Part 8:
I yawned as I walked down the street. After my late night, I had been hoping to sleep in. That was what Saturdays were for, after all.
Grue had argued. He basically forced me to set an alarm to get up early. I could understand, on a level. If I needed to rely on someone else to watch over my dad once I was gone...
Well, I didn't want to think about it. Tattletale had also decided to take advantage of my early morning. Had helped walk me through a costume design, and had me send it to some costume maker she had heard of. We had ordered extras, just in case they were damaged. They had been expensive, but I had the money from 4 up and coming criminals padding a bank account now.
And I was soon going to have a costume. One I hadn't been completely on board with, but one that Tattletale had convinced me would work well. And, it was supposedly made out of high quality materials. Slightly armored.
Not that it was completely necessary, with Alabaster's power. But, I supposed it would be reassuring to have.
And those would be delivered in the next few days. Hopefully discreetly. I didn't need my dad finding them and asking questions.
"We're here." Grue said, shaking me from my thoughts. I looked up at the building that we were standing in front of. It was run down, definitely in the lower end of the city.
"You sure she'll be here?" I asked.
"No, not at all. She's got a pretty nasty habit of running off when things get tough."
I nodded. He didn't need to go into more detail. His death would be trying for his family. It wasn't even my fault, but I still felt a bit guilty about it.
I entered the building and followed Grue's directions to one of the apartments. I took a deep breath and knocked, waiting for an answer.
And I waited.
And waited.
And after a few more minutes, I sighed. I put my ear to the door and couldn't hear anything on the other side. I took a quick glance around the hallway, and saw that I was alone. I swapped out Alabaster, who to my joy was pretty quiet, at least for now, and brought Sophia back to the roster.
Switching to the shadow state, I phased through the door. Once I turned back to normal, I was hit with the smell of the apartment. It reeked of spoiled food and body odor. Tattletale's power was practically screaming at me. The things it spelled out about the occupants...
I shook my head. Needed to focus.
"Nice to see mom is still the same." Grue said.
"The more things change..." Tattletale replied.
"This is your mommy's place, huh? No wonder you became a two bit villain." Sophia said.
"Fuck off." Grue said. "Let's just see if Aisha is here."
I nodded, and started wandering the apartment. It was small, which just made the mess worse. The front door led right into the kitchen, which was crawling with cockroaches. Beyond the kitchen was a split. To the right were what I assumed were the bedrooms, and to the left...
A living room. With two, barely dressed people sleeping on the couch. Tattletale's power hit back at me, harder this time. The woman of the pair was Grue's mother. No doubt about it. The man she was with...definitely not a one night stand. The set up was too comfortable. Too familiar.
On the coffee table in front of the couch was an assortment of drug paraphernalia. Some light stuff, some...much heavier. It was also obvious that they had been using it pretty heavily, with how out of it they were. No visible signs of overdose, though.
It occurred to me that this was likely the way that Skidmark, Squealer, and Mush had lived. I wondered, idly, if the merchants had been suppliers for the couple. It was likely. And if so, it was also likely that some of the old members were still handling it. They wouldn't disappear, after all. Not immediately.
I turned away from the pair, and paused. Something...something had seemed off. I couldn't be sure of what, but...I could have sworn I had seen something, just out of the corner of my eye.
Probably a trick of the light. I rationalized. For some reason, though, I couldn't shake it. My mind clung to it.
Shaking my head, I moved toward the bedrooms. The first door that I opened was clearly the mother's room. Just as trashed as the rest of the apartment that I had seen, and no Aisha.
I opened the other door, and saw...a surprisingly well kept room. Oh, it was messy, but not like the rest of the apartment. Just a teenagers standard of messiness.
I entered and began looking around. It was clear she wasn't here, but...
I paused, getting that sensation again. The feeling that something was off. Tattletale spoke up this time.
"You too?"
"You're feeling that?"
"I am. Something...little things seem off."
I nodded. "I keep thinking I'm seeing something."
"Seeing something? I don't know about that one." Tattletale said. "Something is tripping me up, but I'm not seeing anything."
I frowned. So much for that.
"She doesn't seem to be here, Grue."
"Damn. I was hoping..."
"Could she be with your dad?"
"Unlikely. We can check, if you don't mind, but..."
"No, it's fine." I said. "I don't have anything else planned for the day. And if you can think of any other places she'd go..."
Grue nodded. "Yeah, I'll try to think of something."
-
It was nearly 7 PM when I finally got home. We had wandered all over the city, Grue leading us to places that he thought his sister may have gone. All of them had turned up empty.
I mumbled a hello to my dad as we entered, and then headed up to my room, his voice following me to tell me that dinner would be ready in about half an hour.
I was barely even hungry. Just tired. I had been walking around for over 10 hours.
"I can't believe we didn't find her." Grue said as I began up the stairs.
"We can try again tomorrow." I said. "She has to be somewhere."
"I'm sure she is, but...I don't know where else to look."
"Well, we'll just go back to the same places then. She'll show up eventually. And your dad seemed nice enough."
"Yeah, sure." Grue said. I wasn't sure which comment that was to. Maybe both.
I opened the door to my room and stepped in. "Once you have your costume, and don't look like a Shadow Stalker wannabe, then we can look around at night, too." Tattletale said.
"We could look around at night now. Even without my costume."
"And what's wrong with looking like me? If she's gonna use my powers, she can at least pay..."
"Homage." Tattletale and I both said, each picking up on the word just as Sophia began to stumble. That just elicited a groan from the former hero.
"I'm still not sold on the costume, either. It's not...really my style."
"That's kind of the point." Tattletale said. "You want to disassociate your two personas from each other. Try to keep things simple. Cape life and civilian life, separated."
"Not to change the subject, but..." Grue began. I raised a hand to stop him.
"Grue, I promised I would help you find your sister, and I'm going to. After a good nights sleep, we'll head back out and find Aisha, alright?"
There was no reply. Just silence. I raised an eyebrow, and was about to speak again when I heard a voice from behind me.
"You always talk to my dead brother when you think you're alone?"
I spun around so fast that I almost fell over. Sitting on my bed was a girl, maybe a year or so younger than me. I didn't need Tattletale's power to fill me in here. I had seen both of this girl's parents today, spoken with her father, and I had her brother on retainer as one of my powers.
"Aisha." Grue said.
"How...did you get in here?"
"I've been following you all day." the girl said. I was still taking her appearance in. A stripe of purple was dyed into her hair. An act of rebellion and a cry for attention. The former aimed at her father, the latter at her mother. She had a black eye. An assault. Fairly recent. She was shaken from it, though she would try to hide it. She was smiling. Not an act. Not really. She knew something.
And then my power kicked in. My real power. I could feel her power. I could also see a slight glow around her. Golden in color. A word came to mind. Forget.
"I think..." Tattletale began. "There might be more to your own power than we thought."
I nodded, but didn't answer her. I turned my attention fully to Aisha. "You're a Cape."
"You too. Or just a nut who buys costumes. And can walk through doors. Probably a cape, though."
"You...were in your mom's apartment."
"Guilty." she said, smiling. "It was pretty funny watching you wander around. Then you started talking to yourself, and then you mentioned Grue, which was my bro's villain name."
"She knew?" Sophia asked. "You told your sister you were a villain?"
"She figured it out." Grue said.
"I wasn't talking to myself." I said, ignoring the bickering. "I...can kind of collect Capes. I found your brother and his teammates. Two had already died, he and the other were on their way out. There...was no saving them."
"So...you have him? Right here, with you now?"
I nodded, slowly. I couldn't be sure how she'd react. She displayed a hundred emotions at once, on a micro scale. Sorrow, happiness, relief, anger, and so many more. She literally didn't know how to feel.
"He asked me to find you. To help you out of your...situation."
"How, by killing me and adding me to your utility belt?"
I shook my head. "We didn't even know you were a cape." I said. I then continued. "When did that, happen? Grue wants to know."
"Well, you can tell Brian that it was the other night. I went for a walk to clear my head, after...after the funeral. Some guys came out of nowhere, tried to start shit with me. One of them hit me in the eye. After that...they just kind of wandered off. Took me until a couple of hours after I got home before I realized no one could see me."
I nodded, slowly. "Okay. Well, I'm not going to take you. I only target people who deserve it."
"So...okay, what now?"
I looked at the girl. She was a mess. Emotionally, anyway. After seeing her parents...
The mom who was so burnt out that she barely even registered the death of her son. The father with such repressed emotions that he would never let any grief show. And a young girl who needed someone to hear her out, to support her.
I walked past her, toward my door. "Stay here for a minute."
I walked down the stairs and headed into the kitchen, where my dad was still cooking.
"Hey, Taylor. Say, did I mention that my truck is running better than ever? You must be a natural at repairs."
I smiled a bit at that. "That's great, dad. But, um...can I talk to you about something?"
"Sure, what's up?" he asked, looking concerned.
"I have a friend upstairs, and she could really use some help right now..."
