Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Maven.
The girl was like the Escherian equivalent of a bad penny. Far more dangerous for the wrong person and highly obnoxious for everyone else and sure to make you sick. Very sick. To your stomach. Even to be near and see her.
We had defanged her the last time we dealt with her years ago. She had been such a problem for boys and had her sights set on Tom. She seemed to be able to manipulate them into loosing all their individuality and personality to become her play things. They dressed the same. Acted the same. Even wore the same cologne and even the same design brand of 3d printed sunglasses. Oh and the slicked back their hair. Who did that these days?! We called the boys the Derplicates.
She had wanted to add Tom her to play toys and we had stopped her cold. Both by being Tom's friends and by getting her into trouble for unleashing a worm on everyone's boosters. One of her Derps had been caught trying to steal supplies from the chemistry closet and my former Awknerd fanboy, Aitan, had tried to intervene to stop Juan the Derplicate from doing so. He thought he would impress me or something. After she had been busted and left Juan to be busted for everything, her hold on the other Derplicates weakened. Juan, ironically, remained loyal. As did one other Derp. However, the others had loosened her hold enough to slip away. She had been completely unable to add any other Derplicates since.
Yeah! Team Merry Pranksters!
Maven never forgave us. She especially didn't forgive me.
She saw me as the ultimate architect of the downfall of whatever plan she had been concocting. None of knew what made her make boys into Derplicates. None of us understood why they stayed. None of the escapees wanted to talk about it. None of had any idea of what she had ultimately planned. And she sure wasn't going to share with her arch - in her mind - nemeses.
And doubly so for me.
No monologuing here.
We hadn't had a confrontation with Maven in over a year. She'd been so wrapped up in trying to get out of trouble and then keep her Derps from escaping and then she tried to face us down ...which is the actual act that allowed her Derps to get away. What she'd done since, none of us really knew.
I had a feeling I was about to find out.
Maven the Raven: it was a nickname that fit. Her hair so black it glistened. Her eyes were dark, dark, dark. So dark they seemed to swallow the light and it was difficult picking out her pupils. Yet her skin was so white, it could have been used as a reflector for a megawatt class laser with no damage. She had always liked specially buckled and not quite frilly clothing. However, then, there and then, she took it to another level. She had on a black cape. With a hood. It was pushed back though. Had she binged on watching the latest Immie remake of The Lord of the Rings or something?
I didn't know and I didn't want to deal with her. However, her two be-caped stood abreast of her and blocked getting around. I was a bit nervous. If they meant violence, this was going to get ugly. I was no slacker in the martial arts classes, but there were three. And loomed quite well.
I had stopped and was about to ask her to politely step out of the way when she spoke up.
"My, aren't we in a hurry? Well, you should be Merry Crankster. You have something to hurry about, don't you? Yes, yes, best hurry along. You wouldn't want to miss the chance to be the first to find out where these are coming from, eh?"
And with that, she held out a repticulate.
My eyes bugged out and my jaw dropped. Where had she found one? They were not - at least yet! - common. That concerned me. What concerned me more and my brain never seized over it was that she might have examined it. Maven was no techno guru, but one should never underestimate an enemy. Perhaps her Juan or John might have known how to extract the data. Or perhaps they had paid someone. It didn't matter.
She might have found that repticulate matched ours - though I doubt she knew about the data from ours - and that would lead her to...Dad. And give her something to potentially cause him harm and would have allowed her to get revenge on me. That was low, Maven. Real low.
But wait! Based on how she was acting, it seemed like she knew about our repticulate! But how?!
We'd been careful. Really careful. Unless...did she put it in my bag? No...yes. It would explain how she knew. But, no. She was only sorta devious. She was not a Prankster and not good at misdirection. Perhaps it was a mind game and she was trying to figure out what we knew. Or perhaps she wanted to even just brag she had something and we didn't. Something she knew would have attracted us to it like moths to the flame.
Ha!
We knew how to circle the flame without getting burnt.
We were evolved moths, I tell ya.
For a hot second, I thought about bluffing my way through this and implying I'd never seen the repticulate before. Lying was something I was not terribly good at. Lying is actually a necessary skill. Mostly with white lies. If you're the sort who dates girls, then when she asks if an outfit makes her look fat, the answer is always a convincing no regardless of the truth. Hence, a white lie. One that might actually be necessary for your future survival or at least your minimal chances of actual reproduction.
Maven already knew I knew what was dangling from her hand. She also knew I was running through my brain at a million lightyears per jump about what to do about her and the fact she had a repticulate. Denying that would have been disingenuous at best. And probably a stuttering and unconvincing pathetic instead. Probably the latter. I was a teenager, after all. Smooth was not common amongst my age group.
So, instead, I simply told her to move and that I needed to get by.
That caused her to raise an eyebrow and twitched a corner of her mouth into a smirk. She stepped out of the way.
I passed through as quickly as I could, tensed to lash out if I needed to. I didn't, fortunately. As I said, it would have been ugly. However, once I was past and a quarter block away, she called out:
"I knew you knew. This will be so fun."
And she began to laugh. A mocking cackle that crows would have been horrified at. One that made my skin crawl.
But I refused to run. That would have been what she wanted.
At least until I was out of sight and then I ran like the wind.
We were about to have a race, a showdown in Shadwell. And I had to prove my Dad wasn't the one who was responsible for the highly illegal repticulates. Long before Maven could have. Otherwise, very bad things were about to happen.
So I ran and I tinked a code red to my Merry Pranksters.
We had to meet.
Immediately.