Attack Doll 2: Junior Prime
Page 19
Chapter 19
I spent the next hour or so waiting for word on Lily (actually, I think we were all doing that) and taking my hundred shots out on the target range. And that was so much fun that I decided to take an additional hundred shots.
After that, I had a bit of trouble finding stuff to do. Trina was busy with some sketches, so we didn't work on her board-breaking technique; Shelley was with her dad, so I didn't get a chance to ask her about Escrima; and Mike and Toby were sparring in the gym and didn't seem to need any company. So I eventually wandered back to my room to check my e-mail and work on my Gershwin prelude.
The first message I saw was from Angie, with a subject line of "Hey sibs!! Watch me on TV!!!!" (You know, I sometimes think my parents must have gotten a special computer keyboard for Angie, one with extra exclamation-point keys, because she'd wear out a regular one.) She had sent it to me, Joy, Jerome, and Nick, and she told us all about her adventures at the Browns-Steelers game and afterwards.
I guess a camera crew met her and my parents as they were getting home from the game, and they wanted a sit-down interview with her right then and there. According to what Angie wrote, they were really nice about it and gave her time to get herself cleaned up and looking pretty, and the interview was about what you would expect for a story with a headline of "Brave High School Girl Battles Zoinks To Save Her Friends". In other words, nothing too deep or searching, a real puff piece.
She gave us the time and channel when the interview was supposed to air. What she said happened afterwards, though, got me a little worried. She wrote:
Funny thing, though. After the TV crew left, a couple of guys in uniforms came up to the house and said they wanted to talk to me alone. They made me kinda nervous, and Dad said no. So he and Mom and I talked to them for a while together.
The one guy said that they were from the Army. They saw what happened on TV and they wanted to know everything that Prime Indigo said to me. Of course, I couldn't tell them much because he didn't say much. He just wanted to thank me for the help and make sure I wasn't hurt or anything, just like I said in the TV interview.
The guy told us that all the technology that the Primes have was stolen from the Army years ago, and that they consider the Primes to be terrorists or criminals or something. He said they've been trying to arrest them for years to get their tech back, but they can never get close enough. And he gave me his card and wanted me to let them know if any of the Primes ever contacts me. (Pshyeah, right, like I'd ever get that lucky!!)
You wanna know the truth? I didn't believe him. Mom and Dad thought he was okay, but he seemed to me way too creepy to pass the smell test. And he was seriously trying to make me think my life was in danger from the Primes!! As if!! Everybody knows they only ever attack those weird monsters that show up and hurt people.
Anyway, gotta close now. 'Bye!!
Love,
Angie
"Hey, Wizzit," I called out, "can you check out the last part of Angie's e-mail to me?" Given how much he controls around HQ, I have to believe Wizzit can read our e-mail whenever he wants to and can track pretty much anything we do online. Of course, I also believe he doesn't care about 99.9% of it, so it doesn't bother me all that much.
"Interesting," Wizzit said after a moment, not sounding at all surprised or worried. Of course, the only time he ever does sound worried is when we're taking too long to destroy one of Enclave's monsters. "It's all lies, of course. Army wants my tech for itself. Do you want me to bring this to the Commander's attention?"
"Yeah, that would probably be a good thing."
"Good as done," he replied in a startlingly good impression of Mike's voice.
"So now what?" I asked after a few seconds. There was no reply, which told me that either he didn't want to discuss it further or he thought there was nothing worth discussing. Either way, I couldn't do anything more, so I shrugged and sent Angie a quick, generic reply, and then I turned on my piano keyboard.
I could tell right away that Gershwin's second prelude was going to be a tough nut to crack. Not necessarily the notes -- those looked a little tricky, but nothing like, say, a Bach fugue. No, it's that this was one of those slow, soulful pieces that requires a delicate touch, and that's really hard to get on an electronic keyboard like the one I have, without what they call "velocity sensitive keys." But I gamely plowed ahead and worked on what I could. It was a nice piece, and I could tell I'd be whistling the main theme around HQ for the next few weeks.