The sky made a noise that no sky had any right to make.
It was somewhere between a burp and a giant trying to swallow a trumpet.
Cleo stopped in the middle of the street and looked up through the clear dome of her helmet.
Above the rooftops, a patch of blue had begun to swell.
It bulged outward, transparent at the edges, like somebody was blowing a bubble on the other side of the world.
“We won, but…” The redhead’s hair lifted around her face without the help of wind.
An orange flame danced over her fingertips.
“Did the sky just burp?”
The dark-haired woman beside her watched a line of pale symbols crawl across the bulge.
“That’s not normal sky behavior.”
Cleo raised one gloved finger.
“We should probably poke it.”
“No,” said the dark-haired woman.
“Probably,” said the redhead.
A warning flashed across Cleo’s visor before either of them could settle the argument.
DEFLATION PROTOCOL LEVEL 2 INITIATED 78%
The number ticked upward.
They had survived stranger things that morning.
Cleo was beginning to worry that surviving had only made them eligible for stranger things in the afternoon.
“Who are you?” the redhead asked, suddenly noticing the small figure in blue beside them.
Cleo turned.
“I’m sorry.
I thought you were talking to me.”
“I was.”
The dark-haired woman frowned.
“Wait.
What was her name again?”
A beat passed.
Then the redhead snapped her fingers.
“Oh, yeah.
Bubble Gurl!”
“Cleo,” Cleo said.
“My name is Cleo.”
“Oh my gosh, hi, Bubble Gurl.”
Cleo gave her a look through the helmet glass.
The redhead smiled back as if this had gone beautifully.
They watched the swollen sky tremble.
It seemed to watch them too.
“We were thinking of starting a coven,” the redhead announced.
“A what?” Cleo asked.
“A team,” the dark-haired woman said.
“We were thinking of starting a team.”
“Right.
A coven-team.” The redhead spread her arms.
“The Wicked Bitches of Fuck You.”
Cleo waited for the correction.
None came.
“Wait,” said the dark-haired woman.
“What’s it called?”
“The Wicked Bitches of Fuck You.”
“That is definitely what you said.”
The name traveled faster than they did.
People on the sidewalks shouted it.
A boy with a phone yelled that they were going to get magically sued.
Somebody else asked whether the sky had named them.
By the time the three of them reached the next block, the ridiculous title had already inflated into a legend they had never agreed to.
Cleo might have laughed if the countdown on her visor hadn’t kept climbing.