A Waken 16.5
I found Ms. Badgiruel on the other side of the door waiting for me.
"Ms. Hebert," she greeted.
I closed the door behind me, and quickly turned toward the somewhat obscured door you wouldn't normally notice with it open. Going down the hallway on the other side, I continued into the PRT's private meeting room on Arcadia grounds.
My head bowed as I entered the room at the far end.
"Taylor," Miss Militia greeted. She smiled at me, and I could see it because she'd tugged her scarf down to show her face. "How was school?"
Meekly, I answered, "Fine."
Pulling out the chair across from her, I took a seat and glanced around the room. There were the cameras in the corners of course, but other than that it was just us. And really the cameras probably didn't matter. Safe to say Blue Cosmos knew I was onto them already and the men who survived Atlantic City had probably already found a way to report back.
I had to let this one go though.
"What did you want to talk about?" Hannah asked. "I was a bit surprised. We could have spoken when you came by the PRT building."
"Yeah..." I should have. I guess the part that made it weird for me was that I'd kept so many secrets for so long, it was hard to let them go. "I'm sorry. It's just been really hectic lately."
"It has," she agreed.
She watched me, patient but expectant.
I guess this was one of those situations where there's no way to say it but to say it.
So I said, "Ali al-Saachez is free."
She didn't react at first.
The paling of her skin took a few moments. The trembling in her eyes. Her fingers clenched atop the table between us and her power started flickering at her waist between various guns and knives.
Her look of shock twisted into anger quickly.
"How?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "But the man in his cell isn't him if you ask me, and Veda has confirmed it's not."
"When?"
"I don't know," I repeated. "But Holiday and Red Ranger, the two Wards killed in Houston over the summer. I think that was him."
Hannah's clenched fingers balled into a fist. "The shooter blew up a hotel front to cover his tracks in that shooting."
"It's as good a cover as a normal person can make," I mumbled. "Thinkers would have a hard time shifting through rubble and fire for any concrete evidence. The security guard for the building is on trial for conspiracy to murder now, but he's not talking."
"Blue Cosmos," Hannah hissed.
"I thought you should know," I told her. "I only found out the other day."
"Where is he?" Hannah snapped.
"No," I replied firmly. I narrowed my gaze, fighting a desire to flinch as Hannah rose from her seat and glared. "I need him right now. Letting him out was a mistake. I can use it."
"How?"
"Forecast."
Hannah narrowed her glare and sat back down. "You're using him to spy on them."
"Like I said. A mistake." Dinah knew who he was. She'd even seen him. She could follow him with her power and that might give us a better idea what Blue Cosmos planned to do. "I won't let him hurt anyone, but unless he's doing it right now this instant, I'm going to leave him where he is and see what I find."
He wasn't a stupid man. A violent sociopath? Hell yes, but not stupid.
"I wanted to tell you, though," I explained. "You deserve to know. I won't be shocked if he comes back to Brockton Bay for revenge."
"Ali doesn't believe in revenge," Hannah snarled. "He doesn't believe in anything."
I blinked. "You think he won't come back here?"
"I know he won't. He knows better, especially if he —Does he know you know he's out?"
If he was a smart man, "He can probably assume it."
"Then he absolutely won't come back to Brockton Bay. It's your home ground. He won't attack it unless he's certain he can win and he knows better." Hannah averted her eyes. She inhaled deeply, nails digging into her palms. "At least not right away. He'll wait. He knows war is about deception."
"He's read Sun Tzu?"
"He didn't have to." Hannah rose from her seat again, and this time the anger bled from her face. In its place was pain, sadness, maybe even longing. "He's talented..."
She trailed off, and it became hard to see the stern but compassionate heroine I knew. In her place was a woman in pain, a girl even. Someone I might recognize in a mirror. A cape who knew despair intimately.
What did he do to her?
I didn't know, but there was some kind of history there. She knew who he was and he knew her. Stratos told me Hannah had been a child soldier before she was a Ward. Given her apparent ancestry, I could guess. The border wars between Turkey and Kurdistan were getting really bad in the mid-80s, and that was when the first capes were appearing. They made it worse.
She'd been there through that, and so had he.
"Two weeks," I whispered. Hannah looked at me from the corner of her eye. "I'm not going to wait for them to throw the first punch." Not the real one, anyway. "Two weeks... Two weeks and..."
"I understand." The girl was gone, and Hannah pulled her scarf up and over her mouth. "I'll deal with Ali."
I flinched. "I don't—"
"I will deal with Ali," she repeated as she rose from her chair. "I'll finish what I started."
What she started? "Wait. Hannah, don't—"
"Thank you for the warning."
"No!"
I rose up, throwing the chair back behind me as I stormed around the table to block her exit.
"You don't get to just run off on your own and die!"
"Die?" Hannah cocked her head, eyes switching from simmering fury to concerned. "I'm not—"
Shirking back, I turned before she could see more of my face. Her hand fell on my shoulder, and before I could pull away, she'd pushed me back into my chair. She moved hers around to my side of the table and sat down.
"Turn off the cameras," she said. She turned, looking up into one of the lenses. "Now."
I eyed the door, cursing myself for letting emotion get the better of me.
Unfortunately, that path of escape was blocked.
Hannah leaned in toward me until her half-masked face was just a few inches away. "Taylor, are you alright?"
This was humiliating. I'd had more than enough humiliation, thank you very much. Was Mom watching this too? Did she know how I felt about it? Did she feel it?
The claw grasping at my ches—
"I'm sorry if my reaction upset you," Hannah apologized. "I didn't mean to suggest I was going to run off after Ali no matter the cost. Our history..." She sighed. "I created him. I helped make him the way he is. It'll sound like denial."
She hesitated, watching me closely.
"He wasn't like this," she insisted. "Not at first. It happened so slowly, I didn't realize what he'd become until it was too late." Her voice cracked for a moment, and she added, "He became my brother, Taylor. I loved him. I knew what he was becoming and I did nothing."
Feeling more than a little ashamed, I pushed my own issues aside and latched onto the hope that she thought I was worried about her. I was, honestly. It's just not the thing that really upset me.
"You weren't any older than me," I pointed out. I assumed. She'd been called a child soldier more than once but she'd been about my age when she joined the first Wards team. "You couldn't have—"
"I could have," she asserted. Her eyes smiled through pain. She took my hand in hers and covered both. "Maybe there's nothing I could have done, but I could have tried. If I'd faced him then things might be different now... But I ran away."
I raised my head cautiously, not entirely sure I could convey worry rather than insecurity.
If Hannah saw anything, she didn't let on. She squeezed my hand. "There's nowhere left to run."
The bell rang. It was muffled as it reached us from the other side of the wall, but it was the last bell of the day.
Hannah looked me over and then she rose up and pulled me to my feet. "We'll use the discrete exit."
My chin left my chest. "Discrete?"
She put an arm over my shoulder and moved me toward the door. "You need a moment."
A moment? Lifting a hand to my face, I touched my cheek. The skin came back wet. Frantically wiping at my eyes, I tried to get the tears to stop. I was crying again.
Beyond the door, Hannah pushed her shoulder into the wall. It gave way easily, leading into a well-lit stairwell that probably led to the well-hidden side entrance she'd used to enter Arcadia.
She led me down the steps, arm still over my shoulders.
Her other hand dialed her phone. She was typing out a message to Ms. Badgiruel, letting her know I'd 'exited' the building and no one needed to wait on me.
"You want to use Ali to find out more about what Phantom Pain is doing," she whispered. "Okay. But Taylor, you're going to tell me where he is and I'm going to...bring it to an end. Understand."
I couldn't help but think back to the last time she'd fought him. "I won't let you fight him alone."
"Then I won't. I have Stratos, Mouse, and"—her voice hitched—"Colossus. We'll deal with Ali." Her hand gripped my shoulder as we reached the bottom of the stairs and started down a very short hall toward a door. "Ali can't be allowed to run rampant. He's too dangerous... He has to be stopped."
I bowed my head again, not paying much attention as Hannah edged the door open and took me outside. The area immediately beyond the door was hidden from sight. I doubted most of Arcadia's students or staff even knew it was there. From the exterior, it looked like little more than a closet on the side of the building.
I glanced at Hannah, trying to puzzle out if there was a difference between her wanting to stop Ali and her wanting to die at his hands because she thought she'd failed him.
How much of that was me projecting my problems onto someone else?
Hannah turned to face me, asking, "Are you alright?"
"Yeah," I lied.
She looked skeptical, but she didn't press. "Well, it's a good thing you do well without makeup. Even a little mascara and it would be impossible to clean yourself up."
Yeah. Yay me.
I pushed my glasses up with a thumb and wiped the last of the tears off with my fingers.
"Taylor," Hannah mumbled. "Are you sure—"
"I'm dealing with it." I needed to get into a room with therapist Amy... though I wasn't sure I could really say everything aloud. "Sorry."
Hannah continued to linger. "Being a cape is hard," she offered. "In all the glamor and the PR, people don't always realize that we're not all that superhuman. We can crumble under the weight of things just as easily as anyone."
"I know."
"You could relax more. I know Lieutenant Ramius kept insisting on that."
Murrue. "I know. I'm not working today... We're going shopping."
"We?"
"Veda and I. Dragon created a design for a gynoid and left it for her. We need to get her a wardrobe and stuff."
Hannah seemed to relax a bit at that, though she remained hesitant. "I'll have to say hi sometime. I saw her when you came to pick up Armsmaster, but my mood..."
"Heavy?" I asked.
"Heavy," she agreed. She waited a moment longer before saying, "I'll get going now, unless you want me to stay." I met her gaze. "I will if you want."
"I'm okay," I assured her.
"Okay," she replied reluctantly. "Try and relax today. You could use it."
"I know."
Hannah turned and left, and I wiped off my face again. She had a point. It was a good thing I went light on makeup and didn't use anything like mascara. That would be hard to hide.
I wiped my face off one more time, straightened out my glasses, sorted my hair, and left the little hidden area. There was a black unmarked van sitting by the sidewalk at the far end of the street nearby. I gathered Hannah wanted to be absolutely sure I was okay...
I couldn't quite figure when my life had so drastically turned around.
You turned it around. Did I? Maybe.
"Taylor."
I turned, looking over my shoulder at Veda. She'd tied her hair back today. She wore a coat that Lafter probably approved of—pink and puffy—and jeans plus the same boots from the other day. The jeans were mine, an older pair I'd outgrown. Veda's avatar had a similar build to mine, but she was shorter.
I checked the time. I'd been standing in place for a while. "Sorry."
Glancing away, I cursed Emma. Emma who—
Arms closed around me and Veda pressed her face into my hair. I stiffened up, grimacing as my heart raced one way and my brain raced the other.
I never feared being emotional before. I was fine being open with other people, I didn't fret being mocked or derided for being human. Emotion is human. A person without emotion is just a robot, a thing. That's what Emma wanted me to be.
A thing.
And I'd been letting her win.
sys.v/ Miss Militia might think you were worried for her
sys.v/ or reminded of the last fight with Ali
sys.v/ I know better
sys.v/ you are not okay
Damnit. "Can we talk about it later?"
sys.v/ we will talk about it later
She was using italics now. Damn. "Okay."
Reaching up, I took Veda's hand and pulled it down. It was strange that she was walking around, talking with her own voice and seeing with her own eyes. It was warm though, and when her fingers closed around my hand I smiled.
And then I stopped because why is Dinah talking to Labyrinth?
Elle was standing beside an older woman, her PRT handler or guardian I assumed, and Dinah was just there. Chatting away. Elle had a weird look on her face.
"Wait, Veda—"
Lafter threw herself between us and forced us forward toward the bus stop. "Let's go shopping!"
Five minutes later, I was already having second thoughts."Maybe we can go shopping another day," I hedged.
"Oh no." Lafter grinned. "We're going shopping!"
"You just went shopping," Akihiro protested with a drawn out face.
"There's no such thing as too much shopping," she quickly retorted. "And Taylor never shops except when I twist her arm, so she can either come willingly or I can keep twisting! And you're both coming."
"Says who?" Orga asked.
"Chivalry!" Lafter answered. "Or do you plan to let three girls wander the city alone, where anything could happen to them?"
My jaw slackened because that was an absurd proposal. Not to mention kind of sexist.
"I do not believe the city is that—"
Lafter covered Veda's mouth and declared, "Let's go to the mall!"
I wanted to be an introvert again.
Brockton Bay had a few malls, few of which I'd visited since the fall of the ABB and the Empire. Lafter picked one near the community college, and I didn't really know the difference. I guess it made sense. Being near the campus, the mall would probably cater to younger adults.
And business was booming.
"Sorry about this," I offered. "Lafter can be a force of nature."
Orga sighed. "It's fine." He glanced to his side at Akihiro. "We probably shouldn't discount that anywhere crowded is a good place to take a shot at you right now."
"The Haros are watching," Veda pointed out. "We will be forewarned of any danger."
We'd taken the bus and crossed the long parking lot. Fortunately, this wasn't the same mall where I'd fought an army of robot zombies. Not sure I wanted to shop there again.
The building was two stories and laid out on a single long strip with a few outbuildings—mostly restaurants—set facing the road between it and the campus. The Pavillion was down the block and I'd probably passed the strip dozens of times. I think I went there once with Mom. I had to have, given the proximity, but I didn't really remember.
We stepped onto the curb as a group. A few heads did a double take at us, but that was usual. I might have tried wearing a hoodie to obscure myself but I doubted any attempt at disguise would hide me from Lafter's boisterous energy.
"Okay," she mused. "We've got the boutique at the far left we're gonna want to visit but the opposite one on the right has better sales so we should go there first. But we can't skip—"
I rolled my eyes. "Stop milking it, Lafter."
"Never!"
She was just being exuberant for the hell of it. "Veda needs basic stuff for the bathroom." I grimaced, realizing that wouldn't exactly be much of a shopping trip. "We can look at clothes after we've gotten the necessities."
"Do I need to point out that we're rich?" Lafter asked.
"No," I replied. That I had more money than I'd ever know what to do with on a personal level wasn't really the point. "Veda's hair is different from mine and Aisha's. She needs different stuff."
It occurred to me that shopping might not be that much different from a cape fight.
It all comes down to initiative.
So I took the initiative, grabbed Veda's hand, and started moving down the strip.
"What happened to me being your shopping sherpa?" Lafter complained.
"You've been retired," I quipped.
"I demand severance!"
"Denied."
Veda followed along beside me and I could already picture photos ending up on PHO. Just walking around with Orga got people assuming I had a boyfriend. Holding Veda's hand would probably fire off a whole new round of banal online debate about my sexuality, but whatever. The internet would do something dumb no matter what I did. Might as well do what I wanted.
"I'm pretty sure there's a salon over here with a few shelves." I vaguely remembered going there with Mom once. "Should be right up here unless it closed down."
"We should get manicures," Lafter whispered.
I rolled my eyes. "I'm not making Orga and Akihiro wait hours while we get our nails done. Besides, our daily activities will ruin them in a week."
"That just means we get to do it again!"
"That seems wasteful," Veda replied.
"Because it is," I assured her. "And it's not why we're here."
I found the salon past an electronic store loaded with TVs in the windows and a men's shirts store. My mother got her hair done there once and she'd taken me along. I'd been too young at the time for anything so fancy and I only barely remembered the place.
Sure enough though, while the right side of the salon was a salon—and a busy one it seemed—the left was practically a higher end general store. Toiletries, hygiene products, and of course, shampoo and conditioner.
I led Veda inside as Lafter spun.
"Wait out here," she ordered.
Orga and Akihiro glared at her.
"You dragged us along," the former grumbled. "We—"
Lafter crossed her arms over her chest. "And I suppose you'll follow us into Victoria's Secret too?"
Those poor boys. It took them a minute to catch on. When they did, their faces turned red and they shuffled off to the side of the door to wait.
"It's a salon," I pointed out. "And we're not going to Victoria's Secret."
"Oh yes we are," Lafter insisted. "I finally got you out here and you're going to leave feeling empowered or I'll tie you down and wheel you through the aisles!"
I left her to her rich fantasy life and only silently accepted her ongoing efforts to make me feel more feminine.
Finally where I intended to be, I led Veda down the aisles to haircare and started looking things over. I'd adopted all my products from Mom, which made sense given we had the same hair. Finding what Veda needed would take a bit more effort. In body her hair was akin to Emma's, so I started with what I remembered seeing in the bathroom the Barnes girls shared.
"Not that one," Lafter warned as I looked one bottle over. "Way too acidy."
"Ah." I put it back and, looking at her blonde tails, considered that Lafter and Emma had similar hair. "What do you use?"
She looked me dead in the eye and said, "Head and shoulders."
Naturally. Lafter, to my quiet jealousy, was the kind of person who barely took care of her appearance and came out looking great. I suppose it was flattering, and endearing, Veda chose to make her avatar more like me than any of the other much prettier girls we knew.
Continuing my search, it took about half an hour before I found what seemed like the best fits for Veda's hair.
"Is this not excessive?" Veda asked as we crouched low over the bottommost shelf.
"We're girls," I pointed out. "Excessive hair care is what we do." Except for Lafter. "Or at least most of us."
I turned over two different brands of moisturizing conditioner and settled on the red bottle with indented flowers. We'd already found a good shampoo and lucky for Veda, Dragon's avatar did not suffer from excessive dandruff.
"Let's try this one," I said, holding up the red bottle. "Sometimes you have to experiment to find what works best."
"When I set out to better relate to others," Veda began, "I had not considered that haircare would be so important to femininity."
"Suppose it depends on what kind of feminine you want to be," I guessed as I rose up. "Or on how pretty you want to feel."
"I'm not sure I can accurately gauge standards of beauty." Veda deftly rose from her squat beside me. "The differences seem superficial."
"Sometimes." Tucking the two bottles under my shoulder, I moved down the aisle toward combs and brushes. "Mom told me that standards of beauty were unrealistic and oppressive expectations denied many women the right to feel beautiful."
Veda stayed close, looking past me as we passed a small section of curling irons, driers, braids, and clips. "That seems a straightforward feminist proposal."
"It is."
I knew the combs I used for my hair weren't right for Veda's. My hair waved and curled as it grew, and it tangled more easily. A comb that helped me with that might be too rough for Veda.
Remembering, I added, "She also said everyone wanted to be pretty, and it's not like women don't contribute to what is thought of as beautiful."
I hadn't thought about that in a long time. I'd just started puberty, and barely a year in I knew I wasn't coming along like the other girls. They were already growing out. I only ever seemed to grow up.
"She told me everyone had to make their own beauty." I looked down at myself, my awkward gangly build that was entirely too long and straight. "You can't feel beautiful if you feel ugly."
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder?" Veda asked.
I forced a smile and looked away from myself. "Something like that. Maybe."
Veda blinked, staring ahead.
Hesitantly, I suggest, "You should work on that."
"On what?"
"Not being so... Stiff? I don't..." Why did I open my mouth? Easy. Because it was really obvious Veda wasn't human. Anyone could see by watching her. "You've heard of the uncanny valley, right?"
"Yes. It is a persistent concept in the field of artificial intelligence." She reared back in a slightly more authentic motion. "Oh. I am uncanny?" I raised a hand, leveled it toward the ground, and wiggled it back and forth. "In what way?"
"It's..." I couldn't find the words. "I don't know, I guess. It's just easy to see that something's off. You stand too stiffly. You end up staring a lot. You don't move like a regular person."
"I see." She looked down at herself. "I should engage in further observation."
Huh. "Maybe you're observing too much. Spend too much time trying to imitate how a person moves and you'll just end up not looking normal... The avatar has innate responses that mimic people. I've seen you express embarrassment and surprise."
"Yes," Veda answered.
"Maybe you should use that more," I suggested. "Just..."
The avatar was a marvel. Dragon's notes cited dozens of tinkers she'd taken inspiration from, including Cranial and Blasto. She wanted the body to be a body. It was human. Enhanced and modified, sure, but fundamentally and genetically human.
"Don't try to control it so much," I thought. "Let the avatar move as it wants to move."
Veda cocked her head left in an almost bird-like motion, but then her shoulders relaxed. Her fingers became less straight. Weight shifted to one leg rather than being evenly shared.
She hummed. "Hm."
"Hm?"
"I'm not sure."
"Well"—I looked her over a third time—"that's better." She nodded and took a few steps forward. "Still a little stiff, but better."
She came around me and turned to look at the shelf of irons, driers, braids and clips again. I followed her eyes, asking, "Something you like?"
"I'm not sure," she replied. One hand rose and stroked her hair. She tended to wear it falling over one shoulder rather than down her back...
"You like your hair that way?" I asked.
Veda turned her head but her hair escaped her view. "I'm not sure."
I turned my attention to the shelf. She wasn't looking at the driers or irons.
"This would match your glasses," I pointed out, indicating a set of plain purple hair clips. "Hold on."
I took one off the shelf and cracked the pack. We'd pay for it either way. Turning Veda to face me, I slipped two of the clips into her hair. She let the strands roll over her shoulder and down her side. It was odd, but it didn't look bad. It did leave her hair blocking her vision on one side normally.
With the clips, I held it back so it would stay out of her view.
"There. How's that?"
Veda turned her head left and right. "How does it look?"
I tilted my head and admitted, "Not bad, honestly. You wear your hair a bit oddly but it works."
"I think I like it," Veda decided. "It is different. However human I aspire to be, I will always be different."
Different. "Does that upset you?" I made her that way. It was my fault. Stupid.
"No." She looked at me. "I am as I am. There is nothing to regret."
...
Well, I must have done something right. "I like the clip. It—It looks good."
Veda nodded. "I agree."
We managed to find the rest of what Veda needed quickly. One function her body didn't replicate was the menstrual cycle—I guess Dragon didn't consider cramps worth it—so we didn't need any of that stuff. We did add some basic lotions to the kit and found her some razors of her own so she didn't need to use mine.
We'd moved on to checking 'vitamins' at Veda's insistence before I noticed. "Where's Lafter?"
I walked down the aisles and found her at the far end of one near a small pharmacy section. Tylenols and such. Nothing too fancy.
"Hey," I called. How long had she been gone? "You ok—"
I stopped and stared.
"Lafter."
"You think I'm being dumb?" she asked, her usual joviality completely absent.
"I didn't say that. I just"—I glanced again at the shelf in front of her—"you haven't even told him you like him, and I don't think he's noticed. Aren't you skipping a few steps?"
"It's not like I'm going to strip down and throw myself at him," she grumbled. "But I mean...isn't it better to be prepared than... You know."
I looked again at the shelf. A small section of various items I chose to ignore. Lafter's focus remained fixed on the singular shelf of condoms. Guess that was why she'd insisted the boys wait outside.
Leaning over and looking toward the front, Orga and Akihiro were still there with their backs turned.
When I looked back, Lafter's face was red and locked into a grimace.
Veda found us a moment later, noticed the section we were at, and cocked her head to the side. She could blush too, though she seemed confused by the reaction.
I hesitated for a moment but fuck it. For all her teasing and pushing, Lafter had been there for me more times than I could count. She never asked for anything in return. Fuck it. I reached for my phone.
There were only two people I could call to ask about this sort of thing and I didn't know if I'd be interrupting Murrue.
"Taylor," Kati answered. "How is your afternoon?"
"Fine." I held the phone closed, and covered my mouth with my free hand. I joined Lafter in grimacing, and after building up a couple seconds of courage asked, "If someone wanted to be prepared for sex, what kind of condom should they buy?"
Kati didn't answer at first. Lafter turned her head and gawked at me. Veda watched curiously. Sue me. There were like twenty different kinds and just reading the labels was awkward.
"Do I need to ask?" Kati finally asked. "Do you need to ask me anything more specific?"
"Just"—I glanced at Lafter—"Being prepared. For anything."
Kati didn't sigh so much as breathe. "Send me a picture on your phone."
I did, very self-conscious of the fact we were in a public place, and Kati sent a quick reply. I grabbed the package and shuffled it between some of the hair products we'd gathered before pulling Lafter around and carrying on.
I was not used to seeing Lafter low on confidence.
Whispering, she said, "Thanks for not saying—"
"Don't worry about it," I told her.
We went to the register and I don't think we hid much of anything. The cashier was an older woman. I kept grimacing as items went across the scanner, waiting for her to notice the most innocuous of the items. It was humiliating. Took everything I had to keep myself from shaking. Would she try to figure out which of us planned to use them? Would she assume when we went out and met Orga and Akihiro that we were some kind of weirdos?
But, the item swiped by and the woman barely seemed to register it. She shuffled the package into the bag with the rest of the items and rang us up.
Huh.
"Sorry," Lafter muttered.
"It's fine." I shuffled the package around in our bag so it wouldn't be obvious. "Look at it this way. You're an in-the-moment person. Maybe something will happen, and if it does you'll both be happier with, ah, one in your pocket. Ready and waiting."
Lafter nodded and I chose to say nothing else.
It was uncomfortable and humiliating...
And normal? Lafter was seventeen and I was sixteen. That was the age this sort of thing started coming up. It was typical high school girl stuff. Life. Right?
"You okay?" Orga asked as we exited the salon. "You took a while."
"Girl stuff," Veda replied stonely. Good girl.
Lafter managed to recover herself, putting on a haughty smile and explaining, "We don't just grab the first thing we see and assume it'll work. A good shopper is a smart shopper!"
"Right." Akihiro stepped aside. "We have a visitor."
Visit—My narrowed gaze fell on Tattletale and the thinker pulled the rim of her hat down.
"Yeah sue me," she grumbled. "They don't exactly have upper end malls in Sanc."
"You're here to shop?" I asked skeptically.
Tattletale met my gaze with her own. "Do you know the last time I so much as bought toothpaste?"
Liar.
Lafter looked her over. Tattletale was wearing somewhat plain clothes, but of course she was fairly pretty so even plain looked good. Jeans, sneakers, a jacket and the same baseball cap I'd seen her in a few times before.
"Your timing is acceptable," Lafter said. She turned to me, with a mischievous glint in her eye. "I'm going to need a fourth opinion."
I shuddered.
This is what I get for helping.
"We only came for hair care," I insisted.
"But we're here now!" Lafter grabbed my arm and started pulling. "And that means we're not done until someone needs to find space in the closet!"
"I could stress shop," Tattletale suspiciously added. "You have no idea how desperate for human contact the 'Kids' are and I'm just not that much of a social butterfly."
They flanked me and I became acutely aware of Veda behind me. "I don't need—"
"Oh yes you do," they both retorted as they nudged me along.
They corralled me down the strip, looking at storefronts and windows as they went. There were two large department stores on either end. Tattletale kept subtly waving Lafter on past the boutiques and smaller shops, no doubt using her damn power to know I'd never go along with something so ludicrously expensive.
I was...willing to do normal teenage girl stuff.
But I was not buying an eighty dollar top. That was absurd.
Maybe it was absurd to go along with something simply because it was 'normal teenage girl stuff' but... I'd let it go for now. Maybe I could use a bit of Lafter's attitude for a bit. Live in the moment. Take things for what they are.
Just for a bit.
Lafter released me once I was inside. "Yeah but we're here sooooo"—she turned and held the door open for Veda and—"come on. Let's go."
Orga and Akihiro stared. "You said—"
"This is different," she asserted. "Let's go. Get in here."
While Lafter shanghaied the boys, I eyed Tattletale closely. Keeping my voice low, I asked, "What are you really here for?"
Tattletale looked away. "It can wait. You need this."
...
I must be fucked if Tattletale was looking out for me.
What happened to my life?
You found friends again.
Friends.
Administrator perceived it as a network. Made sense. To her, every mind and 'person' was part of a larger whole. The Shards were many and one. I supposed humans could be the same in some ways. As much as we tried to establish ourselves as individuals, what is an individual without a society? Without other people, we couldn't know what was individual and what wasn't.
Veda was right.
We needed connections. In a way, we weren't any different from them. Humanity was a network too. Connected and intricat—
"Is something wrong?" Veda asked.
I blinked and shook my head. That was weird. I thought I saw—"Fine. Sorry." I turned to look into the department store. "Just preparing for my inevitable humiliation."
Tattletale gave me a queer look with her brow cocked.
She'd obviously come to talk about something and thought better of it. I guess if she was waiting, it wasn't urgent. So... I'd wait. It could wait. Tattletale was a bitch but she wasn't dumb. It could wait.
Can it?
Next time I went shopping, I decided to bring something to tinker. Just to deal with the nerves.
"You need something that shows off your abs," Lafter told me a few minutes later. By that, I assumed she meant something short enough to expose my midriff.
"You have abs?" Tattletale asked.
"She wears sports bras while she jogs," Lafter replied, "which show off a lot more than her abs!"
"They're functional," I protested. "And I don't want to—"
Lafter held a beige top to my chest despite my complaint, while Tattletale looked around.
"Exposing your stomach is comfortable?" Veda asked, looking at Lafter's exposed stomach.
Lafter hummed to herself, tossed the top and pulled another from under her arm. "Honestly she's just wasting her assets." She glanced at my face. "The 'she' is you."
"I figured," I grumbled.
I tried to bat the next top away, really not interested in anything that would make me look flatter.
"Taylor's abs are an asset?" Veda inquired.
Suddenly, Lafter grabbed the front of my shirt and lifted it up. "You tell me."
My face burned red, and I glanced at the boys not even a few feet away.
Orga sat with Akihiro on the sidelines, our bag of toiletries uncomfortably close on the floor beside them. They didn't look particularly excited before, but now they both leaned to the right and looked at my stomach.
"She's more toned than I am," Lafter declared, "and she's wasting it!" I knocked her hand away and pulled the shirt back down. "The intern look works for you Taylor, but you can't dress like you're on the way to an interview all the time."
I glared. "Watch me."
"Just try it on," Lafter insisted.
"I will try it," Veda proposed.
"I don't want to," I said back. If I was really going to vary my wardrobe, I wanted something else. I didn't really know what. Something that obscured my lack of a figure rather than emphasized it. Besides, "I'm not spending fifty bucks on half a shirt."
"You don't have to buy it," Lafter groaned.
"Then why would I try it on?" I gawked.
"Because the secret of shopping is that half the time you're just putting things on to look hot!"
"To look beautiful?" Veda asked.
Lafter pointed. "She gets it!" She held up one top while Veda lifted another and looked at it. "Now, try this on and see how good y—"
"Try this." Tattletale dangled a shirt over my shoulder. "Seems more your style."
I pulled the shirt from my shoulder and lifted it up.
Huh. "Fine."
Veda followed me to the changing room and we took a stall to switch our shirts. A pair of girls waiting outside another stall recognized me and I needed to glare at them before they put their phones away. If they wanted to snap shots of me going about my life, fine. But not in a damned changing room.
"How does it look?"
Veda stepped out of the stall behind me, looking at herself in a mirror. The top was a purple color and didn't really match the rest of her clothes, but one in a matching color would, "Looks good. Do you like purple?"
"Do I? I've never considered a favorite color."
"Hair clip. Top."
"Hm."
I took her hand and pulled her toward the exit. "Come on. Let's go face the gallows."
We exited the changing area. Lafter and Tattletale were looking over an entire arrangement of tops, shorts, and jeans they'd somehow amassed in a very small period of time. We were only gone a few minutes. How did they collect all of that? We weren't even near the jeans section.
"Did either of you earn a mover rating while I wasn't looking?"
Tattletale gave me a ha. "Cape humor. Funny." She turned and frowned. "You buttoned the bottom."
"Yeah?" I glanced down. "It's a little tight and it's not because I'm fat."
Tattletale rolled her eyes and stepped forward. "That's because you're supposed to leave the bottom three buttons unbuttoned."
Veda leaned around my shoulder. "What is the purpose of buttons that aren't meant to be buttoned?"
Tattletale leaned forward abruptly while Lafter crossed her arms over her chest. She unbuttoned the bottom buttons of the shirt. The fabric parted, exposing my stomach from the diaphragm down. I blushed as cold air rolled over my belly and Tattletale rose up.
"There," she declared. "Throw a thinner top underneath and you can have the best of both worlds."
"It works," Orga said.
Great. Even Orga was trying to help. Thinking back to Halloween, I remembered he knew full well about my body image issues. And he was trying to be nice. Great. More humiliation.
"It does," Lafter agreed. "The casual side of business casual. Wonder if there's a version with long sleeves. Long sleeves work with long arms."
Veda raised an arm and held it out beside me, eyes tracing the limb.
"I can double check," Tattletale replied. "For now, let's see if we can get her out of khakis—fashionable though they may be—and into a pair of jeans that go with that shirt."
They got me into a pair of jeans that went with the shirt. Naturally, that meant taking off my shoes which they immediately used as an excuse to get me to start trying a pair of sandals.
"It's winter," I grumbled.
"And?" Tattletale and Lafter asked.
"They look nice," Veda noted.
"No one wears sandals in winter," I complained.
Veda held up the box. "They are on sale."
"They learn so fast," Lafter stated proudly. She grabbed another shoe box and pushed it toward me. "Now these."
Grimacing, I pointed out, "We're making a mess." We'd almost managed a fort made of clothing items."
"I wouldn't worry about it." Tattletale set a hangar down. A small robotic hand grabbed the hook and carried it off.
Green shuffled by, running the hangar back into the aisles.
"When did—"
"Question later," Tattletale quipped, "shoes now."
And on it went.
Lafter had started trying on various skirts and shorts between sending me into the changing rooms. She kept glancing at Akihiro in a mirror, as if trying to see if he liked anything she put on.
From what I could tell, he was mostly watching the store around us.
I wasn't sure what Lafter liked about him. Not that I disliked Akihiro, but the image of them was weird. I'd have never pictured Lafter with someone so... Serious. Though, aesthetically speaking I understood it completely. Tall, broad shouldered and loaded with muscle, more than I found appealing, but Akihiro was a manly guy and if that's what Lafter liked, that's what she liked.
Maybe I should ask her?
"That works." Lafter pointed at Tattletale. She'd thrown a sundress over her head and was testing the way it moved as she shifted her weight. "The neckline is a little low."
"And?" Tattletale asked with a grin. "Just because I'm not interested doesn't mean I don't like looking interesting."
I settled onto a seat because I'd been standing, walking, and changing clothes for a few hours.
I'd been shopping for hours... I'd never done that before. Not since Mom died.
"You seem better."
Beside me, Orga leaned forward, elbow set against his knee with his cheek resting on his palm.
"Do I?" I asked.
"Better than yesterday," he confirmed. "Feeling any better?"
I looked forward. For the moment, Lafter and Tattletale had moved on to fussing over Veda. She'd put on a pair of stockings and a modest skirt, which was completely different from the halter top she'd tried before.
Veda embraced the various articles more readily than me, but honestly?
"I'm okay," I admitted. On the whole, I don't think shopping was a thing for me. I'd much rather go, grab whatever I needed, and then be on my way. "Just a little worn out."
"I've been sitting here and I'm worn out," Orga grumbled.
"I can tell. Sorry."
"Job's a job."
"My wellbeing is your job?"
He grinned. "What's one more?"
I rolled my eyes. "Fair enough."
I could lose the shopping... But I liked being with people I was connected to. It was calming, despite my lacking eagerness for the activity itself. The world was still falling apart behind me and in that I felt a bit guilty.
But the world wasn't going to end just yet and I couldn't do anything in this exact moment to make it better.
So... So maybe it was okay.
It was okay to live.
