SG: Innocent Bystander #8 -- Grounded 1/2

[Whitney Taylor]

Innocent Bystander #8 part 1/2


Savannah, February 1994


Stefan patted his shirt pocket to make sure he had brought his cheap sunglasses. Emerging from dark hallways into bright sunlight had not always given him a headache, but after his grueling sessions with Doctor Kelley he had found dark lenses to be his own necessary magic talisman against migraines. It was worth it, of course, but he couldn't help but wonder if a different teacher would leave him less drained. Max...


Would Max have taken him on as an apprentice? Though less confident in their skills, they had helped him greatly already, with gentle suggestions and borrowed items, and for such a recluse always seemed to have a smile for him... even Estella had warmed up to them, spending her breath in chatter about them all the way home.


Estella had accepted their strangeness faster than he had, if anything, her increasingly (and unfortunately) characteristic insolence notwithstanding. Though they would have been within their rights to be indignant, Max had handled it well, as they seemed to handle all the insolence the world had to offer. No amount of scolding had ever amended his elder daughter's behavior as efficiently as Max's gentle enigmas. Yes, lessons with Max might even be fun.


As he slid the dark lenses out of their case, his thoughts consumed by his troubled child and his oddly endearing friend, a woman rushed out through a side door, jostling him and knocking the sunglasses to the floor.


Stefan had glimpsed this inhabitant of the house before, flitting demurely along the corridors, her suit impeccable and her hair in a tight bun. Before, she had always kept her distance except for occasional shy glances. She had seemed better fit for an executive's office than a wizard's lair... But that just showed how much he knew about wizards' lairs. Perhaps Wonder Grunion had a mermaid somewhere with a waterproof typewriter.


Now he was getting a closer look at the "secretary". Her platinum hair was unbound this time, spilling past her waist. A blush rose on her cheeks as she stepped back, leaving a faint scent of jasmine behind her. Her suit jacket was off, and she had been buttoning her blouse as she came out. Put her in sequins, and she might have doubled as a magician's beautiful assistant... but Stefan was no magician, and was a married man besides. He wrenched his eyes away from her to the ground, where his sunglasses had fallen.


"Oh! Excuse me! Let me get those for you!" The woman exclaimed, "I--I wasn't looking where I was going--I just closed my eyes and--and the next thing I knew it was six o'clock--oh no, Doctor Kelley will be so--he does have his moods, and they've been getting worse..."


Stefan grimaced sympathetically at her distressed tone. Theodore Kelley, with his arrogance and condescension, could not be easy to live with. "You don't have to keep him waiting, then. I can--"


She interrupted, speaking swiftly and quietly, "You must have been his 1:30... Stefan, wasn't it? You're the father of that poor little girl. I can't imagine what that must be like... but it's so brave, learning magic to save her life, and from--from *him*!" her hand trembled slightly as she held the sunglasses out to him, and he couldn't quite avoid the brush of her fingers. Looking up, and continuing to look up, he caught her admiring gaze, and felt suddenly warmer--only to feel a hot sting as she averted her eyes. Ridiculous to feel like this when--


"Laylah, what is this?" Boomed a voice from behind Stefan. Starting guiltily, he turned. There stood Kelley himself, scowling fiercely. That expression made Stefan's heart quail briefly, though it was directed past him at the woman. Next to the wizard stood Max, their face blank although Stefan saw that their hands were tightly clenched. He heard the woman--Laylah--gasp, and something about the sound made him step in front of her.


Kelley gave him a disgusted look. "Fool. Don't forget you are a petitioner and guest here, and an ignorant one at that." Stefan thought of Estella then, and stepped away. "Laylah. Stop playing and find that boy. The things he expects us to bring--pfagh. Get him to understand that where we are going electric toys will be so much dead weight. Make him pack sensibly."


Laylah's voice was quiet and meek. "Yes doctor." She stepped past Stefan, not looking at him. Walking with strangely muffled footsteps on marble in her sharp stilettos, she brushed past Max, whose eyes flashed, although they didn't move.


"You are starting to get into trouble." Kelley told Stefan.


"I didn't mean any..."


"Perhaps I should have you escorted out each time," the mage mused. "Yes... Max, see to it." He turned and left, robes swishing.


Max stared at him for a moment, unmoving. "What did she say to you?" they said, finally, and was that an edge of fear in their voice?


Stefan searched his memory of the last few moments. "Nothing... nothing of substance? She said she'd been sleeping, she thought I was brave... it's more a feeling she gave off--" He was aware that his face was reddening. Max seemed to notice, too, and furthermore seemed quite annoyed.


"A feeling of being timid, and vulnerable, and so unequipped to deal with the big scary archmage." they said soberly, "Don't take her seriously. I... can't *make* you listen to me if you're determined to be chivalrous, I can only advise you, but please, if my advice has ever been of use to you..."


They trailed off, and now Max was the one looking scared and vulnerable, which was disconcerting. Stefan studied them for a moment. "I brought my daughter to this place."


Max winced. "Yes... but they didn't meet, and there should be no need for her to come back."


Stefan nodded.


"You can be angry with me. That's good. It means you've taken my warning to heart."


"I've never seen you like this. If I didn't know better--ah, ignore me." he smiled weakly. "I'm seeing things. Just tell me, is the teenage boy I saw examining my car the other day a deadly threat to my immortal soul?"


*****


Jacksonville, present



"...if everyone simply learned to love work, things would be so much more civil, wouldn't you say so?"


Miss Rule, resplendent in green, gestured towards the mind control device and the two figures tending it.


"Of course I would." Mina's attention was focused on the two technicians. They wore shirts with "sandwich scientist" logos on them, but when she tried to make out faces, there was only a twisted blur of features.


They did not love work.


The two circled, flipping switches and twisting knobs. She longed for them to finish their task, but for every adjustment they made, she could see another setting that needed changing or button that had to be pushed. The more they worked, the more desperate they grew to finish, but there was no end in sight.


"Mmake sure to drink your tea," a voice purred from her other side. Mina turned to look at Inayya, who wore a dress of 19th century cut in the same color as her headscarf. "They cann't finish until you drink up," she added reasonably.


"Oh... of course..." Mina lifted the cup to her lips. As she did, one of her teeth fell out and into it. She clutched the cup close to her chest, both to protect the tooth and hide this mortifying faux pas.


"You'll stain your dress!" Miss Rule scolded, trying to take the cup away from her. Mina blushed... they had given her the white dress and it was very lovely...


"Don't worry about that, now! Just give me your hand, so I can gain the power of invincibility." Miss Rule's pink dress rippled with excitement.


"I'm not the one who can do that!" Mina protested. Another tooth fell out, and she scrambled to catch it.


"You knnnow where teeth come from. Does it bother you?" Mina looked towards Inayya, who was now standing in front of a human-sized science tank full of coffee.


"Does the other Mina want some tea?" Whispered the voice of Miss Trial from somewhere behind her. Mina turned...


...And with a nauseating wrench, she was standing some feet back, watching herself chatting amiably with the would-be tyrant Miss Rule. Mina cried out, and ran towards them. But her feet were moving so slowly... and her targets were drifting away.


"Therrrre's only onnnne way to deal with this!" Minyang jumped easily past, her eyes fixed on the vanishing pair.


"Don't kill me!" Mina screamed after her. But the catgirl did not turn...


"Mina, what are you doing? And why aren't you dressed?" Mina looked down, and to her horror saw that she was wearing only a lacy white dress with decolletage that might have been from a particularly naughty previous century. Dress might have been a bit much actually, it was more like a corset... she tried to pull it up and down simultaneously. "Nevermind that. There's work to be done. You need to deliver this, Mina." Leda Milani held out a tray holding a steaming mug. Mina took it. "The customer will leave if you don't hurry."


Turning, Mina saw that it was true. The customer had left her table and was walking away towards the door, long black hair floating out behind her. Mina called after, moving as fast as she could. The girl broke into a run, and Mina found that she could follow at top speed, the mug remaining miraculously unspilled. It was so easy... why hadn't she known this trick before?


Between the tables was sand now, and not tiles, and the lights had dimmed for closing. Mina had to hurry. She could hear the lapping waves.


Then the sand ended before her quarry, and the other girl stopped before the great expanse of the Atlantic ocean.


"Wait!" Called Mina. She had to reach the customer... she had to... or...


The girl wasn't tall... was she even old enough to drink coffee? She turned to face her pursuer and Mina's own years fell away.


Inky black hair, longer than it had ever been able to grow in life, swirled wild in the wind. The emaciated face scowled at her. "Don't follow me." Estella raised her stick-thin arm, and brought it down in a slashing motion between them. The ground fell away beneath Mina's feet...


And she was drowning, surrounded by mud. She didn't know where the surface was, and then she could no longer hold her breath. With a gasp she drew mud into her lungs... and to her great surprise, it sustained her as if it were air. This was it, she realized! She had finally expressed latent superguy potential! A great joy enveloped her, and she shot towards the surface. As she pulled herself out of the mud and onto solid concrete, her euphoria faded; she had finally gotten a super power, and it was the power to breathe mud.


Mina groaned in despair, knowing that she had wasted her potential.


"Why are we here?"


The voice sounded familiar. Mina looked up, and saw herself again, this time in jeans and a hoodie, sitting cross legged on the hard concrete in front of her. Under the hood, her features looked flat and gray. Into the sky around them rose the bare steel beams of abandoned construction, jumbling together as they vanished into the distance.


"What are you doing here?" Rephrased the other Mina, eyeing her resentfully. "This is a place of death."


Mina shuddered; she had indeed seen a man die here. If she remained long enough, she might see it happen again.


"Are you trying to get us killed?" Other Mina demanded, reaching towards her, "Stop it!"


As her doppelganger's hand approached her, Mina was gripped by an unreasoning terror. She tried to roll away, but she could feel it coming closer. The wall was behind her and she could move no further. Trapped, she lashed out desperately...


...And her leg met softness. Something yelped.


"Nnngffgg!" Cried Mina as her perception shifted into a more solid realm. For a moment, her terror lingered unfocused, despite the bright sunlight illuminating every crack in the wall.


"Bbrrrr?" A callused hand lay itself on her forehead. This would be Maow, she reminded herself, whose lap she was using as a pillow. The weight resting on her... that was Maow's arm, bound in a sling. She was curled up on a couch in the heart of catgirl territory, cradled by one of their number. The best one. What, then, had her foot encountered?


"Yyyou kick Mmmiette!"


Mina tried to master speech once again. "Sorr'...i' was an acciden'..."


"Yyyyyou kick Mmmiette llllike the football!"


"Mmina? Mmmiette? Sleeeping." complained Maow.


Was there an extra catgirl in here? There was nothing to do but keep apologizing. "Didn mean to... sorry..." She badly needed a toothbrush.


A bundle of extravagant fluff the size of a ten year old child was squeaking at her. "Mmmiette wwwaas only trrrying to snuggle! Jjjjail! Jjjail forrrr Mmina for onnnne hunnndred years!" The claw this diminutive beast pointed at her looked even sharper than Minyang's.


"Go awwway Mmmiette. Sleeping."


Mina sat up, wincing at the crick in her neck. "Miette?"


"Mmmiette!" The cat-child corrected vehemently.


"Mmmiette, I saaaw a cockroach run unnnder that doorrrr." The kittengirl squealed again and scampered out the door in hot pursuit. Turning to her still-disoriented human companion, she asked, "Exciting dreammms?"


Maow stroked Mina's hair soothingly, as the latter waited for her heartbeat to return to normal. "Exciting... you could say that."


"I hhoooope you caught the mmmmouse," Maow purred, "annnnd evaded the policcce."


Mina smiled a little. "My teeth fell out... there weren't any mice anyway... Minyang was there, though..." as she babbled on to Maow's encouraging murmurs, she wondered how much time the catgirls spent running from the authorities if they dreamed about it. They must have to steal a lot to survive... she couldn't see any of them holding down a job...


A job...


"Oh, no," groaned Mina, "work." Her slide into languor halted abruptly as a thousand unpleasant realities prickled her consciousness into full wakefulness. The possibility of sleep banished, she tore herself away from Maow's comforting warmth, wincing at the crick in her neck.


"Nnnno wwwork!" Maow protested, caressing Mina's back imploringly. "Only nnnnap!"


Mina grabbed her bag off the floor. "I wish!" She pulled away to stand up, turning to look into the big sleepy blue eyes one more time. "I--we'll keep in touch. Phones, right?" Mina hesitated a moment, then leaned close and kissed the furry forehead. Then she was gone.


*****


Mina pulled her scooter, (which the Social Justice Warrior Cats had thoughtfully retrieved for her at some point yesterday, and, with some wheedling, agreed to drop off with its rider close to her destination), into its accustomed place along the wall next to the employee entrance of the Middle Grounds Cafe. Her stay at the secret lair of the catgirls had left her well and rested but no cleaner. Catgirls didn't believe in showers and there was only so much one could do over a sink.


Mina touched the folded paper in her pocket, a giddy feeling in her chest. What kind of relationship could they even have? The catlike woman was so different from everyone she'd ever known, differences which went more than fur-deep. She was a very good cuddler, though...


Two faces turned towards her as she opened the back door, causing her to stop in her tracks. "Am I interrupting something?"


"Rezo here was just giving his two minute's notice. I'm happy to say, his departure will not cripple our operation." Leda Milani said dryly. She looked Mina up and down. "I can't say the same about the rest of the staff. I hope your work clothes are in better shape than that."


"I came to get my mug." Rezo waved his "Earth's Worst Henchmen" mug in the air.


"Oh." said Mina. "Oh! Are you going to devote yourself to fighting supervillains now that you have powers?"


"Noooo," He drew his words out slowly, as if trying to make himself understood to a very small stupid child, "I'm going to get paid to stand next to some rich guy and lend him my force shield. Because I need to pay off my student loans, and fighting supervillains doesn't pay *anything* unless you can get them to drop a bag of cash. What do you think this is, Canada?"


"Have fun being a sellout, then!" Mina shouted at his back as he brushed past her. But the retort lacked conviction, since she had come here to serve coffee to supervillains and listen to their plans and not even with a plan to report those plans to anyone who could do anything about them.


"Is that--" Amy Sunderland stuck her head through from the kitchen, her face freezing in an expression of guilt as she saw Mina.


"Mina!" cried a middle aged woman, pushing the cook out of the way as she rushed towards her daughter.


"You. Mom!" Mina said in quick succession, her tone changing from flat accusation to horrified embarrassment in a split second. She found herself embraced, briefly but inescapably.


"Go on back to the front, Simone," she heard Leda say. The other woman, who had trailed after Mina's mother, eyes bright with curiosity, obeyed with several glances back.


Mina was pushed away abruptly, and found herself being examined at arms' length. "Honey, you look awful! Your poor hands are all scratched up... and are those grass stains? And your clothes--they're covered in some kind of animal hair. What have you been doing?" She turned her reproachful gaze on Leda, zeroing in on the managerial energy the dark-haired woman exuded.


Leda cleared her throat uncomfortably. "She just got in... Mrs Westing? In fact, she's somewhat late."


"It's true, I just got here... the grass stains are from something else. It's fine! I'm having a great time!" Mina put on her brightest smile, which her mother examined skeptically.


"Since you're here, maybe you'd like to catch up over a cup of coffee? On the house." But off the clock, said her look towards Mina. Also: please get this woman out of my establishment as soon as you can.


"Are there a lot of... customers?" asked Mina trepidatiously.


Sophie Westing tsked. "If you deal with those people every day, I can handle them for a few minutes."


Mina nodded reluctantly. At least her mother hadn't seen her in her work clothes, mandatory stiletto heels and all.


As they walked into the kitchen, Sophie paused, sniffing. "Is that triple-threat flan layered baked butter dulce de leches cream coated arterial murder tart I smell?"


"With chocolate coated berries," Mina added automatically. She made a point to upsell this snack at every opportunity, on the grounds that it was likely to reduce the number of active supervillains over time. This is the sort of thing that counts as praxis when you work in the service industry. Also, if there were any leftovers by the end of the day, she would be tempted to eat some herself, potentially shortening her own life and raising the premiums of her health insurance!


Naturally, it was one of her mother's favorite dishes. "It's a delicate recipe... why would someone leave the oven unattended? The unattended kitchen is a fire hazard, too..."


"I bet I can guess," Mina muttered. She had had time over the past day and night to think of who might have told the Belles of Bellum that she had taken a piece off Malmechano's stupid mind control device. It would have been the same person who had roped her into helping to steal the device in the first place, who had then declared her intention to sell it to the highest bidder.


While her mother fussed over the food, Mina cast a glance around. The freezer or the employee bathroom... only one of them locked from the inside. She should make sure the freezer was clear first, though. Pulling a gun shaped object from her bag, she crept close, and flung the door open!


Amy Sunderland froze. Figuratively, because she stopped moving when she saw what Mina had pointed at her, but also literally because the freezer was quite cold and she was starting to turn blue. Mina scowled at the knife she was holding. "What were you going to do? Stab me? You better not try it, or Lucy here will have something to say!" She waved her laser pointer around in a vaguely menacing way. "I wasn't even sure 'til now that it was you who sold me out to those Lost Cause psychos!"


"I-I c-c-c-can exp-p--"


"Why bother? It's just going to be the same self serving crap I hear from everyone else around here. What I want to know is, how did you deal with them without getting scammed by their mind control?"


"I-I-I-I n-n-n-nev-v-ver-r s-s-s-saw t-t-t-hem-m in-n-n-n p-p-p-p--" At this point Mina stepped aside, gesturing for the shivering woman to leave the freezer. She wanted a coherent answer, and besides, leaving it open like this was environmentally irresponsible! She snatched the knife out of Amy's shaking hand before she could thaw enough to start waving it around. "W-we t-talked by p-phone and t-traded b-by dead-d-drop."


Mina nodded, disappointed. "So, nothing I can use if they come after me again. Thanks." She wondered if Amy was telling the truth. She could have any kind of scavenged supertech tucked away somewhere... but she couldn't think of a way to get the truth from her now.


"I-I didn't h-have a c-choice! They know w-where my f-family--"


"So you handed over mine, instead." Both women jumped at the sound of the voice. Sophie Westing leaned against a counter, arms folded, a heavy cooking pan in one hand tapping against her hip, her icy gaze fixed upon the already shivering cook.


"F-f-f-f-fu--"


"These 'Lost Cause psychos'... they would be the ones responsible for the death of my old war buddy Ed?"


"Um, no... in fact that was something --someone-- else..."


"So you've managed to run afoul of at least two super-powered groups in the time you've been here, one of whom got a good man killed. No wonder you're carrying. I don't guess you have a license for that, by the bye?"


In response, Mina twitched "Lucy's" barrel to the side, and pulled the trigger, letting a narrow beam of blue light play along the freezer door. The look on Amy Sunderland's face did not make the whole adventure worth it. Not quite.


Her mother nodded. "But this is real?" She stepped forward, taking the knife from Mina and examining it for sharpness. "I remember... back during the Genocide War. There wasn't much room for mercy, in those times. If there was someone who might sell out the resistance... we couldn't hesitate." She drew the knife in pantomime across her own throat, staring Amy directly in the eyes. "Those were lawless times. Not like today, thank Elvis."


The other woman gulped, sidling away. "I j-just have--I-I was in the m-middle of--"


"I took your dish out of the oven," Sophie added, sweetly. She took her open-mouthed daughter by the arm, and gently steered her toward the dining room. "It might have burnt otherwise. Take care now!"


*****


Continued in Part 2!


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