Chapter Sixty-Two – Hollow

Emily was intimately familiar with anxiety.

She’d been feeling stress of one sort or another for what felt like her entire life. Maybe there had been some moments when she was much younger where she wasn’t anxious about something, but those moments were a long time ago.

Every meeting was a scenario she had to replay in her mind a thousand times. Every appointment was something she had to worry over until she felt sick to her stomach. Anything that involved talking, or meeting with people was… well, she didn’t need to go into much detail there. They were their own kind of stress, piled on top of all the rest.

For some reason, the anxiety she was feeling now was entirely… hollow.

That was new.

Sure, she had schoolwork to get to, and she knew that there would be tasks and assignments that she’d have to work with a group to accomplish. There was that one teacher’s assistant that she didn’t get along with, and she had a number of small appointments peppered through her agenda that worried at her.

But now they all felt like distant, small stresses, where before each one would be a monolith to face and defeat.

Emily secretly suspected that it was all about tolerance. Since becoming a villain, she’d had to go through so much anxiety that now the things that would have given her ulcers were barely more than a blip. She was like a thrill-seeker that had discovered that the average roller coaster didn’t work for her anymore, not after parachuteless skydiving.

Not that she had skydived, or would. She liked being alive, thank you very much. And of course, it would set a bad example for her sisters.

The day after Rattles was captured, Emily found herself staying at home. She’d sent a message to the school telling them that she was sick and that she’d be missing the day’s classes.

Being up until nearly the crack of dawn didn’t suit her sleep schedule at all. Not to mention getting her sisters to bed after all that excitement had been a nightmare.

She was exhausted, and that was after sleeping in until almost noon.

At the moment, she was on the couch, in her walrus pyjamas, feet up on the coffee table in exactly the way she’d told her sisters not to do a dozen times. Trinity was tucked in to her left and Teddy on her right, and Maple was humming to herself while playing with something on the table. Athena was… Emily looked around, and discovered Athena on the far end of the couch, head on Trinity’s lap while she watched the TV.

It was nice. They had blankets, and the room was almost uncomfortably warm, but not quite. Toasty, from all the body warmth, but not so hot that it was unpleasant.

The TV was turned to the news. A local channel, which mostly covered provincial stuff and news from in and around Eauclaire and its suburbs, as well as whatever big international story was too big not to cover. Mostly that was a scandal at the moment where Apoca-Man had unmasked a villain’s real identity way down south, revealing that they were the head of some moderately big corporation down there.

It wasn’t something that would really have an impact on Emily or her friends, but it was still interesting to see what some villains were up to.

For all that she was… reluctantly giving in to the idea of maybe being somewhat villainous, she didn’t feel like she was anywhere near the big-leagues. Nothing she did was international news.

But it was local news.

“Oh, it’s us again,” Athena said as she sat up.

The story changed to nighttime footage of Rattle’s arrest. It was all cellphone video taken by bystanders, and the video quality was made worse by the flickering lights of emergency services vehicles. Grainy video of Rattles being loaded in a van and checked on by some paramedics, then a loop of Emily, Glamazon, and her sisters standing off to the side and clearly out of the way.

The newscaster, an attractive enough middle aged man, smiled into the camera. “Good news this morning for citizens of Eauclaire as small-time villain Rattles was finally captured. The villain was responsible for a series of attacks across the city, cumulating in several million dollars of property damage as well as thousands stolen from local banks and businesses.”

They cut to some better-quality footage of Rattles hitting a bank, then that money van he’d toppled over.

“The villain was confronted several times by HRF associated heroes, leading to his arrest last night. A team-up by the Eauclaire Brats and local heroine Glamazon.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Boo! Boo!” Teddy said to the screen as it split up to show their images.

Glamazon took up a third of the screen. The other two-third was split up into small boxes with images of Emily and her sisters, with their heroic names underneath the images.

“I got in three times!” Trinity said. “Wait… that’s the same me twice!” She pointed to two of the pictures which were… clearly both Trinity.

“You can tell which you is you?” Athena asked.

“Well, it’s all me, but obviously each of me’s a little different,” Trinity said.

Emily looked at her, then looked at another her. She couldn’t see anything that would help. Not to mention, she wasn’t sure how often Trinity’s bodies had… refreshed.

“The team-up led to a successful capture of the villain early in the morning,” the newscaster continued, unaware of their chat. “A statement came in from the HRF, thanking local heroes, associates, and independents for their hard work keeping the streets of Eauclaire safe from villainous influences.”

The camera shifted to the side, to the co-anchor who smiled broadly. “I think that makes us one of the safest cities on the East coast,” she said.

“I think so. Eauclaire was never a place with a strong villainous presence, but these last few weeks after Power Day have been difficult. It’s nice to see the last of these scoundrels put away,” the main host said.

“Hehe, they don’t know nothing,” Teddy said.

Emily patted Teddy’s head, and Teddy’s smugness only grew. Emily wasn’t sure if this was encouraging her or not, but at the moment she was distracted by the way Teddy’s ears flicked every time her hand came close. “I guess this means that we’ve more or less won?”

“Won?” Athena asked. “I mean, I guess. We beat that idiot, so the city’s ours now. We just need to kick the heroes out, and then start spreading.”

“Spreading?” Emily asked.

“Our evil influence,” Trinity confirmed.

“I can start building bigger things,” Maple said.

“And we can start influencing more people. Bring them around to the right way of thinking. Which is our way. Obviously,” Teddy said. “But we can also set it up so that the next time some competition comes here, it’ll have a much harder time.”

Emily was about to dampen her sisters’ resolve, but that last bit had her curious. “What do you mean?”

Teddy grinned up at her. It was a surprisingly evil expression. “Because now we have the home-turf advantage.”

“We will have it,” Athena said. “We don’t yet. We just don’t have anyone stopping us from taking it.” She shuffled a bit, without removing her head from Trinity’s lap. “Just need to do some of that stuff heroes do, where they make themselves all famous and stuff. And get stronger too.”

“I got some points for that,” Trinity said.

“Me too,” Maple added. “From the fight.”

That was unsurprising, but Emily was kind of hoping to hold off on using those. Not because they wouldn’t be useful, but because she had a hard enough time controlling her sisters when they were this strong. Them being even stronger wouldn’t help. “I got some as well,” Emily said.

Teddy sat up so quickly that Emily’s hand slipped off her head. “Did you get a skill slot?” she asked.

“Yes?” Emily replied.

“Wait, does that mean we’re getting a new sister?” Trinity asked. She gasped in triplicate.

Emily sighed. “I’m not sure if I’m ready to have another little sister,” she said. And wasn’t that the truth. She was only just beginning to get used to handling the sisters she had now. Adding another would maybe be the straw that broke her figurative back.

Then again… it was another sister.

Emily looked over her current sisters, meeting inquisitive, happy gazes, and felt some of that last lingering anxiety melt. Would it really be all that bad to have just one more?

“Well, maybe,” she said.

“Yeah!” Teddy said. “More sisters to boss over.”

“Oh, shut up, you can hardly boss yourself,” Athena snapped.

Emily let the arguments wash past her, barely listening as her sisters flung pointless barbs at each other. She cleared her throat eventually, calming them down. “If we’re going to do this, then we should do it right. Maybe prepare things a little first? That way we can meet our new sister properly.”

That sounded like the right thing to do.

***

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