Epilogue: Nights In White Satin
She watched Aisha and the children leave the slave camp. They walked down the snow dusted roads of a far off Earth. It wasn't their Earth, but it was now home.
Sophia was perched on a tree branch, using her breaker form to reduce the cold's effect on her body. She watched the kids, the blonde Samuel who listened, the tiny brunette terror most feared called Flor, and the quiet looking but usually not quiet girl Juliette. The older two jostled one another, after Samuel fixed the little one's scarf.
"You cold bitch, I told you no one would follow us".
Sophia's heart sank as she stayed the knife clutched in her hand, "I could have run you through, Aisha".
"I bet you say that to all the other strangers. Anywho, we're done here. Dragon's sources were right - Teacher's pudgy ass was working the local capes up into a shitty cartoon rendition of The Warlords of Gimel."
Sophia sheathed the boot knife, and slipped her hands back into her black hooded jackets woolen pockets, "How did they do?"
"Where did what to the why now?"
"How did the kids react to your interrogation technique?"
"You are not recruiting them. They're tiny weirdos and some of them trust me. I'm not recommending them for Wards 2.0: Electric Boogaloo. Coil made the Wards suck major porcupine cock."
"It sucked before Calvert poisoned it, but Taylor dealt with him for all of us. No, I just… your kids have been through alot and it's fucking cold out here! Let's talk in the truck."
"I didn't put you in the tree, Shade Maiden", Aisha shimmied down the tree.
Sophia shifted to her shadow state and glided down to the snow covered ground, "Up yours, Gone Girl."
"Shhhh, ix-nay on the On Girl Gay".
"I knew she was into girls", Juliette reported to her siblings.
"Yeah she's got this look in her eyes when she sees breasts", Samuel added.
"Because she stares at them!" Flor blurted out.
"Oh, even Flor got in on this. Everyone has got to know".
Aisha stood in front of the open passenger side door and looked up into the night sky, "Oh this is worse and I did it to myself. That's it you three sit in the camper and think about every time I've stared at boobs and every time I've stared at a guy's butt and then come back with some hard numbers."
Juliette snorted.
"Numbers, I said numbers. Shut up, in the back you three. It's adults talking time anyway."
"Whatever", Samuel muttered as he helped Flor onto the truck bed and into the plastic camper shell with dog blankets lining the truck bed.
The five traveled down dark icy roads a ways before Sophia spoke up, "Was it really that bad, Aisha? Ya know, working under us in the Wards? And be honest, no joking it off. Life moved pretty fast after we brought you in and -"
"We worked like dogs! Every other Wards team got posters and events and action figures. I got a bobblehead and a t-shirt with my mask on it that caused controversy cuz it was used on the packaging for some tinker made bath salts at one point."
"Gone 4 Gud?"
"Yeah, it was dumb. But, no, you and hornboy weren't bad. You let us be us. You trusted us, didn't micromanage even when ordered to", Aisha turned in her seat and leaned against the passenger door.
"Ray said you all wouldn't be trouble, that you were a team and so long as we kept you together, and did our best to make sure you were feeling accomplished. Give you guys some down time to be, ya know, people."
"Being people is what I was born for. I know others are born for greatness or glory, but me - eating, breathing, resisting the calls of my undiagnosed chronic masturbation, I'm all about people-ing."
"Ugh, you weirdo. Always saying the wrong shit at the right time."
"Aww, you missed my frank and earnest nature."
"In Brockton Bay I'm Frank and in Boston I'm Ernest, hurhurhur."
Alisha's mouth dropped, "You do remember".
"It was funny all of once, and I know what movie you got that from."
"Long Kiss Goodnight, Ray got Defiant to roll it on the Dragonship on the way to the Endbringers sometimes."
The two sat quietly for a while during a particularly turn happy section of road. The truck's headlights struggled to illuminate much more than a few meters of icy dirt road against the flurry of snowfall. Sophia's breath had been visible for a few minutes and she opened the middle console between the driver and passenger seat and pulled out a small stack of orange mylar packets and handed them to Aisha.
Aisha slid open the truck back window, "How's the boob to butt ratio?"
"It's cold!"
"Ratio me or me and the chauffeur bathe in hand warmers, Kidsicles."
"Okay, okay, you have a near equal number", Samuel said through the opening.
"You like both,'' Flor added.
"Ahh, bask in the warmth of truth! Ah hahaha!" Aisha shoved the hand warmer packets all at once through the hole.
"Ow!"
"I know you guys are too numb to feel that. Besides, we're almost there", Aisha shut the window and grinned as Flor shook a small fist in view of the window.
"How is it?" Sophia asked.
"Let's skip my bantering back, faux wondering what you asked about and I'm going to assume he's started bugging you about making a Sophia-Ray hybrid abomination Gimel is nowhere near prepared for."
Sophia said nothing for a long while, but Aisha piped back up, "I don't have to change diapers or warm bottles, it seems some of them are trained how to do that. But, the little ones are basically tiny drunk adults. They stumble, fall, vomit, pee and cry. These - the older ones are already affected, different, by what Heartbreaker did. But the little ones, everything to them is new - they cry, and it's weird. Like they know someone is supposed to take care of them."
Sophia again said nothing for a long time.
"What you think you're-"
The truck swerved a bit.
"Ice patches are a bitch, huh?" the nervous passenger laughed.
A while later they pulled up to a long building, the windows had foil sheets and rough Gimel made paper blocking the windows. Some of those paper sheets had children's drawings across them of people riding dogs and a short black demon figure with a knife. Sophia circled the building with the truck and pulled into an unlit barn, its roof dark against the snow speckled sky as no snow accumulated upon it.
A knock came from the truck's back window again. Aisha slid it open.
"Sophia, can you text him?" Samuel asked.
"He's already here", she said as a knock came from the driver's side window.
The hooded figure that stood at the driver side door pointed to the back end towards the camper. Sophia held up three fingers and nodded. The figure disappeared and the back of the truck shook three times in the space of a few seconds.
Aisha cleared her throat.
"No", Sophia said as she tossed the keys to her.
"Aww c'mon it's as cold as Dragon's tits out there. It would cost him nothing to give me a lift."
"Hey, you gave away all the hand warmers to the kids", Sophia blew hot air onto her knuckles right before she opened the driver's side door. "Make sure to lock up tight".
A cold gust of wind replaced the woman.
"He'd give Lisa or Rachel a lift but noooo not me. And she even picked the barn furthest away from the house. Fuuuuck", Aisha said out loud as she braced herself for the long trek back.
The driver's side door slammed shut and there was a knock at her window. Ray was outside waving to her, the hood of his coat held open in a triangular shape by the two horns on his head and his chin. His face was different from her memories she recounted with his wife, one eye perpetually in a squint surrounded by new scars on top of the old.
She pushed open the door and he dematerialized as the door passed through him as she hopped out. Quickly she slammed the door and locked it. Then she turned to face her old teammate.
"Thanks for coming back. Praise Oprah, Buddha, and baby christmas Je-" and she too was gone.