Trish checked her suit for the last time, the ritual, which she had conducted more times than she could count, taking on aspects of a meditation. The final step, brushing the long red hair that was attached to the black hypermesh cowl, reminded her of the long, steady, strokes she also used to sharpen the clay tempered steel tanto that she would take on certain missions, when she wished to leave a lasting impression on whoever her target was, an impression that her customary collapsible tactical baton didn't leave.
She still hadn't made up her mind whether she would take it tonight, though she was leaning in that direction. The harness she wore on occasion, the one which powered her grapple and took the weight of her body as she swung from the duraflex steel cable, that she was definitely taking. It was a five mile drive from 73rd street to Lafayette street, almost a mile less by the route Trish would be taking across the rooftops between 2nd and 3rd avenue. There were a few buildings that were too tall, too out of reach, but not many. Trish liked that route for its scenic views, especially late at night, though she would be the first to admit that it was the only time of day she ever got to enjoy it. The city had enough costumes flying around in the daytime, whatever method of propulsion they used, it didn't need her adding to the traffic. And Trish liked the exclusivity she felt at night. The few people like herself, people that preferred hunting down evil doers in the wee hours rather than in broad daylight, those people she already knew by sight and sound. She knew where they prowled. She knew, she could guess at least, where to find them on those nights when discretion became the better part of stupidity for the criminal class and they spent the evening in front of the TV watching the Mets or the Nicks instead of wandering the city assaulting law abiding citizens. Trish could trot out two or three stories of late night conversations, conducted across adjacent rooftops, between herself and one or two other costumed figures, the three of them acting more like strangers who happened to be regulars at the same bar. No names. Names weren't required. A nod of the head to acknowledge a familiar face, or a familiar costume, a salutation - "how's the hunting, " or "how's the fishing, anything biting?" before the topic would change to more mundane things like "What kind of wire are you using?" "Are those really claws on your gloves?" which sent her into an explanation that they were hand grapples, and she could use them, and the mini spikes in the soles of her shoes, to run up walls. Trish's ability to hear almost anything at long distances took up almost thirty minutes one evening as they played a game of "What am I saying now?"
But those conversations would occasionally resemble group therapy sessions, when tragedy had stricken one of them, someone they had failed to save, something they themselves had done that had accidentally hurt people, a relationship ending because they had been away too often, or lied one time too many about where they had been. It took a toll, the life she lived; the life they lived. Having people to talk to that understood that life was more precious to Trish than gold.
Unless we're talking about a shitload of gold, Trish thought, a shitload of gold can buy a lot of therapy.
Trish lifted the cowl and attached wig and gave it one final look before placing it on the plastic head in her closet just above the mannequin that was wearing her suit. She closed the wooden chest on the floor before closing the closet door and locking it. She opened the apartment door a crack to make sure the coast was clear before slipping out of Kathy Rambler's apartment.
She had just enough time to get to Luke's for dinner.
Rita had been laying on her couch for the past two hours, reading Love in the Time of Cholera while thinking that if every one of these fucking characters were to board the same cruise liner, and that liner were to disappear off the face of the Earth without a trace, Rita would not shed a tear.
But for the last ten minutes the hardcover book (Rita wouldn't read a book on her iPad if her life depended on it) had been sitting on her coffee table as Rita's eyes rested on the digital piano where it sat, unused since Aric was last here, against the wall. She had asked him several times after they had broken up if he wanted to come and collect it, and he had always said that he would do so if it was getting in her way, or if she simply didn't want it around anymore. It wasn't technically a passive aggressive response, but it was pretty fucking close in Rita's opinion. Rita's mother was quick to offer an alternate explanation.
"Quizá no quiera tenerlo por ahí porque le recordará a ti," she had suggested.
"Mamá, es su piano, ¿cómo podría recordarle a mí?" Rita had asked.
"Le recuerda todas las tardes que te sentabas en el sofá mientras él jugaba para ti."
She was probably right. They had spent a lot of nights that way, Rita sitting on the sofa with her legs folded underneath her while Aric played for her. The first time she had noticed that he was playing and crying at the same time she had gotten up and sat next to him on the piano bench, but he just smiled at her, while his fingers, and the tears running off his face, continued to caress the piano keys.
"It's an electric piano," She said once he had finished, deliberately avoiding the tightness in her chest, as she fought against her own tears, "you're gonna short something out."
"It's only tears," he had answered, his smile still present as he wiped his face, "it'll survive. So will I."
"What was that you were playing?"
"Geronimo's Surrender. A man named Peter Kater wrote it. It makes me cry every time I play it."
"Why do you keep playing it then?"
"Because it's so beautiful. And because tears are a small price to pay."
Just the thought of that moment brought the tightness back to Rita's chest as the tears that she had fought against at the time started running down her own face.
It was one of the first things that she had learned about Aric, how important music was to him, both the listening and the playing, how it acted as a relief valve for him. Music had never made Rita cry before she met him, and she still wondered sometimes whether their connection had rewired that part of her brain to resemble his. They had been connected the first time it happened, as the two of them listened to George Winston play Living Without You, which Aric was learning at the time. She hadn't been prepared for that level of intensity, how it filled him completely and how quickly it overflowed into her, like water from a tap filling a glass too far. It was deeper than they had ever gone before, more than simply sharing thoughts or images. It was raw emotion passing between them, unfiltered, uncensored, as the music drew it out of him: joy, heartache, longing, sadness, love.
This is not good, not good at all, not anywhere near good, she thought as she lay on the couch and mimicked Aric's motions and wiped her own face, think of something else for Christ sake. Anything but him.
It was almost as if the Gods themselves answered her prayers, that answer arriving in the form of a text message from the woman Rita had seen just a few hours earlier.
You need to talk to Misty. It's really important, Laura texted.
"Remember we can't stay too late. We have the thing later," Julia said to Beth as she sat at the kitchen table gluing a new gasket for their espresso machine.
"The thing?" Caitlin asked.
"She's hitting the next thing on her list tonight," Julia explained as her fingers held the two ends of silicon material together.
"Hey, you should come along," Beth said cheerfully, "I always wanted a sidekick."
You already have a fucking sidekick. Julia thought.
They had been a team for three years, and in that time they had developed something close to telepathy, or at least an ability to interpret even small changes in body language.
"Don't be that way, sweetie," Beth said as she walked behind where Julia was sitting, wrapped her arms around her and kissed the top of her head, "you know I'm just kidding around. And if anybody is anybody's side kick, I'm your sidekick. You're the one in charge. You always have been.
The three women had a history, and it was a history that did not have a happy beginning. It had been Julia that had finally tracked the two women down, with a little help from her father, but still mostly it was Julia that had followed the clues that lead to the oversized abandoned warehouse in Cape Girardeau where Killer Frost and Alice had spent a bit over four hours trying to kill each other before Kate and Barry finally arrived to end the threat that the pair were posing to the surrounding community in general, and each other in particular. Beth and Caitlin still had flashes of the memories from that day, even though those memories were created by their alter egos. Beth's memories were of a labyrinth of ice and frigid temperatures that pushed the heater in her suit to its limit; ice, and clouds of green gas that she herself was casting by the handful, her supply of chestnut sized pods almost depleted at the end.
"Hey! Ice Bitch! I'm coming for you, motherfucker! I'm gonna find you!" Beth's voice echoed across the building.
Caitlin's memories of that day were similar to Beth's, though hers were more about the large clouds of green mist and her constant efforts to condense them into frozen puddles on the floor. She had quickly run out of ambient moisture in the air, and had resorted to rupturing the sprinkler line on the roof which gave her more than enough material to work with. It was her own internal energy reserves she was concerned about now.
I knew I should have brought more Snickers Bars, she thought as she held her breath and ran towards a clean patch of air before replying to Alice's latest taunt.
"You should be looking for the guy that sold you that fucking wig! What is that, a fucking mop on your head?!"
"Come over here and get a better look!" Alice replied before a spear of ice shattered on an ice covered steel column a foot from her head.
That was too fucking close, Alice thought as she tossed a cloudburst pellet into the air and scampered to her right, firing both her semiautomatic pistols through the expanding cloud in the direction she thought was the source of the six foot long frozen deadly projectile.
"Uckingfay itchbay!" Alice laughed, "issedmay emay!"
"Wow! Fucking pig Latin from a fucking pig! There's a surprise. I'm gonna rip that mop off your fucking head, scortillium, and mop up your blood with it. Quod a fucking promissionem!"
SMASH! Another ice spear impacted another ice covered metal surface, but missed the woman in the atomic blonde wig that had been its target.
"Catch me if you can, you blue eyed BITCH! HA HA HA HA HA!"
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! echoed through the building and off the ice walls as Alice fired each of the pistols in her hands.
The local police HAZMAT team had been forced to cordon off the whole site with absorbent damns afterwards, as the ice and frozen puddles of toxic green material started to melt, and then mix, and then flow outwards. They were still monitoring local groundwater even though almost four years had passed.
"I don't want to be in charge. I want us to be a team, and I just want to be an important part of it," Julia said quietly, as she continued to look at the material in her hands. It didn't quite capture exactly what she was feeling, or what she meant, but it didn't have to. Beth knew both of those things already.
"We are a team. We have been since the day you pulled me out of there, the day you began to save me. You're the one who formed this team, not me. You formed this team, and you keep this team together. This team, by the way, which you still haven't named."
"I gave us a name," Julia said as she looked up at her best friend in the entire world.
"I'm not calling us The Dynamic League of Codependents."