Firebird Freedom

Firebird Freedom
Date

It was obviously a trap. A nice trap, but still a trap, gilded with the finest gold and baited with a delicious chunk of brie, and perhaps a glass or two of wine. Any respectable mouse would have turned her nose up at the invitation and scrounged around in the dumpster for dinner instead, but a restaurant this expensive probably sent their garbage out by invitation only in gold-leaf bags at a hundred bucks a pop.

For long minutes standing on the flat roof with occasional flakes of snow blowing by, Summer wrestled with the temptation, finally coming to the conclusion that if she raided the restaurant dumpster before her date she inevitably would foul her outfit and probably damage the cheap low-heeled flats she borrowed from her druggie roommates.

Wearing her boots would have been an obvious tell to her criminal past, because the colorful duracloth of her costume could be adjusted to approximate a fashionable grey blouse and slacks, but the hip-boots just screamed supervillain. That was why her communications visor and the boots were safely locked away in the footlocker at her shared fleabag apartment. Widget had made the locker for her, one of the few worldly possessions she retained after the lawsuits and prison. Nobody messed with Widget’s creations, villain or hero. Even the prison had quickly returned her costume upon her release, because the occasional Widgetwear creation went looking for their owner if kept apart too long.

“Wearing the full outfit and flying inside would go over so well,” she muttered to herself. “Gentleman Jim could probably get away with it, but me? This place would evacuate their clientele and send in the cops with orders not to get blood on the walls or leave bullet holes in the furnishings.”

She gritted her teeth while checking her phone again, the only good thing about being flat broke and on public assistance, or welfare as she could not help but keep thinking. There were still a few minutes before she was supposed to arrive, and standing on the rooftop with the scents of French cooking wafting up all around her was agonizing. Her empty belly fairly burned with the sharp pain of ketosis, a mixed blessing of her mutated physique.

Many middle-aged housewives would have killed to be able to eat as much as Summer did during a normal day without getting fatter. The last six months had thankfully burned off the last lard of a year's worth of jail, but without enough to eat, her weight would probably keep dropping until she was the same starving wreck that had been thrown into prison when the Consortium had been busted. Between restricting her flying activities, public assistance and a certain amount of legal hustling, she had managed to delay the inevitable, although when the food stamps kept running out before the end of the month, there was only one option left that she was willing to lower herself down to.

Dating.

The phone gave out a toneless bleat as her timer went off, and Summer stepped off the edge of the building before she could talk herself out of this impending disaster. She had regained enough control over her powers that casual flight no longer endangered her plastic footwear, although the comfortable warmth of her passage melted a few leftover flakes of snow when she landed at the front door of the restaurant, right on time.

Entering the place was the hardest thing she had ever done. She would rather have fought Mighty Mite with one leg in a cast and a bad case of the flu… No, that’s not quite true. Mite would have thrown such a fight, taken a dive rather than hit somebody suffering, and probably brought over some chicken soup afterward. Probably soup from this place, too. There were no lines, nobody standing around waiting for a table, just an impeccably dressed gentleman who held the door open in front of her path and a painfully thin gentleman with a painfully thin mustache who met her inside and promptly guided her in the direction of an ornate table in a fairly private area.

A young man dressed in an expensive tailored suit looked up, caught in the act of pouring red wine into two glasses. It was hard to get a solid grip on his role in this theatre production because he had a very guarded expression, much like somebody who faced lawyers and criminals in court every day. Still, he lit up with at least supposed enthusiasm at her approach and pulled out her chair with a smile.

“A lady with impeccable timing, I see. Right on the dot.” He tapped his watch, a slim silver timepiece with old-fashioned hands. “If you’ll forgive me, I poured the wine early so it could breathe while we talk.”

“That’s fine,” she said to him before snagging the sleeve of the waiter or whatever he was. “Breadsticks?”

“As you wish, ma’am. I’ll have our server see to it.”

There was an awkward period of silence with the young man just looking at her across the table, more curious than anything, until he said, “Sorry, m’lady. I should have thought of that.”

“You should have thought—” She squelched the snappish response, although she could not bring herself to smile like a good and proper lady would. Instead, she arranged her grey outfit and got more comfortable on the rigid chair, giving him a brief nod. “It’s only proper to introduce yourself to a date.”

“Oh, yes. My apologies. My social life is a little limited. I’m Richard, but you already knew that from our text exchange. And you’re Summer Lewis.”

She waited for a moment to squash the irritated flames of anger that threatened to erupt, made only more difficult by a razor-sharp pain in her gut as her empty stomach tried to overrule her cautious mind. Far worse, the young man did not look like one of the creepy people who had dominated her life over the last few years, from screeching supervillains to arrogant lawyers. In respect for the general welfare of the other restaurant clients, their insurance agencies, and all the others who would suffer for her loss of control, Summer bit back her first response and growled through gritted teeth, “What gives?”

“Pardon?” The young man had a roguish way of raising one thin eyebrow that made him more attractive, but Summer forced down the sympathetic reaction since a young lady dressed in a server’s outfit was approaching the table with a basket of assorted breadsticks. After a few moments and only once she had a piece of bread in each hand, Summer continued in a low and menacing tone.

“You obviously knew about me before our date. The staff knew to bring me right here without even asking my name.” She glanced upward. “Right under the sprinkler.”

“You have distinctive hair,” responded Richard with a brief swipe of his fingertips across his own immaculate coal-black hair. “Yellow and red. It’s not totally unique in this day and age, but enough so that I could pass that along to the maître d'hôtel so he could ease your passage. And I will admit,” he continued quickly, “enough that a simple internet search told me a great deal about you. Mostly wrong, I suspect.”

Summer finished the second breadstick with a low growl and reached for a third. “No, it’s not. Just spill it now. What did you find out?”

“So… Firebug?” Richard waited until she had polished off the breadstick, plus several more, then handed her a linen napkin at the same time her stomach growled for more.

“Firebird. That’s my name now. Firebug was the name they gave me after I dropped into this world and fell into their control.” She flicked a finger at the unlit candle on the table, leaving it neatly burning with a tidy short flame. “You knew that, and you still showed up here. Are you expecting to skip out and leave me with the bill or something?”

Richard opened his hands wide in front of him. “I already paid in advance, and Simon has my card just in case. I just wanted to talk, or I never would have even downloaded that app.”

Summer snorted around the last of the breadstick, then reached for several more as her stomach gave off a sharp stab of hunger. “I don’t believe you. There’s only three kinds of people who swipe up on that blasted dating app. There’s the criminals who think they can drag me into some sort of scheme that will wind up with me back in prison. There’s gung-ho law enforcement types who are looking to get a feather in their cap by putting me back in prison for just talking about committing a crime. Future or past, or even fictional, they don’t care. And then there’s the third type. That’s you. Weirdos.”

Richard rubbed his smooth chin. “Admittedly, you’re right. Then again, who in this world is exactly normal? Not either of us, that’s for certain. And this place does an amazing gateau au chocolat for dessert. That’s not normal either.”

“Weird with money.” Summer gestured at the candle with the last breadstick and picked up the wine glass with her other hand. “If you make one move on me, one dirty joke or gesture, I’m not going to burn you. I’ll just leave, no matter where we are in the menu. You want to talk? This little talk is going to cost you. A lot.”

“Agreed.” Richard nodded. “As I said, all I want to do is talk. No recordings, no fake book deal promises, no lies on my behalf at all. You’re a very interesting young lady. Um… I don’t think that wine has had time to breathe,” he added as she washed down the last of the bread with the whole wineglass.

“I’m not going to starve while waiting for it to start respiration.” She picked up the wine bottle and refilled her glass. “And I’m not going to get drunk on just one bottle so stop looking like that. Five would only get me tipsy for an hour or so.”

From Richard’s expression, he had obviously not thought about that particular aspect of her ‘modification’ at the hands of science, although he did raise his folded menu to get the attention of their waitress, who was lurking nearby.

“Are you prepared to order?” asked the polite waitress with her eyes darting back and forth between her two customers, but eventually settling on Richard.

“Yes, I’ll have what we discussed previously, and the young lady will have…?”

“I told you this would be expensive.” Summer took the folded menu out of his hands and opened it, placing her finger on the right column and moving down. It let some of the steam out of her demeanor to think about what was going to come next, since the menu was edged in gold leaf, and none of the menu items had prices next to them. “Start with whatever he’s having, then I’ll have one of everything down to here.”

“Start with the soups,” said Richard to the startled waitress. “Bring them one at a time instead of all at once, and make sure Chef Ramone uses generous portions for the young lady. Oh, and some more breadsticks, s’il vous plaît.” He watched the waitress as she left, then turned back to Summer, who was filling her third wineglass from the nearly depleted bottle. “I should have had her bring the wine list.”

Summer shook her head, feeling her short hair brush against the collar of her grey ‘blouse’ while missing the heavy flow of a thick mane reaching her waist. “No need. I’ll send the empty bottle back with the first entree. They can just bring the cheap stuff—if this place has any cheap stuff—and I’ll make do just fine. Unless—” She cast an inquisitive look in the direction their server had vanished. “Do you think they have apricot brandy?”

Memories of a time long gone swirled around Summer, spiked with the glorious taste of apricots which had gone to their reward in a particularly glorious fashion. In her student days, the bottle she had ‘borrowed’ from the Royal wine cellar had been doled out over several weeks in small dribs and drabs, self-awared rewards for her studies, a substitute for pats on the back and words of praise that she had rarely received for her efforts. That had been a better time, before she had become so obsessed with power that she flung herself through an unknown portal in hopes of… To be honest, she still had no idea what she was chasing. The only thing she knew for certain is that she had not caught it, and was further away from it now than when she started.

Or what she was running away from.

“If they don’t have apricot brandy, the wine sommelier will find some.” Richard watched her pouring the last of the wine into her glass and wordlessly placed his own untouched wineglass onto her side of the table. “I think I will need all of my wits this evening. So, did you want to talk about the supervillain group who made you this way?”

“Only if you can tell me where they are. Not that I’m going after them, of course. There are crazy people in capes for that.” Summer gestured with the half-eaten lemon slice that had been resting on the rim of her water, since it was the only thing left on the table to eat other than the linen napkins. “I’m not doing anything that could possibly get me thrown back in jail. I don’t even cross against the light or step on bugs.”

“That bad?” asked Richard.

“Worse, and you can’t feed me enough to tell you half of it.” She looked over her shoulder again with her stomach growling. “Thought she’d be back by now. Anyway, the Consortium didn’t realize my metabolism was jammed in high gear either, and they didn’t care as long as I did their dirty work. Mind-control implants. It’s a great way to keep your disruptive minions in line without complaints.”

“I read about that,” admitted Richard. “Didn’t it get you off at trial?”

“First trial. Second one was more complex, and my own damned fault. Ah, here she comes.”

The waitress slid a bowl of fresh onion soup in front of Summer, then one for Richard, but by the time she turned around, the first bowl was gone and a napkin was in order.

“Really good, ma’am. If I could get a second bowl, please. Oh, thank you, sir,” Summer added as Richard passed her his bowl. A few seconds later, it too was empty and added to the stack of empty dishes that the waitress was taking back to the kitchens, along with the empty wine bottle.

“Wasn’t that hot?” he asked. “Or is that more of the Consortium’s genetic tinkering?”

“A little of one, a little of the other,” admitted Summer. “I can drink boiling water if I need to. Threw me for a real loop first time I found out. In less than a month after my ‘treatment’ at the hands of the Consortium, I went from a temp insurance clerk straight out of high school to a lab experiment to a genetic freak flying above a bank watching for the police. Had no real idea what I could do and they didn’t either. Six months after that, Mighty Mite hit me in the face so hard she broke my nose and my jaw at the same time. Woke up in a hospital with a power damping collar and a splitting headache. A month later, I was recovering from neurosurgery, and a year after that, all the criminal charges against me were dropped.”

“But you went to prison anyway after a second conviction?”

“I had a habit to feed. Literally.” She scooped up a crumb from the table and made it disappear. “Most addicts pay their pushers. I paid the donut shop for their leftovers, and anything else I could find on the cheap. Then there were the pizza deliveryboys.”

From his skeptical expression, Richard did not believe her. Since the waitress had returned with two more bowls of potato soup and a basket of bread, both in stick and slice form, she was willing to wait to educate him. That only took until she was wiping the bottom of the bowl with a slice of bread while he was still dealing with his spoon and blowing on the surface.

“You’ve never been hungry in your life, have you, rich boy?”

“Not particularly.” Richard was far faster than Summer first thought. He managed the trick of taking the last piece of sliced bread out of the basket without losing a finger. “I’ve been in trouble more often than I can count, but never in that way. I understand how desperation can lead somebody to make horrible decisions,” he added quickly between spoons of soup and bites of bread. “Heroes, villains, and ordinary people go through that every day, sometimes for the dumbest reasons. Rich people aren’t immune by any stretch of the imagination. They just get more people injured or killed in the process instead of nicking a couple of pizzas.” He paused. “Sometimes, there are turtles involved.”

“I didn’t get arrested for petty theft the second time,” she admitted while smothering an onion-y burp. “I was arrested for trying to rob an armored car to pay off the loan shark that I took money from in order to pay off the pizza place and other places so they wouldn’t have me arrested. It looked so easy, just like my time with the Consortium, right until Mighty Mite showed up. Again.”

“So is she an official nemesis or—” Richard wobbled his empty spoon back and forth.

“She was cashing a check at the bank, probably in her secret identity,” said Summer through gritted teeth again. “There’s nothing between us. It was just coincidence. Bad luck on my part.”

“She really doesn’t have that much of a secret identity,” pointed out Richard after a few more spoons of his potato soup. “She represented you at the first trial, after all. I mean how many young sub-five-foot-tall female defense attorneys with purple hair are—”

“It’s a secret identity,” said Summer with as much emphasis as she could without setting something or someone on fire. “Ethical supervillains, as much as that sounds odd, don’t mess with family, and generally, the heroes do the same.” Since she had some time before Richard finished his soup and the next course would arrive, she continued, “In the clink, I heard about two guys. I’m not going to name names. Anyway, there was one hero and one villain, with both having teenagers in the same school and they met by accident at one of the basketball games.”

“Awk-ward,” said Richard.

“It gets better,” said Summer. “Or worse, depending on how you look at it. They never really became friends, although they wound up taking in a few baseball games together in the summer, co-sponsored some school events, things like that. Then their kids started dating.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Heavens only knows how it’s going to turn out, but everytime I open a newspaper now, I check for fights and wedding announcements.”

Richard winced and put his empty bowl to one side, which seemed to trigger their waitress appearing out of thin air to collect all the dishes. Summer likewise stood up and looked around, making her excuse for a quick bathroom stop between courses.

It was no gas station toilet like she had become used to, but not quite the gold-plated and obsequious plumbing paradise she had pictured. The spotless marble lady's room did have an attendant with towels, which set Summer back. It was not exactly the most intellectually challenging job in the world, but the young redhead looked as if she was far overqualified from the way she tucked an expensive tablet computer into her outfit pocket when Summer entered. It also was a job without many physical challenges, so it was a bit disconcerting to see how well the attendant filled out her expensive uniform like she had a secondary career as a very expensive and pretty bouncer.

Summer took care of her business and washed up while thinking, and dried her hands on the proffered towel before deciding that asking was better than ignorance.

“Do people… tip you?” she asked.

The attendant obviously resisted a small smile, but nodded with a bob of her shoulder-length red hair, which made Summer dig around in the pockets of her grey blouse.

“This outfit isn’t very convenient for storage. I was meaning to take it up adding some more pockets with Widget, but she was difficult enough to deal with in the first place, and you really don’t want to push her on things like that or you’ll wind up with a costume that self-destructs when—” She produced a dollar coin and quarter, placing them into the small bowl on the bathroom sink. “Is… that enough?”

“That’s fine, ma’am. Um… You’re Firebird, aren’t you?” At Summer’s reluctant nod, the young woman gave a weak grin. “Can I get your autograph? Make it out to Barbara?”

* * *

Summer barely managed to get seated at the table again before their waitress appeared with two plates, one substantially larger than the other. “Pasta with garlic prawns,” she said with a sniff. “You’re on a date, and you ordered garlic prawns?”

“I told you I just wanted to talk,” said Richard as he arranged his napkin. “At sufficient distance.”

“I was a villain, not a vampire,” grumbled Summer while picking up her fork. Some rapid stabbing and chewing of the pasta later, she snagged a piece of bread out of the basket and began to mop up the remaining sauce. “I didn’t used to be this stingy. I used to count calories, and worry about how I was going to fit into a bathing suit.”

“No sane man would touch that line with a ten-foot pole,” said Richard while dealing with a dripping prawn.

“This isn’t fat any more,” said Summer, slapping one hand against her duracloth-covered arm. “I prefer to wear long sleeves and baggy clothes in public now because… Well.” She located the adjustment tabs in the folds of cloth and twisted them back to their costume position, feeling the cloth tense up to its normal skin-tight settings making it look more like body armor while waves of orange and yellow flowed out across the duracloth. She flexed, taking some quiet satisfaction in the way Richard’s eyes opened wide and the waitress coming up to take the empty plate stopped in her tracks.

“Impressive,” he managed while she was readjusting the cloth tension on her outfit back to the concealing slack and dull grey it was before. “I’ve seen women with practically zero percent body fat and that kind of build before, but you’re nothing like the pictures of your trial would suggest.”

“One upside to what the Consortium did to me. I could probably bench press five times your mass and carry you flying for an hour or two with the right protective gear, but that comes with a price. I’m more efficient now with practice, but I used to burn over three times the calories in normal activity, ten times when flying. A hundred times or more when fighting. The blithering twits they had pulling my strings never realized it. By the time Neuro pulled the Consortium’s little mind-control gadget out of my brain, I was well on my way to dying from malnutrition. Ah, thank you,” she added as the waitress slid another plate in front of her, this one simply heaped with large roasted garlic prawns.

“I read that the Consortium’s freed—pardon the phrase—experimental subjects were kept in a resort in upstate New York, and… Um… You know you’re supposed to shell those first,” said Richard, pointing with his empty fork at the rapidly reducing roasted prawns on her plates.

“Takes too long.” Summer broke off another prawn head and dropped it on the table before making the rest of it vanish with a crunch, leaving only the very end of the tail to join the scraps. She wiped her hands on the napkin, then patted the loose duracloth fabric across her front. “They called us Dee-Dees, for Dimensionally Displaced. That also worked for bra sizes. Went down the alphabet from there as I starved. When Mite broke my jaw the first time and hauled me away from the Consortium, all I had was skin.”

Another prawn met its gruesome fate, and Summer waved the remains at Richard. “I’m not sure you should call it a resort, since we weren’t allowed to leave. I didn’t care because they fed us. By the time what the media called the Consortium Trial came up, I was just above the weight I am now, with enough fat to be healthy and photogenic. They must have taken a billion pictures.”

“And nine months later, you get caught robbing an armored car, looking half-starved,” said Richard.

“Criminal record,” said Summer between prawns. “Cops won’t hire you, fire department treats you like an arsonist, and every single company takes one look at civil liability and runs the other way. Couldn’t even go back to work at the insurance company as a clerk since I was still setting papers on fire whenever I got upset.” She glanced upwards at the sprinkler head above their table while chewing. “Better now. Anyway, couldn’t make bail. No bondsman would touch me. And since—” she flicked her thumb up and let a small blue flame dance on the end of it for a moment “—I was an obvious hazard awaiting trial, they dropped me in the state pen and stuffed me into a suppressor collar. Cranked up to ten.”

Richard winced. “Seems a little extreme.”

“Depends.” Summer put the empty plate holding the prawn tails and heads to one side and began wiping her fingers. “I have to watch my temper or you’d be worried about more than just setting off the sprinklers. The prison doctor worried too, so he had my food drugged. I about overdosed on tranquilizers. Oh, wait,” she added to the waitress who picked up the empty plate. “Some more soup would be nice to wash this down. What’s available other than the onions and potatoes?”

“Soupe aux truffel noires,” said the waitress. “That’s chicken soup with minced truffles. One bowl?”

“Please.” Summer gave the departing waitress a final glance before turning back to Richard, letting her polite smile fade. She picked up a breadstick and used it to point at him.

“The armored car was a stupid act of desperation. I thought one quick heist would fix everything, and I was hungry. I don’t think well on an empty stomach. I do stupid things. Like tonight, for example.”

“You don’t strike me as a particularly stupid young lady,” said Richard, who had managed to pilfer a breadstick of his own out from under her nose. “And the worst thing you should take home from this evening is indigestion.”

“Ha!” scoffed Summer. “Anyway, I don’t remember much out of the last year in prison because of the collar and the drugs, but I was still hungry all the time. My mutated metabolism was all damped down to parked, I wasn’t thinking straight, and had nothing else to do, so everything I ate went to fat. I could barely drag myself out of my cell, but boy I could eat, and the warden let the cafeteria know that I could have whatever food I wanted. My lawyer was clueless, and didn’t see my weight gain as a problem. He was some pro bono reject, and he only worked on the criminal portion of my new legal woes.”

Richard tapped the last stub of his breadstick against his chin. “I thought the Consortium trial put an end to any criminal actions against you?”

“Criminal yes, civil no. Second time in prison, and there was an opening for the legal sharks when they found a bankruptcy judge who had it out for any supers, probably because some cape dropped a building on his car. Lawsuits are civil, and you don’t get a free lawyer for them so I wound up trying to represent myself while my brain was all fuzzed out.

“By the time my second criminal trial opened, all the lawsuits from my time as a puppet to the Consortium were closed, and the judge awarded them everything they asked for and more. I could have won the lottery and been further underwater than before. Lawyers,” she added in a bitter snap at the whole blasted occupation.

“It doesn’t seem fair that you were penalized for actions taken while under the influence of a third party,” said Richard, who had stopped eating with one untouched prawn still on his plate.

“Since when is life fair?” she countered. “I did the damage. How can I look at some kid in burn bandages and say it’s not my fault? When the Consortium was treating me like a puppet, I tried to limit the damage as much as I could, but people still got hurt. I feel worse for the parents, mostly. Their lawyers probably filled their heads with dreams of a big payout from Junior’s injuries, and all they got was beans and a fat bill for representation. At least the lawsuits got me out of prison for a few hours at a time. I was so fat by then they had to push me around in a wheelchair. Ah, the soup.”

Summer caught the bowl before the waitress could put it on the table and took a long drink out of it, only to carefully place it down afterward. “That is good. Going to take my time with this one, ma’am. Take a break for a bit, and thanks.”

“Now you’ve got me curious,” said Richard, picking up his spoon. “Mind if I try or would I draw back a stub?”

“One spoon. That’s it.” Summer pushed the bowl closer to him. “My second criminal trial date finally came up after that. The prosecutor wanted me in jail for life and offered no plea deal. She was running for re-election and my fat scalp would look good on her wall. With my old skinny picture in the campaign ads she had been running for most of the year, of course. I thought I could sway at least a juror or two by waddling onto the stand and crying.”

“You’re out,” said Richard, pushing the bowl back reluctantly. “Something must have worked.”

Summer lingered over a spoon of soup, savoring the rich flavor as much as the memory. “Mighty Mite testified about the armored car robbery. Took about an hour. Prosecutor asked her to stay in case I caused any trouble. I think the bitch was hoping for it. Get me angry and make me fire up during questioning, then see me taken out of the courtroom on a stretcher with a broken jaw. Again. So when it was my turn to take the stand, they unlocked me from the wheelchair with both hands shackled behind my back, I take one step… And down I go like a four-hundred-pound bag of potatoes.”

“Ouch.”

“No kidding.” Summer took another spoon of soup and blew across it to warm it up. “Woke up in the hospital with Mite right there. Later, I heard she ripped my damper collar off with her bare hands and flew me to the emergency room. Said my heart stopped twice. Cracked several ribs doing CPR. Without the collar and the drugs, they healed up in two days. That upstate New York place is great. They’re not hiring, though. I asked. Begged, even.”

“So…” Richard paused while the waitress brought out two plates of pan-seared Scottish salmon, one with a regular-sized piece, and the second nearly reaching the edges of the plate with a heap of asparagus drowned under cheese and garlic sauce. “Chef Ramone seems to be rising to the challenge, I see,” he added once the waitress left with the empty dishes.

“Don’t diss the chef,” said Summer, waving a large fork full of salmon at him. “If he’s single, I’d marry him in a heartbeat. I’m terribly prone to catabolysis since my time with the Consortium, and if I start breaking down muscle mass for energy again…”

“It would be bad,” said Richard. “Unfortunately, Chef Ramone is married.”

“So is the chef at the recovery facility,” admitted Summer. “Anyway, when the trial resumed at half my weight, I had a new counsel. Short and competent.”

“Isn’t it unethical for a lawyer to represent a client in a crime that she stopped by breaking her jaw?” asked Richard. “Twice.”

“Oh, and a new judge,” added Summer without a pause. “Lost enough weight I could walk by then, provided I wasn’t wearing one of those blasted damping collars. I was told where to stand, what to say, how to look, and what to wear when I was walked out of the courthouse to the car and back to upstate New York to recover some more. Got to the point where I couldn’t look lettuce in the eye, and I used to like lettuce.”

Richard finished chewing and wiped his lips. “Sounds scripted.”

Since Summer was chewing, she did little more than grunt.

“Of course, if it was scripted in some way, you wouldn’t want to admit it for legal reasons, and I’m not going to pry,” he added. “You’re once again a free member of society, and I haven’t heard of any banks being robbed by flaming bacon-haired maidens, so all is safe in the city once more.”

“Safe. Right.” Summer dealt with the rest of the salmon like a bear in springtime, giving the plate a quick swipe with a piece of bread once she had finished off the cheese asparagus. She caught the sleeve of the waitress as she arrived to clean the table and said, “Just a moment. I believe you can skip the steak tartare. I wasn’t really thinking when I ordered, and I used to be a vegetarian before—” She made a vague gesture at herself.

“So did you want to cancel the filet mignon also, ma’am?”

“Heck no,” said Summer immediately. “Make sure it’s well done, though. Crunchy is better than drippy. With ketchup.”

After a brief snort of derision, Richard said, “A barbarian instead of a supervillian, I see.”

“The last place that served me an underdone burger…” Summer took a deep breath, really unwilling to elaborate except for the way that Richard’s eyes widened in realization.

“You didn’t.”

“Did.” Summer held her hands together, one on top of another. “Fried it up right at the counter. Messy, but effective. I can’t go back there anymore, though. Banned. Like every buffet and lunch counter in town.”

The waitress, who had been listening with obvious amusement, promptly spoke up. “Chef Ramone can make a number of extraordinary hamburgers. They’re not on the menu, but—”

“Yes,” said Summer. “Skip the filet and get me one of each type he can dream up, please. Well done, no pickles, por favor. And that bottle of apricot brandy to wash them down.”

Richard was doing a poor job of hiding a smile, at least until the waitress vanished back into the kitchen area. “Hamburgers with brandy,” he eventually managed.

“Better than Chinese food,” she admitted, grabbing a fresh breadstick and dunking it in marinara sauce. “All you can eat buffets aren’t. You go now!” she added in a sharp falsetto, slowing down as she chewed. “They’re all afraid of me. For good reason,” she added as Richard seemed to be about to contradict her. “Fire has to be controlled, and I’ve always had a temper. Got me in trouble more than once before I let the Consortium fiddle with my genes. I’ve always had this thing about being controlled. Not getting what I wanted.”

“The city’s full of people with powers who can’t get what they want,” said Richard. “So they take it. Armored cars, for example. I think you know that more than most. Was it the same where you came from?”

“I would have taken it.” She picked up another breadstick and bit it viciously. “I was stopped. I had never been stopped before. Never. You have this saying. Money is power. Well, it’s wrong. Power is power. That’s what I wanted. I tried to take the money in the armored car because I was frightened. I had the power. I just couldn’t use it to do something as trivial as feeding myself without breaking the law.”

She waved the half-eaten breadstick around. “There are probably a hundred criminals in this city who would buy me my own buffet, but they want to use me for their own goals, and I’m never going to be used again. Not after what the Consortium did to me. Never.”

Giving the stub of the breadstick a vengeful stab into what was left of the marinara sauce, she swirled it slowly. “Maybe they were right. I’ve always wanted more than I could handle. I couldn’t get that kind of power where I was from, so I… ran away. I was so consumed with anger it made me blind with pain. I deserved that power. Thought I was smarter than every—” she coughed “—body else in the world. It hurt too much for me to stay. Didn’t listen. Didn’t wait. Didn’t ask why. Didn’t even try a different approach. Just ran.”

The silence stretched on, painful and thin, broken only by the distant click and clatter of other restaurant patrons out of sight.

“Sometimes,” started Richard before coughing and wiping something from his eye. “Some pain is too strong to face when you first encounter it,” he eventually added. “You have to get stronger than the pain first. Some pain… Some people can’t run away from their pain. It either destroys them, or they become something far stronger by growing into it.”

“My pain almost destroyed me. Completely self-inflicted. Little Miss Perfect.” Summer put aside the breadstick, despite wanting to bite its head off. If it had a head.

“Will you ever go back where you came from and face what made you leave?” asked Richard. “Or can you?”

“I don’t know.” She finished off the breadstick anyway and grabbed another, adding after she had swallowed, “There are people in this world who could undoubtedly make me a magic portal back home. I met some while I was recuperating in the enclave upstate. I didn’t ask then. Not going to ask now.”

“Why?”

It was a very small word, but Summer would rather have faced a disappointed Mighty Mite. Chewing on the breadstick did not help her find words that didn’t hurt.

“I’m not done. Growing, that is. I thought all I wanted was power. And when I got it, I turned into…”

She flicked her fingers at the lit candle on the table, giving it a quick swirl before snuffing it out and pulling the fire into her hand where it danced across her palm in a torrent of tiny sparks.

“Power is power. It comes in all sizes and strengths. It sounds trite, but you have to control it before it controls you. Every day, every time I use it, I get a little more leverage on it. I use fewer calories to do the same things, or brand new things like this. But I have to keep it under control, or…”

She popped the rest of the breadstick into her mouth before pointing the flickering flame at the far wall and swinging around like she was releasing an imaginary inferno to ignite the whole room. “You know, one slip and I could burn this building to the ground regardless of the sprinkler system, and laugh in the blazing rubble. The Consortium knew it, which is why they planted a controller in my head. The prison knew it. The tranquilizers and the suppressor collar only damped my power, not the anger behind it. Now I’m free, and…”

“Vengeance?” asked Richard.

“No. Never.” Summer let out her breath, returned the candle flame to its home, and watched it dance for a time. “That would make me into what they say I am.”

“Then you’re running away?”

“Not again.” Summer drew in another breath and held it. “I’m finding out who I really am. For the longest time, I thought that was a terrible person. Destroy the world kind of terrible. Evil in all senses of the world, but the more I look at myself, my real self once all the impurities were burned away, I’m not afraid any more. Are you?”

“If I was afraid of you, I wouldn’t be here,” said Richard. “I’m just curious. It’s gotten me into trouble before, and probably will again. For example, why did you point at the candle with two fingers? Does it channel your powers better, or is it just for dramatics?”

“This?” Summer held up one bare hand and looked at the way she had her index and middle fingers pressed against each other. It helped take her mind off the past, and let her relax with the humorous memory. “Habit, mostly. First time I used my powers in costume, I pointed like this.” She held her hand with all of the fingers together and her thumb curled against her palm.

“Blew my glove off and nearly hit a policeman. We exchanged awkward looks, he handed my glove back, and I flew off without setting him on fire for staring at my chest. My controllers liked to wear my costume cut down to here,” she explained, pulling down on the loose duracloth of the blouse until it stopped just below her small breasts, showing barely enough bare flesh to be called cleavage. Richard had the good taste to look away for a moment while she rearranged herself, but he eventually managed a polite but snarky response.

“Using all of your assets in a fight, I suppose.”

“I had some influence over myself while being controlled,” said Summer, grabbing another breadstick for emphasis. “Had more than one controller twisting my mind through the implant. Never saw their faces and none of them have been caught yet. One was a real pervert. Could hear their voices, so if I ever find—”

She broke off and picked up a nearby empty plate. It took considerable concentration, but she lit her fingertip from the candle on the table, focused the fire down to a single point, and wrote on the china with a light touch. The needlepoint of plasma under her nail etched a fine line where she touched, and when done, she put the plate back down on the table and picked up a loose fork. It took a slightly more diffused touch to melt off the last inch of the silver alloy without setting the sprinkler off above her, but she had been practicing, and filled in the etched signature with a glittering silver trail from the ex-fork.

“You’ll mark him for future identification?” asked Richard.

“The young lady in the bathroom wanted my autograph,” said Summer. “She didn’t have any paper, so I’m improvising.”

“That’s not an answer,” pointed out Richard.

“You’re correct.” Summer put the plate to one side and began picking bits of metal out of her palm. “Ow. Happens every time.”

“With great power comes melty things sticking to you?”

“Laugh it up, Mister Money.” She pointed two fingers at him. “You’ve never had a pair of nylons melt to your legs, or worse, underwire bras.”

Richard pursed his lips and winced, only to close both eyes and hold a hand over his eyes when she continued, “And don’t get me started on sex.”

Unseen until that moment, the arriving waitress gave a little gasp by her elbow and nearly dropped the brandy bottle she was carrying. “I’m sorry,” she gasped in something between a snicker and abject embarrassment.

“Don’t be.” Summer picked up the silver-chased plate and passed it over after the waitress put the bottle on the table, along with two empty brandy snifters. “Take this to the young lady in the bathroom, please.”

Once the waitress left, Richard shook his head. “I’m sorry for embarrassing you like that. With… you know.”

“Sex.” Summer let out a breath she did not realize she had been holding. “I don’t want to talk about it, but I can’t afford a shrink. You say anything about this—”

“My lips are sealed,” said Richard, holding one finger against his chest. “Burned shut.”

Giving a short nod, Summer opened her hand and picked at the last bit of silver metal embedded into her palm. “Suffice it to say, the prison system has guards who are willing to take advantage of somebody who is defenseless. Even a lard-ass. Probably the best for them. If I had even a flicker of my power back then…” She bit down on her lower lip. “I lose control when my emotions get going. Inside and out.”

Thankfully, Richard kept his comments to himself. He uncorked the bottle of apricot brandy and poured himself a thin layer on the bottom of his glass, then passed it over for Summer. She only looked at it for a moment, then began to pour into her own snifter. And pour. And pour.

“Maybe it’s for the best in the long run. I’ve never seen any of them again, and I know better than to look. There are some temptations that should be avoided at all costs.” She shook the bottle to get the last few drops of brandy out, then placed it to one side while looking off into nowhere in particular.

Richard swirled some of the brandy around in the bottom of his snifter, then took a sip. “So if you could go back in time—”

“I wouldn’t.” Summer placed her full snifter of brandy in front of the empty space where the plate was going to go when the waitress returned. “I have regrets. Everybody does. But you can’t solve them by going backward. They say you can never go home again, but I never realized how accurate that was until I left home and became somebody else. Going backward is admitting failure, placing yourself in the same situation you fought so hard to escape. You have to build your new self out of the wreckage of your old. Even if I was foolish enough to go back where I started, it’s not the same place and I’m not the same person.”

“So if somebody—and this is strictly hypothetical because I can’t—were to find a way to reverse what the Consortium did to you—”

“No.” Summer played with the lip of her brandy snifter, running one finger around the edge. “The Consortium gave me everything I wanted, everything I had dreamed of since I was young. Power. Flight. A place where I belonged. I own that decision and its consequences. I could probably shave my head and wear a wig, try to blend into society. Go back and deal with actuarial tables and accountants. Attend a real college instead of taking mail courses. Even go back to where I started. That would be defeat, not victory.”

Taking a long swig of brandy, she stared at nothing in particular. “Do you know the frustration of having a role model so powerful that you can never measure up to them, no matter how hard you try?”

Richard stifled a snort. “More than you’ll ever know. I think you will find it is better to become your best self rather than try forever to become somebody else, no matter what kind of pedestal you put them on.”

She took another drink of her brandy and moved backward when the waitress placed a plate heaped with french fries in front of her, then followed it up with another plate containing a hefty hamburger oozing with swiss cheese and loose mushrooms, while strands of raw onion stuck out of all sides of the bun.

“I’m sorry if that’s a bit much, ma’am,” said the waitress hesitantly. “The chef is taking this as a challenge, and— Oh.”

Summer did not hear much other than the crunch of lettuce and onions beneath her teeth. When she surfaced after working her way halfway through the burger, the waitress was nowhere to be seen, probably because she was afraid of being eaten also.

“I could have saved a thousand bucks by taking you to a burger joint,” said Richard, who had managed to sneak several of the french fries off Summer’s other plate while she was distracted.

“Another example of how I’ve changed and can’t go back.” Summer gestured with half a burger. “Before the Consortium, I never would have eaten this.” She grabbed several fries and washed them down with a mouthful of apricot brandy.

“So, forward then.” Richard did that annoying thing where he tented his fingers in front of his face, much like a few supervillains that Summer had briefly known. “Where?”

Summer did not say anything, even after the waitress brought out the next hamburger. It took three trips because she was sent back for ketchup at first, then for another plate of fries.

“For now, here,” said Summer after several bites. She pulled a pickle out of the hamburger with her fingers and dropped it on the napkin, but continued through the rest of the burger without a pause. “For later, anywhere but prison, or anything that might lead to prison. Been there, done that, got the mental scars.” She washed down the last of the hamburger with a good swig of brandy, then placed the empty plate to one side just in time for the waitress to place another one down.

“Kimchi and fried egg,” she said as Summer dug in. “It’s a little hot, so you might—”

It really did not matter, because Summer was too busy enjoying the mix of blazing flavor to say anything in return, but she did make an encouraging grunt. Richard merely watched, trying to hold back a smile and doing a rather poor job of it. She was just getting to the end of the damp sandwich crust when he twitched and pulled out his phone to look at a text.

“Darn,” he said.

Summer gasped, and held one greasy hand over her mouth. “Such language! By the way, I normally melt a date’s phone if they try to take a picture,” she managed before starting work on the french fries, glittering under a light coat of duck grease and a sprinkle of what she suspected was an expensive salt from somewhere thousands of miles away.

“That would be nice.” Richard typed a short response and tucked the phone back into his jacket. “The boss wants me back, now. The jet’s waiting at the airport, and no, don’t think I’ll ask to have you fly me out there.”

“A place with thousands of gallons of jet fuel all over the place,” said Summer between bites. “Probably a bad idea, even if you had an asbestos suit. Mind if I finish up here?”

“I would never get between you and fine cuisine.” Somehow, the young man managed to capture Summer’s hand as he stood, and brushed his lips against the backs of her fingers despite the thin layer of duck grease and salt. “I’m actually booked for a week at the hotel on the boss’s credit card. It would be a shame to see that go to waste. Penthouse suite. Room service. They have a spa, with a steam room.”

He added a plastic room card to her hand as he turned it over, then closed her fingers over it. “Simon will call you a cab and bill it to my card. Think of it as an apology for not making it to the end of dinner with a fascinating young lady.”

“I really shouldn’t,” said Summer while trying to think of excuses. It was difficult while looking into his sparkling blue eyes, all packed with mischief. “Think of your reputation. And your boss. Particularly if it all goes wrong and I set something on fire.”

“My boss is sorta-kinda expected to have exotic young ladies over at odd hours,” said Richard smoothly. He reached into a pocket and produced a monogrammed money clip, which was wrapped around a good number of high-denomination bills. “Tip well. It’s expected,” he added while pressing the cash into her palm. His phone took that moment to buzz again, and he winced. “My ride’s here. Sorry for the interruption. I’ll call by the end of the week if we can find a job for you. A legitimate job,” he added quickly when Summer started to object. “Everybody who tries deserves a second chance. Sometimes three or four until you get it right.”

And with that, Summer was alone again. Well, except for the remaining fries. She convinced the waitress that she was done with burgers for now, skip the snails, and perhaps one bowl of the cheesy macaroni because she was fascinated with the way every restaurant fixed it in a different manner. Then she sat there for a time, swirling the leftover apricot brandy while thinking of a place far away, and what changes had most likely occurred after she crossed over into this world.

It would have been easy to peel the bills out under the stylized R of the money clip and slip away, good for another month or two before hunger drove her into another disaster date. Then again, the use of a penthouse suite for a week made for some very tasty cheese, if this was a trap. And she had always wanted to see how this world managed the luxury she had practically ignored in her own world. It certainly showed in their macaroni, because it was exquisite, and the magnificent gateau au chocolat, which she managed to stop eating after thirds. Well, fourths.

Life was getting better. She had been deeply concerned that her date was going to be some psycho or supervillain like so many others before. Having him be just some eccentric rich guy working for a richer guy was… a nice change of pace.