The Girl With Pink Hair: Pt. 06

"Except us," Elena said softly, and Jess reached to take his other hand.

He laughed out loud. "Do you know it's less than month since I met you in the upstairs lounge at the Bar Italia when you threatened to brain me with a highball glass? I think I still have some of the bruises. It was just supposed to be a little op to suss out the opposition's new significant other. I had a promising career in The Council. Now look at me!"

"I don't think you're doing too badly, Forrester," Jess said, leaning back in her chair and inspecting him.

He looked between the blonde and the pink, between the grey eyes and the blue, and surrounding them all, the rich burnished gold of their bond.

"I guess being wedded to a warrior princess and a genius astrophysicist isn't the worst thing to happen to me."

"We're not married yet," Elena chided him.

"But it's gonna happen, right?"

"Better believe it!" Jess said firmly, and there was silence for a few moments.

"Now," said Elena, bringing them back to the matter at hand. "How is Jess to get in touch with her mum?"

"Internet café," Alan said promptly. "Use a VPN to hide the location."

Jess looked at him scornfully. "I'm going old school. The hardest bit will be finding a working phone box."

"If you're successful, can you ask her to contact my Dad?" Elena asked.

Alan and Jess looked at each other. "Can't hurt I guess," said Alan.

"Only, if I'm going to marry the Warrior Princess, I'm going to need Dad to give me away. And he'll want to meet you too," Elena said, looking at Alan.

"Meet your Dad?" said Alan, with what sounded like genuine apprehension. "Isn't it a bit soon for that?"

Jess shone with glee. "Not scared, are you Forrester?"

"Um," was all he could manage, and the other two fell about laughing.

"Stop it!" he said. "I've had some very bad experiences with dads of one sort or another."

Elena reached to hug him. "Don't worry, Dad will love you."

***

Town centre 1pm Sunday 5 ^th June

The early sunshine had given way to a brief spell of rain after which ominous, thundery clouds loomed over the town.

While Jess was making her phone call, and Alan went on some errands, Elena volunteered to find some clothes for the trio. They agreed to meet back under the statue in the town square in an hour and went their separate ways.

Finding a phone box proved quite difficult. The first couple Jess found had been converted to other uses but finally, down a rather dismal little side street, she found one that still had all the necessary equipment.

Stepping gingerly over the puddles, the discarded needles, used condoms and other unspeakable detritus, she squeezed herself into the corner of the phone box. The smell of urine was eye watering. She eyed the handset dubiously and decided to sacrifice a handkerchief in the interests of her future good health.

Punching the number from memory, she marvelled that it had to have been at least ten years since she had last had cause to use it. "Probably take it to my grave," she muttered.

It rang half a dozen times, and she was on the verge of hanging up when her mother answered.

"Hello?"

Her mother's voice eased an ache she'd not been aware of.

"Mum?"

"Jessica!" her mother shrieked. There was the unmistakeable sound of a hand being placed over the mouthpiece. "George! George! It's Jessica!" she shouted away from the phone.

"Darling, are you alright? How is Elena? Is Alan Forrester with you? What's happening?"

Careless of any potential biohazard from the phone, Jess clung to the sound of her mother's voice and wiped her wet cheeks with her sleeve. "I'm fine, Mum, really."

"Everyone's in uproar! There was an emergency meeting of the Heads of the Families yesterday, even some of the independents turned up. One or two of the Centrists made the most ludicrous claims. The Noble's had a visit from some very unpleasant Americans."

"Americans?"

"Of the shoot first and ask questions later variety. You're sure you're alright?"

"There are people wanting to shoot us? No wonder Alan's friend told us to run."

"So Mister Forrester is with you?"

"He's more than with us, Mum. We're the Trinity."

There was a dreadful pause. "Elena's operant?" Mrs Calamar squeaked.

"She's the vessel for the Queen."

There was silence on the other end of the line.

"Mum?"

Her mother's voice was hesitant. "And ... you, darling?"

"Well, it's been a lot. We got into a fight."

"A fight!"

"These locals decided they were going to have a bit of fun with us and when one of them touched Elena, well, I kind of lost it and that's when I became the Sword."

There was another dreadful pause.

"I didn't kill anyone," she finished lamely.

"I think I need to sit down," her mother said, faintly. "George, would you get me a brandy? I take it then, that Alan Forrester is the Shadow?"

"Yes, Mum."

Her mother's voice firmed. "Listen to me Jessica, you are in grave danger. There are various groups of people looking for you, including the Elect. You were wise to avoid contacting anyone. Oh my God, it's coming true! More brandy, George!"

"What's coming true, Mum? Alan told us that our futures are opaque."

"Too big for the auguries, darling, way, way too big. The reason they can't see anything is because you're too big and too close." There was another pause and her mother sounded hesitant again. "You and the Sword are separate?"

"Yes, Mum, she's not absorbed me. Actually I really like her. My weapons are amazing, I can't wait to show you. But Elena's had the hardest job, coming into her powers and then fighting Queenie off."

Joan Calamar audibly gulped. "She has a pet name?"

"Elena's phenomenal, Mum. She's so powerful. The Queen's a bit scary but we've got a sort of understanding. We've been negotiating in Elena's dreams."

Jess felt the urge to unburden herself, great blocks of things suddenly calving like icebergs, secrets that she'd kept to herself during her lonely years working the station bistro. "And Mum, I'm not really a waitress. Well, I am, but that's not all I've been doing."

"Your clandestine work? Yes, darling, we know about that."

"You do?"

"Credit us with some intelligence, Jessica! I may not be Charity Vaughan, but I have some resources."

"Oh." Jess didn't quite know what to say to that.

"Now, Jessica, you need to get off the line. Our phone will certainly be monitored, and I assume you've been careful."

"Yes, I'm in a phone box."

"Good girl. Take care of yourself darling. Come back to us in one piece. Look after Elena and you need to introduce us to your Mister Forrester. Is he handsome?"

Jess grinned, "Yeah, he's alright, I guess. Elena asked me to ask you to call her dad." There was a pause and then, "Mum, you've not told me what to do."

"No, darling. I can't interfere."

'Can't interfere?' Jess thought. What did that mean? Her mother was still speaking.

"You have the tools, just do what feels right. We love you and we trust you, darling. All of you."

Jess hung up the phone feeling that her mother had loaded her last statements with meaning, and somehow it meshed with what Alan had been talking about at the breakfast table that morning.

***

While Jess made her call, Elena went on the hunt for second hand clothes. It was a habit she'd picked up in her university days when money was tight. She prided her eye, picking up couture items that some rich undergrad had simply tired of.

However, she didn't think she'd have nearly the same luck in the many charity shops that along with bookies are symptomatic of a depressed neighbourhood. She cast a jaundiced eye at the colourful displays of the latter; designed to squeeze the last few dollars out of people so desperate that they would risk money they didn't have.

Opening the door of her first emporium, she caught that special charity shop smell full in the face and winced. Squaring her shoulders, she forged on, working the racks. While spoiled for choice in her search, to her increasing irritation they were mostly clothes that no one in their right mind would buy to begin with. Elena was no fashionista, but this was more like wading through a house clearance. She paused, mentally chiding herself. A lot of it would be just that.

Several shops later and no further forward for camouflage, she was crowded by three women. One took hold of her arm and she suddenly realised they were all of the Folk. How had they been able to sneak up on her? She might be new at this game, but she wasn't entirely blind.

"You are to come with us, ma'am," one of them said in a low American accent and Elena felt the prick of a needle at her neck.

Elena could feel the women reaching out to dial down the curiosity and suspicion of the others in the shop as the trio frogmarched her to the door of the premises. She searched desperately for an escape, but the Americans had kettled her very competently.

Right about then, Elena's luck turned as a gaggle of teenage girls barged the door open, filling the small space with noisy chatter and garish crop tops over white trousers. They completely blocked the exit. One of them noticed the possessive hand on Elena's arm.

"'Ere, whatchoo doing?" she shrieked in a voice that would have found favour at a fishwife's convention.

"This doesn't concern you," the presumed leader of the kidnappers said, trying to exert her authority. Elena could feel her fighting uphill against the gang's attitude. She almost pitied her; these girls didn't defer to anyone. If the leader had ever tried to teach in an inner city secondary school, it might have given her the necessary tools. She widened her eyes at one of the gang in mute entreaty.

"Let go of 'er!" shouted one and then there was uproar as the kidnappers tried in vain to use their combat training against young women who had been fighting their entire lives. Trouble being her 'rescuers' wouldn't necessarily discriminate between Elena and her abductors.

In horror, she saw one bring out a travel can of hairspray and a lighter. Throwing herself to one side, there was a terrible howl as someone took it in the face; then bedlam as the screaming woman fell backwards into a clothing rail.

A fire alarm added to the general cacophony and Elena dropped to her hands and knees. Miraculously, she managed to crawl in the right direction, and in moments was out of the shop. After one last glance inside, at where the flames were climbing the draped fabrics, she scrambled to her feet and fled.

Looking over her shoulder she saw two of her attackers emerge from the smoke filled doorway. She cursed her Talent as they unerringly turned in her direction and started to run.

Bafflingly, she could hear a familiar voice. She glanced to one side to find Mike Buchanan from the hippy grocery driving a car paralleling her, with the passenger window wound down. Elena stared at him in blank incomprehension, what the hell was he doing here? Stacy was in the back and leaning forward to shout at her through the open window.

"Jump in!" she shrieked, and Elena weighed the odds that the grocery shop Commies were part of The Bad Guys. She yanked the door open, and half jumped, half fell into the passenger well.

"Are you alright?" Mike asked, peering in the rear view mirror.

Elena didn't answer as she was squinting over her shoulder to where someone she could have sworn was Jack Turner was rugby tackling one of her pursuers. What the fuck was he doing here? Or Mike? Were they tangled - she huffed an ironic laugh - up in this? In which case ...

"Is everybody in on this fucking thing?" she snarled.

"What?" Mike shouted above the roar of the traffic.

"What about you?" she shouted. "Are you in on it too?"

"In on what?' yelled Stacy. "Oh, you mean you having mind powers and hosting a psychic parasite and being on the run from the Man? Yeah, us Scoobies is all over that."

"Fuck me," Elena said with feeling.

'Indeed,' murmured the Queen.

Stacey's face was flushed. She looked as if she was having the time of her life.

"Are you alright?" Mike repeated, his eyes darting from the road ahead to the rear view mirrors.

Elena was still staring out of the back window to where smoke billowed from the charity shop and the patrons milled around outside. Of the remaining assailants there was no sign.

"Elena?" he asked again, and she blinked hard to bring herself back into focus.

"Yes. Yes, I'm okay, thank you. How did you find me?"

"Sanjay got the place where you dropped off the car, Sylvie remembered you mentioning where you grew up and Ali found something on Twitter about a fight with a girl with pink hair. We've literally just got here. Pure chance we were driving up the road just now."

Elena's lips twisted. Chance, eh? More like the narrative funnelling assets and followers to her. Still, her friends were clever people and if they'd made the necessary connections so quickly and easily, it was perhaps not so surprising that others had too. Although their being American was more baffling.

'More pieces in play,' her alter ego whispered.

Elena gave her the psychic equivalent of the side eye. 'Where were you in all this? I got no warning at all. One minute they weren't there and the next they were escorting me out the shop.'

'I was otherwise occupied,' She said, cryptically.

Elena frowned but left it at that. Stacy was still speaking.

"I'll tell the others we found you."

"They're here?"

"Yeah. Sylvie drove down as well. Her and Shawna are in her car, Ali, Merry & Sanj are out on foot."

"Call them and tell them to get the hell out of Dodge. Wait, let me speak to Merry."

Her own phone buzzed with a text from Jess.

'Where r u?'

'In a car with Stacy and Mike. We'll pick you up by the Co-Op. Be careful. Some Americans tried to kidnap me.'

'!!! r u ok?'

'I'm fine. Be careful! We're 5 mins away.'

'What kind of car?'

Elena cursed herself for forgetting such an elementary piece of information.

"What kind of car is this? We need to pick Jess up at the Co-Op."

"Black VW Golf EX09 PMU," Mike responded promptly, as if he was in some police procedural. He also seemed to be enjoying himself.

"Which way?" he asked.

"Just stay on this road, it's about half a mile," Elena said as she rapidly texted the car details to Jess.

Leviathan was mulling over the likelihood of Mike and Stacy arriving at just the right moment to rescue her and then being pointed in the right direction to collect Jess. It offered that if the narrative had been more efficient then the Scoobies would have picked her up before the Americans got to her. Elena conceded the point. However, the more probable scenario was that hostiles were converging on their position and assets were being placed to counter them.

She worried about that. The Trinity were the important pieces on the board. The narrative might consider all the others expendable. In which case the Scoobies had to be removed from play at the earliest opportunity.

Elena started to feel like the narrative was an actual opponent, a hostile in its own right, which was the wrong way to look at it, she knew. Leviathan promptly opined that they were in the basin of an Attractor, a subset of the phase space of a dynamical system, where all actions tended towards a particular outcome. Elena's mouth turned down. Such things were like the traps of ant lions or pitcher plants. No matter how the prey moves, the direction of travel is inevitable.

Stacy handed her the phone. "Merry."

"Hello Merry, I haven't got time for twenty questions. How did you find us?"

"Ali found some social media chat about a girl with pink hair beating up a bunch of guys and we put two and two together. We're good like that!" Merry's voice had the odd quality that said Elena was on speaker.

"We reckoned that if anyone with pink hair was going to beat anyone up it would be Jess!" Alison chipped in.

"Does anyone else know what we're doing?" Elena asked

"What do you mean?" Sanjay asked.

"We mustn't gain attention. Attention fuels the narrative. The narrative gives the avatars power. If this gets traction on social media, then we're fucked."

To their credit, the Unholy Trinity understood immediately.

"Holy shit!" Alison exclaimed.

"Even getting your support means that we, the royal 'We', have supporters. We've gained the allegiance of a local gang of thugs and a flock of birds; would you believe it?"

"Ravens?" asked Alison.

"Magpies."

"Corvids," Merry said, and Elena could picture her nodding. "More creatures from myth. Fuck, this is getting - wait, that's not Arthurian, that's Nordic!"

Up ahead, a familiar aura touched her, and she tapped Mike on the shoulder. "Fifty yards. On the left."

She turned back to her phone. "There are people trying to do us harm and I don't want you getting in the firing line, so find Sylvie and Shawna and get out of here. No buts!"

There was silence for a bit and then, "And there's nothing we can do to help?"

"I'd rather not have to worry about you. You're all very precious to me and I need you to stay safe."

"Okay," Merry said reluctantly, and the line went dead.

Once Jess was in the car, Elena relaxed. They communed through hand holding and murmured affection. Stacy tried not to stare or feel jealous. Jess felt her turmoil and reached out to calm her feelings only for the Queen to intervene.

"Let me help."

Stacy startled at the different voice coming out of Elena's mouth, but Jess put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Elena rolled her eyes but stepped back.

Both mundanes gawked at the transformation.

"Eyes on the road, Mr Buchanan," She reminded him gently.

She turned to Stacy who stared at Her with wide eyes.

"You're a fierce one. Why do you need the ink and the metal? They keep the world at bay, yes, but they are a distraction. You're never going to be a swan, but you're not an ugly duckling anymore. You need something more fitting. If I may?"

Transfixed by the Queen's presence, the young Scot nodded.

The power in the air surged and Jess reached out to give Mike some protection so that he could concentrate on keeping the car on the road. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Stacy's tattoos were moving, leaving her face and arms, and migrating towards her torso. There was a soft tinkling as her piercings all fell out.

"There. I think you have the necessary armour, young lady."

The Queen melted back into Elena.

"Bugger me backwards! What just happened?" Stacy exclaimed, her hands exploring the smooth unmarked skin of her face. She looked at her reflection in the car's rear view mirror. "Where are me tats?"

Jess smiled. "Take off your tee shirt."

Stacy gave her a look but raised the hem and caught sight of the new ink on her belly. As she pulled it up it revealed a scaly tail and a clawed foot that disappeared round to her back. Craning her neck to see, she hissed in frustration.

"Here, let me," said Jess, getting her phone out to take pictures.

Elena gasped as Stacy turned to reveal that the dragon coiled up to come over her right shoulder. Now dressed only in her bra, she turned back to reveal the dragon's head resting above her breasts. The artwork was exquisite.

"What? What? Let me see!" Snatching the phone from Jess, her hand to her mouth as she saw the Queen's work.

"Oh my God," she kept repeating, flicking the images back and forth, not quite believing what had happened. She raised her eyes to Elena.

"Thank you. Thank you so much!"