The Marvels

Ep. 33 | Poor, Poor Girl

It had rained all night. Shoes squeaked against the school floors, dragging mud everywhere until there was a thin, even layer of grime covering every tile. It was a dull day, and Vidya stared out the window during class. In the rooms where there were no windows, she doodled in the corner of her notebook. Anything was better than learning; it was just one of those days.

After school was uneventful, too. The homework was light, but so were the missions...because there weren't any. She silenced her pager at eight-thirty and pulled out her phone to see a message from Aisha, but it wasn't about a new adventure. She just wanted to get bubble tea. David was busy tinkering and opted out, so Vidya and Aisha went without him.

The tea shop was empty, but even if it were crowded, Vidya wouldn't hesitate. Her 'newness' had died down, and it wasn't jarring anymore to see Frostbite around the city. It all went smoothly, but the guy who took their order did stumble over his words and fail to make eye contact with either of them. It was kind of funny; Vidya didn't have the charisma or star power of any of the other heroes, and she wasn't worth the nerves.

They took their time walking back to the greenhouse. At first, they talked about everything other than what happened at the hotel, either because it didn't matter anymore or because it mattered so much that it was scary. To Vidya, it was already old news, but she wasn't sure about Aisha's perspective until she suddenly got quiet.

"She wasn't mad, was she?" Aisha mumbled into her straw.

Vidya shook her head. She didn't know how to describe Lady Marvel's reaction, but mad wasn't the right word. "Don't worry about it. Was your client happy?"

"Yeah. I told her about the shootout, and she didn't even care."

"Did she happen to mention what AMS is?"

"Nope."

Vidya sighed. Google didn't know, either. S could stand for society, and that was as far as she could guess.

"I don't think I even want to know," Aisha said, shrugging.

That was fair. News never broke about the shootout at the hotel, and it sure seemed like someone—Celestro, maybe AMS itself—had brushed the whole thing under the rug. If it was that serious, then maybe it was best they stayed in the dark.

Vidya sipped her tea, careful. The first time she tried bubble tea, she'd sucked hard enough that a tapioca pearl flew into the back of her throat, leaving her choking and red-faced. To this day, that picture was Amber's screensaver, and she didn't want it to be Aisha's, too.

They were only two blocks from the dome when Aisha suddenly laughed. "You should have a specialty bubble tea," she joked. "Like Astra's Astracinno."

"Oh, please." Vidya smiled and tilted her head up haughtily. "If I'm going to have a specialty anything, it'll be—"

What happened next couldn't have lasted for more than a second, but to Vidya, it felt like a lifetime. There was a flash of red in the corner of her vision, and she turned around just in time to watch Aisha get cut in half.

A bright red beam from somewhere above sliced through her at the stomach. It was a jagged, cruel cut, wavering in the middle before going all the way through. Blood rushed out of severed veins and splattered against the alley walls. Aisha's laughing face went slack, her cup falling from her grasp. The bottom half of her body fell forward, and the top half fell back, and the red beam blinked out of existence.

One second. That was all it took.

Vidya's vision blurred as her own cup fell to the ground, spilling more tea and tapioca pearls into the growing puddle of blood. Her arms were limp at her sides, her feet stuck to the ground, her mind unable to do anything other than freeze. She slowly looked up, but there was no one in the air or on the rooftops. They were alone—no, she was alone, accompanied by the split remains of a poor, poor girl who was breathing only seconds ago.