Chapter 153: Prologue

Prologue

Emily genuinely disliked moving.

Not that she'd moved much. Once, when she was too young for the memories to be entirely clear, her family had moved into a nearby town. Her dad had gotten a new job away from Eauclaire and the commute would be better. She didn't really recall where they lived before, though her mom had once pointed the house out when they were driving through that little town, and there were pictures of a baby Emily in an unfamiliar home that she'd seen here and there.

No, the home she grew up in was the only home she'd known her entire thinking life. It was... home.

So really, her dislike of moving was more recent.

First, moving from home to the dorm a little over a month ago. That had been kind of awful. It meant a hard disconnect from her life at home, a loss of her comfortable bedroom and her own private little space.

And then there was moving now.

"Teddy, no," Emily said without looking up from the box she was repacking. She didn't have much, and yet it felt like a lot when she had to fit it all into a few boxes to be carried across the city.

"What? C'mon Boss, you didn't even look up!" Teddy complained.

Emily did look up this time and turned to find Teddy standing, eyes distinctly not meeting Emily's gaze while her hands were tucked at the small of her back. Two of Trinity's three bodies were on the floor, as if they'd recently been shoved, and the third was clinging onto Teddy's back while trying to look innocent.

"What were you doing, then?" Emily asked.

"Nothin'," Teddy said.

"Mhm," Emily replied, extending a hand towards Teddy. "Sure. Give me that."

"Don't got anything to give, Boss," Teddy said.

"Teddy," Emily warned.

Teddy's cheeks puffed out, and she finally deigned to surrender... what looked very much like half of a slice of pizza, covered in a fine dusting of hair and mold.

Emily flinched, and the pizza splattered onto the carpeted floor.

"Mine!" Trinity said as she leapt down to grab it.

"No," Emily said as she caught the nearest Trinity by the scruff of her shirt. "No, absolutely not. Where did you even find that?" she asked.

"It was under the bed!" Trinity said. "Everyone knows the five second rule!"

"Five seconds? This looks like it's been there for weeks!" Emily said. "Was that what was causing that smell?"

"I thought it was Teddy's socks," Athena said from where she sat nearby. Athena and Maple, at least, had been helping. The two of them were taping the boxes Emily packed with great enthusiasm and not so great skill.

"If you want to smell my socks so bad I can stuff them into your nose," Teddy shot back.

Emily clapped her hands twice, catching everyone's attention. It was a trick she'd picked up from Miss Headerson, the kindly woman who taught her sisters and somehow managed to corral them into something approaching orderliness. "Let's not turn this into a fight," she said. "Teddy, Trinity, you can't have the, uh..."

"Floor pizza?" Trinity asked. "But the five second rule!"

"I don't see how that rule applies here," Emily said.

"It's been more than five seconds, so it's mine," Trinity said.

Emily considered that, then dismissed it. "No. No, absolutely not. Athena, put the floor pizza in the No-Trinity-Trash Can."

Athena made a face, but she ripped her arm away from a big bundle of tape, then tugged another piece off from around her leg and made her way across the room to pick up the pizza slice. She held it out at arm's length and then tossed it into the No-Trinity-Trash Can, which was just a normal trash bin with a post-it on the side that had an X over a cartoony doodle of a raccoon.

Trinity pouted, and Teddy grumbled, so Emily decided to distract them.

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Her dorm room was nearly empty already. Her books were in one box, her things in a few others. Fortunately, a number of things from her home had never been unpacked to begin with, so she didn't need to worry too much.

The rest was all stuff she'd accumulated in the last month since her semester had started. Mostly there were a few toys, lots of small Maple inventions that did all sorts of things, and a number of things for her sisters.

There were a lot of blankets and clothes still left to pack away, but it was coming along. Enough so that Emily did a count of the boxes that were... mostly taped shut thanks to Athena and Maple's efforts.

"Alright," Emily said. "Trinity, you have the most hands, so you can grab three times as many boxes as anyone else. Take those there, there, there, and there. Teddy, you take that one there, the heavy looking one, since you're so strong."

"You hear that?" Teddy asked Trinity. "I'm strong."

Trinity rolled her eyes, all six of them, which was a rather impressive amount of eye rolling from a single girl. "Yeah, but there's more of me, so blergh!" She stuck her tongues out at Teddy, and Emily worried that it might all turn into a scuffle.

Her sisters were rather excited about the move. As far as they were concerned it was all fun and games, but then, they didn't have to worry about the logistics of it all.

"What do you want me and Maple to grab?" Athena asked, her voice pitched just loud enough to cut off Teddy's rebuttal.

Emily knew that she shouldn't play favourites with her sisters... but sometimes... "Just grab that one there," Emily said. "I'll take my school bag and this, and... Maple, do you think you can handle that box there? It's all of your gizmos."

"Okay!" Maple piped up. She looked up at Emily and smiled. Then she winced as she tugged a strip of tape away from her hair.

Emily grabbed a box of her own, then looked around the room. It was almost entirely empty except for her chair and a few bits of furniture that were too big to move easily. Those she'd need to grab with her dad's help, but he only had time off in a day or two.

In any case, the room was essentially empty now.

It felt a little strange, but not that bad. This room had only been her home for a month and a little bit, but... a lot had happened here. It's where she met her sisters, where she had gained her powers.

But now it was too small. She had four sisters and with herself, that made seven bodies squeezed into a room meant for one college student to sleep in. The rooms here weren't even meant to be living spaces. There was a shared living area on each floor and the kitchens on the ground level for that kind of thing, ostensibly so that more rooms could be crammed into the building and so that people would have to socialize to get things done. Emily had avoided socializing at all costs though, and had done a pretty good job of not even learning the names of the people who lived right next to her, with one exception.

Emily filed into the elevator with her gaggle of sisters, then back out once they were on the ground floor. She had to pause to help one of Trinity pick up a smaller box that had fallen, then it was out the front of the dorm.

Sam was waiting for her there, eyes on her phone and back leaning against her brand new car.

After their last big... adventure, Sam's car had been totalled and the insurance company had written it off as a loss. But Sam, being clever and prone to fraud, had gotten the best insurance she could afford a few weeks prior, including a hefty insurance that only kicked in if the car was damaged by heroic or villainous actions.

Which was exactly what had happened. Never mind that Sam had used her car to stop some bad guys from getting away on purpose.

Now Sam was the owner of a seven year-old, mint-green minivan.

It had seating for eight, more if they were small and prone to ignoring the law, and plenty of room for all of Emily's boxes.

"Heya, Boss," Sam said as she lowered her phone. "Got all your stuff?"

"Yeah," Emily said. "Think it'll fit in the trunk?"

"Can I fit in the trunk?" Trinity asked.

"Oh, um... can I be in the trunk too?" Maple asked.

"No one's going in the trunk," Emily said. "The only thing going in the trunk is our stuff. Now come on, let's sort this all out. We might have to keep a few boxes closer to the front."

She was always a little worried that they didn't have car-seats or whatever, but then her sisters would probably rather die than have to use a booster seat.

Emily shook her head as she closed the trunk, the last box packed away and her sisters fighting for the best seats. She looked up to the Quantum Mothman House, then smiled to herself. It was time for a new--hopefully calmer--chapter in her life.

One which was, unfortunately, going to start in an underpass.

***

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