BAD GRACE - quantum witch © 2005
see Prologue for warnings, rating, and summary
In which the Them play ninja, and there is a secret kiss.
5:01 – COVERING TRACKS
"OKAY, HERE'S WHAT WE DO TO PLAY NINJAS," Adam said in a conspiratorial way. "So long as you keep yourself invisible, you can sneak up on anyone."
"There's no such thing as invisible," said Wensley plainly. "Nothing is ever not seen unless you close your eyes, and you can't go 'round expecting everyone else's eyes to be closed just so you can sneak up on 'em."
"Air is invisible," Brian said with a grin.
"Course air is invisible," Adam sighed, "if it wasn't then you'd wouldn't be able to see through it."
"Oh," said Brian, scratching his head. "Yeah, didn't think of that."
"Anyway," Adam pressed on patiently. "What I mean by keepin' invisible is just making sure nobody can see you. You gotta believe you're invisible to make it work. It's a zen mind control thing, like in Anathema's magazines, remember?"
"Oh, yeah," Pepper nodded. "That was where you sit down with your legs crossed and put your hands on your knees and go 'Uuuummm' like a vacuum cleaner." She giggled.
Wensley looked thoughtful. "But it's just Tibetan monks and stuff that do that, right? Not ninjas. 'Cause ninjas are killers and they don't have time to sit around umming, especially since then people would hear 'em and that doesn't help being invisible."
"Hey, maybe it's the deep breathin' zen thing that does it," Brian said with another grin. "Get enough air in you, you turn invisible."
"Oh, knock it off!" Pepper smacked him hard in the arm. "Adam's tryin' to get a game going, and you're being a pain."
Brian rubbed his arm, and shut up.
Adam sighed yet again. "Yeah, okay. So we're agreed that ninjas can't exactly be invisible, not really truly, because only air is invisible. And they probably don't sit around going 'umm' either. I mean, they're not monks after all, they're assassins."
"'S a funny word," Brian snickered. "Arse-arse-ins."
"Oh, shut it," Wensley grumbled, "or you'll get whacked again, and I'll help out."
"Anyway," Adam said pointedly, "they kill people, and they do it without being seen 'cause they hang out in the dark, or at nighttime, and they were black clothes and cover their faces up 'cept for their eyes so they can see."
Brian politely raised his hand, as though in school.
"For cryin' out loud," Wensley groaned. "What is it?"
"If it's nighttime, how do the ninjas see anything either? Are they part cat?"
Pepper threw a rock at him, which he successfully ducked.
"Just askin'. It's a serious question!" he insisted.
"All right, all right," Adam continued. "They train themselves to do that, just like train on all kinds of weapons and fighting. That's the kind of meditatin' they do, it's a special type they do very quietly that helps 'em learn to see in the dark. Okay?"
Brian was satisfied. So long as it made some sort of sense, he was fine.
"So if we play ninjas, we have to get all black clothes," Wensley said reasonably, "and then we do some weapon training here in the Pit, and then find someone to sneak up on, but not to kill 'em. I read that ninjas were sometimes spies too, just gathering information because they were so good at sneaking around unseen."
"Why would they need weapons, then?" Brian asked.
"Well, dummy, what if they got seen by another ninja working for someone else? They'd have to fight each other." Pepper snorted in disgust. "That's obvious, isn't it?"
"Yeah, all right, I knew that," Brian conceded.
"So anyway," Wensley continued with lesson, "we can play ninja spies instead of killers, can't we? I mean, there's loads of interesting things to hear and see in Lower Tadfield. And then we can come back and report to each other."
"Sounds good to me," Pepper said. "I like knowin' what's going on."
"Same here," Brian nodded. "Never know what sort of secrets people are keeping."
Adam looked pensive. He had a secret or two he wanted kept, and he knew they had some too. But they weren't yet afraid of those things.
"Okay," he said, "but we need some training first. We need to practice weapons and get ninja clothes an' stuff. We'll meet back here after school tomorrow and get started."
And the meeting was adjourned.
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON WAS INTERESTING, to say the least.
Not a one of them had any black clothes, for starters. Brian was wearing a green jumper and blue jeans. Wensley wore a blue long sleeve shirt and jeans. Pepper had on a purple sweatshirt and jeans. And Adam could only find his brown turtleneck and jeans. But at least all the colours were very dark.
"Well, it'll have to do for now. We can still blend into the shadows when it's darker," he said.
"But don't we have to be home before it's too dark?" Brian asked.
"Not if we're playing ninjas. And b'sides, it's Friday. No school tomorrow, so they can't complain if we're out later," Adam responded reasonably. "So does everyone have a mask?"
Wensley's was the best. He'd secured a large bandana in a blue so dark it nearly was black. Of course it had a white pattern around the edges, but he wrapped it up so it mostly didn't show. His bespectacled eyes peered out and Adam looked pleased.
The others didn't fair so well. Brian had an old dishtowel of an ugly green that nearly matched his jumper, and it wasn't the best fit around his head. Pepper's idea was clever but looked silly. She'd taken an old faded-red pillow case and cut a slit in it for her eyes, then rolled up the bottom and wrapped a ribbon around that. She also threatened to take her playing level to 'assassinate' if anyone so much as breathed the fact it was a ribbon in her presence.
Adam's mask wasn't the best either, but he put it on the best. He'd gotten a piece of cloth from his mum's sewing room and, after studying some ninja drawings in his comics, he wrapped it around a few times and it came out looking pretty accurate. Of course it was inside out because, while it was mostly black, the front side had flowers on it. And he wasn't quite manly enough yet to not mind that sort of thing.
So, thus prepared, they began to spar with their 'weapons', which were just as sad as their costumes. Pepper had a wooden sword which was really just a broom handle, and she used it a bit harder than was really necessary, and gleefully at that. Brian's throwing stars made of tiny Frisbees he'd cut up didn't really go far enough to do any damage, as if they could do anything other than make one crack a rib from laughing. Wensley had made something like nun-chucks, which were fairly convincing for all that they were the ends of a jump rope with the rope between them cut short and then tied back together. He didn't really work them very well either, but you didn't want to be too near when he was swinging them, so it was still effective.
Adam's contribution was a handful of 'throwing knifes' which his mother would kill him for later, no doubt. He'd taken them from the kitchen drawer, but not from the cutting block. These were merely butter knives, because the other type had wooden handles and were too unwieldy (and sharp). The butter knives were one solid piece of silver and slid easily between the fingers. He tried three at a time, like he'd seen in the comics. They flew everywhere and missed everything. So he went down to two with the same result. Finally settling on one, he did manage to hit Brian in the hip, which thankfully didn't hurt very much.
"Okay, I think we've had quite enough practice," Adam declared after twenty minutes. They'd all gotten sweaty and dirty and slightly bruised from the training. Especially anyone on the receiving end of Pepper's sword. "Let's go into the woods and try practice sneakin' next."
"The woods?" asked Wensley. "Shouldn't we be getting back home for dinner?"
"Yeah, my granny's over for the weekend and she's made her yam pie," Brian said petulantly.
Adam's eyes flared for a moment. "Fine. If you guys wanna wait on training 'til tomorrow night, that's a whole 'nother day between, and we'll need more weapon training first, because ninjas train every single day and night, then that's just fine with me." Adam said, throwing up his hands. "I mean, here we are, things getting a little dark already, the woods are just across the road, and we can practice for ten whole minutes or something and be back in plenty time for dinner. Dunno about you, but my dinner's not for another hour anyway."
That was the first time they'd seen Adam in a snit, since… that thing that happened last summer, that they never discussed and which they weren't entirely sure what it was anyway.
When he saw they'd stepped back a little, he sighed and was genuinely contrite. "I'm sorry, it's okay. I'm just… lately, things are getting' weird. But I'll be okay, I promise. If you don't wanna play anymore today, then we'll just do it earlier tomorrow. Though we really ought to do the sneaking at night."
Pepper came closer then, because on some level she was catching on. "Adam, it's okay, we can play a little longer. I can anyway, because mum knows where to find me." She turned to glare at the other boys. "All our mums know where to find us, they always do. It's like mum radar."
It was true. The reason they were hesitant was they, too, were picking up on something different going on within Adam. The hidden memory of Armageddon couldn't help shifting and stirring kraken-like underneath beneath the waters of their nearly-pubescent psyches. It was making them wonder just what was happening with Adam, not that either of them were brave enough to ask.
"All right," Wensley said, "I guess I can stay another hour. And we do need to practice if we're gonna get this right."
"Right," Brian agreed. "Especially if we're gonna sneak up on people like… Mr. Tyler."
They all grinned at that thought. Mr. R. P. Tyler was the stuffiest, nosiest, most easily-annoyed person in all of Lower Tadfield, and nothing delighted the Them more than annoying him. Because he was so easily-annoyed, they had to constantly find new and interesting ways to get that vein to pop out on his temple and then listen to their parents read aloud the latest newspaper's 'Letter to the Editor' about how children today can't be allowed to run loose stealing a person's toupee, or whatever.
Annoyance on a ninja level would be the best thing they'd ever thought of.
They walked to the woods, and then split up in different directions. It was something like hide-and-seek, what they were doing, but with no one being 'it'. They would walk as far away as they could, at least as far as they knew the woods (which was about as intimately as they knew their bedrooms), count to fifty, then slowly start hunting for each other. If anyone found you, you had to do a staring contest, because a fight would alert others. Whoever blinked first lost and had to join the winner in hunting for the remaining ninjas. They would probably be done in less than an hour, especially the way Brian was crashing through the underbrush.
Adam felt his heart pounding, because he wasn't playing the game. He was deliberately using his abilities. He sensed where they all were, but most especially Pepper. And he was automatically tracking her, because he wanted… to… see what she was thinking. Or something. He stayed out of people's minds now. Actually, he really couldn't see into them. The only people he'd ever read weren't even people, exactly, since they just wore human flesh but were actually angels or demons.
But humans… No, he could make them do things, he could push them around all over the world, all at once, if he wanted to. He could literally move mountains. He could push Mohammed, whoever he was, onto the mountain. He could even make Mohammed say what a lovely mountain it was and make him build a fortress on it and stay there for decades. But he couldn't make Mohammed's mind think that on its own. People had free will, even if everything else was being manipulated. And Adam's friends had shown him that during the Apocalypse. He respected that and was glad he didn't have the power to change it.
He didn't care that it was the one thing he couldn't do. He just knew he had to know this particular something and it would drive him crazy until he found out. So he tracked Pepper, and when he found her, she looked very annoyed at having been found so soon. They stared and stared and eventually Adam blinked because she was an amazingly fierce starer. She grinned in triumph and slipped her ninja mask down for a breath of air.
Adam was going to ask about that something, he really was, but instead he gripped her hand and pulled her into thicker cover, and knelt down as if to hide them from the others. Then he pulled his own mask down and kissed her, straight on the lips.
For a half second, Pepper's eyes went wide as saucers, then her face went so red it made her hair look pink. Then she close her eyes and leaned a little closer to enjoy the kiss. It was so different than she'd read about in those girl's magazines she hid under her bed and was convinced her mum knew nothing about. It didn't feel exactly 'magical'. It felt more wet and weird and it was hard to figure out where to put your nose. But it had a very pleasant undertone, and that was what she decided to concentrate on.
Adam was literally breathless when he finally backed away. He licked his lower lip, which tasted just a bit like fruit juice. "Were you wearing… lip gloss?" he asked.
"You only just noticed that?" she accused with a puzzled look.
"Er, I was kinda busy," he blushed and she instantly forgave him with a returning blush.
They would have said, and possibly done, more, but they heard Wensley and Brian coming. They jumped out of the bushes immediately, and did the youngster's version of straightening one's clothes after having been caught together in the broom closet at a social gathering.
"There you are," Brian sighed. "Do we need to stare you both down? Seems silly to keep staring when we've all found one another."
"No, it's fine. We can consider it a draw. It was just sneakin' around practice anyway." Adam sighed and rose to his feet, putting out a hand to help Pepper without thinking about it. Fortunately it didn't seem like anyone noticed, except her. This time.
They all trudged from the woods to go home for dinner, agreeing to meet the next day for a bit more practice, and then a full ninja spying session that evening when Mr. Tyler was out walking Shutzi. If they could sneak about without him noticing, then they would later move on to following him home and listening through his keyhole and windows.
ADAM FINISHED HIS DINNER and his homework (best get it over with before the weekend, so it's not ruined) and then went back outside. He shuffled around the yard for a while, then decided to take a walk over to Anathema and Newt's. Seeing the baby was a big cheerer-upper for him lately.
He'd been getting moodier and twitchier. And today he'd not only yelled at his friends, he actually gone and kissed one of them. He'd known Pepper since they were five, for crying out loud. It was weird, but in a disturbingly nice way. And so far, it didn't seem like she minded stuff. He hadn't yet been able to voice it to her, the Valentine's card itself was rather vague. But she was catching on, thank God.
When he arrived at the soon-to-be-former Jasmine Cottage, he saw they already had company and it seemed a rather grown-ups-only situation, just from the aura of the place. Being still dressed in his brown ninja jumper, and still having the flowered mask in his back pocket, he put it on and snuck up to the side window to see what was happening.
Inside was the angel, sitting on the sofa and drinking a cup of tea with shaky hands. Adam couldn't really hear words, just the buzzing of their voices. But it was clear to him that the demon had left the angel, possibly forever.
Adam frowned. This was a bad development. He knew that the two of them were meant to be together, in whatever way that happened. It was simply the truth. And Adam was somewhat responsible for that.
He stepped away from the window and sat down in the bushes to think. Sighing, he crossed his legs, put his hands on his knees, palms up and fingers touching, breathed deeply… and sent his aura out further than Lower Tadfield, which he hadn't done in a long while.
Somewhere in America was the demon. There were no other demons nearby, or infernal entities of any kind anywhere near him, and no avenging angels either. So he was in no immediate danger, other than damaging his liver and lungs with outrageous amounts of alcohol and cigarette smoke, all of which he could repair himself. But he was very unhappy. So unhappy that being aware of Crowley was making Adam depressed.
Adam began to pull his aura back home, and he sighed. Why was it that soul mates had to go through so much pain and trouble? Why couldn't the angel and demon admit it and justget on with their lives and be happy? Anathema and Newt had found each other and they were pretty happy. Why couldn't everyone else be the same? Even Adam had found his. But he would have to wait sixteen years to admit that.
Love was going to suck, he could just tell.
As his aura shrank down it brushed over something that suddenly didn't feel right. It was very near the spot where Rachel had been born. Exactly where she'd been born.
Someone was looking for her. Specifically her. And they had a clue already how to find her, the name of the cottage.
In a panic, Adam wished he could use his powers to push his will on whomever it was and make them forget. But he had made a promise not to. If he broke that promise, it wouldn't be just him that paid for it.
Somehow he would have to ensure Anathema and Newt settled on a new name for their cottage, right away, and it couldn't include anything to do with flowers.