Fluff

Chapter Forty-Three - Bar Hopping

Emily had never actually been to a bar before. They were places for older people to hang out and drink, and she was neither old, a drinker, nor the sort of person to do hanging out.

She didn't expect her first time in a bar to have her sitting in the kitchen with her shirt off. She hissed as Sam pressed something frozen against her chest. "Ah, cold, cold," Emily squeaked. She grabbed the bundle of cloth, which unfolded it a little.

It was a pack of frozen peas wrapped in a dishtowel.

"You need to keep the swelling down," Sam said. "Actually, what you should do is go to the hospital."

Emily groaned and pressed the bag to her chest again. It stung, but after a few seconds the coolness of it started to spread across the bruises covering her front. It didn't make it hurt any less, but it was something. "I'll manage," she said. "I really don't want to go to the hospital."

"Maybe you should?" Athena asked. She wasn't meeting Emily's eyes, and Emily could almost feel the slight undertones of guilt coming off of her little sister. The same little sister that Emily would have said was the smartest of the bunch just a day ago.

No, that wasn't fair. Athena was clever. It was just a coincidence that Rattles had shown up here today. Still, it wasn't the first time one of her sisters had run off and caused some trouble.

"Okay. New rule," she said, loud enough that all of the others heard.

Teddy and Trinity looked up. They had been picking out pieces of meat from a large pot filled with spaghetti sauce sitting on the stove. The evidence was all over their faces. Something else for her to clean after before the nice bartender lady came back.

Maple, meanwhile, was sitting not too far from Emily, the parts of her anti-vibration machine laid out on the counter before her. She had been picking through them for a while, as if trying to see what had gone wrong with her machine.

"What's the rule?" Athena asked.

"No more leaving the house without my explicit permission. Trinity going to the landfill was one thing, but running into dangerous villains on your own is another. And I think it's also the final straw."

"There's a box here!" Trinity said. She plucked out a brand new box of plastic straws from her bag.

Emily sighed. "Put that back. The nice barlady is helping us, we shouldn't steal from her. Put whatever else you took back too, please. And Teddy, leave the sauce alone."

Teddy dropped the spoon she was using... into the sauce.

"So, wanna talk about what went down?" Sam asked.

Emily leaned back, then groaned as that pulled at the muscles in her chest. She looked down at herself. There was a large yellow-ish mark covering her ribs and the space between her breasts, all the way down to her stomach. It wasn't pretty. "I guess," she said. "Why did he run away?"

"Because we scared him off good?" Teddy asked.

"Maybe," Emily said. Losing his powers must have spooked him. She knew that she herself would be pretty spooked if her powers stopped working.

"There's also the bikers' reactions," Sam said. "Throwing bottles and such. If he came here to recruit and it failed, then there wasn't much of a reason for him to stick around anymore."

"Maybe," Emily said again. "But it still feels strange. He had us on the backfoot. Especially after he hit me and broke Maple's device."

Maple looked up. "I can fix it," she said. "But I should probably make a newer, better one instead. This one didn't work as good as I wanted. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Emily said. "It did exactly what you said it would. More or less. I don't think you could have expected him to be able to use his power the way he did."

"How did he use his power?" Sam asked. "I was a ways off, so I didn't see."

Emily shrugged, then shifted the pea-bag around. "Maple's machine worked. It shut down all the vibrations in the area. But then he started...shaking himself?"

"His name is Rattles," Sam said. "Maple, how was your thing supposed to work?"

"Um. It stops things from vibrating through the air," Maple said. "But I didn't want it to be too strong, because the science man on the TV said that sound is vibrations too, and I thought everyone not being able to hear would be bad. Also, stopping all vibrations might stop people's hearts."

"Uh," Emily said. She hadn't considered that. "I'm glad you designed it the way you did, then. It did work."

Maple shook her head. "He got past it."

Emily sighed again. She was sighing a lot today, she realized. "We'll get him next time."

"Yeah! Teddy said. "Rule of three!" The others nodded.

Emily met Sam's eye, and Sam shrugged. "What's the rule of three?" she asked.

"It's when a hero tries to fight a villain, or a villain fights another. If they don't beat each other up good enough that the fight's completely over the first time, then they gotta fight three times, and the third time's the last time," Teddy explained.

"Oh... kay," Emily said. She wasn't so sure how accurate that was. Was it something quest related? Her sisters knew a lot more about the system that governed powered and abilities than she did. They probably knew more than almost anyone, actually.

Sam hopped backwards, sitting on one of the counters next to Maple and her pile of stuff. "So, you're going to take him on again? Isn't that asking for trouble?"

"We can't let him go," Athena said. "If he doesn't stop, soon everyone will think that he's the city's big bad villain. No one will respect the Boss and the rest of us."

"Yeah, this city's not big enough for two big bad villains," Teddy agreed.

Emily felt a weight settling in her chest. More stress added onto the heap that was already there. Rattles had gone from a challenge that she could choose to face to someone that she absolutely had to fight, and win against.

"What would happen if we lose again?" she asked.

Teddy scoffed. "We won't!"

The others cheered, adding their agreement.

"Okay," Emily said. "Okay, so we'll fight him again. Great. But next time, I don't want it to be like today. We rushed to get here, didn't have much of a plan, and we only really won because Rattles didn't look like he wanted to carry through."

"I'll keep an ear to the ground," Sam said. "He'll pop up again eventually. The HRF have certainly proved that they can't handle him."

Emily nodded along. "We need a better plan. Maple, I think we're going to have to rely on you a bit more. The anti-vibration machine worked. Can you make one that's even better?"

"I can do that," Maple said.

"And can you make me something that I can fight with?"

Maple blinked. "I can. Why do you want something like that?"

"I don't want to be useless again," Emily admitted.

Sam grinned. "Well, you can start by hitting the gym some more. You need to learn how to actually fight, even if Maple gives you a railgun toaster or whatever."

Emily winced at the thought, but Sam wasn't wrong. "We should work with the minions too. Those bikers today actually helped a lot. I think Rattles' weakness might be his range. It's pretty good, but he can't handle things from outside of it well."

"Yeah, I saw him get conked by that bottle," Sam said. "Did you intend to give the minions grenades or something?"

"M-maybe not grenades," Emily said.

"I want grenades," Trinity said.

"No," Emily put her foot down. She adjusted the frozen peas again. The bag was leaking condensation all over. "We're not arming our minions, or Trinity, with grenades."

Trinity sighed in tune with herself.

"Can you make stuff that's non-lethal, Maple?" Emily asked.

Maple nodded. "I think I can. Non-lethal just means that they don't die right away, right?"

"That's a terrifying definition, but it's not entirely wrong," Sam said.

"I can do that."

"Sounds... good," Emily nodded. "We'll talk about it more at home." Groaning, Emily stood up, then tossed the peas on a table. She looked down at her chest again. The bruising was turning a little purplish. She prodded herself curiously, and instantly regretted it.

"You sure you don't wanna go to a hospital?" Sam asked.

"They'll ask questions," Emily said. She started to button up her shirt again, then tucked it back into her pants. "Maybe we can get armoured versions of our costumes. It wouldn't hurt to be a little less... fragile."

"Add it to the list of things to do," Sam said.

"That list just won't stop growing, huh?" Emily shook her head. "Come on, I probably need to report what happened to the HRF, then we can head out."

***