Chapter 11
Trina, Mike, Toby, and I were just sitting down to dinner that night when Shelley came into the kitchen. "Sorry, I'm going to have to bail on you guys," she announced. "I've got a dinner date in London. I'll be back in a couple of hours."
At first none of us spoke. I think we were all stunned; Shelley never goes out on dates. After a moment, Mike frowned, picking up the carving knife and fork. "Are you sure you want to miss out on this fine New Zealand lamb?" He turned in his seat to look at her. "If you're eating in London, you're probably just going to get piss-warm beer and boiled -- whoa!"
I silently echoed his sentiments. Whoa, indeed! This must have been some dinner date, because Shelley had curled her dark blonde hair and done up her face, and she was wearing a little black dress that made her legs look a mile long. She was, in a word, stunning.
"You look . . . really hot," Toby said with frank admiration.
"Thanks," she replied. "Let's hope my date thinks so, too."
Surprisingly, Mike was the first of us guys to get his mind back on business. "Uh, you know we'll be a bit short-handed with you gone, right?" he said.
"I've already cleared it with Wizzit," Shelley told him. "We dealt with a monster just this morning; it's not likely they'll have another one ready again so soon. And if they do, I promise I'll be out there within five minutes."
"Five minutes?" Toby repeated. "This bloke must not think much of you if he's willing to let you ditch him with just five minutes' notice. Especially with you looking . . . well, like that."
Shelley smiled at the compliment. "Let's just say that he's very understanding about my job."
"Is he anyone we know?" Trina asked her eyes sparkling.
"Possibly." Shelley winked. "I'll tell him you said hi. Wizzit, I'm ready to go now." And then she vanished as Wizzit teleported her out.
After an exit like that, it was a little hard for the rest of us to settle down for just another dinner together. Fortunately, Mike had made us a roast leg of lamb, and that helped considerably. To hear him talk, you would think that Mike was, at heart, a beer-and-Marmite kind of guy, or whatever it is that they have with their beer in New Zealand. He does up a pretty nice leg of lamb, though. I would probably have stuffed myself on it, except that I learned a long time ago that it's never a good idea to overeat when you're on duty.
Toby and Trina cleaned up the kitchen while I got out a deck of cards; it looked like another long evening of nothing in particular to do. We all sat down, and I was just starting to explain the rules of a card game I know called Horse when the monster alarm began to sound.
"What the hell?" Mike said, looking up. "How can they send out another monster again so soon?"
"Doesn't matter," Wizzit said tersely. "This one is near your stomping grounds, Trevor. Cleveland Browns Stadium in beautiful Cleveland, Ohio. You will probably even get to be on American national TV; they're right in the middle of an afternoon football game."
I groaned. This had all the earmarks of a real mess, I could tell. We were going to have to deal with the monster, whatever Zoinks had come along, a stadium of terrified fans, two teams of professional football players getting all macho on us, and probably a sportscasting team trying to get all journalistic as well. Not my idea of a fun night.
"Hmm, this is interesting," Wizzit went on as I ran to get my battle vest from my room. "It appears that we have two lovely young lotus flowers there as well."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I heard Mike yell as he ducked into his room, which is just down the hall from mine.
I muttered a very bad word as I picked up my vest and began running towards the weapons room. I had a pretty good idea who at least one of the lotus flowers he was talking about was. There was a dim recollection bouncing around in my head of Angie telling me that her high school marching band had been invited to play for halftime at the Browns game that afternoon.
Wizzit said, "It means that Lily Lee is there; she appears to be acting as the monster's minder." Okay, I hadn't expected that. Lily's Chinese name, Li Lin-fa, was probably better translated as "Lotus Lee", but Wizzit doesn't do translations. I decided that he was calling her a lotus flower just to be poetic. "And it seems that Trevor's younger sister is there as well. She is trying unsuccessfully to help with crowd control, but has not attempted to activate her Junior Prime Pink badge." He paused. "She is wearing a strangely stylized suit of clothes and appears to be holding an oddly-coiled metal weapon of some sort."
"That's her marching band uniform," I called out as I skidded around a corner. "And she's probably holding her trumpet. A musical instrument, not a weapon."
Toby was right behind me as I entered the weapons room. The lowest-ranked Prime is normally supposed to gather up the weapons for the higher-ranked, which is why I was getting them today, but there's no rule that says someone else can't help. He picked up his hammer and Mike's club. I grabbed Shelley's sword, figuring that Wizzit had already notified her.
"How many Zoinks are there, Wizzit?" I asked, trying to gauge what kind of weapon I would need to bring along. I usually get Zoink-bashing duty if there are a lot of them, and I don't like to use weapons against Zoinks as a general rule. There's just no challenge to it. And I had my sap gloves if I really needed to use something.
"More than twenty, less than thirty."
Hmm. If Padma were with me, we could handle twenty or thirty Zoinks between us without breaking a sweat, but it might be a bit much by myself and unarmed. And, short-handed as we were, I doubted Shelley would assign anyone else to help me. Since my baton had been destroyed, I decided to grab an Escrima stick. It was a bit over two feet long and a little under an inch in diameter. I hadn't practiced with this particular weapon much, but hey, a stick's a stick, right? Pounding on Zoinks doesn't require a whole lot of finesse.
"Better grab another weapon, too." Wizzit's voice was coming from my belt, so I realized he was speaking specifically to me.
"Uh, okay." Wizzit doesn't normally make weapons recommendations, other than stuff like "It's a big 'un today, so grab something big to hit it with!" I waved Toby on and looked around the room. "What should I bring?"
"Whatever toys your sister likes to play with."
"Wizzit, no! I am not going to get Angie involved in a monster battle!"
"She's already there. Do you think she'll be content to sit on the sidelines and watch?"
He had me there. Of course Angie would want to be in the thick of things. Her Junior Prime badge wouldn't give her any special powers besides anonymity, though, so she'd get her butt kicked if she tried to get into the fight. Having one of our weapons might at least give her a fighting chance. "Would it work for her?" I asked. I grabbed another Escrima stick, stuck them both in my belt, and hustled out the door. "They don't work for us when we're not wearing our belts."
"I don't know," he replied cheerfully. "They draw their power from your force shields. I guess we'll have to find out whether that was built into her badge."
"Gee, thanks a lot!" I growled. I mean, how could Wizzit have such keen insights into people's characters and still be so annoying?