Laurence "Windbreaker" Davidson

  Laurence watched in disbelief as the two unfamiliar guardians broke into an argument. He had no idea who the tiny, metal-clad woman was, but he assumed she must be another high tier Star Guardian. it was a bit hard to take her seriously, though, when she was barely taller than Chloe. That problem only grew worse after the guy who made the chain barrier suggested getting tacos. What had been an already ill-considered suggestion soon devolved into something stranger.

  "You don't even like tacos," the short one complained. "You said as much when the uni was having a Taco Tuesday and you didn't want to come—wait. Did you lie to me? I bet you just didn't want to stick around longer than you had to, so you said you didn't like them."

  The confirmed Star Guardian raised both hands defensively. "I didn't lie. I don't hate tacos, but I don't particularly care for them. And don't lecture me about cutting our time short when the only reason you wanted me to come in the first place was because you're used to me paying for everything when I'm around. How much does a food truck taco even cost? Ten dollars?"

  "Wait, what?" Laurence wanted to kick Kevin for dragging them into the conversation, and he settled for elbowing his fellow Guardian—but the strike specialist was undaunted. "Where are you getting food truck tacos for ten dollars? It sounds like you're getting ripped off, dude. Jeez, you can never trust anyone in LA."

  The Star Guardian waved him off. "I don't know, because I don't buy tacos from food trucks. If ten dollars is too high, that just strengthens my point." Rounding back on the metal lady, he continued. "What happened to all that money I had David give you? I hope you didn't lose it all on high risk derivatives."

  "No? I'm not stupid. I mean, yes, I've been trading derivatives, but that part of my portfolio is now up by 1700% since I started, and I don't directly reinvest all of it."

  "And yet you tried to rope me into buying you cheap tacos," the tall one complained. "Also, did you say 1700%? That's a lot of percents. How'd you manage that?"

  Laughing nervously, the short one glanced around before continuing. "I found a little trick that the kids are calling 'insider trading.' Not on Vanguard, because I'm not stupid, but hanging around David is super useful for meeting people and getting into places. It works even better if you act like a young, superficial little princess who leaves finance stuff to the menfolk. Then, whenever I know something that contradicts the market news, I buy puts if the finance bros are buying calls and buy calls if they're buying puts. Works almost every time."

  Is this really happening? Laurence actually rubbed his eyes. I can't believe I'm standing here, witnessing Star Guardians talk about committing white collar crimes. Is this normal? He didn't know which answer to that question would be worse.

  The tall one nodded. "Huh. That does make sense, yeah—wait. I thought that was illegal."

  "I mean, yes? It is?" The metal one shrugged. "Just don't get caught."

  "Oh, okay. That makes sense."

  Kevin once again decided that it wasn't a terrible idea to interrupt them. "Excuse me, but weren't you originally saying something about tacos?"

  We ended up getting tacos.

  Satisfied that everything was now handled, dad cut another portal in the air and shepherded us all through. The only one who offered any resistance was Katherine—I didn't expect that, but it was because she was still worried about Max. Dad assured her that he was, quote, 'allegedly in a somewhat stable condition,' and that he was already en route to a hospital. Naturally, Katherine asked if he could send her to the same hospital. I think she wanted to loiter around him instead of going home or at least cleaning herself off, for whatever dumb reason.

  Surprisingly, Dad refused. In what was a shocking disregard for both the law and any kind of emotional sensitivity—even by his standards—he effectively kidnapped her. He made it quite clear that she wouldn't be leaving his side until he said she could, and the same went for me. I expected the reason had some relation to us becoming Star Guardians. Well, Katherine became a Star Guardian. The reason for keeping a tight leash on me was definitely different.

  There was a brief moment where we did a short, only half-spoken dance after the others had gone through the portal. It was more guesswork than actual communication, but I think we both got the general idea. I was supposed to be a Star Guardian like Katherine, and we were both supposed to be regular Guardians, for some reason. Why? Don't know. Would also say I don't care, but it's definitely gonna be some bullshit that'll cause future me twelve dozen exciting new problems.

  The portal brought us to a quasi-alleyway behind some kind of strip mall. It was one of those areas that I rarely saw—the mirror image of the front parking lot, with dumpsters for the various businesses, AC units, a loading zone, and parking for the indentured servants. Sorry. Employees.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Our group didn't exactly fit in, but the guy throwing an empty pallet beside one of the dumpsters didn't stop and stare at us. He looked, that was true, but he didn't slow down or show any real reaction. That was fair enough. Guardians really weren't that rare to spot, and he was probably just ready to clock out and go sit in traffic. I watched the slit in reality close up behind us. Small, violet chains stretched across the glassy rift like stitches. Then they all pulled tight, cinching space back together. There was a small, translucent ripple, and then the air was back to normal.

  The sound of his hands clapping together echoed between the concrete buildings. "Right. You four." He pointed at the random team of Tier 1 Guardians. "Go around to the front and head to Uncle Xavier's across the street. Tell them we have a party of six, and also that—wait, no—seven. We have seven, and tell them that the Gringo sent you."

  His words were met by a wall of incredulous stares, and several people blanched. Mr. Agent was the first one to say anything. "Excuse me?"

  Dad didn't seem bothered by the reaction, simply waving them off. "It's the nickname they have for me, so they'll know who you're talking about. Go on now."

  Dad, I don't think that's the problem. I was having to hold in my laughter at this point. Time spent with my dad followed a specific pattern. The overwhelming majority of it was boring and a little awkward. There was a smaller fraction, though, when he started clashing with the general public in a way that was really funny to watch from the sidelines. I imagined the Roman public felt something similar watching slave gladiators trying to cope with whatever exotic animal the emperor brought into the coliseum that week.

  "You know what that means, right?" Boots asked with a bit of hesitation.

  Dad laughed. "Se?orita—hablaba antes de que caminaras."

  The four looked at each other. "She doesn't speak Spanish," Little Toxic said. Ooh, this is getting juicy. Inside, I was now grinning like some kind of psycho. I had no idea how things would play out next—that was part of what made these fleeting moments so great. The man had a knack for spreading a dense fog over the social waters, something that was hilarious when the guy doing it wasn't even trying.

  "Lo se—that's what I figured. You look like you don't actually speak Spanish, and I know what 'Gringo' means."

  Holy shit. The fuck kind of a thing to say was that? Leave it to my dad to figure out how to defend himself from the brutal 'I don't speak that language' mistake in the weirdest, most frying pan to fire kind of way. It wasn't just a knack, it was a gift from God. Or maybe from whatever that thing was that gave Katherine her Star Core. Wait, was that God? I was a lifetime Atheist, never believing in anything beyond the material and also wherever the Anathema came from.

  It would be reasonable to expect that the start of the Incursions in the December of 1990 forty years ago would have accelerated the trend of global secularization overnight. Actually, it only succeeded in shaking things up a little. The bigger kids on the block—the various forms of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and whatever the fuck was going on in China—together, they continued to form a supermajority in global surveys. Well, except for China. Something the average chart-viewer didn't realize was that those numbers usually excluded China entirely. But I digress.

  Religion didn't disappear. In fact, one of the big shakeups was the sudden emergence of all kinds of new shit. For instance, Christianity went deeper into the historical cultural roots of the United States than people tended to appreciate, with the result that American atheists tended to retain a more fundamentally Christian perspective on things like morality and justice than they tended to realize. That alone was interesting, but it also contextualized how the understanding of Guardians and Anathema evolved. There was now a sizable movement that either reinterpreted or reinvented the Holy Spirit as the very same energy Katherine talked about using.

  Having witnessed the way in which she'd gotten that Star Core—well, I had to wonder if those people were genuinely correct. So what would that make me, then? A demon? That one was pretty obvious. In retrospect, it was kind of surprising that the English language term for our kind hadn't ended up being 'demon.' In fact, you'd see that word a lot when you studied those first few months. The only reason it didn't stick was the emergence of the Star Guardians. None of them used the word 'demon.' They all called them 'Anathema,' of all things, and I'd honestly never understood why. I had a pretty good idea now, though.

  The same thing that chucked a Star Core at Katherine described me with that exact word. Seems pretty obvious now where the first Star Guardians got that one from.

  I realized that Dad had somehow managed to convince the random Guardian team to go over to that Uncle Xavier's place. That left him with me and Katherine—I had a feeling what the general topic of our private chat was going to be. It didn't seem like a great time to start dumping a bunch of crazy, world threat level exposition on Katherine, but that was her problem. Personally, I was more than ready to hear whatever juicy lore he was about to drop.

  "Since the two of you are this world's newest Star Guardians, there's something important to get out of the way right now." Huh. I didn't miss the way that he said this world and not the world. Yes, that was a minor thing, but I'd gradually learned how to listen for probable clues in the specific ways my Dad would phrase things. One of the biggest—and admittedly, also the easiest—was how he'd let slip the specifically seven dimensional nature of the breaches. I might be reading too much into this one, but I was going to remember.

  "Actually, it's more like two things. Three, really. Yes, three." Ha. I really had been wondering for a second if he was going to keep increasing the number. "The first is that, as far as pretty much any Anathema detection method is concerned…

  “Well, the two of you are now infected."

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