That little kerfuffle with Casey’s term paper left so distracted that I’d actually missed sothing very important until Casey pointed it out to . Specifically, he’d asked about why he’d only been sent the docunts for two of the cases the court would be tossing my way, as opposed to all three. Now, I’d only ant to ntion two of them to Casey to begin with, because one of them was a special case, and it probably would’ve been better to keep that one closer to the vest. Thankfully he didn’t protest, so I got to smooth that over without issue, but still, yeesh; I really needed to pay more attention.
As for why it was sothing best kept sowhat quiet? Well… gan included a little postscript on the email to which she’d attached the other cases’ docunts and write-ups:
PS — case 3 is sothing I only know about through gossip, and that’s not sothing I want to put to writing. Talk to you about it on Saturday, if conversation on other topics peters out; if not, we’ll schedule a ti for the next day.
Ever so slightly ominous, all told, but not sothing worth worrying about quite yet. Odds were that it was sothing embarrassing for the NMR, like interpersonal conflict between a new Moonshot and a drill instructor who hadn’t gotten used to the lighter touch needed to not break down the new recruits for building back up to spec. If anything, I was more worried over gan’s pessimism about our planned brunch eting. Oh, well, nothing a bit of liquid courage wouldn’t be able to handle.
gan let pick the location, so I’d made an 11am reservation at one of my favorite brunch spots in the city — Dirty Habit, on 8th Street NW between E and F. The food was… decent enough, nothing to write ho about, really. But the food wasn’t why I loved this spot. Oh, no no no.
I’d picked this spot for the bottomless brunch.
Was I a heavy drinker? Ha, no, not even close. I was a bit of a lightweight if anything, which Gorou was more than happy to heckle over. But I was enough of a regular here to know that if you ca later in the morning, the unlimited mimosas and micheladas were lighter on alcohol content than they were if you arrived at, say, nine in the morning. And what could I say? I liked the taste of both drinks.
Lastly, and most importantly: the general manager was once a client of mine, back when she’d just managed front-of-house. I’d represented her in a civil suit against a dine-and-dasher who’d taken his plate off the table to use as a projectile. He threw it like a frisbee, it beaned her in the forehead, and the hit plus the fall left her with a broken arm and a concussion. We only got so much out of him before he declared bankruptcy, but all her dical bills were taken care of, plus the restaurant gave her triple the normal dical leave, so she was more than willing to return.
And my role as her forr attorney ant I got priority treatnt and a generous discount, which I gave back in the form of rather silly tips.
gan, anwhile? Well, I had a feeling this was her first ti going here. It wasn’t exactly her social scene; hell, the only reason I knew about this place was because of the case I worked.
Needless to say, while I arrived early and was all nice and comfy on the booth side of our table for two, gan seed very out of place as she walked in, five minutes late. She wore a comfortable cream blouse paired with black slacks and a blazer, seemingly unwilling to completely doff the rigidity of military stylings while also understanding that she could wear sothing a bit simpler to manage.
“Apologies for the tardiness,” she said, offering the hostess thanks as she rounded the corner to our table. “Parking here is… um.”
gan stared at . While I managed to hold back the giggles, my ears lowered and tail wagged up and down in clear amusent.
“Naomi, I don’t want to co off as judgntal in what’s supposed to be a friendly setting, but — what are you wearing?”
“Oh, this? Do you like it?” I tapped at the pastel purple zip-up hoodie I’d worn, pulling one of the sides flat to show her the graphics on it. “It’s Hello Kitty! Got it last ti I was in Japan, which was about a year and a half ago now, I wanna say?”
gan didn’t imdiately respond. She just stood there blinking for a couple of seconds, and only pulled out of her reverie when I cleared my throat and tapped my foot against what was to be her chair, scooting it back from the table slightly.
“Right, yes, I know what Hello Kitty is,” gan said. “My daughter — not your brother’s, from my first marriage — she was a fan of it when she was a little girl, but she outgrew it when she was seven or eight.”
“Yeah, well. It was one of the first things I got to enjoy without having to hide it, or be judged over it, so.”
gan’s lips thinned, a look of understanding on her face as she sat down opposite . In hindsight, maybe that wasn’t the best way to start things off.
“So… daughter, huh.” I started. gan had just picked up her nu, glanced at my already-half-empty mimosa, and cracked a slight grin at both my drink and my statent. “How old is she now?”
“She turns eighteen in September,” gan replied as she put down her nu. “Let tell you, much as I’m hoping she cos out here to the East Coast, I am not looking forward to her college applications.”
“She lives with her dad, then?” The way gan phrased that was rather particular — she wouldn’t be ‘coming out’ to this side of the country if she was already here.
“With her dad and stepmother,” she confird, taking a sip of her water before continuing. “I would’ve preferred to have her grow up with , but… well, I was a base brat myself. It was fine for , but that’s partly because I had both parents. And neither of them were an MP or JAG.”
“I sense a story there!” As I said that, though, the sound of heels clicking on concrete had swiveling one ear to follow its approach. “We’ll probably need to give that a mont, though. Hi again, Sandra!”
“Hi again, Naomi!” the newcor said. I stood to greet her, and she pulled into a brief hug. “Good to see you again! No spiffing Brit joining you this ti?”
“He’s busy across the pond, so no, not this ti,” I said, turning away from my one-ti client to gesture at my current companion. “This is gan, my sister-in-law. I get the feeling her job keeps her too busy to explore what DC has to offer, so I wanted to start her off with a place I knew.”
“Well, you picked the right place!” Sandra exclaid, turning towards gan as I sat back down in my chair. “Any questions on the nu? Dietary restrictions? Other requests?”
“Um—I don’t think so?” gan seed a bit off-kilter from the sudden attention. Then again, having soone who was clearly a manager of so sort offer to act as your server would’ve been enough to put off-balance if not for my familiarity with the restaurant. “Um, are you… able to take a drink order?”
“Let guess, bottomless brunch?” gan nodded. “Mimosas, boozy punch, or micheladas?”
“What’s…” gan trailed off as she saw lower one ear and shake my head ever so slightly. “Never mind. Could I do the mimosas?”
“Alright, I’ll get that in for you!” Sandra exclaid with a soft clap of her hands. “I’ll let your server know to give you a few more minutes to peruse the nu, okay?”
“Sounds good; thank you, Sandra!” She gave a smile and a nod, then headed back to get gan’s drink order into the system. “So. Military police, then JAG, huh. And I’m guessing your ex-husband is a civvie?”
“Civilian contractor,” she confird. “t him while I was acting as an MP on Guam. Bit of a whirlwind romance, he encouraged to go to school… although he wasn’t happy when I fell right back into the military and went for JAG. Then I was assigned to our base in Berlin, our daughter was turning four, and he’d been out of the contractor ga for so long that he’d have to completely start life over in a foreign country.” gan sighed. “Our marriage didn’t exactly survive long after that.”
“No, I suppose it wouldn’t.”
There wasn’t much else I could say to that, although I definitely didn’t expect gan to open up right off the bat like that. I’d admit to being suspicious about this when she’d first proposed sitting down for a brunch get-together, but my suspicions weren’t surviving the charm offensive. If she’d been more guarded and kept things vague, that would’ve been one thing.
But now I knew about her kid and her first marriage, along with the fact that love for her work was what led to ending things. That wasn’t sothing you just shared on a whim, not even when you were trying to win trust.
That was sothing personal and private, the kind of thing you only shared so early when you wanted to be genuine.
A server arrived while I was mulling this over, a glass pitcher full of mimosa in hand, which he used to fill gan’s glass before topping mine off. Both of us thanked him, at which point the two of us both reached for our glasses to take a sip.
“How about you?” gan asked. “It’s a bit of a journey from ‘superhero’ to ‘attorney’, and definitely didn’t happen overnight.”
“Hm? Oh, uh.” I set my mimosa glass down and took a sip of water instead, both to make sure I wasn’t just drinking alcohol and to buy so ti to marshal my thoughts before answering. “So, um. How much of my file and everything have you read?”
“You got your powers in Japan, there was a year of negotiation to figure out how custody and citizenship would work, you were in the NMR for two years, shit happened, Japan took you back for a year,” she summarized. “Then you disappear to the UK for a bit and pop back up at Georgetown Law.”
“And I know it’s a bit of a non sequitur, but are you familiar with the Camden Andnt to the Repatriation Treaty?”
“Only tangentially,” she admitted. “I heard from so of the MPs I worked with as a JAG that it caused them a bit of trouble, though.”
“I can imagine,” I said, resting my chin on an open palm as I crossed my legs. “Add a new exception to a prior rule saying ‘don’t you fucking dare’, and of course soone’s going to try and press their luck.”
“Mm,” she agreed. “I can tell there’s a connection, but I’m not seeing it.”
“It’s nad the Camden Andnt after the man who wrote it,” I explained. “Sir Ambrose Camden. Who diated the negotiations over , helped apply for university and law school, basically gave his guest room in Oxford. Ambrose wrote it, yes. But I’m the reason it exists.”
“... oh.” gan’s voice was soft, but heavy with realization. It wasn’t hard to see in her eyes that she understood. She understood that I’d spent an inordinately long ti being powerless to control my fate, despite the imnse powers that had been bestowed upon — and how that powerlessness led down the path to ensuring it couldn’t happen to again.
“Yeah,” I murmured.
Our conversation briefly petered out, an awkward silence blanketing the two of us. Thankfully, our waitress was a perceptive sort, and took the opportunity to swoop in and get our orders. gan sprang for the chilaquiles, even though she couldn’t even pronounce the dish’s na (which was adorable). I, anwhile, ordered steak and eggs, which drew gan’s wide-eyed stare as the waitress walked off.
“That’s a lot of food,” she said, though I could hear the implied question in there.
“I need to eat more food than you do. And especially more protein.”
“Is that because of the whole…” She waved her hand over herself, and even though it was pretty nondescript, I understood what she was getting at. “The ‘fox’ thing?”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Mhmm. Dietary needs aren’t the only things that changed, either!” I said brightly, smiling to both let her know that it was okay to keep going down this line of conversation, and to show off my enlarged canines.
“Well, obviously,” she said with a scoff. “You used to—wait, shit, I… probably shouldn’t talk or ask about, well. ‘That’?”
Ah, yes. ‘That.’ A bit of an elephant in the room, if so of her awkward stumbling during our last few etings was anything to go by. The gender issue.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath to center myself, and sighed softly, letting my ears fall limp as I did.
“Not quite where I was planning to go with this, but, well… yes.”
“... ah. I’m, ah, I’m sorry.”
“No, no, it’s…” I sighed again. “Look. I’d rather you ask the questions and we be a bit awkward about it than have you not ask and make incorrect assumptions. I get it. Even if you have t other people like , odds are their situations are nothing like mine, so…” I lowered one ear as if to beckon her. “I’ll be an open book for a bit, if it helps. Ask away.”
“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“gan, if your tone is anything to go by, you’re more uncomfortable asking about this than I am discussing it,” I fired back. “I’m being serious. I’d rather you be a little uncomfortable and correct than have you try to save both our feelings and end up being wrong.”
“It’s just… actually, no. That’s fair.” Before she continued, though, gan downed the rest of her first mimosa. I an, if a bit of liquid courage helped, I wouldn’t complain. “I’m just… trying to figure out my husband a bit better. This past year has shown a side of him I didn’t know before, and I don’t understand it. Or how I missed it in the first place.”
“Why Eli hates , you an?”
“That,” gan nodded. “It’s just, he’ll talk about your younger years with such fondness, and it’s… weird. Like he’s talking to a ghost. But then there’s so much hate when he talks about anything later. Sure, maybe it’s the whole ‘gender thing’, as you put it. But I can’t help but feel like there’s more to it.”
I found I needed a long pull of my own mimosa before answering. What little I knew of my brother’s reaction didn’t co from the horse’s mouth — I’d had to put it together by combining the events of our ‘reunion’ with what our little sister told on tracking down. And those two events were almost seven years apart.
“That’s, um. A bit more complicated than just the whole, well. Gender thing. Before I go further, though, how much of our extended family have you t?”
“Two of the older cousins ca to the wedding, but that’s it,” she said with a frown. “Still a bit wild to think about, actually. Jews in Shanghai?”
I cracked a wry grin at that. So 20,000 Jews fled to Shanghai to avoid the rise of Nazi Germany, only to co under occupation by the Japanese. That was where my great-grandmother finished growing up alongside her family — and where she died when my grandma and great-uncle were born. My grandma went with her grandparents to the US; my great-uncle, anwhile, went with their mom’s siblings, who’d grown too used to a more Eastern lifestyle to easily return to a Western country. They initially went to Okinawa before moving northward, and nowadays, that side of the family lived just outside Kyoto.
We switched off which side of the family schlepped across the Pacific every year, and while my brother and parents always complained about it, I personally preferred the years that we visited Japan. There were cousins around my age, and while we could barely understand a word of Japanese, their English was absolutely superb. Mira, for her part, also had younger cousins who absolutely adored her.
Eli, though…
“In that case, you probably didn’t et any of the ones who’d talk about it, and I doubt Eli did… though, to be sure, has he ever ntioned the na ‘Tatsumi’?”
“Only ever in passing,” gan said with a shake of her head. “Never anything specific. I heard enough to know that he was a cousin, and that he’d been ‘lost’ the sa way he thinks the ‘old you’ was. But that’s about it.”
“I sort of figured.” I took another long sip of my mimosa, which left it more than half empty and acted as an unspoken signal for one of the serving staff to refill it. Bottomless mimosas, my beloved. “So… I’m not the first Moonshot in our family. Tatsumi is. Or was, rather.”
It didn’t take long for gan to put two and two together. Her sudden breath was a rattling hiss, accompanied by a grimace.
“MAD?” she asked after a mont.
“Yeah.” My ears fell, echoing my dismay and sorrow. “It happened when I was sixteen.”
MAD — Moonshot Awakening Death. The phenonon was largely unknown outside of Moonshot communities before the age of the smartphone, only ever getting any kind of traction on the kinds of IRC chats and niche forums that also played host to serious discussions about the moon landing being a hoax (of course it fucking wasn’t, or Moonshot wouldn’t exist), and eventually the Great Moonshot Mind Control Conspiracy (which also didn’t exist). But then social dia beca commonplace, and by the ti smartphones got popular, the general public had already gotten enough information to confirm that yes, MAD existed, and definitely happened.
As for what it was? Well, for specifically A3 Moonshot, getting powers was reportedly disorienting but harmless. Except sotis, very rarely, it wasn’t. Sotis they just… died. And yes, it was rare enough to have been considered a hoax or a conspiracy, but it did happen. They got powers, and instead of walking the experience off, it killed them.
That was what happened to Tatsumi. He got powers, and they killed him. But not imdiately. According to his friends, he went weird at around 1pm on the day of his death — had a sudden freakout, went to the restroom, and ca back just placid. Barely responsive. His parents and sister had similar remarks about his behavior that day, and described him as being ‘on autopilot’.
Then they found him slumped over dead at 11pm that night, with the wood of his desk growing branches and leaves between his splayed-out fingers. Except, that hadn’t been when he died, because an autopsy put his ti of death at 1pm — when his friends said he’d first had a freakout.
Tatsumi had been a walking corpse for ten hours.
My explanation of Tatsumi’s fate continued until a couple of minutes after our food arrived. I didn’t so much as pick up my silverware until I was done talking, at which point I dug in before it started getting cold. gan picked up her own fork and took a slow, unsteady bite, seemingly in a daze at what she’d heard. And then she kept eating, picking up the pace as she went.
“How in the world does he believe that?” she asked, thank goodness — the silence between us would’ve been maddening if not for the sound of silverware on plates, but even then, it was almost stifling. “It doesn’t even make sense — and for God’s sake he’s FMB, he’s seen and investigated enough cases of MAD to know better!”
“And yet, he still sohow thinks Gorou transford my corpse and is puppeting it,” I said around a bite of steak, even as I dipped another in perfectly runny egg yolk.
“... quick question: he’s never actually spoken to the fox, has he?”
“Now you’re asking the important question!” I exclaid, pointing my fork at gan, only to hurriedly take the bite off the end before any of the yolk dripped back onto my plate. “And no, Eli’s avoided Gorou. Said he’d, ‘put a bullet through your real body’ if Gorou ever approached him, too.”
gan set her silverware down and laid her forehead on her hands, resting her elbows on the table to prop her head up. Her exasperated sigh was a thing of beauty, as were the deep breaths she took afterwards in what was clearly an attempt to control her temper.
“For the love of — do I need to send my husband to therapy? Jesus Christ…” She pulled her head out of her hands and grabbed her full mimosa, then drained it dry in one long pull. “God, I am not drunk enough to deal with this.”
“Sorry?” I offered. She waved off and picked her fork back up, diving back into her chilaquiles with a vengeance.
Thankfully, our conversation eventually made its way to lighter topics, such as gan’s favorite deploynt (Rota, Spain) and what from the UK I’d prefer to have more widely available (Cadbury Flake — yes, really, don’t knock it). And it was only after I’d paid the bill and we sat there enjoying our bottomless mimosas that I finally decided to broach the forbidden topic… work.
“By the way,” I began, keeping my tone light and letting my tipsiness sneak the tiniest bit of slurring into my words, “what’s up with the third case I’m getting?”
“... fuck.” gan grabbed her mimosa and slugged it back, draining another half-full glass dry in monts.
“Too drunk to discuss?” I asked, lowering my ears in concern.
“Not drunk enough to avoid discussing,” she corrected. “Fucking military career tolerance…”
“If you’d rather wait—”
“No,” she interrupted, tone suddenly stern enough to have my ears standing at attention and tail going stiff. “I lied. The district court is only assigning you two cases. It’s just — I’d rather not bring this to you, and I’m sorry for lying, but I’m out of options. When I tried to talk to Eli about it, he told it’s not the FMB’s business. So I brought it to the Marshal, who said it wasn’t sothing the NMR or the National Guard at large should care about. And since I’ve already been told not to look into this, my superiors will notice if—”
“Tell .”
“W-what?”
“Tell ,” I repeated. “Whatever this is, it’s important enough for you to skirt the rules. And it also says sothing that you’re asking . So, tell .”
gan took a deep breath, and eyed her empty mimosa glass. The server who’d been going around with the pitcher had just emptied it, and was going back to get another, so I pushed my mostly full mimosa over to her. She reached for the glass — but at the last mont she grabbed her water instead, and took a few long sips to steady herself.
“So…” gan chewed at her lower lip a little, eyes squarely on her water glass. “One of the NMR’s superheroes, um. They have a stalker.”
gan stopped there. She didn’t seem set to say anything else, and gave a aningful look to suggest that she’d only say more if I asked. I frowned and drank so more of my water, turning that statent over in my head.
An NMR hero had a stalker. The way she’d phrased it already suggested to that this was one of the superheroes who maintained separate hero and civilian identities, and that the stalker was specifically targeting the superhero identity. That she’d talked to both my brother (who was apparently a higher-up in the FMB? When had he stopped being a lobbyist? God, I didn’t know he could get even less respectable, Jesus…) and the Marshal in charge of the DC National Guard, and probably a few more people elsewhere along the chain of command, who’d all said it wasn’t their problem. Which could be true, yes, but it was more likely that even though they could do sothing, they wouldn’t, because the NMR and its superheroes had an image to uphold. The NMR’s superheroes were supposed to be above such silly concerns as traffic jams, or smaller civil suits, or other, similarly petty things.
Petty things like a regular, bog-standard, baseline human stalker.
“I’ll help,” I said.
“Wha—” gan cut off, giving a look of surprise. “R-really? Just like that?”
“Just like that,” I confird.
“You aren’t even going to ask who it is?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” I answered, sipping at my water and letting the server, who’d just returned with a full pitcher, refill our mimosa glasses before continuing. “So poor Moonshot’s in a shit position ‘cause they’ve got powers, and their bosses probably wouldn’t give a damn even if they were allowed to. That’s not right.”
“That…” gan trailed off, and took a sip of her freshly filled mimosa before continuing. “I just — Please don’t take this the wrong way, Naomi, but I expected you to tell to fuck off.”
“None taken. But just so we’re clear?” I set my glass down and leaned forward, ears pinning low and back. “I wouldn’t be doing this for the NMR. And especially not for the Fumblers. I’d be doing this for so poor Moonshot who deserves better than to get abandoned by the people who’re supposed to have their back.”
“Mm. I understand.” gan took a deep breath and looked longingly at her mimosa glass, but set it aside. “Thank you, Naomi. This… takes a weight off my mind. I’ll drop by your ho tomorrow, drop off everything I have. Or put it in your mailbox, if you’re not going to be ho?”
“I’ll be there to get it,” I said. “I assu that things need to stay quiet? That anything I file would be on behalf of a client who wishes to remain anonymous?”
“Yes,” she confird. “And — I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can pay you. Not even under the table.”
“Eh,” I waved her off. “I needed so actually voluntary pro bono hours anyway.”
“If you’re sure…”
“I am.” I grabbed my mimosa glass and drained it dry, then stood up, picking up my purse and slinging it over my shoulder as I did. “Well, aside from so of the more serious conversations, I think I honestly enjoyed this?”
“ too — ah, Naomi?” gan stood to et at eye level. “I, uh — I haven’t said who I wanted you to help.”
“Am I going to like the answer?” I asked.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s, um… it’s Lady Liberty.”
Of course. Of. Course.
I’d had a feeling, given gan’s caginess, but… ugh.
“If… I understand if you want to back out now, but—”
“Still doing it,” I told her. “I’ll expect you tomorrow.”
“Wait — really?” gan asked, voice disbelieving but hopeful.
“Yes,” I confird, even though I couldn’t help but sigh and twitch my tail in annoyance. “gan — I don’t like her, no. But I haven’t liked a lot of my clients, and even beyond that? It’s the right thing to do.”
And it didn’t matter who got helped when doing what was right. Goodness was its own reward, here.
“... thank you,” gan said, voice quiet.
“No thanks needed,” I said, and walked away. And despite everything, I truly ant that. Not even Lady Liberty deserved to be stuck dealing with a problem that went ignored by the people who were supposed to help them, no matter how much I disliked her. So no, I didn’t have any reservations with agreeing to help, despite the phantom pains in my tail reminding of our first eting.
I only hoped that I’d still feel the sa, once everything was said and done.
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