"So, uh, I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting all this to get put together so quickly," Morven said softly, glancing around the interior of the PRT van the two of me were currently sitting in.
Across from me, Velocity shrugged. "I don't want to give the crisis credit for anything positive, but..." We were headed out to the site where a couple Bakuda bombs had gone off earlier this morning, after all. Of course, that was just one bombing, compared to three yesterday, and nine the day before. The gang war seemed to be awkwardly petering out, ever since Scion had done his thing two days prior. I guess they were trying to withdraw from the public eye in the face of all the outsiders, both cape and not, who'd been drawn to the city by the incident.
"Still," he continued, his leg bouncing in a restless way that made me sympathize with him, "it should make for some good PR, which'll help reassure the public." Both of me nodded, and I couldn't help but let one of Fionnuala's eyes be drawn down by his leg's motion.
… Huh. Either Velocity tucked, or the Protectorate's costume designers were well worth whatever they were paid. Not to say he wasn't cis or anything, of course, but still.
I looked away, my many eyes taking in the other occupants of the van. With us were a pair of fully decked-out PRT agents — each armed with both a grenade launcher in hand and an SMG hanging from a strap, with a handgun presumably stowed somewhere amongst all that gear — and a cape from out of town who was doing her best to look anywhere but at Fionnuala's face. Her costume seemed to be primarily composed of layered leather, shaped to evoke the idea of leaves in shades of green, orange, and red. The contours of its detailing almost seemed to lead my eyes towards the ends of her extremities, where they ended up settling on her hands. They looked strong, those hands, with long, slender fingers.
Thanks to my vastly improved memory, courtesy of my kinda-terrifying-in-retrospect superpowered brain surgery, I could remember that the name she'd introduced herself by was Arbor Sylph.
I somewhat sympathized with her discomfort, especially since the Fionnuala form didn't and couldn't move all her eyes in synch, meaning pairs and trios ended up looking at a myriad of different things all at once. Or maybe it was her face's eye sockets and lids? In any case, my sympathy was warring with my enjoyment of her discomfort. I didn't really feel like changing Fionnuala's look since… well, it was one of the few things I had that was entirely mine. But, hmm, maybe a minor alteration wouldn't hurt?
I gathered bone from within her skull near the bases of her horns, letting it bulge outwards to completely conceal how her eyelids had been pushed and (slightly) stretched outwards by the horns' growth. The new plates of bone stopped before they covered her eyebrows, snug against her brow ridge, and didn't cross her nose to meet, but they did extend down and to the sides a couple inches to cover her cheekbones. The lower edge, I decorated with sharp spikes, taking a design cue from those I'd placed on the crown of eyes.
Morven twisted a little in her seat to peer at these new additions, her head tilting this way and that for different angles. She hummed to herself, then said, "I like it, but it's a little plain, I guess? Maybe you could add something like, ah…" She tapped her armor, which I'd decided to have her update with a great many designs and images and patterns. Not only that, I could devote a fragment or two of my mind to move and alter them in real time, effectively animating whatever was portrayed. At the current moment, the torso of her stone armor was occupied by a portrayal of a coral reef, with seaweed streamers swaying, fish darting here and there, and even a little octopus hustling along the bottom while protecting itself with two halves of a coconut shell.
She raised her hand, index finger extended, and peeled back the stone to form a small blade from the steel beneath. "I could hel—"
"Not here, sis," Fionnuala murmured, gently pressing Morven's hand down.
"Um." A quick glance around found the other passengers staring at the two of them, Arbor Sylph in particular opening and closing her mouth repeatedly. Finally, she managed to say, "Were you, like, about to just…" She trailed off, then turned to Velocity. "Why are we with these fr-" she swallowed whatever she'd been about to say, though my eyes all narrowed a tad at her. "These people, again?"
Velocity, having apparently gathered himself, gave the colorfully-clad cape a look that was actually more body language than mere facial expression. Which made sense, given that his mask covered everything but his mouth. Some history between them, perhaps? "You got the same briefing I did," he said, his tone a tad irked, but still professional. "We, and they," he nodded to me, "are helping with S and R at the fire station that got bombed earlier this morning." Left unsaid was that they were also running escort duty for Fionnuala and Morven, or so I assumed.
Arbor Sylph took a deep, calming breath, held it for a few seconds, then released it, and I wasn't sure whether or not I felt offended by that. With that done, she turned to lock eyes with Morven. "So, what do you two do? Besides, y'know," she gestured vaguely at Fionnuala.
"Well," I had my white-clad body say out of no spite whatsoever I swear, "both of us can sense where people are, after a fashion, and I can make myself pretty strong. More importantly, though, my lovely sister here," I had her pat Morven between the cat ears of her helmet, which made her preen, "can reshape solid stuff at range. So, she can shore up parts of a building that's at risk of collapsing, or clear out space for first responders to get through, or free anyone who's stuck or gotten buried."
"Huh." Arbor Sylph nodded to herself, looking at least somewhat mollified.
"So," Morven said, "You know what we can do, and we know more or less what Velocity's powers are, but what can you do?"
I saw the other parahuman's eyes blink through the lenses of her mask before she replied, "I can become large and tough, but immobile. While I'm like that, the terrain around me becomes harder to damage, and I can deploy a… a combat minion." Her tone during the explanation was almost aggressively clinical, with the only deviation, however slight it might have been, coming at the very end.
"I see." Morven tilted her head slightly. "Does your Shaker power keep already-damaged buildings from collapsing?"
Arbor Sylph blinked, a small smile fighting its way onto her face. "Y-yeah. That's… actually why I was assigned to this, I'm pretty sure. Still, I get the feeling I'll be rather redundant on that front, with you here."
"Well, you're not alone on that front, I'd say," Fionnuala said with a self-deprecating grin as she slung an arm around Morven's stone-and-steel-clad shoulders "My own powers kinda pale in comparison to Morven's, but, well, we're—"
"—sisters," my other half continued, "and we stick together." She leaned into the hug.
A thoughtful look came over Arbor Sylph's face, but before the conversation could continue, a knocking rang out from the thick-looking window that stood between the driver's cabin and the area the lot of us were in, before the speaker set right beside it crackled to life. "We're coming up on our destination. Two minutes."
.o.o.o.
The moment the van came to a stop at our destination, I told the fragment of myself that was confining outer power's field to the vehicle's chassis to let go and rejoin me. Instantly, my field flowed forth through the ground like torrential waters from a burst dam, accompanied by a most profound sense of relief. Even as the back of the van was opened and my bodies exited into the sunlight, the field roiled down into the depths of the earth and swirled up into the walls of nearby buildings, until finally it sloshed out to rest in its maximum extension. It was as if one of my limbs had been forcibly curled up and made to hold that position until it'd cramped, only to finally, finally be allowed to stretch. I couldn't help but let out a surprisingly lewd groan, which I covered up by having Fionnuala do a long, languid, spine-popping stretch of her own, holding it until her sternum popped in turn. Bliss, if soured a tad by suddenly finding myself fully in Fionnuala, then springing back out in a mess of disorientation.
The whole display earned Fionnuala a few odd looks, but I was too preoccupied with two things to care. One, I was really coming to dislike riding in cars. And two, both my eyes and my outer power's field had simultaneously found why we were here.
It was a fire station, or rather, it had been one, back in the bygone age of earlier that morning. Once, letters and numbers had graced the face of the building, proclaiming it to be BBFD Fire Station 14. Now, those letters and numbers were hidden from sight by the partially collapsed bulk of the building, and the only reason I knew they were there was that my power filled them. They were upside down, but even if they'd been turned right side up they wouldn't be usable, seeing as they were now backwards, mirrored. In fact, the majority of the building was mirrored around a central point, one occupied by a hidden, mangled piece of electronics. Most of the basement, and much of the foundation, had traded places with the roof. The edges of where the mirroring had sheared through were, ironically, mirror smooth and perfectly reflective, no matter what the material they were on.
All of this should have collapsed under its own weight. Would have, had it not been for the second bomb that had detonated.
Near as I could tell, only a moment after the first one had gone off, before furniture and other loose objects had the chance to fall more than a few inches towards what had once been the ceiling, all the air in an almost twenty-foot-radius sphere had been turned into solid, flawless glass. And despite the circumstances, what I could see of it with my myriad eyes was absolutely gorgeous.
"Well." Morven placed her hands on her hips as she surveyed the scene, her stone tail swaying gently. "I've already learned something new about my powers."
The others' eyes left the scene to focus on her. "... What do you mean?" Velocity asked, slowly.
"I can definitely use my main one on people," she said in a decidedly neutral tone. "They just have to be dead first."
The red-clad cape stiffened. "How many?"
Morven held up a pair of fingers. "There's also someone in the back who I believe is still alive. Inside the mirrored zone but almost entirely outside the glass, save for their arm. Which is broken." She paused as I realized she was being a bit more outgoing than the character I'd intended her to play and gave the fragment in charge of her a small, mental nudge. Her tail and ears drooped a tad, and in a softer tone she said, "It's, it's lucky there weren't more people in there at the time."
"Yeah," he sighed, before gesturing for everyone to follow him as he set off for the already-present gaggle of first responders clustered a respectful distance from the building.
In truth, it seemed that I couldn't fully control those dead bodies, not yet at least. For while they were dead, they'd passed on recently enough that not all of their cells had gotten the memo yet. The areas my field was able to permeate were growing, but jerkily, at random rates, and in all honesty it was a trifle distracting. Still… as I observed the dead, I found an intrusive thought running through my mind.
"Resources."
.o.o.o.
Once greetings and introductions had been seen to, and the information I-as-Morven had gathered had been relayed (and Morven had confirmed that there didn't seem to be any more bombs on-site), everyone sprang into a flurry of activity. The priority was to rescue the trapped person in the back of the building, of course. The retrieval of the bodies was, naturally, deemed a secondary objective. My varied eyes scanned those present, but Jacob did not seem to be present among them. I felt some relief at that, especially since I could tell that none of those in the building, be they dead or not, had the right body shape to be him.
Once the EMTs had gathered their gear, Morven led them to the wall closest to the person in need of rescue. She placed a hand on that wall, then looked over her shoulder at those assembled. "I've fused all the places the structure of the building is broken or felt liable to break, and reinforced it as much as I can. I feel comfortable saying that this won't collapse unintentionally."
"Making me feel kind of redundant, here," Arbor Sylph drawled from off to the side, arms crossed, finger tapping idly on her bicep.
Morven shrugged. "Better to have and not need than otherwise, I guess," she replied, before plunging her fingers through the wall like it was made of gelatin and ripping it wide open.
Okay, I'll admit, that was just a bit of theatrics on my part. Sue me.
Morven made the hole she'd just created stretch wide and tall, enough for three people to walk through at once without touching each other. I stretched and smoothed out the now flat base of the opening, creating little wheel-friendly ramps for the stretcher the EMTs had brought.
Sunlight fell on the person we'd come to rescue, and I couldn't stop Morven from cringing a little at the sight. I'd seen worse elsewhere, technically speaking, but a picture of a degloved finger in a textbook just didn't have the same impact as seeing someone, in person, hanging from an arm that was both obviously broken and dislocated at the elbow. The man's weight rested on his left shin and forearm, facing us, and though he mercifully seemed to have passed out, his face was still drawn and ashen.
"Morven?" Fionnuala placed a hand on her sister's stone-clad shoulder and, after a moment, guided her inside and out of the way, kicking aside a fallen, mirrored clock in the process. EMTs quickly cleared a path through the scattered debris and the stretcher was wheeled in. The man who seemed to be in charge, a stocky, black fellow, looked at the trapped arm, then at Morven expectantly. Morven shook her head lightly to clear it, then went over to place her hand on the glass.
"I'll lower him as gently as I can, then release his arm, alright?" she asked. The only response she received was an approving nod. With a nod of her own, she did as she said she would, and when she'd finished, she turned away and left, her sister following after.
Outside, the two of me watched as the EMTs ferried their charge away, then joined our escorts in contemplating the foundation-crushing mass of glass. "What d'you think'll be done with it all?" Arbor Sylph wondered aloud.
Morven sighed, the breath hissing softly through the vents in her helmet. "Well, first I'm going to have to retrieve the bodies. After that…" She glanced at her sister, who met her gaze.
"Divvy it up into blocks?" Fionnuala suggested.
Morven shrugged. "Should work, I guess."
Velocity glanced at them and gave them a tight smile. "I'll see if the folks back at base can arrange for disposal," he said. Morven nodded in response, and Fionnuala gave him a deliberately sloppy salute.
.o.o.o.
The bodies had been retrieved from the glass, and most of it had been extracted from their lungs. While they'd been carted off to some morgue or another, Morven had drawn forth great, blobby tentacles of glass that started depositing cubes of their own material on the ground. Each cube was about a foot to a side, and while they didn't look all that big, that still meant they were about a hundred pounds apiece. Morve shaped the cubes so they'd be easy to stack, and molded handles into the sides and top of each for ease of carrying.
While she'd been hard at work, Fionnuala had mostly just stood off to the side, watching. As she did, she felt the footsteps of someone coming up to her, and she turned an eye to their source. He was one of the EMTs who had remained behind when most of them had left, and he was trying his best to not look at the eyes on my white-clad body's antlers, to mixed success.
"Yes?" Fionnuala prompted after letting him stew for a moment. She didn't turn to face him, but the eyes that did all focused on him.
He seemed to steady himself, then said, "Um, there's something I need to speak with you about, Miss. Ma'am."
"... Alright, I have some time."
He glanced around. "Not out here. Could we speak over there?" He nodded towards a nearby alleyway.
Fionnuala was silent for a time. "You know, this is sounding quite suspicious." She turned her head to face him, and grinned. "But sure, you've piqued my curiosity."
He let out what was almost a sigh of relief, and soon enough the two had relocated.
"So," Fionnuala began. "What secretive subject did you want to speak about?"
"N-not actually me," he replied, and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, one that was open and, apparently, already had a call running. He held it out to her, and she took it.
With a curious hum, she raised it to her ear. "Who is this?"
"Ah, Fionnuala, I presume? It is a pleasure to meet you," a smooth, male voice said.
"I wish I could say the same, oh person of mystery," she replied in an amused tone.
"Very well. You may call me Coil. I have a proposal for you."
