“House keeping.”

The knocking continued.

Anna groaned, rolling over as she was dragged from sleep.  She fell off the bed, hitting the floor with a thud that shot radiating pain up through her skull.

“Fuuuuuck,” she groaned, squinting her eyes as she adjusted the way to bright sunlight drifting sneaking in past the edges of the curtains.

“House keeping?”

Shit.  She reached out, climbing her hand up the bedside table and feeling around until her hand smacked on hard plastic, and she pulled the alarm clock down to the floor with her.  It was 1:22 pm.  She’d slept past checkout time.  Fucking hell.

“Gonna need a minute,” she called, wincing at the sound of her own voice, simultaneously too loud and too hoarse.  Her mouth tasted awful, and immediately she was sure she’d thrown up at some point.  “Fuck me,” she whispered, trying to piece together the events of last night.  She struggled to her feet as the knocking continued.  Damn they were persistent.  She stumbled towards the door, opening it to tell whoever was knocking to get bent, when she stopped, slamming the door shut when she saw her arm.  

She was still wearing her costume.  Too close.

“Ma’am?” a timid voice came from the other side of the door.

Anna leaned against the door, pressing her cheek against cool wood paneling as she chose her words.  “Come back in twenty… come back in an hour.”

“Yes ma’am,” came the response.

That was the immediate problem solved.  She threw the extra lock on the door for good measure, and pushed herself away from the door into the bathroom.  She shut her eyes beforehand as she flicked on the lights, slowly easing them back open.

Her face!

She looked like shit.  She had two black eyes, one of them half swollen shut.  What the hell had happened last night?

And then she remembered the fight.  The head-butt to the face had left her looking terrible.  She gingerly touched it, wincing at the pain.  That actually explained a lot, and she felt a little better, knowing that how she was feeling wasn’t solely attributed to a hangover.  

And she’d been shot last night!  

She’d forgotten about that.  She eased up her armor, revealing her flat, toned stomach, now ugly, painful hues of purple, black, blue and yellow, wrapping nearly halfway around her torso.

“Fuck me.”  She grit her teeth as she pulled her top over her head, revealing the full extent of the bruising.  “Note to self.  You’ve got money now, abuse pain killers, not alcohol.”  Her swollen eyes widened as much as they could in their current state as something else occurred to her.  “Other note to self.  Tell to switch payment to your own card.”  It would not do to have the LC’s accounting department see how much she’d spent on the mini bar.  Not at all.

She stripped naked and got into the shower, letting the warm water wash over her sore body as she sat on the edge of the tub.  She tilted her head back, rinsing her mouth, but the heavy chlorine taste of city water made her sick again.  Vomit go all over her legs and feet, the shower quickly rinsing her off again.  She should have told them to give her two hours.

Throwing up again actually made her feel better, and once she was clean, she actually felt semi-functional.  “Alright Anna.  What else did you do last night?” she asked her reflection in the mirror, wrapped in a fresh white towel.  Her wet, bruised reflection stared back at her, not having the answers she was looking for.  She remembered taking down the drug dealers, complete with getting herself shot.  It occurred to her for the first time that she might have cracked some ribs, and she should see a doctor.  She could just imagine the smug look on Izzy’s face.  “I offered to help.  I don’t wear armor, but I can take a bullet like it’s nothing,’ he’d say.  Stupid Iz-

Izzy.

She remembered something.  A sinking feeling sat in the pit of her stomach, and she felt sicker than she had while throwing up.

The hung-over heroine rushed from the bathroom back into the hotel room, and she began tossing the sheets aside until she found what she was looking for.  Her phone.  Its battery was dead.  She could only pray that the battery had died before she could do anything stupid with it.  Her towel fell off her as she dropped to her knees by her suitcase, tearing through her luggage completely naked as she searched for her charger.  “Be here!” she hissed, as if her cell phone charger was subject to her powers.  Her fingers snagged on the thin black cord, and she yanked it out of her suitcase, shuffling over to the nearest outlet on her knees and fumbling to get it into the socket.  She plugged her phone in and stared at the little charging icon blinking on the black screen.  “Come on come on come on,” she whispered as she waited for what felt like forever until her phone turned back on.  

No outgoing texts.  Thank god.  She checked the call log next, and her heart sank.  Four outgoing calls.  One to Izzy, one to Macy, one to Tyrese, and another to Macy.

She stared blankly at her phone.  She didn’t remember any of those calls.  Not a single one.

Tyrese was deaf, so she couldn’t talk to him on the phone even if he’d answered.  She’d once translated a voicemail for another deaf co-worker, so there was always a possibility that if she’d left a message, he could get someone to tell him what she’d said.  But he wouldn’t be stupid enough to get someone to listen to a message from his super heroine friend who should’ve known better than to try and call him.  But then again, she was dumb enough to make four drunken phone calls, so she couldn’t judge him too harshly if he had.  He could have thought she was in trouble!

“God damn it, Anna,” she cursed herself.  “How could you be so stupid?”

But she wasn’t.

Well she was, but she’d learned to anticipate her own stupidity.  She quickly checked the number programmed into her phone for Macy.

Anna let out a long sigh of relief.  She’d gotten drunk one night shortly after her falling out with Macy.  She’d been smart about it though, and had changed Macy’s number in her phone to a burner phone she had.  She’d gotten drunk, and called, and left a voicemail, telling Macy all the things she’d wanted to say to her, but hadn’t been ready to tell her.  How she’d been sorry she’d gotten Ellen killed, how she’d only tried to bring her back to life for Macy, and how she’d only joined the LC to protect Macy from herself.

And her own stupidity.  But she hadn’t called Macy last night, and when she got back to the LC, she could listen to what she’d tried to tell her sister in her drunken stupor.

That just left Izzy.  She double-checked, just in case, but it was the cowboy’s number.  She’d probably just rubbed it in his face that she’d kicked so much ass on her own, and he was probably very grateful that her power didn’t work over the phone, because she was sure she had told him to do some unsavory things.



Anna felt better.  Not great, but all right, after having gotten some food in her.  Definitely not good enough for a repeat of last night, but she could lean more heavily on her power.  Or completely on it, probably.

She sat in her car, incognito again, a heavy layer of makeup and sunglasses obscuring her bruised face.  She pulled chicken chow mien from the carton with chopsticks, spilling some on her clothes.  They were tear away clothes anyways, she thought, not wiping it away.  

Her eyes drifted to the clock.  She should get moving.  Realistically, using her power was going to be quicker than trying to handle tonight’s den of scum physically again, but she was moving slow, and should give herself all the extra time she could.  She lowered her sunglasses, looking outside.  It was getting dark.  Time to go.

She found her keys and started up her car.  Well, she tried to.  There was a licking sound as she turned the key in the ignition, but the engine never started up.

“Fucking really?”  Now that she was making good money, buying a new car was on her list, but her little Toyota had always been reliable.  Really, the one thing she could reliably count on despite its age and mileage.  “Come on girl, I need you listen to me and START!”

The car lacked a brain, and an ability to comprehend language, and as such was immune to her power.  It didn’t listen, and it didn’t start, no matter how many times she tried turning the key, harder and harder until her sore wrist screamed back in pain.

“Fucking hell!”  She hammered on the horn with both fists, her car’s polite, timid little honk doing a poor job of conveying its driver’s frustration.

People on the street stopped and stared.  She got out, yelling to them, “Hey!  Does anyone have jumper cables?”  

Seeing that the angry driver’s problems were something so mundane, the pedestrians turned away and continued walking.

“Seriously?  You!  Tell me if you have jumper cables!” she ordered a man getting out of his car.

“I don’t,” he said, shrugging apologetically.

Anna took a deep breath, and reached into her car and pulled out the keys.  Her mind raced with all the things she should have done, namely used her car to drive to the Chinese place instead of walking two blocks because she thought it would be ‘good to stretch her legs’.  She slammed her car door and locked it, and took off running, gritting her teeth through the pain in her body that screamed at her to stop.