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“Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got,
I’m still, I’m still Jenny from the block.
Used to have little, now I have a lot,
No matter where I go, I know where I came from.”
Jennifer Lopez, Jenny from the Block
Armand pushed through the glass door, a stale but
angry look on his face. Before the door had even shut again, Ledger pushed
past it, with Roland following behind. The three knights, each dressed in
black, with only the red shirts to break the monotony of their outfits,
stopped just inside the front door of the casual restaurant.
“I hate that son of a bitch so much,” Armand griped,
his hands balled into tight fists as he spoke. “Man, I want to get my hands
on him and…”
“Calm down,” Ledger said, neither sympathetic nor
interested. “You’ll blow a gasket.” Armand was about to yell at him, but
the black knight pointed over into the corner of the restaurant. “There’s
Edgar.”
The three gathered themselves up and headed over
towards the table that Everett
and Edgar sat at. “Armand,” Roland said, putting his hand on the younger
knight’s shoulders, “I wouldn’t mention your anger about Morgan. If you do,
Everett’s
liable to get really mad.”
“I should sure as hell hope so.” Armand said. “The
son of a…”
“At you,” Roland said quietly, but clearly. “Not at
Morgan. What you did was…well, it’s a touchy subject right now.” He walked
ahead of Armand, leaving him to think.
As Roland neared the booth, he saw Ledger standing at
the end of it, a giant grin on his face. “Great,” he grumbled. “Now I’m
really worried.” But as he got closer, he found that a third person was
between Everett and Edgar. He immediately smiled at the blonde-haired
beauty that he found waiting. Then he recognized the face. “Sydney?!” he
exclaimed, his eyes wide as his jaw dropped to the floor.
“He said what?!” Mint exclaimed, staring in disbelief
at Ken.
“He said I either needed to get things back on
schedule,” Ken explained as he sat in the chair to the tiny table of the
hotel room, a small glass half filled with ice and liquid in his hands, “or
else he would find someone else to do the work instead of me.”
“I can’t believe Phil would say something like that,”
Mint said, looking away in anger. “I really can’t.”
“Well, he’s not ‘Phil’ anymore,” Ken said, equally
annoyed. He looked around in the small extended-stay hotel room that had
become Mint’s home. “He’s someone else. He’s the Phillip/Jericho hybrid.”
“Don’t say stuff like that,” Mint said, shivering. “I
hated Jericho
with a passion.” She shook again, at the very thought.
“That’s right,” Ken said, sipping his drink before
turning to her with an amused smile. “You and Jericho went to college together, didn’t
you?”
“I met him in college, yeah,” Mint confessed with a
dash of embarrassment. “I even made the mistake of dating him for a little
while. He was a good guy back then. All chivalrous and everything. But now…”
She shook her head and fell silent.
“Well, now, he’s worm food,” Ken said callously,
looking out the window and down the street far below. He saw the same man
standing at the door of the diner across the street. “If the Triumvirate
really did get their hands on him, if the rumors are true and all…then Jericho’s gone.”
“This guy says he found one of your fliers,” Ruwani
said into the payphone at the opposite end of the pancake house. She turned
back around, to see the large, blonde-haired student sitting at the table
she had just come from as Alan worked to keep him occupied. “What do you
think?” she asked, turning mentally back to the phone.
“I-I don’t know,” answered Marilyn with an unsure
tone. “I…after Tim…”
“Don’t you mean ‘Eli’?” Ruwani corrected crossly. But
she regretted what she said before the name had even escaped her lips.
Silence.
Finally, Ruwani heard a sigh from the other end of
the phone. “Just, I don’t know,” Marilyn finally said. “Just, just bring
him to the kung fu school tonight,” she said, obviously at a loss. “I can
meet him then. And I can try and get Malcolm to come.”
“Malcolm skip his Tae Kwon Do class?” Ruwani joked.
“That’ll never happen.”
“Not even for the group?” Marilyn asked. For a
moment, Ruwani couldn’t tell if she was kidding or if she really wanted the
input.
“I’ll make sure he comes tonight,” Ruwani said,
nodding certainly.
“The guy, ‘Brian’ right?” Marilyn asked.
“Him too.” Ruwani nodded.
“All things being equal, I would prefer not to be
doing this,” Aaron said as he stood in the elevator, Ian and Errol on
either side in front of him. He looked to his two subordinates. They looked
to him, but neither said anything. Aaron just sighed, resigned to his fate.
The doors
chimed in the silence.
The metal
barriers parted, allowing the three to step out into the world.
The factory floor before them was bustling with
activity as the workers moved mechanically around the heavy room. Life,
mechanical and of all types, flowed constantly around the room. Workers and
machines moved in harmony as the factory thrived.
Aaron walked behind Errol and Ian, the two larger men
keeping their eyes constantly alert, scanning the factory. None of the
workers, though, seemed to notice the three as they made their way down the
main corridor of construction.
The trio looked around as they walked, seeing the
heavy machines working. “Entire structures were built here, inside this
massive, underground factory,” Aaron said quietly, speaking to Errol and
Ian. They both looked back at him, but he just smiled. “Don’t tell me you
weren’t curious.” They said nothing. Aaron laughed, reveling in the
lightness of the moment. He swallowed the laughter though, getting his mind
back onto the matter at hand.
The three
simply kept working.
Across the long factory, they finally came to a large
set of double-doors. Errol stepped ahead of Aaron and looked back at him.
Ian moved behind the head of the Investigator’s clan and kept a lookout.
Aaron looked between the two of them and nodded.
Errol pushed the heavy door open with one hand,
allowing Aaron to slip quickly inside.
“It’s fun to
see all of you again,” Sydney
said as she looked over the team of knights with fond memories. Around the
table, black prevailed. Edgar was dressed in a black suit with a red shirt,
while Roland and Ledger both wore their jackets. Armand, like Everett, wore his
trench coat in spite of the warm weather. And in the center of attention, Sydney wore a black
shirt over a red tank top. She looked over at Everett as everyone laughed. “Especially
you, sweet cheeks,” she winked.
“Sweet cheeks?” Everett
asked back, a surprised look on his face. He looked over at Edgar, but the
eldest knight chuckled, not saying a word.
“Hey, you won the sparring match,” the only lady at
the table said casually. “I get to at least call you embarrassing names.”
“Sparring match?” Armand asked, barely able to tear
his eyes away from the blonde beauty that sat with all the knights.
“Yeah,” she said, sipping her water. She looked to
Armand, then back to Everett.
“He didn’t tell you? We sparred to see who got to be on top.”
Silence.
“You’re blushing,” Edgar whispered across the table
at Everett as Sydney’s smile grew, as well as everybody
else’s.
“He is,” Roland exclaimed, starting to laugh. “He is
blushing. I didn’t think black people blushed.”
“Shut up, white boy,” Ledger snapped back, the only
one not laughing.
“Okay, okay,” Armand said, after the laughter faded
into smiles. “Okay. So, madam, forgive me for being rude, but how do you
know Everett?
And, apparently, everybody else?”
“Oh,” Sydney
said, standing up. She coughed a bit and straightened out her black shirt.
“I am dame Sydney Pointer,” she said professionally. In her eyes, Armand
saw a seriousness and an intensity that he had rarely ever seen, even in
all the knights he had known. “I am a knight-errant, formerly of Atlanta.”
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