Villainess 7: Janet’s Night Training

Red Pill 35: Swashbucklers, Synergies

Mindy Kessler and her club mates had been out in the Student Commons Town for almost an hour amongst the locals in the area and had come across an unforeseen development. From the whispers of the townsfolk, replete with hearsay of a new saintess, they found out that someone had already been spreading word about the Black Saintess before their arrival tonight. Whoever it was, the group had split up into three groups and fanned out into various eateries along the main brick-paved boulevard to question the townsfolk still out after curfew about the matter: Mindy Kessler went with Baron Underwood (and Celeste Graves and six of Janet’s clones); Jean Drevis went with Kevin Sydney (and Rowena Fleming and six more of Janet’s clones); and Saraya Drevis went with Ridley Woodberry (and Maxine Diddly and another six more of Janet’s clones).

In this way, they spent half an hour collecting information from the last few customers from the cafés and restaurants and other eateries before they all gathered in a designated alleyway a little ways from the main boulevard. (As such, the twenty-one ghosts all acted as lookouts around the alleyway, Celeste and Rowena and Maxine acting as sentinels, while the eighteen clones fanned out along the streets as invisible spies.) And so, while Janet and Miss Maya were brainstorming their plan in the shadows of a converted underground auction room, Mindy and her friends spent another half hour sharing information: first, Mindy and Baron Underwood said that several customers had been talking about the ravings of a drunken cat girl at various saloons and pubs spewing word of the Black Saintess as if she was a mystic; then Jean and Kevin said that other customers from the Red Lion café heard another cat girl talking up a storm about the Black Saintess amongst them; and then Saraya and Ridley said that still more customers had started sharing the same information with the added detail that other incognitos might be involved somehow. Based on all this hearsay, they came to the conclusion that at least two cat girls were spreading around those rumors, though Mindy and her allies had no idea who the other incognitos were or how they were connected to all this.

That’s when Mindy had an idea and said, “Will they also start spreading rumors about us?”

“Maybe,” Kevin said.

“Or maybe not,” Ridley added.

“But who are the other incognitos?” Saraya said.

“Don’t know, but maybe that works in our favor,” Jean said.

“What do you mean?” Baron Underwood said.

Mindy smiled at Jean, guessing at what was on her mind, and said, “Wait, are you saying we should take advantage of whatever’s going on?”

“Yeah,” Jean said, then to the others in the group: “What about the rest of you? Are you in?”

Mindy looked at the faces of her club mates, gauging their reactions, but none of them took up Jean’s offer, so Mindy got the ball rolling.

“I’m in,” Mindy said.

And so, one by one, Kevin and Ridley and Saraya and even Baron Underwood all followed suit and listened to Mindy and Jean hash out a plan of action between them.

 

Teleporting two dozen slaves still under their slave contracts straight to Janet’s fountain would have put a strain on Janet, whose mana reserves had depleted in her tussle with Nineteen. Instead, RuRu took them to the second-floor hallway of Elba House in front of a set of half-turn stairs, where she led them up the steps and then thirty-nine unseen steps past the landing into the clearing of Janet’s domain. With a haze obscuring the light of a full moon, its diffuse glow shimmered like a ghost over the huge fountain against a backdrop of elms and flowering royal poinciana trees.

She gazed up at the two-tiered basin spraying dark red arcs in the air and overflowing into the giant reservoir of teeming dark red below it, where the green phosphorescence no longer glowed over the surface. After RuRu led them to the fountain’s ledge (she said, “DeeDee, what’s going on?”

“The aether affinity has been depleted from the decoy,” DeeDee said and informed RuRu of what had happened, in which Janet had almost succumbed to the collective attacks of the incognitos in the room if it hadn’t been for Miss Maya’s intervention at the last possible moment. “It was a huge gamble, but it paid off. I’m now able to bypass Nineteen’s barrier and tap into the doings of the auction room at will.”

RuRu bit her lower lip and said, “How’s Janet?”

“She’s fine, don’t worry,” DeeDee said. “She and Miss Maya are planning something, and I think it’ll be a learning experience for Janet. How are the kids?”

RuRu looked back at the kids, still silent and doll-like under the control of their slave contracts with the lifelines of Forty and Nineteen inhibiting their volition, and said, “They’re fine for now.”

“Good,” DeeDee said.

Then RuRu noticed their blank eyes and the slave markings over their necks and heads and hands fluorescing in the presence of the fountain and said, “DeeDee, I know you said that slavery is a nasty business, but will Janet really be able to save Nineteen and Forty?”

DeeDee let out a sigh and said, “I understand your doubts, but I also said this was your chance to prove yourself. You’re the Guardian of the Darkness, so you’re responsible for Janet’s actions through your guidance, got it?”

“Yeah,” RuRu said.)

 

Viscountess Kelly Durham, a.k.a., the Night Flower, had just finished telling Marquess Fleming what she knew of the Church of the Divine Dragon. It amounted to snatches of hearsay gleaned from the informants working with the Internal Affairs Office of the Information Guild. Parsing through all the strands of intel, she reduced them down to a suspicion, just beyond the cusp of reasonable doubt, that possible members of the Church of the Divine Dragon have ensconced themselves as sleeper agents within the ranks of the Church of the Holy Light and have been running an underground slave market at undisclosed locations within the borders of the Kaden Kingdom.

In addition, she said that the Waterloo Mansion in Deer Park was one confirmed location but added that the other locations have yet to be verified with conclusive proof. Marquess Fleming asked if a raid at that location was forthcoming, and the Night Flower said she couldn’t reveal the particulars of any pending operations and apologized to the Marquess, so the Marquess asked something else.

“Then have you heard anything about an incognito named Count John Doe?” Marquess Fleming said.

“Only that he exists,” the Night Flower said. “Any speculation about his identity is still forthcoming.”

“I see,” the Marquess said.

“The ball is in your court, my Lord,” the Night Flower said. “Now that I’ve told you what I know, what can you tell me about the Church of the Divine Dragon?”

“I hope I’m wrong about this, but I suspect they’re planning something for Friday’s title confirmation,” the Marquess said and took another sip from his glass of grenache. “Specifically, they might make an attempt on her Majesty’s life to scapegoat my daughter at his Highness’s prompting.”

Marquess Fleming’s emphasis only served to strengthen rather than lessen the impact of his words, making Kelly Durham pause at the way he said it as if he wanted to portray the Prince as an active participant in a plot against his own mother. She just couldn’t help shaking her head and saying, “Are you saying his Highness is willing to endanger her Majesty just to get back at Lady Fleming?”

“Not with his own volition, no,” the Marquess said, “but it’s possible with a slave contract. I know it’s an ugly picture, but that’s how I see it.”

“Is that all you know?” she said.

“That’s about it,” the Marquess said. “Unless you can tell me anything else about the Church of the Divine Dragon or the slave market or the title confirmation, this discussion is at an end,” and he took another sip from his glass.

The Night Flower paused, wondering if she should let Marquess Fleming in on the details of Count Cosgrove’s idea of the Queen using this Friday’s title confirmation as a sting operation to expose four abbesses of the Church of the Holy Light as possible sleeper agents during the event. If she said that four of the pillars of the Kaden Kingdom (Abbess Andrea Balthazar, Abbess Vera Knoxville, Abbess Kilala Machen, and Abbess Alicia Carmine) have become sleeper agents, then what would he say? Whatever his answer, she knew protecting the Queen and Lady Fleming would double the workload on an already stressful day of security measures for the event.

“What’s on your mind?” the Marquess said.

“I’ve just been wondering about something,” the Night Flower said, thinking through the possibilities of what might happen during the event. “Holding the title confirmation in a bigger venue in another town away from the Academy presents a lot of security risks, so there must be something much bigger at stake that I’m not yet seeing.”

“Then let me guess,” he said.

“What are your thoughts, my Lord?” she said.

“Her Majesty would never take risks unless she had no other choice,” the Marquess said. “I’ve only ever seen her risk her life once, and that was when she dueled with Lady Bartleby for the saintess title at the graduation ceremony.”

The Night Flower sucked in breath at Queen Blaise’s greatest act of courage in front of as many spectators. Since that duel, the lives of both participants diverged into different paths, one dying in prison and the other becoming queen consort in the wake of that and the murder of an abbess at the time, in which the new Queen bore that infamy for a time.

Viscountess Durham gulped down her qualms and said, “If you’re referring to something of that magnitude, then do you think her Majesty will put Lady Fleming through something similar during the title confirmation?”

The Marquess nodded and said, “In order to prove Lady Fleming worthy of being a saintess and quell the naysayers, I suspect the Queen will put her through some kind of test with those in the congregation present as witnesses. It’s not much different from what his Highness had done with my daughter in yesterday’s lunch period.”

“I see,” the Night Flower said. “If Lady Fleming passes her Majesty’s test, then she will repair her reputation or at least stop it from eroding any further.”

“Only ‘if’ she passes her test,” he said.

“Any idea what kind of test it’ll be?” she said.

“None whatsoever,” he said, shaking his head and downing the rest of his drink, then letting out a burp.

The Night Flower got up from the salon sofa and said, “Please, lay off the hard stuff.”

“Grenache isn’t ‘hard stuff,’” the Marquess said, getting up from the sofa, but his glass fell from his grasp and shattered to pieces on the polished stone floor—

Which made Viscountess Durham step forward and hook her arm around the crook of his elbow to keep him from keeling over, saying, “You must sit, my Lord!”

Which also brought the gray-haired butler named Stuart back through the double doors, striding over to the commotion and saying, “Thank you for the assistance, Miss Night Flower,” and he came to the other side of his employer and hoisted the Marquess’s other arm over his shoulders to support him. “I’ll take him from here.”

“Are you sure?” she said.

“I’m sure, thank you,” Stuart said, guiding his man on tenuous steps out of the office, while the Night Flower followed beside the Marquess. “I’ll have a maid escort you out,” and he hailed a maid within earshot of his voice: “Jane, accompany Miss Night Flower to her coach, then clean up the glass shards on the floor in his office!”

“Will do,” Jane said, coming over to them, then to Viscountess Durham: “This way, Miss Night Flower.”

Viscountess Durham peered at the Marquess dragging his feet alongside his dutiful butler before she followed Jane through the hallways of polished wainscoting and gleaming stone flooring towards the foyer. Thinking back to their Majesties’ reactions in the Tea Garden at the Royal Palace and to the King’s demeanor in conjunction with Marquess Fleming’s just now, she couldn’t help herself feeling sorry for both men still grieving over the death of the same woman.

 

(While listening to Miss Maya’s plan, Janet saw the growing argument between Count John Doe and the Captain, knowing that the former’s impatience and the latter’s impotence at finding her were wearing thin on both men. Then she gaped at the cat girl’s insane proposal, still listening but now wondering how the heck she was going to do what she proposed to do. After her five-second tussle with Nineteen, Janet thought Miss Maya had lost her marbles for thinking up that kind of stratagem against the sheer speed of Nineteen’s lightning-fast slashes and said, “But Nineteen’s so fast! How are you gonna—”

“Don’t worry about me,” Miss Maya said after she finished. “Now did you get all that?”

“Yeah, I got it, but still,” Janet said.

“Hey, I’m a cat girl, remember?” Miss Maya said, chuckling. “I’ve got nine lives, and I thrive on long-ass chances. Now get yourself ready!”

And with that, still doubting, Janet placed her hand flat on the floor, bringing up her shadow storage behind her, and waited for her ally to reach her position. As such, Miss Maya slipped (unseen) through the shadows of the opposite wall, then merged into the faint shadows of the floor space amidst the incognito ruffians searching the premises in groups under the Captain’s orders and Count John Doe’s threats to find Janet or else none of them would get paid. And one by one amidst the footfalls of unwitting incognitos, Janet saw several circular seals popping up all over the floor space at their feet, shining like beacons; the method reminded her of RuRu imbuing her arming sword with mana and using it as a teleportation spot to get her closer to Janet’s position in the last round of their sparring session, so she said, “So that’s how you do it?”

“Yep!” Miss Maya said. “But, damn, how did you manage all that without marking your teleportation spots beforehand? We never go in like that without marking out our spots first, but you’re hella fast for an amateur!”

“Yeah, keyword: ‘amateur,’” Janet said, kicking herself again for not thinking about that earlier.

“Don’t sweat it. I learned that the hard way, too, so I know what you mean,” Miss Maya said, now heading for Janet’s position by the corner close to the stage after she was done. When Janet felt the cat girl’s body enter her shadow storage, she heard her say, “Whoa! This space is humongous!”

“I bet it is,” Janet said.

Then Janet’s flour clones came around to the shadow storage behind her and crouched down and stuck their heads into the black void, and one clone said, “You weren’t kidding! It’s gigantic inside here!”

“It’s as big as a mansion,” another clone said.

“I know,” the cat girl said. “Maybe you could fit the entire Royal Palace in here— . . . Wait, why’s there four of you? And how come I can’t sense any of you at all?”

“Long story,” a third clone said.

“Very long story,” the ex-suicide clone added.

“And you’re too cute for your own good,” added the first clone that had looked in and saw the cat girl.

Miss Maya let out a sigh and said, “Save it for later,” and then to Janet: “Are you ready?”

“Wait, not yet. I need to talk to someone,” Janet said. “RuRu, can you hear me?”

“Yeah, loud and clear,” RuRu said. “I’m with the kids at your fountain right now. What is it?”

“Those two, Nineteen and Forty,” Janet said, looking over at the pair of incognito slaves guarding the only way out of the room. “Are they like the kids we recused?”

“No,” RuRu said. “Nineteen and Forty have already been tested, but the kids are still untested.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” Janet said.

“It’s kill or be killed,” RuRu said. “New slaves are forced to kill someone on their masters’ orders to bind their contracts to the will of their masters. If they refuse, they’re tortured to death as a warning for the other slaves to follow their orders. Since the kids haven’t been sold, they’re easier to deal with, but that’s not the case for Nineteen and Forty, because they’ve already killed someone. It’s more difficult dealing with them but not impossible.”

“Then how do I deal with them?”

“Don’t worry about them for now,” RuRu said. “Focus on the other assailants first, but however you do it, take them out without killing them. You can injure them, even incapacitate them, but don’t kill them, okay?”

“Is there any reason why I shouldn’t kill people besides your prohibition against it?”

RuRu remained silent for a time, then said, ”Look at all the incognitos around you, Janet. Do you see any numbers shimmering above their heads?”

“Wait,” Janet said, seeing no numbers at all, “what are you talking about? What numbers?”

“When I was with you at the table and on stage with the kids,” RuRu said, “I saw numbers above the heads of most of the people there, including the Captain, Nineteen, Forty, and even Count John Doe. You can’t see them, because your powers have yet to fully mature, but those numbers represent how many lives they have taken without the sanction to do so. The reason why I tell you not to kill anyone is because I don’t have the authority to sanction the death of another human being.”

“You mean there’s someone who has that authority?”

“Yes,” RuRu said.

“Who?”

RuRu remained silent.

“It’s me, Janet,” DeeDee said.

Janet paled at DeeDee’s voice, gulping down her qualms and saying, “Are you serious?”

“I am, because it’s my jurisdiction,” DeeDee said. “I oversee the passage of spirits from this world to the next, and as such, I have the authority to grant and take away a human life. I’ve often intervened during stillbirths and have saved many newborns like yourself after hearing their mothers’ prayers, but I almost never sanction people to kill anyone without just cause. To that end, I’ve only granted a few people my sanction to kill, three of whom were in the War just before the founding of the Kaden kingdom: Captain Jude Fleming, Duke Wilhelm Bartleby, and Lady Avalon Jeong. Yet since then, murderers in high and low places have used my name to justify the killing of political opponents and undesirables in all kingdoms, including this one. The reason I’m residing in this kingdom is because the iniquities here are comparatively less than in other kingdoms, but it seems that’s about to change.”

Janet’s familial connection with the first two of the three names mentioned threw a new dimension over her infamy and said, “Is that why I’m hated amongst my peers?”

Silence reigned for a time.

“I’m afraid so,” DeeDee said. “I hope the day never comes when I would have to sanction you to kill someone, whether that’s Lady Dorian or anyone else, but should that ever come to pass, just know that it’s under my authority alone. No one else has that authority, not you, not any of my other sisters, only me. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” she said, gulping again, then to her four clones and Miss Maya: “Did you all hear that?”

“Yeah,” one clone said.

“Holy shit!” Miss Maya added.

Another silence passed amongst the listeners.

“RuRu,” Janet said, breaking the heavy silence, “what do you think of our plan?”

“It’s pretty solid,” RuRu said.

“Any suggestions on your end?” Janet said.

There was a moment’s pause, followed by the rustling pages of books, maybe profile books, till RuRu said, “DeeDee and I are looking for the Captain’s profile book right now, so beware of that guy. He’s not as fast as Nineteen or Forty, but he seems powerful.”

“How powerful?”

But RuRu was silent for a time, flipping through the pages of a profile book and looking at entries.

“After I gained access to Nineteen’s barrier,” DeeDee chimed in, flipping through more profile books, “I haven’t felt much of his aura at all, which means he has a lot of control over the amount of mana he can use. Since I don’t know what kind he has, I can only guess how much is at his disposal. I think, if his power was condensed into a mana pool, it would be the size of a tea table, nowhere near yours.”

“That’s why he can’t find me,” Janet said.

“Yes,” DeeDee said, “but he’s fresh and has the full extent of his mana pool at his disposal, however much that is, while your aether mana pool is gone. Your darkness mana pool is a little smaller than a cabin right now, bigger than the Captain’s, but your efficiency with it is nowhere near his. You must conserve your energy, Janet.”

“I know, I get it,” Janet said.

Yet another silence passed amongst the listeners.

Now it was Miss Maya’s turn to break the silence, saying, “Are you ready, Lady Fleming?”

“Ready when you are,” Janet said, remembering RuRu pushing her into the fountain to activate her power, and drew her sword and took up her buckler. The blade of her arming sword gleamed with a blackish red corona shimmering from it, like the hue of a full moon tinged crimson.)

 

After hashing out their plan, Mindy and Jean and their club mates and club advisor shared their plans with the clones and other ghosts with them, but they disagreed on their options. In fact, while the eighteen Janet-clones were for it, Celeste and Maxine and especially Rowena were against it. As such, Mindy and Jean said it would stir up more talk about the Black Saintess and raise Lady Fleming’s reputation, but Rowena and her peers expostulated that using such tactics to drum up that kind of notoriety could backfire on Lady Fleming if anyone caught wind of their doings. After ten minutes of back-and-forth arguments, in which Mindy and Jean and Kevin and Ridley and even Baron Underwood shared their opinions and assurances, namely that he’d take responsibility as their club advisor if they got caught, they somehow reached a compromise satisfying everyone’s wishes to some degree.

Then Rowena revealed the contents she and DeeDee and RuRu had gleaned from perusing Count Childeron and Count Felton’s profile books before their outing on the town tonight, in which she went over in detail what RuRu had said at Elba House. Specifically, she noted that all the slaves at the Lotos Bordello were female and at least fifteen, old enough to turn tricks with customers, and warned them that they could see some things that might upset them and asked, “With that all said, do you think you can handle that when we go in?”

Mindy and her friends were silent.

After thinking of Janet on her own mission, wondering what she was going through right now, Mindy traded glances with her peers and said, “If Janet can do it, so can we.”

“We’ll manage it,” Jean added.

“You don’t have to worry so much,” Kevin added.

“Look, I’m sure you can manage it,” Rowena said, “but you’re still kids. If it gets too much at any point while we’re there, you don’t have to force yourselves to go through with it. You can always change your mind. Don’t let anyone, not even DeeDee, tell you otherwise.”

Mindy and her peers all nodded.

After Rowena told them what to look out for in their search, Mindy and her friends (and the twenty-one specters) all stalked through the streets of the Student Commons Town in search of the infamous entrance to the Cottages, as Rowena had termed it in her briefing afterward. But since most establishments in town were closed after curfew, save for inns and public houses and gentlemen’s clubs that kept late hours, the nocturnal version of the Town held a spooky character. Unlit storefronts and closed doors leered at their passage like empty eye sockets, all manner of shadows leaped and capered along those storefronts ahead and behind them, the outlines of phantoms flitted up and down the thoroughfares in their wake under blinking incandescent street lamps, and disembodied footfalls and voices echoed through the night as if a festival was in progress. Even the whispers of a breeze carried an (unseen) tumult on a current of jealousies, the made-up infamies around Aria Roscente, Princess Libertia, Iris Lana Almeria, Athanasia Cloix, Elaine Lana Norris, Makia O’Drielle, Aileen Lauren d’Autriche, Claudia Letsya, Remilia Rosa Graupner, Claire Martino, Scarlet Castiel, Keira Parvis, Sylvia Atlante, Alyssa del Edenverre, Saintess Candidate Lua, and others soft on the lips of hearsay, fallen victim to the collective tyranny of lies. Yet at the heart of such fictions, the foundation of things outré and dangerous, was a kernel of honest brutality if you could change your perspective and see the ugly truth inside the lie.

So Mindy and her friends followed the uneasy quietude (with Rowena and Maxine and Celeste as guides and Janet’s clones as lookouts up ahead), stalking along the empty thoroughfares and inspecting every building and landmark they passed for a time, till the current of their passage stopped at the sound of a pair of running footfalls behind them.

(“Into our shadows, quick!” Rowena said with two black voids forming in the shadows of Maxine and Rowena.)

And one by one, they all stepped into their shadows, Mindy and Jean and Saraya in Maxine’s shadow storage and Kevin and Ridley and Baron Underwood in Rowena’s shadow storage, while a pair of clones doubled back to intercept this intruder. A moment passed, in which Mindy and her friends stayed silent under the cover of darkness when a pair of voices reached their ears.

The voices sounded familiar to Mindy as she listened in from Maxine’s shadow storage at eye level with the brick-paving (till she and her friends heard another pair of Janet’s clones talking it up with the pair of clones that had doubled back towards the footfalls). As the pair of running footfalls slowed down on the approach to their position, a shadowed part of the wall facing the mouth of an alleyway, Mindy and her friends heard the elder Sydney brothers talking between themselves (and the two clones talking with the ones that had followed Noel to the Champion Restaurant for dinner and then to Shadwell’s Antiquities to meet with Edward at eleven o’clock tonight).

“I swear I heard voices here,” Edward said.

“You’re hearing things,” Noel said. “You’ve still got women on the brain, it seems.”

“I’m serious!” Edward said.

“We’ll be late if we dawdle here,” Noel said.

“Hey, I know you’ve got the hots for that Night Flower chick,” he said, “but she can wait: if you need some time alone, so you can relieve yourself—”

“Fuck off with you!” Noel said.

“Hit a nerve, didn’t I?” Edward said, smiling.

“Oh, fuck off with you and your jokes!” Noel said. “I’m not the one thinking of women twenty-four seven! Don’t go shoving your puerile projections onto me!”

Their brotherly spat had Mindy and the Drevis sisters cupping their hands over their mouths in Maxine’s shadow, while Mindy heard Kevin and Ridley and even Baron Underwood sniggering their heads off in Rowena’s shadow storage, thereby halting Noel and Edward on the spot.

“Who goes there?” Noel called out.

When the sniggering stopped, Edward’s hand crept to the pommel of his longsword as he said, “Whoever you are, come out and let us have a look at you.”

No response from the boys in Rowena’s shadow, nor any from Mindy and the Drevis sisters in Maxine’s shadow.

(“What are we gonna do?” Mindy said.

“Stay quiet,” Maxine said.

“But we can’t stay here,” Jean added.

“We’ve gotta find that bordello,” Saraya said.

All the while, Kevin and Ridley and Baron Underwood were also talking it out with Rowena. Baron Underwood had wanted to go and talk with them, saying he and Noel Sydney used to be classmates at the Academy as undergraduates, but Kevin and Ridley shot that down with Rowena adding that it would draw too much suspicion if they found out an assistant professor was out on the town after curfew. So Kevin and Ridley brought up their own idea, in which they would give themselves up to them and let the others go on, but Baron Underwood and Rowena shot that down, too, saying that two students out after curfew would affect their academic records in school.

And so, all three girls and all three boys were hashing it out on what to do in this situation, while Mindy was praying for the Sydney brothers to get bored and go away.)

Yet the two Sydney brothers weren’t budging from their spots, and after a minute elapsed, both brothers drew out their swords, and Noel said, “We know you’re here.”

“If you don’t want us getting rough with you,” Edward added, “reveal yourself now.”

Only silence answered for a time.

(“I’ll go and distract them,” Kevin said. “You guys go on and find that bordello.”

“Are you sure?” Rowena said.

“Don’t worry, they’re my brothers,” he said.)

“All right, I’m coming out,” Kevin said from Rowena’s shadow storage, stepping from the shadow of the wall as if manifesting out of the masonry.

“Kev, is that you?” Noel said.

“Yes, it’s me,” Kevin said with his hands up, so his brothers could see them.

“What are you doing here?” Edward added, and both men sheathed their swords and approached Kevin.

While Mindy and the rest remained silent, Kevin said, “I just lost my way on one of my legend-tripping adventures. Don’t tell Mom and Dad, okay?”

“Where’s Ridley?” Edward said.

“He had homework to do,” he said, “so I came out alone and got lost on the way.”

Noel and Edward let out sighs.

“You can’t be out here past curfew,” Noel said.

“You’re coming with us, so no trouble out of you, got it?” Edward said. “Lower your hands.”

Kevin lowered his hands while nodding his head, then said, “Am I going to jail now?”

“And explain it to Dad? Hell no!” Edward said.

“We’re still on duty right now, so we’ll take you with us to the Information Guild,” Noel said. “No trouble while you’re over there, okay?” When Kevin nodded again, he also said to Edward, “Don’t be a bad influence on him.”

“I won’t,” Edward said, hooking his arm around Kevin’s neck. “Let’s get going.”

And as all three brothers walked away from the mouth of the alleyway (Rowena said, “Kevin, keep us unformed while you’re over there.”

“I will,” Kevin said.

Then to the four clones following the brothers, she added, “And you girls keep him out of trouble.”

“We will!” the four clones said as they stalked after them), Mindy and her remaining friends all breathed out after holding their breaths as if coming up for air after a deep dive. Once their footfalls fell out of earshot, Mindy and Jean and Saraya and Ridley and Baron Underwood stepped from the shadow storage of Maxine and Rowena and resumed their search.

 

Miss Maya emerged from the shadow storage behind Janet with a spherical smoke bomb in her hand and tossed it over everyone’s heads, catching the eyes of the Captain and Nineteen and Forty at the double-door entrance.

In the single second it took to fall and burst on impact, the Capitan yelled, “Bomb! Clear out!”

Yet it was too late for the ruffians to get out of the way as it exploded with a percussive bang ripping through their ranks, ringing everyone’s ears in the auction room, and spilling plumes of smoke everywhere.

Still feeling the aftereffects of that, Janet vaulted out of the corner in a blur of flashing steel, while Miss Maya merged back into the shadow of the corner and just in time, too. Maya’s presence had tripped Nineteen’s barrier detection spell and sent her blinking over to the corner, drawing out her katana and almost nicking off Maya’s ears.

(“Geez, that was close!” Maya told Janet. “Be careful! She’s scouting the corners!”)

While taking in those words, Janet did her worst with Maya’s teleportation spots amidst the smoke and the hacking coughs of the armed ruffians around her. There were five of them within striking distance, so Janet slashed at the one closest to her, cutting across someone’s forearm deep enough to dislodge the sword from his hand. Amidst screams of pain, as it clanged to the ground, Janet threw her buckler-hand in a half-shield cross at her opponent, the edge of her buckler cracking his shoulder and dislocating it, before Janet blinked out of the way in the nick of time—

Just as Nineteen appeared with a slash across empty air, where Janet had been an instant before, and clave Janet’s afterimage after she had teleported away—

To another part of the smoke-filled room. There Janet slashed at another incognito still coughing from the smoke, severing the muscles in his sword-arm, and bashed the edge of her buckler into his temple and crumpled him to the ground.

Then she ducked a slash from an attacker to her left, twisting her body and cutting across the tendons of her opponent’s knees, then ramming the edge of her buckler right over one of them and dislocating a kneecap, toppling him to the ground on his side in a burst of muffled screams—

Just as Nineteen rushed in at Janet from behind in the haze, teleporting to her location with a sweep of her katana, aiming for Janet’s neck in a vicious arc—

(“JANET!” her clones screamed in her head.)

—till Maya came in a blur and intercepted the attack. In one fluid motion with a metallic shing of her kodachi drawn from her scabbard into a swinging arc, she parried Nineteen’s beheading blow by the barest of margins, blade on blade, sending a clang echoing through the room and clearing away the smoke for just a moment. And yet it was enough for Janet to roll out of the way with the momentum of her twisting body rolling her back onto her feet into a crouching position facing her attacker with sword and buckler at the ready.

Janet saw Nineteen pause at Maya’s appearance in the auction room: that of a pink-haired cat girl with long twin tails tied behind her neck, an apron over a kimono top and a pleated skirt, white stockings over supple legs, dainty heeled shoes, and a pink tail protruding from a slit behind her skirt. Miss Maya might have been the cutest thing to grace the scene of a comic interlude on stage that had spilled into the midst of a laughing crowd seated in the floor space, if it wasn’t for the casualties groaning around them, the Captain ordering his scattering and coughing crew to line up around the walls, and Count John Doe gathering the nobles on stage, as well as the kodachi held in Maya’s two-handed grip and the glare of her blue eyes fixed on the wide-eyed stare of shock on Nineteen’s face.

Against the odds, just as Maya had promised Janet in her plan, she had caught Nineteen’s blade in the bind with her own, edge to edge, Maya’s kodachi against Nineteen’s katana, a ninja maid pitted against an assassin.

In the next moment, Janet sprang into a lunge, blinking out of sight while Maya still had Nineteen distracted—

And reappeared with a swinging right hook of her buckler in full-shield, smashing cold steel into Nineteen’s solar plexus and knocking the wind out of her, shifting Nineteen off center to lose her balance and her footing. Then Janet discarded her weapons, letting them fall to the ground, and blinked out of sight again—

And reappeared behind her opponent with her arms clipped around Nineteen’s waist, locking her hands in a tight grip and planting her feet on the ground. She then lifted up with her legs and fell back with Nineteen’s head and shoulders hitting the ground and knocking her out, just as Janet’s armaments and Nineteen’s katana clanged onto the floor.

In ten seconds of teamwork with Maya, Janet had taken four of the armed incognitos, including the persistent headache that had been Nineteen, out of the fight. And with that, as the smoke was thinning to a haze around her and Maya (Janet said in her mind, “RuRu, take her away!”)

So RuRu appeared in the haze using one of Maya’s teleportation spots and manifested a talisman out of Janet’s shadow storage. After placing it over Nineteen’s supine form, she disappeared from the foggy scene, taking an unconscious Nineteen with her and leaving Janet and Maya behind.

To Be Continued