Star Harbor Nights

"Superheroes?" said a voice, quavering and unmistakably feminine. It came from the trees all around them, producing a slight echo effect. "Like... Holly?" asked the voice, the many sounds coalescing until they... it... issued from a single point: a large oak tree in the center of the clear space. It was so large and so much the central feature of the glade that Perfect found herself wondering how she had failed to notice it before.

"Holly?" Perfect repeated in confusion, thinking of the plant.

"You don't mean... Holly Gram?" D.J. asked.

"How could a ghost watch American Hero?" Perfect asked D.J. skeptically.

"Oh, I didn't!" the voice said. "And... I'm not a ghost. But do you know Holly?"

"If you mean Holly Gram, or Hollywood, or whatever he's calling himself," D.J. said, "then, yeah, I've met him."

"Do you know where he is?" the voice asked plaintively. "He said he was going to have to go away for a little while again, but that he'd come back and visit me. He said he could do that any time, no matter where he was."

"So that's why he kept disappearing during the show," Perfect said. "I remember everybody figured he had a boyfriend or something... they weren't supposed to be in contact with anybody, but nobody could ever prove it, so he stayed on until he got cut in that elimination round with Echo."

"Forget about ghosts," D.J. said to Perfect. "I'm still trying to figure out how you could watch that show."

"Can you come out where we can see you?" Perfect asked.

"I... yes."

The tree's surface rippled like water, and something smooth and green emerged from it. It took the two only a moment to realize that it was a long, shapely leg. The leg's owner hesitated, exactly as one might hesitate when stepping into a shower of uncertain temperature, and then the rest of the body stepped through. Perfect and D.J. gasped as one at the sight... a beautiful, voluptuous, and decidedly naked woman with green skin and mossy green hair with a vibrant blue tropical flower growing out of it.

Her eyes darted around the clearing, not resting on either of the two women. One arm trailed out behind her, the tips of her fingers touching... or possibly overlapping... the bark of the tree.

"Well, holy shit," D.J. said. "It's a dryad."

"Is that what you are?" Perfect asked. "Some kind of tree nymph?"

"I don't know," the green figure said quickly. "I guess I must be, but I don't even remember my name. But... Holly... said I could be called Vine. He said a toy company was going to make him famous and he was a superhero and I could be his sidekick. Do you know where he is? Or when he's coming back? I need to talk to him."

"Well, that explains your 'fairy lights'," D.J. said, then chuckled at the accidental pun.

"I suppose so," Perfect said. "Look, uh, Vine... Holly was on the news lately. He went to California... he got, um, mixed up with some bad people and got hurt. He's okay, though!" she hastily added, seeing Vine's stricken look. "From what we've heard, anyway. I think he's staying with the Pantheon... those are more superheroes. I don't know why he hasn't come back to see you, but he might just be hurt too badly. Does anybody else know you're here, that he might have used to try to get a message to you?"

"No," Vine said, sitting down on the grass with her back against the tree. She folded her long, bare legs beneath her. Despite her obviously womanly attributes, there was something inherently childlike about her. "No, just him... other people come here. Lovers. I like to watch them. Reproduction is... nice, I think. It's a part of me. It reminds me of home. But, they only come here when the sun's out, and I get lonely at night. Or I did, until Holly found me. He'd come here at night and talk... to himself, but I thought he was talking to me... so... and then he did come here to talk to me. It was nice, too. So I asked the lovers if they knew him, and they... ran away. Which I think means they don't. Do you really think he's too hurt to fly?"

"He could be," Perfect said. "We could find out." She turned to D.J. "Broker could get a message to the Pantheon, right? Or we could try their voicemail."

"Already left them a message," D.J. said, her eyes slightly unfocused. "Calling Broker now... and... it's going to voicemail, too."

"Uh, right," Perfect said. Despite having spotted her friend's new body almost immediately... and having seen it in action... Perfect was still inclined to think of her as flesh-and-blood. "Anyway... Vine... we're glad if we can help you find out what happened to Holly, but we were looking for you for another reason."

"Okay," Vine said simply. Perfect was again struck by how much she seemed like a child.

"Please don't freak out, but like I said, there've been some fires," Perfect said. "Some mystical fires. We don't know much about magic, so we wanted to find somebody that does."

"Oh, I don't talk to her," Vine said. "Or she doesn't talk to me. I don't remember which."

"Uh..." Perfect said, then decided to push past the non sequitur. "Do you know anything about what's been going on in the city lately?"

"It's bad," Vine said. "Very bad. That's why I need to talk to Holly. I don't know much about superheroes, but I know they're supposed to... um... I think he called it 'saving the world'?"

"That's the phrase," D.J. said.

"I think somebody might have to do that," Vine said.

Ray sat in his customary back booth at Cedar's, a little neighborhood diner just outside of Twistville. The owners weren't too stringent in holding him to the shirt-and-shoes rule, as he helped keep trouble away from their doorstep. He'd just finished a combination late lunch and later breakfast, which he was washing down with an entire pot of coffee, one mug at a time. His body never ran out of energy, but his brain didn't know that. Caffeine helped even things out.

He liked the booth because it was only one in the corner cafe that provided both a solid back to his wall and a clear view of both doors. He was a very recognizable man, with the red brands that crawled all over his body and face, glowing dimly even when his powers weren't actively in use. He'd made enemies of some very dangerous and disturbed individuals, and even if his name and number weren't exactly advertised, he figured it was only a matter of time before somebody tracked him down to his usual haunts.

When that happened, he wanted to see the trouble coming.

He lifted his mug and took another big gulp of coffee, tilting his head back. In a world of wet-pull espresso bars, Cedar's still made theirs with the drip method, and it was damned good. He lowered the mug... and spit out the whole mouthful of piping hot coffee. The woman who'd appeared across from him flipped a laminated menu up in front of her to deflect the hot liquid without flinching. She was a tall, slender woman with dirty blonde hair, dressed in hot pink leathers, with a yellow scarf and yellow tinted oval sunglasses.

"Christ, Diana... how the hell'd you do that?" he asked.

"You know what they say about a good magician," she said with a shrug.

"Yeah, well, you're no magician," Ray said.

"And you're no good," Diana countered.

An awkward silence passed between them... only a few seconds, but as anyone who's ever enjoyed such a silence knows, time is relative.

"I... heard you were in town," Ray said.

"You mean you were warned."

"You did disembowel me," he reminded her.

"Please, I never went near your bowels," she retorted.

"They all think you did it because I cheated," Ray said.

"You did."

"But that's not why," Ray said.

"No," Diana agreed. "It's because you dared to turn around and go all moralizing on me, even after you cheated. While you were still cheating, even."

"There's a difference between sleeping around and murder."

"There's a difference between murder and killing."

"I'm not interested in arguing the finer points of morality with an... with a fucking assassin," Ray said.

"You didn't cheat on me because I have sometimes done things that needed doing," Diana said. "You cheated on me because you're weak and stupid, then later decided to use my actions to excuse your own. You like your morality to be black and white, because once you admit the right thing to do can be conditional, you have to start examining things like consequences... and you were never any good at dealing with consequences, were you?"

"You have no idea what kind of consequences I've dealt with," Ray said.

"Oh, don't I?" Diana said. "You pull out that sob story about your gypsy princess every chance you get... well, that's not your origin story, Ray... it's your excuse. Anyway, I honestly didn't come here to trade barbs."

"Why are you here, then?" Ray asked.

"I just want to talk," she said. "And if you can be a gentleman... or at least, not a complete jerk... I promise to try not to dislocate anything."

"Fine... talk," Ray said.

"It's just... we were good together, sometimes, weren't we?"

"I seem to recall you saying so once or twice, yeah," he said, smiling in spite of himself.

"I meant working together," she said. "Fighting side-by-side. The rest of it pretty much sucked... I mean the sex was kind of okay, but our relationship was doomed from the beginning."

"Okay? What do you mean okay?" he said indignantly. "What about all the times we stayed up all night making love? I'm completely inexhaustible, remember?"

"I'm one of the world's top martial artists. As such, I have total control over every part of my body. It takes a lot more than stamina to rock my world," she said pointedly over the rims of her tinted glasses. "Anyway, since I've been back, I've been off my stride a little. It's like I've been out of this city for too long. I could use somebody to watch my back. Somebody who knows my moves as well as I know theirs... somebody who knows how to handle themselves as well as I can handle myself."

"You do a lot of that these days?" Ray asked smirking.

"Ray, may I remind you I only promised to try not to dislocate anything."

"Point taken," Ray said. "So, uh, since we're here, did you want to order something?"

"No, thank you, I already ate this week."

"Is anorexia a superpower, or some new form of martial art?"

"I've seen you go longer without remembering to eat," she said. "Anyway, I'm teaching my body to nourish itself with its own substance."

"So basically you're learning how to eat yourself?"

"Go nourish yourself," she said. "Anyway, do you want to know what I'm up to, or not?"

"Broker implied you were working for Shad," Ray said. "That is, the Dock Shadow."

"Working with," Diana corrected.

"If you kill somebody on his watch, he'll be more than pissed."

"It isn't that kind of work," Diana said. "You knew me for two years. In that time, you saw me kill somebody once... how can you let that one act define me?"

"When you put it that way, I guess one person every two years must be way below the national average," Ray said sarcastically. "But of course, here we come to the one point where you killing is like me cheating: the fact that I caught you once doesn't mean it only happened once."

"There's a difference between taking an innocent life and stopping a monster who would only go on and kill a lot more people," Diana said.

"Maybe, but it doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Are we talking about me or you now?" Diana asked.

"I just want you to know that if we're going to work together again, there can't be any killing," Ray said.

"I don't wake up in the morning and ask, 'Gee, whose life can I end today?'" Diana said.

"No, you wait for some mysterious guy you don't even know to call you and tell you that it's 'necessary'," Ray said.

"I don't blindly follow orders from anybody," Diana said. "I get my information from Zero, and then I check it out, and then if I agree that the action he suggests are necessary, I take them. And, in case you were wondering, killing is not the only thing I do for him, or even one of the more frequent."

"How many men have you killed?"

"How many women have you slept with?" Diana countered. "Don't seriously answer that... if you even could. Anyway, are you in or out?"

"I'm ...in, I guess," Ray said. "I could use a bit of a diversion in my life right now, actually."

"Are you free tonight?" she asked.

Ray thought long and hard.

"I've got nothing better to do, no," he said,

"Fantastic," Diana said. "I'll meet you in front of your place at eight."

"Okay, but Diana... I'm serious about not killing," Ray said. He glanced at the wall clock at the mention of the time. "And if this gets weird, we should stop it, because..." he trailed off, turning back to see that the other side of the booth was empty.

"Damn it," he said aloud. "She did it again."

At least, he reflected, now that she'd apparently stopped eating, she couldn't stick him with her half of the check that way.