Free 1.5

I woke up wrapped in fabric, loose knit yarn, a sweater. I fought my way free, each movement causing a jingle. Finally free I twisted around looking for the source of the sound. Bells were taped to my tail.

This had to be Panacea's bedroom. It was cluttered, she was using the floor as a closet, and tastefully decorated, what little I could see of it anyway. I could make out a giant lump under the blankets. If she was still asleep I could—

"Gryphon," she mumbled, propping herself up. "You're up. We need to talk."

"Patrol. Talk later."

"It's Sunday."

Oh… crap. "Still patrol," I lied.

"Fine. When do you want to talk?"

'Never,' I thought. "Seven," I said.

"That works. Tay— Gryphon, your body is fragile right now and can't be moved without medical supervision, so please don't get any stupid ideas."

I didn't answer. Changing to Sauron removed the bells; I waved a wing toward the window. She slipped out of her bed and opened it for me. I didn't stick around to say "thanks."

Fucking Panacea, self righteous bitch.

I made a life, a good life; I'm helping people; I'm making a living. She didn't have the right to tell me what I could and could not do.

I should, I should—I should leave. Get away.

No. Trapped. She was right about that. I couldn't move or care for my body. There was no one to help. Everyone would take her side. The Protectorate would insist that I join the wards, go to school, play nice; the Guild wouldn't help a teenager; I'd convert and join the Saints, but even they probably wouldn't take a minor. Fuck.

Taylor was dead. I killed her. She had no right coming back.

Emancipation. No. That would hurt my dad even more. More than explaining that I'd been awake the last two months? Maybe. Probably.

Fucking Panacea.

Fuck this. Fuck all this shit.

I turned and headed for the Merchants' largest high traffic operation. The cashier would have maybe up to two hundred on him, but with no proof of intent I wouldn't be able to collect. I targeted the pharmacist instead.

I dove, striking the ground with enough force to break my legs. Not waiting for the pain to kick in I Changed. Cerberus charged the Merchant. A headbutt threw him against a wall. I bent down, muzzle next to his face and roared.

The other Merchants scattered. Fine. I'd get them all. Every time they ran an operation I'd target their pharmacist. Let's see how long they can stay in fucking business when they lose a man every time they try to peddle.

The pharmacist was groggy. Possible concussion or perhaps just stunned. It didn't matter. I felt his pants for a phone—the front right pocket—and ripped it open. The phone fell face down on the pavement. Turning it over without hands was tricky, but doable. Scratching the phone's screen when I dialed the PRT hotline was entirely unavoidable.

"PRT hotline. This is Paul. How may I help you, sir or ma'am?"

"Gryphon. Have drug dealer."

We did the song and dance. He promised a van. I promised to wait and stay on the line.

Trainwreck and Mush promised to do various unsavory things to me.

Arresting someone is a game. Neither side wants to escalate so whichever side can display force first wins. Since the Merchant reinforcements arrived first I was supposed to call off the van and skedaddle. Fuck that.

I heard the pair before I saw them (doggie ears). Mush—in the tradition of all under performing employees—was complaining about doing his job. Trainwreck didn't reply, but he still made more noise—slight chuffs of escaping steam, a low crash every time he took a step, the screech of metal on metal.

As they rounded the corner I let loose my flame. Trainwreck didn't even seem to notice, but Mush lit up like a human torch. Interesting thing about garbage: it burns. Oh, not all of it. The cans, nails, various metal odds and ends won't—of course—but intermixed are burger wrappers, kleenex, receipts, plastic bags, etc.

He ran in a circle screaming bloody murder. Stunned, I just stood watching, giving Trainwreck enough time to swing. Giant dogs are heavy. But they are still blood and bone. Water, a bit of carbon, a bit of nitrogen. Trainwreck was several tons of steel. I felt the fist pass through my left head, the force lifting me up and throwing against the wall.

I felt cold. I spared a glance at my left head, Trainwreck had caved it in. At the rate I was losing blood I had minutes? Seconds?

I clambered back to my feet, charged, leaped, and—at the apex—Changed. The world vanished for a moment; I pushed, hard as I could, willing for the Change to happen faster.

The delay gave Trainwreck enough time to wind up another punch. Big mistake. The punch pushed through into the gelatinous cube, the force behind the punch forcing me back. It didn't matter; I still had his hand. I scrunched forward, swallowing more.

For a brain dead junkie Trainwreck wasn't a complete idiot. He didn't hit me with his other hand, or yank straight back pulling me towards himself. Instead he planted his feet and pulled at a slight angle, swinging me in a circle. My butt left the ground, but I held on. I inched up his arm—his increasingly hot arm.

He must have been sending his steam into the arm in an attempt to burn me off. Would probably work too, if I felt pain. I moved on, squeezing the dead, burnt layers onto his armor as insulation.

Really wished I could hear what he was saying. The phone was still on. It would look bad if he surrendered right now and I kept eating—no, restraining him.

Trainwreck gave up on trying to throw me away; he switched to hitting me against the side of the building to no effect. Before I could reach his shoulder he stopped and dragged me over to two parked cars, wedged himself between them, using the cars as a counter force to his tugging. Clever.

Not clever enough.

I covered the cars as well and continued up his arm. On reaching his shoulder I wondered why he didn't eject from the suit. Was there no easy way to exit the suit? Or was it part of a life support system? Or did he not just think about it? Maybe it was actually remote controlled… I'd be screwed if that were the case.

Still, my course was set. I continued on until I covered the head and started to count. 'One Mississippi. Two Mississippi.' Did he have an internal air supply? Or was there air intakes in other parts of his suit? 'Ten Mississippi. Eleven Mississippi.' I continued to swallow the suit.

The suit continued to cook me. I idly wondered what it smelt like. 'Forty-seven Mississippi.' The back of the suit let out an explosion of forming a giant bubble in the cube. It burst a hole in my outer membrane. I sealed it but Trainwreck had noticed. He pushed more steam out, expanding the bubble.

The pressure was too great. I opened a path out, then shut it, opened and shut. The bubble slowly expanded despite my efforts. He couldn't have too much steam, right? He has to carry around his water so maybe ten gallons. Was that a good number? How much steam did ten gallons make? 'Did this in chemistry. One mole of an ideal gas makes 22.4 liters.' I recited. 'One mole of water is 18 grams. One gram of water is one milliliter. So… 1.8 liters is 100 moles and holy shit, that is a lot of steam!'

The steam was still blasting out of Trainwreck's back, but he wasn't moving. 'Shit. What number was I on? How long has it been? Two minutes? Three?' I couldn't risk killing him. I Changed back to Cerberus. Trainwreck remained standing. Shit.

I pounced driving my paws into his chest. He fell backwards, unresponsive; his joints were locked.

I spun in a circle looking for Mush.

"Gryphon?" Miss Militia stood next to an unconscious figure. Mush, I guessed. Aegis hovered overhead carrying Vista.

I nodded my right head towards Miss Militia. "Hello."

"Are you alright?"

"Yes. Don't know—" I jerked my head towards Trainwreck.

"We'll take a look at him back at base. Mush is going to count as a Protectorate capture, if that's alright with you."

I nodded.

Aegis set Vista down and grabbed hold of Trainwreck's armor; Vista clambered onto his back. Lifting off they seemed to distort, as if seen through a fun house mirror, and then vanished. So that's how they had arrived so quickly.

"Armsmaster is back at the base," Miss Militia explained. "He'll be able to deal with Trainwreck's suit so we can treat him."

That was a relief. I might have—maybe, possibly—gone slightly overboard in my takedown. A man's death wasn't worth whatever his bounty was—at least two thousand (the bare minimum), but it would be months before I saw a payout.

"Good job here, Gryphon," Miss Militia interrupted my chain of thought, "but this doesn't seem like you."

I ignored the implied question.

"Escalating the situation like this... if Vista and Aegis weren't both on duty Mush here"—she tapped him with her foot—"could have been killed."

"Mistake. Did not thuh-ink he would buh-urn."

"And Trainwreck?"

"Struh-ong. Tried to kill me. Only thuh-ing I could thuh-ink of."

"Going out alone like this is dangerous, Gryphon. We're here if you ever change your mind."

I nodded.

The PRT van finally arrived. They sprayed the foam encasing Mush with a chemical that liquidated it. Lifting Mush into the back they then refoamed him. I followed the van back to their base, but either Skidmark and Squealer hadn't heard about the capture, or they considered it a lost cause.

My phone's batteries had died in the night. Crystal had sent over a dozen messages asking if I was alright. I texted back a non-answer.

She didn't take it well. Insisted on meeting.

Capes who can fly tend to meet on rooftops. Not skyscrapers, too windy, a three story building was ideal. Crystal's favorite was an old office building with an excess of statuary. Cherubs, angels, and carved ivy spotted the building.

I found her in her usual position: leaning against an archangel. I perched on its extended wing. "So what happened with you and Panacea?" she asked upon seeing me.

"Don't wuh-ant to talk about it."

"Tough noogies. What happened?"

"Puh-ersonal."

"Right. Who'd you lose?" I didn't answer. She sighed. "I'm here if you need it. Heard you took out some Merchants."

"Yes. Doesn't matter." It didn't. It couldn't. Not really. I'd gotten lucky, and even if I hadn't another hero would have caught them.

"Of course it matters, silly goose. With only two left The Merchants are toast, thanks to you."

"Empire will take territory." What good could one more hero do? Was everything I did pointless?

"Hey, hey, one step at a time. We'll get there."

"Yeah. Sure."

"Want to do a team-up? My classes end at noon tomorrow so the afternoon is free."

That sounded nice. I said so.

She tried to get me to go shopping and then the movies with her like she always did. I said no like I always did. The rest of the day I flew randomly around the city.

I met Panacea outside of a coffee house. One of those chains where a single cup cost more than I'd spend on a meal. She insisted on buying me a cup and when I protested that I couldn't enjoy it she just said, "I can fix that."

She already knew, and it wasn't like she could screw me over any more than she already had. "Guh-o ahead," I consented.

She reached over and touched my upper right hand. I felt something shift around in my mouth, but I didn't feel any different.

"Try this." She shoved a cup of hot chocolate into my hands. Whip cream, little sprinkles, and artfully squirted syrup covered the top. There was no straw so I was guaranteed a milk mustache.

I took an experimental sip. Oh sweet nirvana was that good. I held it to my chest, limbs curling possessively around the cup.

"I'll get you another cup," she offered.

I accepted. We sat in the parking car, her car's heater on low, watching people walk in and out of the coffee house. She finished first.

"How did you fuh-ind me?" I asked.

"I do rounds on long term patients occasionally. Just a quick run through, heal those I can. Came to you, and you were awake. Not entirely unexpected, sometimes a patient is misdiagnosed as being in coma when they actually have locked-in syndrome—awake and aware but unable to act.

"I triggered a couple of nerves. Followed the transmission back and found an alien brain structure taking in all your bodily inputs. Your gemma. Looked up your name and date of admittance. It was right before Gryphon appeared."

"Will the doctors find out?"

"No. Not really. To them a gemma is mostly theoretical. Okay, there are two structures the corona pollentia and the corona gemma," her tone shifted as she started lecturing. "The corona pollentia is probably where powers come from. Some people, have it before they even have powers. The gemma connects your brain to the pollentia, so everyone with superpowers has both a gemma and a pollentia.

"The problem is is that there is no textbook pollentia. All of them are in different places, different shapes and sizes. A doctor is more likely to diagnose a brain tumor than a pollentia. And the gemma is an offshoot of the pollentia. The only reason we know of the gemma's existence is because of two patients, X1 and X2, who had MRIs before and after triggering."

"Safe?" I pointed at myself.

"Unless they try brain surgery." She held up a hand, forestalling my objection. "I can make sure that doesn't happen. Or at least warn you."

We sat silently for a few uncomfortable seconds. "Do you remember what happened the day you"—she waved a hand at me—"this?"

"Yes." She waited but I didn't expand on it. I was in the locker, and then I was free. It was the best moment in my life, and she was taking it away.

"Gryphon, you almost died. You were in the locker the entire day. The loss of circulation started causing tissue death after four hours; the blood in your limbs became toxic. I talked to the doctors, if that one teacher"—Mr Plinkley, history teacher, ex-EMT, I'd never had him unfortunately—"hadn't known to make tourniquets you would be dead. You need to go the police."

"What guh-ood would it do?"

"They'd be punished. Stopped," she pointed out.

I stared at her. Of course they wouldn't be punished. "No, thuh-ey wouldn't."

"This goes beyond bullying. This is assault."

"No witnesses."

"There's you."

"No. Didn't see."

"So you don't know—"

"I know. Didn't see."

"And what if they do this to someone else? Can you allow that?"

"They won't," I said. I didn't know why Emma chose me, maybe I was just that pathetic. They had never attacked anyone else.

"Are you willing to risk that."

I shut my eyes. I was done with that life. It didn't affect me any more. But could someone else be hurt? It wasn't any of my concern. 'Hero,' I reminded myself. "What could you do if I told you?"

"I," she bit her lip, "I'd ask Carol. She's a lawyer so she'd know what we could do."

"How did you find out?" I countered.

"This is ridiculous. You know, if you decided to come out sooner than April you still wouldn't go back to school."

"You said April."

"Yes, but if you wanted—"

I cut in, "Don't want."

"But—"

"No," I snarled.

"Alright, alright. But it'll get worse the longer this goes on."

She was wrong. I'd have more money, more respect, more time. This was salvageable. It had to be. I sipped my hot chocolate.

"Vicky liked your visit in the children's ward."

"Are we done?" I asked.

"Yeah. I guess. Just… yeah, we're done."

I thanked her for the hot chocolate and left. I had forty days to make a difference.