This chapter beta-read by Undead Robot and Abhorsen.
Chapter 5: Lift High The Cross
The mess was gone, all evidence destroyed, and in its place stood a grove.
Thorn waited on a pew in the sanctuary, bare feet digging into the soft mat of viridian moss that had replaced warped tile and moldy carpet, waiting for her brother to return now that the sounds of fighting had stopped. The inner support pillars were covered in ivy with purple flowers, and huge maple trees lined the walls where the exterior pillars had been, their branches sealing and supporting the damaged roof. The broken pews and trash piles had been destroyed, while the good pews had been rearranged and were steadily returning to their former sheen as microbes worked to clean and repair them.
In reality, the scene was a series of blatant facades and half-truths. Amelia had indeed broken down the trash and debris, but it was still being digested in out-of-the-way stomachs. The support pillars were in fact covered with ivy, but she hadn't had the nutrients to actually reinforce the structure at all. The 'trees' on the walls were no more dense than balsa wood, and were mostly shells for the actual support structures besides. Just to get this much done, she'd run an arm-width vine into the storm sewers outside the church for water, and had all of the grasses outside parasitize each other into a single organism, whose sole function was to provide excess photosynthetic products to the interior until she could come up with a better solution. Earlier in the day, she'd turned two hundred pounds of store-bought peat moss into fifty pounds of nut-like nutrient storage disguised as armor, and the forty-five pounds she'd kept for herself had been depleted to a mere fifteen pounds of bulletproof shell material.
In short, it was a hack job, but she'd promised to have it done by the time her brother returned, and as far as anyone else could tell it was done. She had most of a church to rebuild tonight anyway, so it would be worked on one way or another.
Her brother- now going by the name Crux- came around the corner, looking exhausted. He stopped short as he entered the doorway, posture shifting as he craned his neck to look all the way up to the vaulted ceiling, his facial expression nearly impossible to make out behind the cross-shaped faceplate of the helm she'd grown for him.
"...Whoa." he finally said, walking forward in a daze. "This is incredible, sis."
She shrugged. "It's good enough for now," she said coyly, hiding how true the statement was. Her eyes narrowed as she took in the remains of his brand-new clothing. "You took some shots. Are you okay?"
Crux pulled out his jacket and shirt, seeming surprised to find bullet holes and blood on them. She noted his knuckles were similarly bloody, and could tell from the strange gaps where they weren't that they'd been split open at some point.
"I'm fine," he said, poking a finger through one of the holes in his jacket. "Didn't even notice in the moment, to be honest."
"It went well?"
"We got a few recruits, but... we've also got some bodies to get rid of."
Amelia winced. "Feel free to say no, but… I could take care of them?"
"What do you mean?" he asked carefully.
"Well," she answered cautiously, as if testing the words, "If we need to dump bodies and we don't want the law to get back to us, I can make sure they're never found. Speed up the circle of life a bit?"
He stared uncomprehendingly. She groaned.
"Fine, I'll just say it. I can eat them with my plants. It's kind of squick to think about, but I've done similar stuff before on a smaller scale and it's better than risking an investigation."
Crux sat down on the pew next to her, as heavily as his small frame would allow.
"Damn it," he said with a sigh. "Two weeks ago, our biggest issues were junior year of high school, bullies, and girls."
Those were your issues, Thorn thought to herself. I had international responsibilities, a secret identity, and severe depression on my list. Instead of voicing that, she simply hummed in agreement. She hadn't been a bad older sister to Carlos, in her opinion, but she'd been more distant over the years, and it'd taken the death of their brother to bring that regret to the forefront.
"Yeah, we'll go with your idea," he said decisively. "We're already committed, and disappearance is probably kinder for their families than the alternatives. Where should we put them, and is there anything we need to do for prep?"
She rattled off a short list of measures to take, and he was gone again. She got back to work on the cathedral shortly thereafter, already thinking of and testing ways to more quickly and cleanly digest foreign materials.
Gat's friends turned up in the following half hour, and the new recruits received the most amateur medical attention Amelia had offered in years. To further separate the healing from her usual fare, she took inspiration from experiments in lab-grown organ replacements, using something that would look like a fungal body under a microscope to form a scaffolding that would disintegrate as cells regenerated. It was a risk, experimenting with people's bodies like that, but she'd made sure to check them for anything dangerous while she was tuning the growths to their immune systems, so at worst the fungal patch would simply fail and they'd be in no more danger than before.
The former Sons seemed a lot less unhappy to be Saints after she'd attended to them, cracking dirty jokes as they helped Gat's men bring scraps of wood from the collapsed section of the building to the sanctuary, dumping stone, mortar and drywall alike into a massive pile for later processing. Unfortunately, the good mood couldn't last. One of the phones taken off a dead banger beeped with a new text, and the news wasn't good.
"I've got to go deal with this," her brother said as he checked the text. "You two stay here, hold the fort."
"What? I'm not letting you go out there alone." Thorn declared, standing up.
He walked over to her, passing her the phone. "We're low on resources, and I'm the only one here who can afford to work without them. Besides, you and Gat need to be here, making sure we still have a base tomorrow."
She read the text.
Anton: HLP NEDED, BIG PSH
Raoul: If you're fucking with us again it's your head this time Anton
Raoul: Baron's checking this himself, bringing Zombie. Scouts aren't reporting a push, better be right.
"...Shit," she said. "Fine. We'll hole up here as best we can, just in case. Stay safe, and kick their asses if you can."
"Fuck yeah I will." He pulled her into a hug, then left. The last she saw of him was a purple glow as he shot into the air.
"Alright, cleanup's over for now!" she called. "Get your guns, we might have a fight on our hands!"
Crux jumped as high as he could over the Suburbs, watching for any sign of the Sons, abusing his ability to control his trajectory and the 'air dash' he'd figured out earlier to keep in the air longer and see more. After five minutes of block-hopping, he finally spotted the duo on some distant rooftops. As he came in for a landing, the two figures stepped towards the edge of their rooftop, launching themselves as if from a slingshot in the direction of the church, their breakneck momentum dropping off supernaturally quickly to land on a building two or three spaces down.
He landed in a crouch on a neighborhood sidewalk, and then took off like a bullet. This was the first time he'd ever had a cause to go all-out, full-sprint since discovering his expanded abilities, and it did not disappoint. The thirty seconds it took to reach the block he'd seen the capes on were a rush of wind, sweat, and the pounding of feet on pavement as he left the world behind, everything he'd wanted from the track team once upon a time expanded a hundredfold.
Carlos leapt into the air at the end of the row, using his momentum to catapult himself high and far, then kicking against the air just before landing so he could dive right back into another sprint-jump. He spun midair to land in a skid on the top of a commercial strip, no more than twenty feet in front of his potential enemies.
"Sup," he remarked casually, standing up and dusting himself off as he took in his opponents.
Baron was dressed in funeral formal wear that could best be described with words like 'well used' or 'dingy'. The black fabric suitcoat was worn, the white shirt stained and washed so much it was more of a curdled cream color, the deep green slacks showing runs and wear on the knees. A frequently crushed white top hat, green half-skullcap mask, and an oversized, skull-topped pimp cane completed his usual ensemble; today he had added a garishly colored totem of some sort dangling from one wrist, and a necklace of human teeth.
Zombie, like their usual partners Jack and Joker, tended to change their outfit for the occasion, and could only be recognized by use of their powers regardless. Today, Carlos was probably lucky; the cape looked male, but closer to his build that Gat's, and they'd chosen very casual wear, sporting a baseball bat, a knife holster on one side of their hip, and a holstered gun on the other. They had a bulge in one pocket of their cargo shorts, though; he'd keep an eye out for that.
"Well hello there," Baron said, tipping his top hat and grinning a multicolored smile. "You want to know what's up? Well, we were just going to check on our own damn men, you see, and suddenly some pissant fell out of the sky, so I guess it's raining yellow."
"Well, your men aren't there anymore," he admitted, crossing his arms.
"So the ABB is making a push, then?" Zombie said. "Shame, I was hoping to bet on the next race. Bandwagon owes me twenty though."
"You don't look like ABB… material, spitshine," Baron commented.
"I'm not," he replied easily, ignoring a quiet curse from Zombie. "We're the Saints, and this is our territory now."
Zombie sputtered in disbelief, then bent over laughing, their long dirty-blonde curls bobbing around their hockey mask.
Baron didn't laugh, though, pursing his lips in thought as he toyed with his cane. He smacked Zombie on the back of their head to shut them up, then spoke. "You said the Saints? Was there a breakout or something?"
Carlos smirked behind his helm, his posture changing to match the bravado he was trying to project. "You haven't heard? Some psycho broke Johnny Gat out the other day."
"But Gat's ABB. He ran the offense for them," Baron argued, brow furrowed in suspicion. "Even with him, you can't seriously be thinking I'd accept this. What's your fucking angle?"
Crux shrugged. "I think I could take you two on here, and I'm sure you're pissed about the territory grab enough to roll those dice. Or you could puss out and leave, I don't care which right now."
"Baron, I think he's-"
"Shut it, asswipe," Baron said, offering them a friendly grin immediately afterward as he turned his attention to Crux. "You're cocky as a whore on a Friday, huh? Either you're actually that dumb, or this city just got interesting. Either way, you have my attention."
"Oh yeah? What's that get me?" Crux asked, hoping the drug lord would get to the point soon.
"I'm a deal-maker, got it? A businessman and entrepreneur of the seedy variety. You seem like a trustworthy shitstain yourself, am I right?"
Crux didn't respond.
Baron straightened himself up, his voice growing a bit more accented with a Louisiana drawl. "Here's my offer: you get the territory around and south of the high school, because that shit changes hands so often I ain't even gonna wipe mine off yet. It's good shit, mind you, but that makes all the flies keep on buzzing up to get a piece, so I ain't even gonna miss it. I leave you alone, and you leave me alone." He raised his arms wide, gesticulating widely with the cane as he continued his offer. "In return for this generous gift, you and yours are gonna help me make a push on Brotherhood territory for the next month. You keep what you can loot, but the Sons get all of the Brotherhood territory we can grab."
Carlos didn't even have to consider; that would cripple him for rep and make his gang members little more than canon fodder, just to get a peace agreement with a gang he wanted gone for both strategic and personal reasons. "No fuckin' deal," he said flatly. "You're high if you think we'd take that, it'd put us in a shit position for stuff we already have."
"Oh, you're already in the shit boy," Baron said with a pitying shake of the head. "You just can't tell cause the wind's blowing your way. Let me fix that."
The cape gestured with his cane, drawing a line in the air. In the evening April twilight, the movement made a heat-haze-like shimmer in the air, aimed down the length of black-painted wood towards the ground below Crux's feet.
Carlos wasn't sure what Baron's powers were, but he knew getting hit by them would probably suck. The moment he was sure of an attack, he took the initiative, leaping low and horizontal to sail just over the two capes' heads. Where he'd stood, a blue glow took hold, sending loose roof gravel skittering away. He had to guess that that was the method the two had been using to hop rooftops, which meant getting hit by them would be inconvenient at best.
"I warned you," he said as he skidded to a stop, and then he was sprinting at them. Baron spun and tried to place another field, but Crux ducked under the cane, grabbed the skinny cape by the ankle, and chucked him into the field he'd just made with a discus toss. The leader of the Sons went skidding and tumbling away along the roof, settling into a disheveled heap a few dozen feet away.
Crux turned his attention to Zombie. Or, well, the Zombies, plural. The cape had dropped into a runner's stance, and in the few seconds he'd spent dealing with Baron they'd turned into five clones, a new one bursting out of them every half-second or so, stumbling until they could gain their footing. Ironically, he knew more about their powers than those of the leader of their gang; their usual teammates, Jack and Joker, often used the cape as a source of disposable minions in their game-show-style capers and events. Each clone was a variation on the original's theme, ranging from different gear or haircuts to full body or sex changes. The clones degraded physically and mentally over a short time, but he didn't know how quickly; it was something that made the blooper reels when a camera caught something funny..
The Zombies rushed him, brandishing swords, axes, pistols and clubs. He pulled out his taser, hoping to get in a shot on the main body, but only managing to hit the newest clone to spawn. He disappeared it a moment later, catching the axe by the handle and using it as leverage to knock over its Zombie. He slammed the back of the axe into another's temple, knocking the corpse off the side of the building. One of them hit him with a nail-studded bat, and he bit back a scream as he dropped the axe and wrenched the bat from his arm. He slapped the clone backhand while elbowing another that was trying to restrain him, flinched as a line of fire announced the one with a hand cannon scoring a hit on him, and eventually was forced to jump out of the growing throng or risk finding out the limits of his regeneration.
He took stock while he was in midair. He had almost no ammunition left in his pistols, and his amateur boxing skills were just not cut out for fighting a horde of people, even if he could take each out in one shot. He had to be smart about this.
Instead of landing on the rooftop, he angled and dashed to the opposite side of the road, landing in the parking lot of the opposite side of the retail strip. He looked around for something big, big enough he wasn't sure he'd be able to use it. A concrete security pillar was soon wrenched out of the ground along with a small chunk of sidewalk and rebar, and he was soaring back up to the rooftop.
He hit the gaggle of clones like a freight train, landing at a sprint and swinging his makeshift club with the force of a speeding car. The nearest clones, distracted by some argument that had sprung up among the gathered Zombies, never even had time to scream as their heads were reduced to pulped raspberries. Crux turned the unspent momentum into another discus-toss with the pillar, bowling over the rest of that group of clones, then sprinted around the gaggle, heading straight for the original. He juked around the newest clones, grabbed the cape by the ankle, and slammed them overhead into the ground.
On impact with the rooftop, Zombie exploded. Carlos was taken by surprise as a literal wall of flesh blew him off of the cape, a tangled mess of Zombies forcing him flat to the ground under their sheer awkward mass. He was unhurt, but couldn't get leverage quickly enough to break free of the pile by brute force alone. He began crawling upward through the Zombies, kicking and elbowing his way toward the light of the evening sky.
Yells of surprise and dismay started cutting through the chorus of groans that suffused the pile. It was hard to pick out specifics from the noise, but he caught the general gist; the clones were complaining with Baron, the pile shifting as if more were being added every second. Crux redoubled his efforts, shedding his jacket for dexterity and grip as he clawed his way to the top of the pile.
His hand found open air, and was immediately lanced through with pain as a gunshot rang out from somewhere beyond the pile. He yelled, but nonetheless kept clawing his way from the pile. Another shot glanced off his helmet as it rose above the mass, and he spared a moment to flip off the shooter, a female Zombie clone.
"Fucker," it spat, firing again into the pile. "I liked that body."
Baron had gotten back on his feet, and was currently on the opposite side of the pile. He brandished his cane like a teacher in a lecture, and the same heat mirages that he'd fired before flew through the air with each swipe.
"There he is," the leader of the Bastard Sons said, "You know, I never got your name, little Saint. How rude of me."
The Zombie with the gun shot him in the back before he could answer, eliciting a grunt of pain.
"You know, I've never really held to that Christianity bullshit myself," Baron said as Carlos crawled to the top of the writhing mass of half-sensible bodies, eyeing the blue-purple fields the cape was thickening around him as the suited figure paced around. "I've always been a bit more in touch with my ancestral roots. The Loa ain't exactly the easiest to understand, but you take the right stuff and the picture comes through a bit clearer. Zombie, you're carrying, right?" Zombie dug a fist-sized packet from their cargo shorts pocket, passing it to Baron. The kingpin of the Sons grinned, hefting the package. "You seem like the durable type, and I owe you some courtesy from our polite discussion earlier. Tell you what, I have a new deal for you."
Crux was already getting his other leg free, and the moment he had it planted he jumped. At least, he was trying to jump. Every time a body hit the purple fields that boxed them in, they were roughly shoved back, hard enough to snap bones if it hit at the wrong angle. The entire pile was so unstable he couldn't even stand properly. To a normal person, the spasming pile would have made any attempt to get in a jump impossible; For him, the abortive twitch of his legs still sent him ten feet upward in a messy spin, giving him a good look at the area beneath while Baron continued his monologue.
Baron chuckled. "Jumping at the bit, huh? I wonder if a runt like you even knows what this is." He produced a lighter, igniting the corner of the bag and tossing it into the side of the pile. "That's half a pound of our special blend, and trust me when I say it burns like a dream. You're standing on a pile of the stuff, though Zombie's gonna slow it down a bunch. You get out of that area before passing out from this shit or burning alive, and I'll turn around and leave you to this territory, no bad blood between us. You fail, and we call up our buddies, go kick out whoever the fuck you have back there with Gat, get em' hooked on the good shit, and make them our bitches till they ain't worth the drugs they're taking."
There were maybe twenty Zombies in the tiny area marked out by Baron's fields, if he had to guess, and a sickening smell of weed, burning flesh, and chemicals was already starting to rise from the mass as the flames of the packet caught. Crux didn't bother with banter. He landed, immediately jumping again, this time into the fields. It threw him back, sending him into a spin as he bounced to the opposite wall, which made things worse. He dashed to gain back some control, leveling out, but also feeding even more power into his bounces between fields. The effect was nauseating, compounded by the smell from below and the slight buzz it was starting to give him. He managed to stop the bouncing with difficulty, landing again on top of the pile.
"You better hope I don't get out of here," Crux warned, letting some of his frustration through into his smoke-heavy voice. "Fuck your truce, this shit means war."
As Zombie cackled gleefully at that declaration, Crux eyed the situation. The drugs were thankfully not taking their something very well, but a constant thin haze of smoke and heat was wafting upward through the gaps in the pile. He could feel his mind getting fuzzier, the world getting a bit more colorful even as the bright sunset was fading to dull greys and pinks. He wasn't having much success going up, because whatever Baron's fields were, it didn't drop off low enough to escape in the air. He'd almost gotten stuck up there, bouncing around faster and faster; if he couldn't control his momentum, he'd… huh.
Crux looked down at the pile he was crawling on top of. Experimentally, he grabbed one of the Zombies by the leg, eliciting a weak twitch. He braced, and threw them upward as hard as he could.
The clone bounced upward, rebounding from wall to wall, speeding up as it went instead of slowing down. It looked painful.
Carlos grabbed two more, and started chucking the briandead clones one after another.
"What the fuck is he doing now?" Baron wondered.
"I don't know, boss. Maybe he wants to burn faster? Juggling practice?"
Baron laughed deeply. "Juggling practice, huh? Maybe you're not such a waste of brainpower after all!"
"The fuck does that mean?"
"The fuck do you think it means, deadhead?" The two capes started bickering, turning away from the ring to get in each other's face.
Crux was halfway through the pile when the first open flames popped up, and they eagerly began to spread. The smell was awful, the heat painful and stifling. He took one last breath and started chucking bodies as fast as he could, powering through the pain as his clothing caught fire. He found solid footing in a gap between bodies, shoved his feet into that gap, and finally stood up.
With no time to waste, as fire and drugs impaired his every movement, he smashed his way through the roof, leaping down into the building below. He heaved in a deep breath, tore off his tank top, and used it to put out his jeans as quickly as he could. His wounds screamed at him for a few moments, then a blessed wave of relief came as they began to heal.
Carlos registered the fact that his enemies were getting away, and the determination he was holding onto through the haze was replaced by anger. Crux was through playing around.
He ran outside, busting through a window and leaping high. The two fuckers were running, but he was faster. In seconds he caught up to them, cutting them off and leveling a shotgun.
"You like deals?" he spat. "Fine. Get the fuck out of my territory. You pull any shit, I see how far I can throw you, then I bring the fucking fire to your group first, instead of leaving you be for now."
"You-"
"You threatened my people, and you got me fucked up right now," he said, raising the shotgun and cutting Baron off. "I'm surprised I'm not killing you yet. So shut your goddamn mouth, and take the deal."
Baron nodded carefully. "Deal. For now, at least."
Crux briefly considered chucking them anyway, but lowered his shotgun. "Good. Now fuck off."
Amelia was about to head out and find her brother when she heard an impact from the front door. The new Saints members all tensed up, their guns and improvised weapons raised for a fight.
The doors flew open suddenly, and it was only luck that she and Gat recognized Crux before the group could open fire. He was shirtless, shoeless, and dirty, his jeans were full of holes and burn marks, and he had a few scratches on his brand-new helm. He was also carrying five bulging, white, grease-stained paper bags, each proudly labeled 'Freckle Bitch's' in a colorful font.
Her brother, unconcerned about the near-miss with their firing squad, raised his bags triumphantly. "I'm high as fuck! Who's hungry?"