Chapter 10: Memories

Laura awoke from her recent, most all-encompassing demise yet. She was back in her executive suit and in her hotel room.

Etsu was sitting down at the table where the CEO and super heroine had surfed the web on just that morning. She was wearing her usual university attire, and had a smile on her face.

Laura was still reeling from the experience. The sensory overload of seeing all of reality as she did, even if it was just a brief snippet, was, to Etsu’s credit, humbling. The sights alone would do that enough, but the sheer tininess of Laura’s being to the cosmos was something she had known, logically, yet never quite experienced.

Indeed, she was visibly humbled, and Etsu was visibly pleased by that. Laura thought not to protest, obviously. She let the omnipotent monster have their smug victory moment. Things were better that way.

“Welcome back.”, said Etsu.

“Are we done?”, said Laura. She stood up straight and brushed her executive suit with her palms.

“Sadly. Like I said, the game’s over... for now. It was a lot of fun. It was really something. It felt almost therapeutic, didn’t it? I think like I actually learned something about myself, which is quite rare. I think you learned quite some things too, didn’t you?”

“Sure.”, said Laura. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind leaving Kramston alone for the future, and maybe be kinder to the world?”

Etsu chortled.

“Kehehehe, as if.”, she said with a snort. “I’m not gonna stop having fun just because we had an especially interesting day together. If it’s any consolation though, you’ll be happy to know my panties are off of Paris, and Sydney is sweat free. I undid all the mess I made already. I will try to be more careful in the future about those tachyons, though, so you can consider that a small win of yours.”

Laura said nothing, but shot a look of disapproval.

“Don’t be like that. Although, you know, it is sad in a way. You won’t even remember our fun times together. I’ll be erasing your memories of course. I can’t have you blabbing about my existence and nature. I mean, sure I could fix it, but why not just prevent that now?”

“No.”, said Laura in protest. “Leave my memory alone.”

“And why would I do that? I could erase your mind and be done with this.”

“Don’t.”, said Laura. “There’s not as much of a point as you think. So long as there’s a clue, a single clue to something weird going on with time or some other physics anomaly, I’d just find you again. That’s all I need, just a few clues. It’s how I am.”

“I don’t know~~~”, said Etsu.

The purple-haired woman brought her fingers together as if she was about to snap them. She leaned back in the chair, defying reality to rock it forward and back a tiny bit, even though the piece of furniture lacked that feature in its design.

“I could just be super thorough cleaning up my tracks.”, said Etsu.

“Yes.”, said Laura. “But that’s a bit more effort.”

“The word ‘effort’ doesn't’ mean for me what it does for you I think.”, replied Etsu. She tilted her head and grinned.

“No, you’re right in that the effort would be infinitesimal at best. But, I think you like leaving a mess from time to time. Do you really want to have to put all the particles back in the box every time you, well, do what you do?”

“Hmmmm”, hummed Etsu. “It does have a certain flair to it, scattering tachyons around like confetti. Still, are you sure? Do you really want to go on with life knowing what you know now? That so much control is in the hands of one young woman, thousands of miles away? This is information no one else knows or would know. Not any intelligence agency in the world. If they did, they’d try to cover it up.”

“I think the world must know. They must know your crimes against the world, our reality.”, said Laura.

Etsu sighed.

“No I can’t have that.”

Laura saw the fingers stiffen. She was worried Etsu was gonna snap them as a gesture of wiping her memory.

Instead, Etsu lifted her hand up, fingers interlocked with another. Both hands were behind her head in a leisurely pose.

“But, you can keep your memory.”

Laura smirked slightly.

“On one condition though. I need to make sure you can’t tell anyone, of course.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry. If you ever want to meet up again, for a chat or whatnot, well, you’ll remember who I am, and where to find me... at least when I’m not out and about tormenting another universe or something. Kehehehe.”

Laura moved to say something, ‘stop!’, but Etsu clapped her hands together and everything went black.

--==--==--==--

Laura found herself in the elevator down to the Leopard Cave hidden under her manor. Her base of operations for all her heroic business: the business that really mattered to her.

Her executive suit was on, suitcase handle in hand. The doors slid open and she stepped out.

“Ah, welcome back Mistress Laura, how was your trip to Japan?”, said Margret. The older woman was in her black and white work attire, ready with a tray upon which rested a cup of water and a plate with a single scone on it.

“It was... certainly something.”, said Laura.

“Shame it was cut short as you mentioned, but good on you for traveling on the behalf of the company for once! Even better of you on not getting into any of your vigilante business. At least, I hope that’s what happened, or, rather, didn’t happen”, said Margret, chuckling to herself.

“I suppose if you stopped a pickpocket or something, well, that’s a good deal safer than what you usually are up to. I don't like to worry, you know. You didn’t fight any super villains or anything like that, did you?”, continued the old maid.

“I...”, said Laura. She set her suitcase aside then moved to her desk.

The heroine remembered her vision going black when Etsu clapped in the hotel room. And then, she remembered everything that happened after, as if she had done it of her own will. She had not, however. She was on autopilot, and she knew now that she had been.

Etsu just disappeared from the room, and Laura called the hotel staff to cut her stay short. A quick call to Margret explained that her business meetings were over early and, with Etsu’s modifications to reality, that’s all Margret thought the trip to be: just Yeal Enterprise business. The memory of the tachyon manipulator too was likely expunged for Margret and anyone who worked on it.

She remembered getting on the plane, flying for hours, then driving back to her manor. Harmless actions really. Boring things. She thought maybe Etsu cut all that out from her awareness at the time not just to make sure Laura didn’t try anything, but more cause it was boring. Like, as though removing the conscious experience of it was a courtesy.

Of course, Laura still remembered all the atrocities and twisted games she had witnessed Etsu do. The games she was a part of. She remembered what Etsu had done to her city in the first place to start her on that journey. Etsu kept her word that she wouldn’t make Laura forget what she learned, for better or worse.

Margret set the tray down atop Laura’s desk.

“Thank you Margret, but I’m not hungry right now.”, said Laura.

“Mistress Laura, my question about trouble in Japan wasn’t entirely rhetorical. You seem a bit shaken. Is there anything you want to talk about?”

There was. Laura looked towards her maid and wanted to blurt out everything. Everything about what the tachyon particles were about, who Etsu was. She wanted to say how some sadistic young woman across the pacific was responsible for acts of unparalleled abhorrence. How such a rotten person wielded powers none should have.

Yet, when Laura opened her mouth to say these words, she found it sealed shut. In a bit of a panic, she fished out a piece of paper and brought a pen to its surface, aiming to write it out. Instead, her hand stopped just before the tip of the writing instrument touched paper. Try as she might she couldn't push it down that extra bit of space to put the ink down. Her arm simply wouldn’t cooperate.

Laura turned around to type on the keyboard to her front. She tried to type out a message about Etsu and what the trip to Japan was really about, but her hands froze against the keys.

In one last attempt, she turned to Margret and tried to blink out something in Morse code. ‘Etsu was the attacker’, was what she tried to convey. She managed to blink once, then found she couldn't blink again to continue the message conveyance.

It was at this moment Laura grasped the trust meaning of Etsu’s words. She had the memories, yes, but not the ability to share them. She couldn’t speak about anything that would implicate Etsu as what that young woman really was. Something activated in her mind like a trap. It was an awareness. An awareness that this was a curse of sorts, not exactly surveillance. A safeguard rather than a security cam, so to speak.

That did little to soothe Laura on the matter. She grit her teeth and lowered her head in frustration.

“Laura, what’s wrong?”, said Margret.

“Just jet-lag I think.”, she said. “You know I’ve been a bit sensitive to it of late.”

“Ah, well, yes. Yes of course.”, said the maid.

Laura wanted to check something though. She pulled up the tachyon monitors on the screens. The sight of them shocked her.

“Oh, that fun tachyon project you were talking about. That hobby of yours isn’t it? Why are they arranged like that? How curious?”

Margret chuckled.

Laura did not. She stared at the monitors and saw the tachyons were arranged to span across the array of screens in the pattern of a smiling emoji.

“Did you do that somehow?”, asked Margret.

“No.” said Laura.

“Well, what’s it mean then?”

Laura shut off the screens.

“Nothing worth worrying about.”

An alarm sounded in the Leopard cave. The screens turned back on just as they were shut off. They showed a hammer wielding clown-dressed man banging a giant hammer against a bank vault, while face-painted goons pointed guns at cowering customers and staff in the background.

Laura ditched her business suit, then pulled up her costume’s mask as she bolted towards the Leopard mobile.

“Already? But you just got back.”

“I know,” said Laura as she hopped into the car and fired up the engine.

“But it’s what I do.”

The vigilante then sped off into the night, off to go and fight a threat she could actually beat.

Fin