Happily Ever After, Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
WARNING: More crack than Skidmark's medicine cabinet
"… so that's how the C.U.I. saved the world. And then everyone lived happily ever after."
"Tell it again, gramma Taylia!" said Zimmy, whose rapt expression during the story had given way to disappointment once she realized it was over. "One more time, please?"
Taylia sighed as she glanced around the room. Most of the adults had meandered off to do their own things, and the two exceptions hardly counted toward her audience. Dinah was curled up by the fireplace, dozing, while Libecca was lying on a chaise lounge, so deep in reverie with herself that Taylia would probably need to dump a bucket of water over her head to snap her out of it.
And of the three children, only Zimmy was paying full attention. Her brothers were more interested in their action figures and building blocks, and especially what happened when the former were forcefully combined with the latter.
Boys will be boys, she thought as the corner of her mouth twitched into a smile,
but it's already past all our bedtimes.
Zimmy must have noticed her grandmother's hesitation, as she redoubled her efforts. "Tell it again, pleeeease?" she begged, as she batted her eyelashes, eliciting another half-smile from Taylia.
Quite the charmer. Ah well, I suppose it is my prerogative to spoil them. "All right, just one more time, but after that it's straight off to bed, okay?"
"Okay," Zimmy chirped, looking up expectantly. Levi threw in an absent-minded " 'kay," while Bemmy only grunted in agreement before returning to his toys. Taylia settled back in her chair, which purred soothingly as she stroked its armrest, and let her mind drift back to the past. "It all started on the day of my wedding…"
The wedding had been everything that Taylor and Amelia had dreamed of, and more besides. The ceremony was beautiful, the exchange of vows was touching, and most importantly the day hadn't been spoiled by any S-class threats and/or homicidal Entities with suspiciously perfect senses of dramatic timing.
Finally it was time to throw the bouquet, which Amelia had grown on-site from flowers pollinated by Taylor-controlled bees—both as a reminder to the watching nations that the brides were no ordinary teenagers, and (Amelia hoped) a promise of what the honeymoon might bring. Taylor and Amelia joined hands on the stem of the bouquet and tossed it backwards into the throng of expectant attendees with a flourish.
There was a brief but vicious scuffle as the bouquet flew through the air: Alexandria flew up like a rocket to meet it, only to be blindsided by an actual rocket from Miss Militia. The blast knocked the bouquet away, causing Crystal and Sarah to collide in mid-air as they desperately tried to correct their courses. The now-smoldering flowers began to fall toward Lily and Sabah, who shrieked in terror and ran away in opposite directions, to the relief of their friends and teammates.
Clarice ran lightly across the shoulders (and occasionally heads) of the crowd and positioned herself to intercept the bouquet, only to be intercepted in turn by Vicky. As the two exchanged a lightning-fast series of feints, parries, and strikes, Missy took advantage of their distraction to distort the space between her and the prize, reaching out almost casually to grab it … and was shocked to realize that the bouquet was already in the hands of a strange girl who was definitely not one of the wedding guests.
As Missy and the other combatants stared in confusion, the stranger—who was dark-skinned, with long curly hair, and wearing an outfit that would be more appropriate for a seedy nightclub than a wedding—began to do a touchdown dance with the bouquet. "Who's the best? That's right, it's me. Uh huh, you know it, you know it, uh huh!" she sang as she strutted around, finishing by spiking the bundle of flowers into the ground with a "Woo!" while a growing crowd stared, aghast.
The silence was so complete that you could have heard a pin drop on a mat of Yggdrasil. It was broken by an exasperated voice. "God DAMN it, Aisha!" Lisa shouldered her way through the crowd and grabbed her long-lost teammate, dragging her away from the spectacle with one hand while rubbing the bridge of her nose with the other. She could already feel one hell of a migraine coming on, and it wasn't just from her powers. Although that certainly wasn't helping matters; as ever, Aisha was an abundance of TMI. Flushed. Not from fighting for the bouquet. Used her power to have a quickie during the ceremony. Lisa groaned. With Alec. "WHAT?!" she screamed. "Are we living in a fucking comic book? Doesn't anyone stay dead around here?"
Of course Taylia sanitized the story considerably in her retelling, but she made a point of exaggerating the emotions: Missy's surprise, Aisha's enthusiasm, Lisa's frustration. Hmm, I may have overdone that last "WHAT?!" she mused, as she noticed Dinah stirring from her slumber. Fortunately, Dinah only poked her head up briefly and mumbled something that sounded like "97.402% chance I've heard this one before." Then she carefully smoothed out a wrinkle in her suit with her paws, tucked her head under her wing, and went back to sleep.
On the bright side, the story of the bouquet battle had captured the young boys' attentions, if not for the same reasons. Bemmy was doing his best to reenact the scene using his action figures, with what looked like a Crawler head as a stand-in for the bouquet. Levi had stopped fidgeting and was looking thoughtful. "Could I catch the bokay at a wedding?" he asked.
"Of course you could dear," Taylia replied, "but you'd need to be pretty fast to grab it."
"I'm really fast!" Levi proudly exclaimed, running a few laps around the room to prove his point. "But, what do you get if you catch the bokay?"
"Well, some people say it means you'll get married next."
"Oh," Levi said, "could I marry Zimmy?"
"No dear," Taylia laughed, "that's not the way it works."
Libecca's fingers twitched almost imperceptibly against the chaise lounge, transmitting a message through its material that Taylia's special senses detected and interpreted as "
Hmm, I guess it must run in the family." She exercised her powers to make the lounge's fabric minutely shift in a pattern Libecca understood as "
Oh hush. He's adorable and you know it." More finger twitches "
Absolutely. Not to mention that I'll be able to embarrass him with it years later, when he starts bringing dates over." Shifting fabric "
Don't even think about it, unless you want me to tell them about the time you almost held hands with your other half, right in the middle of a UN session." Fingers twitching in mock outrage "
You wouldn't dare!" "
Try me, you hussy."
In the moments that this side conversation was being conducted, Levi's brow wrinkled in confusion. "Why not?"
"I'll explain it when you're older," Taylia replied, still chuckling. "But for now, let's continue the story. Later on my wedding day…"
"Explain. Now."
The public ceremonies were over but Taylor and Amelia were still in their wedding dresses. Taylor was gritting her teeth too hard to speak, so her swarm spoke for her. "How are you two even alive? We saw your bodies! And, out of all the times you could of let us—your friends—know, what on earth possessed you to do it by ruining Amelia's and my WEDDING DAY?!"
Missy, Clarice, Theo, Zach, and Emma looked on in confusion and concern. Lisa was nowhere to be seen, as she was busy replacing her Thinker headache with a Johnny Walker one. CalmingSoothingIt'llBeOkay, Amelia sent, trying to prevent Taylor from having a complete meltdown. GratitudeFrustrationYou'reRightButShe'sJustSuchABratAndIReallyWantedTodayToBePerfect, Taylor sent in response.
Aisha edged away from the roiling cloud of bugs, working hard to keep her power suppressed. She'd learned the hard way that angry bees don't need to remember what they're attacking, and this swarm was only kept in check by Taylor's orders not to attack anyone in the room she was aware of.
"Okay, okay, first of all I didn't ruin your wedding. No one outside of this room will even remember who caught the bouquet, I made sure to avoid cameras, and…" "Nope." Taylor cut her off. "Pick one: explanations or bees. Ten words or less."
Aisha sighed theatrically. "Got captured. Bonesaw made decoy bodies. Wedding crashing is funny."
A vein began to visibly pulse on Taylor's forehead and her swarm surged forward again, until Alec spoke up. "Actually this scary lady in a suit told us not to contact you until now, and that you'd understand once we explained things."
FrustrationResignationBullshitHax DittoCompleteBullshit Taylor visibly relaxed, the majority of her swarm dissipating. But remind me to fill Contessa's wardrobe with Mantellum-wasps once this is all over. "Okay you two, actually I can believe that. But back up a minute. What was the part about you getting captured and Bonesaw making decoy bodies?"
"Oh yeah, it was crazy." Imp said, absent-mindedly scratching a few stings on her midriff. "We both got hurt pretty badly when Piggy blew shit up, so Boney blocked our powers and grabbed us to do mad science on. I dunno what she wanted Alec for, but she said she was going to stitch me together with this older lady named Yamaha, or something like that. But anyway, most of the Nine were out fighting and that Yamaha lady talked the Siberian into letting us go …"
Oblivious to the looks of utter amazement from most of the room, and guilt from Clarice, Aisha continued her story "… so once I got my power back I broke Alec out too and we got the fuck outta there. But everyone already thought we were dead, since Bonesaw left behind fake bodies made from…"
"Definitely not Girl Scouts!" Clarice interrupted, sweating nervously. "Heh, um … definitely not Girl Scout COOKIES is what I meant to say. Because they're delicious and it would be a shame to waste cookies on making clones to gruesomely kill in order to prevent your enemies from searching for their loved ones so they won't interrupt your brilliant scientific plan to react pure concentrated tact with pure concentrated anti-tact to generate an unlimited source of orgone energy to power your army of giant murder robots because that's just crazy and hey, who wants a Thin Mint? I know I sure do! Gee I'm so hungry! I'mgonnagopickupsomeThinMintsnowbye!"
Clarice had begun sidling toward the door by the time she first mentioned Thin Mints, and in the end she took off at a sprint, accelerating so quickly that her voice dopplered as she disappeared down the hallway. Amelia followed in concern, while Theo stayed but looked rather unsettled by the whole outburst. Missy just sighed wistfully, "Isn't she the cutest?"
"Speaking of food, what do you guys have to eat around this place?" Alec started wandering off in search of a refrigerator to raid and Taylor moved to give chase but … wait, wasn't there someone else I needed to talk to? I'll worry about it later, she told herself.
