The first of the two treehouses, the one that the rope ladder had been attached to, had a sturdy catch but no lock on the door and Luna hesitantly let herself into the building to find that a table and chairs along with a small, unequipped food preparation area.
She explored for a while longer, discovering that the treehouse also had a second room with bookcases and a desk. The shelves were empty, but the renovations were quite obviously still ongoing, suggesting that perhaps they would be filled later.
A rather loud boom let Luna know that Speedster had returned and she poked her head out the door to find her friend looking around for her while holding a bag of something that looked kind of like food cartons.
“Speeds, up here.” She waved. Speedster grinned when she spotted her and clambered up carefully, making sure not to drop the floor. “So, want to explain?” Luna asked, gesturing around.
“Sure,” Juliet nodded, handing Luna a carton, which she opened to find a sweet and sour chow mein, and a pair of chopsticks. “These treehouses used to be mine as a kid. My uncle helped me build them when my parents were away. They were military you see, so they were never around.” Speedster explained, “So I lived with my uncle. He has a house not that far from here.”
“And you just decided to start renovating now?” Luna asked, still not entirely sure what the point of her being brought her was.
“Yes and no.” Speedster shrugged, “My uncle phoned me the other day to say that his misses was pregnant. You know the one.”
Luna grimaced slightly. She did. She had met Juliet’s uncle and his new wife at Christmas. She hadn’t much liked the new wife then and she knew Speedster got on with her about as well as cats and dogs. That was why she had stuck around the city when she had graduated. She’d had nowhere else to go.
“It got me nostalgic.” Speedster continued, pausing momentarily to attack her mushroom chicken and rice, “So I zoomed down here the morning after I had that big fight with Spike, you remember?”
“The one where he tried to set you on fire because you wouldn’t let him go and do the same to the guy who had t-boned his car?” Luna asked.
“That’s the one.” Juliet nodded, smiling slightly at the memory of Spike’s frustration. He had wanted to set her on fire, but he hadn’t been able to catch her to do so. “When I saw it was falling apart I decided to rebuild it. It’s taking me a while. I’m not too good with D.I.Y. It normally stands for ‘Destroy It Yourself’ in my house.”
Luna started giggling at that, causing Speedster to grin. The pair finished their food in companionable silence and as Luna got on with her coursework on her laptop, Speedster did a little work on the house across the rickety bridge.
“Shouldn’t you fix the bridge before you fix the house?” Luna questioned as one of the planks from it fell when Speedster shot across it with supplies to fix the roof of the second building.
“Maybe?” Speedster guessed, glancing at the bridge, “I probably shouldn’t speed across it like that either.”
“Going a little slower probably wouldn’t be a bad idea.” Luna agreed, able to envisage Speedster going to dart across, only for the whole thing to go tumbling to the ground.
They worked on their projects until Luna’s battery started running out on her laptop, then Juliet ran them home, making a comment about needing to get a power generator or something out there so she could use power tools and Luna could hang around more often.
“Does your Uncle know you’re rebuilding it?” Luna asked as Juliet dropped her on her doorstep.
“Yeah, he caught me at it a couple of weeks back.” Speedster nodded, wincing slightly as she remembered nearly careening into him at full pelt and going crashing into a tree instead.
That tree was at a wonky angle now.
“And he doesn’t mind?” Luna looked curious as she hesitated to re-enter her household when she just knew her brother would be inside, waiting to tease her.
“Nope,” Speedster shook her head, “Said that it didn’t matter what his wife said, I was always welcome on his land and in his home and I was welcome to do whatever I wanted with my treehouses.” She grinned slightly, “I did ask if that meant I could turn them into a fully functional house, plumbing and electrics included.”
“Oh?” Luna asked curiously.
“He said that if I ever managed that, he wanted to know how so he could sell the secret.” Juliet chucked. “Now you need to work, so I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.”
“Speeds...” Before Luna could say anything else, Speedster had shot off, embarrassed.
She didn’t even know what she had been thinking when she had decided that she was going to run her friend down to her childhood hideaway. She had just decided that she didn’t want to go home to the house, she wanted to work on the treehouse.
There had been a Chinese takeaway place in the next village over that she knew she could get Luna’s meal from and while she hadn’t been able to provide anywhere to charge Luna’s laptop, she had at least been able to provide some peace and quiet, bar the noise of her fixing the buildings.
She supposed it was because she trusted Luna to keep her secrets. Though her friend had told others about the missing Sphere, Luna didn’t tend to gossip about things that didn’t directly affect the Club. Going down there had helped her calm down too.
She felt better able to face up to the Club at tomorrow’s meeting after spending time working on her secret hideaway. She felt a lot more optimistic about her chances of convincing the Club not to freak out and to let her deal with the fallout when it came.
It was that optimism that nearly caused her to miss the swing Brawl took at her as she stepped through the door. It was only her speed that saved her from becoming a smear on the wall. “Brawl!” She glowered at the dark skinned, bald headed, muscle bound brick outhouse of a guy. “The hell!? We have a rule!”
“She’s right mate,” Chi agreed, glowering briefly at Speedster before ushering Brawl away, “We’re not supposed to fight at Club meetings. Wait until the meeting’s over.”
“You know,” Speedster opened up the meeting by speaking, “If you all are here just to punch my lights out, I’m leaving now. Just saying.”
Despite a vote being called on whether they should get to punch her lights out (a close result with the motion failing sixteen to fourteen), the meeting ran pretty smoothly. It was generally agreed that Speedster was a moron and that any fallout from it was purely Luna and Speedster’s problems since they had caused the problem in the first place.
After the meeting, however, Speedster had to escape rapidly as the ones who wanted to get into a fight with her over this tried to jump her on their way out. Instead of heading for her home, she instead sped for the treehouse.
She spent a few days there instead of hanging around the city, recognising that she wasn’t welcome in her usual haunts while the Club was still furious at her and wanting to get some real work done on the treehouses before any more snow fell. She kept up with her job, but other than that, she spend almost two full weeks down there, heading back into town on the fourteenth day to find Luna waiting for her at her door.
“Speeds, hey. You been at the treehouses?” Luna fussed at her, brushing off the dirt and tutting at the paint on her jacket.
“Yeah, you could have rang you know.” Speedster pointed out as she headed inside, letting Luna go first as she headed in. “My phone still works out there.”
“It’s been flat for days.” Luna pointed out, causing her friend to look sheepish as she checked the device in question only to find Luna was quite correct.
“Oh.” Juliet looked sheepish. “Anything happened?” She asked as she plugged the phone in, looking over at Luna who was shuffling back and forth, looking uneasy. “Luna?”
“Sorry, sorry.” Luna apologised, seeming to lean into something Speedster couldn’t see. “I just...There’s been signs of your World Sphere and we couldn’t get a hold of you and I feared...” When Luna trailed off, Juliet frowned.
“What?” She asked, “Luna, what’s happened in the last couple of weeks? What signs?” Speedster’s eyes widened as Luna’s eyes actually changed colour, shifting from a soft amethyst to a sharp ruby red. She had never seen Luna’s eyes do that before, even when she had the Other Her in control and it worried her, “Lune?” She asked, worried.
“During the last week or so, there have been robots running around the campus.” The Other Luna informed her. “Not particularly smart ones and they don’t have much of a bite to them, but they tend to follow anyone around who’s a little different. No one knows where they’re coming from or who made them, only that they look like they’re made out of junk and seem to have some sort of A.I.”
“Robots?” Juliet was confused. “How is that a sign of my World Sphere?”
“Speedster,” Luna’s tone took on that of one speaking to a particularly slow child, “How far away from junk robots with learning A.I. do you think we are?”
“I know that people have already made learning A.I.s.” Speedster shrugged, “So not very?”
“Okay, but what does your Fusion fight regularly?” Luna tried coming at it from a different angle.
“Other hedgehogs.” Speedster’s offhand comment made the Other Luna glower at her, “I get it, I do.” She put her hands up defensively. “You think Buttnik’s Fused to someone.”
