Sanctuary: Crime at Sea

Laine Cantrille had heard that the streets were not kind, but she did not think that was accurate. Perhaps it was that kindness seemed to mean different things than she had always been told it had sometimes, or perhaps it was something else. She didn't know, but she had found that she did not dislike the streets. She had a place there, one where she felt like she belonged, even if only a little bit.

Laine had heard that people who lived on the streets were dirty, but she had decided that she would not be, and so that had never been a problem. She had been keeping herself tidy since she was a child, after all. Good girls did not get dirty. Perhaps the way Laine kept herself presentable wasn't quite the way everyone else did, but if deciding on a certain self-image and holding it so firmly that it couldn't be dislodged worked... well, it was a strange solution, but it was her solution, and somehow that made it better.

She was getting used to making choices for herself. Sometimes that was the hardest part - not having someone to tell her what to do or where to go. She still had school and that had helped, because there was at least some structure for part of the day. The rest of the days were her own, though, to figure out what she would. Mostly, she studied. Learning was important. She did not know what she was going to do with the knowledge, but it was important anyway.

She was sitting on a split cardboard box that had been put down to keep the rain and dirt from the street away. It wasn't Laine's box, but the woman who had found it didn't mind sharing. She didn't mind most things - mostly she lived in a different world, talking to people who were not there. Sometimes the woman shouted, but she never shouted at Laine. That was different, but it was a good sort of different. Laine tried to make sure that whatever she was talking to during her bad times didn't scare her too much, and make sure she ate something during the better times. In return, she shared her box, and that was okay.

Laine was working on her math problems again. She didn't have paper, so she was writing them out on the box. Laine's writing was very small, but she still thought she was going to run out of box very soon. Maybe she could find another one and share it. The woman beside her was yelling at her little portable radio, which Laine didn't mind either. It was something about a baseball game. Laine had learned the rules of baseball by listening. It had good rules, but she wasn't very interested in anything beyond that. Still, the woman liked to listen to it. Sometimes her name was Denise, but she didn't always answer to it, so Laine tried not to think of her name too much.

Names were strange like that. She was definitely Laine, now. She had been worried about it, the first time she had written Laine on her test at school, but no one had said anything. She did not think that they had not noticed, but they were pretending not to notice. The school was pretending not to notice a lot of things. They were pretending not to notice that she lived on a box that wasn't hers. Laine thought that was... kind of them.

She still had some uncertainties about that word, kind. Math was easier. Math didn't rely on how someone felt about a word at any particular moment. It was just equations. She solved another one while the woman beside her argued with the radio about the placement of a ball that she could not see.

Laine wondered what it was like to be so sure of everything, but she did not think she was ever going to find out. She wasn't even going to find out about where the ball had been and whether it had belonged there, because the announcer of the game shifted over to a local news break. The woman beside her wasn't happy about that, either, but she was more unhappy about the interruption in the broadcast than in the news itself.

The radio said that someone was trying to steal a ship in the harbor. Laine wondered if they were pirates. People said that pirates did not exist any more, but people said a lot of things that she had many questions about. Maybe some day she would meet a pirate, and ask them - although she supposed that if she did meet a pirate, she would not have to ask. Sometimes questions answered themselves.

The news also said something about people with powers, special abilities. That made Laine look up. She hadn't been telling anyone about herself. The school was also pretending they did not know about that, but Laine knew that was a lie. She hadn't corrected it, though, because she didn't know how to, and other than keeping herself tidy, she didn't want to use her abilities anyway.

But she had thought about when they had come out, and the people who had been there for her, and whether or not people like that had a responsibility to do things like that. Eventually, she had decided that they did - first, to be responsible for themselves, but then to be responsible for others like them. Maybe things would have gone differently if there hadn't been people like that there to be responsible for her. Laine didn't know if different was a good or bad thing in that case, but she had decided it didn't have to be.

Still, if there were people with powers there, maybe she should go. Maybe she would find out if there was someone there who she belonged with.

She put away her math book with the knowledge that it was hers and that it would be there when she wanted it, and took out the only other thing that was hers. It was a blanket, she supposed, although she was not really sure if it was much of one. It was the sort of blanket that was given out at shelters to people who didn't have a place to stay and it was cold outside, and this one had been given to her. Whatever color it had originally been, it was mostly a faded gray now, a tattered and threadbare thing. It was not a very good blanket, but Laine was not a very good superhero, and so that was very fitting.

She put it on over her shoulders, wrapped around a couple times like a cloak, a fold of it up over her head like a hood. It would stay there because that was where it was supposed to be.

And Laine was supposed to be in the harbor. She walked there, which did not take very long, because it was only two streets over. Being on the beach did not solve the situation, though. If Laine was a good girl, she would go home and let the grown-ups handle it, but Laine was...

...Laine was a superhero, whether or not she had wanted to be. Laine who was a superhero was not afraid to talk to people, and so she walked over to someone standing by a motorboat with her tattered cloak wrapped around her for protection.

"Will you take me out there, please?"

“Sorry, sorry, I was really looking forward to tonight.”

Mai tapped her brakes as she took the curve of the interstate exit ramp a touch faster than its speed limit allowed. A pair of tickets resting in the passenger’s seat slid doorside. This made the third time this week that she’d have to call off this particular date, which also made it the third time this week that Mai’s girlfriend graciously accepted her apology for plans dropped at the last second. It was her fault for buying the tickets ahead of time wasn't it? Just doing that had given all the unsavory elements around town to ruin any plans she tried to set up.

Mai shifted the shoulder she was using to pin her phone to her ear, cutting her wheel fast as she rolled onto a street that followed the harborside. Ship was a way out into the water, it would be a bit tricky getting there.

“Mm, how about dinner and a movie back at my place? Sushi joint down the street is open late.”

A shady yacht owned by a shadier man, not the sort of thing that would really make one’s sense of justice demand action if not for the people who found themselves suddenly caught up in the middle. The ransom demands were the odd part, she could understand the ship, but only wanting a grand a head seemed low for the effort put in to take the ship over.

“At the harbor, ll’give you a call back when I’m free and we’ll figure tonight out.”

Mai slowed as she slid into the parking lot, finding an empty space near the docks. No camera crews or police setting up, though they might have found a better vantage point somewhere else along the harbor. She exchanged her ‘love yous’ before silencing her phone and sliding it into an interior pocket of her jacket. She popped her door, slid out, and closed it again with a bump of her hip. Her neon gaze flicked around the area, looking to see if there was any offering of boat rentals, before an odd sight caught her attention. A fisherman by the looks of it talking to two girls, or well that was Mai’s assumption anyway. One was wearing some bold tie dye assortment with a mask, and the other was swaddled up in a threadbare blanket.

When the fisherman was clearly about to tell them off, the tie dye girl sprayed him with something yellow that stopped him in his tracks before snatching something out of his hand. With a frown Mai closed the distance at a jog, slowing as she approached the two stepped into the fisherman’s boat, tie dye girl asking if the other knew how to pilot a boat. Mai brought her hands together apologetically as she passed by the fisherman, he wasn’t so much frozen as he was moving like a movie running at a quarter speed. Now to solve the first important mystery of the day, why were two kids in makeshift disguises hijacking a boat?

“Hello, hello.” She said cheerily, an easy smile curving her lips as she hung back what felt a reasonable distance. “Might I ask what you two are doing with our friend over there’s boat?”

Laine was negotiating with the boatman when someone else walked up. 'Negotiating' meant that he was staring at her, which she did not like, and she was avoiding eye contact, because she did not like that either. Laine was not sure if this was what negotiation was meant to be, but it was what was happening, and she did not have another good word for it.

The other person who arrived was very strangely dressed, but not in a way that implied that she was a bad girl. The outfit was very colorful, but it was not at all like the one that the woman who called herself Jazz had worn. That one had been much too small, too short, or not nearly enough of anything. It was not the sort of outfit that Laine would ever dream of wearing. This new girl's outfit was not so bad, though. It was different, and it marked her as being different, but it was different in a way that was not bad.

Laine was trying to be different in a way that was not bad, too. She did not have a fancy outfit, though. She just had a thin, tattered blanket. For now, that was enough. The other girl asked to go along, which was enough to interrupt the negotiation. The boatman did not seem as impressed by the new girl's outfit as Laine was. The negotiations started going bad, but the new girl sprayed the man with paint.

Laine was not sure if this was something she was supposed to do. The man moved, but... slowly. That was very strange. Laine watched him curiously, which was why she was not watching the other girl when the keys ended up in her hand. She was not sure if that was allowed or not. The other girl asked if Laine knew how to drive a boat, which was definitely not allowed.

"I don't have a license." A license was required to drive a boat. Licenses were required to operate all motor vehicles. Laine did not have any licenses, and did not know how to operate any motor vehicles. She had been hoping the boatman would drive, but it seemed that this was not happening. Laine considered the information that was available. There was much less of it than she would have liked. Laine liked knowing things. That was why she asked questions.

"Who are you?" It was not an existential question. It could have been, but Laine was not a very philosophical person. She liked it when things were more direct. Not knowing who this girl was was not good, especially when another person joined them. The new person looked older. This was definitely going to get confusing without names.

Laine was not sure how she felt about names. Her name had been on the news, but that had been four months ago, and it was the name that she did not like. Elaine. No, she did not like Elaine, not at all. She was different now, but she was not sure how different. Superheroes were not supposed to have normal names. In all the stories, they had different names. Laine had read a lot about superheroes lately. The library was a valuable resource.

"I'm Laine." She liked being Laine. She was not sure if Laine was a superhero. She needed a superhero name. She looked out to the boat, the one she did not have a license for. There was another boat beyond it, out in the sea. This boat was not hers, and the boat farther out was not one that belonged to the person trying to take it. That was why she was here. "I can't drive the boat, but I think I can hold it together."

Yes, that was right. She could do that. Laine was good at keeping things together. Sometimes. It was something she was working on. The boat was a whole, and she could see how it fit together. She could make it stay that way, she thought, even if it was being driven by someone who did not know how to drive boats.

"Call me Anchor."

It seemed that they were all superheroes, then. Laine wondered if the others were as much superheroes as she was, which was not much of a superhero at all. One of them had a special outfit. That implied some forethought. Laine had her tattered blanket capelet, but she was not sure if that implied forethought or not.

"Griffonage. Handwriting of a crude or illegible nature." Laine was not sure what that had to do with the girl who had called herself that, but it was at least an interesting word. It was not one that people used very often. Laine thought that many people would not know what it meant. She liked words, though. Definitions were very useful. Knowing the correct word was important, especially when she was not always good at conveying what she meant through other means.

And Mai. Mai did not sound like a secret code name. It was more of a regular name, like Laine was. She supposed that it could be a different regular name, like Laine was different from Elaine, but she did not think that it was polite to ask. It was better just to let Mai be herself, whoever it was she happened to be. That left the boatman, who had not given his name. Laine wondered if he did not think he was important enough to do so, or if there was some other reason. She looked at him curiously, but he was still scowling at Griffonage, who was holding the keys.

"I'm sorry she did that." Laine was not supposed to be the one apologizing, but he deserved one and it didn't look like he was going to get one otherwise. "I don't think superheroes are supposed to steal. Griffonage, will you give it back, please? The keys belong to him." They were his keys, the keys to his boat. Of course they were supposed to be with him. Why would anyone think anything else?

Whether by her own volition or some subtle influence from Laine, the keys made it back to the man, who was still scowling, though a little less. Laine let her eyes drift outward again, back to where the other boat would be, out on the horizon.

"You kids are really going out there?" This was from the boatman, who still had not given his name, but Laine did not ask. If he hadn't answered the first time, he probably did not want to.

"There are people in danger. Superheroes are supposed to save people who are in danger." Laine watched him weigh the keys in his hand, carefully.

"Fine. I'll get you close, since you're doing it anyway."

Laine's head tilted a little in consideration of this. It seemed like negotiating had worked out after all. She stepped carefully into the boat and sat down, because you were supposed to sit down in a boat. The ride out was interesting. Laine had never been on a boat before, and did not know what to expect. She stayed quiet, thinking about what to do next.

She did not have many ideas, but she had to do something, because that was what superheroes did. It didn't take long enough to get there for her to come up with a plan, and she was not sure if that was good for the hostages or not. The boatman was a very good driver, though, and was able to pull them right up into the shadows of the yacht. Laine thought that this probably meant that the villains had seen them, but she did not seem to have much of a choice about that. She did not have hiding things powers.

There was a set of rungs built into the side of the yacht like a ladder. Laine reached out when they were close, pulling herself over and climbing up. Good girls were not supposed to climb, but Laine thought maybe it was different when they were superheroes. She did not fall, because she was holding on to the rungs. This was a good thing, because she did not know how to swim. That was okay, though, because it just meant that she did not belong in the water.

She pulled herself over the side of the boat. Since she was not very good at stealth, she decided she would try negotiation again.

"Hello. Will you please give the hostages back now?"

“I’ll keep an eye on them.” Mai said, with a smile as she stepped onto the boat. It seemed like the two kids had their hearts in the right place, even if they weren’t fully thinking their actions through. The one wearing the rags, Anchor, she wanted to go by, seemed like she had a better head on her shoulders. She gave the keys back after all. Wouldn’t be fair to make any judgements on either of them off first impressions alone, she also knew, so better to try to put things on the right foot going forward.

“Good to meet the two of you.” Mai said, after Griffonage gave her alias. She took a seat at the front of the boat, a better chance to knock any bullets off course from there, which was something she’d rather not attempt to do. The boat under her was metal too and she wasn’t fond of the idea of taking a swim today, her dress wasn’t exactly crime fighting or ocean diving grade but she had also been expecting to be in the middle of a date right now. “The name’s Mai, I hope we can get along.”

The short ride didn’t offer much time to pull together a plan, though there didn’t seem to be much talking. So, Mai instead kept her focus on anything threatening on the yacht. She glanced back when Griffionage offered to speed them up, probably the opposite of what she had done to the boatman if she allowed herself to assume the obvious.

“I’ll have to pass, don’t think this is the best moment to experiment with strange paints[/b].” Mai said with a wink. Not the best time to trip over her own legs because things were moving too fast. She drew a breath as the boat came to a smooth stop alongside the yacht. Man definitely knew his stuff.

“Thanks, I owe you one.” She said to the man as she clambered onto the ladder after Anchor. Mai gave Griffonage a thumbs up when she volunteered to provide them cover before she quickly worked her way up the ladder. She pulled herself up and over the ship’s railing with a little less grace than she would have liked, but she didn’t feel anything get snagged and rip so it was about the little victories. And, from the sound of things Anchor was trying to just ask for the hostages back. Definitely a bold move there.

Well, if that was the play, no reason not to try, right?

“I’m sure we can all be reasonable about this, yes?” she smiled pleasantly.

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