Moonstrike 1 : Please Call Me

Hammer was on the news again. Ji Min controlled her expression as she took another muffin from the hotel breakfast bar.

"He's so generous," someone said behind her.

Her hackles went up. He was a showboat, she wanted to say. He was a dramatic hack with bulletproof self assurance and way too much leniency from the media.

"be donating to rescue operations, and you all should too.” He made a weird, cheerful hand gesture that she didn’t pretend to understand. “That aside, I’m looking to sell Jupiter. If you have an offer-”

The video cut off abruptly before the news were complicit in something, showing a few seconds of a news anchor sitting silently and stiff until he turned on his camera smile.

A female voice giggled. “He’s a national treasure.”

Ji Min swiveled to level a disapproving look at the other woman. She was probably in her 40s, herding three kids under 10 years old. She made eye contact with Ji Min and drastically misread the situation. “Isn’t he handsome?”

She felt such violent nausea that she thought she was gonna be sick on the table.

“Mom!” a child in a unicorn t-shirt protested. Their face was screwed up in a grimace and there was orange juice on their sleeve that the adult hadn’t noticed yet. “Gross.”

'Good call,' Ji Min thought at the child. It was gross, thank you very much. Hammer was all surface. The child looked around the room with wide eyes.

“Char-char’s got an extra orange,” a different child tattled. They kicked the underside of the table. “Mom! I said Char-char-”

“Shut up!” the third child pushed their sibling off their chair entirely.

Ji Min hid a grin and turned away from the ensuing chaos. It was for the best that the kids had spared her from answering. It was better not to talk about Hammer at all. It wasn’t worth it, she reminded herself.

If Hammer was dragging around Gene, she could not compete with him. She wanted to take him by the hair and deposit him in a jail cell where she didn’t have to look at him, but she was patient. She could wait. She told herself that until it felt true.

Alejandro was right. She needed to back off of Hammer, for now. She took a deep breath and ignored everyone else in the room to focus on her breakfast.

The room had cleared out, as the Mom herded her bad little kids away to get something that passed for an education, and the business people swept away morosely to do battle against the timesheet. Ji Min hung around, putting off the start of her own day. When the hotel staff started cleaning up, she gave up and went off to her first appointment.

It was a blue Buick with damage to the hood and top from falling branches. She ignored the hovering client as best as she could and looked for any issues that could compromise the performance of the vehicle. It seemed unlikely. She cracked open the hood and the owner came fussing over.

“Miss, won’t the mechanic do that?”

Ji Min glanced over for the socially required second of eye contact. “Yes, later, but I’m just assessing any damage.” She indicated the inside. “It looks like your hood did its job and protected the engine block. There shouldn’t be any issues with the internal workings of the car. I think the damage is cosmetic.” She let the hood fall closed.

“You really should wait for the expert to say things like that,” scolded the older woman. Her bleached blonde hair was piled high, and her arms were crossed over her ankle length house dress.

'I'm a mechanic,' she didn't say, because it would sound petulant. Arguing with clients was a waste of time and emotional energy.

Ji Min valiantly resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “I am the expert, ma’am. But as I said, the mechanic will also see your vehicle later. If I miss anything, I’m sure that they’ll spot it.” She picked her clipboard up and went through a series of checks. “This is your current address and phone number, correct? And this is your mechanic?”

The client leaned over and took a very long time to read through information that ought to be familiar. “Yes, it is,” she said. Her tone was weirdly grudging. “You’ll call the mechanic?”

“That’s the next step,” Ji Min said blandly. “The insurance company should get back to you before the end of business hours with an estimation of costs for repair and any explanations of your coverage that you could need. Have a lovely day.” She waited a moment before getting into her rental car.

“You too.” The client uncrossed her arms and reached out for a handshake. “I… Sorry.” She shook her head. “I bet that you get a lot of stressed clients.” She sounded like she was hoping the answer was yes.

Ji Min forced up a smile. “No one is having their best day in this kind of situation. Take care now!” She got in the car and drove away, stopping in a parking lot to start making calls to the client’s mechanic. She dialed them up, double checking the number, and leaned back to talk numbers and parts.

She was winding things down when the faux stocks app on her phone lit up with an alert. Ji Min eyed it, tempted to look. But she stayed professional and didn't open it until she'd wound things down with the shop.

The dummy app required a 13 digit identification code to unlock the real content. She tapped it in with a moment's thought.

Then she whistled. "Already?" Ji Min wondered aloud. She ran a hand through her hair.

There was a new contact request. The username was a random string of numbers and symbols, but there was a personalized photo of a faintly glowing silver star against a sea of black. It had to be the other cat burglar.

Ji Min let out a long sigh, tapping her fingers nervously on the dashboard. The icon felt like a good sign. It tied in to the hero identity that she was starting to identify with. But that didn't mean anything. This really could be a sting operation. Having this app was a strong indication that the user was in-group, but it wasn't definitive proof.

She hit accept.

She waited a breathless second. She half expected to get a call or a message immediately. But a minute ticked on with no response. Ji Min pushed down disappointment and punched in GPS coordinates for the next appointment.

The let down left her itchy with energy that she couldn't purge. She tried back at the hotel, pounding steps into the treadmill for an hour. She was still buzzing. She lifted weights next, hoping to get tired out. Of course it didn't work.

It did bring to mind something that had been bothering her. The packet that Alejandro the suit gave her with a breakdown of her powers… Well. It didn't match her experience. She hadn't told them that yet.

They knew she had superhuman strength. That was listed on her intake. But the description of how it worked and the comorbid powers didn't match with her experience.

'Are they totally wrong about how these work?' she wondered. Sweat dripped down her face, but she didn't feel strain. 'Maybe people just don't tell them that they're wrong.'

It seemed too convenient. And if that was the case, it would fall apart if there was even one strength-type hero loyal to the government.

The thing was, Ji Min didn't need to work out to be strong and fast. Her body changed when she did, yeah. But she wasn't packing on muscle like Hammer. And if she stopped working out, she was exactly as strong: she just had noodle arms.

That wasn't how it was supposed to work. The introduction packet had included training schedules for maximizing and measuring her performance and boasted about personal dieticians that would help her make the most of her mutation.

Her instinct was to lie and mimic the traits that the paperwork described.

Maybe that would be the wrong call, though. Maybe it would be a waste of the government sponsorship to hide things like that. If something else was going on with her biology, should she find out? Would they be able to identify what was actually going on?

She put the problem aside for later. Ji Min wanted to believe that it didn't really matter.

She just had a bad feeling about it.