Chapter IV: A Means To An End
Date: January 15th, 2031
Time: 12:07 PM
Three days has passed since the attack on Gwen's life, and by now the entire city was aware of the damage. Everyone had heard stories of the mysterious assailant, but no one had any news on where he had disappeared to, or when he could be back. Many of the heroes had instantaneously come out of vacation, shocked at the sudden spike of danger, and New York was presently crawling with heroes searching for the perpetrator. Gwen, however, was still completely comatose.
Rachel sat at her bedside, desperately hoping for some kind of sign that her friend would awaken soon, but so far it was to no avail. Lucy was currently using every piece of technology she had to locate the assailant, and Michael was scouring the city almost non-stop from the skies. The girl who had saved Gwen from the lightning, however, was nowhere to be seen, although the trio all agreed she was probably amongst the masses searching for the man responsible.
"Come on Gwen," Rachel whispered, desperately trying to coax her friend back into consciousness. "Don't leave me now…"
"She can't hear you, you know that right?"
Rachel immediately whirled around to find the girl from the other night standing in the doorway of the room, watching them intently. She appeared to be about two years older than herself, appearing to be around eighteen years old, and her ebony brown hair was lopped short in a kind of shaggy bob, her skin a dark tan color that signified an Asian background, or possibly native American. Somehow, Rachel had a vague feeling that neither was quite right, but she didn't really know why. The girl was rather tall for her age, standing at around 5'6", and appeared to be rather muscular, looking every bit as athletic as the track girls or soccer players at their local high school, if not more so. Her most striking features were her eyes, which were a verdant green and radiated almost as if they were powered by some kind of unseen energy. Her eyebrows were furrowed into an expression of concern and confusion, though Rachel couldn't quite tell whether that was from Gwen's condition or just a part of the girl's overall personality.
Rachel nodded slowly in response, looking back to her friend in concern. "I get that. I guess it just helps me cope with it all…"
The girl inspected Rachel curiously, still hanging back in the doorframe as if observing the situation from afar rather than being engrossed in its entirety. "Why are you so concerned about this?" Rachel opened her mouth to snap at the girl, but instead the girl quietly held up her hand. "What I mean is, obviously you care about your friend, I get that, but, then, so do the other two. So do a lot of the heroes in this city from what I can gather. Yet, none of them are staying here to be with her. So, my question is: Why are you?"
Rachel contemplated this for a moment, piecing together what the girl was saying. Why was she staying when everyone else had left? Was it because she was more loyal, more virtuous than them? Or perhaps because she was more panicked, or even obsessive about the situation. While some of these scenarios may certainly have been valid, the fact of the matter was that none of them were the reason, and Rachel knew that almost instantaneously. Wording it, however, was a slightly more difficult endeavor.
"Because I owe her…" she answered finally, wincing a bit at the apparent callousness of that statement, but knowing in her heart that it was the truth. She loved Gwen like a sister, and she would do anything for her, but if she had said there wasn't an ounce of duty in her reasoning, she would have been lying. The girl regarded her curiously, apparently not having expected this kind of honesty from her.
"And why do you owe her?" the girl pried, trying to get to the heart of the matter. Rachel was silent for a moment before looking to the floor and sighing, collecting her thoughts. A few moments later, she nodded and looked back up at the girl, ready to speak.
"When I was younger, I was… a very different person. I guess you could say I was on the other end of the law, and there are a lot of things that I did that I'm not proud of. I stole some things, both out of greed and out of necessity, and I had more than one run-in with the law because of it. My father was working a lot, and I never met my mother, and as a result I guess I had this built in desire to rebel," she began going silent for a moment, and it was obvious she was reliving every minute of the experience in her head. "When I was eleven years old, I took things a step too far. I had stolen some old equipment of my father's I had found when I was in the attic, lying around in a box labeled "Nightwing". At the time, I hadn't thought much as to where it came from, thinking only of what I intended to do with it, but now…"
She paused and shook her head, continuing on with the story. "I robbed a bank. Like, legitimately broke into a vault and stole anything that looked valuable, as much as I could carry. I guess, in my head, I was thinking about how I'd always felt kind of invisible to my family, and maybe now people would see me. I hadn't really thought through what would happen if… if I got caught."
She looked back to Gwen now, her memory of that day still as clear as it always had been. As clear as it always would be. "But I got caught. The police couldn't catch me, especially since none of the security cameras picked up my face, but they weren't the only ones to be worried about. I was heading through the city, thinking I was home free, when all of a sudden Gwen dropped down in front of me, in costume and everything. I ran into her and fell to the ground, dropping the diamonds and money all over the ground in front of her. That was when the police came up behind me. I was… I was so sure that they were going to arrest me… that I was going to be caught by this girl and go to jail for who knows how long." A single tear dripped down her cheek, guilt eating away at her conscience over the experience she regretted the most in her life. She took a deep breath before continuing. "When the police came, they pulled out their handcuffs, ready to haul me away. That was when Gwen stepped in, walking over to the officers. She told them that there had been some kind of mistake, and that I was innocent. That the thief had not been me, but in fact had run into me only a few moments ago and spilled the jewels all over the ground. She said that when the thief saw Gwen, he immediately ran away, and she could not pursue him without leaving me behind."
Rachel looked back up at Jetta, her eyes watering at the memories. "She said that I hadn't stolen the jewels, but had actually returned them. She lied for me, and she gave me a second chance to set myself straight. I owe my life to her, and that's something I'm never going to be able to repay…"
The girl regarded Rachel curiously, not seeming very surprised at any of the information. In fact, she seemed strangely calm, especially considering the admission she had just witnessed. Her eyes went to Gwen, and then back to Rachel, obviously trying how best to word the question on her mind.
"If it had been someone else who was attacked," she began slowly. "If it was her here, and anyone else there… what would she do?"
Rachel paused a minute, contemplating the question. "She'd want to bring them to justice. To set things right. That's what she always does."
The girl nodded slowly in response before turning to leave, but Rachel immediately yelled after her.
"Where are you going?" she asked, puzzled at the stranger's sudden desire to leave. The girl stopped a moment, her back still to Rachel even as she responded.
"I have somewhere I have to be," she stated flatly, her tone clearly indicating she wasn't going to give any more than that. She took a step to leave before stopping and turning to Rachel one last time. "The name's Jetta…" she finished, and then turned and left before Rachel could respond, the door closing tightly behind her.
- Tales of The Vanguard -
"I'm glad you all came," a voice rang out, the dim lighting and grim faces of the attending heroes casting a definitively mournful tone upon the gathering. The room was little more than a concrete bunker, but it offered a relative amount of isolation from the outside world, giving them ample solitude to plan their course of action. The speaker was none other than Jack Jordan, known to most simply as Lantern. "I think by now all of you have heard, but let's just cover it in case you've somehow missed the news."
The room grew uncomfortable, most knowing exactly where this was headed. Those who didn't only added to the discomfort in their confusion, and elected to remain silent. Lantern was silent for moment, allowing the suspense to fill the room before he continued.
"Three days ago, our friend and partner, Spider-Girl was brutally attacked and beaten to the point of near death," he began, gritting his teeth in anger. "She was drugged, poisoned, and assaulted without warning, and she has been unconscious for the past three days as a result. The perpetrator," he continued, turning on a projector to show an image of the man responsible. "Is a relatively new super criminal, and the authorities have very little information on him. So far, the cops have been referring to him simply as 'Vortex'. No one knows what he looks like. No one knows his name. No one really even knows the full extent of his powers. What we do know is he appears to have an innate ability to alter the weather, either by genetic or technological means. He is ruthless in combat, lethal in ambushes, and certifiably insane on all accounts."
"He's difficult to track," a voice piped up, coming from just to the right of Lantern. The crowd parted and revealed the glowering face of Lucy, dark circles under her eyes from several sleepless nights of trying to track the criminal down while monitoring Gwen's condition. "Authorities have been unable to identify any particular areas he likes to hide out in. However, his specific power set produces a mass amount of electricity, even when not directly utilized as a thunderstorm or lightning bolt. As such, I have worked out an algorithm to scan the city and search out his possible whereabouts. We should have it narrowed down to a few locations within the hour."
Lantern nodded, asserting to the rest of the group that what Lucy said was true. "Spider-Girl has always fought beside us, and now it's time that we returned the favor. I move that we find Vortex and we teach him what happens when he messes with one of us."
"And how exactly do you plan to do that?" a voice asked, coming from a girl in the corner of the room, watching as everything went down. No one present recognized the girl, but had Rachel been there she would have known it to be Jetta right on the spot. Lucy, however, had been so involved with Gwen's condition on the night of the attack, that even she didn't recognize the girl in front of her eyes. Lantern and Lucy locked eyes, giving a quick nod before Lantern began to respond to the inquiry.
"We can't allow him to rampage through the city, especially not at the risk of innocents," he began, gauging her reaction carefully. The girl only nodded ambivalently in response.
"I agree," she concurred, studying him with a critical expression of appraisal. "What I'm asking is what exactly you plan to do about it."
Lantern watched her carefully, obviously unsure about the presence of this stranger, as well as whether she could be trusted. Eventually, however, he yielded, and he explained in further detail.
"There are more of us than there are of him," he grunted, a spark of anger flashing through his eyes. "I'm recommending we have Lucy track him down, and then we move in at the earliest given opportunity. We go in covertly, we gang up on him, and we end this once and for all. No one else gets hurt."
"And how do you plan on keeping him from doing this again?" Jetta asked, her eyes narrowing as she awaited the answer that she already knew was coming.
Lantern took a deep breath, looking to Lucy who only nodded in response. They had dealt with his kind before. When you let them go, they come back viler than ever. When you put them away, they break out stronger than before. When you try to keep them away from innocents, they kill all the more in their rage. There was no reasoning with a madman, no brawling with a trained killer. There would be no detaining a criminal who could blow the bars off of his cage just as quickly as they locked him behind them. There was only one way to end this, and it was a line that most of them were regretful to cross.
"We can't have a psychopath loose on the streets," Lantern admitted reluctantly. "I move that we go in, we find him, we take him down, and we make sure there's no chance of him coming back to finish what he started." Lantern looked around, the expressions of the group surrounding him quickly flashing between confusion, to astonishment, and finally to reluctant agreement. "I move that we kill Vortex, once and for all, and may the public thank us when we do."
Jetta nodded her assent, her eyes quietly showing her approval for the plan of action as she watched the group take in what had been said. The silence was replaced by a dull clattering of applause, gradually growing in intensity until everyone was cheering with a near-manic fixation on the course at hand, the boys and girls chanting Lantern's name as their applause gradually deepened into a sound vaguely reminiscent of a drumbeat, their expressions becoming vacantly obedient as they accepted and exalted the new course of action, abandoning every line they had ever stood for in a moment of sheer unbridled terror, with no one around to stop them or remind them of their rules. The days of criminals and enforcers were now over, replaced instead by a group of rogues intent on using whatever means were necessary to get the job done. The sheep, in their fear, had become no better than the wolves, and now nothing could stop the blurring of the lines that had already begun between hero and villain, and any casual observer would have been left with one final question in the face of the mob.
Where did the line end?
