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Author's Notes: I've had an interest in this genre for many, many, many years now... but it's only been in about the past 2 years that my own characters have started to form in my head. Allison Vogel/Songbird was the first to form, and the most insistent. But developing her universe has come in fits and starts. This is about the third or fourth attempt at a first proper story to introduce her that I've undertaken, but finally, one of those ideas has actually seemed to gel in my head. And this is the result. The whole thing is not completed yet, but it is outlined. And I'll keep updating as I progress.
All comments and criticism welcome. Hate mail, less so. :-)
PROLOGUE
Summers Airfield, outskirts of Montezuma, AZ. 10:23PM Sunday
People tend to think of Arizona in the dog days of August as something of an oven, primarily based on the reputation of the Phoenix area. But in the northwestern quadrant of the state, where the burgeoning young metropolis of Montezuma was located, the mercury only occasionally flirted with triple digits. Most days stayed in the mid to upper-mid 90’s, and the evening temperatures on some occasions would even dip under the 70 degree mark. And tonight was one of those occasions.
All of which made the leather jacket that Shawn was wearing somewhat superfluous. But damn if he didn’t look good in, if in no one else’s mind but his own, so it stayed on, regardless of the weather conditions. Only the lightweight, basic white tee underneath the jacket stood as a concession to the warmth of the evening, tucked into a well worn pair of jeans. The other three men on hand were all dressed with more of a mind toward the climate, and more of an eye toward the time. One wore a deep blue muscle shirt, with a pair of black Dickies and Jordans. The other two wore similar short sleeved tees, one a dark red, the other a forest green, with basic black slacks and work boots. None of them, other than Shawn’s white shirt, wore anything that stood out against the Arizona night, with only the lights illuminating the landing strip working against their efforts to blend in.
“Hey, Shawn,” said muscle shirt, “you down for hittin’ up Gold Diggers with us after we’re done here?”
Shawn scoffed. “C’mon, Marcus, you know ‘Nique would have my dick if I hit up a strip joint with you guys. Besides, Mariah wants…”
“Oh, here we go,” red shirt interrupted. “Ain’t that what the bitch is for, takin’ care of the kid? Who I STILL ain’t convinced isn’t Coop’s, by the way.”
“Fuck you,” green shirt spat out, in such an indignant manner that only a besmirched Coop could have managed. Though both green shirt’s shiteating grin and Shawn’s laugh suggested that neither party put much stock in the accusation.
“You know my girl is my world, JD,” Shawn said. “And ‘Nique’s job doesn’t provide health insurance…”
“Yeah,” JD countered, “and we ALL know the Ballentines don’t provide no 401k, either.”
“But with what the Ballentines pay, we don’t NEED no 401k,” Shawn shot back. “Once we bring this shipment in and get paid…”
His voice trailed off, as all four men noticed the hum of an aircraft engine in the air, the noise growing louder by the second. “And on that note…” Marcus observed, before moving to open the hatch on their SUV. It was only a matter of moments before the blinking lights and outline of the small plane came into view, as it began its final descent. But as Shawn and his compatriots prepared to receive their delivery, none of them noticed the other, significantly smaller object in the air, hovering overhead, monitoring the whole situation…
Roughly fifty yards away, behind the cover of one of the airfield’s service vehicles, were two masked women. One stood, stooped slightly forward and toward her partner, with her hands braced against well shaped, tawny thighs. Her colleague was on one knee, her left arm extended forward, bent at the elbow. And, projected into the air from a gauntlet on that wrist is a blue tinged, hologrammatic representation of the goings on over by the airstrip. “I’m never gonna cease to be amazed by the things you’re able to put together,” said the woman standing, her blue domino mask doing little to hide the fact that she was clearly a youthful brunette. “Though I still wish you’d fitted your ‘Hummingdrones’ with mics…”
The kneeling woman, an even more youthful blonde, playfully rolled her eyes, each large, round, blue peeper residing behind a green, diamond shaped panel of her mask. “I told you, it was either speakers in these gauntlets, or blasters. Forgive me for going with blasters. Besides, when you start contributing tech, you can criticize the designs.” The apple cheeked blonde tilted her head up to meet her partner’s gaze, flashing an impossibly bright smile as she couldn’t resist delivering one more teasing taunt. “We all know I’m the brains of this outfit, anyway.”
The brunette straightened up, folding her arms across her chest, and cocked her head a couple of accusing degrees to the left. “And what does that make me, then?”
“The boobs.”
The brunette opened her mouth to respond, but couldn’t find the words, suddenly becoming acutely aware that her friend (should that be in scare quotes, after that remark?) had demonstrated her point, not simply with the standing woman’s body language, but by having guided her toward such a pose in the first place. Almost involuntarily, her eyes for a fleeting moment dropped to take in her own cleavage, pleasingly displayed by the neckline of her metallic blue one piece. Her bosom was hardly some disproportionate, top heavy parody of a superheroine. She didn’t even consider herself in Andromeda’s league in the voluptuousness department. But even she had to admit that she had to fit more into her costume than her partner did…
Speaking of the costume, the brunette’s metallic blue one piece was accented by a white sash, tied off just above her right hip, the two loose ends fluttering slightly in the light breeze that also occasionally lifted her white cape. Tanned legs descended into blue, knee high boots, and her hands were shielded underneath elbow length blue gloves. Also, around each bicep, she sported a white armband. And then, at least, the appropriate response finally formed in the young heroine’s mind.
“Bitch.”
The blonde just shook her head, as she stifled a giggle.
The brunette leaned forward again, examining the holographic playback, which was now showing the small aircraft taxiing down the strip. “Four of them,” she noted.
Her partner grinned. “Hardly seems fair, does it?”
The blue clad brunette nodded. “We’ll give ‘em a chance. I’ll take the goons, you take the wheels.”
The blonde clicked one button on her gauntlet, which discontinued the playback. She pressed another button before pushing up from her knee and rising to her full height… which ended up being a good half foot, if not more, shorter than her colleague. She, too, wore a metallic textured one piece, though hers was primarily of a purple hue, save for the strip of green running up the center. While her partner’s costume accentuated her cleavage, the blonde’s one piece bared only her shoulders and clavicle, the fabric of the garment rising upward at an angle toward her neck before crossing into green shoulder straps. Instead, her costume displayed, through a diamond shaped cutaway at the midsection, an ivory expanse of smooth, flat abdomen. Unlike her partner, she did not wear gloves, but instead sported long sleeves, from shoulders to wrists, patches of exposed outer arms alternating with purple stripes. In addition to the gauntlets on her wrists, she also wore utility packets strapped around each thigh, as well as purple boots, with green laces crisscrossing from her toes to just a couple of inches below her knees.
And finally, unlike her partner, the blonde did not wear a cape. Instead, worn against her back was a small, green metal object, which almost but didn’t quite look like a backpack. “Montezuma PD have been notified,” the blonde said, “so they’ll be on their way. We won’t have TOO much time to subdue these creeps…”
“All the time we need,” the brunette replied, simply. “You ready to kick some ass, Hummingbird?”
The blonde, known to the criminals and the general public of Montezuma simply as Hummingbird, grinned once more. But, as she did, a set of small, purple, mechanical wings sprouted from her “backpack.”
“Ready, waiting, AND eager, Songbird.”
After placing the last brick of narcotics into the SUV’s cargo bay, Marcus lowered the hatch… and that was when he caught his first glimpse of the two distinctly feminine shaped figures—well, even if one of them had wings—flying toward their location. “Well, well, well,” he sighed, sounding far more annoyed than alarm. Then, he alerted his friends, calling out, “Look! Up in the sky! It’s the ‘Birds.”
JD came up alongside him, following Marcus’ pointed finger toward the approaching duo. He had seen a couple of news reports about the exploits of Montezuma’s costume clad heroines in the past couple of months, but he hadn’t put very much stock in their credibility. In his expert opinion as a criminal mastermind waiting to claim his own empire, he had simply figured most of the apprehended parties had just invented tales of these costumed cuties to mask their own incompetence. And yet, here they were, closing in. Even so, despite the evidence of his own eyes, JD shook his head. “Nah. Nah, dawg. Those ain’t birds.”
“Well, they can’t be the plane,” Coop said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the light aircraft on the runway. “Cause it’s already here.”
Finding a spot between Marcus and JD, Shawn slung an arm around each of his partners’ shoulders. “Y’know what that leaves, don’tcha?” he asked, the blonde and brunette now only a handful of feet in front of them, and about six feet overhead. “These must be super sluts!”
Songbird simply shook her head. “Do you ever stop and wonder if the Emerald Eagle got to deal with a better class of banter, back in her day?” she asked.
“I blame Sesame Street being farmed out to HBO,” Hummingbird replied, perfectly deadpan.
“Now look, guys,” Songbird told the men below, “not to be cliched or anything, but we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.”
“Oh, trust me,” Marcus shot back, grabbing his crotch with his left hand, “it’s already hard. And it’s gonna be harder than you can handle.”
“You hear that?” Hummingbird asked her partner. “Dude’s already excited at the thought of getting his ass handed to him. Y’know, I read in the last issue of Capes & Cowls Magazine that science has proven that 80% of henchbitches are just subs in denial.”
That was enough to change Marcus’ demeanor, from mocking to furious. “Yo, who you callin’ bitch, bitch?”
As much as Songbird was enjoying the exchange, that didn’t stop her from noticing the movement of both Marcus and JD’s hands toward their waistbands, no doubt reaching for handguns. That first flicker of movement was the only tip off that the brunette needed to raise her right hand, palm extended forward. She had to keep one palm lowered toward the ground, to keep herself in flight. But now, she used the other hand to direct a burst of sonic energy toward the quartet of miscreants, that wave first knocking two fired bullets out of the air. That would have been enough to stun the criminals, surely, only that pulse wave didn’t stop there. Instead, the energy wave washed over all four, sending the men crashing to the ground below, with guns skidding across the ground.
With her flight supported by mechanical wings, Hummingbird had the use of both her hands for offensive purposes, and she put them to good use. When the fingers of her right hand curled toward the heel of her palm, they activated a trigger that send her own pulse wave of energy surging toward the front landing gear of the aircraft. The stanchion proved no match, coming apart under the assault and sending the nose of the plane plummeting to the tarmac below. In the next instant, the blonde heroine’s left hand did the same thing, delivering a pulse wave to the rear passenger’s side tire of the SUV, destroying it just as thoroughly.
Shawn was just getting to his feet as Songbird touched down, and he didn’t hesitate in charging toward her and swinging a looping, overhand right in her direction. But perhaps discretion might have been the better part of valor, as he remained a little dazed from the brunette’s initial attack, which rendered his blow sloppy and easy for the heroine to duck. Songbird returned fire by delivering a swift left-right combination to Shawn’s belly, the jabs landing with significantly more force than he would have expect a girl of five feet eight and maaaybe one hundred and thirty pounds to be able to manage. With the breath knocked out of him. Shawn dropped to his knees before pitching further forward, into something of a three point stance as his other arm hugged his stomach.
Before she could press her advantage, however, a pair of arms slipped underneath hers, the hands attached to them locking together behind her head in a crude but effective full nelson. As Coop approached her, Songbird realized that these guys apparently had no interest in honoring the tried and true tradition of henchmen attacking one at a time, even if they enjoyed a numerical advantage on the good guys. Meanwhile, JD’s voice hissed into her ear, “You’re gonna regret sticking that cute little nose in where it doesn’t belong…”
Before the brunette could think of a witty rejoinder, Coop extracted a measure of vengeance for the fallen Shawn, delivering a couple of crisp and powerful jabs to Songbird’s tummy. The heroine grunted with each punch, her eyes reflexively trying to close in response to the punishment. She did at least feel a momentary sense of relief as she saw her partner come in for a landing, those purple wings promptly retracting back inside their metallic encasement. But relief quickly turned to dread when Songbird saw a recovered Marcus approaching her protégé from behind, Hummingbird completely unaware. She tried to call out a warning, but thanks to Coop’s gut punches, it took her too long to find the air necessary to vocalize the danger.
And, from behind, Marcus slipped an arm around Hummingbird’s neck, trapping the blonde in a tight sleeperhold. The young heroine’s already large, round eyes grew wider still as the flow of her blood and air was restricted, her hands reaching up to paw and claw at the brawny biceps which had become a noose for her. Marcus smiled, given his sleeper a couple of jerks left and right, partly to try to disorient the heroine, and partly just to assert his dominance. He reveled in the sensations of this tiny girl, barely five feet if that, cosplaying at being some sort of heroine, gradually slipping into unconsciousness, squirming in his grasp. And he would have enjoyed it more, if not for that damn case on her back that was keeping a frustrating distance between her taut glutes and his building need. “You’ve made the biggest mistake of your life, kid,” Marcus snarled, “and trust me: I am gonna enjoy tapping that aaauuUUUUUNNNNGGGGHHHHHHH…”
His chilling threat was brought to an abrupt halt when Hummingbird’s heel buried itself in the pit of his stomach, her mule kick forcing him to release his sleeperhold and stagger backward. The blonde might have still been short of breath, but that didn’t prevent her from acting quickly, as she pivoted to face Marcus and dropped to one knee. Raising her right arm, Hummingbird aimed a pulse wave that struck the vile cretin directly in his crotch, at nearly point blank range. Without even a cry of the torment he had to be experiencing, Marcus crumpled to the ground and shriveled up into a fetal ball.
“Something tells me you’re not gonna be tapping anything anytime soon,” Hummingbird mused, extracting a pair of lightweight but sturdy handcuffs from the utility pouch strapped to her right thigh.
Marcus’ howl from the mule kick had spun Coop around, and once Marcus had gone down, Coop started to head toward the blonde heroine. Alas, diverting his attention from the other heroine in this fight proved to be a mistake, as Songbird used JD’s full nelson as a form of support, raising up her legs and driving her boots into Coop’s shoulderblades. Her feet settled back down as Coop stumbled forward, and the brunette powered her way out of JD’s clutches with a mighty downward thrust of her right arm. Slipping around behind the criminal, Song whipped him toward his partner, JD rushing into a turning Coop, their foreheads cracking off one another.
And as the two turned back toward her, Songbird opened her mouth, unleashing a scream. Her scream, however, was more than just a piercing sound. Her scream was a channeled wave of pure sonic energy that slammed into both Coop and JD with incredible force, in addition to the decibels that assaulted their eardrums. The combination of the two left the men collapsed in a heap, whimpering and clutching their ears with both hands.
The decibel portion of Songbird’s Sonic Scream would have done the same to her partner as well, if not for the devices she had implanted in her ears, which left her hearing immune to the frequency which her friends weaponized sound operated on. As the blonde straightened up and tossed a pair of cuffs toward her partner, Hummingbird teased, “Man… I usually only see that sort of reaction at Christmas, when you try to sing carols.”
“Shut up,” Songbird grinned, plucking the tossed cuffs out of the air before moving to restrain JD.
Hummingbird took one step toward Coop, but then stopped herself. “Weren’t there FOUR of these jerks?”
The brunette shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe he’s smarter than his buddies?” she replied. “Anyways, we’ve got his friends, we’ve got the drugs. There’s not much he’s gonna do, apart from save his own ass.”
The sound of sirens began to fill the air. Montezuma PD was closing in. “Just in time,” Songbird mused, as the first marked car pulled up to a halt.
When the driver’s door opened and a clean cut Hispanic man of about 30 with close cut dark hair stepped out of the car, Hummingbird grinned, “Why am I not surprised, your would-be boyfriend being first on the scene?”
“Shut uuuuuuuppppppppp,” the raven haired heroine whispered, trying to choke back the crimson she felt rising on her cheeks. She couldn’t help how Det. Ricardo Calderon might feel about her. The idea of a relationship with anyone did not particularly hold much in the way of appeal to her, at the moment.
“Ladies,” Det. Calderon greeted them. “We got here as soon as we could. What can you tell us?”
Songbird lead the detective over to the SUV, and popped open the hatch. “These guys were receiving a pretty sizable shipment of drugs. Looks like coke. On whose behalf, I can’t say…”
When Calderon caught sight of the amount of product in the trunk, he let out a whistle. “Keeping all this from getting to the streets is a victory in itself. But we’ll get ‘em to tell us who it’s for. And when we do, I’ll let you know.”
Songbird regarded him quizzically. “That’s a breach of procedure, surely?”
“Oh, undoubtedly,” Calderon replied. “But I’ve got a hunch, that whoever the recipient for this shipment is might be… connected. VERY connected. In which case, we’re gonna need whatever help we can get. And, I know the rest of the force might not appreciate your… assistance as much as I do. But…”
“We’ve got your back,” Songbird assured him. “And we’re glad to be of whatever service we can be.”
The detective nodded, then moved off to assist his fellow officers in securing the narcotics, and placing the captured men officially into police custody. A moment later, and Hummingbird broke the silence. “What a night, huh?”
“What a summer,” the brunette agreed. “Can’t believe it’s just about over.” As she continued to watch the authorities at work, Songbird noticed fewer and fewer of the police paying attention to them. “Figure it’s time we head back to the Nest,” she said.
Hummingbird nodded. “Yeah, time for a good night’s sleep. I don’t know about you, but I see a particularly nasty evil in my future tomorrow.”
“Oh?”
“Mmmm hmm,” the blonde answered. “Professor Shackleford’s Psych class.”
“Say no more,” the taller heroine said, with a laugh.
Songbird #1: "Teacher's Pet"
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HeroineMark
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ACT ONE, PART ONE
Allison Vogel & Michelle Morrison’s apartment, 6:00AM Monday
VREEEEEK! VREEEEEK! VREEEEEK! VREEEEEK!
The incessant, electronic screech from across the room, courtesy of the alarm clock on her dresser, spurred Allison Vogel to roll over. As she did so, the brunette’s right arm spilled off the mattress. But instead of dropping toward the floor, the limb remained elevated, fingers extended toward the ceiling, her palm aimed toward the source of the noise pollution.
And as her brown eyes forced themselves open, instinct told Allison to launch a pulse of sonic energy at that damn alarm clock.
This was hardly an unprecedented situation. In the month immediately following her powers manifesting themselves, three alarm clocks had paid the ultimate price for having the unmitigated gall to do precisely what she had programmed them to. In the years since, Allison had learned how to keep this early morning bloodlust under control. “Shut. Up,” she hissed, swinging a pair of long, shapely legs off the bed as she willed herself up to a seated position. As she did so, the oversized pink Montezuma State University Aztecs football jersey that served as her favorite bit of sleepwear crept up her thighs, revealing just a slight hint of the black satin panties underneath. With a tiny yawn, Allison forced herself to stand, and shuffled across the room.
And then, at last, her hand brought a peaceful quiet to the room, as she slapped the off button.
She then brought her hands up to her eyes, wiping away some lingering sleep. Doing so allowed her vision to come into focus, with that focus initially falling on her own reflection, staring back at her from the dresser’s mirror. Some mornings, it was Songbird that she found facing her, even if she wasn’t wearing the mask. But not today; today, she saw a young woman of 20, her deep brown eyes residing under a pair of arcing dark brows, and above an impeccable set of cheekbones. Her nose was small and ever so slightly upturned, her lips pale and full. Her jawline descended into a narrow chin. And her raven black hair, wavy under normal circumstances, was positively wild and unruly after the four hours of sleep she had managed.
And yet… On her, somehow the bedhead worked.
Still, that bedhead would prove no match for the shower she was soon to take. Once she had washed away any remnants of her crimefighting adventures from the night before, a refreshed Allison Vogel would be ready to take on the first day of her junior year.
Michelle Morrison was that rarest of rare creatures: a young morning person.
When she turned her key in the lock of her apartment door and pushed it open, she did so with the energy of someone who had been awake for several hours already. She was pleasantly surprised to hear the sound of the showerhead, from behind the closed bathroom door. While it wasn’t the whole reason for her swinging back by the apartment this morning, if she was completely honest, part of the reason was that she did not fully trust her best friend and roommate to wake up on time. Satisfied at least on that score, she placed a box of donuts on the coffee table, opened it to grab one glazed jelly filled, and then made her way over to the kitchen, and to the refrigerator.
One would be forgiven for thinking Michelle was a high school junior, rather than a college junior, given her bright, innocent features. Of course, those bright, innocent features stood in something of a contrast to her current wardrobe: a white, short sleeved Beyonce t-shirt, tucked into a pair of blue denim short shorts, capped off by a pair of black thigh high boots that were every bit as visually striking and stunning as they were thoroughly impractical. A tall girl in her own right at five feet eight, the heels of those boots gave her a thoroughly unnecessary boost that made her threaten the six feet mark. Her straight blonde hair, parted in the middle, spilled past her shoulders on opposite sides, falling to the edge of her shoulderblade on the left, and nearly to the summit of her right breast.
She heard the water from the shower shut off as she removed a Diet Dr. Pepper from the fridge. Moments later, the bathroom door opened, and Allison trundled into the living room, her torso wrapped in one towel and her hair bundled within another. When she caught sight of Michelle, Allison did a small double take. “I thought you spent the night at Terrance’s?” she asked.
“I did,” the blonde replied. “My books didn’t. Besides, I never could sleep much before the first day of class. So many things to do, so many new people to meet…”
“So many boys to tease?” Allison asked, giving her roommate’s ensemble a quick once over.
Michelle brought a hand to her bosom, uttering a mock gasp of outrage. “You’re so… so…”
With her friend apparently having difficulty finding the right word, Allison volunteered, “Judgmental?”
The blonde shook her head, Michelle’s light brown eyes twinkling as she finally settled on, “Binary.”
Allison just chuckled. On practically anyone else, such confidence or self-assuredness would come across as arrogance, and be… off-putting, at best. In Michelle’s case, however, it somehow only added to her charm.
“Anyways,” the blonde said, heading toward her room, “you need to get dressed…”
Even with her back turned to her roomie, Morrison could see the look that Allison was giving her.
“… and I’ve got an 8 o’clock,” she concluded, grabbing her backpack from the edge of her bed. Returning to the living room after slipping its straps over her shoulders, Michelle posed a simple question. “Lunch?”
Allison’s response was a simple question in its own right. “Moy-fee’s?”
“Where else?”
“See you then,” Allison said, unwinding the towel from around her hair.
“In the meantime,” Michelle said, coming close enough to plant a quick kiss on her bestie’s forehead, “have fun. And always remember: don’t do anyone I wouldn’t do.”
“And just who does that leave?” Allison called after her departing roommate. In response, Michelle spun on her heel, brought a hand to her crimson lips and blew the brunette a kiss… only as she pulled her hand away from her mouth, four of its five digits curled inward, toward her palm, leaving only the middle one fully extended.
In stark contrast to that gesture, the young blonde brightly called back, “Love you!”
Allison could only shake her head as the front door closed with a moderate thud.
Montezuma State University campus, 9:09AM
“6 minutes to go…”
Lexie Shepherd pressed the button on the side of her Android, and the time disappeared as the screen turned to black. She placed the phone down, just above her energy drink, on the small wooden panel attached to the right armrest of her seat, an undersized desk for an undersized girl.
Which was not to say that Lexie was an unhealthy girl, just that she was… tiny. Short of stature and lithe in build, “cute as a button” was a phrase that she was not unaccustomed to hearing. So much so, in fact, that she had developed a common rejoinder of, “Cute as a FUCKING button, I think you mean.” As adult as that language might be, however, the fresh-faced blonde’s apple cheeks and perpetually twinkling, rounder than round blue eyes (behind a pair of wire rimmed glasses) conveyed a disarming sense of innocence. Her hair was long, spilling into curling waves as it framed her face and fell in front of her shoulders, reaching as far as her breasts, which were every bit as pert and perky as she was. She wore a pink tee, which read in white, cursive script ‘Zombies Want Me for my Brain’, as well a pair of snug, light blue jeans that were effectively missing the denim that should have covered the kneecaps, and finally a pair of Chucks that appeared to be a couple of years old at this point.
Of course, she certainly knew that the whole if-the-professor-is-15-minutes-late-for-class thing was every bit as much a myth as the you-get-an-automatic-4.0-if-your-roommate-commits-suicide thing. But that didn’t mean that Lexie wouldn’t be above taking advantage of it, should circumstances allow. She started to reach for her phone again, to see if those 6 minutes had passed in the last 30 seconds, but she stopped herself when, amongst the sea of voices of the couple hundred students who populated the lecture hall at the moment, a pair of voices came to the fore. First, because they were getting closer, but second, because Lexie thought she recognized one of them…
Shepherd looked over her shoulder and sighed when she found her suspicions confirmed. Heading down the steps toward her position in the front row were two women, both blondes, one of the dirty variety, the other more of a platinum. The platinum blonde actually stood the taller of the two, if only by an inch, though she trailed the other woman and appeared more to follow her lead. The dirty blonde’s pale, bow shaped lips seemed genetically incapable of forming a smile, and her icy blue eyes gave the impression that nothing could impress her, ever. Her tresses were pulled into braided ponytail that draped over her left shoulder. She was dressed in a curve-hugging, open shoulder black dress that seemed more designed for the club than the classroom, its plunging neckline putting her relatively modest cleavage on pleasing display nevertheless—and the diamond pendant necklace residing within demanding that even the most disinterested to give a glance that way.
Both that necklace and the Jimmy Choo pumps suggested that she did not need a scholarship to get into Montezuma State University.
The platinum blonde was a willowier figure, but similarly seemed dressed more for an evening of misadventure than a morning of education. She wore a black mesh, long sleeved top over a black lace bralette, with matching leather shorts that showcased stunningly long legs that were adorned in a pair of black, over the knee, peep toed boots with stiletto heels, laced up the back. Her blue eyes were clear, her forehead relatively high, and her jawline sharp.
As they reached the front row of the class, the dirty blonde pointed to a pair of empty seats, not far from Lexie. “How about here?” she asked her friend.
The platinum blonde started to follow her companion’s finger, until her eyes locked with Lexie’s. At which point, her face blanched with disgust, as if one of the stiletto heels of her boots had just sunk into an unexpected pile of canine excrement on the sidewalk of the shopping district in downtown Montezuma. “Pass,” she said, threatening to earn a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for most contempt packed into a single syllable.
That wasn’t lost on the other blonde, and it certainly wasn’t lost in Lexie. “Please,” Shepherd agreed, matching that contempt in equal measure. “I can already feel my IQ points melting away, the longer you stand here. What are you even doing here, Cinnamon?”
It was the sort of animosity that only one type of people could summon: former friends. Of course, that friendship had ended at the beginning of middle school, when fitting in with the cool kids had become more important to Cinnamon McAlistair than hanging with the girl who had been by her side since Cinnamon had been the new girl in school in the second grade. And the way that had proved the most effective in ingratiating herself to the cool kids had been bullying and harassing Lexie at nearly every turn, from seventh grade on. The last two years had been a welcome respite, with Shepherd assuming that her onetime friend and present nemesis had gone to another school out of state or had settled into a comfortable life as some 40-year-old executive’s trophy wife.
“I transferred in, after…” Cinnamon began, but rather than finish the thought, she simply repeated, “I transferred in. Continuing my education.”
“Transferred in?” Lexie asked. “From…?” When Cinnamon hesitated to answer, Lexie’s face broke into a broad grin. “You went to thirteenth and fourteenth grade, didn’t you?” Montezuma Community College was often referred to as the thirteenth and fourteenth grade of Lexie’s and Cinnamon’s alma mater, O’Connor High, by those who enrolled there after graduation.
“Cinn?” the dirty blonde interjected herself. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to this… delightful creature?” She paused before those last two words, and had placed the emphasis on the opposite to the one Lexie would have preferred.
“Of course,” Cinnamon said. “Dyan Lyons, this is Lexie Shitsmear.”
“Cute,” Lexie muttered, under her breath.
“Shepherd!” Cinnamon corrected herself. “I always make that mistake, and I can never understand why. With that pug face to remind me, I shouldn’t forget Shepherd. Anyways, she is Montezuma’s resident egghead. You’ve heard of cheerleaders who’ve done the whole football team? Well, I have it on good authority that Lexie here once did the whole chess club, back in high school. Taught them a whole new definition of ‘queening.’”
“Charming,” Dyan replied, her voice entirely flat, no longer paying Lexie any mind. “Still, I think we’ll sit here.”
“But…” Cinnamon began to protest, but she was silenced with one look from Dyan. She took the open seat furthest from Lexie, while Dyan started to slip her backpack off her shoulders. Perhaps accidentally, but almost certainly not, as the dirty blonde swung her backpack in front of her to place at her feet, it struck Lexie’s energy drink, knocking the can over and spilling its contents into her lap. Shepherd jumped out of her seat with a squawk, hands raised, a darkened, damp patch now marring both the bottom of her tee and the crotch of her jeans…
… and, as the piece de resistance which Dyan could not possibly have planned, at that precise moment two women entered the lecture hall from the side door. Both redheads, one of whom was barely any older than the students in the classroom, dressed in a modest, light green, short sleeved mini sundress. The older of the two, perhaps in her mid-thirties, was a statuesque beauty, sporting a button up purple silk blouse underneath a black blazer, with a matching pencil skirt. Her flame red hair was pulled back into a high resting ponytail.
“See if you can find the young lady some paper towels, would you, Ms. Rivers?” Professor Eleanor Shackleford instructed her T.A.
“Yes, Professor Shackleford,” Trish Rivers dutifully responded.
While Trish went about her quest, the professor climbed the steps onto the lecture stage. But rather than give the assembled class any further acknowledgment, she went straight to the white board. And, taking a dry erase marker, she proceeded to write a single word on that white board, in four large, commanding letters:
SELF.
“It’s the most profound, and pressing, question in our world, isn’t it?” Shackleford asked, when she finally turned back to her class. “Who. Am. I? Who are you?”
She pointed toward a male student in the fourth row.
“Who is he? What makes him…”
She pointed to a young woman in the seventh row.
“Different from her? Apart from the physiological, of course.”
That earned a small chuckle from virtually the entire assembly. Save for Lexie, who remained preoccupied dabbing paper towels at her damp clothing.
“That is what we will explore in this class,” Professor Shackleford said. “By the end of this course, it is my sincere hope that you will all have a greater understand of what makes you who you believe yourself to be.”
She paused for a moment, before adding, “And who knows? Perhaps by the end of this course, you will come to learn that the person you think you are today and the person you truly are, are two entirely different things?”
Murphy’s MegaBoigah, downtown Montezuma, 12:17PM
Wes Murphy had become something of a cult figure here in Montezuma.
He was one of the first student athletes to achieve a form of stardom while attending MSU and had briefly made the Aztecs football program a player on the national scene. The flamboyant quarterback culminated his time at school with a fourth place finish in the Heisman balloting his junior year, followed by becoming the tenth pick in the NFL Draft.
His first two years put him on the cusp of realizing his potential… only for a series of injuries to both his knees to derail, and ultimately prematurely end, his professional football career.
With his playing days behind him, Murphy had returned to the scene of his greatest triumphs and begun a second career by opening a chain of fast food restaurants. The two locations in Montezuma, and especially the one closest to campus, had quickly become very popular with the MSU student body. Not so much for the food, which wasn’t… bad, per se, merely unremarkable and unspectacular.
No, what made Murphy’s MegaBoigah such a popular spot were the commercials, which Wes insisted on starring in. And every bit as gifted a college quarterback as Wes Murphy had been, he was equally ill-suited to being a commercial pitchman. This was for a variety of reasons, one of which being his thick accent, which he claimed to be a result of his Jersey upbringing. But few if any MSU students believed that any other human, anywhere else on the planet, sounded like Wes Murphy. And while he was self-aware enough to incorporate his distinctive speech pattern into the spelling of his establishment’s name, the college kids had gone a step further, and taken to mimicking his accent in calling it “Moy-fees.”
Done with her classes for the morning, Allison Vogel arrived at the Montezuma Campus Murphy’s. Before leaving the apartment this morning, she had settled on a darling, form hugging pink tank and a pair of black yoga pants, capping the ensemble off with a pair of white Reeboks and a floppy-brimmed black sun hat, a cute backpack slung over her shoulders. For a moment, she thought she might have beaten her bestie here, until her eyes settled on a less than surprising sight.
Sure enough, Michelle had made it here. So, too, had her boyfriend, Terrence Williams. The lovebirds sat at one of the picnic style tables outside the restaurant proper. Or, more accurately, Terrance sat at the table, while Michelle sat on the table, facing him, a foot beside each of his hips on the bench. She was leaning forward, arms around his neck, while the two engaged in some Grade A PDA. Had there been fewer people about, Allison might very well have covertly aimed a sonic wave toward the nearby fire hydrant, and douse the duo…
Instead, she settled for clearing her throat.
Terrence pulled back from the kiss, glancing beyond Michelle’s playfully pouting face and over her shoulder, to spot Allison. And for her part, Allison had to admit: she understood why her bestie had trouble containing herself. He was a rather attractive young African American man, possessing a face that, while long and narrow, was still pleasantly rounded. Short, thick hair descended into a finely groomed chin strap beard that lined a sharp jaw. He was usually afflicted by something that Allison liked to think of as “Resting Ominous Face”; his natural state appeared to be sporting a perpetually grave, serious expression. Until…
“Allie!” he beamed, unleashing a bright, charming smile that would have weakened knees weaker than Allison’s. Michelle adjusted herself on her perch, allowing Terrence the room to stand. He was somewhat on the diminutive size, standing maybe an inch taller than the brunette as her approached her. He wore a smart lavender sports jacket, quite at odds with the untucked green t-shirt underneath, with black slacks and a pair of pristine, white Jordans that looked like they might have just come out of the box. As his arms slipped around her, Allison turned her head left and right, allowing Terrence to place a quick kiss on each cheek.
It was only appropriate, as a theatre major, that everything Terrence did possessed a dramatic flourish.
“And how was school today, dear?” Michelle asked, the blonde adopting her most maternal voice. “Get in trouble for coloring outside the lines again?”
Allison rolled her eyes, if only slightly. “Gender Studies was a bit dry, but things picked up in Deviant Behavior.”
“They grow up so fast,” Terrence teased.
Dismounting the table, Michelle came up alongside her roommate, Terrance opening the door and bidding the duo inside. Once through the airlock, Allison soon spotted the fourth member of their circle, Lexie Shepherd, seated at a window booth, already enjoying a hearty lunch. The brunette started to slide one shoulder strap of her backpack down her arm, with the intent of fishing out her wallet from the small topside compartment, but Terrence raised a hand in a halting motion. “Ladies, ladies, I’ve got this.”
“You sure?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
Allison acquiesced, and after relaying her order to Terrence, she left the party to join Lexie. Michelle stayed at her boyfriend slide, sliding her arm around his as they waited in line. As she got closer, Allison’s eyes widened a bit as she tried to reconcile this five foot nothing, barely over three bills slip of a girl with the two crumpled burger wrappers and the half-finished double cheeseburger atop a third wrapper on the tray, and the half empty container of large fries. After finishing a sip of her soda, Lexie glanced up and asked, “Where are Kim and Kanye?”
Allison slid into the booth, scooting closer to the window, until she was directly facing the bubbly blonde. “In line. Terrence is ordering. If you’d been a little more patient, you might have gotten a free meal…” The brunette gave the remnants of Lexie’s lunch a pointed glance before adding, “Unless he didn’t want to take out a small loan, of course.”
“I’m a growing girl,” Lexie replied simply, in between bites of a fry.
“Bitch, you haven’t grown since fourth grade!” Allison volleyed back with a smile, before shifting gears. “So, was Shackleford’s class every bit the unspeakable evil you suspected it would be?”
“Not sure about her yet,” Lexie replied, Allison taking note of her friend’s slight shifting in her seat, “but there are a couple of girls in that class I wouldn’t be surprised to uncover being supervillains in training bras.”
As Lexie was talking, Allison’s hand had crept closer and closer to the blonde’s carton of fries. But just as she was about to stealthily procure one, Shepherd’s hand swatted hers away.
“Speaking of uncovering nefarious schemes,” Lexie continued, her voice dipping into a conspiratorial whisper, “you going to be able to pull yourself away from the books tonight, to keep an eye on the town?”
Allison nodded, then whispered her own response. “I doubt that shipment we intercepted last night was an isolated incident, or that that’s the only thing going down…”
She might have said more, but stopped herself when she noticed Terrence and Michelle nearing the table, a tray full of food in Terrence’s hands. Further discussion of crimefighting matters would have to wait until later…
Blanchard Hall Psychology Building, Montezuma State University campus, 4:57PM
“You wanted to see me?”
Dyan had been surprised when Professor Shackleford’s T.A. stopped her after class and asked her to come by the Professor’s office later in the afternoon. Catching the attention of a teacher had not been a regular occurrence in her academic career, and had in fact become something of a source of pride for her…
… well, catching the attention of a female teacher, at least. Catching the attention of male teachers and wrapping them around her pinky finger had been an even bigger source of pride.
“Sit down, please,” Shackleford instructed her, never once looking away from her computer’s monitor. “And close the door.”
Doing as instructed, Dyan pushed the door shut before making her way to the redheaded professor’s desk. Pulling the chair back slightly, she took a seat. And for a few moments, she sat there in silence, Shackleford continuing to type away at her keyboard. Neither the student nor the coffee residing in a mug that read “ALL MINDS MATTER” failed to draw any interest from her for the time being.
“Quite the production you and your friend put on before class,” Shackleford finally remarked, her attention still failing to move from the computer screen.
“I… I’m not sure I know what you mean,” the dirty blonde replied, though a sudden burst of nervous fidgeting suggested otherwise.
“Relax,” the Professor said calmly, at last turning to look at her. “You’re in college, Ms. Lyons. I’m not the principal, calling you in here to place you over my knee and give you a good paddling for your misbehavior.”
Lyons kept the crimson she felt rushing toward her cheeks at bay, maintaining as much of a poker face as she could. Had the Professor just let slip something of an indication toward her proclivities? If so, Dyan was certain she could put that knowledge to her best advantage, should the need ever arise.
But while Dyan’s wheels turned mentally, outwardly she said nothing.
“And far from drawing my wrath, Ms. Lyons,” Shackleford continued, “you’ve drawn my fascination. You see, I am less concerned with what you did than I am why you did it. In a sense, that question ties into the very nature of my class. So, Ms. Lyons, tell me: why were you and your friend antagonizing that poor girl?”
“I… I’m not sure that’s any of your business, Professor,” Dyan challenged, finding a measure of resolve despite the initial tremor in her voice.
“On the contrary,” Shackleford disagreed with something of a wry smirk, “the workings of the mind are the cornerstone of my business. And you still seem to be working under the misapprehension that I am sitting here in judgment upon you, Ms. Lyons. I assure you, I am not. My interest is purely academic, and not even remotely moral. So, I ask again: why did you do it?”
“Because… I could?” Dyan replied, the rising inflection of her voice transforming that response into more of a question than a statement. “Because it felt good, to knock that smartass brat down a peg or two?”
“Oh, I don’t doubt for a nanosecond the role the thirst for instant gratification was for you,” the Professor noted. “But that doesn’t answer the underlying question of what inspired those impulses in the first place. And I suspect that you don’t even know, yourself.”
Lyons settled back in her chair after a moment’s reflection. “Seeing as this was my first day in your class, Professor,” she said, “I’m not sure I have the vocabulary yet to dispute you.”
The redhead’s face broke into a broad, yet oddly cold, smile. “Splendid. Just the sort of response I was hoping for. Naturally, finding yourself in an unfamiliar situation opposite a figure of authority, you experienced some initial uncertainty. But the more I’ve sought to put you at ease, the more comfortable you’ve become. More importantly, the more you have attempt to establish yourself on equal, if not superior, footing to me.” Reaching into one of her desk drawers, Shackleford produced a small business card, which she passed across the desk to Dyan. “Which makes you just the sort of person I want to work with.”
The student took the card with only a hint of uncertainty. “And this is…”
“I am engaged in some, shall we say, independent research,” the Professor informed her. “Specifically, into the realm of dominant personalities. Queen bees, if you will.”
Dyan looked over the card, which prominently displayed a URL. “Forgive me for saying so, Professor, but that seems a surprisingly sexist term, coming from you.”
“Gender is a social construct, Ms. Lyons,” Shackleford shot back. “Males can be every bit as much ‘queen bees’ as females can be. At any rate, on that card is the registration page for you to become part of my research program. If you wish to take part, you will be compensated, of course. Both monetarily and in the form of credit for my class.”
The Professor took a sip of her coffee.
“And, judging from what happened this morning,” the redhead said, “I’m reasonably confident you might find aspects of this research… satisfying.”
Dyan regarded the card for a few moments, and then her head drifted into a cautious nod. “You’ve certainly piqued my interest, Professor.”
“Outstanding,” Shackleford declared. “So, if this is something that you’re interested in, go to that address when you get home. And I do ask that you wait until you are in the privacy of your own home to do this,” the redhead stressed. “After all, this is confidential research.”
“I understand,” Dyan agreed. And, following a handshake, the agreement was reached.
Montezuma State University campus, 10:24AM Tuesday
Allison had told her it would be a mistake, but Lexie hadn’t listened.
In the abstract, there was absolutely nothing wrong with scheduling Introduction to Number Theory and Algorithms and Complexity at 9AM and 10:30AM respectively for Tuesdays and Thursdays. The problem came in the form of campus planning, as the buildings hosting each course just so happened to be on opposite sides of the campus.
And she only had fifteen minutes to make it.
Part of her wish she had worn her wings onto campus, instead of her backpack. Terribly conspicuous, of course, but far more conducive to traveling long distances in a short amount of time than her wee little legs. Still, all things being equal, she was making good time as she weaved her way through her fellow students along the sidewalk. Passing the Fashion & Design building meant that she should only be a couple of minutes away from her destination…
“Oooooph!”
Lexie found herself knocked off stride by what felt like a shoulder, that caught her in the upper back. The bubbly blonde lurched forward and managed to reassert her balance after a couple of awkward steps, her arms unfolding from across her torso—and the pair of notebooks she was holding were both sent spilling to the ground.
“Excuse you!” an all too familiar and all too unwelcome voice said. “You could at least wear some heels. How is any normal sized person supposed to see you in front of them?”
Shepherd didn’t need to even look up as she dropped to one knee and started collecting her stuff, the last two years of relative tranquility becoming an increasingly distant memory. “Good morning to you, too, Cinnamon,” Lexie muttered. Her books back in her possession, she pushed back to her feet, turning as she did to face her old friend turned foe, and the woman whose shadow that Cinnamon had become…
… or at least, that’s what Lexie had expected to see. Instead, she saw Cinnamon all by her lonesome. “Don’t tell me Regina George already got sick of your perfume?”
Cinnamon McAlistair’s left foot cocked to the side, her face scrunching up in indignation. “Okay, first off, bitch. Second, this is Tom Ford, dammit. And third, I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about.”
“That bitch whose ass you were sniffing all through Psych class yesterday,” Lexie replied, far from above taking a little satisfaction in the taller blonde’s annoyance, and perfectly willing to twist the knife a little bit more. “Nasty break up, I take it? Hey, at least you got to see her spill a Red Bull in my lap.”
Shepherd had expected to see anger flash across her adversary’s face, but what she was met with instead bore a far more striking resemblance to confusion. It was soon Lexie’s turn to be confused, however, as Cinnamon reached out and touched the back of her hand to Lexie’s forehead. “Pasty, but not clammy. Or feverish,” McAlistair said. “But clearly imagining things.”
“I’m not imagining the pair of jeans in my hamper…” Lexie challenged, but Cinnamon abruptly cut her off.
“But you are imagining some other girl, and giving her credit for something I did. God only knows why.”
Before Shepherd could press the issue any further, however, Cinnamon simply brought her right hand up in front of her face, index finger and thumb extended in an ‘L’ sign at Lexie’s expense. She then turned on her heel and headed toward the steps of the Fashion & Design building. Under any other circumstances, Lexie might have found herself smirking over the predictability of Cinnamon’s choice of major. But not this time. Something weird was going on, but Lexie was suddenly certain of one thing:
She was going to be late for class.
Allison Vogel & Michelle Morrison’s apartment, 6:00AM Monday
VREEEEEK! VREEEEEK! VREEEEEK! VREEEEEK!
The incessant, electronic screech from across the room, courtesy of the alarm clock on her dresser, spurred Allison Vogel to roll over. As she did so, the brunette’s right arm spilled off the mattress. But instead of dropping toward the floor, the limb remained elevated, fingers extended toward the ceiling, her palm aimed toward the source of the noise pollution.
And as her brown eyes forced themselves open, instinct told Allison to launch a pulse of sonic energy at that damn alarm clock.
This was hardly an unprecedented situation. In the month immediately following her powers manifesting themselves, three alarm clocks had paid the ultimate price for having the unmitigated gall to do precisely what she had programmed them to. In the years since, Allison had learned how to keep this early morning bloodlust under control. “Shut. Up,” she hissed, swinging a pair of long, shapely legs off the bed as she willed herself up to a seated position. As she did so, the oversized pink Montezuma State University Aztecs football jersey that served as her favorite bit of sleepwear crept up her thighs, revealing just a slight hint of the black satin panties underneath. With a tiny yawn, Allison forced herself to stand, and shuffled across the room.
And then, at last, her hand brought a peaceful quiet to the room, as she slapped the off button.
She then brought her hands up to her eyes, wiping away some lingering sleep. Doing so allowed her vision to come into focus, with that focus initially falling on her own reflection, staring back at her from the dresser’s mirror. Some mornings, it was Songbird that she found facing her, even if she wasn’t wearing the mask. But not today; today, she saw a young woman of 20, her deep brown eyes residing under a pair of arcing dark brows, and above an impeccable set of cheekbones. Her nose was small and ever so slightly upturned, her lips pale and full. Her jawline descended into a narrow chin. And her raven black hair, wavy under normal circumstances, was positively wild and unruly after the four hours of sleep she had managed.
And yet… On her, somehow the bedhead worked.
Still, that bedhead would prove no match for the shower she was soon to take. Once she had washed away any remnants of her crimefighting adventures from the night before, a refreshed Allison Vogel would be ready to take on the first day of her junior year.
Michelle Morrison was that rarest of rare creatures: a young morning person.
When she turned her key in the lock of her apartment door and pushed it open, she did so with the energy of someone who had been awake for several hours already. She was pleasantly surprised to hear the sound of the showerhead, from behind the closed bathroom door. While it wasn’t the whole reason for her swinging back by the apartment this morning, if she was completely honest, part of the reason was that she did not fully trust her best friend and roommate to wake up on time. Satisfied at least on that score, she placed a box of donuts on the coffee table, opened it to grab one glazed jelly filled, and then made her way over to the kitchen, and to the refrigerator.
One would be forgiven for thinking Michelle was a high school junior, rather than a college junior, given her bright, innocent features. Of course, those bright, innocent features stood in something of a contrast to her current wardrobe: a white, short sleeved Beyonce t-shirt, tucked into a pair of blue denim short shorts, capped off by a pair of black thigh high boots that were every bit as visually striking and stunning as they were thoroughly impractical. A tall girl in her own right at five feet eight, the heels of those boots gave her a thoroughly unnecessary boost that made her threaten the six feet mark. Her straight blonde hair, parted in the middle, spilled past her shoulders on opposite sides, falling to the edge of her shoulderblade on the left, and nearly to the summit of her right breast.
She heard the water from the shower shut off as she removed a Diet Dr. Pepper from the fridge. Moments later, the bathroom door opened, and Allison trundled into the living room, her torso wrapped in one towel and her hair bundled within another. When she caught sight of Michelle, Allison did a small double take. “I thought you spent the night at Terrance’s?” she asked.
“I did,” the blonde replied. “My books didn’t. Besides, I never could sleep much before the first day of class. So many things to do, so many new people to meet…”
“So many boys to tease?” Allison asked, giving her roommate’s ensemble a quick once over.
Michelle brought a hand to her bosom, uttering a mock gasp of outrage. “You’re so… so…”
With her friend apparently having difficulty finding the right word, Allison volunteered, “Judgmental?”
The blonde shook her head, Michelle’s light brown eyes twinkling as she finally settled on, “Binary.”
Allison just chuckled. On practically anyone else, such confidence or self-assuredness would come across as arrogance, and be… off-putting, at best. In Michelle’s case, however, it somehow only added to her charm.
“Anyways,” the blonde said, heading toward her room, “you need to get dressed…”
Even with her back turned to her roomie, Morrison could see the look that Allison was giving her.
“… and I’ve got an 8 o’clock,” she concluded, grabbing her backpack from the edge of her bed. Returning to the living room after slipping its straps over her shoulders, Michelle posed a simple question. “Lunch?”
Allison’s response was a simple question in its own right. “Moy-fee’s?”
“Where else?”
“See you then,” Allison said, unwinding the towel from around her hair.
“In the meantime,” Michelle said, coming close enough to plant a quick kiss on her bestie’s forehead, “have fun. And always remember: don’t do anyone I wouldn’t do.”
“And just who does that leave?” Allison called after her departing roommate. In response, Michelle spun on her heel, brought a hand to her crimson lips and blew the brunette a kiss… only as she pulled her hand away from her mouth, four of its five digits curled inward, toward her palm, leaving only the middle one fully extended.
In stark contrast to that gesture, the young blonde brightly called back, “Love you!”
Allison could only shake her head as the front door closed with a moderate thud.
Montezuma State University campus, 9:09AM
“6 minutes to go…”
Lexie Shepherd pressed the button on the side of her Android, and the time disappeared as the screen turned to black. She placed the phone down, just above her energy drink, on the small wooden panel attached to the right armrest of her seat, an undersized desk for an undersized girl.
Which was not to say that Lexie was an unhealthy girl, just that she was… tiny. Short of stature and lithe in build, “cute as a button” was a phrase that she was not unaccustomed to hearing. So much so, in fact, that she had developed a common rejoinder of, “Cute as a FUCKING button, I think you mean.” As adult as that language might be, however, the fresh-faced blonde’s apple cheeks and perpetually twinkling, rounder than round blue eyes (behind a pair of wire rimmed glasses) conveyed a disarming sense of innocence. Her hair was long, spilling into curling waves as it framed her face and fell in front of her shoulders, reaching as far as her breasts, which were every bit as pert and perky as she was. She wore a pink tee, which read in white, cursive script ‘Zombies Want Me for my Brain’, as well a pair of snug, light blue jeans that were effectively missing the denim that should have covered the kneecaps, and finally a pair of Chucks that appeared to be a couple of years old at this point.
Of course, she certainly knew that the whole if-the-professor-is-15-minutes-late-for-class thing was every bit as much a myth as the you-get-an-automatic-4.0-if-your-roommate-commits-suicide thing. But that didn’t mean that Lexie wouldn’t be above taking advantage of it, should circumstances allow. She started to reach for her phone again, to see if those 6 minutes had passed in the last 30 seconds, but she stopped herself when, amongst the sea of voices of the couple hundred students who populated the lecture hall at the moment, a pair of voices came to the fore. First, because they were getting closer, but second, because Lexie thought she recognized one of them…
Shepherd looked over her shoulder and sighed when she found her suspicions confirmed. Heading down the steps toward her position in the front row were two women, both blondes, one of the dirty variety, the other more of a platinum. The platinum blonde actually stood the taller of the two, if only by an inch, though she trailed the other woman and appeared more to follow her lead. The dirty blonde’s pale, bow shaped lips seemed genetically incapable of forming a smile, and her icy blue eyes gave the impression that nothing could impress her, ever. Her tresses were pulled into braided ponytail that draped over her left shoulder. She was dressed in a curve-hugging, open shoulder black dress that seemed more designed for the club than the classroom, its plunging neckline putting her relatively modest cleavage on pleasing display nevertheless—and the diamond pendant necklace residing within demanding that even the most disinterested to give a glance that way.
Both that necklace and the Jimmy Choo pumps suggested that she did not need a scholarship to get into Montezuma State University.
The platinum blonde was a willowier figure, but similarly seemed dressed more for an evening of misadventure than a morning of education. She wore a black mesh, long sleeved top over a black lace bralette, with matching leather shorts that showcased stunningly long legs that were adorned in a pair of black, over the knee, peep toed boots with stiletto heels, laced up the back. Her blue eyes were clear, her forehead relatively high, and her jawline sharp.
As they reached the front row of the class, the dirty blonde pointed to a pair of empty seats, not far from Lexie. “How about here?” she asked her friend.
The platinum blonde started to follow her companion’s finger, until her eyes locked with Lexie’s. At which point, her face blanched with disgust, as if one of the stiletto heels of her boots had just sunk into an unexpected pile of canine excrement on the sidewalk of the shopping district in downtown Montezuma. “Pass,” she said, threatening to earn a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for most contempt packed into a single syllable.
That wasn’t lost on the other blonde, and it certainly wasn’t lost in Lexie. “Please,” Shepherd agreed, matching that contempt in equal measure. “I can already feel my IQ points melting away, the longer you stand here. What are you even doing here, Cinnamon?”
It was the sort of animosity that only one type of people could summon: former friends. Of course, that friendship had ended at the beginning of middle school, when fitting in with the cool kids had become more important to Cinnamon McAlistair than hanging with the girl who had been by her side since Cinnamon had been the new girl in school in the second grade. And the way that had proved the most effective in ingratiating herself to the cool kids had been bullying and harassing Lexie at nearly every turn, from seventh grade on. The last two years had been a welcome respite, with Shepherd assuming that her onetime friend and present nemesis had gone to another school out of state or had settled into a comfortable life as some 40-year-old executive’s trophy wife.
“I transferred in, after…” Cinnamon began, but rather than finish the thought, she simply repeated, “I transferred in. Continuing my education.”
“Transferred in?” Lexie asked. “From…?” When Cinnamon hesitated to answer, Lexie’s face broke into a broad grin. “You went to thirteenth and fourteenth grade, didn’t you?” Montezuma Community College was often referred to as the thirteenth and fourteenth grade of Lexie’s and Cinnamon’s alma mater, O’Connor High, by those who enrolled there after graduation.
“Cinn?” the dirty blonde interjected herself. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to this… delightful creature?” She paused before those last two words, and had placed the emphasis on the opposite to the one Lexie would have preferred.
“Of course,” Cinnamon said. “Dyan Lyons, this is Lexie Shitsmear.”
“Cute,” Lexie muttered, under her breath.
“Shepherd!” Cinnamon corrected herself. “I always make that mistake, and I can never understand why. With that pug face to remind me, I shouldn’t forget Shepherd. Anyways, she is Montezuma’s resident egghead. You’ve heard of cheerleaders who’ve done the whole football team? Well, I have it on good authority that Lexie here once did the whole chess club, back in high school. Taught them a whole new definition of ‘queening.’”
“Charming,” Dyan replied, her voice entirely flat, no longer paying Lexie any mind. “Still, I think we’ll sit here.”
“But…” Cinnamon began to protest, but she was silenced with one look from Dyan. She took the open seat furthest from Lexie, while Dyan started to slip her backpack off her shoulders. Perhaps accidentally, but almost certainly not, as the dirty blonde swung her backpack in front of her to place at her feet, it struck Lexie’s energy drink, knocking the can over and spilling its contents into her lap. Shepherd jumped out of her seat with a squawk, hands raised, a darkened, damp patch now marring both the bottom of her tee and the crotch of her jeans…
… and, as the piece de resistance which Dyan could not possibly have planned, at that precise moment two women entered the lecture hall from the side door. Both redheads, one of whom was barely any older than the students in the classroom, dressed in a modest, light green, short sleeved mini sundress. The older of the two, perhaps in her mid-thirties, was a statuesque beauty, sporting a button up purple silk blouse underneath a black blazer, with a matching pencil skirt. Her flame red hair was pulled back into a high resting ponytail.
“See if you can find the young lady some paper towels, would you, Ms. Rivers?” Professor Eleanor Shackleford instructed her T.A.
“Yes, Professor Shackleford,” Trish Rivers dutifully responded.
While Trish went about her quest, the professor climbed the steps onto the lecture stage. But rather than give the assembled class any further acknowledgment, she went straight to the white board. And, taking a dry erase marker, she proceeded to write a single word on that white board, in four large, commanding letters:
SELF.
“It’s the most profound, and pressing, question in our world, isn’t it?” Shackleford asked, when she finally turned back to her class. “Who. Am. I? Who are you?”
She pointed toward a male student in the fourth row.
“Who is he? What makes him…”
She pointed to a young woman in the seventh row.
“Different from her? Apart from the physiological, of course.”
That earned a small chuckle from virtually the entire assembly. Save for Lexie, who remained preoccupied dabbing paper towels at her damp clothing.
“That is what we will explore in this class,” Professor Shackleford said. “By the end of this course, it is my sincere hope that you will all have a greater understand of what makes you who you believe yourself to be.”
She paused for a moment, before adding, “And who knows? Perhaps by the end of this course, you will come to learn that the person you think you are today and the person you truly are, are two entirely different things?”
Murphy’s MegaBoigah, downtown Montezuma, 12:17PM
Wes Murphy had become something of a cult figure here in Montezuma.
He was one of the first student athletes to achieve a form of stardom while attending MSU and had briefly made the Aztecs football program a player on the national scene. The flamboyant quarterback culminated his time at school with a fourth place finish in the Heisman balloting his junior year, followed by becoming the tenth pick in the NFL Draft.
His first two years put him on the cusp of realizing his potential… only for a series of injuries to both his knees to derail, and ultimately prematurely end, his professional football career.
With his playing days behind him, Murphy had returned to the scene of his greatest triumphs and begun a second career by opening a chain of fast food restaurants. The two locations in Montezuma, and especially the one closest to campus, had quickly become very popular with the MSU student body. Not so much for the food, which wasn’t… bad, per se, merely unremarkable and unspectacular.
No, what made Murphy’s MegaBoigah such a popular spot were the commercials, which Wes insisted on starring in. And every bit as gifted a college quarterback as Wes Murphy had been, he was equally ill-suited to being a commercial pitchman. This was for a variety of reasons, one of which being his thick accent, which he claimed to be a result of his Jersey upbringing. But few if any MSU students believed that any other human, anywhere else on the planet, sounded like Wes Murphy. And while he was self-aware enough to incorporate his distinctive speech pattern into the spelling of his establishment’s name, the college kids had gone a step further, and taken to mimicking his accent in calling it “Moy-fees.”
Done with her classes for the morning, Allison Vogel arrived at the Montezuma Campus Murphy’s. Before leaving the apartment this morning, she had settled on a darling, form hugging pink tank and a pair of black yoga pants, capping the ensemble off with a pair of white Reeboks and a floppy-brimmed black sun hat, a cute backpack slung over her shoulders. For a moment, she thought she might have beaten her bestie here, until her eyes settled on a less than surprising sight.
Sure enough, Michelle had made it here. So, too, had her boyfriend, Terrence Williams. The lovebirds sat at one of the picnic style tables outside the restaurant proper. Or, more accurately, Terrance sat at the table, while Michelle sat on the table, facing him, a foot beside each of his hips on the bench. She was leaning forward, arms around his neck, while the two engaged in some Grade A PDA. Had there been fewer people about, Allison might very well have covertly aimed a sonic wave toward the nearby fire hydrant, and douse the duo…
Instead, she settled for clearing her throat.
Terrence pulled back from the kiss, glancing beyond Michelle’s playfully pouting face and over her shoulder, to spot Allison. And for her part, Allison had to admit: she understood why her bestie had trouble containing herself. He was a rather attractive young African American man, possessing a face that, while long and narrow, was still pleasantly rounded. Short, thick hair descended into a finely groomed chin strap beard that lined a sharp jaw. He was usually afflicted by something that Allison liked to think of as “Resting Ominous Face”; his natural state appeared to be sporting a perpetually grave, serious expression. Until…
“Allie!” he beamed, unleashing a bright, charming smile that would have weakened knees weaker than Allison’s. Michelle adjusted herself on her perch, allowing Terrence the room to stand. He was somewhat on the diminutive size, standing maybe an inch taller than the brunette as her approached her. He wore a smart lavender sports jacket, quite at odds with the untucked green t-shirt underneath, with black slacks and a pair of pristine, white Jordans that looked like they might have just come out of the box. As his arms slipped around her, Allison turned her head left and right, allowing Terrence to place a quick kiss on each cheek.
It was only appropriate, as a theatre major, that everything Terrence did possessed a dramatic flourish.
“And how was school today, dear?” Michelle asked, the blonde adopting her most maternal voice. “Get in trouble for coloring outside the lines again?”
Allison rolled her eyes, if only slightly. “Gender Studies was a bit dry, but things picked up in Deviant Behavior.”
“They grow up so fast,” Terrence teased.
Dismounting the table, Michelle came up alongside her roommate, Terrance opening the door and bidding the duo inside. Once through the airlock, Allison soon spotted the fourth member of their circle, Lexie Shepherd, seated at a window booth, already enjoying a hearty lunch. The brunette started to slide one shoulder strap of her backpack down her arm, with the intent of fishing out her wallet from the small topside compartment, but Terrence raised a hand in a halting motion. “Ladies, ladies, I’ve got this.”
“You sure?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
Allison acquiesced, and after relaying her order to Terrence, she left the party to join Lexie. Michelle stayed at her boyfriend slide, sliding her arm around his as they waited in line. As she got closer, Allison’s eyes widened a bit as she tried to reconcile this five foot nothing, barely over three bills slip of a girl with the two crumpled burger wrappers and the half-finished double cheeseburger atop a third wrapper on the tray, and the half empty container of large fries. After finishing a sip of her soda, Lexie glanced up and asked, “Where are Kim and Kanye?”
Allison slid into the booth, scooting closer to the window, until she was directly facing the bubbly blonde. “In line. Terrence is ordering. If you’d been a little more patient, you might have gotten a free meal…” The brunette gave the remnants of Lexie’s lunch a pointed glance before adding, “Unless he didn’t want to take out a small loan, of course.”
“I’m a growing girl,” Lexie replied simply, in between bites of a fry.
“Bitch, you haven’t grown since fourth grade!” Allison volleyed back with a smile, before shifting gears. “So, was Shackleford’s class every bit the unspeakable evil you suspected it would be?”
“Not sure about her yet,” Lexie replied, Allison taking note of her friend’s slight shifting in her seat, “but there are a couple of girls in that class I wouldn’t be surprised to uncover being supervillains in training bras.”
As Lexie was talking, Allison’s hand had crept closer and closer to the blonde’s carton of fries. But just as she was about to stealthily procure one, Shepherd’s hand swatted hers away.
“Speaking of uncovering nefarious schemes,” Lexie continued, her voice dipping into a conspiratorial whisper, “you going to be able to pull yourself away from the books tonight, to keep an eye on the town?”
Allison nodded, then whispered her own response. “I doubt that shipment we intercepted last night was an isolated incident, or that that’s the only thing going down…”
She might have said more, but stopped herself when she noticed Terrence and Michelle nearing the table, a tray full of food in Terrence’s hands. Further discussion of crimefighting matters would have to wait until later…
Blanchard Hall Psychology Building, Montezuma State University campus, 4:57PM
“You wanted to see me?”
Dyan had been surprised when Professor Shackleford’s T.A. stopped her after class and asked her to come by the Professor’s office later in the afternoon. Catching the attention of a teacher had not been a regular occurrence in her academic career, and had in fact become something of a source of pride for her…
… well, catching the attention of a female teacher, at least. Catching the attention of male teachers and wrapping them around her pinky finger had been an even bigger source of pride.
“Sit down, please,” Shackleford instructed her, never once looking away from her computer’s monitor. “And close the door.”
Doing as instructed, Dyan pushed the door shut before making her way to the redheaded professor’s desk. Pulling the chair back slightly, she took a seat. And for a few moments, she sat there in silence, Shackleford continuing to type away at her keyboard. Neither the student nor the coffee residing in a mug that read “ALL MINDS MATTER” failed to draw any interest from her for the time being.
“Quite the production you and your friend put on before class,” Shackleford finally remarked, her attention still failing to move from the computer screen.
“I… I’m not sure I know what you mean,” the dirty blonde replied, though a sudden burst of nervous fidgeting suggested otherwise.
“Relax,” the Professor said calmly, at last turning to look at her. “You’re in college, Ms. Lyons. I’m not the principal, calling you in here to place you over my knee and give you a good paddling for your misbehavior.”
Lyons kept the crimson she felt rushing toward her cheeks at bay, maintaining as much of a poker face as she could. Had the Professor just let slip something of an indication toward her proclivities? If so, Dyan was certain she could put that knowledge to her best advantage, should the need ever arise.
But while Dyan’s wheels turned mentally, outwardly she said nothing.
“And far from drawing my wrath, Ms. Lyons,” Shackleford continued, “you’ve drawn my fascination. You see, I am less concerned with what you did than I am why you did it. In a sense, that question ties into the very nature of my class. So, Ms. Lyons, tell me: why were you and your friend antagonizing that poor girl?”
“I… I’m not sure that’s any of your business, Professor,” Dyan challenged, finding a measure of resolve despite the initial tremor in her voice.
“On the contrary,” Shackleford disagreed with something of a wry smirk, “the workings of the mind are the cornerstone of my business. And you still seem to be working under the misapprehension that I am sitting here in judgment upon you, Ms. Lyons. I assure you, I am not. My interest is purely academic, and not even remotely moral. So, I ask again: why did you do it?”
“Because… I could?” Dyan replied, the rising inflection of her voice transforming that response into more of a question than a statement. “Because it felt good, to knock that smartass brat down a peg or two?”
“Oh, I don’t doubt for a nanosecond the role the thirst for instant gratification was for you,” the Professor noted. “But that doesn’t answer the underlying question of what inspired those impulses in the first place. And I suspect that you don’t even know, yourself.”
Lyons settled back in her chair after a moment’s reflection. “Seeing as this was my first day in your class, Professor,” she said, “I’m not sure I have the vocabulary yet to dispute you.”
The redhead’s face broke into a broad, yet oddly cold, smile. “Splendid. Just the sort of response I was hoping for. Naturally, finding yourself in an unfamiliar situation opposite a figure of authority, you experienced some initial uncertainty. But the more I’ve sought to put you at ease, the more comfortable you’ve become. More importantly, the more you have attempt to establish yourself on equal, if not superior, footing to me.” Reaching into one of her desk drawers, Shackleford produced a small business card, which she passed across the desk to Dyan. “Which makes you just the sort of person I want to work with.”
The student took the card with only a hint of uncertainty. “And this is…”
“I am engaged in some, shall we say, independent research,” the Professor informed her. “Specifically, into the realm of dominant personalities. Queen bees, if you will.”
Dyan looked over the card, which prominently displayed a URL. “Forgive me for saying so, Professor, but that seems a surprisingly sexist term, coming from you.”
“Gender is a social construct, Ms. Lyons,” Shackleford shot back. “Males can be every bit as much ‘queen bees’ as females can be. At any rate, on that card is the registration page for you to become part of my research program. If you wish to take part, you will be compensated, of course. Both monetarily and in the form of credit for my class.”
The Professor took a sip of her coffee.
“And, judging from what happened this morning,” the redhead said, “I’m reasonably confident you might find aspects of this research… satisfying.”
Dyan regarded the card for a few moments, and then her head drifted into a cautious nod. “You’ve certainly piqued my interest, Professor.”
“Outstanding,” Shackleford declared. “So, if this is something that you’re interested in, go to that address when you get home. And I do ask that you wait until you are in the privacy of your own home to do this,” the redhead stressed. “After all, this is confidential research.”
“I understand,” Dyan agreed. And, following a handshake, the agreement was reached.
Montezuma State University campus, 10:24AM Tuesday
Allison had told her it would be a mistake, but Lexie hadn’t listened.
In the abstract, there was absolutely nothing wrong with scheduling Introduction to Number Theory and Algorithms and Complexity at 9AM and 10:30AM respectively for Tuesdays and Thursdays. The problem came in the form of campus planning, as the buildings hosting each course just so happened to be on opposite sides of the campus.
And she only had fifteen minutes to make it.
Part of her wish she had worn her wings onto campus, instead of her backpack. Terribly conspicuous, of course, but far more conducive to traveling long distances in a short amount of time than her wee little legs. Still, all things being equal, she was making good time as she weaved her way through her fellow students along the sidewalk. Passing the Fashion & Design building meant that she should only be a couple of minutes away from her destination…
“Oooooph!”
Lexie found herself knocked off stride by what felt like a shoulder, that caught her in the upper back. The bubbly blonde lurched forward and managed to reassert her balance after a couple of awkward steps, her arms unfolding from across her torso—and the pair of notebooks she was holding were both sent spilling to the ground.
“Excuse you!” an all too familiar and all too unwelcome voice said. “You could at least wear some heels. How is any normal sized person supposed to see you in front of them?”
Shepherd didn’t need to even look up as she dropped to one knee and started collecting her stuff, the last two years of relative tranquility becoming an increasingly distant memory. “Good morning to you, too, Cinnamon,” Lexie muttered. Her books back in her possession, she pushed back to her feet, turning as she did to face her old friend turned foe, and the woman whose shadow that Cinnamon had become…
… or at least, that’s what Lexie had expected to see. Instead, she saw Cinnamon all by her lonesome. “Don’t tell me Regina George already got sick of your perfume?”
Cinnamon McAlistair’s left foot cocked to the side, her face scrunching up in indignation. “Okay, first off, bitch. Second, this is Tom Ford, dammit. And third, I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about.”
“That bitch whose ass you were sniffing all through Psych class yesterday,” Lexie replied, far from above taking a little satisfaction in the taller blonde’s annoyance, and perfectly willing to twist the knife a little bit more. “Nasty break up, I take it? Hey, at least you got to see her spill a Red Bull in my lap.”
Shepherd had expected to see anger flash across her adversary’s face, but what she was met with instead bore a far more striking resemblance to confusion. It was soon Lexie’s turn to be confused, however, as Cinnamon reached out and touched the back of her hand to Lexie’s forehead. “Pasty, but not clammy. Or feverish,” McAlistair said. “But clearly imagining things.”
“I’m not imagining the pair of jeans in my hamper…” Lexie challenged, but Cinnamon abruptly cut her off.
“But you are imagining some other girl, and giving her credit for something I did. God only knows why.”
Before Shepherd could press the issue any further, however, Cinnamon simply brought her right hand up in front of her face, index finger and thumb extended in an ‘L’ sign at Lexie’s expense. She then turned on her heel and headed toward the steps of the Fashion & Design building. Under any other circumstances, Lexie might have found herself smirking over the predictability of Cinnamon’s choice of major. But not this time. Something weird was going on, but Lexie was suddenly certain of one thing:
She was going to be late for class.
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HeroineMark
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ACT ONE, PART TWO
Unknown, 10:38AM
“I must say, I am taking considerably more satisfaction in this than I ever expected to.”
What he was taking satisfaction in, however, would fill most people with a sense of decency with disgust. He was looking through the sort of bars one would expect to find in a prison cell, but while there was indeed a prisoner of sorts on the other side, it was readily apparent that this was no state, taxpayer funded jail.
For a start, the young woman inside the cell was almost completely naked. She was on her knees, the curve of her pert glutes resting against the balls of her heels, her hands bound behind her back. Aside from the shackles around her wrists, the only other article that could in a charitable fashion be considered clothing was what appeared to be a high tech collar fastened around her neck, a couple of small green lights and one red one on its surface blinking at semi-regular intervals.
And she knelt there, completely still. This wasn’t the stillness of someone resigned to her fate. This was the stillness of someone completely unaware of her fate, despite the fact that her dilated blue eyes were wide open.
Gesturing a hand toward the steel bars, the man asked of the third person in the vicinity, “May I?”
“By all means,” she replied, keying a combination into the digital panel on the wall which sent the bars rising into the ceiling. “You paid a considerable amount of money, Mr. Braxton. It seems only fair you be allowed to inspect the merchandise before delivery.”
His only response was a small nod, before he stepped inside the cell…
The kneeling woman never even registered the intrusion.
Slowly, appraisingly, he circled around behind her. Absently, he reached down a hand, scooping up a few strands of dirty blonde locks, which he allowed to slip back through his fingers. “I’m sure you think me a monster,” he said, addressing the woman who had apparently ‘acquired’ this poor, unfortunate soul on his behalf.
“Humanity is a mass of complexity, Mr. Braxton,” the woman responded, “and it fascinates me in all manners. Trust me, there’s no judgment here.”
He offered an uncertain half-smile, grateful for the effort to ease his discomfort, but clearly unable to believe that anything about… this… could be considered normal. Or be empathized with.
“I will admit,” she did add, “procuring a… specific subject is not normally what I do. There’s no shortage of people willing to bid on pliable young flesh and empty minds at auction. Though even those bidding wars rarely reach the heights of what you offered for this young lady…”
Suddenly, the man’s tone turned harsh, though his voice remained level. “This is no lady,” he declared, all concerns he might have felt over being perceived as some sort of beast momentarily forgotten. “This… brat… made my daughter’s freshman year of high school a living hell.” Slipping a pair of fingers underneath the kneeling girl’s chin, he tilted her head upward, so that her vacant eyes met his gaze. “Didn’t you, Dyan?”
The girl who once thought of herself as Dyan Lyons didn’t respond.
“I’ve spent three years, trying to put my little girl’s life back together again…”
The woman outside the cell arched a bemused eyebrow. “This would certainly qualify as the most unique graduation present I’ve ever seen, Mr. Braxton,” she said. “I commend your creativity, and dedication to your progeny. And I’m sure she’ll be pleased. So long as Dyan… or whatever you choose to call her… wears that collar, either you or your no doubt charming daughter can…”
It took her a little more than a second to find the right term.
“… re-write Ms. Lyons into whatever you wish her to be. Then, once you’re satisfied with what you’ve shaped her into, the collar can be removed, and that new identity will hold.”
Mr. Braxton said nothing for a moment, and instead continued to examine and inspect the kneeling young woman. “Thank you,” he finally replied, simply. “I’m not sure anything would make my little Brenda happier than being able to make this…”
He tried to find the exact pejorative to capture his animosity toward this girl, but ultimately gave up after a few moments.
“… than making her suffer like she had. I just fear the possibility of discovery…”
She shook her head. “I told you when we first spoke, Mr. Braxton, that’s part of the service I offer. That possibility does not exist.”
“So you say,” he said, sounding far from convinced. “But I still don’t understand…”
“You don’t need to, Mr. Braxton,” she interrupted. “All you need to understand is, to the rest of the world, Dyan Lyons has not merely ceased to exist…”
The woman offered her client a chilling smile.
“To them, Dyan Lyons has never existed.”
Lexie Shepherd’s apartment, 3:51PM
Allison and Lexie were close friends, but that wasn’t the reason why Allison had a key to Lexie’s place.
Well, technically, it was her parents’ names on the deed, but Lexie was the only person who lived there. It had been her parents idea to “gift” Lexie with a modest property, where she wouldn’t have to worry about paying rent or deal with the distraction of a wild and crazy roommate and their wild parties, giving their little girl the freedom to focus on her studies.
That had been their thinking, anyway.
Having a place totally to herself made it a natural choice for Allison and Lexie to base their operation. As much as she adored living with her bestie, it had been a recurring nightmare for the young brunette at the start of her crimefighting career, Michelle sneaking into her closet to borrow some darling number for a party, and instead finding Allison’s Songbird costume.
Allison gently chucked her backpack onto the couch, her gaze momentarily settling on the digital picture frame on the end table as it cycled through a series of photos of Lexie with her parents. Those pics always made Allison chuckle. That Lexie’s mother was the shorter of her two parents wasn’t a surprise, but that she was still six feet four, and a couple of inches shorter than her husband, and that they had produced li’l ol’ Lexie, was.
Stepping into the hallway that led straight to Lexie’s bedroom, Allison instead took a quick left turn, opening a door, behind which a staircase descended into the basement. She ignored the light switch by the doorframe, and instead took a couple of steps down, until the motion sensors recognized her presence and turned on the overhead light. Reaching the bottom, Vogel found herself in what appeared to be equal parts a storage and computer room, shelves and boxes on one side, and tables on the other, one with a Mac, one with a desktop PC, and others with various bits of hardware, in various states of assembly.
The brunette approached the far wall, which was aligned with bookshelves, apart from about a three foot gap in the middle. Making her way to the shelf on the right hand side of the gap, Allison pushed aside a couple of books, then reached her hand through the space she had created, placing her hand in the scanner that had been hidden behind those books. Roughly three seconds later, a small panel opened on the wall between those shelves, at eye level…
… well, at Lexie’s eye level. Allison was certain that her friend had done that quite deliberately, and that she took great satisfaction every time that Allison had to lower her head to line up with and meet the second scanner’s lens. Once her retinal pattern had been verified, that small panel slid back into place, before part of the wall slid to the right, revealing a hidden entranceway. Allison promptly stepped inside.
The security features had all been Lexie’s doing, but the room itself was not. It had just been a happy coincidence, Lexie discovering this secret chamber shortly after moving into the house. She couldn’t be sure how long it had been a part of the building, though the presence of a generator as the lone artifact remaining from a previous owner suggested that it was of relatively modern origin. Lexie had since outfitted the spacious room with lots of computer equipment, and had set aside space both for costume storage, training, as well as a workspace for Lexie to develop her various gadgets.
And even this secret chamber had a secret exit: a tunnel leading out into the nearby woods, which had caused both Allison and Lexie to spend time speculating on whether they were the first people to use this place as a base of crimefighting operations.
Allison had christened it ‘the Nest.’
Lexie sat at a computer, still ‘out of uniform,’ as it were. “Got your message,” Allison said, placing a hand on her partner’s shoulder as she, too, began to intently study the screen. “What am I looking at?”
“You remember me ever telling you about an asshat named Cinnamon?” Lexie asked.
“Blonde, snotty, and seemed to make it her mission to make you curse your birth?” Allison queried back.
“That’s the one,” Shepherd nodded. “She popped up in my Psych class yesterday, attached at the hip to an even bigger brat, Dyan. Not gonna lie, it was kinda fun watching her kiss the ass of a new alpha.”
“Okaaaaaayyy…” the brunette said, still not certain of why this warranted calling her over.
“Well, I ran into Cinnamon on campus again this morning,” Lexie continued. “No Dyan this time. But she acted like she’d never even heard of Dyan. Like I was making her up…”
“Maybe they had a fight? Dyan figured she was too much of a bitch, even for her?”
The blonde shook her head. “Talked to a couple of other people from Psych class this afternoon. They couldn’t remember any Dyan, either. And I’d seen some of them talk to Dyan yesterday.”
“Weird…”
“And I don’t think she’s the first.”
Allison’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve done some digging, while waiting for you to get here,” Lexie said, switching tabs on her browser. “So far, I’ve found no less than seven students—all girls—who have just… vanished. Stopped going to classes. No record of a transfer or withdrawal in the registrar’s files. I call up their social media…”
Lexie switched to another tab, displaying the Facebook page of a young woman.
“Nothing,” the blonde declared. “No activity from them. No concerned messages from their friends. Nothing shared to their wall.”
Shepherd called up one more tab.
“In at least one case,” she said, “a police report was filed, by the parents of a girl from Texas. But then…”
Lexie snapped her fingers.
“Nothing. It’s not that all the leads turned up dead ends. There are NO leads. It’s as if the initial report was filed, and then there’s no investigation…”
“You don’t think Montezuma PD is in on this… well, whatever this is, do you?”
Shepherd shook her head. “Why create even that much of a paper trail by filing an initial report? No, I think whatever’s going on is beyond their scope.”
The brunette gave her partner’s shoulder a squeeze. “But not beyond ours. We’ll find out what happened to Dyan.”
The corners of Lexie’s mouth started to curl upward, but almost just as quickly reversed course. “I’m… not sure how I should feel about that.”
Edwards Hall Theatre Building, Montezuma State University campus, 5:32PM
From the moment he had stepped into the theatre for his first audition freshman year, it had been Terrance Williams’ favorite place on campus, and perhaps one of his favorite places in the world.
Even right now, with the school year barely begun and the department yet to kick its season into gear, the open space of the auditorium had such an inviting, calming presence for him. He would often sneak in during quiet periods of the day—the doors weren’t locked, so it could hardly be considered trespassing. With the house lights lowered as they were, one could practically disappear into the shadows, seated in the back row…
… which had helped the Edwards Theatre become one of Michelle Morrison’s favorite places, in the time she and Terrance had been together.
Michelle sat next to her boyfriend, her head resting against his right shoulder. They weren’t alone—a handful of stagecraft students were down below, treading the boards, examining the lighting and such. But there were no professors about, and again, from their vantage point in the backrow, she and Terrance would hardly draw the attention of a rapt audience…
… but still, the two sat in relative, contemplative silence.
Which was finally broken by Michelle. “Fuck, I’ve missed you…”
Terrance drew in a short, but deep, satisfied breath, which he released in the form of a soft chuckle. “Michelle, my sweet,” he said, his arm around the blonde’s shoulder pulling her in a little tighter for the moment, “we have spent just about every spare minute of the last four nights together.”
Morrison crossed her arms and made such a production of forming a pout on her lips that there would be some justifiable confusion over which one of them was the theatre major. “You say that like it makes up for the past two months…”
Shaking his head, Terrance rolled his eyes playfully, never one to be upstaged. “First of all, you know I could not pass up that internship at Paramount. And second, even if I had still been in town, that wouldn’t have made much difference, with you back at your parents in Florida.”
“Uhhhhhh, I do not recall me being the subject here,” Michelle objected.
“Like you would ever object to being the subject,” Terrance countered, leaning over to give the blonde a light kiss. Much to their mutual consternation, however, before that gentle kiss could become anything more, they both heard a light buzz in the air, and Michelle felt the vibration of her cell against her hip.
“Sadly,” Michelle sighed, “that’s my cue. You’ve got your meeting, and I’ve got some homework for Shackleford’s class I should probably knock out.” The blonde’s eyes twinkled for a moment, as she teasingly drew her bottom lip for a fleeting moment between her teeth. “Should I expect you to swing by later?”
As Morrison stood up, Terrance chose to neither confirm nor deny. “Are you just asking so that you know whether or not you need to stay decent?”
“Oh, honey,” Michelle said with a wink, “I’ve never been decent a day in my life. And you wouldn’t have me any other way.”
She turned and started down the aisle toward the exit, while making certain to inject an extra bit of swish into her hips for the first couple of steps, just for Terrance’s benefit. And he had to admit, she made a compelling case.
The Nest, 6:47PM
“Anything?” Allison asked, her voice somewhat garbled by the pizza she was chewing. Her left hand held a plate, while her right hand partnered with her hip to carry the box into their secret headquarters.
The apple cheeked blonde shook her head as the door to the Nest slipped closed behind Vogel. Before Lexie could offer a verbal response, however, she noticed her friend place the closed carton on the desk, about a foot to the right of her keyboard. Her eyes narrowing as she looked up at the brunette, Lexie’s voice lowered into a menacing whisper as she said, “If I open this box, and see even one solitary chunk of pineapple…”
“What kind of monster do you take me for?” Allison replied, sounding genuinely offended as she flipped open the box to reveal a classic combination of toppings: pepperoni and sausage.
The cloud lifted over Lexie, the vivacious blonde nodding in approval as she selected one of the thinner, more narrow slices. “Not a bad choice,” she said, before taking a bite. “For an American college girl, anyway.”
“I’m sorry we can’t afford an English butler on our financial aid.”
“Ehhhh, that’s been done,” Lexie observed. “Now, a French maid, on the other hand…”
Allison arched an eyebrow. “That your idea for trying to work Michelle into our operation?”
Lexie just chuckled, then right clicked on her mouse, maximizing a window on the monitor screen. “I’ve managed to get into the MSU security camera footage.”
Allison’s eyes went to the screen, which displayed a corridor inside one of the dormitories. “And I’ve managed to retrace Dyan’s footsteps,” Lexie noted, “from the Psych building to the Food Court. The from the Food Court to the quad outside Cinnamon’s dorm, along with the entourage. And then, finally, back to HER dorm. Of course, Big Brother hasn’t actually made it inside the dorm rooms yet, but so far I haven’t…”
As if on cue, a figure approached Dyan’s door. Lexie leaned forward, Allison peering in over her partner’s shoulder. Unfortunately, “figure” was about all that could be ascertained from the screen, though the pink hoodie at least suggested that the figure was female. That the hood was pulled up, completely shielding the woman’s face from view.
“Wasn’t it almost 90 degrees last night?” Allison asked.
“Yes,” Lexie agreed. “Yes, it was.”
“Not exactly hoodie weather…”
The door opened, the hint of a dirty blonde woman appearing in the doorway before hoodie girl stepped inside. “That Dyan?” Allison asked.
Lexie simply nodded.
A few seconds later, the door opened again, and Pink Hoodie Woman stepped back into the hallway. She made her way back toward the lobby, her head lowered, continuing to deny the camera a glimpse that might reveal a hint of her identity.
“Well, that was in no way suspicious,” Lexie noted.
Allison brought a hand up to her chin. “True, but she’s leaving alone…”
The brunette’s cell suddenly began to chime, interrupting her. “Ooops,” Allison sighed, the alarm reminding her of the meeting she’d agreed to with a couple of the kids from her Public Administration class. “Look, I gotta run. But keep watching. Let me know if you find anything?”
“I’ll fire up the Bird Signal,” Lexie said. “Metaphorically speaking, of course.”
Allison & Michelle’s apartment, 8:12PM
Considering she had no plans to go out for the rest of the night, Michelle had wasted little time in grabbing a quick shower and changing into some considerably more comfortable clothes once she had gotten home. Or, perhaps more accurately put, Michelle had changed into a considerably more comfortable lack of clothes: a short sleeved black t-shirt, emblazoned in ebullient pink script the words ‘I’M A FUCKIN’ PRINCESS!’, the hem of the shirt coming to rest just below the waistband of a pair of purple Brazilian bikini cut panties.
Morrison tossed herself onto her bed, laying on her belly, facing the foot of the bed, her feet kicking up into the air as she reached for her laptop. She had a fair amount of homework to get to, from both her English and Psych classes…
… but the allure of the tab marked “Facebook” proved a bit too strong to resist.
She scrolled down, the first thing to capture her attention being a photo of herself. Along with Terrance, it should be noted. Posted by Terrance, and taken just a few hours ago in Edwards Hall. The florid declaration of love underneath caused a smile to form on the blonde’s lips, and her finger to glide across the mousepad, moving the cursor to hover over the “Like” button so that she could select a heart.
Michelle then giggled softly as, below that post was an adorable cat meme from Allison. “That gets a like,” Morrison noted to no one in particular, registering her approval with a click.
Sadly, that burgeoning bright mood was promptly dampened when her scrolling brought her to a piece of homophobic trash, posted by someone whose friends request would never have been accepted if not for the minor detail that her mother and his father shared a set of parents. But when Michelle noted one name among the people tagged, the tiniest hint of a smirk returned. She couldn’t help but wonder whether Bridget Haywood would have been tagged in this post, if he knew what Bridget had enthusiastically done to and with Michelle under the bleachers following graduation rehearsal…
Even still, that small brush with the negative aspects of social media was enough to remind Morrison of the work that was ahead of her this evening. She opened a new tab and was just about to start typing in a URL when the familiar chime from Messenger caught her attention. Re-opening that tab, she offered a confused frown at the blinking, narrow box at the bottom of the screen. “Why are you…?” she started to say, before clicking on it.
The only answer immediately apparent was a hyperlink. She promptly clicked on that as well, which forced another tab on her browser to automatically open…
… and Michelle’s attention was instantly ensnared by a spiraling barrage of white, pink, and purple streaks.
Round and round they went, starting out wide in the frame, but sweeping their way toward the center of the screen, appearing to dive deep into the flat LCD monitor, while also seeming to expand beyond the boundaries of the monitor as well, in all directions. Michelle was less interested in that, however, as her eyes—seemingly of their own accord, followed the spiraling colors deeper and deeper into the recesses of the monitor.
And it looked like those swirling colors eventually all met in one almost infinitesimal, rotating dot that shifted from white to pink and to purple with each revolution. And as tiny as that point might be, something deep down told Michelle that, if she focused hard enough, she could make out the details of that point. And something even deeper told Michelle that it was VERY important that she work out whatever those details might be.
As she continued to stare into the monitor, ever more intently by the second, those sweeping, swirling colors began to fluctuate in intensity. And Michelle’s breathing began to slow and deepen, in time with those fluctuations. Had Allison been home, she no doubt would have noticed her bestie’s feet stop kicking the air, and instead droop back to the mattress. Had Terrance made it over following his theatre department meeting, he almost certainly would have noticed the blonde’s jaw begin to slacken, and her eyelids beginning to droop, even as they settled into that state, Morrison’s gaze becoming an unblinking one.
Michelle noticed none of this. Soon, Michelle noticed nothing at all, other than those pulsing, soothing colors… and then, a voice in her head.
“That’s it,” the voice told her. It didn’t come from the computer, but rather the voice itself was in her head, just like her thoughts—though these thoughts did not come in Michelle’s voice. This voice was more mature, more assertive, and sounding like it could instruct the blonde in all the secrets of the universe. “Just relax,” it told her, “and sink into the journey. That spinning dot holds the key to your very existence. You MUST know what it means.”
“Must… know…” Michelle repeated, her tensionless jaw barely complying to form the words.
“Soon, Michelle,” the voice told her, “you will hear two knocks on the door.”
“Two… two knocks…”
“That’s right. Good girl,” the voice praised her. And suddenly, Michelle experienced a warmth like she had never known before. “Answering those knocks will give you what you need to find the answers you require. And that, Michelle, will leave you with a tremendous sense of contentment. Do you understand?”
“… understand,” the blonde echoed, minus any rising inflection. From Michelle’s lips, it was not a question.
DHUNK! DHUNK!
Morrison rolled from her stomach to swing her legs over the edge of the bed. She then sat up, and slowly rose to her feet. With a halting gait, her bare feet padding across the floor as she made her way out of her room, down the hall, and finally to the front door. Without a second thought, Michelle opened the door.
She didn’t say a word to the person on her doorstep, nor did that person say anything to her. Most of their face obscured by a pink hoodie, though the line of their jaw and their crimson lipstick suggested “they” was, in fact, a “she.”
And “she” didn’t wait for an invitation that Michelle appeared incapable of offering. Closing the door behind her, the girl in the hoodie circled behind the motionless, expressionless blonde. Lifting a hand, she swept Michelle’s flaxen mane away from her neck, exposing plenty of smooth, flawless skin for a moment, until that skin disappeared underneath a metallic collar that she snapped closed.
Without a word, the woman in the hoodie tapped a button on that collar. Most people, no doubt, would have been astounded to then see the young blonde blink out of existence in a crackle of electricity, but she took it in stride. And when she touched a button on the bracelet around her right wrist, her nonplussed demeanor in the face of such of marvel came into sharper focus when she, too, crackled and vanished into the ether.
Montezuma State University campus, 8:48AM Wednesday
“Hey, Terrence, wait up!”
Terrance Williams was running late on his way to Edwards Hall, but that didn’t stop him from heeding the call of a familiar, light, feminine voice. “Alexandria!” he said, opening him arms to welcome the tiny blonde into a hug.
“Don’t call me that, Terry,” Lexie Shepherd replied, taking joy in her friend’s playful recoil from his parting peck of her cheek, knowing how much he hated to be called that. “It’s bad enough my mom gave me a name with that many syllables.”
Aware that she had a few minutes before she had to turn and head toward the Psych building, Lexie joined her friend on the way toward his class. “How soon before they start auditioning for the fall play?” she asked.
“They start casting Reality next week,” Terrence said. “I’m considering it practice for my eventual run on The Bachelor.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’ll go over real well with Michelle,” Lexie scoffed.
“Michelle?”
Lexie froze for a moment, a nervous feeling falling over her. That wasn’t the sort of joke that Terrence would make. “Yeah, Michelle,” she said. “Y’know, your girlfriend?”
Now Terrence stopped dead in his tracks. “What are you talking about, Lexie? You know I’ve been single ever since Amaya Childress shattered my heart into a million little pieces last November. And ground a six-inch stiletto heel into each piece.”
The tiny blonde’s blood turned ice cold in her veins. “Nooooooooooooo,” she contradicted him. “You’ve been dating Michelle Morrison ever since she attended the cast party following the spring play last year with Vanessa Johnson, and left the party with both of you!”
The longer that Terrence looked at her as if she was speaking Martian, the more that Lexie’s heart sank. “Lexie, I have never even heard of a Michelle Morrison. And I do believe that a young, red-blooded, heterosexual male such as myself would remember being in a threesome with two women, particularly if one of those women was Vanessa Johnson.”
Lexie shook her head weakly. The missing girls, however many there might actually be, they had been simply abstracts in her head. Even Dyan was someone that, aside from the level of basic human empathy and not wanting harm to fall on any other human soul, she wasn’t incredibly invested in saving. But if whatever was happening on this campus had now suddenly claimed a friend of hers as a victim…
Mumbling a few halfhearted excuses and farewells, Shepherd turned and started sprinting toward the parking lot. She had to get to Allison’s apartment, as soon as possible.
Allison’s apartment, 9:12AM Wednesday
DOOOOOONNNK! DOOOOOONNNK! DOOOOOONNNK! DOOOOOONNNK!
BRRRRRNNNNNG! BRRRRRNNNNNG! BRRRRRNNNNNG! BRRRRRNNNNNG!
DOOOOOONNNK! BRRRRRNNNNNG! DOOOOOONNNK! BRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNG!!!!!!
“C’mon, Allie,” Lexie muttered, barely audible, nervously shuffling from foot to foot as she alternated between slamming her fist on the door and jabbing her finger against the doorbell. Had she already left for class? Was she even awake?
The answer came when, at last, Lexie heard the deadbolt turn. Allison had only just begun to pull the door back when the blonde pushed her way beyond it, resulting in a startled grasp from the still drowsy Vogel. “Geeze, Lexie, what…”
“It’s happened again,” Shepherd responded, her eyes darting around the apartment, from the living room to the adjoining kitchen, and then down the hallway toward the bedrooms. She wasn’t surprised not to see Michelle around, but the presence of one of Michelle’s jackets, hung across the back of a dining table chair, gave Lexie a modicum of hope. “Another girl’s disappeared.” Turning to face her friend, she gripped Allison’s arms, gently but firmly, with both hands. “And Allie? It’s Michelle.”
Even before the brunette opened her mouth, part of Lexie already knew what Allison was going to say, and dreaded it. As awful as it might sound, part of her had hoped to see horror flicker across her friend’s features, or panic in her eyes, instead of the blank, blinking stare that accompanied just two words.
“… Michelle who?”
Unknown, 10:38AM
“I must say, I am taking considerably more satisfaction in this than I ever expected to.”
What he was taking satisfaction in, however, would fill most people with a sense of decency with disgust. He was looking through the sort of bars one would expect to find in a prison cell, but while there was indeed a prisoner of sorts on the other side, it was readily apparent that this was no state, taxpayer funded jail.
For a start, the young woman inside the cell was almost completely naked. She was on her knees, the curve of her pert glutes resting against the balls of her heels, her hands bound behind her back. Aside from the shackles around her wrists, the only other article that could in a charitable fashion be considered clothing was what appeared to be a high tech collar fastened around her neck, a couple of small green lights and one red one on its surface blinking at semi-regular intervals.
And she knelt there, completely still. This wasn’t the stillness of someone resigned to her fate. This was the stillness of someone completely unaware of her fate, despite the fact that her dilated blue eyes were wide open.
Gesturing a hand toward the steel bars, the man asked of the third person in the vicinity, “May I?”
“By all means,” she replied, keying a combination into the digital panel on the wall which sent the bars rising into the ceiling. “You paid a considerable amount of money, Mr. Braxton. It seems only fair you be allowed to inspect the merchandise before delivery.”
His only response was a small nod, before he stepped inside the cell…
The kneeling woman never even registered the intrusion.
Slowly, appraisingly, he circled around behind her. Absently, he reached down a hand, scooping up a few strands of dirty blonde locks, which he allowed to slip back through his fingers. “I’m sure you think me a monster,” he said, addressing the woman who had apparently ‘acquired’ this poor, unfortunate soul on his behalf.
“Humanity is a mass of complexity, Mr. Braxton,” the woman responded, “and it fascinates me in all manners. Trust me, there’s no judgment here.”
He offered an uncertain half-smile, grateful for the effort to ease his discomfort, but clearly unable to believe that anything about… this… could be considered normal. Or be empathized with.
“I will admit,” she did add, “procuring a… specific subject is not normally what I do. There’s no shortage of people willing to bid on pliable young flesh and empty minds at auction. Though even those bidding wars rarely reach the heights of what you offered for this young lady…”
Suddenly, the man’s tone turned harsh, though his voice remained level. “This is no lady,” he declared, all concerns he might have felt over being perceived as some sort of beast momentarily forgotten. “This… brat… made my daughter’s freshman year of high school a living hell.” Slipping a pair of fingers underneath the kneeling girl’s chin, he tilted her head upward, so that her vacant eyes met his gaze. “Didn’t you, Dyan?”
The girl who once thought of herself as Dyan Lyons didn’t respond.
“I’ve spent three years, trying to put my little girl’s life back together again…”
The woman outside the cell arched a bemused eyebrow. “This would certainly qualify as the most unique graduation present I’ve ever seen, Mr. Braxton,” she said. “I commend your creativity, and dedication to your progeny. And I’m sure she’ll be pleased. So long as Dyan… or whatever you choose to call her… wears that collar, either you or your no doubt charming daughter can…”
It took her a little more than a second to find the right term.
“… re-write Ms. Lyons into whatever you wish her to be. Then, once you’re satisfied with what you’ve shaped her into, the collar can be removed, and that new identity will hold.”
Mr. Braxton said nothing for a moment, and instead continued to examine and inspect the kneeling young woman. “Thank you,” he finally replied, simply. “I’m not sure anything would make my little Brenda happier than being able to make this…”
He tried to find the exact pejorative to capture his animosity toward this girl, but ultimately gave up after a few moments.
“… than making her suffer like she had. I just fear the possibility of discovery…”
She shook her head. “I told you when we first spoke, Mr. Braxton, that’s part of the service I offer. That possibility does not exist.”
“So you say,” he said, sounding far from convinced. “But I still don’t understand…”
“You don’t need to, Mr. Braxton,” she interrupted. “All you need to understand is, to the rest of the world, Dyan Lyons has not merely ceased to exist…”
The woman offered her client a chilling smile.
“To them, Dyan Lyons has never existed.”
Lexie Shepherd’s apartment, 3:51PM
Allison and Lexie were close friends, but that wasn’t the reason why Allison had a key to Lexie’s place.
Well, technically, it was her parents’ names on the deed, but Lexie was the only person who lived there. It had been her parents idea to “gift” Lexie with a modest property, where she wouldn’t have to worry about paying rent or deal with the distraction of a wild and crazy roommate and their wild parties, giving their little girl the freedom to focus on her studies.
That had been their thinking, anyway.
Having a place totally to herself made it a natural choice for Allison and Lexie to base their operation. As much as she adored living with her bestie, it had been a recurring nightmare for the young brunette at the start of her crimefighting career, Michelle sneaking into her closet to borrow some darling number for a party, and instead finding Allison’s Songbird costume.
Allison gently chucked her backpack onto the couch, her gaze momentarily settling on the digital picture frame on the end table as it cycled through a series of photos of Lexie with her parents. Those pics always made Allison chuckle. That Lexie’s mother was the shorter of her two parents wasn’t a surprise, but that she was still six feet four, and a couple of inches shorter than her husband, and that they had produced li’l ol’ Lexie, was.
Stepping into the hallway that led straight to Lexie’s bedroom, Allison instead took a quick left turn, opening a door, behind which a staircase descended into the basement. She ignored the light switch by the doorframe, and instead took a couple of steps down, until the motion sensors recognized her presence and turned on the overhead light. Reaching the bottom, Vogel found herself in what appeared to be equal parts a storage and computer room, shelves and boxes on one side, and tables on the other, one with a Mac, one with a desktop PC, and others with various bits of hardware, in various states of assembly.
The brunette approached the far wall, which was aligned with bookshelves, apart from about a three foot gap in the middle. Making her way to the shelf on the right hand side of the gap, Allison pushed aside a couple of books, then reached her hand through the space she had created, placing her hand in the scanner that had been hidden behind those books. Roughly three seconds later, a small panel opened on the wall between those shelves, at eye level…
… well, at Lexie’s eye level. Allison was certain that her friend had done that quite deliberately, and that she took great satisfaction every time that Allison had to lower her head to line up with and meet the second scanner’s lens. Once her retinal pattern had been verified, that small panel slid back into place, before part of the wall slid to the right, revealing a hidden entranceway. Allison promptly stepped inside.
The security features had all been Lexie’s doing, but the room itself was not. It had just been a happy coincidence, Lexie discovering this secret chamber shortly after moving into the house. She couldn’t be sure how long it had been a part of the building, though the presence of a generator as the lone artifact remaining from a previous owner suggested that it was of relatively modern origin. Lexie had since outfitted the spacious room with lots of computer equipment, and had set aside space both for costume storage, training, as well as a workspace for Lexie to develop her various gadgets.
And even this secret chamber had a secret exit: a tunnel leading out into the nearby woods, which had caused both Allison and Lexie to spend time speculating on whether they were the first people to use this place as a base of crimefighting operations.
Allison had christened it ‘the Nest.’
Lexie sat at a computer, still ‘out of uniform,’ as it were. “Got your message,” Allison said, placing a hand on her partner’s shoulder as she, too, began to intently study the screen. “What am I looking at?”
“You remember me ever telling you about an asshat named Cinnamon?” Lexie asked.
“Blonde, snotty, and seemed to make it her mission to make you curse your birth?” Allison queried back.
“That’s the one,” Shepherd nodded. “She popped up in my Psych class yesterday, attached at the hip to an even bigger brat, Dyan. Not gonna lie, it was kinda fun watching her kiss the ass of a new alpha.”
“Okaaaaaayyy…” the brunette said, still not certain of why this warranted calling her over.
“Well, I ran into Cinnamon on campus again this morning,” Lexie continued. “No Dyan this time. But she acted like she’d never even heard of Dyan. Like I was making her up…”
“Maybe they had a fight? Dyan figured she was too much of a bitch, even for her?”
The blonde shook her head. “Talked to a couple of other people from Psych class this afternoon. They couldn’t remember any Dyan, either. And I’d seen some of them talk to Dyan yesterday.”
“Weird…”
“And I don’t think she’s the first.”
Allison’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve done some digging, while waiting for you to get here,” Lexie said, switching tabs on her browser. “So far, I’ve found no less than seven students—all girls—who have just… vanished. Stopped going to classes. No record of a transfer or withdrawal in the registrar’s files. I call up their social media…”
Lexie switched to another tab, displaying the Facebook page of a young woman.
“Nothing,” the blonde declared. “No activity from them. No concerned messages from their friends. Nothing shared to their wall.”
Shepherd called up one more tab.
“In at least one case,” she said, “a police report was filed, by the parents of a girl from Texas. But then…”
Lexie snapped her fingers.
“Nothing. It’s not that all the leads turned up dead ends. There are NO leads. It’s as if the initial report was filed, and then there’s no investigation…”
“You don’t think Montezuma PD is in on this… well, whatever this is, do you?”
Shepherd shook her head. “Why create even that much of a paper trail by filing an initial report? No, I think whatever’s going on is beyond their scope.”
The brunette gave her partner’s shoulder a squeeze. “But not beyond ours. We’ll find out what happened to Dyan.”
The corners of Lexie’s mouth started to curl upward, but almost just as quickly reversed course. “I’m… not sure how I should feel about that.”
Edwards Hall Theatre Building, Montezuma State University campus, 5:32PM
From the moment he had stepped into the theatre for his first audition freshman year, it had been Terrance Williams’ favorite place on campus, and perhaps one of his favorite places in the world.
Even right now, with the school year barely begun and the department yet to kick its season into gear, the open space of the auditorium had such an inviting, calming presence for him. He would often sneak in during quiet periods of the day—the doors weren’t locked, so it could hardly be considered trespassing. With the house lights lowered as they were, one could practically disappear into the shadows, seated in the back row…
… which had helped the Edwards Theatre become one of Michelle Morrison’s favorite places, in the time she and Terrance had been together.
Michelle sat next to her boyfriend, her head resting against his right shoulder. They weren’t alone—a handful of stagecraft students were down below, treading the boards, examining the lighting and such. But there were no professors about, and again, from their vantage point in the backrow, she and Terrance would hardly draw the attention of a rapt audience…
… but still, the two sat in relative, contemplative silence.
Which was finally broken by Michelle. “Fuck, I’ve missed you…”
Terrance drew in a short, but deep, satisfied breath, which he released in the form of a soft chuckle. “Michelle, my sweet,” he said, his arm around the blonde’s shoulder pulling her in a little tighter for the moment, “we have spent just about every spare minute of the last four nights together.”
Morrison crossed her arms and made such a production of forming a pout on her lips that there would be some justifiable confusion over which one of them was the theatre major. “You say that like it makes up for the past two months…”
Shaking his head, Terrance rolled his eyes playfully, never one to be upstaged. “First of all, you know I could not pass up that internship at Paramount. And second, even if I had still been in town, that wouldn’t have made much difference, with you back at your parents in Florida.”
“Uhhhhhh, I do not recall me being the subject here,” Michelle objected.
“Like you would ever object to being the subject,” Terrance countered, leaning over to give the blonde a light kiss. Much to their mutual consternation, however, before that gentle kiss could become anything more, they both heard a light buzz in the air, and Michelle felt the vibration of her cell against her hip.
“Sadly,” Michelle sighed, “that’s my cue. You’ve got your meeting, and I’ve got some homework for Shackleford’s class I should probably knock out.” The blonde’s eyes twinkled for a moment, as she teasingly drew her bottom lip for a fleeting moment between her teeth. “Should I expect you to swing by later?”
As Morrison stood up, Terrance chose to neither confirm nor deny. “Are you just asking so that you know whether or not you need to stay decent?”
“Oh, honey,” Michelle said with a wink, “I’ve never been decent a day in my life. And you wouldn’t have me any other way.”
She turned and started down the aisle toward the exit, while making certain to inject an extra bit of swish into her hips for the first couple of steps, just for Terrance’s benefit. And he had to admit, she made a compelling case.
The Nest, 6:47PM
“Anything?” Allison asked, her voice somewhat garbled by the pizza she was chewing. Her left hand held a plate, while her right hand partnered with her hip to carry the box into their secret headquarters.
The apple cheeked blonde shook her head as the door to the Nest slipped closed behind Vogel. Before Lexie could offer a verbal response, however, she noticed her friend place the closed carton on the desk, about a foot to the right of her keyboard. Her eyes narrowing as she looked up at the brunette, Lexie’s voice lowered into a menacing whisper as she said, “If I open this box, and see even one solitary chunk of pineapple…”
“What kind of monster do you take me for?” Allison replied, sounding genuinely offended as she flipped open the box to reveal a classic combination of toppings: pepperoni and sausage.
The cloud lifted over Lexie, the vivacious blonde nodding in approval as she selected one of the thinner, more narrow slices. “Not a bad choice,” she said, before taking a bite. “For an American college girl, anyway.”
“I’m sorry we can’t afford an English butler on our financial aid.”
“Ehhhh, that’s been done,” Lexie observed. “Now, a French maid, on the other hand…”
Allison arched an eyebrow. “That your idea for trying to work Michelle into our operation?”
Lexie just chuckled, then right clicked on her mouse, maximizing a window on the monitor screen. “I’ve managed to get into the MSU security camera footage.”
Allison’s eyes went to the screen, which displayed a corridor inside one of the dormitories. “And I’ve managed to retrace Dyan’s footsteps,” Lexie noted, “from the Psych building to the Food Court. The from the Food Court to the quad outside Cinnamon’s dorm, along with the entourage. And then, finally, back to HER dorm. Of course, Big Brother hasn’t actually made it inside the dorm rooms yet, but so far I haven’t…”
As if on cue, a figure approached Dyan’s door. Lexie leaned forward, Allison peering in over her partner’s shoulder. Unfortunately, “figure” was about all that could be ascertained from the screen, though the pink hoodie at least suggested that the figure was female. That the hood was pulled up, completely shielding the woman’s face from view.
“Wasn’t it almost 90 degrees last night?” Allison asked.
“Yes,” Lexie agreed. “Yes, it was.”
“Not exactly hoodie weather…”
The door opened, the hint of a dirty blonde woman appearing in the doorway before hoodie girl stepped inside. “That Dyan?” Allison asked.
Lexie simply nodded.
A few seconds later, the door opened again, and Pink Hoodie Woman stepped back into the hallway. She made her way back toward the lobby, her head lowered, continuing to deny the camera a glimpse that might reveal a hint of her identity.
“Well, that was in no way suspicious,” Lexie noted.
Allison brought a hand up to her chin. “True, but she’s leaving alone…”
The brunette’s cell suddenly began to chime, interrupting her. “Ooops,” Allison sighed, the alarm reminding her of the meeting she’d agreed to with a couple of the kids from her Public Administration class. “Look, I gotta run. But keep watching. Let me know if you find anything?”
“I’ll fire up the Bird Signal,” Lexie said. “Metaphorically speaking, of course.”
Allison & Michelle’s apartment, 8:12PM
Considering she had no plans to go out for the rest of the night, Michelle had wasted little time in grabbing a quick shower and changing into some considerably more comfortable clothes once she had gotten home. Or, perhaps more accurately put, Michelle had changed into a considerably more comfortable lack of clothes: a short sleeved black t-shirt, emblazoned in ebullient pink script the words ‘I’M A FUCKIN’ PRINCESS!’, the hem of the shirt coming to rest just below the waistband of a pair of purple Brazilian bikini cut panties.
Morrison tossed herself onto her bed, laying on her belly, facing the foot of the bed, her feet kicking up into the air as she reached for her laptop. She had a fair amount of homework to get to, from both her English and Psych classes…
… but the allure of the tab marked “Facebook” proved a bit too strong to resist.
She scrolled down, the first thing to capture her attention being a photo of herself. Along with Terrance, it should be noted. Posted by Terrance, and taken just a few hours ago in Edwards Hall. The florid declaration of love underneath caused a smile to form on the blonde’s lips, and her finger to glide across the mousepad, moving the cursor to hover over the “Like” button so that she could select a heart.
Michelle then giggled softly as, below that post was an adorable cat meme from Allison. “That gets a like,” Morrison noted to no one in particular, registering her approval with a click.
Sadly, that burgeoning bright mood was promptly dampened when her scrolling brought her to a piece of homophobic trash, posted by someone whose friends request would never have been accepted if not for the minor detail that her mother and his father shared a set of parents. But when Michelle noted one name among the people tagged, the tiniest hint of a smirk returned. She couldn’t help but wonder whether Bridget Haywood would have been tagged in this post, if he knew what Bridget had enthusiastically done to and with Michelle under the bleachers following graduation rehearsal…
Even still, that small brush with the negative aspects of social media was enough to remind Morrison of the work that was ahead of her this evening. She opened a new tab and was just about to start typing in a URL when the familiar chime from Messenger caught her attention. Re-opening that tab, she offered a confused frown at the blinking, narrow box at the bottom of the screen. “Why are you…?” she started to say, before clicking on it.
The only answer immediately apparent was a hyperlink. She promptly clicked on that as well, which forced another tab on her browser to automatically open…
… and Michelle’s attention was instantly ensnared by a spiraling barrage of white, pink, and purple streaks.
Round and round they went, starting out wide in the frame, but sweeping their way toward the center of the screen, appearing to dive deep into the flat LCD monitor, while also seeming to expand beyond the boundaries of the monitor as well, in all directions. Michelle was less interested in that, however, as her eyes—seemingly of their own accord, followed the spiraling colors deeper and deeper into the recesses of the monitor.
And it looked like those swirling colors eventually all met in one almost infinitesimal, rotating dot that shifted from white to pink and to purple with each revolution. And as tiny as that point might be, something deep down told Michelle that, if she focused hard enough, she could make out the details of that point. And something even deeper told Michelle that it was VERY important that she work out whatever those details might be.
As she continued to stare into the monitor, ever more intently by the second, those sweeping, swirling colors began to fluctuate in intensity. And Michelle’s breathing began to slow and deepen, in time with those fluctuations. Had Allison been home, she no doubt would have noticed her bestie’s feet stop kicking the air, and instead droop back to the mattress. Had Terrance made it over following his theatre department meeting, he almost certainly would have noticed the blonde’s jaw begin to slacken, and her eyelids beginning to droop, even as they settled into that state, Morrison’s gaze becoming an unblinking one.
Michelle noticed none of this. Soon, Michelle noticed nothing at all, other than those pulsing, soothing colors… and then, a voice in her head.
“That’s it,” the voice told her. It didn’t come from the computer, but rather the voice itself was in her head, just like her thoughts—though these thoughts did not come in Michelle’s voice. This voice was more mature, more assertive, and sounding like it could instruct the blonde in all the secrets of the universe. “Just relax,” it told her, “and sink into the journey. That spinning dot holds the key to your very existence. You MUST know what it means.”
“Must… know…” Michelle repeated, her tensionless jaw barely complying to form the words.
“Soon, Michelle,” the voice told her, “you will hear two knocks on the door.”
“Two… two knocks…”
“That’s right. Good girl,” the voice praised her. And suddenly, Michelle experienced a warmth like she had never known before. “Answering those knocks will give you what you need to find the answers you require. And that, Michelle, will leave you with a tremendous sense of contentment. Do you understand?”
“… understand,” the blonde echoed, minus any rising inflection. From Michelle’s lips, it was not a question.
DHUNK! DHUNK!
Morrison rolled from her stomach to swing her legs over the edge of the bed. She then sat up, and slowly rose to her feet. With a halting gait, her bare feet padding across the floor as she made her way out of her room, down the hall, and finally to the front door. Without a second thought, Michelle opened the door.
She didn’t say a word to the person on her doorstep, nor did that person say anything to her. Most of their face obscured by a pink hoodie, though the line of their jaw and their crimson lipstick suggested “they” was, in fact, a “she.”
And “she” didn’t wait for an invitation that Michelle appeared incapable of offering. Closing the door behind her, the girl in the hoodie circled behind the motionless, expressionless blonde. Lifting a hand, she swept Michelle’s flaxen mane away from her neck, exposing plenty of smooth, flawless skin for a moment, until that skin disappeared underneath a metallic collar that she snapped closed.
Without a word, the woman in the hoodie tapped a button on that collar. Most people, no doubt, would have been astounded to then see the young blonde blink out of existence in a crackle of electricity, but she took it in stride. And when she touched a button on the bracelet around her right wrist, her nonplussed demeanor in the face of such of marvel came into sharper focus when she, too, crackled and vanished into the ether.
Montezuma State University campus, 8:48AM Wednesday
“Hey, Terrence, wait up!”
Terrance Williams was running late on his way to Edwards Hall, but that didn’t stop him from heeding the call of a familiar, light, feminine voice. “Alexandria!” he said, opening him arms to welcome the tiny blonde into a hug.
“Don’t call me that, Terry,” Lexie Shepherd replied, taking joy in her friend’s playful recoil from his parting peck of her cheek, knowing how much he hated to be called that. “It’s bad enough my mom gave me a name with that many syllables.”
Aware that she had a few minutes before she had to turn and head toward the Psych building, Lexie joined her friend on the way toward his class. “How soon before they start auditioning for the fall play?” she asked.
“They start casting Reality next week,” Terrence said. “I’m considering it practice for my eventual run on The Bachelor.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’ll go over real well with Michelle,” Lexie scoffed.
“Michelle?”
Lexie froze for a moment, a nervous feeling falling over her. That wasn’t the sort of joke that Terrence would make. “Yeah, Michelle,” she said. “Y’know, your girlfriend?”
Now Terrence stopped dead in his tracks. “What are you talking about, Lexie? You know I’ve been single ever since Amaya Childress shattered my heart into a million little pieces last November. And ground a six-inch stiletto heel into each piece.”
The tiny blonde’s blood turned ice cold in her veins. “Nooooooooooooo,” she contradicted him. “You’ve been dating Michelle Morrison ever since she attended the cast party following the spring play last year with Vanessa Johnson, and left the party with both of you!”
The longer that Terrence looked at her as if she was speaking Martian, the more that Lexie’s heart sank. “Lexie, I have never even heard of a Michelle Morrison. And I do believe that a young, red-blooded, heterosexual male such as myself would remember being in a threesome with two women, particularly if one of those women was Vanessa Johnson.”
Lexie shook her head weakly. The missing girls, however many there might actually be, they had been simply abstracts in her head. Even Dyan was someone that, aside from the level of basic human empathy and not wanting harm to fall on any other human soul, she wasn’t incredibly invested in saving. But if whatever was happening on this campus had now suddenly claimed a friend of hers as a victim…
Mumbling a few halfhearted excuses and farewells, Shepherd turned and started sprinting toward the parking lot. She had to get to Allison’s apartment, as soon as possible.
Allison’s apartment, 9:12AM Wednesday
DOOOOOONNNK! DOOOOOONNNK! DOOOOOONNNK! DOOOOOONNNK!
BRRRRRNNNNNG! BRRRRRNNNNNG! BRRRRRNNNNNG! BRRRRRNNNNNG!
DOOOOOONNNK! BRRRRRNNNNNG! DOOOOOONNNK! BRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNG!!!!!!
“C’mon, Allie,” Lexie muttered, barely audible, nervously shuffling from foot to foot as she alternated between slamming her fist on the door and jabbing her finger against the doorbell. Had she already left for class? Was she even awake?
The answer came when, at last, Lexie heard the deadbolt turn. Allison had only just begun to pull the door back when the blonde pushed her way beyond it, resulting in a startled grasp from the still drowsy Vogel. “Geeze, Lexie, what…”
“It’s happened again,” Shepherd responded, her eyes darting around the apartment, from the living room to the adjoining kitchen, and then down the hallway toward the bedrooms. She wasn’t surprised not to see Michelle around, but the presence of one of Michelle’s jackets, hung across the back of a dining table chair, gave Lexie a modicum of hope. “Another girl’s disappeared.” Turning to face her friend, she gripped Allison’s arms, gently but firmly, with both hands. “And Allie? It’s Michelle.”
Even before the brunette opened her mouth, part of Lexie already knew what Allison was going to say, and dreaded it. As awful as it might sound, part of her had hoped to see horror flicker across her friend’s features, or panic in her eyes, instead of the blank, blinking stare that accompanied just two words.
“… Michelle who?”
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azzazin404
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- Posts: 1
- Joined: 5 years ago
This is absolutely amazing! Your prose is excellent and you've got me thoroughly engrossed in the plot so far. I look forward to seeing how this story plays out.