morP 3.7 (take 2)
"When clusterfucks meet other clusterfucks to debate which clusterfuck is the biggest clusterfuck, all the clusterfucks will agree tonight was the clusterfuck that proud clusterfuck parents want their newborn baby clusterfucks to be when they grow up."
Chris said to Dennis, "Admit it, you just like saying clusterfuck."
"And you don't?" Dennis replied from where he sat on the curb outside of Immaculata. Three Brockton Bay Police Department cruisers in the parking lot sent red and blue phantasms chaotically chasing around the entire landscape.
"Besides, 'shitstorm' hits a little too close to the mark." Dennis protectively cradled his abdomen with a sigh, the after effects of his earlier purging still made sympathetic echoes in his biology.
"At least you didn't get hit on by a nazi." Chris looked up at the sky and sighed. "Why did she pick me?"
Dennis raised an eyebrow as he twisted to look at Chris.
"Aside from the two who are 'moving up to the big leagues' and weren't forced to be here tonight, just look at the choices available," Dennis pointed to himself and then to each male Ward in turn around the parking lot and said, "Hair color which meant my ancestors were witches, Hispanic AND gay, and finally in a relationship or at this point, retaliation-ship."
"So you tell me," Dennis asked, "who else is 'Becky Honkyngton' going to latch onto?"
"How dare you use logic and reason to make your point," Chris replied with a smirk.
"And that doesn't even count the new guy, who isn't through branding yet, who also doesn't fit into the perfect aryan mold."
Chris let a frustrated sigh escape as he turned to watch the busiest area of activity outside Immaculata.
In the teachers' parking lot next to the school Victoria and Dean kept Amy company by the lone Ambulance to respond. Even from this distance he'd practically memorized her standard speech where she had to tell yet another teenager that no, she couldn't do anything about the impending doom from the laxative they'd ingested. Especially while there were still a few people with actual injuries waiting. It was triage, plain and simple. Fortunately the custodian for Immaculata had stuck around to lock up after the dance and so was able to unlock the rest of the schools bathrooms for immediate use.
Good luck finding an empty stall, though.
The BBPD had the kids from Winslow who had been behind all this in custody. Sophia was among them even though there was video showing her as their target for the evening, despite the righteous ass-kickings she had delivered. She had the back seat of a squad car all to herself despite the overcrowded conditions in the other two cruisers..
The kicker was that even though Sophia had assaulted multiple teens, she squeaked by on a technicality since she had obviously been provoked, although the guy she kneed in the crotch could justifiably say she had not used restraint.
"I bet Piggy's getting ginsu dentures made and custom fitted for the ass-chewing Sophia's going to get tomorrow." Dennis opined.
Carlos walked up to join the conversation, "No, she's going to strike while the iron's hot, bet on it."
"Really?"
"You notice how the Limo hasn't come back for us yet? I bet it's just waiting up the block until Sophia's released from police custody," Carlos ventured.
"Well, speak of the devil…."
Sophia took back her phones from the cops now that they decided to let her go. Neither they, nor any of her Ward teammates who had pulled her out of the fray, had let her clean herself up. 'Evidence,' they said. She was forced to stay in the squad car wrapped in a scratchy blanket while red paint and pasta sauce dried on her until all the Track Team members she beat down got fixed up by Panacea. They even asked her if she wanted to press charges. Press charges? Like she was some victim unable to handle things and seek vengeance for herself, although it would harm them far more than her... the very idea raised her hackles.
She wanted to get her hands Jesse again and keep crushing his windpipe until Panacea got the hint and stopped fixing it.
Sophia noticed there was still no sign of the Wards Social Worker. Here she was, left to twist in the wind by that bitch after all this.
Screw her.
Still, it gave Sophia the opportunity to sneak away from the crowds. That squad car was stuffy, and she felt a little woozy from the paint fumes. With a quick glance around to assure she would be undetected, Sophia used a shadow form assisted leap up to the gymnasium roof. She landed in the blast of exhaust from an air conditioner, and turned herself this way and that as it blew all those gum wrappers, lint, bugs, and most importantly, that disgusting cop car smell off of her while she flickered in and out of her breaker state. An unexpected side benefit to getting away from all those annoying assholes down below.
The red paint itched as it contracted and had pulled her skin while it dried.
Sophia pulled out her personal phone, checked her messages and had an inspiration.
Instead of targeting Grue, she would get that Merchant mercenary Butterfly to hunt down and kill Jesse so none of it got tracked back to her. She ought to have enough cash hidden away that she'd stolen from drug dealers to cover it.
Sophia brought out her phone, pulled up the message Butterfly had sent her this morning and texted a reply with a quick 'Hey, howzit?' then, pressed send. She had typed up the next message with details about where and when to meet up tomorrow when she took a moment to contemplate her surroundings.
Sophia peered beyond the edge of the roof towards the city lights on the horizon, her gaze swept down to the clusters of people in the parking lots below. Farther away unfamiliar students from different schools illuminated themselves in the darkness as they milled about and checked their phones. Closer by she recognized Emma and her friends getting into Mr. Barnes brand new car now that the settlement for their faulty driveway construction had come in. The Wards moved toward the PRT Limo which had just pulled up on the street on the far side of the gym. Sophia knew her time was short, but she paused when she recognized an unexpectedly familiar person weave through the crowds while texting to shelter behind the bushes.
"Hebert was here? When the fuck did Loser MacLoser-ton show up?" Sophia wondered.
Glow from a phone lit up Hebert's face like a kid with a flashlight under their chin telling ghost stories while camping.
"Since when did Hebert have a phone?"
Sophia knew the wuss had never had one at school. She would have snatched it away from the gangly geek and flushed it, or intentionally missed a three-pointer at a garbage can, or slid it down a crowded hallway like a hockey puck, or sent any of a million potential taunts and torments once they knew the number and could text her regular abuse.
She leaned over the precipice of the gym roof to get a better view. There was Hebert, her torso turned slightly away as she finished texting something, and hit send on her phone. Moments later Sophia's own phone vibrated in her hand. Butterfly had just texted her back. But she couldn't read the mercenary's response until she sent her own message which had been languishing on screen for the past minute while she'd been distracted by Hebert.
Sophia pressed 'send'. Below, the ghoulish light that had illuminated her thin face and too-wide lips went out as Hebert powered off her screen.
Only for it to flare into brightness again, which revealed the quizzical look on Hebert's underlit face.
As Hebert texted just one letter and pressed send, Sophia glanced at her own phone. Butterfly's previous message had asked for a time and location, which her just-sent message had answered.
The phone in Sophia's hand vibrated. Butterfly's response was one letter...
'K'
"What the fuck?!" Sophia thought.
Glory Girl descended from the sky and hovered next to the air conditioner behind Sophia. The blonde pointed at her and said, "Hey, Dean and sent me up here to tell you if you don't get in the Limo ASAP, I am to carry you there."
"Yeah, yeah," Sophia said with a last backwards glance, "Just let me finish this."
Sophia texted a quick 'KTHXBYE' and pressed send one last time and watched to see what would happen.
Hebert's phone lit up in response yet again.
"No goddamn way..." Sophia thought.
Glory Girl cleared her throat over-dramatically.
Sophia strode across the roof full of conflicting emotions; angry at herself for being duped, confused about how fucking Hebert was also Butterfly and had managed to pull it all off, and most of all pissed that she couldn't just leap down and kill the bitch NOW with a swift attack, not with Bimbo Barbie floating right there.
But as long as no one else knew that she knew... the 'unwritten rules' could go fuck themselves.
She just had to bide her time and plan out her moves, and do it in spite of the frustration and acidic reaction of her gut to the denied action. But now she had a target, a goal to achieve and the emotions to pack down and use as fuel to power her revenge.
Sophia ghosted to the ground, ducked into the limo, shoved Chris aside unnecessarily, and flopped to a surly rest against the upholstered seat behind the driver.
Dean scooted to one side for Victoria to sit down and said, "You seem upset Sophia..."
The snarling, disgusted glare of contempt Sophia threw his way surpassed even the hag mask of her costume.
"No."
Sophia extricated a congealed gobbet of pasta sauce encrusted with paint from her hair.
"Shit."
A contemptuous flick of her wrist sent the crimson glob in an arc across the interior of the limousine.
"Sherlock."
The resulting red splatter on Deans' tuxedo merely blended with the other stains he had acquired as he had restrained Sophia from further injuring her fellow Winslow students earlier.
"Tell me, O Wizard, O Wise One… what was your first fucking clue?" the paint and pasta sauce stained Ward asked vehemently.
The long ride back to the Protectorate's Rig passed in tense, uncomfortable silence.
