"For a quart of ale is meal to a king."
When possibly being hunted by an entitled, manipulative, bald prick with a secret agenda and varying capabilities for making your life hell, what do you do? (Now though, am I talking about Cueball or Professor X-rated? Hmmmm . . .) Add in the fact that your friend/mentor, an all-seeing god from ancient mythology told you that you were going to be discovered after basically living in hiding for the majority of your life—soonish, maybe—and it was necessary for you to be so, but don’t worry about it? Not to mention the Avengers and who even knew how many of the other government agencies were in on the hunt. What can you do?
Answer: get drunk off your fucking ass! (Which is funny; between us, I’m Ace, and Luna’s Demi—there were literally no fucks to give!)
Luna and I were back in our hotel room before midnight (time zones being a thing) and we drank. And drank. And drank. And attempted to drink ourselves into a stupor. I said attempted because it doesn’t work very well. Luna, the dragon, sometimes I don’t even know about that woman. I think it must be either a metabolism thing or a magic thing. Or the simplest answer could just be that she was the reason for the stereotype about the Irish and drinking. And then there was me. It wasn’t a metabolism thing as my extra padding would attest too—but yeah, drunk? Not a thing I could do. And believe me, I’ve tried.
. . . At least it didn’t until I asked Heimdallr if he knew of anything that could get a dragon drunk. And then we may have had a few cases of Asgardian mead show up. And I don’t think either of us remember what happened next . . .
(Stupid decision I’m sure, but that seemed to be the current trend in my life; one stupid decision after another. But hey, that’s what your 20’s are for, right? Right?! Right . . .)
But not every stupid decision can last forever, so when I dragged my sorry ass out of bed the next evening, I went to work. Heimdallr said discovery was more or less inevitable, fine, but that didn’t mean I was going anywhere on anything but my own terms. Cue the laptop and eight tablets (I had Luna go home for the rest of them—we were still on vacation damnit!) I hacked back into various government systems and took a look at their current investigations into us. There wasn’t much, as I suspected, so I left them alone for the moment.
S.H.I.E.L.D. actually impressed me for once; someone had connected our recent activities with our too-perfectly timed rescue of the Avengers previously, and assumed that we were one and the same. The theory had been flagged but then the investigation stalled out—they’d tried sending someone to question the Avengers, again, about their escape from the Chinese facility, and that poor baby agent had walked in on Agent Romanov during knife practice. Needless to say, the poor baby could barely squeak out his excuse for showing up uninvited, let alone ask questions. So we were fine on that front, for now.
I also sent out a few feelers, checking out the chat rooms and the news stations. I don’t trust the court of public opinion for anything, but it couldn’t hurt to have people in our proverbial corner when the inevitable happened.
And I was surprised, no, perhaps astonished was the better word for it. Eyewitness accounts outed us as females, and we had a surprising following for only having made one ‘appearance’ as it were and considering the rampant sexism in our society. So all in all, things were not as bad as they could have been, and I could breathe again.
Then the next problem was getting our bracelets fixed. Luna had to remind me that they were broken, I’d almost forgotten. I took mine off and examined it under the light, trying to see if they were salvageable. “Shit,” I said, rubbing my eyes. If they were, it was far beyond my skill.
“No good?” Luna asked me and all I could do was shake my head, “Where’d you get them anyway? Because as useful as these things have been, you certainly didn’t find them on the street.”
“Don’t ask; you don’t want to know who I had to kill.”
Luna actually hesitated a few beats before she asked, “No, seriously, where’d you get them?”
“They were a gift.”
Luna sighed, “A gift from whom?”
“T’challa.”
Luna sighed even louder and asked again, “So why’d T’challa give them to you? And no one word or otherwise vague answers!”
“Officially? They were a thank you present after I helped with some security issues he’d been having, S.H.I.E.L.D. poking its nose in where it didn’t belong among other reasons.”
Now Luna looked interested, “And unofficially?”
“They were a thank you present from a grateful scene partner.” Luna just looked annoyed and I took pity on her this time. There was a time and a place to be a little shit, and that time was coming to an end. “Not only am I damn good at what I do, but he can count on my absolute discretion and thanks to you, I can be wherever he is in seconds—hence why you got a bracelet too. Add in the fact that he can claim legitimate reasons for being seen with me, both on a business and personal level, and there you have it.”
“Aside from pretty and useful presents, what do you get out of your relationship with him?”
“I get an ‘s’ type who I don’t have to keep secrets from, one who’s need to serve and let go lines up well with my need to command and to care for and protect. He’s got an image to maintain and a country to run, there are only so many people in his life that he could even consider mentioning these desires to, let alone act on them.”
Luna’s eyes were starting to glaze over, so I finished off with the kicker that I knew would get her, “Plus, being what he is, I can flog the hell out of him until he can’t even remember his own name. He’d just have to make do with mine.”
“Damn it!” Luna mumbled as she half fell over into my lap. Yep, I’ve still got it.
“You're gone aren't you?”
“Yep. Higher than a kite. Shit! I didn't think you'd space me . . .”
“Sweetheart, we've figured out that it doesn't take much for me to get you there. You okay?”
“Yup. Just perfect.”
“Do I need to apologize?”
“Nope, you’re just fine. I’m fine, everything’s fine.”
“Okay, sweetie,” I said, petting Luna’s hair, “take your time. Come back when you're ready. I'll be here.”
Since we were going to be here for a while, I flicked my fingers for a blanket and my cell, draped the blanket over Luna, and then hit the second number on my speed dial, below Luna and above my publicist.
“Good evening, Ms. Suero,” T’challa said, his voice warm and low when he picked up the phone. “It is good to hear from you again so soon. Tell me; is this for business call or a social call?”
I laughed and responded sweetly, “Does it matter, my prince? Business, social, last I checked, both were held in equal esteem and were of great pleasure to participate in. Have you forgotten my last visit so quickly? I should have thought I left a lasting impression.”
There was a pronounced silence on the other end of the line before he spoke again, just the slightest hitch in his voice that let me know my innuendo struck home, “It can never be said that you do not leave such an impression whenever I have the chance to see you.” After clearing his throat, the prince tried again, “But still, there is some reason why you have called so soon after we said goodbye?”
“Unfortunately, I do have an ulterior motive this time. There was an incident if you will, and the bracelet set you gave me was damaged. I believe it’s beyond my skill to fix; is there some way I can have them repaired?”
“You should take better care of my gifts,” T’challa said, “Else I might believe you ungrateful and not give you another.”
I shook my head; silly thing liked having an opportunity to tease me. “I take excellent care of my toys, a fact you should well know,” there was a sharp inhale and shaky sigh on the other end. Gotcha, “And I assure you, the next time I have to see the ham-fisted child who broke my present, he’ll regret it.”
A few more veiled innuendos, punctuated by our soft laughter and T’challa and I arranged for Luna to drop the bracelets at our usual spot, though he did warn me that it might take a while to recreate the bracelets to my specifications. But what choice did I have? Thank the gods we chose a vacation spot that had significantly less cameras and the like to avoid, or we’d have had to be on what would amount to self-imposed house arrest. We finished our conversation and said our goodbyes and that, for once, was that.
***
“. . . and that, for once, was that.”
Or so I thought, because with Luna and me, nothing was ever over. Over the course of the next three weeks of our vacation, she had us show up to help the Avengers seven more times; thrice more in Manhattan, once in Kansas (of all places, insert Wizard of Oz joke here please), once in Australia, and twice out on the open ocean (over a cruise ship in the Pacific and an airplane carrier in the Indian Ocean respectively). Vacations were supposed to be relaxing! I was not relaxed!
The only good thing that came out of our constant appearances was the fact that I got to practice levitating—and I got to be pretty good it, if I did say so myself. (And what do you know, I did.)
Since our bracelets weren’t fixed to operate at optimal levels, we didn’t go out with them most of the time, so our appearances on news channels became somewhat more frequent. Our fan base grew, government agencies tore out their hair, and S.H.I.E.L.D. ran around in circles looking for us (and found nothing, which I was grateful for). The Avengers did a lot of staring, and the media persisted with their insipid nickname for us, The Phantom Twins.
That was my current gripe, staring the juxtaposed footage compiled over the last few weeks of our appearances. We were not twins and we were hardly phantoms. I suppose I should be glad for small mercies, we could have ended up with some sort of sexist nickname. The head to toe black leather look could have called for dominatrix jokes (and that would have been insulting on so many levels). There were some great shots of us whizzing about here and there and blowing things up—safely, we’re very good at avoiding wanton destruction—and generally kicking ass and taking names all over the place.
Of course, the most footage out there is from whenever we were in Manhattan because of course for biggest impact, terrorists and aliens and whoever the fuck villain of the month was thought New York was perfect, so we were home a lot on this vacation.
In fact, we were home so often they should have called us the ‘Phantoms of Manhattan or some—wait . . . OH!
“Luna!” I called, jumping up from what I considered 'my' seat on the balcony and reentered our suite, “Where you at?”
“Here, Rin, where’s the fire?” Luna said, poking her head out of her bedroom.
“I just had the best idea!”
She just gave me a look, “And this was more important than my book and my tea?”
I wavered a little, because for me, a bibliophile and best-selling author, to another bibliophile and hoarder of books, that something was that didn’t come naturally, calling anything more important than books. “Not exactly more important shall we say, but pretty important.” Luna tilted her head to and fro for a moment before she closed her book and looked at me properly.
“What would you say to me if I said I had an idea for a play?”
“Go on.”
“A modern-day parody of sorts of The Phantom of the Opera using our current sightings as heroes and calling it “The Phantoms of Manhattan”. Well?”
“Where do I sign?”
***
For once, this pair of insomniacs didn’t sleep for a much more pleasant reason than the insomnia itself. By noon the next day we had a rough draft of a script and I’d emailed my publicist about this new venture of mine. She was ecstatic about the project, less so when I told her I wanted it on Broadway by next year at this time, if not sooner. But since I was going to fund the venture out of pocket (hey, I always wanted to add producer to my list of titles) and we’d cast specially through Julliard’s current classes and recent grads, Luna would be my co-writer and my main director while I would be the sole producer—well, it didn’t take long for her to cave. What I want, I get. It’s good to be the King (in a manner of speaking). Besides advancing my career in new directions, I had an ulterior motive. This musical could only help us if we wrote it, fanning the flames of our popularity, because if as Heimdallr said our discovery was going to be inevitable, then I wanted as many people in our corner as possible.
And my publicist was and has always been a Godsend; she got me a two week run at the beginning of June, just under a year from now, which for anyone else would make this an impossible venture. But Luna and I thrive on the impossible. Julliard was more than happy to allow Professor Draconis to use our play as a special topic for this school year; after all the publicity alone would do wonders for the school. And the debut musical by both the professor herself and the elusive author ‘E. Ueno’ how could they refuse?
A few days later, with a new and improved in script in our hands, we returned to Manhattan to begin out next great adventure.