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'When I'm Cleaning Windows' is performed by George Formby
A pleasant whistle drifted down the darkened hall, accompanied by the eager squeak of the wheel from the cart that the blonde-haired Mark Farr pushed along. With the departure of the students and their clamor, Dalton Institute felt like some great, hollow cavern, carrying the ominous chill that prompted any who wandered into the shadows promptly rush out. Every noise seemed magnified and the most minor of movements in the lonely passages and classrooms felt inherently threatening. It grew less menacing with the passage of time and experience, but the atmosphere never completely left the abandoned rooms. However, there was a strange sense of tranquility and peace in the emptied corridors, a rare separation from the droves that flooded the halls.
However, as 'Mark' studied his features in a passing display case, he was reminded that he wasn't entirely alone.
"You know, I don't think we need any footage of your ugly mug."
"Aren't you supposed to be doing homework?" the disguised Garfield Logan grumbled to the one-eyed heroine over his ear bud.
Rose shrugged, "The clown's got some super genius persona going and she practically stole my homework."
"Do not let her do your homework," he chided tiredly as he halted in front of a classroom door and eased it open, checking for any teachers who had opted to stay late. Finding the room deserted, he pulled the dust mop from his war chariot and set about the room, gathering the debris left over from the heedless students who paid no mind to the men and women left to clean up after them.
"But she wants to," she protested. "Also, I'm fairly certain she turned the hair dryer into a heat ray and brought the fridge to life. It refused to open for Blackfire because it said she was trying to make 'poisons.' She provided a . . . counterargument."
"So we need a new fridge?" he asked stoically as he shook out the dust mop and returned it to its place upon the cart. He grabbed the broom and dustpan, sweeping the mess and depositing it in the attached garbage bag. Striding back into the room, he glanced over the floor and scowled at the rubber marks marring the linoleum and swung back to the readily equipped cart to grab a long pole with a tennis ball secured at the end. As he removed the erratic stains, Rose answered with a disconcerting eagerness.
"She absolutely annihilated the thing. It probably made my week."
"I'll put in an order," he sighed.
"Get one with a larger freezer. If you and Blackfire are going to keep wasting the ice cream doing things I would rather not know about, we're going to need to set aside some actually meant to be eaten."
"We're getting off track here. You're supposed to be doing your homework," he redirected, his voice growing steely and stern as he admired his work, giving a satisfied nod.
"Missed a spot. Under the teacher's desk," she interjected, earning a grumble from her elder as the door hissed open behind her. She glanced back to see a toned girl saunter proudly towards her, a dark mask in the shape of an 'H' reaching across her face with the bar covering her eyes with crimson lenses. A black leather jacket was draped about her athletic frame, the words 'FOUL PLAY' emblazoned on the bulky sleeves that reached slightly beyond her wrists. Orbiting her were obsidian spheres with jagged spikes, and composed of some metal that gleamed in the room's lights. Her hair was a dull ebony hue and collected in tight braids that were held by miniature variations of her personal satellites. Razors extended from the knuckles of her gloves, and she was careful not to slice the small pile of papers that she languidly presented to the silver-haired girl.
"In utter veracity, the conundrums were stupendously underwhelming," she sighed as Rose beamed at the essay and several pages of fully solved math problems.
"But you are oh-so-much better at handling the boredom than I am," she smirked.
"Naturally. Now if you'll pardon my departure, I must tend to the dismal security measures of this domicile," she inclined her head slightly and strode from the room. Rose tossed the papers onto the circular couch and turned back to the monitors of the feed of Gar's contacts as he entered into another classroom and went through the process once again.
"So, it's a bit late for me to actually do my homework."
"Then burn it and do it yourself."
"You can't be serious."
"Course not. Though Steve made me do that once. I talked Cliff into giving me a hand and tried to pass if off as my own stuff. Mind you, this was before I had my crazy awesome mental defenses, so Steve saw I was trying to pull a fast one and – well, some stories write themselves."
"Someday, I'm going to learn how to determine whether you're being serious or not when you tell your stories," she warned.
"Yeah, good luck with that, bright eye," he scoffed. "Anyway, why are you pestering me when you should be working up the courage to go ask Eddie to that school dance you guys have?"
"First off and foremost, we're masquerading as siblings. My real family is messed up enough as it is. Let's keep my pretend one marginally normal, please. Second, even if Eddie and I weren't imaginary family, I wouldn't be going to a dance with him. Unless it was out of pity," she grumbled.
"If you're gonna go swimming in de Nile, make sure you've got your water wings on," he teased.
"Hey, Mark, you coming on break or not?"
The Dalton Institute's newest janitor nearly jumped and toppled over, but regained control of his reaction and turned to his superior, an older blonde man. An off-white baseball cap sat atop his scruffy mop of hair and a heavy keyring hung from his belt, jingling with each step as he approached the neophyte who held up a finger while pressing the other hand to his ear.
"All right, baby girl. I'm gonna have to call you back. Play nice with Eddie."
"Watch your step when you get back here, salad head. I can promise that what will be waiting for you won't be very nice," Rose snapped as 'Mark' dropped his hand and straightened, miming the tucking of a headset into his pocket.
"So soon? Felt like I just started," he admitted as he ambled over.
"It's cause you're slow, kid," Norman Blank observed with a smile growing beneath his bushy moustache, hooking his thumbs in his belt loops. Just as Eddie and Rose had people they desperately wished were not part of the NOWHERE scheme, Gar hoped with every fiber of his being that the kindly, recently-turned-grandfather was not an agent of the shadowy organization they were going to take down. He was quick with a sincere smile and even quicker to proudly produce snapshots of his dark-haired grandson who stared up from the photo with a startled gaze or an occasional toothless smile. Norman had previously worked in a school in Metropolis where he grew tired of tending to the messes left behind by the heavy hitters of the superhero and villains communities, and found employ in a simpler environment. More than happy to share his numerous years of experience, he had guided Gar in his first few weeks, but his gregarious nature had proven more a hindrance to Gar's investigation than anything else.
Pulling a smile into place, the disguised shape shifter gave a nod, "Well, if I went at full speed, they wouldn't need an old fossil like you creaking through the halls."
"Sure they would. To fix the mistakes upstart punks like you make when you fumble everything up," he bantered before jabbing a thumb over his shoulder. "Now let's go. Missy made me bring in these brownies she made for you."
"Without eggs?"
"You think there would be any left for you otherwise?"
"Sorry if I think the whole devouring of the unborn is just slightly wrong."
"Peanut butter is mashed up tree fetuses. That hasn't stopped me yet."
"You monster," Gar laughed as he followed his elder into the center of operations for the janitors. Tall shelves that reached to the ceiling were stacked with cleaning products of every sort and other tools of the trade found purchase anywhere there was room. In a corner, there was an aged fridge next to a circular table that had been scavenged from the cafeteria after they had deemed it 'unserviceable.' A large TV set squatted atop the fridge and Norman swept the remote of the table, turning to the news as Gar reached into the fridge to retrieve the lunchbox that had 'MARK' scrawled across it in sharpie. He sighed as he lowered himself into one of the seats that a teacher had tried to throw away because it wouldn't lean back. Norman joined him at the table with a paper plate stacked with the aforementioned brownies, which he passed over, and his own lunch box.
"Your wife is a goddess amongst women," he mumbled reverently about a brownie that seemed to melt in his mouth.
"You act like I don't know," he returned from beside the microwave tucked next to the bottles of window cleaner, hungrily watching his pirouetting meatloaf. "Did your girl make you anything?"
Gar was forced to school his features at the stench that assaulted his fine-tuned olfactory as he opened his lunch box, and called back to his training at the hands of Rita and upon the set of Space Trek 2020 as he lifted the offending thermos up. Unscrewing the top, he allowed the revulsion to show through as the odor of the tar-like substance rushed into the room. As Norman gagged and coughed at the accosting smell, the younger man observed, "That'd be a 'yes.'"
"Holy – what'd you do?! Forget an anniversary or something?"
"Seriously, did you? Because Cheshire has toxins that are safer than that looks," Rose added, her disgust evident even without being introduced to the fare's noxious fumes.
"Of course not," he snapped before pausing and counting in his head. "At least, I don't think so."
"Goddamn, you two are disgusting," grumbled a man as he ambled inside along a weathered woman, both immediately noting the cloud that infested the room.
"Mark did something to piss off his lady friend," Norman offered as he settled back into his seat.
One took a deeper whiff as he approached and had to swallow down the rising bile in his throat as he covered his mouth, "Geeeezus! She trying to kill you or something?"
"No," he sighed, "She's just got a strange sense of taste."
"Obviously," the woman observed with a chuckle, "I mean, she's dating you, isn't she?"
Their heckling carried on for several minutes, the three of them trading turns in delivering playful barbs as they ate before finally turning to discussion of more pertinent news and the occasional grumble concerning a new mess they had discovered. Gar joined in the talks sparingly, holding back the typical flood of chatter, as he took the opportunity, which he had made a habit of doing, to study his coworkers. Since he had been a child, he had not been able to sit amongst regular men and women and engage in simple conversation without any curious glances or questions suddenly being cut off as the asker lost his or her courage. He did not bemoan the nature of his powers and had long since come to believe that 'normal,' if it did exist, was highly overrated, but he enjoyed the ease of the conversation with the cover provided by his holo-ring.
That wasn't to say that he was ignoring his duties as they conjectured on exactly how and where they would hide a body even though Gar still staunchly defended his view that the best idea was to take the corpse from the school entirely and spread it between the hyenas and crocodiles at the nearby zoo. He analyzed all the scents that drifted from their clothes and forms, cataloging them as he discerned their origin. His current company carried benign although not entirely pleasant aromas that were blaringly prominent to him. Occasionally there was the disquieting scent of blood or other fragrance that didn't fit in his typical understanding of schools, but he had yet to pinpoint their origins. Other times, there were faint sounds, almost beyond his range of hearing, in deserted halls but they also eluded his search.
A new smell invaded his sensitive nostrils, a noxious scent that reminded him of hospitals and the detached sterility of them, and he glanced over his shoulder to see a lean, crude broomstick of a man with a billed cap covering his balding head. Tiny eyes stared back at Gar distrustfully as the skinny man stomped to the fridge and removed his Tupperware containers with undue savagery before tossing them onto the table. He flopped into his chair, ripped off a lid, and stabbed angrily at the lumpy mash potatoes that he preferred cold for some reason. Nodding at Gar, he grunted as he chewed sloppily, "You finish that back hallway upstairs yet, Mark?"
"Just a few more rooms to do," he replied.
"Hmm," Fenton Pike grunted in his typical disdain. The haggard looking man was the senior janitor at the Dalton Institute though Gar had yet to see him do anything to deserve that position. After handing out tasks, he would disappear to handle his own business that he never bothered to explain. Lazy and perpetually surly, there were dubious rumors that he had once applied to the police, but Gar had trouble believing that such a man ever held the desire to 'protect and serve.'
"Why don't you quit slacking off and actually do some work? Bet you'd finish up pretty quick then," he suggested snidely as he shoveled another scoop of potatoes into his mouth.
"Settle, Pike. I needed Mark's help with one of the bathrooms. One of the kids stuffed the toilet and overflowed it," Norman interjected.
"If you're too old to handle something like that, maybe you should retire," Fenton remarked snidely.
Fighting back the urge to pounce across the table and give the man his well-deserved mauling, Gar stood and packed up his lunch box while stating, "Well, I'm going to go finish up my section. I'll catch you guys later."
"See you, Mark," Norman called as the others grunted their farewells, focused more on the news and their meals. Striding into the hallway, he headed back towards the staircase but upon reaching the second floor, he raced down the halls to another set and returned to the first floor to pick up the scent that had been clinging to Fenton Pike. Out of sight of the others, he crept along as Rose provided commentary.
"So is that guy just a douche or is he part of NOWHERE too?"
"Pretty obvious, right?" he whispered. "I personally prefer the more polite villains. Sure, they're a shifty bunch, but at least you can have a conversation with them. Not to mention the mid-battle banter."
"Just so long as they don't start to monologue. I hate that," she moaned.
"Hey, don't let a good monologue go to waste. Villain starts one, you just use the chance to sock them in the jaw," he advised as he wound through the abandoned school.
"What if they've got you captured or something?"
"Then it's more of a mental game. Start nitpicking about their plan and everything else they talk about. Annoy them. You know what's really great? Pretending to fall asleep. That really riles them up," he chuckled as a fond memory surged to the forefront of his mind.
"So you're suggesting that I intentionally piss off homicidal maniacs?" she asked drolly.
"No, I'm suggesting you stall them," he corrected as he stepped into the bottommost floor of the school, where the locker rooms, weight lifting center, and more function essential components were located. "So that we can save you."
"What if you can't find me?" she wondered, her tone growing slightly serious to mirror his.
"Rosie, I've got your scent. I'll always find you," he promised as he followed the trail he'd been scouting to the boiler room, pushing through the door of the pipe cluttered room. Heat rolled from the entry, and the damp air caused his clothes to cling to him as he dove deeper into the room that was filled with the soft thrum of machinery. Inhaling deeply through his nostrils, he focused on the scent lingering beneath the heavy shroud of moisture and budding fungi. The antiseptic smell had been thicker on the senior janitor than it was in the crowded room, and he found himself facing a wall without any apparent means of passage.
He paused and frowned at the obstacle as Rose snorted, "Yeah, real boost of confidence there."
"If you think a wall's just a wall, she-with-the-hair-of-the-silvery-moon, you really haven't been at this job long enough," he mused as his fingers felt along the smooth surface, searching for an indent or other sign of a passageway. He was interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps and he turned, miming perplexed study of several gauges. Fenton stomped into the room and scowled at the intruder.
"What are you doing in here?" he snapped.
"Temperature's wonky up in the room. I was trying to figure out what was wrong," he answered innocently, straightening as he did so.
Fenton scoffed, "You can't fix that down here, dipshit. Stop stalling and get back to work."
"All right, all right. Don't get your panties in a twist," he grumbled, sliding pass the elder man and wincing at the nearly overwhelming smell that seeped off of him but departing before anything could be made of it. He bounded up the stairs as Rose's voice sounded in his ear once again.
"I totally call a punch for when we take these creeps down."
"Get in line," he grumbled as he trudged back up to the second floor.
"We'll rock-paper-scissors for it," she returned as the door into the computer room opened and she glanced back to see Eddie stride in, his excitement evident. A large notebook was clenched in his hand and he scribbled on it furiously, mumbling to himself.
Pressing the button to turn off her mike momentarily, she nodded to him, "Hey, Eddie, what are you up to?"
"Miss Horrific just gave me a pretty huge breakthrough for Styler's solid light projector. I'm about to head over there and show him my thoughts," he answered.
"Oh, is that who Duela is this time? I couldn't tell," she mused, eyeing him thoughtfully. Eddie had been partnering with their purple-haired peer and their wheelbound teacher on a project that consumed most of his time and attention. She saw him sparingly as he journeyed to Styler's house to work on the project, and it had been a while that they had a chance to speak normally. Biting her lip, she hesitated before steadying and asked, "Hey, so anyone asked you to that dance yet?"
"Not yet, but I'm still planning on going. Mostly to watch Styler make a fool of himself when Jess drags him out onto the dance floor," he smirked.
"She asked him?" she followed a new vein of conversation, the anxiety she had refused to acknowledge settling back down.
"Yep. It floored him. I think that's like the only time I've seen him without a comeback until he stammer out a yes," he recalled fondly. His smile faded and he glanced away, licking his lips before posing his own query, "So, uh, you going to the dance?"
"I don't know. Kat's been trying to set me up with a date, but if I go, it's going to be on my own. That way I can slip out and do some more scouting," she shrugged.
"That's good."
She arched the brow over her functional eye, "That nobody wants to ask me out?"
"Yea – I mean, no! I was talking about your plan. It's a good one. I bet there's a whole bunch of people who want to ask you out."
"Whole bunch of people that want to ask Rose Bloomberg out; not Wilson," she muttered with some bitterness as she looked back to the screens. "Aren't a whole lot of people looking to hook up with a cyclops that's got more scars than New York has alleys."
His gaze drifted to the testimonies of her battles that marked her tanned flesh and were obscured in more recent times by her holographic projector. Most he was unfamiliar with, absent at the time of their earning, but others he had borne witness to. Claw marks bit into her forearm from their battle against Control Freak's video game demons. There was a series of still-angry red marks from when she had sheltered a child from a shattering window with her body. Her supple frame was decorated with demonstrations of her fortitude and refusal to allow any innocents or civilians came to harm in her presence, and he had always admired her for that. However, since their infiltration into the Dalton Institute, he had noted that while she performed with her typical cool and capability, she seemed uncomfortable amongst the regular members of society. Unease had crept into her typically unflappable demeanor as she walked amongst everyday youths who she had never had much in common with even before her father had tried to take her under his wing.
Glancing about for a moment, he tossed his notebook onto the couch and leapt into the small pit the central computer was situated in. Sliding past her, he approached the keyboard and pressed the key to open communications to announce, "Hey, Gar, it's Eddie. Rose is going offline for a bit. We're heading out, so Blackfire or DeeDee will be filling in."
"Fine by me. Don't do anything me and my midnight sun wouldn't do because at the point, you're getting into some pretty freaky stuff," he returned evenly.
"What did I just tell you about things I would rather not know?" Rose seethed though her curious gaze remained fixed on Eddie who gave an innocent smile.
"Speaking of which, try to get my golden and ebon beauty to come chat with me. It's not often that we get a chance to talk without getting . . . distracted," he admitted with a wry chuckle.
"All right, I'm done listening to this," the one-eyed girl threw up her hands as she stormed to the stairs. She was surprised but, even if she wasn't about to admit it, pleasantly so when Eddie jogged up behind her and hook his elbow around her limb. He dragged her down another branch of the hall and she permitted him to do so as she glanced up at the red-skinned boy, "You might want to tell me exactly what it is that you're doing before I twist off your arm and beat you into unconsciousness with it."
"I'm just trying to make sure you don't go stir-crazy again. I figured we'd go out on the town and do something," he shrugged, hoping to evade any form of punishment. She eyed him speculatively, pursing her lip before rolling her cerulean orb and sighing.
"Just so long as we don't pick up any strays this time."
Good news, folks. We managed to get this out early, so we hope you appreciate and enjoy that. Express said appreciation and joy in that little review box, right down there. Yep, that one right there. Just click and start typing your thoughts and feed us your critiques . . .
And with that, Gula's done typing any form of communication for a while.
Guest: We're glad that you like them. When we first joined the site, we were planning on writing a story about them, but we figure nobody would read it because nobody knows them. So we fit them in in NOWHERE instead of the original members of Gen 13. And we are not answering that last question for the sake of some mystery.