very tired of that fucker."

"Who is he?" Nereid said, rubbing her eyes.

"Pastor Al," Sophie growled. "Tent revival boy. Is he appearing in the dream world a lot?"

"All the fucking time," Lucid said. She sat down heavily. "He's always trying to say something to the dreamers. It's not like he's actually here -- believe me, I've looked. I think that he's just a really potent symbol."

Suddenly, his face reappeared in every window of the car, and each face was saying something different, smiling a slightly different way.

Lucid's eyes narrowed and she stamped on the floor. Blinds snapped down over every window.

"We'll be there soon," she said after a moment.

"Good," Sophie said. Then, more softly, "Thanks."

Lucid squeezed Sophie's knee and patted Nereid's shoulder. "I couldn't let down some of my favorite people."

The Dream Party was less populated than Nereid had ever seen it before. The buffet was still busy. There was still a small jam session in the corner, consisting of variously-dressed people playing guitars, Vulcan harps, and drums. But there were definitely fewer beings chatting in little groups, and they spoke in lower voices.

Nereid noticed a woman sitting nearby, calmly watching roses grow from her left arm. Green sprouts burst through her skin, grew and extended, and eventually exploded into blood-red blooms. When one bloomed, she carefully snipped it off at the base with a pair of scissors, and slid the rose into a nearby glass vase that was overflowing with flowers. The water in the vase was red.

A small blue dragon alighted on the table, arranged its feathers carefully, and watched this ritual for a few moments before asking, "Does that hurt?"

The woman said, "Like a bitch. But it's the only way I know to get rid of them."

"Your friend is waiting in the private room," a second Lucid said, gesturing over her shoulder toward a door. The two Lucids nodded to each other and stepped together into a single Lucid. "Let me know if you want anything."

Sophie cast a longing glance at the buffet, but said, "Thanks," and, taking Nereid's hand, went through the indicated door.

X was seated on a straight chair with long legs crossed in the very masculine way Nereid had noticed before when X was angry. The outfit for this Dream Party outing consisted of a dark blue velvet cutaway coat over tailored black trousers and waistcoat. X was also wearing sunglasses.

X looked in their direction but didn't get up or say anything, though there was a nod to Nereid.

Sophie shut the door and said, without any introduction, "This is why I asked you both to come here." And then there was a sound like wrenching metal. Sophie let out a little gasp and staggered to one side, while another woman staggered away from her in the other direction.

The other woman was a stocky, dark brown African-American woman of medium height. Her dark hair was shaped into a short afro. There were deep lines around her eyes and mouth, lines that made her look a great deal older than Nereid would have guessed from the rest of her body. She was wearing a t-shirt and old jeans. After she caught her breath, she straightened up and put her hands on her hips.

"This is damned weird," she said, looking around at the three of them.

Sophie coughed and slid into a chair. "X, Pacifica, meet Renata Scott."

"Oh!" Nereid said, then covered her mouth with both her hands. Renata, the telepath who'd been in her head when she'd killed Sator. Right.

X rose, swept off the sunglasses, and crossed the room, extending one elegant hand. "So pleased to meet you."

Renata looked at X, grinned, and -- somewhat gingerly -- shook hands. "Hah!" she said. "This is damned weird. I'm glad to meet you finally, X. I saw you at Ruth's birthday party and didn't get introduced." She looked at her hand, then Sophie. "You must be filtering me big time."

"Well, me and your prison, I think," Sophie said, then waved a hand. "Tell them what you told me."

Renata shook hands with Nereid. Nereid gave her an embarrassed, somewhat hopeles little smile.

Then Renata threw herself into an overstuffed chair and said, "Sit yourselves down, and I'll tell you about the aliens."

X sat obediently, eyes fixed on Renata. Nereid sat down more slowly, glancing over at Sophie, who was leaning her forehead on her hands.

"They've been trying to get me to work for them," Renata said. "They won't say outright what it is they want me to do. But I suspect."

"They're projecting some sort of psionic energy via mechanisms Brainchild built," X said, and Nereid was a little startled by hearing X use Sophie's spandex name.

Renata nodded. "I know," she said, and glanced aside at Sophie, who hadn't raised her head. "And I know whose psionic energy it is."

X sat forward in the chair, perching on the very edge. Nereid blinked at Renata.

"Look," Renata said, looking at them, but running her fingers over the tooled leather of the chair she'd ended up in, "I'm imprisoned on the spaceship until I either work for them or they decide what else to do with me. They've given me a very comfortable apartment, and I'm heavily shielded from psionics there. The only reason I can project to Earth, in fact, is because I stuffed Sophie back into her head a few years ago, and so I know her better than any other human on the planet and could probably find her anywhere. The aliens have captured and imprisoned Ruth and the rest of the Gold Stars in an interdimensional prison, and they've got some jackass as their 'human liaison' whose wife is an empath. Somehow, they amped her up and she's projecting her own emotional dogma down at the U.S. of A."

X slumped back in the chair, exhaling, "Shiiiiiittttt."

Nereid looked over at Sophie again, but Sophie wasn't moving. So Nereid said, "Does she know about the new church and stuff down here?"

"Probably," Renata said with a shrug. "What little I got during my brief interviews with them was some serious right-wing religion."

X said, "That's probably what's doing it, then."

"Doing what?" Renata said.

X sat forward again, counting off on slender fingers. "Here it is: resource riots, little teams of men in black roaming the streets, martial law, nationwide mental health crisis, tripled suicide rate."

Renata stared.

"I can't get hold of Simon any more," Nereid said slowly. "Every time I call, his friend Megan answers, and she doesn't seem to know that... that Simon's human. I don't think he can be human any more. He told me he was feeling horrible about himself about and... you know he's trans, right? He was even thinking about... going back to living as a girl, just to try to make it easier to be human."

"I think the men in black may be minor telepaths," X said. "I think they may be altering potential troublemakers. A therapist I know told me that people who say they've met up with a group are often... never quite right afterward."

"I met some," Nereid said with a shudder, and started remembering like a nightmare. "For a little while afterward, I felt better. Or I thought I did. Everything was so clear. They gave me a ring. Every time I met them, they gave me a ring, and Sophie took it away from me. But after a couple of days, things weren't so clear any more, and my brain was like thick soup, and I'd feel even stupider than I used to in high school."

X reached over and put an arm around her shoulders. Nereid could feel herself shaking in the circle of that arm, but was so grateful for X's familiar warmth.

Renata's face had grown stern. She looked like an old woman, Nereid realized, though her body was young. "I can't play any more," she said. "I can't hide in my room. I didn't... I wouldn't face what was going on, but I've got to do what I can to... make it less horrible." She stood up, and her hands were clenched into fists.

"We're doing what we can," X said, also standing. "Or we'll try. I have friends who're trying."

Renata nodded sharply. "Once I know more, I'll get Sophie to bring us together again. Perhaps Lucid will be willing to bring in some of your friends, X."

"Will you come if we need to talk to you?" X asked.

"Tell Sophie," Renata said. "She knows how to get in touch."

Renata walked over to Sophie and laid a hand on the younger woman's shoulder. "Quit beating yourself up," she said quietly. "You can't help anyone that way." And then she vanished.

X sighed and said, "She's right, you know. We all need to work together in any way we can."

"Easy for her --" Sophie said, gesturing over her shoulder and upward violently "-- to say. She's not party to mass murder."

"You made an outstandingly shitty choice," X said, going to stand over Sophie, hands on hips. "I'm certainly not going to argue that you didn't. But you've got to find a way to try to make up for it now. It isn't like you're the first para to accidentally almost destroy the world."

Sophie snorted. "I could at least have done it more cleanly if I'd done it myself."

Nereid walked over to the two of them. "Yes, we all know how much better you'd be as a supervillain. You tell us all the time." She crouched down in front of Sophie and butted her forehead against her girlfriend's, looking up cross-eyed into Sophie's glasses. "But you're not, and I won't let you be, all right?"

Sophie almost smiled as she pulled back, shaking her head. "Puppydog eyes don't work at that range, dammit."

X smirked. "They do, though. From Pacifica, at least."

"That's her other damn superpower," Sophie said, standing and pulling Nereid up too. "Class 10 puppydog eyes. Let's eat, for fuck's sake."

My schedule has just gone to heck, but here I am, giving you another Wonder City just under the November wire. I hope you enjoy it!


Enter the Dragon

Nereid was surprised and pleased to open the front door of the Young Cosmics' headquarters to find X leaning indolently against the stair rail. X was wearing a hip-length double-breasted black wool coat against the spring chill, and also neatly creased grey trousers over long, slender black-and-white patent leather oxfords. X's hair was a little shorter these days than it had been when X and Nereid were first introduced by Brainchild, with a little more masculinity and a little less androgyny. Still, X was striking, handsome and beautiful at the same time, and always made Nereid's heart do a little pit-a-pat. Just a little.

"Hey," X said in a smoky tenor. "How's it going?"

Nereid smiled and stepped back from the door. "Not bad," she said, lying through her teeth because she was really feeling pretty stir-crazy, trapped in the headquarters.

X strolled into the headquarters and Nereid saw the line of tension across those admirable shoulders relax. There was something, Nereid had noticed, about their headquarters. It was palpably more comfortable, like someone turning off a white noise machine you didn't realize was running. It didn't stop her from hating being cooped up there -- the headquarters was not designed to be some sort of self-contained habitation. Sophie often described it as being built in "Soviet Brutal" style, a bizarre, ill-lit convolution in concrete and other materials designed to resist explosions and similar supervillain assaults.

"So," Nereid said, shutting the door and turning to lead X toward the flat she shared with Sophie, "what brings you to this part of town?"

"I came to ask you all for a favor," X began, but they turned the corner and ran smack into a knot of Cosmics.

Wire, Mercury, and Vector were clustered around a tall, tanned man with longish white hair that sported a heavy lock hanging dramatically over one eye, wearing an exquisitely tailored pale grey suit. Nereid had only seen the man that her team leaders called "Mr. Moneybags" a few times in her tenure with the Cosmics, but she knew him on sight anyway -- who could miss him, really?

"Ah, Nereid," he said in a low, faintly British drawl. "How are you, my jewel?"

Wire shot Nereid a frustrated glance that Nereid knew to interpret as, You have derailed him just when I thought we were getting somewhere, and then Wire exhaled hard enough to make her floaty blue forelock flip back across her otherwise closely-shorn head. Nereid smiled quickly and nodded. "Fine, sir," she said quickly, trying to sidle past them. Mercury, resplendently muscular in his tight black spandex outfit, at least, made way for her, and she thought, for a bare second, that she could get away.

"Mr. Moneybags" managed to intercept her, twining his way between Vector and Wire, who half-reached for his sleeve, but wisely withdrew her hand. He leaned against the wall in her path in a slightly predatory way and looked down at her from his always startling height. "Are you really well, though?" he pursued. "You looked a touch pale, my dear."

"I'm fine, sir," she repeated, then said, "Have you met X, sir? X, this is Michael Frost, the Cosmics' backer. Mr. Frost, this is X."

"Ah, yes, I recall you," Mr. Frost said, raising one pale eyebrow. "You have some interesting potential, you know."

"I know," X said with a tight smile. "It's a pleasure meeting you again."

Mr. Frost's attention was not long held by X, though. His icy blue gaze was turned back to Nereid before she could think of another distraction. "I don't want you becoming ill," he said.

"Sir--" Nereid clamped down on a moment of rage, bit down on a demand to be let out of confinement, and swallowed her unhappiness, giving herself quite a stomachache. She was saved from answering by her usual rescuer.

"Hello, Michael," Sophie said, somehow appearing at Nereid's elbow. "I was wondering when you'd turn up."

Mr. Frost straightened up to loom from his full height and turned to face Sophie. His expression didn't change much at all, something that had always creeped Nereid out about him. "Brainchild," he said. "Thank you for pulling them out of an untenable situation. Again." His gaze darted to Mercury in particular, and Nereid had the rare pleasure of seeing their boisterous, cocky leader wilt.

"That's my job," Sophie said, taking Nereid's arm. "Isn't it?"

"I wish you had managed the press as well," he said.

"The press isn't amenable to my style of prediction right now," she said, also taking X's arm. "Logic doesn't work very well in the current climate."

His lips compressed. Sophie's face was her most indestructable mask of cool cynicism, and the extra lenses of her glasses were fanned down over one side of her face, which Nereid always found unsettling.

Mr. Frost turned on Mercury, Wire, and Vector with cool precision. "I will make myself clear now," he said in a low, penetrating voice. "My team will not become involved in any long-term situations that will bring the gaze of the government or media down on it. These short-term emergency actions are quite enough, and I understand that it would be... irresponsible for any hero group to fail to respond to such emergencies. But there will be no pursuit of nemeses, no trips to space, nothing of the sort, and you will always respond to even small emergencies with a full team, unless waiting would endanger lives, you understand?"

Wire and Mercury said, reflexively, "Yes, sir," at the same moment.

Sophie chose this moment to silently draw Nereid and X down the hall and around the next corner into the flat.

They all exhaled simultaneously when the door of the flat was shut.

"That was about the university thing, wasn't it?" X said.

"Yeah," Sophie said, pushing off from the door and moving into the kitchen. "And more, probably, but it's hard to tell with him."

"I can never tell anything with him," Nereid said.

Sophie shrugged and said, "Humans find it hard to read Reptilian-Americans. Want a drink, X?"

"Sure," X said, sitting on an arm of the sofa.

Nereid stopped and stared at Sophie. "He's a Reptilian-American? Why didn't you tell me?"

Sophie gave her a slightly disbelieving look, and Nereid knew instantly she'd said something stupid, and could almost say, word for word, what came out of Sophie's mouth next. "Would it have made a difference in how you interacted with him?"

Nereid sighed explosively and moved around the room, turning on more lights. "No," she said, then added, in a brighter tone to X, "You said you came to ask us a favor?"

X grimaced and glanced toward the door. "I was," X sighed, "but I think that point is moot."

"Oh, was it something Mr. Frost just forbade us to do?" Nereid said, and she could feel a whole vista of hope of getting out of the building opening up before her.

"Probably," X said with an air of gloom.

Sophie brought X a tumbler of tawny liquid and said, "No."

X nodded and sipped the drink.

"You don't even know what it is yet!" Nereid protested.

"I'm not going to buck Michael on anything he just said," Sophie said, handing Nereid a similar glass of alcohol, "because he's right. Completely. Fucking. Right. This team mostly needs its nuts pulled out of the fire, and mostly by thee and me, sweetheart."

"There's something really wrong out there and I'm sick of doing nothing," Nereid started.

"Nereid, it's fine," X said mildly. "Sophie knows her stuff here."

Nereid caught some sort of look between X and Sophie, something sharp from X and something almost... guilty? from Sophie. Looking back and forth between them, she said, "What?"

X looked at her, one elegant eyebrow raised. "She knows something she isn't telling us, isn't she?"

Nereid blinked. She'd thought it was all in her own head, but if X had seen it too... "I've... thought so," Nereid said slowly.

Sophie raised her chin in a defiant look.

X considered her gravely, then shrugged. "I know you too well to try to press you. You'd rather make something up than tell us if we do."

Nereid looked down into her glass, then looked back up and said, "I trust you, Sophie."

The defiant look shattered with sudden violence and a cry that sent Sophie fleeing to the bathroom. Nereid looked at X, alarmed.

X nodded and shrugged. "She'll tell us when she can." One corner of X's rather perfect mouth curled up in a wry smile. "Or when we can squeeze it out of her."

They Tell Me That I'll Move Forward for the Good of Us All

Nereid crept guiltily into Sophie's laboratory at the heart of the Young Cosmics' headquarters. She knew Sophie was going to be upset. She knew she shouldn't have done it. She knew, she knew, she knew.

"Hey, you," Sophie said, glancing up from the tiny mechanism she was working on today. Then she paused and flipped the microscopic-view lens out from in front of her glasses so she could see Nereid more clearly. "What's wrong, Pacifica?"

"Nothing," Nereid lied. She knew she lied badly, especially to Sophie.

"You went out," Sophie said, her voice flattening and her face locking down over any expression.

"I just needed a new hairbrush," Nereid said defensively. She wilted under Sophie's silent scrutiny after only a few seconds. "I'm going stir-crazy in here, all day every day, Sophie!"

Sophie sighed and put her tools down. After a moment of staring at the desktop, she rose and put her arms around Nereid. "I'm sorry. I know you're going stir-crazy. Everyone is, but particularly you."

"Because you let them go out," Nereid said, the sulkiness slipping out before she could stop it. She saw that she'd hit Sophie where it hurt and immediately regretted it. "I'm sorry, I know you've said that it's extra dangerous for me, but I just don't understand. I mean, I'm a Class 10 para..."

"Class 10 paras can be taken by surprise and clubbed down," Sophie said. "But it's not that kind of danger I'm worried about though."

"The riot last month really shook you up," Nereid said, frowning. "That's when you said I couldn't go out at all."

"Yeah," Sophie said in a tone that Nereid knew meant she wasn't going to explain. Sophie leaned her forehead against Nereid's and closed her eyes.

"I wish you would tell me why," Nereid said, and it came out more pathetic than she'd meant.

"It's a feeling," Sophie said, as she had before. "I don't have any data to back it up."

Nereid didn't believe her -- there was something a little too polished about the lines. Sophie was too good at lying sometimes. But she didn't say that, just bit her lip.

Sophie said, after a moment, "Did the Men in Black find you again?"

Nereid gave her a worried look and said, "You shouldn't call them that, it's disrespectful."

"You didn't like my other nickname for them either." Sophie sighed and opened her eyes. "What did they give you?"

"They didn't...!" Nereid clenched her hand to try to hide the pretty little steel promise ring. "They just... talked. And read to me."

Sophie stepped back after feeling around Nereid's neck for a chain, and gently took each of her hands. Nereid relented and let her take the ring, though she felt a sharp pang of regret as it left her finger.

Sophie didn't even examine it, she just threw it into what Nereid knew was a small disposal unit. Nereid winced at the sound of something grinding up the metal of the ring.

"Come on," Sophie said, her eyes terribly sad in a way that made Nereid want to apologize repeatedly. "Come on, it's late, let's go to bed." She took Nereid's hand and drew her out of the laboratory.

A terrible stab of guilt flashed through Nereid, but she didn’t say anything.

---

Author's Note:

Oh, Nereid. Oh, Sophie.

Thanks for the linking and such to Madame's readings offer! I've got a full reading and 5-card reading to do up for folks. :)

Don't forget to vote for Wonder City Stories at Top Webfiction!

Jubilee

It was my first time running the android avatar that Larentia Canis had built me in a crowd, but I was going to by damn be AT Ruth's birthday party, not just watch it on a camera.

She was somewhat awkward to handle at first, no matter how much practice I'd had running her in my home. I called her Metro because Larentia, in a fit of whimsy, had recreated the android from Fritz Lang's Metropolis, with the feminine body and helmet-shaped head and deco styling, only with a dark copper finish. I was sititng in my long distance chair, wearing the control coronet. I was also drugged to the gills. Metro also had all sorts of electronic filters that affected mental powers, but the meds brought me down to a level actually manageable by those filters. I had full physical sensation, just as if I were there, without the mental onslaught of the people around me. I was just me, walking around on the hot sand beach of the remote island where everyone had gathered.

I spent a little time enjoying the feel of the sun warming the metal of my skin and the smell of the ocean and hot sand.

Of all the (few) people who knew me, Suzanne Feldstein found me first. "Renata? Renata Scott?" she said, a brown-haired, middle-aged white woman peering into Metro's eyes inquiringly.

"That's me," I said through Metro's speakers, and offered a hand. "Glad to meet you in the flesh, Suzanne. Well, flesh and metal."

Suzanne shook my hand vigorously. She was dressed in a yellow-floral-print sundress, and the sun was already starting to redden her shoulders. "I'm so glad you could come. C'mere, let me introduce you around some."

And so I met Simon, and he was just as fine in person as he was on camera, and if possible, sweeter. "Ms. Scott!" he said, shaking my hand. He was wearing a blue muscle shirt with "TEAM SIMON" on it in block letters and loose black shorts. His hair and Van Dyke were sharply trimmed. "I'm glad to meet you! Oh, I'm glad Mom did such a good job on that android body; it's really gorgeous."

How could I blush at a compliment meant for his mother's handiwork? Don't ask me. "Your mother has been very generous and kind to me over the years. This is only one example."

"She's like that," Simon said, then he stepped back and gestured to someone. "And here's someone who's been wanting to meet you too. Ira, this is Ms. Scott."

"Please," I said, shaking the old man's hand, "both of you, please call me Renata."

Ira beamed at me. He was wearing a big straw hat, a yellow polo shirt, and khaki shorts that showed his pale knobbly knees. He was a little thin and stooped, but otherwise looked younger than his 83 years. "I'm honored to meet you, Renata. You did such a bangup job that night, though I can't imagine it was easy."

"You did a pretty good job yourself, sir," I said.

"Ira," he corrected me.

"Ira," I said, wishing Metro's smile wasn't so very... scary, and that Larentia's attempt at the overlay projection (a la Maria's duplicate) hadn't failed so spectacularly. Someday, I'd be able to smile at people too.

Suzanne, I realized from her movements and her half-empty drink, was already more than a bit tipsy. She reached out and snagged the arm of a mousy, bespectacled white woman in jeans and a t-shirt. "Watson, Watson, come meet Renata."

So there was an orgy of introductions conducted by Suzanne, who was adding every moment to her "sheets to the wind" quotient. I met Watson Holmes, Megan Amazon, Ivy and Malik Canis (each holding a squirming puppy they introduced as belonging to their sister Jasmine -- I wasn't entirely sure what they meant by "belonging", given that the puppies were exclaiming my name delightedly), Ana Hernandez, Flo and Ebb Starr, the Silver Guardian (who was an old friend of Suzanne's apparently), and Sekhmet of the Gold Stars, and... a lot of other people whose names I'd heard but who I'd never met "live" before.

I was glad to be drugged to the gills, honestly. It was the largest crowd I'd been in for over 20 years.

Simon finally, kindly, as the afternoon advanced alarmingly toward evening, led Suzanne off to the buffet tables, saying, "We'll catch you later, Renata," over his shoulder. He winked at me, the little devil.

Left to my own devices, I made my way from the beach, where I'd been trapped by the introduction nexus after arriving there via the teleport link, up toward the line of umbrellas and beach chairs where I spotted Gloria Revelle's lean, solemn face peering around periodically. I figured that wherever Gloria was, Ruth was likely to be.

I was right. Ruth was ensconced in a thronelike wooden beach chair with some colorfully umbrella'd adult beverage in an enormous glass in one hand, grinning like a fool up at me. "You did make a gorgeous thing there, Larentia," she said, glancing up at Larentia, who was standing nearby. Ruth carefully balanced the glass on the arm of the chair, and got up to hug me. I saw Sophie reach out and steady the glass behind her, just as Ruth got me in a careful bear hug.

I leaned Metro's chin on her shoulder and enjoyed the various sensations of a solid, muscular, warm human body in my arms. I loved Ruth for many reasons, not least because for her, hugging one of her friends manifested in an android body was hardly the oddest thing she'd done in the past five minutes. "You look so much better than you did last I saw you, Ruth," I said.

"I feel so much better, Rennie," she murmured, not letting me go yet. "You helped give me back my baby. I won't forget that."

"Hell, Ruth, you gave me my life," I said, not willing to let go, feeling like I'd been in the desert for 20 years and was just getting a small sip of water. It had been so long since I'd touched a human being, and I can't actually remember when I last hugged someone without immediately being inside her or his head. "I'm glad to give something back. I mean, what do you get the most powerful para on Earth for her birthday anyway?"

We laughed, and finally stepped back a little, but our arms lingered around each other's waists. Ruth gestured around, saying, "You know Gloria, of course."

I shook hands with Gloria, and was amazed to actually see the woman smile. She had a little lopsided smile, with a mostly closed mouth, and I noticed that she had a bit of an overbite -- I suspected that might be why she doesn't smile more often. "Gloria, thank you for everything you've been doing lately with the chef roster. The variety has been really wonderful."

"I thought we could use some new blood in the kitchen," she said in her deep voice and blunt MidAtlantic accents. "You're my lab rat, you know. These are all chefs I try out on you before using them for catering and events."

"Glad to be of service," I said. "Delicious service."

"Here's Olivia," Ruth said, drawing the Fat Lady into the circle. The Fat Lady was wearing a remarkable gauzy white dress that drifted dramatically on the breeze and looked just right with her complexion, and her sleek black hair was caught up under an extravagant white sun hat.

"Renata, I've heard so many good things about you," Olivia said, turning her famous dimples and dazzling smile on me.

I confess to feeling just a little overwhelmed and, well, fangirlish, so I think I managed to mutter something polite and possibly gushed about loving her work before Ruth sicced Sophie on me.

The girl had some of the most intense dark eyes I've ever seen, and even though I technically shouldn't have been able to sense a damned thing about her, I could feel the wheels of her mind turning and turning. It was almost like I could see and feel the clockwork moving through those remarkable eyes. That's what you get from the intimate connection of stuffing someone back into her head, I suppose. There we were, caught in mid-handshake, staring into each other's minds, I think, for what felt like a piece of eternity, before we both shook ourselves and she said, "I've been wanting to thank you for everything you did."

I shrugged. "There were lots of folks who did more than I did."

"Yes, well," Sophie said, flashing a grin. She reached behind her and dragged another white girl her age foward. This one was brown-haired and utterly average in terms of looks and overt charm, but I recognized her.

"Pacifica," I said, shaking her hand. "Glad to meet you outside your head."

She smiled shyly, pressed her lips together and hunched her shoulders a bit. "I'm flattered you remember me, Ms. Scott."

"Renata," I said, thinking, Girl, how could I possibly forget you? Aloud, I added, "Your arm seems to've healed up nicely."

"It's still stiff," she said, "but Sophie makes good healing accelerators. Even if I did have to spend time in tank full of blue goo. Why was it blue, anyway?" she added, turning to Sophie.

"I didn't want anyone eating it," Sophie said.

"No one would eat that, it smelled too bad," Nereid said.

Sophie grinned. "You'd be surprised..."

There was a loud crack of lightning overhead, and everyone tensed. Ruth looked up quickly, then rolled her eyes and said to Sophie, "Didn't you give that child an invitation?"

Sophie shrugged. "I did," she said, "but she always prefers to crash." I thought I picked up just a bit of mischief there, as if, perhaps, she'd had some idea in advance.

High above us was a flying stage, limned in neon and flashing lights against the twilit sky. It slowly lowered until it was hovering just above the ocean, with the spectacular painted clouds of sunset sprawling out behind it. Myriad small, hovering robots levitated from the stage and sprang into formation in the air, turning colored spotlights onto the platform. A backdrop of enormous metal struts extruded from the back of the stage, arching up into Gothic points and then blooming into weirdly delicate curlicues that suggested tentacles, or possibly fruit.

"What the hell is that?" Sister Power said, as though she knew exactly what the hell it was but was a bit afraid of the answer. She crinkled a smile at me, her dark brown face highlighted by a glorious mane of silver hair. I'd forgotten how old she was; she'd gotten her start in the 1970s, so she must be in her 60s by now.

Ruth massaged the bridge of her nose. "It's Sophie's little friend. You remember her, Imara. The one who started a band in college. Calls herself Gogo."

Sophie snorted at this description.

An enormous grinding noise silenced us all and a pillar rose up from the middle of the stage. It appeared to be girdled with a bank of steampunk consoles and quite a lot of flashing lights. The grinding noise stopped, and then, in a burst of music, it flew open, revealing a young white woman whose top was dressed in a silver jumpsuit, and whose lower half was a kickline of seven sets of robot legs. A drum line started. She leapt down to the stage with surprising agility for someone with fourteen legs, and subtle instrumentals started up. She started to declaim in a deep voice that was projected to several points around us.

People keep saying it's the end days,
Skynet's won, we've run the maze.
In the center is Room 101:
Can we boldly go when all is done?
All the things I tried to save
Are just putting flowers on a mouse's grave.
Game over, man, and everybody dies
And there's nothing to eat but lies, lies, lies.

"I do believe," Gloria said, "we are about to have a concert."

"Oh, god help me," Ruth said, taking the umbrella out of her drink so she could swallow it faster.

A robot guitarist, keyboardist, bassist, and drummer emerged from the surface of the stage, apparently fused to their instruments. I noticed the drummer had long hair so it could swing it back and forth. All of them were silver-skinned, like Gogo's jumpsuit and legs, but with gold accents. Gogo strutted down to the front of the stage (there's a lot of strut in seven sets of robot legs), seized a microphone that was dropped from above by one of her ubiquitous flying drones, and burst into song with a crash of music.

I won't be just a worker in the heart machine
I'm going to see the light of day.
I'm going to crack the world's shell is what I mean
Put on my wings and fly away.

Everyone asks me am I bad witch or good
Or one of the genetic elite
But I am telling you I'm Lilith's Brood
And we have never known defeat!

We're from Ultima Thule
And we include me and you.
She's the hero we need
Cause she makes us heroes too!

"Oh, no," Ruth groaned, and finished her drink.

Sophie looked contrite. But only a little. Nereid was watching Gogo with her mouth hanging open. An attractive androgynous Asian person appeared over Nereid's shoulder and raised inquisitive eyebrows at Sophie, who said defensively, "It's not my fault!"

Just living day to day
Learn to rise up and say
She's the hero we need
To sing Hero of Heroes today!

She's the Ultimate test!
In her Prometheus rests,
She's the hero we need
Because we give her our best!

I was pretty amazed at the dancing you could do with fourteen legs in perfect unison. At the end of the first chorus, backup dancers also melted out of the stage. I felt distinctly upstaged when I realized that they all looked just like my android body, except in silver. Talk about embarrassment for wearing the same outfit to the party.

"Hey," Larentia said faintly. She patted my shoulder apologetically.

Gogo spoke into her microphone again.

At Yoshiwara's we'll dance and fight
Always alone in the night,
But reaching out, touch hand to hand,
Galadriel or Servalan.
Is the Slayer really born this way?
Or Sleepless walk both night and day?
Or maybe we'll stand up and see:
You have no power over me.

Sister Power said, "None of this makes any sense. What the hell is a servalan?"

Sophie started laughing helplessly into her hands.

The music kicked up again.

For some reason, Gogo threw her microphone into the audience. Then, with a satisfied little smile, she leaned back and another one sprouted, or seemed to sprout, out of her chest. She grabbed that one and kept singing. I noticed a middle-aged black woman, oddly wearing a suit on the beach, making her way through the crowd with purpose in her eyes. She didn't even flinch at the volume of the music. I nudged Ruth. Ruth looked over. "Marilyn, heeeey, girl!" she said, waving her hand. I wondered idly how many of those giant glasses of booze Ruth had already consumed. The woman, who I now recognized as Marilyn Henderson, lawyer to paras, arrived in front of Ruth with a grim little smile on her face. "Interesting entertainment." "It's not what I would've chosen, true," Ruth said. "But the girl's got a good heart." "And is showing a great deal of leg," Marilyn said with a glance upward. "What're you doing, wearing that penguin suit here on the beach?" Ruth said. "Take that jacket off and set a while." Marilyn straightened her shoulders in an ominous way that made both Gloria and I tense up. "Ruth Thomas, I am here to give you some important paperwork." Ruth laced her fingers together and placed them under her chin. "At my birthday party." She didn't make it a question. "Yes," Marilyn said. She whipped a folder out from under her arm and extended it to Ruth. "It couldn't wait." Gloria's thin form had risen up and arched in a predatory fashion, inclining very slightly toward Marilyn. Ruth sighed and took the folder.

We'll come down like angels on Tokyo And we don't need roads where we're going. At the end of the world can you tell me where And in what way the time is flowing? I can build my friends but I can't build you A place for opossums to call their own. But don't look back, don't blink I'm telling you It's dhoom again but we are flown! A hero right through Like flying snow in bamboo She's the hero we need Cause she makes us heroes too! Take my ansible call 'Cause it's for one and all She's the hero we need Cause she makes us stand tall! She won't be suppressed Or sent into the West She's the hero we need Because we give her our best!

Gogo chose that moment to distract us all with another spoken piece.

We need a hero that's worth our while
Whether Wonder Woman or Trio-style
So put on your clothes, or dye your hair
And sing electric grandmother
From Alderaan to Whileaway
The winning move is not to play.
They tell us we're beyond the pale
Bionic-made or automail,
Whether you are you or me
Virtual or karakuri
Rise up and greet Red Dawn today
Like Nauscicaa we'll fly away;
To Iskandar we'll fly away;
On ships that sing we'll fly away.

And she then started singing again.

Ruth looked back down at the folder in her hands, heaved another sigh, and flipped it open. I have never before seen Ruth stunned. I'm not sure anyone has. Her whole body jerked and her eyes went wide and she stared fixedly at the papers. Then her hands began to tremble, and Gloria snatched the folder away before those tiny muscular tremors could reduce what she was holding to paper pulp. Sophie had moved to stand at Ruth's shoulder, and I noticed her giving Marilyn what I sensed was a conspiratorial and questioning look. Marilyn's smile widened incrementally. The thing about Ruth is that she is the most powerful para in the world. And so the fact that none of us saw her move is just not that surprising. The look on Sophie's face changed to triumphant delight as Ruth threw her arms around her, though. "You two!" Ruth roared, only locally drowning out Gogo's band. "You two!" she said again, apparently at a loss for other words. "What's going on?" asked Imara, peering curiously over Gloria's shoulder. Gloria said, mock-grumpily, "That girl finally pulled her head out of her ass is what's going on." Sophie said, breathless with embarrassment and her mother's embrace, "My adoption papers. I signed them."

She's returned from the blue And Zaha'dum too-- She's the hero we need Cause she makes us heroes too! Dark Lords big and small We will spit on them all She's the hero we need Cause she makes us stand tall! Stand tall, stand tall, stand tall Stand tall, stand tall, stand tall Stand tall, stand tall, stand tall...

Gogo's army of tiny flying robots, which looked, I noticed, like dragonflies, chose that moment to shower us with her new album.

Larentia caught one and so did I. The cover was a brown-skinned woman's arm, reaching up as if to pluck a fruit from a tree, but the fruit was a giant oval containing a twisty, maze-like structure. To give Ruth and Sophie a moment of pseudo-privacy, Larentia began to read from the cover. "'Mitochondrial Eve,'" she said. "I like the title."

I overheard some people passing nearby. One of them said, "I liked her second album the best, 'Amazon Women and the Space-Time Continuum'."

The other said, "Oh, I haven't heard of that one."

"It was back when she was Gogo and the Gadgettes," the first said, and they drifted out of hearing.

"'My Mother's Positronic Brain,'" Larentia read from the track list bemusedly. "'Dear Mr. Heisenberg.' 'Cyborg Manifesto'?"

I skimmed down the list myself. "'Bad Chemistry,' 'Soylent Blue,' 'Love Me and Despair'."

Gloria said, with a roll of the eyes, "Anyone else get the feeling that child is trying too hard?"

Nereid, who I had forgotten, said wistfully, "She looks like she's having fun."

On stage, Gogo had swung into her well-known song, "A Robot of One's Own."

The well-tailored Asian person to whom I really needed an introduction said, "There's a dance floor over there, Pacifica. Would you care to join me?"

Later, around the time that Sophie was finishing up her guitar-playing on-stage with Gogo (oh, yes, she'd just happened to have her guitar with her), I overheard Suzanne saying to Watson, "Is this your work? Remind me never to piss you off!"

I looked over and saw Suzanne showing Watson her StarPhone. Watson frowned down at it, clearly puzzled. "No," she said after a moment, "that's not my work."

Suzanne noticed Metro looking her way, so she turned the display toward me. "'Aloysius MacCready, legally 93 years old,'" I read aloud, "'has been arrested on a charge of second-degree murder and multiple charges of armed robbery, among other offenses. MacCready was processed for a temporal displacement grant upon his return to this dimension, and had disappeared from his stated address. More in-depth analysis of historical records found that in 1932, he participated in an armed robbery of a bank for African-Americans during which he pistol-whipped a bank teller. The teller, 26-year-old Norman Jefferson, later died of the head trauma.'"

"I know the statute of limitations doesn't expire for murder," Suzanne said. "And the temporal displacement laws extend the limitation for the armed robbery charges. But the witnesses must all be dead, so how can they prosecute?"

Watson skimmed more of the article. "They had eyewitnesses who knew MacCready by name and appearance, and who gave depositions identifying him. So with that in hand, they could use the Stefanopolous Laws."

Ana had looked over from her conversation when I started to read, and now she spoke up with, "I think I've heard of the Stefanopolous Laws, but I've never been sure what they're about."

Suzanne said, breezily, "Watson'll have to explain. I'm too drunk. But they involved a vampire."

Watson quirked a smile. "Andrei Stefanopolous was a vampire who was a repeat spree killer. He was notorious in Europe in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and then he moved to New York City. They caught him after a rampage through an Italian and Greek neighborhood in the 1880s, but of course, there weren't para-ready prisons then, and he escaped to go underground again. He resurfaced in the same neighborhood 1952, and the grandchildren of the original people victimized went to the police with the photos from the 1800s and their own photos of him in the neighborhood, begging police to pick him up. They didn't -- all the original witnesses were dead and it seemed like too much trouble and besides, there weren't many people who actually believed in vampires at that point. So then he went on a much wider-spread killing spree."

"Oh, yes, the Vampire Murders," Ana said. "That's all in the college para history books."

"Yep," Watson said. "And after they caught him and the Gold Stars imprisoned him, the story broke that the police had refused to pick him up and why. So the Stefanopolous Laws were passed in a hurry to cope with immortal or temporally displaced violent offenders."

"Technically," a sleek, black-haired, white -- very white -- man said, sliding easily into the conversation and gently twirling his black parasol, "it is for the long of life, not the immortal. Because no one is truly immortal, yes?" He had an eastern European accent and what had to be a hand-tailored white linen suit. He was also the only person I'd ever seen wearing a Panama hat on whom it looked stylish.

Watson nodded and waved a hand of acknowledgement. "You're the authority there, Zoltan."

"Zoltan," Suzanne said in that floppy-headed drunk way some white women have, "it's night time. Why are you carrying that parasol?"

"Ah, dear lady," he said, "to protect against the bites of sharks."

"Oh," Suzanne said, blinking.

"Not to mention robots," he added, "and other undesirable things that fall from the sky."

"So what will happen to this MacCready anyway?" Ana pursued, having produced a StarPhone of her own and apparently searching for the article.

"He's being held in prison," Watson said. "Apparently some anonymous person provided the police with both his DNA and a single-use scanner to locate it, because he has para powers that enable him to avoid direct detection." She looked up and past the dance floor and nearest buffet table toward a line of well-occupied comfortable chairs.

I glanced in that direction and saw Sophie sitting there, with Nereid on her lap, chatting with Simon and Ivy.

"Who could've supplied a device like that?" Ana pondered, frowning at her phone.

Watson and I looked at each other, then back at Sophie. Sophie noticed our regard and gave us a smile and a little finger wave, as if she knew exactly what we were thinking.

---

Note from the Author:

Apologies if the table format didn't work well for you -- I optimized for what I thought would be a usual sort of view.

Gogo's song was written as a winter holiday present for me by my multiply-gifted, brilliant, beautiful, magnificent wife. I had been banging my head against how to do it, and then she volunteered. I don't think I've ever seen quite so many SF&F references packed into one place so effectively, and I think it also works beautifully as a pop song. (And yes, Lady Gaga DOES exist in the Wonder City universe, so Gogo IS in fact purposefully referencing her.) See this document (PDF) for most of the references.

Also, in case you're interested, the full track list for Gogo's new album, "Mitochondrial Eve", contains:
My Mother's Positronic Brain
Mitochondrial Eve
Dear Mr. Heisenberg
Cyborg Manifesto
Les Guérillères
Bad Chemistry
Soylent Blue
To Milton, Love, the Monster
Ultima
Love Me and Despair
The Doom Song
I Can't Be Having With This
Bonus Track: Schoolhouse Rock Mashup (feat. "Sufferin' for Suffrage")

---

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And remember to vote for WCS at Top Webfiction!

The Grave of Your Deserving

The Wonderful House boards were crazy with the news.

Somehow, it didn't surprise me, though. We'd never heard about Brandon's family on the show. They'd talked about Professor Canis, we had the memorable visit from Lizzie's father, Tom's aunt and uncle had come up from time to time, and Jeshri's family was always in her conversation. But not Brandon's. It seemed somehow fitting, karmically, that even his family abandoned him in the end.

Of course, it didn't seem fair that the people who had the most reason to dislike him were forced into the position of taking care of him. And of course they had to, especially after their closing video laying claim to him as "their jerk." They would have been ripped to shreds if it had come out that Brandon's body had been surrendered to the government for dissection.

I popped to a different screen and signed a half dozen petitions to do away with the Gold Stars research law. I knew that Ruth -- or someone -- would take care of me when I died, because god knows no one wants the government to dissect a Class 10 telepath. But didn't all the other paras, all the regular paras, all the homeless paras, anyone at all who wasn't quite the ideal human being, have a right to be buried with their secrets? Patriotic duty, my left asscheek.

It also didn't surprise me that the show's producers had abandoned any responsibility for Brandon along with their responsibility for payout or, you know, the safety of their "contestants". I did notice, however, that the producers tried to jump on the funeral bandwagon once it got rolling. In an interview with Simon:

WonderBlog: So will the funeral be televised?

Simon: We'll be livestreaming it for the fans.

WonderBlog: But no TV?

Simon: We couldn't reach an amicable compromise with the show's producers, who are in the best position to produce a televised version. They were interested in the funeral, but not interested in meeting any conditions, and we weren't interested in being screwed over again.

WonderBlog: Speaking of screwed over, who's paying for the funeral?

Simon: Fortunately, not us. There's a fund established by the Guardians and Gold Stars for the funerals of paras without families who die in a supervillain action.

Oh, good, I thought, at least the kids weren't going to have to cough up for the ridiculous costs of a funeral.

The livestreamed funeral was fascinating. I tuned in late (after taking practically every drug in my pharmacopeia that suppressed my powers without just knocking me out), just in time to see hundreds of fans packing into the largest room of the Weinstein Funeral Home. The camera view switched to Simon, in a tailored black suit, and Jeshri, in a somber brown skirt suit, walking out to meet Tom, who was pulling on a tweed sportcoat over a black polo shirt and khakis as he crossed the parking lot.

"You made it!" Simon said, shaking his hand.

"I couldn't let you guys face this without me," Tom said, next hugging Jeshri. "No luck with his dad though."

"What happened?" Jeshri said, and they all turned and started walking toward the funeral home.

"I stopped at the address you gave me, just outside Pittsburg," Tom said. "Parking the rig was a bitch and the neighbors all came out to stare. Upscale but older neighborhood, almost all white."

"Surprise," Simon muttered.

"Anyway," Tom said with a shrug, "I rang the doorbell. The lights were on and the TV was going, so I kept at it till he opened the door. And guys, the fumes just about knocked me the fuck over."

"Drunk?" Jeshri said.

"As a skunk," Tom said. "He was in his wifebeater and a pair of sweatpants and had about a week's worth of stubble. Looked just like Brandon would have after twenty years of partying and smoking."

"Yugh," Jeshri said.

"I'll spare you more gory details," Tom said as they neared the door. "Let's leave it at him telling me he wouldn't attend anything associated with his wife's filthy para crotch-dropping, in those words, even if it was the funeral for every backstabbing bastard para in the world at the same time. And then he mock-apologized that his wife was on the other side of the world, probably screwing someone who looked like me, when she could have been here, comforting me for the loss of my buddy, if only all paras weren't also great big homos."

"I think I'm going to be sick," Jeshri said, looking the part.

"Guess we know more about why Brandon was such a jackass now," Simon said.

"It's no excuse," Lizzie said, emerging from the doorway. "I mean, look at my dad."

"Must I?" Simon said.

"He's at least as big a jerk as Brandon's dad," Lizzie said, "and I, at least, try to be decent to other people." She was wearing a white blouse and pair of dark blue slacks.

Tom nodded. "You've got a point."

They hesitated outside the door, and then group-hugged.

"Time to butch up," Simon said, breathing deeply.

"Let's get this over with," Lizzie said, breaking away from the others and opening the door.

The camera switched back to the interior of the packed room. My computer system was blurring out faces except those I knew personally, so I noticed Ira and Suzanne Feldstein sitting in the front row, Ira in a crisp, bright Mister Metropolitan uniform and Suzanne in a dark burgundy suit. I saw Ruth, Olivia, and Larentia sitting together a couple of rows back, noticeably not in their more recognizable Ultimate, Fat Lady, and Professor Canis personas. The Steel Guardian was there with Sekhmet, representing for their particular teams. Brainchild, looking pale and wan, all nose and glasses, in a shirt, vest, and many-pocketed trousers, sat next to Wire, whose weirdly floaty blue forelock only briefly distracted me from the shining metal hand she flexed idly in her lap. And just as people were settling in and a man was stepping to the podium, the Equestrian and her horse (in his human form) strode up the aisle to sit with Ira and Suzanne.

The camera view then shifted to the plain black coffin with chrome trim and rails, against which leaned a small easel holding a photograph of a slightly younger, pleasantly-smiling Brandon -- probably a school photo of some sort. I could see any number of floral offerings around the coffin, including an ostentatious bunch of white lilies from the "It's a Wonderful House" producers.

The man at the podium was pastor of a local church who knew Tom (we were not vouchsafed an explanation for that). He was an uninspiring speaker -- I wished for the preacher from Mama's church, whose eloquence she always spoke of in glowing tones -- but white preachers have never particularly impressed me. I tuned out everything he said and concentrated on the images: the camera pans over the crowd (mostly young white people, I noticed), the expressions on the faces of the Wonderful House cast and crew (my system recognized Eartha the camerawoman in that group, and from her face I guessed she shared my assessment of the speaker), and the repeated switches back to the coffin.

He spoke for only about five minutes, which was a blessing, and no one else apparently cared to speak, so Olivia got up and sang "Ave Maria" in her most restrained voice, accompanied by a pianist I didn't know (and so couldn't see). When she was done, the pianist swung into something slow and somber, and Simon, Lizzie, Jeshri, Tom, Eartha, and another crew member I didn't know went forward, lifted the coffin, and carried it out on their shoulders. The crowd began to pour out the doors after them.

I walked away from the livestream while they drove to the cemetery. My computer system was excellent, but with the speed the cars were moving, it would inevitably miss blocking some people, and I just didn't need the headache. My family phone rang while I was pouring myself a glass of tea.

"Hey, Mama," I said.

"Are you watching the funeral?" she said.

"Of course," I said.

"You made yourself so sick over all that," she said, sucking her teeth in annoyance. "I can't imagine why you want to watch that horrible boy's funeral now."

"Because he's the end of the story," I said, adding three teaspoons of sugar to my iced tea. "It's about closure, Mama. He was that man's last victim."

"Well," she said, somewhat mollified. "When you put it that way. I suppose. Is that woman there?"

"Suzanne Feldstein? Yes, she was in the front row with her father-in-law," I said, sipping the tea and going through a door into one of my little parks, where I kept promising myself to start an aviary so I could have birdsong, another one of those things I miss.

"She wrote a very nice memorial to Yenaye and the other women, I thought," Mama said.

"Yes, I thought it was good too," I said, sitting on one of the wooden benches. The tone of her voice was detached, and I could tell there was a pressure of something she wanted to tell me. I waited.

"Rennie, I called you to tell you something," Mama said finally.

"What's up?" I said.

"Well, first thing, your cousin Benjamin asked me to ask you if you were serious about wanting a puppy, because he knows one that needs a home," she said. Mama doesn't like dogs, and that dislike dripped off her voice.

"Tell Ben that I absolutely want a new puppy, and he should send me photos," I said, feeling really excited for the first time in a while.

"You know him and his foolery with dogs," Mama said. "Of course he'd find you a dog. It'll have fleas, you know."

"There's medicine for that, Mama," I said, tamping down the excitement. "What else did you want to tell me?"

She fell silent. "I had one of my seeing dreams, Rennie," she said, her tone uncharacteristically hesitant.

"And?" I knew better than to say anything else at all, because she'd take it as disbelief and never tell me.

She cleared her throat uncomfortably. "I saw you alone with your dog. All alone, mind you, and not in your house." She always called the bunker my "house". I guess it made it sound less like I was locked away. "Looking out a great big window over the city." Throat-clearing again. "That's all. But I knew it was a seeing."

"Thank you, Mama," I said, feeling chilled. "I don't know what it means, but I'll remember it."

"You do that," she said, but I could tell she was gratified. I was the only one of her children who believed in her seeing dreams. I had reason to. "All right, I'd best be getting on. You take care now, Rennie."

"I will. You too, Mama," I said. "I love you."

"And I love you, girl," she said, and hung up.

When I got back to the screen with my half-glass of tea, they'd gotten to the cemetery and were lowering the coffin into the raw hole in the green earth. As I watched fans and acquaintances pass by the grave to throw flowers into it, I raised my glass. May it be sweeter for him next time around.

---

Note from the Author:

Renata's not the only one grateful for closure here!

Please remember to vote for WCS!

What Your Shoulders May Refuse

A smoky indigo darkness like a tornado's phantom spun down out of the hole in the dome. It touched Sator and he laughed, spreading his hands wide so that the winds stretched out to the walls well before they reached the floor.

Nereid's arterial gout that had been, at least, distracting him a bit, was blasted around the room by the roaring wind. The air reeked of it. Everyone looked like they'd walked through a Hollywood slasher movie. Blood dripped off Nereid's nose and chin and she was badly nauseated from the smell. Everything felt cold and coagulated after the wind passed her on its way to the wall.

At least Sophie, being down on the floor now, seemed to be out of the range of the suction of the funnel, and being untouchable, wasn't covered in gore. She was moving around slowly, apparently confused by the information her spirit-senses were giving her. Nereid wondered why Renata hadn't pulled Sophie into the telepathic link.

Her mind's all slippery, Renata said. I tried.

Simon was a wolf again, leaping toward the magician and trying to lock his jaws into the man's calf muscle. Sator laughed at him and kicked him in the chest. Simon yelped and spun away, but said, in the link, I'm fine. I'm fine.

Nereid knew that Suzanne was out there, listening and watching, and kept looking away from Simon, hoping he was telling the truth.

The Equestrian was on Maelstrom's back, and they were in the air. The Equestrian said, Fuck me, fuck me, that wind is eroding the dimensional wall. He's trying to merge this world with Earth!

Maelstrom threw back his head and let out a shrill horse scream, which drew fire from nowhere to rain down on Sator and made the hair on the back of Nereid's neck stand up. The magician flinched as the flames struck him through his sorcerous shield, and then he gestured dramatically and a net of spinning, glowing barbs closed around Maelstrom and the Equestrian.

Sator flicked a hand at Nereid, and Nereid found herself sailing through the air. She tried to catch herself, knowing in the insanely dilated time as the wall came closer that she was about to hurt a lot, that she mustn't hit her head. Then she hit and felt sharp pains in her arm, her shoulder, and her chest as she crunched into the wall. But at least her head didn't hit. She slid down the wall to the floor, her costume and skin tearing on the sharp teeth of the spinning metal gears.

She looked up. Tam was crouching behind the remains of the control panel that Megan and Meteor had thrown. Sophie had stretched to life size and was crouched, staring around, not far from him, apparently bewildered. Nereid tried to get up. There were warning twinges in her right shoulder that told her: Not this arm. Try again later. She rolled to the other side and pushed herself up to her knees with her left arm. She weaved back and forth, then got her feet under her and stood up.

The world was weird and tinny and distant.

Sator had a moment of freedom while the Equestrian and Maelstrom were dealing with his snare, and he grinned down at Sophie. "Come, you'll seal my victory," he said, and reached out his hand.

Nereid -- her face weirdly numb and cold, her vision going dark around the edges, the voices in the room and in her head moving further and further away -- knew absolutely that she was going down. As Sophie's spirit stretched unwillingly toward Sator, Nereid slid to her knees and locked her gaze doggedly on Sator. There had to be something, anything she could do.

Keep away, keep away, KEEP AWAY FROM HER, she thought, or possibly shouted, her vision going black. She reached out desperately, dragging with all her might on the blood moving in his body to keep him from stalking after Sophie.

---

Note from the Author:

Possibly it's just as well you didn't have to wait till Tuesday for the resolution of this one. :) As before, 10 COMMENTERS gets you the next new episode on Thursday!

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Hope Like Hell That Man Is an Evil Man

Megan shouldered Meteor aside and leapt over the contorted body of the serial killer they'd chased and through the doorway. She felt Meteor follow via the link. In a corner of her mind, Megan was very impressed with Renata's power -- not every telepath could maintain contact with multiple minds through a dimensional gate, even initiating new links on the other side of the gate. In fact, Megan couldn't think of a single telepath in the literature who could.

Sator's a showier mage-type than we thought, she reported to Watson.

Sator was inspecting his opponents coolly from his vantage point, hovering well above the floor. "Ah, you," he said, his gaze falling upon the Equestrian. "I wondered when she would send you my way."

"You can hardly imagine that she'd ignore what you've been doing here," the Equestrian said, rolling a green glowing ball from hand to hand.

You knew what was going on? Nereid exclaimed in the link.

Of course not, the Equestrian said.

What is going on here? Simon asked, and Megan could hear an echo of the question from Suzanne and Watson.

If evidence can be believed, the Equestrian said, he's collected hundreds of human souls to power an interdimensional engine.

"She rarely cares about the outskirts of her realm," Sator said.

"She cares when you start rearranging the furniture in her house," the Equestrian said, gesturing upward.

"Oh, she'll like the results," Sator said with an unpleasant smile. "For about five minutes. And then I'll destroy her."

The Equestrian looked over at Maelstrom. "Where've we heard that one before?"

"Only every two-bit pretender that's come along," the horse, now much more horselike, said.

I think you all should probably back out slowly, the Equestrian said. We're used to dealing with blokes like this.

Sophie! Nereid and Wire said simultaneously, and Megan noticed, for the first time, the bell jar containing a tiny version of Brainchild.

Dammit, the Equestrian said, and there was an edge of dawning horror from her mind. She's probably the linchpin to kick his machine into high gear. There are few things more powerful than a disembodied living human spirit in this realm.

Bugger, Maelstrom said, and stepped in front of the Equestrian again just as the room became a fireworks show of multicolored magics.

"Where did you get this many souls, Sator?" the Equestrian said, gesturing a magical shield into existence.

"I've been here a long time," Sator said. "And humans -- particularly paranormals -- are very useful for fetching and carrying."

Like the serial killer? Suzanne said. I wonder if he demanded the victim type switch for some magical reason.

"Like the poor chump you've been using lately?" the Equestrian said, raising blue vines from the floor to entrap Sator.

"Oh, he was a killer to start with," Sator said, creating a shredding whirlwind around himself that took the vines to pieces. "He came to me, pathetic thing, wanting to know how to get rid of the ghosts that were following him. So I took them away, and tucked them here for safekeeping. And he went off to make more."

"Not all girls, though," the Equestrian said. Maelstrom kicked a ball of fire up at Sator.

"Oh, it was some Oedipal thing," Sator said, flicking the fireball away. "He didn't get to kill his father, so he wanted to kill his father. I promised to raise his father so he could kill him -- imagine me going to all that trouble for a foolish little creature like that -- and he went out to fetch more souls. But temptation took him back to his original targets. Humans are so predictable."

There you go, the Equestrian said to Suzanne.

That's terrible, said Suzanne.

At least there won't be any more, Ira said comfortingly.

By this one, Suzanne said.

Megan looked around as she ducked the lightning and fire and wind. There was a big, heavy control panel nearby, behind Sator. She ran to it and found herself face-to-face with Meteor, who apparently had the same idea. They nodded to each other, bent, and jammed their fingers underneath the solid mass of steel and lights.

Megan counted, One... two... THREE! and they both heaved with all their might.

The panel tore free of its moorings and slammed into Sator's back, exploding into more lightning and fire and wind.

Sator lost concentration, apparently, as his part of the fireworks ceased for a moment. There was a whirring, whining sound that cut through the air, and Wire's trademark wires, which she reputedly never used on living things, lashed out to wrap around Sator.

His clothing was reduced to ribbons, but his skin was impervious. He pursed his lips and raised a hand. The wires rebounded, lashing back toward their creator.

Wire leapt aside just a fraction of a second too late, and her left arm just... fell off below the elbow.

Megan felt Renata clamp down on Wire's reaction, but she saw the blood burst onto the floor. Wire fell, clamping her remaining hand over the stump. Somehow, Wire stayed silent against some sort of desperate panic that Megan didn't understand.

Worse, the churning, spinning wires kept on and slashed through the glass bell jar that hovered above the funnel, sending glass fragments everywhere.

Nereid screamed as Brainchild's spirit slipped toward the abyss of the black cone.

---

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Backstage Pass

"Sophie!" cried Nereid again, reaching for the bell jar. Tam slapped her hands away.

"You don't know what's holding her there," Tam snapped. "It could hurt you."

Nereid gave him a baffled frown, then looked around at the others. Wire was gagging and spitting nearby. Maelstrom was looking upward with a cynically mournful expression. The Equestrian was standing with fists on hips, looking up at the ceiling as well.

Nereid looked up too. The enormous concrete blocks that made up the dome were shifting and sliding around each other as the dome slowly rotated. It looked vaguely familiar, like a special effect she'd seen in a movie once. Or perhaps like one of those sliding puzzle games she played as a kid.

As the blocks screeched against each other, a small aperture began to open in the very top of the dome.

"I don't like that at all," Maelstrom said conversationally.

The Equestrian sighed and said, "Let's find out what it does before getting down to disliking it."

"Is it... some kind of observatory?" Nereid asked, watching the tiny hole iris open to reveal a strange, vivid darkness that seethed with burning stars and indigo clouds.

"I bet you a case of Guinness that it's not just for observing," Maelstrom said.

Wire punched Nereid in the arm, hard. Nereid exclaimed and looked at her teammate, feeling very injured. Wire, one hand clapped over her mouth, pointed furiously at the door in the center of the room.

"Oh," Nereid said. Then, a little louder, "Um, everybody? The door is glowing all over and all around."

"Oh, that," the Equestrian said. "I expect that's what it's supposed to do when it unlocks."

Maelstrom stomped over, examined the door closely, sniffed it, and then pounded on it with one bony fist. When it failed to respond, he turned his back on it, lifted one leg, and kicked back at it several times.

The door remained unmoved. It was a door.

"It's sealed," Maelstrom said unnecessarily.

"I figured that," the Equestrian said. "There is, after all, no doorknob on this side."

"Does no harm to check," Maelstrom said.

"Except whoever's door it is now knows we're here," the Equestrian said, still staring up at the dome.

Maelstrom snorted. "Only if they're standing right on the other side."

Nereid stamped her foot to much less effect than Maelstrom. She pointed at the bell jar. "What about Sophie?"

The Equestrian sighed and walked over to look at the tiny figure in the jar. "Yep," she said. "Looks like Brainchild all right."

Wire, who was examining the knobs and dials on the machine, lifted her head to glare daggers at the Equestrian.

The Equestrian ignored her, as usual, and peered curiously into the funnel under the bell jar. "Hmmm," she said.

"What?" Nereid said.

"Dunno," the Equestrian said, then added, "Maelstrom, go take a look at those walls of vacuum tube thingies."

Maelstrom snorted again and slouched over. "Oh," he said as he got closer. "Oh," he said again, sniffing loudly. He tapped one glowing glass bulb in the nearest wall. It rang under his fingernail. "That glow's a human soul."

Nereid exclaimed, "All of those are souls?"

The Equestrian pursed her lips and rubbed her chin. "Well, that's a thing," she said, looking at the walls of luminescent souls, then at the funnel, then at the turning gears and opening hole in the dome.

Tam said, nervously, "They're... not for a tithe, are they?"

The Equestrian said, "I think they are, in a way."

Maelstrom spun around on his heel and stared at her. "Even a bribe this big--"

"No," the Equestrian interrupted. "Not an established trade route. I think it's a magician, trying to force the wall open. It's a good night for it."

Maelstrom replied, "It's a busy one, that's for sure. But are you referring to the Far Lands, or something further?"

"Something further, I think."

Nereid exclaimed, "Could you speak in English for the rest of us?"

The Equestrian pinched the bridge of her nose. "I think someone is trying to crack open the dimensional wall between Earth and... somewhere else... using an engine that takes souls for fuel that's stationed here, in this land, because souls can be made tangible here." She pointed at Sophie, who was drifting around inside the bell jar, apparently unable to see the lot of them. "And it's May Day on the other side, a day when the walls are thinnest."

Nereid's jaw fell open. How did they lose so many months? And... a dimensional gate? She looked at Tam, whose face wasn't registering horror so much as complete bewilderment.

Unfortunately, she didn't have time to explain it to him before the machines all around them lit up and began to emit a peculiar set of extremely irritating tones.

"What is that?" Nereid said, clapping her hands to her ears.

Wire exclaimed, "That's a modem coming online!" then turned her back, retching violently.

Nereid didn't turn fast enough -- she saw something hit the floor and scurry away, and gagged in sympathy.

The Equestrian said, "Then the connection's been made. Maelstrom, watch the door. Nereid, Wire, you know computers, see if you can figure out how to get this thing shut down."

---

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Wake Up, Little Sophie

When Nereid walked into the hospital room to see Sophie, Wire was sitting in the chair next to the bed, holding her head in her hands. Just as Nereid was quietly backing out of the room, Wire looked up. Her face was pale and grim with something Nereid thought might be rage, and it twitched around the edges when Wire saw her. However, Wire pulled all the pieces of her composure back together and said, "Nereid. No need to go; I'm done here." She rose, picking up her heavy armored costume jacket from the back of the chair. She wasn't wearing her costume otherwise, just hiking boots and flannel-lined jeans and a buttondown plaid flannel over a cream-colored waffle-weave long underwear shirt.

Nereid gestured, incoherently and helplessly. "I'm sorry to interrupt..."

"No interruption," Wire said, not looking at Nereid. "I mean, there's no one here to talk to, is there?"

Nereid felt her own mouth twitch with uncertainty, then took a deep breath, slowly shifting into the room. "I wanted to talk to you about that."

Wire went on, as if Nereid hadn't said anything at all: "I talked to Dr. Thomas today. She's exhausted the experts. She even talked to some Class 10 telepath I never heard of. Sophie's not in there. She's braindead." Wire paused, one arm in her jacket, and started to laugh bitterly. "Brainchild is now Braindead," she said, still laughing, and Nereid cringed back from the shattered glass edges of that laugh.

She waited for Wire to settle back into her accustomed silence, but she kept laughing and covered her face with one hand. Finally, impatience got the best of Nereid and she snapped, "Wire, I know she's missing. We know where she's gone."

Wire froze, then peered out from between her fingers. The one hazel eye Nereid could see looked wide and crazy, and Nereid found herself backed against a wall, holding her breath. Then Wire's hand dropped and she looked at Nereid with undisguised contempt. "You somehow know something that the world's experts couldn't figure out? That the Ultimate couldn't figure out?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," Nereid said, and hated herself for how tiny her voice had become.

Wire was suddenly standing very nearly nose-to-nose with her. "Now you listen to me, Miss Know-It-All-Now-I'm-Class-Fucking-Nine, and you listen to me closely, okay?" she hissed into Nereid's face. "The Ultimate, the Gold Stars, the Guardians, they all say it's just like Josh Feldstein, all right? And you know what? He was in a fucking coma for ten goddamn years. His wife and father had him to even more experts than Sophie's been to, and none of them know what the fuck happened to him. All we know is that he came back, tried to destroy the city, and vanished, okay? The Sophie I... we... knew is fucking GONE, Pacifica, that's what I'm telling you, you green little diner-spawned leech. GONE."

Nereid had lost the thread of the tirade somewhere in the middle, because she could see a shining brass and steel orb floating outside the window of Sophie's window. As she watched, long... tweezers, it looked like, extended from the orb and somehow pierced the window without breaking it. The tweezer ends opened slowly and mechanically, and the window appeared to move aside, billowing and draping like a curtain over the metal arms. By the time Wire realized Nereid wasn't paying attention and looked over her shoulder, there was a glistening crystalline hexagonal surface pressed into the aperture.

There was a ringing thud, and another, and then the crystal was kicked off, a foot visible in the opening, and the cover tumbled in a noisy bell-like clatter onto the tile floor. Music blasted out of the mouth of the orb, a dramatic pop-orchestral thing with a driving beat. The foot, shod in shining brass and crystal itself, slid out and down to the floor, dragging behind a body similarly covered, topped with brilliantly platinum-bleached hair. The face turned toward them, and the eyes of the mask were iridescently faceted, facets upon facets upon facets. The smooth brass, striped irregularly with black, encased a slim throat, painfully thin torso, gracefully awkward arms, and unimpressive bosom, all atop long, slender legs that appeared to be strangely insectile in design. The metallic legs clicked on the tile. The face turned toward them. One of the eye covers slid to the side, exposing a heavily-kohled human eye. Four small, translucent wings unfolded from the back and vibrated briefly.

After looking over Wire and Nereid, who were frozen in their close-as-lovers tete-a-tete, she turned her attention to the bed, and with long, exaggerated movements, she stalked over to the side of the bed. With a gesture, she turned the music down to what Nereid took to be "background soundtrack" level. In a clear voice, she declaimed, "Oh, Brainchild! So much ego, brought so very low. My unparalleled genius has come to your aid!" She threw her arms upward and her head back dramatically, drawing polite applause from the crowd of nurses, orderlies, and other passerby from the doorway. The wings buzzed.

Wire visibly dismissed the strange vision and looked back into Nereid's face. "So what," she said, her voice at a whisper, "do you think you could possibly add to the know-how of ten goddamn years?"

Nereid's gaze kept being drawn by the woman's antics next to the bed. Now she had opened Sophie's eyes and was peering deeply into them through the insect eyepieces, saying, "You never could ask for help, you little fool, you little beast. You went up against something you didn't understand, couldn't understand, and it took you down. But you know I'm always here for you, whether you ask or not..."

Wire shook Nereid by the shoulders and Nereid looked at her. To stave off another rant, Nereid blurted out, "She's in Faerie."

Wire blinked. "What?"

"Faerie," Nereid said. "You know, tinkling bells and glitter dust and jolly songs in the woods?"

Wire's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "How do you know this?"

Nereid sighed. She knew she had to explain, and also knew she'd better make it good, because she didn't want to do this alone. But that damned woman had climbed onto the bed and was straddling Sophie's body and holding some sort of contraption over her and was talking constantly, sometimes creepily reassuring, sometimes saying things like, "You brought me back to life, you taught me how to make my own legs so I could stand on them, you taught me the way of things, I've got to be able to help you somehow..."

Wire yelled, "GoGo, give it a goddamn REST already. We're TRYING to have a CONVERSATION over here."

The woman straightened up and hopped delicately down from the bed. Her narrow shoulders went back and her chin went up defiantly. "That is Lady GoGo to you, you ignoramus. Or maybe," she said, with the tiniest giggle, antennae slowly extruding from her mask, "today I am Queen GoGo."

"What. Ever." Wire turned back to Nereid. "How?" she said again.

Nereid swallowed hard. "We went to the Dream Party and..."

"'We'? Who's 'we'?" she snapped.

"X and I..."

"Oh, fuck me, that basketcase?" Wire rolled her eyes. "You're going to believe anything she said?"

Nereid almost said, "'She'? Who's 'she'?" but her mouth said something else instead: "It's not very nice to say that about X."

"I can talk about Ehhhhhx --" Wire illustrated her mocking tone with airquotes "-- however I want. I knew her before she went all mystical and cryptic and butch."

Nereid snarled, "Don't talk about X that way, and don't fucking use a pronoun for zir that zie doesn't want used."

Nereid had never realized she was capable of channeling Simon and Ivy quite that way, but she was pleased with the result. It took Wire aback so hard that the woman couldn't speak for a moment. Into that silence, Queen GoGo exclaimed, "Oh, Sophia, I had thought nothing was beyond my powers!" She threw herself across Sophie with a gasping sob. "That the one thing had to be the restoration of your incredible intellect...!"

This served to completely discompose Wire, who half-turned to remonstrate with the woman. Nereid seized that moment to grab her by the lapels of her flannel, and yanked Wire close enough that their noses did touch. "We went to Lucid's Dream Party," she said, her mouth curling into a sneer all on its own, "and reputable sources told us that Sophie had passed through a door that leads to Faerie. The Equestrian has agreed to take us, but X can't go because of zir responsibilities. I thought I'd ask you because I thought Sophie might just be important to you. But you have one, one fucking chance to say yes or no before I walk out that door and ask someone off the goddamn street, because they might be more useful than you."

Wire gaped at her. Actually. Gaped. Nereid had to fight to keep from grinning like a loon. Knowing the Canis family had some fabulous benefits.

Queen GoGo strode away from the bed, back to the portal in the window, music increasing volume with every step. She cast a longing look over her shoulder at the bed, then folded herself back into the orb. The crowd at the doorway clapped politely again. The giant tweezers closed and withdrew from the glass, leaving no mark, and the orb sailed straight up in the air. She left the crystal cover on the floor.

Wire finally said, sullenly, "All right. I'm in."

Nereid had thought she'd be relieved to have someone else going with her. She was often wrong in her life.

---

From the Author:
Happy New Year! I have finished out the year on episode #13, which pleases me mightily. I hope your 2011 is full of beauty and joy.

Again: I'm posting twice weekly during the month of December as a [fill in holiday here] gift for you all. If you like getting WCS twice weekly, then please comment on anything. :) If I get 50 comments over the course of December, I will post twice weekly all through January as well. If I get 75 comments, I'll post twice weekly through February. If, by the amazing work of you wonderful folks, I get more comments than that, I will come up with some even better reward.

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So Wet Have My Sleeves Become

Nereid held up roofs with pillars of water, halted the flight of chunks of pavement, stopped water mains from gushing into the combat zone, and lifted debris according to the direction of rescue workers, all with Sophie either over her shoulders in a fireman's carry or at her feet where she could protect her. She never had a free moment to turn her over to those rescue workers.

Pavement was disrupted for a block or two around the combat site, and that meant that buildings and their foundations were likely disrupted. Within about 3 blocks of the fight, most of the buildings were badly damaged, and windows were broken out to about 6 blocks. Small, flingable objects like cars and motorcycles had been thrown around by the vibrations and pavement disruption. Santa Ana was keeping the gas mains in check, while Nereid alone was keeping the water mains from bleeding out into a downtown-coating glacier.

The sun had long since set when the Ultimate landed next to her.

Nereid was too tired to be startled, but she did make an effort to focus on the superwoman. The Ultimate was shorter than she was, middle-aged, round, and had dark brown skin. She kept her hair in a close-clipped natural, like Simon's mom kept hers, though a little more squared-off on the sides. There were threads of silver laced through the black hair, though, unlike Professor Canis, and worn lines around the Ultimate's dark eyes. She was wearing a black and grey spandex outfit that covered all of her from the chin down.

The Ultimate cast a sharp gaze over her. "Nereid, right? One of Brainchild's teammates?"

Nereid nodded and scraped her straggling hair out of her face with one stiff, numb hand. She suddenly realized that she was freezing. She was soaking wet and shivering hard. Her brain -- which, she thought, was never sharp at the best of times -- felt like it was attempting to ford a river. "She used something to stop his winds, and then he looked at her and she just fell over. I tried to wake her, but it didn't work, so I kept her with me. Was that all right, even though it's cold? She was wearing her insulated uniform."

The Ultimate's grim face softened a little. "Just right." She bent and picked up Sophie effortlessly with one arm and extended the other to Nereid. "Let's get both of you to the hospital."

"I'm not hurt," Nereid said through teeth that started to chatter uncontrollably. "They might need me."

"They'll do all right without you now." The Ultimate carefully put an arm around her waist, and Nereid held on as they lifted into the air. "You did pretty well, Pacifica."

"Thanks," Nereid said, laying her head on the Ultimate's shoulder.

She must have slept some, because the next thing she knew, she was warm and dry and lying in a hospital bed. There was an IV in her arm.

Wire was sitting in a chair next to her, reading a book. Nereid squinted a little and saw that it was the Fat Lady's autobiography, On a Massive Scale.

When she moved her hands, she realized that a few of her fingers were bandaged. She stared at them, not comprehending.

"Frostbite," Wire said, lowering the book but leaving her thumb in it to mark her page. "Just a touch. You'll be all right in a day or so, they say."

"Oh," Nereid said, blinking at Wire. Then her brain engaged. "How is Soph-- Brainchild?"

Wire grimaced a little. "They're... not really sure what happened to her. She hasn't regained consciousness, and they can't find anything else wrong. Her EEG is... not normal. They won't tell me more than that."

The more Nereid woke up, the more wretched she felt: achy, hungry, and miserable. This news just added more misery, and she burst into tears.

"Hey," Wire said, looking concerned and leaning forward to take her hand. "Hey, don't cry. You'll get your bandages wet, and the nurses will have to change everything."

"Oh, like you care," Nereid said, not bothering to rein in the bitter edge, but not pulling her hand away either. Her muscles hurt too much. She tried to stop herself from leaking, though.

Wire put her book down, and said, "I deserve that."

Nereid looked at her, feeling a little wild-eyed. Had she ended up in some alternate reality? Her mom and dad had once; Dad didn't like to talk about what happened to him, but Mom had ended up a queen or something.

"Look," Wire said, staring down at Nereid's hand, "you did really good out there yesterday. It's all over the news. Your mom and dad have been just about fit to bust with pride." She looked up. "They're getting something to eat, by the way. I just stepped in so they could go out."

"Thanks," Nereid said. "Really?" Yesterday? How long had she slept?

"Really," Wire said. "Between you and Santa Ana, you stopped a much bigger disaster from happening. You kept the shelters from flooding in downtown, too."

"Oh," Nereid said. It had only made sense at the time to stop the water mains.

"The Ultimate said that maybe the Gold Stars need to update their files on you," Wire said. "She thinks your power is bigger than the review a year ago rated it."

Nereid blinked at that. Her rating had been a modest class 3, like her father's.

"Anyway," Wire said, "the team met, and we'd like you to stay as a permanent member." She squeezed Nereid's hand gently and released it.

The cynical part of Nereid's brain was apparently awake, because she wondered how much this reconsideration had to do with a combination of the news coverage and the Ultimate's comment. "So I'm useful now?" she said before thinking about it.

Wire had the grace to wince and blush. "I'm sorry about that."

Nereid made an effort to shrug casually and lie. "No biggie."

A silence stretched between them. Then the door opened, and Flo and Ebb came into the room.

Flo's face was wreathed in smiles as soon as she saw Nereid awake. "Sweetie!"

Ebb, as usual, was so moderate in his response as to be nearly unconscious. "Hon."

Wire got up hurriedly. "Well, I'll leave you all alone. Nereid, think about it, okay?" She flashed her charismatic smile around at the three of them and fled basely.

Flo descended upon Nereid with hugs and kisses, and eventually Ebb rubbed her shoulder affectionately. Nereid made an effort to focus on them and not think about the Ultimate, the Young Cosmics, or Sophie, and almost succeeded.

---

From Jude:

I think I've concluded my ChipIn experiment for now, and I want to thank everyone who donated for bonus episodes! If you feel like tossing some cash my way so I can buy a chai latte periodically, I certainly won't object. :) Please also keep commenting -- that's one of my biggest motivators! -- and clicking to vote for Wonder City Stories on Top Web Fiction, and recommending the stories, and everything else you all have been kind enough to do. WCS will continue to post every Monday as we continue the denouement of Volume 1.

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