CH10 - Interlude: Canary
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"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not." - Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves
"Born too late to explore the world. Born too early to explore the universe. Born just in time to listen to shitty trap music and play with fidget spinners. " - Youtube
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." - Robert Frost
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She was the only daughter of the largest stakeholder for the Infiniton Industrial' semiconductor fabrication plant. Her mother died when she was three.
In all the world, she was the only thing he loved.
She did well in school. Not that it mattered, save that her father expected it of her. Even as a child, her allowance would have shocked most. As she grew older, it grew as well. By the time she was fourteen, it was a fact that she would receive every month more than some people made in a year, for the rest of her life.
Her father encouraged her to find something that made her happy. She changed her career goals year to year, sometimes multiple times.
It surprised everyone when she tried writing songs, and proved good at that, too. So good that the only strings her father needed to pull was to get them read. Major artists loved them, sung them, hit the charts.
But it felt hollow.
With every backstage pass, she felt more frustration. As she watched singers swarmed by fans, while she was an accessory. Just in the background.
They didn't care who wrote the song.
Observing her worsening mood, her father suggested singing classes. She tried, harder than she had ever needed to try at anything, but it didn't matter. The talent simply wasn't there.
Success could be synthesized with a phone call, but she didn't want that. How could she, after staring at artists who could actually sing and feeling as she had? It would be a mockery. It wouldn't be real. She wanted to do live performances, experience real, honest, fanatical admiration.
She stayed in a funk for months, before her father came to her with a solution. They called themselves Cauldron. Her father supplied the money. She agreed to an unspecified favor, at a later date.
Bad Canary was born. Though critics and peers disdained her talent as 'parahuman ability', it didn't matter. Fans didn't care about that, any more than they had cared about her when those same artists used her songs. As for her, she knew her singing really was amazing. The means by which she achieved it didn't matter, not really. To spite her critics, she soon stopped plucking her feathers, flaunting her parahuman nature. Her sales only spiked.
She paid off her favor in time. A subtle harmonic while attending some diplomatic function. She didn't miss it when the recent rise in tensions with the CUI faltered and died shortly after.
Then her father died, another tragedy of Behemoth, along with the foundry that represented most of their wealth. Then the Elite started pressing her label, a non-stop barrage of attacks from every angle. Political, financial, even physical, small things at first. They were rebuffed, for now, but the sabotage continued.
Despite her loss and increasing problems, life wasn't bad. She was the star, now. She was loved.
By the year 2011, she was one of the top singers in the United States. The latest attempt to tear her down was some nonsense about her music loosening inhibitions.
It was unfortunate, that she only cared about her ability to sing. Any unusual influence was nothing more than the influence of all good music, just more, surely. She did her best to keep it in check, and that was that.
She didn't know how powerful it was.
And then she told her boyfriend to go fuck himself, and everything went to shit.
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The shower was running, but Paige just stood at the sink, naked, staring into the mirror.
Hopefully there weren't any cameras. Not that she was in any position to argue.
Compared to the horrors inflicted by the PRT… she shuddered..
No lawyer. That government stooge wasn't her lawyer, she refused to give him that. He didn't even talk to her, he barely talked at her. In the beginning, she could at least send him emails— only him, mind. She was lucky to get a response hours later; usually it was days. Sometimes not at all.
It didn't matter after they confiscated the phone, some nonsense about 'unknown limits of her abilities'.
Then they said she might be a Brute. She was dangerous.
Those massive restraints. Bomb collar. Plugging her mouth painfully with acrid rubber and metal.
Hosing her down like an animal.
A big fucking charade, all of it.
She'd seen the news, on the tablet. The man who sprung her, he killed people. So the PRT said, anyway. It should have disturbed her, worried her... but she… just didn't care. She was just...
Done.
Just done.
She just wanted to sleep. On the actual bed. After an actual shower.
Maybe someday, she would want to wake up. Figure it all out. But… not today.
She turned the water off. She walked to the bedroom, not bothering to dry off, or put anything back on.
She crawled under the sheets of the heated mattress.
She closed her eyes, and waited for oblivion.
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/AN: Have you ever, like… had a big, fat pile of nasty liquids spilled on you at work, #firstworld'ers? Imagine that feeling you have, in the moments after. Now imagine something a dozen times worse, like being locked in a locker full of filth. Now imagine something beyond imagination times worse, like having every limb shackled, a gag shoved in your mouth, told you're a menace, put on stage with the gag still in your mouth and lectured about how dutifully sorrowful they are to send you to a place the bogeymen are supposed to fear for the rest of your life. She fainted, then, you know. In canon.