Chapter Fifteen - A Cryptic Request

“You girls did good work today,” Mister Landcaster said.

Emily looked up from her plate of mac and cheese and mashed potatoes to take in the larger than life man standing above her, then she looked back down. Meeting his eyes for any amount of time was hard enough already, moreso when she had a great excuse not to.

“Th-thank you, sir,” she said.

“Yeah, thanks,” Teddy said.

Mister Lancaster harrumphed. “I wish I had more to give you girls than a pair of warm meals as thanks, but that’s what it’s like in our line of work, isn’t it?”

“It’s okay,” Emily said. “The, uh, work is its own reward? Would it be okay if we returned?”

He grinned at her, huge and proud. “Of course! Take one of the fliers by the door. They have our opening hours. Show up a bit before that and you’ll be more than welcome to help.”

“Thank you,” Emily said.

“No, thank you,” he replied. “Now, I’ll be off. We need to get everything sorted out for tomorrow morning. You girls keep safe on the way back home.”

“Yes sir,” Emily said.

“Sure thing, comrade Lancaster,” Teddy replied.

Emily watched the big man walk off while picking away at her noodles. They’d found a little corner at the back of the kitchen where they could have a bite to the tune of the volunteer cooks packing up and a radio in the corner blasting 24/7 ads between the occasional intermission of pop music.

“Today was fun,” Teddy said as she scarfed down her potatoes. Emily didn’t need to worry about Teddy being picky, not if the way she devoured everything on her plate meant anything.

“I guess it was,” Emily said.

Teddy nodded along, spoon stuck between her teeth as she grinned up to her. “You check your notifications, Boss?”

Emily blinked. At first she thought Teddy was talking about her phone, but then it clicked. She hadn’t looked at her quest messages in a bit. Nor had they bothered her during the latter part of the day.

It seemed that however the powers system worked, it at least had some common decency at times. “I didn’t, no. Can you keep an eye open for our surroundings?” she asked.

Teddy gave her a quick salute. “Of course, comrade Boss.”

Emily snorted a laugh and shook her head. At least her ‘sister’ was kind of... cute, when she wasn’t a car-sized bear.

Quest Complete!

The Queen With the Silken Sword

Rewards: +1 Skill Upgrade Point! +1 Scoundrel Point!

That was wonderful! Not the Skill Upgrade Point. That was something she could do without. But the Scoundrel Point; that meant that she was just a little bit closer to no longer being a Villain.

Scoundrel was still pretty bad, but it was a step up from outright Villain. People reacted to moralities in different ways. A Scoundrel was kind of scary, but a Villain was terrifying.

She noticed that she had another notification. It wasn’t like she had a flashing thing in her sight, but more an... impression of something waiting for her attention.

Action Reward!

For turning another powered individual into a minion through threats, blackmail and fear mongering, you have earned:

+ 1 Skill Slot!

Emily frowned even as the prompt faded away. “Teddy, what’s a Skill Slot?”

Teddy looked up, her tongue currently out to lick her plate clean. She slipped it back into her mouth before answering. “Didn’t I tell you that already, Boss?”

She felt herself flushing a little. Being told off by a girl who was a head shorter was a bit embarrassing, but it was Teddy, and... and Emily found herself surprisingly comfortable with the bear-girl, more so than most people who weren’t her mom, at least. “You did, but now I have one.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Teddy said. “You can get a skill added to a power with one of those. Not a new power though, just something tacked on. You get them for doing stuff.” Teddy nodded sagely.

“I see,” Emily said.

“You should use it sooner rather than later,” Teddy said. “You’ll have time to get used to it that way.”

“I’ll think about it,” Emily said. She eyed her plate and pushed it over to Teddy who took it with a happy little growl and tore into the leftovers with more gusto than Emily thought the food deserved.

Then Teddy was done and leaned back to pat her tummy, Emily picked up their plates and rinsed them off at the sinks, adding them atop the pile of cleaned dishes they’d been working on all afternoon.

“Are you ready to go?” Emily asked.

“Yeah, coming!”

Emily and Teddy left by the front with as few goodbyes to the other volunteers as Emily could manage, and then, hand in hand with her strange little sister of sorts, Emily started walking back towards their dorms and what she hoped would be a good night’s rest.

They were a couple of blocks along when Emily felt something buzzing at her side. “One sec,” she said before gesturing to a bus stop by the nearest corner. It was empty save for a few discarded cups left next to an over-full garbage can.

She slipped in with Teddy and pulled out her phone from her purse. The number on the screen wasn’t her home number which meant that it wasn’t a number she recognized.

“Hello?” she said as she pressed the phone to her ear.

“Miss Wright,” said an all-too-familiar voice.

She felt her blood go cold. “Mister Handshake,” she said.

“Let’s keep this short. I’ve secured this call as best I could, but that only means so much. I... have to ask for a rather em--” the man cut himself off to cough, rather violently.

Emily didn’t know how to react to that, though she did pull her phone away from the side of her face as if that would do something. “Mister Handshake?”

“I’m well,” he said. “Well enough? It doesn’t matter. I need to talk to you, in person, and soon.”

“Why?” she asked.

“This line isn’t secure,” he said.

Emily bit her lip and looked down to Teddy who quickly yoinked her finger out of her nose and shrugged. “I... I think I’d like to know why anyway.”

“... Alright. As you can imagine I keep some information about all of my clients. It’s stored on a very secure device, encrypted to all hell with some power-tech thrown in for good measure. If you can't read my mind you can’t get into it.”

“Oh-okay,” Emily said. She felt her stomach edging closer to a deep precipice.

“A few days ago, my laptop was destroyed, as you’ll recall. I had backups, but they’re not quite as secure. Someone took them and--” he stopped for another bout of coughing. “And they got the passcodes out of me. It’s only a few week’s worth of information, but the business we conducted is part of that.”

Her stomach finally rolled over the edge and dropped. “What?” she asked faintly.

“That’s why I want to meet in person. In my line of work there’s a certain... responsibility. See. Someone crossed me bad, and now a lot of my clients, yourself included, are at risk. I need your help to settle things.”

Emily felt her hand going numb so her other came up to cradle the phone close. Teddy looked a bit worried as her own hand was dropped. “I... okay. Where?” she asked. “Wait, no. Can, can we do something about it?”

“I hope so,” he said. “I really, really hope so.”

The line went dead a moment later.

Emily stood, cradling the phone for a few long minutes while screaming in her mind. Then it buzzed and she found herself staring at the screen as an address and time appeared via text.

That very night, at a park just on the opposite side of the campus as her. There was a note attached to the end of the text. ‘Come as your other self.’

“Boss, you okay?” Teddy asked.

Emily took a deep breath in, then let it out slowly. “I... I don’t know Teddy. I really don’t know.”

***