A/N: Seeing as there isn’t a Sci-fi category here, this would be classified as Other. Anyway, Freedom and Marie are my latest characters, and I really like the cosmic doubles. They make a good team. Freedom, Marie, and Ivy do swear a bit, just to let you know.

“And it’s obvious that you’re dying, dying, just living proof that the camera’s lying.” Fences, Paramore, Riot!

Heart hammering Freem pounded down the street, the police on her heels, her luck has finally run out. Might as well stop pretending, she’s been exposed as a criminal, she doesn’t have to hide the fact that her real name is Freedom. Her name could get her hurt, but she’s already set to be hurt so it doesn’t matter. Turning abruptly, she runs down an alleyway, and as the wall at the end rushes up, her hands started glowing. Well, glowing would be the wrong word, they were covered by pink and black energy. With a wave of her hands a portal opened up, which she jumped through. Seeing this, the police quickened their pace, but it was to late, she was gone, and so was the portal.

~~~~~~*~~~~~~

“Now Marie, we’ve talked about this. We can’t have you messing around with the laws of physics.” Artemis told her, “You know little about that field, and the effects of your meddling.”

In response, Marie rolled her eyes. Unknown to Artemis, she did know about the effects of her meddling. Six months ago she built a machine to negate the effects of gravity. In other words an anti-gravity machine, the only problem being that it malfunctioned and hit her with a beam of energy. This energy still lives within her, allowing her to turn off gravity.

Miffed, Artemis opened his mouth to say something, but stopped when he saw a portal open up.

It was then that Freedom stepped out, “Hey Marie.” she said, breathing heavily.

“Hey Freem, you look tired.” Marie replied.

“Freedom,—and no duh I’m tired! The police chased me half way across town. I managed to avoid them by opening a portal, Oppression ratted me out, like the b-tard he is!” Freedom told her, and then began cussing Oppression out.

“Tough break,” Marie said.

“I’m worried about December, Oppression hates him and must have also ratted him out.” she replied, breathing returning to normal.

“What is going on? Who’s Oppression and December? Why does Oppression hate December? How do you know each other?” asked Artemis, flustered for once.

“The police were tipped off about my various illegal activities by my ex-boyfriend Oppression. December is my current boyfriend, whom Oppression hates because he thinks I dumped him for December. In reality Oppression was getting too nosy, and I didn’t know whether I could trust him with the knowledge that I was a criminal. Oppression is wrong because I met December while on my criminal path. And how I know Marie is very complicated, but let’s just say we’re sisters.” Freedom replied, her hands in the pockets of her skirt.

Looking at them they didn’t look like sisters, but if you looked closely, you could see similarities. For one, they both had streaks of color in their hair, Marie had green ones, Freedom hot pink ones. Another similarity was the way they carried themselves, same slouch, same way of walking. The overall biggest similarity is their eyes. Marie has piercing blue eyes with a thin black rim around the outer edge of her iris, Freedom has piercing fusicha eyes with the same black rim around her iris.

“Can’t December just use the portal opener you two invented and escape to Earth like you did?” Marie asked, one eyebrow raised.

In response to her question, Freedom started swearing profusely for a little while. Composing herself, she answered, “Crap, I forgot about that, yes he could, but then the police could follow him here. If he was smart, he would have destroyed it. Anyway, it’s still not operational unless you want to get zapped. If the police did try to use it then they would probably get the powers to open up a vortex to earth like I did. Crap, that’s just what I need, police officers that could follow me to Earth.”

“Where do you live if you don’t live on Earth? What crimes have you committed?” Artemis asked.

“Live on the planet Garth, a parallel world to Earth. My crimes are varied in nature but they all break Garth’s one law. Garth’s only law is that you can do no Good. Does that answer your questions?” Freedom snapped, patience wearing thin. “I am so doomed. Why me? Why does it have to be me?”

“I don’t know why it’s you. But there must be a reason, things happen for a reason. Fate works like that.” Marie told her, sounding philisophocal.

“Ya, right, try telling Fate that. You’d swear you could see her head swell. She’s already got a big enough ego.” Freedom replied.

It was that moment that Artemis’ communicator decided to ring.

Some other stories by Lydia Tall:

• D Is For Dead
• 9/11/01
• C Is For Conviction
• B Is For Betrayal
• Code Red Creations