21st, Monday, 12:27 AM.

When we climbed onto the roof, Claire Stansfield was waiting for us.

I'd thought we would have had to search the roof and the carriages to find him, but he was just standing in the middle of the train. His back was towards us and he held his arms outstretched, enjoying the wind as it rushed by. The perfect opportunity for a sneak attack-.

"Claire!" Dean yelled suddenly and stepped in front of us. Claire turned around, smiling.

God dammit, Dean.

"It's been a while little brother!" Claire yelled back, the wind doing it's best to take his voice.

I looked at Dean to see his reaction, and he had a strange look on his face. Managing to look somehow, happy, sad and angry all at the same time. He started to say something before hesitating, then he tried again a moment later, clearly struggling to find the right words.

"Why are you doing this?!" Dean yelled back finally.

Claire just shook his head, the smile on his face seemingly genuine.

"You'll have to be a bit more specific, Dean!" He sounded like he was going to laugh.

"You killed all those people!" Dean shot back immediately. "You're the Rail Tracer!"

"Is that what they're calling me?" Claire replied, sounding bemused.

Dean made an angry noise, at the non-answer. Claire just shook his head again, smiling.

"Claire!" Dean sounded pained. "you can't keep doing this!"

Claire just watched him quietly, waiting for him to continue.

"You're sick!" Dean continued, "Just come with me, we can find you help!"

Claire tilted his head and something changed in him, his smile was still present but it didn't reach his eyes.

"You don't get it!" Claire finally replied.

He wiped his fingers up and into his hair sweeping the tangled web of hair and blood out of his face. The motion caused him to leave faint smear of blood across his brow in the process.

"I don't need help Dean, why would I?" His eyes were filled with a strange intensity as he stared at his brother. "Nothing here is real, it's just a image my mind has projected onto the world, everything is a dream."

I didn't understand what he meant, I glanced back at Dean wondering if this was some sort of brotherly meme, but he was looking at Claire with incomprehension.
What was he saying exactly? That we weren't real? That none of us were actually on this train? or that the train didn't exist?

"This world is just a long, long dream I'm having." He continued, there was a strange undertone to what he was saying. "Each and every one of you is just an illusion, you don't really exist."

Claire Stansfield really was insane. I wasn't an illusion, and this wasn't a dream. He had somehow convinced himself that everything was fake. He was sick, just like Dean had said.

"My mind dreamt up this world," He said, "I sit at it's center as the only real thing in it."

Claire grinned and this time it reached his eyes, he looked excited and alive.

"So what will happen if I die?" He said. I watched him quietly.

I don't know what, exactly, had broken him, to make him like this. But I felt like I could almost understand.

Mom, Dad, Gaston, and Belle.

When each of them had died, I had retreated into myself, hidden from the world. Tried to tell myself it was just a sick dream, that I would wake up and they would be fine.
That I'd walk into my kitchen and Gaston would be standing there making breakfast, unharmed and alive.

I'd tried to convince myself, that they hadn't actually died, but the world turned cruelly on, and they stayed dead and gone. The illusion couldn't hold up to reality so it shattered and my dream ended.

Claire's dream, had never ended. Whatever tragedy had brought him to this, it had left him broken. He'd retreated into himself, just like I had, only he had never come back out. He convinced himself it was all a terrible, terrible dream, that he was the only thing that was real. To avoid the pain, he'd distanced himself from reality.

"I just can't imagine myself dying." He said, "But if I did, then everyone would simply disappear!"

He let his hand drop from his hair and raised both arms out wide again as if to embrace us all.

"I am the only one in this world who won't disappear. The rest of you are just the images I see, as if in a dream."

Everyone was quiet and we just watched him for a while. Dean recovered after a moment.

"Why did you save that woman in the carriage then?!" Dean yelled, angry and hurt. "If we're all fake, why did you save her?"

"So what if I'd save her," Claire shot back. "In my mind, it's the certainty in myself that I possess, which allows me to have that kind of mercy or compassion."

It took me a moment to unpack that one. What was he saying, that he would let people live on occasion because he was self-assured? self-confident?
Strong? I couldn't make the connection, this kind of stuff went over my head.

"So remember this, little brother," He continued, "Mercy and compassion are virtues that only the strong are privileged to possess."

"And I," Claire said, with a grin on his face. "am strong."

I didn't have time to parse that, because Claire had started moving towards us. Oh shit, here we go again, he didn't look like he was going to stop.
I dragged Dean back next to me with nearby wires, and Aural stepped up in front of us, her thin knife in hand.

Battery had been standing still during the entire discussion and absolutely cratered the train roof as she threw herself forward at an absurd speed.
She appeared next to Claire, slammed her left foot into the roof to stop her momentum and lashed out with a kick that tore through the air aimed at his torso.

Claire leaned backward until he was completely horizontal. Battery's right leg slashed through the air just above him and his clothes were whipped back from the force.

She spun in an almost complete circle before she twisted her foot slightly and used the movement to raise her kicking leg high into the air before she brought it down without mercy towards his torso. This all happened in the space of an a couple of seconds, they were moving fast enough that the details were starting to become hard to see.

Aural had started forward the moment Battery had attacked and had almost reached them, she had some form of enhanced speed as well.

Claire, from his horizontal position, put his hand on the floor and then spun his legs out in a circle. Battery's left leg was swept out from under her in an instant and she started to fall to the ground.

He reached for her face as she fell and her eyes widened. I speared a wire directly where his hand would connect with her face and thickened the end of the wire, it bloomed into a pane of metal in-between them.

Claire aborted the attack and lent backward as Aural's knife tore through the air past his head. He suddenly lifted his leg to avoid a blast of light that came from Dean's hand and ducked backwards out of range.

I quickly created another shield nearby in case I had to intervene. Aural turned the missed stab into a backhanded swipe but Claire reached out and pushed her forearm aside with his hand.

With a twist of his wrist he pulled Aural gently past him before spinning back towards Battery. Aural was left teetering on the edge of the train, the wind threatening to drag her off, her black dress was whipping around violently in the wind.

I pushed her back from the edge with the shield before refocusing on the fight. Battery had managed to stand back up and was retreating out of Claire's reach. She needed a moment to recharge her spent power, I would oblige her.

Three giant wire constructs, shaped like hands grew into existence and I sent them forth to attack with a chain of punches one after another, striking at him in a steady beat. He dodged the first few attacks before suddenly changing tactics.

Claire reached out and slapped the first hand away with the back of his hand, it disintegrated from the force. The first time I'd actually seen his super strength in play, it was terrifying.

I thickened the shields in response, if he had continued his attack against Battery his hand would have gone straight through the shield like it was paper. The second hand attacked low and Claire stepped onto it, tensed his leg and stomped it into the roof.

The hand was destroyed beneath the force and his foot continued on to the roof of the train cratering it and leaving a hole behind. The entire length of the train shuddered from the impact.

The third hand I broke into three smaller hands and kept up the rhythmic attacks, I created more shields, one for each person in case he started tossing shit around.
Aural reentered combat and flitted around the hands attacking from a bizarrely low angle, she was lashing and stabbing at Claire's legs and feet, trying to disrupt his footwork.

Claire seemed to barely notice. He weaved between each attack brushing them away like gnats somehow advancing towards us at the same time. I was reminded again of how ridiculous this guy was.

I knew there were people out there that could no-sell me, people with defense too high to penetrate, capes that could overpower me with brute strength or capes with strange powers that would mess with my own.

This was an entirely different thing, I couldn't even land a single hit on the guy. He was blocking attacks from blind spots, dodging four capes simultaneously with even more disruptions on the field like the wire hands.

Some of these attacks were coming from strange angles, timed to give him the least amount of time to dodge and we still couldn't hit him. It was infuriating.

Battery suddenly appeared next to him in a blur, the roof bore the brunt of her stoppage once more and she lashed out with half a hundred punches in an instant. Claire wove through them with no extra difficulty, brushing some aside, blocking others and avoiding the rest, abruptly Battery's charge ran out and she immediately backed off.

I sent another hand at him to assist her retreat and Claire scattered it with a moment's effort. Fuck. Nobody was this good, how was he doing it? He had to be at least a Brute, Mover, and Thinker all at once. Super strength, super speed, and whatever he was doing to see the blind attacks.

We were working pretty well together despite a lack of cohesion and we were strong capes individually, I felt like we shouldn't be having this much trouble.

Aural alone was an absolute beast, a Mover/Thinker. The public information on her said her powers were echolocation, enhanced agility, and enhanced timing. It lead to her being a incredibly deadly melee combatant and she hadn't even managed to scuff the guy's shoes for fuck sake.

Battery was a member of the Protectorate, she could move at absurd speeds after she charged up and hit with the force of a truck. I could barely track her top speeds, although distance helped to see the movements more clearly.

She felt barely present in the fight, she would duck in after she charged up, get stonewalled and then have to retreat.

Dean was essentially a non-factor, his blasts were slow in comparison to everyone else, and he probably wouldn't have been able to hit his brother if he was half blind and dying of tuberculosis. He was providing good covering fire, and the beams were just another thing that he had to avoid.

Claire Stansfield was a simply a monster. He was as far above us, as we were from a normie. He saw everything coming and nothing slowed him down. He was fighting a team of capes that would destroy any single non-invulnerable cape that I could think of, and he wasn't even pretending to try.

I felt personally attacked.

I knew he wasn't trying, he was barely attacking us, content to defend and deflect, moving around and slowly advancing. I'd seen hints of an obscene speed granted by some of his reactions but he wasn't blitzing us.

He was just letting the fight play out, like a treat rarely indulged in. One of Dean's attacks hit the ground near Claire marring the metal surface and drawing my attention.

"What do your range attacks do?!" I yelled at him. They had to do something more then slight physical damage, Dean kept up his attempts to hinder his brother's movements.

"When they hit someone," He yelled back. "I can make them feel an emotion! Like sadness or whatever!" What?

"What the fuck?" I yelled into the wind. What a dumb power, Dean glanced at me for a moment, the swearing drawing his attention.

"Try not to cry, Claire!" I yelled up the train. Claire managed to look at me questioningly while fending off all of our combined attacks at the same time.

"Dean is gonna hit you with his sissy-bitch beams!" I continued at the top of my lungs. Dean suddenly looked pissed off but Claire simply laughed.

Battery appear again and her fist flew passed his face and he leaned back to avoid it. Then he reached out past Battery's arm and grabbed her by the shoulder, he made the absurdly fast motion look casual.

Battery jerked to a stop like smashing against a brick wall and her shoulder dislocated with a massive crack that I could hear from here, she tried to pry his hand off her with a strangled scream of pain.

Claire stepped on her leg in response and her kneecap snapped inwards. Aural immediately started an incredible chain of flickering stabs at Claire's eyes that drew his attention away from Battery for a moment.

I sent wires tearing through the air and chased him further away. I jammed as many shields in between the too as I could herding him towards the edge of the train.

He made short hops and turns to avoid it all and started to circle around to make his way towards me. Fuck this. I threw myself off the train to avoid him and flew around in a wide semi-circle, a stream of wires left in my wake. They abruptly surged upwards like a wave increasing in volume a thousand-fold and crashed towards Claire.

For the first time he stopped advancing, he dodged backwards away from the mass. and when the wave hit Battery and Aural position it opened around them and continued past without touching them. I added another wave to the roof beside it, combining the two to encompass the entire width of the train and Claire dashed backward away from it.

I chased him back three carriages at least before the wave obstructed my vision of him briefly. The wave swept down the length of the train and vanished, but he was gone. Had he jumped from the train? My eyes snapped to check on Battery but she was fine.

Well, fine was a bit much, she was on her back screaming in pain. Aural was standing next to her still on guard. Fuck. I sent some wires down to her.

I picked her up as gently as I could and sent her back down to where Miss Militia and Kid Win where still in the carriage behind us, I lowered her through the hole in the wall and left her there. She was out of the fight. I landed next to Aural with a stumble and Dean jogged towards us from the other carriage.

I opened my mouth to tell them to stay on guard, when Claire suddenly crested the side of the train opposite us at great speed and clamped his hand down on his brothers shoulder. My mind reeled, and we all froze in horror.

Claire just smiled.

"Claire." Dean grunted and tried to pull free, but quickly gave up when he didn't budge.

I couldn't speak, my mind was to busy trying to figure out how to save him before his brother tore him in half. Dean looked up at his brother and spoke after a moment.

"What happened to mom?" He asked, quietly. We were close enough now that we didn't have to yell to be heard.

I didn't know what to do, he could kill Dean before I moved any of the shields, hands or wires I had created. I looked at Aural and she standing directly beside me, leaning forward ready to move in an instant. But she hadn't, because she wasn't fast enough either. Fuck.

"Ah," Claire said. "I thought you might have forgotten in all the excitement."

Dean just looked at him. Claire looked more sane then he had the entire night. His lack of lucidity had peeled back slightly to reveal the remnant of a human being underneath. He looked up at the sky for a moment and then spoke as if he was reading a file out loud.

"Sarah Stansfield. April 12th, 1996. Attempts to kill her ten-year-old son." He continued,"Sarah is convinced that her eldest son is an impostor."

Dean was enraptured. I was trying to figure out what that meant. She thought her son was an impostor? A fake child? Someone pretending to be a child?

"Sarah insists that the boy has done something to her real son." He keeps going, "The son manages to escape before she can kill him, he is gravely injured in the process."

Dean's rapture is turning more and more to horror as the story unfolds, Claire could see his brother's reaction and was watching him curiously now.
I felt a sense of rising dread crawling up my chest, Dean glanced at me briefly, he looked like he is about to break down.

"Sarah is then committed to a mental asylum in perpetuity." He continues quietly, without feeling. "She tries to kill herself soon after."

"Stop." Dean started to cry. "I've changed my mind, I don't want to know, anymore."

"Medical staff manage to get to her in time." He continued on mercilessly. "She falls into a coma soon after, that she will never wake from."

Dean doesn't respond, he just wipes at his face angrily with the back of his hand.

"It was good to see you again, Dean." Claire says and shoves Dean off the train.

I've been on a hair trigger the entire time waiting for the moment, but instead of ripping him in two, he threw him off the train. I managed to catch him in time about halfway to the tracks. I toss him into the train with Battery. Claire turned to fully face us both. He hadn't killed his brother, was there a last shred of humanity left in him?

"You're really good," Claire said to Aural. Ouch, what about me asshole? That kinda stung. "What's your name?"

Aural tapped her throat with a finger and shook her head once.

"Oh!" Claire said, sounding actually surprised. "I hadn't realized, my apologies."

Aural glanced at me. Yeah yeah, I get it.

"Her name is Aural, with an A," I say to him and waggle my eyebrows behind my stupid mask. "Or an O if she likes you." I elbow her in the side jokingly.

Claire laughs again, figures only serial killer's and psychopaths find my jokes funny.

Aural turns her head and raises an eyebrow. I shrug at her and she pushes her tongue into her cheek three times, I grin back at her.
With names like Aural, Climax, and Swallow they obviously had a sense of humor, I'm glad she didn't shank me.

"Well, I believe we were in the middle of something?" Claire asks leadingly and takes a step forward.

Aural met my eyes for a moment and then started walking forward. Looks like I'm the support, got it. She pours on the speed and half-circles him before coming in from the side. Claire's eyes follow her the entire time but he doesn't turn. I start bringing my now existing shield's and hands into range, ready for distractions and defenses for Aural.

After a second of thought, I generate another ten hands and shields each.

Aural takes three swipes at his legs before suddenly drawing a second knife from under her dress and slashing straight upwards.
Claire pulls his legs back from the swipes and taps her wrist gently with the back of his hand, she drops it and the knife falls into the air.

Claire plucks it out of the air in the same motion, before driving it down at her face. Her eyes widen in shock and I manage to move the closest wires into place between his arm and her head.

He cuts straight through five of them before I can thicken them enough to halt his strike. He doesn't even glance at me, as I attempt to tangle his arm.

Aural tries to nick his wrist but he pulls it back, tearing free of the wires. She switches targets to his toe going under my wire and drives a knife at his foot.
He moves it to the side at the last moment and the knife glances off the roof with a shower of sparks. I clear the wires to give her room.

Claire takes a swipe at her with the knife and she dances back of reach, but this time he follows keeping up a steady stream of slashes and thrusts.
Fast, but not blindingly so, he was testing her, and she managed to evade, deflect or block each strike in the chain.

I was trying to trip him up the entire time, striking at his face with the hands but he would just slap them away in between each strike, destroying them.
It was maddening, whether I attacked when he was attacking Aural or not he would still managed to deflect the attacks.

They were moving towards me, slowly. I started to move a shield back into position in case he rushed me when Claire suddenly grabbed one of my wires in the air and yanked on it. I was sent flying forward before I could react. Oh fuck.

I threw my hands up between us and tried to yank myself backward, but he still managed to kick me, right in the middle of my crossed arms.
The wires disintegrated and I felt both of my arms break from the force, something in my chest followed a moment later.

My arms smashed into my face and I blacked out for a moment. I came too in a massive dent in the roof of the train. The roof was torn in places around me and I could see the carriage below me. People scattered away from the impact. Claire was standing a couple of meters away from me holding Aural by the back of the neck. He held her knife in his other hand and her feet were dangling above the ground.

I forced myself to sit up and quickly regretted it, there was something wrong with my shoulders as well and I couldn't hear the wind for some reason. I coughed and my mask chose that moment to fall into a million pieces onto the ground, shattered by my arms hitting my face.

"Hey," I said, my voice sounded like it was underwater. Wasn't I supposed to say something witty? "Is only game, why you heff to be mad?"

It might have been my imagination but I thought that Aural looked vaguely disappointed, she tried to pull his fingers from her neck without success. Claire just smiled.

"Felix." I said, "Claire, Rail Tracer. What a dumb name." I mumbled. Can't even draw trains without cheating, bitch.

I must have been concussed, I was thinking weirder stuff than normal. We were probably about to die, I thought stupidly. I didn't want to die.
I didn't think Aural wanted to either or Battery, Dean, Kid Win or Swallow or Climax.

I couldn't stop this guy, not without killing him. He was too good, he was too strong. He was unstoppable, but I doubted he was unkillable only I didn't want to be a killer. I didn't want to kill Dean's brother. I didn't want to kill Claire. I'd never really gotten what I'd wanted, I thought, not really.

"Well, this has been fun," Claire was saying something, but I couldn't understand it. "It's about time I finished up, however."

Was he about to kill her? If he did, I would have to kill him. I didn't want to.

"Claire," I managed, coughing. "Don't make me kill you. Just leave. Please."

It didn't sound threatening, it didn't sound like anything. I could kill him, I could put so many wires into the air it would cover the sky. He couldn't avoid that many could he?
Everyone in the train would die, Aural would die first, she was closest. I didn't want that. I didn't want to be a killer.

Claire shook his head without responding. I was crying, I noted distantly. The wind was tearing the water from my face, off into oblivion but I still couldn't hear it. Aural had stopped grabbing at the hand and started tapping just above her chest, near the shoulder. I didn't understand what she wanted. He lifted the knife to slit her throat.

"Please," I choked. Don't make me a murderer. Claire froze.

I thought for a moment he had found some shred of morality leftover from when he was once a human. Claire looked over his shoulder at something behind him, turning in the process. Oh, it was Dean.

His upper body stuck out of a hole we in the roof, his arm was outstretched towards his brother. A bright color curled off his palm and evaporated.

I looked back at Aural and she was still tapping her finger weakly against her chest. Light from a passing lamppost caught on the blade in Claire's hand and it blinded me for a moment. Suddenly I understood. Sounds burst back into existence, the roaring wind came back. I'd seen all the pieces of the puzzle already, I just hadn't been able to put them together.

Claire was able to block things he couldn't possibly have seen in the carriage. Attacks from behind, and attacks from out of his line of sight. I had thought he was using his other senses. Which he probably was, but it was more than that. I'd tried to stab him in the leg once back in the carriage, with a wire hidden underneath the debris.

It made no sound and I had only attacked when he had been standing practically on top of it. He still blocked it, even under those conditions. Because he had seen it, in a reflection. He was using the reflections in the shattered glass and shiny metal of in the carriage to track everything out of his line of sight.

Dean had managed to hit him with a sneak attack, the only hit we had landed since the fight began. Because the wind had blocked the sound and he had done it from three carriage lengths away, directly behind him and out of sight.

There was nothing reflective to see the attack coming. The knife was in front of him, his own body and Aural's had blocked the reflection. Even my wires had been reflecting vague shapes throughout the fight.

When I had blacked out all of my actively controlled wires had vanished. All of the shields, hands and other wires that had been reflecting the lights from the train, and the light posts. The only reflective surface in sight was the knives.

Claire could react to anything within his perception. Sneak attacks from out of his range were the only thing that would ever even approach him. But if he saw them in a reflection, or realized that it was from coming with another sense he would avoid it.

Aural had figured it out and was trying to get me to attack, the knife was dangling just out of Claire's line of sight. He was looking behind him, and the nearest light post was too far away for the light to reach. I wouldn't have another chance.

Claire said something to Dean. I created a single wire and pierced it through Aural's shoulder and it passed cleanly into Claire's chest.

He reacted immediately, snapping his gaze around and lifting the knife to kill her. But for once he was too slow. I split the wire into a million branching tendrils that tore through his body. Claire stopped moving abruptly, and laughed. It was alarmingly loud and filled with mirth.

He dropped the knife after a moment and gently pushed Aural. She stumbled a couple of steps and then dashed away, stopping alongside me and turning to face him.
He had uncountable wires sticking out of his skin all over his body, they all originated from the middle of his chest. The movements to push her had torn great rent's in his skin.

He looked like a twisted version of when I used my power. I managed to drag myself to my feet with a combination of wires and Aural's help.

Claire was completely covered in blood now, except his perfect white teeth, pulled into a grin. A dark red puddle expanding outwards from his feet.
I retracted the wires as carefully as I could, as if I did it gently enough he would somehow be alright.

When he was free he immediately took a step towards us and we both stepped backwards in shock. He took another step and stumbled, falling face down on the roof dead.

Dean was staring at us in horror, his hand still outstretched.

Climax and Swallow appeared next to him climbing onto the roof, moving towards us. I pushed Aural away and stumbled towards the side of the train, she watched me go silently.

"Try not to get arrested, dumbass." I said and wrapped some wires around a passing lamppost. She nodded once.

The wires grew taunt and I slipped from the train.

I was a killer now.

Authors Note:

Dun, dun, DUN! That's 14 done, I'm thinking one more chapter in this arc and then we will time skip again.