Parallax 2.04

Today was a rather lazy day. The unusually good weather we had been enjoying had finally given way to the usual overcast sky. Normally this would have been a bad thing. Without some sort of activity, Jamie had nothing else to do but dwell on her recent discovery. Fortunately, she was able to find an alternate way to occupy herself.

"You sure you're okay with just staying inside all day?"

Jamie looked up from where she was, sprawled along her stomach on top of Karen's bed, a hardcover novel laid out just in front of her. She pointedly glanced out the bedroom window where a light drizzle could be seen impacting the glass. "Did you want to go outside in that?"

"It's just a bit of rain," Karen replied from her desk. "It's hardly strong enough to worry about." Despite her comment, she was hardly dressed for the outdoors, instead simply wearing an overly large t-shirt and shorts as she curled up in her chair. She poked at the keys of her computer listlessly before spinning around in her seat. "Are you sure you don't want to do anything else? A lot of people have said it's kind of boring just watching me browsing the 'net."

Jamie looked up from her book and gave the other girl a frank stare. "I'm used to quiet," she said. "So what are you amusing yourself with?"

Karen rolled her eyes, pointedly staring at the posters and photographs that covered her walls. "What do you think?"

Jamie looked up from her book again and blanched. "Ah," she said. "Having fun?"

"Kind of. Nobody knows who you are, apparently."

"What?!" Jamie raised herself over her arms and flipped herself over into a sitting position. The movement gave her more difficulty than it should have—she seemed to still be having troubles with moving her legs, despite her efforts in recent days. She gave them a glare even as she addressed the other girl. "What are you talking about?"

"Rela~ax," Karen flailed one hand, the other still pecking away at her keyboard. "I made a post on the 'Miscellaneous Sightings' section. No real details. 'Unknown cape, flashes of blue, possibly telekinetic'. So far I'm mostly getting responses about some cape around the American east coast, even though I keep telling them I'm in the UK."

I blinked and moved in closer to the screen, verifying for myself. "She's right, nothing that can give us away. Still, you could have asked first," I turned towards Karen with a frown.

She looked unapologetic. "Would you have given me a straight answer?"

I didn't even have to think about it. "Probably not."

Jamie looked pensive. "Maybe..."

I spun towards her, even as Karen turned a brilliant smile on her newest housemate.

"What would you do with that information?" Jamie continued, ignoring my shocked expression.

"Don't know, actually," Karen admitted. "I just like knowing things for its own sake." She scooted her chair closer to the bed. "So who were you, before you got injured?"

"Nobody you'd have heard about, most likely," Jamie said with a glance towards me. "I was... injured... not long after I got my powers."

"Did you ever think about a code-name?" Karen pressed. "Or pick out a side-kick? Ooh, I could be your secret keeper!"

"You're already keeping my secret," Jamie retorted, sounding amused. "As for a name? Hmm, the phrase 'Looking Glass' might have come up once or twice."

Karen's face twisted into a grimace. "What, like a mirror? That's a stupid name."

"Hey!" I protested. I had put serious thought into that code name.

Jamie's eyes were dancing as she glanced towards me. "Yeah, it's not the most impressive of names, is it?"

Karen followed her gaze towards me. "Oh, it was your idea? Well, you should still listen to your master, she's the one who has to live with what people will be calling her."

"Hmph." I crossed my arms and nodded towards the book still in Jamie's lap. "Are you done with that?"

She snapped the book closed and rocked herself to one side, supporting herself with one arm whilst she used the other to fling it into the air.

"Wha—?" Karen started as she snapped her head back towards Jamie. She half leapt out from her seat, one arm stretched out as if to reach across the room. "Noo! Harry!" She stopped herself as the book changed direction in midair and floated back towards her bookshelf.

I carefully slid it back into its place and poked my head out from the cover. "Did you want the next one?"

"Hmm," Jamie rested her chin on her free hand. "Give me book three, I remember hearing that's when it really starts to get good."

I hesitated over the second book. "You sure? You're missing out on a bunch there."

Karen sat there, mouth agape for a few moments. She finally slumped back into her chair, giving Jamie a mock glare. "Mean trick," she said at last. "Don't scare me like that! Those are first-edition copies, they're valuable!"

Jamie giggled.

"... What?"

"Oh, it's nothing," Jamie said. "I was just thinking about how nice it was to have an actual person to tease and annoy. James tries, but it's not quite the same as having a living, breathing person to be a friend."

Karen tilted her head. "You consider me a friend?"

Jamie hesitated, her smile fading slightly. She flicked her eyes towards the brunette before looking away. "...you don't?"

"I—oh!" Karen smiled reassuringly and hopped out of her chair. She took two long steps forward then threw herself onto the bed and across Jamie's back. "Of course I do!" she squealed, wrapping her arms across Jamie's shoulders. "You think I'd let any homeless person into my room? Up until now the few strays we took in just stayed in the guest bedroom until they left. Not that they weren't good people themselves, but you're like the first one who's not really that much older than I am. It's just that, well, you seem kind of withdrawn into yourself. I wasn't sure if you felt... safe here, I guess."

Jamie smiled, although it was a somewhat bitter one. "Well, I can definitely say you're the first person that I've interacted with in over a decade who's even close to my age. Also you know one of my secrets."

"And what a secret it is!" Karen's glasses seemed to flash as she glanced towards me. "You know, if you kept him hidden completely whilst you did your little poltergeist tricks, people would just assume you were telekinetic."

Jamie joined her in her scrutiny, making me shift uncomfortably at the sudden attention. "You think?" she asked.

"Definitely." Karen rolled off of her, spinning smoothly to her feet and dropping herself back into her desk chair. "And your ghost is right. You can't skip book two, it has snakes!"

Jamie made a face. "I saw the movie already."

"No!" Karen scowled at her. "Movie bad! Book good!" She jabbed a finger towards me, "James!"

Jamie winced as I dropped myself into the next book in line and threw myself at her. "Mergle..." she mumbled, not pleased at having been outvoted. She dutifully caught the book anyhow and flipped it open, stretching herself out against the bed covers once again.

"It's not like you've got plans for today," I pointed out. "You don't have anything better to do."

"Traitor."

...

There had been no sign of Nightwalker in the last few days—or nights, as it were. The police station had been cleaned up, but nothing had been found to be missing. The authorities were currently treating it as having been a successful interception, forcing him to flee before he'd achieved whatever his objective had been.

It left me with nothing better to do but resume my new patrol routes, although I kept a slightly more wary eye on the shadowed areas of the town.

I'm bored.

Well, to be fair, Jamie was mostly searching, whereas I was browsing older reports on my phone.

I was almost done with the fifth book. Is it just me, or were they getting longer?

"They were getting longer," I told Jamie.

I don't remember those parts in the movies.

"And that's why you don't neglect the source material in favor of the adaptations."

Whose fault do you think it is that I never read the series until now?

"You're the one who likes reading," I pointed out. "I was fine with the movies."

Heresy!

I chuckled to myself even as my phone lit up with a new message from Volley.

ur such a niteowl now. does BL kno bout this?

There was an icon that indicated an attachment had been transmitted along with the text. Without bothering to reply to the message, I opened it up and began reading through it.

It was an older police report dated back into the early millennium, long before I had joined the group. It described an encounter between two capes in Bristol, both of them fairly new at the time. Details were somewhat sparse, mostly focused on the broader events and parties responsible.

The outskirts of the city had been suffering some petty vandalism of public properties. Trash bins, sign posts, benches, and other various objects had been twisted beyond recognition. The responsible party had been a young teenager, a newly-minted parahuman that hadn't yet been registered into the system. A modified motorcycle helmet had safeguarded his identity and he had resisted attempts to apprehend him by normal police.

Two other capes had responded to the disturbance, each of them solo heroes. One had been an experienced veteran with several bounties under his belt. The other had been a much younger cape who'd only been active for several weeks. A small skirmish had broken out, resulting in the older cape being incapacitated. The younger cape had managed to pin down the rogue and his creations, making the actual arrest.

It had been Flurry and Wu Lung's first meeting.

The next page in the attachment had been a low-resolution scan of a contract of some kind. The fine print was impossible to make out, as were the typed names below the signatures at the bottom. The meat of the document, however, was just barely recogniseable for me to read the main details. It was a bargain of sorts, negotiated between Wu Lung, Flurry, and several city lawyers. He'd apparently commuted his prison sentence into community service, subject to good behavior—aka, since he'd not been an established villain at the time and this was his first offense, he'd played nice and switched sides. Flurry, as a cape with a proven record against him, had effectively become his parole officer despite her relative inexperience.

It was interesting information, something I hadn't really heard about before. It still wasn't enough for what I'd been wondering. Although it did show that Wu Lung had initially used his powers for his own amusement, it still didn't answer why he'd taken the step further into direct villainy—as the leader of his own personal gang, if I had been reading into Sunny's and the alternate-Wu's conversation correctly.

'You-are-such-a'... what's a, oh 'night-owl. Does—' who's 'BL'?

I looked up from my phone and found my face partly embedded into Jamie's. I backed away with a muffled exclamation, but she hardly seemed to notice, instead staring down at my phone's screen.

Oh, she sent. 'Boss-Lady'. Is that Volley?

"Er, yeah," I said. "I sent an email to him last night asking about Wu."

Oh, why does he need to know if Flurry knows?

I glanced down and flipped back to the police report. "Maybe because he thinks she knows him better than we do, most likely."

Jamie looked pensive for a moment, though for some reason I could just barely pick up her surface thoughts. A chaotic flash of white, red, and gold. Maybe... she mused.

Before I could ask her what she meant, there was a sharp noise that carried through the air—the sound of glass breaking.

Whoops. With a sudden flash of blue, Jamie whipped through the air and sped for the distant noise.

With a sigh, I hopped off the roof and landed on the building's fire escape, sliding down as fast as I could so I could follow.

...

When Jamie rolled in for breakfast, she found a small stack of papers next to 'her' plate. "What's this, then?" she asked.

"Job opportunities," Sunny said as she stepped out of the kitchen. She placed a bowl of oatmeal on her plate then waved a hand over the stack. "Places that do not require too much experience and are not physically intensive. They should be good starting points for you becoming more self-sufficient."

"Uh... I need to get a job?" Jamie asked bewilderedly.

"That is the usual manner most adults use to survive in the world," Sunny pointed out.

Jamie grumbled and began browsing the sheets with one hand, her other hand reaching for the spoon Sunny had thoughtfully left in the oatmeal.

Jamie didn't really find anything she wanted to do from the list—or at least nothing really jumped out to her that would make her say, 'Oh, well this sounds like something I'd want to do!' While she was still reading and eating, Karen ran past her chair in her school uniform—stopping just long enough to grab a muffin Sunny had left on the table—before rushing out the door.

"Morning, Jamie; bye, Sunny!" she called out as she jogged down the walkway.

After Jamie was done eating, I tagged along as Sunny drove her to a multi-story apartment complex. She took Jamie inside with her as she spoke with the landlord, asking politely about the various tenants. The landlord gave us a brief tour, pointing out the various rooms that were accessible on the ground floor.

"What do you think?" Sunny asked Jamie.

Jamie's eyes flicked around the hallway and the sample room the landlord had showed off. "Um, it's nice?" she commented, unsure why her opinion mattered.

Sunny seemed unusually focused as she stared at Jamie's face, but she simply turned and thanked the landlord and the two traded business cards.

Sunny drove her to a different location, this one a flatter but more sprawling housing complex. Once again she brought Jamie with her, showing her around and asking about various residents she and the landlord apparently shared associations with.

It wasn't until we were leaving the third such stop that Jamie finally voiced her concerns. "Sunny?" she asked. "What's this all about?"

Sunny glanced towards her, then resumed her focus on the road. "Housing options," she said matter-of-factly.

Jamie thought about it. "Oh, so you help out with finding shelters for homeless people too? Kind of like helping them get food with your warehouse?"

"I primarily work with the food bank," Sunny corrected her. "And although we do not support them directly, these apartments are run by people I know very well. I trust the individuals who run them and they do me the favor of discounting the rates for people I point out to them."

Though I didn't breathe in this form, I could feel my breath catch. Jamie apparently did not pick up on my abrupt train of thought, or she simply ignored it.

"Like the people you and Karen pick up from the streets?" she asked.

Sunny glanced at Jamie, then back to the road, then back at Jamie whilst we were stopped at a streetlight. "Exactly that," she said.

She held the stare until Jamie's eyes suddenly widened as she made the association. "Oh... " she said.

"It is nothing against you, personally," Sunny assured her. "Karen greatly enjoys your company and despite my wishes, she does not have very many peers that she socialises with in her school." She turned back towards the road as the light changed. "Unfortunately, we cannot take care of every individual that has crossed our path indefinitely. We can assist them, take care of them, help them get back on their feet, but ultimately ours is a temporary support."

"So... the trip to the food bank?" Jamie asked.

"Extra food, enough for me to support you during your stay," Sunny said. Her mouth twitched slightly. "Being one of the supervisors does help towards that end."

"The questions about my backgrounds and the job applications?"

"A means of figuring out a skillset you could support yourself with," Sunny confirmed.

"Today's little housing tour?"

"More permanent dwellings." Sunny glanced at Jamie to gauge her reaction. "I cannot keep you, Jamie... no matter how much Karen might wish. Aside from the legalities involved—although if you are as old as you say you are, that should not be too problematic—we simply do not have the resources to take you on long-term. We have aided many such individuals in the past in the same manner. Many of them have been able to recover and return to society."

"So... Karen knows?" Jamie's voice was a dull monotone.

"If it were wholly up to her, I'm sure she'd wish to find a way to let you stay on," Sunny said. "And to be honest, I am not against the idea of having someone else close to her age to associate with. But this is how we have always handled this sort of situation, so... yes, she knows."

Conversation fell away after that little revelation. Jamie was too shocked to speak up and Sunny was content to let her work through it on her own. The silence was somewhat awkward as we pulled up in front of Sunny's home.

"Jamie," Sunny said as she pulled out her wheelchair. "I know this must be somewhat upsetting for you, given your history. In deference to this I am willing to allow you to stay with us longer than is usual, but you must come to terms with the fact that someday we will have to part ways."

Jamie nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

Sunny seemed to wait a few moments longer, as if waiting for a more comprehensive response. Finally though, she unfolded the wheelchair and began the process of helping Jamie into it and wheeling her inside.

I shivered. Throughout the whole conversation Jamie's thoughts had gradually dimmed, growing fainter. By the time we had reached the house all I could pick up with a faint background noise as my sister completely withdrew within herself.

This didn't bode well.

ooo

(a/n)—i'm happy that some people are leaving reviews to give me some pointers and britpicks. unfortunately, ffnet doesnt really allow linking so many of the resources you're probably trying to link to me aren't coming through. if you'd like to send me a page or a video, you might have to do some shenanigans with the url for ffnet to accept it.

example: www dot google dot com or www. google .com breaking up the url or replacing it with nonsense symbols/words.

setting: some people seem to be confused about the setting slightly. mostly my fault since, again, i've not really lived in the uk so descriptors may not square completely. looking glass was based in chepstow, which is a town (and apparently much different from a city). cardiff is the closest city apparently which may more closely match, being much bigger and all...

i guess if the suspension-of-disbelief wills it, let's just say its a city-sized area that is positioned around the area where chepstow is. sort of like how worm's Brockton Bay is a fictional location in the us east coast, 'Glasstownsville' (shrug) is a fictional southern wales setting. if that doesn't work, leave a comment!