SG: Innocent Bystander #2

[Whitney Taylor]

Jacksonville, present


The murk of the sky was shading from charcoal to steel as Mina Westing hopped out of the truck. She waved halfheartedly as the pickup truck clunked away with its apparently precious cargo: a suit of high-tech armor tailored to a cat-human hybrid and most of a not very powerful mind control device. She turned away from them, her pockets (and conscience) heavy with the souvenirs she had taken for herself. She knew she should try to dispose of at least one of them as soon as possible, but she was too tired to think of anything but the bed in her tiny apartment. Her next shift was only in a few hours, and the night's adrenaline had worn off on the ride back.


She locked the door of her efficiency behind her when she entered, and then slid the bolt for the first time before even dropping the backpack which contained her work shoes and other valuables. She wrapped her ill gotten gains of that evening, which amounted to a fancy laser pointer and a miscellaneous bit of electronics, in a plastic grocery bag to be stowed under the bathroom sink, which her tired brain identified as a place likely to do the least damage if either was radioactive. Mina was not a superguy and had no protection from such things. She made sure her windows were locked, and then lowered the blinds. This done, she sank down into the room's only chair, exhausted. Almost immediately, she got back up again, picked up the chair, and wedged it against the doorknob. Then she collapsed again, this time onto the bed. And then she slept.


*****


Hello Good morning, caught in the monotony

I'm drowning in my own thoughts right now

Too comfortable with mediocrity

It's amazing, time we're wasting

--Sumo Cyco, Bystander



*Knock knock knock!*


A bolt of panic shot like lightning through Mina's dreamless sleep. "Mmffghrm!" *They've found me!* She had at the moment no recollection of who 'they' might be, or why they were looking for her, but she knew instinctively that there was a 'they', and that 'they' meant trouble.


*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!*


"Urrk!" Her body lifted convulsively upright in an instant, eyes wide. The light in the window indicated that it was far past noon.


"Miss Westing! Mina? Are you in there?"


Mina's brain performed some quick recalibrations. This was not some cackling supervillain or contentious catgirl here searching for his or her lost property. It was worse: her boss. She scrambled for her phone. To her dismay, there were a multitude of notifications on it. She had set it to silent mode before sneaking into a villain's hideout, but neglected to turn it back on!


"Coming!" she called, wiping drool from the side of her face. She caught a look at herself in the mirror. Her jumpsuit was a wrinkled mess and grubby besides but at least she didn't have to dress. Her mouse-brown hair stuck out in spikes. She wrangled it into a ponytail and headed for the door.


The sight of Leda Milani, her supervisor, only intensified Mina's sense of her own scruffiness. Black hair pulled into an impeccable updo, black uniform fresh looking and wrinkle-free, the manager of the Middle Grounds Cafe regarded her with solicitude. "I sent a message when you didn't show up, but you didn't answer, so I came in person. Is everything alright?"


Mina began stammering out excuses as fast as she could think of them, but the older woman cut her off. "I should have said 'after last night.' I know you went to the abandoned warehouse district." Mina could only stare in blank horror. Leda smiled reassuringly. "You were curious, of course. You find the... lifestyles of some of our regulars exciting, yes? Somewhat glamorous even. You wouldn't be able to work for us if you didn't have at least some taste for danger." She leaned forward, suddenly serious. "But you have to remember that they *are* dangerous. Working at Middle Grounds is no protection once you leave the premises."


Mina nodded mutely.


"Were you hurt?"


Mina shook her head.


"Were you seen?"


Mina nodded, reluctantly.


Leda sighed. "I'll have you washing dishes for a while. Supervillains live exciting lives, they won't remember you for long. Come in tomorrow and get Simone's shift, she covered yours today."


"We took something..." Mina managed. But now Leda was shaking her head.


"I don't want to know anything about that. Amy's little side hustle is condoned, for whatever reason, but it's unsafe and worse, unprofessional. I like to maintain plausible deniability. It's kept me out of trouble so far. I can't give you orders outside of work, but I can recommend you follow my example."


"...condoned?" Mina's mind had caught on the single word.


"By the owner. She's a lovely woman, really, but it's better not to draw her attention to yourself. If Amy tries to badger you into anything, just come to me."


"...'kay..." Her imagination had already gotten to work on this concept of "owner" and the resulting images were not kind to her overstressed brain.


Leda was giving her a kindly smile. "Just make sure you get a clean uniform before tomorrow. And make sure to set your alarm? You don't want to miss any more shifts."


*****


Our train of thought ordered by remote

Through the screen, through the lens of a telescope

Our train of thought ordered by remote

Through the screen, through the lens of a telescope

--Sumo Cyco



Having showered and changed into sweatpants and a tee shirt, Mina finally settled down to confront her phone. It had occurred to her that Leda had assumed without asking that she would continue to work at the Middle Grounds Cafe, which attracted a clientele of dangerous supervillains and associated hangers-on. It bothered her that she didn't intend to quit and it bothered her that her supervisor knew that without asking. She was a little surprised not to be fired, though.


Reluctantly, she started flipping through notifications.

Leda: How did last night go?

    Don't forget, you have work today.

    Are you all right?

    Unless you respond in the next five minutes, I'm coming over

Andrew: Yoooo Mimi, u better call mom, she's freaking out

    r u fighting crime

    if ur a secret superguy u can tell me ;)

Mom: How was work?

    Did you get my last text?

    Please answer

    Mina, please, I'm worried

And more along these lines. Mina winced. She typed <I'm fine, Mom, just forgot to charge my phone> and then dropped the offending device onto the bed, face down.


*****


Savannah, 1993


The gauzy, distorting halo of childhood clouded Mina's recollection of the first time the paranormal had touched her. Her mother and father were arguing, barely comprehensible to her six year old brain. Mother was a nurse who only believed in other nurses and doctors, but her father wanted to try something new. The argument was vehement but short, and then her father began making his mysterious weekend trips. Mom stopped talking to him for a while, but only until Mina's big sister Estella started getting better. That was when Mom and Dad had looked the happiest Mina ever saw them. Best of all, Estella stopped moping and crying and snapping and became fun again.


The first time Mina had felt the touch of the supernatural as a direct force, she had shared the experience with countless others around the globe. The memory was dominated by the image of a woman's face, beautiful and frightening. Adult reasoning told her that it would have been on television, but in her mind's eye the Dark Goddess floated disembodied above her. Mom and Dad had been afraid, and so Mina had been afraid, but excited too, because of the way Estella looked. Her sister had been leaning forward, enraptured, eyes bright and cheeks glowing, looking alive in a way she never had before or again. The announcer had talked about how the rogue superguy Radian would destroy the Earth, but Mina had known that couldn't be right because Radian was a famous good guy, a member of Calforce, Estella's personal favorite. And Calforce was the most fun group of superguys, beloved of both sisters. But Mina's mother had clutched her tightly and conversed with her father in a soft, strained voice she had never heard before. The last thing Mina remembered of that night was Estella protesting bedtime as her father carried her away.


Then all that was over and the world was still there. Her parents wouldn't discuss Radian, but Estella had learned at school that the fallen hero had escaped and was on the run with her own sister, Shadebeam. When she gleefully confided this tidbit to Mina, the younger girl had wondered out loud if it would be fun for her and Estella to go on the run from the law. "Don't be stupid," said Estella, closing down abruptly as she often did. "We're not even twins."


*****


Jacksonville, present


"Yes, mom, I found my charger. No I don't need you to send me a spare. Yes, again, I'm fine."


Mina lay flat on her thin bed, eyes closed. Her mother's voice was only a couple of hours of bus travel away, but it felt like it came from the other side of the moon, one thousand years ago and she felt she had to drag herself all that distance to maintain the connection.


"Are those police sirens I hear?" Her mother's voice sharpened with focused worry.


Mina hauled herself out of bed to peek out of the window. A sizable alligator was making its way down the street at an alarming rate of speed. Close behind followed a man wearing cowboy boots and what looked like a kilt made entirely of meat. Police cars followed slowly, trying to head the man off. "It's just Florida Man. The police are about to get him again."


"Florida Man? I haven't heard of him. Is he dangerous?"


"No." Mina hadn't heard of him killing anyone, although she didn't think she'd heard anywhere near all of the stories. "He just shows up in a city and does stuff like attack people with fried chicken and steal lottery tickets and then he gets caught by police or local superguys."


"Oh. Well, if the police can catch him, he can't be that much of a hazard." Her mother seemed relieved. Mina had an instant to hope that the antics of Florida Man would be enough to distract her from her daughter's filial delinquency before the older woman continued. "But there are so many bad people out there and some of them have serious powers! I worry when I don't hear from you, honey!"


"Mom... it's not like I'm in Boston... am I going to have to call you every night for the rest of my life?"


There was silence from the other end of the line. Then: "Only... only until I'm sure you're safe. I could lose you so easily, love. I could lose you and not even know."


*****



Savannah, 1994


Her father, shaking his head in uncharacteristic silence as he turned off the news. Anti-magic sentiment was in the air and getting worse.


A rogue member of the superhero group Team M.E.C.H.A. had gone to Dallas to attempt the assassination of a mage member of another superhero group, the Teen Team. A confrontation between a mage and a superguy called Spectrum had somehow caused a new crater to appear on the moon. Meanwhile, just down the road in Jacksonville, a building had been set on fire with a group of young women inside it. The store they worked and died in had professed to sell magickal trinkets and books, but if any of the women had been a true mage, she was not powerful enough to stop the blaze that left their five charred bodies behind it.


"Will they come for us next?" her mother, casting a covert glance over to where the girls were playing together. Mina did not know the details, but she knew that magic had something to do with why her sister was getting better.


"Idiots." Estella muttered, clutching her doll. "Too stupid to live. I wish Radian had just killed them all."


But for a while, everyone was all right. As long as the news was off. That was how Mina remembered it.


Then one Sunday, her father never came home. There was a knock at the door, a woman's cultured voice. Then crying, so much crying and if there had been a climactic battle which shaped the future of the human race then none of them had been in any shape to notice.


*****


I'm suspended caught up in the spider web

Got to untangle myself somehow

It don't got to be complicated

Baby, it don't faze me!

--Sumo Cyco



Jacksonville, present


"When?" Mina asked wearily. "When are you going to be sure I'm safe?" What will it take for you to believe in my continued existence, even when I'm not where you can keep an eye on me?


"Well for one thing, honey, I wish you would find a job closer to us. And, well, Jacksonville's just not very nice. They have a real super-powered crime problem there and no one seems to be doing anything about it. It's kind of a mystery how the city even continues to function, to tell the truth. I just can't stand to think of you all alone there. Savannah's much safer. We just don't get supervillains here."


Mina closed her eyes to the sight of Florida Man's collapse, his defiant stance finally broken by five simultaneous tasers and a flung juice bottle. "There aren't any jobs there, either. Not ones that will pay off my student loans."


"I did tell you that a history degree wouldn't be good for much..."


"Thanks, mom." Mina groaned.


"Sorry, honey. Mothers can't resist an I-told-you-so." Then her voice became firm again. "But you should move back after you've made enough money. We can find you a nice job here. There's no reason to put yourself at risk when you can be perfectly safe at home."


*****


Savannah, 1996


After Dad was gone, Estella stopped getting better and then got worse. She locked herself in her room day after day until the lock had to be taken off for safety, and even then she didn't want to talk to Mina. Sometimes she would throw things, although they never left bruises when they hit. "It's because she's in pain." their mother explained to Mina, but Mom was also in pain. She cried when she thought no one could hear, but she never threw anything. The only time Estella came out was to sit with her mother, when she turned to the trial with Spandex Babe, who was supposed to have killed someone. Mina had hated this. She had yelled about how boring the trial was until she was exiled to her room to play video games, but in fact it just made her sad because she had liked Spandex Babe.


Then there was the super powers plague. Mom, who worked in a hospital, had totally freaked out and tried to get anyone who would listen to support a mask mandate she wanted to propose to the city council. The girls had thought the plague sounded like great fun, though. Every time she sneezed, Mina would fantasize about what super power she would get soon.


Estella went further, though. Once in the hospital she had contrived to sneak away and tried to get every patient she met to cough on her. When they finally caught her she and Mom had had the biggest fight young Mina had ever heard. "I don't care what army they make me join! I'll do it anyway!" This had made much more sense later on, when Mina learned that you had to die to get your superpowers. You came back to life afterward, but then you had to be part of some hive mind.


In retrospect, Mina didn't really want any part of that, but things were different for her sister. She was lucky enough not to catch any cold, super powered or not, so she was mobile enough when the monster invasion happened. They were supposed to stay indoors and wait for Mom, but went outside when they heard the gunfire. The two of them had nestled together in a ditch under an old tarp, watching in awe as a bat-winged figure flapped through the air pursued by a red pickup truck full of guns and hollering people. Some of their neighbors came out and added the noise of their own firearms to the cacophony. For a moment, Mina felt sorry for the hunted thing. Then it turned evasively in midair and its malevolent gaze pierced her.


There was a deafening BANG from across the street, and some more gunfire. Mina had her face buried in Estella's shoulder, so she missed the killing. (Estella would later claim to have kept her eyes open, but Mina didn't believe her.) The creature was on the ground, unmoving. A red haired woman dressed in camouflage was inspecting it. She looked unworried, her rifle slung back over her shoulder, so Mina helped her sister walk over.


"Did you kill it?" Estella asked.


"It took a lotta hits. I don't know who should get credit. My name's Debbie, by the way." Said the woman modestly. "We been on his tail since just outside Jacksonville."


Mina stared at the corpse. Dead things were generally gross, but the big leathery wing stretched before her looked smooth and dry. She reached for it.


"You don't wanna do that, hon. It could be carryin' rabies." Debbie deftly caught Mina around the middle, pulling her back.


"WOOHOO!" Came a triumphant shout, followed by another volley of gunfire and yelling from the pickup truck. "THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS TO THE MINIONS OF MISTER SATAN T. LUCIFER JONES 'ROUND THESE PARTS!"


"I don't think it's Jones this time, Ed." Said the woman. "Some other fella runs a similar outfit, that's what the TV said."


"Why's another guy tryin' to rip off Satan? Ain't he afraid of gettin' sued?"


"I don't know, I'm just tellin' you what the man on the TV said."


"You know, I bet it's some kinda licencing deal. You pay Lucifer a certain amount of money or souls or whatnot, and he lets you put a bunch of demons on Earth without any kinda legal hassle."


"Shit, as long as blessed bullets take 'em out who gives a damn?"


"I know you. You were in the Revolution." Estella's high, thin voice cut through the jubilant chatter. Her burning eyes were fixed on the man called Ed, a mulletted redhead. It was not an admiring gaze.


The man chuckled uneasily. "Well, that was a long time ago. You must've been, what, eight or nine?"


"Not that long," Estella ignored the question, "They had all of you in handcuffs. It was on TV. Which side were you on?"


"Ahaha... we were given a pardon by the president, one an' all, so--"


"I don't care what the president did. Which side?"


"Well, little lady," Here he looked around at his companions, who were looking from him to the pallid girl. He straightened, seeming to swell up as he realized he was watched. "I never had no use for no spells. The only magic I needs' the magic of prayer, which--"


"Mina, we're supposed to stay inside. Come on." Estella declared suddenly, snatching her by the back of the shirt. Mina had taken advantage of the distraction to creep back to the corpse, which was the most amazing thing she had ever seen in person. She had just placed a chain of flowers on its snarling head when Estella started pulling her back to the house. She was already stronger than Estella, but her sister's face looked scarier than the dead pseudo-demon's, so she followed.


"L-lucky they didn't set us on fire." Estella muttered as she locked the door. She slumped down against the wood panel, her face hidden. "I'll keep watch. Go away." This meant she was going to cry. You couldn't cheer or comfort her when she wanted to cry. You couldn't even try, unless you wanted to be screamed at. Hell(tm) on Earth seemed a little redundant to Mina, that day.


*****


Jacksonville, present


"But that's not right, Mom!" Mina was pacing back and forth, her throat tight. "I have to live my own life and I can't live it like... like that."


"Like what, Wilhelmina?" Her full name. Now she had opened the door. "Finding a safe place in a dangerous world? Protecting the ones you love? I just want--"


This could go on for hours. Outside the window, the police made Florida Man duck his head as they put him into a patrol car. The muffled sound of the car door slamming reached Mina in her room. She flinched, her hand closing into a fist against the wall. She couldn't put up with hours of her mother like this. "I mean living every day like you're afraid of losing everything. That's paralysis. You can't be alive that way. You can't be a part of the world. *You* used to know that!"


*****


This is who we are!

View the world through a telescope!

View the world through a telescope!

Carry on when you got no hope

View the world through a telescope!

View the world through a telescope!

Carry on when you got no hope!

View the world through a telescope!

View the world through a telescope!

--Sumo Cyco



Savannah, 1997


Mom almost lost it when the Unimaginable League Amoral took Charleston. By then, Mina didn't have a sister anymore, and she hadn't yet acquired a brother, so she herself was the focus of all her mother's fears. Every time she got home from school her mother held her tight, so long she started to squirm. Sometimes in the middle of the night she would wake up to stifled sobbing and find Mom sitting at her bedside, looking at her as if she were dying like Estella. Mina cried too, then, but only because Estella was gone, not because of some stupid villains taking over a town up the road. She knew she was all her mom had left, but she didn't want to be sad all the time, so she spent as much time at her friends' houses as possible.


When they built the tower near Savannah, even that escape was cut off. Her mother forbade her to leave the house except for school, and she would have forbidden that too if she could. Some of the teachers went missing. Some of her classmates whispered stories of parents who just walked out the door and disappeared, and that was when Mina started to get really scared. If her mother left her, she would be all alone. She had aunts and uncles and cousins, but they lived far away and she had only seen them in pictures. She didn't squirm anymore when Mom hugged her, but hugged back as tight as she could.


They would snuggle together on the couch watching the news. That led to the first time in her life that Mina ever heard her mother curse. A man she had never seen before got up and started saying a lot of boring news-talk that she had to struggle to understand. Her mother didn't have any problem with it, though.


"Cowards! Lying bastard!" She threw a cushion at the TV in a way reminiscent of Estella, but so hard it almost knocked it off its stand. "Who the hell (tm) are you even? Director of Asshole Authority?" She was shaking, but more with rage than fear for the moment. Radian had been a goddess, and a transdimensional demon army was... a transdimensional demon army, but this was just some government man. You could imagine taking on a government man and not getting squashed *right* off.


But the weeks passed, then months, with most everyone around them going back to business as usual. The ferocity in her mother's eyes dulled to a sort of forlorn conviction. The biggest heroes Mina knew, like Andy Awesome and Spandex Babe and She-Devil and Mighty Guy and Unorthodox Lass--actually, no, it was Unorthodox *Girl*--had disappeared somehow. Mom told her they were probably just hiding, but really she thought they were dead. Mina knew this because she eavesdropped on her mother's conversation once. It was one of the teachers who hadn't disappeared (Estella had been in his class) and he wanted to know if any of the missing people had shown up in the hospital. He was trying to find his wife, and he carried a new baby.


Sometimes her mom was visited by old Mr. Peters from across the street. He had helped Debbie and Ed and the other gunmen take down the pseudo-demon two years before. More than once, Mina saw a car that looked like the red pickup they had been driving outside Mr. Peters' house. Sometimes Mr. Peters came to talk to her mother, and then Mina was sent to her room where she couldn't hear much. She knew that he had once been a soldier and was good with a rifle, and that he was talking to some people out in the woods.


Mina was now allowed and even encouraged to get out of the house and go visit her friends, but she was not supposed to talk about anything that she saw at home. She wanted to tell someone though, so she told Estella. Estella had never been afraid of anything that wasn't her own body, so it was comforting to pretend that she was there. She wouldn't have been afraid of the empty-eyed soldiers, or the people who walked and watched the streets and the halls of the school. She thought her big sister would have found everything going on to be terribly exciting. She wondered what the older girl would have thought about her old teacher Mr. Westing coming to see her mother again and again and talk in a hushed, anxious voice. She wondered what Estella would make of her mother calling her teacher "James", and him calling her "Sophie." She wondered what Estella would have *done*. She might have been old enough for Mom to tell where she went when she wasn't at work, and what were in the boxes Mina sometimes saw in the car. She might have been brave enough to help.


Then one day, when Mina had been exiled by the arrival of the worried teacher, who had brought the baby this time, her mother summoned her back into the living room with a shout. The television was on, and on the screen--Andy Awesome! It couldn't be an old video, because he looked older than the last time they had seen him. This meant he was alive! Mina opened her mouth to say so, but her mother hushed her so they could listen.


"Fellow Americans, citizens of the world, oppressed and frightened people

everywhere, take hope. After meticulous planning and preparation, the Allied

Coalition has today moved to eliminate the invaders..."


By the time Andy had finished his speech, they were all cheering. Mom grabbed the schoolteacher--who was smiling tentatively--and whirled him about the room. Mina wanted to jump up and down on the couch, but she was holding the baby, and he had started shrieking, probably because no one was paying attention to him (the little brat!) Then the grown-ups stopped dancing--sprang apart, really--and started clearing their throats and patting their hair and talking about how they had to get serious now and what a lot of work there was to do.


That night was the first time they went to bed without a fog of dread or grief hanging over them since forever, but Mina still couldn't sleep, she was so excited. At school she learned that Savannah's repeater tower had been wrecked that very night! The local news wouldn't cover it, anyone who lived near the tower knew about it. It had taken a while to fall down, and had made an awful lot of noise. No one could see what was destroying it, and the ULA guards couldn't stop it; in fact they had wandered off, looking confused, a few seconds after the start of the wrecking. Someone with a really nice camera had taken video of the demolition, and put it on an Internet site. Mina typed in an address passed to her in a furtive note from a classmate, and downloaded the video. It was creepy, but exhilarating, watching the tower take itself apart in grainy texture and weak lighting, and best of all Mom was proud of her for finding it. It took days for the site to go down, and in the meantime, people had downloaded it and were passing around disks with the video.


Things moved fast after that repeater fell. There weren't any mind-controlled people around anymore, so heroes didn't have to worry about having to hurt innocent people anymore, and the bad guys that weren't mind controlled surrendered pretty quickly. Local superguys (mostly low-powered) and just plain normals with guns and a grudge came out of the woodwork to gather in Savannah, then struck north and south, destroying repeater towers on the way to Charleston and Jacksonville. Mom didn't have to do anything in secret anymore, but she said it was better if the things she had done weren't mentioned since no one knew how things would turn out when this was all over. Mina suspected she had been stealing things from the hospital, and didn't want her mother to go to jail when she had just been trying to help.


One person who wasn't relieved was James the schoolteacher. Classes were suspended when the American Authority fell in Savannah, so there was nothing for him to do there. His wife hadn't been in any nearby work camps, or hospital morgues. Individual people who were conscripted into Psybernet's army were all but impossible to track, but he was going to try. Child care being both scarce and unreliable in the war torn city, he left his infant son with Mina and her mother. Meanwhile he followed in the tracks of falling repeaters, searching.


He waved them goodbye from the supply truck he had hitched a ride on. "I hope he comes back with Andrew's mom." said the girl, who held the handles of the baby's stroller.


"Me too," said her mother, and tried to smile, but it looked weak and sad.


The baby was a smelly nuisance. He wasn't quite old enough to not wear diapers, which were sometimes impossible for Mom to even find, but he was old enough to run around and get into things he shouldn't. Also, Mina had to watch him when her mother wasn't there, which was most of the time, so she couldn't join the neighborhood kids when they went to look for abandoned equipment and watch for passing aircraft or superguys. Still, she was glad to have him sometimes. He didn't know anything about the genocidal war happening around them. He didn't care whether the TV played Allied broadcasts from That Other News Network or propaganda from the ULA or just static on any particular night. All he cared about was pooping and chewing on things and watching their meager supply of movie tapes and making Mina read to him, and when you were around him that's all you could think about too.


His father did come back weeks later, looking much older and carrying an urn that he said was his wife. His house had been taken over by squatters while he was away. He would have had to go to a refugee camp, but Mom wouldn't let him take the baby to one of those. He ended up sleeping in Estella's old room, and that was where he stayed for months and months while they all waited anxiously for one side or another to win. It would have been nice to have the extra company, but he was quiet and gloomy all the time. When the news lady finally declared Psybernet to be dead he started crying, and Mom sat beside him, rubbing his back wordlessly.


There was a big party in Mr. Peters' yard when the war was over. Mina contributed some old posters and pages from magazines she had kept hidden away to help make a banner of the heroic Superguys who had led the counterattack that freed America from the ULA. James Westing had saved up enough sugar to bake a cake, and Mom brought out a bottle of bourbon that she had been saving. Fresh meat had been hard to get recently, but someone had shot a deer and they were grilling the venison.


The red pickup truck was there, along with the whooping gunman identified as Ed. He wasn't whopping now, and Mina counted fewer comrades in the back of his truck than she had the first time. A familiar looking woman smiled at Mina. "Hey there, honey! Remember the last time we met? You had a little friend with you, the little skinny girl." Mina just stared back until she continued, "I bet you've had enough excitement this past year to last you, though!" It hadn't been all that exciting, mostly  sad and scary and somehow also boring, but Mina nodded to be polite. She was busy enjoying her venison steak, and watching Mom and James stumbling and giggling and trying to dance to old Johnny Cash records played on the most powerful sound system anyone could scrounge up.


Time passed. Mina went back to school, and so did Mr. Westing, but he didn't move out right away. Andrew stopped using diapers and his mother's urn lived on the mantelpiece permanently and Mina realized that James Westing no longer slept in Estella's room but in Mom's. This was okay. Mom was still here only she didn't clutch her last daughter to her quite as suffocatingly tight as she once had. One day she tried saying Dad instead of James just to see how it felt, and after seeing the way he smiled she never went back.


As the two families pieced themselves into one, so the world outside reassembled itself into something like working order. The dead were identified and mourned, displaced people were identified and returned to their homes where possible, the shrines and monuments to the lost grew and multiplied. When enough of the government was working for it to matter, they all went downtown so Mom and Dad could sign some papers together. There was something for Mina to sign too, and that was how she became Mina Westing.


*****


Got Paranoia, the effects are crippling

Am I talking to myself right now?

This overthinking is paralyzing

Lately, going crazy

--Sumo Cyco



Jacksonville, present


"That was different," her mother said softly, "They came to us where we live. I had to fight back, because there was no other way to stop them from taking us."


"Yes, that's what I'm saying." Mina closed her eyes, trying to recall the face of the father gone so long ago. The only image her mind could bring forth was the emaciated face of her sister lying in that hospital bed with all her pretty black hair gone. Estella, who had wanted to live so much she was willing to join a hive-minded army if that's what it took, had lost her only chance because people were ignorant and scared and someone had told them they could be safe if only they killed all the witches. And her foster brother Andrew's mother, who had been snatched away into another hive-minded army without warning, never to be returned, because some power she didn't know or understand had wanted a footsoldier and didn't care who they used. "They can always come for us where we live. Just because it's been quiet for a while, where you live, doesn't mean it always will be. Complete safety doesn't exist anywhere. You just have to face the fear and move on." She took a deep breath. "At least that's what I intend to do."


The silence lasted a long time. Then, finally, a sigh. "I see. You're a grown woman now, and I can't stop you. All I can do is hope you stay safe long enough to get old and sensible, like your poor mother."


"Thanks, mom." Mina whispered; then: "I love you."


But Mom had already hung up.


*****


Savannah, 1998-2008


And so the years passed and passed and Mina Westing went to and through high school with minimal scarring further but not much more adventure, held close under her mother's wing. Savannah in normal times was a peculiarly quiet city with regard to supernatural violence. It had its share of the more mundane kind, but no costumed avenger had burst forth to outshine the police, or to attract the more flamboyant sort of villainy. It might have been a welcome respite after the years of turmoil. But the older Mina got, the more she realized how lucky they had been; and the more she wondered if and when that luck would run out as it had for so many, all around the world.


For normal people like her, people without inborn powers or magic, there was the option of firearms or (if you could get it) powered armor. With these armaments, it was possible to fight back like cockroaches in a corner. It might not *mean* much when the cosmic terminex man came to call, but it was better than surrender. The real problem, as Mina saw it, was hanging around in powerless anticipation waiting for the next hammer to fall while people you never met battled for the future of everything. And if the champions of justice should prove unequal to the task, the main part of humanity would be lucky if they got the opportunity to so much as grab the nearest firearm before being disintegrated or snatched up into a psychic army. And if they survived all that, they still might meet their end at the hands of their own superstitious and spooked mundane neighbors. Mina could watch from relative safety the continued battles and invasions in big cities like Boston, but if they should spill into the wider world...


Meanwhile, there was a mundane life to live in the world of ordinary danger and corruption, where the bills got higher and the wages stayed the same. No super powered heroism was going to save her from her student loan debt, whatever else might happen. So she lived, with increasing discontent, in her parents' house working a series of dead end jobs while some buried portion of herself waited for the sky to crash in again.


Until one day, she came across an ad for a job in a nearby city. The rate was far higher than it should have been for the job on offer. At first Mina thought the work must have been... *spicier* than advertised, a condition which she was poorly equipped to fulfill by both inclination and natural talent. On a whim, though, she dug deeper into the internet footprint of the place called the Middle Grounds Cafe. What little she found fascinated her. A place frequented by supervillains, although she couldn't figure out how they knew to go there. It seemed reasonable enough that they might want a place where they  could meet up to plot with each other or just get a pumpkin spice pentuple espresso and not get thrown out for laughing too maniacally.


Once she confirmed for herself that there was no sex stuff involved, she started to seriously consider. The pay was good, good enough to make a small apartment worthwhile. She'd be out of her parents' house AND paying off her debt! (And, a tiny, Estella-like voice added from her deepest subconscious, get a closer look at the sort of people who can upend your world again and again and again without even knowing your name.) There would be danger, yes, but there was plenty of danger in just sitting in one's home. At least she'd know where it was coming from.


The interview, held in a room with a mirrored window, was short. The pages of legalese on the waiver Mina had to sign were long. She studied them diligently anyway, signing only after she had determined that she was not officially agreeing to be experimented on or used for parts. There was one climactic, tearful battle with her mother's anxieties, and then Mina was ready to step into this strange, dark, familiar new world.


*****


We are uninvited, watching from afar

We are all misguided, divided, falling apart



Jacksonville, present


Mina stared out the window at the aimless meandering of the confused alligator, which had emerged from underneath a bush into the reddening sunlight. Her mother had lost so much. So what was Mina doing here, really? It was the money, of course, but not only the money. Not to fight in the streets to make things better, as superheroes did. That would be silly. She had no powers. Why go out snooping with Amy Sunderland, cook from the Middle Grounds Cafe and secret supertech salvager, then?


But that was it, wasn't it? Snooping. Sightseeing. Confronting the beast in its den before it can confront you in yours. Because her childhood had been torn apart and there was a part of her that kept waiting for the next shock, and she had had enough of that daily dread. It wasn't the smartest thing to do, maybe, but if she got close enough, she might understand the supernatural world just a little bit more, and then she might be a little less afraid. Just a little.


"I have to be here, to do this, Mom." she spoke aloud to her reflection in the shiny black of her phone. "But I'll be more careful. I promise."


The alligator slipped off the road into a drainage ditch, and vanished. Mina watched the deepening sky for a few moments more. Then a slight but irrepressible smile touched her lips. Throwing herself onto her bed, she began to type on her phone.


>>>Hey Drew, u will NEVER guess what kind of night i had...


*****



Oh Na Na I Don't wanna be a Bystander -

Watching the world go, Oh my GOD!

I don't wanna be a Bystander, I don't wanna be a...

Oh Na Na I don't wanna be a Bystander -

Watching the world go, So Bizarre

I don't wanna be a Bystander, I don't wanna be a BYSTANDER


--Sumo Cyco, Bystander

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.eyrie.org/pipermail/superguy/attachments/20220812/ed7fd614/attachment-0001.htm>