Another part of the story that we thought only we'd like . . . . Guess there are more people out there who like X-Men *and* Dark Angel than just us.

None of them are ours. X-Men: Marvel. Dark Angel: James Cameron. Don't sue - we're both South African, and our money is next to worthless! ;)

AVENGING ANGELS

PART ONE

BY KAREN AND LOMAS

“And where have you been, missy?”

Tapping his clipboard with a pen, Normal stepped in front of Max as she wheeled her bicycle into Jam Pony’s office. As usual, her boss had a displeased look on his face, an earpiece clipped to his head, and a small parcel beneath one arm. From the writing on the box, it was destined for a restaurant in sector two. And, from his expression, she was destined to get a lecture on responsibility, punctuality, accountability and all the shit that she had hoped she had left behind with Manticore.

“Well, I’m waiting?” he peered at her from behind his square-framed glasses.

“Classic Normal,” Max thought to herself, “The man needs an explanation for everything and anything. One day, I should really tell him the truth about why I’m late and watch him freak. ‘I’m sorry I’m late, Normal, but I was keeping an escaped transgenic from killing people. I’ll try and do better next time.’ Yeah, right, I bet he’d still think I should have done that out of office hours . . . ”

With a little shrug, she said, “Sorry. I forgot to set my alarm.”

“I swear you people think I’m running a holiday resort instead of business here.”

“Oh, you’d just love that,” Original Cindy drawled, coming up to them and throwing an arm around Max’s shoulders, “All this fine, female flesh in bikinis.”

Max grinned at her. She knew her best friend was a lot more interested in fine, female flesh than Normal ever would or could be. Unapologetically lesbian, unapologetically black, Cindy was one of the few people who could fill the room with the sheer force of her personality. She was loyal, outspoken, blunt, compassionate and sarcastic by turns. And her style of dress was almost as outrageous as she was. Today, she was wearing a tight, cropped top over tight, black pants, and her shock of frizzy hair was hidden by a bandanna. The gold writing across her shirt proclaimed her a “goddess”.

“Bikinis don’t get packages delivered,” Normal replied, punctuating his statement by thrusting a brown-papered parcel at Max. She made a face as she took it from him, “Now, get moving. Time’s wasting, and your time is my money. Bip, bip, bip.”

“Come on, Normal, sugar. You call yourself a businessman? Original Cindy says that sometimes you can make more bada-bling from packaging than packages, if you can read the market right!” she said cryptically, a knowing look on her face. Max quickly copied it.

Normal stared at her with a blank expression, obviously lost.

Cindy sighed deeply, “An’ you go callin’ yourself a man!”

Grabbing Max by both shoulders, she turned her slightly sidewards and pulled her upwards, so that she was standing ramrod straight. With a stiletto-booted foot, Cindy kicked her feet slightly apart, and Max realised that all her curves were now in plain view of Normal. Before she could protest, Cindy came to stand next to her, dropping into a sexy pose.

“Now imagine your packages get delivered by this, dressed up in leather. Your customers would sign for a grenade just to get a look at some of this action,” she arched an eyebrow expectantly.

Slowly, Normal’s eyes lit up, as his brain turned over the possibilities, “Yeah! You sloppy-ass people might actually have an idea there. At last, a hard-working man can get more out of his business than putting up with scumbats who have no work-ethic, no drive and no working alarm-clocks.”

The last was said with a pointed look at Max, which made his eyes look like two overlarge, poached eggs behind his glasses. He approached Max and Cindy with a predatory smile on his face, the money practically flashing in front of his eyes. He could see it now: extraspecial delivery for higher rates. They were his employees, after all. They’d wear what he paid them to wear and that was that.

“You,” he pointed at Cindy, “You get white leather. Max, you get black. Get me sizes. The clock is ticking, and my time is my money.”

Max gritted her teeth in frustration. What had Cindy been thinking? There was no way she was going to ride around the city on her bike dressed like a cheap whore. She could take care of herself, but one of her customers would inevitably think a quick feel was a part of the deal and would complain to Normal when she knocked him out on the floor for his troubles. She didn’t want to lose her job. Not only did it keep bread on her table and provide a pass between sectors, but it was one of the few normal things in her life. She could even put up with her jerk boss most of the times, when his mind wasn’t somewhere in the gutter.

As it was, Cindy dragged his mind out for him, “Normal, Original Cindy says that my sister and me will dress up, but we’ll need danger pay before we do. It’s no biggie, sugar, but you never know what psychos walk around the streets looking for some quick action. Sometimes, they don’t even bother to ask a girl first. So, me and Max think that we’ll need 2K each to buy some peace of mind. That’s 2K a month too. And another thing? None of your shaking your little pencil at us no more. We make our schedules. We pick our deliveries. Got that?”

Max hid her laughter, as Normal’s face pruned up faster than a plum in the sun, “What are you two pulling here? A honest man tries to run an honest business, and you try to take his clothes off his back!”

“What a coincidence, hon,” Cindy replied tartly, “Last time I checked, that’s what you were tryin’ to do to us. Just for that, I think we’ll need to keep tips as well.”

“How will I benefit from this at all?”

“Don’t ask me, sugah. I just deliver the packages. You’re the Big, Bad Businessman. You tell us.”

“Bikinis?” Normal tried in a last-ditch effort.

“Nope,” Cindy shook her head, “Since you can’t afford our terms, get off, will ya? Time’s wasting, and me and my girl have work to do! Bip, bip, bip!”

Scowling, Normal threw one last comment at Max before retreating, “I pay you, so get your butt in here on time. Bip!”

Shaking his pen at them in a final admonition, he walked back into his cubicle and began looking through some paperwork.

Max laughed and punched her friend lightly on the upper arm, “I almost believed you there for a second, Cindy. I came so close to kicking your ass.”

“Just winding up the boss, sugargirl. I swear that man is positively abnormal,” Cindy rolled her eyes, steering Max towards their lockers, “Now that we’ve got him out of the way, what’s the real dealio?”

“One of Logan’s reporter friends got word of a transgenic attacking people in Sector 4,” Max explained, leaning her bike against the pillar. That done, she opened her locker and removing her leather jacket from it. She slipped it over her red vest and zipped it up tightly, before shoving her tinted glasses firmly onto the bridge of her nose, “He sent me to check it out, but it looks like it was just some punk kid’s idea of a joke.”

“Funny,” she commented wryly, “I hope you got a chance to show him you didn’t get it.”

Before Max could reply, her beeper began to sound. Swearing impatiently, she pulled it out of her pocket and glanced at it. The words scrolling across the dimly lit screen were enough to make her regret her irritation. They read: ‘NB. Call Me - Logan.’

“It’s Logan again. He needs me to call him urgently,” Max explained.

“Logan has you on a beeper?” her friend said in frank disbelief, “Sugar, much as I hate to stand in the way of true love, it might be time to dump his ass. Guy hasn’t heard of a cellphone?”

Max ignored the comment. As close as she was to Cindy, her current relationship with Logan was one of the things she did not want to discuss with her or anybody else. She didn’t even want to think about it. Besides, it wasn’t as if she knew what the current situation between them was. They certainly weren’t lovers, but were they even friends anymore? Had she become just a convenience to him? Did he only keep her around to be his transgenic enforcer? Did he even care about her? She pushed the thoughts firmly from her mind.

Tossing the package to her friend, “Deliver my parcel, please.”

“Sure,” Cindy sighed, catching it and hugging it to her chest.

“Thanks. You’re a life-saver.”

“What else are best friends for?” she smiled, “You take care of yourself, girl.”

Grinning back, she straddled her bike, “You know I always do.”

*

The two quarters disappered into the payphone with a metallic jingle, and Max punched in Logan’s number from memory. She heard the terminal dial the number with soft clicks, before it began to ring. Idly, as Max waited for Logan to pick up, she wondered just how many people would like to know the number she had just dialled, especially if they knew it lead to one of the most wanted people in America: Eyes Only. And there she was, just calling him from a payphone.

Max’s thoughts were pulled back to the present by the click of a pick-up from the other side of the line. It was Logan.

“Hello?”

“It’s me,” she said simply.

“Oh . . . heya . . .”

There was a slight hesitation in Logan’s voice, and Max’s forehead crinkled slightly in response. It wasn’t like him to sound that way. He usually seemed pleased to see or hear from her, even when it was just to save the world. Was he expecting someone else? Was it Asha? Just thinking about the pretty, blonde woman together with Logan made her stomach feel hollow.

Again, he paused before replying, “Sure, I’m fine . . . You, Max?”

“I’m okay too. You beeped. So, what’s up, fearless leader?” Max said, pretending a humour she did not feel.

“Mmm . . . that,” she knew the joke had been weak, but his voice was as cool and emotionless as it had been before. The line went quiet, and she could hear the rustling of papers being paged through, “Ah, got it. Matt Sung gave me a copy of a police report filed a couple of days ago. It was a rape case - an attempted one, to be exact. The victim said she was rescued by a werewolf or something very much like it.”

“A werewolf?” Max repeated in surprise, “Sounds like the chick must have been high on weed or something.”

“Who knows?” Logan said flatly, “According to the report, her rescuer was very short, very hairy and he had glowing eyes. It was all she could see of him before he ran the attacker through with claws. He stopped the 300lb attacker dead, then vanished into thin air. The attacker is in the ICU, suffering from three well-positioned puncture wounds. Whatever the guy used, it went straight through him. Matt says they don’t expect the guy to make it.”

“What a way to go,” Max said, matching her tone to Logan’s.

“Police questioned the woman - a Natalie Chambers - but she was severely traumatised. All she could say was that the claws glinted like metal.”

“Metal? A steelhead?” she offered.

“Possibly,” Logan answered vaguely, “This maybe isn’t the place or time to talk about this in more detail. Come around to my place later, and I’ll show you what I’ve got on this case.”

Max felt the same little flicker of excitement in her heart that she always felt when she thought about being near Logan. As much as she knew they couldn’t and shouldn’t be together, she couldn’t help it.

“As in a date?”

“I was assuming you’d like to take a look at the report yourself. I have a copy ready for you,” Logan’s voice was coldly business-like. It was the same tone of voice that she had heard him use when he was gathering information for Eyes Only. He hadn’t even seemed to hear her hint about a date. It hadn’t even been a subtle one - she would have had to show up naked at his apartment for it to be any less subtle. He would have had to be deaf not to hear it - or else he hadn’t want to do so. Max felt sick at the thought.

“Max, you’re there?” he asked, calling her back to attention.

“Yeah. I’ll be there.”

“Okay,” was all he answered. Before she could say good-bye, she had heard a sharp click and the steady hum of a disconnected line. Logan had hung up.

Max slowly replaced the receiver, and rubbed her eyes. So this was what their relationship had become: brief phone-calls where they talked business like the brisk professionals they were. She guessed she could deal with that. She would have to - Logan had left her no choice in the matter. As she walked out of Jam Pony’s office, trailing her bike behind her, she didn’t even notice Cindy’s worried eyes tracking her out the door.