Fluff

Chapter Sixty-Eight - Breaking and Entering

Emily opened the door to her room, then stumbled back as all of her little sisters pushed and shoved to be the first in. She stepped in after them and closed the door behind her. “Okay, everyone, we need to grab our costumes. We can’t get changed here.”

“What about me?” Trinity asked. “I’ve never put my costumes on.”

Emily considered it for a moment, then nodded. “One of you get changed. That should be enough to know, I guess.”

“Yeah!” two of Trinity’s bodies cheered. They tore into the bag with her costume, then ran into the bathroom.

Emily listened to the click of the door, then started to move herself. Her costume wasn’t exactly hidden. Rather, it was tucked in a plastic bag along with Teddy’s costume in one of her drawers. Athena’s own costume was a bit too large to fit, at least the jacket part of it.

“We’re going to need to get you a new mask,” Emily muttered as she looked at Teddy’s bear mask. The plastic was a little warped on the sides and there was a crack along one ear. Just normal wear and tear on something made so cheaply.

“Oh, can I get one made of steel?” Teddy asked. “With knives for fangs.”

“I… don’t know if we have the budget for that,” Emily said.

She stuffed things away in a duffle bag, including Athena’s leather jacket, then stood up and looked to the Trinity sitting on the edge of her bed. “I’m still getting changed,” she said.

“Alright, take your time.”

Trinity nodded.

Emily had a minute or two to waste, so she moved over to her laptop and booted it up, then it was on to Oogle for a quick search. Black Shield, Thunder Clot and Spin to Win. The three Heroes that Cement had mentioned.

The news said that Cement had been captured by Glamazon and Silver Fox, but the news could be lying, especially if the Cabal controlled those two as well.

Black Shield’s presence online was nearly non-existent. There was an article or two, but they always had the Hero as part of a larger group. A young woman, in tight black spandex, standing at the rear. Her costume had some armour over the chest and knees and shoulders, black on black, with a few dark-grey highlights. The Heroine’s weapons were the only things that really stood out.

Emily clicked over to their Ikipedia page and frowned. The Void Shields. Some Gadgeteer tech shields that could fire lasers. They were both basically gauntlets with a big teardrop-shaped shield, the point ending a dozen centimetres past the Heroine’s knuckles, and the rounded part only about as wide as her forearm.

Her power was listed as “Black Shield Creation,” but Emily had no idea what that meant.

Thunder Clot was a different story. He was a much louder sort of Hero. Plenty of participation at local hospitals, visiting sick children, doing volunteer work, baking cookies for some charity work.

Thunder Clot was an average-looking man, if a bit on the thinner side. A bright yellow costume over a dark blue skin-tight suit. The armour looked high-tech, and he had some screens on his forearms. His helmet was a cross between an army hat, and a bicycle helmet, with a yellow-tinted visor on heavy headphones.

There was plenty about his activities, and some footage of him firing lightning bolts at a mugger out in the opening, but that was it. She didn’t get the “Clot” part of his name. He was a speedster, though, the way he reacted almost instantly.

And finally, there was Spin to Win.

They were the strangest of the three. A person in a suit and tie, one that was different at every appearance they made, the only common thread being how bright it was, and the wild patterns of the cloth. They had something of a business-man-clown look going on.

They—Emily didn’t know if they were male or female, Spin to Win seeming to change from picture to picture and event to event—had a large hovering wheel behind them with a large arrow in its centre. The wheel was always divided into sections, each one labelled differently. Things like “fire” and “gravity” were written on the pie slices.

The consensus from what Emily saw was that they could “spin” for a new power, but they didn’t have a choice on what they landed on.

“That’s a terrible power,” Emily muttered. Of the three, Spin to Win wasn’t the most public, but they didn’t exactly hide from cameras either. They had a lot of Villainous takedowns to their name, and had participated in at least two Endgames.

“Sis!”

Emily turned to see two Trinitys stumble out of the bathroom. The one in her new costume stepped up and placed her hands on her hips with a big, proud smile.

The costume suited them. A green scarf over a black-and-white shirt, green domino mask over her eyes and a big bag with a dollar-sign hanging by her hip. The shirt matched her tail, which was fluffed out behind her in plain sight.

“You need a beret,” Emily said. “But other than that, you look great.”

“Alright!” Trinity cheered. “Now I need to get changed again, yeah?”

“That’s right, and hurry it up. We’ll be heading out as soon as you’re done.” Emily turned back to her laptop—after glancing to make sure her other sisters were behaving. Teddy was catching a nap and Athena was leafing through one of Emily’s course books. Her next search was the address Cement had given her.

Plugging a nearby address into a map site let her find the right street. Eauclaire being as small as it was meant that the place wasn’t too far away. A quick walk, past the more commercial area and into part of the city filled with housing developments from the seventies. The kind of place filled with cookie-cutter homes in cul-de-sacs, like where she grew up.

“I’m back!” Trinity said from the bed as another Trinity opened the bathroom door and stumbled out.

“Okay,” Emily said. She shut down her laptop and stood up. “Teddy, wake up, sweetie. Athena, are you ready to go? Good! Trinity, don’t wander around too much, alright?”

Emily led her troop of sisters out of her room again, and into the elevator where they boarded with a single boy who, when faced with five girls staring at him, seemed about as uncertain as Emily usually felt.

The ride down was fast, though, and soon they were back out onto the streets and heading more or less northward.

Emily didn’t have the keenest sense of direction, but she could keep track of which way was which if she put in some effort.

The trip was mostly spent keeping her sisters in line. Teddy was being a little bossy to the others, which, while somewhat helpful, wasn’t very nice. Athena kept pulling ahead, and Emily only had so many hands and eyes to keep track of Trinity.

Maybe half an hour later, Emily found herself approaching the street where the home Cement had pointed her to was. “We can’t just walk up to it,” she said. “We’re going to need to either costume up and just… walk in, or we can try being a little sneaky.”

“I can go in on my own,” Trinity said. “Just one or two of me, while I stay with you.”

It wasn’t a terrible idea. The problem was trusting Trinity to properly communicate what she saw. Still, it wasn’t as risky as moving into the house herself.

“There should be some room behind the homes,” Emily said. Most of the lots had fenced in backyards, and past those was a section of forest before a highway leading into the city. Plenty of room to sneak past.

Emily found an alleyway to change in, a little nook where someone could hide away for a second or two. They took turns getting changed, and when all of them were in their costumes and her stuff was tucked away in a duffle bag hidden in a corner, Emily led her sisters to the backstreets and into the little strip of woods, with cars whooshing past just a hundred metres away.

“Alright,” Emily said when they reached the right house. The backyard was plain, with nothing but a firepit in its middle and a little gazebo in the back to make it stand out. “Trinity, you’re up.”

The girl nodded, then two of her bodies fell down next to the wooden fence and she boosted herself over it to crash on the other side with a thump. “I’m okay!”

Emily sighed and helped the second Trinity up and over the fence. “Good luck.”

“I’m still here,” the Trinity staying behind said.

“Right, right,” Emily replied.

She wondered where her life had gone so crooked that breaking and entering was more of a chore than anything else.

***