Fluff

Chapter Two - A Much Needed Break

“Are you sure?” Emily asked.

It wasn’t the first time she asked.

In fact, she was quite certain it wasn’t going to be the last time she asked the same question.

Her mom rolled her eyes. “Emily, I know you. I think in some ways, I might know you better than yourself. I can tell when you’re fraying at the edges. You have that same look in your eyes as when your father and I drag you to a party and you’ve been forced to socialise for more than an hour.”

Emily frowned. “I’m fine.”

She received a hug. It felt a little condescending, but she accepted it all the same. “Sure you are, sweetie. And you’ll be a lot more fine with a couple of hours of time spent alone to think and decompress.”

Emily fidgetted. “You’ll keep in touch?”

Her mom nodded. “I have my phone, you know my number. I’ll send you a picture once we’ve arrived.”

Emily nodded, then she turned to her sisters and tried to adopt as serious a look as she could manage. “And you three will behave?” she asked.

Five heads nodded. “We’ll be good,” Teddy said. “We’re not gonna mess with Step-Boss. We’ll do exactly as she says.”

“Please, sweetie, just call me Claire.”

“Sure thing, Step-Boss,” Teddy said.

Emily pointed to Teddy. “No turning into a bear unless it’s super-super urgent and you’d best believe that you’ll have to explain it to me if you do.”

Teddy’s head bobbed up and down.

Emily turned her finger towards Athena. “No making people paranoid for fun. And don’t tease your sisters too much. Just because you’re the most well-behaved doesn’t mean you can get away with more.”

“Yes Big Sis,” Athena said.

Emily pointed to Trinity, to all three of her bodies. “And you. No dumpster diving.”

Trinity squawked in protest from three mouths at once.

“None,” Emily said. “Not even a trash bin on the way over.”

Her mom’s laughter cut her off short. “I never thought I’d see you being so bossy,” she said. “It suits you. Now, don’t worry, I can manage a few kids. It’s just a quick run for ice cream. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

“Please, stop jinxing it,” Emily said.

She got another hug, then five more as she knelt down and hugged each sister as they moved out of her rooms.

The door closed with a click, and suddenly Emily found herself in her room, alone.

She turned, taking in the room. It was a little messy. Something impossible to remedy when there were so many little mess-makers stuffed in such a small place, but otherwise it was the same room she’d started her school year in. It was just... quieter.

Emily frowned, then crossed her arms. She refused to miss her sisters after less than a minute had passed. Not after an entire life of trying to avoid people wherever she could.

Instead of wallowing in contrarian and bizarre feelings, she moved over to her desk and pulled it open. The papers they had acquired from Cement were all there, in a neat stack under a few crayon drawings on looseleaf. She didn’t bother hiding it, not when she couldn’t think of a good place to hide anything in.

She pulled her chair closer to her desk, fished out a fresh notebook from her backpack, clicked the tip of a pen out, then leaned forwards to study.

In reality, she figured that the likelihood of the papers having an answer to her problems was slim, but that didn’t mean they were non-existent. Besides, she could let her problems percolate in the back of her mind as she studied.

The papers, unfortunately, weren’t designed by a teacher who intended to teach anyone. They weren’t extracted from a textbook either. They were a semi-organized pile of reports, maps, print-outs from various web-sites, and printed pages.

She gave up on reading them all five pages in, then started to work on cataloguing them instead.

Her pen flew across her notebook as she started to break everything down into smaller chunks. First, she put a number on the top of each page in the order they were in. That would be their name. Once she had an idea of the broad category they fit in, she could add a letter designation to that.

Her desk was soon split into two dozen little piles, with a few more on the floor next to her when she ran out of space.

“This is a mess,” Emily concluded. But it was becoming a comprehensive sort of mess.

There wasn’t a manifesto in the papers, nor an easy explanation for what she had. Instead, it was the disjointed evidence of the creation of... of what she was realising was a criminal organisation.

Some of the papers were blackmail material. Evidence that different people had committed a crime of some sort, or had cheated on a spouse. Most of the evidence of that nature was found in accounting reports with highlighted sections. They were from a few companies set in the city.

Most of the website pages were listings for buildings that were for sale. One of them was the place she had raided with her sisters. Hideouts? Safehouses? She flipped her notebook forwards and made a list of the addresses. She could visit them, see if any were lived-in.

The reports she had almost all ended with an H at the very bottom, one that looked a little bit like a crude drawing of a house.

Homie. The villain that she and Teddy had captured with Melaton’s help.

She skimmed through the reports. Mostly they named shops and stores across the city that had had issues with smaller gangs, then they detailed how those gangs had been pushed away. There were also ‘collection’ reports, with donation sums next to them. They didn’t amount to too much, individually, but altogether was another story. Cement had been raking in tens of thousands of dollars a month in protection money.

He also ran a pair of little businesses. Entirely innocent, from what she could tell. Innocent except for the way they turned those donations into taxed revenue.

All in all, the collection racket was barely any more than what they were making from selling cheap pizza to hungry college kids.

Emily was only halfway through the pages and her hand was already cramping up.

She leaned back in her chair and folded up her legs under her. It was a lot of disjointed information to try and piece together.

To be fair, it wouldn’t have made sense for Cement to have everything labelled clearly. It was his business, and these were his notes. He didn’t need to explain his operations to himself.

She was struck by how small it all was. Complicated, certainly, but still very small. A few tiny scuffles with other gangs, a few reports of known thieves getting bruised up. A few little rackets run by a few little groups. The city probably never noticed any of it.

Emily had to reconsider what she knew about Cement. The older villain had been little more than a passing threat, and while she knew that she had been underestimating him, she didn’t know it was by this much.

It was a scary thought to have.

Her phone buzzed, and Emily almost jumped out of her skin.

She was getting too used to constant noise, that now she was spooked by silence.

Grabbing her phone, she opened it to find a few messages from her mom. Pictures of the girls all sitting around a table, with ice cream cones in their hands, and plenty of ice cream on their faces and clothes too.

At least they were having fun.

She smiled, then sent a quick reply to her mom before glancing back at all the papers. If she didn’t figure something out, that fun might soon evaporate.

Feeling a little more resolute than usual, Emily picked up her notebook and slipped back a few pages. Cement ran a couple of businesses. Honest ones, as far as she could tell, at least when it came to anything but their accounting.

With him gone, who was running those?

And then the people paying into the protection racket he had going, how would they react to Cement being gone? Would it be favourable?

Two leads to follow.

She nodded to herself as she made note of some addresses.

She had classes in the afternoon of the next day, but the morning was free. That would give her plenty of time to investigate.

If the people who were now freed of Cement’s protection racket were generous, maybe that would be the first honest bit of money she’d make in a while. And if the businesses could use some help, maybe that could be a good source of income too.

It was something.

***