Chapter Sixty-Six – The Grand Bosses

“Uh, hey,” Aurora said with a little wave.

The big man looked at her. His expression was… neutral, but still quite stern, and just a little bit scary. He would have been very intimidating if Aurora just bumped into him out of nowhere.

At the moment, Trinity was using him like a living jungle gym, which admittedly did help make him a little less intimidating.

“Hey,” he said. “You’re the new girl?”

Aurora nodded. “I am,” she said. “It’s nice to meetcha?”

He nodded once. “Likewise. You look older than the rest.”

“I guess I’m kinda older, body-wise,” Aurora said.

“Nuh-uh, I have three bodies, so I age three times as much in the same time, which makes me the oldest,” Trinity said from her position atop the man’s broad shoulders.

He chuckled, then reached up, grabbed Trinity around the waist, and easily plucked her off his back to place her on the ground. He patted her on the head. “Go and play with the others, I’ll chat with Aurora here for a bit,” he said.

Trinity perked up, and her other bodies, which were still clinging to him, jumped off. “Okay, Grandpa Boss!” she said with a sloppy salute before she ran off.

Aurora watched her sister scamper off. They were at a Huck and Cheese, a restaurant that Aurora wasn’t sure she was fond of. There were some animatronic characters, mostly dressed like heroes, and a big indoor jungle gym off to one side.

The music was annoying her. It was very loud and obnoxiously upbeat. But her sisters seemed to love it, so Aurora kept her opinion to herself.

“Wanna have a sit?” her Grandpa Boss asked. He gestured to the booth they’d been brought to by a pimple-faced, overworked waiter earlier.

Emily and her mom (the Grandboss) were behind the glass wall between the normal restaurant section and the play area. The rest of her sisters were fighting in a ball pit, Trinity diving in to tackle Teddy under the balls.

Maple was… next to one of the animatronics, and Aurora was a little worried about what kind of thoughts were crossing her mind as she stared up at the robotic hero figure.

“Yeah, let’s sit,” Aurora said.

“Must be tough, being the new one,” he said as he squeezed into the bench across from her. He was a big guy in more than one dimension, and he had to suck in his gut a little to fit into the seat.

“It’s a little hard, I guess,” Aurora admitted. “But everyone’s been nice. It’s not a bad family to be part of, eh?”

“I guess not,” he said with a soft smile. “My daughter’s a good kid. Never figured her for the… motherly type, or as much of a leader, but she’s figuring things out well enough. It helps that you and your sisters seem to respect her well enough.”

“She’s the Boss,” Aurora said with certainty.

“She’s Emily first,” he said.

Aurora didn’t quite know what that meant. “She’s Emily first?” Aurora asked. She supposed that him being Emily’s dad meant that he knew the boss better than even her sisters did. Though some part of Aurora was a little doubtful about that.

“Yeah,” he said as he looked across the room. Emily was now in

the room with the ball-pit, wagging a finger at both Trinity and Teddy and telling them to behave. Another kid ran by behind her, bumped into her rear, and sent her sprawling forwards with a squawk to crash onto Aurora’s sisters. They all disappeared under the balls. “She’s always been an… interesting kid. Actually, I take back what I said earlier.”

“About her being a good leader?” Aurora asked.

He shook his head. “No. About her being good. Did you know that there’s a difference between good and good?”

“You just said the same thing twice,” Aurora pointed out.

“No, not quite. There’s different sorts of good. You know, my wife was surprised and a little shocked when Emily turned out to be a… the V-word.”

Aurora knew what he meant. Emily had told her–and her sisters–not to use the word Villain out in public if they could avoid it. It was a dangerous thing to say, because being a villain wasn’t something people liked very much.

“Were you?” Aurora asked.

“No, I wasn’t,” he said as he leaned back into the bench. “Emily was always a quiet, studious kid. She has, well, pretty obvious anxiety when it comes to talking to others and socialising. Don’t know where she got that from. Probably my side of the family. We’re quiet sorts. It’s not from her mom, that’s for sure. That woman’s a consummate gossip.”

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‘Uh-huh,” Aurora said. “And the V-word stuff?”

“Emily’s quiet. Quiet doesn’t mean good. But a lot of people conflate the two. When someone’s good at minding their own business, when they keep to themselves, people seem to think that they’re not bad sorts. They’re doing their own, quiet thing, not breaking any laws, not messing with others. But that doesn’t let you see what’s going on in their heads.”

“Can you see what’s going on in people’s heads?” Aurora asked. Athena could do that. It was a neat party trick.

He laughed. “No. But I can read my daughter. When she was small, she’d frame the cat for knocking things over. She was quiet, but would use that to her advantage too. She kept picking books from the older sections of the library, but would just go mum when her teachers talked to her about it. I recall one teacher discovering her in the teacher’s lounge one day. She’d gotten a ninety six on a test, instead of a hundred. The teacher just dismissed it, said that Emily wasn’t supposed to be there, but Emily was so quiet and nice that no one saw it as a real problem, just something that happened, a kid getting lost. She’d rewritten her exam results to give herself a hundred. She told me about it later, because the teacher was wrong while grading her, and it was easier to break into their room and change the results herself than to correct the teacher.”

“Whoa,” Aurora said. “How old was she?”

“That was when she was in her… third grade, I think? So under ten or so.”

Aurora was even more impressed with her big sister now than she had been before, and that was saying something. “She started vil– uh, the V-word stuff even earlier than I expected.”

“Yeah. She’s… headstrong, in her own way. I think if it wasn’t for her problems talking and socializing, then my daughter would be a real hellion. Her mother was like that too, when she was younger.”

Aurora looked over to the Grand Boss, who was laughing even as she helped Emily out of the ball pit. “She was?”

“Oh yeah. Feisty, that one. She was the sort of woman that others learned to be afraid of. No one bosses her around, lemme tell you. She’s not evil or anything, but she can be mean.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Aurora asked.

“No, I don’t think so. Not when she’s being mean on your behalf.” He nodded. “It’s why I’m not so worried about Emily and this whole V-word thing. Sure, she’s got a mean-streak in her, just like her mom, and maybe with power and time she’ll grow into someone more… fearsome. But at the same time, she’ll only act to protect herself and what’s hers.”

“Oh,” Aurora said.

She was part of that too, wasn’t she? That was a nice feeling to have.

Emily walked out of the playroom and over to their seats, her mom right behind her. Emily’s hair was all frizzled up, and her cheeks were bright red as she took a seat next to Aurora. “Well, that was something,” she said.

“Are you okay?” Aurora asked.

“I’m fine. But I lost my phone in the ball pit.”

“Oh… you’re not looking for it?” Aurora asked.

“I got Trinity and Teddy to compete to find it first,” she said. “I give it even odds that they’ll either find it, or start emptying the ball-pit until it’s impossible to miss.”

The Grandboss sat down next to her husband, then leaned forwards and kissed his cheek. He flushed a little. Aurora thought they were both cute. She wondered if Emily would be looking for someone one day.

A waiter arrived to give them some menus, and that attracted her other sisters back to their table. Maple had… what looked like a small part of the animatronic’s leg with her, which she tucked under the table, and the others had retrieved Emily’s phone and were fighting over who would give it back to her.

It was chaotic, but not in a bad way.

“Huh,” Emily said as she grabbed her phone. “Sam sent me a message… One sec, I think I need to look into this.”

For some reason, what should have been an innocent moment suddenly felt a little more dangerous.

***

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