Enjoy!
Terror 3.a
Victoria Dallon was upset, and when Victoria Dallon was upset gangbangers tended to come down with broken bones. The fact that the source of her ire was beyond her reach at the moment only incensed her even more.
Glory Girl had always known that Shadow Stalker was a bitch, but she had never in a million years thought that she would have been capable of what she did. Torturing a civilian just for the fun of it? That was something that Glory Girl would have expected from the rapists and murders that she put away, not from a Ward.
Dean had tried to give her some form of explanation as to why Shadow Stalker's behavior hadn't been caught or stopped, but she hung up on him. Had it been petty? Perhaps. But the fact that her boyfr- ex-boyfriend hadn't been able to detect Sophia's psychotic behavior given his ability to sense emotional states, Glory Girl was understandably upset at him. She couldn't begin to imagine how he couldn't have known about Sophia's instability.
Had he always known? The dark thought entered her mind, unbidden by any external stimuli. It would certainly make more sense that he had known and just ignored the issue rather than him not realizing what was going on. As much as Dean like to portray himself as a white knight, she knew he didn't like to interfere with other people's business. He tended to remain passive in situations that might benefit from his interference, believing that his powers constituted an invasion of privacy. It was one of the things that Glory Girl had tried change about him by pushing him out of his comfort zone, but he had remained adamant on his neutrality.
Now look where it's got you, Glory Girl thought with a brief flare of fury.
But as angry as she was, it was nothing compared to the raging inferno that her mother had become when the news hit her. Since then her mom had been on a warpath and had been gunning for putting the local Protectorate's head on a pike. A parahuman using their status to get away with literal murder was the very situation that New Wave had been founded to prevent.
Of course, it wasn't as if they could just ignore the Protectorate while the threat of a full-blown gang war loomed on the horizon. Aunt Sarah and Uncle Neil were dealing with keeping New Wave's image separate from the Protectorate while simultaneously trying to coordinate with them against the gangs. Her mom was trying to gather up steam for a lawsuit against the people who had been involved with the Shadow Stalker debacle so the Protectorate couldn't just sweep them under all under the rug and use the Winslow administration as scapegoats.
Arcadia had been forced to close as it and the other schools held a meeting to determine how they were going to sort out the Winslow mess. With most of the administration and the teachers being suspended pending a full-scale investigation the gang-ridden school had been forced to close. That meant that the three other high schools in the city had to deal with an influx of about one to two thousand students that were seeking education sources.
Glory Girl couldn't say she disliked the situation that much since she was getting a free week off of school. It gave her some more free time to go on patrols, which was exactly what New Wave needed to do while the city was in near turmoil. It had proven difficult to organize their patrols in such a way that would allow them to effectively cover the city while simultaneously avoiding being associated with the Protectorate. Harder said than done given that the Protectorate had been patrolling the more at risk neighborhoods to try and quell any budding unrest.
While the tensions between the Empire and ABB had skyrocketed, they had been oddly restrained the last few nights. What she had found was that the more independent criminals were coming out in full force while the calm lasted and they didn't have to worry about an army of skinheads or a serial suicide bomber ruining their day.
That wasn't to say that all gang activity had outright stopped, but she had found very few instances of the gangs committing obvious criminal acts.
Though the gang's meager presence wasn't her concern this night. She had been spending the last few days tracking a rapist who had been preying on women near the edge of Downtown. She had found the first victim by pure chance, but the woman's torn clothing and terrified and vacant gaze made it clear as to what had happened. After having talked to one of New Wave's contacts in the police force she had found that the unfortunate woman hadn't been his only the man's only victim and that they had three rapes and one attempted rape attributed to him.
The victim's descriptions weren't much to go on, the man apparently wore a ski mask to hide his identity and the clothing that he had been wearing was different each time. Leaving her with very little to go off of, Glory Girl had decided that the best course of action was to simply patrol the area that he had been sulking about and hope that she would be able to find him before he found a new victim.
Glory Girl shivered as a cold breeze swept over her form. As much as she liked her costume, it didn't provide much in the form of environmental protection. As she looked down at the buildings below she could see an almost physical divide between the Downtown area and the Docks South. The bright and modern looking Downtown streets were a sharp contrast to the much duller and older buildings of the Docks South. That wasn't to say that the Docks South was a very bad neighborhood compared to the buildings around the train yards, but there was a very clear distinction between the two areas of the city.
Glory Girl paused as a faint noise whispered across the wind. It was almost too faint to hear, but as she lowered herself closer to the street level she could make out exactly what it was.
A woman. Screaming for help.
Glory Girl shot off in the direction of the screams, her form blazing with unconstrained anger. Her mouth set into an angry snarl as she saw a few windows slide shut as the residents tried to block out the noise as if by simply ignoring it they could pretend that nothing was wrong.
As Glory Girl swung around a corner at high speeds she forced herself to come to a halt in midair that the sight before her.
A young woman who didn't look much older than her was lying on the ground, her expression absolutely terrified as she screamed her lungs out. Her simple blouse and jeans were stained with muck and grime as she tried to drag herself away from the man before her. The man was wrapped in a set of nondescript clothes and wouldn't have stood out that much if it wasn't for the ski mask covering his face. The faint glint of a blade signaled that he was armed, which was probably how he cowed his victims into submission.
Not that it would do him much good against her invulnerability.
Glory Girl let her control of her aura fall away as she blasted the alleyway with a good dose of fear. She felt a brief pang of regret for terrifying the woman, but she was already scared out her mind anyway so it wasn't like it was going to get any worse.
"Hey ugly," Glory Girl snarled, her beautiful face warped with anger and rage.
The man twisted around at the sound of her voice, and what little she could see of his face through the mask was already pale and afraid. The man's eyes widened as his terrified brain connected the dots between her appearance and what was about to happen to him.
"Oh, s-"
The man didn't get to finish his well-justified expiative as Glory Girl exploded forward with the speed of a bullet, wrapping her hands around his throat like a vice. The man barely had time to drop his knife and reflexive try to remove her grip when Glory Girl shot up into the sky, carrying the man with her. In the corner of her eye she could see a thick shadow twist and writhe, but she marked it as unimportant as she focused on the scum before her.
"You get off on it, don't you?" Glory Girl asked as the man choked and squirmed in her immovable grip. She wrapped her hand around the man's ski mask and tore it off, but instead of the face of a monster, all she saw was a regular guy. There was no defining feature that marked him as evil or criminal, but in a way, that was even more disappointing. It was one thing when a monster wanted to hurt or kill you, but to see a human being willingly resort to committing such acts was something that enraged her like little else could.
"You like seeing them helpless?" Glory Girl growled as she dropped him onto a rooftop with a little more force than what was required. She heard a pop or two that signified that one of his ribs had snapped from the impact. As she lowered herself down the man's level, he pulled himself up, eyes still wide with fright and a thin sheen of sweat covering his face as he took a swing at her. Glory Girl did nothing as the fist impacted her sternum, aside from smiling nastily as the man started screaming from broken fingers.
The idiot didn't even have the decency to throw a good punch, Glory Girl thought as she watched him cradle his broken thumb that had been inside his fist. As the man looked back up Glory Girl took a swing of her own and watched with satisfaction as the man's jaw shattered under the impact, blood and teeth flying out from his mouth as he fell to the ground screaming. His screams came across as wet gurgles as he tried to move his lower jaw.
"Sucks, doesn't it?" Glory Girl asked as she towered over the man's whimpering form. The man was in bad shape but unless his rib punctured a lung he wasn't going to die anytime soon. But now that her rage had subsided a little bit, Glory Girl recognized that she might have gone a little too far with the guy. But he was a rapist and had tried to take a swing at her, no matter how ineffective it had been.
Still, she was going to have to call Ames and beg her to heal the man up a little bit before she turned him in. Ames would probably tell her to be more careful and resist at first, but her sister always helped her when she asked really nicely.
Amy was nice like that.
A slow clapping sound wrenched Glory Girl from her thoughts. She whipped her head around to the source of the sound and felt her breath catch in her throat.
Boogeyman sat on the brick outcropping of the building a mere five feet away and she hadn't even noticed her presence. While Glory Girl mentally berated herself for not paying more attention to her surroundings, she allowed her feet to leave the ground as she unleashed her fear aura at full blast. She heard the rapist whimper behind her, but much to her frustration all Boogeyman did was raise a hairless eye ridge in response.
"I hope you're not trying to scare me," Boogeyman said in a bored tone, completely unphased by the blonde bombshell's use of her power. Glory Girl had to resist the urge to growl. It wasn't as if people hadn't overcome her aura in the past, but for one to do it so effortlessly…
"What do you want?" Glory Girl asked with a wary expression. New Wave had found themselves divided on Boogeyman and her position in the cape community. On one hand, she represented what New Wave wanted to avoid, a cape that was accountable to nobody and flaunted the rules and laws without a second thought. On the other hand, her methods, while brutal and violent, had proven to be effective. The people who lived in the former Merchant territory could now walk down the street without worrying of being mugged by a druggie after the sun went down.
They hadn't decided how they should classify her as and had taken a wait and see approach. If Boogeyman proved to be villainous then they would take her down without hesitation, but as it was she hadn't done anything yet to harm any civilians. She was clearly a loose cannon that would have to be brought in eventually, but better to focus on the real threats of the Empire and ABB than making a new enemy.
"You know, I've met a few criminals who have quite the fear of you," Boogeyman said, her voice tinged with approval.
"What do you want?" Glory Girl asked again, this time much more firmly. She kept her posture tense and ready to move at a moment's notice. She didn't think that Boogeyman would attack her, but she did have a confrontation with Miss Militia from what she heard, and it didn't end well for the Blaster.
"I wanted to talk to you," Boogeyman said with a small smile as she leaned back against the open air. There was a relaxed grace to the woman's movements as if they were having a chat in a coffee shop rather than on the roof of a building while a serial rapist was mewling in pain behind them.
"With me?" Glory Girl asked warily as she eyed the cape. She let her aura fall away, realizing there was no point trying to use it to scare Boogeyman anymore. She still kept herself at the ready to paste the woman into the ground if she tried anything. Glory Girl didn't think she would seeing as the only hero she had attacked so far was that psycho Shadow Stalker, but being blonde didn't mean that she was stupid. "Why?"
"To make an offer," Boogeyman said as she stood up with an alien grace that set Glory Girl's teeth on edge. It took every ounce of her willpower to keep herself from slamming into the parahuman at the sudden movement. Boogeyman paused as she eyed her with those yellow orbs that sent chills down her spine.
"What kind of offer?" Glory Girl asked. There was no way that she would agree to whatever the woman was offering, but it didn't hurt to listen. It might give her some insight to how the woman's mind worked. Holding back now might help New Wave if they ever had to engage her in the future.
"Nothing crazy," Boogeyman assured her as she circled the rooftop, setting Glory Girl on edge at the complete lack of concern the parahuman was giving her. While Glory Girl knew that she wasn't the strongest parahuman in the city, she was still pretty high up there. Her forcefield's nigh invulnerability had let her engage with the like of Hookwolf and Lung. To have a cape be so dismissive of her power and strength stoked some of her irritation.
"I want you to join me in my fight against the gangs," Boogeyman said, stopping and whirling around to directly face the floating woman. It took everything Glory Girl had to keep herself from gaping on the spot like an idiot. Out of all the things she had expected Boogeyman to ask, that wasn't one of them. A healing from Panacea. Sharing of whatever intelligence New Wave happened to have. But this?
"You must be joking," Glory Girl blurted out undiplomatically as she let her feet set down on the gravelly roof, too surprised to focus on flying.
Boogeyman just raised one of her hairless eye ridges. "I assure you I am not," she said in a calm collected tone that reminded Glory Girl of the times her teachers had called her blurting out what was on the top of her mind and wording it in such a way that made her sound stupid.
"Why would I work with you?" Glory Girl asked, none the too kindly. If this cape thought that she would betray her family, betray everything that she had ever stood for, all for a chance to get a better spotlight then she was going to have to teach her a thing or two.
"Perhaps that fact that we're so similar?" Boogeyman asked with a careless shrug.
"I'm nothing like you," Glory Girl said with a snarl as her golden locks fell around her twisted expression like a frame. While she certainly appreciated what Boogeyman was doing to the gangs, she didn't want to throw her support behind her. She was a cape that answered to nobody and had decided for herself that she had the power of judge, jury, and executioner. No matter how much good she did she would remain as a poster girl for New Wave's message of cape accountability.
"I'd say he'd disagree," Boogeyman commented as she looked down to the rapist who had been trying to wiggle his way out of their field of view. Not that he had gotten very far, the blinding pain from his broken ribs severely hampered his mobility as he tried to claw his way to the access hatch for the roof with his unbroken hand. Glory Girl wasn't sure what his plan was once he reached it, there was no way he would be able to climb down that small ladder in his current condition, and it wasn't as if they wouldn't notice the screeching of the rusted metal as he tried to pry it open.
"…That's different," Glory Girl argued as she eyed the man's trail of crimson fluid. But even as she denied it, she couldn't help but hear some traitorous whispers in the back of her mind telling her that it wasn't different, no matter what she said.
"Oh?" Boogeyman asked with what appeared to be genuine curiosity. "So, because your sister covers up your tracks that means that it doesn't matter?"
"Yeah, it is different," Glory Girl said with a new conviction. She wasn't like Boogeyman, she didn't kill her enemies or leave them on the ground like broken toys. She just called Ames and had her heal them up. It wasn't like anyone would know and the criminals would learn their lesson.
Boogeyman said nothing in response to her rebuttal. Instead, she just stared at her with those freakishly yellow eyes that seemed to be looking at something beyond her face and skin, as if she was tearing away they things that made her, well her, and was trying to get into the gooey center of her person.
"So, you're willing to risk your sister's life?" Boogeyman asked with a raised eye ridge.
Glory Girl saw red.
Nobody threatened her sister and got away with it.
Glory Girl leaped forward, arms outstretched and lips twisted into an angry snarl. For a split second, she swore she saw Boogeyman's eyes widen in surprise, but the look of shock was hidden under a mask of boredom so quickly that she might have imagined it. When her fist was mere inches away from plastering the capes' internal organs against brick Glory Girl suddenly found herself face to face with empty air.
Her fist struck the rooftop, cracking the structure like a child's toy. A spider web of cracks erupted from here her fist impacted as if a sledgehammer had been brought to the building.
"That was uncalled for."
Glory Girl whirled around to see Boogeyman relaxing against the other side of the building without a care in the world. She didn't even look the slightest bit frightened by the threat of being put into a full body cast.
"You threatened my sister," Glory Girl screamed out between her gnashing teeth. Did she not think that she cared about Amy? That any two-bit thug could just threaten her to her very face without getting punished?
Boogeyman gave her a genuinely confused look as if she didn't understand what Glory Girl was talking about. Suddenly the woman's eyes sparked with recognition and she gave her a slight smile. "Ah, you misunderstand Glory Girl. I wasn't threatening dear Amy Dallon's life. I was merely pointing out how much you put her at risk by involving her in this situation," Boogeyman said with a wave of her hand to indicate the still crawling rapist.
"What are you talking about?" Glory Girl asked, the tiniest amount of her blinding rage bleeding off as she listened to whatever excuse Boogeyman had. There was no reason to believe what Boogeyman was saying, but if there was the slightest threat to her sister's wellbeing then she would make sure to deal with it.
"You beat these criminals within an inch of their life to teach them a lesson," Boogeyman said with a voice that emoted nothing but approval. "But then you bring your sister in to heal them all up, and you take away whatever impact your lesson might have had. It's not much of a punishment if you give them a reward afterward."
"And how is that supposed to put Panacea in danger?" Glory Girl asked with far less hostility than she had been exerting a few seconds ago. As much as she hated to admit it, what the woman was saying did make a certain amount of sense. Was the only reason she asked Ames to heal to keep New Wave's reputation intact? Would the criminals really stop doing what they were doing if they could just walk out of the police station without a care in the world?
What was the point of breaking a man's jaw if it was healed up again? People like him learned through pain as to what they could do and what they could not. It wasn't as if they deserved to be healed, they were criminals and villains.
"I imagine that more than a few of your targets may hold some resentment for what you did to them. And while you yourself might be invulnerable, I imagine that dear Panacea is not," Boogeyman said with a careless shrug.
A cold chill swept down Glory Girl's spine at the cape's words. She had never thought about that. She felt her throat go dry at the thought of her sister being targeted by any one of the criminals that she had put behind bars, however temporarily. She glanced down to the pathetically mewling rapist.
What if that had been Ames?
The dark thought wiggled its way through her imagination unbidden. Images of varying ways that her sister could be caught unaware and mistreated flashed through her mind's eye, making her stomach churn in horror and anger. She had gotten her fair share of threats before, and she had mostly ignored them because she knew that they wouldn't be able to do anything to her with her invincibility, but now the thought of Amy being gunned down to get back at her made bile rise in her throat.
What was worse was that the idea wasn't without precedent. While it had been before her time, Glory Girl knew that Fleur of New Wave had been killed by a former member of Marquis' organization as revenge for ensuring that the crime boss would be sent to the Birdcage. She had been gunned down in her civilian identity and left to bleed out on her kitchen floor for Lightstar to find later. Fleur's death had all but killed the New Wave movement and remained a stain on their legacy even after all these years.
"I-I'll protect her," Glory Girl shot back with a conviction she didn't truly feel. An image of Amy bleeding out onto the kitchen floor flashed inside her head.
"Perhaps you will," Boogeyman agreed with a slight nod. Her expression turned slightly more apologetic as she told the truth that Glory Girl didn't want to admit, even in the dark corners of her mind. "I'm sure that dozens of would be murders and rapists would regret their decision. But what about the one you miss?"
Glory Girl remained utterly silent as she floated back down the ground, her mind a whirl of dark futures for her sister. Her head shook silently as she tried to deny what the woman was saying.
"You might stop him from getting to your sister," Boogeyman said as she gave the man a glance. "But what about the next one? Or the one after that? You can win all you like, but you only have to lose once."
"Stop!" Glory Girl screamed in denial and rage as she covered her ears. She didn't want to hear this, she didn't want to think about this. The image of Amy cowering for her life as a dark shadow loomed over her filled her mind as she tried to push such thoughts out.
"I know you don't want to hear this," Boogeyman said with a kind tone. "But all I offer is the truth."
"What do you want?" Glory Girl growled as she turned her anger to the only available target. The parahuman seemed unruffled by her fury, instead, giving her a pitying expression as she stood to her feet and made her way to the rapist.
"All I want is for you to take your work to the logical conclusion," Boogeyman said as she set a foot down on the man's back. The rapist squirmed underneath her grip like a bug in a display case, unable to move the woman's immovable foot. "You've already hurt him, all you have to do is let him stay that way."
Boogeyman gave the man a sharp kick, eliciting a wet scream from him as he was rolled onto his back. His skin was pale and clammy as he stared at Boogeyman's towering from. "We both know people like him just don't learn unless it's through pain and fear," she said as black sand started to form into a shape. Glory Girl watched as the sand turned into the form of a sword, the point coming to rest just above the man's zipper.
The man froze in place as he stared at the bladed weapon pointing at his privates. Half-formed pleas weaseled their way out of his broken jaw, barely comprehensible as human speech. Moisture started to build up around his eyes as his desperate pleas went unanswered and the sword dug in a little deeper, folding over the fabric of his jeans.
"You just need to make sure they learn their lesson," Boogeyman hissed as her eyes blazed with anger. The sword dispersed into nothing as the man fainted, the fear too much for his system to handle.
"I-I can't," Glory Girl admitted. It was difficult to admit that there was something that she couldn't do. It felt like wrenching her teeth out from her gums as the words forced their way out of her mouth.
She had always hated the idea of being incapable of doing something, of not being able to achieve a goal, of being mocked by those around her because she failed. It was the whole reason that she had triggered during that basketball game. And even though her trigger event was positively mild compared to some of the stories she heard, that day still stuck with her like a lingering shadow. A reminder that there were things that she couldn't do.
As she ran the Boogeyman's words through her head she couldn't find any real fault with the woman's logic. Was it brutal? Yes, leaving a man in a state like this would be beyond painful for him, but he was a rapist. It was like Boogeyman said, people like him only learned through fear and pain.
But to do so would be to give into everything her family stood against. Accountability, honesty, the very tenants that New Wave had been founded upon.
You think the monster will care when they're hurting Amy? The dark voice in the back of her mind whispered as it caressed her thoughts like a loving parent.
"Tell me, when was the last time that New Wave made a lasting difference to the city?" Boogeyman asked.
"When they took down Marquis," Glory Girl replied without even having to think about it. New Wave's victory over the crime lord hand been one of the things that had put them on the map as one of the more successful independent parahuman organizations.
"And what lasting accomplishments have they made since then?" Boogeyman asked, a slight smirk coloring her expression.
Glory Girl remained silent, unwilling to provide the answer. But the fact was, aside from putting away the occasional gang parahuman behind bars for a few days they really hadn't done anything of notice. While they did provide a certain amount of safety to the area that they patrolled, they had yet to make another lasting difference to the cities' criminal political structure.
"That's what I thought," Boogeyman said as she abandoned her position next to the unconscious rapist. Glory Girl could feel her muscles tense, and despite the assurance of her invulnerability she couldn't help but feel her gut backflip in fear as Boogeyman drew herself closer.
"You want to make a difference Victoria," Boogeyman said as she stopped a few feet from the blonde parahuman, yellow eyes locked with Victoria's bright baby blues. "Yet you constrain yourself to play fair, to pretend that the rapist and murderers will play by those same rules."
Glory Girl swallowed as more words poured out of Boogeyman's mouth, and for the life of her, she couldn't think of an argument to oppose her. Everything that she was saying made a certain amount of sense, but it couldn't be right. Because if it was right it meant that she hadn't been making the streets a safer place, she had been making them more dangerous for her sister.
"I'm offering you a chance to make a real difference. You don't have to force yourself to be a shining beacon of hope to appease the masses, with me you can take the fight to the gangs and make sure that your sister can never be hurt by them again," Boogeyman said as she held her hand out for Glory Girl to take. The second generation parahuman looked down at the hand with a far more contemplative expression than she probably should have had.
"I-" Glory Girl sputtered out, unable to bring herself to provide a resolute yes or no answer to the woman. Her mind felt as if it had been stuck in a blender as if everything that she knew was being turned on its head. Up was down, left was right.
"I understand that this is probably a difficult question for you to answer, so I'll tell you what," Boogeyman said as she lowered her hand. "Meet me back on this roof at midnight in three days' time and you can give me your answer then."
Glory Girl could only give Boogeyman a shaky nod as the woman started to step back into the impermeable shadows that covered the building. Before the parahuman disappeared entirely, she turned around to Glory Girl and said, "Remember Victoria, you can either be a hero, or you can make a difference." And with those parting words, Boogeyman vacated her place on the roof, leaving Glory Girl alone with her thoughts and the form of a broken rapist.
Her cell phone weighed heavily in her costume's secret pocket, like a burning piece of coal. All she would have to do to fix this mess was to call Ames and ask her to heal the man.
Then he could hurt her, the dark voice in the back of her mind whispered. If she allowed this man to be healed and he escaped, then she placed her sister at risk. If she left him as it was, then he would be unable to escape the police and would be locked up in prison instead. It wasn't like they wouldn't treat his wounds, it would just take a longer amount of time.
She could make the streets a little safer for Amy, and all she had to do was to not call her. She slipped her hand into her pocket as she tried to ignore the tremors wracking her limb. Conflicting thoughts and arguments whirled around her mind as she tried for the life of her to figure out what she was going to do. As a cold breeze ruffled her skirt Boogeyman's words echoed through her mind.
You only have to lose once.
Glory Girl steeled herself as she made her choice.
Special Thanks to my Patrons: Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz