[hr][center][i][b]The Convoy, Outside Pointe Bordeaux | Grace Kennison[/b][/i][/center]
[center][i]March 18, 2016 - 2 Missed Calls, 2 New Voicemails, 1 Unread Message from Joseph[/i][/center][hr]

Grace felt a heat wave of anger and embarrassment flood over her body as the man she had dragged to the convoy called her an idiot for the second time that day. She now certainly felt like she had been an idiot for helping him out in the first place as the man continued to shove his own foot further and further into his mouth. She had thought she lacked tact, but at this rate the man would be noshing on his entire leg in no time. Part of her felt like it would be for the greater good if she picked him up by the ankles, spun him around like she was an olympian, and hammer threw his ungrateful rear back into the swamp she had found him in. The seasonable part of her knew that would be terrible for at least a hundred thousand reasons with the top one being that it would actually prove his allegations about her intelligence to be accurate. Grace also imagined the insanely crippling amount of guilt and the stigmata that comes with being a murderer would be pretty big bummers, too. 

Still, the man was truly pissing her off. Disgusting her. Lucas (she believed that military man had called mister search-and-seizure Lucas) had discovered some nugget of information on the man the same way he had discovered that her varsity jacket was really Joseph’s. However, his secret was much, much worse judging by the implications. She glowered at the man as he tried to use broken logic to convince the others to take him in. She wanted to yell at him, to drop him with the Golden Rule straight from the Sermon on the Mount, to bring him to justice, to punch him, to go old testament on his—[i]crrrrrrrrrrrrack![/i]

Wide-eyed, Grace looked down at the helmet in her hand. A low, quiet groan escaped from her mouth as she was greeted by the splintered mask. The upsetting man had made her forget about it completely, and in her annoyance she had forgotten to hold her strength back. The mouthguard was totally ruined, and there was a web of cracks over the tinted eye protectors. She walked a few yards away from the men, shaking her head in frustration. She couldn’t listen to them anymore. She turned the mask over in her hand. It wasn’t completely ruined, right? [i]Man, Joseph is going to freaking kill me,[/i] she thought. She sighed with relief as the mask fit over the top of her head. She carefully took it back off and put it in her bag for safe keeping. 

Unzipping the bag, she was greeted by the blinking light on her silenced phone. A message, call, email, update, tweet, notification? It likely wasn’t anything important, but she couldn’t refuse the temptation to find out check it. It gave her an excuse to bury her face into a tiny screen instead of, gulp, having an actual conversation. She pushed the button on the side. Her first thought wasn’t one of fear or concern, but annoyance. If she missed a call, it meant she was busy and didn’t have her phone. Calling her a million times would never change this. She was about to read the message when the phone lit up again. It was Joseph. 

“Finally!” her brother yelled over the line before she could say anything. “Are you safe? Can you hear me? Grace?” She could hear the fear in his voice. “Grace? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, laughing nervously. “Are you—”

“Why the fuck weren’t you answering your phone! Jesus, I thought you were doing something stupid. Listen, Grace, I know you think this would be a good time to get some publicity, but you can’t do anything in this situation, okay? Take the day off. Hell, the week,” said Joseph. He was rambling, not letting her get a word in edgewise. “We got to make sure this things aren’t legit, or make sure they can’t hurt you. You’re out of costume, right? Think you can grab one so we can do some tests later?” 

“Joseph, I literally do not know what you are talking about,” she said. Today, she felt like she didn’t understand anything that anyone was talking about.

“How do you not know what I’m talking about? The, the, the, the thing, grab one of those things, and then get the hell out of there,” he said.

“Oh yeah, those things, no, I totally got you now,” she said dryly. “Listen, it’s not my spot to tell you whether or not to get high in the middle of the day, but please tell me you didn’t do it inside. You know I hate the smell, so…”

“Grace, you are a real idiot sometimes!” he said. She grimaced. “The taser-gun-whatever-thing. That thing. Grab one and then get out, okay?” There was a pause. “You did go to that rally, right?”

“The…” [i]Oh, right.[/i] “Yeah, about that. Well, I, um, got a little distracted.”

“Seriously?” said Joseph. She couldn’t tell if he was relieved or angry. “Fine, okay, no that’s good. Probably best that you aren’t in that crowd of maniacs. Yeah, this is good. So where are you?” She told him that she was at the old plantation. “Why the hell are you out there?” She gave him a truncated version of what happened. When she mentioned the convoy, the speaker next to her ear almost exploded. “What the fuck are you doing with the convoy? Get the fuck out of there, okay?”

“Look, I’m fine, they aren’t going to do anything weird to me, okay?” she said. That had already happened. “I just want to walk around for a bit, talk to some people, and then I’ll come home for dinner. Okay?”

“Oh my god, Grace, how do you not know what’s going on?” he said. “Look, I can’t really explain all of this craziness. It’s bad. Like, real bad, okay? Just get on Twitter.”

Although skeptical, Grace obliged her brother. Clicking on bird icon, her personal account pulled up. Scrolling through a feed of strangers talking about their personal lives, bands advertising for concerts she would never be able to attend, and an ungodly amount of pictures of animals, her eyes widen with horror as it settled upon a new string of messages, each one ending in the same hashtag. She clicked on the hashtag, delving deeper into a cesspool of anger and hate. She felt her stomach twist as she thumbed through the feed, gathering the whole picture one hundred and forty characters at a time. There was a video. She clicked on it, her teeth gritting as she watched some corporate prick knocked out some poor wage slave while the crowd went wild like animals. Her eyes fell on one of the top comments.

[i]Oh God.[/i]

Her feet were already moving, kicking up mud as she ran through the convoy back towards the group of men. She ran by the oddity of a miniature sun, her head not even turning to look as the unusual sight as her mind raced in pace with her beating heart. She didn’t slow as she came upon the group still arguing over the loathsome man. Grace tucked around a girl and caught sight of the black beret. She slowed her pace as she got closer to the man, out of fear of causing a panic and losing her footing and knocking him out with her body. Halting right in front of him, the girl shoved her phone right into his face so that he could clearly read the message: 

[center]Freak show Convoy at Old Foster's Plantation. If we don't protect ourselves, who will? No Hypes in our Home. #StoptheHypes[/center]

“You guys have to get out of here. It’s not safe,” said Grace, trying to keep her voice low as she scrolled through a list of similar comments. “The cops aren’t doing anything about this. It’s like a mass hysteria or something,” she said, dropping the phone into her bag and pulling out her cracked mask. She gave Tarvos a look completely devoid of confidence and then slid the mask over her face, her spiderwebbed visor blocking out the uncertainty in her eyes. 

“I’m want to help you guys, okay? I might not look it, but I can really pull some weight,” she said, realizing as the words came out of her mouth how stupid they really were. “What I mean...oh, nevermind. We got to warn the others, right?”