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The End of the Circus: A Tale of the Yizibajohei
Omake: Reasons For Living
by Regina Magia
San Francisco, north of the Presidio, the fourth Thursday of November in 2012, an hour before breakfast (Tōkyō time: Friday, midnight)...
Maurecia Gutierrez grinned contently as she watched the sun rise past the peaks of the Southern Coast Ranges to her east and southeast. Sitting atop the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, she sighed, letting the wind blow through her hair. The seventeen-year-old African-Latina descent from Costa Rica had become the newest incarnation of the Ultimate Speedster, Dorim ("Redline"), less than two weeks ago courtesy of a local Terran-turned-Yizibajohei recruiter. Remembering that awesome moment when her life definitely took a shift for the better, she gazed at herself, now clad in a cherry red jumpsuit accented with pale yellow lightning bolts, belt and racing boots similar to what the Flash wore.
Going from a paraplegic to a super-speedster had really done wonders for her emotional state.
A year before, she lost the use of her legs in an accident, ending any chances of pursuing an athletic career while getting her kinesiology degree from the University of California, San Francisco. Such a tragedy made Maurecia bitter enough to contemplate suicide, which so alarmed her parents that she was immediately put into psychological counselling while undergoing rehab regardless of the costs they had to incur through their health insurance provider; fortunately, the American Affordable Care Act — "Bartletcare" as it was decried as by Republicans who opposed such a "socialist" move to give people universal single-payer insurance — ensured the Gutierrez family didn't have to declare bankruptcy. A week before meeting the recruiter, Maurecia and a few of her classmates formed a suicide pact.
But NOW...?
Now she was back on her feet — literally AND figuratively! — and faster than ever!
There was no way she was going to throw her life away now.
Getting up to her feet, she took out the burner phone she purchased only a few days ago...
[Changed my mind. Go ahead without me.]
Hitting SEND, she thought about it for a moment...then let the phone fall from her hands, watching it plummet into the waters of the bay far below. Shaking her head, Maurecia sighed. No, there was no need to put herself through her death scene now that she was the Ultimate Speedster.
And if the others wanted to do their death scenes...?
It wasn't her business anymore.
One of the basic lessons of the Dawn of Power was simple:
You couldn't save everyone.
Nodding as she chased away the memories of her "friends", Maurecia hopped onto the supporting cable connecting the south tower to the anchorage in the Presidio, speed-hopping down to the road deck.
"Born to run, baby!" she cackled. "Born to RUN!"
In the early morning fog of San Francisco, a crimson and gold steak ripped through the streets of the city at speeds that couldn't be followed by the normal eye and even most security camera systems...!
A hotel in Des Moines, that moment (local time: An hour before lunch)...
"Kate? How're you feeling, babe?"
Looking away from the window of her hotel room where she had gazed on the morning traffic, Kate Churchill walked over to the bed, sitting next to her boyfriend. "A lot better, Kirk," the blonde farmer's daughter from the town of Orient, birthplace of one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's vice presidents, lamented with a sigh. "It feels good to be away from that woman."
Brushing aside a lock of his curly brown hair — which made Kirk Wallace look like a teenage version of Brian May of Queen — he pulled her into a warm embrace. Only a few months ago, the high school senior had come across his girlfriend crying by herself under a tree in a fallow field near his country home not far from Orient. As it turned out, Kate's mother Darlene Churchill had been verbally and physically abusing her since the death of her husband Mark two years before thanks to a drunken auto accident. Only the knowledge that he could kill the mouthy bitch who was WAY too close to Tariko Katabarbe's own estranged mother Moroboshi Kinshō for anyone's comfort had kept him from beating the crap out of the woman, then dumping her into the Missouri River; as the Sharpshooter of Light, Kutosem ("Dellingr"), he could project powerful energy blasts with the accuracy of a hard-core sniper like Canada's Rob Furlong or England's Craig Harrison in addition to being a mid-level FISS.
Instead, he took the same path Tariko did when it came to people like Rose Potter, Tendō Akane and Hayashi Kanami, offering Kate the chance to get away from her mother and become one of the Gifted.
After seeing him demonstrate his own powers on some beat up cars in a nearby junkyard, Kate gladly accepted, becoming the newest incarnation of the Sovereign of Storms, Tonu Beni ("Cloud Princess").
The day after her Gifting, the Adair County Sheriffs Office received a written confession from Kate detailing the verbal abuse her mother had forced on her, which made her run away from home. That had prompted a quick arrest. Kirk's parents received a similar message, one that also told them the couple had decided to elope. The two Iowans were now relaxing in a comfy hotel room in the state capital, waiting for a chance to get a bus to Los Angeles on their way to Sunnydale.
Hearing of the nasties that lurked around the Hellmouth, they wanted in on the action...
After a moment of warm kisses, Kate then purred, "You know, I've never done a pillow scene."
A blush answered her as Kirk felt his "little shooter" instantly stiffen. "Er...are you interested...?"
She laughed. "I was saving myself for marriage," she explained as she swung her legs up, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Then again, 'premarital' pillow scenes aren't a big deal on Yiziba, are they?"
A snort escaped him. "That...is obviously a rhetorical question."
The couple laughed before they enjoyed a very warm kiss...
Livermore in California (fifty kilometres east-southeast of San Francisco), that moment...
"You almost ready, Charlotte?!"
"Just about!" the New Orleans native replied to her lover Kayla Lei as she finished removing her stage attire in the wake of an all-night practice run for the next week's performances in town. Much as she wished that she could do her shows in her Yizibajohei battlesuit, she knew how important the concept of secret identities was. Both C.J. Cregg and President Bartlet had maintained a remarkable level of concrete discretion about people like Charlotte Vargas during their eye-opening press conference when Saeru Hinako was introduced to the world on Tuesday morning.
Besides, if the audience knew she could use REAL magic, it would rob the show of its mystery.
That ultimately defeated the purpose of stage magic.
Ever since she was a child, the second-generation nimmib descendant of a line of hoodoo priestesses who had stood against the daywalker vampires who tried their best to stamp out magic among African slaves in the antebellum South had been fascinated by magic, both the spell casting and sleight-of-hand varieties. Having not inherited her great-grandmother's gift that could have seen her invited to Ilvermorny, Charlotte had chosen to take up studying stage magic. Her ability to understand how to perform it soon saw her recruited to one of America's few remaining travelling carnivals.
Said circus had made a stop in Sweet Valley near Vandenberg Air Force Base two years ago. There, Charlotte had a remarkable encounter with the Wakefield twins and other members of the Sweet Valley Boosters. The hoodoo priestess' great-granddaughter soon learned what they really were when she saw Jessica Wakefield catch a falling Ferris wheel one evening after some animal rights activists broke into the exhibition grounds to free all the "tortured" animals contained within.
By the time the carnival had departed for the next stop on its seemingly never-ending journey, Charlotte had become the Occult Dazzler, Myuno Bumbae ("Witchbrand").
The dark-skinned brunette blinked as she shook her head from her contemplation, then she smiled, not turning to look towards the door of her trailer. "What's shaking, kids?"
Shocked gasps echoed from outside her trailer, then the air inside her trailer shifted to reveal two blushing teenagers, a blonde girl with brown eyes and a dark-skinned tattooed boy with bushy black hair and deep brown eyes. A quick gaze with mage sight told Charlotte who they were: Megan Baynard, current incarnation of the Spectral Observer, Timr'buo ("Witness")...and her boyfriend Taree Printz, who had just been Gifted to become the Wandering Shifter, Bimsuor'ba ("Wandeln").
Of course, the hoodoo princess' great-granddaughter had a PAA that had been personally built for her by Elizabeth Wakefield after Charlotte's Gifting which allowed her to get all the updates from Hasegawa Chisame concerning all the new people who had become Gifted.
"Nothing gets by you, huh?" Megan then said, her cheeks reddening more.
That made her boyfriend blink. "You know each other?!"
"Ms. Vargas' last incarnation was my last incarnation's mother," the recently "retired" thief/prostitute from Delaware explained. "When we were on Yiziba after you took a dive into the Great Crystal yesterday, I heard from Nexus that someone had become the new Witchbrand two years ago. I met up with her while you were busy talking with Sara and Lara back in Wilmington."
Hearing that, Charlotte nodded. Sara Bernat and Lara James (who went by the street name Lara Roxx) were also former members of Larry Clayton's gang of thieves that had operated from Delaware's largest city now forced to find a new line of work. "Inviting them to get Gifted, were you?" she asked.
"They're all for it," Taree confirmed as he thumbed behind him towards one end of the fairgrounds. "They're waiting for us now by the funnel cake stand."
"Good thing practice is over for the week," Charlotte then declared with a tired sigh. "With any luck, we should be back in time for dinner. You ought to try Kayla's fried chicken. It's scrumptious!"
Both former street kids from Delaware purred in anticipation...
The End...For Now
WRITER'S NOTES
As The West Wing is one of the base storylines behind The End of the Circus, having this universe's version of the Affordable Care Act called "Bartletcare" seemed logical.
Canadian Army corporal Rob Furlong (born 1976) was the world's record holder when it came to the longest confirmed sniper kill, acquired in March of 2002 in Afghanistan; the range was 2,430 metres (2,657 yards). That was beaten by British Army corporal of horse (sergeant) Craig Harrison (born 1974), who got a kill shot in Afghanistan in November 2009 at a range of 2,475 metres (2,707 yards). That record would be broken by a sniper from Canada's Joint Task Force Two (whose name is withheld due to security), who achieved a kill at 3,540 metres (3,871 yards) in May 2017 during the Iraq Civil War.
Megan Baynard (Witness) and Taree Printz (Wandeln) first appeared in A "Quiet" Time in Delaware.
