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It’s a week or two earlier.

Lucy attends an underground fighting tournament.

There are rings and rings of people fighting down below. There are at least four battles going at any given time. It’s dark and the area is tented like a circus.

She squints down.

She pokes the girl sitting beside her.

“You,” she says. She waves her underground fighting playbill. “Human girl. Tell me of Sid and Max.”

Emily glances at her.

Lucy suddenly flashes on an old Vulcan salute. She flares her nostrils. She looks away.

“Nevermind,” she says.

“Ha ha!” says Emily. She sing-songs, “Max has a fan-girl.”

The evil prophet of space kills her —

Wait, no.

That’s a pretty sweet viper palm, admittedly, but it goes through where Emily’s neck had just been and not through Emily’s actual neck. Emily is on the floor, having just kicked out the metal support from under Lucy’s chair. The evil prophet of space tumbles forward and lands awkwardly over the shoulder of Meredith, who was sitting in front of them.

“Club represent!” says Meredith, pumping a fist.

Lucy hisses and thinks about killing her, but because Meredith is in the Konami Thunder Dance club she does not. Instead she awkwardly rights herself.

“I’m Emily,” Emily says. She is holding out a flat hand. Lucy stares at it, waiting for it to writhe with some sort of aegis of evil prophecy, or possibly stupid-Vulcan-salute-girl cooties, but it doesn’t. So finally, resentfully, she shakes hands.

“Lucy,” sulks Lucy.

“Oh! The new girl.”

“I am not —”

Lucy sighs.

“I am here to watch Max’s fight.”

“Too late,” says Emily. “You just missed — just kidding sit down.”

Lucy eyes her. Then, showing off, she snaps her fingers and restores her chair to solidity with the power of the wicked god of space.

<< Chapter 2: The Hat without Equal

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