New York Overture

And then Jeanne let go. Memories of Jeanne sleeping over at Leena's house struck her suddenly, the smell of the foreign bedsheets and the smell of the kitchen, the look the aloof but responsible big sister gave to her well-cared-for little sisters, the littlelest of which was Jeanne's cherished friend. A friend who she abandoned.

But she couldn't admit that. She couldn't believe that.

"Leena?" she thought pathetically about the new form the big sister had taken and once again it made her want to cry. She sniffled a bit as she kept herself from personal humiliation, and instead squared her shoulders, put her head up, maintained a more neutral expression; more like the frustratingly haughty but always mildly confused resting face of the younger Jeanne, who always seemed like she wanted to be somewhere else.

Sheepishly, she scooted away and finally properly pulled the cover off the drain, peering inside with the flashlight on dim.

"I'm sorry..." she cleared her throat, and gesticulated like a confused pedestrian that couldn't really be bothered to explain why they just caused a car crash. "You're just... a pile of goo."

Jeanne blinked. She sat on the grass, caressing the gauntlet that was a reminder of her new identity, in the uniform that was a reminder of her old.

"I stole a thousand dollars from my father's cabinet, took a one-way trip to the Honor Guard base where I was recruited under a different name and age. I underwent express training for three days and on my fourth received this gauntlet," at which she motioned self-evidently, "and, well,"

She sighed. "This piece of equipment has a function that allows alpha dna to be spotted through skin. I tested it on myself and," she grit her teeth, "um, the uh, the results were... positive. Which were very much not, ah, positive... for me.

"I had to desert again." She looked at Leena's... slimy form, as if looking for validation. "Otherwise I risked death. So when I was called to a mission, which just happened to be this exact church, I... well..."

Jeanne tried to keep it cryptic, for she figured that the more she talked, the more banal her situation became, which was exactly what Jeanne wanted to avoid. She took a larger breath than usual. "There's a reason you encountered no honor guards but myself."

Jeanne felt a prisoner of the same uniform that had previously given her a feeling of confidence, an impostor that shouldn't be permitted to exist. She felt like a traitor to her own race with every breath that she took, and those breaths got heavier to accept the more she took them. Leena's presence was only a reminder of how far they'd erred; in her she no longer saw the virtuous older sister of her childhood, but a monster who she tolerated only because of the mind that was still left inside.

When Leena touched her gauntlet, Jeanne recoiled slightly, but otherwise did not change anything about her demeanor. Her feelings were expertly concealed inside her tar-black heart and her wicked brain. She smiled painfully.

"I need to get out of these clothes," she said. "I'm almost certain they will start looking for me, but they know neither my name nor my hometown. This is the only identifier."

Jeanne hesitated. "Do you... uh..." She gestured. "Know a way back home?"

Jeanne nodded. "It sounds good to me."

After what seemed like an eternity, Jeanne gasped and shook her head, closing her eyes. When she saw that she could see even with her eyes closed--an aberration of nature, an impossibility, light was not supposed to be touching her retinas, she gasped again, and louder.

Jeanne then proceeded to rest her head in her hands, shocked, dazed and confused.

"Leena," she said softly, after swallowing. "There's an individual in Honor Guard armor inside the church and he is speaking with the pastor."

She got up, flight again triumphing against fight, and spread herself flat against the side of the building. In another soft motion, she gave her gloved hand to Leena's gelatinous mass, and began walking with a brisk pace in a direction she deemed the least conspicuous: away from the roads, away from the people. "Don't ask me how I know," she added.

"Because I don't know."

Jeanne slinked to the edge as well, but she seemed more confused than worried at that point in time. What was even worse is that she had a blend of horror and awe on her face, as if she didn't know whether she should scream or clap at what was happening in front of her.

"I can see everything," she told Leena in a vague, confiding tone.

She did; she saw pavements yards away, lit by streetlight; she saw foliage and grass lit by moon, the vague outlines of faces of young individuals staying up late at night staring at their computers in tall apartment buildings, a permanent scowl on one, mouth slightly gaping on another. It seemed clear to her that she was seeing things lit by something, but all things were not like the other. There remained a blind spot behind her head, in the dark alleyway, that did not exist when she was out in the parking lot, when her powers first manifested.

She tried to concentrate on the Honor Guard's whereabouts again, for she was certain she could not yet relax, and she also felt as if she had been seen and tracked already. There was a certain limit to the range of her abilities, she gathered; otherwise she'd know what was happening at home, or the house next door where Aaron lived, but she didn't. Her range seemed to fuzz at some radius, but she couldn't accurately pinpoint the location.

Jeanne chose to momentarily ignore Leena's question, partly because she could not answer, partly because she didn't feel like it. She was reveling in the knowledge of power while simultaneously hating her new condition, but she couldn't accurately explain that without mincing her words.

"There's nobody," Jeanne whispered with no hesitation. "Let's go."

Jeanne gave her right hand to her partner in crime's tendril and began the brisk walk through the numbered street to the other side of the alley.

As Leena was leading Jeanne through the alleys, she took it as an opportunity to whisper softly to her, in tones that she'd never used in her life. A newfound confidence was electrifying. The security of knowing where everything was, where everything was going. She could tell the future by analyzing the present.

"Leena," a soft murmur, delicate in its tension, like a single string being tightened on a violin. The name felt good on her lips, much in the same way that Leena's form did not please her eyes or her soul. This disjointed her from her heightened state of awareness, but not as much as she feared. "Slow down, there is no rush. There is nobody."

"I see through walls," she described, as they were walking. "But not through them. More so I can see what's inside of them. And I see the ground around and behind us. I see roofs, I see through the inside of chimneys. I see the lit faces of people staring at their computer screens, of people staring at their phones as they walk on the street far away from us."

She took the moment to catch her breath, and looked, knowledgeably, in some vague direction, different from where they were going. "I see the counter-tops inside that house's kitchen. It looks like marble." Another breath. "They have damascus steel cooking knives," she added as a finishing touch, although admittedly her powers did not allow her to see what kind of steel it was. It was just guesswork.