Wearing the Cape 5: Ronin Games Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Marion G. Harmon
doing?”
----
Breakfast got better after those first awkward minutes. It always did. Dad owned his architectural practice and had no scheduled meetings, and Mom could deadhead the roses anytime, so we stayed in the kitchen until the last piece of bacon was eaten and I got them to laugh at my recounting of last night’s after-party.
Mom surprised me by handing over an engraved invitation to the Silver and Green Ball, Mrs. Lori’s annual charity ball and international art auction. She also passed on verbal instructions from the grande dame of Chicago society to show up as Hope Corrigan rather than Astra. Just in case I couldn’t read the name on the invite.
I loved Mrs. Lori, but I’d always had the completely unfounded fear that she would rap my knuckles or switch my hiney like an old fashioned parochial school nun (not that she’d ever threatened too—just because of the way she looked at errant young society girls). Now that I was infinitely stronger than her she made me a lot less nervous, but she remained convinced that I should train and fight crime less and do the charity-circuit more. Her argument was that there were “dozens” of Atlas-Types and only one Hope Corrigan Also-Known-As-Astra.
“Could you tell her I’ll try?”
Mom accepted that and I got away without further commitments. Trading kisses with the parentals, I headed back upstairs to “dress for work.”
“ You will go to the ball, you know ,” Shell giggled in my ear as I changed. “ Blackstone’s afraid enough of Mrs. Lori that he won’t schedule anything conflicting for you .”
“Yeah, well maybe we’ll get lucky and aliens will invade.”
“ They wouldn’t dare. The old dragon wouldn’t stand for it .”
“Be nice!” I swallowed my own laugh and clipped on my cape. Mrs. Lori was kind of a dragon, and not the cute kind like Kindrake’s flight of rainbow drakes.
Mmm. Kindrake and her friends at the ball… I shook the image out of my head; first, Mrs. Lori wouldn’t invite just any cape to her events—of the other Sentinels only Blackstone and Chakra usually rated one—and second, Kindrake was still in St. Louis finishing her CAI recertification.
The final fallout of our brawl with Powerteam three months back had been our exoneration and the reality-show team’s complete decertification. They were recertifying now, but Kindrake had left them to do hers elsewhere. Once she was done, we planned on thanking her for her assist in Littleton (which Never Happened) by bringing her back here for cross-training exercises while she applied for a place with the Hollywood Knights.
Weirdly, Powerteam’s viewer ratings had gone up, which was just wrong on so many levels. Somewhat selfishly, I wanted Kindrake to do well just to spite Powerteam, but Kindrake was nice once you got past her Artemis-wannabe attitude and I did think her whole goth-girl thing would make a good contrast to all the glamour heroes in LA.
“So besides our morning schedule, what else have we got?”
----
Since a medical benching meant no serious training, the answer to my question was “Next to nothing.” The daily briefing for the Sentinels and Young Sentinels took half an hour—a military-time half an hour, which meant exactly thirty minutes. My own one-on-one action review with Lei Zi took ten minutes. The Harlequin made sure the photographer got me holding Malleus in full view
i
n the photo op; I couldn’t do anything about looking small, especially in any picture with Svyatogor in it, but at least I could look like a serious problem. Then I got to fight him.
Astra vs. Svyatogor was pretty much a wash. Facing off on our hardened training room, I dodged his thrown club and got the first point before it returned to him. He held onto the club and block-hit me hard for the second point, and I got in the third point after some fancy air dancing only because Svyatogor, giant A Class
----
Breakfast got better after those first awkward minutes. It always did. Dad owned his architectural practice and had no scheduled meetings, and Mom could deadhead the roses anytime, so we stayed in the kitchen until the last piece of bacon was eaten and I got them to laugh at my recounting of last night’s after-party.
Mom surprised me by handing over an engraved invitation to the Silver and Green Ball, Mrs. Lori’s annual charity ball and international art auction. She also passed on verbal instructions from the grande dame of Chicago society to show up as Hope Corrigan rather than Astra. Just in case I couldn’t read the name on the invite.
I loved Mrs. Lori, but I’d always had the completely unfounded fear that she would rap my knuckles or switch my hiney like an old fashioned parochial school nun (not that she’d ever threatened too—just because of the way she looked at errant young society girls). Now that I was infinitely stronger than her she made me a lot less nervous, but she remained convinced that I should train and fight crime less and do the charity-circuit more. Her argument was that there were “dozens” of Atlas-Types and only one Hope Corrigan Also-Known-As-Astra.
“Could you tell her I’ll try?”
Mom accepted that and I got away without further commitments. Trading kisses with the parentals, I headed back upstairs to “dress for work.”
“ You will go to the ball, you know ,” Shell giggled in my ear as I changed. “ Blackstone’s afraid enough of Mrs. Lori that he won’t schedule anything conflicting for you .”
“Yeah, well maybe we’ll get lucky and aliens will invade.”
“ They wouldn’t dare. The old dragon wouldn’t stand for it .”
“Be nice!” I swallowed my own laugh and clipped on my cape. Mrs. Lori was kind of a dragon, and not the cute kind like Kindrake’s flight of rainbow drakes.
Mmm. Kindrake and her friends at the ball… I shook the image out of my head; first, Mrs. Lori wouldn’t invite just any cape to her events—of the other Sentinels only Blackstone and Chakra usually rated one—and second, Kindrake was still in St. Louis finishing her CAI recertification.
The final fallout of our brawl with Powerteam three months back had been our exoneration and the reality-show team’s complete decertification. They were recertifying now, but Kindrake had left them to do hers elsewhere. Once she was done, we planned on thanking her for her assist in Littleton (which Never Happened) by bringing her back here for cross-training exercises while she applied for a place with the Hollywood Knights.
Weirdly, Powerteam’s viewer ratings had gone up, which was just wrong on so many levels. Somewhat selfishly, I wanted Kindrake to do well just to spite Powerteam, but Kindrake was nice once you got past her Artemis-wannabe attitude and I did think her whole goth-girl thing would make a good contrast to all the glamour heroes in LA.
“So besides our morning schedule, what else have we got?”
----
Since a medical benching meant no serious training, the answer to my question was “Next to nothing.” The daily briefing for the Sentinels and Young Sentinels took half an hour—a military-time half an hour, which meant exactly thirty minutes. My own one-on-one action review with Lei Zi took ten minutes. The Harlequin made sure the photographer got me holding Malleus in full view
i
n the photo op; I couldn’t do anything about looking small, especially in any picture with Svyatogor in it, but at least I could look like a serious problem. Then I got to fight him.
Astra vs. Svyatogor was pretty much a wash. Facing off on our hardened training room, I dodged his thrown club and got the first point before it returned to him. He held onto the club and block-hit me hard for the second point, and I got in the third point after some fancy air dancing only because Svyatogor, giant A Class
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