Chapter 12: The Train and the DDPSI

Beatrice wished that she'd had Alice hand her her sunglasses before she flew away. At least then she wouldn't have to see what she was currently seeing.

This bathroom was FILTHY!!! Seriously, does the train station even have cleaning staff!? The worst part was that even though a lot of the bathroom was colored in various shades of that new "filth" color, she could tell that even without her new vision the bathroom wouldn't look pretty. But at least it wouldn't look as bad as it did now if she had her sunglasses.

She was currently about an inch and a half tall, hovering in the middle of the bathroom so she didn't touch any of it. About 40 minutes had passed and her wings were starting to get tired.

Ambi had wanted to use this time to try to teach Beatrice how to use her wings, but there was absolutely no way she was going to risk Beatrice clumsily flying into a single surface in this bathroom. While her kind had remarkable resistance to illnesses, she didn't know if that trait was inherited by her current body and she really didn't want to find out.

Still, this time wasn't completely fruitless. She had been having Beatrice explain to her how to use her arms, and was now moderately proficient at pointing at things. She still had a long way to go if she wanted to use her body as proficiently as Beatrice does.

To top it all off, her eyes hurt! Ambi was still moaning about it even after Beatrice had explained to her why they were in pain. She didn't get a good glimpse during the fight, and after it her eyes were too watery for her to be able to see properly, but Beatrice was pretty sure at one point she saw Alice wielding a can of bear spray during the fight. Bear spray! Why!? Why did she need that!? Shouldn't ordinary pepper spray work for self-defense purposes?

Still, she and Beatrice both were grateful that it had the effect it did on those hornets. If it didn't, they'd be dead for sure.

Suddenly, just as she was about to begin practicing shooting things with her stingers, the door opened. She quickly flew into one of the stalls, but not before she caught a glimpse of Alice's signature red hair. She immediately turned around and flew towards Alice before suddenly realizing that she had no plan for how she was going to land. She couldn't approach her target at a fast speed and cling to it to stop like she normally did now that her limbs were so unfamiliar.

She began rapidly flailing her arms before turning control over to Beatrice, who braced herself for a crash landing. She hit Alice straight in the collarbone before falling through the neck of her shirt. Alice, who only saw her at the last second, shrieked in surprise and jumped back.

"AAH! Oh my God!" she yelled before feeling something small and soft tumble down her shirt before getting caught on the bottom of it. Or, rather… gripping the bottom of it. The shock of feeling something tumble down her shirt, even if she knew what it was, caused her to stumble backward and come crashing down upon the tile floor.

 This caused the small thing on her shirt to be thrown upwards before tumbling back down onto her chest.

"AAAAAHHHHH- OUEH!" she heard a small voice wail.

Dizzily, Beatrice rubbed her head and looked up to see a giant pair of deep, blue eyes staring right at her.

"AAH!" she yelled, tumbling backward before coming to a stop on Alice's navel. She could no longer see the large pair of eyes looking at her, so she sighed and collected herself. It was only then that she realized who those eyes belonged to.

The ground beneath her suddenly began to shake. Fearing being thrown around again, she grabbed on to Alice's shirt and held on for dear life.

"Haha!" Alice giggled. "You looked ridiculous! Am I really that scary?" she laughed before reaching her hand onto her stomach and picking up her poor, startled friend.

"You really need to work on your landings. That was quite something. You well-near scared me half to death for a second there!" she continued, holding Beatrice up to her face on her open palm.

"B-blame Ambi," Beatrice shuddered, still not used to talking to someone 40x her size. "She was- she was the one f-flying me," Beatrice stammered.

Alice blushed, the redness of her cheeks concealing her freckles. "I... tell her she needs to be more careful where she moves you. It's... it's kind of embarrassing knowing that you went down my shirt like that," she said, avoiding eye contact with the tiny person on her hand. To Beatrice, who was only a few centimeters tall, it felt like the spotlight on a lighthouse had taken its gaze off her, the sheer pressure of its blinding light no longer constantly bearing down upon her like a waterfall seeking to crush her under the weight of the water cascading down its rocky spillway.

The sudden realization of what she had just done hit Beatrice like a ton of bricks. "O-oh," she stammered. "D-don't worry. S-she heard you," she said, her cheeks turning orange as hot, red blood surged underneath her banana-yellow skin.

"Why would it not be okay to go down her shirt like that? Is there some joke here I don't understand?" Ambi asked.

"D-don't worry," Beatrice continued, ignoring the question. "Girl, I k-kinda couldn't see anything given that I w-was, like, f-fighting for my l-life to find s-something to grab on to," Beatrice stammered.

"If she's scaring you this much, can't you just close your eyes?" Ambi groaned. She then made a strange noise that sounded like a cross between a buzz and a growl. It seemed that she was growing quite frustrated. "We really need to work on getting you more accustomed to being small. I can't have you feeling this afraid every single time we're this size. It affects me, too!"

"I'm just teasing... mostly," Alice said, still a little flustered.

After explaining to Ambi the human importance of personal boundaries, Beatrice stuttered that she wanted to be put back into Alice's purse and get back on their Skype call so they could talk.

"Oh, sure, you're probably freaked out of your mind right now, aren't you? Before I do that, though, I need to tell you a few things," Alice said.

"W-what?" Beatrice stammered. "Wait, first, can you t-tell me why you c-carry around fucking bear spray!? M- my eyes are s-still s-stinging and it's been n-nearly an hour!" she cried.

"Yeah, that hurt!" Ambi chimed in. She knew only Beatrice could hear her, but she said it anyway.

"Oh, uh... sorry about that," Alice said, sheepishly. "I carry it just in case. Pepper spray's legal in this state, but there's no law against going a step up to bear spray, so I figured, 'why not?' Whatever will hurt any potential attackers more, am I right?" she laughed half-heartedly.

Beatrice just rubbed her eyes in response.

"I'm sorry, I'm really sorry..." Alice murmured.

Beatrice, now keeping her eyes closed, looked up toward the source of the booming voice that was shaking her teeth inside her skull every time it spoke. Even though her eyes were closed, she was still aware of her helplessness and of the giant carrying her in its palm. This awareness was only heightened every time the giant spoke, and she knew she could very easily be flattened between its fingers if it made one careless mistake. She had never been more aware of her own mortality in her entire life. "I-it's fine. A-anyway, you said you h-had something to tell me?" she stammered, just wanting to get this over with so she could retreat to the safety of her friend's purse once more.

Our train is going to get stopped after a few hours and everyone on it will be quarantined, myself included. When that happens, I will need you to hide somewhere in the station and wait for my return. I'll be wearing a blue headband and I will stand outside the Women's restroom. You'll be able to recognize me by my bright red hair and contrasting blue headband. Sound good?" she said.

"W-wait a second, hold on, why is that going to happen?" Beatrice asked.

"Did you not pay attention during our class on paranormal and supernatural law… nevermind, not important," Alice said, shaking her head. "To make a long story short, the paramedics and SWAT officers in this city are very poorly trained when it comes to supernatural incidents. Emergency response teams in the United States usually respond at least somewhat properly when the incident is ongoing by containing it and calling a higher department... though they usually call the Federal Bureau of Investigations and get redirected to the Department of Domestic Paranormal and Supernatural Investigations instead of calling the DDPSI directly. Most of their training regarding these types of incidents actually focuses on active incidents rather than ones that appear to have already finished, which is why many of them don't really know the proper protocol for one that appears minor and has already finished. They were supposed to detain me and everyone involved in the incident, set up a quarantine around the scene of the incident, and wait for the DDPSI to show up and take over. The DDPSI needs to screen everyone for supernatural energy contamination, curses, and mutant/Altered pathogens. However, apparently I was the only one there who knew that. A couple of them figured that this was what they were supposed to do, but they felt really pressured when I directly asked them if I was being detained or arrested," she continued.

"Ah, you gave them the whole 'lawyer' spiel?" Beatrice chuckled.

"Pretty much. Since they're legally required to tell me if I'm being detained or if I'm free to go if I ask them, they got kind of upset that they couldn't keep us there anymore without directly telling us that we were being detained," she said.

"Us?" Beatrice asked.

"Me and the driver," Alice responded. "Anyways, since they didn't want to say, 'yes, you are being detained,' and risk actually detaining us for a reason that they weren't sure was actually legal, they let me go. Since I very clearly knew my shit when it comes to law, they deferred to my own judgement for fear of being sued if they did something wrong. I called another taxi ahead of time, so it showed up at about the same time as they finished taking my statement," she said, a subtle look of pride on her face.

"Dang, way to go Alice!" Beatrice cheered.

"Thank you," Alice smiled.

"But I'm confused. Don't you need to be quarantined for 24 hours? Why're you doing things this way?" Beatrice asked.

"I was getting to that," Alice responded. "Anyways, since I'd probably need to be detained for at least a full day by the DDPSI, I figured that this was the best way to do things since you'd definitely be attacked again by those hornets if you had to wait here. If we do things this way, we at least put some distance between ourselves and this city before the DDPSI quarantines me. So… what do you think?" Alice smiled. "I'm brilliant, huh?"

Beatrice stood there for a moment, stunned by what she just heard.

"Wow… your friend is pretty smart. I think we made the right decision by bringing her along," Ambi said, slowly warming up to the idea of having Alice accompany them on their journey.

Alice, meanwhile, patiently waited for the praise she was so sure she was about to receive. "Wow! You're so smart, Alice! What a great plan!" she imagined her friend saying.

But Beatrice just shook her head. Then, she opened her mouth.

"Alice… this is a STUPID PLAN! Why not just have me wait for you in Portland!?" Beatrice yelled. "You're going to get an ENTIRE TRAIN quarantined and put an entire department of the government in full panic mode!!! What the Hell were you thinking!?"

Alice stepped back, appalled by what she'd just heard. This caused Beatrice to stumble and fall off her hand, making Alice quickly scramble to catch her. Gripping her firmly in her hand once again, she held her up to her face so they could continue to talk.

"I was THINKING that Portland Train Station is massive and thousands of people probably go through there every day. You could get lost! Or caught! Or you could miss me completely! This way at least we get separated in some random small town with far fewer people using the trains. It'll be a lot safer and easier that way!" Alice hastily explained.

"But what if you WERE detained here? Wasn't your original plan to have me wait in Portland anyway!?" Beatrice yelled. "Also, stop squeezing me so tight! You're crushing my wings!"

"Aah! Sorry, sorry!" Alice replied, quickly opening up her hand and setting Beatrice down on her palms. Beatrice quickly stood up and brushed off her wings before flapping them a few times to loosen them up and shake off the pain.

"Anyways, that was never going to happen. I was confident I could get the SWAT officer to let me go," Alice explained.

Alice specifically remembered from another lecture and a video she watched that the DDPSI's number one complaint was that emergency response teams across the nation were not properly trained to handle supernatural incidents. The DDPSI actually prefers to respond to active incidents rather than ones that have already finished because usually the local emergency response team is able to intuit what to do based on protocol for other high-stakes but non-supernatural incidents. But ones that were already over were an entirely different story. They often responded to incidents only to find that the SWAT team failed to quarantine everyone involved, necessitating frantic contact-tracing and a roundup of everyone involved in the incident and everyone who came into contact with them. It's a real headache. A national survey of emergency response staff found that less than 1% of cities in the nation have staff that not only know how to respond to a supernatural incident that had already finished, but also frequently train themselves on the protocol for such incidents so that they are always properly prepared. The DDPSI tried several times to remedy this through implementing various training curricula, but since nobody ever expects that they'll deal with a supernatural incident on the job, almost nobody pays any real attention to it.

The DDPSI even tries to instruct SWAT personnel on what to do once they receive confirmation that a supernatural incident has occurred, but usually the emergency response department does not have the DDPSI emergency number on hand like they are supposed to and they have to dig around the office to find it before calling the DDPSI. This can take several precious minutes, and several minutes is all it takes for an ignorant SWAT officer to let a witness go. Incidentally, it took around 30 minutes for the DDPSI to be called about the hornets once the SWAT team showed up.

"Wait, won't the SWAT team just turn around and come search the train station for you once they find out they weren't supposed to let you go?" Beatrice asked.

Alice winked. "I thought of that, too! I fabricated some story about needing to get to an apartment close to the train station. I not-so-subtly hinted that I was doing some pro-bono legal work for a family member and that I needed to see him urgently. After the taxi dropped me off, I only had to walk about a block to get here!" she smiled.

"So you lied to them? Won't the police be mad when they discover that you gave a fake story to the taxi driver they're inevitably going to pull over, quarantine, and question?" Beatrice snapped.

Alice confidently threw her hair back. "I didn't exactly lie to them… I just told them where I wanted to go and they took me there. Anything they insinuated after that was 100% on them," she laughed. "Oh, but I did lie to the paramedics since I'm far less likely to get in trouble over that."

"Clever, clever… so I take it you just walked here from the apartment building?" Beatrice asked.

"Yep!" Alice smiled, pensively. "They're probably busting down the doors to that apartment complex right now and scaring some old couple half to death!" she laughed.

Beatrice raised her hand to slap Alice, but seeing that there was quite a distance between her and her friend's face and that she was only a few centimeters tall, she opted instead to stomp on her hand.

"Alice! That's not funny! Those poor people!"

Alice just giggled. "Bea, you look so adorable right now! But seriously, we should probably cut this conversation short before somebody walks in here. I'll get a voice call set up so we can still communicate."

At that, she lowered her hand toward her purse while her friend was still stomping on it. After carefully unzipping the zipper while keeping her other hand steady, she moved her hand closer to the opening and Beatrice crawled in. After getting jostled around a bit while Alice dug around for their phones, she got comfortable and lifted her tissue-paper blanket over her chest while she waited to hear Alice's voice ring out from the earpiece next to her.

"Wow… you were right about the SWAT team," she heard Alice say. "Several blue-and-white lights are zipping past the train station toward where I told them to drop me off."

Alice received several phone calls from a caller I.D. "POLICE" while she and Beatrice conversed in the lobby, so she was forced to turn off her phone and end the call with Beatrice. As the duo sat in silence in the lounge and waited for their train, the adrenaline rush from earlier finally caught up to them. Since Beatrice was already in a cozy, warm, dark place inside Alice's purse, she fell asleep first. As Alice waited in the quiet, dimly-lit train station for the train to arrive, her eyelids began to droop. She only had to wait an hour in total, but the wait still felt like an eternity. When the train finally arrived, she sleepily loaded up her luggage and found her seat. It was all she could do not to fall asleep the moment the train began moving. She quietly opened up her purse to check on Beatrice and saw that she was cutely curled up in a little ball on a mattress of cotton, covered in several sheets made of tissue. Careful not to wake her up, Alice quietly zipped the purse back up, turned her phone back on, muted it, then collapsed into her seat and closed her eyes.

Their peaceful rest would not last long.