Just Super

“I do get how ridiculous this is,” Emily says.

Tiara volunteered to drop us off at a bus stop, and even set us up with a day pass on the mass transit app, so we’re now sitting on a bus.

I wait for her to go on.

“I could be anywhere in this city in minutes, and you’d be there waiting for me. But, no, we’re trundling along on a bus.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Thanks,” she says. She has a weird expression. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she feels guilty about something. She opens her mouth to say something, then closes it again. 

A second later she tilts her head, like she’s listening to something.

 “This is our stop,” she says.

We get off the bus in front of a bank.

“A bank robbery? Really?” I can’t help but say it.

“Shh.”

She stares at the building. She shakes her head, then starts walking down the street. I follow.

“How do you deal with this happening all the time?”

“It’s usually not this bad, and it’s not all that often,” she looks at me, “at least not when someone isn’t deliberately provoking it.”

“I’m sorry. In case it wasn’t clear, I won’t be doing that any more.”

“Thanks.”

We continue along the sidewalk.

“Can we stop and get lunch?” I ask. “Is there time?”

“With what money?”

“Tiara gave me a little cash. Well, us. She just handed it to me.”

Emily looks suspicious.

“I didn’t even ask,” I say.

“Sandwiches okay?”

I nod.

I smell the ocean before we get to it. I didn’t realize we were that close. The maps app on my phone says we’re approaching Venice Beach. 

Emily speeds up. At first, walking a little faster, then, she breaks into a light jog. I hurry to keep up. This has to be it. Whatever ‘it’ is.

The road we’re on ends in a park. It’s not much of one, just grass with a few palm trees around. There’s a little festival going on. It has to be a queer-related thing, because of all the pride flags, especially trans pride. 

It’s a little odd that they’re the same as ours, since they were designed well after the invasion, but I don’t have time to think about all this, since Emily is moving quickly through the crowd, looking around frantically. 

“What are we looking for?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

She stops, still scanning.

I look around, too, but have no idea what to look for. We’re right next to a table where a girl a little older than us is handing out little heart pins with the trans flag on them. I take two. 

On one side there’s a small group of protestors, holding up some pretty offensive signs. I don’t spot any weapons on them (not that I’m an expert), and Emily seems to have dismissed them. 

Everyone else around probably assumes Emily trips. But this is Emily. Her head snaps to the side and her feet fly out from under her. She crashes to the ground, knocking the table away. A fraction of a second later I hear a crack from the direction away from the beach.

I’m almost in shock, but somehow manage to yell “Gun!” Emily is bleeding. I’ve seen this girl take a point blank blast from a laser pistol to the chest, and get annoyed at the damage to her shirt. I’ve heard stories of her shrugging off hits that would kill an elephant. She’s lying there, and she’s bleeding.

I have to focus. People are screaming and running. Good. They’ll be harder targets. I’ve been standing in the same spot since she was shot. That’s stupid. I flicker to the side, just as dirt sprays up a few feet from where I was standing. I flicker again, this time twenty feet away, and facing the direction of the shots. 

There, on the roof of some condos. There’s movement. We could have been more thorough. We could have flown over the area and Emily could have dropped me off there. It’s unlikely, but it’s enough.

I’m standing on the roof. There’s a man in what looks like body armor kneeling at the edge of the roof and aiming a huge-ass rifle down at the crowd below. There’s a large duffel bag sitting next to him.

This guy is probably six and a half feet tall, and almost half that wide. I wouldn’t stand a chance against him, even without the gun—guns; I can see a handgun on his belt. But I also can’t just let him kill people.

If he was standing up, I’d consider shoving him off the edge, but he’s kneeling, so that probably wouldn’t work. At least that also means he can’t turn too quickly.

“Excuse me,” I say.

He doesn’t turn; he rolls. The ridiculously large handgun that was at his belt is pointed at me almost before I can register. Fuck. I manage to flicker away an instant before he fires.

I’m on the roof of an almost identical building a couple of hundred feet away. I take a second to collect myself while he springs to his feet and looks around. I flicker to about twenty feet behind him and to his left, then call out “Hey, now!” 

He spins to face me and I catch a glimpse of a cross around his neck. “What in hell are you?” he shouts at me and fires again. 

Again I flicker to the other roof. He’s scanning his roof, but I’m far enough away that I apparently don’t register to him.  My heart is pounding in my chest. I take another couple of seconds. I need to seem calm. If he thinks I’m no threat, he’ll just go back to his rifle.

As a matter of fact, he takes a couple steps back in that direction. I flicker back, behind and to his right this time.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I ask. I don’t see how it could be, but whatever. 

“Fuck you,” he snarls, and fires into the empty air I leave behind. 

It takes him a second to spot me this time. There’s one of those little enclosures where the stairs come up to the roof, and I’m sitting cross-legged on top of it. His gaze jerks up when I start slow clapping. I’m beyond terrified, but if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s baiting people.

This time he stares at me for a moment, gun not quite pointing at me. I’m betting my life that I can flicker away before he can point and fire.

“Look—” is as far as I get before I have to flicker away again. This time I’m sitting on the low wall around the edge of the roof, legs crossed at the knees. I examine my fingernails, keeping him well within my field of vision.

“—that’s not going to work,” I continue. I try to believe that’s true. I have to keep him off balance until the cops can get here. As long as he’s shooting at me, he isn’t shooting into the crowd.

He fires twice this time, but I’m already on the other side of the little enclosure. I regret that move immediately, because, although he can’t see me, I also can’t see him. I don’t know if he’ll come around the enclosure, or if he’ll go back to his rifle. 

But if I appear at a random place where I can see him, I may end up right in his line of sight and not be able to flicker away quickly enough. I don’t have time to think about it, though. He could be about to shoot someone.

Time to try something else. Instead of flickering to a specific place on the roof, I try to flicker ten feet behind him. It takes a tiny bit longer than usual, and a little extra push, but there he is, back to me, facing the enclosure.

Unfortunately, he’s standing about five feet from the edge of the roof. I suddenly feel like the coyote when he realizes he’s run off the edge of a cliff. The rifle is right in front of me and, because I’m apparently too dumb to just flicker away. I grab its barrel and hold on tight.

He seems to have secured the gun with bolts or something, and, for just a moment, they hold. Then there’s a small shriek of tearing metal and I’m falling again, taking the rifle with me. If anyone asks, I did that on purpose.

Now I remember to flicker. Since he’s got to be looking this direction at this point, I flicker back on top of the enclosure. Sure enough, he’s looking at the spot where his rifle had been. I take a quiet breath.

“Now look what you made me do!” I say, letting my voice drip with disdain. “We can still salvage something out of this if you’ll stop—”

I flicker to avoid another shot.

“—shooting at me.” 

He spins again and the gun clicks. He must be out of ammo. He reaches toward another, identical gun on his other hip. Seriously? Before I can think too much about it, I flicker behind him again, with my hand on the grip of the gun. His hand grabs mine and squeezes. There’s a burst of pain from my hand and I think he’s broken something, but when I flicker to the far side of the roof, my hand’s fine, and I have his gun. 

I get a flash of Emily, lying on the grass, bleeding from her temple. I can see the asshole from where I am, he’s pulled something from his belt. If action movies have taught me anything, that’s a new clip for the gun he still has.

I glance at the gun in my hands. Fuck. I flicker between him and the edge of the roof, gun raised. 

“Drop it!” I say.

He spins, but freezes without raising the gun. 

Huh. I’m surprised that actually worked. But he’s not looking at me. He’s looking past my shoulder. Oh. 

He raises the gun quickly and I flicker behind the enclosure again. I hear one shot, then a low-pitch grunt of pain. I flicker back to where I can see him.

A combination of joy and terror hits me. Emily’s there. The hair on the right side of her head is caked with blood. Most of that side of her face is a massive bruise. She’s standing on the gunman’s back so that he’s held face down on the roof.

Emily looks over at me. “Could you come get rid of any weapons he’s got left?” She sounds tired. 

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“Ye—” She starts over. “I will be.”

“What about—” I gesture out past the roof to where the festival was.

“Everyone else is okay.”

I approach and the gunman tries to grab at me.

“Hold on,” Emily says. 

She bends down, grabs both of his wrists, then shifts so that she’s standing on his calves. The whole time he’s letting loose with a stream of profanity, which we both ignore. 

“Dude, you’re just going to hurt yourself struggling,” I say to him, as I begin removing everything from his belt and pockets. There’s a lot. Soon I have a little pile of knives, a can of bear spray, multiple clips for his handguns, and a roll of cash. I consider tucking that away while Emily’s not looking, but instead get her attention and hold it up.

She shrugs. “Going to pay for those phones?”

That’s a solid idea. I nod and peel six twenties off the roll, then stick it back and go on with my looting. The best find is a bundle of zip-tie cuffs, like cops use at protests. When I show those to Emily, she pulls his wrists close enough together for me to secure. I use three sets, just to be sure. Then I secure his feet with three more. In the distance, I hear sirens approaching.

“You should leave,” I say.

“But you…”

“I’ll just stay long enough to make sure he stays secured until the cops get here.”

“What if—”

I hold up the taser.

Emily nods and shoots straight up until she’s lost in the clouds.

I sit down on the roof in front of the guy, in his field of vision if he looks up.

“She could have popped your head like a grape. She could have tossed you off the roof. She could have broken every bone in your body, one by one. Considering that you shot her in the head, I wouldn’t have blamed her.”

He curses at me some more.

I really want to hurt him. I can see Emily getting knocked to the ground, lying there. He tried to kill her. He would have killed her, and a bunch of other people too, if she weren’t who she is. He deserves to be hurt. I could do it. I could roll him off the roof; he’d never hurt anyone else.

I’m not going to. No version of me would do that. I could taunt him. I could probably make this even harder on him emotionally that it already is. That’s definitely up my alley. But maybe I’m wrong. What if I start with words, and can’t stop there? What if I am the version of me that would push him off the roof?

I flicker back out of his line of sight and just watch him. I keep seeing Emily hurt. He was shooting at me, but that’s not what I’m so angry about. He hurt her. That’s what makes me furious.

Uh oh. Am I—

My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of feet on the stairs. I flicker back to the top of the enclosure.

“He’s restrained!” I yell, “You should be good. You might want to kick him in the head or something, just to be sure, though.”

“Come out with your hands in plain sight!” a man’s voice echoes from the stairwell.

“Nope. I have an appointment. Gotta go, byeee!”

I flicker to the other nearby roof and watch them drag him away.

“That was insanely dangerous!”

Tiara is calmly explaining the error of our ways. I messaged Emily and Tiara from the other roof and coordinated a place for us to meet up. Yes, we both could have gotten back to the house under our own power, but we didn’t want Emily to be seen flying to the house, and I wasn’t brave enough to face Tiara alone. We’d end up doing a whole cloak and dagger thing, including ditching both of our phones.

I’m sitting next to Emily in the back seat. She still looks pretty bad, but the bruise is already fading.

“She doesn’t really have a choice,” I explain to Tiara. “It’s what she does.”

Emily looks like she wants to object, but just doesn’t have the energy.

“You could have called the authorities,” Tiara insists.

I try to explain what little understanding I have of Emily’s danger sense. It pretty much boils down to ‘it doesn’t work that way.’

When we arrive back at the house, Emily looks a little unsteady, not so much physically, but still unsteady. I stick with her as she floats up the stairs to our rooms.

“I need to wash this blood off,” she says.

“Can I get you anything?”

“Could you please just back off and stop crowding me!?”

I recoil. I don’t know what to say.

She disappears into the bathroom and closes the door. I stay close by, just in case. I can hear the water running, and little movements, so I’m not too worried. When I hear the door knob turn, I flicker to my room.

I can’t hear her footsteps, so I assume she’s floating. I do hear the sound of her bed springs as she lowers herself onto her bed, though. I think about going downstairs, but decide against it. There’s nothing to do down there, anyway.

At one point I hear the doorbell ring and worry a little, but after a few minutes no one’s come upstairs to haul us away, so it must not be about us.

Tiara comes up a little before dinner and hands me a new phone still in the box. It’s a fancy box, too. She also asks if sushi is okay for dinner. I’m good with that. I notice that when she knocks on Emily’s door, there’s no answer.

Once Tiara walks away, I peek through Emily’s door. She seems to be fast asleep.

I eat dinner in my room and spend the rest of the evening with the new phone. It seems sort of stupid to spend fifteen minutes setting up an account that I’ll use for at most a few days, but I don’t have anything better to do.

There are a bunch of free apps, and Tiara adds me to her family plan as soon as I get her my ID, so there’s no shortage of things to keep me busy. Tiara sends me the link for a game called Tetris and recommends I spend some time playing it. It’s pretty simple, but it keeps my mind occupied.

In the morning, Emily looks totally recovered. There’s no bruise on her face; her hair is brushed normally. It’s like she wasn’t shot by a high-power sniper rifle sixteen hours ago.

Something is off, though. Her default state is annoyingly cheerful, but this morning, she spends a lot of time staring into the distance. 

I try to start a conversation once or twice, but the attempts don’t go anywhere. All I can get out of her are non-commital grunts, or monosyllabic answers. After a bit, I back off and keep my distance.

I spend most of the day looking at yesterday’s events on the Internet. The first thing I find is a closeup pic of Emily, lying on the grass, bleeding. I turn off my screen. A few deep breaths later, I open again and flick that picture away. There’s a lot of other stuff, too. There’s a video of a small group of people gathered around her, jumping back when she sits up and floats into the air. I don’t blame them, I would have jumped back, too.

There are several much lower quality videos of me and the shooter on the rooftop. It’s been a while since I’ve watched any videos of myself flickering, and I’ve gotten a lot better since then. It looks more like bad special effects than something real.

When I get to the part with me dragging the rifle off the roof, I flinch. I got closer to the ground than I realized at the time. I very much do not look like I was doing it on purpose.

There’s a lot of commentary on the videos. Much of it comes down on the side of the whole thing being faked. Some people say it’s a false flag operation to make conservatives look bad. Others think it’s part of a viral marketing campaign for a yet to be announced movie.

The false flag stuff is the worst. A bunch of bigots are using Emily and me to try to turn the whole thing back on the queer community. I want to talk to Emily about that, but it isn’t the right time.

I get myself to stop doomscrolling by opening up Tetris and letting go for a little bit.

When I go down for dinner, I hear Emily’s and Tiara’s voices coming from the sitting room. As I’m almost there, I make out Emily’s words. She sounds angry.

“—me lying there on the grass, while she’s up on the roof—”

I flicker back to my room. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I can’t help thinking about what I heard. Is she really mad at me for leaving her there? I hated to, but there was nothing I could do there except get shot. I had to deal with the shooter. Didn’t I?

I don’t go back down for dinner.

I stay mostly in my room again pretty much the whole next day, except for brief excursions downstairs for food, and a quick trip to Chicago to drop money in the register of the store I stole the phones from. The only other interruption in my day of doomscrolling and video games is a message from Emily letting me know that Tiara got the final item she needs and we can try to talk to our world tonight. Wow. She’s twenty feet away and had rather message me than look at my face. I add her to my contacts anyway. Now I have two.

At midnight, Tiara, Emily, and I are seated around a small table in the basement. There’s an arrangement of odd items around an actual crystal ball. There’s a bundle of some sort of dried plant, a crystal that looks like amethyst, and another that looks like topaz. There are three different bowls of slightly different colored powders. 

Tiara lights the dried plants, drops them into a small brass bowl, then sprinkles the powders onto the flames, one at a time. Nothing noticeable happens.

“There,” Tiara says, “It’s done.”

“What now?” I ask.

“We wait. If your Tiara noticed it, she’s likely to—”

This time I feel something. It’s barely perceptible, but there is a shiver in the air, and I could swear I see the faintest purple glow coming from the crystal ball.

“Hello, Frank. Hello, Emily. I’m glad to see you’re okay.”

Emily opens her mouth, but I rush ahead.

“Is everyone okay?” I ask. “At the school? Did anyone get hurt?”

“It was not as bad as it might have been. We don’t have long, so it would be best to focus on more immediate matters until you get home.” 

The voice is this Tiara’s and not. There was a resonance to it, as if two different people are speaking at exactly the same time.

“Okay, sorry. What do we need to do?”

She tells us. Emily and I both take notes. I suspect it’s not necessary, and that this Tiara will remember it all, but I’m not taking any chances on getting home.

Within five minutes, the shivering in the air, and the barely existent glow end. We have everything we need, we hope.

Walking back up from the basement, I steal a look at Emily. I know it’s stupid to hope we could even be friends at this point—I’ve blown any chance of that—but I was starting to feel like maybe something more than just ‘not enemies’ was possible. Now, though, it looks like any chance of that is slipping away.

“Emily?”

“What?” She almost snaps in reply.

“Nevermind.” Yeah. That ship has sailed. 

The next morning we get an early start. We need to be at a specific spot in Death Valley at solar noon.

This Tiara volunteered to come along, but Emily and I both vetoed that. The spot we need to reach is many miles off road. Not a problem for us, but it would be a hell of a hike for her. She accepts that, which I appreciate. Emily and I are big girls, and can take care of ourselves.

The next disagreement is not as easy to resolve.

“They’re saying it was staged. A false flag. We need to give interviews before we go, to prove that the whole thing was real.”

That’s my argument. Tiara disagrees, and Emily thinks it’s a terrible idea.

“I can just call a couple TV stations and tell them a place to meet me at, like, 11:30,” I say, “I teleport around a little on camera, then, bam, back to Death Valley with time to spare.”

“What if they catch you?” Tiara asks.

“I don’t think they can,” I say; “here, hold my wrists.”

I hold out my hands and Tiara takes my wrists. I flicker a foot to the side, out of her grasp.

“See?” I say.

“And if you get shot?”

“I’m pretty sure that reporters would rather shoot me with cameras than guns.”

Emily twitches when I say that. A tiny twitch, but I notice. I turned to her.

“What?” I ask.

“I couldn’t protect you,” she says, her voice flat.

“I’m not asking you to.”

“No, that’s not—” She shakes her head.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“Sure,” she says.

She turns her head and lifts her hair so I can see where she’d been shot. Perfect, as always. Well, almost always.

“That’s not what I—”

“Come on,” Tiara interrupts, “We’ve got to get you kids ready to go. I’m going to drive you out to the edge of the desert so you don't need to do any flying over the city.”

That’s fair. We finish our breakfast and begin gathering supplies.

We reach Death Valley at around 10:30. Tiara offers to take us further in, but, once again, Emily and I decline. We can get there faster relying on Emily’s flight than any other way. We say our goodbyes; Tiara gives me a big hug.

“Tell Dawn goodbye for me, please,” I say. She hasn’t been around since that dinner. She was probably a little overwhelmed by my hero worship. I hope I didn’t upset her.

“I will,” Tiara answers. “She was sad she couldn’t see you off, but she’s on another business trip.”

“Do you want—” Emily rises a couple of inches and turns, so I can grab her around the shoulders again. 

“Nah. It’ll be faster without you carrying me. How long will it take you?”

Emily looks at the map on her phone. “I’ll definitely be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Okay, I’ll flicker to you in sixteen, then.”

Without another word, Emily tosses her phone into the passenger seat of the car and takes off. I set a sixteen minute timer.

Tiara doesn’t want to leave me there by myself, so I get in her car with her and she starts back toward LA. It seems like forever before the alarm finally goes off. 

“Thank you again,” I say to Tiara. “Where do you want me to put these?” I hold up the phones she bought us.

“You two can keep those as souvenirs.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, honey.”

“Thanks!”

I say one last goodbye, then flicker to Emily.

“This is it, huh,” I say, looking around. It looks like any other spot high up in the desert. 

This was the locus of the Invasion—in our world anyway.

“Have you ever been?” I ask Emily.

Back in our world, this spot would be in the center of a huge castle—the castle that the Archmage transported from his world to ours, along with his armies. Tiara told us that this would be the weakest spot between our world and this one. The source of the divergence.

“No,” Emily replies, “there’s a senior field trip, though, so we’ll probably go next year.”

Her voice is still flat.

“We should get set up,” she continues.

It isn’t a complicated setup. I use a camp shovel to enclose the whole potential area in a large circle. Emily uses the rangefinder on her phone to place a small amethyst at each point of a hexagon on that circle. Next, we each draw a series of geometric shapes at precise points.

Neither Emily nor I can do magic. Hardly anyone can. Not freeform magic, anyway. As far as I’m concerned, I do magic every time I flicker. The experts disagree, but I don’t really care. I definitely can’t cast a spell, though, and neither can Emily.

What we’re doing, or trying to do, is to create the same setup here that our Tiara is creating back home. She’ll create the portal from that side, and we’ll step through to home. Easy peasy.

Opening portals is apparently pretty easy in our world. The frequent incursions are evidence of that. The problems are targeting and safety. Tiara could force a portal open, but without an anchor to target, it would open in some random universe. Anything could then come pouring out, and closing it might present a challenge.

Emily and I are providing the needed anchor. The amethysts are because this Tiara had enough of them handy, and so did our Tiara. The geometric shapes are a means of making the spots more similar. The combination, and the fact that Emily and I belong in our home universe, is supposed to be enough to provide an anchor.

We finish up with forty minutes to spare. That’s more time than I’d planned on.

“Hey, Emily,”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll be back soon. I promise.”

“There’s not time! What if the portal opens early and you’re not here?”

“I will be, I promise. I just have to do this one thing.”

“You called the reporters, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I—”

“If you’re not back in time . . .” she trails off.

“I will be.”

“Don’t let your ego—”

I don’t want to hear the rest of that, so I go.

I see at least three television cameras and twelve people on the lawn in Griffith Park when I appear on the roof of the observatory. There has to be some access to up here, so it’s not a problem.

I’m glad we finished early. I’m not due down there for another half hour, and this way I can watch people as they arrive. If anyone is up to anything, I should be able to spot them.

More people and cameras arrive. By the time I’m supposed to show up, there are thirty or so people and eight cameras. I haven’t seen anything suspicious, so I flicker to where the cameras are pointed. 

“Hi,” I say, and pause.

I was going to introduce myself, but I think about what Emily said before I left. Is this about my ego? It definitely isn’t just about that, and it doesn't feel like it’s about that at all, but now I‘m not sure.

“I saw a lot of people online saying the whole thing at the park the other day was faked. That it was staged to make the transphobes and other bigots look bad.”

I ignore the shouted questions.

“You all saw me appear. I hope your cameras were running. In case they weren’t, though, here you go.”

I flicker ten feet to the side, then back, then again in another direction. I keep that up for twenty seconds or so.

“What about the other girl?” “How do you do it?” “Are you an alien?’ “A mutant?”

“The other girl is recovering and will be fine. It takes more than a high powered rifle shot to the head to keep her down. I don’t have time to tell you our story. I can just tell you we were only here by mistake, and we’ll be out of your hair by—”

I feel a sharp pain in my arm. There’s a dart sticking out of it. I should have been standing somewhere else. I can feel myself getting woozy already. 

Definitely somewhere else. I’m five feet away, and the dart is gone. I’m still a little light headed, but I’ll be fine.

I flicker back to my bedroom. Okay, maybe more than a little lightheaded. This isn’t my room in this world. At least it’s empty this time. I flicker back to Death Valley.

Emily is facing me when I reappear.

“I need to—” I start. I don’t have time to finish. A swirling purple-white disc of light appears in the air between us. 

“You first,” Emily says.

“No way,” I reply, “we’re doing this together.” 

“Fine, get over here, then.”

I could walk around to the other side. That would be easy. That would be smart. But do I do that? Of course not.

I flicker.