Quickly calculating the amounts she'd seen in the report, she shouted in her mind, "Ten years? What the heck and hootenannies? Hurry up, Bright. We gotta figure this shit out, like yesterday. Just let me get my hands on the little SOB."
“How do you know he’s little?” Rainbow Bright offhandedly asked.
"Because they all are. If not in reality, in all the ways that matter."
Bringing them in for a landing as smooth as creamy peanut butter on hot toast, Rainbow Bright happily chirped, “Your turn now,” before receding to the back of Freddie’s mind with a, "and you were right. The scent of roasting coffee is only tainted by the act of terrorism that caused it."
Freddie returned to her human form and replied, “My thoughts exactly.”
Shifting for the woman and her winged tree frog had always been precisely that seamless. Even from the first time, there'd been no pain, no dysphoria, nothing more than moving from the front to the rear and then back again in her soul. Freddie really felt sorry for the big, brawny shifters who'd told her how painful their change could be.
“Wonder if it hurts when Buck shifts into his honey badger?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know,” Bright sassed. “Because you didn’t talk to him before setting off on this foolhardy mission.”
"Foolhardy? Exactly how is finding the asshole depriving the world—and me—of the greatest drink in the history of all history foolhardy? Tell me, Bright. Tell me now. Do you really want to be stuck with me for the rest of forever without the aid of caffeine in its most splendid form?"
Sucking in a deep breath, she added before her alter ego could respond, "And if that's not enough, he's a murderer of at least three humans and of more little critters than we can ever ascertain the number of.”
“I am not saying that, and you know it. I am simply voicing my opinion. Of course, all of that matters way more than your coffee consumption. I’ve been telling you to make the switch to green tea for a month of Sundays.”
“And I’ve been telling you to get stuffed.”
Completely ignoring that Freddie had even spoken, the winged tree frog kept going. “I think that coming out here alone, with no backup, in the back-ass of Nowhere, Brazil, in the middle of a valley surrounded by a mountain range where there is absolutely no cell reception was not your smartest move. And you, my dearest Freddie, are no dummy.”
“Did I have a choice?”
“You always have a choice, Freddie.’”
“Yeah, well, up yours, too.”
Slamming her mental blocks into place and securing them with the enchantment she’d inherited from her mother’s side of the family, the magic of the great witch and Celtic goddess, Cerridwen, Freddie gave a sassy retort of her own. “Now, just sit there and think about that, Miss Raeanna Bree, princess of my big round booty.”
Shaking off her irritation and shoving aside the guilt she felt over putting Bright in time-out, Freddie dressed quickly, then opened her mind as far as it would go. Letting her eyes slide shut, she blocked the images of the one and only incredibly sexy honey badger, in the buff, spread out on her bed, waiting for her to join him, and focused on finding the exact location of the fire.
"Thank the Goddess that I got a decent sense of smell from both Mom and Dad. Sure, I sometimes wish Pops would've been a wolf or a bear. Hell, I'd have taken chimp, anything with a few more muscles. It would've… Whoa, looky right there, folks. Got it on the first try. Give me a cookie. Preferably chocolate chip and dipped in coffee."
Yep, gotta get this crisis under control. My brain is not firing on all cylinders.
With her mind's eye locking on the smoldering rubble of what she immediately recognized as a rather large ranch-style hacienda, Freddie opened her real eyes—the two just above her nose—and with the map in her head, marched forward. Almost immediately entrenched in a dense forest of kapok-bearing ceiba trees enlaced with vines and creepers, she pulled out her machete. Designed by Willem, an Amur leopard shifter, the head of the FUCN'A Design and Development Division and one of her good friends, the machete went on every mission with her, even those in the middle of the city. However, she hadn't gotten to try the leopard's newest modification.
Swinging the long sharp blade like it was a bat, she was Babe Ruth, and it was game seven of the 1932 World Series. From one slash to the next, a loud whir emanated from the leather-covered handle, and the machete started to vibrate in her hand. Stopping midstride and midstroke, Freddie felt her eyes open as wide as they would go when long, sharp spikes appeared, covering all the edges of the blade, and began to spin like a buzz saw.
“Son of a biscuit eater!” she cheered. “Way to freakin’ go, Willem. You are the rock star of all rock stars. I’m gonna kiss you square on the lips the next time I see you.”
Pushing through the rest of the thick foliage between her and the smoldering rubble, careful not to damage anything the creatures who called the woods home would need, Freddie stopped fifty yards after emerging from the dense foliage. Sliding her thumb up the inside of the handle, she happily mumbled, "And that's another reason why you're my brother from another mother, dear Willem. The simplicity of your designs does my heart good. Make the off switch the opposite of the on switch. Perfection."
Stowing the machete back in her pack before digging out a bottle of water, Freddie used the guise of getting something to drink to engage her fantastic echolocation and keen sense of hearing. Although there weren't as many sounds as she was sure there'd been the day before, she quickly picked out the scritch of a sloth's long nails scratching across tree branches and the capybaras in their caves at least five miles behind her.
"I see you looking at me through the leaves of that fern, little monkey," she whispered, smiling when the tiny guy's eyes opened even wider before he turned to scamper off.
Tired of talking to herself and her conscience working overtime to make her feel like a real horse's ass, Freddie opened her mental shields and beamed, “Hey, Bright!”
When no reply came, but she could see the winged tree frog pouting in the deepest corner of her mind, Freddie gave up and went straight to the apology portion of their scheduled programming. “I’m sorry, Bright. Really sorry. That was a dick move. Just ’cause I didn’t like what you were saying doesn’t mean I get to play the Wicked Witch of the West and lock you in the dungeon.”
Watching as Rainbow Bright's head turned to the side, the beautiful shine of her emerald green and red-rimmed eyes slowly returning to their usual glowing luster, Freddie went in for the kill. “How about, to make it up to you, when we get home, I let you take our cadets out on a hang-gliding exercise? We’ll call it Professor Bright’s Intro to Riding the Winds.”
Up on her tiny little webbed feet and doing pirouettes from one side of Freddie’s mind to the other, Rainbow Bright sang, “Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes.” To the tune of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.”
“Are you sure, Bright? I’d hate to have to twist your wing.” Freddie chuckled, a sense of relief washing over her that she and her alter ego were once again on good terms.
“Oh, Freddie, you are such a…WATCH OUT!”