Heroine Complex (24 page)

ASSISTANTMAGEDDON!

Why Evie “Rude Girl” Tanaka Must Be Stopped!

by Maisy Kane, Bay Bridge Kiss Editrix

It's time for some real talk, 'Friscans. Now, you know your pal Maisy doesn't like to get all unfun in her reporting. But frankly? Someone's gotta address this. And I think it's best if that someone's me.

After writing yesterday's post about Aveda's mall adventure, I had a good think about what I'd observed on the scene. Sure, Aveda being able to temporarily transfer her fire power to her minions sounds cool in theory, but let's consider this—do we really want non-superheroes test driving something so gosh-dang destructive? And who is this Evie Tanaka person, anyway?

'Friscans, I think it's time I exposed some truths about Aveda's mousy little assistant, aka Rude Girl. Why, she threatened your pal Maisy right before nearly incinerating the entire Nordstrom shoe department! If I hadn't ducked just in time, I might've ended up burned to death. And crispy critters are no good at blogging!

Further reporting uncovered even more bad behavior. A reliable source at The Gutter shared a terrifying tale about a recent phone call with one of Ms. Tanaka's minions. That's right: Aveda's minions have their own minions now. Truly, the situation is out of control. Acting on Evie's orders, said minion used outright threats to nab a spot for Aveda in The Gutter's prestigious karaoke competition! Can you even wrap your brain around that one?

I've decided it's very necessary to take a stand against bullying. I've talked our source down at The Gutter into giving me the spot opposite A. Jupes in their karaoke contest. I'll be singing in symbolic protest of E's threatening ways . . . and in protest of A letting her lapdog run wild in the first place. And
you can bet your buttons I'll be crowned queen of the whole shebang.

I can't help but wonder if all this is a result of that shiny new international fame going to A's head. I mean, if she's willing to let such an unhinged menace play around with her power, she's clearly not using her best judgment. Perhaps she's started to consider herself better than the rest of us.

Someone's got to show her she's not the only 'Friscan who matters. And that someone is your pal Maisy!

Shasta's Corner! Shasta (Maisy's bestie) here. I was on the scene at the mall and can confirm that Evie Tanaka is a menace to society. And a badly dressed one, at that. (Editrix's Note: Nice one, Shast! I knew you weren't a total waste of space.)

“WELL?” AVEDA HISSED.
“What are you going to do about this?”

“Now you want me to do something? Because yesterday you were ordering me to shut up and get back in your shadow,” I retorted.

“Evie!” Bea hopped from one foot to the other. “You have to take this seriously! Aveda's already lost a couple hundred Twitter followers. And there's a whole thread on Facebook questioning her continued validity as a superhero. People trust Maisy's reporting.”

“That's reporting?” Scott said. “A shitty picture and a bunch of half-assed suppositions and exaggerations?”

“Yeah, I incinerated one pair of shoes, not the whole department,” I said. “And as for this karaoke thing . . .” I turned to Lucy. “Kevin's got to be Maisy's source, right? Did you threaten him when you asked for a spot in the contest?”

“Of course not,” she said. “I mean, he was a bit reluctant at first. I believe his exact words were, ‘Call me when Aveda can do her superhero theatrics while also singing Cher's ‘Believe' over a track of AC/DC's ‘You Shook Me All Night Long' and hitting every note without autotune.' But I wore him down. And possibly said I'd start a rumor about unsanitary kitchen practices if he didn't give in. I'd hardly call that a threat, though. I
certainly never said I was your minion or that you told me to—”

“Right, right,” I said, shaking my head. “But no one supposes and exaggerates like Maisy. Especially when she's got what she thinks is a story.”

I took the phone from Aveda and studied the screen. There were two photos accompanying the post. In the first one, I was confronting Maisy in the Nordstrom shoe department: eyes wild, hair flying, pointing at her in a way that was decidedly threatening while she cowered behind Nate. This was when I'd told her to keep her “grabby hands” off Aveda's escort. Shasta must have snapped it when I wasn't looking. The second image was a lovely shot of me shooting fire at Aveda's head.

I should have been embarrassed by how unhinged I looked in these photos. But, honestly, I was kind of proud. Because I also looked . . . cool. Powerful. Like a worthy colleague for Michelle Yeoh/Invisible Girl and Co.

“What's that?” Nate asked, pointing to a spot on the first photo.

He took the phone from me and tapped the screen to zero in on Maisy's left hand, which she had brought to her chest, as if clutching invisible pearls. The back of her hand seemed to have some kind of black blotch on it.

“Is it a tattoo?” I said. “I know Maisy Kane's super alternative, but that doesn't seem like her brand of alternative.”

Nate tapped the screen again, enlarging that spot of the picture. It appeared to be a tattoo of a crude symbol, a line with four hash marks through it.

Where had I seen that before?

“The hand!” I blurted out. “That same mark was on the hand that attacked at the mall.” I stared at the screen, a hunch forming in my brain. I took the phone from Nate and handed it to Bea. “Do we have any photos of the Tommy Thing?” I asked her. “Or shots from the Yamato YouTube video?”

Bea's fingers flew over the screen. “Let's see . . .” She pulled up a series of freeze frames from the video.

“There.” I jabbed my index finger at one of the pictures. “He has the tattoo, too. I didn't get a good look at it 'cause I was too busy running away from him.”

“So there are odd things in a couple pictures, so what?” Aveda cut in. “Can we please get back to what's important?”

“Which is what, your image?” Scott said. “Unbelievable,” he muttered under his breath.

Ignoring them, I turned and stared into the sink. Maybe the Aveda statues were a red herring. Or maybe they fit into the picture in some way I just couldn't see yet. But the tattoo was an actual solid connection that linked Maisy, Tommy, and Stu.

Three makes a trend.

“So these three all have this mark,” I said, facing the group again. “We've hypothesized that Stu was somehow turned into a freaky demon-human hybrid and maybe Tommy was, too. Does this mean Maisy is also part of that crew?”

“You know . . .” Lucy paused thoughtfully. “She and Shasta are always there. In all of the instances connected to the new breed of demons: Whistles, the benefit, the mall. The Yamato, too: we didn't actually see them, but Shasta told us they were there. It's under the guise of reporting on Aveda, but . . . whenever these weird demons appear, they're on the scene.”

Lucy met my eyes. She'd gone pale. “That night at The Gutter—remember how we had that encounter with Shasta? And then right after, she approached Stu Singh.”

“Whispered in his ear and shit,” I said, remembering.

Lucy nodded, going even paler. “Do you think she was recruiting him into this cult of demon-human hybrids? And is she one, too?”

“Okay, let's slow down for a minute,” I said, holding up
a hand and trying to get my thoughts in order. “I don't know about Shasta. She doesn't appear to have the tattoo and it seems like she's fulfilling her usual role, supporting and enabling Maisy, so even if she's part of this—”

“She wouldn't say boo unless Maisy told her to,” Bea finished.

“Right,” I said. “Let's go back to the idea of Maisy, Tommy, and Stu being connected. Tommy and Stu look clearly transformed, but Maisy . . .” I frowned. “She doesn't look different. She still looks like her aggravating human self.” In my head, I called up the image of Maisy waving her stupid recorder in front of my face the day before, trying to capture every moment on video. I'd missed the tattoo. Had I missed anything else? I'd been pretty close to her, had even grabbed her hand . . .

“Her
hand
,” I said out loud.

Everyone looked at me quizzically.

“I thought my fire had burned it,” I said, remembering how her skin had looked flaky, patchy. “But she brushed it off, acted like it didn't matter. And it didn't look
quite
burned. It just looked different. Like . . .”

“Like the skin on Tommy? On the disembodied hand?” Lucy said.

“Yes,” I said. “But not that extreme. It wasn't all over her body, just in that one spot.”

“As if she was controlling it, maybe?” Nate suggested. “Does that perhaps indicate that Maisy has a higher level of power than the other oddities we've observed?”

I heard Bea inhale sharply. “Evie,” she said slowly, “Maisy's outfit yesterday at the mall was all yellow, right?”

“Yes. What does that have to do with this?”

“What does any of this have to do with anything?” muttered Aveda.

“Did you see that new stone from Whistles?” Bea persisted.

“Yes?”

“Yellow,” Bea said, “could also be interpreted as . . . gold.”

The Golden Princess
.

I stopped breathing for a minute. Those three simple words acted as a trigger, forcing our scattered observations into a connected whole. I saw a picture coming together, a mishmash of images arranging itself into a possible solution.

“The yellow outfit,” I muttered out loud. “The tattoo. Her patchy skin. And . . .” I paused as another memory rose up in my head. Maisy and Shasta in the bathroom at the benefit. Me in the stall, trying to hold back tears. Them cackling about my dress. Maisy saying she wanted to transcend Aveda's celebrity status. She didn't just want to be a star, she wanted to be . . .

“A princess,” I said out loud.

I'd thought she was putting on airs. Now their conversation seemed to indicate something much more sinister.

“And in her blog post,” Bea said, waving her phone around. “She said she was going to be ‘crowned' at the karaoke contest.”

“Holy shit,” I said. “Maisy Kane isn't just connected to this new demon threat. I think . . . I think she's in charge.”

“She's a freakin' demon princess,” Bea breathed.

“A good hypothesis, considering the data,” said Nate.

“I agree with you one hundred percent, darling,” said Lucy.

“I guess that sort of makes sense,” Aveda said reluctantly.

“How generous of you,” Scott retorted.

“So obviously we're not going through with this karaoke debacle anymore,” Aveda said. She tried to give her “that settles it” smile.

Only this time that did not fucking settle it.

I turned and stared at the sink again. So clean and silver and shiny. I imagined the drain was a portal to
another world—not the Otherworld, but some dull dimension where everything was nice and mundane and there were no superpowers or superheroes or bloggers who were also pissed-off demon princesses. Five days ago I would've leapt through a portal to that world without a second thought.

But now? I was surprised to find I had absolutely no desire to. Zero, zilch, zip. I couldn't dredge up even the tiniest bit of longing for a mundane alternaworld. I wanted to save the crazy, colorful, occasionally fucked-up world I was already living in.

Was that personal growth or insanity?

I decided I didn't care.

“Yes, we are,” I said, turning away from the sink. “Karaoke debacle is on.”

Aveda glared at me. “Have you forgotten who's the actual boss, here?”

“No. But what we're facing is bigger than that. It's bigger than you, it's bigger than me. It's about saving this city from the clutches of a hipster demon princess who . . .” I hesitated. What was Maisy's endgame?

“She might be trying to take down Aveda to prime San Francisco for invasion, as you suggested earlier,” Nate said, as if reading my thoughts. “Or perhaps she's set on turning the entire city into demon-human hybrids. Or maybe that ‘you need three' stone was meant for her and—”

“And she already has the three she needs to take over!” yelped Bea. “Stu, Tommy, and herself!”

“But Evie took out Tommy and Stu,” Lucy said. “Er, part of Stu.”

“We don't know if I took them out for good,” I said.

“Maybe it doesn't matter if you took them out,” Bea said. “Maybe all Maisy has to do to gain ultimate power is, like,
create
these weirdo hybrid things. In which case, she can still totally count Tommy and Stu in her number.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “So it's safe to say that none of
these are good options. Whatever Maisy's up to, it's not going to end well for us. Or anyone in San Francisco. We have to go through with the karaoke plan.”

I looked at everyone in turn. Aveda was frowning hard, but the others looked intrigued. Hopeful. Even Bea gazed at me as if what I was saying was at least as rousing as Bill Pullman bellowing, “Today, we celebrate . . . our Independence Day!”

“Who's with me on this?” I asked.

Slowly they all raised their hands. Nate, Lucy, Scott, Bea. Everyone except Aveda. She kept glaring at me, a weighted silence settling between us.

“I see,” she finally said, her voice like ice. “I guess there's a new boss in town.”

She turned and stalked out of the lab as fast as her crutches would allow. I suppressed a sigh. I'd deal with her later.

I turned back to everyone else.

“I don't care if Maisy's a demon princess with a whole army of disembodied hands at her disposal. I don't care how many shitty, unflattering pictures of me she posts on her blog. And I don't care that I really can't sing.”

I drew myself up tall.

“Maisy can have the internet, but she can't have the city: not while it's under the protection of Aveda Jupiter. Let's take that blowhard blogger bully
down
.”