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“Ahh!” Lisa yelped.
Nine turned his attention away from his laptop, adjusting his glasses as he attempted to discern the problem. “What’s the matter?”
Twelve popped his head out from the other room. “Is there another spider? Geez, where are they getting in from?”
“No, it’s nothing! I just poked my finger on the needle, but I’m fine!”
“Needle?” Nine questioned, finally taking note of what the girl was up to.
Lisa sat on the center of the couch, cloth spread over her lap, myriad spools of thread, little stacks of buttons, and pin cushions in different shapes piled on either side of her.
Nine rubbed at his eyes underneath his glasses. He must have been on the computer for far too long a time, seeing as none of those items- save for Lisa herself- had been on the couch when he had first sat down to work.
“Where’d all this come from?” Twelve asked, picking up a spool by the thread end. It unraveled across the floor, stopping at a pile of bomb-making supplies stacked in the corner.
“Well,” Lisa began, “I thought that because I’m not really very good at cooking, I could still help out around here in a different way. So maybe I could mend your clothes for you…”
At this, Twelve stuck a hand into his pocket, wiggling a finger out from a hole in the corner in demonstration.
“You needed this much equipment just for mending?” Nine asked. It could very well have been for all he knew; neither boy had ever witnessed someone sewing before now.
“You see, when I got to the fabric shop, there was this big sale, and, well, I thought that maybe I could make entirely new clothes for you instead.” Lisa, suddenly shy, turned her gaze toward the spool that had rolled to the floor. “If they come out okay…I was hoping that maybe you could use them in your next Sphinx broadcast…”
“That would be awesome!” Twelve grinned. “We’ll have our own uniforms, like some sort of super villains! Nine, aren’t you excited?”
Nine plucked at the fabric of his own white school-uniform top, as if trying to figure out what use he could possibly have for anything different.
After that, the three teens worked in comfortable silence on their respective projects into the night.
When Lisa awoke the next morning, she found herself asleep on the couch where she always slept, though this time, she was covered in a length of yellow tshirt material, rather than her usual blanket. One of the boys must have covered her during the night.
She began to scan the room, until she found the shirt she had completed the previous night. Gingerly, she took in in her hands, unfolding it. It hadn’t been a dream after all- she, Lisa Mishima, had actually made something by her own two hands, that did not, in fact, catch fire, begin to smoke, or to become otherwise a cause of polite reassurances from her two gratuitous hosts.
She had planned to have the two boys draw lots to choose who would receive the first shirt, however Nine immediately urged Twelve to take the yellow article. Perhaps Twelve’s synesthesia was rubbing off on his friend, Lisa thought with a suppressed giggle. Though, now that she thought about it, she had begun to associate bright, sunny colors with Twelve as well.
That evening, the same process repeated, with Lisa hard at work, fingers sailing up and down, in and out over the cloth, until on the third morning, Nine was presented with the second shirt. Still warm in tone, yet not as flashy as Twelve’s, Nine agreed that the brown was a good choice, even if he did find the idea of a new wardrobe a little frivolous, having little to offer toward their cause. Though, of course, not that taking in a needy girl was any less so, Twelve reminded him.
Lisa watched from off camera that night as the boys performed their latest taunting message to the authorities. Both wore their new shirts, and Lisa thought, though she couldn’t be sure, that whoever was on the case would find themselves particular frustrated with tonight’s riddle.
The recording concluded with Nine and Twelve announcing that yet another attack was in the works.
Lisa began to wonder, as Nine shut down the computer and Twelve removed his mask, if she should make new shirts for the next bombing as well. They may come back dusty, or torn.
May they come back at all.
End