Written for QLFC Round 6 by Chaser 1 for Montrose Magpies
Prompt: Kick-Ass (movie)
Optional prompts: (word) token; (object) headphones; (word) coast
Word count: 1879
The girl did not speak to anyone as she stared out the window of the train, watching the scenery rushing past her. Black headphones were nestled over her ears, trailing down to the Walkman that rested in her lap. Her hair and eyes were both light brown, her face was utterly ordinary, and her hoodie was a dull shade of grey. There was nothing remarkable or memorable about her. People noticed her, but they never truly saw her.
As the train slowed to a stop at the station, she stood and, slinging her backpack over one shoulder, made her way to the doors. The man ahead of her glanced back over his shoulder. For a moment, his assessing gaze met her blank one, but then he shook his head and turned back to the door again. The train jolted to a stop, causing her body to jerk, and the doors slid open. They both disembarked without a backwards glance.
She followed him through the terminal and out onto the street before stopping just outside the front entry. A gust of wind brushed past, sending her shoulder-length hair flying. Her face contorted in annoyance as she pushed it out of her face — it was the first time it had been anything other than blank since she boarded the train. Between her backpack and disgruntled expression, she could have easily passed for a schoolgirl waiting for a parent or friend to pick her up.
She wasn't.
When the man turned into a back alley, the unremarkable girl with the unremarkable features started to move. Looking down at her Walkman and flicking through a few songs, she strode along the footpath in the direction he had gone, only stopping when she reached the place he had disappeared. Glancing down the narrow street, she saw the man talking with an elderly woman. A few moments later, the woman gave him something and, stepping back, turned on the spot. With a loud crack, she vanished into thin air.
The man flinched.
The girl didn't.
"Hey!" she called out, pushing her headphones from her ears as she started towards him. "Do you know the way to the library?" She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and tilted her head bashfully, a soft smile flirting at the corners of her lips. "I'm supposed to meet a boy there."
The man tensed at the sound of her voice, his free hand instinctively reaching for the holster at his waist. When his gaze landed on her, however, he hesitated. His eyes narrowed as he peered at her face. She stepped forward, letting him get a better view of her.
"You're the girl from the train," he finally said, his whole body relaxing as a relieved smile spread across his face and he slipped the package into his coat pocket. "You're nearly there. You continue along the main road for a hundred metres and then take a sharp left. It's a little tricky to find, but after that, you just go straight until you reach the bridge, and it's right after that."
"Oh, thank you." She laughed, and it was light and airy like a fairy. "Do you mind if I write that down? I am so forgetful."
"Here," he said, walking towards her. "If you have a pen and paper, I'll draw you a map."
"Would you?"
"Sure. Anything to help you get there safely — these streets can be dangerous when you're alone, you know."
"Yes, my father did mention that." She swung her bag around so that it rested in front of her and started to barrage around inside it with her left hand.
"You're a lefty?" he asked as he reached her.
When the girl looked up at him, she smiled. This time, however, her eyes gleamed with the hint of something predatory. "No," she said, her voice so sweet and innocent that it took him a moment to register what she had said.
By the time he had, a wand was pointed directly at his face. "Stupefy."
As he fell to the ground, the girl swung her backpack back over her shoulder and stepped forward. Pulling him to his feet, she glanced around to make sure that nobody was watching before closing her eyes and, visualising her desired destination, turning in a neat little circle.
Within moments, the alley was empty once more.
-x-x-x-
"You did well out there today," Mad-Eye Moody said, his voice gruffer than usual. It always was when he paid someone a compliment — it was as if he were, even subconsciously, trying to balance out the effects of his words. "I know you wanted to just grab him off the train, but we needed visual confirmation that he was associating with Mrs Avery."
The girl nodded in acknowledgement. She wasn't one for false modesty; she knew that she had executed the mission perfectly. Still, her chest swelled with pride at hearing her mentor admit it. Knowing that he wouldn't like for her to acknowledge it, however, she remained silent, continuing to stare through the two-way mirror at the man she had taken into custody: Angus Bulstrode, the Squib half-brother of the infamous Gertrude Bulstrode, who had been linked to a string of murders and black market deals but never convicted of any of them. He was sitting with his arms on a desk, his head bent over so that his hair fell down around his face. He looked weary.
Good, she thought. Weary captives were easier to get information from. They had retrieved the package from his coat pocket and gone through its contents in painstaking detail, and it was enough to put him away for a few years, but there was nothing in there that implicated his half-sister. They needed him to talk.
"You should change back now." Mad-Eye told her. "It's best not to use your abilities any more than necessary, even around here. The less you remind people about them, the better."
"My pleasure," she replied, pulling the headphones from her neck with a decisive tug and wrapping the cords around the Walkman so that they wouldn't tangle or catch on anything. "I hate pop music."
"You weren't even listening to it," he pointed out.
She shrugged. He was right; whenever she took the Walkman on a mission into the Muggle world, she turned the volume down to the lowest possible setting so that it looked like she was lost in the music while she was really paying attention to whatever was going on around her. Nevertheless, she always took a generic pop CD along with her so that she would be prepared in case anybody asked what she was listening to. And for a girl whose father had sung her to sleep with rock music when she was a baby, even that felt like a betrayal. "It still felt dirty. It's the principle of it, Mad-Eye."
As he shook his head and muttered a disparaging remark that sounded uncannily like, "Recruits these days," she closed her eyes and conjured up the image of a face that was so different to her own and yet so familiar. Within moments, her whole body prickled as it started to twist and contort into something new.
When Nymphadora Tonks opened her eyes once more, she had lost a foot in height and was once again sporting her telltale bright pink hair and dark brown eyes. Rotating her shoulders until they stopped cracking, she let out a relieved sigh. Finally, she was herself again.
"Do you think we've left him stewing long enough?" she asked, returning her gaze to their prisoner. They had long suspected him of secretly aiding his half-sister whenever her interests crossed into the Muggle world, but they had never been able to prove anything.
"No," he said, "but if we want to make a move before anyone comes for him, it's all the time we have."
"I didn't think they would come for him." Tonks frowned in confusion. From what her mother had told her of the Blacks, that kind of family would be willing to let their House die out before they publicly acknowledged a Squib or blood traitor. They might resort to a token gesture of solidarity every now and again to make sure he continued to cooperate, but nothing like this. Even if the Bulstrodes saw fit to include Angus in their criminal enterprise, it didn't make sense for them to risk their reputation by appealing to the Aurors on his behalf.
"Not directly, but someone will." He sighed. "I wish we could still use Veritaserum. Things used to go so much quicker that way." Glancing at her out of the corner of his one good eye, he added, "You should start building up a resistance. We can't use it, but they both can and will."
Tonks nodded, adding it to her ever-growing mental list of the things that she had to learn. Mad-Eye was an exacting mentor; he wasn't one to let a recruit coast by. That had resulted in a lot of sleepless nights as she tried to cram in everything he had asked her to work on — after all, in his eyes, work on meant master. It was only as it should be, however. Being an Auror was a huge responsibility, and there were more ways for a mission to go wrong than there were for it to go right. Preparation was key.
And constant vigilance, she thought wryly, eyeing her mentor as he marched over to the door and, fixing a scowl upon his face, pulled the door open.
She moved closer to the window so that she could watch his entrance, knowing that even simply observing him had a lot to teach her. The moment she took the first step, however, she faltered. Her foot slipped, and she had to throw her arm out to grab the wall to keep herself from tumbling to the ground. Her cheeks heated in embarrassment, and she glanced around the room to make sure that it was still empty. Relief rushed through her at the realisation that nobody had seen her falter.
The only downside to her Metamorphagus abilities was the perpetual clumsiness that accompanied it. It was always worse whenever she had just changed into or out of a disguise and had to adjust to a new centre of gravity again, but even when she hadn't used it for a while, she would occasionally find herself moving too much or too little for whatever body she was in at the time.
Mad-Eye had assured her that everybody had their weaknesses and that the trick was learning how to hide them or, better yet, to turn them into an advantage. For her, that meant using it to manipulate their enemies into underestimating her.
Recovering her composure, she finished making her way to the trick glass and pulled a quill and a piece of parchment from her backpack, ready to note down anything important. She would never like the clumsiness that had plagued her ever since she was a baby, but she was slowly learning how to live with it and use it as part of her arsenal.
After all, what kind of bad guy would be scared of a clumsy little girl?