Interlude - Not-So-Plain-Jane - Part B

She showed up in the food court an hour later and immediately assumed that Beanstalk had been fucking with her.

The food court was semi-busy. Half the tables were taken up, and there were lines at all of the fast food places along the sides. The space smelled like fries and sweat and that weird rubbery stink that came from subways. She wasn't sure if she even wanted to stay.

Then again, it had been a bit of a walk. "Dammit," she muttered as she moved to one side. Beanstalk had lied. There were no portals here.

She wasn't even sure if she could blame the woman. There was something to say about playing things safe and keeping cards close.

Jane worked her jaw for a moment, then sighed and took off to one side. There was a little shop that sold ice cream and she could use a milkshake or something. It probably wasn't healthy, but nor was she. Half of her diet came out of a microwave and the other half was delivery.

She waited in line five minutes, then five more for the machines and the teens behind the counter to wrestle her order together, then once she had her five-out-of-ten drink in hand, she slumped over to one of the tables that were free in a corner and sat.

At least this was a good spot for people watching.

There was this common thread in the fashion scene, a sort of repeating thing that happened over and over again. Some new designer would get the cultural zeitgeist, then they'd iterate and refine it and turn it into something marketable.

Then the rich sort that lived in the city centre would buy it up for an insane markup.

Of course, that same designer almost always pigeonholed themselves as the person who did that one style, and they'd slowly fade into obscurity.

Jane sucked at her drink and stared at the crowds. There were a few generational trends. Teens didn't wear the same stuff as young adults, and kids wore whatever their parents gave them to wear.

The teens sitting a few tables down were in cut-off corpo wear. Basically jumpsuits and clothes with company logos, only they wore them with the sleeves cut off. One boy was wearing what was probably an employee of Brightbarrow Interlink's shirt cut at the middle to expose his abs and the cyberware running up his spine.

Further out a couple in their early twenties were wearing browns and greens. The neo-nature style had fallen out of fashion last year, but just because it had didn't mean that people didn't still wear it. Not everyone could keep up with the latest trends and people stuck to what they were comfortable with.

She glanced over where a group of thirty-somethings were mixing with some teens. A gang, probably, but small-fry. They were wearing armoured face masks, the same kind of oval thing that riot police wore all the time, only painted over with neons and bright colours. The same colours covered their jumpsuits and thickly padded coats. A few of them had vests on, bulletproof and military-surplus, but covered in bright ribbons and streaks of paint.

That was an interesting look, she supposed. The gang was carving out a visual identity for themselves, which was important if they wanted to get anywhere.

A man sat next to her, looking exhausted. He had a heavy-duty coat on, all plastics screens that had flashing, rolling ads on it, probably workwear for whichever corp held his leash, the poor fuck.

Jane was just considering getting up and tossing the second half of her drink when she noticed movement.

Coming in from the stairs not too far from her, with their backs in her direction, were two figures.

Beanstalk and Fran, only... not quite. Not when they were dressed that way.

What did Beanstalk say her 'heroic' identity was again? Deadline? Yeah, she looked the part of someone with that kind of name.

They moved into the food court like sharks swimming into a bay filled with scared little fish. People stepped out of their way, unconsciously or not, because both of them were moving with the kind of easy grace that suggested that they wouldn't stop for anyone.

They were in the gear that Jane had picked out for them. Immediately, she could see where she had erred, but also what worked.

The long poncho-like tops were acting like capes, billowing out in the shifting air of the food court, making both women seem larger, more imposing. In the neon-whites of the court, with light that usually made everything seem washed out, the deep black of their coats sucked in the light and drew the eye.

Jane glanced over to catch people's reactions. The gang at the far end had a few people looking over, the teens shifted a bit.

Nothing too egregious. That whole mental image of everyone falling over themselves when someone cool entered a room was fantasy bullshit. Still, there was some faint truth to it.

People noticed the guns, the sword on Beanstalk's hip. People with guns out here was normal as surcharges but swords? That was a little weird.

The two moved over to one side of the court and... stood there.

Jane took a little sip of her milkshake. What were they up to? Other than aura farming, of course, which was entirely valid.

Beanstalk reached up and tugged her hat lower. It cast a deeper shadow over her eyes.

Yeah, the villain hats were a good move. Very pretentious, especially with the masks and cloaks, but pretentious wasn't bad.

She could definitely amp up the sexy, tho. Fran's legs were very nice, and those shorts were doing things, but the kneepads... eh. Maybe full-length combat boots that climbed up to her knees instead?

That didn't exist, but it could.

And Beanstalk was hot already, but her pants rode too high. There had to be a way to make her cargo pants sit a little lower, exposing more of her delicious hips.

Jane took another sip, then choked on her drink as the air suddenly filled with a weird tinglyness. People spoke up, some went quiet, she noticed a few reaching for guns or phones.

And then a portal ripped itself into being at the far end of the food court, just a few yards from Beanstalk and Fran.

"Oh, shit," she muttered.

Well, that was something.

There was instant panic, some people running out, but most of them just kind of... stood around and stared, on high alert, but not doing anything just yet.

Beanstalk set her pack down, knelt, then tossed a rifle up to Fran who casually checked it over and inserted a magazine.

Oh no, that gun broke up the lines of her costume in a bad way. She either needed something much smaller or much bigger.

Jane shook her head. Not the time for fashion... wow, she never expected to think that.

The girls stood, then casual as anything, they stepped into the portal.

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Jane wasn't the only one who was impressed. A few of the teens nearby were whispering, excited. She overheard one suggest that the girls were from Midnight Tea Garden, but that was stupid. MTG went all in on the pastelpunk anti-goth lolita fashion, not post-fascist punk dark reclamation like how Beanstalk and Fran were dressed. Morons. Those kids probably thought that chartreuse was a fruit.

She watched the portal for a while, but then the time came where the police and such showed up. Somehow, they decided to set their barricades down inside the court, so other than shoving people back into the corners where she was already, not much happened.

People with nothing better to do gathered around. She imagined that some of them just wanted to see what was going on, while others were taking the opportunity to bask in low-level magical energy for free.

That... wasn't all bad. She'd never gone out of her way to get magical shit, but turning into an E-ranker wouldn't hurt. She just never had the time or cash to invest in that kind of thing.

Then NetherGain showed up.

Six of them, with more support staff in the back. Jane had no idea what their ranks were or whatever, but even she, a normie, could tell that there was magic in the air when they came down.

C-rankers or something? They had nice gear. She knew gear, selling and maintaining it was her entire business, and NetherGain was at the top of the food chain in many respects. The stuff they had was top-of-the-line. The armour was all ceramics and titanium, the kind of stuff that was made-to-order for each individual member. Their guns were good. Not necessarily all the best brands, but the best models from respected brands that had stood the test of time.

So, not just expensive gear, but good gear. They probably had a quartermaster who knew their shit. Two of them had what looked like thin gambesons made of this off-grey material. She vaguely recognized it as spider silk, probably from this one repeating portal in Fortress SW. That shit was a thousand dollars a yard.

The six of them milled around, talked to the cops a little, then regrouped not too far from the portal itself. Jane tried to listen in on them, but all she caught was one of them mentioning 'getting the peasants out of here' with a rude gesture in the direction of the crowd she was part of.

That kinda pissed her off, but she could get it. Normal folk were way below them, and they had a job to do.

A few more NetherGain employees came down, and the cops helped too. Mostly what ended up happening was that everyone was shoved back about a yard, then people got too compressed and the push kind of just stopped.

The NetherGain team didn't seem entirely ready to just jump in. They had technicians come in, take measurements, and then they sent in a drone which came back a few minutes later.

All normal shit, she assumed. Jumping into an unknown, non-repeating portal without any intel was dangerous. It was how people died.

They didn't seem happy with their results, though.

Jane was just starting to get tired of standing on her feet. She'd ordered a second milkshake from the same place--which she knew she shouldn't have, she had to lose weight already, sitting down at work all day wasn't doing her any favours--and was about halfway through it already when finally, something happened.

The first signs were some murmurs in the crowd. There was one dude who was probably just an E-ranker in a group of gangsters. He had a keener sense for the magic in the air and was narrating some things that NetherGain had been up to. He was the first to speak up. "Portal's shifting."

"What's that mean?" someone asked.

"Either a breach or the boss is dead," the gangster said. He looked supremely unconcerned about either option.

The portal wiggled and then, stepping out of it, came the girls.

They looked fresh, walking out of the portal with casual disregard. Fran was a step behind Beanstalk, and she stepped out with just the faintest hitch. Both of them were carrying rifles slung low and there was some mud on their shoes, but otherwise, they looked fine.

"What's all this?" Beanstalk asked as she came to a slow stop before the NetherGain team.

The group bunched up a little, then one of them stepped up. "Can you identify--"

He paused as the portal twitched, then winked out of existence.

Jane felt it, a slight change in the air, like leaving a space with different pressure, or riding one of those faster elevators up a dozen floors.

"You closed the portal," one of the NetherGain guys said, not the one who'd stepped up, but one of those a bit behind.

"We did," Beanstalk replied. "Are we going to have problems?"

"We just need your credentials," one of them said.

"What you need is to get out of our way," Beanstalk replied. "We saw a portal, we tackled it, it's done."

The same NetherGain guy who'd spoken up walked forwards, arms crossed. He looked like the kind of bootlicker who wanted a fight. "You're both only D-rank. How did you end a portal so quickly?"

"Preparation," Beanstalk said.

"And what makes you so confident now, huh?" he asked. "You stole that portal from right under us."

"It wasn't theft. And this isn't a negotiation. Let us by or we'll make our own way through."

The man snorted. "You're 'prepared' for that, huh?"

Beanstalk tilted her head back a little, the shadows moving away from her eyes. "Adam Carter, Alicia Rodriguez, Benjamin Hayes, Brianna Sullivan and Caleb Johnson," Beanstalk said. "D-rank water, water, earth and ice, then C-rank fire and water respectively. We are prepared."

There was an electric thrill in the air that had Jane sucking on the straw of her milkshake like she was watching the finale of a particularly good soap opera. Shit, was this gonna turn to blows?

The first NetherGain guy to speak raised a hand, stalling things. "We'll let you pass," he said. "You're right, we can't ask anything of you. But... reports say that you were here before the portal even opened. How did you know?"

Beanstalk hesitated for a while, then shrugged one shoulder. "A wizard told me."

Somehow, that didn't sound as stupid as it should have coming from her.

The NetherGain guys backed off, one of them even seemed to know what that meant, whispering something to the others while the girls walked out of the food court uncontested, ponchos flapping like capes, no one standing in their path. Massive boss bitch energy.

And then there was a long, awkward moment before the crowd started to disperse. She did hear some of the teens saying that they were gonna post it all online.

She reached the end of her drink, then cursed.

Damn... she was thirsty.

***