I have baked some life. Anyone want a slice?
Splash 1.4
Saturday, 9:00am, April 23rd, 2005
⬥ Private message from ManInTheCan:
ManInTheCan: Sorry about the drone
Hmm..?
I leant back in my seat for a few moments to ponder before typing out a response.
Parthian: You made your choices, I made mine. Can't hold a grudge.
Parthian: Have any trouble getting the frag out of your paint?
ManInTheCan: A couple of scratches, which is more impressive than you might think. But that is why I'm messaging you. While I certainly don't condone your photoshoot, what happened last night shouldn't have happened. Evidently, I put a little too much trust in someone I shouldn't have while I was out of state and they greatly overstepped their bounds of authority.
ManInTheCan: I'd hate to have bad blood with a fellow tinker (I assume?) so soon after their debut, so please let me know if there's something I can do to make it up to you. Within reason of course.
I couldn't help but giggle maniacally to myself as I pondered my options. Someone with the username 'ManInTheCan', who described themselves as a fellow tinker, was messaging me out of the blue to apologise for the loss of my drone. I could only assume I was talking to either Sentinel himself, or possibly Arsenal - Atlas' other resident tinker - on his personal account. What could I ask the - presumably - man himself for?
I typed and re-typed the start of a sentence in response, then deleted it all again and thought some more. With time slowly ticking away to get ready to go out with Sam, I decided to leave my interlocutor without a firm answer for the time being. A favour from Sentinel was no small thing and I didn't want to waste it with a hasty response.
Parthian: I'll think on it and get back to you. Consider any bad blood cleared.
ManInTheCan: :thumbsup:
I closed the lid of my laptop and headed in the direction of the shower, eyeing the time as I went. Over the next 40 minutes or so, I went through the daily ablutions, scrubbing down, cleaning up and doing some hair care. Once I'd finished drying it and setting it, I put on some make-up - maybe a little more than the usual "no makeup" look I normally went with. I wanted to make a good impression with Sam, and his friends, of course.
I'm not overthinking this, am I?
I was definitely overthinking it.
I fussed for another 10-15 minutes, picking out some clothes - aiming for an elegant and slightly gothic look I hoped would be appealing - before heading out to find Sam. I found him waiting in the lounge room, in some blue jeans, a similarly toned polo with a white undershirt beneath, and a few big bags of art supplies beside him.
"Ready to go?" he asked.
"Yeah. Can I help with those?" I offered.
"Please." Sam stood up from the couch and handed me a big duffle bag, shouldering another 2 himself. With an eager 'Okay!' I hefted the last bag and followed him to his small hatchback, down in the parking lot. Once the bags were loaded in the boot, I climbed into the passenger seat and buckled in as Sam flipped on the radio and pulled out of the car park, heading towards the city.
Despite my best efforts, I failed to resist eyeing him curiously as he drove.
Just… Keep it casual Annelise. You were literally raised to be able to carry small talk. How much more difficult could just a casual chat be?
"How many of your friends are coming?" I asked idly.
"One girl - Jane - I know personally, and then three others I met at a class last week," he answered.
"Ahh, okay. Do you usually do stuff like this on the weekends? Go and find stuff to paint? With Jane?"
"Sometimes. I've known Jane since high school and she's like a sister to me," Sam explained. "I started a course on landscape art with her last week because I suck at anything that's not portraiture and that's where we met the other three. We thought it might be fun to go out and do something together so we settled on a group painting day."
"Cool, cool," I responded, leaning back into my seat a little bit and finding a tune to softly tap a foot to while I tried to find a way to continue the conversation. "So... you're gonna find somewhere with a bit of skyline. Got somewhere planned out?"
"Well Jane is a bit of a cape geek, and very persuasive. So… Probably a view of the harbour that's got the AA base in it. Maybe around Huntleys Point on the north side. It's got some good vantage points."
I hummed in acceptance, and went back to watching the parts of Sydney go past that I didn't usually pay attention to while I was the one driving; the alleys, the side streets, the buildings, the people walking... and, occasionally, back at Sam.
"How long does it usually take to... paint a skyline?" I asked a little sheepishly, trying to prompt some more idle discussion.
"Depends on how detailed you wanna get and how fast you can work. We'll probably be there for most of the day although you don't have to stick around if you don't want to."
I let out a small laugh.
"No, I'm not trying to get out of it already... I'm just curious. Some time away from work is probably a good thing, since stuff's come to a bit of a flashpoint and I could use a bit of time away from it to let things settle in and develop. A day away from it all is good."
Sam chuckled in response.
"It's fine, really. I'm under no illusions about you being as interested in art as I am. I just wanted you to do something other than work. Plus, it's nice to get to know you better. I feel like I've hardly seen you since I moved in, with how much you've been working."
Great. Even Sam thinks I have no life.
"Yeah, I suppose that's true enough... Very busy... Lots to do..." I mumbled. "But! I'm here now. And, yeah, I'm plenty interested, but you have to admit that being as interested as you is a pretty high bar!"
"I'll take that as a compliment," Sam laughed jovially.
I gave him a broad smile by way of approval.
The drive into the city took around an hour or so, thanks to traffic, and as we were approaching the Anzac Bridge I heard the rumbling of jet engines approaching from the south-west. A familiar rumble.
I panicked for a second, twisting in my seat to try and spot the source of rumble before remembering that I wasn't currently Parthian. Sentinel - assuming he and ManInTheCan were one in the same - had extended an olive branch and apologised for last night, apparently passing the blame to someone else for the entire debacle, but I wasn't going to take him at his word and go knocking on Atlas' door in costume.
Continuing to gaze out Sam's window, I watched as three dots in the distance rapidly approached, growing bigger by the second until they quickly became recognisable as Sentinel, flanked by two of his probes flying towards the bridge.
"Huh," I muttered, before deciding to feign ignorance. "That's… There's a cape heading towards the bridge, with some big drones," I told Sam.
Sam's head whipped around to glance out his window.
"Holy-! 'Lise - that's Sentinel!"
The probes peeled away from Sentinel to fly under the bridge as he rocketed over the top, slowing down and arcing up to perform a loop-de-loop before banking back down and carrying on across the harbour towards the Atlas HQ. A bunch of cars honked their horns as a way of cheering as he passed over and I giggled as Sam joined in.
"Seems like a bit of a show-off," I mused, continuing to play clueless.
"Well he is a celebrity of sorts. How the hell do you not know Sentinel is?" Sam flashed me an incredulous look.
Whoops. Too much ignorance.
"I've heard of him!" I responded defensively. "Just seems a little reckless to be flying those things around a bridge willy-nilly, you know?"
Says the girl who played Cops and Robbers with three of them in the middle of the city last night.
"He's only the greatest Tinker since Hero, may he rest in peace! I'm sure he knows what he's doing," Sam said in defence of the hero who definitely didn't need defending.
"Mmm. I suppose you don't get to that point without having a pretty good idea," I conceded.
"You're not that big on cape stuff, are you?"
Is that a heaping pile of irony I hear knocking at the door?
I turned back to Sam, with Sentinel's drones now well out of the vicinity, and gave him a shrug.
"I guess I just haven't really had that much time to follow the scene or anything."
"Well a lot has happened since Leviathan..." Sam trailed off.
I nodded, humming in agreement, and decided to let the statement lie. I turned away again to watch the buildings go by.
After another 15 minutes of weaving through the city traffic, Sam pulled into an underground lot to park. We collected the gear he packed and headed back up to the surface for a short walk to the public transport hub at Circular Quay. I stuck close to him, clutching his equipment tightly as I focused on passively observing and going with the flow, rather than giving in to the instinct to interrogate and take control of the situation and where we were headed.
It was a nice day out, the weather was clear, and we seemed to be getting a reprieve from the chill of the last few days. As a result, there were a lot more people out - tourists and locals alike, going about their days and enjoying the sights. We waded through the hustle and bustle, having to gradually fight harder against the tide of people as we got closer to
the quay, until I heard a voice calling out.
"Sam! Sam! Over here!" a woman called to us.
I perked up, looking for the source, ready to signal Sam if he hadn't noticed yet. Unsurprisingly - considering he was a foot taller than me - Sam was able to spot them with ease, and gave a wave in her direction.
"Hey, Jane!" he called in response.
He gave me a nod, tilting his head in her direction and led us over to where Jane sat with two other people. Another young man, who I guessed might be Greek from his features, and an older looking woman in maybe her mid-50s. I surveyed the group, putting on a well trained smile and holding up one hand in a chipper half wave as I introduced myself rather than waiting to be introduced.
"Hi! I'm Annelise, but people call me 'Lise."
Compelled by curiosity, I took a bit of a longer look at Jane, wondering what kind of lady Sam would be long term friends with. She was what most people would consider to be conventionally attractive; standing maybe three to four inches taller than me with shoulder-blade-length straight blonde hair, a slightly ovalescent face with bright green eyes, a rounded nose, and a bright toothy smile.
"Hi! I'm Jane," she responded with an even more eager attitude than mine, darting over as we arrived to take my hand in a sort of part-clasp, part-shake. "This is Keith and Mel. You must be the mysterious and benevolent housemate Sam has told me about!"
Well she's certainly a ray of sunshine.
"Yeah! Not mysterious by any particular choice, though - I just work a lot," I enthused, giving her hand a friendly squeeze in turn. "So the invite out today was nice for the chance to... get away from it all. I hope I'm not intruding or anything."
"Not at all! We're happy to have you," she insisted.
Keith gave a nod, and Mel smiled warmly in agreement.
"Thanks," I said with another smile - Jane's pep was infectious - before turning slightly back to Sam. "Did you say there was someone else coming too?"
"Oh, Will just texted me," Jane cut in. "He woke up with a fever so he's staying home. Huge bummer."
She frowned slightly but quickly perked back up again.
"So, we were thinking of getting the ferry up to the Berry's Bay lookout as our spot for the day. Any objections?" she proposed.
I shrugged and nodded agreeably, adjusting the bag on my shoulder.
"Just happy to tag along," I enthused.
"Sounds good to me. Let's go!" Sam piped up. He adjusted his bags as the others gathered up their gear and then we all headed into the Circular Quay ferry terminal. Tickets purchased, we headed for our wharf to await the arrival of the next ferry.
"So is the Berry's Bay lookout a nice spot?" I asked, directing the question to the whole group.
"Oh it's lovely," Mel said. "I've done some work there before but it's a whole new city to paint now."
"It hasn't stopped sprouting upwards," I remarked, alluding to but not quite stepping on the cause of it.
Leviathan was always an awkward topic. Even seven years after his attack, people still didn't really know how to talk about what had happened. Sydney was the third city Leviathan attacked, and the first time we'd truly 'lost' to him. With no mass teleporters to bring in heroes, only Legend, Eidolon, Alexandria - and shortly after, Hero with a dozen other capes - had arrived in time to reinforce Sydney's (at the time) small cape population... Along with other Australian cape teams, like the Mystics and the Renegades, who had access to Mover powers.
It hadn't been enough, and more than 1.5 million people died in the attack.
Despite the destruction, Sydney had bounced back remarkably fast thanks to the international support. So quickly, in fact, that the city had still managed to host the Olympics in 2000, which ended up being treated as a sort of grand re-opening for the heart of the city. A celebration of human perseverance that showcased we could still thrive and carry on
with our traditions, even in a world beset by the Endbringers.
For a lot of people though - especially those who'd lived through the attack - it left them at an awkward middle point. Talking too casually about the Australia's biggest national tragedy felt like an insult to the memory of all the lives that were lost, but too much negativity and mournfulness felt like it undermined how far the city had come since its destruction and how much we'd prospered in spite of what we lost. And there were plenty of survivors, friends, and family who just didn't want to talk about it, under threat of reliving their own memories of it all.
Lost in thought as we waited for the ferry, I found my eyes drawn to Atlas HQ more than anything on the ground while I listened to the idle chatter.
"Are you a cape enthusiast too?" Jane asked in her ever eager tone. She must have caught me staring and assumed. I broke from my reverie to look back at her with a smile.
"Not particularly," I answered. "Most of my life I've been too busy to pay attention. I suppose it's been bringing itself to my attention a little bit more lately, though. Sam - tell them about Sentinel at the bridge!"
Sam recounted the spectacle to Jane and the others as the ferry docked at the wharf and the workers set out the gangplanks for us to board. I could only describe the look on Jane's face as that of a child listening to a grandparent tell an old war story.
"What?! No fair! That's so cool! Ugh! I'm so jealous! I want Sentinel to do a backflip for meeeeeeee~!" Jane complained, in an overdramatic but oddly genuine fashion.
"It did look pretty impressive..." I conceded. "Wonder what he was doing?"
"He loves doing things like that whenever he's out on patrol," Jane explained. "It's the sort of thing that puts a smile on people's faces. If the capes are happy to be showing off a little, then we know there's nothing to worry about, right?"
The piercing sound of the ferry horn split the air momentarily before the roar of the engines picked up, and the vessel started to pull out from the wharf, turning towards the harbour.
"You ever wonder if maybe things weren't all A-OK, would they stop doing that?" I countered. "Or would they keep doing it anyway, because people would notice and start panicking otherwise?"
Jane's face hardened as she started to ponder that thought very deeply - as if the idea that heroes could lie to the people was a totally alien concept to her. Keith leant over and whispered conspiratorially to me.
"Jane is totally gaga for cape stuff. Apparently, Maverick saved her life once when he stopped a car from running her over and she talks about it all the time. I guarantee she'll mention it to you before the day's over," he joked playfully.
The mention of Maverick was a bit of a jolt. Even as a cape myself now, it had been so long since I'd thought of him. I gave Keith an understanding nod, and in the interest of confounding Jane further, I elaborated.
"I mean... wouldn't it kinda be required of them? As superheroes? To make it seem like everything's okay regardless of whether it is or not. In order to protect the public from anything bad that might happen if people started panicking and thinking the heroes don't have everything under control."
"I guess? It depends though, doesn't it?" Jane began. "If there's a villain on the rampage, seeing Sentinel doing backflips instead of rushing to the scene at Mach four isn't gonna put me at ease, right? It's about the ideals they embody. When there's trouble or danger, we can count on them to protect us and catch the villains, but when there isn't, they ease up. That's not to say I don't think they aren't still working hard, but if the heroes are always looking for trouble non-stop and we see them doing that, then we'd assume that there was trouble to be found and then we'd always be worried."
"I almost got run over once," she continued. "Car was doing 70 in a 50 zone and ran a red light. It was a big car too, almost certainly would have killed me... but at the last second, from out of nowhere, Maverick jumps in front of me and takes the hit for me, practically catching the car. I was terrified! But despite the fact that he'd just stopped this car going 70
kilometres an hour almost dead in its tracks, that he was covered in broken glass and I could see this piece of metal stabbing into his leg. Despite all that, the first thing he did was flash me this big, warm smile and say, 'Are you okay, Miss?'"
I watched as Jane's eyes widened with wonder as she recounted the story. For a near death experience, she didn't seem traumatised in the slightest. Quite the opposite in fact. Earnestly caught mildly by surprise, I frowned as I pondered one of the statements.
"Stabbing into his leg?" I asked.
"Crazy, right? Because he's shown himself to be bulletproof before. I can only think that maybe his powers take time to activate and if that's the case then what he did was even more heroic! He made a split second decision and legitimately put himself in harm's way to save me."
I lapsed into thought for a few moments, a few complicated expressions working their way across my face. That was certainly Maverick... My cousin, Peter. He had always been a genuine hero right down to his very core. I wondered if his father was happy or upset about that wound and why he got it. Peter could be bulletproof if he wanted, but after that accident that led to him getting powers, Uncle Dave had never truly been able to stop worrying about him. That was a big part of why he'd decided to have Cardon Enterprises fund the Atlas Alliance… So that Peter - Maverick - would have a team around him to watch his back and help keep his bleeding heart from leading him to take too many risks.
A wave of sadness washed over me as I thought about Peter and Uncle Dave. We'd been so close when we were kids - to the point that I still thought of Peter as more of an older brother than a cousin. I wished I could have gone to them after I… left home in a hurry. But they were too closely connected to my parents; I couldn't predict what they might have
done if I'd told them everything. And I couldn't go back home. Absolutely not.
I suppose I could reach out sometime. It's not like I'm kept too busy to get in touch anymore. Maybe Peter could tell me why Elly isn't taking my calls anymore? Or at least find out if she's okay…
I blinked a few times, realising I just absolutely zoned out, and gave Jane a sheepish smile.
"Yeah - really seems like one of the good ones," I agreed.
"Definitely. He's also a total hunk. Mmm!"
Hahaha… ew.
I gave Jane a bit of an involuntary weird look at that thought, and chuckled. The ferry rocked a bit as it docked again at another wharf.
"Hey ladies!" Sam called out. "This is our stop."
I hefted my bag and made to follow Sam again. As we disembarked from the ferry, Keith leant in again.
"Told you~!" he muttered.
"You absolutely called it," I marvelled back at him. "Within minutes."
"It's kind of endearing, though. Nice to know that the AA really can inspire so much hope in people."
"Honestly it sounds like a life-changing experience. I can hardly blame her for wanting to share the story," I agreed.
It was a five minute walk from the wharf to the lookout where we all started to set up our various bits of equipment. Sam and Mel both had easels on which they set out some canvases, Jane had a big sketch pad and Keith had a bulky and expensive looking digital camera.
"Any preferences for what you want to work with?" Sam asked. "We've got acrylic or water paints, or you can do sketches like Jane, if you want?"
"I'm good with a pencil," I replied, eyeing Keith's camera curiously. It looked like a new model and was probably very expensive. I could feel my power tingling in the back of my mind.
The best way for me to describe how my hard-light projectors worked was that it was a kind of lensing effect, much like that of a camera - except, instead of bending light, it bent its properties. High quality optics were more than just necessary, they were the bulk of the weight of a projector; I'd spend a lot of time early on disassembling junk cameras for parts to prototype with before I reached the point where I needed to manufacture my own, more specialised lenses. Those weren't only useful for hard-light projectors, either - the optics package on the Peregrine was far better than most consumer tech, on account of being able to build it myself, to much more exacting specification.
That camera looks pretty nice, though. I wonder if I could strip it down for parts for the Peregrine rebuild?
Sam dragged me away from that distraction by handing me a sketch pad and a set of drawing pencils. I took the supplies gratefully, but instead of getting started, I hovered around a little bit, curious as to what everyone else planned to start with.
Unsurprisingly, Jane had chosen to frame Atlas HQ as the focus of her piece, and was currently working on sketching out a rough skyline. Sam was focusing more on the CBD itself, while Mel was starting with where the harbour opened out into the ocean. It was harder to tell exactly what Keith was shooting, but he seemed to be getting pictures of all kinds.
I clutched my sketch pad and took a few steps back - contextualising not only the skyline of the CBD, but Sam against it as well, observing him as he observed the lay of the land and pondered his canvas. After a little while spent just watching and taking in the details, I put a soft pencil to the page and began to lightly outline the shape of my subject; Sam, and particularly the look of concentration on his face.
From the moment I put the pencil to paper, I could feel the urge to use this time to lay out design and concept drawings for the next version of the Peregrine. Thanks to yesterday's field tests, though - and the choice of Sam as my subject - I was able to fairly easily suppress that urge for the time being, as I zoned in on something organic rather than technological.
The first handful of hours passed by quietly as everyone focused on their work, only pausing occasionally to make idle small talk. As the day went on, I could feel the itch getting a little more nagging. I really did want to work out some new ideas for the drone. There was always room for improveme-
I managed to shut down the instinct again as I stared even harder at Sam's face and body, to the exclusion of my awareness of anything else. Sam was no Hollywood hunk, but he certainly wasn't bad looking. A little on the lanky side but I could choose to see it as toned if I wanted.
I might have ended up stylising him a little bit in my sketching; a little more angular here, a little bit more prominent there, adjusting his stance a little bit more confidently, his grip on the brush assured. Maybe it was a little bit embellished. So what? It was art, even if it was just a sketch. It wasn't that bad, it was just... picking good features that were already rhere.
As I added a little bit more shading to the side of his brow in profile, emphasising the not-quite-severe, purposeful expression, my thoughts turned somewhat to my stomach; not much more than peckish on account of a filling breakfast, but fairly thirsty. I pondered speaking up to inquire whether the group planned to take a break, but shied away from the idea, unwilling to shatter the unique atmosphere of artistic focus.
Very zoned in on my work, a jolt of surprise shot through me as I realised Jane was peering at my work over my shoulder.
"Ooo! Interesting! I love your composition," she said in a teasing fashion.
"Ah! W-what?!" I yelped, jolting upright and twisting as she announced her presence.
For a split second, I wondered why my new alert scripts for the Peregrine didn't ping me that someone was that close to me; then it hit me all over again that I wasn't in costume, I hadn't uploaded those scripts yet, and the Peregrine experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly just last night.
In the here and now, I found myself moving to hide the sketch from her in a guilty fashion and then forced myself to stop, mentally cursing that I got taken by surprise. I took a second to master myself and then put on a smile.
"Thanks," I responded shyly, looking down to consider it again in its totality myself, having spent most of the time laser focused on small details.
The piece did include vague references to the skyline, wiggles of shading here and there to indicate splashes of colour, but I had mostly avoided any straight lines; with the exception of the parts of the easel necessary to convey the context of the subject I was sketching, almost all of my efforts over the last few hours had been soft outlining, marking, hard lining, shading and little flourishes here and there, all telling the story of an artist and his dedication to a work in progress.
"You know we're supposed to be drawing landscapes right~?" Jane whispered to me.
I whipped my head back around to look up at her, mortified. This was weird, right? This was probably creepy. We quite literally came out here to do landscape work and I actually just drew a sketch of my new house mate instead. It was probably going to creep him out. Jane gave me a wink and then spoke louder as she addressed the rest of the group.
"Do we wanna break for lunch now?"
I tried to at least freak out silently, hardly listening to the others as they piped up in response. A consensus was quickly reached, with Keith and Mel volunteering to stay and watch the gear while Jane, Sam and I went to grab some food from a kiosk we'd passed earlier.
I stiffly flipped the sketch pad closed and stood up, clutching it tightly where nobody could spy on what I had drawn and then shuffled in with the others. It was only a short walk up to the kiosk and the three of us made a bit of small talk about how our pictures were going.
"I'm kinda impressed Lisey~" Jane needled.
Lisey? Is that my nickname now? I wonder if Sam will catch onto it, or if he'll keep calling me Lise…
"You've got a real eye for detail," Jane continued. "Do you work with small scale stuff a lot? Like for work or hobbies?"
Dammit… Jane, please pick anything else to talk about..!
"Uhh... yeah. My job is... technical," I answered in a small voice, vaguely deflecting.
"Oh really?" Sam chimed in. "I'm kinda curious about your job actually. Is it like engineering or IT?"
I perked up a little bit at Sam's show of interest, nodding emphatically.
"Yeah. I can't give you any specific details because it's, uhh, classified." Nice cover, 'Lise. "But it's been a lot of both, lately..."
"Ooooo~!" Jane cooed conspiratorially.
"NDAs are exciting. Wait! You're not working on the thing they're building under the AAHQ are you?! If you are, you have to tell me! I need to know Lisey! What are they hiding down there?!" she lamented in dramatic fashion, grabbing me by the shoulders and jostling me gently.
"Jane, calm down!" Sam said, a little concerned.
I grinned a little bit as I brought a hand up to rest on her wrist against my shoulder, deciding to take the opportunity to do a little retaliatory teasing.
"You know, I might know a little something…" I said as nonchalantly as possible. "Did you see the photos that leaked on PHO before the thread was taken down?"
"No, I didn't!" Jane whined. "I woke up late this morning and they'd already been taken down..!" She pouted and hung her head momentarily before perking up again. "Wait. Did you?!"
I grinned even wider for a moment, letting the tension build up a little further, enjoying my newfound leverage far too much.
"Maaaaybe~" I allowed, before suddenly reaching into my purse to pull out my phone, unlocking it with a few taps and bringing up the photos I'd saved. I tilted the phone to her, showing her the Peregrine's overhead stills in ever-so-slightly grainy - but high-resolution - full-colour night vision.
Jane's eyes lit up like a Christmas tree and she snatched my phone from my hand to stare into it, giggling like a schoolgirl. It took her a few seconds to catch herself and turn bright red with embarrassment as she meekly held out my phone to give back to me.
"Sorry..." She said sheepishly.
My instinct was to snatch my phone back and admonish her rude behaviour, but I swallowed the thought.
Be nice. Make friends. Everyone needs friends.
Instead of taking my phone, I leant over and swiped to the next shot from a different angle and nudged the device back towards her.
"They posted a few different shots," I prompted.
Jane giggled again, almost dancing with joy as she stared into the screen as the three of us queued up to order food.
"So what do you think it is, based on those? And... any thoughts on who might have taken them? It seems like it's a new cape... I don't really know much," I lied, trying to prompt her into speculating, in the interest of figuring out what she thought of me… Or, rather, of Parthian.
"Well, I read through all the other comments before the post was locked and I'm leaning towards some sort of training centre," Jane answered. "A museum seems a bit self-aggrandising and not really worth the secrecy. Question is, who's it a training centre for? The AA themselves almost certainly have one up in their flying fortress already - so who, then? A Wards-esque program seems the most likely… but the bill to legalise underage capes has been stuck in the senate for more than a year now. So unless something's changed, or is gonna change soon, I'm not sure. As for the cape who posted the pics, I don't know, really. We don't know anything about them or what their powers are yet, except that maybe they're a Tinker, but that could be any number of things."
I pulled an incredulous frown - partly at the relative dismissal of the 'mystery cape', and partly at a revelation hidden right in the middle of her… admittedly expert-sounding analysis.
"I didn't even realise underage capes were illegal," I said. "Why even do that? There are so many young parahumans... There's going to be ones doing cape stuff either way. At least in America they've got a safe option..."
Jane frowned as well.
"A lot of the capes who died in the Leviathan attack were kids, and there's some pretty morbid footage from news crews and people on the streets of it happening. Stories from parents who had no idea their kids had powers, spending days wondering what happened to their children… only to find out they'd been drowned or crushed or died in any number of other horrible ways while trying to fight Leviathan. It was a big point of contention when Sentinel and Cardon Enterprises went to the government with the AA proposal. There's still plenty of underage heroes out there like Beacon and Gusto, but legally, they have to be classified as Rogues - and the AA, Protectorate and APRA always have to discourage their actions even when they're saving people. It sucks on a lot of levels. Hopefully, now that we have a much more organised system for heroes, this'll be the turning point for them," she concluded.
"Yeah... If your kid's got powers, they're probably going to fight... Would you rather they fight alone as Rogues or have a team, as well as older capes looking out for them? It should be an absolute no-brainer... Oh well. I guess I'm glad I don't know any underaged capes to worry about." I said, shaking my head.
Jane continued to swipe through the pics on my phone, zooming in and studying them for the next few minutes of waiting until we reached the front of the queue to order.
"What do you want 'Lise?" Sam asked.
"Oh! Umm... I'll... take a Caesar wrap and a bottle of water," I offered in response.
"Gotcha." Sam placed the order and the three of us stepped aside to wait for our food. Jane handed my phone back to me, a nervous and guilty expression on her face.
"Sorry. I might have swiped a little too far and seen a pic of your workplace," she muttered.
I stiffened in place, my veins running ice cold before I clawed my phone back and frantically stuffed it back in my purse to secure it.
"Umm, you, uhh..." I floundered for a few moments in pure panic, lowering my voice with a worried tone. "That stuff's, umm, classified, so uhh... I didn't... you didn't see anything serious, right?"
"Just a fancy looking workshop I think?" Jane answered in an equally hushed voice. "But I didn't see anything. You don't have to worry about me one bit."
She mimed zipping her mouth shut.
"Food's here!" Sam called as he started loading stuff into his arms. I moved up to grab my stuff, mentally kicking myself.
Dumb, dumb, dumb! I should've put those photos in their own folder. What if she saw the Peregrine? What if she saw the Lightreach? Now all I need is for Sam to find out I sketched him instead of, y'know, what we actually came here to sketch, and make me look like a weirdo. Then my total fuck-up of the first time I've actually gone out with new people and tried to make friends will be complete.
I followed close behind the others as we moved away, almost physically shrinking down as I cringed at my simple, stupid mistake. My eyes remained fixated on the ground as we walked, watching the placement of my feet and enduring the tension and awkward silence that seemed to last an eternity on the short walk back to the others.
Jane sat in silence as she ate, while the others talked. I snuck glances at her, doing my best to stay discreet, trying to pierce through the windows of her eyes to decipher what she was thinking about that's got her so quiet. I prayed to gods known and unknown that she didn't see anything that would inevitably become identifiable as belonging to Parthian.
I pulled my phone out again and began frantically going through it. First, I saved all the incriminating photos to their own folder and encrypted it. Then, I went through outgoing connection logs, breathing a sigh of relief as I determined she hadn't uploaded copies anywhere while the phone was out of my sight.
I was upset with myself, even so. Angry enough that I didn't even want to finish my wrap. Instead, I just sat and simmered, kicking myself over and over again so I might never make such a rookie mistake twice.
When lunch was over, everyone went back to working on their respective art pieces. I looked at the front cover of my sketch pad and contemplated what to do next. I could have started something new, but... Nothing else I might've wanted to draw out here would help me keep my mind off my gear. Not to mention, it would be obvious I'd started over, and they'd probably want to see what I was working on before.
Instead of making a decision, or sitting there staring at my sketchpad and looking awkward, with a stroke of genius I put off the decision by pulling out my phone. The bookmark to the PHO home page called out to me, to see if there were any new developments. Both the thread I created and the one about Parthian remained locked, so there was nothing new to read there. I had, however, received a response regarding my ban.
⬥ Private message from Aussiex3:
Aussiex3: Right now your ban is gonna stay in effect. We don't know anything about you except you're a verified cape whose first post was pics of classified material. PHO doesn't condone and tries not to encourage villainous activity, so if you're not a villain maybe go do something heroic? Catch a thief or save a cat from a tree or something. Once we know more about you and that your intentions are good, I'll think about lifting your ban early.
Ugh. That's so unfair! Other capes' speculation threads were fine. Why lock mine? Overzealous moderators...
I paused as an idea occurred to me.
Hmmm...
I pulled up the private message thread with ManInTheCan and started to type.
Parthian: Think you've got the influence to get me unbanned from PHO and my speculation thread unlocked? I'm not a villain, but the moderator seems to have a hard-on for the idea.
I sent the message, then lowered my phone for a moment to look around at the others. Everyone else seemed to be zoned in on their work. Jane noticed me looking and gave me a small but nervous smile before returning to her work. I looked down at the sketchpad and then brought my phone up again, refreshing my messages.
Nothing yet.
I let out a sigh.
I put my phone back in my purse and then grabbed the sketchpad, flipping back open to my previous work. There was no point starting something new and fighting the urge to tinker when Jane had already seen my sketch of Sam and the others would probably ask to see it anyway, so I continued work on it. After about another hour or so of working my phone pinged with a notification.
I suppressed a jolt of surprise as I was broken from my focus and then carefully closed the sketchpad, putting it down to the side and pulling out my phone to check it.
⬥ Private message from ManInTheCan:
ManInTheCan: I can probably swing that. Is this what you want as your favour?
I pondered for a few moments. It was probably a fair ask. It did require him to demonstrate his influence a little bit. And I did want people talking about Parthian... That was the whole reason for the stunt in the first place.
It wasn't exactly the best thing to use a favour from the most powerful tinker in the southern hemisphere on… But there's favours and then there's favours, and this was not the latter. It wasn't a 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card - not that I was planning on landing myself in jail. No… this was a perfectly appropriate request.
Parthian: Yes.
ManInTheCan: Deal.
I failed to suppress a giddy little grin as I anticipated getting what I wanted from the annoying moderator. One of those small victories that tasted oh so disproportionately sweet.
ManInTheCan: Don't post anything you shouldn't this time.
Parthian: Already promised the moderator I wouldn't! Cross my heart.
ManInTheCan: It's me you should be worried about crossing. :wink:
Parthian: And yet, here you are about to get me unbanned! And you didn't even demand that I go save a cat or something first. Truly, you're a gracious adversary.
Parthian: :smirk:
ManInTheCan: So long as you use those powers for good, we won't have a problem.
Parthian: Alright, big guy. You've made your point, and it's well received.
With a sudden rush of awareness, I hid my phone screen for a moment while I looked up and around to make sure nobody was watching me. Nobody was but the flash of movement did draw a glance from Sam.
"Everything okay?" He asked.
"Yeah, just- uhh, just work stuff. It's nothing, just... a notification," I said, putting as much confidence as I could in my voice and ending with a weary smile.
"How's the drawing going? Mind if I take a look?"
I froze up, opening my mouth so that my brain could generate an appropriate refutation. When it unexpectedly and utterly failed to produce one, I gave him an awkward smile and grabbed the sketchpad, clutching it close.
"I- it's, no, you don't want to, it's not... I don't think... it's not really done or anything..." I started to try and excuse myself.
Annelise. Get a hold of yourself! What's wrong with you today?
"That's cool. I can get a bit cagey about showing my work before it's finished too," he said sympathetically. "Lemme see at the end of the day?"
I breathed an altogether probably too loud sigh of relief, and muttered a few vaguely agreeable words. He gave me a smile and went back to painting.
I let my racing heart slow down again and - with another quick glance around - opened the sketchpad to cautiously continue my efforts. I was basically continuing to dig my own grave after learning it was destined for me, but… maybe he'd forget?
Or maybe he'd be too busy looking at the other parts of my drawing. The way I had started sketching the skyline was rather abstract.
Hmm, that's basically a circuit diagram… No! Bad! Stop that!
I started aggressively shading over the hints of circuitry - creating a much more darkened backdrop that, annoyingly, only served to highlight the drawing of Sam in the centre of the page. Exasperated, I tried to flesh out more detail elsewhere in a more… organic manner. Smooth, curved lines that flowed naturally like... the wings on the Peregrine drone.
Nope! Perhaps if I sketch another person? That seemed to be working.
I started drawing Keith, and quickly realised I was much more interested in his camera as I started envisioning - and then sketching - a refined optics package for the Peregrine.
Okay, I need to stop.
I started to scribble over what I had drawn so far, and then stopped for a moment. No point letting good ideas go to waste. I pulled out my phone and took a quick photo before going back to scribble some more. Once I thought it looked suitably like a mistake in the drawing, and not a covered-up design, I slowly closed the sketchpad, closed my eyes, and tried to centre myself for a few minutes.
I let time pass for a short while. It was actually very relaxing in the warm afternoon air, and the idea of just dozing off for a while began to rapidly grow more appealing. Maybe a quick nap would let me get back to it without all these designs floating around in my head trying to get out. I leant back, closing my eyes and focusing on the warmth of the sun, just letting time pass.
A voice called into the depths of unconsciousness… calling for me.
"'Lise? 'Lise~!" Sam said, trying to gently rouse me.
I opened my eyes and straightened up.
"Yeah... what's up?" I asked, looking around.
"We're gonna start packing up now."
As I looked around, I noticed the sun was much lower in the sky, right around the point where it was starting to turn the horizon orange. A little surprised and embarrassed, I gave him a little smile and a nod.
"Ahh, okay... yeah," I agreed, still gathering my wits about me.
I reached around, checked my purse and phone before grabbing the sketch pad. It was 5:11pm now, according to my phone, and everyone else was gathering up their gear. Keith was packing away his camera while Jane helped Mel remove her canvas from the frame, and Sam was washing off his brushes. Still clutching the sketchpad close, I hovered around, observing, looking for an opportunity to help if someone needed it, considering I had basically nothing to pack up.
"Mind helping get my canvas off the frame?" Sam asked as he finished packing away his brushes.
"Sure!" I said, glad to have some direction. I moved up to the easel, sketchpad under my arm and took my cues from him.
He'd painted a very realistic depiction of the Sydney CBD skyline using acrylic paints. It was a bit smudged and sloppy in a few spots where he had clearly painted over a mistake, but on the whole it looked quite good to me.
He handed me a small tool to use for prying the staples from the wooden frame, and I took it with a nod before getting to work. Immediately comfortable working with my hands, I operated almost on autopilot while I split my attention between the staples and taking in the details of his painting.
"It's amazing," I marvelled aloud. "Accurate."
Sam smiled brightly as he continued to work.
"Thanks! You really think so?"
"I do! You only need to look out there to see," I enthused, gesturing back out to the view, giving him a broad smile.
"Guess my skills are improving then. You'll have to show me yours too."
I gave him a noncommittal grunt and another smile to hide the dread as I finished separating the canvas and gladly let him take over, gently rolling it up and stowing it away in a special canister. In a few short minutes, everyone was almost all packed up and ready to go.
Sam tapped me on the shoulder.
"So can I see or what?"
I looked around nervously as it started to sink in that there was probably no reasonable way to get out of this. It was going to look wildly inappropriate. I was going to look creepy as hell, and then we were going to have to drive back to the apartment and it was going to be just so unbelievably awkward. There was really no two ways about it; the drawing was so absolutely and utterly focused on him, and everything else was an afterthought of an afterthought by comparison. Purely because trying to draw anything else resulted in tinkering, but it wasn't like I could ever explain that.
I set my jaw and slowly extended the sketchpad towards Sam, still looking away, bracing myself for the reaction.
It's really not going to help the matter that it's a pretty flattering rendition, either...
I started to shrink down in a kind of anticipatory cringe.
Sam was quiet as he took the sketchpad and looked over the drawing.
Just kill me now…
"Wow... This is... Really good." Sam looked up at me with a slight blush. "I'm kind of flattered. What do you guys think?" He turned the sketchpad to show the others.
I shrank down a little further, cursing as I felt the heat in my traitorous, burning cheeks. I could hardly understand why this was affecting me so much - I'd spent so long not caring what people thought of me when I was growing up as the scion of a pretty rich family.
Why do I care so much now? Why do I want them to like me so much?
There were several hums, nods and mutterings of approval. Jane managed to catch my eye and gave me a wink.
Without any real way to respond to that, I defaulted to putting on a weak smile by way of acknowledgement.
Mercifully, the big deal I was expecting about my sketch never eventuated, and we all finished packing up and headed back down to the wharf. We boarded the next ferry to arrive and headed back to the city. I spent the entire trip back almost entirely self-absorbed and quiet, grappling with confusion over how quickly they all reviewed the sketch and then left it be, moving on like it wasn't something really strange for the weird new girl to do... and Jane's wink.
When we arrived at Circular Quay, Mel stayed on the ferry to head back to her place and Keith darted off after a quick goodbye to catch his bus, leaving Sam, Jane and myself in the same spot where we met this morning.
"It was really nice meeting you today, Lisey! I had a super fun time," Jane said.
"Yeah - you too," I replied to Jane. "Maybe again soon."
I was now entirely unsure of how to feel about Jane. She seemed nice, if almost too bubbly. She'd seen the picture of my workshop but behaved as though it was an honest accident, and I hadn't found anything to suggest she'd made copies of the picture - or done anything else underhanded. Had she guessed I was a cape, or had my abstract descriptions of my work being secretive been enough to convince her not to pry? If she had guessed, she was hiding it well.
And what was that wink about? That was twice!
Jane pounced on me, enveloping me in a big hug.
"Thank you for being so good to Sam," she whispered quietly to me, before pulling away to playfully aim a punch at Sam's arm and then envelop him in a hug, too.
I looked at her, a little confused, but gave her a smile regardless as she pulled away, complete with a micro shrug. She waved goodbye to us both and then skipped off down towards the CBD.
"Shall we?" Sam asked, turning to me.
"Yeah," I agreed quietly, coming up alongside.
Once we'd reached the car and loaded it up, the trip back home was a long one, thanks to Sydney's notoriously terrible evening traffic. It felt even longer, on account of the awkward but amicable silence hanging in the air. Early on, I felt like maybe speaking up, or apologising, or something… but I never mustered the will to actually do it. Instead, I just wallowed in a kind of silent anguish. I'd had fun, sure - it was a good day, but… well.
I guess it turns out that actually, I SUCK at socialising.
Truly the cruellest of ironies for the lonely, former socialite longing for acceptance.
About 10 minutes before we got home, Sam finally broke the silence.
"Any thoughts on dinner?"
"I'm easy... I mean- I don't mind- Whatever's convenient," I offered.
"Probably leftovers then. I'm gonna go shopping tomorrow."
I looked over at him and nodded a few times.
"Need any cash for groceries?" I asked.
"Not unless you want anything expensive," he joked.
I shrugged.
"Maybe some of that really nice ice cream?"
"Sure. I'll send you the bill." He chuckled lightly and I found myself laughing along.
Maybe not so awkward after all…
I looked down at the sketchpad. It belonged to him. Was it weird to keep it?
Should I take my page out and give it back... Or give it back, page and all? Should I just abscond with it entirely? Would he mind? Should I buy him another pad? What's the least weird option?
I grappled with that for a little while, looking at the sketchpad but not really seeing it. Sam pulled into the carpark and turned off the engine. After a few minutes of unloading, we were back in my apartment, safe and sound at just a bit past seven. I retreated to my room with the sketchpad, dropping it down next to my laptop, and then headed back out, making my way to the fridge in search of the aforementioned leftovers.
I found the spag bol I didn't eat last night, some meatloaf, and a few slices of frozen pizza in the freezer. I decided I definitely wasn't going to let the spaghetti go to waste, pulling it out and setting about heating it up. Even after a day in the fridge, the spag bol was some of the best I'd ever had. That wasn't idle praise; I'd eaten at some high end Italian restaurants before.
I said my goodnights to Sam and headed back to my room, cracked open my laptop and checked PHO. My ban had been lifted, and my thread was no longer locked. There was some light discussion, but not a huge amount of buzz; talks of the pictures I had posted, whether or not I was connected to the explosion that happened last night, and a few very grainy and blurry photos of me whizzing through the city on the Lightreach.
I pulled up a CAD program, opened my phone, pulled up the photo I took of the design I drew before scribbling it out and started to explore the idea a little bit, tinkering for a few hours to scratch the itch. A feeling of relief settled in as I stretched my creative legs again, iterating on the Peregrine for a while using the photo I took of my sketch, then moving on to a new idea. When I was starting to get tired again, I'd pretty much finalised the Peregrine rebuild plans, and made headway on a new arrowhead. I saved the new file as 'Data Knife' - name pending, but that first idea sounded pretty good to me.
I checked the clock - 12:22am - and on a whim, reached into the duffle bag under my desk to retrieve my helmet and pull it down over my head. I crouched down in front of my desk, hands over the edge as I peeked upwards at my laptop webcam, so just my fingers and the upper half of the helmet was in frame, with the rest of the room in darkness. I took a cheeky picture, pondering it for a few moments before posting it to my speculation thread with the hope that it would stoke some more conversation
The helmet went back into the duffel bag, my clothes joined the pile in the hamper, and I dove haphazardly under the covers to let sleep take me.
I guess today went alright after all.
AN: This chapter was delayed a bit longer that it was on other platforms because I had some issues with FFN not loading and then I kinda forgot to try again for a few days. Sorry.
Definitely not happy that I was late again with this chapter but in my own defence, it is about twice as long as previous chapters and the first draft was even longer! I thought about splitting this up into 2 chapters but I couldn't find a point anywhere that felt like a good stopping point without giving the next chapter an awkward start. Turns out I have a tendency to get lost in the weeds when writing SoL stuff, so big thank you to my co-author/beta reader Casey for helping me cut this down to something more manageable.
On a different note, I said in the very beginning that Parthian had some secrets of her own and here is where we get our first hints of that. It seems that being a cape runs in the Maxwell/Cardon family~
We're nearing the end of Arc 1 now. I estimate maybe 1 or 2 more chapters (depending on length) and then our first interlude before we begin on Arc 2!
I've also decided that I'm going to move the day I post (or at least try to post) updates to the weekend rather than in the middle of the week and since I don't want to keep people waiting 2.5 weeks for the chapter, I'm going to aim to post Splash 1.5 on the weekend of the 25th of Feb.
Comments sustain the eldritch horror that fuels my writing so please feed it. Thank you all for reading!