What kind of cartwheels do I have to pull?
What kind of joke should I lay on her now?
I'm inclined to go finish high school
Just to make her notice that I'm around…
When I was a kid, I always wished I could fly.
I imagined it every time the wind whipped through my hair, whenever my stomach turned as I reached the very peak of my leap into the sky, the split second when I'm weightless in the air. The blink of an eye when there's no push or pull and I hang there, bathed in starlight and I'm free.
And each time I feel the pull of gravity bringing me back down to earth, I'm disappointed.
The ground rushes up to meet me, filling my vision as I hurtle to the ground and when I land, I leave a crater. I couldn't do this in a town, not without hurting someone at best. I've gotten better at my control over the last couple of years and when I leap, I usually have a pretty good idea of where I'll land, my arc sending me over the horizon and away from any passersby. No one around to get hurt. It was the only thing I worried about during my landings.
After all, it's not like I ever got hurt. Not anymore.
I could see the city in the distance, the early morning sun reflecting off of the buildings and painting the landscape orange. Even from miles away, I could smell the salt in the air and hear the ocean churning, barely audible white noise that reminded me that I wasn't in Missouri anymore.
And I'd never go back.
I shrugged off my backpack and started putting on my shoes. As much traveling as I've done in recent days, there was no sense in trashing perfectly good footwear – normal shoes weren't made for high-impact landings or even running at speed. It wasn't too far from the city and it's not like I ever got tired, so I made my way over to the road and started trekking down the highway.
Maybe Brockton Bay would be a good place to start fresh.
"What the hell are you doing here?!" Tammi hissed, dragging me into an alley. City life had been good for her, since she looked a lot less gaunt than she did when we were eight. Granted, we were both beanpoles at that age, as were most of the other kids back at the gatherings. "I thought this was, you know, a 'family' thing, not a social visit."
"Nice to see you too," I muttered, "and we're technically kin, sort of."
"'Technically' doesn't cut it and we don't look anything alike."
"I can't come into town and say hello to the only person I know?"
"We barely know each other. Last time I saw you was when we were twelve, just after… you know…" she trailed off, but we both knew exactly what she was talking about. Powers were important in the family, but how you got them was better left out of polite conversation.
"Yeah, I know," I said, running my fingers through my hair. I could see her looking at it, black and thick to her own blonde and thin, my dusky skin a sharp contrast to her milky pale. The Herrens were always the sort to pay attention to that kind of thing and it seemed like Tammi was no different. "But you got out. And you're doing well. Or at least you look like it."
"Thanks," she said, her eyes darting towards the sidewalk, "Look, I can't be gone for too long. I've got a meeting to get to. So spill."
"Fine. How'd you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Make it here in the city."
She looked genuinely confused and I could have kicked myself for not realizing it sooner – she didn't get to the city on her own, she and her folks left the clan together. They were probably supporting her, taking care of her, buying her nice clothes and sending her off to school.
I hadn't been to school in years. Not since I met her.
Tammi was silent for a moment before speaking, her words slow and considered. "I… have an uncle, still with the clan. He knew some people and they got me books and videos. My folks didn't like that, so I left." Tammi's nose wrinkled, a scowl on her brow. "I got caught pretty quick and I got stuck in juvie. They left me there alone with those animals, telling me to treat them like normal folk and I… Well, now I'm like you."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah," she said, a wicked sort of grin on her face, "and when I got out and made them pay for it, my uncle brought me here. I've got a new family now."
A new family. I didn't know much about Brockton Bay, no more than Elijah did when we were getting our "lessons" about the important people to know in our world, but it was easy to figure out who she was talking about.
"I didn't think you'd go Empire."
"Where else was I gonna go?" She shrugged, tracing invisible doodles onto the brick behind her. "Besides, I've got a place to myself. I've got food. I've got money. And I've got more coming to me once we take our rightful place and the dregs of society fall in line."
I couldn't help myself — I snorted. Loudly. And when I saw the look on Tammi's face I laughed some more. "What kind of book did you read that out of. Do you even know what the word 'dreg' means?"
"Do you?!"
Before I could say anything else, I felt a rumble deep in my chest. The ground shook beneath my heels and Tammi flipped a hood over her head; what I thought was a green jacket unfurled into a cloak covered in odd designs I didn't recognize. She clutched at the wall behind her and a chunk of it came loose, wider than she was tall, and she swung it around like an oversized shield just before the alley was flooded in light.
Tammi cursed under her breath as she covered her eyes. "Damn, damn, damn. Not this n—"
"Well, well, lookee what we got here," a voice boomed from beyond the spotlight. Sitting atop a mechanical beast, something that looked like a tractor smashed together with a semi truck, was a skinny black man with a mask over the top of his face, giving me a clear view of his chapped lips and rotted teeth. I could smell him over the garbage cans and smoke that belched from a set of exhaust pipes beside him. "Baby Nazi #1 and her shitstain Nazi boyfriend! Looks like it's my lucky day, ain't it?"
I didn't recognize his accent, but it felt like something I had heard growing up, in the Before Times. Something that should have sounded educated, but he spit his words when he should have been singing them. "Tammi, who's this guy?"
"Call me Rune when I've got my mask on!" She said with a grimace. "That's Skidmark, one of the local druggies who thinks he's people."
"Oh, is that it?" I said, looking at the truck inching closer, tires digging into the concrete and leaving powder in its wake. "Is he a Tinker?"
"No."
"That's all I needed to know."
"Hey! You two cunt-nuggets talking about me?!" Skidmark snarled, spit flying with every word. "I'mma 'bout to do the world a solid and make two Nazi fucks into a grease spot. Maybe they'll call me a hero for this!"
He slid down into the cab of the truck and the lights got even brighter, enough that I needed to squint to keep him in sight. Tammi mewled piteously beside me for a moment before she muttered "Yeah, fuck this", threw the chunk of wall to the ground, hopped on top, and then shot into the sky.
Of course she could fly.
"Hey, get back here you little bitch!" Skidmark's voice was louder than before, tinny, like an old speaker. "Ah well, at least I've still got you. What's your name, you little Nazi shitheel?"
"Gabriel. And I'm not a Nazi."
"Nah, boy. Your cape name!"
"I don't have a cape name."
"Well, this'll be easy then, won't it?" He chuckled. There was a growing crowd on the street behind me, onlookers who had stopped to take pictures and suddenly realized that a fight was about to happen. The noise of panic rose as the Tinker truck revved its engines. I hadn't intended to fight, to do anything here other than talk to Tammi and maybe ask to crash on her couch afterwards.
The truck shot forward and I heard a scream in the crowd.
My decision wasn't really a decision at all.
I planted a foot behind me for leverage and time slowed down as the Tinker truck slammed into me, metal bending around my body and going red hot from the sudden friction. If the look of the truck hadn't given away the fact it had been altered by a Tinker, the feel of the metal beneath my fingers as some yielded to my touch while other, more reinforced sections bent and buckled at the force would have confirmed it. During my training, She would have scouts rob the local PRT office and steal any bits of Tinkertech they had in their evidence rooms, making me bend and twist the odd materials until I recognized them. Tinkertech was odd sometimes, producing materials that could even make me struggle to break them apart.
But they all did. Eventually.
And whatever this truck had been made of, it hadn't been fortified enough, not for someone like me. "W-what the fuck are you?" Skidmark wheezed from somewhere inside the ruined hulk, the tinny speaker cracking with every syllable.
I thought of Her name for me and the word soured on my tongue. "The end."
I didn't need a name anyway.
The truck wasn't nearly as heavy as it looked and whatever Tinkertech held it together kept the frame from buckling as I pulled it into the air, scraps and other bits of metal plinking around me as I eyed the skyline, zeroing in on the dark, churning blue of the horizon. Before he could protest, I heaved Skidmark, truck and all, over the buildings and into the Bay, putting in enough strength that it cleared the rusted old boats in the harbor.
"What the fuck did you just do?!" I turned around and saw Tammi floating down from her makeshift platform, her pale skin even paler than before even beneath the domino mask and hood.
"Clean up, by the looks of it." I said, turning my head away from the flashes of multiple cameras in the crowd and strolling down the alley.
No sense getting in the papers over this.
"You have no idea. Of course you have no idea." She whispered. "You can't just show up out of the blue and take out someone with a name! Not without backup—"
"Yeah, good job of backing me up, by the way." I muttered and Tammi flushed before glancing down. At least she had the decency to look embarrassed.
"You didn't need it. You never needed it."
"It would've been nice to know you had my back. So much for kin."
"Look, Chort—"
"Don't call me that!" I said, turning on my heel to look her in the eyes. "Never call me that ever again. Chort's dead. He died the second I opened my eyes and saw our family wasn't real."
Before she could say anything else, I turned around and leaped into the air. I was angry and it had been dumb to rabbit off like that in the middle of the city, but I was lucky that I managed to head out in the same direction I had tossed Skidmark. And more fortunate still that I landed on the beach rather than the ocean.
I could feel the sand beneath my toes and groaned as I realized why — I hadn't taken off my shoes and they had all but disintegrated when I slammed into the sand.
Damn.
I still had my backpack on me, so I shrugged off the tattered leather and skipped up to the deck of one of the rusted old boats to look at the sea. I had never seen anything so huge in all my life, water so vast and deep that it seemed infinite. The sky had gotten dark, but there were no stars out. Not this close to the city.
With nothing else to do, I laid back on the deck and propped my backpack beneath my head.
Maybe tomorrow would be a fresh start.
