Ping-pon.

Umi looked up from the newspaper’s wanted ads in response to the doorbell. Left alone once again (with strict instructions to not touch any of Alexandra’s stuff), Umi had expected a quiet afternoon to peruse the local newspaper in search of a job. So far, she had yet to find anything that would allow her to carry a weapon or function as any sort of security. She had been leaning toward a daycare job; how hard would it be to watch children, anyway? She would keep looking anyway, but, now, curiosity was at the door.

She wandered into the entryway and stepped up to the door. She saw that whoever was on the other side was wearing white. She grimaced knowing which of the stories wore white. With hesitation, she opened the door.

“Aww, I thought that was gonna take longer,” Jennifer said as she stashed a smartphone into the belly pocket of her sweatshirt.

Umi sighed. “What are you doing here, Jenny?” she groaned.

Jennifer scoffed and crossed her arms. “Not very Asian of you,” she remarked with a grin.

Umi’s expression turned into an annoyed glare. “Kaere.” (Go home.)

Jennifer glanced up. Then she gave a small laugh and a dismissive handwave. “Oh, take it easy, Umi,” she said. “Just chill out. I’m not here to make fun of you.”

Umi released the door so she could cross her arms and lean her shoulder against the doorframe. “So why are you here, then?” she asked.

“Do I need a reason?”

“This is Sandy’s house. I’m pretty sure you do.”

“You’d think she doesn’t like visitors…”

Umi shrugged and said, “She probably would if they wouldn’t destroy her home.”

“Does that include you? Or has she forgotten what you did to her grill?

Umi gave an insincere smile. “It still works. The bullet holes didn’t really mess it up.”

“And has there been anything else you shot around here?”

Umi’s expression faltered as she recalled shooting out Alexandra’s television two stories ago. She shook her head and played it off as a shake of denial. “Not to your knowledge.”

Jennifer raised an eyebrow. “That was cute in Good Burger. Coming from a police story, it just sounds pathetic.”

“Huh. And you said you weren’t here to make fun of me.”

Jennifer cawed out a laugh and backed up a step. “Well, how else to you expect me to respond when someone gives me an outdated rip-off of a joke?”

“By getting bored, turning around, and letting yourself get hit by a Mack truck.”

“Are you going to invite me in? Or do I need to invite myself with another plothole?”

Umi glared at her. The last time she had entered a building via plothole, she and the other police stories discovered that she had the evasiveness of a squirrel and a talent for setting up logic-defying traps, cementing the dangers of forcing her to use plotholes for anything. The fact that she had hidden in an abandoned hotel in Japan where fresh bacon and a yak should most decidedly not have been available just reinforced the perils of dealing with Jennifer’s boredom. And a reason for and against letting her into the house.

Umi then sighed and let her head hang for a moment. “Fine…” She saw the thoughtful grin on Jennifer’s face. “What?”

“Nothing,” Jennifer replied as Umi stepped out of the doorway. “Just remembering the noodles.” She stepped inside and moved so Umi could shut the door. “I loved the yak.”

Umi sighed again. “Kou iu riyuu dewa anata to no kaiwa ga taerarenai.” (This is why conversations with you are unbearable.)

Jennifer glanced up. Then she turned to Umi. “Oh, but I think a lot of people like talking to me,” she said.

“Nna wake aru ka yo…” Umi growled to herself as she followed Jennifer into the house. “Oh, wait! Shoes!” (The hell they do!)

Jennifer glanced down at her sneakers. “This is America,” she pointed out.

“She makes me take them off.”

Jennifer crossed her arms, her face exuding smugness again. “She makes you? Or do you just do it because you’re too polite to think that Sandy doesn’t care? She’s more multinational than you, after all.”

“Hey!” Umi snapped. “The ICDC is an international organization, much more international than Sandy is!”

“Yeah, how many of those other nations do you get to see in the story?”

“Last Uniform and Badges of Honor have plenty of promise for international thrills and shenanigans!”

“I imagine that’s kind of hard to say considering B. only has a chapter title and two pages made so far.”

Umi’s fist shook. If she had a gun, she would have finished the conversation right away and only worried about cleaning up the mess afterwards; she already knew where Alexandra kept the cleaning supplies (having made Umi clean a spilled raamen bowl out of the upstairs carpet). As it was, Umi wanted to punch her. Unfortunately, she was not the type to actually throw a punch. Still. She hated that she was losing this argument. Between the big three stories, she had received so little actual material that it embarrassed her that Alexandra and Kelsey were so far ahead of her.

So, she marched past Jennifer and pulled open the closet door behind her. She grabbed out her new sneakers and dropped them on the floor to slip them on.

When she looked up at Jennifer, Jennifer gave a shrug and turned around. “Got any food?” she asked as she left the entryway.

“You came here for a meal?” Umi asked.

“No, I’m looking for a meal because I came here. It was a long trip.”

Umi stumbled, having expected Jennifer to turn left toward the kitchen then switching directions when Jennifer turned right only to have to dodge out of the way with a yelp when Jennifer spun and started in the correct direction. “You couldn’t just plothole your way here?” Umi asked in exasperation.

“I didn’t want to chance plotholing in front of Sandy,” Jennifer said. “She told me she’d shoot me if I did it again, and this isn’t a comic, so I can’t hide behind the panel frame this time.”

“And you aren’t worried she’s going to shoot you anyway?” Umi asked as they stepped into the kitchen. “She might not be in a good mood.”

“When is she ever?” Jennifer stepped to the refrigerator and pulled the door open. She pondered the contents before grabbing an egg carton. “Think I have time to boil some eggs?”

Umi shrugged. “I don’t know; she didn’t really say where she was going.”

Jennifer frowned and pondered the carton. Then she crossed the kitchen and opened a lower cabinet. “Well, I’ll just have to take the chance then,” she said.

“If you’d called ahead, I’m sure she would’ve told you were she was going,” Umi pointed out.

“Can you call her now?”

Umi held up an empty hand. “I left my mobile back in Japan.”

“Use Sandy’s landline.”

Umi shrugged at Jennifer’s back an—

“Okay, look,” Jennifer suddenly said as she stood up. She looked up at the text and started addressing it. “I think the readers get that my name is ‘Jennifer’, so referring to it in the narration is a little redundant, B. You can just refer to me by my nickname; it’ll save time.”

…

…

Jennifer just stared at the text.

“Really?” she asked the text with a flat tone. Umi, being unable to see the text, could only look up at the ceiling in confusion.

…

…

…

I will die on this hill. There’s style and format to consider.

“And yet you constantly refer to Kelsey’s audience surrogate as ‘Cat Ark’ instead of his full name,” Jennifer pointed out.

I refuse to constantly type out “Catutigernos Arkadiy’ every time he steps into the narration. Besides, it is still his legal name.

“Use ‘Jenny’.”

No.

Umi sighed and commented, “For some reason, I feel better about being a comic…”

“Bee’s being stubborn about this ‘writing style’,” Jennifer said as she nudged the cabinet door shut with a foot. The cabinet bounced open, but Jennifer ignored it, stepping over to the sink instead.

Umi frowned and strode over to push the door shut. “How long do you plan to stay?” she asked.

“That eager to make me leave, huh?” Jennifer asked in response as she filled a pot with water.

“Oh, I know there’s no making you leave,” Umi replied. “I just wanted to know whether you’ll be leaving on your own, or if Sandy will have to send you back to white space.”

“Aaaah, if only I could look down…”

Umi watched Jennifer light the gas range and set the pot on it. Then she heaved a sigh. “Can I at least offer you a drink?’ she asked.

“I hope so, or else you’d be a very bad host.”

Umi glared at her. “I don’t live here.”

Jennifer glanced over her shoulder with a grin. “You just keep telling yourself that…”

“Ch…” was the sound Umi made as she walked over to the refrigerator and opened it. “Sandy has milk, iced coffee, and orange juice.”

“Mmmm… I’ll take a glass of half coffee, half milk.”

Umi turned one of the bottles to read the label. “It already has milk in it,” she told Jennifer.

Jennifer looked over her shoulder again. “Do you want me wandering around with that much coffee in me?”

Umi sighed in frustration as she took both the gallon jug of milk and a glass bottle of coffee out. “Omae ga gyuunyuu no naka de dekishi shite hoshii…” she grumbled as she opened an overhead cabinet next to Jennifer to retrieve a plastic cup. (I want you to drown in milk…)

Jennifer glanced up at the text. “A bit of sugar, too,” she added as Umi twisted the coffee’s lid off with a snap.

“This is too cold,” Umi said. “The sugar won’t dissolve.”

Jennifer made a circular motion with one hand and said, “Stir it around.”

Umi heaved another sigh and took the drink’s implements down the counter to get away from Jennifer. She opened a silverware drawer and contemplated the butter knives before picking out a fork. Jennifer gave the text above a quick glance before picking up the egg carton and dumping the eggs into the pot in time with Umi slamming the drawer shut. Two eggs cracked open, but she still gave the pot a satisfied smirk.

Umi finished mixing the drink and held it out to Jennifer as if she had intended to punch Jennifer in the face. Which would not have surprised either one of them. Jennifer took the cup and said, “Thank you, Umi. Don’t let anyone else tell you you’re a bad host.”

“Mou kanben shite kure…” Umi muttered as she returned the milk to the refrigerator. (Gimme a break already…)

Jennifer glanced up at the text. Then she said, “So, anything good on TV?”

“Noit’sallgarbage!” Umi blurted out, alarmed just as she was about to drink from the open bottle of iced coffee.

Jennifer turned to take in the deer-in-headlights look on Umi’s face. “All of it?” she asked, not at all hiding the glee on her face.

Umi turned pale. “Y-yes,” she said. “Yes, it’s-it’s-it’s—it’s all just news. It’d bore you.”

“Oh, I don’t think it could be that bad,” Jennifer replied. She paused to take a drink. “I heard there was a car chase not far from here a few days ago.”

Umi’s face grew paler. “A c-car chase?” she asked.

Jennifer nodded. “Yep. The cops outside of D.C. were chasing down a guy, and another car intervened and P.I.T.-ed him into the trees. Flipped the other car, though. It even caught fire.” Jennifer then crossed her arms and put on a contemplative look. “Come to think of it… That looked like Sandy’s Focus.” She gave a dismissive laugh. “But that’d be silly. Sandy’d never chase anyone down in her car. Besides, you can find Ford Focuses all over the place. It was probably just some other lunatic with a death wish. What’s she driving these days?”

Umi clapped her mouth shut and tried to think. “She, uh, she’s between cars right now,” she said with a nervous grin.

“Really? I thought someone just said she’d bought a Mitsubishi recently. A red, 2003 Lancer, I believe.”

“Who, uh, who told you that?”

“Hmmm… I think I heard it from Kelsey.” She cleared her throat. “I have to use the bathroom.”

Umi stared where Jennifer had disappeared around the corner. Her mind buzzed with frantic energy. It was clear that Jennifer knew what was going on. The question was how. She knew the news had reported the car chase; there had been a helicopter following it, so it had at least caught her using Alexandra’s Ford Focus to perform a P.I.T. maneuver on the suspect’s vehicle. She was certain she had not been seen because there was no subsequent pictures sent out asking people to identify her.

But the part where she knew about the Mitsubishi made it clear that she had another source. Kelsey had not made it to the ground alive; as mad as Alexandra had been, her aim had not been nearly that wild, and she had landed enough hits on Kelsey that, by the time she had landed one street away, her corpse was a mess better left undescribed. Kelsey could not have identified the car even if she had landed alive since it had already been smashed by a satellite she (most likely) had de-orbited. Even that overlooked the fact that Kelsey was knowledgeable of star vessels and faltered when it came to early 21st century cars. Alexandra had not had the car long enough to tell anyone but Umi about it.

Considering she had seen Jennifer argue with the author, she wondered if B. had told her. Or, even easier than that, if Jennifer had access to whatever story detailed those events. What else did Jennifer know? What else had B. written?!

She set down the bottle of iced coffee and started toward the bathroom to confront Jennifer when she realized that there was something on the floor. She noticed it when she heard something crunch under her foot. She looked down to find dirt forming a pair of trails out of the kitchen. She glared at the trails. There was no way Jennifer’s shoes were tracking in enough dirt to make trails so noticeable; she must have been carrying it, which meant she was leaving it on purpose. She resolved to confront Jennifer and marched out of the kitchen, not worrying about stepping through it herself since she was still wearing her shoes.

The downstairs bathroom was across from the master bedroom Alexandra used as a den on the other side of the first floor. Umi strode up to the bathroom door and knocked on it. “Hey, Jenny?” she called through the door. “Jenny, you need to clean up all this dirt! I know you’re dropping it on purpose!” She listened, but she could hear nothing form the other side of the door. She knocked again. “Jenny?” She waited for an answer. Then she knocked harder. “Jenny, you’re not going to ignore me! Open the door!” She still heard no response. Now annoyed, she turned her shoulders in preparation to ram the door open. Then she realized that she was not wearing her CDC-issue jacket and opted to check the doorknob. The door clicked, and she shoved it open.

The bathroom was empty. The toilet was unused, and there was nothing else to indicate that the room had been occupied. The window was still closed, and Umi strode over to check that the latch was still on. That was when she noticed a folded sheet of paper lying on the toilet’s tank. She picked it up and opened it.

—Sandy’s home. Have fun.

Written in thick, black permanent marker, the note carried the perfect emphasis to what happened next. It began with the front door opening.

WHAM!! “UMI! WHY IS THERE DIRT IN MY HOUSE?!!”

“Yabah!” Umi uttered to herself. She dropped the note and dashed out of the bathroom. “Choh—Hanashi kiite kure! Sandy-chan!” (Not good! Wai—Please listen to me! Sandy-Chan!)

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! IN MY KITCHEN?!”

“Chigau! Chigau yo!” (It’s wrong! It’s wrong!)

“THAT BETTER BE YOU GETTING THE BROOM!!”

“Chigau tteba!” Umi hollered as her shoes squeaked to a stop on the kitchen tiles. “Dakara kiite kure!” (I’m telling you it’s wrong! So please listen!)

Alexandra, who was just removing her duster as Umi entered the kitchen, took a look at Umi’s feet and threw the jacket on the floor. “Shǎbī! ¡Estas llevando tus chingados zapatos! ‘Ee dah?” (Chinese: You dumb f***! Spanish: You’re still wearing your f***ing shoes. Arabic: What is this?)

“Yabai, gengo ga gochamaze…” Umi said to herself. (Not good, her languages are mixed up…)

“Kono kusottare! Dào Rìběn hùiqù a! Den pistevo esena!” (Japanese: You piece of shit! Chinese: Go back to Japan! Greek: I don’t believe you!)

Umi held up her hands to stop Alexandra. “Wakatta, wakatta! Houki o motte kuru kara!” (I got it, I got it! I’ll bring a broom!”)

PAP! PAPAPAP! PAPAP! Both looked at the pot still sitting on the stove. They caught a burst of white fly up with a sharp crack and stick to the ceiling. With horror, Umi realized that those were the eggs that Jennife had set to boil.

She then heard a sizzle nearby and turned to see Alexandra holding a magic bolt in both hands.

“Die.”

From outside, Jennifer looked at the house with glee as screaming sounded through the walls and flashes of pink light shone out through the windows. After a moment, she pulled out her smartphone and started scrolling down the screen.

Then she noticed you reading and gave you a smirk. She turned the phone to show you a webpage she was browsing. “Funny thing about secrets,” she said. “You can’t keep them when they get posted online. I’d like to thank Jason Lamey for making this little slice of hell possible; I wouldn’t have done this without you.” She pocketed the phone and pointed down at the ground. “And let me remind you that any of you who leave comments about me, it’s ‘Jenny’. Bee is already going to eat his own personal hell for calling me Jennifer in the narration. Don’t tempt me, Side Seven.”