Chapter 13
It had taken a while for Avalyn to have been peeled from her vice-like grip on the roof of her cell. She had immediately wanted to ask Steph what was going on, but Steph took a phone call and said she had to go, and then proceeded to leave without explaining anything else.
In fact, no one had explained to Avalyn what on earth was going on yet. The Maria lady merely shook her head with a tired expression on her face and told Avalyn to ‘wait for Tabby’, whoever Tabby was. She was getting rather bored of being put on hold in real life for an explanation as to why her best friend had kidnapped her to what looked like some sort of super-powered cult.
Avalyn knew better than to ask as another stranger, presumably the ‘Tabby’ that she was told to wait for, told her to follow as she led Avalyn down a corridor. A corridor that wouldn’t have been too amiss from a cliche horror game from the mid 2000s, complete with the flickering neon lights and that really annoying whirring sound that was rattling within her pairs of ears.
Avalyn cringed slightly at that reminder, her new set of cat ears folding down onto her head. Right, she had those now. The snicker coming from inside of her head seemed to suggest she got no sympathy from the thing that gave them to her.
“In case you were wondering, since I noticed you staring at them.” The woman suddenly spoke up, causing Avalyn’s ears to stand to attention. “No, they aren’t meant to flicker like that. We just don’t have the budget to fix them…allegedly.”
“How expensive could it be to get some new lights?” Avalyn tilted her head.
“Allegedly, ‘funds are better allocated elsewhere” Tabby said, using her fingers to single air quotes as she stopped walking at a singular door. Avalyn hadn’t even noticed that they’d reached the end of the corridor. The older woman went to open the door, the metal creaking loudly as it slowly swung open.
“Let me guess, you guys can’t afford to buy oil either?” Avalyn deadpanned.
She didn’t get a response that time as Tabby walked up ahead into the dark room, clouded in darkness. Avalyn had seen enough horror movies to know not to go into a dark room with a complete stranger, so she stood her ground.
Ye bloody coward, what’s the worst that can happen?
“I don’t know, maybe she shanks me or some shit like that.”
Have ya bloody forgotten that ye have powers ye dense twat.
“I don’t fancy being shanked with powers or not!” Avalyn loudly whispered back.
That’s what a coward would say!
Avalyn rolled her eyes as she walked into the room, only to be immediately blinded as the room was suddenly blanketed with an extremely bright light. She sprang up against a wall, letting out a quiet hissing sound as she protected her eyes with her arms.
After more than a few seconds, she slowly removed her arms from her face, and took in the room in front of her.
The room in front of her was a far cry from the lo-fi horror that Avalyn had seen in the building. For one thing, all the lights were working in this room, but that wasn’t all of it. The room itself was quite large and dotted uniformly with rows and rows of equipment, apart from a wide open space at the end of the room.
Avalyn recognised some of the equipment, the treadmills, the weight machines and some other stuff that one might find in a gym. Some of the others though, they seemed far more high tech than that. The metal arms and pokey bits coming off of them intimidated her and frankly Avalyn did not want to know what they were for. One of them seemed like a slightly translucent cube, but its colour seemed to change every few seconds. Mysterious.
Tabby caught Avalyn staring at the cube and quietly shook her head. “We won’t be using that one today. This is our test facility. We, ideally, would like to have the details of your abilities, physically or supernatural, on record. So that we are no longer surprised when you drive a bus through a metal wall.”
“Shouldn’t I have to like…” Avalyn scratched the back of her head. “...sign a form or something? I don’t want to be probed by whatever that is.” She pointed to a machine with a very prominent sticky out bit.
“We’re not going to poke you anywhere with anything.” Tabby sighed. “I just want to find out how strong you are, how fast you are, how physical you are. And then, I just want to see your powers in action. Most of these machines are prototypes anyway.”
“Then…why are they in here if they might not even work?” Avalyn tilted her head.
“We have nowhere else to put them. Now…” Tabby walked up to where the weights were held, and gestured to Avalyn. “Now, let’s get started, or are you going to be stubborn again?”
Avalyn shrugged, making her way over. After all, what’s the worst that could happen?
—----------------------
A dumbbell sticking out of the concrete wall of the room. The front of a treadmill caved in from where Avalyn had fallen into it. Several broken grip strength dynamometers.
A list of some of the things that had happened. In Avalyn’s defence, she didn’t think she did too much wrong. She barely touched one of the dynamometers and it immediately crumpled.
She did trip on the treadmill though. She got a little bored after keeping up pace with it for the past hour. She wasn’t actually sure how simply falling into a treadmill could cause the entire front to fall off, but the answer, as she had been told so many times, was probably because this thing costed less than a croissant.
“Let’s take a break.” Avalyn heard Tabby take another long sigh, as she dumped her notebook on the floor by the sidewall, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Can’t believe I have to report all this…”
“I’m not paying for it if that’s what you’re thinking…”
“Nah…it’s not your fault. Christine will probably pay for it anyway.” Tabby went to walk towards the door. “Want to go get a coffee? I know a place nearby.”
Avalyn shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t really drink coffee but, sure.”
She could POISON yer drink!
‘She’s not going to poison my drink, Cora. That’s an unbelievably stupid idea.’ Avalyn noticed as Tabby blinked in her direction. ‘Sorry, Cora thinks that you’re going to poison my drink.’
“If we wanted to kill you, we would have done it already. Now, let’s go relax, and have a drink.” Tabby deadpanned as she pushed her way through the door. Avalyn followed her soon after.
The walk itself was rather quiet. Tabby seemed extremely tired and irritated so Avalyn thought it was best she didn’t bother the senior too much. After all, she had wrecked a lot of shit just a few minutes ago, and she was starting to feel a little bad, even if Cora didn’t.
Tabby led them to an elevator that was the other end of the hall, and as she pressed the button to the ground floor, Avalyn noticed that this building had four separate floors. The journey was creaky and highly alarming for Avalyn. But, with a loud grinding noise, they made it to earth safe and sound.
Shockingly, the door of the elevator opened out right onto the street, and sure enough, a quaint looking cafe was right across the street. Very soon, Avalyn found herself sitting down in a booth right next to the door, opposite to Tabby. She had already caught several people staring at the top of her head, her cat ears unconsciously folding down in embarrassment.
“If you don’t want people staring, I can get you a hat or something.” Tabby shrugged lightly.
“Nah, it’s not that big of a deal. Worst comes to worst, people just think I’m a furry with a cat ears headband.” Avalyn grinned. “Then they’ll just stay away from me, win-win.”
“I guess so.” Tabby turned to look for a waiter, but they had all apparently seemed to decide to go on break at the same time as none was in sight. “Typical…so, Avalyn, it would save me sometime, and perhaps some money, if you would tell me how your powers work exactly, apart from your superhuman strength that you’ve already demonstrated.”
“Well, I can give you my tragic backstory if that helps.”
“The abridged version maybe.” Tabby deadpanned.
“So then, let’s start from the beginning. I was just walking to university, then, bam, I get hit in the head by a thing. That thing turned out to be this goop alien symbiote from space called Cora. Along with being an annoying bitch, she can like, give me this other form that is super strong, super fast and can grip to walls. It does come from a skirt and ‘combat stilettos’ as she calls it though, so that’s a downside. Oh and also I can apparently survive fatal wounds, and that everytime I did change or had to be healed, I became more and more female.”
“I did hear about the last bit from Steph, but I think she just thought you were on HRT.” Tabby tilted her head slightly. “That’s…quite interesting though, we have a good spread of powers but we haven’t had or heard of power by symbiosis yet.”
“Of course not, I’m unique, me.” Avalyn smugly smiled. “What are your powers then, since I told you mine? Only fair ain’t it?”
Strangely, Tabby seemed a little nervous, her glance darting to the side. “It’s complicated to explain. In fact, I don’t really want to explain it.”
“Oh come oooooon, it can’t be that bad can it?”
I bet her power is that she takes explosive shits.
Tabby shook her head. “No, it’s just, kind of embarrassing, not just for me.”
“Can I pay you to tell me?” Avalyn immediately reached into her jacket pockets in search of her wallet.
“Not enough.” Tabby said, folding her arms. “Listen, you need to understand some things beforehand anyway, and the lecture would take more time than I have.” Tabby’s right eye twitched as the door at the other end of the cafe opened with a ring.
“Hey look, if it’s bad behaviour for me to ask for other’s powers then, I didn’t know.” Avalyn grumbled, sagging slightly into her chair.
“No, no, nothing like that. Just like I said…my power is complicated.” Her right eye twitched again, as Tabby moved her hands under the table.
“Do you want to get a drink? You seem a bit…I don’t know…fidgety.” Avalyn cocked her head, as she saw Tabby’s eye twitch again, the older woman shook her head.
“No, no…not right now…” She slowly rose to her feet, and Avalyn saw that her right hand was doing what she could only describe as repetitive jazz hands. Her other hand waggling up and down, the twitching in her eye getting stronger. Avalyn could only watch as Tabby stumbled along, apologising to people as she went. As she was halfway across the cafe, her right leg started to kick onto the ground, the sound of her boots creating a ‘thump’ every time she did so.
Looking at the other side of the cafe, Avalyn noticed that she seemed to be walking towards a pair of older-looking teenagers, sitting at another booth. Of course, they had noticed her by this point and were staring at her with a mix of confusion and annoyance, the latter especially clear from the blonde guy.
As she reached the table, Tabby was almost fully dancing, her body jumping around and jerking, generally in the direction of the blonde boy. Leaning on the frame of the booth for some sort of stability, Tabby leant forward and seemed to whisper something towards the boy. She reached into her pocket and dropped something onto the lap of the boy. She couldn’t make out much of it, but Avalyn thought she saw the symbol of the NHS on it.
Avalyn wasn’t sure if she was meant to have heard what Tabby said next, but her sensitive ears picked up ‘you’ll be happier, you’ll be happier’ from the older lady. With a drop of another card on the boy’s lap, suddenly, Tabby’s body stopped twitching and jerking, and she made her way back calmly towards Avalyn’s booth, sitting back down. She sagged slightly in her seat, and rested her forehead down onto the table in front of her.
“Are you ok?!” Avalyn asked with an element of hysteria. “What on earth was that?!”
“That…” Tabby sounded exhausted as she lifted her head from the table to stare at Avalyn. “That was my power.”
“Come again?”
‘Oh, I bet it’s something really funny.’
“Well…my power is that, I detect that someone is in need, and my body responds accordingly. The closer I get to the person, the more extreme it gets. I cannot ignore it, as until I help the individual, my body won’t stop.”
“Like, that person is going to die or something? Are you like a walking cancer detector?”
“No no…” Tabby sighed as she shrugged. “Avalyn, my body detects if someone is having feelings of not feeling right in their own body and identity, more specifically, their gender…I detect repressed feelings of gender dysphoria, and my power basically requires that I help them, no matter what.”
Avalyn was stunned into silence, her gaze turned towards the blonde..’boy’... who was now reading the pamphlet that Tabby had left…’him’. The effect of the reveal though, was rather scuppered by someone not quite having the right grasp on the situation.
‘BAHAHAHAHAHA, SHE FUCKIN’ DETECTS EGGS, I’M LOSIN’ IT, HAHAHAHAHA. FUCK, SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN AROUND BEFORE I WAS TO HELP, FUCKIN’ HELL HEHEHEHEHE.’
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When he woke up today, Will Schroeder certainly didn’t expect to be met with a direct confrontation of…his..repression.
What right did this random lady..Tabitha..have anyway to soul read him and tell him that ‘he should do this’ or ‘he should do that’.
So, why was it that Will was sat on the front steps of his flat, staring longingly into the business card with her number on it.
Did he really want to get help? Would it really make him happier, or would it just make everything worse?
His contemplation was interrupted as he was struck in the head by something that had screamed down from the sky.
Will was not having a good day.