Gender Politics
 

Vanessa sighed as she watched the latest newscast as she killed time before her shift at the preschool.

"I don't even know why I watch this nonsense," she said, glancing at her sister.

"I really couldn't tell you," Leah said with a bit of a shrug. "You know I only watch that when there's Avenging happening." She grinned a bit, making sure everything was put away and she was ready for the onslaught of children. They still had a few minutes before starting, at least.

Vanessa shook her head and turned off the newscast, turning to do one last visual check of the room.

"What's on the agenda for today?" she asked Leah. "I was thinking we could set out some crayons and paper today and let the children practice their colors."

"That sounds good to me," Leah agreed. "Colors are always good to work on. It's supposed to be pretty hot today, so indoor activities will be good."

"Yeah, that's what I thought too," Vanessa said, nodding. She grinned. "I'll photocopy a bunch of coloring pages."

"Good call. I've got crayons." Leah went to go get supplies out of one of the cabinets, setting out the crayons for the kids to use. Everything would be a mess again by the end of the day, but that was okay.

Vanessa went and grabbed six or seven different coloring pages and started making copies. She was just finishing up when the first Beta parents arrived to drop off their children.

Leah greeted all the children as they came in, making sure everyone put their bags away and settled in fine. She even exchanged a few quick words with some of the parents. Most of those dropping off were either Betas or Omegas, which was just easier for everyone involved.

Vanessa let Leah chat with the parents, while she herself got the children settled with their coloring. Because it was preschool, and therefore really just glorified daycare, she wasn't worried about teaching the kids to read or write yet. Most of them were too young for that, anyways, only three or four years old, although a few already showed promise.

Leah did go over the colors with the kids, at least, and let some of the more outgoing ones work on their talking skills with her. By the end of her shift, though, she was quite ready to go home and relax for a while.

Vanessa was definitely ready to go home by the end of their shift. It was only part time, but it was still exhausting working with the kids. She briefly paused when she heard sirens go by outside.

"Sounds like something interesting is going on," she commented to Leah as she grabbed her things. "We don't usually hear sirens this close."

"No, we don't," Leah agreed, grabbing her own bag. "Hopefully it's not too close to our place and won't impact foot traffic." She cracked her neck. "I'm ready for the couch and Netflix."

"I am so down for Netflix and crashing on the couch," Vanessa agreed. Heading outside, she turned towards home. "We might not get so lucky with those sirens, sounds like it's in the direction we're going."

"Of course," Leah said on a sigh. She grimaced but kept walking towards their apartment building.

At least until they were across the street. Then she just stopped and stared. Because the sirens were all centered around the building, which was still smoking a little bit. The building was still intact, but there had clearly been a fire.

Vanessa flinched when a corner of the building fell in, clearly having been burnt out from the inside.

"That's our building," she said to Leah. "That's our building, and it was on fire."

"That... is entirely true." Leah's voice was a little too even. "I hope nobody was hurt, I mean, look at it." She made a vague, helpless motion to the building.

Vanessa just made a vaguely helpless noise. Their home had essentially burned down. Their stuff was gone.

"What are we going to do?" she finally asked.

"I'm... not sure," Leah said slowly. "We can go see what's left, see if they'll let us into our apartment. Maybe we got lucky and all our stuff isn't gone? I mean, the whole place isn't wrecked."

"It might not be safe to go in," Vanessa said. "But we can try. See if any of our things made it."

Leah nodded and crossed the street carefully. A few other tenants were out on the sidewalks too.

"They're not letting anyone in yet," one of them told the girls, a nice older lady who lived on the floor below them. "Soon, hopefully."

"Does anyone know what happened?" Vanessa asked, looking around. "How did the fire start?"

"Not sure yet," the lady said. "Firemen are looking into it, so's Clint. He's around here somewhere." She shrugged.

"Good, I was going to ask if he'd been called yet," Vanessa said, looking around. Theoretically, it shouldn't be hard to spot Clint; he tended to wear a god-awful purple hoodie, given the chance.

Even so, it took Leah a couple minutes to spot him. He was up on a neighboring building, looking down at his building and calling something to some fire fighters. Leah huffed.

"Well, he does like to be up high."

"That he does," Vanessa agreed when she saw him as well. "Wonder what he sees up there?"