"How did Theodore break his hand again?" Helga asked as she tightrope walked along one of the protruding rusty subway tracks of the abandoned subway tunnel of Worth Street Station. There was a whole lot of those around here; with New York practically running on subways, ire and pizza, it was easy enough to find one or two abandoned stations/tunnels. Although that was mostly because the locals thought that they were haunted or because they had just fallen into disrepair. Either way, it made for the perfect headquarters for the New York branch of the Echo Initiative. In fact, she and Milton were almost dangerously close to the branch because just beyond that graffitied brick wall over there (hidden by a secret code, mogadorian tech and some optical illusions. She often felt like she was a teenage mutant ninja turtle whenever she came down here. It was a wonder that she never smelt like sewerage), lay the hidden base of her people. Her people being the Augments; the half mogadorians and the half humans born-slash-created as an altogether better race of people.
Helga couldn't understand why the local people—the humans—hated them so much. Okay, yes, the mogadorians did invade their planet, but it was only to track down the immoral criminals who had already slunk passed those borders and weaselled their way into their homes & families so long ago. And okay, yes, the mogadorians were far less appealing than the Lorics, but that didn't mean that they were wrong! That they had to be prosecuted like this! For people like her, life was hard: too mogadorian to be human and too human to be mogadorian. But here they still were—a proud & strong people—who had forced themselves to become diminutive in nature just so that the locals could accept them and make themselves feel more superior than them (though, they clearly were not).
The Augments had to hold up this big farce all so that the Lorics—the Garde—of every generation could be dealt with quickly and neatly. And that's where people like Helga came in; to deal with people like that. People like Theodore Hargreeves. Admittedly, in the years following the invasion, there had been some more public support towards them and their goals (however fabricated & rosy-tinted to please the humans), what with the creation of the 'rehab' centres such as the Ragnor-Ra Centre out in the deserts of Arizona. But humans were a paranoid people and as such, they were easily split into different factions. Which was why even though the LANE Keepers were a big help in their mission, there was also still those who hid and smuggled the Garde out of their grasps; which was frustrating to say the least.
"He was in that big explosion at Meritech" Milton replied, gaze turned down as he focused on jumping from plank to plank without stepping on the gravel in between. Currently Helga led Milton Greene III (best friend of her Garde target in question) on an aimless walk about the undergrounds of New York City, just following wherever their feet led them as the two talked, skirting the perimeter of the base as much as possible (it wouldn't do well for a human to find that). "He fractured his hand and he had to have bits of glass pulled out of him & stuff"
"Eurgh!" Helga scrunched up her face at the image, forcing herself to react in the usual fashion. Disgust was the correct expression, right?
"But don't worry—!" Milton hurried to reassure her, falling for her act. "He's fine now!"
"Oh good…" She nodded, making sure to seem sincere. But inwardly, she was both cheering and screaming. Cheering because someone else had finally seen what they—the Augments—had been telling them all along. And screaming because clearly someone didn't know how to do their job right & finish off a Garde properly. Which just meant more work for her. Yay.
"Yeah, the selfies were brutal" Milton agreed, wearing a similar expression as he hopped over a missing board and continued on.
"There were pictures?" Helga asked, jumped from the protruding train track and instead walked backwards over the rickety planks. She spun to face the lanky boy, a curious expression poised on her face and her bulging school bag dancing with her.
"Just of who signed his cast, y'know the usual stuff" Milton shrugged.
"Ah" She nodded.
"Lucky bastard gets the rest of the week off, though" Milton continued, scowling slightly at the rotting wood beneath their feet.
That was the thing; just another spanner thrown into her intricately constructed plan. Helga had been betting on the fact that the work studies project would keep their year group out and away from the rest of the school population, making it easier to corner the quiet & paranoid boy. Instead, all of the students/teachers who had been present/involved in the Meritech Industries explosion only a couple of days prior, had been ordered to take the rest of the week off on a mandatory rest/recovery period. Which meant that Helga would have to follow the curly-haired boy a lot closer than she had first intended, and the best way to do that was to pick through the brain of the boy whom he had claimed as his friend (she could have, of course, used her powers to do this. But the whole point of being an Augmented Echo was to be discreet) before she moved onto the family.
Helga had to be careful though; the Hargreeves were a well-known family not just worldwide (thanks to the patriarch's philanthropy & inventions), but universally as well. The late head of the family, Sir Reginald Hilde Hargreeves, had been one of the nine sanctioned Loric Cêpans who had fled from their dying planet so long ago, alongside their charges. Mercifully, the first of those horrid Garde children, Ent, had been killed not long after they had reached their sister planet. Although that damn numerical curse upon the next generation of councilmen had been more than irritating when hunting down the children (Helga could still remember the absolute hatred that swelled within her whenever she thought of those historical lessons she had been forced to sit through). Unfortunately, the cursed Cêpan had survived, remaining as a (silent) thorn in their side for years to come and now with the appearance of his grandson's Legacies? Many suspected that the mother too, although denoted as 'ordinary' to the public, was likely to be Loric as well (Legacies were, afterall, an inherited trait).
"Do they know who did it?" Helga pursued. "The fire, I mean"
"The news is saying that it's the same guys who did Gimble Brothers and Griddy's" Milton shrugged in reply as if it were obvious. It was, but that wasn't what she was asking.
"Well, what do you think?"
"Me?"
"Yeah, who do you think did it?"
"Uh…" Milton tilted his head back to stare up at the misplaced tiles on the curved ceiling above him. "I guess a wayward LANE would make the most sense. But I don't know anyone who's even seen one in the last couple of years, so…"
"Gillies said she saw one in Times Square the other day" Helga replied, offering up the tidbit that she had managed to squeeze from the girls' locker room chatter.
"Yeah~" He sighed despairingly, seemingly brushing off the statement as if it wasn't that interesting. Which was strange coming from someone who was supposedly so interested in all LANE-related items (she hadn't needed to hack his phone to know that, but it certainly helped). "Yeah, but Gillies also said that her Dad was some big fancy lawyer even though everyone knows that he's just one of those annoying telemarketers"
"Oh"
Helga's brows furrowed as she kicked a stray pebble in her frustration. She had thought that the tall blonde's words were genuine; that her only—what she thought had been—a solid source of information, had turned out to be a phoney just looking for attention. With everything that was going on these days, it was so much harder to track down and capture those wayward Garde; mostly because most of them were either in hiding or had already been rounded up & shipped off. Oh, how Helga needed this assignment to go well! Being her first official one outside of the training simulations they had done in class, this mission would show the higher ups just how prepared and ready she was for the real thing! (And then she could finally shut up Edward Adler and his stupid smug little piken face, because she did not want to be on piken duty again. No one liked picking up after those things, not even their handers—especially their handlers).
"But, y'know, the superpower thing is pretty cool" Milton continued, nodding authoritatively as if he were an expert on the matter. Who knows, considering his search history, he might very well be. "I mean, like who hasn't thought about what kind of superpower they'd like to have, y'know?"
"I guess…" Helga replied warily, almost afraid of where the boy was going with this.
"I always liked the idea of shapeshifting, myself. 'Cause then I could be anything and do anything; like fly or be invisible—well camouflaged, but same difference—or be, like super strong and stuff" Milton continued, unbothered by the girl's inner turmoil. "Hey Helga, if you had a superpower, what kind would it be?"
He knows! He knows! Abort! Abort! Helga panicked, trying not to let it show. Instead hoping to come off as contemplative as she turned her face to the ceiling. "…I dunno, I never really thought about it…"
"Yeah, but if you had to pick?"
"Uh…mind reading, I guess?" That would make this endeavour SO much easier!
"Oooh! Like Professor Charles from X-Men!" Milton brightened as he spun on his heel and danced ahead far enough that he didn't hear her sigh of relief. "Yeah, that's a pretty cool power too! OPed to the max!"
"Hey, are you going to Kenny's party?" Milton asked out of the blue. They'd been walking for some time now, disappearing down the long twisting tunnels without any real sense of direction. Down here in the dark, you couldn't tell what time of the day it was, but Milton felt no fear. It's not like his new classmate was going to kill him or something; how could someone be so pretty—so young—be that dangerous?
He'd heard about the odd case of course, usually those ones that made the news and when he was younger, there had been a lot more stiff on the news about kids accidentally destroying themselves or others because of newly discovered powers. But that was years ago now, and people had more or less moved on now that those kids were shipped off to the furtherest corners of the world. At least, that's what he'd overheard from Mom & Dad when he & his sisters would listen at the door. Still, he wasn't worried, Helga was a nice person—everyone liked her—and Milton liked to think that he was pretty strong for a thirteen year old, thanks to hours of manual labour in his family's floral business.
"Huh?" Helga hummed, brows furrowed and lips pinched in confusion. "Party?"
"Yeah" Milton nodded enthusiastically, "It's his birthday on Monday"
"Oh" She blinked.
"Did y'know that Kenny and Theo actually share a birthday?" Milton continued, unabashed by her lacklustre response. Theodore was more or less the same.
"Really?" She quirked a brow in interest, sounding far more attentive than she had for the latter half of their conversation.
"Yeah, Kenny was saying something about bowling. But I doubt that Theo's gonna have a party this year, what with everything that happened in the last couple of days and stuff…"
"Hm…" She mused, "But who knows? Maybe we'll see him there; at Kenny's party, I mean"
"Maybe…" Milton agreed halfheartedly, although he wasn't so positive about that. Neither mother or son of the Hargreeves pair had been back to the apartment in the last couple of days (he could only assume that they were staying at the family home in upper Manhattan), so he doubted that they would see Theodore any time soon.
"What's with all the questions anyway?" Milton paused, head tilted in contemplation as if the thought had only just occurred to him. "Why're you so interested in him all of a sudden? Do you like him or something"
Or something. Helga thought, eyes focused on the tracks beneath her feet.
"Wait—!" Milton balked, eyes blowing wide. "Do you liked Theo? Like, like—like Theo?"
"What? No!" Helga choked, vehemently denying the accusation. How could he even think that?! Still, she couldn't fight the blush that danced across her cheeks.
"Oooh~! You do~!" Milton sang in triumph.
Did the meaning of 'no' change? Does it mean something else to humans? Helga inwardly wondered as she fought to keep the pout off of her lips.
"Helga and Theo sitting in a tree~" Milton sang teasingly as he skipped ahead, "K-I-S-S-I-N-G~!"
"Milton—!" Helga made to swipe for the jubilant boy who simply danced out of reach.
"~First comes love! Then comes marriage! Then comes the baby in the baby carriage~!"
"Marriage?!" Helga choked again as she missed a step. "I'm—I'm not marrying Theo! I don't even like him!"
"~That's not all, that's not all! I saw them cuddling in the gymnasium hall~!" Milton grinned wickedly. Thanks to growing up with older sisters, he knew exactly which buttons to push to make a girl mad like that.
"MILTON!" She swiped at him again, about two seconds away from blowing a gasket. Cover be damned, she wouldn't mind wringing this pathetic little human's neck, if only to shut him up.
"Kidding—kidding!" Milton eventually acquiesced. He knew that if he pushed any further, those puffed up red cheeks might just explode.
"Whatever…" Helga huffed, irritably folding her arms as she turned away with a pout.
The silence barely lasted for a moment more before Milton spoke up again, the thought that nagged at his brain just as much as the ache in his feet. "Hey, where are we going?"