Fluff

Chapter Five - Honey Glazed Blackmail

 

Emily eyed Teddy, then looked up to the older woman behind the counter. She hated ordering in lines. She never knew what she wanted, and the pressure kept mounting until she was at the very front where she was expected to make a choice before the people behind her got angry.

It was incredibly stressful, and she’d always found herself envious of those who could just casually walk up to a counter and rattle off an order.

Did they know what they wanted that well? Did they not care that a wrong choice could cost more than they wanted or might not taste the best?

She cleared her throat as the woman stared at her, one eyebrow raising as if to ask if she intended to order before the sun went down. “R-right. I’ll have a medium coffee, black, and a chicken... two chicken wraps. And, uh, half a dozen doughnuts. She’ll pick.” She pointed to Teddy.

Emily pretended not to feel guilty about putting the girl on the spot.

“Cool,” Teddy said. “Half a dozen is six, right?” Emily nodded. “I’ll take six honey glazed.”

The woman blinked, entered the order in her machine, and let Emily tap her phone to the card-reader. “Please stand to the side, your order will be coming soon.”

“Thanks,” Emily said. It was only when she was near the end of the counter that she realized she hadn’t ordered anything for Teddy to drink. “Um. I’m sorry. Did you want something to drink?” she asked.

“Nah.”

That... made her life easy.

Five minutes or so later, Emily and Teddy were heading back down towards their home. Emily’s home. Was it also Teddy’s she wondered? How did people handle summons? Was Teddy a citizen or not?

“S-so, uh,” Emily asked. “Do you remember things from before the summoning?”

“Nope.” Teddy was bouncing along next to her, box of still-warm doughnuts held close to her chest.

That... simplified things a little. Teddy wasn’t someone her power had kidnapped. That would have been terrible. Emily would have had to run to the heroes and explain everything and hope that they didn’t punish her too much for what her power did.

Or was Teddy someone who was kidnapped and then memory-wiped? Or was she some sort of automaton? An alien? A clone?

Emily kept an eye on the girl bouncing next to her. Teddy’s ears were twitching excitedly with every step and she had a happy little smile on for the whole world to see.

The girl looked nice enough. Emily was... willing to give a relationship a try. It certainly felt easier than trying to talk to a normal person. Teddy was beholden to her a little, like... like a pet.

Emily shook her head. No, that was wrong. People, not even people made with powers, were not pets.

A sister. That’s what the power called itself. Sister Summoning.

It wasn’t super speed, or flight, or something wonderful like healing, but it was what Emily had. She didn’t know if she wanted the power. Sure, people dreamed of it, dreamed of being heroes. Even Emily had had a few dreams like that. It was hard not to watch hero-sponsored cartoons as a kid and not want to be the one running from roof to roof in tights.

Maybe not tights.

She tried to focus again. Her mind was increasingly flighty as she tried to juggle all the possibilities going on all at once.

“Hey Boss?” Teddy asked.

Emily looked down at the girl. “Yes?”

“Are we doing any quests today?”

“No Teddy, I don’t think we are,” she replied. All of her quests had been... less than good.

“Alright,” Teddy said. “What’re we gonna do then?”

Emily really wished she knew. “I... we’ll figure it out?”

Teddy looked up at her, innocent face completely bare of any of the doubt that Emily was feeling. “Okay. So after we eat can I take a nap?”

She nodded. “Sure.”

They arrived at the dorm and shuffled off into the elevator as quickly as they could. Emily didn’t want people wondering what Teddy was doing, not if she could help it. There were some pretty clear rules about not having people overnight, but she suspected that some of the others weren’t respecting those.

A swipe of her phone and they were in the safety of her little room.

Teddy rushed over to her desk and placed the box of doughnuts on it. She started to tear the top off when Emily intervened. “No. Not yet. We’ll eat first and save those for desert.”

Teddy turned big wet eyes towards Emily.

“J-just one?”

The girl’s grin did something to Emily’s heart, something that turned to horror as Teddy picked a squashed doughnut out of the box and rammed it into her mouth. She was chewing with her mouth open, and her hands were covered in honey glaze.

Emily didn’t know what to do for a moment, but cold logic kicked in and she found herself running to the bathroom, picking a cloth towelette from her supplies, and running it under cold water. A moment later she was next to Teddy and scrubbing the girl’s face clean.

“Boss! What’re you doing?” Teddy protested.

“Just keeping you clean?” Emily said. “Can, can you go wash your hands, please?”

Teddy grumbled as she stomped off to wash up. Emily ignored her and set the wraps onto the desk, then she pulled her laptop out and set it up. She had a lot of things to look up.

Teddy returned, and soon they were both eating with only the occasional clack of the laptop’s keyboard to break the silence.

Emily had a lot of things to learn. So many that she decided that a second list was in order.

Pulling out her notebook, she found the list she’d made that morning and ‘tsked’ to herself as only half the things on it were complete.

Her new list was a bit different:

Find out what happens to people with powersLearn how to get rid of villain statusFind a way to take care of TeddyCall mom

That was a good list, she figured.

Nodding, she set the notepad to the side and pulled her laptop closer.

“Is that a dog?” Teddy asked as she looked at Emily’s background photo. It was, in fact, a big smiling puppy.

“It is,” she said.

“You should get a bear. They’re better.”

Emily nodded. She didn’t think that bears were cuter, but she also didn’t want to hurt Teddy’s feelings. Her first step was opening her IreWolf browser and ignoring the eighteen tabs set onto cute animal sites

She started to Oogle a few things, first weeding out the searches that lead back to government-owned sites, and then focusing on those from older forums where normal people asked questions.

It was surprisingly hard to get straight answers. Most of the people were talking about hypotheticals, and the few that claimed to have powers themselves were super sketchy, or if they had any sort of verified account all they did was redirect people to the same government sites which basically just told people to contact some official channel.

“Done!”

Emily looked to the side to find a nearly empty box of doughnuts next to the torn remains of a chicken wrap’s wrapper. There was half a doughnut left in the box. More like a third and a bit.

“I left you a piece, Boss,” Teddy said with another honey-covered smile.

“That’s... thank you?” Emily said.

“Cool. I’m going to bed now.”

The girl started to make her way towards Emily’s bed, but Emily was faster and managed to place a hand atop her head. “Sh-shower. You need to shower first.”

Teddy slumped. “But I don’t want to get wet,” she said.

“I’ll give you a big t-shirt and, um, some underthings and you can get cleaned. And then you can go to bed. Okay?” Emily asked.

She would need to find a mattress for the girl soon, but for now they would just have to make due.

Teddy grumbled a bit, but she didn’t disobey as Emily ran around and looked for clothes the girl could wear post-shower.

When the bathroom door was shut and Emily heard the water running, she returned to her search only to notice the icon of her email flashing.

She clicked, expecting a message from her school, or maybe her mom, or at worse an ad that got past her spam filter.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: How very Naughty

Hello Emily,
Did you know that poking around while being so loud has the tendency to set off a few flags? Well now you know.

Tomorrow at 4pm, the Dark Cup on 4th and Instein.

Be there, and you’ll have all of your cute little questions answered.
Don’t, and maybe those flags I burned will reappear.

With love,
A Stranger.