Season 1, Episode 4 - The Microwave IV - "Roving Elves"

Isaac and Reed sat on the grass hill that formed one side of an artificial river bank. The Charles River had been tamed and domesticated, turned into a scenic waterway through Elizabeth Pond. Thanks to the efforts of local water-manipulation Rddhi users, the river (at least while it ran through the Pond) had a deep blue color and pristine contents. The morning sun gently illuminated the whole scene, blue water and green grass and caramel-colored trees.

Isaac felt surprised that they were actually up this early. He fully expected to wait for a few extra hours while Reed slept over at Audrey’s apartment, ignoring Isaac’s knocks on the door that signaled it was time to go. But she was actually outside before he was, leaning with a relaxed expression on the walkway railing under the morning sun.

Isaac also felt surprised that Reed first brought them here. Reed seemed to be someone who got things done fast so she could get back to own life. Reed didn’t meander. But coming down to the riverbank would be a textbook example of meandering. Reed was either losing her mind, or considered their journey today to be part of her life, not a chore to be done as quick as possible.

Isaac kind of liked that second option. He himself had been so caught up in Rddhi training that he never stopped to do something like this, just watching a lazy river, only an hour or two after sunrise. They almost had the whole river to themselves; the world was only just starting to get busy on this Saturday morning.

“So, I finally get back with the wheels,” Reed explained, laying casually on the grass. A long reed hanged from the corner of her mouth, something she liked to do when telling stories (the fact that she usually told stories inside wouldn’t stop her from finding a reed then either). “And get this. Audrey doesn’t like wheel-shaped macaroni. We had a whole big argument about wheels. She says she doesn’t like pasta wheels because there’s too much space in them. I said that’s malarkey, all pasta’s fine, the wheel shape just adds an interesting aspect to it.”

Isaac was sort of following along. He always found it interesting when someone was wearing something besides the usual school uniform. Reed was wearing a black and green windbreaker, probably some knockoff bought from a thrift store, since that was cheaper, but the way it looked rough around the edges yet still confident in itself, Isaac felt that it suited Reed. She also wore a gray skirt with the usual black tights, black and white sneakers. A plain, faded look for a plain, faded girl, and Isaac thought it worked really well.

Isaac himself was wearing a dark green sweatshirt, a hand-me-down from his brother, with tan khakis and grey sneakers. Simple, but effective, Isaac supposed.

Isaac brought himself back to Reed’s story. “Did she ask you to get a specific brand of pasta?”

“Well, she said rigatoni or shells, but – I'm – the one getting it, aren’t I?” Reed asked rhetorically. “It’s my right to get the kind of pasta I want because I’m the one who actually got it.”

“Was Audrey the one cooking?”

“...yeah.”

Isaac smiled and shook his head. He sat up while Reed kept laying down. “Then it’s her right. She’s the one actually making it.”

“I got it though.”

“You thinking a steel manufacturing company would be happy if their resource division grabbed iron, just because they’re the ones getting the resources? The one who’s making the things decides what to get.”

“Nah, you’re just biased because you’re her neighbor.”

“You’re just biased because you’re Reed.”

Reed laughed at that, a slow, lazy laugh. “This should be a scene for our book.”

“Our book?” Isaac asked in confusion.

“Yeah, remember we talked about it last night?”

Last night was a slight blur to Isaac. “Not really.”

Reed looked over at him. “I’m telling you, we’ve done a couple of adventures, we could make a Japanimation book off of them.”

“A Japanimation book?”

Reed motioned with her hands. “Yeah, we talked about doing animation, but we don’t know how to draw or make animation. So we agreed to write a book like it was a Japanimation.”

“But we’re in New England, not Japan.”

“Look at us, Isaac. We both love Japanimations. Lots of people here do. And lots of people love stories like that in book form. Or at least I assume so, because I don’t really read.” Reed counted on her fingers. “We could do a serial in a newspaper. Or make of those dime novels, except since our book would be so good, we’d charge a quarter for it. A whole dollar some day.”

Isaac thought about it. “I don’t know how I feel about making money off of our missions. Matter of national security and privacy, and all that.”

“We could just change the names,” Reed supposed. “We could be in California or something. Or it could be somewhere completely fictional. Those reincarnation in a different world stories are all the rage nowadays...maybe because people just want to escape from a world where atom bombs are tossed around like snowballs...maybe we shouldn’t think about the why behind trends and just act on the trends.”

“I don’t know...” Isaac took a look at the river. “I could do a slice of life Japanimation, not something based on us.”

Reed crossed her arms. “Slice of life? What are you, a balding salaryman who works all day and then spends his lone half-hour of free time smashing sake, eating day-old ramen, and watching high school girls?”

“That’s just offensive,” Isaac complained. “I’ll have you know that I like little bits of life, and that kind of show is entirely about the little bits of life. And you just said ten seconds ago that this whole riverbank conversation would be a scene for our show.”

“Well, yeah, you have to incorporate slice of life elements, get to know the characters during their off-time so you care about them more in their on-time,” Reed explained. “But we’re not a slice of life story.”

“You think scenes like this couldn’t be the whole story?”

“I feel like you have to be surprisingly talented to make something like a slice of life show. Really relies on the strength of the characters and your ability to write conversations, you know? But c’mon. An adventure story? Just need a vaguely sympathetic guy, a few love interests, and explosions. That’s money right there.”

“I can make strong characters,” Isaac countered. “And I’d be good at writing conversations. I mean, I talk every day. That’s great practice. I guarantee you, this riverbank scene would work on its own, without being part of some action-adventure-cultivation series.”

Reed watched a bluebird sail above them in the sky, passing under distant white clouds. “Well, whatever you do, don’t start the scene in the middle of the conversation.”

“Why’s that?”

“The point of the conversation is to show the connection between the characters. You have one character telling the story, and the other one enjoys it and they laugh together or whatever. Shows their bond. Laughing at the story resolution. But, we, the audience, we don’t get the see the whole story, so the resolution doesn’t make sense. How are we supposed to laugh at it? Yeah, we know the characters are friends now, that the story entertained them, but the story didn't entertain me. You get it?”

“You know a surprising amount about story structure.”

“I don’t really do a lot besides television.”

“Nobody really does.”

A comfortable silence followed, the two just watching ripples in the river water.

An unknown amount of time later, Reed stood, throwing her reed away.

“Let’s go. Train’s coming soon.”

Isaac and Reed stepped off the train at Kanakana Station, the northernmost station in Elizabeth Pond. The ride actually took the better part of an hour; the elevated train wheeled its way around the track, snaking west from their station at Tsukishima to Kenji Station outside of the Academy, then to the northwest to Manabi near the under-construction Dunn Corporation Electric Factory complex, then back east to Kanakana.

Only a few people got off at Kanakana alongside Isaac and Reed. Most people in the station, dressed in their best-looking jackets and sweaters and shirts, boarded the outbound train, destined for the border crossing at the edge of the Pond, beyond which lied the luxury district of Kendall Bridge.

This meant that, by the time they descended the stairs into the station lobby after getting through the gathering Saturday-morning crowds on the platform, things actually felt quiet.

Isaac noticed a large poster on a concrete wall and bounded over to it. “Check it out, Reed. I bet Audrey would love this.”

Reed realized the poster was for a movie and read the title. “Of Limes and Lemons?”

The poster depicted a neon array of colors, centering around a fedora-clad detective with a pistol in one hand.

“Audrey loves those wacky, experimental movies,” Isaac explained, observing the poster. “It’s German. Neo-Expressionism. Breaking down genre barriers and cultural barriers and all that.”

“I’m surprised they’re playing it here,” Reed said.

“Well, it’s probably censored up the wazoo.” Isaac pointed at one of names listed below the title. “Hey, it’s Suga.”

“Suga?”

“Yeah, Suga.”

“What the hell’s a Suga?”

Isaac pointed at the fedora-clad detective, who Reed realized was actually a Japanese fedora-clad detective. “He’s an old film-star,” Isaac explained. “He did a bunch of Japanese kung-fu movies back in the day, but he and his wife had to move to Germany when the Pan-Asian League got real concerned about his fame. You might know about his wife. She’s the photographer who took all those sad photos of the European Exchange in our textbooks.”

Black-and-white pictures of crying Slavic children in bombed-out streets came to Reed’s mind. “She did those? That’s gotta be one hell of a depressing career.”

Isaac shrugged. “Raises attention to it, at least.”

“Yeah, might raise attention if the caption below those pictures in the textbooks didn’t say, ‘Remain vigilant in your training and don’t let this happen to us.’”

Isaac supposed she had a point. “Ah, well. If being a wartime photographer is sad, maybe having a kung-fu husband makes up for it.”

“Probably brings in the bills.”

Isaac and Reed chuckled, then headed out through the station doors.

“I think fall has the best colors,” Isaac thought aloud, the two continuing their slow, slightly aimless walk through the wide streets of northwestern Elizabeth Pond. They exited the lobby a few minutes ago; the rest of their journey would be a pleasant walk up Blueberry Hill, with the Domino Dojo at its top. The roads, freshly paved, were surrounded by quaint apartment complexes and quainter people. Every so often on the sidewalks, a towering oak stood calmly, brown and orange and red leaves swaying in the breeze.

“Fall?” Reed repeated.

“Yeah, fall. Like fall right now. Look around you. I think brown and those rich kind of caramel colors are the best, you know? Brown feels like a real piece of art.”

“What about green?”

“Green?” Isaac looked around and saw the remnants of summer on a few trees in the form of their remaining green leaves. “Green’s alright. But it’s like finger painting compared to a light brown.”

“I like summer because there’s a lot of blue,” Reed admitted.

“What’s blue in the summer?”

“The sky.”

“The sky’s always blue.”

“There’s blue and then there’s a summer afternoon blue,” Reed explained.

Isaac and Reed looked upwards. A blue sky, a few birds and autumn leaves circling around, a distant patrol plane sailing westward, leaving a white plume in its wake.

“There’s no difference.”

“If you know, you know. Look at the summer sky sometime.”

Isaac adjusted his backpack. “Well, this is as far as we can be from summer. Winter’s coming.”

“I hate winter,” Reed said. “Hate shoveling out the school.”

“You only have to do that because you get in trouble,” Isaac reminded her. “And winter’s not all that bad. I like how nights are longer. World’s pretty interesting when everything’s covered in black.”

“I’d say black’s scariest color,” Reed supposed.

“Black? No way, it’s red,” Isaac objected.

“Red?”

“Color of blood,” Isaac explained. “Color of fire. It’s a primitive thing. We’re hardwired to fear red because red means danger.”

“You see, you know what you’re getting with red,” Reed countered. “With black, you don’t. That’s the scary part. You have no idea what’s within the darkness.”

“If you don’t know if the black is dangerous, but you know that the red is dangerous, wouldn’t that make red more dangerous? Black won’t be dangerous 100 percent of the time.”

“Well, neither is red. Apples aren’t dangerous.”

“You could choke,” Isaac objected.

“Those red wagons for kids.”

Isaac shrugged. “Tetanus.”

Reed looked over at him. “You’re a real comedian.”

“I have my moments.”

They passed over a pedestrian bridge than spanned an artificial river. This part of Elizabeth Pond was less populated. They only saw a few people; a couple standing on the other side of the bridge, watching the river go by; a few children chasing butterflies by the riverbank. Behind them on the rising slope were tiny houses and larger brick apartment complexes, filled with the color of an autumn morning.

Talk about picturesque and idyllic, Isaac supposed, glad he could use a couple of words from a novel he recently read.

“Give me a quarter,” Reed somewhat asked, but it was definitely more of an order.

“For what?”

Reed pointed to their right. Just off the bridge, nestled against a concrete wall, was a vending machine filled with drinks. Isaac sighed and handed over a quarter to Reed.

“Hydration’s important, you know,” Reed explained as she selected her order.

“Is that why you’re getting soda?”

“Soda makes hydration fun,” Reed explained, spinning the cap off a bottle of Red Alert.

Supposing he felt thirsty himself, Isaac fished around his pocket for another quarter. He placed it in the machine and selected a Quabbin Springs bottle of water; the machine made noises, the bottle of water moved a little, but then, just like that, there was no sound of a bottle being vacuum tubed by the machine, no sound of a bottle hitting the floor of the deposit box.

“You gotta be kidding me.” Isaac shook his head, looked at Reed’s drink and corresponding smug smile with a slight sense of envy, then headed off toward the dojo.

“Where you going?” Reed asked, standing in place.

“Vending machine ate my quarter. No need to mull over it.”

“You can get it back.”

Isaac stopped and turned. “How? It’s not like I can reach in there and get it with my hand.”

Reed raised her hand and made a shooing motion. “We’re living in the modern age, Isaac. Things like hands are obsolete concepts.”

Isaac raised an eyebrow. Reed snapped her finger and a red current of Rddhi sparked from it.

“We can’t use the Rddhi for something like this,” Isaac complained. “It’s illegal to tamper with public property anyway, with or without superpowers.”

“Stop letting things like ‘society’ and ‘laws’ confine you, Isaac.” Reed added air quotes with her fingers for extra emphasis. “In my opinion, this is a training lesson. You’ve been punching your way to victory, you know? You gotta add a little finesse to your arsenal.”

“But punching hard is my power,” Isaac said, looking at his fist. “And the clones I guess. That’s what I do. Clones who punch hard. I don’t have the powers of finessing.”

Reed wagged a finger. “Au contraire. That’s French for on the contrary.”

“You’re a real genius.”

“I have my moments.” She wagged her finger again. “Anyone can finesse. The Rddhi’s pretty versatile like that. In fact, most of the Rddhi users can only do things like finesse.”

“What do you mean?”

“You wouldn’t know yet because you’ve been training in isolation, but there’s like a hundred users at the Academy, right?" Reed began. "I’d say, only twenty to thirty actually have unique powers. The rest? All they can do is bend spoons or make fire in their palms or push around the elements a little. That’s why we have the most users out of all the Rddhi academies here. Cambridge or the Institute, they only take people with unique powers. We take ‘em all.”

“Why does Mr. Stockham do that?”

Reed shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s just hoarding Rddhi assets in the off-chance that spoon-benders and flame-maker people can win a war. But what I’m trying to say is that the Rddhi, it’s like a field or whatever around you, right? So, because we get so caught up in our unique powers, we forget we can do the simple things any Rddhi user can do. Like make a flicker of Rddhi, use the energy as is without converting it into harder punches or sound waves.”

To emphasize her point, Reed brought her hand to Isaac’s forehead and flicked it. Isaac felt a spark of Rddhi go through him.

“See?” Reed asked. “Just a flicker.”

Reed’s impromptu lecture reminded Isaac of his fight in the sewers. There, for most of the fight, Isaac sent out lines of Rddhi energy that coalesced into clones. But there was a point in the fight when Jackson charged him and Isaac sent out the line, not to turn it into a clone, but using the line itself as the weapon.

That was the point of Reed's lesson. You could make a flicker out of the Rddhi. No conversion, just pure Rddhi, right from your fingertips.

Isaac flexed his fingers. “I think I get it.”

Reed nodded and gestured toward the vending machine. “Treat this like you would treat a woman.”

Isaac looked at her in amusement. “Like a woman, huh? And how should that be?”

Reed had no idea how a woman should be treated. “Well, you know...soft. Gentle, I guess.”

“Really? I figured you’d like it rough.”

“Alright, buddy, just finesse the machine.”

Isaac laughed and approached the machine. The smile disappeared from his face when he realized he had no idea what he was doing.

It really is like a woman.

“You’ve been using your whole fist,” Reed explained. “Concentrate the Rddhi in just a finger.”

“Is that what woman prefer?” Isaac asked.

Reed rolled her eyes.

Getting serious, Isaac breathed deeply, closing his eyes. He could feel the energy field, the Rddhi, how it gradually yet constantly moved and shifted, enveloped them all. He reached out, into the musical harmony of the universe, adding his own...

He could feel it. The energy was just in the index finger of his right hand, circling slowly, calmly, yet ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.

“When you’re ready,” Reed continued. “Just flick it. Send that bad boy in there and see what comes out.”

Isaac took another breath, then willed the Rddhi out of his finger.

Golden energy sprung from the tip of his finger. Not random lines of energy, no inefficient explosions, but a controlled line, going exactly as Isaac commanded. Isaac, of course, had no idea about how to hack a vending machine. He supposed he should be going for the controls, but it’s not like he knew where the controls were. He could slightly see the wiring and circuits within the Rddhi, but he was a high school student, not an electrician.

The energy flared as Isaac lost his focus. The sudden spike caused Isaac and Reed to step back as Isaac’s finger blew a hole in the front of the vending machine. A few bottles of water and soda spilled out of the machine as its alarm blared.

Taken aback, Isaac shot out another beam of energy from his finger, silencing the alarm and taking a chunk of the machine with it. The force of the beam sent bottles flying into the sky, showering Isaac and Reed.

Not wanting any trouble, Isaac immediately high-tailed it out there, Reed in tow. With Isaac leading the way, they passed through colorful neighborhoods, sprinting through the walkways between houses, ducking under laundry lines, turning the heads of a few people relaxing in the sun. Though they started off breathing heavily from the sudden running, both Isaac and Reed realized they were laughing.

A few blocks away, they settled down onto a park bench. Their laughter died down as they caught their breath, concluding with a pair of satisfied sighs.

Isaac looked down and saw Reed holding a bottle of water out for him. “Baby’s first damage to public property,” she explained faux proudly, but Isaac felt that maybe it wasn’t so faux after all.

“Yeah, yeah.” Isaac took the bottle of water from her and realized Reed had collected several soda bottles, now stuffed in the pockets of her windbreaker.

“All that soda can’t be good for you,” Isaac warned.

“I heard most people die after breathing air for sixty years,” Reed countered. “Everything’s bad for you.”

Isaac felt himself relax on the bench.

“Well, I guess this right now isn’t so bad for you.”

From the bench, slightly up on Blueberry Hill, they could see rows of neighborhoods, cars slowly rolling by, children playing and enjoying their Saturday, the distant high-rises in downtown Narragansett.

“I suppose it really isn’t.”