Things to Run Away From Really Fast

We finish our coffee and the blonde conference-goer shakes my hand with a smile. I hand her my card and grin back.

The waiter walks up as the woman leaves. He leans over the table to pick up empty plates, his long hair swinging a bit as he moves, and I lean back, holding my coffee.

"These new age yoga nitwits are easy pickings," I tell him conversationally. "They'll buy anything if they think it will help them along a spiritual path."

The two of us chat for a bit, and I give the waiter my card and head out.

Perspective switch

I'm the blonde "yoga nitwit" from before. I'm looking into a mirror, changing my hair and appearance to match my character. My husband comes into the hotel room and smiles at me.

"You got him?"

"He's hooked."

Someone comes and knocks at the window of the fire escape, and my husband dives for cover so that we're not seen together.

The manager of the hotel is explaining to us that they ran out of space, so there's going to be a whole bunch of kids sharing our suite.

"That's unacceptable," I tell him or her. Their gender presentation keeps shifting.

They shrug. "You still have the bedroom. It's just the living area and the bathroom that you have to share."

I look at the line that's formed in front of the bathroom and narrow my eyes, but I can practically see the timer for our op ticking down before my eyes.

"Get out," I tell them. "I'll deal with this later."

We probably have to scrub the op.

I'm on another part of the same floor when all hell breaks loose. I'm pinned by a couple of girls from high school and a man is dumping cages full of dangerous things on me, which I'm deflecting. I break loose, wearing the guise of a brown-haired Samael.

"Get back, fiend!" says a booming voice, and Thor is swinging Mjolnir past my head. I dodge across the room, and the hammer comes flying at my stomach.

Oof. Confirming that sacred objects can still knock the wind out of you. Good thing I'm invulnerable, or this probably would have torn straight through my chest cavity. I still go flying, knocking down a wall behind me. Splinters of wood go flying everywhere, and I pick up the hammer.

Just as an enemy agent pops out with an AK-47. I'm swinging Mjolnir by its strap to ricochet the bullets back at my enemies, and then I'm letting the hammer fly—

And I throw myself through the door into the hotel room.

"Elhaz," I command, waving a hand at the wall and weaving protection into the doors and windows. Overwhelming force, meet immutable object. That should buy me a moment's peace.

I wave my hand in a pattern, more jerky than it needs to be, and glance up from the floor at Sandman's Lucifer, who's standing on this side of the door and looking at me with a nonchalant expression.

"You were supposed to be covering my back," I accuse.

I bicker with my counterpart. The two of us are the same person in different universes, or maybe opposite sides of the same coin.

---

I'm walking on the side of a highway in the mountains. A girl has stopped me to ask about backpacking, and I say that I'm just walking from inside the town to the campsite on the mountain.

"Really? I've never been there," she says.

"You should; it's the best climbing spot in the area."

My name is Honor Harrington, and I'm biking down a path in a valley. In the centre of the valley is a school, and I hop off my bike to go investigate.

I sneak in through an unalarmed pair of double doors, and look around the main floor.

The intercom is blaring something. My communications device is picking up another frequency.

Honor Harrington is there? says an alarmed voice. We can't let her get to the balcony!

The balcony. Interesting. I'd better get up there, then.

I still haven't been spotted; they just know I'm in the area. I pick the doors that I walk through and the shadows that I creep through carefully, and make it to the room by the balcony. There's a bench there, and I poke at it to find a secret compartment filled with papers; glossy, like a magazine. I feel a stab of betrayal; J at the church put them there.

I need to unravel what's going on here. But first, I need to make my escape.

---

I drive my car into the parking lot at the school and step out. It's a work night for a local club, where we all sit and chat and work on projects. I used to volunteer with them, but it's been a while since I've gone.

I'm inside, working on my project, but my hackles rise as a woman walks behind me. Apparently while I've been gone, one of the only really bad bosses that I've had has risen through the ranks of the organization. I try to ignore her, but leave soon after.