A/N:
Thanks to GMM for pointing out a mistake!
My word, you guys. I finished writing this chapter this morning, and now it's time for homework. I'm going to try my best to meet the next deadline, but chapters may be shorter in the future. This one maxed out at a little over 5k.
Vista sat on the edge of a boulder worn by the elements, warm from the sun. Her shoe scuffed against the dirt with a kick and scattered dust to the air.
She was so… mad, and there were too many names on the list. She was angry at everyone and everything in the world, half of the reasons unidentifiable.
She knew the other half just fine.
They were treating her like she was a toddler who couldn't walk or feed herself. If Dennis or Chris were in her shape, they wouldn't be coddled half as much as she was being.
A scowl crawled over her face. I'm not a fucking child. The swearing helped.
Another kick at the dirt produced a compact cloud of dust, and she blinked hard, embarrassed. She wasn't even well enough to curve it away.
Her scalp seared itched with a sunburn. Lines ached across her face from where it was frozen in a grim case. Her legs and arms were sore from walking all day and sleeping on hard ground, but none of it compared to her head.
She'd only experienced something like it two years back as a rookie. One miscalculation had cost her days in the infirmary, blacked out by narcotics and a dim room reserved for thinker migraines.
Maybe she couldn't blame her team for worrying just a little. She still remembered her reflection those two years ago. It had been by accident, walking past the bathroom mirror on the way to bed, but despite the dim light she stood out like chalk on a blackboard. Her skin had been white as a sheet, her eyes sunken in and blond hair affray. She avoided her reflection for a week after that.
But she'd come this far; she had fought against Leviathan, Slaughterhouse Nine, Echidna and the Simurgh and survived. There was no excuse for how people treated her for her age. And she had no excuse for being as incapacitated as she was. She needed to do more, be more for her team.
It was what Dean would have done, and it was what Weld had-
She squeezed her eyes shut. That was a train of thought she didn't want to ride.
"Vista!"
Her best attempts at composure were erased as Dennis's footsteps crashed behind her. She barely stopped the instinct to stretch the distance, instead turned away. She knew the moment he entered the clearing by the gust of his breath.
"Hey," he greeted. He sounded cautious, like she was about to swing a punch. If she were able to she might've.
She didn't respond, and he drew closer.
She was struck by how gross they both smelled and wished not for the first time for some soap. The costume was the last thing she wanted to be wearing at the moment. It was crusty and rank, despite her best attempts at washing it out in the river.
She didn't want to imagine how Dennis was faring. It was obvious that he wanted to remove his helmet. He'd always been one for fidgeting, one hand constantly running through his hair or stroking his chin.
She wanted to as well, though her visor wasn't nearly as constricting.
A large crack decorated its front and painted the world under a giant spider web, the connotations of which she wasn't fond of.
"Talk to me?"
When she remained silent, he scooted himself onto the boulder beside her. His elbow bumped into her arm and jostled her, stirring up the migraine that was already stewing in the back of her mind.
She drew in a sharp breath and he recoiled, muttering, "Sorry. Sorry for everything. I- Tell me what's wrong and I'll fix it."
"You can't fix everything."
He shrugged. "I have superpowers, don't I? They've got to be good for something."
Though she couldn't see his face, she knew he was smiling. It was most definitely self-deprecating, bitter in a way all of them were these days, but it was a smile she didn't have.
"Missy?" he pushed softly.
"You wouldn't understand."
"Try me."
In that moment, his name made it to the top of her list.
"You're a boy. And older than me," she hissed.
She wasn't oblivious to the facts. There were Wards her age both male and female across the country, and she'd gotten to meet them at a few trainings with the other teams. But the boys were expected to be tougher, sturdier despite their powers, and no one balked at the idea of them 'manning' up.
New Orleans had Trucker, a twelve-year-old tinker. Seattle had Vexis, eleven and a mover/shaker to boot. Phoenix had Lion Bite, ten, and he was the youngest brute on the West coast. All of them were male, and all of them were allowed more hours of patrol then she was. Only after Leviathan hit the Bay did she exceed their patrol hours.
Of course, they had to buddy-patrol like she did because they were underage, but that didn't change the facts. Being a stereotypical blond haired, blue-eyed little girl had painted her into being the child everyone wanted to see, not the soldier she was. Even Miss Militia had faced some obstacles in her career at first for being a woman, and Battery had told her some stories as well.
Dennis froze, and for a moment Vista thought she had finally gotten someone else to understand. But then he spoke, clearly uncomfortable. "Is this…uh, is this a conversation for Miss Militia?"
For a moment she didn't understand. Then, "What?" she squeaked. Her ears lit up in a bright red.
He didn't answer, presumably from the last shreds of sense lingering in his ginger head.
"No," she filled the silence. "Gross, no."
He rose his hands in placation. "Okay, sorry, that's just what it sounded like. And something clearly pissed you off back there, so I thought-" he cleared his throat. "Never mind. But you know you can tell me anything, right? I'm serious."
She considered his words.
"I hate this."
Her voice crept on a dry whisper. The confession pried the board loose, and the words poured out like spiders from eggs.
"I hate being… weak. In my body, in my emotions. To the group. I haven't contributed a single thing aside from body heat and an empty stomach."
A stairway conversation came to mind, a girl and a boy talking about regrets and a dead crush. She'd told him he couldn't let anger consume him, but now it was so hard to take her own words to heart. What had happened to her control? Her calm?
Her voice shook as she continued. "And I'm so angry. I don't even know at what, just- everything. That the Simurgh brought us here, that Miss Militia won't admit that we're stranded on another world. That I might not see my family again-"
"I'm scared, too," he whispered, breaking her away from where her thoughts had gone. He drew his legs up to perch his head on his knees. "And I'm still angry, so I guess there's that."
Vista chewed the inside of her cheek.
She knew Dennis had blamed himself over Aegis' death. None of them could have prevented it, the boy being a casualty in a fight between Purity and Hookwolf days after the E88 fallout and just days before Leviathan's arrival. He'd been on patrol in the area and hadn't hesitated to jump in to save the citizens and PRT officers caught up in the blasts.
But Dennis was supposed to be scheduled for patrol that day as well, except a 'family emergency' had risen up and left Carlos on his own out in the field. It wasn't supposed to have mattered.
It had been rumored, later discovered to be true that Purity's kids had been targeted by neighboring gangs at the PRT safe house. No one knew who it was; the Merchants, straggling ABB members or Coil. The only villains in the clear had been the Undersiders and Travelers, but given what was revealed about their boss, nothing was sure now.
Only that once the building had been discovered, it was obliterated. Bodies irretrievable.
Purity had snapped. She went on a rampage against her former gang that was curbed only by the unified efforts of the Protectorate and surviving members of the E88.
Kaiser had been the first to die. Hookwolf didn't last long, and most of the other members had been caught or surrendered. Vista didn't bother with the details at the moment.
It was only really the death of a Ward that pulled Purity back. In a way, Aegis was a martyr. He had been lucky; no one was going to benefit from her death in this forest.
"Me, too," she whispered.
"You're angry at Weld, right?" He didn't give her a chance to respond. "You've been angry at him since the day the Simurgh came. The ride over, the day we woke up. Every moment after you've been avoiding him."
"So?" she asked. She knew what the point was, just wanted to prolong it. Stop being a baby.
"So, why?"
"I thought you didn't like him," she replied.
That wasn't true. Dennis and Weld had been getting along just fine before the Echidna fight. He didn't bother with answering.
She gave in. "He didn't say goodbye."
It sounded just as dumb out loud as it did in her mind. She winced. "I knew I shouldn't have gotten attached, and it wasn't as if he died. But-" she cut herself off, then forced the words out. "But he left without a word."
People are expendable. It was an elementary concept, and the past months should have prepared her for any farewell both planned and out of the blue. But this was when she had finally found someone who understood her. Who knew what she was going through, looked her in the eye and still gave her the order to fight.
And then he left without so much as a word.
Maybe it's my fault.
She had been the first one to be caught by Echidna; things might not have escalated the way they had if she hadn't been caught. Logically she knew it would have escalated anyway, but that didn't keep the thought from resurfacing.
"He had to, you know."
She looked at him. His faceless mask, blank without internal power lighting up its design bored into her own. "There wasn't a place for him in the Wards or the Protectorate. Staying even a day longer? He didn't have a choice. Imagine being in his place."
She had, and did.
"He probably would've returned with a few words after several weeks of cooling down. Hell, I'd say he was on his way to do that when the Simurgh came, else he wouldn't have been in the area. But I don't blame him for wanting to escape in the wake of all that."
"I know. And I- I'm not really mad at him anymore. I haven't been for a while."
The only reason she'd reacted the way she had at the river was because she was so fed up with being treated differently. She felt like a jerk. Vista's face lit up with something more than a sunburn. It was her job to be the heart of the team, and she failed in that, too.
"Hey," he touched her lightly on the arm. "It's okay to be angry. In fact, it'd be pretty weird if you weren't at least a little bit, given the circumstances. A pretty wise young lady once told me that herself, you know. And you know what they say about wise young ladies..."
"I don't."
"Fuck it, me neither. I was hoping to come up with something clever while I was saying it, but I'm too damn tired."
Vista couldn't help the small smile that graced her lips. Dennis stretched, and she heard his shoulders crack with the movement. She imagined a grin playing on his pale features. But then he hunched forward slightly, and she knew it had left.
"Don't worry so much, alright?" he said.
Hypocrite, she thought, for he was the one who worried the most. "I won't."
"No, I'm being serious."
Vista had to bite her tongue from saying something rude. "So am I. But you need to promise me something as well."
He looked up. "What?"
"Stop messing with Skitter."
She hadn't been around either times he'd spoken to the villain, but according to Chris, both conversations had been pretty intense. The last thing she wanted was to wake up with bugs crawling down her throat. Dennis should've been the first one to agree with that statement given his own experience at her hand.
"Already on it," he said. It was a little deceptive how easy he'd agreed, but it sounded sincere. "I got what I wanted, anyway."
He clapped her on the back and stood, and a cloud rolled across the sun, giving a slight reprieve from the heat.
"What was that?" she asked, and followed after him as he led the way back to camp.
He looked over his shoulder. "An answer. Now come on, we should get back before the others start worrying."
She obediently trudged after, and for once his slower pace didn't bother her.
"Do you think we're Simurghed?" she asked between breaths.
He slowed down further after hearing her voice.
"Dunno. But I do know that Miss Militia doesn't think so, and there's nothing we can do by worrying over it. Besides," he said, turning fully so he was walking backwards. "The Simurgh might have teleported us here because she couldn't mind-fuck us."
The question had been asked out of mild curiosity, not worry. The way Vista saw it, there was no use bothering over the future when tomorrow wasn't assured.
With that thought to mull over, she shrugged, and the topic was dropped.
When they reached camp, Miss Militia and Chris were crouched over something. It threw her off guard to see Chris occupied with something else beside his tinker tech.
Weld's and Skitter's absence didn't go past her.
They approached, and Chris was the first to look up at their arrival. His face was practically split in half by a wide smile.
"We found a sign," he said in greeting.
"Of what?" Dennis spoke first. She was already kneeling down to examine what looked like a slab of clay. It took some effort, but once she stopped wobbling she reached forward and brushed off its surface.
Chris wasn't talking about a symbolic sign. She gasped just as Miss Militia spoke. "Given that it's downstream, we're going to have to backtrack."
Despite her words, she sounded pleased. No wonder. Dennis leaned in to get a better look, though judging by his silence he already knew what it said.
LEAVENWORTH.
They all knew the town name. Piggot used to have a postcard of the town in her office. It had been the proverbial flower in the desert in a room of business, the only personal item displayed. None of them knew the reason for it or how it pertained to the former director, but Vista didn't care in the slightest.
They were still home.
What are the chances? she wondered.
"…technology, and tools and energy, hell, I could finish prepares within a day once we make it there," Chris was saying. It was refreshing to hear his voice. He hadn't said so many words strung together since the first day they landed.
"We don't know how far we are," Miss Militia cautioned. "For all we know, it could be weeks trekking back. And the town could be on the opposite side of the river."
"Sure," he replied, but he didn't sound the least bit deterred.
Dennis hadn't said a word.
He straightened slowly with a turn, and walked away calmly. Miss Militia furrowed her brow at his back, but her words were drowned out when he whooped, arms lifted above his head in triumph. He jumped, fists pumping in the air, and Vista startled herself with a laugh.
Miss Militia smiled in return, eyes softening, and Chris ran to join Dennis in their half-flail, half-dance celebration. If anyone saw Vista wipe a tear from her face, no one mentioned it.
"What's going on?"
Vista straightened at the question. Skitter and Weld exited the trees, the latter of which she carefully avoided meeting eyes with.
"We found a town sign in the river," Miss Militia answered, changing moods in a coin flip. The boys straightened themselves out.
"Seriously?" Weld asked, stepping forward to get a look for himself. Skitter remained silent, and Vista took a moment to assess the older girl.
Despite having had one of the larger cities in the country under her thumb, she looked… small. She was a giant compared to other girls, but her body was thin enough that it was almost the same build as her own.
Not to mention the same lack of a chest, if the wonky breast plating was anything to go by.
Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, stray frizz collecting around her face and giving it a wild look. She seemed unbothered by the mess, peering through it without a problem, and Vista imagined the black cloud forming into a swarm of insects.
"Wow," Weld said after a moment. "I mean, wow."
Skitter's eyes remained unchanged as they scanned the sign over. "We should switch sides."
"What?" Clockblocker asked.
"Of the river," she amended. "We've been walking for days on one side, might as well see what's on the other side of the forest. It might keep the… thing away as well."
Weld shot her a calculating look at that, but she didn't act as if she noticed.
"I agree," Miss Militia said. "But we'll only cross once the current is stable, no sooner."
Skitter nodded. "Of course."
Vista watched the exchange in silence. Though Skitter stood without a mask, metaphorically bare to the world, she held herself as if her costume wasn't in shreds and her face wasn't as worn as the rest of theirs were.
Vista envied her for that.
Miss Militia sighed, sending a gust of air that lightly disturbed her own face rag. "With that, let's continue on. Unless any of you need more of a rest…?" she trailed off, and Vista ignored the bite of annoyance that followed.
The rest shook their heads, Vista following the motion without hesitation. The movement stirred up her migraine and sent the world spinning under a spider crack, but she clenched her jaw and got over it.
And then they were off.
The light of the monitor poured onto the desk below. It was harsh, and burned a face that hadn't seen daylight for the better part of the week.
Bags that could rival one of her purses from her former life decorated her eyes, and weighed down her gaze like an anvil from an old cartoon. Clicking her tongue, she complied impatiently with the urge to look.
Varicose veins likely to develop in old age. Lovely.
The carpet below her bare feet was thin, and the cold from the floor below seeped through her skin till it met bones. It didn't bother her. She hadn't been warm for five days, almost six. A glance at the clock on her desk confirmed the latter guess.
The clock shown on the news channel was incorrect. It was a recording from two days ago, four days after the Simurgh had descended.
She absently chewed her chapped lip, and twiddled with the pen in her hand.
Made in China. Light. Almost out of ink-
Her teeth clenched, and a flake of dried skin tore off her lips. Focus, she berated. Though her migraine had left, it was always touch and go after a few days of being indisposed. Her thought processes tended to follow the tracks of a runaway train.
The voice of a newscaster, over-pronounced with no traces of regionalism, spoke over the footage of a stage at the Brockton Bay PRT building.
"Earlier today, White House representative Sheryl Broche restored former Mayor Rory Christner to his position as mayor of Brockton Bay in response to recent events."
She had seen the clip multiple times, though nothing she gathered from it had changed since the first time.
Double breasted jacket suggests compensation. Borrowed? Lines on her face are from stress. Not family-related, job-related. Money- lack of it. In someone's pocket, paid under the table.
Orders from above.
The narrative disappeared, and the camera focused on Mayor Christner at the front of a podium. He did not look well.
She scribbled down some notes, her other fingers drumming fervently against the desktop with nothing to occupy themselves with. Above her, the sound of creaking floor boards was a stale echo of the past four days. In retrospect, she shouldn't have been so surprised to find Rachel at her doorstep, but she had been.
The girl had arrived with her dogs, just two of them- Bastard and Bentley- and had sparked immediate response from Coil's ex-mercenaries who had thankfully lead her to the back rooms before anyone that mattered could see her.
Rachel had arrived today the same way she did every other: pacing like a caged animal, and quiet save for the patter of feet. She didn't come downstairs to visit. She never did.
"I thank you all for coming here today," the mayor said in the recording. "It hasn't been easy these past few days, but this city is used to that. Brockton Bay has weathered Endbringers, murderers. We've survived under the supposed reign of villains. We've outlasted gangs whose roots were decades deep."
He paused.
Pause is not entirely theatrical.
She already knew this, and cut off the tide of information.
"You, Brockton Bay, should know better than anyone that this season will pass. With every hardship comes experience and adaptability. Our city will rise again." Something under his face shifted, and he adopted a new tone. Hopeful.
"For those who wait, good things shall come to them," he gestured from behind the podium. She allowed her eyes to follow the movement to where they rested on an assortment of capes.
Flechette and the newly-converted Fulla, her costume a pale pink that complimented her counterpart. She looked nigh-unrecognizable from either of her past costumes. The Victorian dress was replaced by a tight suit with a short skirt that flared down to her mid-thigh. She was entirely covered, save for the sliver of dark lips that peeked out from her half-mask. Black hair poured over her shoulder in a braid.
It was a shame, but Parian had never been a full member of the Undersiders. It had been no surprise when she left.
Beside the two stood Triumph and Assault and Battery, as well as Crucible and an assortment of out-of-town capes. Dragon and Defiant in armor as bright as gems in the afternoon sun stood on either side of the stage like gods among men.
It was a show of strength, a promise of force against any daring enough to take advantage of the chaos the Simurgh had wrought.
"I will let this image speak for itself," the mayor said, and paused once more as if the world hadn't been staring behind him the entire time.
She let her eyes wander towards the mayor as he spoke. His face was drawn taut, as if all his strength were peeling away at every word. If she were a normal citizen, it would be a little daunting to see the face of the city as worn as its streets.
Good thing she wasn't.
The wooden chair slid across the carpet when she stood, and a thread from where a splinter had caught hold was pulled from the weave. Her ears remained with the TV while her eyes roamed a bulletin board, the notebook on the desk long-forgotten.
Nervous. Doesn't hold faith in current position. Wants out.
Ominous, but she didn't need her power to know that. She pushed past it, lingering on the bulletin board. When it became clear there was nothing else, she rewound the recording and set her eyes on an adjacent whiteboard. Her fingers hesitated by a single yellow string before relenting, relocating it to another point before rewinding the tape and moving on to a whiteboard decorated with blue lettering, then a board backed with black construction paper.
Once the allotted time had run out for the recording she clicked her tongue twice, paused the video and took a step back. Her nose tickled from where a strand of hair had fallen out of its tie and she roughly brushed it back, huffing irritably.
There was something she was missing. Something beyond the obvious, insignificantly small but crucial, and it was screwing with her mind. Her tongue traced the inside divots of the two faint curves etched into her cheeks, a permanent grin curtesy of the man destined to end a world in two years.
It had become a habit that she'd acquired once Grue had healed her up, but now it was a sort of tick she meant to curb but never got around to.
In a way, she was glad for them. They kept her smiling when no one else was.
"And now I will turn over the stand to a most renown cape who needs no introduction," the Mayor finished on camera.
She skimmed over her notes while the recording played in the background. Her fingers dragged over a few words, lingering on one date.
July 14th: Simurgh drops. One hundred killed, six taken. Local civilians killed? Transported à same place?
WHERE?
The last line was underlined numerous times, connected to a file labeled 'Labyrinth'.
Without looking, she knew the exact moment the tickertape at the bottom of the screen read, "Officials in the joint PRT-BBPD investigation have ruled Director James Tagg's death as suicide. Cause is rumored to be Simurgh-related PTSD…"
Definitely not suicide. That particular tidbit was already covered in strings and adhesive notes.
Unaware of the message streaming below them, a black and grey figure stepped forwards from the group of heroes.
"I'm honored to be serving in the shoes of heroes young and old, powered and unpowered. I've heard only the highest of compliments for the Brockton Bay Protectorate and Wards. I personally knew Miss Militia, a true hero who pursued justice for the unjust, and a voice for those too quiet to hear. Let not our presence be a replacement, but a reminder of all they stood for."
Pause. Mind streaming with relayed information, the room was silent save for the scratch of pen against paper. She pressed 'play' once more.
The best way to create a mystery was to go backwards, and the same went for solving it. Rolling her neck and shoulders, she diverted her attention to past notes.
They had to be cleared of several layers of papers tacked to the board. Once uncovered, she was hit with a sense of nostalgia despite the fact they were less than half a year old.
May 6th: E88 compromised. S kept grounded. R dogs moved.
May 8th: Orders remain to be grounded. S restless. C adamant.
May 9th: Theo and Aster Anders dead? Building destroyed C. S injured on site but intact. Suspects, uncertain. Leaving? Keep contact.
May 10th: Purity vs. Everyone. One casualty. (What is gain? Loss?) File 39xi7T A.
May 15th: Leviathan. File 54dFT B.
June 5th: S takes control of BW. C impressed? Deemed valuable asset FTM.
Too far back. Frowning, she replaced a layer. Amongst the mess, an innocuous stylized 'c' could be found beside a line, sometimes accentuated with a question mark, other times left blank, telling in its standalone script.
July 8th: Taylor compromised. Tagg in lead Who pressured who? File 1Jki98.
Part of a whole, pyramid structure.
On the board, she moved another string.
Pushed out of sight but not out of mind, a fifth board rested against the wall on the ground, turned so as not to gather attention from any unwelcome visitors should something unfortunate happen.
There was no title. Its grey surface was crossed with over forty different strings of five different colors. Doctors, nurses, lead detectives and higher up officials faded in and out of the mess, photos linked and labelled with names and dates.
For someone who went above and beyond at concealing their scars, Taylor had inadvertently shown them to a lot of people. Most of them were in the pocket of one of her own fake aliases, one in the Birdcage, but a few were dead. Not at her own hand, obviously. One death was due to natural causes, but the rest were the product of gang skirmishes and the fact that the city had faced two S level threats.
Death was to be expected these days.
"While the Triumvirate has disbanded, our first and foremost duty is to the people. Therefore, while I am no longer with the Protectorate, consider me no different as before. I am only here to serve."
Alexandria stepped back from the podium to the applause of the cloud. It had been a short, passionate albeit formal speech, and the faces of the citizens were lighter than they had been in days.
Finally coming to terms with the fact that there was nothing more to be found at the moment, she clicked her remote.
The light in the room flickered as her other monitor came to life. 'Former Triumvirate member Legend remains out of public eye…" announced a sterile voice.
In the reflection of the board, a nugatory movement coincided with the announcer's voice.
She stopped, hand frozen over a string. Cocking her head, she turned and paused the second screen in one fluid step.
The dashed questions of reporters filled the air in pockets from the first recording. A Chinese-made, out-of-ink pen fell to the carpeted floor.
Oh.
As if velvet curtains lining a grand stage drew open and actors spilled forth for Act 1, she saw it.
And Tattletale grinned.
A/N:
Thus ends Arc: Cumulus.
I was a little wary with this one because some of you asked for no interlude or advised against it, but I've had these two in mind for a while. Especially Vista's. There was a ton of foreshadowing in this as well as some little canon changes sprinkled through. Those will be touched on as the story progresses.
I'd love to hear your thoughts and predictions! Next chapter marks the beginning of Arc 2: Cumulonimbus.