Eva wasn’t happy when I ditched the group to go and meet up with the people from the phone call, but my earlier promise was enough to keep her from getting too upset. I was kind of looking forward to a chill weekend hanging out with her myself.

Whenever I thought of her, I felt something different to how it was before. Our friendship was changing in ways I didn’t understand, but I think… I think I liked the changes. It was sort of exciting. Being a girl made everyone think of me differently, but it also changed the way I thought of others too. Eva for example, our friendship already felt closer, warmer.

Friendship wasn’t really something I was currently about though, not for an hour or two. For now, I had to put on my mean face.

My gauntlets were on now, as was my disguise, and my hoodie. I wasn’t exactly turning up to this thing looking my best, but whatever, they could deal with it. They wanted to give me like two hours notice for this little club get-together, they were getting Gauntlette in her jeans and hoodie.

Grey clouds hung low over the city as I tore through the air, spinning and pulling my way over the rooftops. It was getting on in the afternoon now and golden sunlight was skimming across the western hills to illuminate everything. It was a pretty scene. Grey clouds above, gold to the west.

I was getting better at flying now, the process was so much smoother. It was still a fairly active process, reaching out to pull on the weave of ambient magic that permeated reality took some fairly intense acrobatics at times. I felt a little like Spiderman, to be honest. Except, you know, a Spiderman who was slinging invisible webs at invisible skyscrapers. I was going to get kinda ripped if I did this a lot.

Nearing the area where they’d asked to meet me, I pulsed a spell out to get the lay of the land. Some low level magic was going on, which was interesting. It felt like a spell being maintained more than actively used. Nothing else was going on though, so I guess one of the so-called heroes had some sort of defensive barrier up. That was my best guess.

Dremea, the girl who’d called me, had asked for us to meet atop the city library, which felt… well, a little on the nose really, given my previous joke about a study group.

It was a large, triangular building with the corners all rounded off and a massive central skylight to illuminate the modern interior. I loved the building and I’d found myself lost in its multi-storied goodness many times.

Everyone else had apparently arrived already, all of them standing in a circle towards the back of the building where all the ventilation machines sat. I think that’s what they were anyway. They seemed to be on the top of every building so, yeah.

I came in fast and touched down with the most grace I’d ever displayed in a landing, sliding gently to a stop on the loose gravel. Had I been worried about face planting in front of them? Yes, I definitely had.

Arrayed in a circle were four other people, all of whom looked older than me. The one who immediately drew my attention was the smallest of the group, bar me.

She looked to be about twenty years old, with tawny brown hair and kind, anxious yellow eyes. Her inhuman features were discernible right away. Glossy dark green feathers sprouted from where her hairline met her forehead, then down behind her ears before the line disappeared into her collar. The backs of her hands, arms, and along with the outer sides of her legs all sported the same feathers, making her look like some sort of modest bird of paradise.

She wore a short black robe that left much of her thighs visible, then black thigh high socks, with garters to keep them up. Her face was covered with a venetian style mask that was edged with maroon feathers to contrast with her green ones.

“H-hi,” she said quietly, her yellow eyes having grown wide at my entrance. “You’re… you’re Gauntlette?”

“Yeah,” I nodded, feeling a little bad for her. She was trying, at least, to do a good thing. I shouldn’t be so judgemental, even if everything that was happening hit me right in the cringe-bone.

“Um… well, I’m uh, Dremea,” she said with a shy, beaming smile. “I um, I’m a bird, I think. Don’t know what kind though.”

I nodded and looked her up and down. “Where are your ancestors from?”

Her big eyes blinked at me like I’d just asked her to strip naked in front of us all. “M-my ancestors?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “I can make a guess as to what you are if I know where you come from.”

“Oh!” she said expression turning to one of interest. “I’m from Macedonia, I think? Or, my ancestors are. Some of them. I think I have some Thai in me too, but my great grandparents were super racist so we don’t know for sure.”

“I don’t really have much knowledge when it comes to Southeast Asia, but you could be an Argopea. It’s hard to tell. If you were a guy it would be easier, but you’re not so… yeah,” I said with an apologetic shrug.

She gave me a confused look again. “Why?”

“Argopea are mythological peacocks, basically,” I explained, feeling suddenly quite awkward. “Male peacocks are super showy, with the distinctive eyes patterns in their feathers, but the girls are more chill. On the spirit side of things, I think you’re meant to be very good at seeing things. Like a sentry or whatever.”

“How do you know all this?” a gruff, male voice asked.

I turned to look at the guy who’d spoken, the oldest looking of the group. He wasn’t outwardly magical looking, except that his eyes kept cycling slowly through the rainbow like some gamer’s synchronized RGB setup. The rest of him was all leather jacket and jeans fashion. Well, except that he had a pair of truncheons through his belt and a black mask covering his nose and mouth. He was the least hero-looking of the bunch.

“I’m not sure I trust you all enough to tell you,” I told him plainly. “Sorry, but magic users like us have enemies. Genocidal ones.”

“So we are using magic?” Dremea asked excitedly. “I wasn’t sure!”

“Yeah, we are,” I smiled, finding myself relaxing, at least when I was talking to her. She just seemed genuine. “What’s everyone’s names though? I haven’t exactly kept an eye on the news so I don’t know who you all are.”

“O-oh!” A blush lit up her cheeks as she nodded quickly. “Yes, yes… ah… well I am Dremea. Like Gauntlette said, I have really good senses and stuff. When all this started happening, my grandma took me aside and gave me a book. Didn’t tell me what it was about, but I figured it out. That’s where I got the spell to call you all.”

I asked a few questions about the book, but her answer to most of them was, “I don’t know.” Then we moved on to the guy with the beating sticks. His name was Tarmack, and he liked to get all brawly with his opponents apparently, hence the truncheons. As for magic, he barely knew any at all. He was just faster and stronger than he used to be.

“I’m doing this because everyone’s runnin’ around like the world is back to normal,” he told us all in a grumpy, gravelly voice. “It ain’t though, covid hasn’t just disappeared, and neither have the damned creatures that stalk the parks at night. Government ain’t doing anything, so I will. Not like I have much else to do with my time, seeing as my wife decided I was a demon when I started going rainbow on her. Said the rainbow was the new sign of the devil, because of the gays. Fuckin’ whacko. Should never have married her.”

“Riiight,” I said slowly, squashing the urge to take a few steps back. Like yeah, that sucked, but also… he was all washed-up-uncle vibes. I had a feeling that the wife hadn’t just left him because she was crazy.

“This is Spirit Boy,” Dremea interjected, quickly diverting attention away from the grumpy old man.

The guy in question was one of those people who looked deceptively young from just a glance, but when you looked closer you realised he was around college age. He was kind of scrawny and had a pair of busted up glasses on his face. He would have looked like a fairly nondescript nerdy dude if it weren’t for the fact that his hair was pitch black and his skin was almost bone white.

“I can see why you picked the name,” I said with a wry smile.

“It’s also because I can do this,” he said, striking a pose, both arms raised.

He floated up into the air to hover a foot above the ground, and all around us, indistinct white shapes rose with him. They coalesced into vaguely humanoid shapes that then all turned to salute Spirit Boy.

“They can fight and stuff, whatever I tell them to do really,” he said, looking at me like I should be very very impressed.

My eyebrows had indeed risen up into my hairline, but not for the reason he probably expected. Someone, somewhere back in time, had fucked a banshee. At least, I was pretty sure that was the case. If so his ancestor should be thankful she wasn’t a screamer in bed.The sharp but not overly prominent canines on both the lower and upper jaw, the dark eyes and white skin. That would have pointed towards a vampire of some sort, except for the ghosts he could summon.

“Very cool,” I said, rather than voicing my thoughts.

That actually seemed to be the correct response, because he stopped acting super stuck up and instead floated back to the ground. “Oh, thanks! I wasn’t sure if I was like, actually useful or whatever.”

I got the distinct impression he was fighting some sort of crushing impostor syndrome by trying to look cool.

“Dude who can summon a bunch of ghosts to fight for him?” I mused, shaking my head. “Nah, that sounds pretty useful to me.”

Hopefully that wouldn’t feed an ego and instead make him feel more welcome, maybe chill out a little while he was at it.

The last guy didn’t wait to be introduced, instead stepping forward with a pearly white smile. “Hey, Dremea saved the best for last!”

He offered his hand, and I shook it while staring at him, trying to figure out how he was different. “Nice to meet you…?”

“Ah, I’m Stoneskin,” he grinned. “I worked out what my ancestor was, no need to do your mythological Sherlock routine on me.”

“And?” I asked, still clueless but very much intrigued.

He was a reasonably handsome dude, I think. Built like a soccer player that didn’t skip arm day, with the blond hair and blue eyes that would get him on the front of a magazine. If he was a good soccer player, that is. I was assuming a lot here, but even with the cheap plastic mask he vaguely reminded me of the guys at school who were into the sport.

His outfit was… a bit much, however. He hadn’t gone full 80’s Superman spandex, but only barely, with some very practical padding over the top of his black leotard. Not going full spandex wasn’t much of a bar to clear though, and I could definitely see some unpleasant things highlighted through the stretchy fabric.

“I’m a Troll!” he winked. “Just not the internet kind. I can make my skin go really hard, and I have like, super strength or whatever.”

“How’d you know?” I asked, intrigued now. Contrary to what modern fantasy had done to them, trolls weren’t really all that bad. Sure, they had a tendency towards aggressive isolationism and hot tempers, but they weren’t any more good or evil than your average human. It also depended on what type of troll, since there were so many of them. They were practically their own species.

“Just family stories,” he said, giving a casual half shrug. “I always thought it was memes or whatever, but then we all got grey skin and I had a fight with my dad over something dumb. Fell over onto the garden hoe and broke all the teeth off on my back. It was pretty funny.”

“Well, that’s certainly a story,” I blinked, stifling several questions as they bubbled up. “Uh, well, I’m Gauntlette, or Lette for short.”

“Thanks for coming, Lette,” Dremea said, smiling shyly. “We hoped you’d come, you seemed like you knew what you were doing from that video on youtube.”

“Yeah… uh… I guess,” I shrugged, perhaps a little bashfully. It was weird being looked up to like this. “So uh, what did you want to talk about anyway?”

QuietValerie

Heya, just dropping a lil bit of Gauntlette, cos I felt like it. :D. Hope you enjoy!