My Super Secret Life…Scarlet-19.

*Before…

I have a lot to learn…and a lot to think about even now.

How much to learn and what to do about my relationship.

I get a coffee in a can from one of the vending machines and I head upstairs to my quarters and my office.

I think that I might just have to go home this weekend.

I might need to have a family talk.

*And Now…

I pop the tab and head inside and it’s still really something to get used to. I mean I know that The Ark Angels get serious funding they are THE team on the planet and they have fought everything from constant crime to super villains to invaders of all sorts to heroing in natural disasters. They’re based here in Ark City but the have colony wide jurisdiction.

Okay I guess that’s the long way of saying that they have amazing levels of funding and that’s not counting the Ryan Chase factor. People are still trying to figure out just how much money he has but all I know is that here on New Haven he has Chase Slipstream (Jets/planes/Spaceships), Chase Aero (Hover and aero cars and the like.), Chase Industries (Makes parts and stuff for his other businesses.), Chase Motors (Cars and usually ancient earth re-models.) RC Unlimited (Food and very popular stuff and even resurrected ancient earth chains.) and Excelsior Unlimited (Defense contracts, robotics, weapons.) all huge companies and who the heck knows just how much he is part owner in and what he has off-world either.

So walking in and having a set of office-quarters with a little foyer by the door and a closet then a living room and a kitchen and a bed room and an office all with skyscraper window views and top of the line carpet and furniture…you get that right?

And I’m just a junior member.

And Ryan works pretty much for/with Victory the leader of the Ark Angels.

No wonder some governments and people see plots and agendas with this whole thing. The Federation has a serious thing about Victory since she lead the mutant civil rights thing here and she kept the peace between mutants and the humans of the federation troops like fifty plus years ago and went into the internment camps peacefully and kept a lot of people from lashing out which with NH under occupation would have led to a lot of people, mutants and anthros being killed off for just simple excuses.

They invaded because of “The Ship” and that we were “making weapons and a meta army.”

They used that to justify it and it was opposed by The Galactic Alliance and it lasted a year before our allies made them leave. As far as I know they never cracked the ship and they never got past the mutant refugees and such in the underground.

Sorry it’s just being here instead of reading about this in history books and seeing this stuff on television like it was when I was growing up brings this all into mind. I mean I’ve met people I read about in textbooks and learned about in school.

I go around still sort of nursing the headache and muscle aches from before and the hot coffee in a can helps both and the linens are fully stocked and I have all the appliances a person could ever want for in the kitchen and it’s stocked with a few things.

Sodas and juices, coffee and teas, creamers in a can and things that don’t really go bad that fast like condiments but no real groceries and the freezer though is nice and stocked with ready to heat eats like frozen dinners and pizza’s and the like it’s kind of nice to have people or staff that do this stuff.

My closet has Ark Angel generic workout clothes and something like lounging loose cotton clothes that remind me of scrubs and that will work for me as I grab some of those and a can of spray ice cream.

RC Unlimited chocolate soft ice cream in a can.

I get undressed and I ease myself into the therapy tub all nice and deep with the whirlpool jets and I settle in under the water with a sigh and I check out the different functions that this tub has and manage to turn on the TV which is a holo-screen and instead of watching myself on the news or that kind of stuff I turn onto Nexxt-Wave which is a sort of indie music and video and even TV shorts kind of channel and kind of lose myself in stuff from my generation and just turn off my brain and spoil myself with sprays of soft chocolate ice cream in my mouth every now and then.

God I like baths as a woman, there is something that is really enjoyable about the heat that creeps into you and I know it’s a circulation thing or something and I like the floaty not floaty thing with my breasts. It’s not a big thing really it’s just neat and for me with my perspective it’s something that’s neat about being this way. I’m not sure if it’ll just be my boobs for me with that whole dismissal thing or they’ll always have that bit of mental Dylan smirk of my boobs.

I soak and rest and then dry off and then catch up on some of the whole my age culture and stuff before channel surfing over to some of the local channels here in the city. With the population there are channels for everything but I’m more looking at college age stuff more music but stuff that talks about student life and such, places that are cool to go to and eat and stuff.

I tell you what you get into heroing and just even college life and stuff outside of high school stuff and you get kind of disconnected with stuff that other people are doing all around you while you’re kind of sort of not having a life.

Since I didn’t turn the TV off it actually turns on a holo-screen as I go from room to room. I’ve seen this before but it’s extremely swanky stuff.

I finish watching stuff but I keep it on in the background and I get dressed in the scrub like lounging clothes and I make some coffee from the machine in the kitchen and take my can of ice cream with it into the office and I start going through all the things for writing my reports and I’m still in Scarlet mode, un-costumed but still her so I reach inside the bracelet mentally and see if…yes it’s doing that sort of new way that I do the whole HUD stuff and it has recorded all the things from tonight and this afternoon at the store and I use that to reference all the things that I need to and attach my own video file links from my powers to the files here and to the filing that I have to do with the police reports and it does it all wirelessly.

This is actually getting cooler and cooler in all these little ways and stuff and it’s even cool with the ice cream and coffee combination.

Hey, I’m kind of all about the little things sometimes and I have to take some of this home with me for studying.

Once that’s done I’m feeling fine and I clean things up a little bit and check out a few more things with the apartment/office/quarters like the door that is built there for me because I’m a flier and it’s disguised as part of the golden mirrored glass but it has a specific wireless personal locking code that I have to log in and I do…actually I use a digital file of my as Scarlet retina and get that all locked in and the last thing that I do is send off an e-mail to Housing…yes there’s a Housing & Housekeeping division and thank them for all the work that they did in setting up my home away from home.

Then I costume shift and I head out my new door flying and it’s late at night now again and I really, really should get home and do things there and have an early night maybe but honestly the night sky calls and the lights and I log back in.

Angie comes up in a window on my HUD. “You’re supposed to be relaxing.”

“I’m going for a fly around the city and that might as well be with me logged in to patrol while I’m at it right?”

“No…you’re literally off for like twenty –four hours after you were injured in duty.”

“I’m fine.”

“Those are the rules.”

“Okay…but I’m still going for a fly.”

“That’s fine but you are not cleared to respond to calls unless you get clearance or a request directly from us.”

“Fine.”

“Scarlet, trust me, trust us on this I’ve been doing dispatch for the Ark Angels ever since The Ark Building was set up and I was installed.”

“Installed?”

She dimples at me on the screen. “Installed I’m an A.I.”

“Really, I thought that those were like still science fiction?”

“Nope, I’m for reals. Angie. Or A.N.G.I.E. which is Autonomic Neural Generating Intelligence Engine.”

“Oh…whoa so you’re like something Chase invented?”

“Only some of my hardware bits, but someone else created me.”

“Who?”

“Top secret sorry.”

“Yeah I kind of thought maybe, are you sure you’re an A.I.?”

“Yep, pretty sure I mean without the whole body and all.”

“Why not there’s like android or robots or something out there right?”

“Yes and no, I could like hack into something like that and stuff but it won’t house all of me the hardware is just too small.”

“Even now?”

“Yep, and while I can walk around like wirelessly connected to things like that it’s just not…it’s too easily screwed up for me by someone that knows what they’re doing and it’s a pretty limited experience though I do keep avatar me bots in the building for things.”

“Like what kind of things?”

“I do a lot of functions and things with higher ups that requires personnel that can keep super quiet.”

“So people know about you?”

“Only a few and the ones that I tell otherwise I’m just a cute verbal interface operating system to them and not my real self.”

“Yeah I can see people being freaked out and stuff.”

“You’re not.”

“I have a mystical artifact strapped to my wrist that that changes me and grants me magical and goddess like powers passed down to me in my family through a long line of Scarlet Angels who have all a say in how good a Scarlet Angel I’m going to be and two separate identities and college and theater and a kind of sort of girlfriend….and I’m kind of sort of an Ark Angel. I think I can handle something like this Angie.”

She’s laughing and giggling. “Oh snap do you ever have a lot on your plate.”

“Uh-huh and it’s plates and I’m juggling.”

“Okay, have a good fly then it sounds like you need the chill time.”

“Thank you and it really does kind of help.”

She blinks off my screen and y’know I’m surprised sure but not all that shocked with like all the supers that have been AA’s there must have been lots of them with like super genius smarts to design her and stuff.

So…

Flying while I’m not doing the superheroine thing.

Lots of choices for sure but there’s also my schedule too and I have a lot of things to do actually and that’s actually going to limit the stuff that I actually can do and take off from my new door and I head out over the harbor.

That’s a treat too actually and I think it’ll be good. I mean even if I’m going fast it’s still a huge, absolutely massive mega city like for science fiction really even with all of the colonies and places back on earth and everything else Ark City and all that’s involved with it is completely massive.

It fills the entirety of the mountain zone that the great alien ship had made on impact into the mantle and that’s just huge and it has a huge waterfront too and so many things going on.

A lot of people would think that in these days with aero-vehicles and shuttles and things that we wouldn’t do the boat thing a whole lot but we do actually a whole lot I think we as people have a romance for the sea and stuff and with the past too there’s all sorts of boats and liners and ships but there’s always pleasure boats and now more than any other time that I can think of since we have such a heavy treaty with the P’hari race and they do so much business under and on the water. Like Grand-Scale… the largest fish market on the colony and it slowly tours the harbor for all its vendors and has shuttle boats for the average Joe and then there’s all the business stuff with the shipping and providing for all the other markets and restaurants and it’s a huge aquicultural epicenter.

It’s also like “The” place for the P’hari to buy our goods made for them. I’ve heard tetra-pak drinks are the rage with them because well fish don’t really drink; they can…especially as humanoids, there’s even this whole thing about coating surface styled foods with like a clear gelatin so it is water proof, bars and stuff are fine and everything but I’m talking about things like Chinese chicken balls in like sweet and sour sauce…you I guess don’t lose the sauce and can re-heat them?

I’m so going to have to stop by this place and buy some fish one of these days or try some of the eateries here.

I do a roll over and fly upside down over the water now that I’m in a clear spot and I’m not going to run into everything for like a mile or two…this, just this is so seriously amazing and everything. I see a harbor tour boat getting closer and I wait until I’m in at least good camera range before I flip myself over and do a slow circle and a friendly wave to the people who are doing the whole camera flash thing before taking off up into the sky.

And I think it’s time to head home, I do a banking turn and give my powers a push and come in over the southern part of the city and all of the nice places there. Going from the whole inner mega city core and heading southward you get into the places that used to be farmlands and then when it grew and grew it became sub-burbs which made districts and zones and eventually a lot of the best bits of real estate became some of the posh places to live.

Picture gated mini-communities with their own spas and golf courses, private police/security and all of those all surrounding some elegant other feature like a lake or a boutique shopping park.

No…serious they’re not even called neighborhoods their called boutique shopping parks.

Imagine… (Sarcastic voice.)

It’s a little strange flying over that part of town and everything just says money with like all the huge houses and mansions and things like landing pads and huge pools and some of the places I’m sure have horse and they’re not country clubs.

I have the whole feeling of being watched and there’s a couple of times a private security aero-car actually rose up to flying off the ground in this almost like who do I think I am even flying over their airspace kind of way.

And yes there’s some likely legit reasons for that with like famous people and the fabulously mega-rich and even like a couple of embassy like heads of state places and such but I’m actually glad that I can give it a bit more energy and pick up speed to get out of there, it’s so not a me kind of place even to like fly over it.

Not my thing, really not really my thing.

I could head home which from here is actually north of all of this though a few districts away I live in the area just sort of south of the central city mega core and it’s the whole ivy league colleges and older towns that are now sort of like gobbled up to become neighborhoods and it’s a huge mix of white and blue collar lives, but there’s two more districts of rich and less rich before hitting home from here instead I swing a right left and heat west and over The Ryker Valley district which is a buffer zone between the mega-rich and the extremely mixed district of Zai-pan which is the Asian district but not like just Chinese or Japanese but a whole lot of others too all in this district that’s pretty unique.

The valley’s nice…a lake fed river system that leads to another man-made lake and hydro dam and it’s filled with valleys and farms and green houses and B&B;s and all that charming like stuff that makes a nice place to visit and an expensive one to live in but it’s still a pretty big area and even with the green and all the nature there’s still mega-city elements like the turbo rail trains and the regular trains and there’s a bunch of plants here and it’s also home to a huge water park and a huge zoo and large town sized city section like blocks.

You know that they say that a good twenty percent of people from their districts never leave them? You can drive for hours and just still either be in a district or just get into one of the other ones.

Zai-pan takes my breath away at first because it is Chinatown if you want to pardon the labeling and at the same time it’s not because there’s such a mix of the absolutely high tech downtown and city bits with all the mirrors offices and all these other things that you would expect to see here and then there’s these city sections all do so very much like the things that you’d see in movies with all the pagoda roves and styling’s and the tiles and the very, Asian look and feel to things and then there’s be more modern stuff but different and there’s parks and temples and temple parks and statues and Buddha’s.

Chinese and a lot of different Chinese and Japanese and Korean and Colonials from the Eurasian colonies like Shingzawei and the Tyger Dynasty the Red Star Republics and all over all have blocks and areas as well as in the bigger places all mashed together.

And at night the place is shiny and new and mysterious and old and there’s holo-grams done for ads and entertainment and there’s the food vendors all over and this whole night life and so much neon.

This, this is sort of what I wanted or needed and I slow down and cruise and take in the sights and nip and slip through the loads of aero-traffic and fly alongside a passenger blimp that’s more anti-gravity that anything and it’s shaped like a Japanese dragon huge and a little animatronic but also a flying restaurant.

Y’know I’d come out here to eat in this place. An old school Japanese place that looks like a boat crossed with like one of those old school zeppelin passenger liners from the steam-punk movies and the actual flight apparatus is a huge dragon? Who wouldn’t want to go to something like that and it’s just cool to fly past something like this.

I’m a little hungry and I actually stop at this place called Ping-ping’s and I choose it because there’s a ton of traffic in and out of there and I see cabs picking up delivery orders a whole lot and the parking is pretty full.

I slip into line at the fourth floor aero-fly through windows and I’m definitely getting looks and stuff because I don’t have a vehicle and I’m just flying on my own power and…I’m getting greeted very enthusiastically and not in American-English but in Chinese and I’m iffy at it having just a smattering of it from like life and TV and stuff and the general gist I’m getting is they’ve seen me on the TV and that supers don’t come here.

Okay it’s a lot rougher than that but I’m not going to be like classist and stuff and make fun of their English especially since I’m barely getting by with my crappy skills but they refuse payment and I do manage to get my “xie…xie…” out and some thank you bows and I leave after a lot of camera flashes and stuff and I head off and up into the night until I find myself in Drum tower park a copy of the famous one from earth and I’m sitting on the top and eating.

Pork fried garlic rice balls all crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, beef with brocolini and hearts of palm and chilies and chicken with asparagus and sugar snap peas and pineapple in some kind of a glaze with those crunchy fried chow mien noodles….and some egg rolls.

Sooo…good, I liked Chinese food before and stuff home but there’s so much in this city that’s so much more authentic and real than home. I’m from the mid-west and our stuff like this is several generations removed at best and still it’s the land of steakhouses and fast food and pizza.

I really liked the egg rolls too and usually I’m not a huge fan of them but these had a lot of stuff in them and wasn’t like all too cabbagey.

Full but not too full I lift off and I head for home taking the faster up, up and arcing flight over most of the distance and I go to low power as I hit my district so I don’t get seen as a red streaking thing in the dark and I’m actually glad to get home by the time that I’m done and it’s early morning and there’s enough time to sleep.

I go in through the skylight and I shift down to Darcy mode and I crash after getting undressed and think to my bracelet to set my alarm.

I like sleeping as Darcy, there’s something very good just sleeping as a girl especially with some nice sheets and a fluffy comforter and it just seems easier for me to go into a pleasant sleep.

…………………………..Morning comes and it’s Dale time and I go through my morning getting used to myself again and heading to the gym and to class and then doing all of the things that I need to do in my classes and then hitting the library and having coffee and hanging with Nikki and sharing notes with some of our classes that we have together and talking with some of the other students that are in our classes with us about the classes and the lectures it’s mostly the biology class things and going over the notes that we’ve been given which is actually pretty hard compared to high school since Meta’s and Anthro’s and alien life forms and alien sentients have broadly expanded all of what mankind thought we knew.

But it’s still like college life mostly with the study groups at the food hall or getting coffee together at the student union.

I get out of my afternoon classes fairly early and head home. I tried to have all my classes as early as I could schedule then and it’s nice to be done the day sometimes at tow thirty in the afternoon.

Though there’s not a whole lot of time with me getting home and shifting to Darcy and then showering and heading out again and driving over to campus to meet up with Nikki and just to see her as she still has two classes I think.

It’s nice to see her smile and sort of light up when she sees me.

“Hey you.” God she says that so sweetly.

“Hey you back.” I can’t help but to smile.

“You have classes/”

“No, but I have rehearsal in a bit.”

“Oh yeah right the play.”

“Musical.” But I nod anyways.

“How long do you have?”

“Enough time for a coffee and to walk you to your next class.”

“You came all the way over here just to have coffee with me?’

“I like you.”

She smiles and it’s kind of awesome and bright that whole like beaming thing. “Well I definitely like you too.”

“Do you have time to do anything tonight?”

“Like after your rehearsal?”

“Yes please.”

She smiles again and she does the hair tuck thing and I’m felling all warm and good like someone gave me this shot of energy or something and well of course it’s that girl thrill that seems to fit into me just fine when someone likes you.

There’s a definite mental component to all of that that is I think the same but I think our bodies process it a lot different.

Nikki looks at her phone and she nods. “No appointments or anything really so yes I’m definitely free.”

“Supper?”

“Sure, what would you like cooked?” She asks.

“I’m really not that fussy I’m willing to try anything.”

And I’m blushing as my mind went someplace with the whole eating thing. Nikki chuckles looking at me and says. “How about just food for now.”

“Sorry…”

“No, it’s cool it’s a compliment…I think.”

“It is, it I didn’t want to like go too far, too fast.”

“Me either.”

I blush some more but I look at her pretty directly or I’m trying to. “But I do think about you a lot.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, you’re sweet and pretty and smart.” I can feel the heat in my face and it’s kind of hard to say stuff like this as Dale but as Darcy it’s really hard because as much as things have changed it hasn’t really and there’s this whole other emotional-physical context when I’m a girl.

And it’s really a yay happy score moment when I make Nikki smile but not just smile but blush so much as well.

“Walk me to sosh?”

“Definitely.” I even reach over towards her to take her books and head towards the humanities building with her.

This is nice, it’s more than really. Me and her and it’s…

The sun on my skin and the way my skin feels. The sway of moving without it being a thing it’s its own thing. The way the breeze through my hair feels, the way Nikki’s perfume and other things just seems to float around her.

It makes me all sorts of happy in this sort of don’t know really why way.

I’ve well Dale’s walked people places, girl’s places before but this feels different. I’m way more aware of myself right now and I definitely feel all good butterflies going on and everything.

We get to her class and we stop and I look at her and Nikki steps in and kisses me it’s light and sweet and we’re getting some looks even here and now, even in these days but we’re in the humanities building so it’s a lot more smiles and the like.

That’s really, really kind of a nice feeling too.

She gives me another light kiss and she takes her book back. “I’ll see you after rehearsal.”

“Definitely, am I picking you up?”

“Yes please I’d go meet you but it’d take way too long for me to get there on the buses.”

I nod. “Good idea that’s a lot of transfers.”

Nikki sort of blushes. “Sorry but y’know got to save my bus pass for classes and grocery trips.”

“You can call me for grocery runs.”

“You don’t need to be running after me all the time you have enough of your plate.”

Yeah if she only knew.

“Okay, okay but tonight doesn’t count.”

“Deal but I’m buying supper.”

“Deal.”

Hey part of me wants to say no and be Dale and the guy but Nikki’s got her own pride and feelings too and Darcy doesn’t have to abide by Dale rules and stuff. Or at least I don’t think that I have to.

And yeah I’m still working on that part since it’s my first time dating and not being a guy. Even this far in society some things are still things.

She smiles and she heads into her sociology class and I head back to my car and I head off to rehersal and I’m leaving with extra time for the traffic and I’m still very, very not used to the driving out in other districts of the city especially that close to the whole mid-city districts and stuff that I have to get to. All these advances in society and all of these things we have to better ourselves and we don’t use them. You’d think there’d be auto driving cars with locked down speed zones and everything would be safe and sound.

Nope, people want to be in control which means shitty drivers and accidents and speeders and people swearing and then add it the fact that it’s a mega city and I have to go through places that had sixteen lanes of traffic.

…Four…the main street home in Greenvale has four lanes and that’s not counting the free-way. By the time I get to the rehearsal space I’m more than a little nerved up and shaken.

……………………………… I’m sweating and I’m sore and I’m trying to get through the part with my first scene and the choreography. I’m playing Flayme and she’s a fire sprite from the TV show and a character here and the first time is me dancing, and dancing in a holo campfire that the female lead was trying to light and I will be down under the stage dancing while the mini me will be up on stage interacting with the lead actress.

Then I’ll have me big poof scene when I go full size. Then some speaking parts which are stuff I’ll have to learn and then there’s this dance through the forest leading them out and my leading some of the goblins away that are chasing the heroes.

And there’s a song for me to learn too it’s actually a whole lot to learn and stuff and there’s a lot of stuff to go over together and there will be more to do by ourselves and to get down. Until the director thinks that we’re coming along to the point where we can actually put it all together and rehearse all in the whole ensemble cast thing.

There’s going to be some video chatting and stuff for some of us too as things progress in our line reading once the scheduling people are done getting things all together and we can get set times when we can do online readings together in our scene groups.

It’s actually more of a cast meeting than a rehersal but those of us doing dancing are getting a little time in extra and some of it is working with the dance choreography people and they’re working with other people like the effects ones and the lighting and the musical score people.

High school drama class was nothing like this at all and there’s so much stuff going on and things to do and to see and to learn especially all the cool behind the scenes stuff.

I’m actually singing some of my score as I’m done and driving through the craziness until I get back into Avalon district and from there it’s relatively sane or sort of sane and that’s just talking about like driving wise.

………………………………I stopped home first and showered and changed and I’m wearing a dress and sandal styled shoes and I hope that I look okay. I’m wearing this simple dress with a scoop neck and short sleeves with a mid-thigh length and it’s a medium dark red color and I think it looks okay. I actually like red on myself and with black stocking leggings and under wear and a bra I think that it looks good. I even gave myself a spritz of a perfume I bought while with her called Heat which has this sort of strange but nice smell like cherries cooked with cinnamon with some other sort of smells like woodsy scents and pepper?

I like it and it wasn’t too, too over the top girly I don’t want to smell like a vanilla factory or like bubblegum or cotton candy.

Though I do clip a flower from outside in my yard and I tape it to a chocolate bar as sort of a date thing. I mean candy and chocolates right it’s still cool it I do that this way right?

It’s so odd driving in a dress.

Doing anything in a dress really and all done up and stuff. Okay not so much done up as dressed nice and smelling good it’s actually not like I’m doing the make-up thing. It a lot less of a thing to screw up as a girl if I don’t really use it a whole lot to begin with.

I get to her place and she’s there waiting for me outside on her stoop doing the killing time thing on her phone. I get out and I go over and lean sort of sideways to get her attention.

“Hey…hello.”

“Oh hey, you’re here.”

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”

“Oh that’s okay I was just keeping up with some of my blogspaces.”

“Oh cool what are you on?”

“Constellation mostly.”

Constellation is like a blog but sort of a colony and you can accept people that can live there as like co-bloggers and then there’s systems that are made up of aligned communities like star systems and such and then there’s like transmissions that you can get from other places. It’s pretty much like most social media stuff but Constellation is the oldest and biggest inter colony and planet based one. Like from actual space places so you can be friends with people a really long distance away….like worlds away.

But there are literally hundreds of these things including the ancient ones like Facebook which is all part of some huge tile-com giant entity that owns all of these things.

“So are you ready to go?”

“Oh sure!” She closes down her phone and puts it into her purse and smiles at me and does the blush and hair tuck. “I hope that you like Italian.”

“Love Italian, pizza’s one of my favorite foods.”

“How’d you know where we’re going?”

“I…well I didn’t and I was kind of just joking.”

“Well let’s go it’ll take a while before we’re seen to there.”

“Really, that good?”

She nods really enthusiastically. “Tyrone’s is awesome.”

I walk her to the car and get her door which is making her have that bemused smile and I get in and I sort of blush. “Sorry…I’m still all new to this dating another girl thing, I keep going to stuff I know.”

“It’s okay I don’t mind it being nice to your date doesn’t have to be a gendered thing Darcy, we can just be nice to each other.’

“Good well in that case.” I reach into the back seat and pass her the flower and the chocolate bar.

“Oooh yay, candy.” She takes it and pulls the tape off and she smells the flower. “Thank you this was sweet.”

“Good, I was so unsure and all.”

“Well you’re doing good really good.”

“Yeah?”

“Definitely yeah.”

I start the car up and pull out and follow directions and we’re not going too far but it’s far enough that it’d take a few bus rides from her place to get there.

There is Tyrone’s…. it’s a pizza place that looks like a full service type of Italian family restaurant and stuff and not really fancy but it’s packed. It’s nice an old brick building with lots of character and the fabric awnings and the old school stuff on the windows and I get a parking spot just in a lot down the street and pay the parking guy and we walk back together and then inside.

It’s old but it has that old school charm with lots of wood and checkered table cloths and candles in those little glass jars and the place smells…first thing that hits me is the smell of pasta and sauce and then garlic and bread…that whole pizza dough bready smell and a hint of wood smoke?

“Wood fired? I though no one did that anymore?”

Nikki nods. “Not a whole lot and there’s like special laws and licenses I heard.”

“I’ve never had a wood fired pizza before.”

“They’re awesome.”

It’s a wait to get a table and there’s a waiting area bar combination that also has like video games and pinball and things to do while we wait and they do bar serving of things.

I get a drink a ginger-cider and Nikki gets the same and we sort of hang around the bar and nibble a little on the things that they set out.

Flatbread hot and with that singe from the wood oven with a big bowl of deep green olive oil and herbs to dip it in.

Hot fried olives with rosemary and garlic.

Half shelled small roasted clams with this butter sauce.

Artichokes roasted but done so you pull off a leaf and scrape the good stuff from the bottom part with your teeth or dip it and do that.

Little things like that and they’re good but I’m not filling up on them and it’s actually an hour before we get seated but it was still good with the little knoshy bits and Nikki and I playing pinball and taking turns.

The pizza is…well its three toppings only and no amount of money will get you more. We both get two different ones and I get “The Korey.” Which is sweet sausage and prosciutto and fresh mozzarella and she gets a napoleon pizza with the basil and the cheese and it’s amazing…the dough is thin and cooked so hot and fast it does that bubble thing and there’s this char too but just a little and there’s just that little bit of chew and pull to the crust when it’s baked but it’s that newly baked kind of fresh and the sauce.

I could eat anything with this sauce.

We’re quite full too once we’re done but at the same time it’s one of those things that you really want to savor and yet can’t keep from wolfing it down.

It’s really, really strange to not be the one paying for this though and Nikki takes the check when it comes and she leaves a tip and goes to the cash to pay and I’m kind of just with her…not doing anything but just be there?

It’s a very strange feeling not being the one taking out and everything.

We drive home to her place after that and I walk her to her door.

“That was great, you want a coffee?”

“Uhm…no, I’ll be up late as it is and I’ve been burning a lot of extra awake time lately.”

“You want to stay over?”

Okay…that surprised me.

Nikki looks at me and smiles but she’s shaking her head no. “Not like that way but just over to crash instead of driving home and everything.”

“Oh that’d be nice really but I think it’s still too soon really.”

I blush a little.

She smiles and she kisses me. “You’re a sweet girl Darcy; just call me when you get home?”

“You’re not mad?”

“Darcy, I’m not a guy even if I’m keeping some things…Not ready for more is perfectly okay with me…even if it’s just a sleep over.”

She kisses me again and it’s longer and a little more tortured and good goosebumpy as she touches my sides and trails fingers. “G’night Darcy.”

“Goodnight Nikki.”

She goes into her place and I take a moment just to breathe and I really, really wanted to stay and at the same time I’m not, and Dale wasn’t one of those move fast and hook up types. Even in school I dated, but I had relationship dating for as long as they might have lasted I kind of took my time getting into them each time and then I was with them until we broke up.

I head down to my car sort of musing on all of that too.

Me and break ups, they always sort of happened and I had like half that were ouch bad where she’d left me for someone else…better car or job and partied more or just more popular. I wasn’t really a geek and I wasn’t really a jock either but somewhere in the middle and I was sort of semi-popular but not part of the really popular crowd but I knew a lot of them.

But the others were just sort of life things and one was gay, another two just ended up moving away and stuff and Gwen my last ex she and I parted ways as friends after two years with her going into an engineering program all the way over on the other continent at Azure City.

She got a really good scholarship and I didn’t really have any prospects there and my stuff here and everything even before the Scarlet stuff. We parted good though and that’s sort of rare sometimes I guess but it’s just one of those life happens things.

I head home and go and get changed and crash shifting back to Dale. I know it seems like I’m doing that a lot but I’m still sort of trying to be my first self enough to really get a grip on everything that’s going on and the way that I’m feeling about everything.

I know there are decisions ahead and that I’ll very likely have to make a choice but I want to do that actually as Dale more than as Darcy because it’ll likely be effecting my life as Dale the most.

Sleep actually comes pretty quick and easy despite everything going on in my head since I’m actually pretty tired with things that had gone on the last few days.

………………….It’s actually kind of the same thing over the next few weeks.

Yeah...No, I didn't go home that weekend.

I kind of hate to gloss over things but I’m not needed to hero right away or anything so there’s no calls that way for me from Angie and the patrols have been pretty light weight stuff with me doing back up for police and fire usually and there’s been a few times when I seriously have to use some of my power…destroying some large caliber weapons or energy weapons and helping out in pursuit chases since my fight is fairly fast and I’m very agile at flying or at least compared to a few Aero-cruisers. I few arrests of my own but there’s not a whole lot that I get to do with just a few scant patrolling hours in a week.

It’s been really busy actually.

I’ve got classes as Dale and I have studying things from The Ark Angels in the late evenings with me going there and doing the range stuff and the self-defense training and learning the basics of the police styled stuff that I need to know and that’s showing me just how much that I really do need to learn. That’s sort of turning into night classes in a limited way but the good news is that both Dale and Darcy have the CPR courses under our belts and we are learning things…just there’s so much that I really need to know.

Or I think that I do.

And then there’s the rehersal things and that’s…well mostly online once they set it up and we do this sort of conference call thing with us going over our lines and a few times with me singing and the vocal coaches giving me input on that too.

The online thing is a good idea because it’s saving us a lot of travel time commuting until we are well into getting the lines down and everything and after that we’ll be doing that in group rehearsals so that we can get direction and used to the sets.

Then Nikki… My time’s sort of tight but we see each other when I’m Dale which is good for me but she still doesn’t know that I’m Darcy and I get to see her at Darcy in the afternoons if I can get home fast enough as Dale or if I can find a space I’ll do the swap out trick with the bracelet and clothes and become Darcy someplace private. Though that actually entails getting dressed as both Darcy and Dale in the mornings. I’m not sure how exactly that works but it helps that each different part of me has their own clothes.

And Nikki and I we sort of date too…I’m usually gone though around ten at night and a couple of times a bit later than that and I’m definitely using the whole trying to be respectable thing a whole lot and I am and it’s nice too.

Honestly we both have things to do and we both need sleep even though I’m doing things another four or five hours after our dates.

And the dates…well they’re all just pretty awesome. Sometimes we’ll go out and a few times it’s together at the student union building doing some things that are campus held activities like going into the scrabble tournament together or doing Lawn-bowling or Frisbee with some of the others. They tend to be sort of cheap dates too, I mean I’m not really broke by any means especially since I’m or rather Darcy’s drawing a paycheck from the AA’s but sometimes Nikki wants to treat me and that’s usually when we have those cool and creative dates.

Like a night of all you can eat fries and ping pong at the student pub, that was actually a whole lot of fun.

And I’d not have thought about it as a date myself.

………………………….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 been wanting 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?