–Over Meridiana, 2:27 AM–
"Hey. Wake up, kiddo. We’re about five minutes away from landing." The dull vibration of the helicopter’s rotors had lulled Sebena to sleep, and it had gathered the side effect of the pilot mentally thanking providence that Sebena hadn’t been wired on chocolate-covered coffee beans earlier.
"Mhggg. Mom? We there yet?" Sebena sat up, rubbing her eyes as she tilted the oversized crash helmet back on her head.
"Look down through the window on your right, and you’ll see the city. Now, it’ll take about five more minutes, then we’ll get to a nice, four-star hotel to sleep until about ten in the morning." She leaned back in the jumpseat between the pilot’s seat and the co-pilot’s seat, watching Sebena as the young girl stared, awestruck as the lights of the city slowly increased in size as the pilot lowered the quiet chopper towards the lit helipad on the roof of the hotel that had been reserved for the two passengers.
With a short jolt, the chopper landed, quickly followed by the side door opening and three duffel bags being tossed out onto the rough tar roof. After the two passengers got out, the door closed, and the helicopter lifted jerkily, then headed towards the airport. "Well, let’s get our stuff and register at the desk. Wanna play with the express elevator?"
"Well... yeah!" They picked up all three bags, then started walking towards the small shack-like building that housed the express elevator to the ground floor of the thirty-story building. Less than five minutes later, including a bit of interesting hacking to get around the security panel on the roof, the two left the elevator, walked over to the desk, and waited for the night clerk to notice them.
Soon enough, he did notice the young woman wearing a black greatcoat standing in front of the desk, and pasting a leer on his face, he walked over to her. "Yes? How can I help you?"
"Well, you can help by looking through the damn register for a Mrs. D’Arnise and companion. After all, My cellphone signal got through, and I did reserve the penthouse." The clerk, whose eyes were beginning to range up and down her body, tore his eyes away from her and started leafing through the registry book.
"Well, you’d most likely be in our last entry, and... yep! Here it is. The price for the room is three hundred a day, not counting TV and minibar costs. The first day has to be paid in advance, though. Of course, if you’re short on cash, I could always... spot you a loan in return for a... favour."
She frowned, then pulled out three crisp, grey, hundred dollar bills. "Well, three hundred. Here it is in Canadian. Gimme my change before I decide to rearrange your face."
The reaction was almost priceless, especially as Sebena got bored standing there, and started to chuck pennies at the clerk’s oversized forehead. "Well, three hundred Canadian, that’s-" *clink* "Ow! Four-fifty, so you get-" *clink* "Hey! One-fifty back." *clink, clink, clink* "Ouch! Does she ever miss?"
"No. Hand over the key or I’ll give her some quarters." The clerk grumbled a bit, then thought better of it when a penny, expertly lobbed, smacked him in the ear hard enough to leave a welt, followed by a childish giggle. Growling like an angry wolf, he tossed the required key over to the woman, who suddenly reached out, grabbed the key from midair, and at the same time also caught a penny that was going to smack the clerk right between the eyes.
"Oh yes, set a wake-up call for the penthouse at ten-thirty AM. We just flew in using the rooftop helipad as well, and you’ll need someone to repair the security bypass I rigged to get down here."
The reaction was an incredulous "Whaaattt?!?", followed by the elevator doors closing quietly. After pushing the button to go to the penthouse, followed quickly by the elevator rising to the thirtieth floor, the two extremely tired and saddened people walked into the most opulent room they had ever seen.
"Wow. Now, where’s the beds? I just wanna crash for a month." Sebena pointed in the general direction of the bedroom, then followed her exhausted mother. When they had entered the room, and upon seeing the two immensely plush beds, they just crashed into their respective beds, landing face first into mounds of pillows. Less than twenty seconds later, the two were asleep, and stayed that way until the prearranged wake-up call.
–The Mayor’s Office, 9:30 AM–
"So, you’re telling me that the leader of those green-skinned freaks has managed to somehow ‘augment’ his basic grunts into something that could easily stand up to your heavy weapons? And one of them actually killed your commanding officer? Why are you telling me this?"
Jenny sighed, and scrubbed at her face with one hand. "Sir, I’m sorry but I’ve been awake for almost forty hours straight, and my brain’s turned into something approximating mush. Now, Wilson had only one condition on where he was going to be buried, and considering that we can’t fulfill his wish due to some transportation snarls, we’re asking for a small plot of land in the graveyard near Police Headquarters. If any other members of the teams die, we would also like to have them buried in the same graveyard."
The mayor looked at the small woman who was the interim commander of the currently demoralized specialty team. "Alright. You’ll get your wish. When’s your new commander coming in?"
"She’s already here. If you were up at two-thirty this morning, you would have heard a helicopter land on that new hotel downtown. She’s there with her daughter, and is probably armed to the teeth."
"Really? Is she considered sane?" The last part was spoken almost conspiratorially, but the response was totally unexpected.
"Possibly. I wouldn’t put it past her to be a danger to society though, especially when someone threatens her kid. There was one incident about seven months ago when five or six unknown assassins tried to kill her, and abduct her child for some reason. They stayed unknown because she literally ripped them to shreds."
The mayor almost recoiled when he heard the self-satisfied edge in Jenny’s voice, but stopped himself. "Okay. You’ve told me enough. Now, when will I meet her?"
"The funeral, which will be tomorrow, at about six in the evening. Be there okay?" Jenny then stood, shook the mayor’s hand, and walked out of the building. The mayor just sat there, watching the trim young woman walk away, and wished he was twenty years younger as he stroked his greying beard. Eventually, he sighed, picked up the phone, and started to cut through the red tape so everything could be ready by the following evening.
–Meridiana High School, 10:00 AM–
Mikae looked carefully around the corner of the hallway, feeling horribly self-conscious without her battered leather jacket to hide her arms. Instead, she was wearing a long-sleeved shirt that was slightly thin, so she wouldn’t boil in her own juices when lunch hour turned the school into a sauna.
*Great. I escape from the clone’s clutches, only to be mocked until I find a new jacket to replace the one that little bastard stole from me. Well, it could be worse. After all, I still have my virginity intact.* Mikae was suddenly jolted out of her thoughts when someone slammed their arms onto her shoulders, surprising and temporarily stunning her.
Turning around, she nearly knocked Lori’s block off, but the gang leader only smiled and danced back out of Mikae’s reach. "You’re really asking for me to apply some first-degree murder to you someday, aren’t you Lori?"
Lori grinned, then gave Mikae a CD. "Well, I heard you grumbling all the way through English class, so I thought that I’d lend you one of my CDs so you could calm down. By the way, I like the shirt. Much better than that ratty old lump of leather you call a jacket that you’ve been wearing for the last year and a half."
Mikae snorted, but accepted the CD. "Well, I happen to like my jacket, but it was stolen."
Lori smiled slightly, then looked at her younger counterpart. "It could be worse. Your jacket could be in the clutches of that weird little boy-thing that’s tried to terrorize the city." Mikae looked at Lori like she would a piece of rotting meat.
"Okay. Touched a nerve huh? Well, you’d better get going before the bell goes off." Lori then pelted down the hall, skidding past two of her gang members as she dodged her way into the biology classroom. Mikae just leaned against the wall, looking at the CD Lori had given her.
"Huh. She listens to stuff like Kittie? Well, I’ll take a listen to it sometime later. Right now, I have a class to catch." Mikae put the CD in her pocket, then tore down the hallway towards her own class.
–Imperial Hotel, 10:52 AM–
Jenny was busy packing Wilson’s stuff into his one duffel bag, and wondering how he had managed to hide almost ten pounds of magazines in the damn thing while still having enough room to insert every other piece of equipment he had deemed necessary for himself. Sighing, she felt something flutter by her hand. Looking down, she stared, almost uncomprehending, at a photograph taken last year when three of her friends and herself had gone on a two-week vacation to Grenada.
The photo was slightly tattered around the edges, but it showed Wilson sitting on a lawn chair, with Jenny and Sel sitting on his forearms. All three of them were grinning from ear to ear, and Wilson was trying valiantly to keep Sel’s long, dark hair from covering his face. However, as jenny looked at the picture, remembering all the good times had by all, a dull knocking sound echoed through the room. Jenny stood up, slipping the picture into her pants pocket as she walked over to the door. Frowning slightly, she listened quietly for a few seconds, hearing a formidable array of invective being sent in torrents onto some poor schmuck.
She opened the door, waiting for the inevitable, and found it when she literally came eye-to-eye with one of her oldest friends, who was still firing a rather descriptive opinion of someone’s genetic ancestry over her shoulder while keeping a thin hand nicely placed on a smaller version of herself that was gesturing rather rudely at the retreating person.
"Sebena! Where’d you learn those gestures?!?" Jenny was shocked, and let it show by how she acted. Sebena, seeing that both adults were looking at her with an almost dangerous intensity, decided on the truth.
"Big Jimmy at home. He also taught me some words that you’ve been using to explain to those cab drivers how dumb they are."
Sebena looked at Jenny, then at her mother. The result was a shared glance between the two women, followed by a burst of laughter. "Okay, you win. Just don’t use that language in mixed company. After all, we don’t want to scare the boys, do we?"
"No. That’s your job. Now can I sit on something? My feet want me dead." Sebena looked into the barely furnished room, squeezed past Jenny, and hopped onto the bed. The other two entered the room as well, closing the door behind them as they started talking about their old friends and hopefully the new ones that could appear in the future.
–Dr. Zack’s House, 8:35 PM–
Dr. Zack was exhausted. Not only had he gone through a rather vicious day at the school, with Tilman’s backstabbing inter-department politics interfering with the educational curriculum, but the Mayor himself had called him and asked if he could preform an autopsy on a cybernetically enhanced creature that had managed to kill the commander of the team that had been called in.
"My god. I’d rather be stuck in an inquiry where everyone is against me than have to deal with this day again."
"Why’s that?"
Dr. Zack started at the familiar voice, and his right hand had snuck into the sleeve of his coat where he kept his knife before he put a face to the voice and relaxed. "Well, not only did I have to fight for some more funding to the science department of the school, which is still woefully underfunded, but I had to perform an autopsy on something that was so filled with plasma burns and shattered remnants of metal spikes that I thought I was going to extremely ill less than two minutes through." He sighed again, then removed his coat and hat before walking into his living room.
"Don’t forget that you’re a Doctor of Quantum Physics, not a Medical Doctor. I wouldn’t be surprised if you blew chunks all over a trash can as soon as you got out of the room." The speaker stepped out of the shadows, revealing her trademark fedora and cape.
"Don’t I know it. Now, where did you learn such language as ‘blowing chunks’? You’re starting to sound like Lucas." Dr. Zack frowned in mock disapproval.
Six chuckled, then sat down in her favourite chair. "Don’t let it bother you. By the way, I just got back from my doctor’s and I have some news."
Dr. Zack paused in filling his pipe, then lit a match once he was done. "Well, what’s the news? You seem to be fairly happy."
Six blushed for a few seconds, than looked at the simple golden ring she wore on her left hand. "Well, in about eight months, there’ll be a new member of the family."
Dr. Zack nearly swallowed his pipe.