Red Fox Action Log 50:

  The safehouse echoed with music. Gunnar and Wendel had turned the dining area into a workspace. The boombox’s efforts mixed with the hiss, and flash of the welding gun. Bridgette, or what was left of her, needed all of the team’s technical knowhow to get her comfortable in her new body.

  We scrapped the robot Gunnar had used for parts. Its finer digits fit into the suit’s gauntlet well, which made for a much better hand when she needed it. The rest of the skeleton served to reinforce the suit so it didn’t collapse under its own weight. Bridgette could move the suit without the metal skeleton, but she couldn’t walk without it. The suit was designed to work with someone inside. So, we built a body for the inside.

  Wendel cut off his own pinky to more securely bind her spirit to the machine. I wasn’t sure it was necessary, but he said that there was no magic taboo he wouldn’t break to help his friend. I wanted to argue, but then I remembered how I lost my arm.

  At one point, I stopped in the hall to eavesdrop. Cynthia worked clay to sculpt a face to match the one Bridgette had drawn. Bridgette, using a large metal file, scratched with her new hand at the other, laying in some of the final runes that would allow her ghost to animate it.

  “We could maybe get a closer likeness if we got some pictures of your old face. I think the Super-net has some,” Cynthia offered.

  “I’d rather that when I look at this face, I see someone else, than if I saw someone that looked like me, but not quite. In my head I can think ‘maybe I’m just wearing a mask’ and not balk at the person pretending to be me, looking back from the mirror.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I couldn’t see Cynthia’s face, but when she spoke again, I could tell that she was beginning to tear up. “You know, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. It. Maybe it would be okay if —”

  “— I know you aren’t talking about me. Whatever this is, it is not for me. Here I am carving runes into my new body. Here I am fighting to be here. So who are you really crying for?”

  “I just. I had a friend that went through a lot of pain because of what she felt were expectations to a world that didn’t really care for her.”

  “I’m allowed complex feelings about what has happened to me. But I don’t do this because of what they may think. I do it because I want to. I may not be able to feel your arm,” I heard something like a gasp, and thought maybe she had reached out to her. “Not really. But any time I want I can leap out that window and fly. Not a bad thing, huh?”

  They worked in silence for a bit. I realized that I was intruding, but I felt like if I walked in at this point it may be obvious how long I’d been here.

  More comfortable silence. I almost walked in, but Bridgette spoke again.

  “It seems strange that finally I am free of that prison I didn’t choose, only to now work with you on crafting one of my own design.”

  “You mean, uh, you mean your body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hey guys,” I said, finally walking in.

  “You’ve been listening,” Bridgette said. “Naughty boy.”

  “Ah, only a bit,” I said. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

  Cynthia gave me a weak smile, and wiped her eyes. I tried to give her one back, as if to say I didn’t mind her display of emotion.

  “Then maybe you can be useful,” Bridgette said. “I only have one hand, so if you could turn my wrist for me that would be lovely.”

  I reached out with my good arm, and turned her hand over.

  I glanced at the mask. It was coming along nicely. Not really much like who she was before, but beautiful enough.

  Later, Wendel enchanted the eyes.

  Without that work, Bridgette was stuck looking at the armor from the outside most of the time, from a third-person astral body. The eyes helped her feel human. Or as much as a ghost cursed to experience some kind of sick undeath stuck in a suit of armor could feel human.

  Her sense of humor seemed intact. Maybe that was the last thing to go. What else is a poltergeist, but the will to pester after everything else is gone? It was juvenile, but she liked to hide a whoopie cushion under couch pillows. Sometimes she would enchant the toaster to give you a harmless jolt if you touched it.

  And she needed conversation, constant conversation, unless she wanted to be left alone, and then she’d throw whatever she had at hand at you. Half heartedly, but still… It could hurt if it was a pencil or a mug.

  I didn’t begrudge her the violence, her lashing out. Though I had to take her aside and dress her down about it once or twice. Me and Cynthia could take it, but Gunnar didn’t have superpowers. I thought maybe Bridgette felt herself slipping away from humanity, and what else could be more terrifying?

  We aren’t just our bodies, but without a body, how do you know what is you, and what is the rest of the world? How do you recognize tiredness, lust, anger, your own understanding of your womanhood?

  Sometimes I caught her gazing at Cynthia, and I wondered what she thought. Our team had jumped in power exponentially, but at what cost?

  Sometime a day or two after we’d finished her new body, and a week and a half after the museum fight, all of us convened after breakfast in the kitchen to talk about next steps. Bridgett had her gauntlet and helmet off, and was lazily reading a book on magic that she held in her metal fingers, her clay face unmoving. Cynthia leaned against the counter in her shorts and tank top spreading jam on a toasted bagel. Gunnar chomped on a plate of apple slices and peanut butter. Rick jammed baby carrots into a bit of hummus and crunched away. Wendel had already returned to oversee work on the museum.

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  I kept my eyes on the boys or out the window. Though I can’t say I didn't take small peeks at Cynthia. She was stunning, even with hair up in a lazy ponytail. Maybe especially because of that. Her gem was visible above the neckline of the shirt, and she pushed the blue butterknife against her gem. It fizzled and cracked with sparks as it disappeared into its depths.

  I'd yet to summon anything from mine, but I’d managed to use it to float a bit. If I concentrated, I could surround my body with a protective field.

  I knew it would be easier if I just told her, allowed her help learning to control it, but something stopped me. What if she hated me for taking something that had belonged to her friend? What if she resented me for not coming to her sooner?

  “Next is John Sullivan," Sleuth said. “We can take the van back to Upstate New Lindon. Any objections?”

  “Why not just go after this Whitehot, now?” Bronze Boy said, not looking up from her book. “With me, Cynthia, and Carla, we can take her and her goons apart no problem.”

  “Well, there’s Lovely’s spores,” Gunnar reminded us, “but we may have a counter-measure for that.”

  “Whitehot is laying low for the moment,” Sleuth said. “So while I’d love to finally put that woman behind bars,” Bridgette made a scoffing noise as if she objected to the idea of putting her in prison. “What does the book say, Fox?”

  “What book?” Cynthia asked.

  “We have ah, a friend who is a precog,” I said. “She wrote her vision in a notebook to guide us.”

  We’d communicated recently through text. She was less than pleased with my decision to bring in Cynthia so soon.

  “How trustworthy is it?” Bridgette asked. “I don’t know much about, well, that kind of stuff.”

  “I would say ‘very trustworthy,’ but for the moment we are a bit off the map. Here, let me show you.”

  Sleuth and I turned the whiteboard to face the kitchen. I erased some of the work we’d already used and wrote in its place our tarot card list. I then ran a line through the people we’d secured for the group.

  The Fool — Red Fox

  The Temperant — Sniffer Sleuth

  The Juggler — Bronze Boy

  The Devil — John Sulivan

  The Strong — Carla Quick

  The Just — Gem Blade

  The World — Captain Iron

  “Captain Iron is a big ask,” Bridgette said. “He could be dead.”

  “So should you,” Gunnar said, then immediately found something very interesting to look at out the window.

  “Nora, uh the one that made the notebook,” I said, “believes it’s possible.”

  “Don’t we have Carla Quick?” Cynthia asked.

  “I wouldn’t say so,” Gunnar butt in. “She’s active, but isn’t responding to our texts.”

  “She doesn’t trust us yet,” I said. “The bigger problem, Nora believes, is that I jumped the gun bringing Gem Blade in.”

  “How so?” Cynthia asked.

  “Uh, ‘the order keeps us safe’ is what she said. She doesn’t have nearly infinite previews like Bunny does. She has a set vision that keeps us safe. If we operate outside of that, she can’t help us.”

  “Oh,” Cynthia said, taking a sip of coffee. “Then I’ve made a mistake?”

  “No,” I said. “You’re perfect.”

  Cynthia gave me a shy, but not unwelcoming smile.

  “Here’s brass tacks,” Sleuth said. “We have to assume everything we’re doing is something Bunny has planned for. Every move we make, we have to assume is walking us right into a trap. So, we just have to be a team that can handle any trap. Do we think we’ve become that?”

  “I’d feel better,” Bridgette said, “with an unkillable rage monster at our backs. We’ve already made contact with Carla. Let’s double back for Sullivan.”

  “Or,” I said, “we keep going down the line. Next in line is Carla. And her powerset helps us solve problems faster. We stumble upon a bomb, sure maybe Sulivan tanks that explosion, but if Quick were with us she could disassemble it in an instant.”

  “Why hasn’t she joined us already?” Cynthia asked.

  I sighed.

  “One of her friends —” I began.

  “— his ex,” Gunnar cut in.

  Cynthia’s eyebrows raised with interest.

  “Right,” I continued. “Jill. She lost her arm trying to escape. Same as me. I think Quick sees us as incompetent.”

  “Jill Bosche?” Bridgette asked. “Leader of the Quick Response Team?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh they aren’t friends,” she continued. “They’re boning for sure.”

  “What? No they aren’t,” I said with absolutely zero confidence I was right. I could feel my ears getting hot. “How would you know?”

  Bridgette set down her book finally, and leaned against the counter.

  “I can see it in her face when she talks about her. Also, Carla is messy. Made a pass at me once.”

  “She didn’t,” Cynthia said, incredulously.

  “Like you have room to talk,” Sleuth muttered.

  “What?” Cythia asked, with some heat.

  “Guys,” I said, “let’s not speculate on who is with who.”

  “I didn’t say ‘with,’” Bridgette continued. “I said they f —”

  “Wait,” Cynthia cut in, “explain why you turned her down? Not into women?” she asked with only some concealed interest.

  “Please,” Bridgette responded, “I’m from the London magical community. It'd hardly be my first time with a woman. No, I just clocked that we were ‘incompatible in other ways.’”

  “Wait,” Gunnar said maybe too excitedly, “you think you were both tops?”

  “I didn’t say that…”

  “Ladies!” Sleuth said, raising his voice. “Carla Quick has every right to be skeptical of our abilities. I let everyone I care about be killed right in front of me. Now are we going to sit here bantering about childish things, or are we going to make sure that doesn’t happen again?”

  I gave Sleuth a sympathetic look.

  “Well,” Cynthia said after a bit of silence. “Does the Red Fox have a plan?”

  I thought for a moment. May as well lay my cards on the table.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Let me show you this.”

  I hooked the bottom of my glove and tried to pull it off, but it was being stubborn. Cynthia walked over and took my hand. I let her. Her icy blue eyes gazed into mine for a second, as if she was looking for the answer to my mysterious pronouncement there and not on my hand.

  I tried not to give anything away.

  “Oh, cheeses!” she swore, backing away from me in what I assumed was horror. I showed the rest of the room the gem in my palm.

  More Ratings! Also, sorry for the slightly late upload today. I'm just busy trying to crack the ending to volume 1 and it's kicking my ass.