Please Don't Tell My Parents I've Got Henchmen

by Richard Roberts

  As my classmates and I filed towards our desks in third period, Mrs. Harpy interrupted us. “Before you settle down, everyone, I have someone I'd like you to meet. This is Mirabelle.”

  In a chair next to the desk sat someone in a plain, light brown dress that went all the way down to her ankles, and wearing a sun hat so wide it passed her shoulders on either side. With her face meekly lowered, it had kept her entire head hidden as the class arrived. Between that, her folded hands, and her ankles hooked together, she was the picture of meek embarrassment.

  At Mrs. Harpy's introduction, Mirabelle slid to her feet, head tilted down to hide her face until the very last moment. Taking off her hat, she lowered it to her waist, gripped in both hands.

  It took a couple of seconds to make out anything but her curly hair and pointy cat ears, because it's hard to see details when someone's face is made of glass. She was completely transparent, and the fluorescent ceiling lights sent sparkles dancing along the walls when she turned her head. Once I got the hang of looking at a glass face, she seemed human, with a mouth that alternated smoothly between pursed in embarrassment, and a curious smile. The pointy cat ears twitched in a regular rhythm, and a crystal feline tail revealed itself by flicking out behind her dress.

  The dress itself reminded me of the ones they wore around Jupiter, tight in the waist, with a skirt that hardly flared at all, but in this case a big ribbon as a belt rather than a corset. It looked old fashioned, and suited her. After all, when you glitter as you walk, you don't need fancy clothes.

  Someone started the ritual chant, and we all joined in. “Hi, Mirabelle.”

  Ray snorted in the aftermath. Claire giggled faintly. There were a couple more chuckles.

  Mrs. Harpy resumed, blithely immune to our irreverence. “Mid-season transfer students are not very common, but the school district made an exception in this case. Mirabelle will be part of our class from now on. She's been homeschooled until now, so she'll be ahead of us on some things, but will need your help and support with others.”

  Will's arm shot up so fast, one might suspect he had super speed.

  A second later, Claire went all puppy-eyed. “Mrs. Harpy, I think Will and Mirabelle have met before. Can they sit next to each other? Please? She'll feel more welcome, and have support whenever she needs it.”

  I eyed that sunny smile suspiciously, but Claire's hair remained resolutely ivory. She wasn't using her power, just pouring on the sugar naturally.

  Mrs. Harpy's ability to keep a straight face failed. With a merry smile, she answered, “Sure.” Thirty seconds of wood scraping and groaning, chairs rearranged, and Mirabelle seated herself with the most ladylike delicacy in the desk next to Will's. He gulped air like a fish at first, but when the lesson started up, leaned over to help her sort through our poetry book. To my mild surprise, the human girl on the other side also scooted closer and leaned in to help.

  Lunchtime gave me a chance to assess the new lay of the land, but here was another case where not much had changed. Almost all the kids still sat at the same tables. Some of them now had funny colored hair or dissolved their food into energy instead of putting it in their mouth, that's all. Claudia still sat completely alone, but didn't get any hostile looks. A couple of kids from the club nervously half-bowed as they passed her, and she ignored them. She was engrossed in a big book. The one Bull had been trying to read to her, maybe?

  Marcia and Sue sat alone. The Popular Kids had moved to the far side of the cafeteria, where they could pretend Marcia didn't exist. Losing the richest, most athletic, stereotypically good-looking, highest achieving, and sharpest-tongued member of the clique had not been kind to their social power. I wasn't sure if they were even considered 'The Popular Kids' anymore.

  Will and Cassie, of course, flailed their arms the moment Mirabelle walked into the room, and she drifted over to sit with them.

  Myself, I munched on a celery stick covered in something tangy and unidentifiable that Claire's mother had come up with. My eyes scanned the lunchroom. “Nobody made a big deal in class, but she's getting some stares now.”

  “She's pretty. Even if you don't find girls made of crystal attractive, she's like a living painting or statue. Worth at least a few glances,” said Ray.

  Claire waved a piece of exotic fruit I couldn't identify. “Do you think she'll show up at the club? She has to have powers to go with those looks, right?”

  Ray frowned. His tray was already empty. Sometimes I was surprised his enhanced metabolism didn't have him eating the tray itself. “I hope not. A girl made of glass must be fragile.”

  The spikey orange-and-purple fruit from Claire's lunch waggled in denial. “Not necessarily. She won't be made of normal glass. Diamond Lil isn't as hard or as brittle as regular diamonds. Most superhumans with non-flesh-and-blood structures are more durable than us, and it's only loosely connected to what they appear to be made of.”

  Ray leaned forward. Super Geek Mode had been engaged. “Okay, but it is connected. Koi is highly flammable. She's said several times that's why she doesn't use her powers to fight crime.”

  I cleared my throat loudly, before they got sucked in too far. “I hope she isn't coming, because I want to find an excuse for us to sneak off to my new lab this afternoon. The cockpit is finished.”

  They both stared at me, fixed and eager. My smile probably glowed more than any prismatic girl could manage.

  Mirabelle did not show up for the club. What she did show up for was Geometry, across the street in Upper High with me and Ray. Mrs. Harpy wasn't kidding about her being on different levels from the rest of us kids.

  I must have looked like a goof sitting through the whole class with my back straight and a big dumb grin on my face, because nobody seemed fussed about a girl made of glass in high school, either. There was a certain amount of mumbling between Mirabelle and Barbara, but they both had family on the villain side. My money was on 'They've met in Chinatown.'

  My strategy for getting out of watching other kids do super powered duels that afternoon was 'Show up, smile, step around a corner for a second, make a run for my lair across the street before they realize I'm gone.' It was a huge villainous success. Or possibly heroic success. I still hadn't gotten that untangled.

  In no time at all, I stood proudly, fists on my hips and chest puffed out (which would never be as impressive as when Claire did that), while my minions examined my latest creation.

  “In the middle of the summoning circle. Nice,” approved Ray with a slow, satisfied nod.

  “I'm sure not summoning anything, so why not co-opt the atmosphere?”

  Tapping at one of the side monitors to check if it was a touch screen (It was. They all were.) Claire asked, “This is new for your power, isn't it? You made all these little monitors and control devices this week, and then that chair, and now you combined them all into something new.”

  Shoulder shrug. “Maybe. It has fads, and needs rest periods. Maybe it's still growing? I mean, not many powers are fully developed as soon as you get them. In a few years, I might actually know what I'm doing.”

  His smile pulling up on one side, Ray said, “Which raises the disturbing possibility that Claire's power might still be growing.”

  Sullen, Claire flipped one of the keyboards around to a new configuration. “Into my mom's hopefully.”

  Ray and I gave each other A Look. Our girl needed to accept the incredible power she had.

  Claire flipped a keyboard over again. And again. Each time, it arranged into something new. A twist bent it into a completely different set of controls. Then she crouched down, and came back up holding a circular piece of metal.

  Oops. I really should have gotten rid of that.

  “What happened to the Super Clock?” she asked slowly.

  I coughed. I tugged at my collar. I looked at the ceiling. Eventually, I ran out of theatrical ways to put off the inevitable. “Well, my, uh, power, like you said, is in a 'combining old inventions into a new invention'
kick…”

  Clenching her fists, she stomped the stone floor hard. “I had so many plans for that! It could have been the key to a whole cat burglary career!” Tempering her outrage with mercy, she eased her tone down to 'petulant' and changed the subject. “Funny you built the control chair before the robot.”

  Leaping on the opportunity, and into the wonderfully comfortable (Thank you, super power!) cockpit chair, I flipped a switch, scrolled the view on a side monitor around, and tapped a green targeting reticle that showed up. My main screen filled with a bunch of brightly colored and familiar application boxes, strategically positioned over a photo of Claire wearing not very much. A section of my keyboard flipped around to match that arrangement. Ray gave a sulky sigh when a couple of taps covered up the background display, and…

  Claire jumped into the air, and grabbed her buzzing pocket. “You took control of my phone?”

  Resisting the urge to joke about the mild narcissism of my best friend's chosen display theme, I tapped merrily away, opening apps. For several seconds we played virtual tug of war, as she closed those apps just as fast. Then I flipped the big red switch, opened her note pad, and as she watched helplessly typed 'Your phone? That was the override. This is my phone now.'

  My point made, I switched off the override, and pressed the clear button to disengage from her phone.

  Claire put away her phone, and took a step towards my chair. Another step, and her hands began to twitch. Her face lit up in unholy, avaricious glee.

  Before that could get too far, I held up my own hands. “Sorry. It has a very limited range. I don't think I can take over anything outside of this room.”

  Her face fell into horrified dismay. “But that's useless!”

  “Weeeell… not quite.” I flipped through a wonderfully retro mechanical scrollbar on my keyboard. On the corner of my main screen, a grey box appeared. It looked rather like a pill, red on one half. I pressed a button. It turned green. I pressed the button again. It turned back to red.

  “And what thrilling display of super-scientific wonder have we just witnessed, my liege?” inquired Ray, draping himself decoratively against the side of my chair.

  “A pen light. I don't want to keep flicking it, in case my mom notices, but I took control of it here, then left it in her car. It's miles away now. Probably at home.”

  With exaggerated sweetness, Ray drawled, “To what maximum range do you maintain your iron-fisted domination of a possessed plaything?”

  I spread my hands. “Who knows? With my power, I'm guessing at least the whole city, and I wouldn't rule out 'across the universe' or 'across all alternate universes'.”

  Before any further discussion could commence, I lifted my hands higher, palms out. “For now, we have to sneak back to the club as if we never left, and since I don't have anything to do there anyway, we can do our homework. That will free me up to play Grimoire of Nursey Rhymes later.”

  Claire folded her arms over the top of the chair, a more casual and vastly more feminine balance to Ray. Her evil glee had already vanished, replaced with pointed sarcasm. “I did notice that you haven't gotten very far. Now I know why. You promise you'll focus on the game now, so we can talk about it?”

  “Yeeeees, Miss Lutra,” I singsonged.

  “You at least got to the childhood flashback, right?”

  “Er…”

  Claire's voice dropped a few degrees, and kept dropping as her questions received only a guilty grimace. “The big fight with the magic overload? The first lightning storm? The crying scene. The devastation scene. Did you even get out of the box?”

  “Yes! I got out of the box. That's where I'm saved.”

  Claire rubbed the bridge of her nose. “That's the first level. There's something like twenty. You're not even done with the tutorial.”

  Shrinking my head down between my shoulders, I gestured at the giant, multiple-monitor, multiple-console, levers, buttons, waldo gloves and boots, VR-headset, reconfigurable ultimate robot control cockpit. “But the time was well spent, right?”

  I did not get an answer. She could neither agree, nor disagree.

  hat promise didn't last long.

  I did try! In fact, I planned to attend the whole club meeting on Wednesday, like a good little figurehead.

  Oh, I thought about bracing Marcia during lunch, but that would catch everyone's attention, and people would listen in. Anyway, Wednesday lunch I had a very important rant saved up for Ray and Claire about how ridiculous it was that Mark Twain wasn't on our reading list in English. That was just dumb. How could the greatest writer of the nineteenth century get such disrespect?!

  The man had a super moustache. A super powered moustache. Surely that gets you into 'the classical authors' by itself.

  I caught up with Marcia and Sue right at the entrance to the recess ground. Just watching Marcia walk was so different than before she… uh, stole super powers, beat up her own father, and went completely insane, not necessarily in that order. She still wore the kind of brightly but not gaudily colored, shiny-fabric clothing I associated with rich, Popular Kids. I had no idea what was actually in fashion right now. Since her transformation, Marcia wore them rumpled and wrinkly. She walked with an erratic bounce, rather than the well-trained grace I knew she was capable of. Most of all she smiled, either dreamy and not quite there, or the opposite – eyes spastically hopping from focus to focus.

  When I went, “Hey, Marcia?” she spun around and I got the super-intense look, with eyes boring in on me in expectation of the greatest conversation ever.

  Instead, all I had was a weak, “Are you okay? After your fight with Mourning Dove, I mean. I didn't see how that went. She's a bit, uh…”

  Marcia balled up her fists so tight they shook, and as though all that strength drained out of the rest of her, her knees bent and wobbled. Eyes squeezed shut in ecstasy, she whispered, “Yes. Yes, she is. It was unreal, like fighting in a dream. Not just figuratively.” All of Marcia's energy came back in a sudden rush. “Do you think she has illusion powers? I would try to hit her, and she'd just come apart, like black mist.”

  “Did she try to negotiate? She's really unyielding, but I think one part of that is always giving kids a chance.”

  Marcia made a 'pfff' noise, and rolled her head in derpy circles. “Oh, please. I don't know. Maybe? She said something, blah blah blah. All I noticed was how cool it was to have a chance to fight a vampire. Have you seen her teeth? I don't think they're natural fangs. I think they're filed to points!” If I ever needed proof that this wasn't the Marcia I used to know, her doing a goofy sharp teeth impression with her fingers over her mouth was it. Especially since I'd seen Mourning Dove's teeth, and hadn't noticed any pointiness.

  Personally, I let out a sigh of relief. “I know you heal everything, but I was just a little-”

  In manic mode, Marcia cut me off. “Yeah, about that! It was the weirdest thing, and that fight was full of weird things. She grabbed my head in both hands.” Marcia mimed just that with her own hands. “Oh, and did you know she has claws? I'm sure I felt claws under those gloves. All of a sudden, there were three snakes circling my heart, not two, all eating each other and never finishing.”

  I was developing a strategy for having a conversation with Marcia. Keep following your point, and try to read what you want to know in the subtext. “That sounds… painful?”

  “No, not at all. I feel better than I have in ages.” She paused just long enough to cross her arms over her chest and shiver, smiling beatifically. “Oh, sure, I couldn't stand for a few minutes after the vampire snake pulled out. I had to focus on getting the white and black snakes eating each other and not me again, but once I did, they're easier to balance than ever before. By that point I was stuck in a patch of blue slime, being carried up the wall of that brown building across the lawn from the museum. So I'm fine!”

  Well, I was getting answers to my questions, and it was nice seeing Marcia this way. I could like her, as a person, although
maybe not feel one hundred percent safe in her company. As for the sudden snake obsession, that must be what it felt like to have her powers. “I'll have to ask Jacky why she was there. She was the last person I expected to see.”

  That launched another giddy conversational Marcia explosion. “Oh, that! When Sue told me that you were going to break into the museum, Jacky was one of the kids there, and followed along trying to talk everybody out of going. Hey, did you know that Sue has some of the coolest powers of any of us? Shadow control! She can hear and see through shadows, which is how she knew about the break-in, and she can make shadow holes, and she can touch things with her shadow, and mess with other shadows. I bet she'll be a full on Mourning Dove when-”

  From out on the asphalt, Teddy yelled, “Marcia! Are we fighting, or what?”

  “Yes!” Marcia squealed. She grabbed my wrist in both hands, and dragged me two steps forward, babbling the whole while. “We're having a rematch. You have to watch. You won't even recognize us!” Then she let go, turned a cartwheel, and ran the rest of the way to Teddy.

  When I was sure she was out of earshot, I asked Sue quietly, “Is she really feeling better?”

  Sue looked straight at me, and I recoiled. Those eyes, a little too violet to be natural, glared at me with icy disgust. Her voice low, she said, “Don't make the mistake of thinking we're friends, Penelope Akk. Marcia wants to, like, leave her old baggage behind, so I put up with you. You blew up both our lives, but I had to stick with Marcia because none of those other ungrateful traitors know what it's like for her. And no, my parents aren't as super strict as her crazy everything-has-to-be-perfect dad, so, like, don't even start to go there. They just have this obsession that shadow powers are only for villains, like if they pretend I don't have these powers long enough they'll change into something else.”

  “Pennyyyyyyy!” yelled Marcia, waving her arm over her head to get my attention.

  Sue took that as her opportunity to stomp off. My ride on the Marcia/Sue rollercoaster was over, and it left me playing spectator to kids trying to fight with their powers for the three hundredth time.