Warning. This chapter contains discussions of kidnapping, human trafficking and allusions to sexual assault. Please read at your own discretion and for goodness sake, be respectful in the comments. Thank you.

Splash 1.6

Monday, 12:08am, April 25th, 2005

I could only watch as the white-hot thermal silhouette of the man suspended in the air was suddenly flung up into the ceiling. Something - probably his neck - broke with a crunching sound that made my stomach turn, and then his body dropped to the floor.

Fuck!

Fuck fuck fuck!

That was too fast! Way too fast!

I'd thought I was in position, poised to intervene before the girl - the serial killer - would be able to hurt the man... and she'd killed him faster than I could

comprehend. Utterly stricken with fear, I started to back away, hurriedly backpedalling with my bow aimed right at the centre of the door as I made my way out of the back rooms.

"S-she just killed another one," I said to the APRA operator in a tight whisper, following up with hurried, rapid-fire statements. "Shaker… Telekinetic power that works on people, I guess. Really strong. Ground floor, back rooms. Her next target will be, uhh, Bali Springs if she gets away. I think she might be a trafficking victim trying to locate other trafficking victims. I'm heading for the ground floor exit."

"Understood," the operator responded. "Deva should be there any second now to stop her if she starts attacking civilians. APRA is four minutes away."

As I continued to back away down the hall, turning off my infravision as I moved, I heard footsteps from the room and saw movement through the hole in the door. I backed up faster, pulling the bow to full draw as the door creaked open and a head peered out from behind it.

"She's coming out..! She's looking at me!" I groaned under my breath, skipping back another few steps - I hoped - into the foyer. I kept the arrow fully drawn just a little bit longer, ready to dodge to the side and make a break for the entrance as soon as I was in the foyer proper. I only caught a glimpse of the killer before she quickly pulled the door shut again, but a few distinct things stood out to me.

She didn't seem to be wearing a proper cape costume, and the bottom half of her face was only covered by some fabric tied around the back of her head. She was Asian, and definitely younger than I was - 22 at the oldest. Her eyes were red and swollen, her cheeks streaked with tears and her left arm was heavily tattooed with what looked like a tentacle, curling all the way up before disappearing into the torn sleeve of a baggy, black jumper.

The moment the door closed again, I eased the tension in the bowstring, turned, and ran for the exit as fast as my - admittedly very shaky - legs would carry me. The Peregrine chirped a warning at me and highlighted a silhouette flying rapidly towards the building.

That's gotta be Deva for sure. Thank god!

I booked it, doing my best to ignore the two bodies in the foyer. As I stepped out through the front entrance and into the street, I was showered in a golden light; a moment later, Deva landed hard before me in the middle of the street and quickly took a defensive and ready stance.

Whenever she appeared on television or in newspapers and magazines, Deva always made a point of eschewing any implications or suggestions about her religious beliefs, maintaining a firm stance that her actions and choices were always based on her own thoughts rather than the guidance or teachings of any religious texts. She had apparently chosen the name Deva because while it remained thematically appropriate - meaning 'celestial being' in its original Buddhist context - it didn't carry the same burden as a name like 'Angel' or 'Seraph' would in the Western world. She claimed to have forgone a mask because she wanted people to see that she was still human beneath the heavenly visage of her costume - and standing before her, it was easy to understand why so many believed she was, in fact, a divine being.

Both angelic and profoundly intimidating in appearance, Deva stood at least seven feet tall as she drew her huge, white-feathered wings together behind her back. Her costume was a white dress with golden armour plating at her chest, shoulders, forearms and shins. Unmasked, her face looked as if a renaissance painting had come to life and the halo of shimmering light that hovered above her head only exemplified how supernaturally beautiful she was despite the hard stare she was giving me.

"Parthian?" she queried.

I held up my hands both in greeting and as a display of non-hostility, slowing to a jog as I moved - not directly towards her, but to the side of her, to get out of her way.

"Yeah," I called back. "Cape inside. Did the APRA operator fill you in?"

"I am apprised of the situation," she said with assured confidence. "Wait here."

She marched without hesitation straight up the steps and into the building. As she passed by, I couldn't help but relax as I felt a wave of calm wash over me; the fear and tension of the fight or flight instincts that had been coursing through my entire being moments ago just ebbing away now that I was in her presence.

I slowed to a stop, lowering my bow and letting the hard-light arrow dissolve as I found myself nodding; my worries quashed by her words. It was thanks to that clarity that I remembered to provide Deva with a key piece of context to the situation.

"W-wait! She's... a victim, too," I called to Deva as she advanced, before trailing off and standing there, a little awkwardly. She paused for a moment, head turned to the side, and gave a nod of acknowledgement in my direction before continuing on.

What was I supposed to do now?

As Deva disappeared into the building, the Peregrine gave me another warning chirp, snapping me from my momentary confusion. I expanded the feed on my HUD to see a small figure travelling away from the back of the building. If they hadn't been highlighted by the Peregrine's thermal overlay, I wouldn't have been able to spot them as they moved. A small feminine figure, dressed entirely in black. She took to the air, and although they didn't appear on the white-hot thermals, the night vision hinted at what looked like wings made of shadow.

"Are you still on the line?" I said over the phone to the operator as I reached down to my bandolier and retrieved an IF-TSDS arrowhead.

A tracking round, designed to tag targets with microdots I could trace by radio.

"I'm here, Parthian," the operator answered. "The APRA squad will be there shortly. What's happening?"

"The…"

Why does 'killer' feel wrong now..?

"…girl has left by the back of the building. She can fly," I said, nocking the tracking round and angling my bow upwards... Way upwards. I signalled the Peregrine to lock its camera on the girl and follow it as the Lightreach and Peregrine started exchanging data to give me a firing solution. "I'm going to try and tag her with a tracker from a distance."

"Got it. I'll notify Deva. Tell me if you hit her."

I drew my bow to the calculated power, lining up my shot and loosing the arrow through the air, watching as it sailed high - straight over the building, far and away. I gazed through the Peregrine's camera for second after second as the arrow came back down. Right on target, the arrow discarded itself mid-arc as it deployed its almost unnoticeable payload; the miniature radio tracer. As the only part of the arrow that actually came down to land on the girl, the tracer stuck itself to her back without her noticing as she continued to fly away, taking up a more evasive pattern as she moved towards the harbour.

"Tagged her. Tracer is transmitting." I notified the operator.

I instructed the Peregrine to begin following the tracer's signal rather than the visual of the girl in case she ducked out of sight of its cameras. I ran back into the building after Deva, consulting my GPS for "Bali Springs'' to see if the girl was heading in that direction. Concerningly, Bali Springs was a kilometre east of us, but she wasn't heading in that direction at all. I checked the Peregrine's feed again, in case the girl had done something to confuse the tracer, but only confirmed that she was in fact travelling south-west.

"She's not headed to Bali Springs," I yelled down the hallway to the back rooms as I reached the foyer. "She's heading south-west!"

I turned back and took a few steps out onto the street, setting out the Lightreach in board configuration and climbing on. I angled upwards, gaining speed and altitude as fast as I safely could. Consulting the Peregrine's current airspeed as it kept pace with the girl, I determined she was only moving at about 50 kilometres an hour. I could catch up to her easily.

"Can you give us the frequency for the tracker Parthian?" asked the operator.

I reluctantly rattled it off, making a mental note to take the rest of my tracer arrowheads apart and rebuild them - they were all single-frequency right now. Maybe I could write some kind of dynamic frequency allocator... a tracer frequency tracker for my HUD? Then I could rename the trackers on the fly and know which was which - I could just...

Not the time, Parthian!

I climbed to a few hundred feet and followed from a fair distance back, matching the girl's speed; I didn't need to follow her with my own eyes, the Peregrine was both harder to spot and had better cameras. I glanced back to the nightclub to make sure I wasn't going off alone and saw the light of Deva's halo emerge from the back of the building a moment later, as her wings unfurled and she took to the air.

"I'm afraid the range on your tracer is too small for us to pick up on any of our scanners currently. The Wogs are pretty thorough with taking down any relay towers we try to set up in the area. Are you comfortable pursuing the suspect with Deva's support, Parthian?" asked the operator.

"I… I can do that. I'm in flight. Still have the girl in sight. Can you put Deva on this call?" I asked as the wind started to whip up around me.

"Patching her in."

"How fast can you fly on that?" Deva asked as she rose up to meet me.

"Fu... Fast, really fast," I said, stopping myself at the last moment from swearing in her presence. It felt... profane. "She's going about fifty kilometres per hour. I can go much faster."

"My top speed is one hundred but it takes me time to reach it. Can I ask you to go ahead and keep eyes until she stops?"

"I'd prefer to stay with you." I admitted. "I can still track her remotely using my drone."

Deva nodded, then took the lead in our two-person formation. I pulled up close to her, flying off her side and clear of her wingspan as she accelerated up to her top speed as quickly as she could in pursuit of the girl. We were rapidly gaining ground on her as she briefly flew out over the water, until she suddenly turned and began descending, to land at the tip of one of the small peninsulas that jutted out into the harbour.

I called out the sudden change in direction to Deva, pointing at the girl - or more accurately, pointing at the blinking icon on my HUD that indicated the location the Peregrine was looking, locked on to the tracer signal and the white-hot infrared signature that just dove downwards.

Deva slowed down to a stop and hovered in the air, beating her huge wings to stay aloft.

"What's she doing?" The hero asked.

I expanded the Peregrine's camera feed, swapping off infrared to its colour night vision sensor and zooming in to take a look. The girl had touched down on a little outcropping right by the water. She sat down and pulled off her shoes before dipping her feet into the water. I watched as she wrapped her arms around her torso and began hugging herself tightly while her body shuddered.

"She's just... sitting there," I answered. "She's got her feet in the water. She looks like... I don't know. She's hugging herself. She was crying when I saw her face. I think she's having a breakdown..."

I zoomed out a bit, partly so I could check the area around her for other heat signatures and partly because I suddenly felt as if I was intruding on something deeply private. There were no other signatures around and the girl's one was slowly starting to drop a little as she kept her feet in the water.

"You said you thought she was a victim. Of what?" Deva asked softly.

"Trafficking, maybe... I think you know the kind I mean. She was looking for girls... Girls being taken and moved. I overheard her talking about trying to claw her way up the chain to a boss who would know about the workings of the operation. She indicated... she lost her parents," I explained, trying not to let the emotions I was feeling get to my voice.

A sombre look crossed Deva's face.

"She's alone there," I continued. "Nobody else is around. We might be able to approach slowly and talk."

"Lets," Deva replied as she began to slowly descend down to the rocks.

I stood upright and slowly rode down behind Deva, keeping my arms out to the sides and empty, trying to maintain as non-threatening a posture as possible. I held back a little bit behind Deva. Though I continued to feel calm in her presence, my heart rate started to pick up again nonetheless as I remembered what the girl had done to those men with her power. The bodies…

"Don't forget she's a telekinetic," I muttered, a little worried, but very glad for Deva's presence.

The light of Deva's halo and the beat of her wings announced our presence as she touched down on the rocks a safe distance away from the girl. Though, 'safe' was a relative term considering we didn't know how large the range of her power was. The girl noticed immediately and scrambled to her feet, quickly pulling up the fabric to cover the bottom of her face.

She took a defensive stance, holding her arms out. I could see that both sleeves of her jumper were shredded and tattered almost all the way up to her shoulders and her arms were covered with full sleeve tattoos from palm to presumably shoulder. I could see patches of skin catching the light from under her clothes through what I assumed must be bullet holes. I would have been worried about the fact she might be bulletproof if she didn't look so… scared…

What on earth has she been through..?

"Did the Wogs send you?" she called out.

I touched the side of my helmet's jaw, retracting the lower portion of the beak so I could speak with my own voice, rather than having my helmet rebroadcasting it. I felt like anything even slightly imposing would send things entirely in the wrong direction right now.

"Nobody sent me," I called back. "We… We want to help."

I cast a glance over in Deva's direction.

"No you don't!" the girl shouted back. "Nobody's ever helped me. Not for years!"

"Then we want to understand," replied Deva. "You must be angry. Upset."

"Hah!" The girl laughed, but there was no levity in her voice. It was a harsh, choked sound, jagged with sarcasm and disbelief. "I am so far beyond angry! I'm overflowing with RAGE! I HAVE SO MUCH AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT!"

I glanced rapidly between her and Deva, unsure of myself and very, very scared of the little girl. Even if I'd had any clue about what to say, I wouldn't have been able to speak the words.

"I won't patronise you by pretending to understand what you're feeling, but what you're doing has to stop. I can't let you keep going around killing people." There was a presence in Deva's voice as she spoke. Firm and assertive, yet there was something calming about her words.

"I don't kill people!" The girl retorted. "Those men weren't people! They were animals and monsters and they deserved to die for what they did to me! To all those other girls!"

She gesticulated angrily as she yelled, and as her arms flailed, I could see that the tattoos on her skin were moving, the tentacle around her left arm coiling like it was alive.

"Not a Shaker," Deva whispered to me over the phone line. "Changer. Or maybe a Breaker of some kind."

"That explains the wings," I muttered back, eyes boggling behind the lenses of my helmet as I watched the girl's skin literally crawl.

"Hey, look… I'm Parthian. You probably know Deva, right?" I asked; I doubted she did, since she'd assumed we were with the Wogs when we first arrived, but establishing a sense of familiarity was a good way to diffuse hostility. Just one of the many lessons I'd been forced to learn quickly or suffer whatever consequences my parents deemed appropriate. "What do we call you?"

"I don't have a cape name. I don't want to be a superhero or a villain..."

"I understand," I continued before Deva could speak again.

Establish familiarity… Then try to find common interests.

That was actually easier than I would have expected.

"I... don't necessarily wanna be either of those things, myself. I'm new. I just... feel awkward calling you 'girl'," I explained. "Is there... a nickname you want, just for now?"

"My name is Aiko. I'm still a person... Or at least… I want to be…" The girl- Aiko's defensive stance faltered as she looked at the ground. "I didn't want to kill anybody, but nothing else worked... It makes me feel sick but I'm finally making progress. Please don't stop me. Not yet. I…"

The words seemed to catch in her throat.

"I think I'd rather die than not be able to finish this…" She turned her head away, looking out towards the harbour behind her.

A few moments passed in silence.

"What do you need to finish? I don't know much about you, Aiko, but I know they hurt you. Are you... looking for someone? Trying to get revenge? Trying to save someone?" I probed cautiously.

"I want to stop the Wogs bringing more girls in," she answered, her voice surprisingly calm. "I've already rescued a few from some of the clubs I went to, but if I don't find where they're coming from then they'll just keep bringing in more. More kids like me, pulled off the street from another country and dragged here to be bought and sold like livestock. It has to stop! I HAVE TO STOP IT!"

I tried not to physically recoil as her anger returned so suddenly. Hopelessly out of my depth and completely winging it, I peered over at Deva, trying to gauge which way she was leaning. Her expression was almost unreadable, her beauty almost aggravatingly distracting as I tried to guess what she might be thinking. She glanced over at me and then reached up to her ear. I heard a brief dial tone as she hung up from the phone call with the operator and I.

"Hang up on the APRA operator," she whispered to me. "Make it look like you got disconnected if possible."

With a few taps of my thumb against my knuckles, I called a script and power cycled my helmet's cell radio hardware, forcing the softphone to the APRA operator to crash. I gave Deva the slightest incline of my head.

"Can I talk with Parthian for a moment?" Deva asked Aiko.

She responded with a nod though I could see the wariness in her eyes. Deva slowly unfurled her wings, opening them out and then drawing them in to form a curtain around the two of us.

"We may have a unique opportunity here to kill several birds with one stone," Deva whispered conspiratorially. "The only issue is we could all be in serious trouble if we get caught. Should I say more?"

A small smile crept across my face.

"Go right ahead," I encouraged. "I'm with you."

"My public position as a member of the Atlas Alliance prevents me from conducting myself in any manner that falls outside of the law. You however, aren't currently bound by those limitations, so to speak. I am not blind to the flaws of government heroism and the laws that sometimes prevent us from truly achieving justice. I am proposing that you go with Aiko back to wherever she is staying or take her somewhere you know is safe; and then join her crusade, acting as a chaperone of sorts. You keep her from killing anyone else as you continue to search for the heart of these trafficking operations and put a stop to them. After the Wogs are dealt with, she surrenders herself to the authorities to be properly tried. We help a young girl find the closure and justice she very clearly needs, stop the Sydney Club Killer's rampage, shut down a sex trafficking ring and potentially cripple the Wogs' infrastructure all at once."

That's… actually a pretty solid plan.

But paranoia demanded I play devil's advocate.

"And if something goes wrong?" I asked.

As expected, Deva's expression hardened.

"Worst case scenario. You are branded as an accomplice to the killings and I am charged with aiding and abetting two parahuman serial killers. If we're caught, we'd quite likely all end up as cellmates in the Icebox," Deva said gravely. "However, if you notify me in advance of any 'research' you're doing on the Wogs, I can put myself on patrol in those areas and help to turn a blind eye to your activities. So long as you or Aiko aren't killing or maiming anyone."

I let out a low whistle, taking a few moments just to consider. Processing everything Deva just said. Everything Aiko had said. Everything that just happened tonight…

This is one hell of a night…

"Putting a lot of trust in the moral fibre of a cape you just met tonight, aren't you?" I muttered back to her.

"Well, that arrow you shot at one of Sentinel's probes was just a misunderstanding, wasn't it?" She answered coyly.

I bristled.

"I shot that at my drone, you know," I replied. "He understood."

Deva smiled at me. The expression had an almost motherly quality to it.

"I can imagine."

I tapped my foot a few times, looking back and forth as I considered everything for just a little bit longer - though, in all honesty, my mind was already made

up.

"I'm in. Give me a number I can contact you on securely. You wanna make the offer, or should I?" I queried.

Deva quickly rattled off a phone number. I was surprised she had a secure one just ready to go.

Maybe this isn't the first time she's bent the rules to help someone do the right thing?

"I'll make the offer," Deva asserted, closing her wings back up and turning to face Aiko. "Aiko, I'd like to make you an offer. On the condition that you turn yourself in to the authorities for your crimes afterwards and don't kill any more people, Parthian will help you in tracking down the source of the human trafficking ring and stopping them while I make sure no-one else interferes in your search. Are you willing to agree to that?"

I turned to face Aiko as well, giving her a purposeful nod.

Aiko's eyes widened in disbelief and her arms dropped to her sides.

"Really?" she exclaimed.

"Really really," I confirmed, putting on as chipper a voice as I could muster.

Her head started bobbing up and down with increasing frequency as fresh tears began rolling down her cheeks.

"Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes! You can send me straight to jail afterwards if you want! Thank you! Thank you!" she cried, happily.

I stepped towards her, leaving the Lightreach hovering preternaturally behind me, suspended in midair.

"Do you have somewhere to stay, Aiko?" I asked her.

"Umm... no... I don't really own anything," she confessed. "I've been living off money I stole from the clubs I went to..."

"I have to go and report that the suspect has escaped and took Parthian hostage in order to do so," Deva said in a knowing tone. "I trust I'll hear from you soon Parthian."

She gave us both a nod and a warm smile before unfurling her wings once more.

"Don't forget to scrap that tracer."

With a mighty beat of her wings, she took to the air, becoming a light amongst the now starry night sky as she flew back the way we came. With Deva gone, that feeling of calm I'd been basking in dissipated and some of my rational fear and apprehension returned.

"Yeah... So. You wanna come stay with me for a while, then? Until we get this all resolved," I offered, partially turned to watch Deva leave, wondering in the back of my head if I'd just been set up to get totally fucked over

"Are you sure that's okay?" Aiko asked.

Gods, no! I've got no idea how this whole thing's gonna work out. I'm taking a huge risk and I've literally watched you kill people!

"Yeah, I'm sure," I lied. "We'll figure it out."

Aiko pulled down her mask and gave me a big, beaming smile, which quickly devolved into teeth chattering.

"Fuck, I'm so cold!" She gasped as she wrapped her arms around herself.

After a few moments of hesitation, I reached up to grab my helmet and pull it off my head.

"Call me 'Lise," I said, holding out a hand. "Pleased to be your partner in crime-busting."

Aiko steadied her shivering as she took my hand and gave it a firm shake.

"Thank you for this, Lise."

AN: And that concludes Arc 1. Damn was this a hard chapter to write. Aiko is a very tragic character and it's definitely tricky to write her and do her story justice without being too blunt or glossing over it instead. I hope I've found the right balance in this chapter and will be able to keep doing so going forward.

Our first interlude is next and will offer a brand new perspective on the Sydney we know so far and the heroes and villains that occupy it. Any assholes, thugs or shitheads who go around the streets at night starting fights, committing crimes and generally causing trouble are liable to get King Hit.

Speaking of assholes, thugs and shitheads. Arc 2 is all about the Wogs of War and plenty of righteous, guilt free gang busting. So look forward to that!

Comments are tasty and I would very much like them please. Thanks for reading!