1.7 Val
It's her fourth night in this odd world and Val finds she misses sleep.
It hadn't been a lie when she told Taylor that she doesn't need most things to survive, but she enjoys them. Val is a creature of experiences and doesn't enjoy being deprived them.
More than that, though, she is a creature of purpose. And she has many tasks, right now, and so she does not sleep.
The internet is a fascination to her. She learns of the building-tall monsters that have leveled cities. She wants to fight one. She wonders how to kill such a thing but knows it will be some time before she is ready to even try. In this world, she has not even begun sharpening her daggers. She will fix that shortly.
She learns of the menagerie of nightmares this world is host to. A wandering band of nine that leaves horror in their wake. A city of grotesque fabrications. A man that ignites the world as he wanders.
When she thinks too long on these things, Val finds her fingers are itching and there's a grin breaking across her face. She knows these victories are not guaranteed. This is why she is excited. But she knows this is not Taylor's task for her, and so she focuses on what lays ahead.
She learns more on the 'powers' of this place. Val has spent her long life wandering the worlds of magic, so most are not a surprise.
There are some, though. Even her sister, who knows more of magic than any other she has ever met, does not know how to bend time. She has never claimed it impossible, because she speaks only things she knows with absolute certainty, but had claimed it beyond her. Val learns one of the time manipulators lives in this city and is a part of the team she is to join. She's excited to meet him.
She worries at the commonality of capes who can predict the future and influence the mind. Val has no protections against these things and has always relied on her mage in such circumstances. Such encounters were extraordinarily rare where she is from. She will need to encourage Taylor to create defenses for them both, and though she is not a mage as Val knows them, she thinks it possible.
Val is now comfortable enough to superficially blend into society. Although this world is much stranger than most, she has a lot of experience in adapting quickly. She learns the names of common objects, events, places, and what people speak of casually. Her knowledge will fail under scrutiny, but she thinks her interactions will only leave people thinking her odd rather than Other.
As Taylor has instructed her, Val patrols every night a small section of land deep in the territory of the gang called "The Empire Eighty-Eight". She can tell by the way the gang members are beginning to look over their shoulders when they walk around at night that somebody will soon be sent to handle her. She finds herself restless in anticipation. She's yet to have had anything resembling a good fight.
The heroes patrol the streets during the day and night, though Val notices they rarely go too deep into gang controlled territory. Val thinks this rather goes against the point. She follows them, the few times she has seen them, careful not to be seen. Their reliance on their eyes makes this easy.
A few times, she has seen a girl who flies through the sky in a white dress. Val recognizes her as Glory Girl, and the name is an endless source of amusement. Val cannot defy gravity so casually, but she has methods of travelling through the air when necessary.
The girl wears a crown on her head and Val loves the arrogance. She has spent time researching the capes of this city and browsing the messaging board known as Parahumans Online. She knows that many don't like this Hero's brash attitude and penchant for collateral damage but Val just thinks they have poor taste.
The arrogant girl is the only cape she chooses to interact with, during these three days. She knows that she has been instructed to lay low, but it was not an Order, and her debut will be soon regardless.
It is late in the afternoon, and Val is sitting on the rooftop of a building observing the city below. She senses the girl flying overhead and recognizes that her trajectory will pass near where she is sitting. It would be a simple matter to hide herself, but she chooses not to. It's not something she'll admit, but she grows lonely easily, and has had few meaningful interactions in the past days, and she likes what she's seen of this hero more than most.
Val is wearing Taylor's black hoodie and her eye wrappings right now, rather than her civilian disguise. She knows how suspicious she must look, hood pulled tight, legs dangling off the edge of the building and staring into the city below.
It's easy to recognize when the hero spots her. The hero banks off her thus far straight flight path towards the building Val is sitting on. It only takes a few moments for her to arrive.
She lands behind Val, on the roof, touching down with little noise and clearing her throat loudly. Val purposefully ignores this and continues to stare at the city below, wanting to get a reaction. She loves to play games.
"Look, I know you're going for the whole 'tall, dark, and mysterious' angle, but it's way too cliché, dude."
This makes her laugh, and her act is ruined much quicker than usual. She takes another approach. She asks,
"You're one of the heroes, right?" She already knows the answer, but that isn't the point.
"Uh, yeah?" She can see how her brow has furrowed with the odd choice of questioning.
"So you save people?" Val's lips are starting to twitch upwards, though the hero can't see it.
"Yeeaahh?" The girl drags this out as a question, clearly not having any idea where this is going.
Val smiles, and pushes off the edge of the building.
She takes a moment to savor the shock that flashes across the hero's face.
She enjoys the wind that roars past her ears for only a few moments before she's caught. The girl had reacted quickly, then, and Val thinks appreciatively: good instincts.
She's been caught poorly, though, and if she were a normal human she probably would have dislocated a shoulder. Glory Girl's face is flushed with panic as she drags Val back onto the rooftop. She laughs the whole way.
"Oh my god, what the fuck is wrong with you? What were you thinking?"
She wasn't, and that's the point. Not that she was in any danger. She says instead,
"Thought you could use some excitement. Patrolling during the day has to be pretty boring."
Glory Girl is staring at her with a flabbergasted expression.
Her panic and confusion is quickly morphing into anger, though, but that's just as much fun. Val's grin gets wider at the same speed the hero gets angrier.
"What if I hadn't caught you? You could have died!" She says this accusatorily.
"But you caught me."
"I might not have!" Glory Girl insists.
"But you did." Val shrugs, and this incenses her further.
She changes topics to keep her off balance.
"Why'd you land next to me? What do you want?"
It takes her a moment to respond as she clearly struggles to rein in her emotions.
"Uh, spooky dude sitting on top of a building in a black hoodie staring creepily over the city? Of course I'm going to see what's up."
"Okay… so…. what? What do you want?"
Val thinks she might actually be assaulted on this rooftop, by the face the girl is making. She mentally confirms this one as her favorite hero.
She struggles to find a good answer, and Val thinks that only makes her angrier. Glory Girl goes on the attack, instead.
"Okay, psycho, you're what, some new cape? What's with the thing wrapped around your eyes? And after that stunt with your jump, if I find out you aren't a brute of some kind, I'm going to be pissed."
She hadn't attempted to keep her eye wrappings hidden. It doesn't matter with her entrance to the official cape scene so near.
She says the following with as much sarcasm as she can muster. Which is a lot.
"Going to be pissed?"
Oh man, that's a very dark shade of red. Yes, she's positive now, she's definitely going to be assaulted on this rooftop. As much fun as she's having, it's time to leave. She says,
"Look, as much fun as this is, I've got an appointment to make. Have yourself a nice day." She waves her hand dismissively in a way that says, 'You're making way too big a deal out of this'. She tries to slip by Glory Girl towards the rooftop stairwell.
The hero takes the bait. She reaches out to grab her.
Val ducks under her hands and takes off in a sprint. Like a dog spotting a darting cat, the chase is on.
Val knows she'd have to show too much of her hand if she remains on the rooftops, so she takes off for the nearest ledge and vaults over it, grappling her way down into the alleyways. The hero is hot on her heels.
She knows she's probably going to demonstrate some irregular abilities, but there's no way the hero still thinks she's a base human at this point, so it hardly matters.
She hears Glory Girl howl behind her, "You asshole, I wasn't even on patrol today!"
This only serves to make Val start laughing again, and now there's murder instead of assault on her face.
The hero is fast, very fast, but her reflexes are poor. She'd have better luck trying to grapple the wind than grab ahold of Val, and the fact that the hero is to her back means nothing with Val's particular method of sensing her surroundings.
She drags out the pursuit, enjoying the thrill of the chase.
/* - */
It's late at night and Val is walking the streets of hostile territory.
She has her knives strapped to her side that she had purchased earlier in the day from a store that sells weapons. She intends to force the Eighty-Eight's retaliation tonight and has spent the evening preparing.
When using magic, the deeper you understand the words you wish to use, the more potent they will be. Val understands two words better than most, and she spends the evening whispering them into her new daggers: she tells them, you are strong and you are sharp.
Such enchantments fade over time, but some of the truth she has spoken will linger forever. Val had developed a habit early on of spending most of her spare time enchanting her weapons with these two words. She spends her idle moments running her fingers across them, encouraging them. By the end of most of her Contracts, there is little to nothing they cannot cut.
The daggers themselves are long and wicked, matte black with serrated edges. This is dramatic, she knows, but the purpose of life is to live for the spectacle.
She walks the streets confidently, black hoodie pulled down, revealing her face and hair. The few people that walk these streets at night flee as soon as they see her. She is known to them, by now.
She has been careful to not display her strength or speed in any concerning amount and suspects she is seen only as a minor threat to the veteran capes of the Eighty-Eight.
But such flagrant unconcern cannot be allowed, she knows, and so she waits patiently.
It takes longer than she thought.
She rounds a corner, and there it is. A tall, muscular man is standing in her path with all the confidence of a predator. Her mouth twists upwards in expectancy.
The man sees this and lets out a slow, booming laugh that reminds her of thunder.
She knows this one calls himself Stormtiger. He is not one of the Lieutenants, as Taylor had predicted.
"This is what my men have been pissing themselves over the past few days? How old are you, girl?"
She can tell he is saying this for the sake of the gang members who are standing on the outskirts of the confrontation. In such an organization, it is rarely about just winning. This is a show of force. A spectacle.
She will oblige.
She draws her daggers. They scrape loudly against their sheathes.
She can see his wariness. He blusters like he is predator spotting prey, but she sees the truth in his eyes. He sees what she is.
Her growing smile has turned vicious.
Val remembers telling Taylor on that first day that she doesn't revel in violence. This is true in a technical sense. The actual violence – the snapping of bones, the ragged gasps of pained breath – she can easily say she dislikes.
She doesn't enjoy the act of hurting people, only sees it as a sometimes necessity – something to be used as a tool.
The fighting part, though, is different. Something about it appeals to her. It wasn't the competition, even if she admits to enjoying proving herself someone's better. And it's not just that she enjoys the satisfaction found in being intrinsically good at something, either.
It's hard to put into words, even in her own thoughts, but in the middle of a fight, a certain clarity falls over her mind. A simplicity in the way forward. It clears her mind and refocuses her purpose, and the doubts and regrets she holds onto just seem to melt away. Only she remains.
The man falls into a fighting stance and takes a step forward. She sees him form claws of hardened air.
She thinks: finally.
/* - */
She slings Stormtiger over her shoulders and begins run. She needs to leave, fast. She has no doubt that backup has been called in. She takes off down the street at a sprint. Some of the gang members make a token effort to follow her, but trail off quickly, obviously not serious in their pursuit.
Trying to move quickly with a 200 pound man in a fireman's carry is not difficult for Val, but it is certainly awkward. The man thumps up and down as she flies silently across the dark streets, heading for the PRT Headquarters she's learned is located downtown.
Val is adept at using only the amount of force she intends, but she hopes that the man doesn't begin to wake up. Repeated head trauma is no joke.
/* - */
It's a long run, with the streets that she had been patrolling being in the commercial district, but Val does not grow tired. The few people left wandering the streets this late at night say nothing as she runs past, and indeed purposefully change direction or duck into nearby alleys. She thinks this is reasonable under the circumstances.
She assumes at least one person would be calling the PRT at such a sight, so maybe there will be some warning of her arrival. But probably not.
The soft sound of her feet on the pavement and the quiet bustle of city nightlife are all she knows for some time. It's oddly hypnotic.
She arrives at the footsteps leading up to the entrance of the PRT HQ and slows herself to a casual, almost luxurious walk. She loves theatrics, after all.
It's two in the morning, so only the night shift is present. Her arrival is not inconspicuous and she immediately sees two men in uniforms beginning to edge in, to her sides and behind her, tense and staring at her intently. She sees one of these men speaking into a handheld radio.
She shoulders her way through the big glass doors, muscle-bound man still on her shoulders, and into the lobby. The receptionist looks up from her desk and does a double-take. She half-stands, not understanding. The guard posted inside reaches towards his waist and takes a step forward, but declines to draw his weapon, anxiously waiting for her next move. She knows her strange appearance is making him hesitate.
"Hello," Val says to the receptionist, enjoying every second, "is this where you submit your resume for applying to the Wards program?" She tosses the giant man off her shoulders and drops him to the tiled floor. "This one called himself Stormkitten, I think. He's going to be cranky when he wakes up, so you should probably do something about that."
Nobody is saying anything, even several seconds later.