Challenge #00090: Faith in Humanity…
Tenderness from an unlikely person in an unlikely place.
Ow.
Not fair. The heart-warming speech should have worked. The whole ‘pick on someone your own size’ thing inherent should have at least made them ashamed of themselves.
But no. Sara had to get an ugly of thugs who took her whole shame-on-you speech as an open invitation. At least the kid got away. She’d made certain.
Which left her back open for attack.
_Mental note. Don’t try tricky things that have yet to be combat tested._
Sure, she’d given them a good hiding, but they gave as good as they got. Possibly better, given that they had time to leave her to rot in a dumpster and debunk with all their battered friends.
Sara had extracted herself and was now using her staff as a walking aid. They’d taken her image inducer. If she still had her phone on her, this would have been useful for tracking the idiots down.
Alas, the kid had her phone. And her purse. The spoils of defeat, Sara supposed.
Good thing her credit cards were in her other wallet.
A rather loud muscle car snarled to a slow halt behind her.
“What the hell. Essel?” said Duncan.
“Sara. Louise. Adrien,” she panted. Anger was helping her limp onwards. There might still be a pay phone on the corner. The council was rather lax about removing them from this neighbourhood. Not that the locals didn’t have a hand in their slow demolition. “Currently in no mood for your asinine fecalities, Mr Matthews.”
“Asinine… Wait. You’re tired of my shit?” he laughed. A reedy little giggle. “Where do you come with that?”
“I get polite when I’m angry,” Sara snarled. Five more steps to the visible crest of the hill. Four. Three.
“What happened to you?”
“Civil intervention gone awry. I attempted to rescue a young mutant from a gang of three. They had ten friends. It did not, as you may guess, end well.”
The muscle-car roared. Pulled up in front of her. “Hop in. I’ll get you to somewhere friendlier.”
Sara contemplated the slope down to the remains of the public phone. And the likelyhood of stumbling and tumbling all the way to the bottom of the hill. “I’ll stain your upholstery.”
“It’ll clean.”
“I am a mutant.”
Duncan frowned. Bit his lip. “So’s my baby sister. She ran home with your purse and a hell of a wild story. Way I see it… I owe you. Big time.”
Her purse was in the back seat. Judging by the size and shape, with all the contents intact.
“You never mentioned a sister…” Sara casually checked her bag for new spatter. Clean.
“My family doesn’t talk about her. She… she was born… weird.” Once she had a space blanket out, he helped her drape it around herself, and get settled in the passenger seat. “Bright yellow. And she glows in the dark. All the time. Never figured out how to turn it off. So… She’s been home schooled and tonight, she ran away… ran into trouble… and… um.”
Sara, knowing she was the 'um’, dug into one of her belt-pouches for the calling-card. “She can come to Xavier’s if she wants to. Perhaps with a different name to -ah- spare your somewhat politically vocal family from unnecessary exposure?”
Duncan blushed. He kept his eyes on the road. “It’s genetic, isn’t it? When I have kids, they’re gonna be freak-babies, right?”
“He said to the freak,” added Sara. “One would think that by the time progeny turned up, you would be living in a world of your own making, Mr Matthews. Consider that, the next time you’re standing behind your father when he’s pontificating at the podium.”
He dropped her off at the gates of Xavier’s without another word. Drove off in silence.
Sara didn’t think anything of it. He was a jock. She was lucky he could drive and talk at the same time. Though asking him to chew gum simultaneously may have taxed his abilities.
Logan was already tearing up the drive with a gurney.
She greeted him with a sarcastic, “All hail the conquering hero.”
“Yer chariot awaits,” snarled Logan.
Three days later, the news broke about the Matthews’ family secret 'freak baby’ - age just thirteen - and the hideous scandal it was to find such a thing in the Friends of Humanity’s best spokesperson in the senate.
All because Dunc snapped a selfie with him and his baby sister in the dark and posted it on Facebook.
Dunc was exiled. So was Sophia Matthews, but at least she was exiled to Xavier’s, where she bloomed astonishingly well.
Two weeks after the scandal, Sara received a thankyou card from Duncan Matthews, who was now volunteering at a mutant clinic in Australia.
[Muse food remaining: 7. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]
Challenge #00089: The Inherent Perils of Silly Season
When glitter goes awry.
Silly Season had started early. It was an excuse for the humans to vent some of their usually-socially-inhibited insanity and to allow things to ‘all hang out’.
Not literally. There had to be standards.
Rael had done his best, with all the other nonhuman JOATs, to make sure the possibility of damage was limited. A certain amount of nonsense was expected, even permitted, during Silly Season. Already, some of the harmless mainstays were occurring.
Not only did they nail gelatin to the walls, but they made a gelatin art gallery. The singing and dancing were pretty much par for the course. As well as the apparently spontaneous appearance of traffic cones.
As long as he kept a watchful eye on Shayde, little could go very wrong.
Lyr stormed up to him with her 'trouble in the air’ face. “What is this?” she demanded, thrusting it into his hands.
“It looks like a piece of purple metallic mylar two point five centimeters square…”
“I happen to have a whole goddamn rainbow’s worth of those raining all over the Elemeno. I have two questions: who’s responsible, and who’s going to clean it up?”
Shayde, noticing the upset, fell into her shadow and jumped out of his. “It was me, Tweedle Dee!” She grinned. “I couldnae find any chaff cannons, so I kind of improvised. And this is the safe stuff, yeah?”
“…chaff… cannons…?” Lyr pleaded.
“It’s best you don’t know,” said Rael.
“Hey look! Disco Slug!”
“…and now the Cleaners are covered in it,” sighed Lyr.
[Muse food remaining: 8. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]
Challenge #00088: Happens Stance
Anywhere in the story: “It happened, and because it happened, it had to exist whether they liked it or not.”
There were thousands of words to describe Shayde. “Annoying” just happened to be in his top five. She had a uniquely twentieth-century disregard for others’ established preferences and his in particular. And this wasn’t the first time he wished inwardly that he had not been the first responder to her spectacular arrival.
Rael found her. She was his problem because, by the reasoning of Galactic law, he was the one with the most experience.
And today, in typical exuberant enthusiasm for a now-forgotten joy, she had kissed him. On the mouth. In public. It happened, and because it happened, it had to exist whether they liked it or not.
He decided amicable negotiation was better than some painful intervention by the law. Besides, as the expert on her, many people hired him to translate her antiquated phraseology into modern memes. He did not want to lose such a lucrative income stream.
“I crossed a line,” she said. “I know it. I can tell, yeh.”
“Unasked-for physical contact can be viewed as assault,” he informed. “And the intimacy level you displayed…”
“I’m not sorry I kissed ye. I’ll never be sorry I kissed ye.” Almost-black talons raked through smoke-white hair. “What I am sorry for is the unwelcome part. I never wanted tae hurt ye.”
Rael had never known love. He’d shied away from anything resembling romance for so long that it was automatic. Having viewed it from the outside, he imagined it to be an emotionally painful and traumatic process. Literature backed him up, with phenomena like ‘the lightning bolt’ and a minor god armed with arrows. There were phrases like, 'falling for someone’ or 'they’ve been hit hard’.
Pain hurt. Rael preferred to avoid it whenever possible.
And here was someone suffering its throes. Unlikely enough… for him.
Meanwhile, Shayde was babbling. “I’ll keep away from ye if ye want. I’ll find a fan or someone who wants t’ be near me. I get it. Ye don’t like me. I just been hopin’ too bad fer a change…”
Absent Powers… she was crying.
“Don’t… do that?” fell awkwardly out of his mouth. Followed by a fatal collision with, “Please?”
She sniffed, wiping her face on her sleeve. Her eyes swirled between the deep blue of sorrow to the dark red of confusion and back again. “Ye woh?”
“It won’t work that way. I’m the registered expert on you. People like to hire experts. For want of a better term… we’re stuck with each other.”
“Ah don’t want ye tae feel trapped, I’ll–”
He held up a hand to stop her. Someone had to be the voice of reason and it was almost always him. “I never said I was hurt. We need to establish some rules, that’s all.”
“But you know about me an’ rules…”
He did. Rael sighed. “Then think of it as an agreement, then. An establishment of… boundaries.”
“I still like ye a lot,” she said. “Ye cannae change that.”
“Yes,” he allowed. “It’s the means of expression I’d like to… quantify.”
Another face-sleeve scrub. “I guess that means no hugs, then…”
And this was a being who thrived on physical contact, but had a societal stigma against hiring a therapist for such things. “Hugging is… benign enough for your home environment. Or mine. Not a public one.”
“Can I hold yuir hand, then?”
Rael began to regret not getting the lawyers involved. This was going to be a long negotiation.
[Muse food remaining: 7. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]
Challenge #00087: My Apologies for the Pun
End with this sentence: “No matter what happened after, no one could ever say he’d been subtle about it all.”
Public forums like this were what Clayton Endicott had been born for. He had worked hard to reach his station in the Galactic Standards Committee and his people - humans in general and the people of Earth in particular - needed his voice today.
He was going to filibuster the living spit out of the Generic Food Standards bill. His financiers demanded it. His people had a right to enjoy the food they wanted. Not the food they needed. And they certainly deserved the food they could afford.
He had his reader full to the brim with studies and testimonials and data. Enough to keep the Committee busy for weeks if he had to. And a bottle of water to keep his mouth agile during his anticipated hours at the lectern.
It’s all fun and games until someone loses an ‘Aye’…
He would preach, he would pontificate, he would talk until there was blood. No matter what happened after, no one could ever say he’d been subtle about it all.
[Muse food remaining: 8. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]
Challenge #00086: The Ninth Step
Sara’s mom and Scott have a chat during her wait while attempting to do a bit of step work with Sara. Scott actually receives good advice from her in the process, albeit slightly jaundiced in delivery.
Jacquelline Adrien had changed a lot since Scott last laid eyes on her. Gone was the Pink Chanel power suit and the ludicrously small hat. Gone were the Label accessories and the solid layer of Mary Kaye cosmetics. Gone, too, were about five pounds of alcohol-fueled jelly rolls.
This was Jacqui. Smaller in more ways than just the physical. She fiddled nervously with an AA chip in one hand, and the hem of a purple summer dress with the other.
Sara, Scott knew, was inside the auditorium doing a TED talk. He was there to pick her up, since his trunk was more spacious than Eileen’s saddlebags. Sara and her visual aids…
“You could always try sleight of hand,” he suggested. “Coin tricks? You know, for something to do.”
“I can’t settle to anything. I can’t sit still. I’m so terrified,” she confessed. She held out her hands to show how much she was trembling. “Look.”
“Ninth step?” he guessed.
“Ninth step.” Jacqui nodded. She reached into a burlap environment bag and picked out some crochet, and fumbled her way through a single treble stitch. “I don’t even know how I could possibly help her at all. She’s grown so much without me…”
_She was doing that before you sobered up,_ thought Scott, but kept it to himself.
“Do you plan on having a family?” she asked out of the blue. Her fingers kneaded her ball of yarn anxiously.
“If the lady’s amenable,” he allowed.
“Don’t ever let them grow up without you. And believe me, there’s ways to be there and… not be there for them. It’s a male belief that as long as one provides, then the family is grateful. You have to provide your time and involvement, too.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“I missed out on it with Sara. I thought I could jam her into this… perfect child mould and be the envy of everyone. Meanwhile, she was turning into someone wonderful all by herself. And I didn’t want to see it because…” she sighed and put away the crocheting again. “Envy is not a worthy goal. It breeds jealousy and spite and many other horrible things. It took me way too long to see that.”
Applause filled the auditorium. Sara would be taking her bows and gathering her props. And they would be asking her back because she covered such dire subjects with almost irresponsible levity and still made people think about it.
Stuff like the Ignorance Bubble. A speech that included Jacquelline and the short, sharp shock that popped her reality… all without naming names or making anything obvious.
Mother had broken daughter. Daughter then fixed herself and broke mother, only so she could fix her up. It was strange, to think how some did the breaking, and others did the fixing.
He’d have to ask Sara about the breaker-fixer dichotomy on the way home.
Maybe she’d put it in her next talk.
[Muse food remaining: 9. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]
Challenge #00085: They Fight Crime
Morning becomes eccentric.
It wasn’t fair. It really wasn’t fair. Sharing the same house with someone who operated in a different time zone was every colour of unfairness.
“Good morning, good mor-ning,” she sang. “You’ve worked the whole night through, good morning, good morning to you.”
And it was really unfair that he loved her beyond all reason. Because mornings made him grumpy.
He was a night-owl. She was a morning person. In the handful of hours when their schedules synced up, they synergised spectacularly and the world was a wonderful place.
It was the remaining eighteen that tended to suck.
“Good morning, good mor-ning, wake up, you sleepy head! Good morning, good morning–”
“Drop dead,” he growled, trying to dig himself further under the covers and wish the world away.
“Sorry, dear, but there’s a dead body on the corner of Fifth and Twenty-second that needs both our adorable attentions.”
“I’m not adorable, go away.”
“I bought the good coffee…”
Carlos Daye dragged himself back from the dead to appreciate the aroma. He scalded his tongue on it, but god, he needed the caffeine. “…brains…” he half-joked.
“Sorry, all we have is bacon and eggs. Alternately, there’s eggs and bacon.” Sylvia Knight was a vision in neat and stylish clothes. Hair done, face polished, and bearing the meal in question.
The second swallow of scalding-hot good coffee bought him further around. Or at least gave him enough cognition to operate a fork. “Any reason why they need both of us?”
“Descedant looks like they’ve been turned inside-out.”
“Ah. Right.” He was not much for words at just past dawn. “That’d do it.”
[Muse food remaining: 10. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]
Challenge #00084: Dance!
Shayde’s first day taking dancing lessons.
[AN: Shayde’s first dancing lesson was when she was a 5YO Katie Walker…But I’ll take ‘modern’ 25thC dance]
“And left… No, the other left. Stage left!”
“Ow!” Shayde flinched away. “How’s someone so skinny so darn heavy?”
“I’m denser than I look.”
“Ye can say that twice,” Shayde muttered. “Why do we have tae learn this thing? Isn’t it designed fer people wi’ four feet?”
“Why did you have to sign me up as your plus one?” countered Rael.
“I think yer cute when you’re flustered?” she suggested. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. More an evasion of the truth.
He was getting used to those. And they always cropped up when he was the topic of discussion. “It’s a formal Gaux event. Dancing is mandatory and so is this dance in particular. And since you already submitted the RSVP…”
“I get it, I get it. It’s all my fault. It’s just..” she wrestled both with her emotions and her flyaway hair. “I thought it’d be nice. A little dinner. A little dancing. I didnae think it’d be the crosswise hopscotch frug…”
Rael snorted. Shayde and her antiquated expressions could be both intentionally and unintentionally hilarious. “Do you even know who the Gaux are?”
“Some… planet we have tae play nice with?”
“They’re heavy-worlders. The ones that sort of look like… headless rhino-centaurs, if I remember your terminology.” And that terminology was why she wore a black-and-silver fan as a brooch most times. As a warning to others that she may be accidentally insulting.
“Oh, is tha’ them? And they dance?”
“The Gaux have a great appreciation for fine things, including the art of body movement.”
“But we only have two legs. Or I do, at any rate… You can just grow another pair.”
“Yes, but it isn’t comfortable.”
Shayde was frowning. Always a bad sign. Either she was angry and about to happen to someone… or thinking and about to happen to him. “This place has a holographic interface, yeah?”
“…yes…?”
“So can we get it tae show us how two Gaux’d do it. I always learned better from watchin’.”
Now that was almost obscene in the wrong mind-set. Rael wondered if it was his association with her and her dirty jokes or something… more internal that had his mind headed towards the gutter.
He did his best to keep his mental depravity to himself and dialed up two Gaux dancers on the holo-playback.
Shayde stood roughly inside the female projection and learned by trying to stay inside. “I get it. Two times the gravity… ye got tae be careful. Arms’d be a bother, so it’s in th’ shoulders.. C’m on then. Join in…”
He did his best, matching his recalled lessons to the Gaux hologram.
“Watch his feet an’ match yours,” instructed Shayde.
It wasn’t precisely easier… merely less troublesome to recall.
She had a warm smile, even with the fangs. “Na, don’t we look charmin’?”
Rael decided on diplomatic silence.
[Muse food remaining: 11. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]
Challenge #00083: By the Book
The 5th oldest trick in the book and the simpleton who fell for it.
As kidnappers went, this fellow was not particularly bright. He’d definitely dotted on to the idea that one should grab the most vulnerable member and attempt to extort money from the remaining family.
He’d forgotten that the remaining family most convenient to this situation was an Augmented St. Bernard by the name of Nanny. Who operated on a schedule of events and was now in the custody of an Augment therapist/handler.
Shayde had been tailing him since the snatch and -yes- he was stupid enough to use a tourist map to find secret passages. He’d gone straight for a dead end with a ‘passage’ that was an inch in diameter. She took the emergency stunner off the wall and sidled up to the best vantage with the best cover.
“Bad man,” Julie was whimpering. “Bad man. I wanna go home.”
“Give it up, smartypants. I got you surrounded,” Shayde called.
“Surrounded? How the hell can you surround me?”
Shayde let him see her sharp-toothed grin. “Ever wondered why I’m called a shadow elemental?”
All the shadows on the wall shifted and moved into humanoid shapes. Then into menacing shapes.
“Drop her, and I won’t have tae fill out a bunch of paperwork.”
The menacing shapes crept ever closer to her new 'friend’. And, since he’d already proved himself a galactic-class antigenous, he had to try shooting the walls.
But it did give Julie a chance to break away and head for safety. Shayde popped out of cover and caught him with one good shot from the stunner.
Down like a sack of spuds.
Rael, of course, was on her in instants. “You did not have to do that. Security was tracking him. Well, to be exact, security was tracking Julie…”
“He had a lethal weapon and a scared kid,” argued Shayde. “I wasnae about t’ let that go sour. And he was an idiot. Fell for the fifth-oldest trick in the book.”
Rael sputtered. “The fifth?”
“The double-reverse backup bluff. Make 'em think yer bluffin’ about backup when you ain’t, but the backup’s just enough to get 'em shooting the wrong way.”
“How is that even the fifth-oldest…?”
“You ferget. I’ve seen The Book.”
[Muse food remaining: 12. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]
Challenge #00082: The Muse Woos
Julie, Nana, buckets of paint and why artists sometimes get away from themselves.
Nanny the Augmented dog had fallen asleep by Julie’s easel. That much was evident from the paint spatter on her cloak and skirt. And Julie had opened all the paint cans in a flight of colour-inspired fancy. That was evident from the rainbows of new spatter all over the floors and walls.
What wasn’t instantly evident to Raak was how the two of them had got caught in an infinite loop and set off her urgency alert.
“Must finish!” Julie screamed.
“Wash! Dinner Time!” Nanny barked.
Raak blew her whistle, holding up the lanyard with the antiquated Stop sign pictured on it.
Now Julie had paint on her ears. “…loud…” Julie complained.
Nanny was sitting in a literal hangdog pose and whining.
“Take a breath,” said Raak. “Take your time. Julie? This is a very pretty painting.”
“It’s not finished yet,” said Julie. “I gotta get the sky right.” Unhindered, she picked up another pot and a brush and resumed working.
“Dinner time,” Nanny whined. “Bad dog.”
“Where is dinner, Nanny?” Raak asked. The dog’s nap must have taken place sometime after lunch, since everything was put away. Nothing had been taken out, so this looked like a scheduling conflict. Nanny had woken late, near to or around the time to eat, and got into a flap.
“Make dinner. Yes. Good dog. Good Nanny.”
“Fast dinner, Nanny. It’s late.”
Julie stepped back from her canvas, carefully, so as not to waste paint on the floor.
“Almost done?” prompted Raak.
“Don’t know,” Julie frowned. “Something’s… off.”
“It can sit and wait until tomorrow, can’t it?”
Julie shrugged.
“Tidy time, then. Let’s get all the lids on all the right pots, eh?” Julie was still unsettled, but Nanny was back to normal. Little hiccups like this where the reason why zhe had a job with people like Julie and Nanny.
Julie started reciting the colours as she put them together. “Carmine lid, goes on carmine pot.”
Raak lined up potless lids and lidless pots. Zen and the art of mopping up.
“I wanna finish it,” Julie complained as she wandered around her studio space.
“And you will. Tomorrow. It’s late. You’re both tired. You need to eat. Those things are just as important as finishing your work.”
“I’m an artist. Art is what I do.”
“And I’m a therapist,” countered Raak. “But I also breathe, I eat, I go to the toilet…”
Julie giggled.
“We all do lots of things that aren’t our jobs, Julie. Those things are important, too. I take time to relax. I play. I hug my family. When’s the last time you took some time off to have fun, Julie?”
A clear image of the nearest park. On the swings while Nanny pushed. Patting the fluffy chickens in the neighbouring petting zoo. “Um. Probably last month? But I got commissions. People are waiting and I hate waiting.”
“Everyone’s willing to wait for good art, Julie. Take a day off. Relax. Have some fun. And then, when you feel better, you can finish your work.”
Julie bit her lip, still matching pots and lids. “Feels like cheating.”
“It’s not cheating, Julie. It’s recharging.”
Julie’s mouth hung open in happy amazement. “Okay. I recharge.”
“Dinner is ready,” said Nanny. “Time to wash.”
“Okay, Nanny.” Julie sprang up to wash the paint from her hands.
[Muse food remaining: 13. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]
Challenge #00081: Graduation
In lieu of college or teaching at the institute, Sam Adrien offers Scott Summers an internship upon graduation. Creeping doom raises the hackles on Scott’s neck subconsciously.
He did it. He passed the bar. He was now entitled to enter the cut-throat world of the law. And very possibly defend his fellow mutants against the slings and arrows of outrageous senators who, say, wanted to ban mutants.
Sam Adrien, like many blonds, was going darker in his old age. On him, it looked good. Sort of Perry Mason-ish without the extra waistline.
“Congratulations. But I really have to ask - why law?”
“You know Sara and you ask this question?” countered Scott.
Sam laughed. “Much as I love her… you have a point. ‘Fargnaxing petty legalities’ is a favourite phrase of hers.”
“I heard she’s doing some intern thing at Princeton.”
“No, that was last month. Now she’s teaching hospitals to 'get it right’.”
“Sounds like Sara,” Scott shook his head. Sara the unstoppable, fixing one problem that nobody knew was there at a time. “But you didn’t come to my graduation just to catch up.”
“Right you are. I’m head-hunting.”
Scott automatically looked to the valedictorian. “Sam the younger, over there, top of the class in all things.”
“Not quite. I’m head-hunting you.”
“Me? But I’m strictly in the middle. I fully expect to be an unpaid intern until I figure out how to distinguish myself in some nowhere law firm somewhere.”
“Thanks a lot,” Sam deadpanned. “No, this will be full employment with assistance. You’re being groomed.”
Scott had the urge to check his ears for parsley. “Um. Why?”
“My firm is an equal opportunity employer and we have to prove it occasionally. Plus we have a reputation for helping mutants.”
Ah. The magic M-word. He did scrub at one ear, but found no vegetation. “Mutants can be good citizens, here’s one we prepared earlier?” he guessed.
“Sara was right, you are smarter than you look,” said Sam.
“Thank-you-I-think,” Scott snarked.
“It’s not just the PR angle,” Sam explained. “Though it is a significant factor. We need a mutant perspective that’s a little bit more…”
“Un-Sara?” Scott prompted.
“Reality based,” said Sam with a nod. “You’ll be working with Glee. She’s brilliant at strategy, lousy at being personable. Expect to swap chairs depending on what’s going on.”
“I’m not getting thrown in the deep end, am I?”
“My dear boy,” said Sam. “How else can we discover if you can swim and fight sharks at the same time?”
Sara had warned him against law. Now he knew why.
[Muse food remaining: 13. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]