The following takes place shortly before Arleigh saw the Minority in action back in her interludes. It is the start of a Minority-focused storyline that will be woven through the upcoming arc whenever there’s a decent spot for it, in between Cassidy’s competition bits. Each of these Minority storyline chapters will focus on a different member of the current Minority, including the new members. You will eventually get the whole story of what happened in that whole situation that Arleigh caught a glimpse of (and ended up sacrificing herself for), mixed in with the regular Cassidy chapters.
“Okay, so they’re playing Mortal Kombat,” Amber noted as she stood in the doorway of the cozy little gaming room on the top floor of what had at one time, decades ago, been a normal police precinct station. It had long-since been converted into the Minority Headquarters, its first two floors filled with all the mundane-yet-critical office workers and support personnel who helped make it possible for a gang of teenagers to fight crime. The top floor, meanwhile, was known as the Clubhouse. That was where the superpowered teenagers themselves were able to hang out, train, interact with each other, and just generally relax during times when they weren’t patrolling. Very few other people were allowed on the top floor.
As she said that, the dark-haired (she wasn’t in costume at the moment so her natural color was visible) girl glanced briefly to one corner of the room, where the very tall Laki Sefo, or Wobble, was perched on the edge of a recliner with the controller held tightly and his gaze locked very intently on the screen. Just a bit to the side of him, Fragile, or Melissa, was seated with her legs crossed under her. The glass-bodied young girl was staring just as intently at the game as the older boy, while the other controller floated in the air slightly ahead of her, held by two floating glass hands.
“Which explains the grunts and growls coming from that side of the room,” Amber continued, as her gaze shifted to the other side, centering on a Latino teen boy about her age. His dark hair was cut rather short at the sides and somewhat spiked up top, and he wore a rather crisp white button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of black slacks. He looked like he was there for a job interview rather than to relax. In front of him was a stack of papers on a round wooden table that he was scribbling some sort of notes on in between flipping back and forth through.
Stepping over that way, Amber asked, “But what’s with the sounds coming from over here? Don’t tell me you managed to find some way to create a pencil and paper version of gaming.”
The boy, Ximeno Arias (or Flashflak in costume), used the eraser end of the pencil to point at her without looking up yet. “That already exists, and it’s better than video games. So much more freedom to play whatever you want.” He made another note on the page he had been looking at before turning fully to face her. “And sorry, I was testing myself. You know, running through this whole pamphlet they gave me.” He lifted the stack in question and gave the pages a quick ruffle. It had all the information about various places of interest, important people, and Touched in Detroit. And given the way the pages seemed to have been taken apart and reshuffled, Amber was guessing that he had intentionally mixed them up to make it harder to memorize everything.
“Three pages in and I screwed it up,” the boy lamented with a grimace. “I was trying to name every active member of that Ninety-Niners gang, and their powers, but I put Pivotal in there. Pivotal. How could I forget he’s supposed to be part of the Easy Eights? This is basic stuff.”
Tugging the other chair out after giving Laki and Melissa another glance, Amber sat down and replied, “You know you don’t have to completely memorize everything immediately, right? No one is gonna demand that you know the entire city like the back of your hand two days after you move here. You don’t have to stress so much. You’re new here, it’s cool. We’ve got your back.”
“She’s right,” Laki called from the other side of the room after reeling backward from the victory screen when Melissa’s character left his bloodied on the ground. “Don’t stress, you’ll pick things up as we go. No one really expects you to move halfway across the country and instantly know every single Touched on all the gangs, let alone all the other stuff you’re trying to memorize.”
“Of course they don’t expect--” Ximeno started before taking a breath. He drummed the pencil against the table lightly while putting his thoughts together. “I know no one expects me to walk in here and know everything immediately, that’s the point.” He pushed himself up, raising his arms in a wide shrug. “My whole life, people haven’t expected shit from me. My pai--my dad’s a day laborer, my mom’s in and out of our lives based on how drunk she is, and it’s the drunk version who actually sticks around. The sober one can’t wait to leave. No one in my whole family has ever gone to college or made more than the bare minimum to survive on. Everyone in my whole life who has ever looked at me for more than two seconds has said, ‘It’s okay, no one expects too much of you. Just be proud about how much you’ve achieved with your disadvantages.’” His voice had adopted a very mocking, exaggeratedly syrupy-sweet tone, before hardening dramatically. “Well fuck that!” As soon as he said it, the boy’s eyes went to the young girl sitting on the floor as he grimaced a bit. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to-- yeah, sorry.”
He took a moment to self-consciously adjust his shirt before speaking again. “The point is, no one, not one person in my entire life has looked at me and said, ‘Now you better work hard because you’ve got all this potential.’ Everyone, everyone tells me it’s okay if I’m not good enough, if I don’t go far enough, if I don’t achieve enough. They point to anything--everything in my life and say, ‘See, that’s why it’s okay if you fail.’ But it’s not okay, and I’m not gonna fail.”
Ximeno let those words hang for a moment before finishing with a flat, “I chose to come here, to this city, because you guys have so much going on. You’re one of the best cities in the country for someone to make a name for themselves. You’re the Touched-Tech manufacturing capital of the U.S. If you make a name for yourself here, you can write your ticket onto any adult team in the country. So yeah, I chose to come here, and I’ve got one year to make sure the people here know me. Because when I graduate, I want every person who looks at my file to say, ‘We want that guy, he’s got potential.’ Not, ‘It’s okay, he had disadvantages, he did the best he could.’”
Offering the boy a small smile after he got all that out, Amber replied, “Dude, it's cool to be ambitious. And trust me, none of us are gonna judge you one way or another just because of who your family is. As long as you're not secretly a murderer who wants to boink one of the most evil Fell freaks in the city just because they’re hot, you’ve got a leg up over our last teammate.”
She tried to say those words lightly and flippantly, like they didn't matter, like she was already moving past all that. But they came out a bit too harshly, sticking in her throat a bit too much. It had only been a few days since… since all that came out, since she’d found out the truth about her father’s death and what her own supposed frie-- her teamma-- what Jerry had to do with it. It had only been a few days since she chose to let the boy die rather than save his life.
Amber and her mother were supposed to be visiting her grandparents by now, but the trip had been delayed for a couple days because the authorities wanted to have multiple discussions with both of them about everything that had happened. Amber wasn’t in trouble exactly, but she had to give half a dozen depositions, and her mom had a whole thing of her own to get through.
Laki had stood up as well by then, stepping over to where she was to put a hand gently on her shoulder. He didn’t actually say anything about all that, leaving it as just that simple gesture. His eyes were instead focused on the new guy. “What she said. You really wanna make a name for yourself, just be there to back us up. That’s what matters, not how many facts you’ve memorized about our city. We can help you with the info, with names, powers, all that. Just don’t be a manipulative, lying traitor.”
Considering the way she immediately winced and looked uncomfortable, Melissa was obviously taking the whole Jerry thing almost as badly as Amber herself. Of course she was. She was just a kid, and she was new to all this. Finding out that one of her own teammates, her supposed friend was-- Amber made a mental note to hang out with her more, as soon as she was back from her trip. After what had happened with Jerry, they needed… they had to be a better team.
Obviously, that included making their new teammates feel like they were included. So, Amber started, “Hey, where’re the others? We should head down to the gym and get some practice in.” Hopefully the idea of training together would appeal to Ximeno enough to pry him away from all that studying. She didn’t blame the guy for wanting to make a name for himself, but that was going to take more than knowing names and powers. They needed to practice working together.
Unfortunately, no sooner had the girl asked than an answer, of sorts, came in the form of an intercom call. “That-A-Way, Wobble, Fragile, Flashflak please report immediately to the lower briefing room with Carousel, Syndicate, Yeet, and Facsimile. Full dress, full prep, no filter.”
The entire group looked at each other with an assortment of grimaces, even Ximeno. He may have been new here, but he’d been part of the Minority in his old city, and they all knew what the message meant. The lower briefing room was the one right next to one of Switchshift’s transport doors that could send them all over the city. Full dress meant come in costume, full prep meant have any weapons or tools you needed, including stay-down cuffs and first aid kits. And no filter meant that everyone named was expected to come, no matter what else you were doing before.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Something bad was going on out there. Something bad enough that even Amber was being called out to help with it despite essentially being on mandatory leave. She may have been here in the building, but she technically wasn’t supposed to participate in any action. The fact that they were immediately requesting her to come down in full costume meant… eugh, something bad.
Still, it also meant that they couldn’t just stand around staring at each other. Whatever was going on out there, it was bad enough for all of them to be called out. So, after that brief knowing glance was shared amongst them, all four Touched bolted for the door. In the hall, they split up, Melissa and Amber heading for the girls’ locker room while the two boys went the other way.
Technically, Melissa didn’t need to take the detour, considering she was made of glass and could change her appearance however she liked in that regard. But she kept Amber company while the other girl changed into her costume, asking, “What-- uh, what do you think happened?”
Slipping the mask onto her face that changed her hair to be blonde, Amber hesitated before admitting, “I dunno, but if it’s bad enough for them to call us all down like this--I mean, maybe they’re just being super cautious, but I don’t…” She hesitated before focusing on the other girl while trying to sound reassuring with what probably wasn’t much success. “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. And hey, maybe it’s not actually that bad and they just want to see how we deal with something as a full team. We’ve barely had time to even meet each other, what’re the odds that we’d get thrown into something that big right off the--nope, nope, never mind. Forget I said that.”
The two of them soon joined the other pair at the elevator. It wasn’t the first time Amber had seen Ximeno in his Flashflak costume, though it would be the first time they went into the field together. He wore loose, somewhat baggy black pants that gave him a wide range of motion, along with a purple form-fitting sleeveless shirt that showed his rather impressive physique and left his arms exposed aside from the purple and silver metal bracers he wore that went about halfway up his forearm and connected to the matching gloves. Meanwhile, his identity was concealed by what amounted to an oversized pair of ski goggles that took up most of the upper half of his face. They were black with a purple lens.
Once they had all regrouped, the four headed down to the lower briefing room to meet up with the rest of their newly-restructured team. The place was very plain, consisting simply of a small, square room with rather cheap gray carpet, plain white walls, and a dozen or so folding chairs facing a wooden podium with a screen behind it and to the side. Upstairs, the main briefing room was fancier and had more to it. That was where the expense and effort had gone. This one was only meant to be used in emergencies, when they just needed a quick rundown of what happened before going through the Switchshift room.
Standing behind the podium, Captain Ipsen, one of the cops who had been assigned to work with them after suffering an injury to his leg that prevented him from going out into the field again, waved for the group to join their teammates. Lexi and Zed Chambers, Damarko Myers, and Jae Baek (or Yeet, Facsimile, Syndicate, and Carousel) were already sitting down. Well, one of the Damarkos was. The other three weren’t in the room. Sometimes Amber envied his ability to only have a fourth of himself stuck in a meeting while the rest could go do other things. Then she thought about how often she ended up arguing with herself and decided maybe giving her disparate opinions their own bodies might not be such a good idea after all.
As soon as they were seated, Captain Ipsen quickly launched into the explanation. Apparently most of the adult Star-Touched and most of the available Shields (police and related Prev law enforcement) were already busy dealing with several problems those Garden of Badb fight club people had been starting all over the city. And now there was yet another issue. Lexeme, that visiting Star-Touched who had been helping out, and Caishen had both been out with their daughters and--oh. They were also out with Trevithick and Qwerty from Cassidy’s team. The group had been getting ice cream together when some unknown Fells showed up. Which wouldn’t have been that much of a problem for Lexeme and Caishen, except these strange new Fells had used some sort of Touched-Tech that seemed to trap everyone in that restaurant, and several connected buildings, in a stasis field. They were either frozen completely, or simply slowed down so much they could barely move at all, depending on which reports you were listening to. Either way, about fifteen minutes had passed since that happened, and none of them had managed to get anywhere.
It looked like these new Fells had set off their stasis weapon in order to break into and ransack one of the supposedly secure vault buildings where confiscated Touched-Tech was stored. No one was supposed to know where that stuff was. From the outside it looked like an ordinary, utterly unremarkable office building. These people had to have inside help, rather high up, to have any idea of what was in there. It was near the place Caishen and the others had been getting ice cream, so the most likely thought was that these people had seen the Star-Touched and kids so close to the building they were about to break into, and had set off the stasis weapon to stop them from interfering. Why they wouldn’t just wait until the coast was clear instead was anyone’s guess. Maybe they were just impatient.
“We know they had to break through the security, which slowed them down,” Ipsen was saying. “But they’ve made it inside by now, which means they’ll be leaving soon. We cannot give them time to get out of there with all that confiscated Touched-Tech. I’m sorry, I really am. I know--” He looked toward Amber briefly. The man looked more like a jovial Santa than a cop, to be honest. His long white hair and beard were far from what most people thought of when they pictured a police detective, even a semi-retired one. “I know some of you shouldn’t be going out into the field right now. It’s not fair. But if these people, whoever they are, get away with that stuff--”
“It’s okay,” Amber interrupted, rising from her seat. “You don’t have to explain it. I know. We know. So let’s stop wasting time and go stop these people before they run off with all that tech.”
“Uh, do we know anything about what powers these people have?” That was Yeet, already standing up along with the others. Though she apparently did have a fair bit of experience with her powers, the fourteen-year-old girl hadn’t actually had a real costume before joining up with the Minority. She had since adopted a suit that consisted of white pants that had sort of a scale mail pattern to them, with metallic gold shin guards and matching boots (white with gold metal trim), a gold belt, and long-sleeved white shirt with two thin gold lines running up the sides and down the sleeves before expanding into a flame-shaped design near the wrists. That design meshed well with the gloves, which were gold with white trim. The shirt had a hood attached to it that went up over her head, white on the outside and gold on the inside. Finally, the upper part of the girl’s face was covered by a white mask with gold lenses over her eyes.
“Yeah,” her twin brother, Zed/Facsimile put in, “so we’re not going in completely blind and all that.” He, like his sister, hadn’t had a costume when he first showed up. Now, he wore what amounted to dark blue coveralls that weren’t that dissimilar from Paintball’s at least in basic style. In addition to the dark blue base, the overalls had several mint green swirly accent lines scattered across them to break up the color a bit. His own boots and gloves were black, and he had a rather simple blue cloth mask that covered his entire head, with mint green eye lenses.
“Unfortunately, we know very little,” Ipsen replied with a wince, even as he began to lead the group out to the hall where the other three Damarkos were already waiting. “There is an older woman we believe has some form of enhanced strength, a man with canine features who may have his own enhanced physical abilities, and several others. We’ve attempted to get a better look, but they broke our security cameras in the area, and they seem to know whenever our drones get close and shoot them out of the sky.” He made a face and sighed. “Again, we wouldn’t send you out there against this sort of unknown threat, but we don’t have a choice. As soon as any other Stars are available, you’ll get backup.”
They all agreed that the situation wasn't ideal, but that this was the best thing they could do. Not only did they need to stop these strangers from getting away with that tech, but if there was some sort of countermeasure to the stasis field that the others had been trapped in, they had to take it.
Even as they headed into the transport room, Amber felt the weight of her phone in the hidden pocket of her costume. Two of Cassidy's friends were out there. Should she text them about it? No, they were in Phoenix, there was no point in making them worry. There was no way they could get here in time anyway. If she texted them or said anything, it would just distract them from the competition.
Amber would just have to go with her team and help deal with this so Cassidy didn't have to worry about it. And she definitely wasn't going to say anything to Izzy. Both of them could just stay focused on their vacation. Someone deserved that. She would simply explain what happened once all this was over. There wasn't anything they could do to contribute, even if Cassidy could explain to her dad why they needed to come back without revealing… well, everything. Izzy might have a better chance given the whole Sterling being Silversmith thing, but even then it was pretty doubtful.
No, this situation was probably going to be solved within the next twenty minutes, and it would take that long just to explain things and let those two come up with a way to convince Sterling to bring them back here. And that would mean Cassidy would throw away the competition. Absolutely not.
Setting that thought out of her mind, Amber glanced toward the three new members of the team. It may have been (relatively) simple to push away the thought of telling Cassidy and Izzy what was going on back here, but not so much when it came to trying to put aside the reminder of just who else wasn’t here. This wasn’t just a case of going into a fight against unknown Touched while working with three new teammates they barely knew. It was a case of doing all that right after their old teammate, someone they had thought they were close to, had turned out to be a murdering piece of shit traitor.
This… was going to be interesting. With a sigh, Amber stepped through the doorway with the rest of the team so they could go find out who these new Fells were, and stop them.
She just hoped they could get back in time to see Paintball’s next event.
Joke Tags: Anyone Gonna Object To The Nine-Year-Old Playing Mortal Kombat?
