Wonder City Stories

This week has been weird and surreal -- I live in central Massachusetts, and work in Cambridge -- and today has been particularly strange, with the refreshing the browser and checking Twitter and such. I have successfully distracted written the lion's share of this episode today, however, and I hope you will forgive any little gaffes as being products of my distraction.


Torschlusspanik

"Ah, Mr. Frost," Zoltan said at the door of the enormous luxury board room, his eastern European accent rolling softly over the name. "And Nereid. So pleased you could make it to our little discussion group."

Nereid stared at Zoltan. For a man who never aged, the very fine lines around his eyes and mouth seemed much more pronounced than they'd been last time she'd seen him, at least a year before. He was dressed very finely in a pale grey three-piece suit, a white shirt, and a pale blue tie. She noticed his cufflinks, though, as they shook hands -- tiny gold bats -- and it was all she could do not to giggle.

"I was pleased to be invited," Michael Frost said, staring beyond Zoltan's head at the far side of the room.

"Ah, yes, you see that Baroness Von Drachenberg has arrived before you," Zoltan said, stepping aside gracefully and gesturing them into the room. "We still await Ms. Washington, from your folk. My folk are represented, as are most of the other Mystikai."

Nereid stared around the echoing room and was gratified by the presence of Madame Destiny and X, and also the Equestrian and her steed (in tall, lean, redheaded human form) Maelstrom. She didn't know any of the many others, and noticed that a certain amount of space was left between every knot of beings as they stood around and drank coffee. Sophie would probably snark about it if she were here. Which she wasn't. And Nereid wasn't sure why she wasn't, but the absence made her anxious.

The Baroness was a short, round, cheerful woman who appeared to be middle-aged, accompanied by a couple of stocky, balding men in tweed suits. She gave Mr. Frost a little finger wave that he ignored. Nereid smiled nervously in the woman's direction.

A moment later, a ridiculously tall, willowy woman with long white hair, wearing a strangely familiar long, flowing black leather coat (with large spiky shoulder pads) and pants, strode past Zoltan into the room without a word. Under the coat, she seemed to be largely wearing straps, which accented her... prominent cleavage. She paused to regard Mr. Frost, then the Baroness with a sneer, and made her way to the center-back of the room, throwing herself into the chair at the foot of the ridiculously long table. She put her booted feet up on the table with heavy clunks.

"And with the arrival of Ms. Washington," Zoltan said, nodding to the t-shirted bar bouncer-types in the hall and shutting the door, "our numbers are complete. I am, as most of you know, Zoltan Farkas, and I speak for the Grand Matriarch of the East today, though her granddaughter --" he bowed to an African American woman who was taking a seat near the middle of the table "-- is here to correct me if I step wrongly. Speaking for the Grand Matriarch of the West is Doña Juana Salazar. Between us, we speak for the Family here in North America."

He nodded, and the Equestrian stood, looking very out of place as a young blonde teen dressed for a horse show in a velvet coat of bottle-green, breeches, and tall leather boots. "All of you know who I am," she said in her British accent. "I'm here for the Good Neighbors, specifically the one known as Lady Daphne, my sometimes-patron."

A broad-shouldered, tanned man in a black suit, surrounded by several individuals in similar suits, introduced himself as the elected speaker for the shapechanger Mystikai. Several more people introduced themselves as chosen or appointed speakers for various schools of magic. There was a fascinatingly tiny woman who was the representative of the Appalachian Gnome Queendom. A pair of thin, pale women who were clearly twins said they were there on behalf of the Wonder City vampires. A perfectly normal middle-aged middle-class woman in jeans and a sweatshirt that sported a picture of a kitten, with the glittery legend, "Hang in there!" arcing over it, introduced herself as the Outsider.

Madame stood and bowed. She was dressed elegantly in a long black dress and a black turban, a silvery-grey wrap draped around her shoulders. She was made up extravagantly, with dramatic swooshes of shadow above her eyes. "I am Madame Destiny, the current vessel for the Mystikai known as the Oracle, and I have been asked here by my friend Zoltan in case we need to consult the Oracle's wisdom." She gestured to X, who was conservatively done up in a black suit and garnet-colored cravat. "This is my apprentice, X." And she resumed her seat.

Nereid became aware, as silence fell, that Mr. Frost and the Baroness were staring at each other across the room. After a long, tense moment, Miss Washington drawled, without standing, "I'm Washington. I'm a dragon."

Both Mr. Frost and the Baroness looked at her at the same moment, a fleeting glimpse of disgust crossing both their faces. They looked at each other again, and the Baroness shrugged, and said, "I am the Baroness Von Drachenberg, and I am a Reptilian-American." She glowered in Washington's direction, then gestured grandly to Mr. Frost.

He inclined his head briefly and said, "I am Michael Frost, also Reptilian-American, and I am the patron of the superhero team, the Young Cosmics." He dropped a hand on Nereid's shoulder. "This is my team's Class 10 elemental, Nereid, who kindly agreed to accompany me."

Zoltan seated himself at the head of the table and folded his hands. "Thank you all for coming. I think we can agree that the situation in the United States, and in Wonder City in particular, is growing intolerable and is threatening everything each of us has worked for. Several of us wanted to bring the community together to discuss possible options for information-gathering and action."

One of the myriad magic-using people -- one of the few dressed in what Nereid thought of as normal clothes -- raised her hand. Zoltan nodded, and she said, "I think it would be helpful if we pooled our intelligence as to the nature of the troubles and possible sources."

"Agreed," Zoltan said, nodding cheerfully all around the table. "So let us do so. I confess that the Family has very little information on the nature or source of the troubles, only a fairly close analysis of the results. So who has more information?"

Several of the magic-using people spoke up about scrying and analytical magic and things that immediately and pedantically went over Nereid's head -- another reason to regret Brainchild's absence, she thought, was her inability to ask Sophie later what something had meant. Nereid was also distracted by Washington's openly bored posture with her head tilted back, staring ostentatiously at the ceiling.

"So what you're telling us," Zoltan said, smoothly interrupting one of the interminable lectures, "is that the main threat appears to be in orbit, and radiating something down at us that is affecting human behavior?"

"Uh," said the man in burgundy robes. "Yes. Essentially."

"Thank you," Zoltan said, and he even sounded like he meant it. "Have any other Mystikai ascertained any details?"

Nereid glanced aside at Mr. Frost's pleasantly-smiling face, expecting him to say something. Instead, Madame Destiny said, "Yes, we have."

All heads turned her way. X met Nereid's look with briefly raised eyebrows.

"Our group of... friends," Madame said with a self-deprecating air, "have determined that the ships in orbit are, in fact, of alien origin, and that the nature of the projection is a technological enhancement of a para with empathic abilities."

And then the meeting exploded into discussion, debate, and questions. Nereid watched it all, bewildered, and also watched the three drago--- Reptilian-Americans, she corrected herself. The Baroness beamed delightedly as her two tweedy companions leapt into a debate with a trio of mages and one shapeshifter. Mr. Frost watched the proceedings with a small smile. Washington continued to stare at the ceiling. The only other person who appeared so disconnected was the Equestrian, who slumped in her chair and frowned at the tabletop.

During a brief lull in the conversation, Washington burst out with, "Tell me why I should care."

Everyone froze. Nereid heard Michael Frost inhale, but whatever he was going to say was preempted by the Baroness Von Drachenberg saying, sweetly, "I would explain, but I think that you are too young to understand."

Washington leapt to her feet and glared at the Baroness. Nereid felt obscurely that she ought to have a large magical sword in one hand, then realized that as a drago-- Reptilian-American, she didn't need a weapon of any sort: she was one.

After a long moment, Washington said, in tones not nearly as sweet as the Baroness', "Try me, old woman."

Nereid noticed one of the tweed-clad men next to the Baroness discreetly scribbling notes in a battered leather-bound notebook, while the other was sliding an old pocket dictation recorder onto the table and looking around surreptitiously. Some of the mages and a few of the shapeshifters were subtly fading back from the table. Nereid herself was feeling more and more nervous sitting next to Mr. Frost.

The Baroness folded her hands on the table and, still smiling, said, "As someone without much experience in the markets of the world, you perhaps do not know how very destabilizing these sorts of events can be. You may think that such disquiet would make your particular objets du dèsir easier to obtain -- whenever you decide to obtain them -- but it is not so." She paused, reached down without looking, and clicked the tape recorder off. "At least, not in the long run."

Washington was pale with a cold rage that Nereid could feel from across the room. She leaned forward to place her hands flat onto the table, her white hair starting to blow behind her in a breeze that seemed to affect nothing else. Before she could say anything, though, Michael Frost began to laugh.

The look Washington turned on him was very little altered from what she had just been aiming elsewhere, but the gaze the Baroness turned on him was cynical, withering, and underneath it all, so sharp that Nereid had to repress the urge to run out of the room. The mages and shapeshifters took the opportunity to slide entirely back from the table toward the outer walls.

"Do forgive me, Baroness," Michael Frost said, in his suavest voice, "but it seems to me that if we are here, we have already agreed to act. There is no need for this attention-seeking posturing."

The Baroness was no longer, at all, a pleasant-looking little woman. Nereid saw the representative of the Gnome Queendom retreating behind a heavy credenza and felt an urge to join her. As if reading her mind, Michael Frost chose that moment to lay his hand over hers on the table, and action that made Nereid unbearably uncomfortable for too many reasons to list.

Nereid attempted to comfort herself with her ability to dissolve into mist at the first sign of actual violence.

At the head of the table, Zoltan looked as if he might be comforting himself similarly. He was exchanging looks with the other representatives of his Family -- whatever that was, Nereid thought, wondering if it he was a member of some kind of vampire mafia -- and both women were giving him cheerful sorts of "I wouldn't be you for a million dollars" encouraging smiles.

Washington was staring at Michael Frost, and Nereid noticed that she was becoming visibly more irritated when he refused to stare back. Her long, slender fingers gripped the edge of the table, and Nereid had an unpleasant image of her flipping it. But the moment passed, and she sat down in a kind of anticlimax.

The Baroness and Michael Frost, however, continued to match gazes, and Nereid thought that perhaps there was some sort of battle going on that she was too human to perceive except on the most uncomfortably lowest levels of her lizard brain. Like the so-called brown note, she thought.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," the Equestrian exclaimed, slamming her small hands on the table with moment-shattering slaps. "The rest of us don't have time for your--" she paused over word choice for a moment, then continued sourly "--politicking."

The two dragons snapped their heads around to look at her and the Equestrian pursed her lips and tilted her head slightly in the direction of Maelstrom, who appeared to be dozing in his chair. Mr. Frost and the Baroness each glanced back at each other, then exhaled, and the tension oozed out of the room.

Zoltan shuffled some papers. The mages and shapeshifters glided back to the table. The Gnome Queendom representative returned to her chair.

"I think," said Doña Juana Salazar, smiling thinly around the table, "that perhaps we should take advantage of the presence of the Oracle to ascertain what level of action would work best for the Mystikai as a whole."

"Yes," the Baroness said, her good humor apparently restored, though Nereid was unsure if that was true. "It is so very easy to overreact and do more harm than good."

Michael Frost said, "Yes, let's." He yawned elaborately.

Washington just waved a hand irritably.

"Perhaps it would be best to determine what the maximum level of involvement we would be willing to pursue should be," piped the tiny representative of the Gnome Queendom.

This led to another bewildering half hour of conversations, cross-conversations, and sub-conversations that Nereid could not parse at all. None of the dragons involved themselves in these discussions; they just watched.

Zoltan tapped a glass (where did he get the glass?) with a spoon (likewise?), and the sound rang out over the room, bringing conversation to a faltering halt. He said, "If we are going to make use of the Oracle, then I think we should do it quickly. We are unlikely to come to a consensus on this issue, nor do I think it is necessary. We simply need to remember to ask yes or no questions for optimal accuracy."

"And minimal cryptic ramblings," the Equestrian muttered, getting a short laugh out of Madame and X, at least.

Madame got up and moved her chair well back from the table, then resumed her seat. X moved to stand facing her, a little to the side. Everyone at the table turned to watch Madame with great interest -- even the dragons.

Nereid had seen Madame do this many times before, and all went as usual. Madame composed herself in her chair and closed her eyes for a few moments. X watched her fixedly. Then the light in the room changed to the harsh, focused, bluish tinge it always took.

Madame's face in that light startled Nereid, like she was seeing straight through the makeup. Madame looked old. Really old. And sick, and strained. Tears began leaking from the corners of her eyes. Then her eyes popped open and blue light crackled there, making everyone blink and look away for a moment.

"SPEAK, CHILDREN OF MAGIC," the Oracle said with Madame's mouth.

X turned to Zoltan and nodded.

But then the Oracle said, "STOP."

Nereid could see Madame's head and hands vibrating as if she had a palsy. The tears were coursing down her face and dripping off her chin. Her face looked grey in the blue light.

Madame gasped, in her own voice, "No!"

The light changed again -- instead of seemingly radiating from Madame's whole body, it shifted to solely from her head. And then blue lightning stabbed out from Madame into X, who echoed Madame with a more gutteral, wrenching, "No!"

Nereid ran to Madame as the older woman toppled from her chair, pulling her up from the floor and cradling her head against her shoulder. For a long moment, Nereid gazed down into her exhausted, drawn, tear-streaked face, and irrelevantly remembered the same woman, five years earlier, patiently helping her with her math homework. She remembered that Madame had been studying to be a mathematician, that she was really good at it, until the Oracle took up residence in her body.

X was suspended in mid-air in the middle of the room, blue light and lightning leaking out spasmodically. Most of the people in the room were at least standing, if not moving cautiously toward X.

Madame's eyes opened and she tried to sit up, but couldn't, then relaxed back into Nereid's arms. She croaked urgently, "Don't touch X!" into the tense silence, and everyone moving stopped.

"If you touch X," Madame said more calmly, "it could distract zir from what focus zie could gather. If that happens on the first possession, we might never get X back." She closed her eyes again.

Nereid was chilled to the bone by the idea of the Oracle being permanently "on" in X's body. She looked at the disheveled figure dangling like a marionette in mid-air.

"NOW YOU MAY SPEAK," said the Oracle with X's mouth.

"Oh, god," Madame groaned.

"It's all right," Nereid whispered to her.

"I thought I could hold on," Madame said, tears trickling out of her eyes again. "I thought I could keep going. Anything so X wouldn't have to..."

"X knew this would happen eventually," Nereid said in low tones, vaguely registering that questions were being asked and answered with a staccato precision elsewhere in the room. "X was prepared for it."

"You're never prepared for it," Madame said faintly. "Never. I knew for years, and I never expected what happened."

"Is it so bad?" Nereid said.

"It's like a seizure," Madame said opaquely. "Oh, god, I should get up, I should spot X, keep people from asking too many questions." She began to struggle to sit up, at least.

Nereid helped her sit up when it became clear that she was too agitated to rest. X was still held off the floor, but was no longer quite so high in the air. Madame took one look at X's face, which was lined with strain, and made a throat-cut motion to Zoltan, who nodded and stepped between a ponderous mage and X.

"Thank you for your generous assistance, oh, Oracle," Zoltan said with a graceful bow. "Your vessel needs rest, and we have our answers."

"VERY WELL, TRAVELLER," the Oracle said in its booming voice. "CARE FOR THE EMPTIED VESSEL AS WELL AS THE NEW VESSEL."

With that, X was released into Zoltan's waiting arms. Maelstrom took X from Zoltan and the Equestrian peremptorily gestured Zoltan back into the scrum of loudly-discussing Mystikai.

Madame reached out as Maelstrom knelt to set X next to her. She stroked X's sweat-beaded forehead maternally and whispered, over and over, "I'm so sorry."

Nereid stayed on the ground with the two of them, an arm around each, content to be a literal support. X was moving slowly, blinking dazed eyes up at the ceiling. Madame was still murmuring what sounded like apologies. As an afterthought, Nereid dried their clothes and faces and hair -- sweat and tears and whatever else would leave a bit of a crust, but at least they wouldn't feel damp.

"You have my promise," Michael Frost was saying, coming to stand near Nereid and Madame and X, "that I will match the Baroness' contributions financially, and that I will permit limited involvement of my Cosmics in a decisive para action."

Washington strode almost up to him, then past, saying, "And you have my promise that I will participate in the para action myself... if it seems fun." She kicked the door open and walked out of the board room.

"I am going to take Madame and X home," Michael Frost said, reaching down to effortlessly lift Madame in his arms. Nereid helped X to stand, and stayed under the strong arm that she remembered so vividly holding her up at one time. "The rest of you may go on discussing whatever you like. Zoltan, if anything significant comes up, I trust you will notify us via the usual channels."

"Of course," Zoltan said, catching Nereid's eye with a questioning raise of his eyebrows. Nereid smiled, she hoped, reassuringly, and turned to help X follow Mr. Frost out of the room.

Why, yes, X DID figure something out last episode.


Ringed Round

Nereid walked into Sophie's lab, noting idly that the locks were engaged, but her special permissions got her through.

She pretty much immediately regretted having special permissions.

X was rampaging around the lab, yanking drawers out of the lab benches and stacking them on the benchtops, opening cabinets and rifling through them, pulling every closet door ajar and peering in. Sophie was standing very still in the midst of the chaos, head down.

Nereid had never seen or heard X so angry before.

Sophie said, quietly, "Please stop."

X whirled around, face red and contorted with fury. "If you won't tell me the truth, then I'll fucking well find the truth."

Sophie said, not raising her head, "Do you even know what you're looking for?"

X snarled, "Yes," and, after shoving a sliding door aside, added, "This."

X turned around, holding a plastic bin. Beyond, in the small closet, Nereid could see a small, sleek machine that hummed gently, and then spat something metallic out onto the floor.

The bin held what looked like hundreds of silver metal promise rings.

X plunged a hand into the bin and shook a handful of the things under Sophie's nose. "What. Is. THIS?"

Nereid said, finally, "What's going on?"

Both Sophie and X looked at her. X's jaw set. An expression of agony passed over Sophie's face.

After a silence, X said, "Your girlfriend is working for the alien invaders." X's hand opened and all the rings clattered onto the floor, ringing flatly and bouncing away from Sophie's boots.

Nereid's jaw worked but no voice came out.

"Please," Sophie said, covering her face with one hand, knocking her glasses off and onto the concrete floor, where the main lenses cracked and the frames broke in half at the nosepiece.

Nereid reflexively stepped forward and knelt to pick up the glasses. She stopped, her hand inches from the frames, but also from the scattered rings, and looked up at Sophie.

A tear dropped from between Sophie's fingers onto Nereid's hand. Nereid stared at it, feeling panicked. Sophie got sarcastic. Sophie got snarky. Sophie got angry. Sophie. Never. Cried.

X looked back at Sophie and in a voice whose anger had been replaced with pain, said, "Why?"

Sophie looked at X finally, her face red, eyes swollen, and said in a ragged voice, "Why else? They have Ruth."

X sighed and ran a hand through the perfect, sleek, black hair, tousling it perfectly. "Ruth wouldn't want this."

Sophie curled her lip and said, in what was clearly to Nereid a desperate attempt to regain some poise, "I have not my mother's scruples."

Nereid reached up and gripped Sophie's shirt hem in an attempt to hold onto that moment of sarcasm. She would have done anything for her own parents in the same situation, instantly and without a thought. Flo would yell at her later, but at least Flo would be there to yell.

"They said that if I didn't do it, they had others who would, and who might do it in return for Ruth's -- or someone else's -- death," Sophie said bitterly. "They have all the Gold Stars."

"How do you know?" X said. "How do you know they didn't lie?"

"Because I saw them," Sophie said. "The aliens met me in the middle of the desert -- at Area 51, as a matter of fact!" she added, her voice going high and strained, "and showed them all to me, let me run whatever tests I wanted to make sure I believed they were real. I couldn't wake her up, though I tried."

"They could've been messing with your head!" X said.

"Don't you think I thought of that?" Sophie shouted, gesturing vehemently. "I have been over and over this. I can't find Ruth anywhere in the known universe by any method I've tried except that one moment. I even tried calling Renata Scott to get her to telepathically hunt for her, but Renata is missing too! The aliens claim they're holding the Gold Stars in a dimensional pocket they control, and that's the only logical answer." Sophie's long, thin fingers tangled into her hair and pulled hard.

Nereid stood and put her arms around Sophie, pinning the anguished hands against her lover's skull with her own grip. "All right, we know now," Nereid said in the same tone she'd once used to soothe her panicked pet dog. "We know. Do we know everything?" She glanced at X. X gestured disgustedly and turned away.

Sophie pressed her face into Nereid's shoulder and let her hands fall to her sides. "I made the broadcast technology for them. They knew it was possible, they have a tech like it for themselves, but it wouldn't work with humans. The rings are the only thing I'm still making for them. They produce everything else. Main system. Transmitters. Repeaters, I'm guessing."

"What does it broadcast?" X said, back still turned.

Sophie exhaled, her breath hot on Nereid's neck, and Nereid held her tight. "They have a mentalist of some sort. I think it's an empath, but I don't know for sure. They wanted something that would transmit human psionic powers."

"And you built defenses on the Cosmics' compound and put everyone under house arrest here to protect them," X said, shoulders hunched.

"Yes," Sophie said, voice muffled in the fabric of Nereid's shirt. "It was the only concession I could get from them."

"You know what they're doing to people, don't you?" X said, turning to look at them.

Sophie just nodded, her nose rubbing against Nereid's collarbone.

X faced them and said in a resolute voice, "We're going to stop them. It. Everything."

Sophie said, "I can't help. They'll kill her."

Nereid said, meeting X's gaze, "But I can."

Sophie put her arms around Nereid finally and clung as if she would drown otherwise.

"I'll talk to Mr. Frost," Nereid said. "I'll explain. Get permission. Whatever I can do to help, X."

X nodded and went to the door.

Sophie looked up and said, "Who is going to stop them? They've got the Gold Stars, and the Guardians and all the other major teams are under the influence."

X looked back, handsome and sad and tragic, and said, "Some people they forgot about," and went out.

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."

The Truth Is Out There

Ira was both prepared and relieved when the light of the Oracle permeated the room. As that time more than two years earlier, the strange, harsh, bluish light returned his vision in youthful clarity. He was able to see the other people who had all gathered of their own accord in Madame Destiny's workroom: Madame's androgynous Asian assistant, X, who was wearing a plain blue buttondown shirt and tailored black trousers; Lady Justice, whose unkempt grey hair was roughly tidied back with bobby pins and whose face looked like a topographic map of some mountainous place in the unflattering light; Madeline Fukuda, who still looked as young and lovely as she had the first time Ira had met her in the 1950s, though, perhaps, the lines around her eyes were more pronounced with worry and sadness; and the woman to whom he'd just been introduced, Pearl Wong, X's grandmother, who did, in fact, look a great deal like X except very definitely a woman in her mid-60s, with all the wrinkles and grey hair to go with it.

Madame was sitting in her accustomed chair, her back ramrod straight, her eyes wide and glowing with Oracle-light. Ira saw that she'd aged shockingly since the last time he'd been able to see her; she looked exhausted. There was a long pause after the light came up, and Ira could see that her shoulders and head were trembling very slightly. Finally, with almost a little sigh, the Oracle said, "SPEAK."

X stepped into Madame's line of sight and said, "Oracle, those gathered in this room have observed strange happenings in the world. We would like to ask you about the source of these happenings."

"EACH OF YOU MAY SPEAK A SINGLE QUESTION."

X had briefed them before the session, while Madame was preparing alone in the room: the Oracle only took yes/no questions right now, especially from a large group, because Madame's endurance was not what it used to be, and one should assume that the Oracle will know the circumstances around one's question, because delay for lengthy explanations would only tax Madame more. X glanced around the room to make sure everyone was ready, then gestured to Ira, who had drawn the straw to ask the first question.

Ira briefly reflected on the fact that X apparently knew about the Oracle's ability to clear the vision of the blind, given the gesture, then shook himself and said, "Has there been a major reorganization of the timeline in the past two years that is causing the odd behaviors I've observed?"

The Oracle turned Madame's head slowly to consider him. "NO, IRA FELDSTEIN."

Ira said, "Thank you," and looked at Lady Justice.

Lady J chewed her lower lip for a moment, then said, "Is there a single person responsible for the behavior changes?"

The Oracle again turned Madame's head, and Ira fancied the hesitation was a little longer. "NO, DOROTHY SANDERSON."

She nodded briefly and said, "Thanks."

X looked at Madeline, who drew a long breath and said, "Is the government at the root of the new behaviors?"

The Oracle said, without hesitating, "NO, MADELINE FUKUDA."

After Madeline had muttered her thanks, everyone looked at Pearl. She looked around at the rest of them, and said, "Does it come from the skies?"

Everyone stared at Pearl. Ira recalled her mentioning something her therapy clients had been saying lately.

The Oracle snapped Madame's head around to look at her, and said, "YES, PEARL WONG."

Now they all stared at the Oracle. Ira noticed that Madame's tremors were worse, and there were tears tracking down her face. X apparently noticed as well, moving forward to put a hand over Madame's wrist and a finger on her pulse.

Madame's face turned up to X and the Oracle said, "YOU HAVE NOT ASKED, EMPTY VESSEL."

X stared into Madame's possessed face, and glanced at Pearl. "Have we been invaded?"

Again, no delay. "YES, EMPTY VESSEL."

X nodded, then said, "You should go."

Ira saw the Oracle sweep an unreadable gaze over the group. Then the light went out and Ira's vision returned to its usual blurry glow. He heard a scuffle and X let out a pained exhalation.

"A little help here?" X said with an audible effort to sound calm.

"Let me," Madeline said, and Ira could see her move rapidly across the room, trailed by someone he assumed was Pearl. Certainly, he knew, Lady J hadn't moved that fast or well since the stroke. "Get her a glass of water," Madeline added. He heard X jog out of the room.

"What's wrong?" Ira said, keeping his seat with difficulty.

"Madame collapsed," Lady J murmured. "Let the kids handle it, Ira. We'd just be in the way."

Ira reached out toward her, and Lady J took his hand. They gripped each other's hands tightly, their ancient superstrength and invulnerability keeping them safe from one another. "It's another invasion," Ira said in a low voice, tuning out the quiet hustle around Madame.

"It seems like we get them about once a decade, doesn't it?" Lady J said. "I mean the really big ones."

"They're changing the world this time. It's just... just..." Ira stopped.

"It's kind of like the Great Gulf, without the time manipulation, isn't it?" Lady J said, giving his hand a squeeze.

"Yeah," Ira said, wiping at his eyes where they were watering. "But without the time manipulation, it won't be as bad. It can't."

---

Author's Note:

Being the vessel of a cosmic entity is hard work.

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

His Faded Idol

12.

The festivities went on well into the daytime hours, and Erszebet was intrigued by the shift in the type of people she saw walking the halls. Of course, the vermin had to leave before sunrise, and they were replaced by vastly more people in colorful costumes than she had seen previously.

Everyone is happy to attend a celebration. Not quite so many are so happy to attend a funeral, even for someone who was, essentially, a kind of head of state.

She retired to what she'd begun to think of as "the Garnet Parlor", a sprawling room done up in lavish Victoriana, full of comfortable chairs, gas fireplaces, cozy conversation nooks, and sound-deadening wall-hangings and rugs. There was also something that flattened out emotional noise, so that it was very peaceful and quiet in all ways. In a dimly-lit corner, in a wingback chair, she closed her eyes and sighed with relief.

"Ah, Ms. Farkas," said a vaguely familiar woman's voice. "How does the last day of the event find you?"

Erszebet opened her eyes and found a cheerful almost-elderly woman smiling at her from another wingback chair; the woman was wearing a black turban with a peacock plume attached to it, and a long black dress, set off by a metallic wine-colored wrap, and a magnificent garnet parure. When the young, beautifully-dressed Asian man appeared in a morning coat and trousers, carrying a tray with a china teapot and cup, she recognized Madame Destiny. "I am extremely tired," Erszebet admitted. "But it has been an... unforgettable experience."

"I expect so," Madame said, taking the teacup offered. "You've had quite a week. And more experiences upcoming soon."

Erszebet looked sharply at the woman. "How do you know these things?"

Madame smiled and sipped her tea. "I've been a fortuneteller for almost fifty years."

Erszebet glanced at the young man, who smiled briefly and nodded. "She's a very good fortuneteller."

"Thank you, X, dear," Madame said. "Oh, would you take this, dear?" She handed the teacup back to the young man and turned a serious look on Erszebet. "I'm sorry, this will probably be somewhat unpleasant, but..."

There was an alarming change in the room -- the light shifted, became sharp and harsh and unforgiving, laying bare not only all the age lines in Madame's face, but the imperfections in the wall hangings, the upholstery, and the hem of Erszebet's dress. Madame, for her part, sat up very straight with her eyes glowing blue.

"ERSZEBET FARKAS," Madame said in an unearthly, sepulchral voice, "YOU ARE A CHILD OF DESTINY."

Erszebet just stared.

Madame went on: "YOUR TRAVELS WILL NOT END, YOUR WORDS FENCES TO MEND, YOUR NAME MANY WILL CALL FRIEND. GO WITH PEACE FOR NOW, THOUGH CONTENTION BE YOUR ETERNAL PARTNER." And with that, Madame slumped back in her chair and the light returned to normal.

Erszebet looked from Madame to X and back, alarmed.

X bent and set a gentle hand on Madame's shoulder. Madame took a startled breath and opened her eyes. She awkwardly nudged the turban on her head and smiled, a little vacantly, at Erszebet. "Well, dear, did that help?"

Erszebet found her voice, and decided to be very polite. "No, I'm afraid it only confused me."

Madame smiled more widely and managed to focus on her at last. "I'm sorry, dear, the Oracle is sometimes like that. It's usually so cryptic that its meaning isn't obvious until much later."

Erszebet was very glad when shortly after, Juana Zalazar came to abduct her. "You look rather pale," Juana said when they were out of the parlor. "Are you well?"

"I... just had a rather remarkable experience with one of the paras, I think," Erszebet said. "I can't quite make out whether it was a prophecy or a curse."

Juana patted her shoulder kindly. "Sometimes, it is impossible to tell the difference. Speaking of that, I'm taking you to see my mother."

Erszebet gave her a wild, alarmed look at this particular segue.

"Not to worry," Juana said, smiling. "My mother has asked to speak to you privately, and Dame Geneviève would like to be introduced to you."

Erszebet's look did not diminish in alarm at all. Both Grand Matriarchs wanted to speak to her? Specially? Had she spoken out of turn? Had Isolde mentioned her embarrassing assumptions earlier in the week? Was she to be sent home now instead of taken on a grand tour of the country?

The two Grand Matriarchs were ensconced, side by side, in comfortable-looking high-backed wooden chairs that looked as much like thrones as they could without actually being thrones. There was no dais, no added jewelry, no ermine or gold, nothing that really indicated that these two ancient women were actually queens who had just peaceably split a kingdom between them. The Zalazar had gone from "plump and cheerful" to "massive and imposing", the tall Spanish comb set with brilliants in her hair only adding more height. The de León's deepset eyes and hooked nose lent a grim and forbidding aspect to her mien.

Zoltan stood quietly to one side, a bland but pleasant smile on his face, his hands clasped behind his back. The smile widened a little at the sight of her, but there was nothing either warning or excessive in the expression.

Everyone in the room -- with the certain exception of Erszebet -- was locked down, emotionally, tight as a drum.

"Erszebet Farkas," Magna Mater Consuela said with a smile.

Erszebet sank into the deepest curtsy she could manage, trying desperately to remember the little "just in case you're presented to the new Grand Matriarch" tutorial her aunt Csilla had given her while also wondering why everyone was using her full name today. Her reward for the curtsy -- and staying down -- was a tight note of approval from Zoltan.

"Rise," Magna Mater Geneviève intoned. "So you are the girl."

Erszebet tried not to show or leak panic as she drew herself back up to her feet.

"She is," Magna Mater Consuela said complacently. "We wish to thank you, Erszebet."

Erszebet tried not to show or leak confusion. She didn't succeed.

"I had planned to challenge Griselda no matter what," Magna Mater Consuela continued. "As had my counterpart here."

"The historical information you passed on to the St. Michels," Magna Mater Geneviève said, "was promptly spread far and wide throughout the American Family, which inspired all the Ancients to challenge."

"It may be an unprecedented event, even in the old country," Magna Mater Consuela said, "this great challenge. You should check with your aunt and let us know." She smiled, and Erszebet took it as reassurance.

"I am grateful to have been of service, my Mothers," Erszebet said, curtsying again.

"I look forward to your company on our travels to my realm," Magna Mater Consuela said, beaming upon her. "And perhaps more discussions of history."

Erszebet dipped to the floor again.

Magna Mater Geneviève turned a moment of crushing, laserlike focus upon her, and Erszebet narrowly managed to avoid cringing. "I understand you are acquainted with my granddaughter," she said after a moment.

"Yes, Mother," Erszebet said, locking down her embarrassment as hard as she could.

"Well, then," Magna Mater Geneviève said, "when Magna Mater Consuela releases you back into the wild, I will charge my granddaughter Isolde with bringing you to my Household for a time."

Yet another curtsy. "You honor me greatly, Mother."

"Shall I send her back to you, Zoltan?" Magna Mater Consuela inquired. "And you can facilitate her reunion with Isolde."

He bowed so that his long hair brushed the floor. "I should be glad of hosting my cousin again, Mother."

"It is settled, then," Magna Mater Geneviève said, thumping the arm of her chair. "Leave us now. We still have many people to see today."

Erszebet escaped the room gracefully, with Juana's assistance. In the hallway, she carefully mopped her forehead and face with her linen handkerchief as she said to Juana, "As if one Grand Matriarch is not terrifying enough..."

Juana laughed. "Yes, indeed. Well done. Come, we will get you a drink. You deserve one."

---

Author's Note:

Portents! Portents and omens! And terror! Yes, terror!

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")

---

Wonder City has been nominated for the Rose & Bay Crowdfunding Award! Thank you! Now, y'all should go check out all the nominees for fiction, webcomics, art, poetry, patron, and other projects. And VOTE!

And remember to vote for WCS at Top Webfiction!

Case Studies

7:00 am, Wonder City, PA

Pearl Wong woke, as she did many mornings, with the weight of her Irish Setter Scully's longing gaze upon her. Scully's red-furred chin rested on the edge of the bed until she perceived that Pearl was awake, at which point, Scully turned two full spins of excitement, her tail thumping against the bed as it passed by, her long fur waving in the breeze of her speed. The excitement woke the shorthaired brown rescue mutt Mulder, who promptly fell off the bed (as he did most mornings), sprang to his feet, and barked in outrage at the bed for ejecting him.

Pearl sat up and caught up the fuzzy end of her sleeping braid, beginning automatically to take it apart.

"Morning," Pearl's wife Rosemary grumbled into her pillow. When Mulder forgot to stop barking, she bellowed, "Shut it!"

Mulder sat down and grinned at them from the foot of the bed. Scully gazed at him a moment, almost scornfully, then turned her gaze back to Pearl. She, at least, knew from whose hand the dog kibble flowed.

"I swear," Rosemary said, rolling over and sitting up to rub her eyes, "I swear Mulder is sleeping on the couch tonight."

"Liar," Pearl said, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. "Ow!" she said, as her hip popped painfully and audibly.

"You have got to get to the doctor about your arthritis," Rosemary said, returning the buss.

"When you go to the eye doctor for a checkup, my darling pot," Pearl said, using the headboard to lever herself to her feet while her knees crackled a symphony.

"At this rate, neither of us will ever make an appointment, kettle," Rosemary said, scratching her fingers vigorously through her short silver hair.

"We'll manage, somehow," Pearl said, wobbling her way into the bathroom while her joints loosened up.


7:42 am

"Your grandchild is on the phone," Rosemary said from the door.

Mulder and Scully cavorted cheerfully around Pearl's feet in the yard, hopelessly tangling their leashes, as always. "What's up?" she asked as she revolved slowly in order to avoid becoming a Maypole.

"Your son is on the warpath again, I think," Rosemary said. "The story was brief and oh-so-carefree. Something about needing a real career."

"He's feeling insecure, I suppose, with his company 'rightsizing'," Pearl said. "Scully, sit! Come take Mulder, would you? I'll go in."

Rosemary descended into the yard, taking the leashes from Pearl in passing. "I feel bad for that poor kid. Can't you get Jim to lay off some?"

"Do you think Jim listens to his mother the evil lezzzzzbian?" Pearl said, not for the first time. "He thinks the whole thing is my fault anyway." She stepped into the kitchen and picked up the phone -- a landline, another sign they were ancient, Pearl thought.

"What's up, sweetheart?" she said.

"Hi, Grandma." Her grandchild X's carefully androgynous voice was crisp and passionless over the line. "My father just called to rant at me."

"Up early, isn't he?"

"On the train, apparently," X said. "It's one of his days in New York."

"Nice to air the family business on the train," Pearl said, then tightened her mouth. "What did he say?"

"It was just the usual," X said. "Paraphrased, it is his considered opinion that I am wasting my life with this para stuff, that I need to stop playing games and finish my degree so I can get out and start working the wage slave mines like he does."

Pearl sighed. This had been a war since X had turned 13 and come into not only zir para abilities but also zir opinion that zir birth sex was not necessarily the gender zie wanted to perform. Jim had, in fact, blamed Pearl for putting "strange ideas into the child's head" and Jim's wife had stopped speaking to Pearl for two solid (blessed) years. They'd discussed sending X to some sort of school that would "re-educate" zir, but gave up the idea when the Gold Stars showed up on their doorstep to discuss X's future. If the Gold Stars had gotten a tip from a certain therapist for paras, that was neither here nor there. "Honey, you know he's doing it because he's worried about his own job. It's all projection."

X echoed her sigh. "I know. And I tell myself these things. Somehow, it makes it better if you say them, though."

"Come over for dinner," Pearl said. "Rosemary is planning to make that casserole you like so much."

"Really?" X said.

"Really?" Rosemary mouthed silently from the doorway. Pearl flapped a hand at her.

"Really," Pearl said. "Come on, sweetheart. It's been a few weeks since we saw you." When X hesitated, she added, "Bring Madame if you like."

X said, "I'll be there around 6," and made no further mention of Madame, so neither did Pearl. That was a complicated relationship Pearl didn't want to touch.

"We'll look forward to it," Pearl said, and they hung up. She looked at Rosemary. "Zie sounds so down, poor baby. I just thought..."

"I'll put the soybeans on to soak," Rosemary said with a little smile. "You've got a couple of new clients coming in this morning, right?"

"Oh!" Pearl said. "Right!" She hurried off to her office.


9:14 am

"The thing is," Robert said, "the thing is, you see, I mean, you can see that my para power is flying, right? There on my para reg card."

Pearl didn't glance at her copy of his card but kept her gaze fixed steadily on the light-skinned young man. He wasn't spandex team material -- too angular of body and face, all nose, chin, and elbows. He was dressed in a brown blazer over a blue oxford shirt and khaki trousers, the perfect IT middle manager look. But he was wringing his long knobby hands as he spoke. "I saw that you can fly, yes," she said.

"Well, the thing is," he said again, "is that I'm afraid of heights." He winced, clearly anticipating derision of some sort.

"That sounds like a very difficult thing to deal with," Pearl said, sincerely feeling that it must be difficult as hell.

He glanced at her face, and she willed her expression concerned and friendly. Then he looked back at his knotted hands. "I've been afraid of heights since I was a kid. And I didn't get my power until I was... I didn't know I had my power till I was 16." He swung his hands down between his knees in frustration. "Everyone tells me, 'Oh, you'll love it once you do it. Oh, I wish I had your power, I've always wanted to fly.' I tell them I'd be glad to give it to them, and they just tell me that I haven't tried hard enough."

"What do you feel when you try?" Pearl said, trying not to be distracted by the constant motion of his hands.

His shoulders hunched. "Like I'm going to die," he said. "I get up too high and I start thinking, 'What if my power just stopped working? What if I started to fall and couldn't concentrate enough to fly to save myself?' And I'm sure I'm going to fall at any moment, and I get dizzy looking at the ground. Once I threw up." He ran his hands through his thinning brown hair.

Pearl said, "What do you want out of coming to me?"

Robert sighed, despairingly. "I told my wife I wanted to learn how to fly." He looked from side to side furtively, as if his wife might be hiding behind the aspidistra. "But I really want to learn how not to care that I can't fly."


10:33 am

Pearl was sitting, making notes, when Rosemary stuck her head in. "Your son is on the phone."

Pearl put her head down on her desk very gently and started to laugh. "Oh, this is going to be a family sort of day, isn't it?" This started Mulder barking from another room.

"Just think how much easier it would be for them to get hold of you if you actually carried your cell phone," Rosemary said.

"Tell him I'm working," Pearl said, sitting up and picking her pen back up. "I'll call him this evening. Late. Mulder, shut up!"

Rosemary mimed taking notes on a handheld pad, striking a feminine pose with her knees together as if she were wearing a narrow skirt. It looked very odd on her square, broad-shouldered, butch frame. "Yes, ma'am. And would you like coffee, ma'am?"

It made Pearl giggle to recall that actually, Rosemary had been a secretary and had worn those outfits. "Sweet and blonde, just like you ain't, sugar."

"Ma'am!" Rosemary said, clutching at her bosom. "Keep that up and I'll call Human Resources on you!" She turned and marched out, tossing her head as she went.

Pearl put her head back down and laughed some more.


11:07 am

The young Asian woman in the chair opposite Pearl was tired-eyed and silent. She sat with her shoulders hunched and her hands clenched together on her lap, her smooth black hair caught back in an untidy ponytail.

Pearl let the silence rest for a few moments; they'd done the initial introductions professionally enough. Now it was in her new client's court.

"I got your name from the union," Tala said finally. "I came to you because you were the only Asian on the list of therapists."

Pearl nodded. "That's how I get some of my clients."

"I work for...--" Tala caught herself, choked a little, then went on, "-- worked for Dr. Marine. Have you heard of her?"

Pearl sorted back through her memory, and vaguely recalled the name belonging to one of the so-called mad scientists who was one of the sorts that straddled the line between hero and villain. There was something else that wasn't quite coming back... "Yes, I've heard of her."

"You may remember that she committed suicide two months ago," Tala said, drawing her ponytail over her shoulder and worrying the ends.

Memory dawned, and Pearl said, "Yes, yes, I do remember that news article." It had been, according to her letters sent to every major media outlet in the world, motivated almost entirely by making a political statement. She had wanted to echo the self-immolations of Buddhist monks, apparently, only more... spectacular.

"She was... I mean... I had to..." Tala twisted the end of her ponytail around and around her index finger. "I don't know how to say this."

"Take your time," Pearl said, watching the young woman with a studied air of serenity.

"I was her assistant," Tala said finally, brown eyes bleak. "Her lead assistant. I... helped her build that machine."

"The one that...?"

Tala nodded wordlessly.

Pearl grimaced in sympathy. "That must be a terribly hard thing to deal with."

"I didn't know," Tala said, in a despair somewhere beyond tears. Her hands dropped into her lap, her shoulders collapsed in on her. "I didn't know," she whispered.

"Don't you think that was more her doing than yours?" Pearl said, trying for eye contact.

"Shouldn't I have guessed? Or something?" Tala said. "She had me building it in pieces, in components. She told me they were for some new 'great invention'. It would solve all the world's problems. When you work for these people, you learn to just nod and say, 'Yes, Doctor,' but you never think they'll..." She pressed the heel of her hand to her mouth to stifled whatever she was about to say.

"You never think they'll... what?" Pearl echoed.

"You never think they'll actually die," Tala said, staring down at the floor. "Lab accidents, I expect them, everyone talks about the ones that blow themselves up by accident. But no one... no one talks about the ones that do it on purpose."

Pearl nodded. "It's more common than you think, because no one talks about it. And your situation... it's more common than you might think too."

Tala looked up hopefully. "Do you... could I talk to someone else like me? Do you think?"

"Yes," Pearl said. "Definitely. I'll get those contacts for you. Let's talk right now about how you're feeling about all this."



12:20 pm

Pearl reclined on the couch with an icepack on her head.

"Tough one?" Rosemary said from the doorway of the living room.

"God, yes," Pearl muttered. "It's a day of tough ones so far, with no end in sight."

"I'm going downtown for a bit," Rosemary said, walking in and bending down to kiss Pearl. "Marilyn wants my opinion on a new case and is willing to pay my consulting fees, so it must be a big one."

Pearl smiled and peeked out from under the icepack. "Well, you be careful. Dodge alien spaceships and random god wannabes, okay?"

"You know me," Rosemary said with a wink. "Caution is my spandex name."

After the front door clicked shut, Pearl meditated on the issue of her son and grandchild. X was an adult, of course, and Jim had no means of affecting zir life except by guilt and haranguing. Jim's wife was especially good at the haranguing... when she wasn't out golfing or drinking with her colleagues in the sales and marketing department at Wondera Pharma. Jim was on the verge of being laid off his job, which had had him traveling from Wonder City to either Philadelphia or New York more days of the month than not for the last couple of years. Things were not, Pearl suspected, hunky-dory between the two of them, especially since X had come out.

Scully's cold nose poked into Pearl's ear and snuffled there curiously. Pearl jumped upright with a, "Yaagh!" that only made Scully thump her tail on the floor and Mulder start barking and bounding around the room.

The eternal issue of therapists and superheroes alike, Pearl thought, getting up and taking the dogs outside. We want to save everyone. But no one can be saved without their permission.

There, Mulder ran around and around the yard, staring at the sky in the eternally baffled way that won him his name. Pearl said, aloud, "The truth is out there, right?"

Scully gave her an almost offended look.


1:50 pm

"So, last time we met, you were just about to go home to visit your parents," Pearl said. "How did that go?"

The tall, lanky, 30-something white woman in the chair opposite crossed her lovely legs, smoothed her taupe pencil skirt, and gave Pearl a wry smile. "About as well as you might think," Shelley said in a smoky voice.

"I can think of any number of ways it could have gone," Pearl said. "I'm very imaginative that way."

Her client waved a long hand, slim silver bangles clashing at her wrist. "'You're the descendant of a hundred heroes! You're King Arthur and Cu Chulainn and Brian Boru and Robin Hood reborn! You're our son who will save the world! How could you do this to us?'" She sighed. "I mean, what do you say to something like that?"

"What did you say?" Pearl said.

Shelley grimaced. "Exactly what we worked out I could say. 'Mom, Dad, I'm much happier living as a woman than I ever was as a man. I love you and I hope you can come to accept me as your daughter.'" Her voice wavered over some of the words, and she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. "The only thing my mother didn't do was faint. I think she was too angry. My father did a good white boy imitation of... that guy on that show in the 70s. You know, the one that was always claiming he was having a heart attack?"

"Oh, yes, 'Sanford and Son' I think," Pearl said. "Did you have an ER run?"

"Very nearly," Shelley said with a short, humorless laugh, running fingers through her long, wavy blonde hair. "I think they were too afraid I might try to come with them, though."

"How are you doing?" Pearl said, bringing them back to the point of it all.

Shelley's thin smile closed down and she set her square, heroic jaw. "I've got an appointment for the first doctor I need to convince to get the damned surgery."

"You've been putting that off," Pearl said gently. "And you had a lot of reasons for that."

"Daddy dearest put the worst of them to rest," Shelley said. "On the condition that I never darken their door again, he's giving me all the money that I would normally inherit when he dies."

"That's very unkind," Pearl said. "How does that make you feel?"

"Fucking furious," Shelley said, crumpling the tissue in her fist. "It makes me want to get it all in small bills so I can throw every one of them in his face."

"Anything else?" Pearl said, cocking her head slightly.

Shelley's shoulders slumped, and she pressed the tissue to her mouth to stifle a sob. "Like I'm dying inside."


3:00 pm

The house landline was ringing when she got back in from giving the dogs their afternoon walk. This inspired Mulder to howl dissonantly along with the electronic ring. Scully sat down and stared at him as if he was an interesting new species and she was contemplating writing a paper on him.

Pearl glanced at the caller ID box, hesitated for a moment over her son's number, then picked up the phone.

"Hello?"

"I thought I was going to have to leave another message," Jim said testily.

"Good afternoon to you too," Pearl said. "How are you?"

"Out of a damn job," he said. "I got my walking papers today."

"Oh, Jim, I'm so sorry," Pearl said. She was, though at least that worry was over. Given what some of her clients said, the anticipation of a layoff was often much, much worse than actually getting the news.

He sighed, mostly exasperated. She could hear street noises in the background. "Well, I knew I wasn't long for the company. The new manager had made that clear enough. Look, Mom, that's not what I'm calling about. I want you to talk sense into Kristine."

Pearl said warily, "What about?" Though she knew, of course.

"She needs to stop playing around," he said. "It was all right when she was a teenager, but she's never going to amount to anything hanging out with that old con artist. She's got to finish college! She's got to wake up and smell the coffee!"

"And you think that any amount of talking is going to convince anyone of anything they may not be ready to hear?" Pearl said.

"Stop it with the therapy voice, Mom," he snapped. "I mean it. She needs to learn to dress professionally..."

"By which you mean 'like a woman'," Pearl said, trying to keep the boredom out of her voice.

"Yes, like a woman!" he said. "Because that's what she is!"

"No, Jim," Pearl said gently. "Your child is whatever she, he, or zie chooses to be. Not what you decide is right."

"She's can't go on like this!" he shouted. After a brief, embarrassed pause, he added in a lower voice, "She's barely para at all, but somehow believes she's some sort of superhero. When that old bitch who brainwashed her finally kicks off, she's going to be homeless, broke, and hungry."

"Look, Jim," Pearl said. "I don't have time for this debate again. I think you and Lucille need to decide whether you want to have a child or you want to have had a daughter. Because Kris is not going to keep playing this game with you. Zie is an adult, and has, surprise, surprise, life plans and even financial security well in hand, with people who accept zir for who zie is. Given how little acceptance you've extended to me and Rosemary, I'm not particularly surprised by your reaction to Kris." She bit her tongue. That last was unworthy of her. But it was useless to deny it.

He said, "She can't divorce her parents. I mean, I couldn't just drop you because I think your lifestyle is atrocious, no matter how much I wanted to."

"No, Jim," Pearl said, more gently. "You couldn't divorce your mother. But Kris? May just decide that life is saner and more pleasant without you in it. And from what I've seen and heard, I couldn't argue with zir at all."

He was silent. She heard the traffic in the background again. Then he said, "You really think that... she'd cut us out of her life?"

Pearl restrained a sigh. "No, Jim. I think zie might cut you out of zir life if you don't start accepting zir life on zir terms."

"Those are stupid words," he muttered.

"And you're being a stupid man," she snapped, losing all patience. "Now look, I have to go because --" she bit down on the petty urge to say unlike you I have a job "-- I have a client coming in. You think about your life, James Wong, and for once in your life, think about who and what you really want in it." And she hung up.

Mulder and Scully were seated side-by-side, staring up at her with big, soft, brown eyes, tails thumping tentatively. She crouched down and put an arm around each of them, pressing her face into Scully's red shoulder. "How did I raise that child?" she said. "How?"


4:16 pm

"Don wants a divorce," Melinda said in a flat, exhausted voice.

Pearl managed to restrain her sigh. She'd been expecting this for months. "I'm so sorry, Melinda. That sounds very painful."

Melinda, a curvy biracial woman with pale brown skin and corkscrew curls, pressed her fingertips to the center of her forehead. "He says no matter how much I say I'll try, I never spent any time with him. Or the kids, he always adds as an afterthought. He says I take care of other people more than my own family."

"He's said all this before," Pearl said.

"I know, I know," Melinda said. "But what am I supposed to do? I didn't ask those... those people from the future to come back and reengineer my body like this when I was 35. I didn't ask to automatically teleport wherever someone the future people think is important is in danger. I hate this life! I hate what they did to me! They didn't even ask. And what am I supposed to do when I'm already there, let them die?"

"Of course not," Pearl said. "You have to do what you feel is the right thing."

"Exactly!" Melinda pressed the heels of her hands into her temples. "He wants me to move out. He wants to keep the house, for the kids, he says, and he wants the kids." She turned despairing hazel eyes on Pearl. "He says that if I don't fight for the kids, he'll let me have visitation and all, but if I do, he'll push for supervised visitation only. And that's one step to losing them entirely." She bit her lip as tears rolled down her cheeks.

Pearl leaned over and pushed the tissue box into reach. Melinda took one and wiped her eyes and nose. She whispered, "I don't want to lose them. Oh, Pearl, I don't want to lose them at all. Or Don. I want everything to go back the way it was before."

Pearl said, "Did you try asking them?"

"You know I have that 'emergency radio' thing in my head, right? Beam across time and space? So I ask them every night," Melinda said, the tears coming faster and harder, her next inhalation shaking her whole body with the sobbing catches in her throat. "Every. Damn. Night. I ask them to take it away, to give it to someone else, to give me my life back." She let out an incoherent sound of pain. "They kept saying no. And last night, they didn't answer at all."


5:47 pm

Rosemary handed Pearl a cup of lavender tea and a square of dark chocolate. "You look like you need that right about now," she said.

Pearl somehow wrangled the cup to her lips over the heads of the interested dogs curled up in her lap (and spilling over onto the rest of the sofa). "I look that bad, huh?"

"Let's just say that I woke up with a sexygenarian this morning and came home to an octagenarian." Rosemary slid away into the kitchen.

"I am wounded to the quick, you mean old woman," Pearl said, popping the chocolate into her mouth to get it away from the long pink tongue that snaked "sneakily" out of Mulder's muzzle.

"Vicious, that's me," Rosemary said, making noises that included opening and shutting the oven. Then she came back and produced a rawhide chew for each animal, and they heartlessly abandoned Pearl with eager barks and whines. Rosemary took advantage of the newly freed sofa space and settled in next to Pearl, putting an arm around her and pulling her close.

They sat together quietly and watched Scully make off with her chew to one of her very secret hiding places, while Mulder took his over to a floor lamp. He set the chew on the floor and carefully pawed the electrical cord over it. Scully returned and sat to watch him fiddle with the electrical cord, pushing it one way with his nose and the other with his paw. Finally, he sat back, barked sharply to declare his satisfaction, and trotted proudly away into the kitchen.

Scully glanced over her shoulder at her humans with the look of someone who had been reminded of her lottery winnings, then went, picked up Mulder's chewtoy, and took it away to her hiding place as well.

The doorbell rang. Pearl pecked Rosemary on the cheek and got to her feet, setting the remains of her tea on the side table. "Tell me I don't really look ancient," she said to her wife.

Rosemary smiled up at her in that rakish way that had made Pearl's heart turn over when they first met. "You're still the most beautiful woman in the world."

"Even though I'm a grandma?" Pearl said.

"You just keep getting more beautiful," Rosemary said, reaching out to stroke her hand. "Now go be a grandma or I'm'a take you to bed, woman."

Pearl was still laughing when she opened the door to X, who was wearing a lavender silk shirt, sharply tailored black jacket, and black trousers. Zie was also holding a bottle of wine that zie pressed into Pearl's hands before hugging zir grandmother. "I had a premonition we'd want that. See, my power is useful sometimes isn't it?"

"Come on in, you," Pearl said, hugging X tighter. "We'll help you get a head start on... what was it he said last time? Being a drunk in the gutter, right? All for one and one for all in this family."

Scully barked once in agreement.

---

From the Author:
Apparently, April comes later in the year than anyone thought.

Seriously, I'm sorry for all the delays, but finally, I give you the third of the four promised Interludes. The fourth IS in progress, and I hope that I will be posting it as a short series in January or possibly in February, which is when I expect Volume 2 to reach its conclusion.

No More Yielding But a Dream

Nereid had a terrible time getting to sleep.

She tossed and turned. She got up to pee and got up to drink water and got up to pee again, all with having to trot down the dimly-lit and echoing hall to the big dorm bathroom of the mostly-empty New Mexico compound dorm.

She rearranged the sandpaper sheets. She fetched a blanket. She tossed the blanket off. She fluffed her pillow. She got up and jogged in place for a while. She thought about going and knocking on Peacenik's door and making him exhaust her even more with drills and exercises and practice.

It took her until nearly 2 am to sleep, and when she did, she was surprised out of a dream of interminable train rides by a large, stocky, bay-colored, feather-hocked centaur. Lucid's face peered down at her from a great height.

"Hey," Lucid said. "You okay? It was a stone cold bitch getting in here."

"I think," Nereid said vaguely, "that I had trouble sleeping."

Lucid smiled. "A lot of people have that problem when they're anticipating me showing up." She shrugged, a mountain of woman and horse. "I suppose it's a natural response to the idea of someone barging into your dreams."

Nereid blinked and fought to clear her head of dream-fog and the driving desire to find her train ticket. "Thank you for coming for me," she said.

"No problem," Lucid said. "Want a hand up?"

"Up?" Nereid said. She was standing, and Lucid was still looming over her.

"Up here," X said, peering out from behind Lucid's shoulder. "It's been a very entertaining ride so far."

"Oh," Nereid said, "sure."

Lucid effortlessly hoisted Nereid onto the broad black horse-back, and Nereid settled in behind X, holding onto X's narrow shoulders in the crisp emerald-green suit jacket. "Okay back there?" Lucid said.

"Yeah," they said in chorus.

"Right," Lucid said, and Nereid could feel the massive muscles bunch and move beneath her. X was hot to the touch in front of her. Glimpses of things whipped past as Lucid galloped along: slices of lemon that dripped juice most suggestively, winged people who beat their wings but couldn't get off the ground, and skies like warehouse ceilings. They dazzled Nereid's mind and clouded her ears and made her dizzy. She closed her eyes and pressed her face into the smooth wool of X's shoulder.

It was hard to judge time on this wavelength. It seemed forever and was only a blink, and then Nereid was standing in the party, rubbing her eyes and smelling the good smells of the buffet table.

"Try eating something," Lucid, now human, said kindly, and stepped away into the party.

"I expect it would help," X said. "Are you all right?"

"I guess," Nereid said, looking at the long table and its mostly tasty-looking contents. "I guess I'll have some of those Swedish meatballs." X patted her on the shoulder, brow creased in a worried frown. Nereid smiled at X. "I'll be all right. I expect you're better at managing things like this, being all mystical and stuff."

"Or something," X said, straightening the black string tie with a grimace. "I'm going to go talk to the musicians, okay?"

Nereid nodded and turned to the table.

"Hi," a slender bearded man said from across the table. "You're back, huh?"

"Hm?" Nereid said, struggling against her numb fingers to get some of the meatballs onto her little plate. "Yes, I suppose so."

"I'm Dave," he said. "Lucid's husband."

Nereid blinked at him owlishly, and then her reason for being here rushed back to her. "Oh! Hi! Yes, I remember you. You were very nice to me."

"Thanks," he said. "Glad you came back."

"Oh," she said. "Thanks. I, um, came back because I'm looking for someone."

"Oh?" he said, helping himself to cheese and crackers and some kind of turnovers.

"Yeah, um, my friend, the one who brought me here the first time..."

"Oh, Sophie!" he said with a grin. "I thought you were close to her in meatspace." When she just stared at him, he said, "Real space? Like, you room together or something?"

"Oh, no!" she said. "We don't room together. We're, um, on the same team. Superhero team. And she's, uh, unconscious. In a coma."

Dave gave her a crooked smile. "So you hoped she was here while checked out of her body?"

"Yeah," Nereid said. "Kinda. Have you seen her?"

Dave popped a tiny turnover into his mouth to chew on while he thought. "We did see her a couple weeks ago," he said finally, then pointed at her plate. "You should eat up. It'll help you feel more grounded."

Nereid speared a meatball with a toothpick and put it in her mouth. The taste exploded -- sweet and savory and hot and acid -- and he was right, it did make her feel more present. She nodded at him.

"She came through," he went on. "Kind of... drifting. Not really paying much attention. When she comes, we almost always jam with her, but she didn't even stop to talk. I figured she was doing something important, so I just kept on keepin' on, you know? But now I'm thinking about it, it was kind of weird."

"That's great!" Nereid said, then covered her mouth. "I mean, it's not great that she didn't talk to anyone, but it's great that you saw her. That means she did come through here and she's not..." She stopped abruptly, and looked down at her plate.

"Not dead?" he said gently. "Yeah, dead people don't tend to come here. It's all right. Maybe if you ask around, you'll find someone who saw her leave."

"Thanks," Nereid said earnestly. "Really."

"Good luck," he said, heading back toward the musicians' corner.

Nereid, pausing now and then to take a bite of food from her plate and remind herself why she was there, started to make her way through the crowd. She spotted X, who was deep in conversation with a pretty young man and a small blue dragon (who looked a little familiar, though Nereid couldn't recall why), and started to forge her way in that direction.

The young man was Asian, and he was wearing a little white hat, a bra, a half-slip, fishnets, and heels. He was clutching a white purse and seemed acutely uncomfortable. He blushed furiously when he saw her looking at him, but he managed a sheepish smile, even as he adjusted his bra strap. "Janet, from Rocky Horror," he said. "It was even more embarrassing in the original dream."

X turned toward her when the young man spoke. "This person," X said, indicating the blue dragon, who had feathered wings and an extremely intelligent look in its eyes, "says that zie saw Sophie leaving the party a few weeks ago. What door did she take again?"

"That one there," the dragon said, inclining its head toward a very plain door. After a moment of study, Nereid realized it was a very plain door... made of gold. "I understand that direction is quite doomful, though."

"Oh?" X said. "Why?"

The dragon looked (Nereid thought) like it was considering how to respond for a long moment, then said, "I am told the door leads to a plane of existence that is... capricious and constructed of illusion."

Nereid glanced at X's face, which was (Nereid thought) a perfect example of what people refer to when they say that someone's face is "a study." "What?" she said to X.

"Thank you very much, o Zi Ri," X said (or Nereid thought X said). "That information is very helpful. I hope I'll be able to give you good news when I see you again."

The dragon (whose name, Nereid guessed, might be Zi Ri?) made a casual gesture of (Nereid thought) farewell, and turned to the pretty young man. X, meanwhile, turned to Nereid. "We're in trouble," X said.

"Why?" Nereid said. "I mean, do you know where she went?"

"I do," X said. "Or I think I do. And I think that, when you get back from New Mexico, we need to talk to the Equestrian."

"Why?" Nereid said.

"Because I think that door," X said in what Nereid thought might be a doomful voice, "leads to Faerie."

---

From the Author:
A reminder: 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 -- how I dress your favorite character funny, situations you'd like to see more of, discussions of whether the Canis family are obligate carnivores, whatever. :) 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 some amazing work of you wonderful folks, I get more comments than that, I will come up with some even better reward.

The arm is much improved and I have moved to rebuilding my muscles as well as increasing my range of motion.

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Nice Work If You Can Keep It

Nereid finally found Wire alone in the workout room. It was dinner time, and the rest of the Young Cosmics were, presumably, off doing other things. Wire was in a t-shirt and shorts, and rather than working out, she was cleaning the room. A mop and bucket of grey water stood in one corner, and the wood of the floor still shone wetly in a few places. Nereid watched her as she bent over one of the machines with a rag and a bottle of cleaner.

Finally, Wire straightened up, flipped the blue forelock out of her face, and looked at Nereid with an intense hatred that made Nereid back up a step. Wire held Nereid in her gaze like an irritated cobra for a few long moments, then said, "What do you want?"

Nereid cleared her throat and blinked. "I wanted to talk," she said, and cursed her voice for starting out so squeaky.

"About what?" Wire said, still not looking away.

Nereid fiddled with the cuff of her uniform and forced herself to keep looking at Wire. "Brainchild."

Wire looked away first, a small victory for Nereid. "What about her?" Wire said, her voice gone dull.

"I didn't know that... you and she hadn't, you know, talked." Nereid bit her lip. Ivy had told her to keep the pleading and apology out of her voice.

"Would it have really made any difference?" Wire said, polishing the chrome on the elliptical. She sounded very tired.

Nereid straightened her spine. "I don't know. I would like to think that it would have. To me, I mean."

Wire gave her an opaque look. "At least you're trying not to lie."

Nereid kept herself from rolling her eyes. "I also wanted to apologize for the way you found out."

Wire waved the rag. "That wasn't your fault. That was Sophie's. And mine. And... well, thanks, anyway."

A silence fell and dragged on for a few moments as Wire sprayed the bench press bench and wiped it down.

Nereid cleared her throat again. "Well, that's what I wanted to say. So I'll stop bugging you." She turned to leave.

"Nereid," Wire said quietly.

Nereid looked back. "Yes?"

"Your provisional membership period is up in January."

"I know."

"Start packing now."

Nereid felt the shock like the too-hard punch to the gut Wire had "accidentally" given her in training a few days ago. "What?"

Wire smiled, a twisted little smile. "The team's already met and sent our recommendation to our sponsor."

"But I never got my review or anything," Nereid protested. "You didn't tell me you were meeting." Nothing she said altered that strange smile on Wire's face. "It's in the bylaws!"

Wire spread her hands as if to indicate that she was helpless in this matter. "We didn't think the review would be helpful since you are, after all, useless." She turned her back on Nereid. "Later."

Nereid staggered out into the hall and walked blindly through the complex for a while, trying desperately not to cry. Simon had been right. Simon had been right.

She collided with X, who was just coming around a corner. X caught and steadied her with a, "Whoa!"

"I'm so sorry!" Nereid said, blushing fiercely as soon as she realized who held her by the shoulders because it was impossible not to remember Sophie's, Are you planning to fuck X?

"It's all right," X said. Today, X was wearing a burgundy velvet tailcoat over a black shirt and trousers, with knee-high black boots. After a moment, X released Nereid and took a step back, surreptitiously wiping a hand over a trouser leg. "You okay?"

Nereid realized that water had soaked through her shirt in places. She raised a hand and watched as water dripped off her fingertips. "I... I'm sorry. Did I get it on you? I'm sorry."

"You're upset." X said it without the question mark.

Nereid shook her head, trying not to shake violently enough to scatter the water she could feel running down her scalp. "It's okay. It's just, you know, Young Cosmics stuff."

X examined her for a long moment, then appeared to decide to let it go. "I wanted to talk to you anyway."

"You did?" Nereid met X's gaze for the first time, and realized that X looked worried. Really worried.

X nodded and glanced around. "Look, I can't say much, and I know you really can't do much about it, but... keep an eye on Sophie for the next few weeks, okay?"

Nereid nodded slowly.

X shrugged. "It's not much, I don't have any details, but there's something... anyway. Just, you know, be there for her?"

"If she'll let me," Nereid said, giving a shaky smile, aimlessly trying to wring out the front of her shirt.

X returned the smile. "If she'll let you." X started to pat Nereid on the shoulder, thought better of it, and gave Nereid a jaunty little salute instead. "I'm off then."

As X went into the entryway of the Young Cosmics building, X produced a burgundy circle from inside the coat and, with a flick of the wrist, expanded it into a top hat. X donned it on the way out. Nereid shook her head and half-smiled, then turned soddenly toward the room that wouldn't be hers for much longer.




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Nothing But Bonfires

It was an average little box made of ticky-tacky. The split-level house was brick from ground to midway up the front wall, where light grey shingles took over. There were overlarge azaleas planted in a row along the front of the house, and a few maple trees in the front yard. The side door gave onto the short driveway, where two small, battered compact cars of nondescript colors huddled together, as if for warmth. The front door was bright green with a polished brass lion-headed knocker.

Ira, in an ancient, rumpled, and oversized grey suit, walked up the three concrete steps slowly. He then adjusted his dark blue necktie (adorned in a small and tasteful way with his white double-"M" logo), cleared his throat, and used the doorknocker.

There was a pause, and the green door was opened by a slender young Asian person of indeterminate gender wearing a black turtleneck and black jeans. This person stepped aside for Ira, saying (in a voice that did not help determine gender at all), "Come on in, Mr. Metropolitan. Her nibs is waiting downstairs in the Consultation Room."

"Thank you," Ira said, stepping in and sitting on the white wooden bench set to one side of the door so he could remove his street shoes before treading on the thick white carpeting. "And how are you these days, X?"

"I suppose Madame would say, 'Can't complain,'" X said, shutting and deadbolting the door, closing out the neighborhood noises, "but she also says that I can always find something to complain about."

Ira smiled up into the dour young face as his feet sought the slippers tucked under the bench. "Well, as long as you can complain, you're alive, right?"

There might have been a quirk at one corner of the beautifully-shaped mouth. "You're right there, Mr. M." X knelt, pulled the slippers out, and helped Ira put them on. "There we go. All set?"

Ira stood up and shook his trouser legs so they dropped back into place. Then he followed X down the stairs.

At the bottom of the dozen steps, the carpet changed to a textured pale blue. X knocked at the heavy wooden door, then turned the brass knob and pushed it open, letting a few strains of soft New Age music spill out.

Ira had been in Madame Destiny's Consultation Room only a couple of times before. When she'd first entered the business, she'd been quite young and lovely, and thought that for anyone to take her seriously, she had to put on "mysterious gypsy" airs. She'd worn a lot of makeup, heavy jewelry, and flowing black ankle-length dresses with plunging necklines. Likewise, her Consultation Room had been dimly lit, full of heavy, dark draperies and thick with incense. Nowadays, though, Madame was fond of bright colors and lights one could see by. As her wardrobe had grown to admit the poppy-colored, tea-length dress she currently wore, her Consultation Room had sprouted a gas log fireplace, comfortable overstuffed chairs, and soothing peach walls, as well as incandescent lighting softened by Tiffany lampshades. The tea table still sported her crystal ball on its ornate brass stand for old times' sake.

"Ira!" Madame said, rising from her dark blue chair and depositing an annoyed tortoiseshell cat onto the coffee table. As she embraced Ira to her ample bosom, he reflected that it had always been so ample, just, in recent years, the rest of her figure had caught up with it. "It's been a long time, dear."

"I saw you the other day at Ebb and Flo's," Ira protested upon being released.

"I meant that it's been a long time since you came visiting," she said. "Have a seat," she added, waving at a matching chair, complete with cat.

Ira peered down at the husky tabby cat and poked at the beast with an inquisitive finger. It opened one baleful yellow eye and growled.

"Don't pay attention to Ahasuerus," Madame said, busying herself with the makings for tea. "He won't bite or scratch. Just give him a nudge."

Contrary to Madame's disclaimer, Ahasuerus did take a desultory swipe at Ira's offending hand, but removed himself from the chair. He trotted across the room, tail high and kinked to one side to indicate his ire.

Madame hummed as she poured out tea and added sugar or milk as necessary. She brought the silver platter over to the coffee table and handed Ira his cup and saucer.

"Thank you," Ira said.

"So," Madame said, flumphing into her chair, "how can I help you, Ira?" She picked up her own cup and saucer and took an experimental sip.

He opened his mouth to protest that he was just visiting, but then he recognized the set to Madame's jaw as her "working" persona. So he shut his mouth and tried to think how to put it.

Madame let him think in peace for a minute or so, then said, "You've never come to me to ask about Josh."

He looked up at her from his contemplation of the tea, then dropped his gaze again. "I was afraid to. You know. If I asked you, I know you'd be... right. About whatever."

Madame Destiny sipped her tea.

"But I..." Ira set his tea down carefully on the table. "I think I need to hear it now."

Madame's eyebrows rose. "Is this about the Gold Stars thing?"

Ira covered his face with one hand. "Has everyone heard about that?"

Madame smiled as kindly as she could, which was considerably so. "X is friends with Brainchild of the Young Cosmics, and you know she's the ward of the Ultimate, who's currently in the Gold Stars. Besides, you know gossip spreads like wildfire in the spandex community."

Ira wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, telling himself that it really was terrible to get old and have such runny eyes. "Yes, it always has."

"You want to know if you imagined Josh talking to you," Madame said.

Ira nodded.

Madame sighed and set her own cup down. "Ira, you know that the Oracle isn't always right. You have to remember that."

Ira nodded again.

Madame watched him for a long moment, mouth pursed. Then she leaned to one side and pressed a button.

The door opened and X stepped in soundlessly. X walked over to stand just behind and to the left of Madame's chair.

Ira looked up, then shot an interrogative glance at Madame.

She smiled. "I'm not as young as I once was. Just to be safe, X is my spotter. After all, when I can't do the job any more, it becomes X's burden."

Ira gave the young person a tentative smile. X nodded and quirked a half-smile at him.

Madame stretched, cracked her knuckles, and said, "All right, Ira, three questions. Make certain they're about the things uppermost in your mind. Otherwise, answers may be garbled."

Ira nodded, frowned, and looked into his tea again.

A tiny noise drew his attention. Madame was sitting bolt upright in her chair, graying hair standing out with the static that crackled at its tips. Her eyes glowed electric blue, and her face was altered into a terrible countenance, one full of stern admonition and intense compassion. The light in the room had changed: harsher, sharper, less forgiving, showing all the smallest flaws and sags of Madame's face, the bitterness and anger in the lines of X's mouth, the aging shabbiness of the furniture and carpet.

Ira had forgotten what it was like to see without cataract blurs and halos around everything.

"SPEAK YOUR QUESTION, IRA FELDSTEIN," she said in the familiar, awful, echoing voice of the Oracle.

X nodded to him. Ira took a deep breath and plunged into the deep water.