Star Harbor Nights

After an interminably long day at her normally engaging day job, Allison Powers found herself in a serious rush to get home. She usually enjoyed the afternoon bus and train ride, but this time she skipped them entirely. Instead, she ducked into a public restroom and changed into her costume... which struck her as a bit tacky, but it's not like they had phone booths in Crescent Bay... so she could fly over the city as Mindfyre. She changed back at an isolated beach a short hike up the coast from her condo, and then jogged the rest of the way.

She realized she was taking a huge risk using her superhero identity to commute, especially during the daylight hours, but after eight hours of forcing herself to deal with color schemes and ad layouts, she was eager to get cracking on her big case. Her mind had kept wandering back to the facts of the caper as she knew them, and she had a few theories she wanted to try out.

An hour later, as she sat on the couch with a notebook in her lap, she felt like she had rushed home for nothing. She just wasn't able to concentrate on the letters in front of her. The truth was, the movie she'd popped on for "background noise" ended up being pretty distracting. She probably would have turned it off, but it was the sort of thing she could only watch when her roommate wasn't home, and she didn't know when she'd get another chance.

The sound of footsteps on the deck and a key in the front door told her that this chance had passed.

"Hey, girl," Allison called. She glanced around for the remote out of reflex, but of course it was nowhere to be seen. She stabbed the stop buton with her telekinesis, and the scene cleared to the blue logo just as Amy entered the living room.

Her roommate was dressed in a long coat. Beneath it was her own superhero uniform, that of Amphitrite, goddess of the waves. A hat covered most of her distinctly blue-green hair, though several locks fell down over her face. All in all, there was something a bit more bedraggled than usual about her appearance. It was odd, considering she normally had the poise and presence of a true goddess, rather than a mutant who took after one.

"Hey, yourself," she said with a smile. "What you up to?"

"Just working on a riddle of sorts," Allison said.

"Yeah?" Amy said. "I've got a riddle, too: what has sixteen tentacles, two horns, and a giant freaking beak?"

She brushed her green hair--unusually damp, considering her powers normally stopped water from permeating it--out of her face, and Allison saw a pair of ring-shaped bruises on her temple.

"Oh! You ran into that thing again?" Allison asked, recalling Amy's account of an encounter with a bizarre sea creature the two nights before.

"Its big brother, maybe," Amy said. "Unless it managed to double in size very quickly. Anyway, I was swimming around just outside the bay when I started to get the feeling I was being followed. Crazy, right? I mean, who would be out there but me? But I turn around anyway, and at first I don't see anything, so I started to swim off but then I notice this ripple... the thing was following me, but it was camouflaged. I hit it with some currents and it just took off in a cloud of ink again, but a little while later, I noticed it was following me again. Isn't that crazy?"

"Maybe it wants to make you its main squeeze," Allison said.

"Again! The octo-beast is bad enough," Amy said, "but then you have to make a bad pun."

"Maybe he's just a sucker for a pretty face."

"You're not getting any funnier," Amy said. "So the third time it came back, I used swirling currents to keep it from running. Big mistake! You do not want to get in close fighting with anything that has more arms than you."

"So what happened?" Allison asked.

"The fighting tired me out very quickly, and I couldn't sustain the vortex around us, so it just took off again," Amy said. "I got a bit of a tentacle that broke off, though. I sent it with my father to have Thoth take a look at it, see if he can figure out where this thing came from."

"Wow, eventful day," Allison said.

"So what are you working on?" Amy asked.

"The mind control case... or Rhyme's connection to it, specifically. The name she used in her Police Appreciation Day caper, Diane Crief, didn't fit her old pattern for pseudonyms," Allison said. "Thoth mentioned that Rhyme had changed her M.O., but he didn't say what the new one was."

"Maybe he hadn't figured it out yet," Amy said, shrugging.

Allison gave her a look that told her roommate exactly what she thought of that theory.

"Anyway, I know her old signature was anagrams... every alias she used, back to the legal name she picked when she first came to America, was an anagram of the phrase 'Rhyme and Reason'," Allison said. "After so many years, she's burned through all the ones that sound even halfway normal... and everybody knows what to look for, anyway, so it makes sense she'd change things up a bit."

"You're assuming Rhyme's interested in things that make sense."

"She is, to a point," Allison said. "She's Reason's daughter, after all. I'm working from the assumption that she's still using anagrams." She held up the notebook, showing "DIANE CRIEF" written a bunch of time with various letters scratched out and different combinations of words and half-words written around them. "I'm not having much luck, though. Puns aside, word play's not my thing."

"You know there are servers on the internet that will do that for you?" Amy said. "For free, even."

"I need to do this on my own," Allison said. "The problem is that I'm an artist... I think visually, not verbally."

"Oh! Hang on," Amy said, heading towards the computer nook. "I'll be right back."

"I told you, I don't want to use the internet."

"I'm not even getting on the computer," Amy called back. "I just need some paper, and I remember what happened the last time I used your fancy drawing paper for scrap."

She came back in the room a minute later, holding a bunch of little rounded rectangles of paper.

"There," Amy said, dumping the pieces of paper onto Allison's lap. "Think visually."

Allison looked down, and saw that each piece of paper had a letter drawn on it with a thick black marker. She picked out the letter D and held it in front of her face, releasing it with her hand but holding it in place with her mind. It was quickly joined by the letters A and N.

"'And'," Allison said. "Let's start by assuming she's not strayed too far from her original motif. What's that leave us with?"

She levitated the rest of the letters in a swirling dance around the floating word, re-arranging their order at random until something jumped out at her.

"'Ice'!" she cried, and that word joined 'and'. "That just leaves e... i... f... oh, wait!"

She set the remaining word in place and then slowly turned the letters around so that Amy could read them.

"Fire and ice... and you didn't even have to buy any vowels," Amy said. "If that's her new magic phrase, I'm thinking she's going to run out of names very quickly."

"I can't imagine 'fire and ice' holds that much meaning for Rhyme," Allison said. "So maybe it's not that phrase in particular. Maybe it's just the pattern of two opposites."

"Fire and ice, I get, but how is rhyme the opposite of reason?"

"Poetically," Allison said. She let the letters sink down onto the coffee table. "Or metaphorically. The point is, this would really open up new possibilities for her while still allowing her to cling to a theme. Hey, wait... didn't the news mention that the student who started lobbying for the big mutant science convention in Nebula City turned out to not actually exist? That ended up working out well for Rhyme's plot, too."

"I don't know. Is it okay if we ask the internet this one?" Amy asked. "Because I honestly don't pay that much attention to the news here, much less halfway across the country."

"Yeah, let's," Allison said. She put her notebook down on the table with the scraps of paper. Allison sat in front of the computer while Amy leaned on the back of the chair. It only took a few moments of searching to find the information. "Let's see here... the suggestion first came up in a letter to the campus newspaper signed by Mindy Baddon. The editors couldn't locate the author, but assumed she was using a pseudonym because the letter implied she was a mutant who was still in the phone booth, so they ran it anyway."

"Well, it's got an a, n, and d," Amy said. "Shall we sacrifice another sheet of printer paper, or will you..."

"No need," Allison said. "The first name gave it away. Mindy... mind-y. Mind and body. See?"

"Very nice," Amy said.

"Which still makes me wonder... if I was able to crack this so easily, eventually... then Thoth must have got it right away," Allison said. "Why wouldn't he have told us?"

"Why does he do anything? He's Thoth."

"Fire and ice... mind and body," Allison said. "You know, I said earlier that fire and ice wouldn't hold any special meaning for Rhyme, but there is somebody both the phrases could apply to."

"Who?"

"Me."

"What?"

"I think Rhyme's trying to send me a message with these names," Allison said. "She could have picked any pairs of things in the world to base her new aliases around, but she picked two phrases that describe my powers... that describe me."

 "So, what are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking... it's a message," Allison said. "I think she was trying to get my attention."

"Gatinha, she started this business last spring. Months before you would have even been a blip on anybody's radar... no offense, but I don't think you'd even rate her attention now," Amy said. "And that's a good thing. You do not want the attention of sadistic, insane archvillainesses."

"No? Then why didn't Thoth elaborate on her new M.O.?" Allison asked.

"Probably because he knew you'd think these things, true or not."

"He said that he didn't think it was a good idea for me to go near her," Allison said.

"And it isn't. You have to understand, Rhyme was already giving me nightmares when she was only twelve," Amy said. "When I think about the things she did... the things she wanted me to do... listen, I don't want you to have to..."

The phone rang. Allison held out her hand as the cordless receiver came zinging into the room.

"Hello?"

"Is this Mindfyre?" asked a female voice, very young sounding, and very fast.

"This is a residence," Allison said. "I believe you've dialed the wrong number."

"Allison Powers?"

"How'd you get my name and number?" Allison asked.

"Um, it's public knowledge."

"No, it isn't," Allison said.

"Well, 4B has it in their computers, and everything they do is supported by tax money, so technically..."

"What is this about?"

"Rhyme," the girl said. "And the Wisdom Twins, and the Dummy Corporation. It's all tied together somehow, I'm not sure how."

At the mention of the twins, a thought struck Allison.

"Is this Claire?" she asked. "Claire Clevenger?"

"Oh, you've heard of me!" the girl said. "Um, I mean no. This is... an interested party with crucial information."

"Claire, every hero on both coasts has been warned about your prank calls," Allison said. "Please don't call here again."

"Wait, don't hang up! Athena met with the guy from the Dummy Corporation yesterday morning and I knew right away that something was wrong, and then she went to his factory and..."

"Yesterday morning?" Allison repeated. "She met with him yesterday morning?"

"That's what I said, and one look at him and you could tell he wasn't breathing, I don't think he even had a pulse. I thought he was a vampire but he could have been one of those dummies like they left in Rhyme's cell, and anyway, Minerva went after her and they've both..."

Allison hung up.

"Athena Wisdom was checking out the Dummy Corporation yesterday morning," she said to Amy. "Morning! Hours before we met with Thoth, before I supposedly decided on a course of action."

"What, according to Claire?" Amy asked. "That loon calls the Pantheon of Heroes every week with some bizarre impending crisis she thinks she's detected. She just likes the attention."

"Yeah, she had a wild story for me, too," Allison said. "But somehow I don't think she was making that part up. Which means Thoth went behind my back... and then stood there telling me that it was my case and acting like he'd defer to me."

"Come on, you know he'd already done the analysis on the chemicals before we saw him," Amy said. "And considering the stakes involved, can you really blame him for jumping on it right away?"

"No, but I can blame him for lying about it," Allison said.

"Maybe he meant it as a training exercise," Amy suggested. "If he told you he already had it all sewed up, would you have been so keen to work through it yourself?"

"I would have given it my best shot even if I thought it was a hypothetical case that never really happened," Allison said. "It's insulting to suggest otherwise."

"I think you're over-reacting," Amy said. "I mean, you don't think I had anything to do with this?"

"No, even if I were that paranoid, you wouldn't have helped me with the anagrams if you were trying to keep me in the dark," Allison said.

"Good, because you should know that I would never, ever lie to you," Amy said. "Never. Though I would have been tempted, if I'd known..."

Allison just glared.

"Kidding!" Amy said. "I would have done my best to persuade you to leave Rhyme to her sisters, but in her case, the truth can be persuasive enough."

"Well, since the Twins have already dealt with Rhyme, I guess it's kind of moot, anyway," Allison said thoughtfully. "I'm supposed to meet them as Mindfyre later tonight to exchange information. It must be nice, being able to fly across the country in minutes under your own power."

"Maybe someday you will be able to, too," Amy said.

"Not likely," Allison said. "It's hard to imagine a telekinetic generating that kind of force... not to mention the concentration you'd need to steer at mach five, or whatever. Though I'll have to admit, it's pretty thrilling to sail around with the extra lift my new costume gives me."

"Yeah, I heard Mindfyre was seen flying across town today," Amy said. "I know the new outfit was my idea... but... do you think you're maybe overdoing it?"

"I only got it yesterday," Allison said.

"And you're already zooming around all over the place," Amy said. "Thoth said you should go easy with it until you get used to it."

"I can't exactly get used to it if I never use it," Allison said. "And he said I should stay out of combat situations until I'm used to the extra power. I'd say flying over the city was a pretty good way to stretch my legs. Uh, metaphorically speaking."

"I guess that's true," Amy said.

"And meeting the Twins is definitely another non-combat situation, right?" Allison went on. "Besides, it's not like I could wear my old costume to meet a pair of world-famous heroes for the first time."

"Why not? When I met them, I was in diapers."

"That's just it," Allison said. "You've never had to impress anybody because you were born to this life. I'm just some nobody from Worth Forgetting, Minnesota. I've got to make an impression, and if I have to choose between wearing my ratty, laser-holed old padded costume or the hot icy blue leather suit that Thoth and Bast designed, you know which one I'm going to choose."

"I suppose you're right," Amy said, though her face still held a look of doubt. "Anyway, now that we've both cleared our super-business... what are you watching?" she asked, nodding towards the TV screen which had long ago went to the DVD player's screen saver.

"Nothing!" Allison said quickly. "Nothing you'd be interested in, I mean

"No secrets between friends," Amy said. "Or do you want to be a hypocrite now?"

With a sigh, Allison waved her hand and resumed the playback. On screen, several cartoon girls in school uniforms were attempting vainly to flee from a giant horned monster which menaced them quite graphically with its extremely phallic limbs.

"AIEIEE!" screamed one of the girls as she was caught by the monster. "The purity of my innocence has been desecrated by tentacled passion..."

Allison stopped the DVD. Amy's skin had turned a shade greener than her hair.

"You asked for it," Allison said sheepishly.

"I guess I did," Amy said, chuckling weakly. "Well, I was planning on chopping up some calamari as revenge for the attack earlier, but now there's no way I could stomach it. What do you want for dinner?"

"I'm up for anything, really."

"I'll just go see what we have, then," Amy said, hurrying towards the kitchen as if she thought a tentacle would burst from the TV screen.

A little guiltily, Allison started the movie again. Amy was safely out of line of sight, after all, and she really did want to see how it ended. A few moments later, as the tentacle attack continued, a thought popped into Allison's head. It was an idea too terrible and too powerful to be denied, so she hesitated only briefly before voicing it aloud in the direction of the kitchen.

"Hey, Amy... how would you feel about stuffed clams?"