Keri’s favorite Poke Bowl was on Bank Street, crammed right between a hair salon and a Dunkin Donuts. Adam wasn’t quite sure what made this one any different from the others–it had the same plastic seats, the same menu, and the same decorations arranged in almost the same locations–but he knew she liked this one just a little bit more than all the others. It’s how he zeroed in on her when he walked into the restaurant.
Without the outfit and makeup, Keri looks remarkably different from Super Chica. With them and her normal attitude, Keri can seem like she fills up a whole room; she draws your attention and never lets it go. Today though, she just seemed small and plain picking over a bowl of shrimp.
Adam waved and quickly took a seat across from her, not grabbing anything to eat. She gave him a small smile and looked back down to her meal. Adam frowned; this wasn’t like her at all.
There was an awkward silence that only broke when Adam couldn’t stand it anymore. “Hey, what did you need to talk about?”
“Oh it’s just…” Keri started to say, but then stopped. Adam could see a nervous energy radiating off her, but it was so tied up into a knot of other emotions that he couldn’t quite tell what it was about.
“Uhm, it’s okay,” Adam said, filling the silence. “I can tell it’s bothering you. If you don’t want to-”
"They’re breaking up the JHHL.
The words hung there for a moment, neither of them knowing how to follow them up. After a long moment Keri finally said, “It was all but official before, but they told us this morning that they were ‘restructuring’ things with the HHL and that meant disbanding the junior team.”
“Oh,” was all Adam could think to say. Things had been rough with the HHL since everything with Vyortovia came to light and that public backlash had also effected anyone associated with them. He hadn’t really known anyone in the JHHL other than Keri, but it didn’t seem fair to that team that it was getting broken up because of a decision the HHL made a long while back.
“So what going to happen with the team?” Adam finally asked.
“There wasn’t much of a team anymore anyway,” Keri said with a hint of anger in her voice. “Ray is going to go do some trip thing with his dad. Kinetica and Ninjess are going to keep doing their own thing like they always did. Kid Kelvin’s got this new nemesis now he’s all wrapped up. And Bob’s been off world for like a month already, so I don’t think this’ll matter to him.”
Adam frowned and asked, “What about you?”
Keri bobbed her head side to side a wry smirk. “Well, it saved them the trouble of kicking me off the team.”
“What?!” Adam asked all too loudly. A few heads turned in their direction but quickly turned back; none of their business.
“It was coming,” Keri said, “they just wanted stuff to die down first. I… caused some trouble at DECSY. They’d warned me about starting shit over there again but some days I get so mad at…” Keri trailed off and shook her head trying to get rid of the thought.
She’d tried talking to Adam about it all before, but it never got very far. He could tell she wasn’t ready to open up about it still. From what Adam had gleaned, they were more alike than he’d ever imagined: modified by alien forces to be their agents on Earth. But where Adam had some measure of consent in the matter, Keri hadn’t.
From what Adam had found out, she’d be abducted by these aliens: the Charzo. The Charzo were some alien race looking to make sleeper soldiers in a future invasion attempt on Earth. Transcendent (who Adam still wanted to meet) had put a stop to that and rescued most of the captives. Keri was one of the fortunate ones: mostly unaffected by the Charzo brainwashing and still alive after their physiology modification experiments. She’d gained a lot from the whole experience, but that didn’t make what she’d had to go through any less horrific.
“¿Que lo wha, pana?” Keri asked. “I haven’t heard anything about the famous Menagerie lately.”
Adam gave a smirk of his own, happy for the change in subject. “We’re not doing much better. Harry’s planning a trip with Andi after graduation. Charlotte’s still figuring out the whole ‘Magus’ thing. Charade and Radiance are doing their own thing. And I just do what I can where I can.” Adam gave a light shrug, “But you know, we’re still friends.”
Keri gave a soft laugh, “Well I don’t think anyone would have ever said that about us. Those azaroso where always backstabbing, trying to get attention, you know?”
“I didn’t really know any of them other than you and I guess Kid Kelvin,” Adam said with a frown.
Keri rolled her eyes. “He was a real dick sometimes. He was getting better though, I guess,” she said but quickly amended, “but only a little.”
Adam and Keri sat there and talked for a while. She finished off a her food and had gotten a little more. Adam could tell Keri was starting to feel a little better when she started taking pictures of her bowl and texting furiously. Uploading to Instagram, if he had to guess.
About an hour later the two left, but not before Keri gave one of the line cooks a big hug and high five you could probably hear from outside–apparently they knew each other. As Adam and Keri started walking north of Bank, Keri already looking around for a good place to get out of sight.
“Hey, I saw on my phone there’s a big storm coming in,” Keri said. “Want to go make sure some boats don’t get stuck out in that?”
Adam grabbed his own phone and flipped it open. It was a little past two and Adam’s mother would want him home for dinner. “Sure but for a couple of hours.”
The two ducked into the lot behind a German restaurant and Adam flashed into Concord. He knew Keri would want to stop by her place to get changed before they did any heroics and started to lift up in flight, but stopped when Keri placed her hand on his cheek. It was a light touch and Concord stared at her in confusion.
“You were really cute when you were older,” she said. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to keep it.”
Concord paused for a moment, unsure what to think. Keri was probably the only person who wasn’t part of the Menagerie who remembered anything about the time when Adam changed the world. When he changed what everyone else remembered, he’d left her alone. Part of him had felt guilty, not wanting to be yet another person who took away control of her life. The other part of him knew that if anyone would understand, she would. And she had.
Finally, Concord smirked and leaned into her touch. “That’ll be me again. Eventually. The way it was supposed to go.”
Keri clicked her tongue and pulled her hand away. “Yeah, it was just nice for you to not just be this little kid but I guess I’ll always just be three years older than you.”
“Two,” he corrected, holding up his hand with two fingers raised. “I’m thirteen now.”
This one probably raises more questions than it answered, but I enjoyed every minute of writing it. My take on the JHHL disbanding sort of coincides with what people had talked about with someone like Tatanka taking the reins. I figure you need to tear down the old structure and rebuild, or you’ll just make something that still looks like the old one.
Keri and Adam… are complicated. This will be expanded upon further in another story. Which is to say that more stories are on the way. At least two. Maybe three (depends on how far reaching I want this to be).
Finally, is my assessment of the team too far off? I feel like the days of the Menagerie are over, but only in official capacity. Everyone’s off to do their own thing but they still see one another and, if they ever need it, the team is just an emergency signal away.
