Chapter Nine
They met on a street corner while the sun was still crawling up into the sky. Taylor with a genuine if nervous smile on and Missy... Missy was glaring angrily at the entire world.
It had betrayed her. Needless to say, she was not in the best of moods.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket for the fifth time in thirty minutes and she ignored it.
"Hi Missy," Taylor said with an awkward wave.
Missy huffed. "Hey," she said.
"I saw you on the news last night! It was great!"
"Yeah," Missy grumbled. "Great."
"Are you alright?" Taylor asked hesitantly.
Missy, instead of answering instantly, sighed and forced herself to pull back. It wasn't fair to take out her frustrations on someone as friendly as Taylor. It was like kicking a puppy. A socially maladjusted puppy. "I'm fine. It's just... you saw that report, didn't you? I looked like an idiot. You should have told me about my mouth."
"I thought about it," Taylor said, earning her a glare that had her backing up with her hands in the air. "But think of what it did for your image. Now our opponents will underestimate us!"
"Yeah, because being underestimated is what I'm afraid of." Missy ran her fingers through her hair. "Whatever, it's done. I'm not looking forward to going to school this week."
Junior high didn't have a lot of kids that watched the news, but there had to be at least one. If it hadn't spread around the school before lunch, she'd be surprised.
"You caught a supervillain. I mean, sure, you're Vista. That's normal. You do that all the time cause you're awesome in your cape persona, but this time you did it as Missy." Taylor pointed out. "Who's going to want to mess with you?"
"Yeah, I guess," Missy said. She shifted, then looked past Taylor and to the road they were on. This wasn't the nicest part of the Bay, but it was certainly not one of the worse off neighbourhoods. They were in the territory she'd usually think of as the ABB's. The houses were nice and well-maintained, with the occasional Asian flair added to otherwise very American bungalows and craftsman style homes.
There were some folks out, riding bikes or tending to gardens on their front lawns. It was rather picturesque if you ignored the random burn marks on the sidewalk.
"Where are we going today?" Missy asked.
"Well…" Taylor waved her arm at the general area. "I thought we could do some door-to-door this morning. You know, like how you met me? I tried to map out our target demographics and, well, we're not hitting the, uh, Asian side of things that well."
Was that... racist? Missy couldn't quite tell, but it sounded kind of racist. "Okay? You might want to find a way to rephrase that, but okay."
"Rephrase… Did I sound weird? Did that sound weird?" Taylor grimaced self consciously. "Was it the Asian thing?"
An old lady rode by on her bike and Missy couldn't help but hunch her shoulders as she held up her thumb and forefinger, less than an inch apart. She hadn't even glanced their way, but Missy couldn't help but feel judged anyway. "Yeah, kinda."
"We could stand to spread out our focus away from the more - affluent areas," Taylor corrected herself slowly. "And this is a good place to start."
Missy gave her a thumbs up at that and she noticeably relaxed.
"Also, this is a little ways from where we were yesterday. I think it's important to hit as many areas of the city as we can, no matter where it is. Word of mouth will do a lot, as will the news report, but we need to get people talking about us."
"Right," Missy agreed. Taylor was being very gung-ho about everything, but that was okay. Probably. "Well, let's get started then."
The first home was a dud, a fat shirtless man grumped at them to piss off and they complied in a hurry. The next homes Taylor made them skip since there was no one home (and Missy made a note not to think too hard about privacy laws).
At least no one had held a knife up to her neck so far, butter or otherwise. That was nice.
It was only when they were halfway down the street that they finally met someone that might have been at all receptive.
"Two people," Taylor said under her breath as they approached the house.
Missy nodded as she knocked on the door, then waited while shifting her weight from side to side. She hadn't noticed the day before, but dress shoes weren't the best for long walks and it was starting to chafe. If not for her feet already being the consistency of leather thanks to her job, she had no doubt there'd have been a couple of blisters in her future. Nasty ones.
Missy looked down at Taylor's sensible sneakers and felt envy… Why hadn't she thought of that?
It was only momentary, Taylor's sudden tensing before the door opened bringing Missy back to the moment.
"Hello?" the man that had opened the door asked. He was old, probably in his late twenties, with a skinny build and a 'Kiss the Cook' apron over a sweater vest and slacks. "May I help you?"
"Hello sir," Missy said. She froze for a moment as she realized that she wasn't exactly sure what she was supposed to say after that. This time, there weren't any cookies to distract from the important things. Fortunately, training and experience kicked in and she didn't make a fool of herself for too long. "My name is Missy and this is my campaign manager, Taylor."
Taylor waved and a cricket somewhere chirped in sync.
"We're meeting with the fine citizens of Brockton Bay today to ask about your preferences in the upcoming mayoral election?" Missy bit back her wince. That wasn't supposed to have been a question. "I happen to be running for mayor myself and was hoping to sway you to my side."
"Ah," the man said. He looked at her with dull, almost lost eyes, then nodded slowly. "Okay. I understand. Come in."
Missy looked to Taylor and--after getting a very inspiring shrug as a response that, at the very least, told her there weren't any bodies in the basement--stepped into the house. It was nice, very clean, well decorated with a very obvious oriental theme to everything. The man with the apron stepped into a living room that was well furnished except for a huge La-Z-Boy that was entirely out of place.
A huge man, as in huge, as in he was nearly seven feet if not taller, was on the sofa; Feet up and covered in old-fashioned bunny slippers, with a teacup in hand as an old rerun of 'Golden Girls' played out in front of him on a fifty-inch TV.
"Lee, who are these girls?" he asked with a deep, rumbling voice that made a nearby teapot shake lightly under the bass.
The newly named Lee hummed, the softness of his voice startling in contrast. "They are here to convince us to vote for them in the upcoming election, my dragon."
My... dragon? Missy puzzled over that for a long moment before it clicked. There were no pictures of any families on the walls and, while the house was well decorated, it was with a very masculine touch. There was a katana on the mantelpiece and some demon masks hanging off the walls. A big ol' buddha statue too.
She had just met a gay couple. This wasn't the demographic Taylor and her had come to see, but this was good too. No, it was great. Two birds with one stone!
It must have been hard for them to live the life they wanted to in Brockton Bay of all places. The Empire wasn't kind to Asian people already. It was probably hard enough due to their culture as it was. That only made it even more important that she convince them to vote for her!
Missy was a firm believer of people being able to love who they wanted to love, so it wasn't a hard step to take. Little barriers like gender, race, and a tiny, minuscule, unnoticeable age gap shouldn't even be a matter of consideration.
That was a personal opinion.
"Hello sir," Missy said with her nicest smile. Not as good as the smile she'd given Taylor when they'd met, but still pretty nice "As I told your partner, Lee, my name is Missy, Missy Biron, and I'm running to become the mayor of Brockton Bay."
***
Missy might, maybe, perhaps, have misread the situation a teensy tiny bit.
Give @Marchenblanc, the co-author of this piece, some hugs too!
Wanted to give a shout-out to Eli who made the bad grammar go away.
