A Tale of Two Masks

First thing in the morning, Ashton was awoken by the ringing of his phone. Actually ringing, not the buzz of a text. It took a few moments for him to realize what was happening, and his hand felt blindly for where he had left the phone before he could answer. He had stayed up way too late for this. At least he had enough frame of mind to look at the caller ID.

“Summer?” Ashton asked. He hoped his voice did not sound as tired as he felt.

“Good morning. Did I wake you up?” Summer replied, sounding a bit concerned. So it had.

“Yeah,” Ashton mumbled. He fumbled with the phone as he pulled himself out of bed. She had definitely called to talk about the night before, and he needed to be awake and ready for this.

“Sorry… I just had something happen last night I thought you should know,” she explained. She continued to tell him about everything that had happened the night before, from finding Shadow Phoenix in her living room to his… odd departure.

“That’s good, right?” Ashton asked her, “You got the answers you wanted, and you know he won’t be coming back.”

“Or he could have been lying,” Summer pointed out, but shedidn’t really sound convinced, “Either way, I think we should visit SI today. I will bring my mask just in case. If there is going to be an attack on the headquarters, it would be now.”

“Most likely,” Ashton agreed a bit warily. He had disposed of the majority of Shadow Phoenix’s costume, but he had kept the mask, just in case. He couldn’t leave the telltale fiery points, so he had cut them off and sanded the edges of the mask to be smooth. The end result looked like a common solid black mask that could be found anywhere.

“When do you want to meet?” Summer prompted. She seemed full of energy. There was probably no putting this off.

“I can go anytime. Just let me eat breakfast and get ready,” Ashton replied.

“I can pick you up something to eat and bring it over,” Summer promised eagerly.

That was more efficient, as long as they didn’t walk straight into a fight. Ashton decided not to think about it. “Alight. I’ll meet you there.”

The conversation ended just like that, and Ashton hurried to get ready. Whatever happened, he couldn’t let her go to SI alone. Just like he hoped, he managed to beat her there, though he felt vastly under prepared for an actual threat. He settled on a bench with a good vantage of the parking lot at the edge of SI’s superficial mini park.

Summer didn’t keep him waiting long. He had grown to recognize her car already, and she pulled into a nearby spot. The car had barely come to a stop before she flung open the door and slipped out. She was holding a large paper to-go bag as she jogged over to him.

“I got breakfast!” she announced, presenting it to him, “Choose whichever one you want.”

Ashton took the bag she offered and looked inside. “That’s… a lot,” he commented. The inside of the bag had an assortment of breakfast goodies from the classic breakfast sandwich, to mini chocolate chip pancakes. Why had she gotten so much?

“Did I get too much?” Summer asked. He could hear her nerves seeping into her tone.

“It’s fine,” Ashton quickly assured her, and grabbed the burrito before passing the bag back, “So what is the plan now? Do you have one?”

“I was hoping you would,” Summer admitted, accepting the bag, “We could do some kind of stakeout?”

“Sure. We can discuss our plan of action in case something happens while we wait,” Ashton agreed.

Ashton had agreed, but he wasn’t sure Summer was prepared for how boring stakeouts were. The plan was fairly simple so it didn’t take long to go over. First, they go inside at the first sign of danger to assess the situation and prepare their disguises. During that time, Ashton would call in the authorities and hope they arrived before anything too serious happened.

After that, Ashton stressed that Summer was to maintain a support roll. Distraction, providing light if needed. That sort of thing. Her newfound ability with waves was secret and untested. It was best to keep it under wraps. That left him with the unfortunate roll of the attacker. With any luck things wouldn’t come to that.

It was amazing how SUmmer just accepted all of this, never once asking what his power was or why he was so confident. Or did she suspect something? Had it been a mistake to meet her as Shadow Phoenix after all? Either way, it was far too late for regrets.

They finished off all of the breakfast that Summer had brought while they waited. After that they found a trash can in the park area and just spent some time walking around. Ashton noticed that if he stood right in the middle, there were just enough trees and nature to not notice he was in a city. A couple steps in either direction and that illusion would be shattered.

Several laps in, Ashton came to a halt. His sense of dread that had never been wrong in his life so far had just hit him. In the distance he saw woman approaching the parking lot. He couldn’t say exactly why she felt suspicious. Her clothing was nothing too abnormal, and she held no visible weapons. Either way, better to be safe than sorry.

“Let’s go inside,” he whispered, “We need a private place to disguise ourselves.”

“What did you see?” Summer whispered back. Her eyes were darting wildly as if she was trying to see behind her without moving her head.

“I could be wrong, but I think that threat you were concerned about is here.” As he answered, Ashton took her hand and guided her inside the building. Luckily there were public restrooms right at the front. They split for a moment there.

Almost as soon as he entered, he both felt and heard the powerful force of wind hit the building. Just this once, he had hoped he was wrong. He carefully applied his mask as the windows and doors rattled, and stashed his jacket in the bathroom. That should make him look at least a little different from before. It was better than nothing.

He shot off a quick text to the emergency line with as much information as he knew, not that it was much. There was no backing out now.