Happy Sunday! Instead of doing a preview video for next week, I decided to try something a little different today. I've noticed that a lot of people were watching the videos, but not coming to the blog to read the stories, so I figured, why not bring the stories to where the people are?
Meanwhile, I used today's prompt from the StoryADay website:
Take a story you’ve already written, and write a new version beginning with the ending scene/situation of the first and see where it takes you.
I decided to take the story I wrote on May 11 and start from there.
“Linda Westman,” she said, still offering her hand to shake. “I’m a reporter, but more importantly, I’m a fixer. I help people in situations that look impossible, and I think this doesn’t even rank in the top ten of impossible situations. For one thing, most everyone already knew you’re the Crimson Wing, so it’s not really news.”
I froze as I was shaking her hand, and she pulled her hand away quickly, shaking it as though she had just touched a stove. Apparently my hands started getting warm with the surprise. “They do? It’s not? Dammit. Now what?”
“Now we re-brand. You, the company, the partnership, everything.” She grinned, and I saw just a hint of villainy in that smile. “It’ll cost you, of course, but I’m well worth the price.”
I sighed. I really hadn’t been looking forward to starting over again, and if it would just cost some money to put out a new story about me, then it might be worthwhile. “Come on. All of you. Let’s take this meeting to my office.” Vincent led the way, unlocking the door as we all walked out of the bathroom and headed to one of the rooms meant for this kind of work. It was going to be a long day.
The lobby was full of reporters, still milling about after the aborted press conference, and it wasn’t long before they spotted me. They started to swarm and I had to concentrate to keep flames from actively shooting from my hands. Before they had a chance to lock me down with their microphones and their questions, Linda started proving her worth. “Ms. Uguns has no comment at this time. When she is ready to make a statement, she will notify you.”
“Linda, you snake!” a perky blonde reporter up front yelped. “I can’t believe you weaseled your way in like that!” The rest of the reporters grumbled along the same lines. Linda, however, didn’t allow it to stop her. Her long black ponytail kept swinging in time with her strides as she moved to the elevator bank, and Anna and Vincent had to hurry to keep up.
I, on the other hand, had a good six inches on Linda, and was able to keep pace easily. Also, I figured it would look better to keep up with her if she was supposed to be some kind of representative for me. “So, where do you think you’re going?” I asked conversationally as she moved confidently to the main elevators. “You’ve not been here before, have you?”
“Nope! This is my first time,” she replied cheerfully. She stopped in front of the panel when the passenger inputs the floor they’re going to and looked at me expectantly. “I figured my first job was to get you away from the jackals, and you would take the navigation over from there. How’d I do?”
I nodded slowly, then tapped my ID badge to the panel and chose my office floor. It was the only floor that was badged, so she wouldn’t have been able to make it in there without either me or one of my team, but she didn’t need to know that yet. “Not bad. It does seem a little rude to call your colleagues jackals like that, since you’re one of them.”
“It’s because I’m one of them that I can call them that,” she said blandly, turning to watch the displays over the elevators to see which was going to arrive first. Vincent and Anna had caught up by then, Anna’s red hair looking a little disheveled and Vincent trying not to sound like he was out of breath. I smiled sympathetically at him. “Trouble getting through the crowd?”
“Well, you two got through so easily, you left us behind!” Anna said shrilly. Vincent rolled his eyes, then pointed to the elevator that had come for us. I ignored Anna completely as we rode up in silence, not saying anything until we got through the doors into my private office and all the doors between were closed. “All right, Linda. What’s the plan?”
“We have a couple of options, as I see it,” she said, sitting on the edge of one of the chairs facing my desk and rooting through her large messenger bag for a notebook and pen. “We can try to discredit Storm Wizard, put out word that he’s going dotty, poor old soul, should have been put out to pasture years ago-”
“Yes, that’s perfect!” Anna interrupted. “It’s like I said, no one will believe him. He’s gotten so old, and doing magic like that is supposed to mess with the mind.” She preened. “We should do that.”
“If we do that, then you’ll have to fire Miss Thing here,” Linda added blandly, pointing her pen at Anna. Anna jumped like she’d been shocked, her mouth opening and closing like a fish. Vincent ducked his head, but not before I saw a smile creep across his face. I felt one on my face, too. “And why would that be?”
“Well, if we discredit Storm Wizard, then there’s no reason on Earth why the company should have gone into any kind of partnership with him,” Linda said, making notes on her pad. “If he’s gone, mentally, then there’s no way he could be an asset to the company, and it would only make sense to fire the person who drove the company into the partnership in the first place. Based on what we got of the press conference, that would be her.” Again, she pointed with her pen, without looking away from me. “So - discredit Storm Wizard, and sacrifice the employee at the altar of the narrative.”
I let the silence play out for a little longer than was strictly comfortable before I sighed and shook my head. “What are our other options? I’m not saying no,” I added, seeing the relief on Anna’s face, “I’m just saying, let’s look at some other plans.” I tried to ignore the disappointment on Vincent’s face. I really did need to get him a raise for all the ruckus he had to deal with.
“Noted. Plan B is to lean into the allegations. Yes, you are the Crimson Wing - or rather, you were. You had your reasons, which we can come up with or leave ambiguous, up to you, but that’s your past. Your present, and your future, is this company.” She looked at me expectantly, pen poised over her notepad.
I leaned back in my chair and templed my fingers. There was a certain elegance to it, as rescues went - it wasn’t inaccurate, since I hadn’t done anything as the Crimson Wing in years, and I had channelled all of my time and considerable resources into my company. Hell, telling investors that they have a (reformed) supervillain leading the company might make some of them more confident in sticking with us - it’s not like any of the big companies aren’t being led by villains. They just don’t have the decency to own it.
“But, doesn’t admitting to being the Crimson Wing mean that she might be arrested for the, uh, acts she committed under that name?” Vincent asked timidly, and my head shot up. “I mean, it would be a great news story, but not if Sofie ends up getting arrested for something that happened years ago.”
Linda waggled her pen in her hand as she thought. “There might be something there,” she mused, making another note. “The best way to know is to find out exactly what the Crimson Wing has been accused of doing, and what’s likely to stick.” She looked at me appraisingly. “Were you ever caught by law enforcement?”
I scoffed. “Please. Getting around the cops is supervillain 101. There were a couple of close calls in the beginning, but they were never able to prove that it was me.” I thought back to my early years, when I was still getting my feet wet and hadn’t even decided on a name yet. “In fact, the one time they had an arrest warrant out for me, it was for an old name. Flamebird, I think? Maybe Great Phoenix - there were a few of them I went through before I landed on Crimson Wing.” I looked at the others in the room and bristled. “It’s not the easiest thing, coming up with a supervillain name.”
“There are online name generators for that kind of thing,” Anna muttered, but I noticed she didn’t meet my eyes. She and Vincent were still standing, even though there were other chairs open for them, and I didn’t want Vincent to be so uncomfortable for however long the meeting would end up being.
“All right, they didn’t have that when I was starting,” I said, standing and moving to the wet bar along one wall of my office. “Go ahead, sit down, let’s have something to drink and figure this out. Vincent, why don’t you grab your laptop so you can get some of your research magic going, and we can figure out what, if anything, the cops could snag me for if I admit to being the Crimson Wing.” I opened the cabinet and pulled down four glasses. “Who wants what?”
Several long hours and a mediocre delivery Thai meal later, we had a list of the crimes that could, in theory, be attributed to the Crimson Wing. Most of them were things that were past the statute of limitations, so they wouldn’t be a problem from the police. There were a couple of arson cases that might be hinky, but the evidence was mostly ash, and so proving that I had anything to do with it would be much more difficult. The deaths were the bigger problem.
“So, can we prove that you didn’t intend to cause their deaths?” Linda asked, picking up the last skewer and contemplating it before dragging it through the rest of the peanut sauce and taking a bite. “I think that would go a long way toward determining if you’d be at fault.”
“Well, I was usually pretty good about not making overt threats or anything,” I mused, digging into my container of pad thai for the last piece of chicken. “There were only three people that died directly due to something I did, and all of them were people I gave plenty of warning to before I did any property damage. They just didn’t take me seriously, I guess.” I chewed the rubbery chicken, thinking hard about the incidents in question.
“I really think we should have brought Alicia into this,” Vincent said again from the table where he’d set up his laptop. “She’s going to be really pissed when she realizes that we’ve been discussing all of this stuff related to your culpability in things and we didn’t call your lawyer.”
I waved his concern away for the fifth time. “I’m telling you, she doesn’t like to know about things until we have things in order. Once we can present her with a definitive list, then we can move forward with what we need to do from a legal standpoint.”
Anna was silently poking at her fried rice from the opposite side of the table from Vincent, sulking and scrolling on her phone. She hadn’t been much help in all of the conversation, and if she hadn’t been a part of the thing that started this whole mess, I would have dismissed her already. Still, I thought it was useful to keep her around, just in case.
There was a pounding at my inner office door, making all of us jump. There was no way someone should have been able to get up here without my knowledge, and yet, there were surprise visitors outside my door. I turned to look at all three of the people in my office in turn, waiting for one of them to tell me what was going on.
Vincent was pale, and he shook his head as soon as I looked at him. Linda frowned, looking both worried and peeved. Anna…Anna refused to meet my eyes. When I looked at her, she ducked her head and sighed, then walked to my door and opened it before any of us had a chance to stop her.
The police walked into my office. She let the police into my personal office. If I didn’t end up in jail, she was so fired. I stood up and, attempting to keep my voice as steady as possible, asked, “Can I help you, officers?”
“Crimson Wing?” the first officer said. She was standing in front of two other cops, shorter than both of them but looking like she had no problem making up for her lack of height with pure spite. She raised an eyebrow at me as she gave me a waterfall look, and I imagined she was unimpressed by my supposed supervillainy.
“That’s an interesting name,” I said blandly. “I’m Sofie Uguns. I’m not sure why you’re asking for that other name.” I kept my hands on my desk and waiting, letting the silence fill the space and maintaining eye contact with the first officer.
She sighed. “We were informed that the supervillain known as the Crimson Wing was in this office, operating under the alias ‘Sofie Uguns.’ If that’s the case, and that’s you, then I need to take you into custody until you answer for your crimes.” She put her hands on her hips, one hand not so subtly on the hilt of her gun. “Will you come with me?”
“Do you have a warrant?” I asked. I turned to Vincent and nodded, and he started texting, hopefully reaching out to Alicia to let her know what was going on. He was probably right, and I probably should have looped her in sooner, but while the best time to bring her in would have been several hours ago, the next best time was right away. I turned back to the officers. “Without a warrant, as I understand things, I don’t have to go anywhere with you right now.”
One of the two other officers scoffed. “Listen to the legal scholar,” he sneered. “Just because you heard it on Law and Order doesn’t mean it’s the way things work, lady.” He also put his hand even less subtly on his gun hilt. The third officer was watching, but hadn’t moved his hands in any way.
“Are you trying to deny her the right to counsel or to know her charges?” Linda said, and I jumped a bit when I realized she was standing next to me with her phone out. “I’d be very interested to hear about that. Linda Westman, NPR,” she added.
The name of a news organization took the wind right out of their sails. The first officer nodded to the others and took her hands off her hips. “When we have a warrant, we’ll be back,” she promised. “I don’t recommend leaving anytime soon.” She spun on her heel and stormed out the door, slamming it behind her.
Vincent, Linda, and I all turned to Anna, who had the decency to look abashed. “Well, I’m guessing that didn’t go according to plan,” I said, crossing my hands over my chest. I felt the heat from my palms swell, and I took some deep, measured breaths to cool them off.
“You’re a villain,” she blurted out. “You need to pay for your crimes.” She stared me down defiantly. Lord save me from the sanctimonious. I was going to have to do something with her, I just needed to figure out what. I turned to Linda. “Any ideas?”
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