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Zebediah Slade
I was actually smiling as I got out of bed, which was unusual because I’m normally a bear first thing in the morning. I hadn’t had a chance to see Anne alone since Thanksgiving, as we’d both been extremely busy with our respective jobs- I’d been working almost non-stop double-shifts since Halloween, and Anne’s consulting business seemed to be choked with late-night installs and troubleshooting. When I’d finally managed to convince the Captain that my efficiency was going to suffer if I didn’t get some R&R soon, he’d told me I could have a full day all to myself, starting right after work, provided I was back on station by six in the morning on the following day.
I didn’t kiss the man (that would’ve been weird), but I offered to call his wife and tell her to do the deed. He all but chased me out of his office.
Next, I called Anne and, to my surprise and delight, she promised to carve a hole in her schedule so that we could enjoy our first real date in weeks. The rest of that day— yesterday— had been given over to training until close to seven o’clock, at which point I was put on call along with a couple of my more experienced officers, Oskar and Donny, and we spent most of our shift bantering and making sure we were all awake and alert until our shift ended at three-thirty.
These guys don’t have much to do with this story, but let me give you a bare-bones, anyways; if nothing else, it’ll help illustrate what it is we do.
Oskar, Donny, and I are part of the West End’s Metahuman Threat Assessment and Response Team; fortunately, nobody had been wiseass enough to call us MART or, worse, M-TART. We were and are the MRT, and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a crazier bunch of yahoos anywhere in the world.
Oskar and I go way back; he was my spotter back when I was in the army, and, if you’ll pardon a ground-pounder for mixing his metaphors, jumped ship with me and kept on watching my back when I moved on to the department of agriculture. He was nearly as good a shot as I was, and a better reconnaissance man, since he didn’t tend to tower above the natives anywhere he went.
Donny, on the other hand, was Candi-with-an-I MacHugh. I had been ambivalent about accepting her onto my team— her squadmates had nicked her “Donny” as a shorthand for “Donnybrook,” after an incident that I learned of just after Jefferson had assigned her to me. The story goes that one of her marine DIs had tried to nickname her iCandi, and she’d about turned him inside out on the mat as a result. It had taken four men to pull her off the guy, and the only reason she wasn’t court martialed was because the senior DI watched the whole affair and judged that her victim had just about begged her for a beatdown. She was short, tough-as-nails, and had the temper of a strung-out wolverine with a bad case of PMS. She had taken martial arts and played all the contact sports that her high school allowed women to participate in, and, finally, had been shipped off to military school and then into the marines in an attempt to channel her violent temper into a more acceptable outlet. It worked, sort of— Donny turned out to be the kind of person who was a bit like a loose grenade during peacetime, but calmed right down when the fur started flying; I judged that if someone could follow her around all day and shoot at her, she’d be a perfectly agreeable human being. Since that is, in large part, what the MRT does, I took a chance on her, and was surprised when she actually exceeded my expectations.
We played penny-a-point poker until just before shift change and I was reminded, once again, why I never gambled professionally. If the stakes had been higher, I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford to take Anne out. My subordinates, on the other hand, would’ve been pretty happy with their increased fortunes.
A bulletin crossed my desk about the Hallmark Hero who’d become active in town over the last couple weeks; no one knew who this guy was, but he’d gotten his name for his signature of tying up muggers- always in pairs- face-to-face outside popular couples’ bars and leaving a “Be My Valentine” card taped to them. His… I hesitated to call them victims, given that, to date, they’d all been convicted felons and there’d been witnesses and evidence that they’d been stopped in the act of perpetrating violent crimes… subjects, maybe? Anyways, none of them had been badly hurt; most were just singularly confused as to how they’d ended up in such a compromising position and in so public a location.
I skinned out of my gear and took just long enough in the shower to make my skin damp, then put on my civvies and headed for the parking lot. I was out the door and gone before Oskar even had his trousers on.
My cell rang while I was on LA-3318 headed for home. I picked up through the truck’s audio with my usual gentility and aplomb: “Are you bleeding?” I growled. It was just shy of four in the morning, after all.
“Not for another week,” Anne’s voice informed me. I swear I heard her grinning behind her tart response, and I was just as glad there was no video pickup; the heat in my cheeks told me I was blushing pretty spectacularly.
“Kid,” I said when I felt I had adequate control over my voice and face, “hasn’t anyone ever told you not to sass your elders like that?”
“Nobody who wasn’t old enough to be my grandpa,” she purred and I swallowed a laugh.
“Watch it, missy,” I rumbled, “or I’ll put you over my knee—”
“Promise?” she broke in, giggling.
It was a good thing I didn’t drink coffee while I drove; I would’ve choked.
“Okay, seriously,” I said, once we’d both stopped laughing, “what’s up? We’re still on for tonight, right?”
“We’re still on,” she confirmed, “and nothing’s up. I just wanted to talk to you before I went to bed.”
“You too?” I asked.
“Yeah— these late nights are gonna be the death of me, I swear. How’m I supposed to get my beauty sleep?”
“Not like you need it,” I noted.
“Aw, that’s sweet,” she said. “Clearly a lie, but sweet, anyways.”
She paused.
“Oh— now I remember. D’you mind if I invite Alessia and James to have dinner with us?”
“Do I know these people?” I asked, a touch dubiously.
“Probably not,” Anne replied, “but they’re good folks and I think you’ll like ‘em.”
“And we’ll still have some private time just for us, after?”
“Count on it, buster,” she agreed.
“Go for it, then,” I said, “sounds like fun.”
*****
Alessia Troisi
It’d been a long time since I’d heard Anne this happy or excited about anything, and I was beginning to think that this cop she was dating might actually be okay.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t have an inherent mistrust of police officers— no more than any other costumed vigilante, anyways— but I had my reasons to be wary of them. So, I reflected, did Anne, and she was less capable of, if you’ll pardon the expression, smelling a rat than I was.
That she’d invited me to join her on her date told me that she wanted to know what I thought of her policeman; that she’d also invited James along let me know that she wasn’t expecting trouble. Actually, that she’d invited James along made me suspect that she was optimistic, because James was bound to put me in a more congenial mood and my generally good humor was likely to color my perceptions.
Anne knew me pretty well; she knew, for example, that I always worked out after work, and that my lust aura tended to be intensified for a bit afterwards, despite a thorough shower. Normally, I secluded myself until my metabolism slowed down enough to let people think clearly around me or, more frequently, covered up so that I wasn’t baring too much skin. For some reason, though, Anne had chosen a venue that was pretty aggressively casual, and the timing meant that I would either have to cut my workout short (which wasn’t happening) or my pheromones would be in full effect.
Get your head in the game, girl, I told myself, enough woolgathering.
I adjusted my shoulders on the bench and grunted as I hoisted the bar up.
Again.
And again.
There was a dull throbbing in my muscles as I pushed the weight up over and over, completing my set.
A wolf-whistle broke my concentration as I racked the weight.
A pale ginger grinned at me and waggled his eyebrows. He was shorter than me by several inches, which wasn’t that unusual as lots of men are; and lean, like a distance runner. He wore a flannel shirt tied around his waist over his jeans and a Misfits t-shirt from a concert that I was pretty sure that he’d attended in college, or, possibly, junior high school.
I sat up and splashed water from my squeeze bottle over my face and into my mouth before speaking.
“What’re you doing here?” I asked, finally.
“I just like to watch you work,” James smiled.
“That doesn’t sound stalkerish at all, no,” I snarked at him.
“Is my big, strong Amazon afraid of a little friendly stalkering?” he teased and I stuck my tongue out at him.
“You really wearing that?” I asked, changing the subject.
“It’s either this or my birthday suit,” he replied with a touch of his charming, British upper-crust accent. “It’s laundry day.”
He tilted his head. “In any case, I think I’m more put together than you, luv— not that I object.”
I rolled my eyes and sauntered over to the pull-up station. “Good thing, too,” I tossed back, “’cause you’re stuck with this view ‘til I finish.”
*****
Anne Friedland
“Are you sure about this, Anne?” Minerva asked.
I shrugged. “Hey, you introduced us,” I pointed out, “and he seems like a good guy.”
“I concur, but—”
“Besides,” I added, “There’ll be a genuine superhero right there, just in case anything unpleasant develops, right?”
“This is also true. Still—”
“And apart from all that, even the fae-folk have been pretty quiet; we deserve a little time off.”
“I do not dispute this,” Minnie said. “however, your shoes and your handbag do not match”
I looked down at my ensemble.
“Um… no?” I blinked.
“My color-sorting algorithms indicate that particular shade of pink clashes unpleasantly with the blue-and-green of your purse,” Minnie explained.
I grunted. “Yeah, no. I wasn’t really planning on wearing them together.”
“That,” Minnie remarked, “is a blessing.”
I relaxed a little. “You pick up that snark from me?” I asked.
“From Dr. Troisi; it seemed appropriate to the situation. Did I use it correctly?”
“Dr. Troisi,” I growled, “is a bad influence.”
“I don’t understand,” Minne complained.
I huffed a laugh under my breath. “You used it correctly, Minnie,” I told her; “Just remember that people can switch back-and-forth from snarky to serious without much warning.”
“I have observed this,” Minnie agreed. “Fortunately, there are almost always non-verbal cues to fall back on.”
“Except on the internet,” I noted.
“No, even then,” Minne demurred. “The nearly ubiquitous presence of cameras and microphones connected to the internet and the global telecommunications network means that very few people are truly absent from surveillance for any length of time, if I have an interest in observing them.”
I decided against explaining to Minnie just how disturbing that information was.
“Is this a good idea, Minnie?” I asked, instead, “I mean… making this a double date?”
There was a somewhat longer pause than usual, and I guessed that Minnie was filtering the question through a variety of processes; normally, she could process data so quickly that all pauses were added purely for aesthetic effect, but human interactions were something that were still a bit of a mystery to her— which, I suppose, made her not unlike the rest of us, in that regard.
At length, she said, “I cannot definitively answer that; evidence seems to suggest that double dates may have a detrimental effect on the longevity of a relationship, but the negative impact may be influenced by a variety of other factors such as self-doubt, a history of infidelity, or friction between loyalties. If those other factors do not exist, then double dates are less likely to have an adverse impact on a relationship and may, in fact, have a positive bearing.”
“So, basically, you have no idea?”
“That would be accurate, yes.
“I feel compelled to ask, Anne: what is your motive for inviting Dr. Troisi along?”
“Honest truth? I don’t know, for sure. Gut instinct, I guess.”
“I would advise you to be cautious about relying on your gastric processes to determine your behavior in amorous endeavors; most processes associated with human viscera are not associated with romance.”
I imagined letting loose a roaring fart in the middle of a passionate kiss. “Thanks, ever so, for that. Now I’m gonna have that stuck in my mind all night!”
“You are very welcome, Anne,” Minnie replied, obviously not picking up on my sarcasm.

********************************************************************************************************************************************************

Someone who I won't name, but is told me, not too long ago, that Zed and Anne were a cute couple and I wasn't allowed to do anything bad to them or their relationship. Well... I think we all know what happens when I'm given ultimatums like that, right? I capitulate right away and try not to get beat!

I have been struggling with this story for about a month, now- mainly with the "cut it back and quit trying to add unnecessary complications, you moron!" aspects. It's still not perfect, but it is in time for Valentine's Day, so...

Zed, Network, Tyche, and James Harkness all are belong to and are working out their love lives in the of

The artwork on this pic was kind of a rush-job; y'all have my apologies. If my current stress level ever comes down to reasonable levels, I might be convinced to attempt a remake...

Description

Zebediah Slade
I was actually smiling as I got out of bed, which was unusual because I’m normally a bear first thing in the morning. I hadn’t had a chance to see Anne alone since Thanksgiving, as we’d both been extremely busy with our respective jobs- I’d been working almost non-stop double-shifts since Halloween, and Anne’s consulting business seemed to be choked with late-night installs and troubleshooting. When I’d finally managed to convince the Captain that my efficiency was going to suffer if I didn’t get some R&R soon, he’d told me I could have a full day all to myself, starting right after work, provided I was back on station by six in the morning on the following day.
I didn’t kiss the man (that would’ve been weird), but I offered to call his wife and tell her to do the deed. He all but chased me out of his office.
Next, I called Anne and, to my surprise and delight, she promised to carve a hole in her schedule so that we could enjoy our first real date in weeks. The rest of that day— yesterday— had been given over to training until close to seven o’clock, at which point I was put on call along with a couple of my more experienced officers, Oskar and Donny, and we spent most of our shift bantering and making sure we were all awake and alert until our shift ended at three-thirty.
These guys don’t have much to do with this story, but let me give you a bare-bones, anyways; if nothing else, it’ll help illustrate what it is we do.
Oskar, Donny, and I are part of the West End’s Metahuman Threat Assessment and Response Team; fortunately, nobody had been wiseass enough to call us MART or, worse, M-TART. We were and are the MRT, and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a crazier bunch of yahoos anywhere in the world.
Oskar and I go way back; he was my spotter back when I was in the army, and, if you’ll pardon a ground-pounder for mixing his metaphors, jumped ship with me and kept on watching my back when I moved on to the department of agriculture. He was nearly as good a shot as I was, and a better reconnaissance man, since he didn’t tend to tower above the natives anywhere he went.
Donny, on the other hand, was Candi-with-an-I MacHugh. I had been ambivalent about accepting her onto my team— her squadmates had nicked her “Donny” as a shorthand for “Donnybrook,” after an incident that I learned of just after Jefferson had assigned her to me. The story goes that one of her marine DIs had tried to nickname her iCandi, and she’d about turned him inside out on the mat as a result. It had taken four men to pull her off the guy, and the only reason she wasn’t court martialed was because the senior DI watched the whole affair and judged that her victim had just about begged her for a beatdown. She was short, tough-as-nails, and had the temper of a strung-out wolverine with a bad case of PMS. She had taken martial arts and played all the contact sports that her high school allowed women to participate in, and, finally, had been shipped off to military school and then into the marines in an attempt to channel her violent temper into a more acceptable outlet. It worked, sort of— Donny turned out to be the kind of person who was a bit like a loose grenade during peacetime, but calmed right down when the fur started flying; I judged that if someone could follow her around all day and shoot at her, she’d be a perfectly agreeable human being. Since that is, in large part, what the MRT does, I took a chance on her, and was surprised when she actually exceeded my expectations.
We played penny-a-point poker until just before shift change and I was reminded, once again, why I never gambled professionally. If the stakes had been higher, I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford to take Anne out. My subordinates, on the other hand, would’ve been pretty happy with their increased fortunes.
A bulletin crossed my desk about the Hallmark Hero who’d become active in town over the last couple weeks; no one knew who this guy was, but he’d gotten his name for his signature of tying up muggers- always in pairs- face-to-face outside popular couples’ bars and leaving a “Be My Valentine” card taped to them. His… I hesitated to call them victims, given that, to date, they’d all been convicted felons and there’d been witnesses and evidence that they’d been stopped in the act of perpetrating violent crimes… subjects, maybe? Anyways, none of them had been badly hurt; most were just singularly confused as to how they’d ended up in such a compromising position and in so public a location.
I skinned out of my gear and took just long enough in the shower to make my skin damp, then put on my civvies and headed for the parking lot. I was out the door and gone before Oskar even had his trousers on.
My cell rang while I was on LA-3318 headed for home. I picked up through the truck’s audio with my usual gentility and aplomb: “Are you bleeding?” I growled. It was just shy of four in the morning, after all.
“Not for another week,” Anne’s voice informed me. I swear I heard her grinning behind her tart response, and I was just as glad there was no video pickup; the heat in my cheeks told me I was blushing pretty spectacularly.
“Kid,” I said when I felt I had adequate control over my voice and face, “hasn’t anyone ever told you not to sass your elders like that?”
“Nobody who wasn’t old enough to be my grandpa,” she purred and I swallowed a laugh.
“Watch it, missy,” I rumbled, “or I’ll put you over my knee—”
“Promise?” she broke in, giggling.
It was a good thing I didn’t drink coffee while I drove; I would’ve choked.
“Okay, seriously,” I said, once we’d both stopped laughing, “what’s up? We’re still on for tonight, right?”
“We’re still on,” she confirmed, “and nothing’s up. I just wanted to talk to you before I went to bed.”
“You too?” I asked.
“Yeah— these late nights are gonna be the death of me, I swear. How’m I supposed to get my beauty sleep?”
“Not like you need it,” I noted.
“Aw, that’s sweet,” she said. “Clearly a lie, but sweet, anyways.”
She paused.
“Oh— now I remember. D’you mind if I invite Alessia and James to have dinner with us?”
“Do I know these people?” I asked, a touch dubiously.
“Probably not,” Anne replied, “but they’re good folks and I think you’ll like ‘em.”
“And we’ll still have some private time just for us, after?”
“Count on it, buster,” she agreed.
“Go for it, then,” I said, “sounds like fun.”
*****
Alessia Troisi
It’d been a long time since I’d heard Anne this happy or excited about anything, and I was beginning to think that this cop she was dating might actually be okay.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t have an inherent mistrust of police officers— no more than any other costumed vigilante, anyways— but I had my reasons to be wary of them. So, I reflected, did Anne, and she was less capable of, if you’ll pardon the expression, smelling a rat than I was.
That she’d invited me to join her on her date told me that she wanted to know what I thought of her policeman; that she’d also invited James along let me know that she wasn’t expecting trouble. Actually, that she’d invited James along made me suspect that she was optimistic, because James was bound to put me in a more congenial mood and my generally good humor was likely to color my perceptions.
Anne knew me pretty well; she knew, for example, that I always worked out after work, and that my lust aura tended to be intensified for a bit afterwards, despite a thorough shower. Normally, I secluded myself until my metabolism slowed down enough to let people think clearly around me or, more frequently, covered up so that I wasn’t baring too much skin. For some reason, though, Anne had chosen a venue that was pretty aggressively casual, and the timing meant that I would either have to cut my workout short (which wasn’t happening) or my pheromones would be in full effect.
Get your head in the game, girl, I told myself, enough woolgathering.
I adjusted my shoulders on the bench and grunted as I hoisted the bar up.
Again.
And again.
There was a dull throbbing in my muscles as I pushed the weight up over and over, completing my set.
A wolf-whistle broke my concentration as I racked the weight.
A pale ginger grinned at me and waggled his eyebrows. He was shorter than me by several inches, which wasn’t that unusual as lots of men are; and lean, like a distance runner. He wore a flannel shirt tied around his waist over his jeans and a Misfits t-shirt from a concert that I was pretty sure that he’d attended in college, or, possibly, junior high school.
I sat up and splashed water from my squeeze bottle over my face and into my mouth before speaking.
“What’re you doing here?” I asked, finally.
“I just like to watch you work,” James smiled.
“That doesn’t sound stalkerish at all, no,” I snarked at him.
“Is my big, strong Amazon afraid of a little friendly stalkering?” he teased and I stuck my tongue out at him.
“You really wearing that?” I asked, changing the subject.
“It’s either this or my birthday suit,” he replied with a touch of his charming, British upper-crust accent. “It’s laundry day.”
He tilted his head. “In any case, I think I’m more put together than you, luv— not that I object.”
I rolled my eyes and sauntered over to the pull-up station. “Good thing, too,” I tossed back, “’cause you’re stuck with this view ‘til I finish.”
*****
Anne Friedland
“Are you sure about this, Anne?” Minerva asked.
I shrugged. “Hey, you introduced us,” I pointed out, “and he seems like a good guy.”
“I concur, but—”
“Besides,” I added, “There’ll be a genuine superhero right there, just in case anything unpleasant develops, right?”
“This is also true. Still—”
“And apart from all that, even the fae-folk have been pretty quiet; we deserve a little time off.”
“I do not dispute this,” Minnie said. “however, your shoes and your handbag do not match”
I looked down at my ensemble.
“Um… no?” I blinked.
“My color-sorting algorithms indicate that particular shade of pink clashes unpleasantly with the blue-and-green of your purse,” Minnie explained.
I grunted. “Yeah, no. I wasn’t really planning on wearing them together.”
“That,” Minnie remarked, “is a blessing.”
I relaxed a little. “You pick up that snark from me?” I asked.
“From Dr. Troisi; it seemed appropriate to the situation. Did I use it correctly?”
“Dr. Troisi,” I growled, “is a bad influence.”
“I don’t understand,” Minne complained.
I huffed a laugh under my breath. “You used it correctly, Minnie,” I told her; “Just remember that people can switch back-and-forth from snarky to serious without much warning.”
“I have observed this,” Minnie agreed. “Fortunately, there are almost always non-verbal cues to fall back on.”
“Except on the internet,” I noted.
“No, even then,” Minne demurred. “The nearly ubiquitous presence of cameras and microphones connected to the internet and the global telecommunications network means that very few people are truly absent from surveillance for any length of time, if I have an interest in observing them.”
I decided against explaining to Minnie just how disturbing that information was.
“Is this a good idea, Minnie?” I asked, instead, “I mean… making this a double date?”
There was a somewhat longer pause than usual, and I guessed that Minnie was filtering the question through a variety of processes; normally, she could process data so quickly that all pauses were added purely for aesthetic effect, but human interactions were something that were still a bit of a mystery to her— which, I suppose, made her not unlike the rest of us, in that regard.
At length, she said, “I cannot definitively answer that; evidence seems to suggest that double dates may have a detrimental effect on the longevity of a relationship, but the negative impact may be influenced by a variety of other factors such as self-doubt, a history of infidelity, or friction between loyalties. If those other factors do not exist, then double dates are less likely to have an adverse impact on a relationship and may, in fact, have a positive bearing.”
“So, basically, you have no idea?”
“That would be accurate, yes.
“I feel compelled to ask, Anne: what is your motive for inviting Dr. Troisi along?”
“Honest truth? I don’t know, for sure. Gut instinct, I guess.”
“I would advise you to be cautious about relying on your gastric processes to determine your behavior in amorous endeavors; most processes associated with human viscera are not associated with romance.”
I imagined letting loose a roaring fart in the middle of a passionate kiss. “Thanks, ever so, for that. Now I’m gonna have that stuck in my mind all night!”
“You are very welcome, Anne,” Minnie replied, obviously not picking up on my sarcasm.

********************************************************************************************************************************************************

Someone who I won't name, but is told me, not too long ago, that Zed and Anne were a cute couple and I wasn't allowed to do anything bad to them or their relationship. Well... I think we all know what happens when I'm given ultimatums like that, right? I capitulate right away and try not to get beat!

I have been struggling with this story for about a month, now- mainly with the "cut it back and quit trying to add unnecessary complications, you moron!" aspects. It's still not perfect, but it is in time for Valentine's Day, so...

Zed, Network, Tyche, and James Harkness all are belong to and are working out their love lives in the of

The artwork on this pic was kind of a rush-job; y'all have my apologies. If my current stress level ever comes down to reasonable levels, I might be convinced to attempt a remake...