Isabella awoke with a groan, head pounding like he’d been hit in the head with a sledgehammer. It was a regular experience. At least he woke up on the couch this time. Feeling around the coffee table, he didn’t find the bottle of vodka he was looking for, just a note. Isabella groaned louder, this time in exasperation, and pulled it closer. It was his parent’s handwriting:
Jill’s PT appointment was today. Told them you were asleep, they decided Jasmine could try driving again. Try seeing them after?
Coffee’s in the pot. Left you a bagel too. Please try making something!
<3 Mom
Oh, right… that was today.
While Jill spent months in the hospital, and Jasmine took it upon herself to hang out in Jill’s penthouse apartment, Rosie had bought a nice condominium in Gold City. She had managed to talk their way into quite a large amount of money for their help in Antarctica, and decided that she could use a vacation. Or something close to one; art was technically her job, but she was passionate enough about it that she rarely thought of it that way. Nevertheless, she’d managed to talk Isabella into staying with her, as long as he needed to stay in Gold City himself. He was, after all, in charge of overseeing Jill’s recovery, and being on standby in case Horizon Frontiers made any “errors in judgement” regarding her care.
But now that she was out of her coma, he had trouble facing her. While on principle he had little sympathy for the Riders, much less for SHINING’s newest darling, he couldn’t say she at all deserved what happened to her.
And he felt in some way complicit in that.
And she’s back to spending her time with her sister, who was also tough to face. Isabella had trained her to fight, as she’d asked, but he’d been harsh in doing so. Prodded at her deepest fears and insecurities to bring out that fighting spirit within her. It was the right thing to do, of course; her enemies and the sad reality of the world would be more cruel to her than he ever could. But there was that small part of him that knew it felt wrong.
And Lucas was living with the both of them, as if it was all deliberately arranged to make the situation as awkward as possible. He certainly didn’t know how to deal with suddenly having a half-brother on top of everything else. He doubted Lucas did either. And Rosie seemed to be perfectly fine with waiting for the kid to make his own decisions as far as family went.
So all in all, when it came to seeing the three of them versus laying hung over on the couch, it was a carefully weighed set of pros and cons.
I should probably get off the couch, at least…He rose and stumbled his way past the bathroom. He could hear the shower running, and that weak “lo-fi” music playing from behind the door. Why his mom decided to take afternoon showers when she was less a morning person and more a morning immortal demon with no need to shower, he’d never know.
Isabella poured himself some coffee and stared at the bagel on the counter with tired contempt before wolfing it down.
”You’re doing great, Jazzy, you just need to take it easy.”Jasmine’s eyes widened as she slammed on the brakes, coming to a sudden stop a sizable distance away from the intersection. Jill said it like it was
so easy, as if it was just perfectly normal to be responsible to be in charge of some fancy-as-hell rental car driving around a crowded city when you didn’t even have your license yet. She wondered if SHINING would find some way to chew her out if she crashed it. Probably not, but she could always feel them judging her whenever the higher ups were around, what with her edgy social media posts, and her inability to act or generate profit, not like-
”Are you gonna go, kid?”Jasmine quickly looked both ways before hitting the gas a bit too hard and speeding off. Of course, her destination wasn’t that far off, so she quickly slammed the brakes again, screeching to a halt in front of the apartment complex.
”Listen, you did great today, I’ll just have Pit Stop park the car in the lot, okay?””Yeah, didn’t even have to swerve away from any old ladies this time!” Beelzebub broke out into a hearty laugh as Jasmine let out a long, deeply held breath of air. Why did she even need to drive anyways? She could fucking fly around on a broom. Or ride her skateboard. Or even walk! So many less anxiety-inducing ways of getting around.
But at least it was over with. Now she could get back to eliminating all that stress.
After Antarctica, Jasmine was sent on the emotional roller coaster of a lifetime. She dropped out of school pretty soon after; she just couldn’t handle the anxiety anymore. Would Jill ever wake up? Or was that it? It was all she ever thought about for a long time. She’d managed to convince Izzy to teach her how to fight, at least a little bit, in case she ever woke up, but that was about all she did in the meantime.
Eventually, Jill woke up, and immediately started on a rigorous physical therapy program. It was becoming clear that things were going back to normal, which caused that stress to start creeping back again. What if she ended up getting hurt again? Jasmine couldn’t say. Coping was a lot easier, though, especially now that Lucas was back from his whole training journey thing. In the end, she was savoring every day she got before her big sister got whisked away again, risking her life to deal with whatever maniac supervillain SHINING decided was profitable to focus on.
Jill, Jasmine, Beelzebub, and Pit Stop entered their apartment to find it more or less clean. Which was rather impressive, given that the amount of pizza boxes left behind by two young adults, a woman attempting to gain back her body mass after a long coma, and the actual demonic embodiment of gluttony was truly astounding.
"Hey-o." He said casually. "What've you two been up to?"
Jill’s eyes narrowed slightly upon noticing the way that Lucas was leaning against the closet, but she was distracted by his question, and stuck her hand in the bag hanging at her side.
”Just got done with the last round of PT,” Jill said proudly, withdrawing her transformation device from her bag like it was some big surprise.
”Doc said I’m good to use all my gear again too, so I’m officially back in business!””And, uhhh, she let me drive again.” Jasmine said sheepishly.
”Yeah, kid, I think he heard! Didn’t ya, bud?” Beelzebub gave another cackle before he gave Lucas an expectant glance.
Seshat growled as she shut off her game and sent the console away to some pocket in spacetime with a simple gesture. Humans had taken the concept of entertainment a long way in four thousand years. And it was moving at a blinding pace in more recent decades. It felt like it was incredibly recently that an electronic game was something more akin to a large piece of furniture, but now she could easily carry far more complex machines in her hand.
They were all meaningless distractions, of course, but they were admittedly fun enough to entice her attention when there was nothing better she could think of doing at the moment.
After the battle in Antarctica, Seshat had no time for things such as rest or celebration. There were multiple loose ends that required her attention, such as finding out more about whatever abominable power it was that the Justice Rider had summoned during the fight, or whether Oh-One was truly destroyed beyond any form of recovery, or what had happened to the power stone the machine had attempted to use before his destruction.
Of the first two, Seshat had found little success. Various other powers had taken an interest in what Oh-One had left behind and picked the site clean like opportunistic scavengers, and SHINING, despite its outgoing exterior of public relations, kept its secrets guarded with utmost security. And she wasn’t stupid enough to shake that hornet’s nest without a very good reason.
And of the third, Seshat only had slightly increased success. Her divinations had tracked its location to Gold City, but beyond that, she was uncertain: Gold City was so thoroughly packed with Nomads and similar artifacts of extraordinary power that even a Power Stone was camouflaged from all manner of tracking, even magic as powerful as hers.
And Gold City was a big place, with lots of hiding places, so over time, Seshat’s sense of urgency had begun to falter.
She was, like most other Nomads, taking it easy.
Seshat was distracted by the loud yelling of a familiar attack name in the distance. She was, of course, well-acquainted with Justin Haggar at this point.
They did not get along very well.
On paper, Justin was definitely more tolerable as far as humans went. He had a good heart, and often found himself fighting on the same side as her. In reality, he had that very youthful sort of brash arrogance surrounding that good heart, which Seshat found very irksome. He in turn had little patience for her decisions and wisdom, which was far superior in a way that certainly wasn’t brash or arrogant at all.
But still, if he was in a fight, it was probably worth her attention.
Trudging her way through the crowds of the city, she was confronted with the fact that he was currently fighting the self-described “Number One Ninja” Jaden Raldo. If there was any good in him, Seshat had trouble seeing it. If it was there, it was surrounded by a layer of vain showboating and obsession with petty fame that she found difficult to see past. It pissed her off far more, and she could not deny that there would be a certain catharsis to seeing him get punched in the face.
But it was unfortunately wiser to see what they were doing first.
“What in Set’s name are you two squabbling over?” Seshat asked, dry derision dripping from her words.
Member
Riddles
Majoraa
Buteo
Mixtape Ghost N
Cleveraptor
Noctis
Drag
Kaithe Dame
Senhara
