You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'
===
"Excuse me! Miss! Excuse me - oh, bloody hell, would you just stop?"
Stopping, usually, wasn't Sailor V's option. She'd been pursued all day by a young man in a brown jacket, one she'd never seen before. Some gawkers, she recognized, but not this one. He was long-legged and fast, and shamefully persistent. But an afternoon of giving chase meant eventual exhaustion, and the dead-end alley was going to require a twenty-foot vertical jump to escape.
So she did stop. And whirled around to face the sweat-stained stranger in the brown coat.
"Freeze!" she told him, pointing a finger right in his direction. He froze, just as directed. "Take one more step, and I'll punish you!"
"Punish me?" He blinked and then, slowly, reached into his pockets. "Why would you punish - "
"I said freeze!"
Whatever he'd fumbled for fell to the ground. She glanced at it, but then her eyes flicked back up to his face.
"It's a press pass. Don't believe me?" He kicked it. The little plastic bill-fold skittered across the pavement and only stopped when it hit her shoe.
She kicked it right back to him.
"Sailor V. The Miracle Lass of London. That's what the papers are calling you. 'London's Lass.' A bit old-fashioned." He bent down and picked his pass back up, shoving it in his pocket. His eyes never left hers. They were dark, honest.... Thoughtful in a quiet way she couldn't quite explain. "Beautiful. Brave. And hard to track down."
"Why would you track me down?" she asked.
"For an interview."
"Interview?"
"A three-part interview." He raised his hands. "The Masked Maiden: Sailor V! London's Lass or Terra's Hero? The Last Refuge of the Damned, or the Damsel Against Distress?"
She wrinkled her nose, and he laughed.
"Not my best work, I'll admit that. Don't you want the people of England to see you for who you really are, V? A girl, caught up in a world of mystery, monsters, adventure, and stylish shoes."
A horn sounded in the street and he glanced over his shoulder at it. When he glanced back to the end of the alley, Sailor V was no longer standing there.
"Tomorrow, on the roof of your newspaper building." She grinned at his expression when he glanced up and found her standing two stories up on the rusty fire escape. "Three interviews. No more."
"If I'm good to you," he asked coyly, "would you take off your mask?"
"If you're good to me," she replied with a tiny smirk, "I'll show up tomorrow."
