Episode 9: Downtime — or, A Spy at the Seattle Music Festival!

Narma slipped in at home, knowing it was actually around the time she usually got home anyways, and that her parents weren't due to be home for another hour. Paranoid, she sneaked into their bedroom and moved to the answering machine, deleting the blinking message she knew would be there from the school stating she had been absent. She sighed. At least that's done.

They'd dropped Carmen off at home before anything, promising to meet up the next day to talk more. Even in the time they spent, there were still more things they hadn't talked to Carmen about. Really, Narma had a few questions of her own.

Firstly, that Rory had apparently been having some sort of dreams about her planet? And Carmen had just used a second attack! She couldn't help but feel a little bitter. She'd been working at this, she'd even been doing those training sessions with Rory in the morning when she got the chance. Why did it feel like she was falling behind?

She made some tea, taking it back to her room so she could work on some of her more recent sketches. No reason to get so pissed about it. People probably developed magical powers at different rates. And Rory was allowed to have other friends.

She wasn't jealous.

Carmen slipped into the hospital room the following morning. She'd managed to convince her father that she just needed one more day out of school, after returning and getting a thorough talking to about taking off without any way to contact home, especially with all of the "terrorist" activity that had been going on lately. She was able to grab the bus downtown without much of a fight.

"Oh!" The nurse looked startled when she came in to see her standing there. "You must be a friend of miss Lush here." The nurse took note of Alyssa's vitals as she addressed her, moving around to look at the display screen on the end of the bed.

"Yes," Carmen said, keeping her voice down in the quiet of the early morning hospital. "How's she been?"

"In and out," the nurse said.

Carmen's gaze rose from her friend. "She's been awake?" Guilt bubbled up again. She should have been there.

"Only for a few minutes, here and there," the nurse said, un-clicking the end of her pen. "If you stick around for a while, you might catch her awake."

That's what she would do, then.

Nearly two hours passed. Carmen spent the time silently recounting everything that had happened to Alyssa, even though she couldn't tell her out loud. She was downloading some of her missed homework to her tablet when the figure in the bed stirred.

Carmen stood, placing the tablet in the waiting chair. "Hey," she said quietly, leaning onto the bed rail before thinking better of it. She watched Alyssa's eyes flutter, her gaze moving over everything before finding Carmen. Carmen watched her, willing to wait. "How are you feeling?"

Alyssa blinked. For a second, Carmen was afraid Alyssa had amnesia or something and wasn't going to recognize her. But then the girl smiled, as uncomfortable as it looked. "Oh, Carmen," she said. She kind of gurgled her words. She still must have been pretty disoriented. "Thanks for coming to see me."

Carmen's heart clenched. Alyssa still didn't know about Carmen's involvement in her getting hurt—and she never could. "Of course," she said. "You've always been there for me." She examined the bandages around Alyssa's forehead. "So. What are they saying?"

"Eh," she responded, making a weak attempted at a dismissive gesture with her IV'd hand. "I've got a pretty bad 'cussion. Fractured one of my shoulder blades, too, I think. I hadn't got to talk to the doctor much." She tapped her temple with the more mobile hand. "'Cause of the 'cussion."

She tried not to grind her teeth. "Yeah. At the skating rink, I saw you get hurt. You looked like you hit that wall pretty hard."

"Shit was crazy," she slurred. "Terrorists in my rink? 'M almost flattered." At Carmen's expression, she said, "I'll be okay. They just got to watch me for a few more days."

Carmen pursed her lips. She was still calling them terrorists? "Do you…remember? What happened?"

"It's a little fuzzy," she said, "But for the most part. I can't believe superheros are real."

"Yeah." Not that we were able to do anything for you in that moment. She lowered her voice. "I've been wondering something. Why…did you do it?"

"Huh?"

Carmen leaned forward, poised over the bed. "Why did you throw yourself at that guy? I saw you do it. You could have been killed."

Alyssa stared up at the ceiling, expression vague. "You know? I dunno, really. I just...you see someone in trouble, right? I couldn't just stand by while one of the people who was protecting us got hurt. I could do something, so I did something."

Like I shouldn't have thought leaving the city was going to fix anything. Maybe Alyssa should have been the super hero. "I didn't know you were an idealist."

"Meh. I'm jus' an optimist."

The Music Festival was a yearly thing, although Narma didn't usually end up going. On the whole, her music tastes tended to revolve around Bollywood soundtracks and punk rock, neither of which was especially popular in the city of Seattle. The bands they featured were soft-sounding pop and rock. She could pass.

This was, she believed, the first time she'd attended since moving into the city. Rory thought it would make an inviting, less awkward way to meet up and disengage for a while with all the stress they'd been under. Plus, Carmen had mentioned the desire to go the previous day, and Rory was always one for catering to other people's wishes.

The bands were already playing when she moved into the park. She saw Rory waving her over as she moved further into the park, the girl having already laid out a picnic blanket in the grass.

Carmen was already there. Oh, great. She went to sit down with them, Rory's eyes glittering when she said, "Carmen brought food!"

Carmen folded her hands in her lap. "They're just some sandwiches. Rory mentioned you were Hindi last night, so I made sure to have a vegetarian option. These are pimento and cucumber." She pointed out a little stack of sandwiches, cut in a diagonal and everything. Well isn't that sweet.

Damn, she was feeling pretty hostile, actually. Why was that? It wasn't like Rory was about to run off and marry this girl, leaving her behind like her jilted ex. She took a breath. She just needed to chill out. "Fixed the usual problem with free food," she said instead. "Nice." She didn't exactly thank her, though.

A lot of people seemed to be taking advantage of the crowds. There was a Girl Scout's stand and some folks who had brought over their wares from Pike Place, hoping to hock it to some hapless festival-goers. Free publicity, she guessed. Karen, that mad woman, used to make her come out to things like this all the time and sell discount tickets to the aquarium. Now, there were less experienced employees for that.

Of course, now that she had left and come back, her rank may not have been one she could pull any longer.

They took some sandwiches, "Cut in two and everything," Rory took a large bite of hers. "You didn't have to do something so fancy for us."

Carmen stared down at her own sandwich. "Oh. It's, uh, nothing special. I'm just used to making finger sandwiches for my dad's business associates when they come over to the house. I usually end up working kitchen duty, so I'm kind of used to it."

Narma resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It's a sandwich; it's not gourmet.

Carmen turned to look at her. "Rory told me you like fashion?"

Seemed she'd been talking to Rory rather a lot. Couldn't say she was a fan of that. "Yeah, I do designs. I'm hoping to go to the National Design Institute once I graduate."

"That's so cool!" Carmen smiled. "Honestly, I'm not sure what I want to do after high school. I like singing, but I kind of want to work with animals."

"That's cool," said Rory. "Honestly, I have no idea what I want. And it's even weirder to think about, now that the whole…" she lowered her voice, "Superpower thing is a thing."

Honestly, Narma could have done without that train of thought—it just brought up the fact that, eventually, they would have to make choices after high school, choices that may not allow their lives to continue on the same path.

They finished up their first plates, and Rory spread out some papers they printed off. "So," she said, "You said they need us a particular, right?"

Carmen nodded, the both of them peering down to the news article with Sailor Moon on the front. "That's what he said."

"That explains why our powers activated, I guess," Narma scratched the back of Celene's ear as she examined the blurry photograph. "They were only a threat to us, not to her."

Carmen looked up at them. "So the only reason our powers showed up at all was because of the monsters? Not the other way around?"

"Right," Narma said. Catch up. Argh, stop it, Narma.

"This coincides with the odd behavior from the sun," Celene murmured without lifting her head. Probably didn't want anyone to realize they had a talking cat.

"I went back and read more of these articles," Rory pulled out another bundle of papers from the bottom, taking a bite out of her chicken and cheese, "and you remember that other universe I was talking about?"

"…no, you lost me," Narma said at the same time Carmen said no, I'm sorry.

Rory's eyes shined the way they did when she made a revelation. "HR 8832," she jammed her finger into the photo side-by-side on the paper. One was an orange-red star, and the other looked totally blank. "It. Vanished!"

"Vanished?" Carmen rubbed her hands together.

"That's impossible," Narma said.

"For real," Rory said. "It disappeared. And that's what NASA is worried is happening to Trappist-1." She threw her hands out. "What if it's the same thing?"

Narma wiped her hands on a napkin, leaning back in the grass. "So, what? You think those Agent guys are responsible for it? I don't buy it." Those guys are way too incompetent. They couldn't even beat a few teenage girls. Step your game up, seriously.

Carmen's large eyes focused on her; Narma shifted uncomfortably. "Maybe it wasn't just them? He did mention some kind of Great Beast, right?"

Narma scoffed, feeling a bit satisfied by Carmen's withering expression. "But it's a sun. How huge would it have to be to do anything to a sun?"

Celene fixed her with a look, her little nose wrinkling. "We have no evidence to the contrary."

They all went kind of quiet. Rory lowered her second sandwich. "Celene, are you saying there could be a creature that big out there?"

Celene turned her head away. "You know I can't remember everything I have experienced. But I do know that all manner of creature may be out there in the universe."

Well, that's one more thing to have nightmares about. "So, I guess we're getting Lovecraftian in here, then."

Rory and Carmen both looked as uncomfortable as she was. This conversation was a downer on their domestic sunny day picnic. "But he has said that the Beast eats the star souls. What does that have to do with the sun?"

"The sun is a star."

They both turned to look at Carmen, whose hands had risen to her collar. "What if they don't just want the star souls," she said. "What if they want the star?"

"So, what, you're suggesting this thing's going to eat the sun?" It sounded ridiculous, then again, a month ago she would've thought magical girls in frilly skirts were ridiculous, but, hey, a joke on her, she guessed.

Across from her, Rory pushed the food aside. "That still doesn't explain why they needed us. Trappist-1 is almost forty light years away from Earth. There are a stupid number of stars between there and here. You'd think the Beast could just eat one of all those."

Carmen murmured, "It doesn't make sense."

Not much they could do but feel bad about it. Narma let her focus relax, peering into the crowd behind them as she spaced out. There, her gaze caught on a pair of binoculars. She blinked for a minute, making sure she was seen correctly, before she frowned and stood up facing the person that had been watching them. "Hey!" she shouted.

The girl startled. Narma took in as many details as she could—navy dyed hair, sunglasses, a hoodie—before the girl took off in the other direction.

Carmen and Rory sat up behind her. "Wait," Rory said, "what happened?"

"This girl was watching us," Narma debated with herself over whether not to run after her, but she didn't have to make the choice after all.

A Few Moments Earlier

Invidia lingered in one of the alleys outside the event. She identified her next target.

The young woman up on stage had the admiration of all the humans in the grass. They sat around, just watching! Disgusting. Surely, a human so admired would have the pure soul she needed.

Still. With so many watching, how could she get close enough? Moving with the utmost stealth to view the space behind the back of the stage, she saw it drop off steeply into the grass.

She'd done some reevaluating. The first attempt to capture a star soul had been such an embarrassment, and the creatures had been so weak. She'd put more work into these, figured out some of their weaknesses. What better opportunity to test their effectiveness?

Formulating a plot, she moved from the market alleyway out towards the stage.

In the Same Park

The creatures had been targeting crowded places. Now that the reports had been coming in nearly every day, their appearances were getting more and more predictable. As this was the most populated event of the week, there could be little doubt that the creatures would make an appearance.

The media was trying to call them terrorists; since when were terrorists covered in weird smoky fur? Wake up, sheeple. And so, if the media was in denial and law enforcement had been thus far ineffectual, it was her time. Only she had the determination and drive to get behind what was really happening in Seattle.

Cryptids.

There had been sightings of similar beasts all over the world: The Jersey Devil. Sasquatch. Shadow people. Unexplainable beings whose existence were being covered up by close-minded scientists and government plots. But apparently, science was slacking in Seattle. And so, she waited.

Mallory unzipped her hoodie. Damn, it was hot today. But that was the sacrifice one made for The Truth. Some kids were screaming behind her, the smell of the overpriced hot dog stand wafting over her shoulder. Poised behind the fiscus, she watched the festival goers, waiting for any sign of something non-human. But she kind of hoped something showed up soon, because she still had geometry homework to take care of.

Someone scoffed as they passed her—she didn't have to look up, she knew. These binoculars are military-grade, you casual. They mocked her now, but when she went to the national media with proof of real monsters, they wouldn't be laughing. Hey, wait a minute.

Gazing across the park, she caught sight of a trio of girls: one short-haired, long-legged girl with a plate of sandwiches, possibly Latina, a girl with silver-dyed hair, and a dark-skinned girl with purple braids. Them, the latter two, they looked familiar. They'd been at several of the other crime scenes, she realized. They went to that school.

Peering across the green, through the obstruction of the ficus, she noted a pile of paper between them. Could be homework.

Could be not homework. It seemed like an interesting coincidence that they would be here. She'd for sure seen the purple-braided girl at some of the attacks outside of the school. This warranted further observation.

Damn, she was good.

Glancing at her watch, she logged the time. She subtly clicked the button on her voice recorder. "Subjects spotted in the green of Pike Park. May have connections to anomalous events in the city."

She wished she could get closer. At her distance, she couldn't make out what they were saying. In hindsight, the openness of a public park was probably not ideal for reconnaissance.

Hold on. Occasionally, the group would stop talking and look down to the same spot. Upon further inspection, she noted an orange tabby in the grass.

Someone would speak, then refer to the tabby. Wait. Speak again. She narrowed her eyes behind her glasses, the transition lenses dark at the moment. Are they talking to the cat?

After a moment of observation, trying to read their lips (a skill with which she needed much improvement), she realized they had stopped talking. The girl she been focusing on, she realized, was now staring right at her.

She stood. "Hey!"

Abort, abort! Mallory closed up her binoculars, making a break for it. She ducked out of sight the moment she had a chance, looking back and realizing the girl had not pursued her. Well that was a clusterfuck.

Wait a minute. Near the stage, she noticed an oddly dressed woman with slick, dark hair. She seemed to be leaving from behind it. But there was nothing there? What was she doing?

There was a wave of noise as the show runner collapsed.

Something was happening to her head.

"Oh, of course!" Narma cried out, gesturing to the snake-headed abomination on the stage. It seemed her bandmates weren't far behind, either. "We're trying to have a cutesy picnic here!"

Behind her, she saw Carmen shudder. "God, that's awful."

"They're definitely the creepiest," Rory abandoned her remaining sandwich half. "Come on! To the alley!"

Figures, they couldn't even have five seconds.

They found an area where they could change unseen, which was abruptly ruined with a burst of light they threw off from the transformations. Even at this distance, Narma thought she could hear the serpent's stupid, hissy "Star soul detected." Learn some new words.

They raced towards the stage, Celene following close behind them. The snakes were already coming to meet them. "Hey!" Narma yelled. "Don't you guys have anything better to do?"

"Nope, they're too thirsty," Rory joked. "They crave that mineral."

"You guys seem to take this so lightly," Carmen whispered to them from behind.

"Girl, we're practically living in a cartoon at this point," Narma got ready for a Typhoon. "We can't take ourselves too seriously."

Fwoom. Water rushed down towards the heads of the serpents. To her surprise, they undulated their creep-o heads out of the way, the deluge falling harmlessly to their shoulders. "Okay, that's got to be a foul."

"They are slippery mothers," Rory said, gesturing for Carmen to take the furthest one over. "Aim for the head."

"And be careful!" Celene called to them all across the grass. "I don't know what effect their bite may have, but it can't be good!"

Narma said, "Yes, avoiding them was the plan."

Carmen said, "We had a plan?"

Rory shot off one of her gusts, which luckily seemed to do some damage as the creature hissed. But she looked confused. "Someone got tougher."

Narma dodged, scrambling back away from the thing's far-reaching neck. She hated having to wait. She moved back behind a tree; might as well make it as difficult as possible for this thing to get her.

"Harmonious Bellicoso!" The cry came from her right, where Carmen stood, musical lines erupting from her extended fingertips. After only a moment, though, the music died, the snake pithos shaking it off as Carmen shrieked. She turned, and, seeing Narma, rushed towards her. Oh, great. Now there are going to be two monsters on my butt.

"It didn't work!" Carmen cried out,

"Yeah," Narma said. These things were feisty—she needed a better plan here. And here comes number two. "Just saw that."

"I don't know what happened," Carmen said, peering around them, probably looking for some kind of out the way Narma was. "Yesterday, that attack took down the Agent on its own!"

"No time to ponder on it now. We've got to get to it, girl."

Across the green, Narma spotted a large sun umbrella. "There." She gestured to it, darting for the cover source. The snake pithos's heads were long, but not long enough to get around that.

The snakes lurched towards them, the bodies slinking stiffly as if they were just another of the snake's coils. Narma picked up the umbrella, sweeping it around to scare the pithos back before thrusting it out like a shield. "Alright," Narma said as Carmen came to join her. "Get behind me."

"I'm sorry," she said, and Narma saw her grab the extension pole from the ground, batting the other Pithos away "I don't know what happened."

Honestly, she was a little annoyed. But now really wasn't the time. "R-Beta looks like she's just about done with hers anyways. Good thing her attack has more range."

Carmen went quiet for a moment. "Do you think that umbrella might be able to deflect water?"

Narma cocked her chin. Actually, that was…a pretty good idea. "Yeah, maybe," she said. "It's going to be another minute or something before I am able to set it off again. Do you think you can hold them off long enough for me to get my shit together?"

"Yeah," she said, swiping the pole back, grounding her feet in Narma's periphery. she thrust it forward like a spear.

To buy time, Narma shuffled gradually forward, forcing the pithos back.

One of the creatures squealed as Carmen thrust the pole into its mouth, where it choked.

Now's the time, while it's preoccupied. Feeling the energy in her hands, she kept them on the umbrella and called out "Typhoon Strikedown," spinning the flimsy umbrella.

The umbrella didn't want to survive the onslaught. The fabric bowed, but even so Narma could feel the water being flung from the axis and diverted into the pithos's faces. It fanned out, the two ducking to avoid being hit with the attack themselves.

They were still standing. Narma could tell that much by their inhuman silhouettes shadowed through the umbrella's thin fabric. She jumped as the one directly in front of her crunched down on the disc of the umbrella's face. "Oh, shit—"

Carmen dropped the pole. For just a second, Narma thought she was going to leave her there with those two creatures ready to take a bite out of her, but then the girl called out, "Mesmeric Pacification!"

The light dropped over the creatures. They hissed in a horrible noise that reminded Narma of cicadas in the south, but then they collapsed, large chunks of shadowy scales beginning to sluff off of them.

She dropped the ruined umbrella. Okay. That had been helpful. "Nice move," she told Carmen, kicking the umbrella's remains as it rolled away.

"I'm just glad it worked." Carmen flung the pole away. Peering towards her, she gave Narma an apologetic look. "I hope you don't mind me sticking with you—you burst in like a badass that time at the rink, and then took on several pithos single-handed. I, well, I thought you were probably a safe bet."

"Hey now. You can't go complimenting me. Might actually think you liked me or something." She…actually hadn't meant to say that out loud. Must have been the rush of battle muddling her filter or something.

Carman clenched her jaw, peering away. "Sorry. I know we're not friends."

The bluntness of the statement caught Narma off guard. For as much as she had been agonizing over Carmen's presence, the words felt like a smack to the face. "What makes you say that?"

Carmen glanced back towards her, though her body language was still oriented in a direction away from her. "You guys have had to be babysitting me since the beginning. And, um, I know Rory's been having to look after me, and I know that's taking time away from you…I don't mean to be." Carmen smoothed down the little hairs on the back of her neck while Narma stared at her in shock because what the fuck. "If I had a choice, I would stay out of your way, I swear."

Okay, apparently Carmen had been picking up on how she was feeling. Now she just felt like a jerk—she wasn't trying to make the girl feel like a burden. She knew how disorienting it was when she had first started coming into her powers. And for the longest time, Carmen's powers hadn't been super helpful, and that had to suck. Damn. She was an asshole. "Hey, no," she recovered. "It's just…a different dynamic, you know? I'm just getting used to it. That doesn't mean you're not my friend."

Carmen's shoulders loosened. "Really? Because you seemed pretty uncomfortable with me—"

"No, no," Narma cringed, even though she was spot on. Girl was fucking intuitive. "It's all good."

"Hey! You guys did it!" Rory jogged over, Narma having noticed her pithos dust quickly after their own.

"Well done, Sailor Soldiers!" Celene remarked, coming to sit at Rory's side.

"Celene," Carmen murmured. "Something's wrong with my powers. It's like the Bellicoso didn't want to work. It was so weak!"

The cat whipped her tail pensively. "…it's possible the attack packed such a punch in the fight yesterday because you were in such peril facing that Agent. Your distress may have given the attack an extra boost it wouldn't have had otherwise. If so, it may take time before you are able to give it that power intentionally."

"Oh. Great." She giggled anxiously, chewing her lip. "And it had to be snakes."

Seemed they needed to work her into the training sessions with them as well.

"Those things suck." Rory eyed the limp body of the band member, lip curling.

"You're not wrong," Narma shot back. She peered over at their papers on the ground, the abandoned sandwiches having what looked suspiciously like a footprint through them. "Well, I guess that sort of wrecks our picnic plan."

"We could continue in another park, if you guys were feeling up to it. But we should turn back before we go back over there," Carmen said. "If someone saw us, they would know."

"Wait a minute, that's right." She'd almost forgotten about their stalker. "There was this girl watching us earlier." She peered around the outside edge of the park, but it was all empty. Everyone had fled when the pithos dropped. The walkways, the stands, the stage, all empty. "Where did she go?"

"Why would someone be watching us?" Carmen asked once they had turned back and moved to collect their stuff.

"I don't know."

She watched Rory examine the area herself as she picked up their papers, the usually care-free expression missing from her face. "…that's weird," she heard her mumble. "It's like there are some pages missing or something."

Narma discarded the smooshed sandwiches in the garbage, snorting. "Maybe they stuck to the bottom of someone's shoe."

Rory frowned. "Yeah. Maybe."

Mallory examined the papers she'd grabbed from the picnic site. Those girls had run away the moment the cryptids made an appearance, which gave her the perfect opportunity to do some snooping.

She peered over the pages, a little disappointed. Were they working on some kind of class project? The articles they had were littered with notes about a star system called Trappist-1. This wasn't enough to prove anything, and it seemingly had nothing to do with the attacks.

She folded the papers into a square and stuffed them in her hoodie pocket. This would require some additional investigation.

She needed to consult the Society.