Avatar of freya, p.1
Avatar of Freya, page 1
Avatar of Freya
Dawn Vogel
Cover art by Luke Spooner
"Dead Souls" is copyright 2021. All other stories are copyright 2022.
All rights reserved.
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Other Cobalt City Universe Stories
By Nathan Crowder
Greetings From Buena Rosa (2006, Timid Pirate Publishing)
Ride Like the Devil (2007, Timid Pirate Publishing; reprinted 2018, DefCon One Publishing)
Chanson Noir: Protectorate Vol. 1 (2009, Timid Pirate Publishing)
Cobalt City Blues: Protectorate Vol. 2 (2010, Timid Pirate Publishing)
Cobalt City: Los Muertos (2014)
Cobalt City: Ties that Bind (2015; reprinted 2018, DefCon One Publishing)
Cobalt City: Resistance (2018)
The Calling: Red Stag & the Wild Hunt Vol. 1 (2020)
By Amanda Cherry
Rites and Desires (2018, Def Con One Publishing)
By Erik Scott de Bie
Eye for an Eye (originally published as a part of Cobalt City Double Feature, 2012, Timid Pirate Publishing; reprinted 2018, DefCon One Publishing)
By Dawn Vogel
Sparx and Arrows (2016, DefCon One Publishing)
Coast to Coast Stars (2020, DefCon One Publishing)
Sure Shot in Las Capas: The Case of the Absent Star (2021, DefCon One Publishing)
By Jeremy Zimmerman
Kensei (originally published as a part of Cobalt City Rookies, 2012, Timid Pirate Publishing; reprinted 2014, DefCon One Publishing)
The Love of Danger (2015, DefCon One Publishing)
The Devil, You Say (2015, DefCon One Publishing)
Snowflake War Journal (2016, DefCon One Publishing)
Kensei Tales: Offensive Driving (2016, DefCon One Publishing)
Kensei Tales: It's the Great Yule Cat, Jamie Hattori (2016, DefCon One Publishing)
Kensei Tales: Live and In Concert (2017, DefCon One Publishing)
Kensei Tales: Unorthodoxy (2017, Def Con One Publishing)
Cobalt City Anthologies
Cobalt City Christmas (2009, Timid Pirate Publishing)
Cobalt City Timeslip (2010, Timid Pirate Publishing)
Cobalt City Dark Carnival (2011, Timid Pirate Publishing)
Cobalt City Double Feature (2012, Timid Pirate Publishing, featuring Eye for an Eye by Erik Scott de Bie and The Place Between by Minerva Zimmerman)
Cobalt City Rookies (2012, Timid Pirate Publishing, featuring Tatterdemalion by Nikki Burns, Wrecker of Engines by Rosemary Jones, and Kensei by Jeremy Zimmerman)
Cobalt City Christmas: Christmas Harder (2016)
Cobalt City Dragonstorm (2021)
Table of Contents
Friday Jones' Helpful Advice for Preventing Your Super-Genius Roommate from Becoming a Supervillain
Double Angel
Coffee Shop Canon
Dead Souls
Afterword
About the Author
About the Artist
Friday Jones' Helpful Advice for Preventing Your Super-Genius Roommate from Becoming a Supervillain
So, you're a college freshman attending an elite school that is also home to a ten-year-old super-genius. THE ten-year-old super-genius who's been gracing the papers of your mutual hometown's newspapers since she was five or something.
You're not surprised you don't have any classes with her. After all, she's literally studying rocket science, and you're just majoring in biochemistry.
But somehow, by the luck of the draw, you're suitemates. Why someone decided it was a good idea for a ten-year-old girl to live in a dorm with hundreds of eighteen-year-olds, you'll never understand. But you poke your head through the door to her room and introduce yourself. You're not sure she'll remember who you are.
At least not until the house party.
(And what, you might wonder after the fact, was a ten-year-old doing at a house party? Except by then you know the answer to that question, just like she knows you aren't just a college student.)
So you've seen her power armor, and she's seen you manipulate plants. And thus, a friendship is sparked.
It's only when you get to know her that you realize just how scary smart she is. She's taking advanced physics and Mandarin. You're not sure when or even if she studies. She's acing all her classes.
She's ten.
When her roommate drops out of school before mid-terms, it's no great loss. You're not a fan of your roommate, either. You agree to room with the super-genius. Maybe she can tutor you. Maybe you can help her.
Because it's only a matter of time before she gets frustrated by people underestimating her, gets tired of people not believing she really is as brilliant as you know her to be, gets bored with these upper-level physics classes where she knows more than the professors, gets mad that as far as the world is concerned, she's still a child, and subject to the whims of her parents.
Somebody's got to keep her on the straight and narrow. Somebody's got to make sure she doesn't make the not-so-short jump from superhero to supervillain.
And that somebody is apparently you.
~
Rule 1: When the team looks to you for solutions, you look to her.
Sure, you're the team leader, somehow, because you have your head screwed on right, or at least you're dealing with less drama than the haunted ninja girl, the probability-manipulating gay boy with a penchant for bad boys, and the girl out of time who's still adjusting to the modern world. But when your super-genius roommate is in her power suit, she suddenly looks like the big, authoritative adult male of the group. Go with it. Let her be the public face. Let her get the accolades.
~
Rule 2: When she seems hellbent on creating destruction, distract her.
She likes ponies, cartoons, breakfast cereal, and pop rap. Indulge her. Let her spend her allowance on spare parts. Use your tip money on things she'll enjoy, possibly for long enough to get distracted temporarily from building whatever death-laser-ghost-trap device she's been working on. Yes, you'll probably need her to figure out the ghost-trap portion later, but maybe she can separate it from the death-laser part. After you've done her nails and yours to match in hot pink glitter polish, and she's finished watching the latest Sparkle Pony/Young Dudes mash-up video.
~
Rule 3: Don't be afraid to call an adult. Just maybe not her parents.
Her parents literally aren't smart enough to understand just how smart their baby girl is. So when things get out of hand and she starts telling her plushies about the Forbidden Alphabet and how she can implement it into a security program to make her unstoppable, maybe it's time to get an adult involved. Preferably someone who's willing to listen to and understand your new set of rules. Because the last thing your super-genius roommate needs is an adult who doesn't understand just how fragile the ego of a ten-year-old girl can be.
And the possibilities they may someday face if they wrong her.
"Friday Jones' Helpful Advice for Preventing Your Super-Genius Roommate from Becoming a Supervillain" was originally podcast at Manawaker Studios Flash Fiction Podcast (2022).
Double Angel
The Lighthouse Café caters to a specific sort of patron. Being perched just a couple of blocks from the center of the Quayside docks, it's unusual for it to not smell like a blend of the brackish semi-saltwater of the Puckwudgie River and diesel. So even if I hadn't seen them walk in, I'd have noticed them by their designer cologne and perfume.
Arnold and Angel.
Arnold looked as surprised to see me as I was to see both of them. I guess he didn't realize that when Justice or Something, the superhero team he and I had been a part of, stopped hanging out at our sweet warehouse hideout, I'd wound up getting an off-campus apartment for the summer. And an off-campus apartment meant my work-study barista shifts on campus had to be supplemented by evening shifts at the Lighthouse Café.
Angel looked less surprised, which made sense. She'd kept in touch with me.
But she hadn't told me she'd be in town.
I forced a smile and grabbed a couple of menus. "Booth or bar?"
"I'm guessing you can't serve us alcohol even if we sit at the bar?" Angel asked.
Since when did she drink? I mean, sure, she looked up to her alcoholic auntie, but that was more of a professional thing than a wanting to grow up just like her thing.
"Nope," I said.
Arnold looked uncomfortable and eyed the menus. "You know what? Let's go get Chinese instead."
Angel and I both raised an eyebrow at that. Arnold Lin, who would go on for hours about the amazing Chinese food in Chicago, would deign to set foot in a Chinese restaurant in Cobalt City?
Still, Angel let Arnold steer her out of the Lighthouse Café without another word.
I sighed. That was a huge tip walking away, but Angel seemed firmly under Arnold's sway. I guess that was why she hadn't let me know she'd be in town.
Another couple entered in Arnold and Angel's wake, so I pasted my customer service smile back on and showed them to
~
I didn't get a break till almost 9, and then I texted Angel. "You didn't tell me you were going to be in town."
The three dots on my screen didn't bounce for long. "I'm not."
"I just saw you. With Arnold."
A slightly longer pause, and then a photo. Angel, in her apartment, the Space Needle looming in the background. "Check the time/date stamp. I'm here."
I did. She was in Seattle, clear across the continent.
She sent another message before I had a chance to respond. "Who in the hell is impersonating me?" followed by a link to Arnold's Instagram. Where he and the Angel imposter had checked in at Lo's Chinese two hours previous.
"I'll figure it out," I texted back.
~
Technically, we'd abandoned our sweet warehouse hideout. Technically.
It was what we'd told the rest of the team when Janella and I had decided our view of Justice or Something didn't really mesh with theirs. When we'd broken up the team.
Arnold had said he understood, but it was always hard to tell with him, especially with the flip-flopping between good and evil like he did. That was ninety percent of why we'd made the decision.
Now Janella and I only used the hideout for shared lab space. I had a grow room for my botany projects, and she had a bigger room for her robotics projects, neither of which were things we wanted in the campus labs.
It was easier to check for her there than calling her house and having to make polite conversation with her vampire fiction-obsessed mom. Texting or calling Janella only worked about half the time, depending on whether her phone was currently a functional component of her robotics project or the remote control.
Paging her on the intercom was viable once I was at the hideout, but she was on a "play Young Dudes, maximum volume" kick right now. I couldn't blame her. She was thirteen. She had a lot of teen angst.
I poked my head into her lab space cautiously. I didn't want to have to dodge a stray laser bolt if she had any of her various projects making sure no one snuck in. She'd had trouble sometimes with their facial recognition software, or possibly she'd forgotten to include me as a "friendly" when she was programming them. Seeing as she sometimes forgot to program herself as a "friendly," I was inclined toward the latter. I tried not to give her a hard time about it. Like I said, thirteen. She didn't need me picking on her pet projects.
Janella was wearing her welding mask and soldering a circuit board, but when I waved, she stopped and flipped her mask up. "Hey, Friday!"
"Hey, Janella. You busy?"
She shrugged. "I mean, I have about seventeen projects I'm working on, but I can drop them if you need something. Like patrolling?"
I wondered how many sodas she'd consumed while I'd been at work. She rarely volunteered to cut her project time short unless she was hyped up on caffeine. For a second, I wondered if this was a clone of Janella, and the real one was curled up sleeping under a desk somewhere. I had no way of knowing, not yet. "I ran into Arnold and Angel."
Her eyebrows rose. "I didn't know Angel was in town. And why's she hanging out with Arnold?"
"It's not Angel," I clarified. "It's someone impersonating Angel--a clone, or something. I'm trying to find out which, and also figure out where that person is."
"Okay, let me see what I can do." She intertwined her fingers and stretched her arms out in front of her, like she was trying to crack her knuckles. There wasn't a sound, but it seemed important to her process. Multiple monitors turned her glasses glowing blue. "Don't suppose you have his current number?"
"I dunno, but you could try his old one?" I suggested. "He might not have bothered to get a new phone. He was at Lo's Chinese a few hours ago."
Janella's fingers flew across the keyboard, and a minute later, she pointed at a map with a red bullseye on one of her screens. "He's still in Quayside, or at least his old phone number is." On a second monitor, still photographs began to pop up. "Looks like he was last spotted going into the Quayside Inn with--" Her voice trailed off. "That's weird."
"What's weird?" I asked, finally setting foot in her lab to look at the monitor over her shoulder.
Janella pointed at the figure beside Arnold in one of the photos, who looked sort of like Angel, but obviously wasn't.
"Huh, she looked different when I saw her. Do you think it's some sort of magical effect that made me see what I wanted to see?"
More images flooded the screen, and Janella grumbled under her breath as she typed more. "Either she's wearing makeup to trick the cameras or ... nope, it's her biometrics. Not magic. Her physical appearance is constantly shifting. It's minor, you might not even notice if you were having a conversation with her, but I can't get any matches on what she looks like because ten seconds later, she doesn't look like that anymore. And if she's got a phone on her, it's turned off. So unless she's still hanging out with Arnold, I don't have any way to track her."
"But she could still be hanging out with Arnold." I pulled out my phone and did a quick search. "Quayside Inn has all-night karaoke. If it were actually Angel, she'd be staying downtown, and they'd be at a karaoke place with private rooms. This might be the next best thing. Especially if whoever this is is trying to keep a lower profile than Angel actually would."
Janella nodded, then looked up at me. "Suit up?"
I shook my head. "Bring the backpack suit. We probably shouldn't stomp into hotel karaoke with the big guns, not at first."
Janella sighed audibly, but she retrieved her hot pink Sparkle Pony backpack that concealed the machinery needed to encase her in the seven-foot-tall mech suit that turned her into Johnny Turbo.
"Alright, let's go see how the karaoke's going," I said.
~
The bouncer (who has a bouncer at karaoke? I guess hotels with all-night karaoke) had a different idea. He looked at me, then at Janella. "IDs?"
"We're just looking for a friend who we think is here," I said, reaching into my purse for my ID. "Is this twenty-one and up?"
"Eighteen," the bouncer replied, looking at my ID, arching an eyebrow, and then handing it back. I may be blessed with a baby face, but my ID was legit, if still marking me as under twenty-one for eight more months.
He held his hand out toward Janella, who'd surpassed me in height during our sophomore year. It hadn't taken much. I was all of five-foot-six ... in six-inch heels.
Janella sighed loudly. "I'm a college junior."
The bouncer squinted at her. "Right, you're that super genius kid!" The emphasis hung heavy on his final word.
Janella sighed again.
"I'll poke my head in, see if they're here, and be right back." As I spoke, I tugged on my earlobe twice, making sure Janella saw it.
She nodded and retreated toward the vacant lobby. She hadn't even reached the couches before her voice lit up our subvocal communications channel. "I told you I need a fake ID."
"No one is going to believe it's real, Janella."
"If I was suited up, I could go in."
"I know, but the Quayside Inn is not prepared for an appearance from Johnny Turbo. I'll let you know as soon as I need you."
I scanned the karaoke bar and spotted Arnold, tucked into a dimly lit booth. I almost didn't realize there was a second person in the booth because it so clearly wasn't Angel. They looked much more androgynous now and appeared to be pleading with Arnold.
Arnold spotted me walking toward them and held up a hand to the person beside him, and they stopped talking, turning to watch me approach.
Trying to be as nonchalant as I could manage, I grabbed a chair from a vacant table and set it at their booth, taking a seat.
