Notes: Moka-girl – Yeah, she could say that. But the problem is that the people who are making noises about it wouldn't listen to the idea that the twelve year old girl, whatever her powers, can take care of herself more than they/her parents can. Never mind the fact that it's having Pandora and the others that make her safer, they think the girl should be with her parents. They're not exactly wrong that it would be better if she could be with her family, but it's more complicated than they think. Good thought though.
Imageination – As you'll see a little bit in this chapter, and more in later ones, there are more criminals coming to deal with. ;)
RadicalTurnip – Glad you found it again! And yeah, I always feel like I'm getting better. Looking back on earlier writing sometimes makes me cringe a little, but we press on. I'm glad you liked Amy vs Crawler, and hopefully there's a few more surprises coming.
Guile... whenever you actually make it up to this particular chapter – Glad you're enjoying it overall. To answer the question, no, Sophia doesn't get the option to not fight Tether. Should she? Is Madison under some particular compulsion to fight fair at this point? She was making a point of revealing Sophia's face to herself, not making any kind of statement about 'okay now nobody use powers'. She was purposefully antagonizing Sophia into admitting the truth and goading her to lose her cool on the record. And as for knowing about the weakness to electricity, Madison was working with the other Wards at the time. They knew about the weakness to electricity, because Shadow Stalker had a special vision enhancement in her mask to watch out for it. But yeah, I'm glad you like it and I hope that helps answer the questions on that point.
As always, thanks for reading, guys (and girls)!
29.01
"She really looked like Vicky?" Amy's voice was soft, tentative against the heavy, contemplative silence that had followed my explanation of what I had seen happen with Freezetag.
It was Friday, October 14th, the day that the Wards were supposed to be honored by the city. That would happen later in the evening, at some big dinner party that the mayor was throwing. It was also the first real chance that I'd had to talk to Panacea with any semblance of privacy. To that end, Amy and I, along with three of the Pandoras (Lambda and the twins, Xi and Omicron), were sitting in the park at one of the picnic tables that was set a fair bit away from anything else. In the distance, I could barely make out the playground where some kids were running around yelling at one another.
Biting my lip, I nodded slowly while watching their reactions. "Not just looked like her, it was identical. She had Victoria's powers, costume, everything. It was definitely more than just changing shape. And it wasn't just Vicky either. She also had Grue's powers when she looked like him."
Xi or Omicron (I still couldn't tell the identical short-haired brunettes apart, and I was starting to suspect that they alternated which names they answered to) spoke up. "How is this possible?"
Beside her, the other twin agreed. "She is not like us. And even if she was..."
The first twin finished her thought. "She did not absorb Victoria-Lost."
Victoria-Lost? After a moment, I realized that it was probably the designation they had decided on for someone that had died. Flinching then, I shrugged. "I don't know, guys. I really don't. I'm gonna try to talk to the Undersiders later tonight at the stupid award thing, maybe I can corner Tattletale and get some answers out of her now that they've had time to work out exactly what Freezetag is capable of."
"Why is she capable of that?" Amy demanded. "She wasn't before. How do you go from 'make people stand still' to 'shapeshift into people that are dead and use their powers'? That's like me suddenly being able to... I don't know, control water or something, it doesn't make any sense."
From where she sat beside me, Lambda abruptly piped up. "And then you would be Pana-Sea-Uh!" This was punctuated by her wide, infectious smile as she waited patiently for our reactions.
Blinking once, Amy shook her head at first. "But my name isPanac-" Getting it then, she groaned.
In spite of myself, I snickered a bit and nudged the girl next to me. "How's your sandwich, Lambda?"
As if in answer, the Hispanic-looking clone took an enormous bite out of her ham and turkey sub that had been piled high with extra, extra pickles before giving me a thumbs up gesture. She bounced up and down, practically dancing in her seat while making happy noises.
Smiling at that, I patted her on the back before looking back at Amy and shrugged once more. "Again, I don't know how Freezetag went from stopping people to turning into the ones that have died after she used her power on them. I can't work out the correlation between that and her old power."
Xi or Omicron spoke slowly, clearly thinking. "We would like to see this Freezetag once more."
On the opposite side of Amy from her twin, the other gave that strange, jerky nod that the Pandoras did, clearly agreeing. "We may understand this power more if we are able to see it for ourselves."
"And," the first of the twins added, "it would be nice to see Noelle-Sister again."
"I'll see what I can do," I promised. "But I don't know how much Freezetag's gonna be up for."
Finishing the large bite that had been in her mouth, Lambda spoke up again, her voice softer this time, with a note of reverence. "We are very sorry that Freezetag-Person has lost her brother."
Omicron or Xi bowed her head while speaking up in a pained voice. "Losing a part of one's family is very bad." I saw the girl set a hand down in the middle of the table before her twin put her own on top of it and squeezed, the two of them clearly comforting one another.
After closing her eyes briefly and giving a visible shudder, Amy nodded. Her voice was a little hoarse. "It really sucks." That was followed by a long, frustrated sigh. "Especially if someone else starts running around somehow turning into the person that you lost."
Wincing at that, I said, "I don't think that was her intention. She wasn't really thinking about anything at all except finding Mannequin and making him pay, and she was using whatever it took to do it."
"I know." Amy looked away, her face flushed. "And I know being mad at her about it isn't fair. I'm just... I can't see Victoria like that. If I did, it just still hurts too much. I know it's not her, but part of me really wants to go find the Undersiders and just..." She trailed off, looking pensive.
I got it a second later. "You want to ask Freezetag to turn into Victoria?"
Looking ashamed of herself, Amy folded her arms protectively over herself and shrank back. "I know. I know it's stupid and horrible and it's not even her. But if I could just talk to Vicky one more time, if I could just-" Her voice cracked and she closed her eyes tightly while a couple of tears leaked out.
That made me wince. I had assumed that she would be upset at the thought of Aisha turning into Victoria, but I hadn't even considered the idea that she might actually want to use that as a way of pretending, even for a moment, that she could actually talk to Vicky again. "Oh, Amy... no, it's not-"
"I know," she interrupted flatly without looking at me. "I know it's not like that. She wouldn't really be Vicky any more than Omicron would be if she took that shape. I know all of it, but that doesn't stop the part of me that really wants to try anyway. It's not logical, it's stupid."
"It's not stupid," I promised her as gently as I could. "I get it, Amy. I understand what you mean. I just wish there was something I could say that would make it better, or at least make it hurt less."
"I loved her." Amy's voice was quiet, but more assured than she had been a second earlier. "I loved Victoria, as a sister and as more than that. It was complicated. It is complicated. I can't just get over that, but I'm trying not to live completely in the past. I'm trying to move on. It's just that when you talk about some other girl suddenly turning into her, using her powers..."
"I know," I said softly while reaching across the table to touch her shoulder. "I know, Amy. That's why I wanted to warn you guys before you saw her out and around like... like that."
She gave the faintest of nods, but said nothing. Meanwhile, the identical Pandoras on either side of Amy, her most constant companions over these past couple of months, each embraced her with one arm while still clasping their own hands together on the table. For a few moments, we sat in contemplation, no one wanting to break the silence that had settled as we thought back, remembering Victoria.
It was Lambda who finally did, speaking up as she looked toward me. "Dinah-Friend and Emma-Friend have just asked that we give you a message, Te—Madison-Friend."
"What kind of message?" I asked while straightening a little. "Is it about Dinah's parents?" I had passed the message along to the girl a couple of days earlier that her parents were still missing and that they needed her help. I also, as calmly and pointedly as I could, pointed out that she and Emma both still had families that were worried about them. She had immediately promised to use her power to find them, but had hesitated at the idea of seeing them. In the end, it was Riley who convinced her by physically smacking the girl and saying that the whole place wasn't going to fall apart, that she wasn't going to fall apart and go back to being Bonesaw, if they just visited their families for a little bit.
She also added something about how their 'project' could wait and that 'he' wouldn't be going anywhere. I was absolutely certain that I really didn't want to know what they were talking about.
After that, Dinah had said she and Emma would try to set up a time to visit with their families, Emma as soon as possible, and Dinah once her parents were located. I'd tentatively raised the worry that they had been killed during the assault, but Dinah assured me they were alive. Apparently her power told her that there was a high chance that she would see them alive again eventually, so they couldn't have died.
"No." Lambda shook her head at that. "It is about Emma-Friend's family. She has agreed to visit them tomorrow evening, but she would like you to accompany her when she goes."
I blinked at that, surprised. "She wants me to go? Wait, me Madison or me Tether?"
"Tether," Xi or Omicron answered from the other side of the table "She believes that your presence will help convince her family that she is safe where she is, and that she is not behaving irrationally."
Omicron or Xi continued after her twin fell silent. "Her previous conversations with her father have not gone as Emma-Friend hoped they would, and she is afraid that he may attempt to make her stay with them. He may believe that compelling her continued presence is for her own good."
I hesitated before nodding. "Tell Emma that I'll go with her if she really wants me there. Whatever she needs." I'd go with, then wait nearby to give her a chance to reunite with her family privately after making my presence known and answering any questions that Mr. Barnes had that I could answer.
"Here comes Crystal." Amy nodded over my shoulder before lifting her hand to wave.
Turning, I saw the older blonde step off the sidewalk path that led in a circle around the perimeter of the park, approaching at an easy pace while she returned Amy's wave. "Hey guys," she said once she was close enough to be heard without shouting. "How's it going?"
Beside me, Lambda slipped off the bench and all-but jumped to her feet. "Crystal-Friend!" She exclaimed, surprising me a bit. I wasn't aware that Amy's cousin was that well known to the Pandoras. That, however, was nothing compared to my surprise when Lambda lunged that way to hug the older girl, almost taking the blonde off her feet with the fierceness of her embrace.
Laughing, Crystal returned Lambda's hug. "There's my favorite little punk." Her voice was soft with fondness. "I don't suppose you saved me a bite?"
Obligingly, Lambda leaned back and lifted her beloved sandwich, offering it to the blonde.
"Snarf." Crystal took the offered bite and chewed. "Mmm, very pickly."
Lambda's head bobbed eagerly at that while her bright smile broadened. "Yes, Crystal-Friend." She paused then, but it was obvious from her expression as she glanced back at the table and then to the older girl that she was anxiously waiting for something.
It was equally clear from Crystal's expression that she was well aware of that fact, and teased Lambda by not saying anything for several long seconds before finally relenting. "Ohhh okay, go ahead, Punk."
Instantly, Lambda recited, "Why were the people sad when they blew away the fog?"
A smile tugged at Crystal's face before she shook her head. "I don't know, why were they sad?"
"Because it was mist!" Lambda crowed before giggling at her own joke so much she nearly fell over until Crystal caught her. It was an open, innocent laugh that still amazed me to hear coming from the same figure that had terrified me so much a few months earlier. All of the Pandoras had grown a lot, and Lambda was perhaps the best example of that when compared to the Pandora of those days.
Crystal chuckled softly at that. "Mist huh? Well guess what, I've got something for you this time."
Brightening at that, the girl chirped, "Knock knock?"
"Ah, you know the rules, Punk. That's what I say," Crystal corrected, pointing at herself. When Lambda bobbed her head eagerly, obviously bouncing from foot to foot with anticipation, the older girl finally relented with a smile. "Okay, knock knock."
"Hello, who is there?" The Hispanic-looking girl's response came instantly, almost interrupting Crystal's last 'knock' in her eagerness to hear the joke.
Leaning over the table, Amy whispered to me, "We tried to tell her that she doesn't have to say hello first, but she said that it's always polite to say hello when you answer a door."
Winking over Lambda's shoulder at us, Crystal answered her with a simple, "Thistle."
"Thistle who, please?"
"Thistle be a good time to open the door."
Lambda blinked once, then laughed so much she really did fall down, collapsing into the grass. "Thistle! Thistle thistle thistle! I like this word." She seemed to be enjoying repeating the word 'thistle' to herself repeatedly almost as much as she had enjoyed the joke itself.
Shaking her head while chuckling easily, Crystal stepped around Lambda and smiled at the rest of us before sitting down next to me. "So, how's everyone else doing?"
"I'd be doing better if they'd just cancel this stupid award dinner thing," I replied with a shrug. "It's just gonna be a bunch of people who don't understand anything about what happened making a bunch of speeches. Director Simms said they were planning on three hours for dinner and speeches.. How come their way of rewarding us feels an awful lot like punishing us?"
I was whining, I knew. I just really didn't feel like sitting around a stuffy room while a bunch of people I didn't know talked about the things that we'd had to do. The idea made me uncomfortable.
"That's funny, I thought you enjoyed attention, Miss Never Shuts Up." Crystal poked me a little bit teasingly.
"Exactly." I waved both hands. "Three hours where they don't want us to say anything. We're just supposed to sit there and let them talk about us. I think they're afraid we'll say something embarrassing if they let us talk." Okay, it probably wasn't a completely unfounded fear, but still.
Realizing after a moment that Crystal hadn't said anything, I glanced over to find her gazing off into the distance. Before I could ask what was up, Amy beat me to the punch. "Is something wrong?"
"Hmm?" Crystal turned back that way and then flushed before shaking her head. "No, not wrong exactly. Just... overwhelming. I talked to Legend earlier."
"Wait, is he recruiting you for that special team?" I had talked to Aegis the day before about the recruitment of Asylum and himself to the new Protectorate team that would not be bound to any particular area.
Letting out a breath, Crystal shook her head. "Actually, no. Not exactly."
Blinking in surprise at that, I asked, "So what did he want to talk to you about then?"
"It was him and Miss Militia," she amended. "She's the one they're recruiting. Something about wanting her to lead this new team with Prism as her second."
"So why were they talking to you about it?" Amy tilted her head curiously.
"Because..." Crystal trailed off, hesitating before breathing out again. "Because they want me to take over here, for Miss Militia after she leaves."
My eyes widened at that. "They want you to be the Protectorate leader here? Oh... Oh. Crystal, that's... but aren't you..." I was trying to process that. "Aren't you still pretty young?"
"That's exactly what I said," she replied. "Legend said that the Protectorate doesn't promote based on age, and that none of the others fit what they want in a leader. He said he can't transfer anyone more qualified in when he's already taking every spare they've got to work out this new team. It's either me or Kayden, and she has a baby. Plus there's still people that might argue against putting her in charge."
"So what did you say?" Amy finally managed after the two of us stared at each other briefly. Xi and Omicron were silent, observing this with obvious curiosity, while Lambda was still giggling.
Crystal shrugged. "I said that I needed to think about it. What else could I say? I mean, I can't legally drink beer yet, but they want me to lead a Protectorate team? It's insane."
"You've got the experience." I pointed out. "You grew up in a cape family. You've lived and breathed this stuff your whole life, Crystal. Plus you've been one yourself for years now. You're calm, level-headed, you think things through... Legend isn't just picking you because there's nobody else. If he thought you couldn't do it, he'd find somebody else or he just wouldn't move Miss Militia. If they both chose you, it's because they think you can do it."
Smiling a little, she glanced toward me. "Sure you're not just saying that because you hope I can stop you from getting roped into any more three hour dinner parties?"
"If I thought you could do that," I replied dryly. "I'd be down on my knees begging you to take the job."
She laughed, obviously in spite of herself and shook her head before nudging me. "Sorry, since that doesn't look likely, we should probably head back and start getting ready for this thing."
I groaned a little. "Do we have to? You know, if they do make you leader, you could always punish me with extra patrol assignments that just happen to coincide with things like this." I waggled my eyebrows at her demonstratively. "Huh, huh?"
Smirking, Crystal pushed herself up. "You wish. C'mon, if I have to show up, you guys do too."
"Ooookay." I was playing it up a bit, pushing myself away from the bench and to my feet as the idea of sitting in a room for hours on end listening to self-important people ramble on made me long for a good old bank robbery distraction. I summoned up all the enthusiasm for this event that I could muster into a single rallying call.
"Let's get this over with."
29.02
A couple hours later I sat in the banquet hall that had been reserved for this big ceremony that everyone who wasanyone in the city had come to. My boredom was in the middle of a pitched battle against my self-consciousness over which of them was going to kill me first. The achingly long and rambling speeches given by people I didn't even know that made me want to drift off were punctuated by the occasional embarrassing direct compliment that made my face go red beneath the mask.
The other Wards and I were sitting at a long table situated front and center right by the raised stage and podium where the speakers stood to give their long-winded thoughts. All around us, hundreds of other well-dressed guests were at their own tables. I didn't know who most of them were either, aside from the table to our left where the Protectorate was seated. All of the local members were present, while a couple out-of-towners had been recruited to run patrols for the evening.
Dinner had already been served and taken away, so I couldn't even play with the various utensils. I might have actually drifted off through a couple of the even more boring speeches, but each speaker occasionally directed attention toward us, and I was pretty sure that being found slumped back in my seat, loudly snoring wouldn't give the best impression. Besides, I was bored, but I didn't want to be that rude. Even though some of these people were clearly using the ceremony to their own advantage, I knew that there were others for whom this really was that important. It gave them closure, it allowed them to feel like they were both contributing and that the saga of the Slaughterhouse Nine was over.
I got that, I understood it, even if I was so painfully sick of these speeches. I wanted it to be over so we could move on, but I wasn't going to go out of my way to ruin the event for those who did like it.
At the moment, the elderly woman who was speaking (I was pretty sure that she was from some rich family that had invented mud or the wheel something) had entered her tenth straight minute on how important it was that streets be properly lit and labeled in order to deter others like the Nine. I wasn't entirely sure how A plus B equaled C in this scenario, but I wasn't going to interrupt and say so. Again, whatever made the people feel like they had actually done something, and weren't quite so helpless was worth keeping my mouth shut. If 'fixing street lights and signs' would help them feel useful, so be it.
Poor Sparrow, who sat beside me on the left, seemed to have it worse. She kept squirming and sighing, obviously trying and failing to find a comfortable way to sit. I felt a flash of irritation at the people who thought forcing an eleven-year old to sit still and be silent for hours on end was anything but an obscene punishment. I could sit through this, even if I didn't like it. Mika shouldn't have had to.
In contrast, on my right side, Reach was sitting upright and seemingly attentive, gazing directly at the podium. At first I thought she had somehow fallen asleep sitting up, but then she chuckled very softly. I blinked, because the woman on stage hadn't said anything funny. After glancing to the podium to make sure I hadn't missed anything else that Cassie could have been laughing at and finding nothing, I looked back that way and whispered under my breath, "Hey, what's funny?" I was glad that the mask covering my face meant that no one could tell I was saying anything as long as I kept my voice low enough.
There was no response. After waiting a few more seconds, I nudged her with my foot. "Reach?"
Finally, the other girl glanced toward me and whispered, "Pause." Then she focused, looking toward the front briefly. "What? Did something happen? Is it over?"
Confused, I stared at her. "What do you mean, is it over? Aren't you watching? Wait, pause what?"
In answer, Cassie leaned closer to me as if we were whispering. Her voice was very soft. "Play."
As I stared into the dark green visor that covered her eyes, I saw the faint reflection of something within. It was like watching the tiny, inverted reflection of a television screen. My mouth fell open in surprise as I blurted under my breath. "You have a TV inside your mask? How?"
She coughed faintly and sat back before nodding over her shoulder to where Theo was very studiously looking absolutely anywhere but at me. With an air of extreme satisfaction as she faced front once more and once more looked for all the world like she was watching the speech as intently as anyone, Reach added, "Audio comes over an unused channel in the earbud. Any official use overrides it."
"That's... you're... cheat." I barely resisted the urge to point at her accusingly. "You're cheating."
"Would you mind?" Cassie's voice was prim as she teased. "Some of us are trying to pay attention." In a quieter tone, she added, "And you're just jealous that you didn't think of it."
"Damn straight," I whispered back before turning my attention back to the speech before we attracted too much attention. The masks and our quiet tone made it easier to talk than other people might have found it, but I didn't want to push it too far and risk upsetting anyone.
The speeches carried on (and on and on), and I did my best to pay attention rather than let my eyes glaze over. Eventually, however, my eyes started drifting closed for several seconds at a time before I would start a little, trying in vain to focus. That would last another couple minutes and then my eyelids would grow heavy again. I honestly couldn't help it after several hours of mind-numbing talking.
Finally, one of the speakers had the lights dimmed so that they could show a video presentation that they had prepared about how more tourism could be brought to the city in order to provide funds for rebuilding. In the darkness, I figured stepping away for a minute wouldn't be quite as noticeable, so I leaned over to Mika and whispered, "I'm going to use the restroom, you wanna come?"
The other girl nodded quickly and turned to whisper something to Flechette on the other side of her. Lily glanced toward me and when I nodded, gave Mika a thumbs up before looking back to the front.
Another short whisper brought Vista as well, and the three of us slipped away from the table. As we passed the Protectorate table on our way out, I leaned closer to Battery on the end and explained where we were going under my breath so that she could tell the others who were looking at us. I couldn't tell if they were annoyed because we were leaving for a few minutes, or just jealous.
"Uuuugggn thank god." Missy groaned once we were out of the room and in the hallway where we wouldn't be overheard. She rolled her shoulder and head, clearly working some kinks out. "Don't those people ever get tired of hearing the sound of their own voices? Please tell me it's almost over."
"Three more speakers," I replied with a sigh. "Probably another forty minutes. The mayor's last, and he has the longest time allotment." I was also pretty sure that I wouldn't have to worry about embarrassing compliments during the mayor's speech, considering how much he obviously didn't like me.
Both younger girls sighed at that, and I couldn't really blame them. We made our way to the restroom together, and I let them go first while standing guard outside so that no one would come in while they were unmasked. Not that we really had to worry about it, considering how utterly empty the halls were. Everyone else was still inside the banquet hall, watching the tourism video.
Everyone, that was, except for the masked man currently strolling out of a room at the end of the hall, carrying a duffle bag in one hand and whistling. He wore a costume that I didn't recognize. It was a full-body suit that looked silvery-white and was semi-reflective. I had to squint a little to make it out, because the material seemed to alternate between showing a reflection and actually giving off light. The effect made it difficult to focus on the man, which was obviously the point.
The man couldn't see me from where I was standing, just inside the small alcove that led to the restrooms, but I could see him just fine. I was trying to remember if there was a visiting cape that matched his description, since I didn't want to start something with a man that was actually part of the Protectorate and was just doing his job to keep the building secure.
My uncertainty ended as soon as the man spoke, clearly using a communicator. "How's that hack coming, Kitsune? I need the alarm dropped before I can get into the back room."
Well, that settled that. First I activated my comm to both Vista and Sparrow in the bathroom, and the rest of the team in the banquet hall, whispering, "Trouble in the corridor, unknown cape intruder." Then I reached out, starting to attach a line to the man in order to yank him off his feet. His back was to me as he strode with oblivious casualness down the hall in the other direction.
At the last second, while I was setting the line, the man abruptly twisted out of the way. He spun toward me, and I saw that his mask was a simple, featureless bit that was even more reflective than the rest of his costume. It made looking at his face at bit like looking into a mirror.
"Well hey there," the man called out, his voice still just as casual as when he had been talking to his partner. Putting one hand against his chin, he tapped the side of his head thoughtfully with the other. "Aren't you supposed to be inside there getting an award or something?"
In answer, I used lines against my feet to throw myself forward, closing the distance between us.
Landing in front of the man, I finally replied to him. "Sure, an award for catching bad guys. So hey, thanks for volunteering to be a visual aid." I chirped the last words cheerfully while feinting a kick forward. At the same time, I attached a line to a nearby fire extinguisher and yanked it our way so that even if the man avoided the kick, he'd step right back into the path of the flying projectile.
As expected, he stepped back nimbly... and then turned suddenly to avoid the flying fire extinguisher. It was just as abrupt as avoiding my line had been. On top of that, he actually snagged the thing out of the air as it flew past him. Waving the thing at me, he adopted a scolding tone. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that you should only use these things in a real emergency?"
"Who are you?" I took a side step, watching the man in the reflective costume carefully. There had been no answer to my call yet, either from the girls in the bathroom or the rest of the team. I wanted to look over my shoulder at the bathroom, but didn't dare take my eyes off the stranger. His complete casualness about the whole affair was confusing. He clearly could have fought me, but hadn't even tried other than to easily avoid everything I threw at him.
Dropping the fire extinguisher to the side, the man gave a brief bow. "Sorry, that was rude. You can call me Kismet. And for the record, we're not really your enemies."
"We?" I echoed. When the man nodded over my shoulder, I turned slightly to find another unexpected sight. A girl was standing beside the restroom door. She looked to be around Vista's age if I had to guess, and wore a costume of her own. It was a tan-gold-red number that managed to mimic the appearance of a fox fairly accurately, with a hood on top that even had appropriate ears. Over her face she wore a set of wide, futuristic looking goggles. A utility belt full of pouches and a backpack completed the ensemble.
She was also doing a little dance. "Whooo! Who's the badass? Army of hired muscle secret service wannabes versus Kitsune, who wins? Kistune! Super secure Protectorate and Ward communication network versus Kitsune, who wins? Kitsune, bitches!" Finally, she looked to me and smiled genuinely while waving. "Bathroom with a couple of genuine badass Wards versus Kitsune? Kitsune."
The last bit made my eyes widen and I took quick step that way. "What the hell did you-"
The man, Kismet, caught me around the waist and turned me then in a quick maneuver that dumped me to the floor while putting himself between me and the girl. "She didn't hurt them," he said quickly while I was rolling back to my feet. "You'd know if she had. They're just sleeping. If I know anything about how the people in that room like to talk, your teammates'll be grateful for the nap."
My mind was spinning. The man reacted to everything I did almost before I did it, the comms had clearly been jammed somehow by this Kitsune girl, and she had also managed to knock out Sparrow and Vista. "You know, it's funny. I could've sworn that you said you weren't our enemies."
Kismet nodded at that. "That's right, we're not your enemies. We all fight bad guys, you just have more obvious targets than we do." He gestured over his shoulder toward the banquet room. "Half the people in there belong in prison, Tether. They get rich and fat while everyone else suffers. Even now, even this they're trying to profit from. Do you have any idea how much aid and rescue money they take right off the top for their own pockets before any of it goes to help the people who actually live in this city?"
"Wait," I stared for a second. "You're playing Robin Hood? What, you're trying to steal from the rich and give it to the poor minus your finder's fee? Is that how you justify all this?"
"If you knew the things that we knew about some of the people in there, you'd be right here alongside us," the costumed man spoke evenly.
"So tell us about them," I shot back. "Come forward if you have this evidence or whatever. Talk to us. People here actually care about that stuff. You can't fix it by being thieves. You wanna change things, then change them the right way."
"Sorry," Kismet replied. "We tried it the other way. Didn't really work out that well."
Behind him, the girl prompted, "Gotta go, bro. I'm pretty damn awesome, but security's starting to catch on."
Raising my hand quickly, I shot a dart toward the girl to knock her out. Even as it flew that way, however, Kismet put a hand out to knock it out of the air. Even though I couldn't see his expression, his voice sounded apologetic. "Sorry, we can't stick around anymore."
"See you later, Tether!" Kitsune called to me. "Just so you know, you're almost as ridiculously awesome as me!" I saw her produce what looked like a small water balloon and threw it at the nearby wall. It splattered, but rather than seeing water or paint or anything else, I could actually see an opening in the wall leading to an alleyway that I recognized as being several blocks away. With a start, I realized that whatever had been in the balloon had somehow made a portalagainst the wall it had hit.
I tried one more time to attach lines to the pair, but once again Kismet grabbed the younger girl and yanked her and himself out of the way before I could get the lines set. He gave Kitsune a toss through the portal, prompting a loud, "Wheee!" from the girl.
Then the man turned back to me and gave a quick, casual salute. "Like I said, we're not your enemy. Check on your teammates. They should be fine in a few minutes, but might have a headache. Good luck with the award thing!"
Then he backstepped through the opening in the wall, and it vanished a second later, leaving the wall looking as good as new. For a few seconds, I just stood there, staring. Then I shook myself and turned to run into the bathroom, checking on Missy and Mika, who were just starting to pick themselves up off the tiled floor.
"What... happened?" Vista was asking while she pushed herself over with a groan.
"Well," I answered honestly. "Things stopped being boring."
29.03
"S-so what happened after you helped the other t-two up? Did your comms work again?"
From my place in the front passenger seat of the van that I was riding in, I glanced toward Emma in the driver's seat and raised an eyebrow before realizing that the gesture was lost behind my mask. "You know, you driving like that is really disconcerting. Could you at least put your hands on the wheel? And umm, I don't know, maybe look at the road once in awhile?"
It was the day after the award ceremony, and we were heading toward the Barnes family home for their reunion. I had originally planned on only making a brief appearance, but my friend had made me promise that I wouldn't leave until she did. Apparently she was almost certain that her parents were going to try something to make her stay.
"Why?" Emma blinked up from the magazine that she had been reading while talking to me. With a hand, she gestured toward the camera that was set up on the dash, then to the ones that were pointed out the back and sides of the van. "That's what th-those are for, you know? I haven't umm... I haven't missed anything, have I?" Her voice became briefly worried while her attention turned toward the front as the van slowed to a stop at a yellow light that was about to turn red without any obvious input from her.
"No, but that's-" I coughed. "Are you telling me that you can watch all four of those cameras at once and process what they're showing you, control the van without touching the wheel or the pedals, read your magazine, and talk to me all at the same time and still not get confused or miss anything?"
"Uhhhh..." Her shoulders lifted in a helpless shrug before she mumbled with obvious self-consciousness, "I'm also s-sort of using the wi-fi that w-we put into the van to look up umm... y-you know, anything ab-bout those two you were just talking about."
For a moment, I just stared at the other girl before turning to look into the backseat where one of the Pandoras sat, fingers moving rapidly over a hand-held game system while the sounds of laser fire and dying aliens or robots emerged from it. "Hey Delta, you guys sort of just 'understand' people's powers when you look at them, right? What the hell does Emma's say when you look at her? Is it just a bunch of lines repeating bullshit, bullshit, bullshit over and over again?"
Delta's chosen form was a slight, slender girl similar to Gamma's in build and stature. Her skin was pale white and her hair was a bright, bubblegum pink that had been tied into a long, tight braid that nearly reached her waist. I had asked what had made her choose that color over a more realistic one, and Delta had said simply that pink was her favorite. Other than the hair choice, she seemed fairly tomboyish in her simple brown jeans and matching brown leather jacket over a red turtleneck.
Now, her head tilted while she looked up from her game to regard me. Her voice was quiet and thoughtful. "Emma-Friend's multitasking ability is even greater than ours. We are able to divide our attention among the eighteen-" She stopped, head turning in a slight flinch before she continued. "-sixteen of us. We believe that Emma-Friend is capable of dividing her own attention much further."
Clearly embarrassed, Emma turned around to poke me. "Hey, you're changing the s-subject. Seriously, what happened after the others w-woke up? Did the rest of the speeches have to be canceled?"
I shook my head. "No, they kept things pretty quiet. No one wanted to, you know, risk scaring everyone again so soon after the thing with the Nine. Especially since Kismet and Kitsune were already gone. They did a sweep, but couldn't figure out what those two were doing or what they were after."
"Wh-what about Sparrow and Vista? Are they okay?" While she asked that, Emma began to squeeze through the space between our seats to scramble into the back, prying the lid off of a plastic tub back there before digging through a pile of what looked like random computer components and wires. Her head was half buried in the tub while the van slowed in order to yield to a pedestrian, then made a right turn and accelerated to catch up with the flow of traffic, slipping into a narrow space between a sedan and a garbage truck. I saw the man in the truck do a quick double-take at the empty seat as we passed.
"Okay, this is patently unfair." I rolled my eyes. "You're a better driver when you're not even in the seat than I am with one hundred percent of my attention on the road."
"It is your spatial sense, Tether-Friend," Delta remarked quietly from where she was sitting. The game was still held in her lap. "The same thing which allows you a subconscious awareness of the world around you in order to assist your own movement becomes blocked and confused while within the small confines of this moving vehicle. It is attempting to direct you, but is disturbed by the fact that it is the vehicle that is moving, not you yourself."
"We thought it might be something like that." I hesitated, frowning a little thoughtfully. "I wonder if I can ever practice enough to get over that. It'd be nice to be able to drive sometimes."
After considering that for a moment, I shook it off. "Anyway, they're fine now. Kind of embarrassed that they didn't really get a chance to fight back, but apparently they never even saw Kitsune. They just heard some kind of pop and then there was gas everywhere. Next thing they knew, they were waking up." I sighed. "Not that I did much better against Kismet. I can't figure out how he did all that."
"Combat sense?" Emma offered while lifting her head out of the tub. She held a collection of components in one hand, and a screwdriver in the other. "Maybe he's got some kind of super sense that lets him know everything that's going on around him or something."
"I dunno." I shrugged helplessly. "All I know is that no one can figure out what they were after or what they were going on about. The way he was talking, I don't think they see themselves as bad guys. Not like the Nine or anything. That is, if it's not all lies. I mean, maybe he's just saying that to get the girl to go along with him or something. Who knows? We need to find them before they do anything else. Before they do something that scares businesses away from helping the city recover."
Freeing herself from the tangled mess inside the plastic tub, Emma scrambled back into the front and took her place behind the wheel again. Not that she even glanced toward the wheel itself, of course.
"What's that?" I asked, nodding toward the thing in her hands. It looked like a black cube about two and a half inches across, with a yellow wire trailing out of the bottom and a collection of pins on the top like the ones I'd seen on the bottom of computer parts that plugged into the motherboard.
In reply, she held it out to me. "Could ummm, could you make sure that Ch-Christopher gets that? I ummm, I p-promised that I'd get him one from the T-Toybox the next time Dinah ordered parts."
Taking the component and blinking down at it, I nodded. "Err, sure. But Christopher? I didn't know you guys were on a first name basis. Or, you know, any name basis whatsoever."
Blushing with obvious self-consciousness that would have seemed completely out of place a year earlier, Emma offered me a shrug. "I... umm, we started talking during the whole... i-invasion and umm, I g-gave him an e-mail address so we could keep... you kn-know... talking."
I continued to watch her for another few seconds, but before I could say anything else, the van pulled to a stop. Emma slowly lifted her head and turned to look out the window at the house that sat there looking the same as it always had whenever I had visited her before everything had happened.
"Well," she spoke quietly, the nervous trepidation apparent in her voice. "H-here we are."
Reaching out, I touched Emma's arm, squeezing briefly. "Are you ready for this?"
There was no answer for a moment, while the other girl simply stared out her window at her house. I couldn't tell what she was thinking, but I didn't rush things. Patiently, I waited and watched, keeping my hand on her arm so that she would know I was right there with her the whole time.
Finally, her head dipped in a single nod. "I'm..." Her voice obviously caught and she swallowed before continuing while reaching for the door. "I'm ready. C-come on, Delta, let me introduce y-you to my parents." Her voice softened to a whisper as she stepped down from the van. "Here goes n-nothing."
We had barely emerged together from the van and taken three steps up onto the sidewalk before the front door of the house flew open and a figure came rushing out. I had time to recognize Emma's mother just as the woman hauled the girl up into her arms, hugging her so tightly I thought she was going to break something. She was sobbing openly, clutching Emma to her while repeating, "Baby, baby, my baby. My Emma, you're okay, baby, you're really okay. God, my baby."
Stepping out of the way, I stood next to Delta and watched with a lump in my throat as Emma's father and older sister emerged from the house as well, hurrying to take their turn hugging my friend.
Not that Mrs. Barnes was in any hurry to let go from her own hug. They ended up in a sort of group hug thing with Emma squashed into the middle, looking overwhelmed and possibly a little bit panicked from all of the attention. She looked scared, and then immediately looked horrified at herself for that fear. It was obviously too much. Not that she was actually afraid of her family, but after everything that she had been through, that sort of complete break in her personality, this was a lot to deal with. She stood there, frozen while her family hugged and all talked over each other trying to ask her every single question under the sun without taking the time for a breath or to let her even try to answer. It was all clearly going way too fast for her.
In the end, it was Emma's father who broke off the hug. He was staring at Delta, an uncertain frown touching his face. "Who are you, exactly?" He asked with obvious suspicion.
His words caught the attention of Emma's mother and sister, both of whom also turned slightly to squint at the Pandora who stood next to me. I had a feeling they knew exactly who she was.
Slipping the game system into one of her pockets, Delta offered the group her best attempt at a smile. It probably didn't help much, considering her lack of practice. Unlike Lambda or Gamma, Delta's smile still resembled a predatory shark, in spite of her attempts otherwise.
"Hello, Mrs. Emma-Friend's Mother and Mr. Emma-Friend's Father and Emma-Friend's Sister." She greeted them as politely as possible while they collectively recoiled from her smile. "We are called Pandora, and I am called Delta. It is nice to meet Emma-Friend's family. She has said-"
"It's you. You're one of them." Mr. Barnes all-but spat the words. "You're the one that abducted our girl. You're the one that won't let her come home. What the hell is wrong with you? Do you know what you've done to this family? Do you have any idea what you've put us through? Do you care? Are you even capable of caring, clone? Do you even know what feelings are? Do you have the slightest idea what it's like to lose someone, to have someone you care about taken away? What kind of freak-"
"Daddy, shut up." Emma had extricated herself from the rest of her family and now stood in between her father and Delta, hands raised as though to ward him off. "Trust me, y-you really don't know what you're talking about. She's my friend. Th-they're all my friends, so please, just stop."
"Oh sweetie," Mr. Barnes shook his head. "It's okay now. You don't have to be afraid. We're going to take care of everything. No one's going to make you leave again. You're home. You're where you belong now. Trust me, baby, I'll take care of everything. She won't hurt you anymore." Briefly, his attention turned toward me. "And you, what iswrong with you, huh? I thought youwere supposed to help people, not aid in kidnapping. Do you think it's fun to force a girl to stay away from her family?"
That hurt, but before I could respond, Emma spoke again. "D-daddy, please, listen to-"
Emma's mother spoke over her that time. "Ems, come on, you're home now. You don't have to listen to those... those clones anymore. Come away from that monster and we'll keep you safe."
Both parents kept talking over each other for another few seconds before Emma abruptly blurted loudly, "I said shut up!" While their mouths snapped closed in surprise, she took a step back to put herself between Delta and me, taking the other girl's hand. "Just... just stop talking o-over me like I'm not here. Stop talking at me. St-stop telling me wh-what you think I am and what you th-think I'm saying and listen. Just listen. Delta is my friend. She's not a m-monster, she's a person. They're all people, a-andI'm staying with them because it's my choice, okay? It's my choice."
Emma's father started to say something else, but it was her older sister who beat him to the punch, speaking carefully with a curious glance toward the silent pink-haired girl beside me. "You're really choosing to stay with them? You're not being... forced to say that?"
Quickly, their mother put in, "Because if you're afraid, we can help you, honey. You're safe here." She looked almost desperate to cross the distance between them so that she could clutch Emma to herself once again.
Swallowing, Emma shook her head. "No one's f-forcing me. I... I chose to stay with Dinah and the others. It's... something I have to do. I have to help. I have to try to make up for... for Taylor."
"Emma, that wasn't your fault." Mr. Barnes spoke firmly, in his 'lawyer voice'. "There's no possible way that you could have foreseen that tragic accident would result from a silly-"
"It wasn't silly!" Emma's voice rose once again, sounding absolutely horrified that he would even say the word. "It was evil, it was wrong, it was... it was..." Her eyes closed briefly and I saw a painful shudder work its way through her. "It was... she was my friend."
A pair of tears worked their way down her cheeks while her family stared. Her voice shook heavily, and more tears continued to come with each word, but she kept talking. "T-Taylor was my friend. Sh-she was the best friend I ever... ever h-had. And... and I threw that away. I did. Nobody else. N-nobody made me. Nobody controlled me. Nobody for-forced me to do the things that I did, but I did them. I ch-chose to do them. I chose to do h-horrible, evil things, th-things that... that I can... n-never take back. Things that I can never ever fix. She-she-she's dead. Taylor's dead because of me. She's dead because of the things that I did, because of my choices. She's gone, she's gone and she's never coming back.
"I... I k-killed her. I helped kill my best friend. So don't... d-don't try to dismiss that. Don't try to excuse it or put the bl-blame on anybody else but me. I helped kill Taylor. If you ex-excuse it or act like it was a little thing, or like it was unavoidable, or anything like th-that, then you're taking responsibility away from me, and... and you can't do that. I made those choices. I did. I can't take them back, but... but I can l-learn from them. I can make them matter. I can be better. I can be a b-better person, and I'm trying to be. But don't ever try to say that it wasn't m-my fault. Don't ever try to di-dismiss it. Because Taylor mattered. She mattered, and she was more important, more special than... than I'll ever be."
Taking in a long, shuddering breath, Emma looked up and stared at her family through eyes that were wet with her tears. "I can't undo my m-mistakes. I can't br-bring back Taylor. But I won't let you dismiss them either. I won't let you pre-pretend it didn't matter, that she didn't matter. She was a better person than me, and I should have been the one that died, n-not her. If I c-could trade with her, I would. I would because she belongs here, n-not me."
There was another pause while Emma stared at the ground, taking in several deep breaths before she raised her gaze once again. "My friends and I w-will... stay for dinner and to talk. I miss you guys. I miss you so much. B-but... but I can't stay after that. I have to leave again. There's th-things I have to do. Things that I have to w-work on. I'm s-sorry. I'm really sorry, but that's the way it has to be. Can you... can you accept that? Please?"
Silence reigned for a few long seconds before Emma's mother gave a little nod. There were tears in her eyes as well as she held her arms open, waiting this time for Emma to come to her.
With another quiet sob, Emma did so, crossing the distance between them to embrace her mother. This time she was the one holding on as tight as she could, clinging to the woman while they both cried.
And yet, even as we started into the house, I caught Emma's father giving several backward glances toward Delta and me. None of his looks were pleasant, and I was pretty sure we hadn't heard his last word on the subject of his daughter's kidnapping.
Alan Barnes was not a man who took being denied very well. I just hoped he learned before anything stupid happened.
29.04
"But please, I don't understand why you can't just join the Wards, Emma." Zoe Barnes, Emma's mother, asked with clear apprehension about ten minutes later as she looked from her daughter to me.
We were all standing in the living room. I had been here so many times over the time that I had been friends with Emma before everything happened, and being here again in this situation felt surreal. Seats had been offered, but no one had felt like sitting down.
"As long as we're on the subject," Anne Barnes, Emma's older sister, waved a hand. "Can we talk about how amazing it is that one of the Wards is standing in our house? Seriously? You have to let me get a picture with you so I can post it in your topic on PHO, please?"
"Anne, please." Mrs. Barnes scolded her daughter. "This is about your sister coming home, not some website." She looked directly at me then. "She could do that, couldn't she? If she wants to help people, she could join the Wards. She doesn't have to do this... whatever it is. You go home to your parents at night, don't you? Why can't Emma?"
Mrs. Barnes' words made me flinch for more than one reason, but I hesitated before replying to control my reaction. They didn't know who I was under the mask, and I had made sure to activate my voice changer since they wouldrecognize the sound of my own. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Barnes. It's complicated."
Alan Barnes seized on that. "How complicated can it be? Emma belongs here with her family. She's a sixteen-year old girl, not a soldier. She should be going to school, enjoying her life, not being held hostage alongside a bunch of crazy bio-weapon clones and a girl that as of a few months ago happened to be one of the most evil, vicious little psychopaths in the world! That's not complicated, it's common sense. Emma should be home, period. Just because everyone else is too afraid to call this-"
His hand was raised to gesture toward Delta, but the man stopped talking in mid-sentence, cutting himself off abruptly. When I looked over to where his hand was still pointing, I saw Emma's older sister staring intently at the arm that Delta held extended between them. As we watched, the arm changed color several times, going from white to green to red and then settling on a dark blue. At the same time, the shape of the limb shifted from a natural arm to a long baseball bat shape, then to some kind of leathery tentacle that wiggled back and forth.
"Anne!" Alan demanded, his voice rising suddenly in obvious fear. "What the hell are you doing?"
Blinking at her father, Anne asked, "What? I just wanted to see her shapeshift. It's kinda cool."
Grabbing his older daughter by the arm, Alan tugged. "Get away from that thing before it hurts you."
But Emma's sister squirmed free and shook her head. "Dad, get a grip. Does Emma look hurt to you?" She raised both shoulders in a shrug. "Besides, you've been insulting her since she got here and she hasn't horribly murdered you yet, so I figure the rest of us are probably pretty safe."
"We will not murder Emma-Friend's family." Delta's words were firm. "We care for her, and will not allow harm to come to those that we care for either through our own actions or those of others." Something in her expression softened slightly then, making her look just a little more human. "Emma Barnes is our friend. We will allow harm to come to ourselves before choosing to visit it upon her or her family without just cause."
"Do you un-understand what she's saying, Dad?" Emma had taken a step toward her father, reaching up to take his outstretched arm, hugging it between both of hers to make him stop pointing at Delta. "She's not a m-monster. She could kill everyone here, Dad, and if she wanted to there's nothing we could do about it. Sh-she could kill everybody, but she doesn't. She ch-chooses not to, Dad. She chooses not to because she's my friend. Okay? Sh-she is my friend. Please, Daddy, just stop trying to win a fight. It's okay. It's r-really okay. I'm here. Can we please... please just talk without attacking her?"
Things were tense for another moment before Alan Barnes finally slumped a little, lowering his arm. I could see tears of frustration in his eyes before he blinked them away. He wanted to win for his daughter, he'd needed to win for his family, to show them that he could still protect them the only way that he knew how, by winning an argument. After months of missing his daughter, of being told by law enforcement that they couldn't help him save her, that she had tostay kidnapped, he'd needed to prove that he still mattered. He had wanted to show that he wasn't useless, that when the time came, he could protect the people he cared about and pluck Emma out of the hands of the monster who had stolen her.
"Mr. Barnes," I put in after a second of thought. "After dinner, maybe we should start to discuss how often Emma will be visiting after tonight and how long those visits will be?"
I saw my words penetrate, making Emma's father stop and think for a moment. He could negotiate. He could convince us, all of us, to let Emma come home more often. He hadn't failed, he had simply picked the wrong fight. If he couldn't convince Emma to abandon the Pandoras, he could at least convince them to let her come home as often as possible.
He nodded after another few seconds and spoke slowly, as if he had to choose each word carefully. "Emma, can... you answer your mother's question? Why can't you join the Wards if you want to make up for anything bad that you... think you did?" His last few words came after a brief silence as a pained look crossed his face. It was clearly hard for him to admit even that much, in spite of his daughter's emotional confession. He wanted to protect her, even from herself.
"It's kind of hard to explain," Emma started before hesitating. "Err, I umm, I g-guess it's not, actually." She shrugged. "Dinah s-says that things will be better if I s-stay with them. That's pretty much it."
"The other girl that was kidnapped?" Zoe Barnes frowned, looking at her daughter in obvious confusion. "What do you mean she says things will be better if you stay with them?"
Jeeze, they really hadn't been told much, had they? No wonder they were so upset.
"To be fair," I put in after wincing. "Dinah also happens to be a powerful precog. She can see the future, I mean. Sort of. She's probably one of the best there is, because she's been right so far."
"You mean the mayor's little niece is the one that wants Emma to stay, not the umm," Anne started to gesture toward Delta, "her? She—errr they—ummm, whatever, this isn't calling the shots, the kid is?"
"We do desire Emma-Friend's continued company," Delta answered simply. "And her original abduction was the choice of our prior self, who is no longer a part of our collective. But it is Dinah-Friend who has said that her continued presence is strategically imperative."
"Okay, let me see if I have this right." Alan held up both hands. "Emma was kidnapped by that..." Emma's mouth opened, and he amended. "By her. She was abducted by her."
"Not really her." I tried to explain as simply as I could, realizing as I spoke just how complicated this was. "Delta is umm... okay, just think of her as a sister of the person who kidnapped Emma. The one that did the kidnapping isn't alive anymore. Delta and her sisters are what's left of the original."
The man squinted at me, obviously trying to see if I was screwing with him before sighing. "Okay, Emma was kidnapped by this one's sister. But it was the other girl that was kidnapped who actually made Emma stay away all this time, because she can see the future and she says that for some unexplained reason, everything is better if my little girl doesn't stay with her own family?
"And somehow, through that time they also happened to collect one of the worst psychopaths in the world, convince her not to go around killing and torturing people anymore, and now they're all living together alongside a bunch of clones of Panacea who are all different people now?"
"Except for the fact that Dinah actually was originally kidnapped by Coil before convincing Pandora to break both of them out together, yeah that about covers it." I nodded. "Generally speaking, anyway."
I was pretty sure that the man started looking for hidden cameras at that point, convinced that we were screwing with him.
"Well, either way, she's home right now." Zoe announced. "So let's go in the other room, have some dinner, and talk. Miss, ummm, what did you say your name was?" She asked Pandora with the air of someone who was so accustomed to being polite that she couldn't help herself even now.
"This Pandora iteration is known as Delta, Mrs. Emma-Friend's Mother."
"Delta." Zoe nodded. "Okay then. But please, it's just Mrs. Barnes, not... all that." There was another moment of hesitation before she pressed on with a gesture to encompass me as well. "Is there anything that either of you are allergic to? Anything that you shouldn't eat, I mean."
"Mom," Emma looked horribly embarrassed. "She has c-complete control over her entire genetic stru-structure. She's not gonna break out in hives because you fed her a peanut."
"I'm sure that anything you've made will be really good, Mrs. Barnes." I spoke up, lifting my hand to give her a thumbs up. "Thank you for letting us eat with your family."
"Yes," Delta agreed while giving that strange head jerk that passed as the Pandoras version of a nod. "We would also like to express our gratitude for your service, Mrs. Barnes-Person." I saw actual hesitation and uncertainty cross the pink-haired girl's face briefly, which surprised me. Then she spoke up again. "And... we would like to apologize to your family. We... did not truly understand what it is like to have a family member taken away when Emma-Friend was abducted. We-" Her face twisted slightly in what looked like almost physical pain. "We understand such loss now. We are very... sorry that we have made you feel this way."
"Who did you..." Emma's mother started to speak before stopping. I could almost see the light bulb go on over her head. "You were cloned from Panacea, weren't you? During the fight against that new Endbringer, Glory Girl, her sister... and you were her..." Trailing off for a moment, Zoe Barnes finally took a step that way and actually embraced a surprised Delta. "Oh you poor girl. I'm so sorry."
Mr. Barnes looked just as surprised as I felt, if not even more so. His mouth opened and I saw him take the tiniest step that way as though to intervene by reflex, but he stopped himself. He stopped and took a long, deep breath, slowly lowering his hand back to his side while watching his wife.
Zoe, meanwhile, just continued to hold the clone against her. "Here we... we just thought it was so easy to think of you as this soulless thing, but you're not, are you? You're a person, people, you're real."
Looking utterly taken aback and confused as she was hugged by the older woman, Delta managed a simple, "We are trying to be, Mrs. Barnes-Person. We make mistakes."
"Well then," Emma's mother announced. "You're doing a great job. Because people make mistakes."
"And you say that Oversight retains total control over every machine within her range?"
It was the next afternoon, and I was on my way into the Birdcage for my monthly visit with Glaistig Uaine. Which was, itself, a sentence that would have left me a gibbering wreck six months earlier.
Now, I simply nodded slightly toward the camera in the elevator where Dragon's voice was emerging from. "That's right, she says that it's hard not to control them sometimes. It's like they want to help her. If she's not really paying attention and just thinks about things, sometimes the machines in the area will try to follow even subconscious needs."
There was a long silence from the other speaker under the camera while the elevator descended. Even after all this time, and with all the safeties that had been established, I still shivered every time I was coming down here. It was ridiculous, really. None of the inmates in the Cage were going to risk the kind of wrath that the Faerie Queen could dish out if they annoyed her by doing something to her visitor. Yet I still couldn't help the reflexive shudder that came at the very thought of being here with some of the psychopaths that were locked up inside the place.
While waiting for the tinker to respond, I thought back to the night before. It had gone fairly well after those initial bumps. Emma's father had mostly stopped trying to win an argument, and dinner itself had been good. Delta especially had apparently fallen in love with the food. She kept saying that the pot roast and baked potatoes were different from anything else that the Pandoras had eaten before.
Anne, meanwhile, hadn't stopped asking me or Delta questions the whole night. If she wasn't asking me about training and patrols, or what Assault's hair smelled like (she had a bit of a crush), she was begging Delta to shapeshift into random people whose pictures she pulled up on her phone.
Finally, Dragon spoke again. She sounded a bit strange, kind of hushed. It reminded me of when I was little and my friends and I would whisper at our desks while the teacher was busy so that she wouldn't hear what we were planning. That was it. Dragon sounded like sounded like someone who was plotting something they didn't want the wrong people to overhear. "If I give you an e-mail address, can you remember it to pass on to Oversight?"
"Um." I blinked, wanting to ask why she sounded the way she did, but shook it off. "Yeah, I'll pass it on. Do you really need her help with something?" That seemed unlikely. Dragon was the best tinker in the world. She had created this entire prison complex along with so many other things that the PRT depended on daily. As good as Emma was, I couldn't see what Dragon of all people would need anyone's help with that she couldn't solve herself.
There was another pause before Dragon replied, her voice careful. "I believe that she may be uniquely suited to assisting me with a special project. Perhaps not, but there shouldn't be any harm in finding out."
As the elevator stopped and the doors slid open, I nodded. "I'll let her know you'd like to talk to her."
"Thank you." Dragon started to say something else before stopping herself. "Wait there. Don't move."
I froze, my mind suddenly panicking. "What? What's wrong, did something happen?"
"No," she assured me. "Nothing is wrong. I'm just avoiding any possible issue with an inmate."
I frowned at that. "All the inmates know better by this point. They know who I'm here to visit."
"Yes," Dragon sounded almost evasive. "This is different."
"Dragon, please." I shifted my feet, my nerves on edge. "If something happened..."
"Nothing happened." She hesitated then, clearly weighing her options before admitting, "Coil is talking to another inmate in the hall to your left. He should be done shortly."
"Coil?" I blinked behind my mask, hands reflexively tightening just at the sound of his name. Slowly, I took a step that way.
"Tether, I recommend you avoid any confrontation." Dragon's voice was firm then. "I can't allow you to excite the prisoners."
"I'm not confronting him," I promised. "I just want to see him. I need to see him as a prisoner." I hadn't had a run-in with the man when I'd been trapped in the Birdcage before, which had kind of surprised me. But things had been too hectic back then to think too much about it.
Against Dragon's urging, I leaned around the corner and blinked down the hall. "Okay, where is he?"
Sighing, she answered. "Fifty feet ahead of you, leaning against the left wall. He is alone."
My eyes scanned the hall, and then I froze as an ugly thought came to mind. "Dragon... what exactly do you see there? Describe Coil for me."
Dragon was clearly confused, but did so slowly, describing Coil perfectly before adding, "But why are you asking when you should very clearly see him standing just down the corridor?"
Before answering, I closed my eyes tightly, so tight that it almost hurt before opening them again. I stared hard down the hall, willing the sight to be different. Unfortunately, it didn't change anything about what I was seeing.
"Dragon?" I said while staring at the completely empty hallway. "We have a problem."
29.05
"Your distraction is troubling, Healer." There was a note of slight, yet definite warning in the chorus of voices that came when the Faerie Queen spoke. The the two of us stood in the middle of her cell block an hour later. It had taken almost that long for Dragon to bring several other Protectorate members into the Birdcage who had been able to, eventually, confirm that Coil was nowhere in the prison.
They were still going over exactly how that was possible, while I visited with Glaistig Uaine. If I had been there for almost anyone else other than her, I might have simply blown off the trip. But even as upset as I was, telling the Faerie Queen to reschedule at the last minute seemed like a very bad idea.
Apparently, however, I hadn't done a very good job of hiding the fact that my focus was elsewhere. Which, to be honest, also seemed like a horrible idea. I gulped at the thought of annoying the girl who was, if not the most powerful parahuman alive, at least within the top three. Yes, the idea of making Glaistig Uaine mad still scared me. I was irreverent in the face of danger, but I wasn't fucking suicidal.
Still, it took me a second to collect myself considering my first impulse was to snap about how this visit was stopping me from jumping straight to finding out why the hell the man who had ordered my parents' murder wasn't in his cage where he belonged. I had to bite my tongue, which was apparently still getting around to reading that whole 'not suicidal' memo.
Finally, I breathed out and looked over to where the veiled girl floated next to me, her feet hovering a few inches off the ground while her eyes, partly hidden behind strips of altered prison uniform, gazed back into my own with a sort of piercing intensity that made me want to flinch away again. Instead, I forced myself to nod. "Yes, your majesty. I'm distracted, and that's not fair to you or our deal. I... I'm sorry. I really am. I didn't come here intending to ignore you. It's just that Coil is-"
My voice caught and I looked away briefly, blinking away the tears that still came even after all these months. "Coil's the one that killed my parents, and part of what let me move on as much as I have was beating him. Knowing he was locked up in here, that's what kept me going whenever I missed my mom and dad. It was important. And now-" I slapped both fists against my head in frustration. "Now he's not even here! He got out, god knows how long ago. He's free and I didn't do anything about it."
"You were unaware." Her chorus of voices sounded slightly placated. "Even you are not always capable of mending a situation you are unaware of. The Dream Vizier is a potent foe, who had years to perfect his strategies in case of his exposure. Do not think to punish yourself for his forethought."
I sighed and lowered my hands, barely resisting the urge to pace. "I just don't get it. How could he not be here? Dragon's locked out the other method of teleporting that Teacher's devices used, and she's got alerts set up if Defiant uses his power to switch with someone again. How did he get out, and how did he program the cameras to show Dragon that he was still here? Not just here, but talking to people?"
That last one had thrown me as well. Dragon insisted that Coil had been talking to an inmate by the name of Robert Hine, a brute with delusions of grandeur. Hine had been pulled aside, but nothing had come of it. He hadn't had a clue what we were talking about, and Armsmaster had said he was telling the truth. Clearly whatever was going on, Hine hadn't known about it.
"Settle, Healer, and think clearly. You know how and when the Dream Vizier escaped this location." Glaistig Uaine's reply made it sound as if the answer was perfectly self-explanatory.
"I... I don't..." I started to say, staring at her in confusion before I stopped myself and frowned. "Wait. Back when I was here before, after Teacher was killed, Lung's group and Marquis' group both escaped. Marquis had one of those devices that Teacher, Eddie, and Defiant made, but we never found out how Lung's group got out. Em—Oversight just said that someone outside the prison teleported them."
Those piercing eyes continued to stare at me, while their owner remained silent. Apparently the Faerie Queen was content to let me talk this through on my own without further prompting, so I continued. "If Coil timed it right and already had the cameras set to show him as being here when he wasn't, maybe he also teleported out at the same time as Lung's group. Maybe that was the whole point of teleporting those guys out to begin with, because he knew the teleport would be noticed. So he grabbed Lung's group at the exact same time. That way when the teleport was detected, we all just thought it was only the four that were actually seen disappearing. If the cameras were set to show him being where he should've been after he was teleported out, Oversight might not have noticed the difference. She was still distracted, still new to her power."
Right after I said that, I felt bile rise up in my throat. "Does that mean he's been free for... for months? I thought he was safely locked up and he's been out doing... doing Scion knows what!"
Even as upset as I was, I noticed the sharp look that Glaistig Uaine gave me at that. It looked for a moment like she was going to say something, but for the first time since I'd met her, the Faerie Queen hesitated with a look that I swore was uncertainty. It was brief, passing almost immediately and in my distraction, I didn't really think about it.
After a few long seconds of silence passed, she spoke and I had the distinct impression that what she was saying now wasn't what she had been about to say before stopping herself. "You allowed the one who killed your parents to be taken alive, Healer. Why did you not take his life for theirs?"
I blinked at that. "What, you mean kill him? I mean, the way we set him up, he had to choose to either let Pandora kill him or let us take him in. He chose to let us arrest him." My expression turned dark in spite of myself as I added, "Of course, now we know he was playing us even then. He probably had this escape hatch in mind the whole time, just in case he was ever caught."
"Indeed," the Faerie Queen nodded, her eyes still locked on me as if trying to decipher the meaning of the universe. "So I ask again, why spare the man at all? Would a demand for his life as payment for the loss of both your mother and father not have been understandable given the circumstances?"
"It doesn't work that way." I frowned, glancing away from her intent stare to look at the other inmates that were a part of her cell block. None of them were paying any attention whatsoever to us, to the point that I wondered if my companion was using some kind of power to make us go unnoticed while we stood in the middle of the room. Either that or they knew better than to even look like they might be eavesdropping on one of their powerful hostess's private conversations. It easily could have been either.
"It does not work in which way?" Her hand raised to point at me. "Did you not wish for his death, or did you simply believe that it would not be accepted? Surely you desired revenge for your loss."
I thought for a moment, choosing my words carefully before responding. "Sure, part of me wanted him to die. A big part, actually. But he surrendered, and at the time I didn't have any way of knowing about all this. With the information I had then, that the Birdcage was inescapable, I thought he'd never get out. I thought he'd be trapped in here forever. He should have been."
"And now?" She asked with a curious tone. "Knowing what you do at this point in time, would you choose to kill the man who murdered your mother and father even after he surrendered in order to avoid this particular outcome? With, of course, the caveat that you cannot alter the current situation any other way. Your choices are to kill him where he stands, or allow things to progress to this point."
My mouth opened and then shut as I turned slightly to look back at the hovering figure. "You mean would I execute him just like that? Kill him after he surrenders, or let him escape?"
"Yes." Her reply was simple and curt, her eyes clearly searching as she watched my every reaction.
I was silent, thinking about her question while the seconds stretched out, time ticking away without me giving her an answer. Yet even though moments became minutes, the Faerie Queen did not interrupt, and still no one bothered us or even glanced in our direction. She waited and watched.
"No," I finally said, after what had to have been several minutes. "No, I wouldn't kill him after he surrendered, even if I knew that he was going to escape later."
"Interesting," she considered that before adding, "does this mean you did not care for your parents?"
My eyes widened behind the mask. "What? No! Of course not, don't you dare-" My voice had risen suddenly as I stared hard at the floating girl before catching myself. "I—I mean..." I swallowed. "I loved my parents, your majesty. I loved them so much, and I miss them every day."
"And yet you would not see justice done to he who ordered their deaths?" Glaistig Uaine prompted.
"That's where you're wrong." I informed her, though the very thought of saying those words to her was so inherently terrifying that my voice dropped to a whisper as if most of it had fled.
"What precisely am I wrong about, Healer?" The Faerie Queen sounded genuinely curious, rather than murderous, and I let out the breath that I hadn't realized I was holding.
"You said that I wouldn't kill him in spite of the fact that I love my parents. That's wrong. The reason I wouldn't kill him is because I love them. They're the ones that matter to me, not him, and they wouldn't want me to kill him after he surrendered. It wouldn't be right, not in that situation.
"And besides, murdering him then wouldn't have been justice. It would have been revenge."
"The happy fact of being a Queen," the deceptively young-looking figure in front of me announced with her many-voices, "is that justice and revenge are often one and the same."
Without thinking, I asked, "How did you trigger?" Her eyes returned to me sharply and I shrugged. "Awaken, power up, whatever. How did you become a parahuman?"
She was silent for a second, and I saw conflicting emotions pass over her face. Real emotions rather than the front that she usually displayed. "Our time is finished here," she finally said after several long moments of hesitation. "It is your brother's turn. Perhaps I will tell you of my past upon your next visit. Would you like that, True Healer? Would you like to hear the story of how I came to be?"
"Yes." I nodded, realizing that in spite of my distraction over Coil, I really meant it. "I would."
"Then I shall tell you of my past, of where I have come from to be where I am now," Glaistig Uaine promised me with a solemn tone that told me this story was an important one. "Next time."
"What the hell do you mean, Coil's not in the Birdcage?" Cassie demanded, hours later. "What did they do, install a revolving door on that place? Whatever happened to 'once you make it to the Birdcage, you never see the light of day again?' How is a place supposed to be a real deterrent if people keep getting out? It's like if you executed a kill order on someone and then revived them ten minutes later."
All of us, the entire Wards team, were sitting on the outside patio at a burger joint three hours after my meeting with the Faerie Queen. I'd spent most of the intervening time being grilled by Dragon, Armsmaster, Alexandria, Mrs. Pelham, and several others over exactly what had happened with Coil. I'd passed on the theory of when exactly he'd escaped with the other man.
With a bit of work, Armsmaster had located another device inside the prison that Emma had missed the first time. This one had clearly been made for the exact purpose that I had already guessed. It patched into all of the cameras and provided a false image of Coil and the other man walking around and interacting with people. Apparently it was so sophisticated that it was able to fake conversations with people who actually were in the prison by putting up a fake image of them while the fake Coil would talk to them. Once the face interaction was over, the system would then maneuver the virtual person up to where the real one happened to be before returning the view to normal, leaving anyone observing the footage unaware that anything had been altered. Armsmaster had alternated between being profoundly pissed off about the whole thing, and genuinely impressed at the programming.
"Trust me, you're preaching to the choir." I stabbed my fork down into the chili fries and gazed at the cheesy mess for a few seconds. At any other time I would already have been making happy noises before feeding myself the comfort food. Now, however, I just stared at my fork before tossing it back down with a sigh. "He's out there. He's been out there for months." I explained everything I knew, as well as what we suspected about how he'd pulled it off.
Once I finished, it was Theo who spoke, his voice hesitant and confused. "But if he's been out there this long, how come he hasn't done anything yet? I mean... he knows Aunt Kayden betrayed him. Why hasn't he tried to come after her, or anyone else? We wouldn't have seen it coming."
Missy shrugged. "Maybe whatever his new plan is, it's taking a long time to come together. We know he's really patient. He's probably just taking his time."
"Mika and I weren't around for what happened with this guy," Lily spoke up, looking between those of us that had been there. "So how bad is it that he's out, exactly? How screwed are we?"
"It's definitely not a low level of screwing," Chris put in. "The guy's really manipulative, and the way his power lets him have two shots at everything he does..."
"Not everything he does," I reminded him. "It's possible to maneuver him into a no-win situation. Especially now that we know exactly what his power is, and exactly who he is. Most of his advantage was in nobody knowing who he was or what he could do. That's gone now."
"He'll find other advantages." Cassie leaned back in her seat. She hadn't been with us for that situation, but she and Theo were both was close enough to the whole thing to know what had happened and how it had gone down.
"Plus we have no idea where he is now." Missy took a long drink of soda before continuing. "Like you said, he's been out there for months. He could be anywhere."
I nodded. "That's why I'm going to use some of the money from my part of the Slaughterhouse Nine reward to hire the Undersiders to find him. If they're willing, anyway. They're supposed to be investigators, so they can investigate. They've got the freedom that we don't have."
"I'll help with my reward," Vista quickly put in, and the others were nodding along with her. "Not like I was doing anything else with it anyway."
"Actually," I hesitated before pressing on. "I was thinking of something else we could do with that money. Whatever we don't pay the Undersiders with, I mean." They all looked at me expectantly, and I shrugged. "Coil knows everything about us. He knows our training, he knows our resources, he knows our building. He knows everything we have and everything the Protectorate can give us.
"So let's go beyond what they can give us. We have money, a lot of money. Let's use it to get resources that Coildoesn't know about. Resources that he hasn't already counted on and planned for. With any luck, we'll take him by surprise by having equipment and toys that he didn't know about."
"Let me get this straight," Chris pointed a finger at me. "You want to beat the supervillain... by shopping."
In spite of everything, including my barely suppressed anger at the thought that the monster who'd had my parents killed was walking around free, I smiled back at him. "Yup. So are you in?"
"You know we are." Chris gave a single nod. "After everything he did..."
Missy finished his sentence for him. "That son of a bitch is goin' down."
There were nods all around the table, and it was Lily who spoke. "Right then. Sounds like we've got a lot of work to do if we're gonna be ready for this guy.
"Let's get to it."
Interlude 29A – Dinah
The options stretched out before her, seemingly endless in variety. Dinah Alcott stood frozen on the precipice of choice, pondering the dilemma of decision while her mind worked its way furiously through the potential outcomes. Whatever verdict she reached, it had to be soon. This couldn't wait.
"Seriously, kid, it's just ice cream. You wanna pick a flavor yet or what?"
On the other side of the Baskin-Robbins counter, the bored teenager whose nametag announced that her name was Gina stood with a metal scoop in one hand and the waffle cone that Dinah had already chosen in the other. She was making an impatient 'get on with it' circling gesture with the scoop.
Considering how often Dinah's picture had appeared on the news in the days since the Nine had been defeated, and all of the ongoing chatter about why the authorities had yet to find the mayor's niece, the ice cream clerk would have been slightly less bored and dismissive if she had been looking at the girl's real face. Fortunately, Amy and Riley had done enough work on their bio-disguise face masks that Dinah was able to wear one and go out in public without immediately being mobbed. She looked like any other ordinary (if extremely indecisive in this particular moment) young teenager.
"Cherries Jubilee," she finally decided, pointing to the flavor in question. Glancing toward the taller figure that stood beside her, Dinah added. "Are you sure that's all you want, Silo?"
Epsilon, whose nickname Dinah had invented by taking only the middle part of her real name, stood patiently out of the way. As always, everything from her long red hair to her black and red suit was immaculate, not a single stitch out of place. In her right hand, the girl (who appeared to be in her late twenties) held a normal cone with a single scoop of cotton candy ice cream.
"Yes," she announced simply. "Upon our first visit to this location, we-" There was a pause while several thoughts passed behind those dark green eyes before Silo amended. "I chose the flavor located here." She indicated the bucket in the bottom right corner, where the chocolate fudge currently sat. "It was vanilla. The butter pecan was to its left, and so that was my choice upon our second visit. Now I have chosen the flavor that was to the left of that flavor upon our first visit. This." Her hand lifted the cone with the brightly colored blue and pink ice cream. "It was the order of flavors upon our initial arrival, and it is the proper order of flavors I shall consume."
So Epsilon wasn't simply trying ice cream flavors in order, she was remembering the exact order they had been in when she and Dinah had first come here and using that to make her choices.
Gina, behind the counter, stood staring at Silo for a few seconds before handing Dinah her cone. "Uh huh, whatever you say, lady. Anything else for you guys?"
Dinah shook her head and moved to the register, paying for their treat herself. Once she had her change, the girl nodded in thanks before looking at Epsilon beside her. "How do you like that one?"
The taller figure shook her head. "It is too sweet. We preferred the vanilla and the pecan." Still, she took another lick of the ice cream. She had chosen it because it was next on her internal list, and now she wouldn't stop until she had finished it, no matter what her personal opinion on the flavor happened to be. That was the kind of person that Silo was, and how seriously she took her idea of order.
She started to the door then, glancing over her shoulder at the woman behind her. "Maybe you'll like the next one better. Which one is-" Her question was cut off as the bell above the door dinged upon the entrance of someone else, and before she could turn back, Dinah walked headlong into the new arrival. The impact made the girl yelp, quickly raising a hand to steady herself against what turned out to be a tall, Hispanic man in a suit. Part of her cone had mashed itself against his chest, messing up his tie.
"Watch where the hell you're going, kid!" The man snapped, glaring at her before making a face at the ice cream on his tie. "Look what you did, god damn it."
"I'm sorry, sir." Dinah gulped, staring up at the man. "I didn't mean to. But at least it's good ice cream?" She offered the last with a weak little smile, while inwardly lamenting just how much of her treat had ended up on his tie. Unlike Silo's opinion of her own choice, Dinah actually liked cherries jubilee.
Looking at Dinah, then to the pretty red-haired figure behind her, the man hesitated before muttering something about kids under his breath as he stepped around them and walked briskly to the counter.
Dinah and Epsilon continued out of the store and to the sidewalk before the twelve-year old girl opened her tightly closed hand and looked at the set of car keys and remote unlock button that had been clenched tightly in her fist ever since she had purposefully collided with the man at the door and secretly dipped her hand into his coat pocket.
"Where?" She asked the figure beside her without preamble while the two of them stepped off the sidewalk and proceeded toward the rows of cars that lined the lot of the shopping center. As she walked, Dinah slid a pair of black leather gloves onto her hands.
"Vasallo-Enemy's car is one row back," Silo answered, already striding that way. "Mu-Iteration observed his entrance and is prepared for the next part."
Following Epsilon's directions to the red BMW that sat waiting for its owner's return, Dinah lifted the keys and pressed her gloved thumb against the remote unlock. The car chirped its welcome, and she reached out to open the driver's side door.
"Give it to me, please." She extended one hand back while leaning into the car. A moment later, a weight settled into her waiting palm, and Dinah brought it into the car. Her eyes glanced down at the large brick of cocaine stolen months ago from the Merchants. Making a face at the drugs, she slipped the package underneath the driver's seat and gave it a single pat before reaching back again. "Next?"
A bottle of pills was placed in her hand next, and Dinah leaned across the seat and used one of the keys to unlock and open the glove compartment. Twisting open the cap of the bottle, she spilled some of the pills out into the compartment before dropping the half-full bottle in as well.
Finally, Dinah took a pistol from Epsilon. The serial number of the weapon had been filed off long before the ill-fated thug it had belonged to had attempted to shoot one of the Pandoras with it. Considering for a moment, Dinah eventually slid the gun into the glove compartment as well before closing and locking it. Then she straightened and closed the car door, using the remote to lock the vehicle and set the alarm while she and Epsilon pivoted and walked together away from it.
On their way through the rows of cars, a thin black girl a few inches taller than Dinah passed them with her hand extended. Dinah dropped the keys into Mu's waiting palm and continued to walk out of the shopping center and around the corner with her constant companion.
She stood there, just out of sight of the stores while taking a lick from her ice cream. "All good?"
"Yes, Dinah-Friend," Espilon confirmed. "Mu-Iteration has returned the keys to Vasallo-Enemy's jacket as he sat down to partake of his own ice cream. He is unaware of their brief absence."
"Good." Nodding in satisfaction, Dinah took another lick of her ice cream before tugging a slim, modified cell phone from her pocket. Flipping it open, she thumbed a few buttons before lifting the phone to her mouth. There was a delay as the call was routed from her phone to the payphone across the street where it would appear that the call was coming from, and then on to its actual destination. While she waited, Dinah took a deep breath and readied herself.
The phone clicked as the call was picked up. "911, what's your emergency?"
"I-I'm sorry." The phone would automatically alter her voice, but Dinah also pitched it upward to sound frightened and tense. "I didn't know who else to call, but this guy, he had a gun and... and drugs." Playing the part of a frightened concerned citizen, Dinah reported that she had been in the parking lot and had seen the man in question place the pistol and what looked like cocaine under his seat before going into the Baskin-Robbins. She provided a description of the man, but declined to leave her name. When the operator pressed her on it, she disconnected the call.
Fifteen minutes later, Vasallo had left the ice cream shop and reversed out of the lot. However, before the car had gone more than a block down the street, two squad cars appeared and pulled him over.
Watching from her place on the sidewalk as she and Silo stood against the nearby building, Dinah dialed another number on her phone and waited while it rang.
"Hello?" An uncertain woman's voice answered a few seconds later. "Is... is it you?"
Thumbing the button on her phone that would change her voice to sound like a middle-aged man's on the other end, Dinah answered. "It's me, Mrs. Aarons. Vasallo won't be bothering you or your sister anymore. The police have him now." Even as she spoke, Dinah could see the man waving his arms wildly as the policeman that was searching his vehicle pulled the pistol out of the car and held it up.
"Oh my god." Mrs. Aarons sounded shocked as she repeated herself. "Oh my god. Are you sure? How? They told me there was nothing they could do. They said there wasn't enough evidence, and Jayna's too scared to testify against him. Last time she mentioned the police, he put her in the hospital. She just... she won't listen. She's too afraid of what he'll do. He's got this hold over her."
"Not anymore," Dinah calmly informed her. "Vasallo will be going to prison for awhile. Now you have time to talk to your sister. Use it. Convince her to get out of town with you. Go start over somewhere."
"I-I will. I will." The woman was obviously in tears. "I'm sorry, I just... how do I repay you? When my friend gave me your number, they said you could help but I never thought... I mean... what can I do?"
"Nothing, Mrs. Aarons." Dinah smiled just a little to herself. "Just take your sister and get out of town. Vasallo's going away for awhile. It should be enough time for you guys to get set up somewhere else."
"But there has to be some way I can repay you, something I can send," the grateful woman pleaded.
"Just one thing." Dinah paused before continuing. "If you ever find anyone that needs help like you and your sister did, anyone that the police and capes can't take care of... give them my number."
With that, she disconnected the call, dropped the phone into her pocket, and nodded to Silo. "Let's go home."
"So how'd it go?" Riley asked immediately as Dinah and Epsilon entered the kitchen of the farmhouse. The young bio-tinker sat at a table eating a plate of pancakes with one hand while her other hand was carefully arranging a pile of what Dinah was pretty sure were cow hearts that were connected to one another through what looked suspiciously like a intricate network of taped together crazy straws with blood pumping through them to each heart in turn. In the center of the heart pile a single gray-skinned arm sat upright, the fingers opening and closing in synch with the beating of the hearts.
Clearly, Riley was experimenting again.
Poor Epsilon took one look and physically blanched before striding to the nearby sink. She began to wash her hands thoroughly over the next several minutes, using liberal amounts of soap from the dispenser as though simply looking at the mess on the table had contaminated her.
"The police have him now." Dinah tugged a chair out and sat down for a moment. After all these months, she was no longer squeamish around Riley's work. She was not, however, to the point of being able to stomach eating around them the way that the other girl did. "Hopefully Mrs. Aarons can make her sister listen to reason and get out of town while he's gone."
"Can I do it?" Riley's eyes were on the chalk board affixed to the nearby wall as she fairly bounced in her seat with eagerness. "Huh, huh? Can I do it?" When Dinah nodded, the former villain slid off her seat and all-but skipped to the board. Plucking up a piece of chalk, she drew a line through the name Edward Vasallo, one of a dozen names on the board, some with lines through them and others without.
"So which one next?" Riley asked while perusing the board. "Ooh, ooh, what about the guy that stole from that old lady? I had an idea that could scare him so much he turns himself in."
Before Dinah could respond to that, the door opened and Panacea stepped into the kitchen from the back porch. She was accompanied by Xi and Omicron. "Okay, Manton's ready for the next part. I think after Riley gives him the next injection, it'll be safe to wake him up."
"You must be certain, Amy-Sister." Silo, finally turning away from the sink, spoke up. "If the doctor is not prepared properly, it will be impossible to control him. Even we may be incapable of preventing his escape should he be free to summon his power."
"We'll make sure before we wake him up." Dinah assured her. "We're not taking any chances with Manton. We have to do this just right. There's... a lot riding on it." Clearing her throat after that particularly incredible understatement, she asked, "Where's Emma?"
It was Omicron who answered. "Emma-Friend and Delta and Iota-Sisters are preparing the large television for this evening."
"Oooh!" Riley's eyes were bright as she bounced next to the chalk board list of people who needed their help to find justice, help that couldn't come the legal way. "I totally forgot, our show's on tonight. We're gonna watch it, right?" She cast puppy dog eyes toward Dinah.
It was Amy who answered. "Of course we are. We watch it every week. We're not about to miss it now." They hadmissed it, of course, while the Slaughterhouse Nine had been in town. But that just made it all the more important that they watch it together and on time this week.
It was such a simple thing. A single television show that all of them enjoyed. They always watched it together, in the farmhouse living room. Dinah remembered being with her parents, her family, and watching television with them in her old home. It was her memory of those moments, of how important they were to her very concept of a family, that had led her to creating this tradition for the people she had devoted herself to helping, for the sake of... well, everything.
"Yup, what she said." Dinah nodded toward Amy. "We're not missing our show, so you better hurry up and get this stuff put away." She raised a hand to gesture toward the collection of hearts and the arm. "You know how Silo gets when you leave your experiments out."
As she finished speaking, the phone in her pocket buzzed. Slipping it into her hand, Dinah glanced at the identifier before answering. "Tether?"
For the next couple of minutes, Dinah sat quietly, listening as Madison explained what they had found out at the prison. With each word, she slumped a little bit more. When the older girl finally finished, Dinah mumbled her understanding and then disconnected the call before dropping the phone onto the table with a clatter that was loud against the ensuing silence. Belatedly, she realized that she was sweating, her cool demeanor broken by the news.
"Dinah?" Amy ventured after looking toward the others. "What's wrong? Are you okay? Is Madison all right?"
"I..." Dinah started to respond before her throat caught, her voice sounding much smaller to her than it had a few minutes earlier. "I ummm, I think we know where my parents are now."
Interlude 29B – Tattletale
"I'm still not sure about this whole thing, T." Noelle's expression was pensive as she shook her head at Tattletale. "I pretty much just joined this group, and now you want me to be the official leader?"
Lisa took a moment to sip from her cup of coffee while letting her gaze pass over the rest of the room that they were in. At one point in its life, it had been the break room for the accounting firm that had owned the building before one of her front companies had bought it. It had been as blank and nondescript as possible with its simple off-white coloring, old fridge, and a microwave that was so old it still used a dial timer. A few thousand strategically-placed dollars later, the place had been renovated to look like it was straight out of one of those old 1950's diners, with a couple plush booths, a gleaming chrome-lined bar with red padded stools where the two of them now sat, and even a jukebox in the corner. The floor was black and white checkerboard, and gleamed with cleanliness.
It was, Tattletale thought, an overall worthy investment. While the room had been rather plain before, she had seen the potential and had put the work and resources into making it what it had become.
With that thought, she looked back toward Noelle. "You're the best choice, bar none."
The brunette snorted. "Me? I think you're forgetting about yourself there, Lisa. You know, the person that's actually been a member of this team from the start? The one everyone knows."
"I'm not a leader." Lisa had no misconceptions on that point. "I'm ops. I can gather information, send directions, interrogate someone, analyze data, and more. I'm good at that, great at it even. But I'm not the kind of person that can actually lead people. That's not who I am, and it never will be. I get too carried away with what I can do. I get tunnel vision when I'm obsessed with something. And frankly, sometimes I need someone to rein me in. I need someone who can tell me when I'm going too far."
She saw the flinch in the other girl's expression while Noelle replied softly, "Like Brian."
The name sent a stab of pain through Lisa. Brian and Alec, half of the original Undersiders, were both gone now. Alec half a year ago, yet the sense of loss was still painful whenever she expected him to make a remark about something she said and heard nothing but silence. And now with Brian gone...
"Yes." Tearing her attention back to the present, Lisa nodded. "Like Brian. But he's not here now, and we need someone else that's good at working with people. We need someone who knows how to lead, who's good with strategy and making people work together. That's not me, it's you."
A moment passed then before she added in a quieter voice. "Besides, Coil knows me too well. He spent way too long figuring out how to keep me in line. He knows how I think, and he knows how to use that against me. He hasn't ever had to deal with you in your right mind, unclouded. You're the best choice when it comes to utilizing our potential, and you're the best choice when it comes to beating Coil."
Wincing at that reminder, Noelle's gaze dropped away from hers. "You know he'll come back. Whatever he's doing now, wherever he is, he'll be back. You, Tether, Pandora, Dinah, you guys beat him. He won't stand for that. His opinion of himself is too high. He can't let a loss like that stand."
"I'm pretty sure that's why he took Dinah's parents." Lisa agreed with a nod. "And it's why we need to find and hit him first, before he realizes that we know he's not in the Birdcage. We need to use that advantage, and the absolute best way to use it is for you to officially take over leadership. Like I said, he doesn't know how you think. I'll help, I'll give you all the information I can, but you've got to be the one that makes the important decisions, Noelle. No one else is ready for it."
"I'm not entirely sure that I'm ready," the brunette pointed out quietly. "After everything that happened, everything that I became before the end of it... the monster I was..."
"Even after all that, you kept holding it together for as long as you could." Lisa sat back a little on the stool. "I'm sorry. I really am. I know it'd be better if you had time to get yourself totally put back together, a few years maybe. But we don't have that kind of time. We just don't. We need someone with actual strategic skill now. I'm smart, and I know a lot of stuff, but I'm not a leader. I wish I was, but I know my limitations and that's one of them. One on one, maybe I can deal with people. But I can't lead a group. I can't manage and strategize like that. It's not who I am. It is who you are. And if we want to keep this team going, if we want to actually beat Coil for good, you're the one we need. So... please?"
She waited then while Noelle looked away, a dozen thoughts clearly working their way through the other girl's mind. This was the right choice, Lisa knew. From everything she'd seen and heard from the other former Travelers, Noelle could strategize and plan better than anyone else they knew. She may have only joined the Undersiders recently, but she was still the best possible candidate.
"Okay." Noelle's voice was quiet as she seemed to stare at the gleaming counter-top as if searching for the right words to say. "I'll do it, but only if you help me with, well, everything."
"Of course," Lisa agreed. "I'm your intelligence gatherer. I'll help any way I can, but when it comes down to it, the actual decisions have to be yours. That's the only way this will work."
Finally looking up from the counter, Noelle met her gaze. "I know how Luke feels, and you obviously. I'm pretty sure Elias doesn't care one way or the other. But what about Rachel and Aisha?"
"You'll have to prove yourself to Rachel," Lisa admitted. "She won't like it at first. She'll probably argue a lot, try to call you out even more than she did when you and Luke joined up. But that's just who she is. Don't let it get to you. As for Aisha..." She hesitated then, letting out a long, low sigh. "I don't know. She's unpredictable. She's acting like she's fine now, like nothing happened."
"I've seen her when she thinks no one's looking," Noelle said quietly. "She is not fine. She's messed up pretty bad. And acting like she is fine is just making things worse. Telling her that I'm taking her brother's old position, that I'm going to be the leader, it might be enough to trigger something."
Lisa nodded again, feeling helpless. "I know. I'm trying to help her, trying to take care of her but she doesn't want to listen to me. She barely listened to her own brother, and now I'm trying to make her pay attention to rules that I set?" She sighed then. "I don't know what's going to happen when school starts up again. She's already making noises about not going."
"Oh she's going." Noelle spoke firmly. "We'll figure out the specifics later, but she is going. I may not have known Brian as well as you, but I'm pretty sure if we let his sister drop out of high school he'd find a way to reach back across existence to throttle all of us."
The thought of Grue somehow coming back to life solely to scream at them for letting his sister drop out brought a slight smile to Lisa's face. "Yeah. I owe Brian too much to let Aisha do that to herself. We're just going to have to approach it the right way. Like pretty much everything else."
Noelle straightened up from her stool. "Right then. Let's tell everyone to meet in the conference room in an hour." She looked toward Lisa and smiled faintly. "Time to make some choices."
Alone in the aforementioned conference room just shy of an hour later, Lisa sat at the long solid glass table, using a blue ballpoint pen to scratch notes into a pad of paper while the soft classical music played in the background. The windows to the side of the room overlooked what should have been a dull, ugly street. Instead, the view was that of a pleasant beach at sunset. This room was in the middle of the building rather than being located anywhere that eavesdroppers could easily listen in, and the 'windows' were actually video screens that could show several different views that ranged from this beach to the skylines of New York, Paris, or Rome, or even the actual street outside if need be.
This room had been one of Lisa's designs when the Undersiders had taken over and renovated the building. All of them had staked out different areas and chosen their decorating scheme. Part of it had been Brian's idea, after the social worker that he had been talking to about getting custody of his sister away from their parents had pointed out that Aisha needed the opportunity to feel like a certain space was hers if she was going to think of his place as being her real home.
Setting her notepad down after another few seconds as her mind wandered away from her work, Lisa glanced up toward the picture that took up one end of the room. It was a photograph of the original Undersiders, taken one night back in their original, Coil-supplied lair. The four of them, herself, Grue, Regent, and Bitch were all in costume. It had been taken right before the mission where they had robbed that casino, and it wasn't a staged or even prepared photograph. None of them save Alec, who had been the one taking the picture, were paying attention to the camera. The image showed Grue clearly trying to reason with Bitch, who stood with her back to him, clearly ignoring the boy in favor of the three dogs that crowded around for her attention. Meanwhile, Tattletale stood out of the way, facing in the opposite direction with her hand over one ear while her cell phone was stuck to the other. She had been trying to nail down the last few details before they started their job.
Somehow, Alec had managed to frame the photograph just right so that it looked like both she and Rachel had deliberately turned their backs on Brian, who had one hand outstretched toward the girl with her dogs, while the other was pointed back toward Lisa herself as he gestured for her help. The result made it appear as though he was reaching out to both of them helplessly while they each ignored him. And in the bottom corner, Alec had stuck his face in while holding his phone out to capture this image. With his other hand, he held up two fingers in a peace sign.
It hadn't seemed to be the best image to use to present the Undersiders as a team, but Brian had insisted that it needed to be there. He had thought that it was important that they never forget where they started, as four near-strangers who barely tolerated one another, let alone trusted each other, in order to appreciate how far they had come, and how far they were going to go.
"I'm sorry, Bri." Lisa spoke softly while staring at that picture, her voice barely audible over the music. "I shouldn't have left you alone up there. I should've figured that they'd find out where we were. I should've moved us to a different location. I should've..." She trailed off then before saying in a voice that was even quieter. "I messed up. I let you die. I failed you, like I failed..." Rex... Reggie, she thought, but didn't say. Even now it was hard to say her brother's name. "I failed, and you're gone."
She took a breath then, clicking the pen several times absently before speaking again. "But I swear I'll be there for Aisha, Brian. Whatever it takes, I'll help her. I will get her through this somehow. I will not abandon your sister, Bri. Not ever. No matter how infuriating she can be."
Her voice dropped even more then, a quiet whisper that was almost entirely masked by the sound of a particularly beautiful rendition of Giulio Caccini's "Ave Maria", yet audible enough for her. "I just wish you were still here. I wish you were both still here."
The door clicked before opening, admitting first Luke, then Elias. The two of them carried sacks of fast food, the former offering one of the bags to Tattletale while sitting across from her. "Just what you ordered, chicken caesar salad."
Lisa took the offered sack and set the food aside for a moment. "Did you see Rachel or Aisha?"
It was Elias who answered while tugging out a chair at the other end of the table to drop himself into. "Pint size was on her way up when we came in." After digging into his bag to pull out an aluminum-wrapped cheeseburger, he added, "She said she had to get some chocolate from her room if she was gonna listen to you and Other Mom play at being responsible." He shrugged at Lisa's squint. "Her words, babe, not mine."
Whatever his other myriad of faults, she at least had to give Elias some credit. While he'd had no problem with letting Brian know that he thought Aisha was attractive, usually to goad the other boy, in the days since Grue had died he had curbed it almost entirely. To be fair, he made up for the lack by repeatedly and enthusiastically expressing his interest in the rest of the female members of the team (Rachel less so since she had made it clear that the next comment he made would be the last time he did so with the same number of digits he had before the warning), but it was something at least.
Before long, the rest of the team had assembled. Noelle sat on the left side of Lisa, at the head of the table. Rachel had chosen to stand, putting herself and the single dog she had brought with her near the door as if ready to leave the instant she possibly could. Finally, Aisha sat cross-legged in one of the chairs at the far end, regarding the group with a sort of forced disinterest that told Lisa the girl was paying far more attention than she pretended, all while snacking on chocolate covered potato chips.
She was also the one who broke the silence once everyone was there. "So she's taking Bri's old spot, huh?" Though she was clearly trying to phrase it as dismissively as possible, there was a distinct catch in her voice that Lisa didn't even need her power to notice. "Great, she's the leader, yada yada. Can we go now, or is everyone still pretending that we have some kind of say in this?"
Lisa opened her mouth, but it was Noelle who spoke. "Coil's back."
Silence came then, save for a single slow crunch as Aisha bit down into one of her crispy snacks, her eyes locked onto the scrawny brunette at the other end of the table.
Rachel said nothing as well, remaining utterly silent while continuing to pat the head of Brutus, who sat next to her. Whatever opinion she had of the decision or the news about Coil, she was keeping it to herself. Part of that, Lisa knew, was that Rachel didn't trust her own reactions or understanding of humans enough to talk much. She preferred to spend most of her time away from everyone else, interacting solely with her dogs, and was happiest when they left her alone for everything except a mission.
She had tried to find a way to connect with the other girl, but her very few attempts had gone poorly in spite of her power. Bitch did not take well to the feeling that she was being manipulated, even if it hadn't been Lisa's intention.
"The fuck you mean?" Elias demanded, making up for his teammate's silence. "Ain't his ass getting hammered in the Birdcage? That's like, one of the things that lets me sleep at night, knowing that no matter what's goin' on with me, that motherfucker was getting his shit torn-"
"That's enough." Noelle interrupted, and there there was a pause while every single person in the room gave Vacate a look of pure disgust. Then they collectively moved on, the girl continuing. "That's right, that Coil. We don't know how exactly, but Tether thinks he used the original Birdcage escape to mask his own, leaving a device behind that made the cameras show him interacting with people so that no one knew he was gone. Now we're pretty sure he has Dinah's parents, and Tether hired us to locate him."
To this, Tattletale added, "Which we would have done anyway because we are not leaving that bastard out there to fuck with us, but it's nice to be on the job while we're doing it, and if we need backup, we've got it."
She pointed to Noelle then. "That is why she's in charge, and why we're not going to debate about it. Because Coil knows us. He doesn't know her. He can't predict her, or what she'll do. If anyone has a problem with that, you don't have to help. But I'm pretty sure everyone here wants to deal with that son of a bitch, right?" There were a few nods, and she returned the gesture. "Then we do what Veritas says."
"Great." Setting her bag down, Aisha abruptly transformed herself into the shape of Brandish, summoning a hard light dagger into one hand before tossing it to the other while staring intently at their newly appointed leader as if studying her for any possible reaction. "So how does Plan Fuck Coil start, boss?"
"We comb through all of his financial information," Noelle answered. "We look at his old contacts, his old resources, all of it. We find something that can tell us how he's stayed out of sight this long. Most of that'll be computer work to start out, which means Tattletale takes the lead on it. But if she needs help, everyone contributes. There's probably going to be some hard copy files somewhere to look through."
To Bitch, she added, "Rachel, when the time comes, we might need you and your dogs to play muscle to scare information out of some of Coil's old contacts. Think you can do that?"
There was a slight pause before Bitch gave the slightest, almost imperceptible nod.
"Yaaaay." Aisha shrugged and turned back into herself, popping another chip into her mouth. In the next bite, she had taken on Regent's form, making Lisa flinch. "So nothing for the rest of us right now, got it." Still in Alec's shape, she started to stand up.
"Actually, there is a couple other things." Noelle paused, clearly gathering herself before looking up again. "If I'm going to be the leader, there's going to be a few rules."
"Rules?" Luke raised an eyebrow while Aisha simply squinted that way suspiciously.
"Yeah, rules." Noelle pushed herself to stand, sliding her chair away. "First of all, training. Everyone on the team, and I mean everyone, is going to attend physical training twice a week unless there are interruptions. We'll shoot for hand-to-hand self defense on Mondays and firearm practice on Fridays. I don't care if your power is summoning Scion to bitch slap your enemies, you are going to learn how to fight without it, and everybody is going to carry a pistol on missions, and know how to use it." She glanced toward Lisa then. "Tattletale, I kind of need you to look up the best teachers for that."
"Got it." Lisa nodded, already bringing a couple of names to mind and sorting through the possibilities both for their discretion and their ability to work with people like Rachel and Aisha.
Noelle continued then. "But besides training, there's something else." Clearly knowing that what she was about to say wouldn't go over well, she went on nonetheless. "Everyone on this team needs to visit a therapist."
That started off a storm of protests, but the brunette gave a sharp, piercing whistle that cut them off. "That includes me. Everybody that is a part of this team will visit a therapist once a week, as soon as we find one that works. Barring emergencies, if you don't go, you don't participate in missions. End of story."
Noelle's voice softened considerably then. "I know I'm new here. I know I haven't been here that long and now I'm just taking over and making demands. I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry about everything that happened to put me here instead of Brian. But I'm here now, and those are my rules. Training and therapy. Everyone will attend, everyone will learn how to deal with each other, and how to handle themselves in every possible situation. We will be ready, whatever happens.
"Any questions?"
