by R. J. Ross
“Not going to say anything about Adanna’s outfit?” I ask instead of answering.
“I go to work in one every day,” Falconess says with a shrug. “It would be a bit hypocritical to question that sort of thing. That doesn’t mean I don’t think she looks adorable, though. It looks almost exactly like your father’s,” she compliments Adanna.
A bit of pink crosses Adanna’s face. “Kim made it,” she admits.
“Of course, that explains everything–other than Sunny petting your shoulder,” Falconess says, glancing over at Sunny curiously.
“She’s my girlfriend,” Sunny says, “it comes with special privileges!” Adanna rolls her eyes, but doesn’t bother to pull away. I know most of the school doesn’t get the whole Adanna dating Sunny thing, but personally I think it’s adorable.
“Well, shall we head in?” Falconess asks as she sees most of the teachers lining up to enter the school. “I wouldn’t want anyone to be late for first hour.”
“Max isn’t here yet,” Zoe says, looking around curiously. “Oh, wait, there he is–“ she stops as we turn to watch the super villain flying towards us. He has a coffee cup in his hand and is yawning hugely. Sometimes I’m SO tempted to stalk him, I’m sure he’s up to all sorts of interesting things!
He drops down next to Zoe and wraps an arm around her shoulder, only to stop as he bumps into the canon. He jerks back, looking awake all of a sudden as he stares at his girlfriend. When she just looks at him he walks around her, examining her for a long moment. Finally, when we’re sure he’s seen everything, he goes, “Pink?”
“Not a word about the canon?” she asks him dryly.
“Oh, sure, can I get one of those for my birthday?” he asks. “What’s it shoot?”
“Come on, let’s get inside,” Trent says, tugging on my hand. “You know how they get.” I snicker, since he’s got a point. We get in line, but I can’t help but turn and watch as Zoe explains the canon happily to one of the biggest super villains our age. I see Max hide a yawn a few times as they speak, so I glance over at Trent.
“What’s he planning, seriously?” I ask.
“I think he’s branching into baseball,” Trent says. “You know, since we’ve got Kaufman Stadium right next to the Chiefs, and the Royals have been doing really good lately.”
“Ooooh,” I say, cheering up. “That’d be awesome!”
“Just wait until next year, you’ll be pulling hero duty for it, too,” he drawls, gently touching my back to urge me forward in line. I glance up, realizing there’s several feet between us and Sunny and Adanna. Whoops. I head forward, pressing my hand to the panel as soon as we get to it and heading down the steps. It’s time to practice–and if I can impress Falconess I might be able to talk Nico into arranging my debut!
The sight of Carla running around the canyon in a blur has us pausing at the bottom of the steps. “WHO LET CARLA DRINK THEIR COFFEE?!” I hear Vinny bellow at the top of his lungs. The teachers–the ones that are teaching us to be proper capes–look away from him with patently innocent expressions on their faces.
“Not,” Carla says as she passes him, “coffee,” she says as she passes him again. “Chocolate,” swoosh, “covered,” swish, “coffee beans!”
I lose it, almost falling over, I’m laughing so hard.
“You’re all insane,” Keliah mutters, crossing her arms over her chest but following Carla with her eyes every time she passes in front of her.
Trent lets out a sigh and takes that last step, turning and holding out his arms. Carla slams into him, sending him skidding back, and slightly into the earth. She looks up at him when they’re fully stopped, grinning from ear to ear. “I like those things!” she tells him excitedly.
“That’s good, but maybe you shouldn’t eat so many of them,” Trent says, patting her on the head. “At least not all at once,” he adds as she starts to pout.
“Okaaay,” she says, practically vibrating, still.
“Let her go,” Nico says, waving it off. “It’s as good of training as any when she’s like this. But from now on–no coffee or caffeine allowed unsupervised, people, that includes chocolate,” he calls over to the teachers before downing the last of his cup. I know for a fact that he has a ton of coffee on a daily basis, so that’s sort of hypocritical, if you ask me. Then again, he did say “unsupervised,” which, considering that Carla just passed me three times in this huge canyon, might be smart. Four. Five. Yeah, think I’ll stop counting now.
“Well, shall we get to class?” Falconess asks me, still watching Carla run with an amused look on her face. Obviously she isn’t the one guilty of leaving out chocolate covered coffee beans.
“I’ll be supervising today,” Nico says to her, walking over and dropping a hand on my shoulder. “It’ll be like I’m not even there, don’t worry,” he says.
Nico is NEVER “like I’m not even there” unless he REALLY isn’t there. Falconess doesn’t seem to realize that fact as she nods and agrees all too easily. I look from her to him for a moment before walking over to Nico and just looking at him. He gives me a shameless smile and messes up my hair. “See? I’m already unnoticeable,” he tells me.
I snort quite rudely before following Falconess into the gym. She heads to the center, standing there and watching me curiously. “I hear you’ve had a bit of trouble with your second doppelganger,” she says. “We’re going to work on that today. Try and summon her.”
I hesitate. “She’s kind of–“
“She’s you,” Falconess says firmly. “Don’t ever forget it–you might not always agree with parts of yourself, but they’re still parts. Everyone has something about themself that they don’t like, or fear, Emily,” she tells me in a gentler tone. “You can’t live for any time of length without coming upon a part of your personality that you don’t really like–that you try to hide. If you just deny that part, you’re never going to grow stronger.”
I nod, but inwardly I’m thinking of a few people I’m SURE don’t have that problem. Ken and Jeanie just to name a few. Maybe. But now isn’t the time to be thinking of other people–now is the time to try and summon my second doppelganger, who still needs a name. “Ditto 2? Repeat?” I mutter, trying to come up with it. Yes, I’m wasting time.
“Repeat works,” Nico says, making me glance at him. He motions to the area in front of me. “Go on, Emily, you’ve got the upper hand right now, don’t forget it.”
I nod, looking at an empty space in front of me. “Okay, Repeat, come out,” I mutter to myself, picturing my second doppelganger. She looks a lot like me, but the streaks in her hair should have beads–yeah, okay, and let’s put her in a Ramones T-shirt–that’s good, and jeans with the knees torn out–yeah. This works.
She stares at me, then looks down at her clothes. “Ramones?” she asks.
“Hey, Ho, Let’s Go!” I say, trying to be cheerful. A tiny grin pulls at her lips, which she hides quickly. Yeah, she’s me, I think. Obscure punk music knowledge and all. “Hey, um–“ I start out, moving forward.
She looks around, ignoring me as she focuses on Nico and Falconess. “Is she really gone?” she asks. “For good?”
“For now,” Nico says before Falconess can speak. “I’m not going to lie, I did a bit of looking into Skystep–she’s not stable, in any way. You know as well as I do that the more powerful a cape is, the more likely they are to be a bit...”
“Off their rocker,” I finish, looking at him pointedly. “How do you deal with it?” I ask him, getting totally sidetracked.
“I’ve got a lot of hobbies,” he drawls. He keeps his eyes on Repeat. “Are you still intent on your revenge?”
“She KILLED my parents!” she bellows, her hands clenched at her sides. “She took the people I love and then she got me stuck in that house with the sisters–I HATE HER!”
“But you’re not there any–“ Falconess says, only to get shoved away. Ditto appears without my thinking, and tackles Repeat. I jump on the other two, trying to
hold them down.
“Calm down!” Ditto bellows.
“Especially since she’s all the way in Texas,” Nico says.
An image of the picnic table where we’d sat with Vinny pops into my head. I know that it’s in my doppelganger’s minds, too, because we look at each other. I hear Nico curse and move his hand–
Then we’re gone, falling as a group onto the table we’d just pictured. “What the–“ Ditto asks, shoving me off of her and looking around. I look around as well, stupidly.
“We just teleported,” Repeat says. “We’re in Texas.”
“We teleported all the way to TEXAS?” I yelp, jumping to my feet. “We need to go back–“
“I’m going to find Skystep,” Repeat declares, racing away.
“Well, crap,” Ditto mutters.
“Exactly,” I agree as we race after her.
***
“What just happened?” Falconess asks, still staring at the empty spot where Emily had just been.
“She learned how to teleport,” Nico drawls, bringing up his phone and tapping on it. “She’s officially upgraded to potential specialized S class. Thankfully I managed to take down the security field before frying her,” he adds before letting out a sigh. “Go tell the others, I’m going to track her down.”
“Did you know this was going to happen?” Falconess asks.
“I had a feeling it would,” he admits before racing away.
“What happened?” The door bursts open a second after Nico leaves and Trent comes in. “Where’s Emily?” he demands.
“She... apparently learned to teleport,” Falconess says.
“To where?” Trent asks.
“I have no idea. Texas, maybe?”
Trent looks like he’s going to pop a vein. “That IDIOT!” he growls, racing out the door.
***
Now you’re probably wondering if I’m lost–but you’ve got to remember, I grew up in this area. I know exactly where the South Branch Hall is. That’s where Repeat is heading. She’s going to sneak into the private section in the back and find information on where Skystep’s base is. How do I know this? She’s practically screaming her thoughts, they’re so obvious.
“I don’t think we can teleport into a place we’ve never been,” Ditto says as she races alongside me. “She’s going to get us caught–then we’ll get in trouble.”
“You might not have noticed, but we already are,” I grit out as we come to a stop in front of the massive Hall building. The one in Kansas City has a statue of Lady Justice in front of it–the one here has a remake of the Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima–it’s a statue that belongs to the Marine Corps Memorial. How do I know that? My dad used to bring me here to see it. He would look at me and place his hand on my head, grinning proudly. “We might wear capes, honey, but we know who the real heroes are,” he would say every time.
I feel a tear trickle over my cheek at the memory, and wipe it away quickly. Repeat’s already made it to the back of the building while I was distracted. Ditto grabs my arm and drags me around the building, practically running into Repeat. Repeat gives us a dirty look and hauls us both behind a pile of trash and trash cans, hiding.
I half hope that nobody shows up, I think as I crouch and try not to breathe. (This is REAL trash in front of us–and it stinks really bad. That’s why I’m only half hoping–if they come we can move on, if they don’t, we might be standing here way too long.) Unfortunately (or fortunately) a black Hummer pulls up to the wall and it opens wide.
We don’t race in, we just look in, staring at the area inside. There’s a desk, I notice, with no one sitting at it. It’s perfect. The Hummer drives in and the wall closes, but it doesn’t matter. I blink and we’re now crouched behind the desk. Wow... I have GOT to figure out how that works, otherwise I’ll be popping up in strange places with no clue how we got there!
Repeat’s the first to catch on. She looks around, seeing a door half opened. There’s a sign that says, “Control Station” on the door. Before I can react, she disappears and reappears next to it, peeking around the door.
‘She’s totally going to get caught,’ Ditto thinks. I feel myself nodding, watching the doppelganger sneak into the room. I’m not breathing. At any moment the alarms are going to go off–
I hear a grunt inside the room and a loud thump. Wait, what? Repeat sticks her head out the door and waves us in urgently. I look at Ditto, Ditto looks at me.
We run into the room.
CHAPTER NINE
It’s not easy dating a girl like Emily, Trent admits as he races through the town, heading for the highway. It isn’t just because she’s a duplicator–that in itself is a handful of trouble, but there are other problems. Mostly an urge to get jealous, he admits to himself, racing around an old lady in a Cadillac. Emily has the type of personality that draws people to her. They want to protect her because she’s little and scrappy, but that’s HIS job–she’s his partner!
Another problem, he thinks as he jumps over a Volkswagon Beetle, is her ability to get into trouble. It’s like she’s a literal magnet for trouble! People are honking at him, and his superior hearing is driving him insane, so he jumps off of the highway, racing alongside it. This is taking too much time, he thinks. With every second that goes by Emily is alone, unprotected, and right where Skystep can grab her.
Faster, he thinks as he kicks up the speed. He needs to go faster. Even a second of not having protection is a second she could be hurt in–maybe even–he shoves that thought away. That’s not going to happen.
But he has to go faster, he thinks, kicking up the speed even further. There are so many things to avoid though. Trees, poles–he grits his teeth as he almost runs into a streetlight, and jumps, going over it.
Faster. The scenery is blurring past him so fast that it looks like streams of light. So his biggest problems with his girlfriend are her funny, attractive personality and natural propensity for trouble. He slows as he realizes it, his mind echoing with the thought for a few seconds. Oh boo-freaking-hoo, he snarls at himself, not even paying attention to running anymore. Such a sad sack situation, having a cute girlfriend that has a lot of friends--
He hears people cheering, screaming at the top of their lungs, and cars honking wildly. He slows down, twisting his body so he can–wait, what?
The entire highway as slowed to a stop and people are hanging out of their windows, cameras and phones aimed at him. He looks at them blankly until one of the younger kids waves his arms and bellows, “KID!! YOU’RE FLYING!!”
He looks down, staring blankly at the ground several feet below him. He’s actually flying. He almost falls out of the air with his shock, but catches himself. “Thanks,” he calls to the kid in the car, waving slightly before turning and flying.
Emily’s safety is still more important than the thing he’s been waiting YEARS for, he realizes.
It doesn’t keep a slight grin from appearing on his face. (But the bug that hits him in the mouth just might.)
***
I look around the small room, expecting to see something other than what’s in front of me. The walls are covered with screens, each showing a different part of the Hall, the computer chair is still lazily rolling across the floor, finally stopping a few feet away from me. Repeat is glued to the screens, standing over a keyboard as she searches the Hall’s files. There’s a large norm man collapsed on the ground right behind her.
The first thing I do is cross over to him, crouching down and checking his pulse. Thankfully she just knocked him out. ‘Close the door,’ Repeat snaps silently, not even looking at us. Ditto closes the door as silently as possible, locking it. ‘We’ve got to work quickly. Someone’s going to notice me getting into the files at any moment.’
I see her fingers racing over the keyboard. I never realized I could type that quickly, I think a bit blankly. Okay, that’s not the thing I should be focusing on. What I need to focus on is the fact that I–me and my Doppelgangers–are doing somethi
ng so stupid that it’ll probably get us all tossed into Cape Cells for the rest of our lives.
Dear God, if you’re listening, I am SO not the one to blame for this–Repeat is! Sure, she’s PART of me, but not the biggest part! Or even the part I like best, right? I definitely prefer Ditto to Repeat–but anyway, if you can help us get out of this without being killed or whatever, I swear I’ll not fall asleep in church... next time. I’ll drink a lot of coffee or something, even if it does stunt my growth.
Repeat takes a second to shoot me a dirty look over her shoulder as she prints out a sheet. ‘Got it,’ she says, grabbing the printout and turning to us. The sound of an alarm going off makes all three of us jerk. ‘We have to GO, Em,’ she says to me, heading forward and placing a hand on my shoulder. Ditto copies her, although I can hear her mental complaints, and we look at each other. Okay. Teleport. Teleporting is–not happening. I start to panic, especially when the doorknob of the small room rattles. Someone’s trying to get in. Once they get the key they’ll get in and catch us and–
‘Picnic table!’ Ditto says. It echoes through my mind as the sound of a key scrapes on the knob–
We land on the picnic table again. “Got it,” Repeat says in satisfaction, squirming out from under us and holding up her piece of paper. “Let’s go.”
“And what are we going to do?” Ditto demands. “You might not remember, but our foster mom–THE Firefly–hit her with enough power to kill off most capes and she still recovered in a day or two! We have no chance–“
“We don’t know that until we try,” Repeat snarls, her hand tightening on the paper. “Fine. I’ll do it on my own.”
“Let her get killed, she’ll just come back later,” Ditto says, waving it off.