Out of respect for Webmistress’s well-developed sense of privacy, we’ll draw a veil over the rest of her henchwomen’s journey to her lair and turn our attention to events which occurred elsewhere, later that day. The disbandment of the Hex Kittens had not occurred in a vacuum, and the ripples which spread out from that act had further-flung consequences than putting Lily in the diner the day after Rhyme’s escape.
Though Geppetto’s attempt at puppetmastery had ultimately failed, it had served to entangle the otherwise unconnected fates of a diverse collection of heroes scattered across the country. We’ll now turn our attention to the woman who had been at the center of that plot: the psionic mutant Allison Powers, known within the cape culture as Mindfyre.
It was hard for Allison to believe that she’d been even briefly elevated to among the lofty ranks of her idols in the Pantheon of Heroes, found herself the focus of a conspiracy for global domination, and then become an instant celebrity for leading an ad hoc team to save the day… that was hard, but what was even harder was realizing that she still had to wake up in the morning and go to work.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like her job at Stan Glenn Images. She was good at it, and she enjoyed using her artistic talents as well as her psychic ones. It was a far cry from flying over the city, though… especially with the feeling of near-weightlessness she enjoyed when she wore her psionic augmenting armor. Everyday challenges like pleasing her clients and bringing a project in on time couldn’t compare to the thrill of life-and-death battle. She would sooner deal with the acerbic Echo, the clueless Slam, or even the relentlessly weird Binder sisters than put up with the stale wit of Bob the I.T. guy.
If there was one thing that Allison was, though, it was stubborn. Rather than giving into the ennui, she fought past it. For the first time in her life, she was getting up as soon as the alarm went off instead of mentally flicking the snooze button. She’d always prided herself on her ability to keep her job and her vocation separate… the actual results had varied, but now she was totally committed. She was showing up earlier and earlier, to the point that on this particular morning she’d had to wait downstairs for five minutes until the Corner Cafe opened.
The corner of her desk was stacked with a pyramid of empty thirty-two ounce insulated cups, and she was nursing another one along. If her powers could reach down six floors and she didn’t care who knew about them, she wouldn’t have had to nurse it, but she didn’t want to leave her desk until she had the pamphlet she was working on just right.
Her tinted glasses were pushed up on top of her head and her hand was resting on her mouse for show, but she was actually nudging the ball with her mind to guide the airbrush tool with the utmost precision. She preferred to work hands-on when she could, but some things could only be done on the computer.
“So ask me about my lunch,” friend Samantha “Sam” Davis—artiste, confidante, former hostage—asked her, strolling up to Allison’s desk and putting a brown shopping bag down on it.
“Lunch?” Allison repeated without comprehension, not looking away from her screen.
“Yeah, lunch,” Sam said. “It’s this thing some people are trying where they stop working and put sustenance into their body. Light socializing is sometimes involved.” She reached over and unplugged Allison’s monitor. “You should try it sometime.”
“Hey!” Allison said. The cord jerked in Sam’s grip before she reached for it with her hand.
“You’re getting sloppy, hero,” Sam said. She dropped her voice, though there was nobody near by to overhear.
“Sorry,” Allison said, taking the plug from Sam. “The more I wear the new suit, the easier it gets to just… reach out… like that, even when I’m not wearing it.”
“So you are wearing it more, even while you’re working more and more hours here?” Sam said. “Girl, you’re burning ends of the candle I never even knew existed… aren’t you worried that something’s going to give?”
“It isn’t going to be crime and it isn’t going to be our clients, so it can’t be me,” Allison said.
“Our work load hasn’t changed any that I’ve heard about,” Sam said. “Unless Stan’s been funneling some plum projects to you on the side?”
“No,” Allison said. “But during… that whole thing… I started letting my day job slip when my night job picked up. I don’t want to neglect it again.”
“So your solution to work-life balance is to overdo everything equally?” Sam said. “That’s not gonna work for long.”
“You were saying something about your lunch?” Allison said.
“Nicely dodged. But, oh, it was awful,” Sam said. She pulled a lavender scented candle out of the bag and set it down on the desk. “I ate at Maury’s. Shrimp and spinach salad with wilty spinach and shrimpy shrimp.”
“You hate Maury’s,” Allison said. “Why would you eat there?”
“Because I was meeting somebody there,” she said, removing a scented body spray and other matching bath items from the bag.
“Oh?” Allison asked. “Business or pleasure?”
“Would I go to a restaurant I hate for pleasure?” Sam asked. “I was meeting a lawyer.”
“Ooh, I don’t like the sound of that,” Allison said.
“Don’t worry, he was a representing-people lawyer, not a suing-people lawyer,” Sam said. “And guess who he was representing?”
“Who?”
“Go on, guess,” Sam said.
“I don’t know… honestly, I suck at guessing games, Sam,” Allison said, making a face.
“How can you suck at guessing games?” Sam asked. “I mean, considering you’re all…” She put a hand up by the side of her head and twirled it around.
“That’s crazy, not psychic,” Allison said.
“What’s psychic, then?”
“I don’t know,” Allison said. “And that’s why I suck at guessing games. If you want me to read the answer out of your head, I can do that, but otherwise you might as well tell me.”
“Ms. Pussywillow Binder, on behalf of Galerie Awesome, L.L.C.”
“Gallery Awesome, L.L.C.?” Allison repeated.
“Galerie,” Sam said. “You have to say it all snooty-like, because it’s spelled French.”
“Oh,” Allison said. “So she really has one, then? There seemed to be some disagreement on that score.”
“Seems she does,” Sam said. “Assuming it’s not some elaborate practical joke… honestly, I have my doubts, after meeting her guy.”
“What do you mean?” Allison asked.
“He kept interrupting the conversation to hit himself in the head with his briefcase,” Sam said. “When I asked him what that was about, all he’d say was ‘My client’s instructions were very specific.’”
Allison raised an eyebrow.
“I hope he’s getting well-paid,” she said.
“I kind of got the feeling that he deserved it,” Sam said. “I mean, the whole time he was sitting across from me, I kind of wanted to punch him in the face. There was nothing specific… he just had like, an aura. He seemed very punchable. Do you suppose there’s a mutant power, like ‘aura of punchability’?”
“So, he was representing this gallery?” Allison prompted.
“Oh, right,” Sam said. “This gallery which may or may not exist in Star Harbor. Says they’ve never done any big shows, but his client is looking to refocus her efforts now that her musical career has come to an…”
“Wait, what about her musical career?” Allison asked.
“Oh, hon, don’t you follow the news at all?”
“Just the crime beat, lately,” Allison said.
“You don’t read the gossip columns?”
“Am I missing anything?”
“Not much,” Sam said. “Just that Amphitrite has declared war now that pop artist Samantha D. has lured away her best ‘gal pal’ Mindfyre.”
“What?”
“That’s what they’re saying,” Sam said, holding up her hands. “I didn’t have nothing to do with this one.”
“Nice use of the double negative for plausible deniability,” Allison said.
“Anyway, to get back on topic here and away from any contributions I may have made to your non-existent personal life… the Hex Kittens have split up,” Sam said. “It’s been all over the airwaves, in between updates about that Rhyme person breaking out or getting caught or escaping again or whatever is going on.”
“What happened?”
“Well, the latest is they stuck her in the back of a van and she just disappeared,” Sam said. “If you ask me, 4B has her tucked away somewhere and they’re doing stuff with her blood, trying to make supersoldiers or something.”
“What happened with the Hex Kittens, I mean,” Allison said.
“Who knows? The publicists have been denying rumors all morning,” Sam said. “The only thing anybody knows is it’s got nothing to do with Lily. Any minute now, we’ll hear she’s been hospitalized for exhaustion. Or arrested for possession of exhaustion. Or found dead of an overdose of exhaustion. You know that when I say ‘exhaustion’, I mean ‘drugs’, right?”
“I picked up on that, yeah,” Allison said, frowning. “I don’t know. She seemed to be pretty… I mean, she wasn’t too… well, I hope she’s okay.”
“Well, call me a vulture, but whatever happened, their loss is my gain,” Sam said. “Samantha D.’s east coast debut! And whatever stories come out of the break-up are just going to help build buzz. I’m so excited!”
“Where’d all this come from?” Allison asked, noticing for the first time the gifts that Sam had laid out.
“Boy, were you ever lost in your work,” Sam said. “I made a little celebratory shopping trip on the way back to the office. Only I got you a few things, too, so’s I wouldn’t feel too self-indulgent.”
“All this stuff is for me?” Allison said. She picked up an envelope and opened it. “Two hundred dollars off spa products and services? Oh, Sam, this is too much.”
“You’d think you hadn’t spent all that time on the Genevieve campaign,” Sam said. “If you knew their prices, you’d be saying it ain’t nearly enough.”
“Sam, I’m touched, but… why?”
“Because you made this happen,” Sam said. “I never would have met the Kittens if not for you. Hell, I would never meet anybody again if not for you, because I’d be dead. You saved my life, hero. That is definitely spa-worthy.”
“But, Sam, you were only in danger in the first place because of me,” Allison said.
“Right, and that’s how I met the Kittens,” Sam said. “So, really, this is all to thank you for endangering my life.”
“So, have you thought about what you’re going to show?” Allison asked. “Are you going to do all new pieces?”
“I’ve got some projects I could pull together,” Sam said. “Though, really, it’s mainly going to be what I have lying around… Her Royal Strangeness apparently isn’t a big fan of delayed gratification.”
“I can kind of see that. How long have you got?” Allison asked.
“A week and a half,” Sam said.
“Christ,” Allison said. “Is she crazy? Actually, I’m pretty sure she is.”
“She’s the best kind of crazy: crazy and moneyed,” Sam said. “Anyway, girl, I’m going to spend the next few days getting stuff ready, so this is probably the last time I’m going to see you before next Friday, when you get off the plane at Star Harbor International.”
“Are you serious?”
“Like a coma,” Sam said. “You’re my lucky charm… I’ll leave it up to you which one of you shows up. ‘M.’ would be better for publicity purposes, but honestly, the contacts you could make in the art world are probably too good to pass up.”
“What kind of publicity do you expect from something thrown together like this?”
“The best kind,” Sam said. “Batshit musician with no society cred buys her way into the art world on the heels of her band fizzling out? The trainwreck potential is too high to ignore.”
“Is ‘batshit’ really the word?”
“You’re the one who told me the story about ordering her dinner to fight to the death,” Sam said.
“Point taken,” Allison said. “So, have you talked to Stan about all this?”
“All what?”
“You taking a week and a half off work,” Allison said.
“I didn’t tell him I was taking a three hour lunch,” Sam said.
“Aren’t you still working on the Apollo’s Coffee thing?”
“They have my designs,” Sam said. “If they need changes, I can do it from home or in Star Harbor as easily as I can here. Everything’s online these days, right?”
“Everything but you,” Allison said.
“So I’ll get an internet!” Sam said. “Apollo’s wanted me because I’m the biggest name SGI has. Anything that raises my profile before they roll-out the new logo is good for them. Good for the company, too.”
“You still might want to let your boss know why you’re not going to be around,” Allison said.
“I’ll tell him on the way out the door,” Sam said.
“His office isn’t on the way out the door,” Allison pointed out.
“Then I guess I’ll look up his email after I get the internet,” Sam said.
“Why don’t you call him instead?” Allison suggested. “He doesn’t seem very up on the technology stuff.”
“Sheesh, he needs to get with the twentieth century.”
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