Louise has an offer

You are just about to walk out the door when you feel your phone start to vibrate and loudly ring in your pocket.

“Hello?” you ask, pressing your phone to your ear as you open your front door.

“Hey John!” you hear a familiar familial voice excitedly shout through the phone speaker.

“Oh hey Louise,” you reply, passing your phone from one hand, then the other and then pressing it to your other ear as you close your apartment door behind you and locking the door, “whatcha up to?”

“Not much yet,” she shouts over tinny sounding rock music in the background, “of all people you are planning on going out tonight to a party?”

“I’m trying to,” you chuckle, locking the deadbolt and leaning against the railing of your stairs, looking out over your apartment complex.

“I thought that you had work on Saturdays?” Louise asks.

“Firstly,” you scoff, “I’d hardly call it work, I’m not even getting paid―”

“Tragic,” she interjects.

“Hey,” you say, “secondly, I’ve been given the night off,” you shrug, “figured that I might as well make the most of my time at college.”

“Well,” she replies, “I don’t know of any big college parties that are happening in town tonight.”

“Oh,” you sigh.

“But, I’ve got some friends coming over in a little bit to hang out, chill and drink something, and then go out later,” she says.

“Oh?” you say, “where are you thinking of going out later to?”

“Sorry,” she sighs, “graduate students only, no underclassmen allowed.”

“Rude,” you huff.

“Just kidding,” she chuckles, “we don’t know yet, maybe the Barn?” she pauses, “I also still owe you a bar crawl from when you turned twenty-one so maybe Old Towne? How about we see?”

“Sure, but whose is the ‘we’ in this situation?” you ask.

“Oh, just some friends of mine. Do you remember Andrew and Victoria?” she asks.

You scrunch your nose up, frowning and thinking. “The names are vaguely familiar?” you say.

“I think that I mentioned them to you before, probably over lunch maybe?” she says, and then pauses, “I met them way back when in my undergrad, they’re cool. Also Tatiana’s here too. Say hi Tatiana!”

You hear the phone rustle and you can barely make out someone else’s voice over the tinny din of rock music.

“She said hi,” Louise states, “I don’t know if you heard that.”

“Uh, tell her hi back for me,” you chuckle.

“Will do,” she says, “so are you coming?”

“Sure,” you say with a shrug, “do I get a ride?”

You hear the familiar crack and hiss of a beer can opening through the phone.

“Sorry,” she sighs, “I’m just starting on my second now, not gonna drink and drive, that would be unsafe.”

“Ugh,” you huff, “I get it,” you start making your way down your stairs, “I’ll walk then, see you in a bit.”

“See you soon,” she says, pausing to take an audible sip from her beer, “just call when you get here, we won’t hear it if you knock.”

“Sounds good, bye,” you say.

“Bye!” Louise says.

You hang up the call and pocket your phone again as you reach the bottom of the stairs to your apartment. You notice a couple of unfamiliar girls walking up to the door of the apartment underneath yours. They come bearing bags of what looks like drinks and snacks and chatting idly among themselves.

Both are rather short. The first has long shiny black hair with straight across bangs, brown skin, and is wearing a black sweater, shorts, black leggings, and platform sneakers. The second has shoulder length greasy brown hair, deep shadows under her eyes, wearing a faded Sailor Moon branded t-shirt, and high waisted jeans. Her eyes are fixed firmly on the ground.

You watch out of the corner of your eye as they walk up to the door, knock, and are shortly ushered in by your downstairs neighbors a moment later with friendly giggles and hugs.

You chuckle to yourself and start your walk towards the Poly State campus and towards Louise’s apartment. The streets are full of out of cars honking at each other, groady old dudes on motorcycles slow boating past college girls with incredibly loud exhaust, and younger students starting to pile out into the streets looking for trouble on a Saturday night.

You sense a dazzling array of colors and sensations as you walk around the wandering crowds of students eating, drinking, chatting among themselves. Whites, pinks, reds, and grays populate your mind’s eye. The exposure to it is a little overwhelming, so much information, so many people. It makes your head spin a little. You try your best to focus the overwhelming stimulus down, trying to pick out perhaps one girl out of a whole gaggle at a time rather then getting flashbanged by many different sensations and stimuli all at once.

Eventually you walk back through the wrought iron gate at the edge of the Poly State campus, past even more students, noticing that the couch that was there in the morning is now long gone.

You walk back out the other side of campus into the central downtown proper. Students are all about shopping, gossiping, and goofing around. There’s a nervous energy in the air of the downtown now that the sun is down, it would seem, the excitement of a weekend night. You watch a pack of young men horseplaying with some restaurant’s patio seating chairs, seeing how far back that they can lean in them until a waiter comes to chase them off with harsh words and threats to call the cops so that an elderly pair of customers can use them to jeers of “fascist” and “fucker.”

That’s certainly something that you ought to consider, you think as you walk towards Louise apartment clear on the other side of downtown. How exactly to keep on the right side of the law. You frown. You’re pretty sure that you’ve broken at least one law on indecent exposure already today.

Then your mind is drawn to something that Mark once wrote on the white board in your apartment the first time he had spent the whole weekend with Ben: “Weekend Safety Brief: Don't add to the population. Don't subtract from the population. Stay out of the hospital, newspaper, and jail. If you do end up in jail, establish dominance quickly.” You’re pretty certain that you’d seen something like that before, that Mark was merely writing down something that he found funny that he had seen before somewhere and in truth it was simple, humorous, and informative, but it certainly feels more poignant now. You’ve possibly added to the population already once today.

As if on queue, a city police cruiser slow-rolls past you in the street, windows darkened and rather menacing under the yellowing streetlights and constantly changing shadows of the headlights of the other vehicles on the road.

You feel yourself swallow hard. You figure that despite whatever powers that Vernius may have given you, that it is probably worth your while not to court disaster with the local constabulary.