“Fine.” She raised her voice. “I’m taking James to see the Sheriff. You all can tag along but you stay back behind the lines. Okay?”
Everybody else nodded, but Danielle said, in a very clear voice, “Where he goes, I go.”
The deputy started to respond but I cut her off, making a ‘hold on’ gesture. “No offense, Deputy. She’s as high-level as I am and probably more dangerous. If he lets me go at all she could only help.”
“More dangerous?” said the deputy. She looked at the petite redhead. “No offense, ma’am. I’m a woman and I know what it’s like not to be taken seriously. But what’s so special about you?”
“My name’s Danielle, Deputy, and I’m a Shadow Dancer,” responded Danielle. “I’m a special kind of fighter that uses Dexterity instead of Strength.” I smiled faintly. We’d come up with this last night. It was a much better explanation than getting into what a ‘rogue’ was, not to mention what a police officer might think of the idea.
“Did you ever see the Avengers movies, Deputy?” asked Samantha.
“Yes,” she said. “Why?”
Samantha pointed at Danielle. “She’s the Black Widow. I am not kidding.”
Franklin’s jaw dropped. “Really?”
Danielle flowed out from under my arm. “Watch,” she said to the deputy.
She took a step, then dropped forward onto her hands. The fall turned into a roll and suddenly the little redhead was doing a tumbling routine, bouncing impossibly high, twisting in the air and barely touching the ground when she came down. While tumbling, she turned around and kept rolling, landing neatly on her feet in front of the astonished deputy. She gave the other woman a smile that hit her with every ounce of Charisma. Deputy Franklin looked like somebody had just bonked her with a bat.
“Do you have something in your pocket?” she said, not even breathing hard. The extra Strength had been points well spent, it looked like. “A quarter? Anything?”
The deputy, mouth still half open, reached into her pocket and pulled out a small folding knife. She held it out with one eyebrow raised.
“That’s fine,” said Danielle, smiling confidently. “Now hold it out flat on the palm of your hand.” The deputy did so. “I could hit you and you couldn’t stop me, but I don’t want to hurt you. I’m going to take that knife, but I promise I am not going to hurt you. You do your best to stop me, okay?”
A grin slipped onto my face. Who knew Danielle was a Kung Fu fan?
“All right,” said Deputy Franklin slowly. “You going to say ‘go?’”
“No,” answered the little rogue cheerfully. “When you’re rea…”
I didn’t have the Dexterity to see what happened next, but I could guess.
The deputy tried to close her fingers around the knife so Danielle couldn’t grab it. There was a blur, more a feeling of motion than a visible movement. The deputy let out a cry of surprise and her hand dropped reflexively to her gun.
Held lightly in Danielle’s small hand was the knife.
“Now imagine I’d had a knife,” said Danielle patiently. “Do you think you could have stopped me from hurting you?”
“No,” said the other woman, looking a little pale. Everyone had looked up at her shout and was watching us intently.
“You’re right,” Danielle said. “But I would never do that, so don’t worry.” She put the knife back in the deputy’s hand and closed her fingers around it. “Can I come now?”
“I’m not sure I could stop you if I wanted to,” said the deputy in an uncertain tone.
“I won’t lie to you, Deputy,” I said. “You couldn’t. But we’re not here to cause trouble. So we asked.”
The deputy shook her head again. “All right. Let’s go.”
It was only a few blocks to the City Hall. It was set well back behind a lawn which was already green in the spring sun. Right in the middle of the lawn was a… big metal box with doors on it. Aran’s description was right on the money.
The Trade Center was a pleasant shade of blue, with a pattern of green markings that made it look very decorative for a big metal box. It was about the size of a semi-trailer, with a four-foot wide, ten-foot tall door every three feet or so on the side I could see. Each door had a handle that looked like the opener on an old-timey refrigerator. Above each was a bubble that looked like a porch light, glowing green.
“That looks harmless enough,” I said to the deputy. “Why is the Sheriff so worried about it?”
She looked at me consideringly.
“The Sheriff did a tour in Afghanistan,” she said. “He worries about booby traps. The thing just appeared out of nowhere in the middle of City Hall’s yard. Can you blame him?”
“No,” I said, “but I wonder why they’d bother with booby traps when they could have just sent an actual bomb. Who are they trying to trick? Why would they bother?”
She started to answer, then shook her head. “Search me,” she said.
The deputy had stopped walking on the far side of the street that fronted the yard in question. There was a rope barrier all along the block to stop people from crossing the road. On the other side of the street, two men sat in chairs, each with a long gun leaning against it.
“The rest of you, stay here,” said Deputy Franklin. “James, you and Danielle come with me.”
We followed. The men watched us come, and Deputy Franklin waved to them. “It’s 10-4,” she called out. “They have something the Sheriff needs to know.”
“Okay, Annie,” said one. The other just nodded.
There was another deputy at the door of the building. With a curious expression, he said, “What’s up, Annie?” Then he looked closely at Danielle and his jaw dropped.
“These two have something the Sheriff needs to know,” she said firmly, and he shook himself out of the daze Danielle’s Charisma had put him in. “Gonna take them in to talk.”
“Anything wrong?” he asked with concern.
“No,” she said. “Might be some good news for once. But let them tell him first.”
“Okay,” he said. “Go on in. City Manager just got here, they’re probably in her office.”
The deputy led us into the small government building, and within a minute we were standing outside a closed door that said CITY MANAGER on its brass plaque. She knocked.
“Who is it?” came a woman’s voice.
“Deputy Franklin, ma’am,” answered our guide. “Two of that group that came in last night have something I think you and the Sheriff need to hear.”
“Come in,” said the voice after a pause.
Franklin opened the door and gestured us inside. It was an unremarkable office, with a nice wooden desk. Behind it was sitting a very no-nonsense looking middle-aged woman, and in front of it was sitting Sheriff Gravelle, who looked tired.
After we were all in and the door shut, the woman stood up. “I’m Cynthia Adams, the City Manager of Pigeon Forge. Who are you folks?” Her voice wasn’t unfriendly, but definitely carried an undertone of ‘I’m very busy so this better be good.’ She did give us a wide-eyed look for a moment, but our Charisma didn’t seem to hit her nearly so hard as it did most people. Politicians probably built up resistance.