The Juniors - The Villains of Valley View

FIFTEEN / "13, 1, 4, 4, 5, 14, 19"

JUSTICE // JAXON

I have no clue why Onyx cares about Surge and Havoc being here. It's normal for villains to move around or out of the country for certain missions. Kind of a useless thing to bring to our attention unless Onyx is planning a team-up.

Either way, I didn't want Lawmaker to find out about the messages. Even if it really was nothing.

That's why the second I heard Renee come home I was jogging down the stairs.

"Hey," I greeted. "Uh, can we talk?"

She was ripping off her police jacket and hanging it up. "What did you want to talk about?"

Interesting. Renee's in a good mood. She's been like this pretty often now, and honestly it's pretty horrifying.

"The League. Why do you think they haven't contacted us yet?" I asked slowly. I peered at Renee while her eyes were somewhere else, trying to gauge her reaction. I just didn't want her to tell me that I was wrong. That she was being contacted.

"Honestly," Renee started with a heavy sigh.

I was immediately chewing my bottom lip, and my hands reached for the back of the couch to squeeze it.

"I don't know. We've been here long enough, and yet, the last message I've gotten from Onyx was the one telling us to stay put."

"Crazy," I sighed out. Renee was looking back at me with an annoyed and disappointed expression, one which I mirrored. But when I looked down, I had to contain my smile.

"But I wouldn't stress about it. This isn't the first time Onyx has kept me stationed out of the League for a duration of time, and it certainly won't be the last."

"Yeah," I said with fake disbelief. Well I can't have her knowing what I know. Onyx was probably going to be sending a follow up message soon, and I didn't want to be around Renee when that happened. "Well, I've got homework, so," I started and turned around.

"Jaxon, hold on one second."

I stopped in my tracks. I felt my breath hitch as my eyes widened, and I slowly turned back around. My eyes reluctantly drifted up to look at Renee, but I still wanted to look away.

"You wouldn't know anything about this, right?"

"What do you mean?" I asked hesitantly.

"Well maybe you've seen or heard some things. Tell me, Jaxon, does anything seem off about this town? To you, specifically."

My eyebrows raised as I looked away. "Uh, no, nothing. Just kind of sickening green pasture everywhere. I go to school with some weird kids, but I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary. Can I go now?"

Renee looked at me for a long time. Her blank, stoic expression almost made me crap my pants. I couldn't tell if she believed me or not. Then again, Renee was pretty good at extracting answers just by giving someone a certain look. "Okay. I haven't seen anything so strange or out of the ordinary either. You can go."

Oh shit. Okay. Okay, good. That's better than I expected. Okay, I should probably go now. I cleared my throat and turned around for the last time before heading upstairs.

~next morning~

The ringing jolted me awake. With widened eyes, I leaned over my bed to the source of the sound. My phone was on the charger and vibrating like crazy. It was 6:35 a.m. My body was literally not awake enough for this.

Oh shit, I thought, noticing that the screen was blue and lit up. I scrambled to get to my phone and almost fell off the bed in the process. Sitting up, I accepted the message.