Elsa pranced about her flower garden, marvelling at the diversity of flora surrounding her. Roses, tulips, lilies, daisies, sunflowers, orchids, daffodils, marigolds, lavenders, peonies, and so many more. They swayed, they bobbed, they beamed at her. She spun, she smiled, she giggled with glee.

  The now-retired ballerina bounded about, wondering which beauty to choose today. The dandelions were particularly yellow in the morning glow of the sun.

  “Hello, my pretties!” Elsa smiled for her audience. “How are you doing today? Anything I can do to help you? More water? New soil? Just let me know!”

  There was a moment of silence as her questions were absorbed by the plants below.

  Then, they replied.

  “Hello, Flower Power,” one of the more mature dandelions replied.

  Giggling, she pinched herself. What a dream!

  One day, she cared for her incredible garden, speaking to and fawning over every plant as if it were her own child. The next day, she Awakened and of all things, she could speak to her flowers!

  She had told the plants to call her “Flower Power” because she found it cute. Fortunately, they never cared to question her on anything she told them. Leaning in, Elsa allowed the dandelion to continue.

  “We’re good, thanks for checking in on us,” the dandelion said in its high pitched, sing-song voice.

  As she stood to leave, Elsa was called back by another dandelion. It was young, almost a baby, and had yet to give way to its beautiful prime of a blooming yellow flower. Patiently, she crouched next to it, ready to grant it any request.

  “I have news,” it said cheerily.

  “Oh? Well, what do you have to share, little one?”

  “I heard from some roses, who heard from some orchids, who heard from some tulips—but you can never really trust tulips—who heard from some marigolds, that EUE wants to take you out.”

  Elsa’s smile faltered. “Take me… out? Why would HUE want to do that? My power isn’t a threat! All I ever do is talk to flowers!”

  “No, EUE, the Equality Unification Entity. They’re Awakened like you,” it said, as if that was the only portion that needed clarification. Flowers couldn’t smile, but Elsa could swear the dandelion was beaming at her.

  Hastily grabbing a shovel and small planter, Elsa dug out the small patch of dandelions with her shaking hands. Transporting them to the mobile flower home, she ran for her cottage almost tripping as she locked the door behind her.

  “I don’t know who this EUE is, but I won’t let them harm me or my beautiful friends,” Elsa declared. “When do they plan to come? Today? Are they on the way?” Elsa’s voice quickened with each question.

  “Tomorrow,” the dandelion said with what appeared to be a slight bow of its stem.

  Taking a deep, calming breath, her radiant smile returned. “Then we have time to prepare.”

  * * *

  Preparations done, sun sitting above the horizon, she waited in the cottage silently, peeking out from her curtain just beyond her protective layer of flowers.

  “Today?” Elsa asked again, looking at the dandelions sitting in her windowsill.

  “Today is the day they said they would take you out,” the young dandelion confirmed.

  The company of her new friends gave her a small comfort. Taking some deep breaths, she stole another glance out to her meadow of a front yard. Tapping the windowsill nervously, she leaned in closer to the flowers.

  “Do you think the roof will hold under them if they try to sneak in from above?”

  “I don't think they'll land on the roof,” it said, sounding dazed, like the topic made little sense to it. Such was flower youth.

  “Yeah, too obvious,” Elsa agreed, taking yet another look out from behind the curtains.

  A speck in the distance was making itself clear. There were three of them. One flying and two being carried in, all wearing goggles of varying designs. They landed at a much further location from her house than she had hoped. She bit her lip. How could they anticipate her counterattack so well?

  Then the goggles stood out to her. All black. She had seen it on the news. Those were the criminal Awakened going around committing all the crimes. She had heard of them burning down business, robbing people, even attacking HUE headquarters. Once again, she had to ask herself what they wanted with her.

  “Elsa! Hello? That’s your name, right? We’ve been looking for you!” one bellowed to Elsa’s cottage. His voice seemed much louder than it should have been from where he was calling from. Worse, he had the build of someone ready to compete in a bodybuilding competition. He could crush her frail frame with little more than a flex.

  “How do they know my name!” Elsa was finding it hard to breathe.

  “News can travel two ways,” her little informant replied matter-of-factly. “It was probably the tulips.”

  Elsa kept still lest she make her presence known and made a mental note to interrogate the tulips once the ordeal was over.

  If she survived.

  “Does your network of flora know who this guy is?” she asked, more out of desperation than hope of an actual response.

  The young dandelion bobbed innocently. “That’s the Chanter!”

  Elsa’s eyes widened at the surprise reconnaissance report she was receiving.

  “What does he do?”

  “It’s said he is able to yell so loud he can leave someone deaf from a mile away,” the dandelion added.

  Pursing her lips, Elsa wondered what was holding him back from starting with a deafening scream. The power must have been exaggerated. Or maybe difficult to control. Whatever the case, the EUE brigade was practically breathing down her neck. They were so close to her property.

  “Should we knock on the door?” the flying one next to Chanter asked, adjusting her goggles.

  Elsa wasn't familiar with her either, but didn’t need insider information to find out that she could fly and was strong enough to carry two people without breaking a sweat. Her flowing robes billowed in the light wind, but didn’t move much of her large bonnet for her hair. If she wasn’t so nervous, Elsa would have found it amusing that she wouldn’t have been out of place at a hippie convention.

  “Oh, the flowers in front of Elsa’s house are so beautiful!” the third one squealed.

  The shortest of the three, she bore a large atomic symbol on her chest. Radioactivity? Elsa hoped it was less intimidating than it looked.

  Sweat made its way down Elsa’s nose, dripping in the quiet of the wood cottage. Heart rate quickening, Elsa held her breath for what could come next. The moment of truth had arrived.

  Chanter and the flying EUE member strolled toward Elsa’s front door while the third one began rolling in the tulips and English Broom at the edge of her meadow. The flowers’ screams rose in fear and were then smothered to death. They called for revenge and knew they would soon have it at the rate she was rolling and laughing in their corpses.

  “The poor things,” Elsa said, spitting at the disregard for flower life.

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  “Why are they doing that to flowers?” her baby dandelion asked curiously. “Not the tulips, they deserved it,” it added, almost like an afterthought.

  “That's what criminals do. They hurt anything outside their organization,” Elsa answered. “And right now, I’m outside their organization.”

  The dandelion didn't ask any follow-ups, likely getting a grasp at what death on a mass scale looked like. Few flowers experienced watching so many of their brethren die, but Elsa couldn’t turn the young bud away from the carnage in fear of giving away their location.

  “Wow, what are these purple ones?” the flying hero asked, interested. Leaning over, she picked up a Monkshood to smell.

  With her bare hands.

  Excellent.

  “Wow, that smells amazing!” Chanter yelled, louder than he needed to. Elsa had added additional scents to them, hoping to get them to bring it closer to their faces. The flying heroine did, but Chanter had something else in his hand. Was that a gun? How had he attained one?

  “Hey, how come…” the flying Awakened one collapsed, numbed and paralyzed by the Monkshood's toxins.

  Increased toxins, actually, as Elsa had convinced her flowers to produce more for the sake of this encounter. Chanter dropped down to the flying heroine and quickly yelled back to his remaining partner.

  “Atomic! Something took out Flo!” he screamed in panic.

  When he looked over to her, he saw she was motionless in the flowers as well, affected by her accidental consumption of the English Broom.

  Elsa hadn’t assumed they'd be clumsy enough to ingest anything, but it was good that she prepared for the possibility. Savages, going as far as eating such sweet beauties.

  “Is it time?” the Angel’s Trumpets hanging above her door asked in a serene voice, “We tire of watching the other flowers get trampled while one of EUE still stands.”

  “Not yet!” Flower Power hissed, looking at the door. Her slight movement gave her position away.

  “Elsa! What happened to them!? I think the flowers hurt them!” Chanter screamed.

  Elsa plugged her ears as Chanter approached the cottage. The door cracked under the weight of his voice. Waving frantically, he ran up to the door and started banging on it. Elsa looked at him grimly, hoping she wouldn’t have to deal with him breaking in.

  “Now, before he speaks!” Elsa yelled to the Angel’s Trumpets, and they all released a downpour of days’ worth of scopolamine.

  Gasping in surprise, Chanter choked for a moment, then collapsed.

  Elsa flung the door open to watch the three EUE members in their dismay. Twitching, choking, or losing consciousness. Better than they deserved.

  “Thought just because I could only speak to flowers that you'd be able to kill me easily! Think again, EUE! There are many ways to defend oneself, even with presumably weak powers like mine.” She stamped her foot down, projecting her voice to her surviving companions in the flower beds beyond.

  “Kill you?” Chanter coughed, his eyes swelling behind his fogging goggles as he lost consciousness to the toxins. “We just wanted... to take... you out to…” he passed out, opening his hand to reveal a gift card to Manny’s Diner.

  Elsa’s smile curved downwards as she looked again at the damage she’d done. Three people at death’s door on her property. None of them having tried to attack her. She never even asked why they were at her door.

  “Dandelion, you said…” Elsa looked back to the flower that was swaying side to side in its youth and innocence, blissfully unaware of the damage to human life occurring on its front lawn.

  “Did they take you out or not?” it asked, curiously.

  Note to self, Elsa thought, eyes still absorbing the scene in front of her. Don’t trust the dandelions, and ask the tulips for forgiveness.

  Unfortunately, she had never cared to question the flowers on anything they told her.

  She looked again at the twitching bodies on the ground. Movement meant they were still alive!

  It wasn’t too late!

  Tripping over herself, Elsa rushed to her medicine cabinet and pulled the vials she’d need for the antidotes.

  * * *

  “So…” Elsa stirred her coffee absentmindedly as she thought of a way to engage her recovering audience “Why do you guys wear goggles?”

  The flying heroine who she’d learned was named Flo, answered between bites of her pancakes. “It’s a uniform. Helps us differentiate between EUE and those knock-offs, HUE. Oh, and those vigilante Freelancers.”

  “Aren’t uniforms supposed to be, uh, uniform? All your goggles look different.”

  “That makes us each unique! And, it doubles as helping to keep up our secret identities!” Flo gave a proud grin as she bit into another pancake. “That’s why we all go by our Awakened names. Can’t let the people know who we really are.”

  Elsa looked around her at the three EUE members and imagined them without goggles on. Her eyes lingered on Chanter. He sat across the table on his own, his bulk taking up the same area as the three women opposite him. The straps of his goggles strained as they stretched across his bald, sweating head. Swollen eyes peered out from behind his lenses, yet he refused to remove his goggles.

  “Unfortunately,” Elsa said slowly, “I’m not sure the goggles are enough to hide the true you.”

  “Would you feel the same w—”

  “Shhhh!” Atomic cut Chanter off. “You’re too loud! Use your inside voice! Then cut that in half!”

  “Sorry,” he said, lowering himself to a volume like a coach telling a referee he missed a call. “As I was saying, would you feel the same way if I gave you one of your own?” Chanter pulled out a pair of goggles that had flower-shaped lenses.

  “Oh my goodness!” Elsa held the goggles close to her heart. “They’re beautiful! What do you think?” She turned to her little planter, which had both dandelions and tulips. Best to have both sides of the story.

  “They look great!” said one of her tulips confidently.

  “Don’t be deceived by his surface level observations. He’s just saying that to make you feel good!” chimed in the baby dandelion.

  Elsa frowned at it, sighing.

  “What did they say?” asked Flo.

  “They said they’re the perfect gift,” Elsa lied.

  “Well, what do you think of our earlier proposal?” asked Atomic. She raised her hand to grab the attention of the waitress.

  “To join EUE?” Elsa looked between her new friends. “You really think my power would be effective in the field? All I can do is talk to flowers. It worked against you in surprise defense, but I don’t see how I could use it in a real world emergency.”

  “We definitely want you in the field, but not the work field,” Flo chuckled as she took a drink of water. Atomic was still waving down the waitress. “We want you to create a field of flowers in front of our headquarters! With your defense capabilities, we’d always be protected from unwanted intruders! Predator would love to meet you.”

  “Predator?”

  “Our leader,” Chanter said, a little too excited.

  The sound of his voice rumbled Elsa to her bones, the coffee mug she held chipped at the top.

  “What’s up with this waitress?” asked Atomic. “She keeps talking with that super old guy over there. Can’t get her attention for the life of me. Maybe she’d look my way if I split the atoms in her apron!”

  “Oh my goodness,” Elsa’s eyes widened. “You can do that?”

  “Uh, no. But, maybe one day I can! Right now I can shrink things down very, very small.”

  “To the size of an atom?”

  “Uh, no. About the size of a coin.”

  “And you can do that with anything?” Elsa imagined turning a home into a keychain.

  “No, it’s mostly already small things. Like maybe a baseball. But, maybe one day I’ll turn a plane into the size of an atom!

  Elsa gave an encouraging shrug. “I like the enthusiasm!”

  “Oh, finally” Atomic rolled her eyes. The waitress—her name tag read “Kelly”—was making her way over.

  “Sorry for the wait,” she sounded so genuine to Elsa. And her smile was very contagious. Why did someone of her upbeat nature spend extra time with the brooding geriatric man slumped over his French Toast? Sympathy? “I love the goggles, by the way. Very trendy.”

  Atomic’s expression relaxed at the compliment. “No worries. Could we get the bill?”

  “Of course.” Kelly made her way over to the register.

  “Okay, before she gets back, I want an answer!” pressed Flo.

  “About what?”

  “What else? About joining us!”

  Elsa turned once again to her flower counsel. “What do you think, my pretties? And no insults about the tulips,” she warned the dandelions.

  “Sounds like a great opportunity to see pastures new!” the tulips replied in unison.

  “There is something to be said about the tulips and their lower standing compared to the dandelions. Out of respect for Flower Power, we will refrain from expressing the truth about them,” a dandelion spokesperson said.

  Elsa raised an eyebrow, both to get the real answer out of them and to challenge them on their flower racism.

  “We begrudgingly agree with the tulips,” the dandelions conceded.

  “Here’s your bill.” Already back, Kelly offered the folder to Chanter.

  “No, I got it, Kelly,” Elsa grabbed it before the others could react. Her perfectly straight teeth gleaming, she took out her recently received gift card.

  “Hey!” Chanter’s sudden reaction caused Flo’s plate to split in half. “We said we’d take you out this time! The gift card is for your next trip here.”

  Flo sighed at her broken plate like a mother cleaning her third mess in minutes, but Kelly swept it away casually. Elsa found it interesting that Kelly didn’t seem to mind, but with more Awakened people appearing by the day, it must be more common than she thought.

  Holding the bill a safe distance away from Chanter, Elsa placed her gift card in the diner folder and handed it back to Kelly.

  “I always love watching friends fight to pay the bill,” Kelly commented. “It reminds me of how much good there still is in this ever-changing world. I noticed you got my name, but I didn’t get yours.”

  Elsa turned to her friends-turned-coworkers and adorned the flower goggles.

  “It’s Flower Power.”