The FK in the Coffee

“Uh…” Chloe took a sip of her coffee and ate a little more of her food, keeping an eye on her bags. She was trying to think of something useful to add – random facts about her family or friends? The school she came from? More political stuff?

That last option sounded good. “I think… listening to the story of my world, it’s easy to fall into the trap of saying… I don’t know. Something like, ‘this is why we need to keep everything a secret.’ But that’s actually the exact opposite of what you should be learning." Chloe's self-pity faded away; she was eager to get into a debate about this subject

“The reason everything went to hell for us,” she continued, “was because the first supernaturals that the normals learned about were terrorists, using their powers to kill people. And in this world, every year that goes by that people don’t know about us is another year some assholes might blow our cover. So, I think we should blow the cover off this secret world we have, ourselves, while we can still take control of how they learn about us. But we'd have to do it the right way.”

Chloe hoped she wasn’t about to hit the news as some kind of dangerous radical.

Chloe already had an answer prepared.

“We should start the normals off with the easy stuff,” She said. “Things that won’t make people very scared. Stuff like flying, healing, minor shapeshifting, extrasensory perception. Maybe throw in some people who don’t have a lot of power, but they don’t look human either.” Chloe might have been thinking about herself, if she wasn’t so busy hiding her powers. “It would be really good if we revealed ourselves in a humanitarian situation, and used our powers to help people. At some point we’d call a press conference to announce ourselves to the world. Make a really good first impression, without looking too threatening. That’s the important part.”

This had been the subject of many pipe dreams and school cafeteria debates, back home. Should we have revealed ourselves? If we could go back in time and be in charge of everything, how would we have run things? Thinking about the past hurt less than thinking about the future, if there was any future left to be had.

She took a sip of coffee. “Of course, I don’t know how supernatural politics works in this universe. So I, uh, hope I’m not stepping on some kinda anthill here,” she added with a nervous grin.

“No, it’s fine,” Chloe said. “I’ve been talking about this stuff a lot already. It’s –“

She was interrupted by a yelling customer. All conversation stopped; they both turned to stare at the man. Chloe spotted small, black things crawling off of the man. “Yeah,” she agreed with Morgan. “Maybe he’s having a bad day because he’s covered in…”

The demon leaned over, staring at one of the black things on the floor, which had fallen as he walked past. “Yup, that’s… definitely a spider,” She reported, clearly amused. Her appetite was unaffected; she took another bite of her sandwich. “His clothes are full of spiders.” Munch, munch, munch. “How do you end up with spider-filled clothes anyway?” Munch, munch, munch, munch. “Sounds like a curse from a bad horror movie. Like he pissed off a mummy or something.”

Chloe realized mid-sentence that mummies and curses might actually be a thing here. She almost laughed.