Fluff

Chapter Thirty Six - A Receipt for Ulcers

Emily arrived home with an odd sense of trepidation. She found Sam near the dorm entrance, the girl cocooned in a pile of blankets and eyeing everyone that entered with suspicion. That had Emily herself a little nervous, but she arrived at her room with no trouble.

She... kind of expected to find a mess inside. Instead, Teddy was reading her red book while thumping her feet on the bed, and her new sister, Athena, was bundled up in her favourite chair, a stack of Emily’s school books on the desk next to her. “Big sister Emily!” Athena cheered.

Teddy craned her neck back without actually moving from her spot on the bed. “Hey Boss,” she said.

Emily closed the door behind her and smiled at the two. “Hello,” she said. “Um, how was your morning?”

“It was alright,” Teddy said. “Real quiet. We need another computer so that we can look at stuff while you’re gone.”

Emily, for the first time in her life, considered the benefits of a parental lock on a computer. “We’ll have to see,” she said. “Maybe I can find a used laptop somewhere. You can use mine on some days.”

“Cool.”

Athena extricated herself from her cocoon. “So, big sister, are we doing anything villainous today?”

“Uh,” Emily said.

“Nah,” was Teddy’s reply. “The Boss has bigger concerns than just being a villain. She’s taking the fight to the pigs in charge.”

“Um, it’s not quite that,” Emily said. “I... ah, don’t really like doing villain stuff. I’d much rather people see me, see us, as heroes.”

“Huh,” Athena hooted. “Well, I’m sure we can do something about that. It’ll be substantially more work, but we can do it, I’m certain.” She nodded, and Emily had the impression that there might have been a crucial misunderstanding there, but she couldn’t quite pin what and how.

“So,” she said. “I guess we have a few mask things to do today. And we need to grab something to eat. Maybe we can stop by the thrift store again and buy a microwave or something like that, so that we can cook stuff in here.”

“What’ll we cook?” Teddy asked.

“Um, just noodles and stuff,” Emily said. She felt kind of bad, it was her duty to make sure that Teddy and Athena ate well, but she wasn’t exactly equipped for feeding them and so on. “And we can pick up some clothes for Athena, I don’t think she’ll fit in yours, Teddy.”

Athena nodded. “That would be nice. Could we stop by a book place too?”

“Oh, sure,” Emily said. “There’s a used bookstore around, I think. New books might be beyond our budget, but we can probably buy some secondhand.”

Athena nodded along. “Sure.”

Emily smiled at her... sisters again, then sighed as she took off her backpack and set it aside. “I have to make a phone call really quick. Can you guys be, uh, a little bit quiet for just a few minutes?”

Athena nodded at her quite seriously, and Teddy gave her a lazy thumbs up.

Emily fiddled with her phone for a moment. She didn’t want to have to make the call she had to, but, well, she had to. Putting off that kind of thing was always so very tempting, but it wouldn’t end well.

She unlocked the phone, then stared at the twenty-odd texts from Mel.

Mel: Hey.
Mel: Hey!
Mel:

Did you just catch the H loser?
Mel: Yo?
Mel: Kid, answer me!
Mel: Holy crap, just saw the vid.
Mel: You’re on the news. Again.
Mel: Well done!
Mel: Did you grab the D?
Mel: Oh, ewww
Mel: Didn’t mean it like that.
Mel: Sorry.
Mel: Is Bear okay?
Mel: There was a camera in the lobby place.
Mel: I’m trying to suppress things a bit, but I don’t have the pull for it.
Mel: Hey?
Mel: You alive?
Mel: Yo?
Mel: Call me.

Emily hesitated for a moment, her thumb hovering over the texts so long that her screen ended up going dark. She sighed and unlocked it again, then tapped a few times until the phone was ringing.

She pressed it to her ear and waited until the click of someone picking up sounded out. “H-hello?”

Some part of her wished that she’d somehow gotten a wrong number.

“You!” Melanie’s voice came through. “Wait. Give me a second.” There was a shuffling, and Emily heard Melanie telling someone that it was an important call that she had to take.

“Um?” Emily asked.

“Okay,” Melanie returned. “I’m away from prying ears.”

“It’s eyes,” Emily said.

“What?”

“N-nevermind,” she said. “Uh, did you, want to... talk?”

“Do I? Yeah girl, of course I do,” Melanie said. Her voice grew louder. “What were you thinking? I know it worked out in the end, but... god, you’re still just a newbie. Homie might be some small-fry punk but that doesn’t mean that you should have just run in there solo. And no, having a fourteen year old with you doesn’t make it any less dangerous.”

“I’m sorry?” Emily said. “I... he had the drive.”

The phone rumbled as Melanie sighed into its microphone. “Yeah, alright. So do you have it?”

“The drive?”

Melanie scoffed. “I’m not asking about common sense, we both know you don’t have that. Yeah, the drive.”

“I destroyed it,” Emily said.

“Destroyed how?”

“Um. We burned it, then smashed it a bit, but it was hard, so I tossed it in a river. Do you think that’s enough?”

Melanie hummed. “I guess? Was it a solid state drive? One of those old ones with a disk? Mechanical ones are a lot more fragile. But... yeah, lighting it on fire and flinging it in a lake would do.”

“Oh, okay, but... it’s done?” Emily asked. “We’re safe now?”

Melanie took a little while to respond, something that didn’t inspire confidence in the least. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

“Oh, good,” Emily said. It was good. In fact, it was great. She could go on living a normal life, returning to working towards her goal of reaching a grey morality, while figuring out how to take care of her summons.

It was all coming together.

“Hey, kid,” Melanie said. “I think I might have a job for you.”

Emily’s eagerness petered out. “A, a job?”

“Yeah. Nothing too big, but it might help you. Your career’s already taking off a fair bit, with some decent management, you could make it pretty big, if only locally.”

“I don’t think I want that,” Emily said.

“Nah, it’s good for you. Tell you what, why don’t we meet for lunch, I’ll tell you all about it. I’ll send you the address, and don’t worry, I’ll pay the tab.”

“What? No, no it’s okay I...” Emily stopped when she realized that she was talking to a dial tone.

She lowered her phone, then glared at it when the screen lit up to show a texted address and time.

“Are you okay, big sister Emily?” Athena asked.

“I’m fine,” Emily lied, though for once it was a small lie. “Just fine. So, are you guys ready to head out? The stores close at five, so if we want time to see what they have, we should leave soon.”

Teddy groaned and rolled off the bed, and Athena hopped off her chair.

“We can grab something to eat too,” Emily added. It gave Teddy’s step a bit of pep.

Why couldn’t all her problems be as simple to understand as her sisters?