The Wardrobe - 5. Superhero...ish I-X

I

Jimmy looked up from her pocket calendar and scanned the rooftops on the other side of the window. The tram was standing, so the movement outside had been unmistakably there, and despite the darkness outside and the light inside the car the view of the tiled roofs was fairly clear. There had been something black and too large for a bird, just for a moment. She kept squinting at the roofs and the chimneys and antennae up there until the tram started moving again.

Like all other information that wasn't very useful or particularly interesting, Jimmy stored this little phenomenon somewhere way back in her head where it would probably be lost for... well, let's say forever. So she carried on as before for a few weeks.

Glass is so fragile and easy to miss at times. The one that was sitting on the edge of the kitchen table - fuck knows why people keep putting their stuff right where it's doomed to be knocked over and fall - well, Jimmy didn't anticipate it there, of course, and as she gesticulated wildly while discussing some really important political idea or other with her father, she knocked it over. It sailed over the edge and dropped, and Jimmy caught it - or she wanted to, anyway. She thought she did, though it really did seem as though it hung suspended in the air, wobbling in midair just a tiny bit, before she grabbed it.

"Well..." she muttered, contemplating the glass as she set it down on the table again and completely forgot the point she had been trying to make five seconds ago.

Back at home, she sat down at her desk and stared at a pencil for a few seconds. Hard. Frowned, stopped staring and started glaring.

 

Let's leave Jimmy to her staring exercises now and turn our attention to something far more interesting.
The future. Not the flying cars spaceship and totalitarian police state future, but rather the future taking place only a few months from now.

 

The figure landed behind the man with a soft thud. As it straightened up from its crouched position he turned around. He seemed surprised, but not alarmed, and when he saw the bedouinic costume the person before him was wearing, he started grinning. His mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out but spittle and blood, followed by pieces of teeth, as Jimmy slammed a fist wrapped in leather straps into his jaw.

He groaned in outraged pain and his head came back around. He staggered backwards a little and started to assume a defensive stance, but Jimmy didn't let him catch his breath and used this instant to pull the dagger from her belt, move in with lowered head like a ram and thrust the blade into his stomach, right below the ribs. She kept shoving him backwards with her head under his chin until he fell over and off her dagger with a pitiful gurgle.

She knelt to wipe the blade on his fine pink button up shirt before it was completely drenched in blood and whatever else leaked out of him now as he jerked and mewled softly. She stood, watched for a few seconds longer until she was sure he was dead, and then dashed into the closest driveway, into a dark backyard and through nightly gardens.

On the roof of the fifth row of garages she was certain she was being followed. An animal of sorts, what else could keep up?

She let herself drop down by a couple of dumpsters and made a sharp turn to the right behind one of them, where she stopped and crouched to wait for the pursuer.

Sure enough, only a few seconds later a black shape dropped down silently where she had landed a moment ago. It straightened up and stopped. It was a person, but... seemed to be sniffing around? Jimmy cocked a brow. Really now?

The figure had obviously sensed that she was still close, so there was no need to stay still any longer. Jimmy pulled herself up onto the dumpster lid and squatted there, facing the figure. They were black-clad and covered in rivets and chains. Kinky, Jimmy thought and smirked. Not that the person could see that. Jimmy's face was still covered with the scarf. The cocked eyebrow was very visible, though, and the person smiled in return. They wore a white noseband for a mask, so that eyes and mouth were visible.

"Why did you do that?" The voice had the same young, androgynously attractive qualities as the look.
"Do what?" Jimmy replied harshly. Her voice was rough and slightly muffled by the scarf.

"Kill that man."

What's it to you? Jimmy thought. "He'd bragged about beating up his dog."

The pretty person blinked.

"Also, he had horrible taste in shirts." Jimmy shrugged.

The pretty person laughed, but stopped herself at once and cleared her throat, then proceeded to size Jimmy up. Jimmy did the same and waited patiently. This person evidently wanted something.

"Who are you?" asked the person.

Jimmy tilted her head a little. "What do I look like?"

"... To be honest, you look like Assassin's Creed meets Al Qaeda."

"Then you may call me Al the Assassin, if you like."

The person laughed again. Jimmy smiled under the scarf.

"You may regret you said that... Al." She gestured to her chest. "I'm The Shade."

Jimmy nodded politely. "And what does The Shade do?"

The Shade shrugged delicately and looked at a tree.

"The Shade takes leisurely strolls in the night - parkour style?" Jimmy suggested. The Shade snickered again.

"Being a shade includes following people, and appearing randomly." She turned back to Jimmy and came a step closer. "And if said people happen to take leisurely strolls through the night, I happen to do the same, yes - parkour style."

Jimmy hadn't moved yet. "And this begs the question... why?"

The Shade effected a surprised look. "You killed someone? In a pretty gruesome way, without provocation? That's... intriguing."

Intriguing? Now that's a comment that intrigues me, Jimmy thought with a smirk.

"I thought... I might find out why," The Shade continued with a shy glance up at Jimmy.

"I just told you why. He was an asshole," Jimmy said matter-of-factly.

"So you are an assassin and it was really not a joke?"

Jimmy shrugged. "So it would seem."

The Shade kept looking Jimmy up curiously. "Why?"
Jimmy blinked impatiently. "To rid the world of assholes."

 

 

II

The Shade was still only observing Jimmy, whose patience had nearly run out now. "Is this going anywhere? Or can I be on my way now? Alone?"

The Shade's eye which was not covered by an artfully straightened strand of black hair widened a little. "I'm not keeping you here."

Jimmy snorted. "I know you're not keeping me. But will you stop following me now?" She had to smirk just a tiny bit again when The Shade glanced away shyly and pulled her thin black hood a little further over her forehead.

"Of course..."

"Well, splendid!" said Jimmy, rather gruffly, as she stood up briskly. She let herself drop down from the dumpster lid on the side where she'd hid from The Shade at first, and made it a point to vanish into the very closest pair of bushes as quickly as possible.

 

Naturally, The Shade occupied Jimmy's thoughts for quite a while after that. For weeks, to be more exact. She took to staring at random people with physiques roughly comparable to The Shade's to see if they could be she, but could never be certain whether or not she had found her out. She had a very bad memory for faces. She could talk to a person for hours on end, looking them in the face and afterwards would not be able to swear if that person had worn glasses or what their eye colour was. So that youthful face obscured by that stupid nose mask thing and a hair curtain, in the fucking dark, was kind of hard for Jimmy to identify. Once she saw a girl on the subway, was absolutely certain it was her and hid behind her book while observing her the whole time she was in view, only to learn a few minutes later that she was in a wheelchair. And quite comfortably too, as if she were used to it. That was when Jimmy actually slapped herself in public and decided to let it go. She had not been followed on her nightly escapades recently, and if The Shade never turned up again, that was that, and if she did, well, there was no need to keep looking for her.

 

One of the prettiest, best-kept parts of town was the financial district, of course, which was cleverly surrounded by playhouses, expensive bars, cafés, fancy restaurants, at least three hotels, the philharmonics and the priciest boutiques. Some of these adjoined a small park with lovely flowerbeds and a big fountain sculpture. There was a subway entrance right next to it and it was hemmed in with art nouveau streetlamps and young sycamores. At night, it all looked especially clean and sharp, the lights and the glittering water of the fountain, the white reflections on the windows of the old buildings and the expensive black and silver cars parked all around them all made this the ideal backdrop for a nightly walk after watching a classical play or listening to a Dvorak concert.

It was perfectly idyllic.

It really was.

Over how lovely and peaceful it all was, Jimmy almost forgot to do what she had come for.

The high pitched giggling and poncey buttwagging of a heavily perfumed... woman... reminded her.

This particular... person... and her male companion where just on their way to Fancy Restaurant X and doing their best to impress each other on the way, Jimmy learned by listening in from up in a chestnut tree. This tree and its immediate neighbours lined a gravel path along with several thick bushes. Their branches provided a thick canopy over the path, effectively blocking the view of the path from everywhere but its entrance and exit.

The couple entered this quiet gloom, quickening their steps. Jimmy scanned the vicinity for any potential witnesses, then leaped to a lower branch of her tree and dropped down quietly. Without trying to sneak she caught up to the two people. Only a few metres behind them, she cleared her throat loudly. "Excuse me. Do you know what time it is?"

The woman jumped a little and they both turned around quickly, the woman holding onto his arm. The man reached into his pant pocket, presumably to take his phone out to look at the clock, but upon noticing Jimmy's clothes, started to snort. "Look, a Taliban!"

Jimmy lifted her arms and held out her hands, the open palms pointing at their faces, and stared the woman down: "Sleep."
She let go of the man's arm and sunk to the ground. Her companion watched this in bewilderment, not even trying to catch her fall, until

"Thank you. A pleasure doing business with you. Moron."

He stared at the empty, dark gravel path in front of him, then noticed he was holding something in his hand. It was his wallet. Denise was lying at his feet, hugging her small handbag and snoring peacefully.

 

Jimmy sat on the quiet edge of one of the several flat roofs of one of the many ugly public office buildings in the city centre, and chewed gum from an ancient little gum vending machine that spat out unwrapped, coloured balls for a few cents. This gum had come with a sticky rubber toy on an elastic string. Jimmy had the time of her life. "Come out, I can hear you giggling."

The Shade approached her with crunchy steps on the gravel and stopped in a few metres distance. "You had a busy night."

"I did." Jimmy turned and looked at The Shade, who seemed amused and a little embarrassed at the same time. She tossed the squishy, sticky rubber ball at her. Alarmed, The Shade quickly bent out of the way, but caught it in the last second and gave a soft snort.

"You rob people and use their money to buy trashy toys and sweets?"

Jimmy tilted her head and thought about it. "Hm. In a nutshell, yes. Although I have to admit, sometimes I buy pointless shit like food and soap, too."

The Shade cocked an eyebrow - or lifted both of them, Jimmy could only see one of them, after all.

"I know. It's shameful. I should eat less, save it all and buy a tank."

The Shade laughed.

She came another step closer and put the sticky ball down on the concrete ledge of the roof before sitting down herself. This was long-winded and looked complicated, but in the end, her straightbacked, cross-legged position looked comfortable enough. Jimmy blinked slowly.

"I'm not going to attack you, or tell on you or anything like that. So can I ask something?"

"Of course."

"How did you get your powers?"

Jimmy looked her up. She seemed genuinely curious and very serious. As if this were a very personal matter to her. So Jimmy turned serious as well. "I will not tell you."

The Shade nodded.

They looked out over the dark city.

"You said you wanted to rid the world of assholes. Did you mean that?"

"Yes."

"Then why do you rob people?"

Jimmy looked back at The Shade. "Because I want what they have. What's your point?"

The Shade looked right back. "Doesn't that make you an asshole?"

Jimmy smiled a little under the scarf. "No. It makes me a robber. Being a good person and abiding the law are not the same thing, my sweet."

The Shade managed to blush.

"And I still fail to see your point. I can have the goal to get rid of assholes and still be one."

The Shade cleared her throat. "But it would be very hypocritical."

"That is true." Jimmy took her scarf down and blew a gum bubble. "Show me your face," she said simply. To her surprise, The Shade pulled her nose bandage down without hesitation. "... Holy fuck."

 

 

III

The Shade kept staring her bravely in the face, but seemed a little self-conscious about it now. "What is it?"

Jimmy forgot to chew her gum and blinked in confused irritation. "You're the fucking wheelchair girl," she accused. It was all she could do not to actually point a leather clad finger at her face. The Shade blushed and frowned, but did not look away. "So the wheelchair is your cover?" Jimmy demanded with a challenging nod. The Shade smirked and snorted softly, but said nothing. She looked down at the tree tops down in the dark, empty parking lot. "Doesn't that get annoying? Pretending you can't walk?"

The Shade's smirk turned a little sour, and then into a quiet smile, as she stretched and leaned back on her hands before looking back at Jimmy. "It pisses me off," she said in a tone that suggested Jimmy was an idiot for asking. Jimmy mulled that over for a few seconds and blinked slowly. The Shade was still looking at her.

"... Then why do you do it?" She remembered the gum in her mouth. Decided not to do anything with it just yet. Because The Shade was staring at her stonily.

"You think I'm doing it... on purpose?" The Shade's stare shot daggers of disbelief, inscribed with the words Moron!, Idiot! and Imbecile! at Jimmy's face. Jimmy started chewing again slowly. She was not using the wheelchair because she wanted to. She had to. But she obviously did not need it. But she did. Jimmy frowned.

"What?" she managed in utter confusion.

The Shade let out a slightly annoyed breath and pulled her bandage back up over her nose. Jimmy leaned towards her.

"How do you not need it now?"

The Shade stood and stepped up to the very edge of the concrete roof, almost half of her feet sticking out into the air, and looked down the eight storeys to the parking lot. Jimmy followed her gaze down her own legs dangling over the edge, then looked back up at The Shade. "So somehow your legs are useless during the day, but at night you turn into bondage batman," she flicked one of the steel rings dangling from The Shade's pant leg nearest her. The Shade looked at that and snorted softly. "And if you don't return home on time, you lose your shoes and turn into a pumpkin."

The Shade laughed. Jimmy got up, too, and nodded at her, hoping it looked more encouraging than threatening. "Come on, what's your deal?"

The Shade smirked at her from the side. "I'm magic," she said with a wink of her one visible eye and turned around, letting herself fall backwards. She lifted two fingers to her mouth and kissed them, then waved them away as she fell straight down. Jimmy watched her turn once or twice in the air before disappearing into the thick mass of leaves covering the closest large tree.

Jimmy smirked to herself.

 

 

IV

Life was predictable and boring. Paying bills, closing contracts, filing applications, calling offices, falling asleep in waiting rooms, homework, housework, social duties and her usual rotten mood filled Jimmy's daily life as they always had. It was all so typically annoying and it bored her to fucking death, but she managed to bear with it, reminding herself to stay patient and inconspicuous, at least until the... accomplishments... of her nightly life had progressed enough for her to stop bothering with all the disappointing rest. And it was going well.

During her nightly escapades she tried to be as efficient as ever, all the while sparing half an eye and a fraction of her consciousness to stay on the lookout for The Shade. She was bound to show up again, sooner or later. Jimmy was sure of it. Maybe it would help if she did something slightly more flashy, more outrageous, than just trick people into giving her money or killing them in lonely dumpster alleys and backyards. Although murdering seemingly random passers-by ought to be outrageous enough for most people, thought Jimmy as she wiped her long dagger on a pant leg. Not her own, of course. She pushed the dead leg over the rim of the dumpster and pulled the lid shut.

 

Roughly an hour later, she reached through the crack of a bedroom window that was tilted open. She held the frame in place while turning the handle to open the third hinge. It cracked a little, but no more than it would have through appropriate handling. Carefully and silently, she opened the window and slid onto the other side of the windowsill, then down onto the soft carpeting. She was silently grateful for the lack of pot plants and knick-knacks that girls typically liked to scatter on their windowsills. She closed the window and opened it properly again, letting it stand wide open in case she needed to make a hasty retreat. She doubted it, but having to turn around and open a stupid window before vanishing into the night would seriously cramp her style.

She turned towards the bed, where the stranger was breathing softly. Looking around the room, she noticed school books and a bunch of notes and drawings on the untidy desk, and picked up a small notepad. It was opened to a page with half-assed doodles and lines of letters. This girl seemed to be trying to alter her handwriting. Jimmy smirked a bit and flicked through the little notebook, leaning against the windowsill. There was nothing of consequence in this pad, so Jimmy just tore out the first sheet and crumpled it into a ball, which she tossed at the sleeping girl's face.

It landed in her hair.

Jimmy tore out the second sheet, bundled that up as well and aimed more thoroughly. It bounced off the girl's cheek.

She stirred and wiped over her face, but did not wake up.

A third paperball hit the girl's forehead. She twitched and woke up slowly. Her arm brushed over her face again and she opened her eyes.

Jimmy stopped moving and just watched, waiting for the girl to notice her on her own.

Which she did.

When she faced the open window and saw the figure standing there in the gloom, she gasped and sat up at lightning speed.

"Calm down, I'm not going to harm you." Jimmy had not moved yet. "The asshole is dead, and he died horribly." The girl seemed preoccupied with disentangling herself from her twisted bedcovers, but stilled now and stared at Jimmy.

"... He's dead," she croaked. She looked ready to vomit. Jimmy nodded and tossed the notepad back onto the desk.

"I killed him in your name, and made sure he knew who sent the pain."

The girl's eyes were crying, but her face still looked simply shocked. "But," she sobbed, staring at Jimmy.

Jimmy crossed her arms leisurely and waited.

"My mum... " The girl seemed to expect a reply. Jimmy tilted her head.

"I'm sure she'll be relieved that she won't have to go through with the lawsuit," she offered. The girl kept staring and clawing at her bedcover while her face dripped tears.

"But," she said again.

Jimmy breathed out impatiently. She was rubbish at this. "You don't have to charge your uncle with rape anymore. He got some roughly appropriate payback and he can't do it to you or anyone else anymore." Jimmy nudged the window open wider and climbed back on the sill. "Feel free to tell them anything you like." She stood and looked back at the stunned girl. She hesitated for a few seconds before climbing out and up the facade, leaving the window open.

 

Several roofs later, Jimmy paused and sat down in the shadow of a slated chimney, straddling the ridge. She leaned back and breathed out in frustration. Or impatience. Or a general vexation with the rotten state of humankind. No. Rotten state of humankind implies that it used to be whole and healthy at one point. But that has never been the case.

Jimmy drew up her knees, crossed her arms over them and buried her face in them. In her head she apologised to the girl whose satisfaction she had stolen. But she was fairly certain she wouldn't have wanted it anyway. That was the most irritating part of all these cases. The victims usually stayed victims.

Only once had she helped someone in this way who wanted it, but for the sake of an alibi couldn't be present when she took vengeance on the man. But that had been an exception. Most people didn't dare even imagine taking their compensation into their own hands. Or their hands and Jimmy's, for that matter.

"Hey," said a soft voice behind her.

Jimmy didn't move. Of course. Of all possible and impossible moments, she has to pick this one to show up. Fucking excellent.

The Shade came down from the chimney top behind Jimmy and somehow ended up in front of her on the roof ridge. Jimmy looked up. The Shade was still managing how to sit and had just decided to put one foot up in front of her and lean on her knee. She looked at Jimmy. "Do you have a name yet?" she asked, kindly.

Jimmy frowned a bit. What was she-

"'Al the Assassin' doesn't really suit you. And I'm pretty sure it was a joke," said The Shade with a soft smile. Jimmy didn't know how to reply, nor did she feel like replying right now. "How about 'Vigilante'?"

"How about something easier to pronounce?" said Jimmy listlessly.

"'The Ultimate Vengeance'."

Jimmy gave her a look, but The Shade just snickered. "So you're not all selfish," she said, smiling.

"Why do you think that?" Jimmy leaned back against the chimney.

"You committed another murder for a girl."

"If you've been paying attention, you might have noticed that I enjoy what I do," warned Jimmy.

The Shade laughed softly and nodded.

 

 

V

"I've noticed." Her voice held a strange tone. It was soft and sounded like a teasing smile. Or that was what the visible parts of her face looked like, Jimmy couldn't tell which. She was glad for the scarf covering most of her face, because she was certain it looked rather stupid just now.

"How do you turn from an invalid into a circus acrobat?" Jimmy demanded, and cursed herself for sounding so harsh. And for her choice of words. The Shade's smile wavered a little, but returned. "I'm sorry. That didn't come out right." Jimmy rested her forehead on her arms again. She hoped The Shade was not going to run away again.

"It's alright. I'm not telling you, though," said The Shade warmly. Jimmy nodded without looking up.

"I think the appropriate name would be 'Jackass' or 'Jerkmaster'," she muttered into the cloth over her mouth. The Shade laughed. It sounded lovely.

"You're a little awkward, but I wouldn't go that far," she said.

Jimmy didn't say anything and they kept sitting there quietly for about a minute or so. Jimmy wondered whether The Shade thought she was crying. Or whether she had fallen asleep. She hoped the latter.

"You're a tsundere person. I'll call you Tsun until you decide on a name," said The Shade. Jimmy looked up. The Shade was looking out at the gardens behind the house they were sitting on. The trees and thick bushes, lining lavish flowerbeds and lawns, filled up most of this courtyard enclosed in this block of residential buildings. Jimmy chanced a look to see whether she was watching anything in particular, and when she didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, eyed up her face again. She looked really peaceful and happy with her quiet smile.

"Like -" Jimmy's voice was far too raspy, so she cleared her throat, "Like what people are called who," she frowned and thought about it, "Who are bitchy but turn out to have a heart of gold?" She winced at her eloquence. The Shade saw that and laughed again.

"Close enough," she said with a smirk that made Jimmy smile. Shade seemed to see that, as well, because she smiled back.

"I can live with that," Jimmy said softly. Shade's eye was black in the night, but it glittered. Jimmy leaned on her hands and pushed herself up until she stood balanced on the ridge. She unfastened her scarf, put a hand on the hilt of her long dagger and bowed with a flourish, offering The Shade a gloved hand. "Tsun, at your service." She wiggled her brow and Shade took her hand, laughing softly. She stood up in one fluid motion that ended in an awkward stagger, when Jimmy suddenly jerked her arm back and pulled her closer. She held her hand in an iron grip and leaned in with a darksome stare. Failing to pull her hand free, The Shade tried to turn and twist away, but Jimmy caught her by the back of her neck and held her in place. "Tell me how you do it," she whispered menacingly. But she was still smiling. The Shade stopped moving and glared.

"You're so thick. I said no. 'Jerk'."

"Alright, you asked for it." Jimmy smirked and tugged on Shade's arm again, pulling her even closer and kissing her.

"Mmf!" complained The Shade. She started struggling again, until she remembered that one of her hands had been free the whole time.

"Hmfuck!" Jimmy let go of The Shade when something pricked her chest in a most uncomfortable manner. She quickly pulled back and saw something in The Shade's raised fist. She wore some distracting black padding over her hands but the dart was very visible. Jimmy looked down at her chest and saw that one was missing from her belt. Stupid! she cursed at herself and directed an irritated glare at The Shade, who had edged back a little and had assumed a defensive stance with the steel dart held high in front of her. She looked wary and a great deal less friendly now.

Well, that's that, Jimmy thought and pulled her scarf back over her face with one hand, keeping the other on her dagger and her eyes trained on The Shade. She glanced to one side to estimate the width of the roof and back at The Shade. "You know I'll find out."

The Shade sneered. Jimmy licked her lips. And I'll do that again, to see this again.

She put one foot beside the roof ridge, crouched and pushed herself off.

 

 

VI

Jimmy had been rash, she had been careless, she had lost one of her weapons, was no closer to knowing The Shade's miracle power and had most likely made an enemy in her now. Well. The most regrettable part was that she now had one less dart to work with. The one that The Shade had stolen out of her belt had been stopped by her ribcage and so the resulting wound was only shallow and would stop bleeding soon enough. She could easily have picked a more vulnerable spot, like her stomach or the liver on the back, instead she had chosen to only sting her solar plexus a little.

It made sense, Jimmy reflected that morning while cutting a strip of band-aid. It was close to where the dart had sat in the belt and obviously The Shade had only wanted to distract her to get free.

She pulled the paper strips off, flicked them into the bathroom bin and lifted the band-aid up to her chest. And stopped. She squinted at the small hole below her heart. Or rather, the roughly star-shaped scar.

Well, fuck me. That was fast. She prodded the tiny patch of tender pink skin and rubbed over it to confirm what she saw. When the hell did that happen? She wondered, and then was distracted by debating whether to save or throw away the now useless band-aid.

 

It rained. Jimmy loved that. For various reasons, it meant fewer potential witnesses – The view was bad, sounds were obscured, and in general people would stay indoors and not come across Jimmy in the first place. It also obscured most traces she might leave behind and posed a slightly greater challenge to her. Wetness turned everything more slippery and dangerous, and the rain itself influenced the handling of her blades.

With nothing pressing on her agenda tonight, Jimmy could entertain herself and practice to her heart's content. For this purpose she had loaded up her mp3 player. With all the noises of the rain and wind she could afford to hear a little less and risk being less silent than usual. She wouldn't be heard anyway.

On the vast construction site by the university, well away from the portable bungalows of the workers, Jimmy climbed the building shells from the outside and jumped from wall to naked wall, exercised balancing on the scaffolding and throwing darts. It all worked as well as it ought to, so she moved on to her next exercise before she could get bored. She hopped from concrete to steel, back to concrete and down to the muddy ground as soon as she had reached the biggest pile of debris that they kept here. She dashed up the hill of broken concrete blocks, metal, granite and wood and straightened up on the topmost wooden beam sticking out. She had to balance a little, because it started shifting and wobbling slightly when her full weight pushed down on its outermost end, but managed to keep it still.

The rain had not only soaked the ground and turned it so soft that everything sank down and stuck to it like to a giant gum, but had also seeped into the raw edged concrete and splintery construction wood and weighed them down slightly. Delighted at this opportunity, Jimmy picked a cracked block of armoured concrete sitting at the foot of this debris hill. It was more than ten times her size and had bent points of steel beams sticking out of it in several places. She examined its dimensions from the distance while securing her footing on the beam at the top of the pile. Stretching out both her arms with open hands towards her target, she started lifting it slowly. It was genuinely hard at first, and Jimmy began to think that she had accidentally directed her intent at something else, when the concrete block suddenly jerked upwards a few centimetres with a wet sucking sound as it came out of the mud. Jimmy almost dropped it again in surprise, but it felt surprisingly light to her now. The weight she was lifting was comparable to that of a full linen bag of groceries, or maybe two sixpacks of beer in glass bottles. Jimmy laughed triumphantly and started singing along to the music in her earphones.

"'Will you dance with me now, heaven's child?' sang the clown, we've nothing to lose but your wings and my frown!" She lifted the block over four metres above the ground to about her own height and pulled it closer. She tried varying the speed to see how steady she could keep it and at what point she might lose control over it. "- To the sound of our love singin' true! So tell me why no one's listenin', is there nothing at all left to say!" When it was close enough for her to touch if she were to lean forward a bit, she lifted it again, and over her head this time, grinning wildly. The adrenalin rush and the awareness of this power surging through her, holding up this massive chunk weighing several tons, was exhilarating, to say the least. She had to laugh, even as a small trickle of rainwater made it through a crack in the concrete and splashed down on her face, followed by a few small crumbs of loose concrete. "So may the living be dead in our wake!" she shouted to the song in her ears and hurled the concrete block down the other side of the rubble hill. It landed with a wet thud and set off a chain reaction of cracking and shifting, as the lower parts in the pile were crushed and knocked aside by it. The debris shuddered and began to shift and slide in an avalanche of rubbish, and Jimmy had to hop down from her beam before the movement reached her. She jumped onto a barrel and then the concrete block, just before the entire pile collapsed. She spread her arms, laughing, and hopped around in a circle on her block.

 

It took The Shade over two weeks to make another appearance. Jimmy would have sought her out herself, if only she had had an idea where to start looking. However, she had been sure that The Shade would approach her again, albeit more cautiously than before, and she did.

After a reprieve of roughly a week, the rain had started again a few days ago. It was annoyingly soft and slow, and sometimes turned into a misty dribble, then into just wet air for a few hours, until it started raining again. Jimmy did not mind and simply continued her private exercises, interrupting them only once or twice to relieve a fat cat of a small part of their comfortable wealth. After all, she needed to eat, too. She kept practicing her lifting with objects of varying weights and sizes, and each time she had successfully moved a particularly heavy piece exactly the way she wanted, her power rush made her so giddy she couldn't help but snicker and do a little victory dance.

This time she was standing on a stack of haybales that were covered with a thick canvas. These fields were not too far out to take a leisurely walk in them, so Jimmy had taken to use them because they were more devoid of people than the city, and it might become a little reckless to keep throwing large, heavy things around every night. Nevertheless she wanted to exploit the cover this continuous rain offered to practice, so these dark, quiet, people-less outskirts were almost perfectly suited to her purposes.

She fooled around, striking a pose like a mage shooting something out of his fingers, as she carefully placed the tractor back into the exact same indentations by the roadside that she had taken it from. She smiled smugly and released it, pulling her hands back, snapped her fingers and twirled around. "Got to be green, got to be mean, got to be everything more, why don't you like me, why don't you like me, why don't you walk out the door?" She looked up at the night sky, facing the falling water, threw out her arms and started bowing in every direction. "Thank you, thank you!"

"Who are you bowing to?"

Jimmy jerked away from that voice and nearly slipped on the wet covering. The Shade was sitting on the other end of the haystack, shockingly close, and what's more, she could not have just arrived, because she was lounging comfortably stretched out, leaning back on one arm and resting the other on a drawn up knee. She even had a fucking straw in her mouth, for crying out loud.

"You've got to stop doing that," said Jimmy, and hoped she hadn't yelled it.

"You've got to start paying attention," retorted The Shade.

 

 

VII

Jimmy turned her mp3 player off and took the earphones off. They slid safely down into her tunic. She used this time to chastise herself for letting her guard down and to force herself into instantly recovering from this little surprise. She started stretching to make a point about how utterly unalarmed and relaxed she was. If The Shade could strike cheesy poses to look cool, she could do it, too.

"Did you bring the dart you borrowed?" Jimmy said boredly, not even looking at The Shade while pulling one of her arms across her chest. Something hard knocked against her leg. She eyed the dart by her foot, kept messing around with her arms while nudging it onto the tip of her foot and lifting it up like this. Without bending down she picked the dart up from her foot and examined it for damages, dirt or any nasty surprises before sliding it back into the belt across her chest where it belonged. She then continued her pointless stretching, moving on to the legs.

"I'm really interested to know how you do that," said The Shade. Jimmy looked at her. She was watching. The rain made it hard to make out a particular facial expression, especially because only her mouth and one eye were visible. And her mouth was busy with that fucking straw. Jimmy looked away again, effecting a bored expression.

"I exercise," she said simply.

"I mean the telekinesis, stupid," said The Shade.

"So do I," said Jimmy.

"At least tell me if it's... something you can learn. Please," tried The Shade.

Jimmy shrugged. Sod it.

"I don't know," she said honestly. "I don't know how I got that ability." She dropped the workout act and just sort of stood around. She hooked her thumbs into her belt and looked at The Shade. She, apparently, also gave up trying to look cool and sat up. "Sorry for being so rude," Jimmy muttered. To her surprise, The Shade seemed to have no problem understanding the words at once, despite her damp scarf and the rain falling around them and drumming down on the canvas.

"I don't know if 'rude' is what it was..." The Shade frowned and seemed to think about it.

"Uuh... insolence? Threatening behaviour? Harassment?" offered Jimmy.

"Yes! Harassment!" The Shade pointed at Jimmy.

"And coercion," added Jimmy, unfazed, while The Shade nodded vigorously. Jimmy shrugged. "Well, sorry for that," she said casually.

They looked out over the nightly, rainy, extremely muddy field together for a little while. Jimmy pulled her mask down. "At least tell me if yours is something that you can learn," said Jimmy smugly. The Shade smirked.

"It's not. Sorry."

Jimmy thought about it. "Is it contagious?"

The Shade shifted and looked up at her. "Say what?"

Jimmy looked at her and decided to just fuck secrecy and go commando, figuratively. She pointed at her chest, where there was still a tiny indentation in the cloth from where The Shade had stabbed her. "This wound healed up in less than an hour. It was small, but that shouldn't have happened. If you have something that can regenerate your body, maybe it rubbed off on me for a short while."

The Shade cocked her one visible eyebrow. "That's impossible. You didn't touch -" She stopped herself.

"Well, I kissed you. So yeah, I did touch you," Jimmy stated and shrugged again. The Shade frowned up at her and got up. Again, the very picture of supple litheness and flexibility. Jimmy took note of that for the gazillionth time.

"That's never happened before," said The Shade, in a tone that said 'Impossible'.

"Maybe the people you've snogged haven't been injured. So no one ever noticed," said Jimmy stoically. She smirked at the gradually more and more flustered Shade, who was eyeing her suspiciously now. It looked as though she were resisting the urge to cross her arms. She also looked as if she wanted to say something. Jimmy kept smiling amusedly and just waited.

"That wasn't snogging." Shade managed to sound indignant in an elegantly dignified manner. Jimmy smirked. She debated whether or not to say it.

"Shall we try again? Just to see if it has the effect."

"Try again? We've never tried in the first place! You forced yourself on me!" Jimmy could almost see The Shade's hair rise up and crackle in outrage. It was wet but that didn't seem to keep it from moving up and sticking out as if charged with electrostatic. Jimmy cocked a brow, but was, in truth, impressed with the spectacle.

"I didn't plan that, you know?"

"Good, because that would have been a pretty stupid plan!" How she huffed.

"I was a little impulsive."

"I'd say!" Now she did cross her arms, glaring fiercely at Jimmy, who was still only sort of standing around.

"And I apologised," said Jimmy and shrugged. The Shade unbristled slightly. "Well, can we please try it? I would like to know why I healed so suddenly. You don't need to tell me how, just let us try this. As research, to try to reaffirm the results of last time. Alright?" She took a cautious step towards The Shade, who looked at her apprehensively but did not draw back. She nodded grimly and pulled her noseband down.

 

 

VIII

Jimmy kept her smug smirk in check and stepped directly in front of The Shade, who stood her ground but didn't exactly look like she wanted to be this close. She looked sort of away to the side and made a rather tense face.

Jimmy untied one of the broad leather straps around her left arm and peeled it off her hand. She let it dangle from her sleeve while pulling out a dart. That she placed in her palm carefully and closed her hand around it. The Shade eyed that, then looked up. Jimmy simply smiled at her, leaned in and kissed her softly. The Shade tensed up even more but still opened her lips a bit. They pretty much stared at each other. Jimmy had to grin a bit and let the tip of her tongue flick over Shade's lip before pulling back. The Shade breathed in and out loudly and Jimmy chuckled.

"Why did you hold your breath?" She opened her hand and looked at the dart lying there, and the thin streaks of blood that were starting to get washed off by the slow rain. The Shade looked, too. Jimmy sheathed the dart again and kept her palm open in the rain. By the time the blood was cleaned off, the cuts had almost disappeared as well. "Well well," Jimmy said triumphantly. The Shade looked astonished. "Sweet Shade, it seems you're a miracle healer. You could become rich with this." The Shade stared up at her in disbelief and snorted.

"Become rich. You really just said that."

Jimmy blinked and rubbed over her palm, now completely healed. "Yes. Amazing talent you've got there."

"Tsun."

Jimmy looked at the slight and very wet girl, who wore a very serious face.

"You are really greedy and selfish," she accused quietly. Jimmy studied her face. The black curtain of hair that usually covered one eye had parted into several separate wet strands that clung to her skin in some places, and Jimmy could actually see most of The Shade's face now. But that very fact prevented her from reading anything in it, because she found herself staring at it dumbly.

"Uh," she pointed out eloquently. The Shade's gaze softened a fraction.

"You rob and steal. And quite frankly, I don't see the point of half of your murders." At this, Jimmy just looked on stupidly. "Yes, I saw quite a few. You enjoy it, you said so yourself. Almost everything you do is for personal gain."

Jimmy frowned. "What's wrong with that? I'm doing a public service by ending harmful people. Everyone I kill has done something despicable, without atoning for it in some way. And they'd all have done more damage to the world if I hadn't taken care of them. How's it wrong if I take some... get some satisfaction from it?" She busied herself with tying up her handstrap again so she had an excuse not to look at that distracting face. "Who are you to talk, anyway? You move like a bloody ninja and have nothing better to do than stalk me. Don't tell me that's not perfectly selfish voyeurism."

The Shade blushed and snorted derisively. Jimmy faced her again.

"I'm not killing and robbing."

"You're watching it," Jimmy pointed out.

"I don't claim to be the avenger of everything!" She was really pretty when upset, Jimmy noted.

"Neither do I!" Jimmy threw her arms out.

"You said you were doing the world a service and ridding us of assholes. Your words." The Shade's hair had started to rise again. Apparently it just did that sometimes. Jimmy stared at it.

"I am doing that. But I don't claim to be a hero."

"Well... good! Because you're not!" exclaimed The Shade.

"Then what's your problem?!"

"You're staring at me!"

"That's your problem?!" Jimmy's eyebrows flew up and almost disappeared under her cowl in utter confusion. The Shade groaned in frustration and stomped to one side of their haystack. She slid down the slick canvas into the dark below. Jimmy followed suit. "Shade!" When Jimmy straightened up down on the muddy ground the first thing she noticed was that it had stopped raining. The second thing was the depth and softness of the mud. Making a face, she stepped back onto the edge of the canvas. The Shade was nowhere to be seen. "This is getting ridiculous. Would be nice to be able to finish a conversation like civilised people next time."

 

 

IX

Mr. Westphal rubbed his cool forehead. Something much bigger was occupying his mind, burdening it, but he still took passing notice of how dry it was. He had expected to be sweating with stress, anxiety, even fear, which would have seemed more natural to him in his current state.

With a slight shudder that might have been imagined, he laid the folded newspaper down by the telephone on his desk. His secretary, Mrs. Kuhn, had browsed the paper for anything she deemed important or interesting enough for him to read, as she usually did when her own schedule allowed it, and had found something.

Yes, indeed she had.

Westphal eyed the offending neon post-it by the article.

The mutilated corpse of Martin Fitz had been found in a dumpster in the city. That was not what Westphal had intended when they had all agreed on 'silencing' him. Fitz had to be taken out of the way and rendered harmless. The drug-and-rape coup had seen to that. Killing him this gruesomely and allowing his body to turn up this soon, and in this manner, did their purpose a great disservice. The set up with his niece had been tasteless enough, and this murder was just so far beyond reason that it was plain stupid. He had already been discredited, so why go any further and torture Fitz to death, and risk everything by diverting the attention of the law away from him as a culprit? They were going to look for his murderer now, and they would scrutinize the goings-on in the company that had only recently let him go.

This was very bad.

What to do?

Westphal stared at the abstract painting on the far wall of his office. The others would stay apprehensive, prepare for feigning ignorance and quietly cover their tracks wherever they could. Some would scramble and run. Some would attempt both – cover up sloppily and bow out more or less elegantly.

But they would all be investigated.

 

"But he didn't want to! He was forced -" The woman sobbed and sat back down, covering her face with her hands.

How cliché, thought Jimmy. "It doesn't matter," she said coolly, "He still did it. He raped her. I really don't care why or how. He raped your daughter."

The rapist's suffering sister sobbed again.

"Look, it wasn't only his fault. But don't absolve him. He did it."

The crying woman did or said nothing more, so Jimmy, feeling out of place, decided it was about time for her to leave. She turned around to the terrace door. "The others are not getting away," she promised on the way out.

This was so tedious. People were tedious. Intrigues and the plots of the powerful were tedious. Jimmy's sighs had become so frequent during the last few nights and days that her scarf was almost damp at times. It could all be so simple, she lamented inwardly. At least she could afford tending to this irritating tedium now. She was almost set to leave her original identity behind and let ordinary Jimmy fade into oblivion. Missing a few more lectures and seminars would only help the process along.

Now she had to do a different kind of homework. Which companies were involved and how, who were the people responsible, the leaders, who the lackeys, who had done what exactly... and all that without being an economist or computer expert.

By the time she returned home the prospect of weeks of tiresome footwork and poking around in strange papers had her so grim that she rued not stopping by the old foundry or the building site to exercise and blow off some steam.

Why don't I just kill everyone? Anyone that high up in global industries like that is bound to have skeletons in their closet. Or at least a superbly rotten character. But if she did that, she would never know all that really happened, and she could not be sure that she got to every last one of the shits who were involved. She would have to break into offices and snoop around carefully enough to – no... what if she could get a hold of just one of them... and make them crack? She would not even have to let on how little she knew about this matter. Just plant some fear into a dull but greedy mind that knew horror, and drop one single name.

 

Mr. Westphal was sweating now. Or rather, he had been. His hands and forehead were clammy and he shuddered frequently. His office was dark. It was just past eleven, the beautiful antique clock on his crystal coffeetable said. It had just chimed daintily eleven times. By now, no one but a handful of security guards would be left in the building. And they had no reason to patrol up here.

The cloaked figure on his leather sofa shifted and leaned forward.

Jimmy yawned.

She stood up and walked around the low table and towards the big, comfortable chair in the middle of the room, in which the nondescript suit sat. She walked past him, checking if his eyes were awake and aware, wandered around him and let a finger trail his collar while she did. It almost disgusted her, but unfortunately, tactile sensation was an important factor in inducing terror effectively. She let her hand rest on his shoulder and looked down at him.

"Mr. Westphal," she said quietly, "I love stories." Her eyes bore into him and he was made aware again of the unpleasant fact that he could not move. Not that squirming would have helped him in any way.

It was mildly unsettling that this young woman masked herself, but it was also reassuring. If she hid her face from him there was a good chance that he was not supposed to die in this encounter. Fitz had apparently fallen victim to a murdering psychopath, and he cared little for becoming one himself.

"Tell me one. About yourself... and Martin Fitz." She turned away and let go of his shoulder. Westphal swallowed. He found that he could move his head. Of course. He was supposed to speak now. But he would not. He had not even made up his mind about what to tell the police once they would come knocking, let alone... that. Whatever she was. She had telekinetic powers and had somehow got in here unseen, but this would not cow him into giving everything up to her.

Jimmy had not expected him to talk this soon, with no motivation. Without sparing him a glance, she levitated the large painting down from the wall and before her to look at it more closely. It was not covered by a glass pane and had only the original rough wooden beams at the back of the canvas for a frame. It was impossible to make out its colours and details in this gloom, but that hardly mattered. She wanted to make a point by letting the canvas hover in front of her in midair while keeping the suit enthralled without so much as looking at him.

"Take your time," she said, "I've got more than you can imagine."

Something cracked, and one side of the painting's wooden frame floated away to settle gently on the soft grey carpet.

"Of course, yours is considerably shorter."

 

 

X

By the time Jimmy had heard as much as she cared to know, she was almost satisfied with her new painting. The canvas held a threedimensional picture now, as well as more colours than before. It was considerably redder and wetter. Slender, coiled ribbons of pink skin were artfully arranged around the shapes that had made up the original painting, trailing delicate tracks of glistening blood that were still dripping red onto the carpet in some places. She let it hover back to its old place on the wall. To make it stick, she levitated up the sharp wood splinters she had used to flay the man's hands and had them fly into the wall to secure it there.

During these last two or three hours she had hardly moved at all, and started to feel it now. Using only telekinesis and very few words, she had tortured and interrogated Westphal successfully, probably even leaving the impression of herself that she wanted to convey, as a detached, cold and perfectly calm person with as little personality standing out as possible. But she regretted not sitting down. And maybe she should not have used only her mind. Within the last hour or so, her vision had grown dimmer and her forehead felt frayed with a dull ache that flooded her whole head, now that she had let go of the canvas and all those small pieces, and was only keeping Westphal in place in his stupid, comfortable office chair.

Not that she envied him. The pain of flaying was particularly excruciating, she had read. And this man now had two skinless hands. She had loosened her mental grip on them after laying their flesh bare, and he was holding them up as much as the invisible bind on his arms allowed, so as not to have the armrests touch them. However, that did not help against the sting of dry, cool air. His red and white hands were dripping and shaking.

You and your colleagues conspired against one of your own who wanted to save your employees' jobs. You drugged him, abducted his niece and had him rape her, only to use this to keep him quiet, discredit him, and go through with your faithless merger with all eyes on him, and safely away from you.

"Of all the things you could have done to remove him from the picture and get what you want, why do this?" Jimmy just had to know. It seemed too ridiculous. "Wasn't it a bit much? A little too... drastic?" She moved to one of the windows and opened it, using her hands for once. This required her to climb onto the backrest of the nice leather sofa to reach the uppermost locked clasp on the windowframe. That she did. Luckily, the sofa's back stood right against the wooden casing of the radiator or some vents or something of that sort, so it could not have tilted backwards if Jimmy had been too heavy for it. With the help of some mental brutality, she ripped the clasp off. It was not meant to be opened, and Jimmy was not keen on setting off any alarms, so using the emergency lever on the window next to it was out of the question. She still needed time and peace to figure out how to get down from this skyscraper, and she imagined that ambulances, police and firefighters rushing up here would not make for the most relaxing backdrop to think. Scaling this building had been relatively easy. Well, it had not been easy, but she had had no time pressure then. Downwards would be a different matter. Because even without her sounding the alarm herself, her new friend Mr. Drippyhands would most likely raise it. He would make a messy call, shout for help, push a fire alarm with his elbow... anything, as soon as she let him go, which she would have to once she left the room.

He had not replied yet. She looked at him as she climbed back down to work on the lower clasp.

"Hm? Why do something this messy?" She asked again.

Pale Mr. Westphal did not know. He honestly did not know. He had been against it. It had seemed so tasteless and dangerous to him. And he had been right. Oh, so right.

"It wasn't my idea. I always thought it was stupid and too..." He drew in a shuddery breath. His hands burned.

"Flashy? Preposterous? Obnoxious?" offered Jimmy. As the lower clasp came off with a sweet crunch, she immediately knew how to simplify her exit strategy by removing the time problem. Mr. Westphal with the shaky arms had just drawn in another deep, shuddering breath, presumably to build a reply, when the two sharp edged metal plates hovered out of Jimmy's hands and flew into his eyes like a pair of throwing knives. He had not even had the time for the reflexive blink before the aluminium shards buried themselves deep into his eye-sockets. To both of them, the sound this made resembled that of a hard mattress being punched. With Mr. Westphal being the mattress. And hearing nothing more after that.

 

The songs that Jimmy is listening and singing to in VI are May the living be dead (in our wake) by Flogging Molly and Grace Kelly by Mika.

Maybe TBC.