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Tails belongs to Sega Corporation. Just read!
"All right, so what's going on here?" I asked the other VLADJIs as we settled in for breakfast.
We were sitting together at a table, as usual. That's VLADJI's way. Pretty standard for us. We're all family here, so we eat like it – which includes conversation over our meal, the occasional sibling(ish) jab under the table. Except for us, the conversation often goes to who messed with whom today, the monsters plaguing us, etc. Not the usual gossip about who likes who. We don't do that here.
I'd avoided the subject of my close call this morning, fearing it might ruin the mood. Besides, if there was, in fact, something affecting everyone's treatment of me, I didn't want to hear about it. Nor should it have to affect the way I'm treated. Will that knowledge make me treat people better? No. The opposite, perhaps.
But DJ had asked me about the incident at lunch, and I'd told her how it went. I couldn't very well do otherwise, if it was my team leader asking. I'd left off where Ash intervened, not giving his name, just saying an avatar stopped the thugs. I didn't want to get my teammates confused. If I hadn't gotten the memo about Ash Williams being in Philadelphia, my friends were unlikely to have, either.
"You mean, someone mugged you in the name of–" Imira Fadjir clenched her fists in rage. She'd never been even-tempered, but something about it seemed to bother her more than usual. Her body language was tenser than when we'd discovered cysnakes were stalking her brother Achmed (long story). Her hijab was also fluttering, another warning sign. The veil was enchanted and woven from magic lion fur, which made it impenetrable and flexible. It also had a habit of flexing and fluttering whenever danger was nearby, or just when she got really upset.
"He mentioned something about a missile," I said, still not understanding it. "The avatar cut him off before he could go into details, though–"
DJ muttered a curse under her breath. She was wearing her usual leotard and skirt combo. Her blond hair was in a ponytail over her shoulder – in other words, her usual look. But somehow, she looked a lot more attractive with it than the rest of the girls in Philly. Her Forcecuff jewel, which in sleep mode changed color to reflect her mood, turned midnight black – an indicator of some serious anger bubbling beneath the surface.
"I was hoping I wouldn't have to discuss it," she muttered.
That set off my internal alarm bells. If DJ didn't want to discuss the matter, no doubt it pertained to her Three Taboos (Religion, Race, Politics) that she avoided broaching with us. Suddenly I didn't want to know what was going on.
"Discuss what, exactly?" Vinny Lee Marzera asked, taking a bite out of his batata harra. He was presently in "male" attire and pronouns (he's gender-fluid – don't even ask), and seemed not to have noticed anything problematic. Then again, that guy had obliviousness down to an art form. I doubted he'd have noticed the spices in his dish.
Well, I'd rather hear about things from my friends than the news, came a voice in my head that was very much not mine. Wouldn't you guys agree?
"Tails?" I asked. I glanced up at the ceiling to find a robin perched in the rafters above us. The others were craning their necks around – they'd "heard" it too. "I thought we talked about you just dropping in."
A faint whoosh filled the air – the sound of Tails dropping an illusion over us. That would definitely help with his cover. The fox tended to be noticed. Avatars are pretty… distinctive, as Ash had attested to. And while we were accustomed to avatars dropping in on us, it had not been nearly enough time for the rest of the patrons to get used to it, especially with how irregular those meetings were.
The robin then fluttered down and transformed into our fox friend – and he wasn't looking terribly happy. I imagined it was over the missile thing Barney had brought up. Ash hadn't sounded too happy over it, and if it upset even a novice avatar, it was likely to be downright appalling human behavior – stuff like genocide, for instance.
"Some missiles touched down in Israel," Tails said without prelude. "Sent from Gaza. The strike killed forty people in Israel."
We observed a moment of silence for the fallen Israelites.
Tails paused with a low growl of frustration and outrage, as if those deaths were too great an inconvenience for him. "A terrorist group in Palestine claimed responsibility," he continued. "Hamas. The Israeli government declared war on them almost immediately."
"That was an ocean and a sea away," I countered, though I felt an immediate pang. I remembered the Camford girls setting a fire that killed two homeless people – a girl and her child. How many of those forty dead in Israel had been women and children? I did not want to know.
"Amos, have you missed that we have the internet now? Everyone knows about the missile strike. And the declaration of war. Also, a lot of people have sympathies for Palestine – something about it being a victim–"
"I get it." I didn't mean to snap at Tails, but accusing my people – Israelis were primarily Jewish, like me – of terrorizing others was a bit of a sore point. Sure, we'd destroyed whole peoples, but that was mainly to preserve truth. We were past that now. I sure wasn't going to hurt my VLADJI comrades, even if we didn't share the same religion. After four, almost five months hanging out with people, you start to realize how similar some values are.
"It's just… there will be repercussions from that. And from what I picked up off your chit-chat, it sounds like they've already hit."
Imira scowled again. I imagined she would've punched the table if she wasn't worried about taking a chunk out of it – and making another cost for her stepmother. Amazon viragos can't be too careful these days.
"I was more concerned about how our sideliners would take it," DJ replied, pointing between me and Imira in case Tails didn't know who she meant by "our sideliners."
"Well, I don't like it," Imira growled.
I decided to change the subject before Imira smacked someone. "Is that the reason you were planning to drop in here?" I asked Tails.
"Hardly," the fox replied in a whisper, settling into an empty chair. "Did you know it was my habituation day?"
"Your what-now?" I'd never quite understood avatars, even the novices, and Tails often made less sense than most of them, which is saying a lot. It also didn't help that we still had a lot to learn about them – their customs, their life milestones and whatnot.
Tails yanked off his backpack, set it on his lap, and unzipped it. The backpack wasn't for school. He often stowed important items in it – stuff like his laptop, gadgets he needed Vinny Lee to test, or even little surprise gifts for the rest of us.
Then it clicked. Amy had told me once that the avatars reckoned their true age from the day and month they habituated, rather than the day they spawned. Which meant…
"Something like a birthday?" I asked. "Oh, dang. Should I have gotten a cake? Or at least dessert? The bakery makes some great mint brownies."
Tails gave me a faint smile. I guessed Tails had just gotten the bad news only recently, and if today was his habituation day… no wonder he was so peeved. Just imagine, getting bad news on your birthday.
"So…" DJ counted off her fingers. "You'd be twelve now?"
Tails nodded. Not that I would have noticed it. Avatars don't age outwardly. Their voice and mind, sure, but physical appearance? Pretty much stays the same. No, I don't understand it either.
He rummaged through his backpack. "You all remember Chase and the narakai, right?"
"How could we not?" Imira retorted. We'd run into Chase on a mission to Norgate Mansion – a mission which everyone was still trying to forget. She'd helped us out with some particularly thorny monsters, and risked dishonor from her pack for doing so. That sort of thing really sticks in your mind.
"Well, Knuckles told me about a custom among them," he explained further, as he kept going through his bag. "A naraka will go out on the day of their birth to a monster that is particularly annoying wherever they're camped and slay it. Once the monster is slain, the naraka of honor then divides the spoils among their friends and family."
I didn't want to criticize, but that seemed kinda backward to me. Not to mention, I wasn't sure I'd want a beast's severed head or intestines for a gift. But I'm not a naraka.
I eyed Tails' hand going through his bag. "You have something for us," I guessed. "You didn't go out in battle to get it, did you?"
"No, but–" Tails pulled out an ivory chest as big as a shoebox (which I was 90 percent sure he'd conjured up – which he could do, thanks a ton). "Making them was much like one."
He set the chest down in the center of our table and opened it up. "Behold."
Inside the chest were four whitish widgets, flat and egg-shaped and large enough to fit on a wrist, though I saw no wristband on any of them. On the face of each widget, dead center, was a set of buttons – a circle cut in thirds with a second, smaller circle in the center. Up at the top of the face was a speaker. I imagined they must be used for some sort of communication. The widgets reminded me of some of those high-tech wrist things spies wore.
"Whoa," Vinny Lee said, clapping his hands. "Zorramigo, you've really outdone yourself."
DJ picked one of the widgets out. I couldn't help noticing a faint tint on the white widgets – blue, pink, yellow, red. DJ had grabbed the blue one.
"Okay, how does this work?" DJ asked quietly. She then pressed the circular central button, and a sharp hum emitted from the device. "Well, does that–"
"Voice recognized. Hello, DJ." The device then turned a deep shade of royal blue. But that wasn't the only thing – the remaining devices had the top button turn the same shade of blue. Interesting addition.
"Synchronized color change? Awesome!" Vinny Lee whooped.
I quickly swiped up the pink tinted device. Not that I wanted to establish a theme – I wear pink in my attire, probably more than I should – but I didn't see anyone else taking it. It wouldn't have gone with Vinny Lee's outfit, and Imira wouldn't take a pink gadget.
I gingerly started fiddling with the device and wound up pressing the central button. There was a hum from the device, followed by a faint click as it almost… recalibrated to a shape that fit in my hand.
"Well, that was weird," I commented.
"Voice recognized. Hello, Amos." The device turned a deep shade of pink – the same as my shirt. Naturally, this spread over to the other devices – the button counterclockwise from the blue buttons on the two still unchosen doodads turned the same deep magenta color, as did the top button of DJ's.
The others noticed quickly. How could they not?
"¿Rosa?" Vinny Lee inquired, frowning at the gadgets.
Imira smirked. "Wonder who that could have been?"
"Oh, shut up." I wished Imira could be quiet for once. I turned over the device to find a clip on it, like on a spool of measuring tape. "You wouldn't have a wristband for this, would you, Tails? I'd rather keep my belt free."
Tails nodded and gestured toward the inside of the box lid. I looked and saw four wristbands, in each of the colors the devices had been tinted. I took the pink one, just to match. I slid the wristband on my right wrist, then clipped the device to it. There. Now I really felt like James Bond.
I spotted the other two watching me. "Oh, man," I said flippantly. "You guys probably don't even want these."
"No way!" Imira shouted, snagging up the red and leaving Vinny Lee with the yellow, which suited them both just fine.
I caught Tails turning to DJ and having what sounded like a serious discussion. I wished I had Vinny Lee's Freqorder (which is the first time I ever wished that), so I could figure out what it was. Another pair of dings from my widget distracted me, indicating that Vinny Lee and Imira had activated their devices. All right then.
"Now," I smiled. DJ turned to face us. "Are we going to test these at the Hangar?"
"Change of plans," she said quietly. "There's an errand we need to go on."
Whoa. First a missile strike, now a big mission to go on. How's that going to go?
Verse for the update: Sirach 7:1-2.
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