Southern Hospitality
Alex and Violet circle back to check if Takeru was okay before heading further into the hideout.
“...Hey Takeru…” Violet asks. “...Are you alright?”
Takeru scratches the back of his neck.
“...Yeah…yeah…I’m fine…”
Violet doesn’t think that he is answering honestly, but she doesn’t force the issue.
They keep heading further into the building until they start hearing an interesting sound coming from a nearby room.
Alex turns to the others and puts a finger to her lips before stealthily walking towards the sound.
They find the door that they are sure the sound was coming from. Alex opens it slowly.
She sees someone in the room working on something. They were a short chubby woman with short red hair with the sides shaved who was wearing a white crop top, a black apron, and black jeans with flame patterns near the bottom of the legs. She was also covered in freckles and tattoos.
This woman currently has goggles on and is welding something.
Alex, Violet, and Takeru hide behind a workbench in the room.
“Phew!” The woman says as she turns around to take a break from her work. She grabs a small rag and uses it to dab some sweat off her forehead. “Time for a midnight slack!”
She starts to leave the room, but before she makes it to the door there is a loud clunk from underneath the workbench.
“Shit!”
“What was that?!” The woman yells as she looks around the room.
Back behind the workbench Alex was rubbing the top of her head. She hit her head on the top of the bottom of the desk by accident.
The woman activates a flashlight that was attached to her goggles as she continues to search the room.
Right before she is about to look behind the workbench that our heroes were hiding behind, Violet distracts her by throwing a random bolt she found on the ground towards the other side of the room.
“I can hear you! Show yourself!” The woman announces as she picks up a small metal box and presses a button on top of it.
The box quickly transforms into a giant hammer. Instead of a regular hammer head the weapon looked like a cross between an anvil and a furnace. Fire began to sizzle through a few metallic grates near the top of the weapon.
Violet, Takeru, and Alex try to sneak out of the room behind her.
*Creak*
“Aha!” The woman quickly turns around. “Found ya!”
“...You know what…” Alex says as she cracks her knuckles. “Screw being stealthy!”
She immediately dashes over to punch the mechanic.
She blocks with the handle of her hammer and hits Alex right in the side of her torso. This causes her to fly through a nearby wall.
As the woman dusts off her hands Alex can be heard yelling from another room before running back into this one.
“YOU BASTARD!!!” Alex cries out.
“Nope!” The woman says as she slams her hammer right on Alex’s head and sends her crashing through multiple floors below them.
“...Now…who’s next?” The woman says as she turns around with a smug look on her face.
Violet and Takeru look shocked. They saw how powerful Alex was and how easily she was able to beat Blitz before.
‘That’s insane!’ Violet thought to herself. ‘She beat Alex without breaking a sweat!’
“...Wait a second…” The woman says while taking her goggles off. “...Y’all are just a couple of kids…”
Violet and Takeru are still shaking from what they just witnessed and were too scared to give a response.
“Woah! Calm down!” The woman says as she puts her hammer down and leans on the part of it that looked similar to an anvil. “I ain’t fightin’ a bunch of children without a good reason…that being said…why are y’all here?”
Violet took a step backwards, but finally built up the courage to respond.
“We are both just young college students who accidentally got lost on our way back to campus.” She said while putting her hands behind her back. “By any chance you wouldn’t happen to know the directions to the school, would you, miss?”
“...Oh…is that all…” The older woman says as she gets up and slowly walks towards the heroes. “...I can direct you all the way back to SUPER if y’all want.”
A chill goes down Violet’s spine.
“...H…how did you know…that we go to SUPER?”
“...Really…” The woman crosses her arms and shakes her head in disappointment. “You are both dressed up in dumb little hero costumes and that fella has a sword. It couldn’t have been more obvious.
“...Well…can you still give us the directions?” Violet threads her fingers together and tries to use a pleading pair of puppy dog eyes to her advantage. “...Pretty please…”
“Ha!” The woman wipes a tear from her eye from laughing too hard.
“Bless your hearts…” The woman says as she puts a hand back onto the handle of her hammer and lugs it onto her shoulder. “...But that trick ain’t gonna work on me…”
Even though they are still scared and outmatched, Violet and Takeru ready themselves for combat.
“Alright, before I beat you two deader than a doornail I might as well let ya know the name of the woman who’s gonna fight ya.” She puts her goggles back on with a fiendish smirk. “The name’s Maggie Smith, but Vulcan works too.”
Maggie raises her hammer above her head and Violet and Takeru brace themselves, but before she can follow through the power shuts off.
“What in tarnation?!” Maggie yells out.
Violet and Takeru use darkness to their advantage and sneak out of the room without Maggie being able to see them do so.
The two of them keep running and aren’t going to stop until they are sure they have gotten away from that monster of a mechanic.
Without noticing each other Violet and Takeru slam head first into a few other people.
A flashlight clatters against the floor before it is quickly swooped back up by the person who dropped it.
“Who goes there?” Urchin announces as he aims the light at Violet and Takeru.
“Urchin, sir, it’s just us. Violet and Takeru.” Violet says as she waves her hands in front of herself in an attempt to ward off suspicion.
Urchin exhales a deep breath he didn’t know he was holding in.
“Where’s Alex?”
Takeru puts his hands in his pockets and looks to the side as Violet gives an answer.
“A villain knocked her down through the floor. We were actually just running away from someone who was calling herself Vulcan.”
Urchin’s eyes perk up immediately.
‘So, she’s here.’ Urchin thinks to himself ‘That means the others are probably here too.’
“Kids. Get behind me and let’s keep moving.”
Violet and Takeru nod as they follow him, Rick, Ash, and Candi down the hallway.