Author's note: This fits in between pages at the end of the "Dead End Kids" storyline, right after Victor urges Lillie to come back with him, and right before they suddenly appear in contemporary NY without her.
For anyone else who was let down by the lack of resolution to Karolina's "I know who did this. And I know where he lives."
"I can't! I can't go with you!" Lily cries, and because there is no music in this alley, she cannot fly away. She can only run, sobbing, into the thronging street. Victor almost follows, but stops himself. He turns back, hiding his own tears from us.
It is discomfiting to be wrong. I thought him merely a machine, a device no more capable of feelings than the Leapfrog, but I was mistaken. There has been so much that I have learned since coming here to my beloved's planet, and so much that I have been forced to unlearn.
We are a hundred years in that planet's past and I very much wish to leave. Every minute we stay we risk causing some minute change that may result in an unpredictable alteration of history. My companions, despite my concerns, seem unperturbed by this possibility.
My beloved Karolina says that we are a family. Though I have my doubts, I say nothing to her. It seems more believable to me that I am tolerated for her sake. Even here, in this alley, I stand apart from the rest of them, alone. An observer.
Molly and Karolina are with the young girl from this time, comforting her while trying to convince her that Old Lace isn't going to eat her.
Karolina has explained to me her situation. Though no older than Molly, she was wed to a much older man, a man who beat her. The bruises and abuse the hatchling has received are certainly appalling, yet I am troubled by the idea, accepted so readily by all the others, to bring her with us to our own time. The possible consequences of altering the time stream like this was the reason why experimenting with time travel technology was forbidden in the Skrull home worlds.
Chase leads the cowed and defeated Yorkes back into their Time Portico under Nico's watchful scrutiny.
I have no idea what has happened to Nico while she was missing, but something profound has changed; not just in the expansion of her powers or the appearance of her staff. The way she dispatched the Yorkes, the calculated ruthlessness of the curse she employed to keep them from changing their fate was genuinely unsettling. It is true that I've been the most critical of her leadership capabilities, but now she seems possessed of a stern efficiency, as if something of the old Nico has been burned away and lost.
I wonder if this is a good thing. I saw the shock on Karolina's face when Nico cast her spell, damning the Yorkes to fulfill their destiny and die without the ability to change that fate. If we are to remain a team, we require a strong leader. And I must admit I would not be displeased if Karolina was no longer quite so admiring of the girl who was her first infatuation.
But if this is all true, why am I still uneasy?
The Yorkes stand on the Portico, their faces slack and expressionless. "Hey, chief," Chase says, stepping away from the device. "Feels kinda weird just letting them go back with this thing. Or forward. Or whatever."
"They won't be able to use it again." Nico says, raising her staff toward the Portico. "One Way," she declares, her voice changing for a moment into what sounds like a chorus of voices. There is a screech of reality tearing for a moment, and then abruptly the Portico is gone.
"Time to go," Nico says.
"C'mon, man." Chase places a fistigon-encased hand on Victor's shoulder. "We gotta get the kiddies back home..."
"Hey! I heard that!" Molly protests.
Victor nods, and wiping a sleeve across his eyes, lets himself be led back to the Leapfrog.
"Okay, 'Frog, got a brand new time-travel thingy!" Chase calls out as he starts up the ramp, the new Over Drive mechanism in his hand. "Let's get out of here!"
"I am unable to comply," Leapfrog's electronic voice announces. "The Over Drive housing has been removed."
Chase stops and frowns. "The what?"
"Oh crap," Victor says, looking nervously from Chase to Nico. "He means the socket the hyper drive thing goes into. I took... it got scorched when the drive burned out. And I thought I'd repair it, you know, while we were looking for the replacement drive."
"Dude, don't tell me you haven't fixed it yet," Chase sighs.
"No! No, it just needed the carbon scraped off the terminals. I got it finished but…" Victor glances down. "I left it in our room. Back at the Street Arabs."
"Right," Nico says. Her face betrays no emotion, but I notice she has been avoiding looking at Victor. That too has changed.
Karolina, crouched by the young girl, stands up. "I'll go, Nico. It will only take me a minute to fly there."
I quickly step forward and take her hand. "No, beloved. You need to replenish your power. I'll retrieve it." Before Karolina can protest, I smile and brush a stray lock of her hair from her forehead. The antique dress she loves so much has become torn and tattered, and her face is streaked with dirt…and unutterably lovely. "You should stay here and look after your orphan."
"Fine. Five minutes, Xavin," Nico says, nodding to me. "The sooner we get out of here, the better. I think I've had my fill of the dawn of the 20th century."
Chase sits down on the Leapfrog's ramp. "Wait, this is the twentieth century?"
I walk a few steps away from the others to the mouth of the alley and then rise swiftly into the air on a pillar of flame.
The streets of New York blur beneath me. At first, they are crowded with people, but they begin to thin out and then become eerily deserted as I near my goal. I slow as I approach the group of buildings the Street Arabs call home, hovering for a moment over the central courtyard where the battle between the factions of super-powered humans of this time had waged.
Despite Nico's prediction, it appears that war has ended, at least temporarily, or moved somewhere else. The square is devoid of movement, the muddy ground littered with debris.
I land on the top of the stairs outside the room that we had occupied. I glance once more across the courtyard. A coal black bird swoops silently down, alighting with a hop on the ground. I realize that what I had mistaken for some bit of broken masonry, half-buried in the mud, is in fact a body.
I should be inured to such sights. I was raised a Skrull warrior, after all, born and trained to the battlefield. I know why they fought; the logic of power and factions and advantage, the tactical and strategic calculations that make others your enemy. Yet I cannot help but feel dismayed by the pointlessness of it all.
I know that one hundred years from now their battles, their causes—their very existence—will be forgotten. Even Victor, who was instilled with a fascination for super heroes, had no idea who these 'Wonders' of this age were.
No doubt my fellow Skrulls would judge me corrupted by Karolina's sentimentality. Perhaps they would be right. I have after all changed much since I left my world. There I was a prince, the heir to my planet's throne. Now I suppose I would be a princess, if that throne still existed to return to.
Molly said that this female form I have chosen is the 'real' me. Literally, of course, she is wrong. If I died, my corpse would become that of a Skrull, not a human; my skin emerald, not the dark brown that I selected from the various hues of earth people. But in a way, she is correct. I have made this my true self—if only because it is the shape I wore when Karolina first came to love me.
I turn from the courtyard and enter the room. It is as we had left it, hours before: a small table in the center of the room, two rows of small cots along the walls, a few other pieces of primitive furniture scattered about. The remnants of this afternoon's meal and a bottle of some foul-tasting beverage our host provided us are still on the table.
It is only then I realize that I had neglected to ask Victor where he put the housing. I shake my head at my stupidity and waste several moments looking about the room. Finally I find a small trunk between two cots. I open it and atop neatly folded clothes the Over Drive housing mechanism rests.
"Where is she?" a voice rasps behind me.
A middle aged man stands in the doorway, his clothes disheveled and splattered with mud. His eyes widen as he looks me up and down. Disgust shows plainly on his face, mixed with other emotions that momentarily anger me.
I curse inwardly. After the pitched battle in the courtyard, I stopped bothering to camouflage myself with period attire. My form-fitting Skrull flight uniform is no doubt…disconcerting to current sensibilities.
"You're one of them, aren't you?" the man demands. "I came here looking for her, but then there was those things fighting... and there was an explosion in the sky!"
"Yes. That was a bomb placed here by some criminals," I explain. "We mitigated its worst effects. Who is it you are looking for?"
"Klara Prast...my Klara. Where is she?" He steps into the room, and I notice the stagger and the slight palsy in his right hand. His anger is obviously stoked by alcohol, making him just that more stupid and unpredictable. "Pete told me she was with the new lot at the Street Arabs...Now you tell me where she is!"
"You are the husband," I say evenly. As I walk toward him, he takes an involuntary step backward before steeling himself. I assess his potential threat and just as quickly dismiss it. Karolina told me that the hatchling Klara possesses some rudimentary power (to control plants, of all things) but this man appears to be merely human.
"When Karolina first told me about this girl, I tried to tell her that such things are products of this time and culture, and are not completely unknown in certain parts of her own era. And that as backward and primitive as you people are, we cannot judge your benighted attitudes by our standards. We had…words about this."
He glowers at me, his fists tightly clenched. They are large and rough, the hands of a man who was perhaps a laborer once, capable of significant damage to a child…even one with powers, if she is too afraid to fight back.
"But then I saw what you did to her. How you beat her. And seeing you now I realize that my beloved was right, and I was wrong. You fear her power, but you fear your own weakness even more. She is coming away with us, to a place where you can no longer harm her."
My words surprise me, as if the act of speaking them had made the decision for me. If they are shock to me, they are a hammer blow to the man. His eyes grow unfocused and he swallows, as if his anger has drained all away in an instant.
"You...you have no right..." he stammers, his voice barely louder than a whisper. "To take her…"
"Go back to your home," I say quietly, taken aback by this abrupt change in his demeanor. "There is nothing for you here." I reach out for his shoulder.
His eyes flash with sudden rage and he lurches away from my touch. "Keep your filthy hands off me, you black whore!"
I jerk my hand back and look at him quizzically. It takes a moment for understanding to come. "My skin color? Yes, I've read about this." Despite myself, I feel a wry smile tug at the corner of my mouth. "You have no idea how foolish that is."
He takes a faltering step toward me, his entire body trembling. It is obvious that his fury is more than matched by his fear and stupidity, and I grow annoyed at myself for wasting so much time with him.
"Leave," I tell him dismissively. "Klara is one of us now. You will never see her again."
I turn away from him and bend to retrieve the mechanism from the trunk. With an inarticulate cry, Prast grabs the bottle from the nearby table and brings it down on my head.
My body reacts autonomically, before I can even think: as the glass shatters, my skull changes density to absorb and distribute the force of the blow away from my brain and my arm sweeps back, elongating, my hand transforming as it moves into a massive slab.
Conscious control arises a micro-second later. I am able to pull the blow at the last moment, at the same time changing my hand back into normal human proportions.
It is enough to avoid instantly fracturing the man's skull but it still sends him flying back across the room.
I feel blood trickle down my cheek where it was sliced by the jagged, broken edge of the bottle. I touch the back of my hand to the wound and the flesh rapidly knits itself back together.
Foolish, I chide myself, turning your back on an opponent like that. My combat instructor would have been very cross with me. I pick up the Over Drive housing from the trunk and walk to where Prast lays by the door, a chair broken into kindling beneath him.
Groaning, he struggles to raise himself. I crouch over him and hold a hand out, a hand that suddenly bursts into flame. Prast's eyes grow wide and he falls back, his bloodless face ruddy with the glow of my fire.
"No. Do not stand," I say. "Where I come from, my instructors taught me that it's foolish to leave a defeated enemy alive on the battlefield."
He watches me, open mouthed and dazed.
I slowly stand up and contemplate the flames that engulf my hand. My fingers close into a fist, and the blazing fire gutters and goes out. "That's what I was taught. But my beloved has shown me a different way, and I am trying to be worthy of her."
I step over him and pause a moment at the doorway. "I will give her your thanks when I see her."
The landing creaks as I walk onto it. I place a hand on the railing and gaze at the courtyard once more. A faint breeze rises, briefly lessening the smell of coal smoke and mud.
When Karolina saw Klara's injuries, she burned with the desire for retribution, for revenge. For justice. But in truth, the man Prast has already paid out his reckoning. He was alone now and Klara was going with us, and no matter how many or how few his remaining years…when she steps out of the Leapfrog into our time he will have been dust for long decades.
It is discomfiting to be wrong. I had thought myself alone as well…even in the company of my fellow aliens, misfits, runaways and orphans. I look down at the mute piece of machinery in my hand and smile. I will not be alone. I will go back to my beloved and my friends and we will return to our home. I rise swiftly into the air, wreathed in flames.
It was almost an hour before Prast was able to stand and then hobble shakily down the stairs to the courtyard. The sun was slowly setting, staining the thin, tattered clouds red.
A drink. God, but he needed a drink. He had no tin, but surely McGurty at the Black Ox would spare him a shot. He just had to get there. A few blocks, was all. His ankle sent searing jolts of pain up his leg with every step and his jaw throbbed dully where that freakish creature had struck him.
He sucked his breath in through gritted teeth. Let Klara go off with her fellow monsters. When she came back, begging him to take her in, he would laugh and slam the door in her ungrateful face.
A cold breeze began to blow and he clutched the turned-up collar of his coat, making his way slowly through the streets and alleys that cut through the warren of tenements. Usually they were teeming with people, but now an eerie calm had settled across this part of the city. No doubt they were all hiding, huddled in fear in their homes while these creatures battled in the streets. He limped arduously on.
A shadow cut across the sky above him and he flattened himself against a building. A man flew by on huge, creaking wings. Prast caught the barest glimpse of its hideously deformed face and spat on the ground. Monstrosities. Abominations fighting amongst themselves. What good were the police or human laws when they allowed such things to live? He stepped back into the street, casting a wary eye over his shoulder.
A clanging bell gave him scant warning as a fire department steam pump careened around the corner and nearly ran him down in a clatter of hooves, shouted curses and a cloud of belching smoke. He scrambled out of the way and turned down an alleyway that led into a small courtyard.
The chill wind shifted, fumbling at his coat and he caught a faint scent. Flowers and dampness... He tasted a metallic tang, like blood on the back of his tongue. His heart pounded in his chest and he looked about, swaying in confusion.
She stood at the other side of the courtyard, near the edge of a narrow passageway that cut between two buildings, a sliver of darkness barely wider than a man's shoulders. The woman's skin and hair were as alabaster white as the dress that clung to her body, and for a moment he thought her a statue until she moved. She was half in shadow, leaning against the brick wall as if too frail to stand unaided.
Prast stumbled forward, his breath coming in short gasps. The pain in his leg and head was all but forgotten, a dim echo against the pull of her beauty. He drew closer and then suddenly stopped. At her feet lay two men, seemingly killed in the middle of battling each other. The larger man had unnaturally massive arms, one huge hand locked around his foe's throat. His body was scarred by a score of cuts and wounds. His opponent appeared more conventionally human, his fist still gripping the handle of a cane-sword, the blade broken off and buried in the other's side.
Prast looked up at the woman. He knew vaguely the sight of the dead men should have been disturbing in some way, but he felt nothing of that, only overwhelming desire. She smiled, the tips of tiny milk-white teeth showing between her lips, and he felt a keening stab go through him.
He tried to speak, but he only managed a breathless rasp. "Who…?"
"The Sinners gave me the name of a flower," she sighed. "...but I've had so many others."
Her head lolled back slightly, baring more of her long, supple neck, and her pallid hair seemed to move on its own, as if suspended in water. He remembered suddenly the stories he heard as a boy in the old country, of girls drowned in rivers and lakes, transformed into creatures that lured men down into their watery embrace.
"Rusalka," he whispered.
She laughed, a sound like delicate bells trilling, and he knew immediately that he would do anything to hear that laughter again. "Oh, that's a very old one," she said. She cast a languid glance down at the figures at her feet.
"I find myself in need of an escort. Our enemies are still all about, looking for blood and vengeance, and my power is diminished." She looked up with heavy-lidded eyes. "You'll likely have to die for me, but that's all right, isn't it?"
Prast swallowed and nodded, unable to speak. Without another word she turned and walked into the narrow alleyway, and he followed her into the darkness.