thegingernut
The journey back out of town was uneventful enough and we quickly found freeway again. But not the freeway we arrived by. "Isn't this the wrong direction?" asked Victoria. "The road we came in by won't take us directly home and neither will this one. I'm taking a circuitous route so if we're being followed we have more time to spot them without giving them any useful information for finding town" I expined. "Do you think we're being followed?" she asked worriedly. "Not really. But no amount of caution is too much when you're hiding from somebody" I noted.
Rose, Alice and Leah were making out in the back seat. It was incredibly distracting. So much so that I eventually stopped checking the rear view mirror in favour of the side mirrors. I could still hear them though. And so could Victoria. "Could you PLEASE tell them to stop" she groaned. I sighed. "I could but I really don't want to. I may deal in mind control but I prefer not to use it on my friends if I can help it. It starts with a ‘don't hit me’ here or a ‘shut up’ there and then before you know it you've surrounded yourself with yesmen who like the things you like and have no personality of their own. Which will drive you mad eventually".
"Okay, but you could like ASK them to stop. No magic, just ‘as my friend please stop that’?" moaned Victoria. "I suppose I could but I don't want to" I replied sardonically. "Doesn't it bother you? Didn't you say you wanted to date Alice yourself earlier? Are you not upset about her kissing other girls?" she said with a mixture of displeasure and confusion.
I sighed. "Well kissing doesn't have to mean anything. You can kiss your friends" I noted. "Not like *that*" gagged Victoria. I shrugged. "Maybe you need better friends" I jested. She shot me a dark gre. "Sorry. Well… in addition to that, I don't own her and she doesn't exactly own me…" I ruminated. "That's what you think!" Alice called from the back seat. I smiled involuntarily.
"Regardless, if you love someone you should want their happiness. When you love someone, you feel happiness at their happiness and safety. Even if you're not in the picture" I noted. "Yeah? Come back after you get your heart broken for the first time and we'll see if you still think that" Victoria scoffed. "When you had that boyfriend. Did seeing him smile make you feel good?" I asked. Victoria hesitated, probably debating if this was any of my business. "Yeah. Fuck, I still get butterflies when I think of him smiling at me…" she grunted.
I gave a nod. "What about the reverse? Do you think seeing you smile made him feel the same way" I asked. "Doubt it. He wouldn't have slept with my sister if he cared about my smile" she said. I sighed. "You can never know for certain how another person feels. But if you're paying attention, you pick up on the obvious signs. My father used to tell me he loved me. But after a while I realised he was looking right through me. Not seeing me. That he saw me not as a person, but as an object. A possession. A treasured possession to be sure. He probably cried after I drowned. But you don't ask a possession how it feels. Its there to make you happy not for you to bring joy to it"
"Some people think of their friends like possessions. They don't really care what their friends get out of knowing them, they just like having them. Like using them. And its not always obvious that someone thinks about you that way… I don't want to think about people that way. So I try to think about what makes other people happy. And if that's not me… Well I don't want to be the sort of person who'd be upset about that…"
"You make me happy and when we get back to town I'm going to hug you till you throw up every st bit of that crap you've swallowed!" snapped Alice. I smiled sadly. "Thanks sweetie, that means a lot…" I sighed. "We'll find a way to repay you for today" Rose piped up. "Its fine. I'm just gd to have finally had my first girls day out" I chuckled. "Its NOT fine! You said you'll literally have less to eat for a while" Leah bit back. "You're a part of the community now. We all help each other. Its not just about giving" she added.
There was a mencholic protest on the tip of my tongue, but at that moment a police siren sounded behind us.
---
I pulled my phone from my pocket, flicked the hardware switch for the wireless and then threw it to Alice in the back seat. "If they get belligerent, hit the topmost button to start recording and keep them in frame. Don't say a word unless spoken to. And if I say poppycock, link hands and teleport back to town immediately. Victoria, reach your right hand back behind the seat so Rose can grab it at a moment's notice. And if someone gets left behind, especially me, don't come back for me unless you can find elder Laurent and or elder Maggie, and even then only with their permission" I lectured as I slowed.
I pulled in where the road gave way to dirt. The car with the blue lights pulled in a football field back, and a man in a uniform that was not police and did not show an icon for any particur organization got out and began sauntering towards us. "Do you think we should teleport out before he gets here" asked Victoria. "Not really. He probably just wants to tell us our taillight is out or something" I noted. "Then why all the warnings?" asked Rose. "Fortune favours the prepared" I said dryly.
I rolled down the window as the man came within 10 feet of the car. "Good afternoon officer. Is there something amiss?" I asked monotonously. "Good afternoon yourself. I was just wondering if you knew how fast you were going?" he asked. "70 miles an hour according to the speedometer" I responded. "Are you quite sure?" he asked. "Do you have a recently calibrated speedometer reading that says otherwise?" I asked. "DON'T GIVE ME LIP" he yelled furiously. "Apologies" I responded and raised my hands in a pcating gesture.
"License and registration. NOW!" he snapped. I opened the sun visor and extracted my license and handed it over. He looked at me, then the license and then at me again. "Aren't you a little young for a full license?" he asked weakly. "Not in Idaho" - "We're not in Idaho" - "The license is from Idaho" - "So it is… Should you really be the one driving?" - "Should someone have to give up their seat on the shopping trip for someone who didn't want to come anyway?". He pced an exasperated palm on his forehead and sighed. What we were doing was weird but probably not illegal. "Why isn't the redhead driving?" - "Left her license in Idaho". He rolled his eyes.
"Will that be everything officer" I asked bndly. "No. I'd like to run a background check on your license if you wouldn't mind" he replied. "Check away, but do hurry up, I've got pces to be and I'd rather be home before dark" I replied evenly. He reached for a 2 way radio and put in a request for a background check on my license number before handing it back. "While we're waiting, I'm just going to take a look round your car, make sure you're not smuggling any drugs" he chuckled. "**No!**" I said. "Excuse me". You need consent or a judge-signed warrant or probable cause to search a vehicle. You don't have my consent, you haven't shown a warrant and if you want to argue probable cause you'll need to convince a jury and that jury will be seeing the video" I said as smoothly as a knife.
He gnced back at Alice and realized there was a camera trained on him. Weirdly unobservant. My father always told me to examine every target before engaging in combat. What are they teaching these people in police academy? "You can't record me" he stated angrily. "You're an officer of the w in a public pce. You have no expectation of privacy. Yes we can" I stated. "You need to delete that video" he snapped. "We need to do no such thing" I replied evenly. "No you don't understand! You need to stop recording!" he bit out agitatedly. "Words cops say before they pnt drugs on people" I noted.
"I will arrest you if you do not stop recording right now!" he snapped. "I wonder what the jury will make of that one. Or all her Instagram followers for that matter" I said with a restrained smile. Just enough teeth for a threat. Any normal person would have backed down at this point. Cut their losses and accepted the loss of face. Hell, it was weird he didn't Jekyll and Hyde the minute he knew there was a camera rolling. He decided to go for his gun. I grabbed Victoria by the hand. "POPPYCOCK!" I yelled. The officer lunged toward me and grabbed me by the throat. His hand felt *weird*. Like jello crawling beneath my skin. Victoria's hand vanished from around mine.
I gnced in the rear-view mirror. The back seat was empty. I gnced his direction. "LET GO". The sensation of jello beneath my skin intensified and an instrument on his belt beeped. His hand remained on my throat and he smiled maliciously. "Nice try wi…" I cut him off with my stolen knife. I sshed across his throat and then stabbed him in the carotid artery for good measure.
He transferred his hand from my throat to his and I started the car and gunned it. The sirens on the other car kicked back in and it gave chase. I considered my options. I was statistically a better driver. Smooth seas never made a great sailor and I learned in a pickup truck I couldn't see over the dashboard of from a man who believed putting a 7-year-old in the drivers seat and yelling vague instructions was calm waters. He might have a faster car but I could definitely lose him with some fancy flying. What I didn't factor in was guns. Specifically some sort of machine gun. They got both of the tyres on my left side and I spun out and crashed into a rock, rear driver's side door first.
I popped the airbag with the knife that was still in my left hand and then cut off my seatbelt. I tried to crawl across to escape through the passenger door. My vision started to blur. Shit. I must have hit my head again. This is bad. This is bad bad bad bad bad…
I bnked out.
---
I woke up. Wherever I was, it was loud. Where was I? Was there a car crash? Was Alice alright? My eyes snapped open. I was in some sort of chamber with two rows of seats facing one another. There was a man pointing an automatic weapon my way. An FN P90 by the looks of it. I didn't care for his trigger discipline. "Finger on the guard moron, one errant twitch could kill me" I said groggily. "I won't twitch!" he said with an unpleasant grimace.
I looked down. I was strapped into the seat with what looked to be a… seatbelt of some kind. We're probably in a vehicle of some sort. Good to know. I looked at my wrists. There was a pair of standard issue police handcuffs binding them together. Additionally there was what appeared to be a blue mood bracelet on my left one. The area around it felt weird like… jello under my skin!
My brain made the connection immediately. It was doing something to my power. Experimentally, I took a breath and focused my energy. Not much. The bracelet glowed slightly brighter and the jelloblood danced irritably. I rexed. The glow faded a bit. I closed my eyes and did my best to calm my nerves. I opened one eye to check. The glow had faded a bit more. I began counting sheep. That proved too interesting because I kept imagining a great wolf jumping in from left field and yelling "surprise" in Leah's smooth alto. I ughed to myself and then sighed. That wouldn't do.
I cast my mind back to a particurly dry book. The tax code. I read some of it back in elementary school so I could maybe report my father to the IRS for tax evasion. I didn't get very far, but I remembered enough of it to lull myself into utter boredom. I opened my eyes. The bracelet had gone out completely. It now looked like clear gss and I could see some circuitry embedded at various points. Carefully, I let some energy flow back into it. Enough that it was glowing softly but not giving off any useful light.
I turned my attention back to my guard. He was still pointing a gun at me. "What exactly do you think I'm going to do? I'm a 15 year old girl for crying out loud" I said with practiced exasperation. "You killed a man in cold blood!" he snapped. Oh. Forgot that part. Head injuries and memories amiright?. Well its not like I pnned on sleeping tonight. "Did I? Ugh, fair enough" I responded.
I turned my attention back to the bracelet. It was glowing slightly more again. I was going to have to get very good at maniputing my body's energies very quickly if I wanted to sell a wrong person wrong time narrative. I decided to spend the rest of the ride practicing.
---
Luckily for me the Ride was long. Eventually I felt an impact and the noise wound down. Must have been a flying vehicle. A helicopter? That made the most sense. Crap. You can get a long way in a helicopter. And I didn't know how long I was out. Not good. A door opened to my left. Two rge men with rge guns marched in. They trained their weapons on me while my guard holstered his. They actually rested their fingers on the trigger guard. At least there's that.
My guard undid my seatbelt and then stood back. I was escorted into the complex. We were in a military base in some sort of desert. So the United States military was directly involved. That tracks. I supposed this must be some sort of Hogwarts for future human weapons. I wonder who's children they'd be training me to kill…
I was escorted down a series of winding corridors. The pce wasn't confusing: Just big. Very big. And I was somewhat tired from driving and brainwashing and practicing energy manipution all day. Dammit, how long had I been awake? Had the helicopter crossed timezones? I really wanted to curl up in bed and forget the world for a while. Maybe we should have left the car and come back for it another day afterall. Or just found a new car. Or asked a more experienced teleporter like Elder Nichos to come get it. He was apparently the one who turned the gym into pools on swimming days, he'd be more than capable!
I was led into a windowless room. I sat down in an uncomfortable chair and continued my energy manipution exercises. I had the bracelet pulse gently, like it was breathing. Never brighter than a dim spark. After a couple of minutes a heavyset woman walked in. I gnced her direction but did not deign to break the silence. She stared at me for a couple minutes. I stared back wordlessly. She sighed. "Do you have anything to say for yourself witch?" she grunted.
"I have the right to remain silent. Anything I say can and will be used against me in a court of w. I have the right to talk to a wyer for advice before you ask me any questions. I have the right to have a wyer with me during questioning. If I cannot afford a wyer, one must be appointed for me before any questioning" I recited.
She let out a cackle. "Miranda Rights don't apply in my base bitch" she ughed. I stared at her impassively. She stared back with a cold smile. The silence stretched. Her smile dropped. "You have no rights! I can do whatever I want to you. I have approval from the highest levels of government. I can disappear you to Guatema. I can kill you and bury you in excrement and there isn't a damn thing you can do to stop me" she said with a dangerous lilt.
"Fair enough. But I don't see how talking to a spook benefits me any more than talking to a real cop" I said emotionlessly. She frowned. "Look, you are in a very precarious position young dy. I can make live very difficult for you…" she said. "You're a power tripping spook who's apparently answerable to nobody. I have no reason to trust any promise you make me" I replied tonelessly.
"Look, I just need to know where the others are hiding" she said. "What others?" I replied. It probably wasn't wise to speak at all, even if I was basically still stonewalling her. There's been cases where a police officer had a private conversation with a person and then lied under oath about the contents of that conversation and was believed because policemen are believed to be of good character. But I had more important things to worry about than a day in court that I was quite sure she wasn't bluffing about me never seeing anyway. I needed to pnt some seeds of doubt.
"The other witches!" she snapped. "Witches?" I replied bnkly. "There were 5 people in that car, but only one when private Marcus caught up to you after you tried to resist arrest. I just want to know where the others went and how they escaped" she said calmly. "There were no others" I said. "BULLSHIT! Privates Marc and Aaron reported there were 5 in the car when they called it in" she snapped. "They lied" I said.
She spped me. Hard. I didn't even flinch. That was a mistake. Normal people flinch. Normal people don't get spped around by their fathers until they stop flinching. Well, too te now. My eyes bore into hers with a calm serenity. "Sp your idiot privates, they're the ones who lied about how many were in the car in hopes of a bigger bonus" I said bnkly. She recoiled back a bit. I could see the lie take hold in her. It was pusible and I said it with zero hesitation.
"Private Aaron is dead" she snapped. I stared on impassively. "Really? You find out you killed a man and you don't even care?" she spat. "Why would a child mourn a man who kidnaps children?" I asked. She full on punched me. It hurt a lot. She missed my nose, which was fortunate. That would have hurt WAY more. It had already been broken enough times… I still didn't flinch. It wasn't something I did by instinct anymore. I stared at her dispassionately.
The anger in her eyes burnt out. She sighed. "Perhaps you'll be more willing to talk in the morning" she noted. "Guards! Take her to the holding area" she called. I was escorted from the cell.
---
James Washington the third took a deep breath. "So expin it to me *one more time*" he asked, for the 50th and probably not the final time. "Well" said James Washington the forth. "We saw some girls at the mall. A ten, an eight, two sixes and a four. We tried flirting to be friendly. They were all really stuck up and frigid except one of the sixes who was just fucking rude! She kept saying bitchy things every time we tried to talk to any of them. Then she got mad for no reason and stormed over to confront us. Then she told us to each give her fifty dolrs and then drive off and keep driving until we ran out of gas" expined James Washington the forth.
"And then you gave her 200 dolrs and then started driving and kept going for hundreds of miles with no real destination in mind" asked the third. "Yeah" confirmed his son. "WHY?" he cried in exasperation. "I dunno. Just felt like it" replied the third. "Did she promise you a blowjob when you got back?" asked the forth. "No" replied the third. "Were you driven mad with lust?" asked the third. "Not… really. She was only a six" replied the forth. "Do you have a secret humiliation fetish?" demanded the third. "I don't think so" mused the forth.
"Is this some sort of bizarre prank at *my* expense? Make dear old Dad drive hundreds of miles to pick up his idiot kid who ran out of gas in a whole other state?" the third demanded. "No Dad. I love you, I wouldn't do that?" the forth replied. "Is this revenge for only buying you a 2 year old car instead of factory new?" he yelled. The man was near tears. "NO! I love my car Dad!" responded the forth in horror.
"Then **why** in the name of all that is Christian and kind did you drive a state over and break down on the interstate on purpose?" cried the elder James Washington. "I dunno Dad. I guess it just seemed like a good idea at the time" replied the younger. The third let out an exhausted sigh. "Did you happen to get her number?" he asked. "No, why?" replied the forth. "Because I want to see what happens when she tells you to study for your history exam. I am genuinely scientifically curious…"
thegingernut