"So you locked your sister up in the manor?" Jeanne tilted her head back, the sunscreen on her skin reflecting a greasy sheen. She closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling of warm sunlight on her body. "You turned the manor into a rehab center?"
"Yeah, I gave her a month-long leave of absence. In order to keep her from getting into even more trouble, helping her kick her soft drug habit is a necessary step." Solomon replied with his eyes closed, sounding half-asleep. "Besides, the manor is way better than one of those white-collar prisons—the kind where you can grow organic vegetables and learn textile crafts. We've got a few bears, some sheep, a cat who once tried to commit murder with a fruit knife, and a horse that wants to chew up the entire lawn. There's no better place in the world than this. I don't want her to screw up her life and end up planning heists with retirement home buddies when she's old. That'd be just too pathetic."
"Bayonetta is taking care of her." Jeanne still hadn't opened her eyes. She wore an extremely revealing pure white bikini and was trying her best to get tan lines. But no matter how strong the sunlight was, her skin remained glaringly white, almost transparent under the sun, like a piece of flawless white jade. "This is a novel experience for her. She's always said she wanted to learn how to deal with rebellious teenagers, to prepare for the future."
"Let me out!" Little Lorna clenched her fists and pounded on the door with all her strength. "I don't want to drink organic milk!"
"But you still have to take your medicine, girl." Bayonetta leaned against the doorframe and spoke lazily. A loose black silk kimono embroidered with intricate flowers and crane patterns draped over her, edged in gold. The beautiful witch's shoulders were exposed to the air, only partially hidden beneath her casually tied black hair. Her entire body smelled of sunlight and sunscreen, but unfortunately, she hadn't managed to get any bikini tan lines either. She held a long smoking pipe in her hand, filled with alchemical ointment. A flickering flame hovered above the pipe.
"Drink it, and I'll let you take a puff." she said. "Once you taste the alchemical ointment, you won't want those soft drugs anymore."
"I'm not a fucking junkie!"
"Watch your language." Bayonetta tapped the door with her pipe. "Take your medicine and your tasks for the day are done."
"I'm not stepping on that sewing machine. This isn't a prison!" Little Lorna wrinkled her nose. "I'd rather sleep with my brother than do some prison labor!"
"Girl, if you're trying to piss me off, that trick is way too old."
"Oh yeah? Then wait until I crawl into his bed at midnight and see what you say! There's no better man than him in this world anyway. All the guys at school are idiots. He's my only choice!"
"I'm sure Bayonetta and Little Lorna will get along just fine." Solomon stretched with a satisfied expression. When he requested a leave of absence for Little Lorna from the private school principal, the request was cheerfully approved—so much so that Solomon didn't even get the chance to go through his carefully prepared arguments. He suspected that Lorna's reputation at school might not have been all that great. He also tried to request her academic transcripts—but that idiot principal told him that nowadays, all student grades were confidential. There were no exact scores anymore, only grade levels, supposedly to avoid hurting their self-esteem and to protect minority children.
That was quite possibly the dumbest thing Solomon had heard all year.
In New York, where political correctness ran rampant, many people thought they were being considerate, but it was actually a deeper form of discrimination. Before the Civil War, the American South had been obsessed with a pseudoscience called phrenology. Many believed that the skulls of Black people had three small indentations, which they took as proof that Black people were less intelligent than whites. Nowadays, American universities offered all kinds of scholarships—Diversity Scholarships, LGBTQIAPK Scholarships, and so on—all packaged as acts of respect, but in truth were discriminatory. The city government wouldn't invest in foundational education in Black communities, but instead bent over backward to elevate students with lower scores to sit in the same classrooms as those who had studied hard; or they'd reduce police funding to keep police from arresting so many Black criminals (who accounted for 50% of all U.S. crime), and then criticize the police for using excessive force on Black suspects—all to demonstrate fairness to minorities in a way that was unfair to everyone else.
It was fucking idiotic. Even the redneck truck drivers in the Rust Belt had a more rational mindset than these white liberal saints. Most of Solomon's normal friends were truck drivers. Though their income wasn't as high as urban white-collar workers, their taste wasn't great, and they believed in all kinds of conspiracy theories, at least they didn't say stupid shit like "support marginalized groups, environmental protection, and women's rights" when they were drunk, nor did they try to treat everyone like enemies.
Most media outlets portrayed these people as white trash and racists, but that was only a small portion—and still not as many as Black criminals. Solomon never noticed anything like that in his interactions with his working-class friends—they might give people awful nicknames, but as long as you were blue-collar like them, the truckers Solomon knew would treat you decently.
They even voted Democrat.
It was the media that kept yelling about "fighting racism" who were the most racist of all. They treated anyone who wasn't white as a subhuman, too afraid to say what they really thought.
It was almost impossible to find a normal person in the U.S. now. It was like the world owed them something.
"Need more sunscreen?"
"Of course. Untie the strap for me—I'm too lazy to move." Jeanne rolled over on the lounge chair. "Where did you go that night?"
"What?"
"The night you caught Lorna," she said. "I remember you called the manor after catching the drug dealer, but then it took you several hours to come back."
"I took Little Lorna to have Chicago-style dipped beef. That food cart I've been going to for years is still there. Then I took her to the Avengers base." Solomon squeezed the cool sunscreen onto his hands, rubbed them together, and started applying it. With a wave of his fingers, Jeanne's bikini strap behind her back untied on its own. The white-haired witch needed sunscreen all over, so Solomon had to grab another bottle. "If I hadn't gotten her Captain America's autograph, she wouldn't have come with me so easily. She even tweeted a photo with him. I can already imagine how popular she's gonna be at school now."
When the sunscreen was applied to her skin, Jeanne didn't feel a chill. She had to admit, Solomon was quite considerate with the details. "What did you go to the Avengers base for? I thought you hated that place." she asked. "Don't tell me you went to see that spy mistress of yours?"
"I just wanted to talk to Steve Rogers about something." Solomon shook his head. "I respect him, you know that. He's got all kinds of flaws—he's only human, after all—but his moral character is genuinely noble. He has the courage to sacrifice. I've spent years trying to convince him to change his allegiance, and it's finally starting to work. He's beginning to understand that he should fight for humanity and its future. Hey, Bayonetta, how's it going with Lorna? Did she take the potion?"
"No!" Bayonetta let her robe fall away, the expensive silk pooling on the grass. She laid back down in her previous spot as if she were finally free. "Pass me some sunscreen. I need a good nap. Whew… Teenagers are so damn hard to deal with. We even had a debate about whether high school girls should stay virgins. I can't imagine how we're going to raise a daughter in the future."
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