My Super Secret Life…Scarlet-20.

*Before…

………………………….And then Settler’s Day or NH Thanksgiving comes up pretty fast.

Nikki’s going home to her folks place and…so am I.

I mean my home not her home and I’ve wanted to sort of do this for a couple of weeks now.

I need to have a family talk and see where they are about all of this and about me and I’ll have to talk to mom first since she’s the only one that I know of out of the family that was in the running. She’ll hopefully be okay enough with things that we can hash all of this out and help me with the paper work that Victory has given me so that she and dad can sign off on Darcy so there’s an official if needed paper trail.

Now do I drive and go as Dale or do I pack a bag and things and fly there as Darcy/Scarlet?

*And Now…

I actually decide on heading home driving because I’m not that into having a chance of someone knowing just yet. And while I or rather Scarlet doesn’t have a whole lot of superhuman enemies out there I’m an Ark Angel now or at least a provisionary sort of one and that might actually bring me some shit.

I do drive over to The Ark building and get in with my ID as Darcy and we get the papers that I need to get done up or preferably done up first and all of that and while I’m actually doing all of that Ryan Chase has the tech guys and gals and bots go over my clunker and give it a tune up and a fit up.

That was pretty cool actually and my car looks pretty newish, not like totally knew with like paint and body work stuff done but it’s got a serious tune up and new kicks and someone gave it a really nice wash and wax while they were at it and there’s even an air freshener.

Coconut because apparently they think I like coconut.

I do but it’s just sort of cute.

And…and while I’m here I actually hit up The Ark’s Gift shop and I go and I get some odds and ends at a few places that are like touristy stuff from like Ark City.

Like a panoramic poster of The Bridge and some city shots and just some things that you don’t get unless you come to the city.

I mean Greendale’s a city and it’s sort of big or it seems like it if you’re not used to that but Ark City.

Well that’s just Metropolis to like Smallville.

Yeah that way mega ancient but it’s sort of like part of my educational Ark Angel package because apparently the old comic culture and the new comic culture actually plays on the whole thing of metas and mutants and all those things in between.

There’s a whole language and culture that’s not just the geek anymore but part of the whole hero and villain thing too.

It’s kind of screwy sounding but it’s like actually a sort of thing.

And I have the theater stuff that I’m getting into.

Which is so Darcy and not Dale.

Which is seriously another thing I have to think about really.

Just how much am I going to do?

I mean Dale worked hard to get into the school and the programs that he did, that I did as him and yet this whole theater thing was sort of a cover that turned into a sort of something else.

And I’m no headliner by far and I likely won’t be either because well….being famous isn’t likely a good cover.

So what do I do?

Well actually going for a really long drive is actually one of those good things for thinking and that’s even longer than usual since I have to cross the city first and that takes hours even with me taking the route that I’ve picked out.

See Ark City is Huge and it’s in this sort of region that’s this mountainous cul-de-sac that’s the size of large states in some places to small countries. It’s take all day and maybe more to actually drive across it widthwise so I leave the bridge and I take The Shoreline Highway north and that takes me through places that I’ve actually only flown over but it also leads out of the city and out over the mountains.

From there I turn west with The Sentinel Highway North…that’s named for the mountains and that takes me past all of the resorts and mining and industrial towns and cities that feed Ark City and all of its industry stuff and once passed the mountains it leads to a turn off for The Great Continental Highway and that’s the Highway that I took to come in on.

It’s a long drive just to get to that part. Four hours to get out of the city and another three to get to the continental and that’s when I’m stopping for a break and some gas at one of the centerline rest-stops.

See the Continental is sixteen lanes eight going one way and eight the other and in the middle they actually have all sorts of rest stops and camp grounds and mini-parks as well as hotels and motels and the like and this highway in the major trade route that spans from coast to coast and it even has close to each side rail-lines for the trains.

I think the trains have like stops her for the commuter ones and passenger ones and they’re all like built with the stations and things that are close to where there are exits and places that the Continental branches off with exits heading to other places and other highways.

It is actually as boggling as it all sounds too.

I was all sorts of oh crap the world is bigger than I thought when I left home and now.

Well with the stuff I can do and the things that I’ve faced and seen.

It’s actually a nice trip and even as much as there is of everything there’s also lots of space that’ll be just driving.

I gas up and I park and I lock up the car and then I go and freshen up and get something to eat at the diner part here rather than the little fast food things or the vending machines and I eat and listen to the music they have there while I people watch and have dish of shepherd’s pie and two slices of spanicopeda and then a cup of tea.

I’ve actually always liked the whole spinach pastry thing and it’s actually quite good too and there’s lots of different varieties but this one’s very normal just a little cooked onion and salt and pepper and I think just a little nutmeg.

There’s one at the train stations café back home that has this really large amount of greens in it but there’s a morne sauce on the bottom and then there’s like lots of butter and dill.

And they make great pie there and pretty good fried fish and chips.

It was like pretty close to our high school so it was one of the good places to go to if you had a car.

And speaking of a car I have another cup of tea and then go and use the ladies room and I go and sleep for a few hours in the car.

It’s a rest stop so it’s actually pretty safe as they usually have like cops around or at least security people to like help keep an eye on things.

I guess some of these places have like reputations for like sex workers and other stuff that can like happen in them.

I’m pretty sure that I’m safe so I crash for a few hours before I’ll hit the road again.

It’s not comfortable sleeping in a car it just isn’t but I will say I have a bit more room as Darcy doing that than I did when I did the same thing as Dale.

I got a few hours of sleep in and I get out and got for a bathroom break and then scrub my face and freshen up and I get a few of those Fuji-Blue-Mountain coffees in a can. It’s a brand from Japan on Old Earth and they don’t grow coffee there but the Japanese are good at that whole canned everything stuff.

And this stuff I know from campus because it’s like really strong stuff.

So I drink a can there and I buy a thing of fudgy-clusters which are these bite-sized brownies sold like a candy bar in like four chunks that are covered in chocolate or a chocolate shell since they have this really creamy icing too.

Yeah I know the girl and chocolate thing is a stereotype but I like stuff like that with something hot and really bitter. And the canned coffee is really bitter and strong it’s like the perfect foil for each other.

I head out and it’s dark out and I turn up the radio and I listen to tunes as I drive and there’s another sort of cool thing about being a girl.

Psycho-socio-permission.

There’s this thing where a lot of guys even when they’re alone wouldn’t like sing along with a girly song and I…as Darcy well I’m a girl and I sing along with some of the tunes that I’ve been discovering and rediscovering and stuff.

And it’s like maybe good singing practice too if I belt out stuff along with the bands and stuff on the radio.

It’s just getting to dawn when I pull off The Continental and drive into the Greendale exit and highway north and it’s about seven when I get into town.

Greendale is big, well sort of big it’s a city it has an airport and a shuttle port and it’s about two hundred thousand people when you count all of the suburbs and the surrounding area and we’re a working classed city with Lumber and Paper products and farming too. We’re the Midwest north too so we’re actually pretty big with cattle and the like.

Then there’s like all of the offshoots and things.

But yeah I said lumber and paper in this era.

Actually things made of actual wood are very expensive since there’s like faux lumber and re-cycled lumber made form waste plant fibers and papers and such. But we’re in what used to be really huge old forests in the colonial days and it’s one of those colony industries.

And now…now we have these genetically modified trees that grow super-fast and they are even more like boosted because they have these sort of anti-gravity lines that go through the tree farms and they reduce the local gravity field and this apparently takes like twenty percent of the gravity strain off of them which lets them grow even like more.

And yeah almost all the trees on like stable founded worlds are like farms now. Old grown forests are like ultra-protected green spaces these days. And when a tree is harvested like just about everything is used like with animals these days…nose to tail ideas have like become root to leaf.

So it’s this small city surrounded by farms and tree farms and all sorts of things that are like green or like natural.

And we’re nestled in this sort of ring of like super hills and there’s this huge lake too and we’re in a valley so there’s the Dale part.

And we’re semi famous for the lake and the park and the Greendale hub.

The hub is a four way suspension bridge that has this huge island that we built in the center that’s a traffic circle that lets you change to other bridges and other place instead of just driving around The Shore Drive which is a four lane city highway that goes around the lake just outside of the boating district.

It’s actually pretty here and it’s really unique too.

And we do I guess get like tourists and stuff here I’ve seen them but also not seen them as I was growing up well just because you just don’t like see stuff like that too much when you’re a kid.

I actually make my drive so I get to cross the bridge and that’s kind of yay.

And I can’t help but to have the thoughts of what it’d be like to actually just sort of fly around it and see things as Scarlet about my town.

Then I hit the north-west side of the city and that’s where I live and everything gets a lot more familiar as I’m seeing people and places I’ve always known and I fight the temptation to wave at some people that I see and know because I’m Darcy.

And it’s about five minutes past Kingswood Fields a tree farm collective and park meets sort of suburbs that I find myself home.

Home’s our farm and it’s walled with an old fieldstone and mortar wall that my great grandfather and his dad built when they settled here and it’s just decorative at this point and sort of shows the property lines but it has little to do with the farm.

I smile and see the houses we have a sort of bunch of family that lives here and a couple of trailers too and then there’s the coop barns and the dairy ones and that’s mostly for us and local sales and stuff. And then there’s the silos and the other processing sheds as what we do here mostly for money is we grow soybeans and alfalfa and green lentils then we have a lot of big gardens that we have again for us and for local sales.

That’s a big part of farming here these days…growing to feed the locals and some of that’s for our own stands in the farmer’s markets and some of it is for our delivery business. I used to drive for that and it’s a tote full of potatoes and greens and carrots and other things that we can pick easily and it’s a bulk buy veg order for a week.

And according to New Haven laws and a holdover from older colonial ideas we would sell some of our raw dairy too as long as the people signed a waiver for it.

And we do like eggs and some other stuff but it’s just kind of a large family but medium sized working farm in the 27th.

I pull in and I stop and take a breath or two and I get out and I look around and I stretch and I see a few people looking and I head for the main house.

That’s the house I grew up in and it’s a two and a half story house with a ranch style to it and solar roofing and siding and a trio of wind turbines on the roof peak and lots of hanging plants and planters with lettuce and herbs and chives around the decks and I go up to the house and I ring the doorbell.

Which feels weird to ring the doorbell in my own house and I see through the screen doors Mom coming up and she stops and she’s staring at me and she’s staring after a few seconds at my wrist and I nod and hold up the wrist with the “watch” that morphs into its proper bracelet cuff form.

She does an inhale.

“I’ve seen you on the news.”

I blink. “You have?”

“Hero-watch….and ever since I knew that you inherited that from your grandmother.”

“So….?”

“Well what’s your name?”

“Darcy.”

She nods. “I kind of like that, it’s close to Dale.”

I nod. “Easy to keep in mind.”

She opens the door and gives me a hug.
I hug her back. “You’re not mad?”

“Yes a little, I kind of wanted to be the next Scarlet Angel.”

I blush some. “So grandma said.”

“Oh?”

I nod. “She knew that you wanted it and she didn’t think that was a good idea.”

Mom frowns leaning back. “Did she say why?”

“That you liked the attention more than she was comfortable with.” I say that with a wince.

She looks at me.

And she looks at me.

Then inside the house towards the hall.

We keep like all of the family trophies and awards and stuff in a couple of display cases in the hall as we’re actually proud in this family when something cool happens for one of us.

And her cheer stuff is in there as well as her homecoming and pageant stuff.

She stares there a second and she takes a deep breath and sighs. “She’s right…I mean the first thing in my head would be that my super self would be hot…hotter than my regular self and that I would be like young again.”

“So we’re good?”

“Yeah we’re good, but this is going to be all sorts of complicated for a few days.”

I nod. “How are we going to do this with like the family?”

Mom looks at me. “All the older family members know sort of, they don’t know as much as I know or your Dad does but they know because she had a talk with us when we were younger and the fact that it’s a blood thing, a family thing and that one day we might inherit that.”

“And you guys stayed quiet?”

“She told us about the other versions of her, the other Scarlet Angels and how some of them died and how family could get hurt.”

Mom looks at me. “Darcy…you’re going to have to do the same thing.”

I nod and she leads us towards the back kitchen and that’s the house working kitchen for like jams and pickles and making things and I follow.

“I think I can do that but I’m here for advice too.”

“Advice?”

“Be Dale, Be Darcy…I have this whole other life taking root and what should I do about that and what I should do about my girlfriend?”

Mom grins and heads for the coffee. “Well is it serious?”

“Kinda…and Dale and her are good friends.”

“Wait…what? She’s Darcy’s girlfriend/”