My Super Secret Life…Scarlet 8.

Chapter 8

Flying is just so intense really and it’s getting more and more special to me. I head out over the city and instead of flying just over the city and the Super-Bridge I head out to Sanctuary out over the water.

I’d have enjoyed it a whole lot more but I pull up but slow down. There’s barges everywhere with protestors about the whole Sanctuary thing. Even from the height I’m at I can hear them chanting hate slogans and waving their signs. Everything from them saying God hates freaks, mutants must die, Satan’s creatures….and more.

There’s the barges and outboards and other boats even all protesting and some are trying to get to the island.

I swear I can feel the hate down there.

The cops and the military are busy trying to keep them from hitting the shores and doing stuff. There’s a lot of media too and there’s and not just the human ones either. I do notice no Ark Angels there to defend the island and even though the Ark City Police have a pro-anthro policy the defenders are all humans. Potential damage control?

I’m getting pictures taken of me and videos and I start to move again. I’m not sure I’m ready for serious media exposure and I head for this aero-platform with police markings like a mobile command post and I slow and hold up my badge. I get a nod from someone checking an image of me in a hologram? And I pass through the place and even get a wave.

There’s powered armor suits sitting in chargers on the Aero-platform. Everything seems so peaceful at the university and in other places of the city and here? Here…we seem to be on the brink of war?

I mean…I look back and there’s got to be actually thousands of haters out there on the water…It makes me actually feel queasy.

I turn back and fly over the actual island now and there’s NHDF (New Haven Defense Forces….our military.) on the beach and as I pass over I see the place I’m headed to The Ark. Headquarters of the Ark Angels and it’s huge.

Two city blocks wide and thick The Ark is five hundred stories high and coated in golden chrome like mirrored glass. It’s really impressive and huge….I’m not sure that they need all of that right? There’s not that many Ark Angels right?

Around it is a huge brick courtyard circle and then outside the circle there’s a lot of buildings that look like they’re embassy buildings from places around the Alliance and Alien races we’re in contact with. Past that I see what’s the school I think it looks like the university style of place being built and there’s lots of building further out and there’s the streets laid out for quite a ways and the look of huge amounts of construction going on as they’re building what is going to be at least a town.

“There must be tens of thousands of jobs here…more. Why are people being so stupid.”

I carefully land and get lots of looks from the lots of people and beings in the big circular courtyard and I actually gulp; The Ark is a lot bigger here on the ground. I’m trying to be confident but I feel really kind of small and really country bumpkin here.

No one stops me though.

“So did Dorothy feel the same way when she got to the Wizard?”

I go inside and the first thing I see is a huge lobby and lots of people here working and they’re all in uniforms the most common being black dress pants, cargos or fatigues with a black thin sweater or tee-shirt or dress shirts and blouses all with a kind of jacket in black with the gold letters AF on one arms shoulder and the Ark Cross on the other. They have the id card necklace things and a name tag on the shirts and while half seems like copped-out business wear the rest seems like sort of police or para-military clothes.

They’re all armed too. I see some kind of gun on everyone and the more cop like looking ones have police like belts with more.

Not a really girly place with no one in a dress and a few skirts here and there. Well for the staff at least. There are people that look like their here for other reasons and there’s a lot of non-humans here too.

I look around for reception?

“It’d be so easy to get lost here.”

I’m rubbernecking and gawk at someone flying past on some sort of hover disc not even looking as he typed away on a tablet.

I see a desk…okay huge counter with a holographic sign saying “Reception.” I head over to it and there’s this tall blonde girl there behind a series of consoles looking very professional in a skirt based business suit and blouse with oh…four arms. I watch stunned and not by her having four arms but at her skills.

You ever see a really skilled busy receptionist? Now give her two extra arms and apparently all the hand eye skills and ability to multi-task as well. Then I’m blinking as she says. “Excuse me may I help you miss?”

“Oh sorry I spaced there. I’m the next Scarlet Angel; Sentinel asked me to come by when I had the chance…”

“Just a moment then please.”

I watch as she does another three or four things and then is talking on the headset earpeice thing she has on. “Ms. Angel?”

Okay now that’s a first. “Yes?”

“I’ll contact you when someone is ready to see you can you have a seat over there please.”

Uhm, okay…I wasn’t expecting to wait. I mean being a super hero and stuff you’d think…

Ow…I feel this kind of headache going on and…..there’s these feeling sinking into me…

Normal, mundane, muggle life…and being a super hero…..and there’s this feeling…like an unhappy frown sort of and…more…like frowns from those that came ahead of me…

Wow…smooth Darcy, smooth…and this is how you’re acting with this huge gift and responsibility that you were left with…chosen for.

I go and need to sit down and grab a ladies magazine and sort of stare at it. The feeling fades but…powered up…it just gave me a hard shot of humility before I got into a bad place right?

I want to cry sort of and feel like a heel. No…I feel like I got caught acting like the kind of people that I don’t really care for.

I’m not reading but staring at the bracelet/cuff. A built in failsafe?

I’m still deep in thought when I heard a polite cough. I look up and see this man there more handsome than I’m used to being around and standing out here by what he wore. Dirty blonde with his hair to his shoulders, blue and silver eyes that weren’t human but were stunning and unlike any I’ve ever seen, light tan and he was in a white thin t-shirt, sneakers, faded jeans and a black zip front Ark Angel hoodie. There was just a bit of scruff going on with his face. He smiles this easy smile and offers me a coffee tall in a take out cup from some place called Eden?

Even in his thirties, early forties? He was more handsome than was safe for women I think.

“Scarlet? How about you come with me and we’ll talk.”

“Okay…”

He offers a hand to help me off the seat and that was nice even if I didn’t need or expect him too. As Dale I knew that you opened doors for women and did the chair thing at restaurants and the car door bit but I never heard of this before.

I’m stealing that if I ever go out as Dale again. That’s shocking and kind of depressing.

I take a drink of coffee and stop. It’s hot and black but still it’s the best coffee I’ve ever had. “Wow…thanks this is good.”

He looks me over. There’s this intensity there and interest? Not quite sexual though but like he’s seeing something going on. Then that smile that sort of feels nice…I’m not sure why it feels that nice but it does. “Yeah I know it’s a hybrid blended bean that a friend’s created. He calls it garden.”

“Garden? The whole Eden thing?”

“Sort of I think the full legal patent strain is Garden of Babylon.”

“Uhm…Babylon?”

“Oh not the colony, but the ancient earth culture.”

Blink. “I’ll have to look it up, I’m not that knowledgeable in ancient history or archeology.”

He laughs a nice laugh. “Me neither, I only really only know about it from Michael going on and on about it.”

I smile. “I have friends that get that way about the stuff they’re into.”

“I’m Ryan, Ryan…”

“Chase…” OMG I recognize him now.

Ryan Chase is a seriously wealthy industrialist. And a super genius, a bit of a recluse in the last ten or twelve years and stuff but he’s done serious inventing for N.H. law enforcement and the military and yet despite that this is the guy behind vintage junk foods, this Old Earth resurgence of chain restaurants…stuff that’s gone extinct over the centuries but are back now. I’ve seen pictures from when he was seventeen and just on the scene and all over the TV’s and magazines.

He’s aged extremely well. And those eyes, not a meta thing. I’m pretty sure they’re custom cybernetics. They’re still amazing and some how soulful. He does this sorta semi-bashful head lower and a bit of his hair falls just so.

I want to…touch it.

Wow…sorry Nikki…I am…wow…I mean I’ve said there were some men I’d sort of found attractive but this is the first guy that’s hit me like this. I mean I’m so not thinking of cheating but…he’s just so.

Ryan?

I’m feeling very aware at the things he’s making me feel.

“Yeah, I’m Ryan Chase.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do you really have that high an I.Q.” They’ve said he’s in the mid 200’s. That’s super-smart…like so smart it’s almost a power.

“Actually no.”

“No?”

“No, I just came to New Haven with a lot of knowledge that didn’t exist here.”

“What you’re from the future?”

“No just another dimension.”

“Huh? That’s real?”

“Yep.”

“Whoa.” My head hurts at the implications. And he’s telling me….why?

We walk to a set of glass elevators and start going up. The place is huge. I see a museum as we pass and there’s a Super’s history museum here that looks amazing and I see me…or the earlier incarnations of in pictures and stuff donated by them that wasn’t in my magic crate. I look at him. “I’m so going to have to check that out.”

“Yeah, there’s some real great stuff down there.”

We keep zooming up and there’s no ear popping either and then we arrive at the place where we’ve been heading to. I’m going to say likely in the cross part of the Ark.

“Right this way.” He does this arm thing to guide me out like an opening door gesture. I catch a whiff of him and…yay? He smells nice….Oh come on Darcy…keep your mind off this guy…he’s not that…

Yeah dammit he is.

The place is really nice up here, it has that old wood paneled library building or law offices and really classy, rich but not rich and actually quite old. There’s lots of history here too. He opens the non-powered door to this huge living room and lounge and there’s.

Victory, Saber, and Samson there sitting around a large oval table.

They look to me and Victory gets up and indicates a seat for me in a friendly gesture. I’m so nerved up…she’s…

She’s Victory.

This woman is the same woman that when the N.H. government went paranoid after the Federation attacks and the Meta-Factor terrorists started way back. Metas, Mutants and Anthros had been put into an internment camp. She volunteered to go in with them despite being a famous hero then.

She’s fought to keep this City and Colony safe for over two hundred years…the same woman…Saved the world way too many times to count publicly.

Superman, Captain America and Supreme rolled into one woman. I’m caught up in that presence she has…Honestly…I stopped breathing for a few moments there.

She’s got a white silver set of glasses on her eyes but otherwise a white very laid back pant suit and a golden tee-shirt. White hair kisses with something chromatic in it? Silvery eyes that are crystalline like? I mean just the color, her eyes look like they’re normal except for her sapphire pupils.

And yes, like most metas-above average looking….her…way above average like an angelic waif somehow became halfway an amazon. I’m sort of in awe but not attracted…see…it’s so who not just…the looks.

Yay for me…and Nikki?

She smiles and honestly reminds me of my grandmother somewhat.

“Please Scarlet have a seat we’ve an offer for you and an interview. Interested?”

I’m not even sure how my legs worked but I walked to the chair offered and sat down and said with a dry mouth.

“I’m interested.”