"I wasn't exactly planning to make my debut yet," I said peevishly.
I scowled at her. Making fun of a new Cape for their poor costumes seemed like it ought to be against the code. Of course, she'd never had to scrounge for money as a second generation Cape, so maybe she wasn't able to empathize.
"So you aren't Miss Militia's less fashionable niece?"
"Not everybody has a family full of people with connections to costume makers," I said. "Or access to daddy's money."
"Excuse me?"
I was startled and I turned. The woman who'd been assaulted had finished pulling her clothes back in place. She had scratches on her face and tears.
I felt embarrassed that I'd forgotten her, much less that she'd managed to surprise me. I was depending too much on my fear sense and once her fear had faded she'd faded from my awareness.
The thug on the ground moaned and the girl kicked him as she walked by. He gave out a short scream.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"Do you need an ambulance?" Laserdream asked from behind me.
The woman shook her head. "I can't afford it."
She was an Asian woman in her early twenties. She could have been one of my teachers at school, if Winslow actually had the budget to hire anyone young.
"I've already alerted the PRT," Laserdream said. "If you will stay here to make a statement I'm sure it will help these men get what they deserve."
The woman nodded shortly. She stepped away from the men and slid down against the wall. She put her head in her hands and was silent.
"I've got to get going," I said. "Thanks for the assist."
"I was afraid of hitting her. I'd have figured something out eventually, but I'm glad you came by. You aren't going to give a statement to the PRT?"
"I'm not even in costume," I said. I stopped suspiciously. "You didn't see who I am, did you?"
She shook her head, but I noticed that she took a cautious step back from me. "I was focused on what was happening with the girl. I didn't see you until you came into the alley."
Although she was somewhat anxious at the thought that I might think she'd deliberately broken the unwritten code, I didn't sense any anxiety related to what she was saying. Of course, she might simply be so confident in her own power that she wasn't worried what I thought. Considering that I was an unknown, however, that didn't seem likely.
I could have been the next Lung, after all, and in a way, I suppose I was.
"So you are a brute?" she asked.
"Kind of," I said before I could stop myself. Thinking quickly, I said, "It's an adrenaline thing, makes me stronger in times of danger."
"What should I call you?" she asked.
"I haven't really come up with a name yet," I admitted. I snapped my collapsible baton shut. "All the really good Brute names have been taken, and some of the others sound kind of villainous. Bludgeon sounds like I plan on smashing people's brains out. Impact is already taken."
"Shillelagh?" she asked.
"I'm not Irish and I don't have a shillelagh. Besides, I don't want to dress up like the lucky charms guy."
"Blackjack?" she asked.
"Like the card game?" I asked, confused.
"It's also a little club you hit people with," she said. "Well, not you, but you know what I mean."
"It's got to be taken," I said. I heard the sound of Armsmaster's motorcycle in the distance. "I think that's my cue to leave. Thanks for the help."
She pulled a little card out of a pocket which I didn't even realize she had. For a moment I thought it might be tinkertech before I took a closer look and realized it was just really well concealed.
"You've got business cards?" I asked incredulously.
"Aunt Carol says it's important to network," she said. "If you need any advice just give me a call."
I took the card and I was careful not to brush her hands, even though she was wearing gloves. The temptation to take her power was in the back of my mind, and I ignored it.
Instead I said, "I'm sorry about your cousin. How is she?"
She stepped back and scowled. "Everybody asks that. How do you think she is? She hasn't come out of her room in two weeks. I'm taking on extra patrols just to make up for her."
"I hope she gets better," I said.
I felt a sharp stab of guilt as I turned and started running from the scene. I'd stood still long enough to cool down and I was sweaty in the underlayer and uncomfortable. It was my fault Glory Girl was like this, but telling her it wasn't her fault would probably lead to Dad being killed.
I could see her watching as I turned a corner. I was running away from the sound of Armsmaster's motorcycle so I thought I would be all right. I just hoped that I hadn't given anything away.
I pulled the scarf from my mouth when I was a block away. It wasn't until I was halfway home that I realized that I'd just accidentally created a second Cape persona for myself.
Approaching the storefront, I took a deep breath. After some consideration I had decided to keep the new identity Laserdream had created, which meant that I needed a costume. Unfortunately Emma had always been the one with the fashion sense and I had no ideas about what kind of costume to create.
"You don't have to be so anxious, it'll be fine," Laserdream said. "Parian is a sweetheart really."
I'd called Laserdream a couple of times in the week when I last saw her asking for advice, mostly about where Capes got their costumes and how to do it without blowing secret identities. I'd been careful to always call from somewhere away from the house just in case she decided to trace the call, and I took to removing the battery when I was at the house for the same reason.
You'd think that she wouldn't know about keeping secret identities, considering that her family had gone public long before, but she knew a lot of Capes and she had listened to a lot of their stories.
Her Cousin Glory Girl swore by the rogue Parian, who sometimes took orders to design and create costumes for capes. She wasn't established enough yet to have her own shop, but she sometimes worked out of the back of a dry cleaner near the college; she'd rented a space there in return for making alterations in real time a few days a week.
Calling ahead, I had an appointment, but I was a little anxious. Laserdream had promised to go with me to help with advice about possible costumes. She'd said that her cousin would have been a better person to ask, but even though she'd been forced to start going to school again she wasn't doing much outside of that.
I didn't know as much about Parian as I did n about the other Capes. She was reclusive compared to other Capes and wasn't out in the media as much. She mostly did small shows for children or animated mascots for various businesses for a fee.
I was a little envious of her; it would be nice to have a power that I could make legitimate money from. Stealing from criminals was risky and wasn't technically legal. I was technically stealing evidence, which was frowned on, even if the law often deliberately turned a blind eye to it.
Taking a deep breath, I made sure my mask was in place and I opened the door to the dry cleaner. Laserdream stepped in behind me. We both squinted into the dimness and I wondered what had happened to the lights.
This time in the middle of February the sun went down before five thirty. It was twilight outside and that made the interior even darker than it normally would have been.
There a strange chemical smell. I'd rarely been to a dry cleaner before except on before mom's funeral. We weren't exactly the kind of family that used clothes that needed dry cleaning. Smelling it now made me feel oddly sad, but that feeling was overwhelmed by a growing sense of apprehension.
It was dark and quiet...too quiet. I couldn't hear any of the machines in the back and I couldn't hear the sounds of anyone moving.
My fear sense told me nothing.
"Hello?" I asked. My voice echoed, and I felt a little uneasy. If they were closed the door would have been locked.
Laserdream repeated what I said and then lifted one hand. Her hand began to glow, throwing shadows over everything around us.
"I didn't know you could do that," I said, surprised.
She smirked. "Most Capes don't tell everything they can do. Being a flashlight isn't exactly ground breaking."
She wasn't that good as a flashlight either. The light was only a little lighter than the glow sticks I'd seen people using sometimes during Halloween. It left everything wreathed in shadows and I was uncomfortably aware of just what kind of target it made us. I carefully stepped a little away from her.
As we made my way through racks of newly pressed clothes, the chemical smell grew stronger, but I also smelled something else, an undertone that immediately made my hackles rise. It was a coppery smell, one I didn't recognize.
I heard Crystal gasp and I turned.
Parian was a dark skinned young woman, something I should not have been able to tell except that her mask was laying cracked beside her. She was leaning against a wall, her lifeless eyes staring horribly like those of a doll.
The top of her head was gone, and blood had sprayed against the wall behind her and in a hemisphere around her body. Her legs were sprawled out and there was a stench of death everywhere now that we were close.
I found myself gagging; the smell caught in my nose.
Crystal on the other hand stood frozen, motionless. It had to be worse for her, she'd at least known the woman casually. She didn't saw anything for a moment.
"Just like Rune..." she murmured.
"What?" I asked sharply.
"Rune was murdered like this in the hospital. A lot of the PRT agents sent to guard her were also killed."
"I hadn't heard anything about this," I said, feeling alternate feelings of horror and relief.
I wasn't a murderer! A weight that I hadn't even realized had been on my shoulders vanished as I realized that I wasn't directly responsible for Rune's death.
However...if this had been done twice, then there was a parahuman serial killer out there, probably targeting female capes.
"Part of the reason the PRT exists is to keep the public calm about Capes," she said. "Telling them there is a vicious murderer, possibly a serial killer stalking the streets is going to be destabilizing."
"They told you?" I asked.
"Professional courtesy,' she said. "Especially if whoever it is is targeting female Capes."
"So...what are we supposed to do now?" I asked. The only bodies I'd ever been around were the injured bodies of my victims. Mom had had a closed casket funeral and I couldn't remember the other funerals I'd been to because I was too young.
"We don't touch anything," she said. "The last thing we want to do is contaminate any evidence."
"What if whoever did it is still around?" I asked. The only fear I felt was what was coming from Crystal, but someone who could do something like this wouldn't be afraid of much.
"We need to get out of here and make the call,' she said. "And this time you need to stay around to be questioned. They have a bad history of assuming that anyone who runs is guilty."
Armsmaster in investigative mode was a little terrifying, and I found myself wilting under his gaze.
"You've never been here before?" he asked.
I shook my head. "I don't have much of a costume and Laserdream convinced me that Parian would be able to help me.'
"So you didn't kill her?" he asked.
"No! I'm not even sure how it was done...I don't have any kind of power that would let me do something like that."
"And no Tinkertech?"
"Do you know how much Tinkertech costs?" I asked incredulously. "I've looked. If I could afford Tinkertech I'd already have a great costume."
"So you aren't a Tinker yourself?" he asked.
I shook my head. "I'm not a Tinker."
"What are your powers exactly?" he asked.
I'd heard that he had a lie detector in his costume somewhere and so I'd been careful to be truthful without giving too much away.
"Is that a question I have to answer?" I asked. "I've already told you I don't have any powers to take the top of someone's head off."
"Were you the one who assaulted a pair of Merchants three weeks ago?"
I stared at him coldly. "Should you be asking me about things that don't pertain to this case? If you do, I think I'd like my lawyer."
"Did you kill Rune?"
"I did not kill Rune," I said firmly. I was pleased to be say that honestly even though being questioned in the alley behind the dry cleaners wasn't my idea of a good place for an interrogation.
Armsmaster had wanted to drag me down to the PRT but I'd refused. The last thing I needed was them fingerprinting me and subjecting me to other tests. He'd wanted to insist, but Miss Militia had intervened.
I'd seen enough TV shows to assume they were playing good cop, bad cop.
He'd seemed disgruntled about the whole thing, and he seemed irritable now. I suspected that he'd hoped I'd be the person to have killed Parian, which would have been an easy win.
"Where were you between the hours of fifteen thirty and seventeen thirty?"
"Are you asking me to reveal my secret identity?" I asked. "Because if you are, we are going to have a problem."
"Is that a threat?" he asked, stepping forward.
I shook my head, but as I did I ran through what my possible responses to him would be. His Halberd was deadly, and from what I'd heard he was a deadly companion.
However, I'd moved my fingers in a quick rune against his wrist when we'd shaken hands earlier, lightly enough that he wouldn't have been able to feel it through his armor. If he attacked me I planned to launch his armor into the sky. Given that he was not known to be able to fly, I suspected that would make the encounter end rather shortly.
Miss Militia was harder. She undoubtedly knew about Shadow Stalker's vulnerabilities, and she could easily create all kinds of electrical stun weapons. I'd have to slip through the wall of the building and hope there weren't too many electrical wires.
Escaping then would be a matter of using my power on my feat and flying away. The last thing I wanted to do was permanently harm either of them.
Alternately I could simply bludgeon her with Armsmaster's power armor with him caught helplessly inside. That ran the risk of her being faster than me and shooting me, so fleeing seemed like the better plan.
"I don't make threats," I said, knowing that his lie detection software would reveal that as at least a partial lie.
The theater I was using in my other identity was all about threats, but it was more than just a way to ramp my strength up. I was safer if every one of my targets was afraid because that meant I knew where they were. I didn't have to be worried about being blindsided by a guy with a gun hiding in a closet somewhere.
"You should join the Wards," he said finally. "Independent capes don't last long on the street."
He'd just accused me of cutting two women's heads open and removing their brains. Were they that hard up that they'd accept just anyone into the program?
They'd accepted Shadow Stalker, so the answer was probably yes.
"I don't think it's for me," I said. Any group that had Sophia Hess in it was a group I had no interest in joining.
Explaining why I didn't want to join would inevitably lead back to my own secret identity. Worse, given my connection to Sophia they'd be one step closer to realizing what I had done to her. I had to keep my answers short and simple and hope that he didn't realize that I was answering some questions less truthfully than others.
"We'd ask that you not reveal what you saw today to anyone," he said.
"Why?" I asked. "You don't think young Cape women deserve to know that there is someone coming for them? At least give them a chance to defend themselves."
"What happens when the public decides that parahumans are too dangerous to have around?" he asked. "Talk about a parahuman serial killer and you'll cause people to panic."
"Maybe they should panic," I said, but at his expression I sighed. "Fine. I won't tell any of the Capes I know unless I absolutely have to."
"You won't go to the press?"
I shook my head. "I promise I'll keep it under wraps."
"I'm sorry to inform you that Blackjack is already taken," he said. He handed me a business card. "You should come up with your own name or the PRT will assign one and some of them aren't particularly flattering."
Considering that the PRT had people named Chubster and Clockblocker, I believed it.
In the end they let me go, even though I sensed that Armsmaster wanted to take me in. I'd gotten away with only a few horrific memories and the knowledge that someone out there was taking people's brains.
I decided that I needed to find a real brute, someone with some good defenses and fast. After all, I was young, parahuman and female, and I was alone as well.
Getting back in the game was going to be important, even if it risked revealing what I could do. Hopefully they'd believe that I and my other identity were two different people. That way, if things got too hot I could simply abandon the other identity.
As I ran away from the site of the crime, my mind was racing, filled with plans.
