A small cloud took shape in the living room, the cloud darkening as it began to rain, the rain forming a teleporter in a gray dress with blue leggings, Zoe and Sam suddenly with the woman.
Zoe was in some clothing that Ozella had never seen before, a forgotten fashion that didn’t look too bad on her, but seemed a bit out of place. Sam was wearing what Ozella assumed was Southern alliance civilian clothing, baggy and thick to hold in warmth.
“These yours?” the teleporter asked with a giggle.
Thunder roared in the living room as the rain that had just spawned the teleporter was sucked back into the cloud, the woman’s body dematerializing with it.
“Sam!” Helena said, running forward and jumping into his arms. She didn’t normally engage in these types of theatrics. Ozella could definitely tell this, and the statkeeper sensed that Helena was putting on the show not only for her friend Juniper, but also for Zoe.
Zoe didn’t have too long to brood as Juniper approached the tiger girl, offering her a bow.
“Who are you?” Zoe asked.
“The person that saved you, well ‘save’ isn’t the right word for it, but I did make it easier for you to find Helena and Ozella here.”
“Hi, Sam; hi, Zoe,” Ozella said.
“And what are you wearing?” Zoe asked Ozella.
“Clothing I gave them, cashmere,” said Juniper. “They couldn’t just go around wearing their exemplar uniforms...”
“Does she know something?” Zoe asked Helena, who was just getting back to her feet after kissing Sam a few times.
“Yes, she has a power, well not like an exemplar, a rune power. Familiar?”
“My family is from the Southern Alliance,” Zoe said with a huff. “I know about runes.”
“And your family name?” asked Juniper.
“You wouldn’t know them. We aren’t royalty, like this,” said Zoe as she looked around the place. “But if you must know, ‘Ramone,’ that’s my family name. Anyway, we can get into that later. What the hell happened last night?”
“We were about to ask you the same thing,” said Ozella as she came forward, Dinah’s form taking shape next to her.
“Hi, Dinah,” Zoe said. “Give Sam some healing real quick, would you? He hit his head.”
The blue ghost nodded and moved over to Sam.
“And your powers?” Juniper asked Zoe. “I’m clear on Ozella and Helena’s, but what are yours.”
“You’re looking at it.” Zoe pointed to her face. “I can do this as well,” she said, her arms growing in size and her hands turning into sharp claws.
“Fascinating,” said Juniper as she turned to Sam. “And you?”
Sam offered her a tight smile. “My nose.”
“Your nose?”
“Should I show her?”
“By all means,” Helena said as Sam stepped forward, moving away from Dinah, pouting since she couldn’t finish her healing.
“I am a little congested today though. Something in the air down here…”
“A lot of people have allergies in the South due to a variety of winter trees. Anyway, what do you mean by your nose?”
“Are your hands clean?” Sam asked.
“Of course they are,” said Juniper.
“Okay, let me smell your hand.”
“Ummm…”
“Just trust me.”
Juniper held her hand out and Sam brought it about six inches away from his nose. His nostrils flared for just a moment.
“Your name is Juniper Hydroze and your father is Baham Hydroze. He is a high-ranking official in the Southern Alliance government, which is one way your family has acquired so much wealth. Another way your family has created so much wealth is through joint real estate deals that were orchestrated by the Knight Corporation, in which they didn’t receive any property but high commissions. But that’s just about the money. You, yourself, have been Helena’s friend for about a decade. Helena doesn’t know, or she didn’t know up until recently, that you spend time in the far south, studying at the School of Script, but you did not graduate. This is why you are back here, now, because your parents have tasked you with overseeing family affairs as punishment for not graduating.”
“You’ve said enough,” Juniper told him, her finger twitching.
“Last thing I will say. You cast your spells using quick gestures with your fingers. You are right-handed, so you predominately cast spells with the right hand, but you also taught yourself to do it with your left hand, which you never told anyone because you wanted it to be a backup plan.”
“Are you sure you’re not a telepath?”
“Nope,” Sam said, “my olfactory epithelium is twice as good as a dog’s.”
“More like twenty times as good,” said Ozella, “with a big dosage of psychometry.”
“Well now that we are all done measuring each other’s… ” Zoe looked to Sam’s crotch. “Never mind, that doesn’t really apply to the situation. I say we move on to the task at hand.”
“Wait, first tell me about your power-ups.”
“My power-up allows me to turn normal for an hour,” Zoe told Juniper. “Sam’s allows him to switch which of his senses is superpowered.”
Juniper nodded. “I guess that leaves one other question. Why are you here? Why have you come to the South?”
“How much do we need to tell her again?” Sam asked.
“I could just cast a rune that creates a zone of truth.” Juniper brought her hands to her sides.
“Fuck all that noise. We’re here to stop a vampire infestation,” Zoe said, enunciating each word carefully. “And we are not bullshitting you here. And now that we’re back together, we need to move.”
“Yes, we really do,” Helena said, and Ozella could tell by the tone of her voice that she was again taking charge. There had been a lot of chaos over the last few minutes, different people’s egos getting in the way and vying for speaking time.
Now it was time for action.
“If you’re going to do anything in my country, I’m coming with you,” Juniper said.
“Can you fight?” Zoe asked.
“What else do you think we study at the School of Script?”
“She’s not lying,” Sam said, lifting his nose in the air.
“You don’t have to verify everything I tell you,” Juniper snapped at him.
“Noted,” said Sam.
“Well, we sort of have outfits that we have to wear when we’re out heroing,” Zoe said. “Do you have something?”
“I’m pretty sure I can conjure something up.”
“You can create clothing too?” Zoe asked.
“No, but I do have a pretty extensive closet.”
Helena rubbed her hands together for a moment. “Okay, we will start at the train station where the cargo was dropped off. While you find a change of clothing, I will catch them up on what has happened,” Helena told Juniper. “And don’t worry, I’ll give you more details later.”
***
Hell yes, they got the drop on an unsuspecting Southern Alliance man.
The jabroni was in a pair of overalls, carrying a crate across the trainyard when a teleporter appeared, Vigilante Justice falling out of a portal, all performing superhero landings except for Ozella, who landed wrong and ended up falling to her side.
“Ozella!” Zoe hissed.
Living up to her promise, Juniper wore white robes and a bandanna over the bottom half of her face. She had also been the one who had created the portal, which meant that as long as she was with them, they wouldn’t need to call a teleporter.
“What are you doing?” the man asked, who didn’t seem as scared of the five would-be heroes as he was annoyed that they had appeared out of nowhere, startling him. “You know I’m carrying explosive persimmons in here, right? That could have been a disaster!”
“Explosive persimmons?” Zoe asked, eying the man suspiciously.
“Actually, he’s not lying,” Sam said.
“Would you stop telling people if they’re telling the truth or not?” Zoe asked him, Juniper agreeing with a nod.
“No, that’s a real thing, that’s all I’m saying. I didn’t use my nose, that was the same thing that led us to Dr. Hamza. Right, Ozella?”
“I hurt my knee,” Ozella said as she stood. “Dinah, will you help me?”
“Amateurs,” Zoe said under her breath.
Ozella stuck her leg out for a moment, lifting her skirt just a bit, which must’ve looked really strange to the guy who was now barely holding on to his crate of explosive persimmons, the dude clearly hopeful that she would lift the skirt just a little bit further.
“Hey, creep,” said Zoe, “we’re here for some information.”
“I don’t know anything,” the man said.
“Easy way or the hard way?” asked Helena, her hands on her hips.
“The easy way being you make him hallucinate; the hard way being I get to beat some answers out of him, right?”
Helena nodded at the tiger girl. “More or less.”
“Is this how you operate?” Juniper asked.
Sam shrugged. “Not all the time, but, well, more or less. If we get information quickly, we’ll just go that route.”
“By threatening people?”
“Yeah,” the man said, “do you guys seriously go around getting information from people by threatening them?”
“This conversation is not about you,” Zoe told him, wagging her finger at the man.
“Why’s she so angry?” the man asked.
“Let’s get the information we need and get out of here,” Zoe said, ignoring his question. “We have already blown our cover. We should be thanking our lucky stars they aren’t here right now about to pounce on us.”
“You seem to be the best one for pouncing,” Juniper said as she approached the man.
“Hey,” Zoe started to tell the woman.
“Look, I do know who you are, and to be honest with you, I don’t want to know who any of you are,” the man said. “But I swear, I got nothing.”
“Please set the box down,” said Juniper.
“You five need to get off this property. I will call the police, I swear,” he said, his hands starting to tremble.
“Place the box on the ground,” Helena said, her eye turning into a spinning bullseye, “now.”
It only took a moment for her hypnosis to kick in, the man doing exactly what she said.
“Now, tell us what you know about the cargo that was delivered last night. It would have been a train that came in at around 10:30 PM.”
“They wouldn’t let me look at anything,” he said. “They simply paid off a customs guy, and went on their way.”
“Went on their way?” Sam asked, exchanging glances with Zoe. “There’s another destination?”
The man shrugged. “I don’t know. Obviously, they weren’t going to tell me. Now, you may get some more information out of the customs guy, his name is Rob, and he’s currently on his break. He gets real pissed off if people bother him on his break. Real pissed.”
“Great,” said Zoe, “then that’s just what we’ll do. Do you know where he takes his break?”
“He usually just goes around to the side there, to a break room that we added last year.”
“Thank you,” Zoe told him as she turned in the direction he was pointing. “Anyone joining me?”
“I’ll join you,” said Ozella as she caught up to Zoe.
The nerdy statkeeper dusted off her knee, and smiled at the tiger girl once they reached the break room door.
“You really are oblivious to things, aren’t you?”
“Not really,” Ozella said. “I pretty much know everything that’s going on at all times.”
Zoe shuddered at this statement, and kept moving to the door in question. Eventually the others joined her, Zoe looking to Helena to take charge even though she’d originally just planned to barge in.
It was subtle, and if anyone had seen the way that she glanced at her, they may not have picked it up, but Zoe, while headstrong and generally bossy, preferred an enforcer role, not the leader role. Plus she was feeling guilty about what had happened last night.
Zoe wouldn’t have admitted this to anyone, but there really was no denying it: even if Sam had played somewhat of a role, what had happened last night was entirely her fault, and she planned to take what had happened with her to the grave.
And if there was ever a chance for it to happen again…
She would do her best to resist it.
“Zoe, Ozella, you stand guard out here. Sam, Juniper, come with me,” Helena said.
“Will do,” Sam said, flashing Zoe the peace sign as they entered the break room.
“Looks like it’s just you and me,” Ozella told her, crossing her arms over her chest, her breasts lifting as she put a little pressure on them. Zoe looked at Ozella’s breasts and back up to her face, offering her a short smile. “Why are you so grumpy?”
“No reason, and I’m not grumpy. It was just a long night. And don’t use any of your powers on me. I’d rather not relive it.”
“I won’t,” Ozella said, turning away from Zoe. “Besides, it’s not like I couldn’t figure out what happened last night. Wait, did something happen?”
“Of course not,” Zoe said, her voice a little louder than normal.
“Oh, okay.”
“I’m glad you and Helena got a good night’s sleep though, and I’m not trying to be a bitch by saying that. For a minute there, I thought Sam and I were going to have to sleep in a barn. It would have been cold as balls.”
Ozella grinned. “Why do people say, ‘cold as balls?’ Balls are not cold.”
“That’s a good observation. I don’t know why people say that, and I don’t know why women use terms that only guys should use. Not my call. Here they come.”
Helena stepped out, followed by Sam and Juniper, the newest addition to the group with a very concerned look on her face.
“What happened?” Zoe asked.
“I definitely was not expecting that,” Sam said. “I can’t even…”
“They are taking the children south,” said Juniper, her face twitching nervously, “and if the man isn’t lying, which he can’t be because of Helena’s power, they are taking them to the School of Heart.”
“Come again?” Zoe asked.
“They’re taking them to a rune school?” Ozella asked. “But why?”
“Well, sort of how your story about vampires is a long story, the story of the various rune schools is also a long story. And it is a story that I’m going to have plenty of time to tell you,” Juniper said as a portal appeared.
“Where are we going?” Zoe asked.
“Back to my house to get supplies,” Juniper said. “Teleporters and portals will only go so far to the south. From there we will have to make our way on our own to the School of Heart. We could wait for the next caravan to go, but that could expose our cover. So we’re going to go it alone. We will need to camp out at least one night, maybe two, which is why we need to get supplies.”
Zoe looked to Sam, who nodded at her, a confident look on his masked face. “Sweet, this is the kind of shit I live for. Let’s go cause some trouble.”
Chapter Thirty-Three: Over the River and Through the Woods
(Vigilante Justice and Juniper go on a camping trip.)
Sam Meeko had to take a moment to look at himself in the mirror.
He had never worn this type of clothing before, nothing this warm, and he was already feeling the sweat starting to pool under his arms. He was in a lambskin jacket with his exemplar clothing underneath, a pair of pants with fur-lined cuffs and deerskin boots.
He also had other cold-weather gear, a thick scarf, a beanie, leather gloves with cashmere lining. This on top of his normal accoutrements, which Juniper was able to procure so they would be ready for anything.
It was amazing that they fit, but strapped over both arms were Souther
n Alliance wrist guards, these ones similar to the pair he had back in Centralia, each with a glowing button on the side.
Juniper wasn’t kidding when she said it was going to be cold where they were going, but in the city, in Juniper’s ginormous mansion, he felt both warm and out of place.
What a life, Sam thought as he continued to look at himself in his winter tundra gear. Who would have thought that a guy arrested for getting freaky with a sex doll and accused of impersonating an exemplar would now be on an exemplar team in a foreign country, about to save the goddamn place without anyone actually knowing what they were up to?
A life of mystery, intrigue, danger and excitement.
Hells yeah.
Sam could have never dreamed of this when he was younger, back when he fantasized about doing heroic shit, but here he was, ready to do what needed to be done.
A knock at the door stopped Sam just before he made an ass of himself.
He was about to strike a pose, his arms crossed over his chest, a ‘fuck it I’m going in’ look on his face, a real tough guy.
Ozella entered without first asking permission, the group’s statkeeper in even warmer clothing than she had been wearing before. Somehow, and Sam chalked this up to Juniper’s vast wealth, they had managed to put together an outfit for Ozella that still had a skirt, even if she wore fur leggings, which kind of made her look like an animal.
This was why Sam started to laugh as he turned to her, Ozella giving him a curious look.
“Sorry,” Sam said, “just wasn’t expecting them to nail your outfit so well.”
“It looks okay, right?” Ozella asked. She wore a hood, the fur rimming most of the circumference of her face. Her blonde bangs fell over her eyes as she looked up at Sam, her cheeks turning red.
“It’s awesome,” he said, “but if we have to wear gear this warm, it does make me a little afraid for where we are going.”
“Tell me about it. Anyway, I was told to come get you. The others are ready.”
“All right, let’s do this,” Sam said as he followed Ozella out, mouth-breathing as usual.
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