Even More RMS, to Brighten your Day

HOLA AGAIN!!!
I'm back again with even more RMS!  As promised, of course.  If you didn't read the first marathon post, I'm trying to cram in as many RMS posts as possible between now and my birthday, trying to get Book One finished or close to finished.

Random Marvel-based Story (Parts 66, 67, & 68)

“I’m telling you, Ava, something’s up!  There is something sincerely wrong with Jess,” Danny said desperately into the phone.

“Ok, Danny, calm down,” Ava said calmingly, but her voice was all staticy through the phone, making it sound like she didn’t really care.  I must sound insane, Danny thought.  “What do you want me to do?”  Ava said.

“Brant’s Bakery, 183rd street,” He said before he could really think.  “And I’m telling you, something is wrong.”

“Yes, I heard you the first time, and the second, and the third...” She said patiently.  “By the way, I expect chocolate when this is over.  And lots of it.”

Jess had once said something about this kind of dealing.  The Americans had a name for it-  “This is blackmail!” Danny blurted out, just like Jess had screamed at her phone one summer afternoon, having talked for over an hour.  Why couldn’t they go back to those summer days?  Now their lives were insane, with memory wipes and invisible enemies and crazy Jessies on the loose and nothing making sense.

“Danny, you with me?  Hey!”  Ava’s voice jolted Danny, blasting out of the phone’s speaker.  “I was joking, ok?  I’ll go over to Brant’s Bakery if that makes you feel better.  This mask makes me worried - Luke says it belongs to the baddie she fought with earlier today, but why would she be taking it on a date?”  It wasn’t really a question, but more like a simple statement.  Danny answered anyway.

“I don’t know, but it makes me worried too,” he mumbled.

“Danny...” Ava said quietly, as if she was trying to break some news slowly.  “Maybe Jess really isn’t a good guy like we thought.”

*******

Ava pulled her grey sweater collar up, hoping that Jess would be distracted.  This doesn’t look like a place that a baddie would go, she thought, staring at the metal chairs and twisting trees - a stunt of green in a very grey area of the city.  Golden words that said ‘Brant’s Bakery’ twisted around a coffee curl.  “This doesn’t look like an evil incorporated, but it’s always so hard to tell,” Ava muttered.

“I know right?” Nova’s voice drawled in her ear, making her jump.

“You bugged me, didn’t you,” Ava whispered angrily, pushing open the glass door.  She touched her hand to her ear to find a tiny disk.  Groan.

“Sh, anybody watching you is going to think you’re insane, and that’s going to blow you cover,” Nova said.  Ava could already picture him, leaning against a leather chair at head quarters, tapping an ear piece and pretending to be a super spy.  She rolled her eyes at thin air and went up to the counter.

She stared at the dishes in the the display case, but scrumptious cakes weren’t really her objective.  Ava was really using the reflections for Jess.  Wait!  Was that her, the girl right there with -

“Hey, lady, ya goin to order or what?”

Ava looked up from the glass case, startled, then realized she was already first in line.  Jess would never make that mistake, she thought to herself with an angry pang.  Focus, Ava, we don’t have time for this.

The cashier sighed and leaned against the counter.  “Let me guess,” he said, annoyed, “A caramel cappuccino, dash of cream, with a cranberry croissant, table by the window with two chairs, no more, no less, hun?”

“Nutella bagel, regular coffee, black, and any table would be fine,” Ava said grumpily, not exactly liking what the annoying cashier was hinting at, and glanced around the cutesy coffee shop.  There was Jessie, but geez, Danny was right.

Ava slid into a chair in a shadowy corner of the cafe, sipping her coffee and pulling out a sketchbook to hide behind.  Not that Ava could even draw well.  She glared at the page, hoping that nobody was watching her.  “Nova” she murmured, so quietly that the couple at the next table didn’t even stop talking, “Jess is wearing...a dress....”

Silence, then, “Keep talking, we need details.  AUG!!! GEDOFF SPIDER FREAK!!!  Sorry about that, Ava, you still there?”

“If my ear drum is busted you’re a dead man, Sam,” Ava mumbled, eyeing Jess.  “Ok, there’s a guy, curly blonde-brown hair and a red plaid shirt.  He doesn't look evil...but you know...they both have coffee, and Jess has, well look at that, a croissant.  Typical.”

“What do you mean, ‘typical’,” Nova said frantically over the com, accompanied by the sounds of bodies thumping.  Boys.  “Ava?”

“She’s on a date.  False alarm!  You guys made me go undercover for this?”  Ava hissed, pretending to be very interested in her stick figure.  She glanced over to where Jessie was sitting and watched her as she laughed and smiled - something Ava hadn’t seen in a very long time.  Then, as she had known that Ava was there the whole time, Jess turned ever-so-slightly, locked eyes with Ava, and grinned.  It was only half a second, but Ava abruptly stood up and start to gather her stuff.

“She knows I’m here,” Ava sighed, “Of course.  Cover blown, I’m leaving.”  She picked up her ‘sketchbook’ and gathered the pencils, eying Jess.

A flash of movement.  Jes was sliding a tablet across the table to guy, who read it slowly, as if every word counted.  He nodded solemnly, and Ava realized: this wasn’t a date, it was a business transaction!  She was making a deal!

“Ok, never mind, something is up!  Code Red!  I’m running!”  Ava snatched up the last remaining art supplies and her coffee, pushing her way out the door.  She caught a glimpse of Jess’s satisfied grin before Ava was down the street, blasted by fall winds.

Half a minute later, when she was finally a semi-safe distance away,  Ava turned to make sure she wasn’t being followed.  “Ok, clear.  Jess wasn’t on a date, she was making a deal with some guy.  Probably a bad guy that we’re going to have capture at a later time,” Ava said, speaking normally now.

“Well where is Jess now?”  Nova said with mock exasperation.

Ava glanced around her to make sure nobody was listening, then said, “I don’t know.  She knew I was there, and we already know that if Jess has her heart set on something that won’t change.  I left.”

“You left,” Spider-man repeated, as if Ava was stupid.

“Well when you want to deal with a cray-cray evil-ish Jessie, you can come and tail her to some random cafe, Spidey.”

“She’s not crazy.”  Somebody new, Ava thought.  Probably Danny.  “She’s hurt, and well, quite possibly evil.  Not crazy.  I can’t believe I didn’t see it before now.”  Ava had never heard Danny so - dead sounding.  She winced.

“‘The last battle is always the most glorious’,” Ava quoted, reminding Danny to perk up.  Silence.

Ava sighed, getting ready to finally leave when a blinding light filled the busy street.  Something crashed into the wall, collapsing the building on top of at least twenty people, and then the whole thing exploded, leaving fire etched into her eyelids like a photograph.  “Jess!”  Ava screamed, and started running.

*******

Before Ava could even change into her white tiger suit, the wreckage was swarming with rescue vehicles.  “I was just in there,” She said to the first person she found that looked like she was in control.  “There’s like twenty or so people in there, you have to get them out!”

“Who are you, kid?”  The police officer said, brushing Ava away.  “They’re all dead for sure, anyway.”

“You know, this is the whole point of having a super suit,” she said, exasperated, but the man was already gone.  She flipped past the barrier, ignoring the angry shouts behind her.  Jess?  Dead?  It couldn’t be!  Ava dug through the stone and wreckage, not at all surprised when the rest of the team joined her.

Eventually, police officers pulled her away from the dirt, saying words that turned to mush in Ava’s ears.  She realized she was crying, but nobody cared.  She just had to find Jess.

“You have to leave now, miss,” somebody said, and Ava finally noticed that Danny and Peter were half-dragging her away from the neon barricades, away from the cafe.

“No,” She muttered, once they set her down across the road.  The road blurred.

Spider-man knelt in front of her, murmuring, “I’m sorry Ava, but she’s just...are you sure she was in the cafe?”

“No,” Ava moaned again.  “She was in there.”

She watched as doctors and policemen dragged limp bodies out of the wreckage.  None of them had black hair, but it was so hard to tell between the smoke and the shouting and the ringing in Ava’s ears.  They loaded them up, and Ava gasped.  Twenty three people, their faces covered like ghosts on the hunt, had been loaded onto trucks.  Twenty three people that weren’t moving.

“She’s not dead,” said a deep voice behind Ava.  She turned around and saw Nick Fury, towering over her.

“Ava saw the whole cafe blown to bits, with Jess in it!”  Spider-man’s voice, snapping angrily like a wounded animal.

“We have a tracker on her suit.  She’s moving away from the city, and no, I’m not going to tell you where.  She’s most definitely alive, or somebody else took her body and is moving at 75 miles an hour.  At any rate, she’s not here,” Nick Fury said rather gruffly.

Peter helped White Tiger to her feet and said, “Oh yes, real comforting!  She was still making a deal with somebody!  Who cares if she’s alive or dead -” Ava sucked in a breath and bit her tongue to avoid snapping at him “- she still baled out on us!”

“Hm,” Fury grunted.  “That does change things up a bit.”

“A BIT???”  Ava howled, stamping her feet against the dirt.

“I need to talk with the experts,” Fury said calmly, glancing at the wreckage across the road.  “Ava, you’re totally certain you saw a bomb?”

“YES!!!”  She snapped angrily, sitting down on a clump of concrete with a huff.  “Why does everybody keep asking me that?”  Jess was dead - what else mattered?  It seemed so alien that she had been complaining about Jess’s betrayal half an hour ago.  No - not half an hour, a lifetime ago.

Nick Fury walked off, where too, Ava didn’t care.  Danny pulled her to her feet and she didn’t even care.  “C’mon,” Spider-man said in her ear.  “It’s time that Jess answered our questions.”

See you tomorrow for EVEN MORE RMS. Because you need that in your life. :D