Turnabout

by Melissa Wong

  “You can have mine,” Sara and Cobalt offered at once.

  “I’m not much for cake,” Sara told Cobalt, sounding almost apologetic. “Well, I mean I like the cake itself, but the frosting is usually too sweet so I just scrape it off.”

  She’s unnatural. Like some kind of lab-created perfect human being!

  “That’s almost criminal! How can you like cake but not—the frosting is the best part!” Melissa exclaimed. “What’s the point of cake without frosting?”

  Sara shrugged, and Ryan pointed at the stage that had been set up at one end of the room. “There’s Cretora. And she’s a blonde now. Interesting choice.”

  “She could have kept the pink if she wanted,” Cobalt commented. “It’s trendy.”

  Melissa saw a man with long, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail walk onto the stage and say something to Cretora. “That must be Criatan then.”

  “He looks like he wears sweater vests un-ironically,” Sable muttered.

  “Yeah, and says dumb shit like, ‘Hi Hungry, I’m Dad!’,” Ryan added in a goofy voice.

  Sable laughed, putting her hands over her mouth to keep from being too loud about it.

  “Hello, honored guests!” Christina’s voice rung out over the crowd. Melissa could see now that she was holding a microphone. She raised it again. “My husband and I would like to thank you for being here to celebrate our son’s sixteenth birthday with us!”

  The crowd clapped at that, and Melissa looked at each of the warriors before speaking quietly.

  “Okay, stay on guard. If the trap is going to be sprung, it’s going to happen soon,” she warned. She felt someone slip their hand into hers and give a little squeeze, so she looked over at Cobalt. He nodded, and she squeezed back as her attention turned back to the stage.

  “We all hope you are having a wonderful time, and continue to do so even after cake is served. We have a special announcement to make at that time, so please remain here while you receive your cake. Thank you!”

  The crowd clapped again and AJ began to bounce on his feet as something was wheeled on to the stage on a silver cart. “What’s happening? I can’t see a damn thing!”

  “They brought out a cake,” she told him sullenly. “It looks really small.”

  “It’s probably for show,” Sable said. “I bet they have a ton of sheet cakes in the back they’re cutting up right now, like you do for weddings.”

  “And now we’d like to ask you in joining with us as we sing the birthday song to our guest of honor! Come on out, sweetie!”

  “Is it weird that I can’t wait to find out who it is?” Cobalt asked her as the lights dimmed. The loss of vision made her extremely uncomfortable, and she clenched her fist. This would be the perfect time for them to strike!

  Instead, a dark-haired male came up on stage and blew out the candles as the crowd sang. The lights came back up as they clapped and cheered, and she finally got a good look at him. He seemed familiar, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on why.

  Christopher had the microphone now. “Happy Birthday, Chase Claravon!” he announced, reaching up to clap him on the shoulder.

  Melissa’s head whipped around as she looked at Sara, and she noticed that Sable had done the same. She was just standing there, hands over her mouth, wide-eyed and shaking.

  “So that’s like, nobody then,” AJ declared. “Just some guy.”

  “H-he kissed me...” Sara stammered. “When we were outside.”

  “I’ll fucking kill him!” Ryan growled, lunging toward the stage. Cobalt quickly reached out and grabbed his collar, holding him back.

  “Did he give you any indication at all of who he was?” Sable asked as he struggled to keep Ryan under control. Sara shook her head.

  “Maybe AJ’s right. Maybe he is just some poor guy Criatan and Cretora brainwashed,” Melissa said. “Not an alien at all.”

  “An... alien?” Sara asked, a horrified look on her face. “I-I hadn’t even considered that...”

  “Oh, good going. That’s just what she wants to hear right now!” Sable sighed.

  Melissa stared at the stage, watching as Chase and Christina talked. He stopped, appearing to look out over the crowd as if searching for someone. They locked eyes for a brief moment before he turned away.

  “He knows what he did!” Melissa snapped, “Look at that asshole up there, all... ugh!”

  “Do you think he targeted me?” Sara asked, her hands finally away from her mouth. “Does that mean they know our identities?”

  “Was that the point of all this?” Cobalt grunted, his arms locked around Ryan’s from behind. “It was all just a big announcement to let us know that they know who we really are?”

  “Let go of me, you pink fuck!” Ryan raged, still struggling to break free, “I’ll smash his face in!”

  “I’m gonna smash your face in if you don’t calm the hell down!” Cobalt told him, dodging an attempted headbutt.

  “That can’t be it!” Melissa cried, “The trap can’t be that they lured us here to embarrass Sara! That’s the stupidest—”

  “Now that the cake has been served, we have another announcement,” Christopher interrupted her. He passed the microphone to Christina, who smiled sweetly before speaking.

  “That’s right, Darling! As you all know by now, Sweet Step has been blessed with its very own team of superheros, the Feline Warriors!”

  The crowd cheered and Melissa felt the hair on her neck stand on end.

  “Okay, here we go,” she whispered, getting ready to reach for her medallion.

  “Well, we just want to say that whomever they are, they are doing a fabulous job at keeping the city safe!” The crowd clapped, and she found herself just wishing they’d get on with it—she’d spent most of the night on edge, and she was sick of it!

  “That’s why we’d like to thank them personally tonight... but we can’t because we don’t know who they are.”

  The crowd began to murmur, a few people looking around as if the Feline Warriors would suddenly appear amongst them.

  “We want to fix that,” Christina continued, “And not only can you help, but you’ll receive a reward too! We’re offering two-hundred thousand dollars per name if you can give us the identity of each Feline Warrior. If you can tell us the real names of the whole team, you will earn one million dollars!”

  The crowd lost its mind, and Melissa felt like the floor had been pulled out from beneath her. She turned to find the others looking just as shocked and appalled as she felt. Cobalt released his hold on Ryan, who sounded hollow as he spoke.

  “I’m so glad no one from my family is here tonight,” he said, “Because I know it’s fake, but they don’t and even two-hundred thousand is a ton of money—they’d rat me out in a heartbeat.”

  “So that was their goal. This wasn’t a trap at all,” Sara said solemnly. “It was a declaration of war.”

  “Everything was carefully set up from the beginning—the mansion, the social media—all of it was to validate tonight,” Cobalt agreed. “Now they’ve turned our peers and public into our enemy.”

  “We can’t let them get to us!” Sable declared hotly.

  Melissa shushed her. “Keep it down! There is literally a bounty on our heads now!”

  Out of the corner of her vision she saw Sara trying to discreetly wipe her eyes, and she turned to her.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Well, I mean, you’re obviously not—but is there any way I can help?”

  “No, I think I’m going to find Maria and see if she can take me home early,” Sara said quietly. “I think I’m all partied out for tonight. I’ll see you all later.”

  As she watched her weave slowly though the crowd she heard Ryan sigh heavily.

  “I’d better go with her,” he said. “You know how to reach me if I’m needed.”

  After he took off someone appeared with slices of chocolate cake on a silver platter. Cobalt and AJ each took one, and af
ter a moment of suppressing her rage at the whole night, Melissa reached out and took two. The man looked like he wanted to say something but she stared him down, daring him to speak. In the end he sighed and turned away.

  “This party sucks,” AJ declared around a mouthful of cake as the waiter disappeared into the crowd.

  The large chamber that had earlier been so full of light and sound now stood silent and dark, its emptiness pressing in on Clokua from all sides as he stood at the center of it. Squares of wan light crept slowly across the cold marble floor, allowing him to see a hint of his reflection in its highly polished surface.

  He had thought he understood what feelings were even if he couldn’t process them, but the events of the past few cycles had left him feeling as if the concept were entirely new to him. Of course, there was always fear; he understood that one thanks to the Darvorians seeing fit to leave it intact.

  He was afraid of what Vetrina would do to Tana. Assuming they had as few emotional bonds between them as Tana said they did, the only reason for her to keep her sibling alive was because Vetrina knew he feared her demise. Being afraid of something other than his own safety was a curious change. He had only worked with her for a short while... should he even be able to deviate this much?

  And Sara... that was a whole other mess. He was afraid of what she thought of Chase—of him—after the events of this evening. He was an invader, and Earth had a great many natural resources. It made sense that there would be a team to protect it—even if they were named after a creature that was reportedly so aloof, early humans mistook it for a deity for hundreds of years. He knew for certain that if she were forced to choose between love or duty, she would choose the latter.

  He put a hand to his throat as something inside of him shriveled at the thought. Love? Well, that was the feeling he’d been hoping to experiment with ever since Tana had tried explaining the concept, but from his understanding love was supposed to feel good. This felt... awful.

  He heard the antiquated squeak of door hinges behind him and turned to see Criatan in the doorway, still in his guise of Christopher Claravon.

  “There you are,” he said, walking over to him. He still wasn’t quite used to seeing him take steps, even in human form.

  “Yes, my prince.”

  “Vetrina and Cretora are going over the uncorrupted data you’ve interpreted from when she attacked the local schools. It... turned into an argument, so I slipped out.”

  “I’m surprised Princess Cretora tolerates Vetrina,” he said, adjusting the sleeve of his cloak. “After all, it is insubordination.”

  “I think being in human form for so long is softening her,” he said, the hint of a smile playing around his mouth. “Speaking of which, how did you enjoy your time in human form? I’ll bet it was liberating, not being trapped beneath a cloak all the time.”

  “It was definitely an adjustment,” Clokua responded, turning toward him. “Prince Criatan, may I ask your advice on something?”

  He laughed. “This feels like one of those father-son interactions you see on the television!”

  “I’m just having trouble wrapping my mind around a concept. I tried to research it using the human’s own information network, but it appears to operate on a bias that humans already understand the subject. It’s vexing.”

  “What is it? I can tell something is troubling you.”

  “Why do I feel negatively about what happened tonight?”

  “You shouldn’t. Everything went according to plan.”

  “No, what I mean is...” He found himself playing with his sleeve again. Was he developing a nervous habit as well? “There is a female I found using Vetrina’s data that had a very good chance of being a Feline Warrior.”

  Criatan’s face fell. “You never mentioned anything about it in your reports.”

  “No, I did not wish to say anything until I was absolutely certain.”

  “Clokua,” he sighed, crossing his arms, “Your perfectionism is getting the better of you again.”

  “It’s not that. While you had me practicing my human form, a male human followed me around with one of those camera devices.”

  “Paparazzi,” Criatan nodded. “Because we’re celebrities.”

  “It would have been useful to know that beforehand, because I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to avoid him and ended up sitting down at a table with a few random humans. That was incredibly difficult for me to do, by the way. But imagine my surprise when one of those humans turns out to be the female I was investigating!”

  “What did you do after that?” he asked, clearly intrigued.

  “I began talking with them, using the man as an excuse to linger. I ended up having quite an enjoyable exchange with the one I was investigating.”

  “That was bold of you—the longer you stayed, the more likely it was that you would be discovered if she was a Feline Warrior.”

  “That’s just it though... they’ve only ever seen the real me with this cloak on. But Chase Claravon is an average-looking human male teenager. Well, Sara said I—he—was handsome, so perhaps he is above average?”

  Criatan cocked his head to the side as he continued.

  “Anyway, her profile stated she was intelligent—even by human standards—but I didn’t understand how much so until I conversed with her. There was some kind of... link, I suppose? I don’t know what to call it beyond appreciation, but it’s much more than even that. So when I saw her again at the party tonight, I was eager to speak to her alone and invited her out to that collection of Earthian flora you have outside.”

  “The garden,” he replied, a smile creeping across his face again. “It came with the house.”

  “Correct. We talked at length, and I was very much enjoying her company. But inside Chase, the human body, there was this strange feeling. I worried that I had fallen ill, but it was more pleasant than sickness. It was a warm, spreading sensation, almost like a dull bolt of lightning. Words fail to describe it fully, but the body wanted to do things on its own. Odd compulsions to... touch mouths together.”

  “I thought that was an issue with these things, but I thought maybe mine was broken!” Criatan exclaimed, his eyebrows rising.

  “Human instincts are bizarre!” Clokua shouted. “I had no idea what I was doing but she seemed to enjoy it so I just let the body lead! And none of my blood was in the right place! It was all pooled in—”

  “That happened to me too!” he exclaimed. “These things are horrible, but when Cretora and I did the mouth thing it was the most wonderful, confusing feeling in the galaxy!”

  “It is!” Clokua cried emphatically. Suddenly the reality of what was to come hit him hard. “But the probability of her being our enemy is nearly one-hundred percent with a point-zero-zero-one deviance margin. When she discovered who I was during the cake ceremony, I saw her in the crowd—saw the look on her face. And now I feel... awful.”

  “That is called regret,” Criatan said sadly. “I experienced it myself when I attempted to initiate the mouth thing outside of human form. I don’t think Darvorians or Tronatians work the same way. Kuroniti like you probably don’t have the physiology either.”

  “I need to study human physiology then...” he murmured. Despite Sara’s dismay, he couldn’t stop thinking about touching his mouth to hers again. He wanted to test out Criatan’s theory, to see if Kuroniti could process that kind of interaction—despite knowing that would never happen.

  “From what I heard Vetrina needs you back up on the ship, so you may not get the chance.”

  A chill washed over him, dampening his pleasant reminiscing. “Prince Criatan, how can you trust her?”

  “At first I didn’t,” he said, pausing to shrug, “But everything she’s done since her arrival has only furthered our plans to conquer Earth.”

  “Even causing Tana to run off?”

  “That was unexpected. I trusted Tana too,” he said.

  “Do you believe that she’s simply run away?�
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  “Why? Do you know something that indicates otherwise? Because I want to believe in her—she was the only hired member to stay on after Rydia.”

  “I believe in her,” he said quietly. It was difficult, trying to stoke his suspicions while not telling him directly what had occurred! “I spent a lot of time working with Tana, and that note certainly didn’t sound like her.”

  “Well, we don’t have time to pursue it now,” Criatan sighed. “Right now we need to work on uncovering the identities of the Feline Warriors. Use what you already know to try and locate more—after that’s done we can focus on finding Tana.”

  She may not even be alive by that point! Why wasn’t he becoming suspicious?

  “Yes, my Prince,” Clokua said, bowing to him.

  The door closed behind him, leaving him alone once again in the oppressive room. Criatan was usually more logical than this; it was something he respected about the otherwise meek Tronatian. Being in human form must be getting to him as well.

  There had to be some way he could free Tana before Vetrina disposed of her, but it was difficult to think straight. Thoughts of Sara kept slipping back into his mind, breaking his concentration despite being in his natural form.

  He tried to push them back when an idea began to form, something that seemed very human in nature. Perhaps his time spent as Chase was affecting him more than he’d realized... it was a bit of an eschewment of Vetrina’s original terms, but there was room in her threat for it. She had told him not to say anything to Criatan and Cretora, but she’d never said he couldn’t tell anyone else.

  Chapter 10

  Communication

  Melissa stared at the ceiling, hugging a throw pillow to herself as her mind wandered. So much had happened in the past week—in the past twenty-four hours even—that she hadn’t had time to process it all. Since the house was quiet and she couldn’t focus on her show anyway, she’d turned off the TV and given herself time just to sit and think.

  They’d kissed!

  She and Cobalt Drien had kissed, in formal wear, under the stars—like in a scene from a romance manga.