My Super Secret Life…Scarlet-2

Chapter 2

It was a pretty good night after I finished my classes and my talk with Nikki. I don’t like lying to people but there in that whole secret identity this and I’m just hoping if it ever does come out she’s cool with the whole super thing.

Honestly I sort have that feeling.

No not the love feeling but y’know that feeling you get when you start to get to know somebody and there’s that friendship click that you get that says somewhere that you just honestly like this person.

Well I think that I honestly like Nikki.

I head home and lock up behind me because one I like my privacy and two its Ark City and it’s just smart really. I put my books away and head to get a shower shifting as I do so.

Getting a shower a hot shower feels so much better this way and not in the whole erotic way either but lets give my variable shower head a nice round of applause everyone. (Happy buzzy grin.)

The rest of the night is more experimentation. Playing with my powers and flying, making my body shield and trying to do little zaps to get control of my blasting powers. I’m stealing a fantasy classic and I’m trying to use a little micro-pulse to light a candle safely.

But it’s not just that but tasting things, trying out textures and studying. Oh yeah there’s a serious part of my geek brain that wants to know if I’m really learning things in a different way as a woman as to when I’m a man. And it’s nothing I can tangibly put my finger on but yeah it does feel different.

But switching back and forth when I’m doing some of my stuff for my physics and math for my engineering pre courses isn’t harder it’s easier because I go over things twice and I just come at them from different methodologies. It’s like I can see the problem from the guys point of view, it’s kind of a linear way of looking at things and as a woman I find myself looking at things in a more round about way.

It’s like as a guy I use the straight ahead solution that I know that’s best but as a woman I look at the variables first and let them tell me as the best way that the problem might like to be solved.

Maybe that’s why girls have problems with math sometime that they get tripped up with the linear stuff? I mean maybe not it’s not tripping me up but it’s like my mind is more prone not to go there.

God it’s really interesting. I think as women we’re prone to multitasking as a way that we interact with the word. I mean all of that stuff does seem very hardwired to the female brain as a caveman way of keeping track of children food, pets and the hundreds of other things that women have done forever.

It’s likely all the social need that we have as girls is hardwired to be literally training for our developing brains to get the habits and skills we’ll need when we’re older.

Oh I really need to sit down with a women’s studies Prof or grad student as Darcy and hash some of this stuff out.

That’s an idea that…Getting out as Darcy.

I go through my clothes and slip into my panties still getting the shivers at the feel of them going over my legs and thighs and settling so perfectly into my vee. Okay…I know it’s just underwear but not to me, not yet and honestly I hope never…I love this sexy slinky naughty even if I’m being normal feeling from them. The same thing with my bra, I foresee me having a well stuffed lingerie drawer…hell, maybe even a dresser just for my delicates.

I want the attention this trip. Thin white t-shirt, and low cut jeans with a pair of ballet-sneakers. Why do I want the attention? I want to see if I can attract some attention, to see where I might be sexually.

I’m not looking to pick someone up or get picked up or anything but I’ve been wondering about my sexuality as Darcy. I haven’t thought about being with anyone really either way yet but as I’m thinking about it now, I don’t feel any revulsion towards either sex.

I need some general stuff anyhow like milk and that so I’m going to the mall closest to the house and campus to do a little shopping and jut to see what’s what.

………………………………... I go general shopping first, just window shopping and getting a few girl/woman geared magazines and trying some of those free make up offers from the cosmetic girls sitting and getting touched up by a professional and really asking questions on how she’s doing this or that and the differences in stuff. Like why Maxx factor lipsticks are the best for sexy night-time reds or when Covergirl’s the best. You know if you seriously give these girls the respect the deserve for knowing so much about so many products. These aren’t really vapid dumb girls, some might be really girly and stuff but personality doesn’t mark you’re IQ.

I bought a bit of stuff from like three of those girls and the girl at Swift’s ladies department store…flirted a bit I think and there was a lot of closeness…and I got her to pierce my ears. I got to see a bit of her cleavage and she was talking softly and low as she put three studs in each ear. There was this kind of dancing around the edge of things with Amy that has me unsure and thinking of her as I feel the weights added to my ears.

It’s this sort of yummy, edgy feeling. My nipples are definitely hard and I’m getting more looks from mostly guys but I kind of like that too. I’m not sure if I’m honestly attracted to Amy or the idea of it.

I get a coffee and it’s only a small as I’m trying things I don’t like as Dale over again and some I like some I still don’t. I’m definitely a latte girl with skim and no sugar done right it’s just perfect with most coffee shop place food. I like bagels a lot more especially toasted…crunch, crunch is definitely a girl thing.

I people watch. While reading one of my magazines. It’s a nice downtime just to be able to do that. I watch guys and girls and let my mind wander about some of them. I am attracted to guys…well sorta. I seem to like these guys with the medium builds but in good shape around six feet under or over that’s fine but in that range. I like that runner/swimmer/cyclist kind of build on them or again there abouts. I like short hair on them for the most part and there has to be something real about him that doesn’t seem fake. I’m a lot more critical about them then the girls. There’s this trendy hipster geek thing that’s sort of popular…I can’t stand half of them. It’s a trend…there’s so many fake pseudolectuals that I want to puke. But that’s true of some of these geekette chique girls too.

But…I did feel a few warm fuzzy fantasy kind of thing with some of them and the same with the girls. I think guys that I actually did find interesting at least from a distance was around like fifteen percent while about thirty percent for the women. I’m not sure if that’s Dale influencing me or if I’m not yet as women familiar with women as Darcy or if I’m just Bi with leanings towards women.

I do feel pretty good though about having an idea of where I stand and what I like though. It’s kind of a relief knowing.

Am I freaked out about finding guys attractive?

No, not a bit. Not even as Dale knowing I find guys attractive or some of them as Darcy. I knew this could happen when I chose this.

But I feel good about being attractive. I try to be friendly with anyone at least with personal contact or impersonal contact. Yeah…it’s just saying thank you when someone opens a door or moves to give me room or is just friendly for a passing second. Like this big guy…he’s big, overweight but he’s aware of it, and his size and he stops and lets me get through the spot in the crowd without trying to push through or turn sideways. It’s almost the same as holding a door for me. And there’s other people who are don’t look at the fat guy…especially some of the other girls…I don’t. I’m pretty sure he’s not going to come onto me or that being nice isn’t going to cause me any harm so I smile and say thank you and the smile in his eyes at getting treated like a human being was worth it.

Why can’t other people just treat people like people?

It’s the same for the Anthrosapiens. Mankind messed around with genetics in the past and created humanoid animals for war, labor and stuff a few hundreds of years ago. Since then they’re bred and stuff and are a sort of race all their own or per species. They have no rights in most colonies or governments out there and are still used and bred in places like the SSB (Soviet Socialist Block.) or Red Star Republic…an off shoot of Earth’s former communist asian countries and lots of other places. Here on New Haven they can be full citizens under the law thanks to our Alien brothers that trade with us. Two of the big three are animal evolved sort of. The Avari are bird based with the only remaining traits are this awesome micro feather hair and really sharp nails and being tall and thin. There’s some of them here in the mall too and the P’hari that are like these almost delicate goldfish kind of aquatic beings they look close to human in shape but I’ve never met one…they live in bubble station cities in two or three places here on New Haven and as much as I want to go see them I’ve never had the chance. And the third of course are the Vishanti.

But the average person isn’t that warm to the Anthro’s sometimes even though more are here in Ark City than anywhere else. The A.C.P.D. have a lot of canids on their payroll. But a lot of people are asses to the furries.

It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of them in the mutant underground running from their old governments and are illegal’s here and make up a good chunk of criminals and stuff literally underground…there’s a place called Freaktown somewhere deep under the city that has at least a fifty percent anthro population.

Other’s are really open about it. The Ferals are a feline based street gang that’s pretty famous and so is the Pryde…the Pryde are on TV sometimes being a pretty violent “Biker club.” but then so are The Dogs of War.

But yeah the five foot nothing Persian cream looking girl serving me up my sliced of smoked Vaxx…oh that’s a tuna sized P’hari salmon just got snubbed by a few people that don’t want “fur” in their food. She’s nice and she’s friendly and she’s wearing long plastic gloves so I don’t see the problem.

Actually she’s kind of cute. Like sexy cute. I love the voice of hers, cute like a teen girls should but she punctuates between meowish sounds and purrs like we do with our own language accents.

I gave her a five dollar tip and loved the car bouncy look she had.

I hope that made up for the way some people are acting like douche bags to her. It’s a shame really. We gave them equal rights because they’re our equals right? It’s the whole ethnic thing all over again really. Anthro…the new negro/a-rab…yeah just as wrong too.

I just…

I think stuff like this hurts me more to see as Darcy. I hate it as Dale but there’s this little kind of ache when I think about this stuff like this.

It’s something that’s making me want to take a stand as a hero even more. It’s more than just battling super villains. It’s so much more.

God I came here looking to get an idea of where I’m at sexually but I’m getting worked up to change things and stand up for things while I’m getting my groceries. I swear I can feel the things the other Scarlet Angels stood up for swirling inside of me reacting to my own feelings and I feel…strong? Reassured, like there’s some intangible atta-girl touching me and if it is…Grandma’s there saying it too in a way.

I head home and put stuff away once I’m there in my sections of the fridge. Celery, carrots, bagels my stuff for the smoked salmon like capers and cream cheese and my crunchy stuff. I got chips but a bunch of rice cakes and rice crisps and stuff.

I make supper a baked potato and a bit of regular cuts of vaxx rolled in olive oil and lemon and popped into the toaster oven I munch on a purple carrot while I’m cooking and think about how charged I felt and how good it felt.

And My Family…

I think I left the wrong impression about them and Grandma choosing me over them. My Mom’s a nice person really but she’s a bit of a flake, she’s a bit scatterbrained and honestly a little selfish. Not like bad bitchy selfish but at the same time Mom and my other family would most likely be more into the fame than actually doing the job. They look at Victory the leading N.H. super heroine and see her dressed to the nines in designer super gowns on these big TV events.

Victory is long lived, a literal legend here and New Haven didn’t always have the rights for anthros and meta’s that we had before her. In the bad days when there was a strong political repressive conservative streak running through things she marched with the protestors, sat in with them in sit in’s and kept a lot of things from going from passive resistance to violence. I learned about things she did in high school history…

I watched her letting riot troops beat on her with shields and billy clubs back then without turning her powers on them, even though she’d saved New Haven a few times…There’s a quote that turned a lot of people from this cop from then.

“This is wrong…it’s like beating Captain America for standing with Dr. King…it’s just wrong.”

That’s a woman role model as a hero. She’s our Superman…no one would fault Superman if he was given an invite to humanitarian awards and stuff.

Mom…I love her but she’d be more about the dress and the gift bag and the whole fame thing. She’d be another Ultraman…My sisters too, My brother…he’s too much just a guy to think he’d be okay with being a woman.

Molly my cousin would be the worst. She’d be a full page Scarlet Angel penthouse spread…

I don’t want to toot my own horn but I’m a good choice objectively. Now there are a few others but they have husbands and wives and kids and families and while I might too that’s not ideal for the heroing life. I mean grandma retired when she got really into family…

I look at the bracelet. “If it happens…would you give me a sign of it’s time to stop?”

I’m not actually asking it but, I’m just sort of asking it and myself.

………………………………................................I’m watching TV a few hours later when I see a news report on a serious battle going on down in the cities central core. The Supervillain crew “The Ultimatum.” had attacked one of the federal buildings and the building and it’s entire block it’s on was on fire and the city’s finest are swamped and trying not to get injured in the crossfire between the bad guys and the ArkAngels.

“The Ultimatum.” are serious bad guys. They do big jobs and are a collection of mercenaries with powers that were brought together by this guy called Paragon….think of an evil superman type…that doesn’t care about laws, governments or normal people. He’s a meta-elitist…and a serious sociopath.

And my hand’s over my mouth as he piledrives a full sized fire engine on Samson…the AA’s meta-anthro-lion and brick.

I might not be able to do any kind of fighting but the cops and fire and rescue guys will need help, lots of help….

I’m up and running to the loft and changing into my energized form and leave by the skylight.

I’ve never flown outside of the house before but I go as fast as I can up to avoid being seen even though it’s late and…there was a pop over my body shield as…

“Holy crow…I broke the sound barrier…”

I’m about three Km up and about three hundred and fifty from the battle but I can see the light from the fires even from here. Mega-Scrapers are hundreds of stories high and that’s what’s burning.

I head into the central core as fast as I think is safe and it’s a serious fight plus the bad guys have a fire support team. I see seven guys in metal all over them firing with laser assault weapons. At the police seriously keeping them at bay. There’s cops down…the AA’s are too busy with the serious bad guys.

Lasers as a combat weapon are nasty. The thing is their hit like an armor piercing weapon burn right through. And while the police have really good armor against non-energy weapons lasers go right through, even riot shield and cars aren’t a lot of help. The beam’s about the same size as a 5.56mm or 7.62mm round and does even worse damage from heat bloom…you know how a wound gets tore up from a bullet…a laser wound keeps cooking.

There’s seven of these guys with pulse lasers think three to five laser bursts for ever squeeze of the trigger.

There’s cops down…dead or dying all of them likely maimed.

Oh I wasn’t going to fight…

I go wide and see some rescue guys and stop and hover. One pulls a gun. “Whoa!, I’m one of the good guys!”

“Okay…” He looks skeptical.

“Look…can you guy catch someone with the blanket things?”

“Yeah why?”

“Those cops over there…I’m going to try to grab two in a flyby and I need a soft place to drop them.”

“You get them and we’ll catch em.”

“Thanks.”

I lift off and take a wide turn and then come in low and over the seven. I blind fire down as I pass them and grab two of the cops and fly them to the EMT’s who have some extra guys helping to catch them. There’s that feeling when I see them safe or as safe as it’s going to get.

I go up really fast in a loop losing myself in the smoke and I bank as I do to come in at another angle and I put both hands ahead and cut loses with as many scarlet energy pulses as I can at the guys in the armor before flying over them. They’re firing back and thank god for 3-d video games because somehow I dodged the incoming laser fire and…

I get myself in line with the last three downed cops and I drop and concentrate on my body shield and roll like a log at their legs. Hey it’s not fancy but it bowls them over. I roll up faster than them because I’m not wearing battle armor and I fire full strength at every gun I can. I don’t have to destroy the guns just break them.

The cops that were taking cover are quick to get to their people and trying to take these armored guys down by force. They look like they have it covered. I fly over to one of the command points and land.

“I’m here to help…just tell me where you need me.”

There’s an older guy there a FD chief and he looks at me. “You’re the Scarlet Angel?”

“Her Grand-daughter.”

“She was a hell of a woman.” He offers his hand and I shake it. “Okay guys get her a rescue vest and a comlink!” He looks at me and takes off his shirt badge and pins it to the EMT vest just after I put it on. “Consider yourself deputized.”

“Alright…tell me what to do.” That feeling wells up again inside… “I’m ready.”

My Super Secret Life…Scarlet-3

Chapter 3

I’m excited and I’m scared all at the same time and I do exactly what I’m being told. I know that doesn’t sound all super hero like but I don’t know…I’m flying into a burning three hundred and some story building trying to get the people out, using my enhanced strength to ferry firefighters, move heavy stuff that I can lift.

It’s hard as hell because we’re all not used to doing this like this but we get into a rhythm. I get a pair of firefighters on my boots and they hang on as I fly them up to a critical area even getting them up ahead of the fire in the upper levels so they can hit it from both sides.

I carry air replacement tanks with me going in to where the guys are getting low. I’m in an EMT vest so when there’s some one hurt and cut and needs something fast I’m there and carrying the supplies needed to get the injured to where they ca get real help. Or if bad enough I fly an EMT in.

There are Aero-fire trucks and Aero-Ambulances but there’s just not enough of them considering the entire block is ablaze.

Then there’s the fact that my body field protects me from the fire, and the smoke even the radiant heat so I’m effectively fireproof. But while transporting a firefighter we got caught in a blast and my power flared too coating the both of us. It weakened the fields strength….I felt the heat and the debris hitting it.

But we were both okay.

It got better and rougher after that. I started sharing my field with those I was carrying and getting out. I got burned with the kids in the clinic building…there was one of the levels in the building that had kids in it. A cyber-fitting ward for disabled kids and the medical gas lines caught and blew. I flew three guys in one standing on each foot and one girl hanging onto my back but it was up to me to get the kids out.

Nine kids under the age of ten…I got them onto one of the hospital beds and put up the rails and told them to. “Okay you guys, get under the covers and hand onto each other and don’t peak out.”

I grabbed the rails and with cargo like this…I put all of the field I could on them and there was so much weight that I couldn’t fly fast enough not to get burned. Not badly but bad enough that parts of my clothes were on fire when I landed and I was quickly blanketed by some of the fire fighters.

I passed out for a few minutes I think. My lungs hurt and I think I got a good dose of the smoke inside my lungs when I did this.

“Oh…oh… (cough)…are…are the kids alright?”

One of the paramedics looks at me. He’s pretty cute, blonde wavy hair, green eyes and the uniform and this really sort of kind sweet way that he’s looking at me…

“They’re fine, scared but fine thanks to you. You on the other hand Ms.?”

“Scarlet… (Cough)…that’ll do…?”

“Spencer, nice to meet you.”

“Spencer is that a first name or a last name?”

“It’s Spencer.” He says smiling and moves off to help some others as he puts a bottle of water in my hand.

Wow…

At least one part of me isn’t feeling dehydrated right now.

My burns hurt but there’s red energy in them, and it feels strange but I’m watching reverse blisters acting like they’re bubbling away. Healing? Yeah definitely healing and this is really frustrating…I wish I knew how this was healing me…and if I could pass it onto other people…heal them.

But the books so far never mentioned that they self healed with this either. Do we all have different powers?

I’m tired and I’m resting a few…I take the oxygen mask they give me too and I’m a bit light headed. My stomach does a nasty snarl when I smell food from a food cart/truck that stopped its sales to help the FD and the PD.

I’m treated to free tacos from there and canned orange juice as I watch the stuff going on. The battle is over and as far as I can tell only the henchmen are being carted off. The Ultimatum seems to have gotten away.

But the Ark Angels are still doing their job.

Wraith… their resident batman type is bringing people to safety with his grapple gear. He’s all black garbed in and tattered hooded cloak that no one can see inside the hood of. He’s the bogey man of Ark City and a borderline hero type. He’s been often accused of being a criminal and a killer. There’s no evidence of it but he’s been rumoured to have beaten some very bad people into extreme trauma.

I’m of two minds about that. The law is the law right but inside when he does that to a serial rapist or a child molester. There’s a part of me more than willing to turn a blind eye.

And so does a lot of the city. It makes me wonder if the ones foaming at the mouth for him to do time are scared he’ll come for them.

Daystar…. He’s really strong and he’s impervious to the flames and he’s literally able to shine like a sun or a star. He’s doing anything he can but a lot of it is what I was doing only he can project his golden light as energy fields like me only he’s able to make spheres connected to his hands by beams of light and he’s taking dozens of people out at a time. He’s big nearly seven foot tall blonde and stunningly good looking and his gear looks like black jeans and a black lycra t-shirt. He’s open in his ID. Christian Stevens he’s one of the few open heroes that there is. Watching him in action is breath taking when you seen him flying out of a burning building with all those people shining like the sun.

Saber…a female samurai warrior and master swords woman she’s in some of the buildings using her blades like some firefighters would use their fire axes. She’s one of the non-powered of the heroes only her martial skills are said to be inhumanly strong compared to other people. Picture a modern leather and Lycra ninja but add a black leather long coat and lots of toys.

Harrier… He’s another flyer and a blaster rather than a brick; he can fly and fire energy pulses. He’s doing what I was doing and it looks like he’s done that before only he doesn’t have my energy field to protect him just his courage. Steel grey costume but it’s a hard body armor with a winged helmet.

Sentinel…He’s another armored one but he’s actually inside a hyper advanced suit of silvery glossy power armor with a bright blue visor. He’s helping the same as Harrier despite some heavy looking battle damage.

Samson…he seems to have recovered enough that he’s in the thick of it too using that huge strength of his to move things out of the way of the rescue vehicles. I mean strong. Daystar could likely press a city bus. Samson can send one skidding and sliding out of the way with a single armed push.

Then there’s Victory…

Head of the Ark Angels, their founder and the Dr. King of Meta rights not just on NH but all over the Alliance of Free Colonies.

Six foot four tall and leggy with chrome colored eyes, not like solid but regular eyes that are like shimmery chrome. Long white hair that hair like shining highlights of light in it. She doesn’t wear a mask either she’s Victory…

That’d be like superman wearing one.

She’s in her standard colors a black body suit with a short sleeved black leather t-shirt-one piece bathing suit over the body suit. It’s got gold trim on it and the Shield with the Winged Lady of Justice on the right shoulder it’s the symbol of the Ark Angels and The New Haven flag as a patch on the other.

Golden calf high boots, golden long gloves and a black utility belt with a golden buckle on it makes up the look. The black and gold colors are the traditional colors of the Ark City Police Department.

Her uniform’s torn, there’s blood on her and ashes and I can see dried blood in the corners of her mouth, a bit in her ears….She walks into the middle of the block and her powers kick in and she shines.

Not like Daystar but like she’s dipped in glass, there’s this energy she can harness that makes her just gleam.

I hear the order to pull everyone back once the people are out. To let it burn?

Nope…

She does what looks for a second like this ballet pose…

I can see her exhale, close her eyes, take a breath…then she starts to spin. She’s a super speedster at times and a flyer too…it’s like out of a movie and a comic book as she spins and spins and spins ever faster until I can feel it. The vortex as it’s forming around het this shining controlled twister that’s pulling in the flames to it and the ait and the trash id still burning and soon it’s a flaming twister but all of the fires are out of the buildings now and there around her then there’s this thump that shakes everything and she’s sky borne and the flames are being pulled up and up over the heights of the buildings with her leading them all away until they’re high enough the air is too thin and they break apart in this giant roiling cloud of flames…and then they’re gone.

The cheers are deafening…I can’t help it I’m joining right in with everyone.

This is Victory…This is what she does.

Even that hurt.

I see Sentinel fly to her and he does the thing that I was doing. He slides his foot under hers and slips an arm around her waist in this I’ve got you way and he flies off with her towards Sanctuary their private island out in the Ark City Harbour and their home base.

The others are getting ready to leave too. I get up and head to the fire chief guy that set me up with everything…I’m still healing and really beat and should get myself home.

My ear piece crackles to life. “Is this the comlink used by the Scarlet Angel?” it’s a guys voice tired sounding but nice,

“Yes? Who is this?”

“Hold on a moment please miss.”

I wait a bit nervously. Then there’s this really tired voice but one I’ve heard all my life on TV and Radio and stuff…Victory’s voice. “Hello Miss Angel…I saw you out there, you did a hell of a good job tonight, thanks for the assist….you saved lives. Welcome to Ark City.”

She clicks off and I didn’t even get to say anything back but…

She actually noticed?...She thanked me…?

You ever do something and have this experience that just completely affirms everything that you believe in?

Looking around at the police, rescue and fire fighters and those words ringing still in my ears.

I’m having that right now.

My Super Secret Life…Scarlet-4

Chapter 4

I exhale a long slow breath as I finish my second nice cold bottle of water and smile at the sort of stares that I’m getting from the two teenagers behind the counter of the 247-Mart I stopped at on my way home. I’m dirty and grimy and smoky and I likely smell to high heaven of the smoke and soot.

But honest to god they are still checking me out.

I’m not interested but it’s still oddly kinda cool.

One of them screws up the courage and asks. “Uhm hey…didn’t we just see you down town on like the TV with like all the other superheroes?”

“Yeah I was there trying to lend a helping hand.”

“Oh that was like cool.”

“Well it sorta wasn’t cool with everyone getting hurt and stuff but actually helping out was pretty cool and getting to work with and see the Ark Angels was pretty cool but honestly guys it was really scary and bad down there. A lot of people got hurt.”

“Oh man, that like really sucks. So what like happened?”

“Honestly I don’t know, some of the super bads were up to something and I have no idea what.”

“I hope you guys stop whatever messed up shi…uhm stuff they’re planning.”

“Me to uhm..,(Nametag check.) Raj, me too.”

I actually get a few things while I’m there some ice cream and some junk food and pay with the bit of cash I had stuffed in my bra.

Okay…it’s kind of funny the way the boys are staring at me when I fish the twenty out. Lord knows that I’ve stared at girls when they pull something out of their bra’s when I’m in Dale mode. I just smile at them. Hey I’m a girl that’s a part time guy and all guys look. I’m not all offended by it and I don’t read a lot into it either.

I kind saunter out of the shop despite the aches that are starting to settle I and touch the power and take to the skies.

And my hurts fade away with it too there is something just so awesome and so pure to your heart when you can fly. I really should go home but it’s getting close to dawn and there’s something I want to do. I pull a loop and fly out past the city and push the speed and head out to Great Sable Island. It’s this old colonial settlement that got abandoned a long, long time ago but they had left the livestock there and it’s now a colonial protected park.

Full of wild horses now.

I’ve always wanted to see this place but even given this day and age it’s really, really expensive like close to four thousand dollars for a three day trip.

Now I’m sitting on the top of this great big hill of several hundred feet high watching this big herd of like sixty some horses waking up with the sunrise coming up over the ocean and eating fudgecicles.

If I never made the choice I’d never have gotten this close to my family history, I’d never had been able to help like I did and never would have gotten to do this. Fame, money…I don’t really care about those things but this….

I can’t help but smile and laugh at the baby horses running and bucking full of energy and life. Horse rolling in the wet grasses getting a dew bath and just being happy and free.

Coin of the soul stuff.

I don’t have classes and nowhere to be so I finish the entire six fudgecicles in the pack and lean back and lay in the grasses myself. It doesn’t take too long for me to fall asleep there in the fresh salt sea air and in the sunshine.

I never slept that good since I was a kid.

It was the cold that woke me up. Waking up in Darcy mode instead of Scarlet mode the very open oceans breezes are quite chilly and while not in northern waters I’m still in the northern hemisphere and that’s chilly.

I power up and head back but spot one of the tourist boats that are like small cruise liners where the eco-tourists stay between going out to see the horse on the hover platforms or do birding…? The place is a bird sanctuary too.

I fly up to them wave and circle before coming close there’s people staring and a few cameras going off and some of the bridge crew come out.

“Permission to come aboard?” I ask.

“Granted.” This guy says and I’m going to assume he’s the Captain even though I know nothing about boat ranks he’s got the captainey hat/cap thingy on.

I land and he’s looking at me. “Is there some kind of danger, some problem miss?”

“Oh…no, no I just haven’t had time to get changed yet from the incident in Ark City there’s now problem sir.”

“Then why did you stop here, do you need our help?”

“Kinda…It’s a long flight back to Ark City and….can I use your little girls room?”

………………………………...........................................LOL! I don’t know what threw him more me asking him or me calling the bathroom on his boat the little girls room.

I get home and found a decent spot where I could downshift to Darcy and headed home but once inside I power up and undress. I’m not sure that the place that stores my uniforms cleans them. Besides it’s kind of a weird honor to was the battle grime out of them.

They’re really beat up and torn I need some more and some spares. Since I change and look different I might go with a Scarlet Angel wardrobe or something. I take a long hot shower still powered up because this magic is sort of alive maybe? Like a force that’s part of me.

What do they call them?

Oh yes, Avatars.

So maybe what ever this is that makes me Scarlet would appreciate a long hot shower. I know I enjoyed it there is something about just getting a shower or a bath like thins that just makes me feel extra good and I’m not talking about the adjustable showerhead but I do…well you know…

The orgasm as Scarlet was intense….I think, I think…no know I flashed red energy when it happened and while nothing seems hurt or burned…It was…and I literally have afterglow like this…there’s a play of red energy like a blush under my skin….and it’s afterglow because when I sort of come down from it, the light under my skin fades away.

I’m so starved after that and I raid my house for food just in my panties and one of Dale’s shirts. I’m not a big cooker but I’m a Midwest kid and if there’s one thing that I can make that’s good for me is chili.

I know there’s lots of this is authentic and that’s authentic but here it is. Mine has meat in it and lots of it. It has beans in it, three kinds no less and lots of vegetables too. I brown off onions first and set the aside, then my bacon just a few strips and get it crispy then take it out and cook the ground turkey. Now I’m like my family does we cook that burger until it’s almost burn’t and all hard and crunchy. This give a lot of flavor to the chili and they’ll soften up in the sauce. Next is celery and shredded carrots because they have to cook and then the dried spices like the chili powder and the cumin and I put in just a bit of cinnamon and cocoa powder and some dried chilies. Mushrooms are next, then once the get the juices coming out of them I add the cooked onions, and the beans…black, red kidney and pinto beans then its three cans of tomatoes a can of tomato paste and a medium jar and juice of red fire roasted and green fire roasted chilies.

The bacon goes last as a chopped up condiment like the other things that I like such as corn or BBQ corn chips.

I won’t need to cook for awhile and while that’s cooking away I eat a bag of microwaved popcorn and a breadless ham sandwich…(blush) No…it was just me with cooked ham/deli sliced package ham…eating it right from the package after slapping a processed cheese slice on it.

It’s not girly, but maybe it is girly…I’ve known a few high school girlfriend that’s do this no problem…but I just….Lazy, tired…? Yeah that’s it I’m having an adrenaline crash….

I watch a little TV channel surfing for about an hour before getting three bowls of chili then freezing some and leaving a decent amount in the fridge.

There was this girly movie on one of the Fem networks and it was some cowboy bit about a girl that got married to young and never got to have a life because of her controlling ass of a husband who beats her and the asshole dies in a car wreck but she can’t handle the farm/ranch by herself and this guy comes along as a ranch hand but he was like this geek she knew in high school all grown up and come back to town and he starts helping her not just fix the place and keep her from losing it and stuff but he encourages her to start singing…and they end up falling in love together.

I get so into it.

It’s like the girl that I am can just empathize so much …I get sucked in…I sob, cry, laugh even and ….Wow…it was cool…I feel so…

Drama, emotional stuff all this classic girly stuff people snub and rolls their eyes at…it’s not dumb or stupid it’s just good…like…like connecting to emotional stuff’s like exercising you’re psyche…it’s just kinda like why girls are girls…there’s this rush too like the endorphins but without pumping iron or running your legs off.

I even sort of dream about it when I crash and go to bed…dream about the movie…me as Dale being the hero, me as Darcy or Scarlet being the girl…long detailed love making dream…I think I flashed red in my sleep…

I woke up as Dale my bracelet glowing and vibrating like my phone? Waking me up? Yes waking me up.

I can sort of smell the results of last night’s “Red Flash” on my sheets and well me. I have to rinse and wash out the washer first because there was a bit of sooty/smoke scent still lingering there but the dryer was fine.

I spend the rest of the week as myself actually busy with classes and my labs and pretty sure that I’m being safe when I get my head shaved off for cancer treatments. There are cures not for cancers, between the gene-treatments, drugs, focused radiation and nano-tech it’s not a death sentence any more. But it is something hardwired into our genes as part of our natural exasperation date. Yes I know it hits people young and randomly but that’s genes, and environment and stuff. Point is 99% of them are treatable in this day and age. It’s the costs…so we raise money for treatment now instead of research most of the time. Hey it’s hair. I’m not part of a frat or stuff like that but I do support them when they do good stuff like this but not the dumb stuff they do either.

The coolest part though was seeing Nikki and buying her a hot chocolate afterwards.

I liked the way that she was looking at me again. God she’s sexy but not hot sexy…okay she’s in a pea jacket and jeans with a big wool sweater and buckskin and fleece boots but she’s drinking her hot chocolate with both hands but with these fingerless glove on and a knit beret like cap and it all goes with her hair and her eyes that are happy eyes right now peeking at me from behind these cute narrow rectangular lensed glasses that add that hip-chick soulful look.

I’m really liking her and the fact she’s this girl all the time it’s not a front. She’s just Nikki…sweet, shy and smart…I’d say more but I’m just yet getting to know this girl.

But the way she’s watching me is…

“Hey…what…”

“Nothing…”

“No you were giving me this look?”

“I was just thinking.”

“Thinking?”

“Yeah, you’re so not like a lot of the people I know.”

“That’s a good thing right?”

“Yes.”

“So how am I different?”

“You’re…you’re just you around me. I get that some people don’t like me because I’m VG and don’t fit their little boxes they need to put people in but I miss the normal.”

“The normal?”

“Yes, I have friends and stuff but a lot of them are Gay or Les or VG and that’s fine but there’s a lot of the whole “Gay” lifestyle stuff like gossip and clubs and the whole subculture thing that kind of comes with being part of the community…it’s not a bad thing but I’m just tired of it? And my straight friends think they have to talk about this stuff just because I’m VG. You, you just treat me like I’m just Nikki, just like anyone else…It’s nice Dale.”

“I’m glad to oblige, I was actually thinking sort of the same lines too about you.”

“About me?”

“Yeah, just the way you look and dress and are Nikki, you really don’t “fit” the whole general college VG, Gay, Lez crowd thing…and I get what you mean by the whole OTT thing with them but the straight crowd does it too a lot…you’re just not one of those girls that’s Y’know trying so hard to be someone that they come across as Y’know fake.”

“I don’t.” She’s blushing a bit but smiling too, it’s a really nice smile too…real.

“No, you’re just I don’t know…you’re Nikki and I like you.”

“You like me.”

“Yeah, not like that…well sort of like that but actually liking someone genuinely just for who they are…” I’m blushing a bit.

“Thanks Dale….that’s actually the nicest thing I’ve heard…well to be honest since the last time we got together.”

There’s that smile again…Y’know what kind of smile that is? It’s rare, it’s always been rare more than likely…it’s that I’m not afraid to be the real me smile. I can’t help but smile back especially when she stands on her tip toes and runs her fingers through my head stubble.

“That feels weird, I’ve never had hair this short.”

“It feel kind cool actually from this side of things and it doesn’t look too bad.”

“Really?”

“You got that kind of tough guy look hiding under the layers of student, farm boy and hipster.”

“Thanks, anything else?”

“Get a leather jacket Dale it’ll look good on you.”

“So fashion advice then.”

“You’re my friend, If I can help you find a nice girl then that’s cool. Besides that way I ca live vicariously through you.”

“Huh?”….Huh?

She blushes but does that two handed sip/hide with her hot chocolate. “I got the double whammy gender and sexuality wise.”

“Oh….oh!…you’re a lesbian?”

“I’m a Sapphic.”

“Uhm…”

“Sapphics are lesbian but we don’t have a problem with men, we don’t have hang ups with the social bullshit the hardcore lesbians have.”

“Huh like a sort of Vegetarian/Vegan thing only with you’re sexuality.”

“Yeah, kinda like. I love women, I am a woman in my soul but it’s just why the heck would I want to hate or limit someone based on their sex, or anything else not in the Femi-psycho mentality.”

“There are those…so I take it you’re looking for a nice Sapphic girl?”

She nods, sips, sighs. “Not all that easy to find…well really Sapphic and not put off buy my uhm extra bits…that’s hard to find. I can find flings sure there’s always curious girls but I don’t want curious. I’d love just to find someone that really doesn’t mind me being me and won’t cave into the pressure of the “hardcores” telling her to dump me because of my spare parts and lack of others.”

Yeah….I’m so thinking right now about…and…but there’s also the secret identity thing and me being a guy…or at least part of the time and….the more I think about it the more complications there are but…I’m still thinking about it.

We get to where we part ways for our other classes and I almost say that I’ll see her tomorrow. “Uhm so where do you want to have Darcy pick you up at?”

“Here…” She takes out a post it, sticks it to my chest and writes on it. “It’s my address and phone and stuff.”

She hugs me and there’s that smile. “Thanks Dale, thanks for letting me ramble and blow off some steam and just be me…”

“Hey, no big.”

“Yeah, yeah…you accept me more than anyone else. That’s a big deal Dale.”

She kisses my cheek but it’s lingering and just…it’s real and so’s the completely unafraid hug that she gave me with it.

Then she’s gone heading into the Life Sciences building and I’m…Oh…

I think I’m already girl crushing but as a guy and the whole thing and complications and stuff…scares me.

I want to skip my next class.

I want to shift and go home and Darcy shift and cry.

I want tomorrow to come a lot faster too.

My Super Secret Life…Scarlet-5.

Chapter 5

“I think…I think that I might be a little excited about today.”

It’s the first thing really out of my mouth after the squeakle (yes my word) of surprise when I went to bed as Dale but had been thinking of the conversation between Nikki and me from before.

I really like her when I’m Dale and there were definite Hmmm thoughts when she told me that she was a lesbian. It was like there’s this part of me that was seriously yaying over the fact that she is and I can be a girl whenever I want to be.

So when I rolled over waking up I bed squeezed my boobs not expecting to have them there and hence my squeakle.

Oh a squeakle is a squeal of surprise with a pinch of eep that makes you giggle right afterwards.

So I went to bed Dale woke up as Darcy and I’m face down in my pillow and my nipples are really hard.

God I’m nervous too.

It’s so different being excited turned on as a girl too. I can feel it like another kind of current running through me and as much as I feel in like I’m getting turned on it’s also this whole other animal where I really don’t feel the desperate need to get myself off but instead it’s like…edgy but happy, just feeling it enough that it feels good but scary at the same time.

I get up after trying to go back to sleep but that was a complete no go so I just laid there awhile in bed and savored it and then got up and smiled a bit at myself in the mirror. Messy hair, no bra, nice perky full breasts and me wearing Dale’s boxers.

Don’t believe the hype about girl’s not liking guys underwear, or people like me liking panties better that guys underwear. These are light cotton and a flannel styled cloth and they are comfy and loose and they’re soft.

I like panties better solely because the girl part in me likes the look just as much as the guy part of me likes the look on me. I like the way that they make me look, and when I’m me like this I like looking like a cute girl.

But I’m only sort of good at it. I really don’t have the natural fine tuning that girls seem to have or develop. I’ve always though Nikki had great taste and I would love the chance for her to show me the ropes.

I get some breakfast nothing fancy just a bowl of cereal with a banana cut into it and coffee and whole wheat toast with some peanut butter. I putter around cleaning up the house before I go and get dressed to go and meet Nikki.

And…what should I wear…and my hair…

Well it’s a good thing that my hair is mostly straight with just enough wave in it that I sort of get it into and bit of a style…kinda like really it’s a kind of has this sort of shy sweet look just some of my hair in these long wisps to like frame my face and then kind of a tumbled look that’s held back by a hair clip of my grandmothers. I take my time and use a bit of lip gloss that has a bit of pink in it that’s the closest thing I’m wearing like make up. I just don’t know how to do the rest.

Clothes I actually get into a nice set of bra and panties in that sort of block peach color with a touch of lace on the edges. Its Victoria Secret stuff but that kind of fancy body hugging sporty stuff. I still have to really get more used to wearing both and yet it’s really nice underwear and I’ll have to say that I look pretty great in it.

Camisole cotton top in white and a pink scoop necked tee-shirt and a light beige set of capri pants and I get a jacket and socks with a set of sketchers. I have like no pockets so I end up with my book bag instead.

“Okay…purse, pocket book and everything else ….”

I’m not sure that I’ve mentioned this but at least when I shift lately and I’m thinking about it and carrying them my I.D.’s change to match being Darcy. Whether they’ll pass scrutiny is another thing. I’m hoping since this is like magic that it does. But I actually feel better having some sort of I.D. The odd thing is my debit card changes but the cash still comes from my accounts. Like I’ve said it’s a magic thing. I’ve still got a decent sized amount of cash for this though.

I lock up the house and get in my car and start driving and fish out the paper she gave me at the lights and it’s her e-mail and her home phone stuff.

I pull over at a service station and take out my phone and text Nikki.
[Hello Nikki?]

[Yes?]

[It’s Darcy, I don’t have ur addy, + think I r lost.]

[Oh thought you were calling off.]

[Nope-lost-HELP?]

[LOL, ?RU now?]

[Fig and…Amsterdam, Gel-Station.]

[Shell Station?]

[Yes.]

[‘K BRT]

[?]

[Okay Be right there.]

[Oh…*Blush*...]

[Nofair want to see the blush. See soon.]

Oh…oh…that was…funny…funny sweet, charming. I’m kind of just sitting in my car and looking at the entire conversation twice on my phone and it just feels.

Yay…?

I mean it’s not me reading into this I hope but just sort of having this kind of sort of good flirty text thing has me going all…

Okay, I’m too old for this but can you remember back to like being four and so happy that you have this smile on but you have to close your eyes and shake because you were happy.

I’m having a very sort of quiet grown up version of that in my head right now.

And she makes me jump like a rabbit and hit my head on the roof when she knocked on my car door window.

She opens the door. “Oh1 sorry, sorry I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I…uhm…a…” I’m seriously blushing and trying to hold my head. “Ow…”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah I’m just really embarrassed right now. I got to look like a total spaz right now.”

“Yeah sort of.” I look over at her and she’s smiling. It’s worth it. “But hey I’d rather be out with a spaz who’s not afraid to be a spaz then someone who just has to be all cool and fascinating.”

I smile back at her. “Thanks…I don’t feel so bad right now then.”

“So are you good to drive?”

“I can drive, whether or not I can drive good enough here in the city’s another thing.”

“We’ll manage.” She slips into the passenger seat. “I’m Nikki.”

“I’m Darcy it’s really nice of you to do this for me.”

“Dale’s a friend and honestly I’m flattered.”

“Flattered?”

“Uhm he told me about me right?”

“Uh-huh but he’s right I mean I’m dressed like this and you just look amazing.”

Nikki’s wearing this silk chemise under this shirt that looks like a brown dress shirt long enough to be belted at her waist but it’s of this fabric that actually makes it look like its like buckskin? Broad belt with these little turquoise bead designs, a denim skirt and these three inch heel soft brown leather boots and a shoulder bag.

Her hair’s down and loose but styled and she has those sexy librarian glasses on and she just has this look I love and at the same time kind of want. She has that whole girl next door studying in the big city.

“I…well…thanks.” Nikki blushes a bit. “But…But I meant Dale told you that I’m VG right?”

“Oh yeah he said that and stuff.”

“And stuff?”

“He said you were Sapphic?”

“Yeah…it’s a lesbian thing.”

“Uh-huh, I’m still not real sure about the differences but then again I’m not really sure what I am like myself….I’ve never really uhm…” I’m blushing again. I’m so feeling my virginity right now.

“Got out much?” She smiles kindly and get’s in the car and actually gives me one of those short girl hugs that you give someone part greeting, part feel better-I get it-it’s cool kind of thing.

That inclusive feeling for someone thing is something I’ve always knew girls did and it’s…its like well there a few guy things that are close but not quite the same thing. It’s my first girl culture hug and okay…boy, girl…the magic. It felt nice on a lot of levels.

“No…I never got out much really and I’ve always been a little heavy on the tom boy thing.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a tom boy.”

“I know it’s just I’d like to kind of know what I’m doing with the other stuff so I don’t look like I’m a complete spaz. I mean even if I was into the girly stuff back home it’s still not the same as Ark City style.”

“You make it sound bigger and better than it is.”

“Hey, you’re a native. But to me it’s Ark City…people come her by starships just to live and work here.”

I start the car slowly easing out into the traffic and you know it’s not being a girl that makes me a nervous driver I’m not a pedal to the metal person even back home where driving fast is almost a cultural thing. No I had a nasty accident back home that weren’t bad in that people were killed or anything but ever since I rolled my fist car from being stupid and not really looking I’ve been a careful driver.

But I’m from a town not even really a true city and now I’m here…and trying to drive through a city where most…most of the streets are four lanes. The Main ones are eight. So yeah I’m nervous as we pull out. Not scared but nervous.

Nikki gives me directions and we pull out of Avalon’s east side and take the interdistrict highway until we pull off and down the exit into Summerdale. It’s a twenty minute drive so I asked. “Tunes?”

Nikki nods. “Sure.”

I use my phone and just set it into the jack-holder and turn it on letting the car access my phone’s play list and for awhile the drive is just that two college kids tunes cranked driving and talking about the degrees she’s taking and me…I figure Darcy’s here looking to get into theatre and acting. I mean it’s kind of flakey and stuff. I feel kinda bad about inventing myself but this superhero thing is dangerous stuff. And Not all the Scarlet Angel’s lived like my grandmother got to.

Summerdale’s a nice district it’s the next one over from Avalon and it’s built on a gradual slope from the Avalon hilly area down to the water and it’s a good area, close to the university, middle classed to upper middle classed urban living so it’s a lot of nice apartment buildings but nothing skyrise like mostly ten to twenty stories.

Lots of places to see and to shop at here too from Up-malls that are like loft styled shops and stuff that are a bit higher end stuff or themed with like say all women’s clothing and lots of places just to spend money.

We head into one of the large central courts that’s this big multi level parking garage with it being connected to a whole bunch of separate Up-malls and it’s so different for me since I’m really more used to going to those big sprawling malls.

“This is different.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve never shopped in a place like this.”

“Oh…I kind of like it better I find the long plaza malls are okay but there’s way too many people there sometimes these places have better deals most of the time and there’s more of a downtown small city shop feeling.”

“Better deals?”

“Oh the way too cool shopping types couldn’t be bothered to take elevators over and over for these little quaint places that only have a few shops per floor.”

She rolls her eyes and heads to one of them and my busy day of shopping starts. We head into the first place and its mostly women’s clothing. I mean…

Okay not to be all wailing on the stereotype but girls, girls can recognize tools, they get that even the basics like those are wrenches…it’s the same thing for me here…those are women’s clothes, those are bra’s but to get into more than that like the details…I’m lost and this isn’t like being at the mall. The entire Up-mall is women oriented and actually as cool as it is scary.

It’s yeah a temple of femdom but it’s relaxed, nice tasteful not the screaming girl power shove it down your throat overly commercial stuff.

I follow her to this little corner café that’s really small. Like just a counter and a kitchenette. “Here this is one of my favorite things here.”

I have my first macaroon. No not those coconut ones but these French cookies lighter than air with this chocolate filling between them and to go with and offset the sweet a really decent coffee. I pay for both and look at Nikki and I pass her three hundred dollars. She looks at me. “Darcy what?”

“You’re taking me around Nikki, showing me the ropes and stuff it’s only fair.”

“You don’t have to, I mean…”

“Please It’d make me feel bet…”

She takes the money before I’m finished but hugs me when she does it. “Sorry, but I really need the extra money Darcy.”

“Things are tight?”

“Yeah, school, apartment, my meds.”

“Meds?”

“Gene treatment pills.”

“Huh?”

“VG remember?”

“I thought that was like hormones and stuff.”

“It’s usually a bit of both actually but given the way I need to be it’s a lot more controlled with the meds that change things more selectly.”

“Oh…so…”

“Translation lots of pills just to be me and most of them aren’t covered by most insurance plans.”

“So extra broke.”

“Yep.”

I really enjoyed the macaroon and the coffee and we head into the first of several stores. I’m not going to go too much into the whole shopping thing because well it’s shopping and it involves a lot of the same old stuff as you’d expect but…

It is fun, I enjoy the whole thing of the way things look on me but also there’s this way that clothes can sort of ay something that you just can’t really put into words better than the way that something looks on you. I mean clothes for the most part are clothes but also…there are those outfits that are just you. It’s just something that says stuff about you.

But there are other things that are…good?

One Nikki is seriously cute even in her underwear and I did get a lot of chances to take her all it. B cups and she wears this nice satin and lace trimmed underwear that just has this pearly pink-white color but is really nice understated and yet perfectly sensual. I mean I’m just learning about this stuff but she goes for this classic sort of French lingerie thing.

Seriously nice but it fits her too. I like the whole look but also that her body is just as endearing as she is. Lightly tanned that fits just right, but also the fact she has these big freckles here and there on her body that are kind of like beauty marks and as lovely as she is there’s parts that really appeal to me more than I thought?

I love her waist. Yeah I know you’d thing I’d be into more further up or down but she’s got this waist that’s just a little athletic and Nikki’s hips are just nicely feminine and her waist tapers in so nicely.

Then there was this kind of cool feeling of when she saw me getting undressed for the first time. That shy but checking me out thing. Then when shopping for underwear and bras the first time I took mine off there was a little catch in her breath.

Okay maybe Dale’s subconscious shaping of how I’d be as Darcy wasn’t to bad. I mean I’ve sort of thought really a D cup? But now it’s more okay. I know that I’m good looking when I try to see myself through my old eyes but you really don’t feel that way when it’s you…not everyday.

I’m shy though a bit self conscious especially when the panties come off. But then so is Nikki and she turns away when she does and blushes. “I…maybe I should change in another booth?”

“No it’s okay Nikki it’s just I’m not used to doing this.”

“You sure because I’ve got…”

“A penis, it’s no big deal.”

We looked at each other and giggled at the turn of phrase. Mind you we still were kind of shy about that stuff and no, I never got a look at her stuff but I sort of looked…I mean I was curious and I’m sure Nikki looked at my stuff too but we just sort of let it go. It wasn’t the big deal it could’ve been or might have been and after the third shop it wasn’t really something that was on our minds that much.

There are things that I did learn.

Jeans, nice fitting blue jeans are one of my go to outfits. I also do really well with tops and I’m not a dots girl or stripes they don’t really look good for me with the exception of a lady bug styled print bikini that just goes well with me being a red head in this cute kind of way.

I like camisole tops even if they’re a bit scary because they’re so revealing but they make me feel…sexy…like I’m dressed but being naughty at the same time. Does that make any sense?

I do well with floral dress patterns and like the whole easy summer dress thing. It’s sort of like the camisole thing but it’s more than that. They make me feel…happy, bouncy, free yet kissed with naughty kinda not feelings…Is that what pretty feels like? I mean as I guy pretty isn’t something we see and can tell something is but being it is something else.

I like it.

We don’t just shop there either. And we don’t buy a lot of stuff but try on a lot of stuff it’s all about the learning curve and exploring myself to get that sense of style. But it’s learning a bargain, what brands are good and what’s garbage. But even trying on things that are really ugly or silly and funny. And laughing about it all, learning about other stuff too as it happens like girl humor and stuff.

Stopping at bookstores and music stores, looking at jewelry and just talking. Just even getting to get a feel for myself and Nikki and other women as people in a deeper way too.

All in all a long day but a really good one.

Nikki gives me directions to her place back in our district and not too far from where she met me. It’s a seven story place kinda on the old side of things but it’s been fixed up a lot by the students and young people living here. It’s really close to the interdistrict highway and likely what she can afford.

“You want to come up?”

“I’d like that, I’ll give you a hand with your things.” She did buy some things and some groceries too since we were out.

“Thanks.” She smiles and I kind of sort of guy it a bit by carrying a lot of the stuff. Nikki looks at me and smiles some more. “You are really sweet for doing this Darcy, but we could make a few trips.”

“No…I have it y’know fully committed and all that.” I’m blushing but I’m sort of grinning to. This is definitely a Dale thing but it feels like a me thing too. Maybe there’s as much in common between being a guy and being a girl as there is that’s different. Nikki takes her bags that she has and we head inside after I lock up my car.

And that’s when I find out that it’s a walk up. That the elevator’s been broken for a long time…and she lives on the top floor.

Uh-huh, no wonder she was grinning at me. I’m a bit winded once we get to her place and she smiles at me after she opens the door. She takes a couple of the bags from my arms and she kisses me lightly on the cheek.

“Thank you, it was sweet Darcy.”

“Uhm…thank y…uhm..you’re welcome.”

She does that bite her lip thing that’s just so cute y’know. “Oh…sorry maybe I shouldn’t have done that….”

“No…I mean…yes…oh dammit…” I lean over and kiss her on the cheek. “It was more than okay…”

I’m kind of looking at her and she’s looking at me and we both kind of blush with each other.

“Uhm… cool…” She blushes and turns and opens the door. “Come on in, please excuse the mess.”

I carry stuff in and we head to the kitchen and it’s a loft kind of place. It’s sort of bare and yet it’s not. Bare brick on most of the walls and she’s decorated the different rooms with pictures and lots of bookshelves second, third hand furniture give it this poor-student-chique thing that‘s nice. I can see in her bedroom and see gauzy curtains and a brass framed bed, with some stuffed animals and some wicker furniture. It’s nice, it really says Nikki.

I take a bottle of water she offers me. “Thanks, need a hand?”

“No that’s okay…make yourself at home.”

“Okay, a…where’s your bathroom.”

She shows me and I use the facilities and get freshened up and slip back out to the kitchen. And she’s looking at me. “So…”

“So…?”

“You want to stay and hang out for awhile?”

“Okay…”

Oh wow nerves time.

It was a little bit of two nervous girls at first until she puts on some music as she puts away her new clothes and then we make supper together, just some salad and some simple pasta and some sauce and we eat it on her couch while watching this really ancient movie that she had for her anthropology class. “Quest for fire.” really odd, and kind of fascinating really. Long too, it’s not really a date movie but it’s still a good kind of time actually.

It’s another look at her and stuff. And I’ve, well Dale’s dated before and they’ve been good but Nikki is better I think because she’s interesting. I know this isn’t a date but interesting is really good.

It’s late by the time the movie gets done and she’s yawning and I’m fighting them too. I look at her. “I should go, I’ve still got to drive home and put my things away.”

“Mmm…yeah…this was nice Darcy, it wasn’t what I though it might be.”

We get up and she’s walking me down to my car. “How so?”

“I… there’s times where I meet people and stuff and it gets turned into something else.”

I look at her and give her a raised eyebrow.

She blushes. “A lot of people just assume…y’know.”

“That VG makes you some porn star sex kitten.”

She blushes really red. “Yeah…but this was nice, different… normal.”

“Normal’s good?”

She steps up and kisses me just a light one on the lips. And it’s just…amazing…the difference between good kisses, great kisses and one just right kiss.

“Normal is really good Darcy.”

She walks backwards from my car to the doors of her building.

“Nikki?”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to ask you out sometime.”

“You just did.”

“Friday night? Will you go out on a date with me?”

“Yes, Definitely yes Darcy.”

“Okay…” I’m smiling.

“Darcy?”

“Yeah?”

“Call me when you get home? Just so I know you got there safe.”

“Okay.”

I watch her go inside before getting in my car and driving home and I’m humming along with the music as I drive and wow…I feel…I’m not sure I’ve ever really felt like this, I mean it’s like being a dating kid all over again but at the same time it’s so different.

I call as soon as I park the car.

“Hey, I made it.”

“Good, I had a really good day Darcy, I mean even if I took money from you…it…it was the best night I’ve had in a while.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

“Good…I’ll see you later.”

“Okay…”

“Okay…”

It takes a moment before I hang up and I lean back in the seat of my car and hang onto my phone with this feeling like before from the good texting moment but way more…you ever just feel like you can’t stop smiling?

I have, but never about a person before.

Yay…

My Super Secret Life…Scarlet 6.

Chapter 6

I get my things and head inside the house and put them away. The few groceries first then to my/Darcy’s room with my clothes and I start putting things away and trying to organize things into outfits, interconnected outfits and I turn on some tunes and try stuff out as I go checking myself out in the mirror and it’s so much more than just a girl playing dress up it’s me actually seeing and learning without people around to see me screw up with something kind of ugly looking.

It’s fun but it’s work and guys if you see a girl doing this or a sister doing this this is why. It’s not being vain, not for the most part. I get it because I’m really in it right now…looking nice, feeling pretty is really important to my psyche right now.

I even get some really nice looks going on and I do that phone-snap mirror pictures. I might want to send some of these to Nikki.

Nikki…

Oh Goddesses sigh…

I fall back to my bed in just my panties and let out another sigh…

I just sit there and day dream about the day that I just had with her and the way we just clicked.

I mean we clicked even though I’m not exactly who I said that I was. But on the other had I’m lying here like this feeling this way about her and even myself and it does bear asking. Just how really real is Darcy?

And of course there’s the fact I eventually might stop being Dale.

I know, I know I’m not there yet or even close but two of the other Scarlet Angels are like me and one was my grandmother and she chose to well stop being the guy she’d been and go full time as the woman I’d known all my life.

Every shifted Angel has done that.

And honestly.

I’m not there like I said but it doesn’t scare me either. In fact I like being a girl, when I’m a girl or at least so far.

Sigh…

Nikki…

Good sigh.

I really should down shift, I have classes as Dale tomorrow.

Hmmm…It’s late…

“Heck with it, I’m going flying.”

Oh yeah, I’m so hooked already about being to fly. I Power up and concentrate on one of the stored outfits from the other Angel’s or Scarlet’s and I go for this black one piece full body motorcycle suit that’s been cut pretty good for a woman’s curves and there’s red pin striping on the suit for decoration. Red boots and red driving gloves and red plastic sunglasses with black lenses. They’re not a disguise they just go with the look, I look different enough powered up so it’s not a big deal.

I leave through the skylight and just once I’m clear for kicks I crank out the speed and just cruise at about not going all out fast but fast enough. I stay clear of where I’m going to know were there’s heavy aero-traffic and just cruise.

It sounds boring but it’s so not.

I’m still almost alone here…it feels like that though. It’s a good alone though that type when you’re jogging, or swimming or on your bike if you’re into those things. Me…home it was hiking. I mean I wasn’t totally country really and stuff but small town…lots of real honest woods and farms and stuff. I loved getting out up there in the hills even going camping.

Love this feeling…the wind slipping over me it’s actually a little erotic if you let it be like a good shower. But the atmosphere…that’s the kicker, it’s the romance of night flying.

I stop and land at a corner store and get some stares but It’s cool with me and I just get a few things then go.

I get to spend midnight at the east corner of the Met-Life super tower one of the really big downtown mega towers and right down town at Heaven’s Square which is like Times Square in those old earth shoes but three and four hundred story buildings and each of the four main streets here have this sea of traffic and about five hundred feet up there’s the Aero-traffic and I’m hidden by the billboards but I’m drinking cream soda red and eating strawberry licorice and a bag of pink candied popcorn.

It took me a few minutes eating before I noticed all of it’s kind of reddish but that’s just me, I like all three of these things but there wasn’t anything to it. But still it made me laugh at myself and flying made me a little nibbly.

And I know that I’m not being all heroic and stuff right now and it’s like I’m just goofing with this but…This, just doing this and taking it all in.

I know this’ll be one of the things that’ll be there when I reach deep down.

I head home without anything y’know jumping out for me and I get stuff ready for classes and shift to Dale me and crash at about two in the morning.

……………………………….....Ugh…up at six. Grab my bag and get into my running gear and a bottle of water and I run to campus. I hit the gym and do a quick session with the weights and get in a quick swim before getting showered there and changed into my clothes.

I’m buzzed from the activity but sore too. But I figure that I might as well or that I should get into better shape. I mean it might/should carry over to Darcy and Scarlet right? I get some…strong tea instead of coffee and a banana with a vegan wrap for breakfast at the food hall.

I get a few looks from people that know me and stuff. I’m mid-western guy and my usual is that kind of stuff.

“Hey I’m trying to get a bit healthy for at least one meal a day.”

Which actually had me with a few others getting into the whole food talking and the whole god I’m so out of shape since getting here thing and just chilling before we all break for our various classes.

I see Nikki in a few classes we have together and she smiles and sits beside me and when we can she’s talking about Darcy…me.

“God Dale, I had such a great time but getting home…and just hanging out was so nice.”

“Yeah Darcy was really happy and stuff, he came in holding her phone to herself and smiling.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow…I mean we just had this nice normal night, a few fun moments and then the rest of it was just so real.”

“Real’s good.”

“God Dale after some of the dates I’ve had.”

“Well it wasn’t a date, you were just hanging out right.”

“Yeah, but Dale I don’t really just hang out. I usually go out, not much but it’s…” It’s like she ran out of the words she wants.

“She had a great time too Nikki.”

She’s got this…no…that smile I love on her face I love so much and she does that absent chew on her lip a bit and she looks at me. “I wasn’t anything but me Dale, Not Les or Sapphic or even VG it all just went away at some point last night Dale and I was just Nikki…It felt so right.”

“I…uhm…wow.”

God, I almost kissed her there and then…and I might be Dale right now but my hearts still beating fast and swelling with this great happy feeling that she felt like that.

“Yeah.” She sighs and sinks in her seat and puts her knees up on the back of the seats in front of us. “Wow.”

“So excited about Friday?”

“Yeah scared too. I don’t want to rush this, I want to be a good date.”

“Nik?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re a good date even just here, or when we’re having coffee and you’re not into guys.”

“Dale…” She blushes and grins.

“No serious, even if it’s not a dating thing Nik. I’ve had better times just doing stuff like this than some dates I’ve been on.”

“Me too, you’re a decent guy Dale even amongst decent guys.”

“I’m not all that decent, I have my secrets and stuff.”

“We all do, but you’re different. Hell so’s Darcy it’s got to be that clear country air and sunshine.”

I blush too. “Thanks Nikki, I got it from my Dad.”

“What’s he like?”

“Dad…well he’s sort of the glue back home. He’s an artist really but we kind of live off the family farm.”

“Real country boy then.”

“It’s a lot more green tech than you’d think. Green houses, the raise bed gardens, our own composting factory, wind and solar…”

“Wow expensive.”

“Actually grants and a lot of work from a couple of generations of the family.”

“And your dad runs it?”

“Yeah but there’s lots of stuff for all the other family members too and the employees.”

“Sounds big.”

“Sort of, about thirty jobs and the seasonals.”

“Seasonals?”

“Pickers, mostly high school kids.”

“I guess, city girl I’ve never really though of how it gets to the store much only that I try to get organic and fair trade stuff.”

“We do organic only and energy clean.”

“Energy clean?”

“The total production is all non-polluting.”

“Oh that’s the EC tags on stuff.”

“Yeah, and you get tax breaks from the government for it.”

“You sound like you’re taking over.”

“Nope, I’ve got other relatives to do that but a family farm…you start really early in the business.”

“But you said your Dad’s an artist?”

“He’s a painter and a sculptor, the farm pays for his studio.”

“Smart…does he sell?”

“Yeah sometimes, he’s done some stuff in town but he’ll have these “just because” painting that he’ll end up getting stacks of and he’ll sell them off anywhere.”

“I thought artists would be like picky about selling their stuff.”

“Sort of, but he thinks that everyone should be able to have some kind of real art that they can afford.”

“I’d like to afford some decent art.”

“I’ll pick some stuff up next time I’m home.”

“That’d be nice thanks Dale.”

We finished the classes we shared had a coffee and a hug before taking off to do our own stuff but it had me in a good mood the rest of the day though. I mean I could feel guilty and actually sort of do with the secret identity thing but the last thing I want to do is get her or my family hurt or killed.

What she doesn’t know she can’t be forced to say. There’s sort of an unwritten rule that you don’t go after families good or bad. You go after a cop or heroes family then they’ll come at you…and the same thing in reverse…the bad guys well most of them have a thing about that too and will come after you hard if you get their families involved. Or with like super villains at least the same doesn’t go for some of the regular types of crooks or any psycho, powered or not.

But enough grimness for now. Nikki has me still all things aside feeling pretty good about myself as both Dale and Darcy.

I head home and hit the books and make supper and end up watching some TV until about nine-thirty then I shift to Darcy and start to power up. Same outfit as the other night and I head out.

I head up, way up and tonight it’s not about just being out. It’s earning my keep, thanks to inheriting this I’ve got a great life for a student…heck for anyone really. I actually own my own place even if it’s pretty old and still needs work, a car and spare cash…I’m on a scholarship so that’s paid off.

But when I was having coffee before my micro-hydraulics class I had an idea.

I hope I can pull it off. I get clear but not too high up about three quarters of a mile and I just float.

I close my eyes and float and concentrate on the bracelet/cuff on the gem and touch that power and once I’m really deep in the scarlet light I start pulling the com signals out of the air to me.

~Okay…you want me to help…then help me help…show me, filter it out and tell me where I should go.~

I concentrate and it takes awhile…I can feel it reaching in me, trying to understand…I see those eyes…I swear I saw those eyes widen as surprised as I am.

I can hear the calls, 911, Fire, Police…there’s windows with the GPS stuff like one of those heads up displays.

[Officer’s under fire, fully armed and armored.]

There are lots of ETA times coming up and I can feel this…feeling…speed…like I know what I’ve got under the hood.

I can get there first.

Tap in…reach out… “This is Scarlet Angel, I can be there in two. I’m asking to be cleared.”

Sentinel’s voice comes over the radio. “I’m eight away, that’s a go for Scarlet, repeat that’s a go for Scarlet.”

It’s all I needed to hear.

I take off feeling the little tug from the energy guiding me there with the GPS I’ve got going on and there’s not a lot of time to think and before I know it I’m there.

There’s a dozen of them with some serious weaponry and they’re hitting this place that’s not something that I know of…I mean it’s not obviously anything…but this is a heavy team of guns all for?

I see several police here, regular cops in cruisers that responded and then back up and they’re pretty chewed up.

There’s three of these guys in heavy body armor and they’re down the steps of the place and laying down heavy firepower chewing the cop cars apart and I can see them taking covered and trying to fight back.

I check them in a magnification view get names. Then I patch in to the radios.

[Officer Stevens, Thompson, Andrews…This is Scarlet Angel, I’m coming in above on your six, I’m going to block and draw their fire from you to me. Can you make your moves?]

[Uhm, yes…this is Thompson.]

I come in and cut loose with a few blasts getting their attention and land pulling my shield off of myself and put it in front of me, split it into two more shields and stagger them.

They’re shooting at me and I dig in mentally fighting the impacts with my force of will as the officers move behind the other two shields gaining ground and I concentrate hard…move the shields for the cops as they move forward.

The bad guys send two more out and I move my hand fast…push my first shield as I move ahead and body block the guy firing on me. He goes sprawling I drop that shield and fire on the two new guys making them take cover back inside and then fire on the two guys going for the police and I fire two blasts their way and I split them up…like hard powerful fireflies hitting them.

It does nothing to the body armor they’re wearing. But it messes with their attention and …yes! The three cops take the two down and the other guy I was going at it with recovers fast and pulls a pistol and shoots at me. I actually dodge the first shot and get hit by two rounds…then my shield is up around me and I’m hitting him.

I’ve been in a fit or two as a kid and I’m more wresting with him than punching and kicking and there’s where the farm comes in. We had animals and I’m used to having muscle them around. With my enhanced strength I get him down and zip tie him up with energy before my shoulder starts to tell my oh fuck and my side.

I look up and the guys with the guns on the inside are coming out with someone…Oh Carmine Ferretti…I’ve seen him on the news, he’s a big player in the Bocatello mob family the Stallones. They got him in a vest and are looking up and there’s this armored aero-car coming down…then it goes careening into a spin as Sentinel slaws into it with a flying two fisted ram…he sends it into the police safe house…and does this three sixty flip that looks effortless…

One of the mob mercenaries fires a grenade from a rifle launcher at him and he catches it. It doesn’t go off. He points the arm of his free arm at them and this band pops up from the forearm with all of these barrels…that spin their way into a fast whine like a mini-gun.

His visor shines bright blue as he talks. “Trust me gentlemen, you don’t have the gear.”

Their ride done in and him there and me…the police here and more on the way they quickly drop their weapons and start raising hands.

Ferretti looks pissed at Sentinel, me I get a look too but I’m too busy panting and hurting and I shunt shield energy to my wounds and heading to the three cops that didn’t come with me…one was on the radio, one’s sot and the other one’s been applying pressure.

I sit down slowly near the wounded cop and set my hand on him and there’s seven shots his armor took five but he took two in his leg…if it wasn’t for his partner he’d have bled to death …I can just feel that.

I shunt energy to his wounds and when I feel the bleeding stop I smile and lean my back against the car tire and close my eyes and smile.

He’s going to make it.

I lose myself in the need to rest and deal with the adrenaline, helping these guys and getting shot and my whole tapping into the system thing I came up with and trusting the stone…the energy force…to guide me through them like triage…I’m almost laughing in shock and almost crying and I hurt but feel so alive.

Ferretti…he’s not going anywhere but to face charges. That means he’ll sing or something since he was put in a safe house.

I hear voices and sounds and there’s EMT’s and FD guys here along with the other police and Sentinel is standing beside me. I look up at him. He’s that classic Iron Man guy a suit of power armor of some kind that is seven feet tall and plated armor with some king of weave underlay that is like this shiny flexible metal all in steel but the soft spots are chrome…blue v-shaped visor, Spartan crest and decorative wings on the sides of the helmet.

Very impressive up close really, very advanced.

Actually if you’ve seen Hero-watch and some of the guests on there he has to be a robot because of the engineering…power supply and thrusters…he’s been around a long time too. Eighty years in several incarnations. He kneels to offer me help up.

“Good job, I caught your firefly trick.”

“Just spitballing.”

I head to the ambulance with the wounded officer. “I gotta keep this going, can we talk later?”

“Sure, I’ll meet you in the AA wing.”

“AA wing?”

“Hey, even heroes need a secure place to get patched up. I’ll see you in a bit.”

The EMT’s are good about helping me into the Aerobulance and they don’t want to have me release the shield if possible until we’re in a good ER. Though we’re both on IV fluids going full stream.

The few looks and nods of respect? The others give me as I’m getting in and settled hit me hard but so right and a few tears fall…

Big…this was…God.

This feeling is why, honestly it that so right that I know that this was the reason I was born.

I don’t even notice the ride into Saint Mercy Hospital only getting out of the Aerobulance and heading to the ER. A couple of quick scans and they get to work on both of us…The officer’s going to be fine and me…my wounds once the bullets were out fill with the red light and the doc says they’re healing…I mean I’m not healing like a regenerator but It’s healing me.

I get a coffee brought to me buy one of the officers there to get all of our statements and Sentinel shows up I glimpse at the clock and it’s just after midnight…where did the night go?

He brought a box with nine little boxes all filled with dim sum. Oh…Korean bbq pork pot stickers and soup filled dumplings when you’re healing and low on energy is just hitting the spot. And so Ark City…I’m eating Asian take out after midnight. Home only the 24/7 shops and gas stations would be open.

He even passes me a plastic fork because I’m helpless with the chop-sticks. We go over everything three times by the time we’re done and there are federal marshals there and this being a big case. He vouches for me and passes my a badge on a chain.

Deputy Ark Angel…it says Scarlet Angel on it.

“Really?”

“Yes really, come out to Halo sometime. There’s stuff we need to talk about.”

“Okay…thank you this is a huge honor.”

“Maybe but it’s more like we’re asking for the help when you can.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” His voice is actually friendly.

“I…I should go.”

“Are you okay to leave?”

“I’m healing…but real life stuff y’know.”

“Yeah, I get it. I have to get milk for morning when I’m done here.”

I smile and slide off of the stretcher. Not bad or dizzy but my shoulder’s not happy with me putting the chain and badge over my neck.

“I have a date tomorrow night.”

“He’s a lucky guy?”

“Girl and my first real big city date. Any advice?”

“Yes actually I have an idea you can try.”

……………………………….................... I made it home and crashed after showering and stayed as Scarlet just to let the bracelet heal me and woke starved as Dale but fully healed. I did the same thing with the jogging and the gym but I didn’t…couldn’t do the health food thing instead bacon, sausages, hash browns and pancakes and went for two helpings and some orange juice.

Classes went fast and my day was caught up in class work, thinking about last night and everything there and then daydreaming about my date with Nikki.

I was a bit disappointed we never had time to hang during the day except for a wave coming and going.

I text as soon as I jogged home and shifted.

[Hey.]

[Heya!]

[We still on?]

[Yes, are we?]

[Yes, pick you up at six?]

[’K, see you soon.]

I shower and get dressed and go for sexy underwear but a light t-shirt and jean short skirt sneakers and a leather jacket and head to go and pick Nikki up.

She looks great. A nice summer dress with spaghetti straps and her delicates just peaking underneath, sandal flats just the right bit of make up and a nice denim jacket.

We hug and break it and I hold her hand as we go down the stairs. “We’re are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Am I dressed okay for this surprise?”

“You look awesome.”

I open the car door and make sure she gets in and I head to our date place. It’s a bit early but I tried to figure travel time and parking and the lines.

Nikki looks confused as I pull into Angel Stadium. “Why are we here?”

“I thought I’d surprise you. Take you out to a night game…” Okay I’m nervous now. I mean I’m taking a girl to a baseball game.

She starts to smile, it that happy only Nikki smile. “You know that I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never even been in the building.”

“I’ve never been to a big league game either.”

“Darcy?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks…this is so…out of the box.”

“So popcorn, peanuts and hotdogs are alright?”

“More than.” She reaches over and takes my hand and we lace our fingers together and sort of girl run, skip, smile and laugh together heading inside.

Thanks Sentinel…I think this’ll be a really good night.

My Super Secret Life…Scarlet 7.

Chapter 7

Sentinel had given me free tickets and while you’d think they’d be prime tickets or something they weren’t. They were good seats I’ll say that much but he had a lot of them in a pop out compartment in his waist.

Not a bad idea and not being in the rich seats seems somehow more hero…ic. Oh damn I like these people…

I’ve got an armload of stuff as Nikki and I are getting seats and there in the prime seats are kids…some look like very much less than well off or they’ve been sick, or with a mom that’s bruised up and had seen too much but seeing her smile because of how her kids are happy…injured cops with their families too… and the best seats in the stadium are marked by Ark Angel symbol stickers and reserved for people that deserve them over the people that can afford them.

I have this big lump in my throat seeing that.

Even as a deputy I might be a part of that.

Being a hero is more than beating on the bad guys.

New Haven baseball is a lot different that Federation or traditional North American baseball and in my opinion better because of the way that the multiple ethnics are all mashed together it’s got the crowds, the cheering sections with the chants and the thunder sticks, the foot stomping and even the rocket balloons.

And the junky food which is like totally guilt free because you’re at a pro-game and I got us hats to wear and a couple of big cheap team t-shirts that we put right on and we’re getting into it and laughing and cheering and stomping along chanting things out in Chinese or Japanese and stuffing our faces.

And the whole time I’m not really Dale but just Darcy and everything is just like completely natural and care free and fun.

We actually lean on each other and we hold hands as we go through the long lines of people heading out of the place.

“God that was fun.” I can’t keep the smile off of my face.

“It was really thanks Darcy I’ve never really been to a game before.”

“I’ve never been to a big league one and it’s a lot more fun than watching it on the TV.”

“So…you want to do anything now?” She asks and there’s this really sweet hopeful look there.

“Sure, what did you have in mind?”

“Uhm…I don’t know…”

“How about we just drive around?”

“Huh?”

“I don’t know the city that well and you can show me things and we can just crank the tunes and cruise around.”

“Uhm…okay…”

“You don’t want to?”

“No…it’s just I’m and Ark City girl we don’t really cruise around anywhere because most of us don’t have cars. It’s not something I ever grew up doing.”

“Oh, because back home its kinda what you do when there’s nothing else going on you just drive around and stop and talk to the different people that are hanging out at different places.”

“Oh…okay sure I kinda get it.”

We get into the car and we head out and we cruise around. It does take Nikki some getting used to but when we start getting into singing some of the better tunes on the radio and stopping at places that she’s hung out at before she’s getting more and more into it. There is just some thing really kind of cool about pulling up outside of a dance club it a car while there’s people you know outside hanging or smoking and they’re having to walk or bus it or get a can and we’re just…cruising.

This was a staple of growing up when I was a teenager. But I’m getting just how much of a luxury it is to have a car in this city. I mean you wouldn’t think so with the sheer volume of the traffic but most people don’t actually have cars here. Home, well home every one pretty much has a car.

And inevitably I end up playing taxi for some of her friends and Nikki looks at me and says. “You don’t have to drive us around.”

“Hey, I don’t mind you’ve got a cool date who’d being good to your friends and I get to learn some of the city and stuff at the same time.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes I’m sure.”

We have a good time actually and I’ll admit there are a whole lot of her friends that are the whole LGBT set but I get to see that hot spots for our crowd and we even slip into a few of them to meet and pick some one up a time or two and we get to dance a bit until the person is ready to leave.

I play designated driver twice too. We take some of her friends at these places home and Nikki holds their keys.

It’s a good night and I get Nikki home about three in the morning and she asks me in for a drink and I stay for a much needed double strength cup of instant coffee.

She walks me to the car again and we kiss for awhile. Not hard and heavy but not just the small and single kisses either.

“I had a really great night Darcy. I mean even with all the other stuff.”

“Me too and I kind of liked the other stuff. I got to see you step up and get the keys from your friends and see you with all of them and that was really cool. Actually you’re pretty damned cool.”

“The same goes here, I like the way you have with people and how sweet and nice you were with everyone and cool about driving us around and even cool with all the drama and stuff.”

“Thanks Nikki…”

“No, thank you…”

“You call me and let me know that you go there safe?”

“I will.”

“Darcy?”

“Yes?”

“I want to do this again….” She says it kind of shyly. “This was great but was this a date or going out as like just friends?”

“Both?”

“It’s just I’ve…I’ve never really had a night like this before and I’m sort of confused…sorry…”

I get it, it could be confusing and it was kind of out there and I’ll admit it wasn’t anything that I had in mind. But I smile at her and I reach out and I pull her to me and I give her a long deep kiss.

“Both...”

“Oh…”

“Nikki…?”

“Yes…?”

“I’m a virgin…and I’m really new to dating so if it’s okay can we just take our time…I love being with you and I love being your girl out on dates. But I’m taking my time…is that okay?”

He eyes widened and she stares at me and I look back until my self consciousness at my admission starts to make me blush.

“Uhm…uhm…yeah, god yeah sure!”

“Thank you…I’ll call you.” I give her another kiss and I’m getting out of there before I get any more embarrassed and so Nikki can actually process that bit of information.

She was touching her fingers to her lips and leaning on the concrete stoop the last that I looked.

I’m too nerved up to fall asleep at the wheel but I’m starting to sort of feel the yawns pulling on the back of my jaw by the time that I have the car turned off.

I get inside and flop to the couch and take out my phone and text Nikki.

[Heya.]

[Hi.]

[I’m home safe.]

[Good…I had a good time tonight.]

[Good, I didn’t want to be like everyone else.]

[Darcy, you are definitely not like everyone else. G’nite, sweet dreams.]

[*Blushing* Sweet dreams for you too.]

I sign off and sigh and lay there on the couch and very slowly I roll off the couch to my feet and drag myself upstairs and after a very quick shower I shift to Dale and crash on my bed. I mean I’m Dale because really I’m Dale to start with but mostly because this bed in made and is closest.

……………………………..The next two days are pretty busy but mediocre busy, mundane? Okay muggle life. House work both mine and Darcy’s and laundry and dishes and cooking some stuff to eat ahead. I made stew and biscuits since I used up the chili and don’t want to reheat and eat the stuff I froze. I have a house now so I have a lawn to mow and there’s still a lot of yard work but I actually save all the branches and old wood and stow it in a bundle in my garage.

I go to class and Nikki and I talk but just the usual stuff and not that much about Darcy. It’s like she’s not sure what to ask me since I mentioned the big V.

Super hero or not its takes me awhile before I’m sort of caught up on my RL stuff before I am free enough with home and school stuff that I can get to do what I want to do. What’s been hovering there in back of my mind for the last few days.

I take out the badge on the neck chain and put it on and I shift into Scarlet and I go with a much more I dunno official uniform that one of the gendershifted wore. A brick red military coat like the uniform jacket and matching pants and a belt, boots and gloves all in red leather and this thin black lycra turtle necked bathing suit in case of wardrobe malfunctions. With the pants it looks like a shirt. I actually add a really good bra myself though to fit me better and to sort of stand the girls out, hey I'm a super-female...I have a tradition to keep up for young fan boys everywhere. And Lastly my sunglasses from the other night.

Not bad sort of military/butch. The black top really makes the badge pop though.

I lift off high speed out of my skylight and head out over the city and slowly bring up that heads up power and tapping into the com traffic and stuff as I head out towards Halo.

I guess it’s time I really make this official right?

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.”

My Super Secret Life…Scarlet-9.

Chapter 9

I slowly get myself settled into the chair and I’m wiping my hands off on my pants trying not to be as obviously nervous as I feel. Oh and guys, there really is no feeling quite as messed up as having sweaty boobs. I mean when you’re not used to having them.

Victory looks at me as she takes her own seat and she takes a sip from her bottled water.
“I’m going to be blunt about it Scarlet I want you on the new teams.”

“New teams?”

“We’re us being the Halo Group are starting to see the need of New blood but not just new blood for The Ark angels or The Champions or The New Light Rangers but for other places, other cities and even in places like Ark City in different districts.”

Samson adds in this deep smooth bass voice. “We are also looking to train teams if we are lucky enough for conjunction with actual police departments and fire departments or the federal marshals.”

“Not Home-sec or the military?”

“No they recruit their own members or agents.”

“I’d be honored to do something like that but I sort of have some other commitments.”

She nods. “College, it takes up a lot of time really doesn’t it.”

“How do you know that I go to college?”

“A good guess, I’ve known most of the previous Scarlet’s a lot of them started as students too.”

“Oh?”

She gives me this really friendly smile. “I started in high school and my first costume was an old BMX racing suit.”

“Really?”

“For true.”

“Okay, I’d like to have seen that.”

She smiles like a cat in cream. “Unfortunately none of them had survived my madcap adventures.”

“Part time?” I ask.

“As a Deputy Ark Angel but there’s going to be a serious cost in hours first.”

“Huh?”

“All Ark Angels are required to pass a bunch of training and be certified in a number of things.”

“Like?”

“Swimming and life guard, drivers licence, offensive driving course, defensive driving course, police ethics lecture, firearms training, basic criminal forensics, evidence handling, all the things basically to make you not a full fledged police officer but enough to get you by with procedure and so you can work along side of them whenever you need to. The better trained you are the better you’ll get paid.”

“We get paid?”

“A modest amount really starting out under a patrolman’s actually.”

“Really?”

“We have a lot of perks that really add up in the costs.”

“I can see that.” I gesture around.

“Good benefactors.”

“I met Mr. Chase; he was what I expected him to be like.”

“Ryan never is.”

“I’ll get you a copy of my class schedule?”

“We’ll need that.”

“So if I come clean to you guys Identity wise can I get those classes on my resume?”

“If you’d like. But I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Oh?”

“You’ll get noticed by someone at some time and they’ll look into your alternate ID. If you have all these courses to your name they’ll make some pretty deadly math and there’ll be people coming out of the woodwork after you and after what you know.”

“Okay…great…point…”

I’m looking out the windows and I’m seeing this flying V like ducks but not…exo-suits but not the ones that I seen on the police platform.

“Uhm guys…I think that there’s trouble!”

There’s a lot of them and they are coming right at us. Then they split two groups veering off and three armors firing at us.

The windows rebound shake then some of the rounds make cracks. Then they shoot rockets at us and the glass blows in on us in that wall. I turn to keep getting glass in my eyes and I see them hitting the Super Bridge…I look at Victory and her eyes…I see the start of her powering up… you ever see superman pissed?

Yah-huh exactly…chills and goosebumps and this sort of déjá -vu.

“Go! I’ve got it here!”

I don’t need to be told twice and I turn and run and flare up and blast a hole through the glass and kick it the speed letting the energy’s HUD effect take stock of the situation.

There’s a shining light coming in beside me from the town area he looks…Think huge guy with movie start great looks and this sort of edge to him bathed in golden light…his costume? Black t-shirt, blue jeans and work boots.

Then we’re taking gunfire as we’re being engaged and I see two of the busses go over the edge and he does this flying flip over rolling thing like…I don’t know but he catches both buses full of kids a rear bumper in each hand and his eyes light up like two pools of the actual sun instead of just the glowing and all the muscles are taut on his body and …the bullets their using on him are doing these little pfft things as they hit his energy.

Another bus is teetering and there’s some kid all tied up into a living net inside keeping the kids from falling out. Okay…I can see this image of this other kid overlaid there too.

Shit it’s going over the edge!

I fly over and okay I can make a shield and do all of these other things then I can make…grapple lines! I snag the bus at a bunch of different points and keep flying and start to tow it…there’s too much weight…no…I can do this…these…I flip upside down and look into the bus…they might be different they might not be like I was growing up but these are kids.

Kids…

I flip back over and I go full thrust…c’mon Darcy dig, dig deep.

I scream…. “Aaagh!!!” and I don’t care how much it hurts…and it does the energy is part of me and it feels like its being pulled out of me.

And I swear…I swear I can faintly hear these voices inside me…grandma’s saying something…something important…important to all of them. I have sweat running off me in rivers under my suit and I bite down on the pain and I start repeating the words.

“I…I will walk into that darkness.”
“I will step into the breach.”
“Every time…”
“Every time!”
“I will bring forth justice and law.”
“I will keep the peace.”
“I will lay down my life.”
“Even for a single life.”
“Every time…”
“Every time…”
“I swear this is my code, my creed.”
“I will live these words until my last day.”
“Even if it’s today!”
“Because this is the truth that’s in my soul!”
“Because…I am…an Ark Angel!”

I think that I’ve reached harder and deeper than I have ever done in my life and I feel it…that hard pull give a little…then a little more and I can feel the rear wheels of the bus ride up and over the edge of the bridge to rest on the pavement. The bus slowly moving away from the edge.

I fall the whole eight feet from where I was flying to the ground as the bus is settled onto the pavement. I can hear the kids inside screaming good screams…cheers.

I look up to see one of the terrorist exo-suits headed my way.

Scarlet-10.

Chapter 10

You know when you’re really deep down exhausted and have nothing in the tank then something happens that if you don’t get off your duff something bad is going to happen.

That’s the situation with the incoming exo-suit…

I’ve got a school bus full of kids behind me and staring from my place on the pavement police and firemen and EMT’s.

The thing is that I have no idea what these guys in the attacking suits have for ammo. The police here are in their HR-gear or “Hard Resolution.” protection but the firemen and paramedics are as well protected.

“Alright…” I push myself up off the pavement and I flare my energy making my shield bright and the aura giving off Scarlet energy flames. “Yes, that’s it look at me.”

And thankfully he is. I’m the big bad mutie, you gotta be all macho…attacking school buses…I lift off and fall backwards almost and he follows firing his machine gun at me…I’m only guessing but these guys aren’t actually military trained in using these things.

I go into HUD mode and even a rear view so I can watch him coming after me and I bee-line it for the water. “C’mon ace, you can take me right? Big macho-man in a suit of armor and packing military grade toys…I mean I’m right in you’re comfort zone aren’t I? I mean a patriot to the human race such as yourself and all big brave guy trying to kill children.”

“They’re not children they’re monsters waiting to happen! Freaks!”

“They’re kids and they don’t want to be anymore different than any other kid does.”

“Bullshit, they change, they always change! They’ll start liking having the power you mutie freak, just like you!”

“Naw, it you banjo playing donkey humping red-necked brother lovers that are the ones that change them. It’s all about the hate, you hate them and attack them and make them feel like shit and then you have the nerve to blame them for the shit that you people inflict on them?”

“Fuck you1 fuck you…you goddamned cunt…I’m no faggot…”

“Didn’t deny donkey humper though huh”

“Aargh!!!”

He’s really chasing me down and firing at me with a serious full on mad on for me. I’m dodging and weaving him flying low over the water and I’m not trained well enough for this really because some rounds are hitting me and they hurt…as long as they’re just single rounds they hurt…like getting hit with a paintball hurt.

I see something and have an idea…I used my shields as a grapple so maybe I can use the force to coat something and move it…like a telekinetic thing or tractor beam. I fire a pulse ahead of me into the water and feel it connect with my target.

~sink~

It’s a struggle and I feel it sapping away at my shield….it’d be a hell of a lot worse if this guy didn’t shoot like an Imperial Storm Trooper.

“I bet I just really piss you off because not only am I a woman but I have powers and you can’t backhand me and get me to shut up like you do your Wife…oops sorry your Sister….Aunt…Momma…”

I stop and spin around and dump all my flight energy and even the rear power into the shields facing him. I stand my ground. “Well y’know what here’s a woman that’s going to put you in your place and who’s not going to run from you anymore Bubba.”

He’s coming on strong and getting it some good shots but my shield ramped up this way they’re just bouncing off.

Closer…

Closer…

~Release.~

I let go of the harbour buoy that I had pulled under water. Physics takes over and all that buoyancy takes over and sends it zooming to the surface and to borrow from the cartoon world he pulls a mid-flight Willey-Coyote and collides with it ay about three hundred miles an hour.

His power armor isn’t that armored.

And a good bit of him collides with a good bit of it crotch first.

His machine gun goes flying and I catch it and point it at him. He’s not moving…I hit him with a ray scan of Scarlet light and he’s alive but seriously hurt. I look around seeing a harbour patrol boat coming to fetch his butt. I fly over them.

“He’s alive but he’ll need serious medical attention.”

I toss them the rifle since it’s not my way and I remix my energies and I kick in the afterburners so to speak and I rocket myself at the two suits trying to take Daystar down and it looks as if they’re trying to shoot up the two buses that he had caught.

Sentinel’s there with him doing his best to keep that from happening but he’s one guy in very good armor trying to protect two school buses and his teammate.

I charge up my hand with blaster energy and I flank one as he’s about to shoot and there’s a power flash and a recoil I feel all the way up my arm and bits of armor plating and ceramics go flying as I knock the one I hit back in the air several dozen yards.

I hover close to Sentinel and do the make me a target Scarlet energy flame aura trick and charge up my hands with blaster energies. “This is one heck of a team audition you guys are throwing.”

“Welcome to my life Scarlet, I think I pissed of a Chinese monk in a previous lifetime.”

“Yeah I think I got the whole interesting times thing happening too.”

The guy I hit recovers and comes back hard and into formation with his buddy and they fire rockets at us.

“Oh lovely…”

I have no words really when they veer away from us and detonate in empty air. I see Sentinel with his hand outstretched…powers and power armor? Ho…that…that I wasn’t expecting.

Neither were they and I open fire on the guy that I had blaster punched and like that firefly trick I concentrate on this…rapid fire…and homing…hit the damaged part…the intakes for the thruster packs they’re using.

He goes down in a…oh shit he’s on fire…there’s an explosion in his suit…did I?

I get hit by the other guy and hard this guy’s a much better shot that the first guy that I fought and there’s micro-explosions erupting along my shield and each on feels like I’m getting hit hard by a baseball bat…actually seven bats in total and I’d be dead, actually dead because there’s a lot more that would of hit me if Sentinel hadn’t pulled me into his arms and turned away and covered me with his own body…oh god…a fully auto barrage with explosive rounds…

All I can hear is the m-80 fireworks kind of sounds going off with each round and see sparks and bit’s of armor and flames…the smell of burned explosives and…pork…oh god…no…no… no.

The bastard goes past us in a flyby and he banks to come at us again and Sentinel is still awake and alive some how and he says. “Scarlet…”

“Yeah…?”

“Hold me up.”

“Okay…?”

I take a tighter grip and he does that arm thing and he raises his arm again and I see chunks of armor missing and underlay missing and bleeding and burned human flesh underneath.

Then his suit shuts down?

Sentinel sort of does that snarling grunt like a guy benching hard weight and his fingertips crackle with spider lightning?

The guy coming at us screams in fear and shock as he hits something and his power armor literally flies apart like all of the assembly locks and stuff all popped open at once and his flight speed is now pulling his armor off of him as he’s heading to the water in an uncontrolled tumble.

He’d been goop for the fishes if Daystar hadn’t light speed flashed in and caught him…part of me lets a breath go. He might have deserved to get taken out but in the end I’d much rather the heroes be heroes and have these guys tried in a court of law and be dealt with justly than dying.

I’m looking for the one that went down in flames.

“Scarlet…”

“Scarlet…”

Nothing…just bits still burning on the water. I…I killed someone.

“Scarlet…”

“Darcy.”

Oh…what…oh…he knows…

He takes my chin in his hand to look at me in the face and says. “It was a good shoot.”

“But…”

His suit powers back up and he slides his boot under my feet and he wraps his arms around me in this hug.

Which takes me right back to him doing this and saving me…

I break down bawling in his arms.

Scarlet-11.

Chapter 11

I don’t really remember much from the point of where I started bawling my eyes out. Little hazy patches mixed in with other hazy red lit patches in my mind. I know that I was in Sentinels arms and crying like a woman that had just lost her mind or part of her soul but inside of myself.

I’m Darcy, curled into a ball in this place that’s like some kind of salt flats but I’m on flagstones and there’s this structure just behind me of this temple? It’s so strange because I looks like a medieval era constructed geodesic dome and that’s mixed with a lot of middle eastern designs.

Like a sort of stained glass mosque.

Then Gran’s there….she’s holding me and the others are there too…the other Scarlet Angels are there and they’re stepping in and kneeling and rubbing my back or a shoulder and almost everyone of them are crying along with me, for me.

“Gran?”

“Hello Darcy Sweetie.” I hug and cry a bit more at that because the way that she said that it’s just like I’ve always been her Darcy. Dead or not Gran’s still Gran and being amazing like that’s still a super power of hers.

“You’re dead…”

“Yeah I suppose I am.”

“You suppose?”

“Well for each of us Angels part of our life force, of us binds itself to the bracelet.”

“So not all of you went to heaven?” (Sniffle.)

“Yes honey but I went to heaven but Scarlet me stays here.”

“But…”

“It’s fine honey, just like in life souls are adaptable.”

“But You’re okay?”

“Okay? I’m proud as heck of you of course I’m okay!”

(Sniffle?)…………………

“But I killed a man?”

“Darcy if he’d been any kind of man he’d had never joined such a movement in the first place much less them attack children.”

“But…”

She takes my face in her hands. “You’re a super, that makes you and our families targets. That could’ve been or might someday come to them coming at our family in the same way.”

“No…No…I won’t let them.”

“Exactly my sweet girl you’d give your last breath and do whatever you could to do to stop them right?”

I nod. “Yes.” (Sniffle.)

“And are the families of those children and those children any less innocent or deserving than our family?”

“No Gran…”

“Good girl, that’s exactly why I chose you.”

I cry a bit more but it’s different here, I can feel her sinking into me like the way she used to make tea but I’m the hot water. It’s Gran but it’s Scarlet and there’s a bond here now beyond the grandchild and grandparent. We both chose, we’ve both done “The Job” even though I’m just starting, we’ve both killed to defend those that need defending. It hurts, it sucks but it’s not easy, it should never be easy.

“No Honey it’s never easy, it’s one of the reasons why we are able to cry baby. We need the tears to wash the blood away.”

“Gran?”

“Yes honey?”

“Is the other you happy?”

“Yes honey I’m with my loved ones.”

“Are you happy?”

“Yes, I’m home here, with my family here. We’re related to half of these women here Darcy, they’re our family too and even the other bearers of the Matrix.”

“Matrix? Like the Movie or the Transformers thing?”

“Not quite honey, a long time ago there was a war where the light faced the darkness in a big way. There was a goddess called Myriad and she was a champion of light a goddess of love and of justice and even a goddess of war. But she had been gravely wounded by an enemy and was dying and in that time the gods and goddesses she stood with abided by her wishes and took the last parts of her life force and created The Myriad-Matrix as a weapon of good. It was bestowed as she wished on one of the members of her followers with the most light and the most heart. That turned out to be the son of one of the goddesses priestesses and her energy filled him and her essence offered him a choice. It’s that energy that shifts and changes us She can’t work without a willing heart and we all become part of each other.”

“Part of each other?”

She gestures around. “All of this Darcy, all of us here ate connected and we’re all a part of you now.”

“Oh…”

“Yes, oh…and it’s for these times, the hard times and the deep trials honey…you’re not alone you’ll always have us. You’ll always have me.”

“Always?”

“Yes always.”

We hug and hold each other until the place faded out as I fell asleep.

………………………………..................Okay I’m not sure how long it’s been but I’m asleep on this really comfy huge couch and I smell food. Everything growls I swear and not just my stomach. I get up and rub at my eyes. I sort of stumble around sleepy, I feel a mess. I’m still shifted in my powered up Scarlett state.

I look around and it’s really big in here. Condo like big three or four floors and very chic, how chic well the staircase looks like it’s crystal set in place by anti gravity tech. That alone would be a couple of million. It’s very open air in here too but not sparse it’s not ever really intimidating. As nice as the place is there’s movie poster on the walls instead of the high end art. I see lots of models everywhere and even vintage toys.

There’s and office nook in this raised dais library’s corner and at a glance there’s serious computer stuff in there but I see a mess too.

I’m oddly reassured by that.

I follow my nose especially when I smell something bready and hot and I go through an archway into this big modern kitchen and see Ryan Chase there, then I see the Helmet for the Sentinel armor there left out. Okay given there’s no armor here he did that on purpose.

Yeah he knows I’m Darcy, or that Darcy’s Scarlet.

“Hey, you’re awake you okay?”

“Yeah, just I’ve never…”

“It’s okay it was a clean shoot.”

“It wasn’t okay Ryan it’ll never be okay but…but I’d do it again.”

“Good, it’s good it hurts and that you feel this way about it.”

“It’s the only way I can look at it, I’m made this way. Always have been.”

He walk to another counter and passes me these scrubs but they’re red and there’s those cheap emergency panties in a package along with some toiletries and flip flops. “Here I got a care pack slapped together I figured you’d like to do the clean and showered thing before eating.”

“Oh god yes thank you Ryan….uhm sorry should I still be using your hero name or calling you sir or Mr. Chase?”

“No…we’re semi off the clock now so out of my armor I’m always Ryan, even to the people that work for me. It’s just not me otherwise….here.”

He takes a glass and puts it to the drink dispenser built into the fridge and it fills with chocolate milk. I take it gratefully since my energy’s on low and I sort of was feeling that more than hungry low blood sugar headache. I actually guzzle it lady like or not. I pass him back the glass.

“Another?”

“Maybe half.”

I take that with me and he tells me where I should go to use the shower and it’s in one of the guest rooms. The place is pretty new looking and It has that just moved in thing to it that’s sort of rings true since there’s a lot of personal stuff here that doesn’t fit in with the rest of the place. And there’s this part of me that’s…tweaked to him. It’s Sentinel he’s a real basified hero, he saved my life and he kept me safe while I lost it crying and like a knight in shining armor brought me here.

I’m not going to say that I’m not feeling something from him and all of this. And he’s really damned good looking…there’s this feeling there of wanting to know more about him. More than the papers and news and the tabloids. More than the stuff I know as Sentinel.

And that makes me feel a bit guilty about feeling these things while I’m in the shower…I’m seeing Nikki, she deserves better than that from me. Well that get’s me thinking about me and Nikki and I end up hugging myself in the shower having another shaky cry and really, really wishing she was here to hold me.

I’m not having a freak out or a flashback but I’m just hurting…and I just want her.

I get cleaned up and it feels good, it actually feels a whole lot better to wash all of today off and get myself straightened out.

Ryan must have made the scrubs somehow because they’re a good match for my Scarlet look as uncostumed me/her.

I could down shift to Darcy mode but I’m not ready to do that here yet. I come down and there’s voices. Other Ark Angels…Victory, Saber, Daystar, Harrier, Samson…all in Ryan’s kitchen and all out of uniform except for Shroud? He’s that guy from Paradise City with the nasty rep.

It’s like a gathering of heroes that’s just…

It’s like walking into the JLA and their in there civvies except for Batman of course.

Apparently the floor we had are meeting on and the one above and below it got V-Trashed.

“V-trashed?”

“Victory trashed, back in the day she had a habit of racking up some really high levels of collateral damage.” Daystar says handing me a tray.

“Really?” I smile a thank you at him as I take the tray. I can’t help it Chris Daystar is not just hot and built and huge and blonde but he’s just got something that really says decent guy, it’s like he gives off good guy more that super hotty.

Which is good because Saber’s his wife and she’s a martial arts samurai mistress and kind of like the Wolverine of the team with an anger rep like Hawkgirl.

Speaking of her she talks around a mouthful of chili-burger. “Actually there were some insurance companies that had act of meta and then they had Victory insurance.”

I can’t help but to laugh along with the others and it feels good. I’m assuming Shroud found it funny but it was against his beliefs to show it. Yeah okay we get it you’re Batman.

Okay I was expecting a lot of things but Hot dogs, Burgers, Chili and boxed Mac ‘n Cheese wasn’t what I thought of when it came to these people. But given what we were just through…comfort food makes perfect sense.

There’s milk, and shakes and floats. No booze, apparently being a Super hero comes with drug and alcohol problems. So there whole building is a dry zone. That makes sense. I’m also really glad that both Saber and Victory are big eaters for women. I’m starved and I’m not getting flak for it.

And you’d think that we’d not talk shop, not talk about what just happened but we’re into talking about what happened and getting this out and figuring things out.

Apparently there was something there, something I was feeling.

Something pushing the crowd along.

Something Mystical.

I look the same way the others do as Chris Daystar set’s this pearl the size of a large marble on the counter.

I can’t help it. “Guys…there’s something alive in there.” I can feel it….almost see it, and my tummy isn’t liking the feel of the thing.

Scarlet-12.

Chapter 12

I’m getting stared at and Chris and Ryan are looking at me like I’m a bit crazy. “No seriously guys it’s alive.”

I see something inside it swirling like mist or water then there’s this shape like a head there but it’s semi triangular and there’s the flare of stormy blue eyes.

They’re all looking at it now and Chris is frowning at it. “That mage character that mixed it up with the students had this thing.”

“It’s full of negative chi hon.” Sasha/Saber says with a thoughtful expression on her face. “Demon?”

I stop mid sip of my shake. “Demon? They’re real?”

There’s a bunch of nods. Saber says. “Yes there’s other beings from other planes of existence…if it makes more sense think of it as invaders and predators from another string theory place, but it’s more like a spider web at this point in creation.”

“Oh…so what do we do with it.”

There’s a communal. “Call John.”

“John?”

Chris says. “John Wisdom.”

“The stage magician? He doe real magic?”

“Yes, it’s his cover he actually does real magic in his shows it’s why people can’t disprove his tricks.”

“Because they’re not tricks.”

………………………………..I feel something… “No Scarlet they’re not.” I turn and he’s there in the room….how? “Wow that was fast.”

“I don’t advocate waiting when it comes to demons.” He smiles at me. “It’s good to see you back.”

“You knew one of us?”

“Yes, several and it’s always been a pleasure.”

He takes my hand gently and shakes it. Oh…he’s. Okay I’m feeling some attraction for sure but he’s someone who’d pull me in with interest even as Dale. Older in his fifties, fit and very well dressed and handsome with this long hair in a pony tail and just everything that comes with this older guy with everything together…and he’d be great to know as Dale because he’d really be interesting I think but now as Scarlet he’s so got this feeling and look of everything a girl might be looking for in a man.

He’s very charming.

And he’s soon shaking hands and gently hugging the women who he knows here with this warm familiarity. Victory is putting her phone away. “I wish this was just a social call John but it’s not. We might have a real problem.” She gestures at the pearl.

He raises an eyebrow. “Soul pearl…Japanese magic.”

“Japanese?” Chris says. “The kids that tangled with the mage said he seemed like a white guy.”

“Could be it’s rare stuff there’s only one being that might know the spells for this onworld and he’d never be involved in this.”

Shroud nods. “Six wouldn’t do this he’d have no reason.”

“Six?” I ask. Shroud looks towards me. “Shang Lee the sixth.”

I give him a black look.

He adjusts his cloak. “Chinese sorcerer, he runs Asia-Major in Paradise City.”

“What’s that?”

Victory says. “The Asian neighborhood down there Six’s the godfather over all the different cultures down there and all the gangs. He’s big organized crime.”

“Oh.” Wow there’s so much I’m learning and need to know at the same time.

John’s taking the pearl and staring at it. “Six wouldn’t even sell these as weapons and I’m not getting any fingerprint I know of from this. I’d say we have a new player.”

“Weapon?” Victory asks and beats me to it.

“The master of the pearl can use the powers and abilities of the soul inside of it.”

Chris nods. “That tracks the kids said he was doing lightning with it.”

John nods taking out a small chest. “It think it’s a Mephit.”

I look at it as he puts the pearl in the box, it feels familiar in a way. “Mephit?”

“A nasty elemental based demonic spirit. I can take care of this but whoever did this is skilled.”

“I felt something in the crowds at the bridge.”

“He’s very likely not using just one creature, I’ll go to the sites to check out the residues.”

He nods to us. “I’ll let you know what I find.”

Chris gets up. “I’ll go with you and show you the fight area.”

He shakes hands and hugs again before leaving with Daystar. I look at everyone. “I hate to eat and run but I have RL to deal with and classes.”

Victory nods. “We’ll get together soon and keep you in the loop with this and the stuff you’ll need to get started on.”

“Thanks, more homework.”

She just smiles at me wryly. “You know even if you weren’t on the team that’s all stuff you need to learn.”

“I know just right now after all of this my brain is screaming nooooo at anything that requires thought or just…”

She nods. “Go, hit your RL and get some downtime….too much of this will get to you.”

I get up and Ryan smiles and comes over and hugs me. “C’mere a minute okay?”

“Okay?”

He takes me to this side office and opens a cabinet and passes me some things. I look….a movie theatre card fox Universal Theatres with unlimited access…and some tickets…wow he’s got access to everything.

“Ryan…you don’t have to…”

“Hey, rich guy here these get sent to me for free. There’s a lot of free swag they send my way to just hope I’ll show up. I like to share so…take these and take your girl out for a few good dates and this way you won’t have to worry about the costs and just have a good time.”

“Okay…I still have to thank you for everything you’ve done for me so far.”

“No you don’t. Darcy you’re a friend…we just went through the shit together and in our kind of life real friends are hard to come by and keep. It’s just something friends do.”

I hug him and hang on a bit not the attraction thing but just because he’s really cool and a nice guy. I lean up and kiss his cheek. “Thank you but I’m paying you back for this.”

“Darcy…”

“No…I can’t do much but I can cook, how long has it been since you had some good old home cooking?”

He smiles. “Way too long, all of us it’s been too long.”

“Then it’s what I’ll do.”

He smiles. “I’ll walk you out?”

“That’d be cool this place is so huge that I’d get lost.”

He takes me up to the roof by the elevator or rather the hangar area and wow…there’s a lot of toys here. He opens the force field? In the wall and I hug him again and close my eyes letting the energy out to re-uniform.

“Thanks Ryan, I mean it.”

“I know, I’ll see you soon.”

“Okay…”

I step off the edge and fall backwards and go freefall and it’s such a rush as I’m heading towards the ground and I get about a hundred feet from splat when I kick in the energy and pull up out of the dive and explode up into the sky with a yell giving it everything and another yell as I feel the pop-wash over my field as I break the sound barrier and head off into the sky.

I really should head home but my heart’s not ready for that and I kick in the speed and I get way up over the clouds.

Oh…I mean really…there is nothing like this at all…passing shuttles and jets here and there but skimming clouds…punching through ones full of rain or snow…it’s so…

I decide to really open it up and see what I can do…up higher and faster just pushing things…yelling and letting shit out and I step on it as it were then….then it happens.

I…

I break atmosphere.

Oh…

Oh my god…

Stunned isn’t the word.

I’m just one person…no suit, no ship…just me and now I’m standing? Here in orbit and I am looking down at my home planet under me both huge and small and…I’m crying…oh it’s good tears. I really can’t put into words just the way this is reaching into my…Dale, Darcy, Scarlet…all of me is just.

I’m not even sure how long I’m up here for but by the time the wonder and shock settles to where I can function there’s something there settled inside of me. I’m here…able to look down and see this, see everyone there down there and every living soul down there deserves the right to live free, be happy and safe and this is so my calling…I know I’ve said these things before but when you see things that keep pointing these things out to you it means something…right?

There is one thing I do…something I need to see before heading home.

I move to the path of the planet’s movement….and wait…it’s absolutely amazing I shield my eyes with my field and watch the sun come into view of the edge of New Haven’s horizon.

I cry again just moved…just yeah…

I get myself under control and do a fall roll over and fly down to home…more than ever this is my home…down in over the southern ocean and pass over the islands down there and then over Paradise City the mountains and the New Phoenix desert then out over the Vulcan plateau and the volcanoes there and from there and head over the Lakeland hills and then follow the colonial highway home up over the Sentinel mountains and in over Ark City.

The fighting, the things that happened…seeing the planet like that getting that perspective changes…everything.

I was gone longer than I thought because the morning sun is coming up and I smile at it as I’m landing in my place with an almost “hey you” kind of feeling. I shift my uniform away and head away into the shower and down shift to Darcy and then to Dale.

It feels very strange to be me this time.

I need to get used to being me again. It’s not like being Dale, me’s a bad thing but I’ve spent the last two days as Darcy and well I’m kind of used to it? Acclimated….I guess that’s the word for it.

I get some clothes, books and get into my workout clothes and head into campus going for a run first and hen off to the gym. Feeling the way my muscles move getting myself worked out and by the time I’m out of the pool after the run and the weights I feel more like me.

I shower and change and walk to the food hall and seeing things still all new things…or just everything new.

I can’t help the grin on my face when I see Nikki at the counter trying to decide. She looks really nice this morning and I get a tray and head over to her.

“Hey, Morning.”

She looks up and smiles at me. “Hey, you’re here early?”

“Up all night studying so jogged in early to hit the gym.”

“I so couldn’t work out like that.”

“It’s new to me too but not being home and doing chores I’m feeling the city life.”

“You’re here early too.”

“I’ve got an early lab so I thought I’d beat the crowds. How’s Darcy?”

“Good she’s out getting familiar with the city I think.”

“I had a great time with her.”

“She did too, she was very happy and jazzed after the whole thing.”

“She was?”

“Yeah, you’ve got her feeling things she’s never felt before.”

“Me too…”

“C’mon let’s get some food and coffee and we can talk a bit before we have to hit our classes.”

“Sure.” She smiles and I kind of wish I was Darcy right now so I could kiss her.

Scarlet-13.

Chapter 13

Three days later.

Sigh…

Yeah big sigh…

I’m just looking at Nikki as she’s biting her lip as she’s sweeping through the stacks looking for a book to add to the research she’s doing for one of her term papers and I’m there watching her and I’m here as the guy version of me but it really doesn’t mean that I’m appreciating Nikki like that.

Okay as Dale I can, on a physical level sure no problem even with her being VG as well not a deal breaker as far as dale’s concerned. But Nikki’s not into guys…and I’m not saying this as a commentary on stuff in my head but I’m lesbifantiszing about Nikki.

Darcy is in my head stretched out on this imaginary bed head held up by her hands and elbows watching Nikki through my eyes as she’s on her tippy toes reaching for a book and there’s just a few wisps of her hair coming free and she’s biting her lower lip a little and she’s in this big old t-shirt over a tank top and a long skirt that goes with is and ballet flats…

Sigh again…Nikki has no idea sometimes just how beautiful she is without even trying.

Sometimes it’s hard not telling her and coming clean but it’s still dangerous, still something I don’t want to risk with her.

But there are times like this I just wish I could be either the guy she likes or just have better reasons for being Darcy.

I need to get a bit of a Darcy life.

I power up my notebook and start to go online for the newspaper and start looking at casting information. I’m well Darcy is supposed to be here interested in acting and theatre but I haven’t moved on that yet.

I suppose I need to really, I need to go to some auditions at least. It’ll help me built my identity as Darcy.

Wow, and wow…there’s a huge section for auditions and shows and all the stuff that goes on in between all the onstage stuff.

And there’s a section that’s right up my alley.

No experience necessary.

I look at the different ads and even some of the plays and tag a few of them to look at later.

I look at Nikki again so into her studies and smile and I get up to help her carry over the armload of books to our table. “Here, let me.”

“Thanks Dale.”

“So why the hardcopy? You could just scan this onto your reader you know.”

“Yes but that would deprive me of actually reading the books.”

I grin at her. “Twenty seventh century and we still love out books.”

She lovingly runs her fingers over the spines of the books. “Some of us still do, I’m an addict myself…reading on a screen is great but compared to a book…the smells and the weight and the feel there’s nothing like it.”

“I’ll have to pass that along to Darcy.”

She blushes but says. “Okay…” with that smile.

We go through some of the human sexuality texts and I’m reading some books on the effects on prosthetics on the female psyche. It’s a good read, women are very connected to who they are and suffering a trauma that permanently changes that is actually petty complex.

Considering me as Darcy…and if I was permanently Darcy and lost a limb, or my breasts to cancer…It’s something really interesting me and in a way where I’m studying prosthetic engineering it’s seriously important now to consider?

It’s the twenty seventh century and you’d think we’d have all this technology that’d replace stuff like this. Well we do and we don’t. There’s cybernetics for sure but just for a regular vision based cyber eye is around fifty grand, and up and up depending on the makes or models. Some get lucky if you can call it that and get set up with some if you are police or military and hurt in the line of duty.

But affordable? Way too many corporations are into making money off this sector of medicine. And there are too many insurance companies that just say it’s not needed to live.

But there’s living and being alive right?

There’s bio-prosthetics basically cloned limbs and organs but we’ve never been able to crack the decay rate…that’s where we clone something that we need and for some reason there’s a rejection that in the best of matches we can’t keep from happening and in ten or twelve years the organ even if cloned from your own body will start degrading.

We haven’t broke that fault yet and it’s a big deal.

The Vishanti however have.

And their treatment is done on their property and held as a secret. And it’s hugely expensive but once it’s done it’d done and no amount of samples has ever given us insight to whatever they do.

Yeah I could go on a lot about this stuff. But me, I’m planning on working at a hospital a good one where it has charities to take off the burden of the cyber ware costs. But I want to work on prosthetics too…maybe something you can slide your amputated limb into that might be as good as something cybernetics but a lot, a lot cheaper.

I’m still really into this without being Scarlet. I’ve always wanted to do this and help people and trust me. If you grown up on a farm or a ranch even in these days you get familiar with people being hurt.

I yawn and look over at Nikki. “I’m done in, too much in the books for my brain right now I need to get out for a bit.”

“Mmm-hmm ‘kay Dale.” She waves bye with an absent minded finger wiggle really into her book on The Transsexual Revolution.

I’m not really familiar with the book but it’s about how there’s non-op but living as female people and likely very pertinent stuff for Nikki as the prosthetics stuff is for me. It makes me smile that she’s so into it and so cutely into it.

I am however filled up with all the stuff I’ve been reading and do need a break. You can feed your mind sure but information’s like food you got to let yourself digest it.

I stop and scan the book I had so I can PDF them later and I head home jogging to shake things loose and…

There’s nothing like being hot and sweaty as Dale and stepping into my shower becoming Darcy.

Sigh…really good relaxed sigh.

As much as I like just being myself and everything I’m finding that I like being Darcy, I like being a girl and not for any other reason than that. Not even fancy really as I go from showering to just puttering around the house in a comfy tee-shirt with sweat pants on and my hair tied up just cleaning up the house and doing my laundry and listening to some music.

Funny thing is there’s nothing sexual about this, no loving my breasts or the way my legs feel or anything it’s just, me…it’s me getting to be myself but this other side of me. And the Dale side of me? You know how I was mentally watching Nikki from my Darcy in Dale perspective well Dale me is just laying back has asleep on this mental sofa with that guy contentment of being on a house with a woman doing the housework and cooking thing. No, not like a sexist thing but that good way when you’re a guy is in the same room or house when his mom or grandmother or significant other is into doing the homemaking thing.

Yes I know I’m the same person but as good as the Darcy sigh thoughts are as Dale, Dale’s relaxed male thing actually kind of hits part of the girl in my with this shot of femizen.

And doing the housework as Darcy is a learning thing for me too. I wasn’t born this way or even mentally been a girl so I don’t have that grown up female touch to things but I am trying to feel out my own style.

One of those is while it’s still nice out I hang out the laundry. I know to some people that’s a lot more of a pain but Grams did it and I like the smell of fresh sheets on the bed.

And cooking is something I’m enjoying too. I’m a decent cook anyways with basic stuff but baking has a lot more appeal to me as Darcy. Dale can bake pre-made dough’s and can make a bit of pie crust.

But I’m thinking I’m going to…

I take out my phone and text.

[Hey.]

[Hi!]

[Dale said u were studying.]

[Writing a paper.]

[Oh so busy?]

[Yeah sorta.]

[Supper?]

[Was planning on the food hall.]

[I’m cooking.]

[Oh?]

[Pot roast and pirogues.]

[Never had either.]

[Really? You’ve never had pot roast?]

[Nope, if it’s not take out my family really never cooked it.]

[Really, you want to come over?]

[Yes!, I’m so tired of studying and researching stuff. Day was right to take off.]

[Day?]

[Nick-name.]

[Dale’s pretty short as it is.]

[Well yeah but he makes my day brighter.]

[Really?]

[He’s a real friend, he does want anything like my other friends do.]

[He’d date you if you were into guys.]

[I’d date him if I was into guys but aside from that we’re really good friends.]

[Cool.]

[Very cool, just because we’re just friends he hasn’t deleted my sex.]

[He wouldn’t, I wouldn’t why treat someone different just because they don’t want to date you?]

[Exactly that’s why Day fit to me, he’s like a bit of my own clean sunshine. No B.S.]

[You know he’s got secrets too right? He’s not perfect.]

[Darcy, no one’s ever going to be perfect. But Dale treats me like me, that’s enough.]

[Just…just okay.]

[You okay?]

[Yeah, just still trying to find my footing here.]

[You’ll get there, life’s a journey not a race.]

[I know, so can I feed you oh wise one?]

[What time?]

[Anytime we can just relax as I cook.]

[I could help.]

[Even better.]

[Can I bring anything?]

[You’re laundry, we have our own machines.]

[You sure?]

[Yeah.]

[See you soon! *Kisses*]

I smile and blush and yeah I hold the phone to my chest and smile and I dig out the pot roast I have and my pressure cooker. I seen a lot of my home meals done in theses things. I put a bit of oil in the pot and I roll the roast in a bit of salt and pepper and garlic and onion powder and brown it off.

Then I pull a trick from an ex girlfriend and I take the pot roast out and put a saucer in the bottom of the pressure cooker and this will keep the roast fro sticking to the bottom of the pot. The rest is a bit of coffee (that’s optional) some rough chopped onions I use two then some garlic and a shot of HP sauce some brown sugar about a teaspoon is all you need and a can of beer then fill the pot of the cooker with water about halfway.

I put some potatoes on to cook for the pirogues and I tend to by a baking potato type since they make fluffy mashed potatoes and fries and well baked potatoes of course. Now my dad always steamed his taters for mashing like this because they’re drier. Once I have them ready to be mashed I add some pepper and some salted butter that I put in it cut into small cubes one the potato has cooled.

I cheat and use store bought pasta sheets and a Cheepo plastic mold for them from a dollar store. (Cheepo’s an actual brand.) I roll the pasta in egg whites after they’re sealed and roll them in a bit of corn meal and flour and then deep fry them. They go all crispy and not quite battered but the pasta gets cooked from the oil and the steam from the potatoes and…I roll my eyes in yum as I bite into one and it’s crispy outside then fluffy potatoes and melty bits of butter.

Okay this is heavy mid-western food so I only make four each and freeze the rest and I make a salad to keep us from getting too ugh… with the heavy stuff. I toss together some quartered tomatoes and chunks of cucumber and just toss them in some salt a pinch of sugar, fresh dill and a bit of red vinegar not a lot of any of it just to sort of kiss the veggies.

I’m making this when the doorbell rings. I head to the door and Nikki’s there and she’s got these big linen drawstring bags and I see a cab pulling away.

“Oh shit Nikki I should’ve picked you up!”

“Hey, you’re kind enough to feed me and let me wash my stuff her it’s okay Darcy. Nice place by the way.”

“Dale bought it from a big bunch of stuff he was left in his grandmothers will.”

“And he bought a house?”

“It’s close to school, if he ever decides to move or something it’ll rent well.”

“Cool, actually sounds like Day.”

“Come on in.”

I take the two bags she has and she takes her one on the walkway and the steps and head right to the laundry room. She’s looking around. “Wow, this is really nice.”

I smile setting her stuff on the counter. “Well I did some housework so it’s cleaner than usual.”

“The trials of living with a guy huh.”

“Dale’s actually pretty neat, just catching up on the stuff you don’t get done when you’re busy is all.”

“Oh, supper smells good.”

“Good then. It should be ready, you want to eat?”

Her stomach growled almost on cue and she covers her face blushing. “Sorry…”

“Hey, student budget and your other expenses. And…..you studied through lunch right?”

“Yes…” Hand still over her face. I reach over and take it and lead her to the kitchen.

I tell Nikki where to find stuff to set the table and I take the pot roast out and make the gravy in the slow cooker pot with a bit of flour and lots of pepper and a stick blender using it to puree the garlic and onions all together and then flake the beef back into it.

We have it over the crispy pirogues like gravy over chicken fried steak. It’s a good supper but we sort of have a bit of awkward silence until we start talking about my acting. I admit I haven’t even gotten started yet and I’m still trying to work up the nerve for testing the waters of the big city.

The rest of the night is us doing her laundry and talking about the few theater shows she’s been to and music and just talking and there’s just something about just kicking back and folding clothes.

Yes, it’s different when you’re doing it with someone you’re into.

Plus I’m learning a lot of women’s laundry stuff. But it’s more than that, there’s a lot of picturing her in the clothes and god…I don’t know if she’s brought it here on purpose but she has some really sexy, really girly lingerie and there’s all this eye contact and she’s so pretty.

I’m really aroused and it’s kind of yay and scary.

I’m really thinking a lot of sex, of sex with Nikki and that’s as exciting as it is scary…do real born girls feel like their whole nervous system is humming when it gets like this? I hate it and love it at the same time.

Nikki’s nipples are hard too, I can even see it even through her sweater and bra now that I’m learning the signs. Just knowing that makes mine feel so aching and hard. It’s like getting a boner sort off…that sexual ache, it really similar, but two points and way, way more intense in the way it radiates through all those nerves.

But as much as we’re feeling it and we’re sharing glances and blushes and smiles and things we don’t go past that. We take out time but we do eventually finish the clothes and I get the car warmed up and then drive her home.

I carry her stuff up the stairs and to her apartment.

“Thanks Darcy, I really needed this tonight.”

“I had a really good time Nikki, I always do with you.”

“Thanks.” She gives me that smile and blushes.

“Nikki?”

“Yes?”

“I want to take you out on a date.”

“Me?”

“Yeah you.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I really, really like you. Heck more than anyone I’ve really met before and…”

Nikki steps forward and kisses me.

I mean really kisses me and it’s that pinning me to her door jam kiss with her soft lips on mine, the flavor of here peach lip gloss and the rush of her scent into my brain because I have to breathe through my nose and her hands just rest on my hips and my girlness tightens like I’ve never felt before and at the same time there’s this excited burst of adrenaline getting all mixed up with the feelings.

Feelings…

Sexually my body is just on…wired…

But the way she’s kissing me, the way she’s touching and holding me all the soft romantic sexuality is melting me too.

I feel…this…

“Yes.” Nikki says as she breaks the kiss, kisses? I think thee was more than one.

“Yes.”

“Yes, I’ll go out with you Darcy, I’m free all day Saturday and Sunday.”

“Saturday night?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve uhm got tickets, we can see a show or a movie?”

“A show, I don’t get to see them that much.”

“Okay…” I’m not able to stop smiling or blushing, I feel like I did yeas ago when I first started dating but totally different at the same time.

“Okay…” She smiles this even sweeter smile, that smile she has talking about me to Dale but this one’s for me.

I feel all happy, yay, smiley-melty.

“G’night Darcy.”

“Goodnight Nikki.”

I step back and she closes her door and I’m leaning on the wall in the hallway and can just feel her there leaning on the other side of her wall.

I take a deep full of life breath and head downstairs and drive my car home pretty quickly for me and I’m inside and locking up and make a beeline for the sky light and pop it open and shift heading as fast as I can into the night sky throwing in an upward corkscrew and grinning like an idiot.

“Whoo-hoo she said yes!”

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/”

My Super Secret Life…Scarlet 14.

Chapter 14

*Previously………

“Nikki?”

“Yes?”

“I want to take you out on a date.”

“Me?”

“Yeah you.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I really, really like you. Heck more than anyone I’ve really met before and…”

Nikki steps forward and kisses me.

I mean really kisses me and it’s that pinning me to her door jam kiss with her soft lips on mine, the flavor of here peach lip gloss and the rush of her scent into my brain because I have to breathe through my nose and her hands just rest on my hips and my girlness tightens like I’ve never felt before and at the same time there’s this excited burst of adrenaline getting all mixed up with the feelings.

Feelings…

Sexually my body is just on…wired…

But the way she’s kissing me, the way she’s touching and holding me all the soft romantic sexuality is melting me too.

I feel…this…

“Yes.” Nikki says as she breaks the kiss, kisses? I think there was more than one.

“Yes.”

“Yes, I’ll go out with you Darcy, I’m free all day Saturday and Sunday.”

“Saturday night?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve uhm got tickets; we can see a show or a movie?”

“A show, I don’t get to see them that much.”

“Okay…” I’m not able to stop smiling or blushing, I feel like I did yeas ago when I first started dating but totally different at the same time.

“Okay…” She smiles this even sweeter smile, that smile she has talking about me to Dale but this one’s for me.

I feel all happy, yay, smiley-melty.

“G’nite Darcy.”

“Goodnight Nikki.”

I step back and she closes her door and I’m leaning on the wall in the hallway and can just feel her there leaning on the other side of her wall.

I take a deep full of life breath and head downstairs and drive my car home pretty quickly for me and I’m inside and locking up and make a beeline for the sky light and pop it open and shift heading as fast as I can into the night sky throwing in an upward corkscrew and grinning like an idiot.

“Whoo-hoo she said yes!”

*And Now…………………….

I don’t know what my life is going to be like with this whole super heroine thing but right now I’m on top of the world literally.

I love flying, I mean in an air vehicle would have been cool to me before but this is just me and my powers and nothing else as I wind myself up and up and up into the sky.

Happy just doesn’t really match this the way that it used to for me and I stop once I’m well above the city and even the air car traffic just up here with the only thing close to this height is the airplanes and the traffic from the shuttle port.

Ark City at night so many people so many lives and lights and it’s all shining down there below me and it’s stunning.

I’m so blown away by being able to do this and at the same time I’m feeling humbled by this too.

I’m flying.

I’m up here doing this and I’ve been granted that privilege. It’s way more than my birthright you know?

I sit there for a few minutes taking it all in before heading north banking eastward until I hit the city coastline and fly over along the harbour and over all these boats and ships and stuff.

I’m oddly smiling at the tankers and the loading docks just because we live in an age of space travel and yet we still have ocean tankers and cargo ships and we still use those shipping containers and there’s still the fact we have trains and stuff for all of that too.

I mean in an age like this some things just are still as they were hundreds of years ago. Oh there’s like little improvements to all of the stuff but there just something…I don’t know right about it?

Maybe it’s this sort of sense that this was the right choice and this is my place in the world.

Then again I just have to figure out my life as Dale and my life as Darcy and how I’m going to still go about keeping this secret if I’m looking at a relationship. I’d love to tell Nikki but I have to protect her from what might come at me down the road.

It doesn’t take too long for me to hit the edge of the city at its northern most point and it’s kind of neat since I’ve never been here. It’s kind of old and it’s kind of poor. The city goes really close to the mountains and the mountain chain or a large part of it rings the city. It’s actually they say the crater from the alien ship underneath everything.

You have the foothills that are all these old industry places still as the first colonists did a large amount of mining way back when and it was just easier to be that close then as you get more towards the city proper you have the old neighbourhoods that were where all the workers and their families live.

There’s this whole odd mixture of slums and these really old places here. Parks and places with statues there’s a lot of old churches here too and just really well built classic old buildings. They build stuff to last in the colonial days especially for like important buildings.

Hey if you’re mining then you have a lot of stone right? Modern cutting tools like lasers were still there back then so there really is a whole lot of it around. Lennox it’s this sort of Amerifrican place…well it was settled by a lot of them has a ton of this even some of the main streets are still stone paved.

It’s kind of marred and messed up though because its home to a lot of gangs and all that nice old stuff is tagged and stuff.

Hannigan is the same sort of thing but it’s that whole Celtic/Irish/UK thing and they border each other too so there is a lot of gang stuff up here on the news. Heck I even heard about this stuff home. I mean there’s just a whole bunch of racial bullshit here…You’d think after so long we’d get a damned clue.

I’m being careful right now and sort of keeping my eyes open looking for trouble but looking after myself too. There’s a lot of anti-meta support here and these gangs well…I just don’t like the ideal of being shot down with some thing like a mini surface to air missile.

It could be worse, it could be L’l Sarajevo, the Slavic and eastern European gangs down there are filled with so much hate for each other and all these crime families that are almost like clans the place was walled off and a police force is there to keep stuff in.

It was actually a military operation at first but after like thirty years of them only stopping every so often the NHDF actually turned over the responsibility to the ACPD.

The place is that bad it’s a no fly zone.

I’ll have to ask why they haven’t been able to stop it with the Ark Angels or the military? I mean there has to be a reason right?

It’s been fun but just thinking of this has me feeling in that heroinics sort of mood. No nothing crazy but I concentrate for a minute and bring all that sort of heads up display stuff again in from of me and I think a call to headquarters.

“Hello Scarlet this is Angie how can I help you tonight?”

“I’m just out for a fly and was wondering if there’s something I should be doing? Like to make this like official?”

“One moment, there I’ve set your status to on-call and patrolling.”

“Cool…just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“I thought that I’d need like signed off on.”

“I did.”

“Oh…can I be nosey.”

“If you’d like.”

“Who are you exactly I’ve never heard of you like in the rosters and stuff.”

“I’m Angie. I’m the network admin for the Ark Angels.”

“Oh…wait the blue haired skinny girl on TV sometimes doing press scrums?”

“The one and only.”

“Okay very cool and really pleased to meat you.”

TY! Actually appears on one of my windows in the heads up display thing I have going. Then her face. “Okay this is beyond bizarre Scarlet I’m actually interfacing with magic energy.”

“Well I was thinking it was me using my powers to adapt to the stuff that worked in the world but hey if you thing it’s cool then it’s cool by me.”

She’s cute, no not in that Nikki way but like she looks fifteen and skinny and she’s got blue shoulder length hair and she’s wearing some kind of body suit.

“Okay, well I’ll leave you to it and I’ll send you feeds Scarlet so you can pick up and respond to calls.”

“That would be awesome.”

…………………………..Wow…If I had an idea then I might have stayed home.

Actually not on your life, or theirs.

Super heroine?

Tonight it was actually first responder. I’m fast and I’m available at least to take first responder calls and all my first aid training comes in handy call after call as I’m there before some of the EMT’s and that’s no judgement on them.

Ark City is a mega city it’s huge…close to four hundred million people live and work here and with that are all the things that come with any, any major city. And there’s only so much that the people hired to help can do at any given time and spread thin.

None of it is anything huge…accidents at home two were burns, a lift assist for a senior, putting out a dumpster blaze, helping people that were in a car accident and using my scarlet energy to make like a shield bandage on a bad bleed for one persons leg until the right guys came and took over and I even got to beam/laser cut the door off of the car for them.

It’s about three AM when I sign off from HQ and I head home.

I try things a little different this time…I pull the power inside but I don’t turn it off and I concentrate on floating myself down.

It’s harder, it’s a lot harder and new…I can feel this is new to both of us me and the Scarlet Angel Energy. It’s a heck of a lot slower too. But I’m out as in not glowing and I’m flying…not fast but I’m still flying and that means I’m less visible.

That’ll be good to know and good to use coming and going from home and in the field…you never know when I’m going to need to sneak up on someone.

I hit my shower feeling like I actually accomplished a huge amount of stuff today and I hit the bed a happy girl.

I even wake up happy because it’s Friday.

Not even that whole TGIF thing either but Friday…after Friday is Saturday and Saturday is my date with Nikki.

I don’t have classes until just after lunch so I take the time to actually sleep in until eight and then I sit after some tea and I focus my powers shifting to Scarlet and then in deeply on myself until I’m there.

That place with grams…inside the Scarlet zone.

“Grams?”

I get moved…that visual whoosh as I’m brought to her.

I think…I mean I’m not sure how this works if it’s Grams or a bit of her or if this is a real place or real to just me or real and made for her.

It’s a yard of this sort of temple place with grass and a low brick wall on either side and grass and she’s repairing a motorcycle?’

“Grams?”

“Hi Sweety what can I help you with?”

“Uhm….I need some help?”

“Oh, I can advise but I can’t help with much other that that you know.”

“I know but I was wondering if you could teach me?’

“Teach you?”

“How to be a girl. The tomboy thing sort of works for Darcy but Scarlet not so much.”

“Oh…you had what in mind actually?”

“Sitting, posture, walking and stuff handwriting I still can’t write like a girl does even a messy one.”

“That, that we can help you with.”

“We?”

“The others, we’re family honey and I’m a farm girl there’s other Scarlet Angels that can teach that stuff better than I can.”

“Oh…are any of them performers?’

“Yes, there’s a few one was even in the theatre scene in Ark City.”

“I’d love to know… (Blush)…I sort of made out that Darcy was a theatre student.”

“Well…we have some work to do don’t we?”

“Yeah….and Grams?”

“Yes honey?”

“Can I work on your bike with you?”

She gives me this warm grandma smile and she’s beautiful y’know. She’s still my Grandma but here she looks just like she turned greying…not as old as she was.

I step over and I hug here and we do that close woman hug walk hip to hip thing as we leave her area and head off so I can learn more…

Being able to do this with her, with them…it’s likely my greatest power.

It’s already my greatest gift.

My Super Secret Life…Scarlet-15.

Chapter 15

I take a few sips of my water and I check myself out in the mirror and try to ignore the looks for the other girls there. Honestly I’m sort of glad for the Scarlet super-heroine thing, I’m actually very comfortable in the leotard I’m wearing even though I’m still getting uses to the skirt they have us wearing with it and the legwarmers.

“Next!” The stage manager yells. “Thirty seven!”

Oops that’s me.

I go out on the stage and it’s bright they’re shining the house lights down on us and I can’t see the people in charge. I hear another voice. “Okay start!”

“Uhm…high I’m doing…” I get cut off by some woman out in the seats.

“We’ll figure it out, just start!”

I take a breath. Focus and I project like I was taught with grams and that other Scarlet Nina Crawford….yes her. Project, don’t force it but sing to the lobby… make people want to hear you out in the street and want to come in to see you perform.

“Don't look at me…Mm, mm…”
“Yeah, yeah, oh, ooh……”

“Everyday is so wonderful… and suddenly… it's hard to breathe”
“Now and then I get insecure… from all the pain…Feel so ashamed…”

(I inhale through my nose as I’m drifting that last note and I belt out the next and I’m flying in the air in my head soaring up with my voice….)

“I am beautiful! No matter what they say!”
“Words can't bring me down….”
“I am beautiful! In every single way!”
“Yes words can't bring me down… Oh no…!”
“So don't you bring me down today……”

……………………I love this song it’s wonderful and pure and poetic and it’s been the anthem for so many good things that I believe in. I’ve seen so many good videos and covers and as I sang this I tried to fly with the notes in my heart but behind those words.

The kids.

Those kids that need help and are on the streets and those kids that I have seen and worked with that need special care and education and attention and all those kids that need what I’m trying to learn how to help that need limbs replaced and they just need to have someone look at them and tell them…They are beautiful.

I look out at the lights out there and my heart is hammering in my chest god that was fun and it was scary but compared to a firefight this was that good kind of scary.

Silence…

Silence…

“Come down here and take a seat miss we’ll talk to you shortly.”

Blink, blink…

I thought even with good news it’s be like a call back.

“Next! Thirty eight!”

Eeep! Shit he’s loud and I was sort of just lost there in the moment and I run off the stage to the seats where another person wearing headphones shows me were to sit and there’s a few guys there and a few girls too and I’m getting looks.

I sit and one of the girls extends her hand she’s this really exotic mix of Hindi and African lines. “I’m Kavita.”

“Darcy…” I’m still sort of breathless.

“You were amazing.”

“I was?”

“Hell yes you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”

“Really it’s mu first audition.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Nope.”

And I’m getting stares from the others even more now and one girl/woman looks like she wants me to choke and die on my water.

“Uhm problem guys?”

Kavita laughs. “They hate you is all don’t take it personally.”

“Huh…how can I not take it personally?”

“Oh well see you’re young, fresh and obviously talented and you just show up all green and you’re that good. It’s the theater Darcy dear we hate you with all of our hearts until we’re all safely cast in a role. Until then you’re a threat.”

“Oh okay…”

She nods to this really cute looking guy there in jeans and not dancers wear and he smiles at me….blonde hair, steely blue eyes and he’s all sorts of guy pretty. “Well all except Casey there he doesn’t hate you he just wants to fuck you.”

He smiles not in a creepy way either but like he get’s this all the time way and he’s good with them busting his chops about it and he does blush but it’s just a hint of it.

“Oh…uhm…I’m seeing someone.”

Kavita snorts. “Oh that hasn’t matter to sooo many girls Darcy wait till you see him move.”

Now he’s blushing.

I grin okay aside from the whole way that some of them seem it’s kind of fun so far and I look at her. “So you don’t hate me then?”

“Darcy love when has chocolate ever been threatened by white chocolate.”

“Not vanilla?”

“Well you are a strawberry…and chocolate goes so well with strawberries…”

Oh my, she just about purrs that…gulp.

And I will say she is smoking hot in that long legged long bodied graceful dancer thing but with still great curves from really good genes…

She laughs and slips her arm in mine.

“I’m just teasing love.” Instant U.K. & C. accent from out of nowhere.

Oh that’s United Kingdom and Colonies.

I smile and sight a bit relieved. “Good because you’re all really good looking and really tempting but I sooo like my girlfriend.”

There’s some grins and some nods and the one that want’s me to choke on my water gives me this even nastier look and she moves a seat over. Oh well, I honestly don’t care if she has a problem with me being with Nikki, Nikki’s worth it.

God it’s a long afternoon. There are hundreds of people her auditioning.

Okay I won’t say that I just walked in and did this off from the first this is my seventh place today and most of those turned me down because of my looks or just wasn’t what they were looking for or just something.

I was turned down flat out by three of them for not having anything on my resume…portfolio…whatever. They wouldn’t even let me audition.

But getting to this point…wow it’s so worth it.

I’m almost bored when it becomes all about the kids and the midgets…dwarves…little people….what’s the right term?

Why all the kids and dwarves?

Labyrinth….like that ancient movie…as a musical but with parts adapted from the TV series too I guess.

I don’t even get to really talk to the heads of stuff yet and at the end of all the auditions we’re put through choreography.

Dancing is just as cool as flying once you’re past the jitters of starting up. I will say this do any kind of stint as a super-heroine and this kind of stuff really does pale in the whole level of fear that’s normally part of this.

And I have a job…this is cover for me.

I am taking this seriously and I am respecting the space and the people it’s just…I have options and stuff and I can afford to just actually love this and enjoy myself.

You know when you’re having this much fun you laugh and get along with people more and cheer on those that you start to like.

Like Kavita and Casey…god he’s good and he’s amazing actually and he’s the male lead too, he’s The Goblin King.

‘Vita’s right about seeing him dance….i have never been as amazed at a guy before outside the super-hero thing or turned on.

No not a threat to Nikki and me but I can see as a guy…through my experiences as Dale that Casey only goes to bed alone if he wants to. That being said he’s a super nice guy actually and he looks you over a time or two like any other guy but he does a really good job of talking to your face and he’s nice and helpful and funny.

And it’s a coup I guess him trying out here. I mean where else does the male lead in a show toss other’s waters and share his towel with you if you need it or show you a better way to pull of the move they just went through.

Six hours and we’re out of there and we’re given our line’s…all the lines and the downloads for the movie and the notes for the movie and for the TV show too.

I’m in the part of Flayme from the show a fire sprite that helps people light their way out of a very dark place and I even have a song to learn as I lead them from the dark place to the faerie woods.

The faerie woods lead to the bogs and the bogs surround the junk and the labyrinth.

We’re heading out in our gear and ‘Vita’s looking at me and some of the others. “We’re heading over to Cosette’s you want to join us?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s and old local club.”

“I was going to call Nikki and celebrate.”

“Tell her to come along.”

………………I’m biting my lip…. “Okay.”

I dial her up.

“Hey you…” She has this sweet almost melody to her saying that…you know that sound when a girl is happy to see you or hear from you.

“I got hired!”

“Hired!? For what?”

“I’m playing in a musical.”

“You are! What one!”

“Labyrinth.”

“I don’t know it…sorry Darcy…”

“No…no it’s cool we’re not going to be a mainline thing or anything and it’s like off some relic of a movie and TV show from like the twenty third but….i have a part…a signing part!”

I can’t help it I’m girling out and I’m right in the Yeeeeeeee….zone.

“We’re going to this actor’s kind of club to celebrate…you…you want to come over…?”

“It sounds like an industry this Darcy…would I even be welcome?”

“They said it was cool….I’m in a leotard and a soft fluffy gauzy fairy skirt.”

“What’s the address I’ll be right over.”

I laugh, well happy excitedly giggle. “Take a cab I’ll pay it’s called Cosette’s”

“Oh like the girl from Les Mis.”

“Okay…?”

“Darcy! How can you not have heard of that?”

“Uhm country girl here y;know I could sing you Oklahoma.”

“No! give me and hour then?”

“Okay I’ll meet you outside in and hour then!”

“Darcy?”

“Yes?”

“Still not our first date okay?’

“Okay, this is something different but I…I still want to share it with you.”

(Sniffle.) “Really!?”

“Yes really don’t do that you’ll make ne cry too!”

(Sniffle.) “’Kay…see you soon…”

“Okay.”

I hang up and blush. ‘Vita’s looking at me. “You too are so sweet.”

She hugs me and we stay one armed hugged while we walk down the streets and take another side street until we come to what I thought was another small, really small theatre and we have to knock to get in.

Oh my gosh there’s so much going on and so much theatre stuff on the walls and awards and these huge antique mirrors for all of us to preen in and stuff and bar maids and stuff in like renaissance costumes and dresses.

There’s yells and cheers…I hear some people actually yell ‘Vita!

And there’s this really drunk but cute guy that comes over staggering or dancing but not spilling his drinks.

“Welcome, be welcome to Cosette’s have a drink; unwind be someone else but yourself.”

Oh he’s the first guy that I’m ever met with a French accent.

We both take a drink and it taste funny like sort of like fennel or liquorice and lime?

“Thank you monsieur. You are most kind.” I do a little bow and he smiles from ear to ear and he bows back.

He says some thing in french and like in some crazy musical the lights drop and there’s a spot light on him and he starts to sing to us but the whole room too?

*Be our guest.* A song I don’t know either until ‘Vita says it’s from Disney’s version of Beauty and the Beast and he’s singing and there’s some others chiming in with other parks and then there’s the chorus with like twenty just random crazy and buzzed people jumping into it and it’s all just crazy and fun and amazing and ……

Wow…Tomas…Tomas is as guy dangerous as Casey is.

He’s the guy that came up to us…

I feel my “watch” buzz me with the feeling of Nikki and I grab my purse and I head outside and a few follow me out with glasses in hand and are having a smoke and I see the cab pull up and it’s Kavita who starts it and they yell “Nikki!” as she gets out of the cab making her jump and squeak and she turns really red.

I go over and pay the cabby and slip my arms around her waist and she does the same to me…oh…in what I’m wearing it feels really slinky and touch me yes please when she does that.

“Sorry, they’re…they’re a little crazy.”

She smiles at me. “It’s okay, I’d never been brave enough to come here and do something like this if it wasn’t you Darcy.”

I blush and we sort of nuzzles and smile at each other and the ones outside are singing A cappella…

Sha la la la la la
Don't be scared
You've got the mood prepared
Go on and kiss the girl

Sha la la la la la
Don't stop now
Don't try to hide it how, you wanna
Kiss the girl (woah-woah!)

Sha la la la la la
Float along, and listen to the song
The song say, kiss the girl

Sha la la la la
The music play
Do what the music says
You gotta, kiss the girl

Okay she’s singing in this whole Jamaican accent and I don’t know it but Nikki’s blushing again and then she’s smiling so big and I’m about to….

Then she kisses me….

Ohmygod….yay….

My Super Secret Life…Scarlet-16.

Chapter 16

The singing bunch of new people…friends and Nikki showing up and the fact that I got the part even thought it’s kind of sort of a cover has me pretty pumped up and excited and then there’s the kissing.

And it’s a real kiss.

It’s a real me getting kissed as a girl kiss and while I’ve been kissed a few times really, really good as Dale this is sooooo different.

I can feel her lips so soft in mine. And mine are girl soft too and sensitive and then there’s this sensual slide of lipstick on lipstick and that send shivers through me and then it’s just better.

Pulse hammering, hands needing to touch her, wanting more and more of this and leaning into it and just sort of melting.

I can’t really say it differently but it’s that girl thing…that the act and the intimacy is just as good as the physical thing and then.

And then…

We’re still dressed but that doesn’t matter at all because I’m leaning into her and Nikki is leaning into me and that’s when it happens.

Boobs touching.

I swear what part of me that’s Dale me in the back of my head just rolled over with a moan.

There’s being a guy and getting turned on by lesbian stuff then there’s being a guy who’s also a woman getting the lesbian experience.

And while I’ve experienced being turned on before and messed around as Darcy real deep physical attraction feels so bloody different. And honestly I’m not sure if it’s acclimation or the magic from the bracelet but I am so enjoying the echoing layers of sensations that is me being very aroused as a woman.

Okay it is a little strange getting turned on downstairs but not too bad really it’s actually sort of comparable and stuff but…

OMG I love the way that my breasts are feeling. Swelled but in a good way, flushed too and warm from the whole blood flow thing, sort of achy and needy in a good way and my nipples are so hard it again kinda hurts but it a good way and I am so…so… wonderfully aware of myself.

And the kissing just seems to go on and on and on until we kind of sort of run out of air and we’re panting and staring at each other in the eyes and Nikki gets this smile there sort of and does this happy little sexy lip bite and I really am thinking.

Take me home and make love to me.

Deep breath Darcy…no going too fast.

Nikki is worth more than a flip into the sheets, I am not that kind of girl no matter how much I really wish I was.

I swear there’s this sexy little voice in me going…but you’re a red head and gingers are fun.

Naughty.

I do take that deep breath. “Wow….”

“Yeah oh really wow…” She’s blushing and staring at me and I can tell that she’s really turned on too.

No, no boner showing but I’m pretty sure she’s working on one.

Okay that’s a sort of sobering thought.

Well not a scary one but Nikki is VG and she’s good with her guy bit.

Okay now I’m sort of wondering what that’ll be like, what she’ll look like in the bedroom.

And then the others are applauding us and it’s actually kind of good that we’re sort of surrounded and taken with them back inside the bar.

……………………………………..Oh my god this was actually so much fun. I had a few drinks but not enough to get sloshed and I’m legal the drinking age here on New Haven is actually eighteen like the voting ages and getting a hover licence.

Twenty one to fly an Aero-vehicle.

Okay maybe I’m was a little buzzed but I was being careful I’m pretty sure my tolerance is pretty light because of one I’m not a drinker and two I’m a lot lighter than Dale is. I danced a lot and try to burn it off with Nikki who can actually drink more than I can and I’m thinking that this might be one of those big city girl things.

I’ve tried a few things and I know that you shouldn’t mix and match drinks but I’m not sure that counts with cocktails.

I don’t care for white wine but I like a sweet red, I loathe cosmos and candy apple martinis…too sweet. I spit out the sip of scotch some one let me try it was really eeew tasting to me and I did like the pineapple sparklers though which are I think pineapple concentrate with rum and passion fruit and club soda.

I like the girly drinks but more of a citrus sweet than the candy like sweet. I still like beer I am still kind of country raised and all but trying the girly stuff is fun.

And so is dancing!

While I was in my mind and in the bracelet I was shown all sorts of things and while I’m not a trained dancer by any means I do have a bit of teaching in dancing as a girl and getting to use that in the bar with the other stuff that’s being played and dancing with Nikki and others.

It’s so fun!

I get to cut loose and be sexual and flirty and spazzy and just not care about presentation or poise and all that stuff that you kind of have to pay attention too all the time. I mean until I started living more as Darcy I had no idea about the way to walk and not to slouch or lean or just plop down in a skirt and the face.

That was the hardest and still is the hardest thing for me to do is to keep my hands from my face. Guys never have to do that so we just touch.

You can’t do that with make-up.

Not that I wear it that much but I have been during my interviews and auditions and stuff and I get it.

When you do it right the added effect to how you look really exceeds the bother and fuss.

But when you’re dancing it all just gets to go away and you’re socially allowed to be wilder and so is everyone else and we sort of feed off of each other and the music is so different here and scattered because some of it’s just like movie music and show tunes and stuff from musicals.

And as fun as it is its completely new to me and to Nikki well she actually is from Ark City so she’s used to there being the whole theatre and arts scene in the city even if she hadn’t really gotten into it.

Another shocker for me and one that I didn’t think would shock me given well just who I am and everything is that there is only one bathroom it’s really big but it’s unisex.

And there was some drug use in there…no thing heavy but I am sort of a cop right? I’ll have to ask the others about these situations. I mean busting someone would break my cover and it’s not like I saw anyone shooting up just well smoking up.

That and while Nikki and I were fixing our make-up I got to see in one of the stalls with the door sort of left open one guy going down on another guy for like a blow job.

No I have never watched gay porn.

And while I know gay people and lesbians and stuff I’ve never actually see it happening live.

And I think they had the stall door jammed on purpose and were putting on a show.

Oh my…I’m a super heroine I really shouldn’t be thinking about that stuff not in like as a raunchy way as I was.

Because I…because Nikki has…and the guy that gone down well he looked like it was kind of a good thing.

And I was staring until Nikki dragged me out of there giggling.

Okay that was really kind of fun doing that.

I don’t know I think we partied for something like four hours and closed down the club with a whole bunch of the others and we ended up walking and swaying and giggling with each other down the streets until we hit some of the side streets…well avenues really and we stop into Corvettes.

Okay Corvettes isn’t the type of automobile which still exists and is actually been revamped from history as an air-car.

No these are named after the type of space ship in a sort of play on words about submarine sandwiches.

They are a chain place but a really good one and we saw it and we were al like.

“Ooooh….subs!” Which was me.

“Oh I’m Sooooo hungry!” Which was Nikki and we tipsy girl stagger into the place and we’re actually not that out of place because it’s a definite post bar crowd favorite.

Okay it was still actually fun there too as we leaned on each other and just goofed and giggled over some of the food like their torpedo fries which are these fingerling potatoes and well they’re shaped like…

And two buzzed girls it was kinda juvenile funny.

And I haven’t been feeling the whole juvenile age thing for a long time.

It really kind of felt good to get back to being me, like the high school me. I know I’m a college kid and I’m still newly Darcy.

It felt really good to let off some steam I guess and with Nikki too which was great because I really like her but this was more than just that it was doing stuff even if it was just a sort of wild night out we were doing it kind of like a date and kind of like we’re friends.

I ended up going with a Mexicali circus sub which is lean ground pork with spices and it’s mixed with some mixed peppers mostly just the sweet ones and then tossed with buttered popcorn before they stuff it in a bun.

I know it sounds weird and it kinda is but right fresh before the steam and juices make the buttery popcorn all soggy it’s this really good kind of crunchy meaty kind of thing like how some stuff has like potato chips in or on top of them.

It was really good.

Nikki gets this fried fish sub with lettuce and squashed peas? Okay it looked really odd but it pleased her to no end so it was all good and I got to treat her.

Which made her happy and this sort of actually a date.

I think Nikki made that pretty clear while we were there too by how much she was kissing with me.

And on the bus.

We could’ve taken a cab I guess but we were buzzed and fading from it and we sort of decided to take the bus and sit in the big bench seat in the back and snuggle under our coats together and just enjoy the long drive and the few change-overs since we were going all the way to two other districts and when we got to the last one it was really awesome because we slipped into Cosmic Coffee and got an extra large hot chocolate that we shared all the way back to her bus stop.

And I got to walk her up to her place again and we must have spent at least ten or fifiteen minutes kissing before we said good night.

Nikki looked at me and did that little lip bite and shy smile. “This, this was awesome…I mean I really needed a night like this Darcy I don’t get out to a lot of the campus parties…because you know…”

“I know and I had a lot of fun too, I…I had a reason to celebrate and then it was just suddenly I wanted to share that with you.”

“You did?”

“Yeah definitely, you notice that you’re the only person that I called.”

She blushes and took a step in and she hugged me. “Seriously Darcy I noticed, there’s so few people in my life now that take me at face value. It’s lonely y’know not being seen.”

My heart did this little ow thing and I so wanted to just make things better.

“Are you going to be okay tonight Nikki?”

(Sniffle-smile.) “Yeah, I’m okay just still kind of boozy and sometimes I get kind of emotional after stuff. Bur it’s good, tonight was good.”

“Good, you still want to go out to see a show?”

“Definitely, I’ve been dreaming on that all week since you asked me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah…honestly feels like I have a life right now.”

“You have a life y’know.”

(Sniffle-smile.) “Yeah but one outside of work and classes and the whole VSVG thing it’s well…it’s been pretty dismal and lonely.”

I hugged her this time and we just stayed there for a little while…actually until she sort of did this sniffle-yawn thing.

“I’m keeping you up, I should go.”

She looked at me. “Okay, are you going to be okay to get home?”

“Oh yeah that’s okay, I’m just really glad that I didn’t bring Dale’s car today because it’d be downtown at this point.”

She laughed a bit. “Knowing Dale he’d be way more cool with it than you think especially since we’d not have drank and drove.”

I couldn’t help but to smile at that. It still kind of very…I like how she see’s me as Dale in a lot of ways but I like her more as Darcy really.

“So…this weekend?”

“Call me to make sure sometimes my job has crazy hours and shifts that come out of nowhere.”

“Where do you work?”

Nikki blushes. “Chilly-Willies.”

“The ice cream place?”

“Yeah, they’re okay with me being me.”

“Well good but yeah it’s still fast food I had friends doing that in high school and sometimes the shifts can bite.”

“How long are the tickets good for?”

“All year I think they’re pretty swank passes.”

“Oh cool, I still can’t wait.”

“Yeah me too.”

“G’nite Darcy.”

She gives me this really sweet smile before she goes inside and it’s one of those smiles that you get from someone that lights you up because they’re really, really happy.

I left feeling really great and I wandered around until I found a spot good enough and secluded enough to shift and do that unlit flight thing using the cover of dark and once I’m far enough away I go to powered up mode and I flew a good portion of the way home before shutting down and doing that slow flight down to my place.

It few amazingly good to take a shower after all of that and to…

Well I was thinking of Nikki and all of her parts and just what she might be like intimately and the dancing and the kissing and my hand dips down and…

It’s a good thing I live alone.

I was happy and buzzy and weal legged leaving the shower and collapsing into my bed.

I can remember still feeling the bed pressing into my breasts or vice versa and enjoying it for awhile and then thinking to my bracelet with a sort of wake up call request.

………………… I’m woken up by this very energized ping feeling like I just had a serious shot of coffee or sugar or like one of those energy drinks and I get up and shift to Dale and it feels really strange.

I even have to sort of plant my feet and get my solid back.

It takes me making breakfast and my first actual cup of coffee to get used to my size and weight and stuff all over again.

It’s not a bad thing or the fact that I’ve bemoaning the fact that I’m not Darcy right now it’s just an acclimation thing really.

Aside from the relationship and liking Nikki still as Dale/Darcy sort of thing I’m okay in guy mode.

Though another concession to my new super heroine life is actually turning on the TV and my laptop and going to the news feeds and actually watching them while I have my breakfast.

I’m a solid breakfast person I’ve never been one of those cereal sugar garbage kids so I cook a couple of sausage rounds and them dump some cold potatoes in when they’re almost cooked and some onion and poach an egg in the microwave. Yeah that’s something from my grandfather actually just a plastic container and a shake of salt and a dash of vinegar in with about a cup of water and crack an egg in it and cook it for one minute on high and you have a nicely poached medium egg.

I like eggs I grew up on a farm and we had laying hens, we really didn’t sell them but we sure did eat a lot of them.

I do my dishes and get dressed and head off to class in the car. I’m not jogging there today not after last night and I pull in and get a large tea this time at the kiosk and head to my classes.

I see Nikki in the classes that we share but we’re actually pretty busy now with some of the stuff we’re doing but we do get to smile at each other and wave coming and going until we’re sitting together in psychology-1.

I smile at her. “Hey, had a good night?”

“Yeah….” She has this huge smile going on. “Darcy’s pretty awesome.”

“She had a good time too; she said she’s never done that before.”

Nikki nods. “I could tell, Darcy’s awesome but there’s a lot of stuff she’s never seen or done before.”

I smile and open my notebook to start to take notes. “Well we’re both pretty small town and country types I mean you could put like home and the next five closest towns here in our district easy.”

Nikki is still smiling but sort of shaking her head too. “I grew up here and I know there’s stuff like that out there but I mean I’ve always been part of Ark City I think that small town like would be either really weird or really nice.”

I take a drink as the Prof starts to rev up the holo projectors for the lecture. “It took me a week before I could sleep here between all the street sounds and stuff and the lights. I’m not sure how I’d take going home and how quiet it’d be.”

She nods and we kind of busy ourselves with class and the lecture at this point because we’re getting to that point where the start of the year’s worn off and they kind of expect you to do some real work and I’m really paying attention because we’re starting to get into the stuff that deals with trauma and the types of it and signs and stuff.

I need this for my job but also for my degree. I’ll be working with prosthetics and cyber and bionic stuff or I want to and there’s a lot of trauma related stuff that goes with this kind of stuff too.

Nikki it’s more that social worker/therapist side of why she’s taking it but it’s still interesting and something that we’re into.

Okay it’s actually cool that we’re doing this from different angles but also that we’re just sort of into things like this.

As much as goofing off last night was fun it’s pretty cool on that we’re adults sort of level this way too.

We get out of that lecture and we head to the food hall together. She looks at me.

“So are you seeing anyone yet?”

“Sort of, kind of, not really?”

“Huh?”

“I’m living vicariously through Darcy.”

“Dale…I’m not into guys y’know.”

“Sigh I know and actually like sexually Nikki I’m not sure that I’m all that open about something like you and me.”

“Really?” She actually looks surprised.

I laugh. “Yeah really, I like you for you and maybe kinda was and am crushing a bit but at the same time I’m not really a T-chaser type.”

She turns around and walks backwards. “You’re the first straight guy that’s ever said that to me y’know. So I do nothing for you?”

“You do, and that’s cool but at the same time I don’t really want to act on it if that makes any sense.”

“Actually it does. People do it all the time having crushes that they won’t ever really do anything about. I know a few men that in theory I’d sleep with but actually…likely never.”

“So we’re still good then?”

“Actually yeah. It’s cool that you’re neutral but not with me and not gay.”

I nod and get a tray.

Nope just complicated.

But it’s true. I do as Dale think Nikki is very good looking and I am attracted to her but honestly I can’t see her and Dale-me being together sexually. I’m not into her in that way or either way as a top or a bottom but as Darcy I’m very into her just as she is and really do want our relationship to get to the point of us being together.

It’s actually kind of this odd yet pleasant huh kind of moment.

And not really schizophrenic as it seems when you take the fact that when I shift over I completely shift over to being female completely and it’s a pretty big change so I’m as different as Darcy as Darcy can be from Dale.

I’m mulling it over and Nikki is called over by some of her friends. She does have some and yeah their part of the VSVG thing which is Varied Sexualities Varied Genders which has replaced the whole old alphabet soup stuff that is still used but just not as the blanket term nowadays or at least not here in college anymore.

And I so am sort of cheating because I sit with them and I get to here Nikki gushing about last night with Darcy and everything that we did together and the kissing and stuff and all the fun and romance that’s been building up and everything.

Okay it’s hard not to blush a few times and it’s hard not to chime in and stuff too but it’s actually really kind of gratifying yayness at the same time.

We separate after lunch with my other classes which is just two of them and then I leave and drive home and Darcy shift and check my mail and there’s nothing there yet from the theatre. Apparently they’re going to send the scripts to us and our notes and anything else as it’s like all the production stuff.

I log into my Ark Angel stuff through the bracelet and check my messages as I shift to Scarlet and there’s a couple of things left there for me to go there for training. I shift down to Darcy mode and I get in the car and I drive over to Sanctuary Island.

It’s a long drive…sort of? Forty minutes to get to the Super-bridge and another five minutes at highway speeds to cross the thing and I’m stopped at the checkpoint at the exit and once I’m cleared to go through I drive to The Ark building and I’m greeted by an Angie hologram when I get out of the car.

“Hey Darcy how’s it going?”

“Good! I got a part in the Labyrinth musical.”

“Coolness so what’s on the agenda here?”

“Came in for some training it was listed on my messages from here.”

“Oh cool so what are you scheduled for?”

“Lockdown? And the ranges.”

“Oh Lockdown’s hand to hand training.”

“Oh I didn’t know that I thought that it was like arresting people and stuff.”

“It kind of is it’s a law enforcement specific MMA.”

“Cool…can you show me where to go this place is huge.”

“Sure.”

Angie leads me through the place and we take the tubes…okay the tubes are like tunnels instead of just elevator shafts since this place is that big that you don’t just go up and down but you go back and forth in some of the levels here too.

It’s still like an elevator only like driven by anti-gravity tech instead and inside it’s like an elevator only sort of rounded at the sides?

Very high tech and very neat and I end up in this sort of gym level and she floats me to where I can get changed and there’s a lot of people here doing the martial arts stuff. Not just Ark Angels but cops too and other law enforcement agents.

I get into my training gear which is this leotard wetsuit kind of thing that looks like one of those super hero suits instead of a gi and it’s got some pretty decent sewn/built in protective stuff for like breasts and crotch and butt as well as knees and elbows.

I find what training class I’m supposed to be in and there’s about thirty of us in there and some of us look as nervous as I’m feeling and some just look gung ho or just into it.

Okay, here I thought it’d be all one on one and stuff.

It’ll definitely be interesting.

Then there’s this guy with lots of ink and piercings and stuff coming in and he’s smiling at us like we’re fresh meat.

Gulp.

“My name is Jason Kilpatrick and welcome to Lockdown, let’s get started!”

Okay it’s a lot of pairing off and stuff but we’re going right into these drills of doing a hit and taking a hit and we’re sparing with each other instead of that lining up and repeating moves no we’re facing off and we’re hitting on each other with the moves and this hardassed guy shows us just a few times before we’re doing it to each other.

“No this isn’t a dojo this is a fighting workshop! You all are here to learn the very fast basics of things that will save your lives and help you when you are faced off against a perp. There is no training better than doing rather than repeating, experience will serve you faster than muscle memory at this stage in your complete lack of experience!”

And there is a lot, a lot of getting hit and “learning what these strikes feel like.” I sort of get it and yet even with the padding it’s hard stuff and he’s sowing us where to hit over and over and my arms and shoulders and hands are sore from actually hitting some one else.

And padding or not I’m still feeling the blows from some people and he partners us girls with bigger opponents.

“Everyone will for the bulk of your careers be bigger than you, some hits you will take will mess with your center of balance!”

No I’m not talking back to him.

It’s actually a kind of scary class really since he yells at us a lot.

Especially the girls.

“Scared and freezing will get you and others killed!”

He doesn’t stop us going after like an hour of class too he goes until he’s satisfied that we can land and take these like seven basic types of punches.

I’ve done farm work and I’ve been hot but never as Darcy before and I hurt, I hurt and I’m drenched and feeling really disgusting under the training suits.

He dismisses us.

“Darcy hold up.”

Eep, he knows my name.

“Yes sir?”

He drinks some water as the others are leaving and he sets the bottle down now that we’re alone.

“Shift.”

“Pardon?”

“Shift, I want to face off with you as Scarlet and see the differences.”

“Uhm…”

“Okay fair warming…”

He comes at me himself and the next thing I know I’m hit in the chest and knocked back like seven feet and he’s still coming.

Ow…ow…ow…

“Get it together some hater or professional developed won’t wait while you’re down!”

He kicks me in my side and sends me rolling another few feel and I shift to Scarlet and him and I start getting into it. I am now skilled at this at all but some things are just there and they stick with me like this plus I’m in better condition like this and stronger and things too compared to just being Darcy.

I don’t just let him hit me either I duck and dodge and I block even a few times and I know I’m fighting for shit but I’m doing better than I would before and he’s hitting me really hard…I’m going to have bruises.

Then after what feels like forever he stops.

I’m panting and sucking air.

“Sorry about that. But now I know where you’re at in both states.”

“Good…bad…?”

“Civilian average pretty much but you get a large boost like this, you’d do alright with your energy field up I’d imagine.”

(Pant.) “Thanks I guess.”

“No thanking me yet we need a lot of work to get you to where I feel comfortable.”

“Great…okay so…”

“Keep coming back everyday until I say that you’re done.”

“We… (Pant)…going to be doing both?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Oh shit.”

“It’s supposed to be that way Lockdown’s a crash styled course we’re supposed to through you into the deep end first.”

“First?”

“First I teach you all to stay alive and to be able to take a perp down then you all can go onto learning other things.”

“Other things?”

“Martial arts other fighting regimes. They’re all decent things to learn and should be learned if you can just after I’m sure that you can get through the job while you do.”

“Oh…okay…and here I thought you were just being mean.”

“I am mean that’s why I do the job.”

I grin at him. He’s actually a lot less scary now that I get why he’s doing stuff the way that it is and with the action I’m already seen…yeah staying alive’s kind of a priority.

He waves me off and I go and shower and the I use the bracelet to send Angie a poke.

She shows up in holo-form again. “Hey-hey!” she waves. She’s actually kind of cute and not what I was expecting from talking to her before instead she’s like fourteen and has those anime style pig tails but she’s in a digital suit look like Tron only like in yellow.

Yes I know what Tron is it’s one of those franchises that keeps getting resurrected all the time. Actually I like that sort of cyber space look with the glowing like racing lines and stuff.

“Hey…so how do I find the range I’m supposed to go to?”

Angie shows me several Apps and maps I can link to for the Ark’s in house systems. And she floats along with me as I head to my range time.

“So how many holo-projectors are there here you seem like you just sort of show up?”

“There’s a bunch but I use something else.”

“Something else?”

“Yep.”

She grins and I smile back. “State secret?”

“Yep.”

“Okay cool.”

She looks at me. “So…you think you might be able to handle a few patrols tonight until like midnight?”

“Sure I might be tired but flying certainly has this…there’s just something about being able to that just is amazing.”

“I’ll have to take your world for that it’s something that I won’t ever really get.”

“Huh?”

“We’re here have fun!” She gives me this big goofy grin and then she winks out but leaving digital or like holo sparkles as an after effect.

I go in and I sign myself in and it’s a whole section actually and my first time in the range is theory and lectures on guns and fire arms and the laws and stuff like you’d get for any real gun classes.

I’m good with that because I’ve hunted and stuff as Dale and I don’t mind it since we really kind of used everything and that but hunting is different than the stuff that we’re going to be learning.

We do end the class though with fittings, learning how to wear the hip holsters and to put them on and everything. We’re told to keep them and to have them on with every class and we’re given an empty 9mm Reliable.

Yes it’s actually called that and it’s an old space colonial era company that made very tough and hard to break weapons for that time. And then we’re given a locker to stow our weapons and belts in scanned to our id cards and then I’m done and following the map in my head from the bracelet translating the stuff from The Ark’s computers to direct mental information.

Oh cool…I have my own section. Well not my own section but for auxiliary members we have our own section with lounge and locker room, gym, hangar and all of the stuff that you might expect but I officially am on the roster so I have a mini-apartment and office?

I go and check it out first and it’s small…it’s more or less an office with a desk and stuff computer and bookshelves and there’s a kitchen closet thing through one door and a small bedroom with just a modest closet and platform bed and a small bathroom. Not something to really live in but it’s like a place to write up reports and to crash at on those long days and nights.

It’s still really cool beans though.

I look through the books and there some stuff for the different Scarlet angels there but there’s a lot of text books and binders and stuff all on like law enforcement techniques and the law like I was going to actually be a police officer.

Actually I like the legitimacy of that and there’s notes on going to take live classes or well labs to take at the Halo university and school thing and the studying and the written things are actually doable online here with special passwords to start each of the tests and assignments.

Looking through that I will in fact have a law enforcement degree and be a bonded peace officer when I’m done all the training and the studying.

“Okay…that’s, that’s pretty cool.”

I’ve always wondered about that and heroes and stuff like being actually like police officers and stuff.

I do look up my current legal status as an Ark Angel and as an Auxiliary member I have no police powers unless I am called in by The Police, The Colonial Marshals, Homeworld Security, Fire and Rescue, Mayors office and The NHDF.

I can call in and get permission to be cleared to make an arrest as well it seems too.

I can work with that, I don’t really have the whole ego that I don’t need to be responsible or accountable for my actions.

Plus the vigilante types well they either really hurt people, even the bad ones or kill sometimes and even if they don’t…there’s so much wrong with things that good lawyers can get them off.

I feel pretty right about joining up.

I have a coffee while I was reading and use the bathroom before I go and shift over and I walk to the hangar that we have for our use here and I give the signal to open the glass-steel doors to the outside and I power up and up and up and once they’re open all the way I signal them to close and blast off right after that so they close behind me.

Oh, oh heck yeah I feel better already and not just from the flying but I’m way up right off from the start and I’m flying out over the Super-bridge and the harbour at night towards the city.

Hmmm…I think into the bracelet and bring up the heads up windows and stuff I’ve been using lately and try to see if I can do a recording function.

Yes, yes I can so I hover a few seconds and I take some pictures as it were using this and link to The Ark and store them in my memory pool…cloud thingy.

Before I take off again and I start to listen to stuff coming in.

See this mostly is part of the translation functions of the bracelet. I had read in some of the journals and even asked while I was with Grams about it. See like most by time bestowed and avatars and mystical types there is built in translation majik and you can understand any common language that you’re exposed to.

Computer code and com and radio and cell phone signals are common enough so really I’m adapting old standards of majik to a new idea and it’s working.

And this according to Gram’s might actually be my signature of my time as a Scarlet Angel since I am the first one out of all of us to do this.

I can say that honestly that makes me happy and I will definitely try and leaves note on doing and using this to the next one after me.

Not that I’m planning to do die any time soon.

And then I’m busy.

Two firefighting assists using my shields and flight to help the get through some trick spots and help getting people out.

Called to an armed robbery I’m sanctioned as first responder.

It’s a convenience store and late at night and the criminal in question is yelling and screaming with a sawed off pistol gripped shotgun. I get a good look opening windows in my view that’s like zooming in…like a camera. Okay there’s the cashier and there’s two people down on the floor and he looks like he’s on something.

Think…

I fly up to the doors of the store and knock. He turns and looks at me and points the shotgun at me and screams. “Stay the fuck back bitch or I’ll frag them all!”

I shove a burst of power as fast as I can and send it through the space on either side of the door and underneath it making a sort of shield corridor and trapping him inside it. He let’s out this scream/shriek of fear and goes to shoot and I yank my floor sheet out from under him and he flips and falls on his back and the concrete flooring…the shotgun goes off but it doesn’t hit anything because of the shield walls I put up and I open the door lock a targeter onto his shotgun and use a bolt to blow apart his shot gun I take a few steps in and have another bolt ready.

“If you have anything else I’d say don’t use it. You can’t threaten anyone right now okay?”

He gets up and pulls a knife and comes at me and I switch my bolt to a ball of shield and think rubber and fire whacking him between the eyes with a “rubber” energy bullet laying him cold.

I lower the shields and say to the people here. “Every please just remain calm the police will be here to arrest this man and to take your statements.

The squad van isn’t too far behind either.

That’s something that we’ve got here that home you’d never see and that’s the police have an entire force of guys that all they do is come and take and transport the perps and log in the arresting officers badges and all the reports and stuff is filed at the end of they shifts and the actual officers on patrol go back on patrol instead of having to run in the crooks.

I just get my badge scanned in and leave them to it when I get another call of officer down.

I give the guys a nod and they just point go and I blast off into the night sky.

My Super Secret Life…Scarlet-17.

Chapter 17

*Before…

He gets up and pulls a knife and comes at me and I switch my bolt to a ball of shield and think rubber and fire whacking him between the eyes with a “rubber” energy bullet laying him cold.

I lower the shields and say to the people here. “Every please just remain calm the police will be here to arrest this man and to take your statements.
The squad van isn’t too far behind either.

That’s something that we’ve got here that home you’d never see and that’s the police have an entire force of guys that all they do is come and take and transport the perps and log in the arresting officers badges and all the reports and stuff is filed at the end of their shifts and the actual officers on patrol go back on patrol instead of having to run in the crooks.
I just get my badge scanned in and leave them to it when I get another call of officer down.

I give the guys a nod and they just point go and I blast off into the night sky.

*And Now…

Officer down…

My stomach does a tightening especially since I had just spent time in The Ark building and that combined with the stuff I have been doing really takes officers out of that whole faceless police thing and into people I’ve met and might have worked with and because of some nasty and dangerous situation I might never see again or get to meet.

I call in. “Scarlet Angel logging into the back up request for officer down.”

“Granted, granted! Multiple officers down heavy scramble use extreme caution you’re entering a Meta classed situation!”

“Scarlet Angel read and clear.”

I bring everything up on my HUD power on the surface of my shield and bank off towards the co-ordinates that are in my system.

And I can see flames everywhere…there’s two of them and there’s what looks like a heavy black car that’s flipped over and it’s scorched but not on fire and there’s one really big black girl hammering away at the car and the windows denting it and spider webbing it and there’s another with flaming hair and she’s hitting the police that are there with these flamethrower like bursts. Serious fire power too and I’m not trying to be punny or anything she’s sending streams of thick flame three hundred feet easily. I hear gunfire coming from the black car and the black girl steps back and she screams something at the people inside and she picks the car up with a scream and slams it to the ground.

Okay strong, really strong because the sound the car made was off in that really heavy way like it’s seriously armored.

Courier maybe?

I circle and I’m kind of obvious since I’m glowing and that’s fine if they’re looking at me then they’re not looking at the officers that are down.

One officer looks crumpled and there’s a huge chunk of concrete beside him…I see blood. There’s two more behind one cruiser that’s burned or their suits are badly burned and one’s slumped over there’s two other police cars there and they’re scorched and the officers are hiding behind them for cover and little miss hot pants is flaming at them until I make my circle and I fire off a salvo of bolts at her.

She jumps out of the way her feet lighting up in this little thruster bunny hot and she bounces.

Like her chest bounces.

She’s…

She’s in this sort of bikini thing with knee high boots and long gloves and the bikini top has this sort of flared collar thing I guess to look all super villainy and stuff.

And that’s pretty much it…

Again no puniness but she’s smoking hot looking in that whole Meta powered better than the average super model body and so is her “friend”. The big black amazon one is wearing this racer back one piece tank suit and long gloves and boots like her flamey friend.

I fire off some pot shots at her too.

They hit and splat sizzle on her skin and singe her costume a little and she spins on me and snags a football sized chunk of concrete from this mess at her feet and she throws it at me.

I do a side roll out of the way and suddenly it’s hot!

Really hot!
I see the thermometer or something like it on my display rising fast and I can swear I can smell my costume cooking from behind my shielding.

“Yikes, shit!” And there’s fire in my face and I can’t see and Whammo!

Lamp post.

And then I go tumbling down to the ground with a slam onto the concrete. “Ooof!”

I hear. “So zif ees the Scarlet An-gel, you are not what the media say that you is not in the presence of might Volcania!”

German? French? I don’t know hot pants sounds like made up euro-trash.

“And Obsidia!” I hear the other one yelling and I look to her and she isn’t where she was?

I figure out she super jumped as soon as she lands on top of me and she smashes me with a double axe handled styled hit into the ground.

My shield does a crackle flicker at the strain.

Oh I’m in shit.

She…Obsidia sits on me and she starts to slug away at me bashing me really good, she’s really strong and my shield’s getting weaker by the blow.

“Zat’s eeet take ze bitch out.” Hot pants sneers and she does a boot thruster hop and bounce again and she starts flaming at the police again. “Ha! I seez you try to move pigglies!”

I don’t like her.

And cue my head bouncing off the ground and energy shield or not it’s like not stopping my brain from its momentum on hitting the back of my skull.

Owww…I’m seeing spots.

I fire some shots into her point blank and they just seen to piss her off and I need to do something.

Another hit and I see stars.

Bit my effing tongue some too.

My brains trying to think of something to counter her and all the tactical stuff isn’t really applying here and the day’s training isn’t either…she’s bigger than me and stronger than me and she’s at least partially resistant or maybe even immune to my energy shots.

Weakness, weakness…?

Ohmigawd…

It’s so dirty pool but…

I slip my thumbs into her bottom part of her suit and I charge the energy up in my hands and I sizzle though the lycra-like fabric down and down cutting right across her crotch taking the bottom out as well as her underwear.

Snip.

And it being stretched pretty tight with her big body and tremendous boobs it does that thing where an elastic gets cut and it shoots free and up Obsidia’s body becoming a tattered sort of sports bra.

She screams and she stops hitting me with both of her hands covering her bare crotch and with a free hand I shove it up to her mouth and use my shield to make another construct like before and there’s a muffled scream and she fish flops off of me with a force energy ball-gag in her mouth.

I get up and grab her costume by the back of it and…snip I burn through it too. She’s freaking even more and clawing at her moth to get the ball-gag out and desperately to cover her nakedness.

I know it’s cruel and likely demeaning and as a woman part of me feels really badly for her but at the same time she wore this bathing suit into a job and combat I mean come on!

You don’t see women police or soldiers doing that.

Volcania spins to see what’s going on and I hit full speed flight coming at her and she screams at me. “You slattern!”

“What?”

She gets her arms up and double stream flames me and I drop but still fly doing this baseball kind of slide at her and she does her booster thrust bunny hop bounce out of my way and I look up to track her and I open fire.

She does this roller skating thing like pushing off with each foot back and forth evading my energy blasts and I pull a bit of flight trickery and spin myself around on the ground and up. It kind of looks like I’m breakdancing to my feet and I fire another salvo at her this time with both hands and trying to focus on the moving targets and stuff on the range.

She zigs and she zags and I miss again and she opens up with this two handed flame shot but it’s swirling together and it gets all tightened up and maybe two or three inches wide and I roll out of the way of it and it burns or melts a slash in the concrete of where I was.

That’s a lot hotter. “Yikes!”

Volcania laughs like some demented euro-trash socialite.

Oh yes even now we still have them because we have the SSB (Soviet Space) and most of the wealthy nations in Europe have their own colonies as well and the EUSS (Euro-Union Space Sector.) so yeah we have Euro trash all over…not that I’m prejudiced but when she’s acting like it and can’t get her accent right…Nuff said.

I take flight myself and I need a way to get at her without her being able to evade my shots and at the same time counter her.

I see a fire hydrant and I land and use a boost of construct power and open it up and then try to aim the sudden burst of high pressure water at her.

She screams like it worked then she unleashes another one of those concentrated blasts at me. I dodge out of the way but barely.

“Foolish slattern deed you tink zat vater would stop me? Peoples can veld under ze vater all ze time.”

“Darn it so much for that idea then, you feel like surrendering?”

“To a boorish oaf-woman like you? Never!”

She opens up with another burst of her flames and I fly up and out of the way and I fire back but this time spikes of force instead of energy blasts…I make a tether with them too as fine as my powers will allow hoping that they look sort of like the other blasts I’ve been firing.

Volcania does her little thruster mid-air skater shimmy thing and honestly…she’s pretty damned good and this is really my first really powered solo fight and it’s a lot harder than I thought.

She actually smirks at me after she dodges everything and does this double handed knuckle cracking fist thing that sends shivers down my spine. When she opens her hands her eyes flare into pits of burning flames and red hot molten something. And two of these spheres of fire appear in each of her hands.

“I knows zat zee are no zee only Ark an-gel coming so I end zis now!”

“Okay but me first.”

“Wazz?”

I flare the tethers to full power and I pull them back as hard and as fast as I can and each spike I send out punched through and became anchors in as many garbage cans as I could target on my HUD…I only went for the green ones with the compostable garbage in them too.

I focus and try to maneuver the cans so they’re all coming at her. She gets a hand up and she screams and fire off one of her sphere’s blowing them apart. The can’s and my constructs go up and a good deal of the stuff too but there’s still enough stuff in the massed amount of garbage that there’s lots left over.

And well it’s still coming her way.

She lets out a well and truly good scream of rage as she gets slimed.

I can smell what she flamed…I can only imaging the smell she’s getting.

She’s…she’s throwing up.

“Aaah…aaah! I have eet in my mout!”

And she horks again.

I take the chance to build a pretty good impact ball shot and I fire it right into her bread basket.

The added force gives her a good six or seven feet on her next burst of vomit.

She falls out of the air too and everything goes out from her hands to her hair and she’s gagging and she looks up at me in between gagging.

She’s no invulnerable to my attacks and her mascara’s running and her hair’s wet and she’s dripping brownish green slime and…and I think some of what I see looks like there was baby poo somewhere in one of the cans.

I have to try not to gag a bit and I haul off and I punch her lights out.

“………………pant…wheeze…”

“Scarlet Angel two meta bogies are down…” I look over at Obsidia who’s made it into a bus shelter and is hiding and covering herself in the corner and she’s glaring at me with the ball-gag still glowing in her mouth. “Both needing pick up one is a high powered brick and the other’s a high powered blaster fire based and flight capable. We’ve got badly wounded or worse officers here we need help ASAP.”

“Roger Scarlet Angel Daystar is on route with a tag and bag team and EMT’s and Fire should be there shortly.”

“Scarlet Angel clear.”

I use a burst of power to screw the hydrant shut and then another to net down Volcania to the concrete even though she’s out. I head to the officers and point at Obsidia. “You stay put…”

They’re hurt and in bad shape…I run a burst of Scarlet energy over them thinking if I can use this to touch things and all of that then it can read body temperature and pulse rate and things and it all starts coming up on my HUD with pulse, oxygen levels, temperature.

It sort of showers out of my palms in a shimmering red cone of light as I run it over the officers that are down and I notice the ones that took cover are up and have their weapons out and are covering the two women.

The two officers hit are burned I can see the burns almost through their things I’m not sure about the condition of the officer on the ground bleeding but there’s a funny looking color that’s not heat in their abdomen but they’re still breathing.

There’s a shine of golden light in the night sky as Daystar arrives and lands beside me and there’s the flashing lights of the aero-ambulances coming in for a landing.

“You okay?”

“Likely not my head’s aching and so is my neck and my skin hurts a little.”

“Okay you stand down and just try to sit still you might be more hurt than you think.”

I sigh and settle onto my bottom. “I…I think I’ll run a self-scan.”

“You in good enough shape to do that?”

“Yeah…”

“Well better not and let Karly take a look at you back at base.”

I look at him. He shrugs. “Sorry it wouldn’t be the first person worse off than they are because they said that they’re fine.”

Sigh…

“Okay…got it.”

“Hey…good work.”

“Thanks it wasn’t easy.”

“It never is.”

The EMT’s get there and a heavier ACPD hover transport for the two women and Obsidia resists arrest and she clobbers two officers trying to place these large tech looking shackles on her because she doesn’t want to get out of the bus shelter and Daystar goes over and he talks to her and she comes out after a few minutes with his leather jacket draped over her.

She’s big but he’s a really huge guy and his jacket is big enough on her that it’s covering her up mostly and goes down on her at least as far as a mini-skirt.

They stop her in front of me. Daystar looks at me. “Scarlet you mind cancelling the thing?”

What? Oh…

I look at her and I make the ball-gag vanish.

She spits and works her jaw and glares at me as they’re leading her in those cuffs away. “I’ll get you, you little bitch, no one humiliates me and gets away with it.”

“You might want to go after who designed your get up you know, I mean wardrobe malfunctions happen and all.”

Yeah Meorr…I’m being catty and wow I have a head ache now.

Daystar gets between her and I and he guides her away. “Miss Obsidia you might want to think about using your right to remain silent.”

I snerk.

Oww…

I’m watching the EMT’s take the wounded officer’s away the first being the one that was bleeding and they took off at a serious flight speed. I think I heard them say something about internal injuries.

I blink when there’s a hand offering to help me up and it’s Daystar and he changes it when I just sort of stare dumbly at it and stuff and he picks me up gently and carries me to another aero-ambulance.

“I’m…you don’t have to…”

“Well yes I do okay I think you’re worse off than you think and this is better safe than sorry.”

“Okay…I’m too beat to argue with you.”

“Good.” He smiles at me and he settles me in and it’s…wow…I might have a thing and a serious thing for Nikki but…he’s clean shaven and he’s big, like huge in that super-human kind of way and all that muscle and the so awesome blue eyes and the long blonde hair in a ponytail and stuff.

He’s really, really handsome in that makes me feel a little funny in the girl way.

And he’s very, very married.

Man…getting used to this and being me and these super hero types is going to take a whole lot more getting used to.

I kind of get him out of my head and I’m trying to take note of the ride since I’ve never been in an aero-ambulance before and the EMT looks at me and it’s the guy that I met with the whole big thing that happened down town when I first helped out all the other AA’s.

“Hey you.” He says in quietly and nicely kinda of caring guy and gentle like…I know because I’ve used the same tones myself.

“Hey…….” Oh...oh man I can’t remember his name.

My Super Secret Life…Scarlet-18.

Chapter 18

*Before…

And he’s very, very married.

Man…getting used to this and being me and these super hero types is going to take a whole lot more getting used to.

I kind of get him out of my head and I’m trying to take note of the ride since I’ve never been in an aero-ambulance before and the EMT looks at me and it’s the guy that I met with the whole big thing that happened down town when I first helped out all the other AA’s.

“Hey you.” He says in quietly and nicely kinda of caring guy and gentle like…I know because I’ve used the same tones myself.

“Hey…….” Oh...oh man I can’t remember his name.

*And Now…

He smiles at me. “Well I could chalk the fact you have no idea who I am to the blows to the head and the fact that last time we met we were kind of busy and all.”

“I…uhm…could we do that?”

“Spencer.”

“Huh?”…. Okay please take note that becoming a girl or even a girl super heroine does not confer you with the actual ability to not make yourself look like a Derp.

“It’s my name; Spencer.”

“Okay…that’s actually kind of a cool name.”

What it is, it’s not like something made up that sounds all messed up and as far as I know it’s not like culturally appropriating from something and it’s not like one of those too common ones either.

And he is kind of cute.

Like, I have looked before. I’ve gone out and been kind of open with myself with like the whole idea of me possibly being attracted to guys and stuff and I sort of am….no I am but I have a type I guess some guys don’t really do a thing for me and then there’s some if I’m honest are…kinda guy-pretty.

Okay if I’m a girl can I actually call guys pretty if I mean it in like the hot yay way?

I mean he’s not handsome or what my brain says is handsome instead he’s got that young twenty something guy thing where he kinda looks like a pop star.

Only in EMT gear.

With a cute clean-shaven smile and nice teeth.

And he’s waiting on me.

I’m into Nikki I really am but Nikki and I are where really we’ve had great times and great dates but are we dating-dating like are we serious and stuff or…

Wow…I really am thrown.

I kinda like Spencer and my body kinda likes Spencer but emotionally in my head if you can like lump the two together I’m kinda all over the place.

And that’s kind of a Darcy thing.

The Aero-ambulance does a shift over and my head rolls a little with it not enough to make me sick but I close my eyes and try to get through the whole carnival ride feeling of it.

Maybe I’m actually hurt?

Okay and now I’m kinda scared because what if I’m too hurt to really get how hurt I am?

And my adrenaline’s wearing off and now I feel cold.

Spencer gives me another check over and he pulls a blanket from a tube thing on the wall and wraps me up in a heated blanket.

Oh…oh wow…I’ve never really gotten that cold as a girl thing and then get warmed up…it’s so nice and so different.

“I guess my shields don’t protect me from shock huh?”

“No…one thing I’ve learned working with people in your line of work that despite all the amazing things that you all can do you’re still people.”

I look at him. “Really?”

“Yeah…my first year on the job I responded to a self-harm call and it turned out to be one of you guys.”

“Oh…and you can’t say…?”

“No, but I don’t care if it’s like Superman from the comics in real life with all the stuff he’s been through he’d have PTSD reactions even if he’s like invulnerable and stuff.”

I snuggle into the blanket more and take another sip of my water. “You guys must see a lot here too.”

Spencer nods. “All the time. And it can really mess you up if you don’t control it.”

“Control it?”

“Vent…use the professional help that’s offered…having fun.”

“Having fun?”

“Yeah something as simple as playing videogames or watching your favorite TV show or going out to do something that you just like to do. That and being normal.”

I raise an eyebrow at him which vaguely hurts to do. “Being normal? Really?”

“Actually yeah and this applies to you guys but like EMT’s and Firefighters and Cops too being normal is actually just that not shutting stuff out from the everyday things but use them. Do the dishes, mow the lawn just do at least one normal thing that you wouldn’t do at work or heroing a day and it helps…a lot.”

There’s this kind but serious look there on his face and I can’t help but sort of smile and blush a little because I’m fairly sure that as much as I kind not want there to be a thing I think I’m kinda feeling a thing.

And Darcy met Nikki through Dale and this is.

This is Spencer talking to Scarlet.

Which I’m not sure is different or should be different but it still kind of feels nice being noticed.

I mean I think that I’m being noticed.

Or that I’m noticing him.

Why is all of this stuff so complicated?

And why is it just Scarlet and Darcy getting the dates and not Dale?

Then again I couldn’t handle anything more than what’s going on in my as things are right now and stuff.

Spencer looks at me and he moves and he’s getting things ready. “We’re here.”

“Oh…okay…”

And Spencer’s back and he’s pushing me back down. “No, no, no miss super-heroine you’re staying right there on the stretcher until we get you inside and under medical care.”

“But…But…”

“I’ve seen you Butt it’s awesome.”

I blush so hard my aura comes on.

“That’s not professional!”

He looks at me and he winks and then says. “Shssh….I’m really not an EMT I delivery pizza’s.”

I snerk and it hurts.

I moan and want to kick him for making me do that.

My god I’m in such trouble.

I need to do some serious thinking about things and me as Scarlet and me as Dale and me as Darcy.

It’s actually more of a relief as Spencer and his partner lift me out of the Aero-ambulance and into the ER of the Ark Building.

It’s actually pretty busy and not just with stuff that had just happened but I do see my two sparring partners from earlier in rooms under guard and being treated. It kind of makes sense really I mean this place does have the best facilities to deal with super powered patients either good or bad.

I’m taken into a room and a nurse helps me slide from the stretcher to the bed and I’m getting the once over as she’s asking me questions like if I’m dizzy and if I have any headaches or ringing in my ears and where I’m at and the date and stuff like that as she’s shining a light in my eyes and she’s taking a temperature reading with a sensor stick thingy and checking my blood pressure before she slips a bracelet on my wrist that monitors all of that stuff.

Seems a little redundant with both and stuff but hey what do I know? I’m looking into working with prosthetics and stuff so it’s not exactly my forte.

She leaves and at least she hasn’t asked me to strip into one of those paper gowns. Instead I’m here twiddling my thumbs for like ten minutes until I get bored and power up and tap into my accounts here on the servers and type on a keyboard that is just purely in my head or rather in my shield’s HUD effect and I start doing up my report of what happened.

I’m into it pretty well when this short woman in scrubs comes in and smiles at me. I’ve met her once before at the meeting we had about the riots and stuff with the demon marble thingy.

Karly Winters… AKA…Whisper and she is the resident “magic person?” here for the Ark Angels.

She’s in a word cute.

Not hot but cute even with her strange amber colored eyes…the rest of her is about five foot four and with red-blonde hair that comes just down to the tops of her shoulders and fair skin in that pale way but she’s just absolutely covered in freckles, like Irish stereotype times seven kind of freckles.

And she’s married to T-Rex who’s one of the semi-new members of the Ark Angels and he’s actually a Meta-anthro…yep, an anthrosapien but with super powers of his own. I heard the T-Rex thing is a play on him being a canid type and a husky-wolf-German shepherd mixture. So that whole Rex dog thing and one of his powers is a bite that can go through nearly anything….So T-Rex.

I’m still kind of trying to wrap my head around the fact that she’s with him and not just the species stuff but there is that but the fact she’s five-four and I’ve seen him he’s over seven feet tall.

Given the light and happy mood she seems to be in though all the times I’ve seen her…

Oh wow have you ever come up with stuff that’s just kind of like TMI in your own brain?

“Scarlet, Chris say’s you need a checkup and that you got banged around a little bit.”

“Yeah…I had a run in with the girl down the hall, the brick.”

“Okay…so tell me what happened and I’ll check you out?”

I’m giving her a recap of things and she doing the usual doctor stuff and then the not so usual stuff with small and very, very expensive and high grade portable medical scanners.

Literally the very best stuff on or off the market.

She’s nodding and Mmm-hmming at all of the right doctor moments and she shoots me the occasional grin while she’s doing it like she was actually doing it on purpose.

Okay I actually find that kind of funny.

Medical humor and all of that.

“So Doc am I going to live?’

“You’re fine, your shift is healing you.”

“Pardon?”

“The Scarlet Angel event.”

“Event?”

“Well as far as we have learned it’s more of some kind of experience…but the energies of it that shifts and changes you they’re always on while you’re powered up and that slowly heals you.”

“Oh…that I didn’t know.”

“Well you just joined and frankly even before joining you haven’t been Scarlet Angel that long have you?”

“No I’m still just learning.”

“Well you can request the stuff we do know in the archives.”

“Okay, cool.”

“It’s a lot.”

“Oh?”

“I think two of the previous Scarlet’s were writers.”

“Okay gotcha…so I’m okay?”

“Yes…this time there’s clearing signs of a concussion but you’re healing up nicely.”

“Cool.”

“Scarlet…”

I look at her and she’s looking seriously at me.

“Yes?”

“Be careful you don’t have healing factor just a buffer.”

“A buffer?”

“It’s what happens when you live as a supernatural being that transforms…it’s what protects you while you transform.”

“Protects me?”

“You know what the very first rule of magic should be/”

“Not a clue sorry?”

“Learn physics, even is magic bypasses the known laws of physics it still has to deal with them. Now think on the strain on your body from shifting…you’re buffer keeps you alive.”

“Oh…wow…I never thought of it that way.”

I look at her and ask. “You have an alter ego right?”

“I did, I don’t anymore.”

“Why?”

“Too much work being me and being someone else.”

“But it can be done?”

“Not well…you have a better chance that others since you literally can transform and costume up.”

“So…what if I was trying to run two alters?”

“Not possible.”

“Really?”

“Not in the long run, it’s hard enough living an double life and doing this job it drove me bonkers more than enough.”

“So I might have to do the same?”

“Look some do, some don’t a lot of us Ark Angels are out and that’s just to make things easier. Like me and Tommy.”

“Okay?”

“We’re married but he’s out, he can’t help not to be. But if I wasn’t out they’d be asking who I was in the press and they will dig dirt up anyway they can. Now being out I’m less of a mystery to the public and stuff.”

“More of a target though.”

“It comes with the business.”

“What about my family, lovers?”

“Fair game…most decent press people will leave you alone unless you’re at a press event or on the job. Most villains leave family alone.”

“Most?”

“There’s assholes in every medium Scarlet but generally they leave you families alone because of the fact we could do the same.”

I nod… “Thanks Doc, I have a lot to think about now.”

“Well I hope it helped, if you ever need to talk I’m usually here or over at St.Mercy unless I’m off.”

“Okay…thanks….I’m clear to go?”

“I think so, just remember you’re the New Scarlet Angel…I knew the last one, and you know how that gets passed on.”

I nod.

“Thanks…I mean it…I think I’ll head to the office and get things written up.”

“Have a shower first, a bite to eat and get your balance. It’ll help a whole lot.”

I nod and I give her a handshake and she accepts it and returns it.

It’s…

Whoa…I can sort of feel the energies inside of her…her magic.

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.

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?