A young woman strode down a night-darkened street with a confidence fully earned. None could prevail against her might. Her enemies feared her, her allies respected, nay, admired her! All wished they could be as great as she, and none would even consider dismissing her as a child as-
As Kid Win's loud yawn jostled Vista out of her daydreams.
"Ugh. Do you have to be that loud, KW?" She grumbled.
"Sorry, sorry, but I can't help it. It's dark and so cold! I'm even walking instead of using my hoverboard to try and warm up." The young tinker shivered slightly.
"Weren't you bragging earlier this week that you had made a new heating system and installed it in your winter suit? What happened to that?"
"The power cell didn't last as long as I thought it would."
The patrolling Wards members crunched their way through the thin layer of snow in silence for a little while.
"Y'know, these are the absolute worst conditions to be patrolling in. Almost makes you wish something would happ-"
Both Wards members froze, Kid Win slapping his hands over his mouth. A few moments passed, and then Vista rounded on her partner.
"Dammit, KW! You know better than to jinx us like that! 'The only good patrol is a boring one' is written on the meeting room wall for a reason."
"Wasn't that because Clockblocker lost a bet?" Kid Win asked, before quailing under his partner's redoubled glare.
The two stood still for a few seconds, listening. Finally, they relaxed, and Vista said, "Well, I guess we're fine this ti-"
A high-pitched scream split the night air. It was followed almost immediately by the sound of Vista's glove meeting her visor.
"The rest of your stuff is charged, right?"
"Of course." They turned toward where the scream had come from. "Do you want to call it in or should I?"
"I've got it." Vista raised her hand to her earpiece. "This is Vista and Kid Win, we just heard a scream north-north-west from our position. Permission to investigate?"
"This is Dispatch. Permission granted. Armsmaster and Miss Militia are patrolling near your location and have been notified. Reinforcements are on standby."
"Well then," said Kid Win. "Let's go."
The Wards members hurried over to where the scream had come from, which was the opening of an alley across the street. The alley ended in a T-intersection a couple dozen feet in, and from around the left corner whimpering could be heard, likely from the person who had screamed.
Vista and Kid Win glanced at one another; Kid Win readied his laser pistols and Vista prepared her space warping abilities, and then the duo moved forward to investigate. Upon turning the corner they found it ended in a dead end. Against the far wall a man cowered, panting like he had run a marathon. When the shadows cast by a light behind the two heroes fell over him, he flinched, crying, "No! Please! Don't kill me!" He raised his arms to shield his face, blood dripping from where half of his right hand should have been. Both of the young capes flinched at the sight of the wound. Vista put a hand over her mouth out of nausea, and when she glanced over at her partner she saw that his lips were rather green. After a moment the man peeked around his arms and, upon seeing the Wards, said, "Oh thank god you're not that thing."
Kid Win walked towards the injured man, holstering his pistols as he approached. When he reached the man he knelt down so he was at the man's eye level. "Hello, I'm Kid Win, of the Wards, and she's Vista, of the same. Can you tell me what happened?"
"There, there was - oh god - there was this thing," the man sobbed. "I, I thought it was a girl, easy mark, but its face! Where was its face?!" He trailed off, tears flowing freely down his cheeks as he stared off into the distance with unfocused eyes, silent but for occasional whimpers and nonsensical gibbering.
Kid Win made a noise that might have been a muffled curse. "Can you tell us anything else?" he asked as he retrieved a first-aid kit from his belt. He grabbed some gauze out of it and held it against the man's wounded hand, causing him to yelp.
The man whispered, "Bit my hand off... so many eyes... oh god, it's coming..." and then returned to staring at nothing.
Thoroughly unnerved, Vista activated her earpiece again. "Vista here. We have an injured man here, and from what he says he was probably attacked by a parahuman. Please send backup and an ambulance; The parahuman involved may still be in the area."
"Copy that, Vista. PRT squad is on its way with an ambulance, ETA eight minutes. Armsmaster and Miss Militia have been alerted and are headed your way now."
"Damn it," Vista muttered under her breath. Eight minutes is too long. Armsmaster had better be close.
"Armsmaster here, ETA two minutes. Any information on the parahuman?"
"Oh thank god. Uh, I mean, Vista here, he said something about them not having a face and that it bit his hand off, and something about a bunch of eyes. He doesn't seem likely to say much more about it, but it sounds pretty freaky. So, uh, could you try to get here qui-"
Vista froze at the sound of something landing in the alley behind her. A huge shadow had swallowed up her own. Flashes of light gave a hint of its form, a mass of squirming, writhing... [i]things[/i], like snakes or tentacles. The man moaned in fear as he pressed himself into the wall, a steaming pool spreading around him. It went unnoticed by Kid Win, frozen as he stared past Vista at the horror behind her.
Oh god, it's here. I should have been keeping watch. Why wasn't I keeping watch? Stupid, stupid, stupid...
"Vista? Vista, come in! What happened?"
"It's here," she whispered. Her voice came out high-pitched and thready between her suddenly tight jaws. "It's got us trapped."
"Shit! We'll be there soon. Get out of there if you can."
Vista's hand fell from her earpiece as she turned to face the thing behind her.
Her first impression was tentacles. So many tentacles, like those of an octopus, the lighting changing whatever color they were to black. But where an octopus' tentacles had suckers, these were studded with dozens of eyes. They varied in size and even pupil shape, but each was a bright, vibrant green and seemed to glow. Scattered among the eyes were a number of mouths, differing greatly in size and shape, but each was filled with a disturbingly large number of teeth in many shapes and, in a few cases, additional eyes. Every eye present focused on the three people before the beast, each bearing a hungry gleam. The mouths opened, and from them issued a hellish chorus of gibberish.
The same gibberish from another voice cut through the chorus. The new voice was, at its core, recognizably female, but it was hollow and echoing, as if its owner were speaking in a crypt. Countless resonating tones accompanied the voice, some high, others so low Vista heard them not with her ears but with her bones, all gnawing at the back of her mind, feeding the fear that had taken root.
Moments after the terrible voice had sounded, the tentacles ceased their writhing and began to retract to a single point, revealing the rest of the creature they had concealed.
The first things Vista noticed were an imposing pair of wings, like a bat's but with too many fingers in odd places, and so dark it was difficult to tell where the wings ended and the shadows began. A body was revealed next, that of a normal, if tall, girl, clad in dark colors, but its human form only served to accentuate the inhuman portions. Behind the legs a long, sinuous tail with barbs down its length and a color matching the wings undulated gracefully. Hands tipped with viciously curved talons of the same color hung at the creature's sides, bearing objects. In one a knife was gripped by its blade; the other held a gobbet of meat, dripping red onto the trod-upon snow. The tentacles retreated to where its face would be, revealing a head crowned in dark, curly hair, restrained in a ponytail by a hairband and some hairpins. And once the tentacles had fully withdrawn, Vista felt mounting hysteria as her thoughts began repeat the fear-crazed words of the man behind her.
Where is its face? Where is its face?!
Where the identifying features or a cape's concealing mask should have been was a hole in reality, a mockery of a human face. Thousands of stars burned in an endless void, galaxies and nebulae swirling in the black. Looking closely, Vista could almost swear that some of the stars and galaxies formed a face, crooked and leering.
Is it a Case Fifty-Three? Vista thought as she hyperventilated. And why does it feel so wrong?
A glance behind her revealed that Kid Win had managed to snap out of his frozen state and was scrabbling for his pistols. Her gaze returned to the monstrous thing before her, which had begun to slowly saunter towards them.
She took a deep, steadying breath. Calm down. It's not a monster. It's probably just a cape, and I can't just stand frozen like this while it can attack us. She felt around the area with her power in preparation to repel the cape, then froze once more as the edge of her power brushed up against it.
It feels sort of like a person, but beyond it there's so much within and beyond it and, and it feels so wrong and... oh god.
Vista clapped her hands over her mouth and bent over a little as a wave of nausea rolled over her.
The footsteps stopped. Surprised, Vista looked up to find the cape had halted in its approach, its head slightly cocked.
"Are you alright?"
It took Vista a moment to realize that the frightful voice had asked her a question, and a few moments more to realize that the cape had been inquiring after her welfare.
The cape turned its - no, her - head to Kid Win, who had both his pistols in hand and was pointing them at her. "Could you put those away, please?" she asked. "I'm not an enemy."
He started a bit when she addressed him, but then shifted his stance slightly, his pistols still pointed at her. She sighed, if a sound like the screams of a thousand damned souls could be called a sigh, and turned back to Vista. "Vista... It's Vista, right?" Vista nodded. "Great. So anyway, are you alright? You look like you aren't feeling very well."
"Um," Vista began, but was interrupted by the sound of squealing tires outside the mouth of the ally, followed by two pairs of hurried footsteps approaching them. Around the corner came Armsmaster, clad in his blue armor and pointing his halberd at the cape. Behind him was Miss Militia in her fitted army fatigues and American flag-patterned sash and scarf. Her weapon had taken the form of a shotgun, which she was pointing at the ground.
"Don't move, villain!" Armsmaster barked as he held his halberd steadily pointed in the cape's direction, presumably lining up one of the gadgets he'd installed in it.
"Wait, what? Hold on!" The cape protested. "This is all a big misunderstanding. And I'm a hero, not a villain!"
.o.o.o.
"So that guy tried to mug me, threatened me with that knife," the cape said. "I don't know how he didn't realize I was a parahuman at first, but he certainly did when I turned to face him. I guess he panicked, because he tried to stab me. I tried to catch his knife hand, but I accidentally bit him-"
"Bit him?" Miss Militia asked, glancing at the cape's lack of a face. In her hand was a recording device she was using to take the cape's statement.
"Her power," Vista piped up from where she was leaning against an opposite wall. "She's got tentacles, some of which have mouths."
"Ah."
"Yes, um, I tried to catch his hand, but I accidentally bit some of it off. I intend to practice that some more so that doesn't happen again. So then he ran away. I chased after him, since he had tried to commit a crime and had to be taken to the police, and because he was injured and needed to go to a hospital. I would have called for an ambulance myself, but I don't have a cell phone. I made sure to bring the piece of his hand along." She pointed to the item in question, which was in a plastic bag in the hands of an EMT. "From what I understand doctors can reattach it, even without Panacea's help. Then I found him in the company of the Wards, and you know what happened from there."
It's a shame her power makes her so scary, Vista mused, and that it interacts poorly with my power. She seems like a nice person, if a little creepy.
"Alright, we're done with that," said Miss Militia as she shut off the recording device and pocketed it. "Do you have any way for us to contact you that won't compromise your secret identity?" The cape shook her head. "In that case, here's a pre-paid cell phone. We're the only ones who know its number, so if it rings, answer it."
It was difficult to tell, since the cape didn't have a face, but Vista got the impression that she was looking at the offered phone with apprehension. "Will you be able to track me if I have that?"
The corners of the Protectorate cape's eyes crinkled a bit, as if she was smiling behind her scarf. "Don't worry. We wouldn't do that."
"Well, alright," the cape said, accepting the phone.
"There are a couple things I would like to ask you before you leave," said Miss Militia. "First, would you be able to stop by the PRT building on Saturday? If you intend to become a hero, it would probably be a good idea to get to know the other heros of Brockton Bay."
The cape nodded. "That's fine. Saturday works for me."
"Good. Now, my second question is if you've decided on a cape name yet."
The cape shifted a bit. "Well, I'm sort of in the process of deciding still, but for now I guess you can call me Starfield."