So you know: June, the main character of his story, is intentionally written to be grating in the first arc because this story is—in part—about growing up and becoming a better person. She begins getting better as the second arc progresses because of the bonds she starts to form with her teammates.
Content Warning: Luster features strong language, slurs (Nazis gonna be Nazis), graphic depiction of violence, and mind control/being mastered. Or put differently: Basically business as usual for Worm.
#
Penny 1.1
Damn, is this really it? I thought to myself as I stared at the worn down building and the dreary brass letters affixed to its exterior labeling it as 'Winslow High School.' The obvious wear and tear on the building wasn't any worse than my old school, at least from what little of its campus I could see from inside my cousin's car, but I'd expected something... more, I guess, from a big city school. Also, probably less graffiti.
"This is a really, really stupid idea, Jake."
"June," I muttered, absently, as I examined a red and black tag in the form of an 'E88.' I vaguely recognized it from my attempts to research Brockton Bay after I found out I would be moving here, but there was only so much I could learn from the few times I could get to the library after Mom killed herself. I thought this one was related to nazis in some way, and I could still barely wrap my head around the idea that actual, real people in Brockton Bay still clung to nazi ideology in the 21st century. Madness.
"Jake..."
"Are you deaf or just dumb?" I said, finally turning to face my cousin, Masuyo, while studiously ignoring the frustration and hurt written plainly across her face. "My name is June."
She seethed but said nothing. I shrugged, unbuckled my seatbelt, and opened the car door.
"June, please." I turned back to look at her. Her hands were gripping the steering wheel tightly enough they shook, and she was giving me a grim look, her brown eyes looking haunted. "I know this is... important to you, but this isn't New York. You don't understand what Brockton Bay is like. The Empire, they might kill you over this."
Why does she even care? I wondered. I wanted to ask her, but it was too awkward. We hadn't met before I moved into her apartment on Saturday—she said we met once or twice when I was baby, but that doesn't count as far as I'm concerned—and she hadn't said then why she was taking me in either. If the Brockton Bay University memorabilia and nursing textbooks haphazardly strewn about her apartment were any indication, then she was in the middle of nursing school. She had to be under financial pressure from that, so why did she take me in when nobody else in the family did?
"I have to," I lamely replied after the silence between us began to grow uncomfortable. I didn't know how to say, Some things are worth dying for, but that sounded way too corny—I could never say it aloud.
She released a soft sigh and tucked an errant strand of black hair behind her ear as she reached down for her purse, her low tied hair slipping over her shoulder with the movement. After a moment of fumbling around, she pulled out a cell phone and held it out to me. When I stared at it incredulously and didn't take it, she leaned over and shoved it at my chest. "It can only do the basics," she explained as I finally took the cell phone. "Not a lot of data, sorry—can't afford it. I have my night classes after work, which is why I can only drive you here today, so use that to look up the bus routes home after school. My number is in there too. I probably can't answer calls, but if you text me, I'll try to reply. The, uh, PRT number is in there too, if you run into any trouble."
"Thanks," I mumbled as I shoved it into the front pocket of my backpack. More students were starting to arrive, and I glanced at the dashboard's clock. "Gotta go. Thanks for the ride and ominous warnings of my imminent death."
Before Masuyo could reply to that, I slipped out the still open car door and threw it closed. I quickly stalked away from the car and slid into a mass of students departing from a nearby school bus. Unfortunately my plan to hide out of sight resulted, predictably if I was being honest, in me running into someone and causing them to stumble.
"Shit, sorry," I groaned as I grabbed a hold of the girl before she could fall. Only once she was upright again did I notice she was wearing a black halter top with some kind of esoteric design made of criss crossing neon orange and green lines over a torn pair of denim shorts and purple tights, the latter matching a dyed streak in her hair. It was easily the most eclectic, loud outfit I had seen in some time, and I had absolutely no idea how she wasn't cold, since it was an unseasonably cold, overcast day.
"Enjoying the view?"
I blushed a bit, not having meant to stare, but she didn't look offended. If anything, she seemed to preen a bit at the attention. Still, I didn't want to give her the wrong impression, so I quipped, "Eh, I don't swing that way, sorry."
Her eyebrows shot up. "That right? Props for being bold about it."
Bold…? Oh, right. Literal gang of nazis. I guess lesbian jokes probably don't go over well. "Being a wallflower's never been my thing." I made to leave, but I frowned and stopped when a thought occurred to me. "Actually, do you know how to get to the office? It's my first day. I need to get my schedule and what all."
She stared at me for a moment, and I idly noticed the number of students loitering outside had begun to dwindle. After a few seconds, she shrugged, "Sure, I guess. C'mon, man."
I grit my teeth at that but tried to contain my annoyance. "I'm a girl," I groused and promptly walked straight into my guide when she stopped in her tracks.
After preventing her from falling again, she turned around and examined me from head to foot, leaving me feeling suddenly self-conscious, especially of my lack of feminine curves and my still pretty short hair. I wasn't worried about my clothes though, since most of my wardrobe was good quality, and I'd worn the best of the lot today: A red, corded turtleneck, bootcut jeans, black boots, and a gray jacket. All of it stolen, of course. My entire wardrobe was, since I'd only been able to skim so much of Mom's money over the summer without giving up the game when she couldn't afford her heroin, and I'd been saving all of that for the stuff I couldn't steal.
"Huh."
I tilted my head. "'Huh?'" I parroted.
She stared at me a bit longer, not saying anything, before eventually shrugging. "My bad," she flippantly declared before turning on her heel and starting towards the school again.
"Moving on then," I mumbled, more or less mollified, and moved to follow.
Once we were inside Winslow, I realized that I could, in fact, be more disappointed with the school. No matter where I looked, I saw some sign of gang activity. Like outside, there were plenty of tags littering the halls on both the walls and lockers, which frankly surprised me. You would think the staff would remove them. Maybe they just go right back up, so they stopped bothering? There were obvious gang members too. Plenty of guys with buzzed away hair who were probably part of the nazi gang, and there were lots of Asians wearing red and green—the colors of the ABB, the Azn Bad Boys.
That gang I had made a point to study a bit, once I'd managed to overcome my initial astonishment that any serious gang would have such a ridiculous moniker. Despite my cousin's worries, I thought I might be able to fly under the radar of the nazis, but a gang that was notorious for aggressive recruitment of anybody with Asian heritage? Yeah, I figured I would need to be very careful to avoid them, since I was half Japanese. That meant I needed to avoid anybody dressed like it was Christmas.
We eventually arrived at the office, and my escort gestured broadly at it. "Well, here you go. Catch you later, newbie."
I did my best to take a calm, steadying breath as she left, trying to steel myself for explaining matters for a second time... People were always all weird about it. Dammit, this sucked enough the first time around...
I walked through the propped open door and made my way over to the secretary, a woman with a somewhat frazzled appearance. Once I was standing in front of her desk, she spared me a brief glance before returning her eyes to her monitor. "What do you need?"
Bit rude... "I'm here to get my schedule. Today's my first day."
"Name?"
"June Fujiwara."
She moved her mouse and clicked on a few things, her eyes dancing back and forth across the screen. Eventually she frowned. "Jacob Fujiwara?"
"I don't use that name. My name is June—Juniper, if we're being formal."
For the first time since I walked into the office, the secretary gave me her full attention. With a frown, she turned to face me and asked, "Come again? 'Don't use that name'?"
I opened my mouth to reply, but the door to the principal's office opened, drawing my attention. "Is the Fujiwara boy here yet? I have that meeting in ten minutes, and I won't be able to delay it."
"Well... This is—"
"Hello," I interjected, doing my best to contain my ire. "I'm June Fujiwara, and I'm actually not a boy. Easy mistake to make, what with the 'male' on my birth certificate and all."
It probably wasn't the best way to introduce myself to the principal of my new school, but damn the looks on their faces were priceless. Solid gold.
"I... see," the principal eventually said. I was actually somewhat impressed. She looked absolutely incredulous, but her words were pretty even, all things told. Probably could have hidden her reaction, if this had been a phone call. It wasn't though, obviously, so no brownie points for her. "That... wasn't in your file from your old school."
"I came out at the beginning of the school year earlier this month, then Mom... well, you know. Probably forgot to put it in there."
"Mr. Fu—"
"Ms."
She pinched the bridge of her nose. Yeah, no poker face at all. Also, she must not have read my school file carefully enough if she thinks this is as bad as I get. "Ms. Fujiwara... I believe you may not understand your predicament."
"Pretty sure I do."
"Be that as it may, we need to have a discussion before you go to classes. I have a meeting in—" she glanced at the watch on her wrist and tsk'd "—seven minutes, and it truly cannot be pushed back. Please have a seat, and we will talk after."
I might get to skip first period on my first day? Luuucky, I thought with a small smile as I took a seat. My enthusiasm quickly dimmed, however when it hit me that, since I was still stuck waiting in the office, I had nothing to do. I toyed with my new phone for ten minutes before deciding it was probably best to not blow all my data on day one, so I turned to the sole other source of entertainment in the room.
"So. Ms. Secretary Lady."
She gave me an unimpressed look and tapped on the nameplate on her desk."I have a name."
"Fancy that, I do too. It's June," I couldn't help but quip, purposefully ignoring the plate. She'd yet to use mine, so I wasn't going to use hers. "Speaking of names, I'm blanking on one. What does that gang of nazi weirdos call itself again?"
"What... How... You really don't even know who they are?"
"That would be why I'm asking. Give me a break, I just moved here a few days ago."
"They're the Empire Eighty Eight." Well, that confirms the 'E88' tag I saw outside was nazi related. "You'd do well to watch yourself in Brockton Bay, given your... proclivities."
Well, that didn't sound ominous at all, I thought, but I didn't get a chance to comment, as the principal's door finally opened, and she beckoned for me to enter, a grim look on her face.
#
[New student is a Jap tranny. Called E88 "nazi weirdos"]
[no shit? name?]
[Jake Fujiwara. Calls himself June. Wearing red turtleneck and gray jacket]
[i'll get this to the right people. good job. keep ur ears open.]
#
So it's basically a huge outdoor flea market, I thought to myself as I glanced around the mish mash of stalls that made up the 'Lord Street Market.' The area was moderately busy with plenty of people walking up and down the walkways between stalls, and I began to casually stroll down one myself. Nifty.
My first day of school had been, as expected, boring after the morning's festivities. Principal Blackwell had introduced herself properly and regaled me with a litany of warnings about blah blah this isn't New York City blah blah Empire blah blah maim or kill me, all of which I ignored before reaffirming I wasn't changing my mind about attending school as myself. I had even managed to limit myself to one joke about her fashion sense matching her name, though she hadn't risen to the bait. Probably thought something along the lines of, Oh no, the poor transgirl isn't long for this world, as the evil nazis we allow to roam free in our city will somehow find out she's trans and stab her in a dark alley where no one will hear her scream. There's no need to give her detention on top of her imminent demise by hate crime. But hey, I wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth and had dutifully accepted my class schedule once she had swapped PE for Computer Science instead.
It was like she expected me to shout, "Hey there, Brockton Bay at large! Just so all of you know, I'm transgender! I wouldn't want to deprive your pet nazis of fodder for their getting their jollies off on the oppression and murder of Jews and people like me and, I dunno, fucking Legend." Honestly, why were Blackwell and Masuyo so worried? They were the only people in this town who knew about me. Oh, and Ms. Secretary Lady too, I guess. But she didn't count. Anyway, the point was I passed just fine, if a bit flat-chested. There were still girls my age who were flat-chested! Like that curly haired girl in the drab hoodie I ran into in the bathroom at the end of lunch. If she could go about her day without being harassed, then so could I.
Which brought me back to the Lord Street Market. See, I hadn't had anybody to sit with over lunch and hadn't really made any connections with anyone from my classes, so I had decided to see if I could track down the girl who had guided me to the office that morning, seeing as she was the only person I 'knew.' Unsurprisingly, that hadn't gone well, since—surprise!— a hell of a lot of students attended Winslow. I'd given it up as a bad job after about ten minutes of exploring the cafeteria, the courtyard, the front steps, and even the back entrance by the dumpster, and had simply plopped down on the steps leading up to the back entrance to eat the wrap I'd bought in the cafeteria. One of the students nearby, who I'd been surprised to see sharing a reefer with his buddies with little effort to conceal it, had mentioned swinging by the market after school.
Beats sitting around Masuyo's apartment twiddling my thumbs. I shivered a little bit as a particularly cold gust of wind from the bay blew past, and I scowled. I really liked this jacket, but even with it zipped up, I was cold. I paused when I saw a nice blouse at a stand selling some clothes, and I briefly considered stealing it before dismissing the idea. There weren't nearly enough people around to distract the stand's owner, and I didn't know the area well enough to find a good spot to lay low after. I ran a regretful hand over the fabric before moving on, thinking I could scope out the area when I was done to set myself up for the weekend. I had a feeling it would be a lot busier then. I did end up deciding to treat myself to a cola when I passed a guy selling homemade soda though. I was past the biggest hurdle, and though making friends was still a daunting task, I expected it would be easier in a city where nobody knew me yet—where nobody had preconceptions of whom I should be. In that way, at least, living in Brockton Bay would be easier than New York City.
I eventually grew bored and decided to get a jumpstart on scoping out the area for any good boltholes. From what I'd seen when looking at an online map earlier, there were some docks to the northeast, and I began heading that way. Travel by ship back home hadn't been a thing since Leviathan first appeared, so I figured it had to be the same here. Abandoned docks meant plenty of places to hide, so that seemed as good a place as any to start. I took a quick glance at the map app to ensure I was heading the right way, slipped my phone into my bag's front pocket, and slung the bag back over my shoulders.
Before long I had left behind the stalls and noise and found myself walking down an entirely abandoned block of road littered with potholes, a few piles of abandoned trash bags, and a car with no wheels that was covered in so much rust I couldn't properly identify what color it had once been. I was just beginning to make a game of debating whether it would have looked better in hot pink or banana yellow paint when something that tasted like cotton was shoved into my mouth, causing me to gag. Immediately after, something hit me hard from behind, sending me flying through the air. Fortunately for my bones, albeit not my nose, one of the piles of trash bags broke my fall, but I was left breathless from the two back-to-back impacts. A muted thunk reached my ears as I tried to get my bearings, then someone grabbed me. I struggled against them for a moment, catching a glimpse of red clothing, but after a second they quite abruptly overpowered me, and I was tossed through the air. No, pulled? It strangely felt like my jacket was caught on something, and I was being yanked along for the ride. The feeling lasted only for a second, then my head hit something hard and stars filled my eyes. The light went away in time with a door being slammed shut, and when I grabbed at the ground, I felt smooth carpet under my fingers that rumbled with movement.
Is this a car? Holy fuck, am I being abducted?
I tried to yell for help, but the fabric still in my mouth muffled me, and when I tried to yank it out, my arms were thrown flat on the ground. My heart pounding in my chest, I tried to lift my right arm, but my jacket wouldn't budge an inch.
"It's no use struggling, really. Just stay quiet back there," I heard a young woman—maybe a girl?—say from what, based on the motion of the car, had to be one of the seats. There was an air of forced casualness to her words, but there was still a repressed energy to them.
"Whaa tha faa?" I yelled back, my words distorted around whatever was in my mouth. "Ooo tha faa are you?"
"I'm a... Shit, what did you call us again... Oh, right! I'm one of the 'nazi weirdos.' Ring a bell?"
Fuck.
"I'm sure you can imagine, but the Empire doesn't shit like that lying down, so I'm here to dispose of you."
Fuck fuck fuck!
"Honestly, I didn't think you'd make it this easy. I mean sure, I would've gotten you today regardless, but what possessed you to walk into the Boat Graveyard? All sorts of bad things could happen to you out here, and nobody would ever know."
Tears streamed down my face as I futilely screamed and impotently tried to beat the floor of the trunk with arms, my unmoving jacket rendering the result worthless. I was going to die. A modern day nazi was going to kill me.
We came to a stop, and I heard a car door open and slam shut, then the trunk's lid popped open. The light blinded me, and I flinched away, anticipating being stabbed or struck. The expected blow never came though, and as my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw the person standing over the trunk was a girl dressed in a dark black robe with red symbols lining its trim with a dark red domino mask over her pale face and had light blond hair spilling out from the pointed hood pulled up over her head. The sun hung low and washed the city line behind her in crimson as she held up a phone and asked, "So Jake, any last words?"
"Thaa's naa maa naaam, you nahzee faa!" I yelled as I tried and failed to lunge at her, forgetting in the heat of the moment that I couldn't move my jacket.
"Ooo, got some fight in ya, Jakey? That's great for the video." Abruptly my jacket yanked my arm around in a u-turn, and I smacked myself hard in the eye, eliciting a pained groan from me and giggles from her. "I guess it hasn't sunk in yet. Don't you see? You're not the one in power here."
Fuck, she's a cape! I thought, the awful realization finally hitting me.
"Listen, this has been fun and all," she remarked with a shrug, the phone remaining floating where it was in the air, "but I've got places to go and things to do, so let's call it a night, yeah? Bye, Jakey!" She waved goodbye with feigned cheer, then the car lurched away from her at high speed, and the trunk's lid slammed shut.
The car splashed into the water of what I could only presume was the Boat Graveyard with a lurch, and the cloth in my mouth pulled itself out. A part of me knew that nazi fuck was still filming me and probably pulled the cloth out on purpose in the hopes I would scream, but I couldn't help but shriek in terror as water began to leak into the trunk.
No, please, no!
Still unable to move my jacket, I lifted my feet, planted them against the underside of the trunk's lid, and tried to shove and kick it open, but it wouldn't budge.
Not like this!
The water level was already high enough that my head was starting to submerge, so I struggled to lift my head up and wiggle out of my jacket as I continued to ineffectively kick at the trunk's lid. Salty water sloshed into my mouth, and I choked as I tried to spit it out.
I was trapped and drowning. I was going to die.
I don't want to die! Please just open—
Two beings more colossal than anything I had ever seen loomed over me, their bodies composed of lights that rivaled the stars in which they moved, entwined in a dance that captivated my attention. They moved as one, and as they spiraled amongst that starry night, the lights from each entity swirled away. They were too many to count, but one grabbed my attention as it carved its way with purpose towards a destination.
Towards me.
—dammit!
The trunk's lid popped open.
#
Edited 05/24/20 to correct typo.
Edited 01/28/21 to correct the colors of Rune's costume.
Last edited: Sep 9, 2022
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Eva Grimm
May 21, 2020
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Eva Grimm
Eva Grimm
#narcolepsyproblems
She/Her
May 22, 2020
#3
Leaving off on a cliffhanger trigger event seems unnecessarily cruel, so here's the next chapter right off the bat. Enjoy!
#
Penny 1.2
The sight of the clear, twilit sky bleeding into the burning red sun overhead might well have been the most beautiful thing I'd ever laid eyes on. Unfortunately, I was too preoccupied with my still imminent death by drowning in a car trunk to properly appreciate it.
I distantly heard someone say something—the cape?—but I couldn't hear them properly. I hacked up salt water, struggled to keep my head above the rising water level, and tried to shimmy my body back and forth to shrug off the jacket holding me down. I had regrettably zipped up the damn thing earlier to ward off the chilly September air coming in from the bay, and with every inch of my jacket forcing itself into the car, I couldn't move my arms to unzip it. Given enough time I might have been able to gradually work the zipper down by pushing my belly up into it, but time was a resource I didn't have. The water level rose up to meet my mouth, and I physically couldn't push my head up any higher.
I started to choke again and was feeling faint. I needed the car to stop sinking, willed it with as much fervor as I could, and all around me, the trunk began to groan. I felt the water level rapidly recede, and if I hadn't already been crying, then I would have cried for joy. In my mind, I could feel a sort of... a weight was the only way I could think to describe it, and a part of me I'd never felt before was pulling it upwards. It was like I had grown another limb, but it wasn't connected to me, not physically. It was just... there. All around me in every direction, there were more weights, and I started to reach out to one of them, but when I felt the car's ascension stall, I hastily abandoned the other weight and threw my full focus into lifting the first weight—the car, I realized—again.
"What the actual fuck?" this time I could definitely tell it was the cape speaking.
The trunk slammed shut, and I immediately panicked at being trapped once more. I groped at the weight in my mind in an effort to break free, but my new limb or whatever it was was unwieldy and fumbled with it. I could tell where I was in relation to it, and the water level began to rise again as something else began to shove the car down, so in desperation, I grabbed at the part of the car I was sure I was in and ripped it away from the rest with a horrendous metallic groan. Whatever the other force that had been acting on the car was, it continued to shove the other half of the car down, but its presence vanished altogether from the chunk of car I had pulled free. I was starting to feel faint again even though the water level began to rapidly recede, and with a final push of effort, I grabbed at the part of the car above me and pulled that away from the bottom I was still stuck to.
Freedom! The entire top of the trunk tore free, the grinding shriek of metal on metal briefly filling my ears, and I could see the sky once more. A fog I'd only just noticed had descended over my thoughts began to retreat at the sight, and a blackness at the edges of my vision that I hadn't noticed in the darkness of the trunk fled with it. An inarticulate howl of fury reached my ears, and I twisted the portion of metal I was adhered to. The cape was on the ground about fifteen feet away from where the dropoff from concrete into water was, perhaps a bit more than a hundred feet away from where I hung up in the sky.
"You're a goddamn cape?!"
What? She was talking to me. Calling me a cape? But...
Oh. Oh. I'm a moron.
I still felt all three weights in my mind: The two halves of the trunk, one of which I was being pressed against, and the other portion I'd torn away from the trunk and was warring over with the other force—the cape on the ground, it had to be. The evidence was clear; I had become a cape somewhere in the past few minutes. I vaguely recalled a dream about two... somethings, but the sight of a chunk of concrete flying straight at me after the cape slapped her hand on it dispelled my attempts to remember the dream.
It probably wasn't important anyway.
I tried to grab hold of the concrete with my power, but I couldn't feel it at all. What was the difference? I didn't have time to question it or, at this point, to dodge. I pulled the top half of the trunk in front of me as a makeshift shield before abruptly questioning whether the metal would actually hold up against a large piece of concrete hurtling at it. Shit, what can I do?
Under my power, I felt the weight of that piece of car shift. Not up or down, or side to side—just elsewhere. I heard the concrete slam into my improvised shield and explode into pieces, but the metal not only didn't give, it didn't move at all.
"Hell yeah! You're nothing, you nazi cunt!" I jeered, the adrenaline pumping through me. I'm a cape! I really am!
"Fucking die, you Jap faggot!" the cape screamed back. I couldn't see her past my shield and tried to move it out of the way, but it stubbornly refused to budge. I focused more acutely on it with my power—My power! Fuck yeah!—and realized it was still stuck elsewhere. I tried to pull it back from there, its weight shifted in response, then I found I could move it once again.
I didn't have time to focus on that weirdness right then though, since another chunk of concrete was hurtling around my shield and towards me with startling accuracy. I forced the chunk I was on to dodge while quickly shifting my barrier to intercept, and though I got myself out of the line of fire and blocked with the shield, the concrete punched through it this time. The concrete reoriented itself and shot towards me again. I whirled around so my back was facing the concrete and hastily shoved this piece of metal into the elsewhere, and I breathed a sigh of relief when the metal once again held strong against the concrete. I didn't even feel the force of the impact on my back, which was incredible.
"Ooo, thank you! I've been trying to scratch that itch for ages!"
"Stop being so goddamn annoying!" she yelled at me as I pulled the metal I was on out of the elsewhere and turned back to face her. She was running past an abandoned pallet, so I tried to grab and throw it at her, but again, my power didn't take hold. Can I only control metal? The cape turned back to face me as she slapped both of her hands against a nearby metal shipping container. When it started to lift up into the air, I recalled how she had touched that concrete earlier as well and realized that she must need to touch objects first in order to move them. I abandoned fighting over the sunken remnants of the car and the pulverized top of the trunk and focused on trying to hold it down with my power. I successfully held it in place at first, but I immediately lost traction when she ran further down and touched the next one.
My power has limits too? I didn't have time to figure it out, so I focused all my control except for what was holding me up in the air on the first container and flung it as best as I could in the way of the other container. The second container ran into the first with a horrible screech that I grit my teeth against, unable to bring my hands to my ears. The cape, being closer to the impact, wasn't so lucky and slapped her hands over her ears with a pained shout. She must've lost concentration, since both containers fell to the ground with a clang that echoed a bit in the abandoned dock. But more importantly than that, the feeling of my jacket pressing into the metal stopped, and I started to plummet through the air.
I caught myself by maneuvering the metal to break my momentum then hover beneath me, but I was starting to shiver from the cool air on my wet body and clothes. I had to finish this quickly, before she got a lucky shot in or I lost feeling in my limbs.
Down below, the cape was rushing back over to the crashed shipping containers to touch them again. "Oh, you want those?" I taunted, once again focusing most of my power into the container closest to her. "Here, let me get that for you." She dodged to the side once she realized what was going to happen, but she was too late to avoid the oncoming battering ram entirely, and it slammed into her hip with a crack. She spun violently through the air and skidded for nearly ten feet, leaving a long, bloody streak along the concrete before finally coming to a stop.
Somehow, against all odds, she was still awake, though it was obvious as I lowered myself down to the dock that she was in agonizing pain. She fumbled with her phone for a moment, likely trying to call for backup, but with a tug of my power, the phone flew from her hand over to me. I snatched it out of the air and almost dropped it to the ground to stomp on it but froze mid-motion when it occurred to me that she knew who I was and could hunt me down again. I needed leverage, and this was my best shot at getting some. Ignoring her distressed shout of outrage, I fiddled with her phone to pull up her contacts. Disappointingly, the 'My Info' part of her phone was blank, so I guess she wasn't a total idiot. Turning my attention back to her, I noticed there was something else made of metal in her robe and tugged it out, drawing a startled gasp.
Personal phone... and no password? Pay dirt. I guess you're an idiot after all. "Tammi Herren, huh? And how are you today, Tammi?"
"Fuck off, you Jap faggot," she snarled, her tone wavering with obvious pain.
"That line again? You really should come up with some more comebacks. Otherwise you come across like inbred white gutter trash."
"You won't get away with this. The R-Rules..."
Rules? I didn't know what to make of that, but my expression darkened at the first part. "Now maybe it's just me, but seeing as you know who I am, I think it's all too fair that I know who you are, don't you, Tammi?" She flinched away, and I nodded, satisfied. My shivering was getting worse, and my teeth were threatening to chatter. I needed to get some warm clothes quickly, and I knew just where to get them.
"H-Hey, w-what do you think you're doing, motherfucker?!" she shouted at me when I marched over and started tugging at her robe. She slapped her hand on it, but behind me, the closest storage container lifted into the air and moved through the air until it was directly over her head.
She froze, watching it warily, and I remarked, "I'm intending to leave you with your life, if not your clothes. Are you really going to push me on the leaving you with your life part?"
The robe tugged itself off, her power clearly at work, and she cried in agony as the fabric pulled itself free from where friction had burned it into her side. Ew. I eyed the bloody ring surrounding the missing patch of her robe with disgust, but I had to work with what I had. I tugged off my jacket and shrugged on the robe. It was warmer for sure, but I really needed to swap out all of my wet clothes. I glanced to the south and smirked a bit as an idea hit me. "Mask too."
"Motherfu—"
"Mask too, Tammi," I interrupted in a sing-song voice, the container dropping a whole inch, eliciting a startled shriek of terror from her. My smirk grew into a full blown grin when her domino mask slapped into my hand. I tugged it on, the adhesive still working somewhat, even if the fit was awkward. I only needed it for a short bit anyway. "Well, I'm off now. If you try anything funny, then you'll be a Tammicake, got it?"
"G-Got it."
I eyed her legs, both of which were bent at unnatural angles, and she was bleeding out a bit. There was no way she could get to help alive if I left her like this, so I sighed and tossed her the first phone she'd pulled out. "I'm guessing that's your 'work' phone? Call for help. But remember, if you sell me out, then I'll return the favor."
I didn't bother waiting for an answer before flying off on my makeshift platform, knowing all too well that mutually assured destruction was the best outcome for both of us. I just didn't like it. I didn't know how far her range of control was, or mine for that matter, so I just flew south and, once she was almost out of sight, I flung the container into the Graveyard, splashing her with salt water in a last fit of pique. She deserved that and more for what she'd done to me.
In short order I was flying over the market, and people were shouting and aiming cell phones at me. Perfect. I quickly found the stall with the clothes I'd looked at before and pulled up some clothes by their hangers, including the blouse I'd been looking at earlier. The shopkeeper's expression was an amusing mish-mash of anger and fear that made him look like he was constipated, and I could help but laugh. Quickly checking that people were still recording, I yelled in my best approximation of Tammi's voice, "That's right, pitiful shopkeepers! Your clothes belong to the Empire! Bow down before our superiority complex and despair!"
The look on the shopkeeper's face? Fucking priceless.
I zoomed off, cackling. Enjoy the bad publicity, Tammi.
#
So I had a problem. Well, a number of problems, really, but two of them were particularly bad.
Problem the first: I forgot Tammi has to touch things to move them, so my little stunt at the market probably wasn't as effective as I thought. Disappointing, but there was nothing I could do about it now.
Problem the second: The clothes I stole were my size but a bit too tight, so now I felt like I was fat. I was already eating veggie wraps at lunch—what more did the world want?!
Problem the third: The blouse didn't flatter my lack of figure well after all, which really sucked. Another injustice by the world at large, clearly.
Problem the fourth, and this was a bad one: Everything that had been in my backpack was a lost cause on account of salt water damage. My textbooks were thankfully still in my locker at Winslow, but my notebooks were a soggy mess. More importantly though, my cell phone was very, very dead.
The last problem tied handily into the final and biggest problem: I didn't know where I lived.
Now, don't get me wrong, if I was at the building, I would totally know which floor Masuyo's apartment was on. The problem was it was long past dark now, and things looked decidedly different when you flew over them from above, so any hope of trying to navigate by memory was a wash. I could have tried to hail a taxi or hunt down the street myself, but I didn't know the actual address. I'd originally had it written down on a slip of paper in my backpack, and I had copied the info into my phone earlier during lunch. With my papers a jumble of wet, white slime and my phone an expensive paperweight, I had no way to get home.
Right away, I wanted to find some metal to keep close in case the Empire had any more capes to throw around, since I had no idea what the gang's make up was beyond 'modern day nazis.' All I had to defend myself with was the bottom half of the trunk of a car, the hangers the clothes had been on, and my phone, and that all felt woefully inadequate. That being said, I was also wary of flying around closer to the ground and getting spotted, especially by the Empire who were doubtlessly even more pissed off at me by now, so that implied I should stick to flying very high in the air. Unfortunately, that wasn't doing me any favors in the temperature department. Ill fitting though they were, having dry clothes did help stave off hypothermia, but hanging about up in the air was exposing me to colder air than the ground.
"I just can't win," I whined as I turned over each possibility while keeping an eye out over the lip of my flying trunk, just in case the Empire had any other fliers. In theory my address was on file with the school, so I could find out where I lived later at least, but that meant sleeping outside in the cold. Also, I had no idea what Masuyo would do if I didn't show up tonight. She'd been really worried earlier, so she might call the cops or something, and I definitely didn't want them involved in anything at all if I could help it.
A gust of wind blew past me, drawing another whine from me as the cold sank in down to my bones. Okay, flying up here isn't going to work. I better find somewhere to stay the night. Most of the area around the market had settled down by now, though I could still see smatterings of people walking to and fro under the light of street lamps. Not sure what else to do, I settled for following the main road from the market towards downtown. After just a few minutes' flight, I found a noticeable bubble of light and noise around one building. At a guess, it was a nightclub, though if it was, it was surprisingly busy for a Monday night. Maybe it was a casino? Did they have those in Brockton Bay? If they did, I was pretty sure they stayed open late. Regardless, it was my best guess for a place where I could find warmth, so I flew over, taking care to set down in an alley a bit away from my target.
On the ground once more, I hemmed and hawed over what to do with my sodden clothes and backpack and what I had of Tammi's costume. I didn't want to lose my clothes, since I was pretty sure they were still salvageable, especially the jacket which I quite liked. That meant keeping them close, even if it was uncomfortable, so I dumped the white mess of paper out of the backpack and shoved the rest in before pulling it on. My back was wet with the damp bag strapped there, but I would live. I also didn't want to leave the trunk or the hangers, but if my guess that this was a nightclub was right, then I couldn't think of any way to keep them close at hand. With a mournful sigh, I left them behind, and a short walk later, I found the source of the light and noise was, in fact, a nightclub after all. The 'Palanquin,' specifically, according to the plain glowing letters of their sign.
There was a bouncer outside and a line that stretched around the building, and I groaned at my oversight. There was no way in hell I would be let into a nightclub. I was clearly underage, I was oddly dressed (at best), and I was carrying a soggy backpack containing, among other things, the outfit of a (known?) supervillain. I almost turned to go back to the alley where I'd abandoned the trunk and hangers, but I didn't want to give up too quickly, so I skulked around the building as unobtrusively as possible. Around the back I found a loading dock with a huge metal door for deliveries, which was promising, but were there people inside? My power showed there were certainly lots of things I could affect moving around.
Which on that note, I tried to lift a multitude of things in rapid succession with my power, just to make sure I was on the right track with how it worked: Backpack? Couldn't lift it. Window on an upper floor of the club? Couldn't lift it. The rat that just scurried by with what looked like a hunk of pizza in its mouth? Couldn't lift it.The nearby dumpster, though—that I could lift.
I looked at tons of items nearby that my power could affect, and I only ever saw things that were obviously metal or probably had metal in them.
Well that settles it. I can only affect metal. Good to know.
Turning back to the matter of getting warm, I examined the inside of the club again and took note of all the metal moving around. I hadn't ever really considered it before, but I supposed it was true that most people had something metal on them, like a phone, some change, or even the button to their jeans. I focused more closely on the area just past the dock door and didn't feel any metal moving, so if there was a guard, they either had no metal on them or were very, very still. I pulled my bag around, retrieved Tammi's domino mask, and slipped it back on. If there's anybody waiting to ninja me, then I'll just book it.
I grabbed hold of the door with my power, lifted it enough to create a gap, then ducked under it and let it slide back into place. I might have been worried someone would overhear the clanky noise of the door opening, but the loud thumping of the music pervaded the air even more now that I was in the building, so I felt pretty secure. The loading dock was only a bit warmer than outside however, which made sense in hindsight, so I regrettably needed to sneak deeper into Palanquin. I crept over to the only door leading further into the club and checked with my power. There was movement not that far away in the grand scheme of things, but it was a large mass of moving metal that had to be the people on the dance floor. I could sense regular spots of metal in the walls, but I didn't know enough about buildings to figure out what that was. Either way, judging by the distance, I guessed I was only a hallway away or so from the dance floor.
I tried to open the door and found it was locked. There was a keypad next to the door, and, judging by the feel of it with my power, another one on the other side as well. Thankfully, the lock itself seemed to be the sort of weight and size I would expect of a normal lock, so I just pulled the lock into the door. Or I tried to, anyway.
"Whoops," I muttered with a wince, as I examined the wood that had shattered when I'd pulled back the lock and then inadvertently continued to pull the whole mechanism further into the door itself. Was I not gentle enough? I started to step past, since there was nothing I could do about it, but then I glanced at the busted lock wedged in the door. It was small and unobtrusive enough, so I pulled it from the wood with my power and tucked it in my bag just in case.
After that, I moved out into the hall, which was thankfully as empty as I expected and also much warmer than the loading dock. The door at the far end of the hallway on my left seemed to be the direction the ever louder thumping music was coming from, so I initially turned right, hoping to find an out of the way supply closet I could hole up in. I paused though when a thought hit me: What would I do if I got found and had no metal around to use? All I had was my phone and the busted lock. Sure, I could always grab more when the need arose, but timing had been critical earlier when I fought Tammi. I didn't want to be caught off guard again! If... If I snuck out into the room with the dancing, then I could get metal there... There was so much—surely no one would notice some of it missing?
Before I knew it, I was walking in the other direction and slipping through the door into the club proper.
82
Eva Grimm
May 22, 2020
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Eva Grimm
Eva Grimm
#narcolepsyproblems
She/Her
May 24, 2020
#7
And here is our journey into Palanquin!
#
Penny 1.3
Nightclubs are loud. Wow, what an original thought, I know, but I could barely hear myself think. That is, objectively, too goddamn loud, and anybody who argues otherwise is wrong, wrong, wrong. I could also barely see anything, since the lights were nonexistent everywhere that wasn't the dance floor, which in contrast was a strobing light show featuring every color under the sun and then some. In short, it was perfect for someone trying to steal metal while standing in plain sight.
And oh my god all that metal! It was damn near hypnotic, feeling it all jump, jive, and bounce to the beat. If I could have properly seen it too? I swear, I might have lost my mind. As it was, I found myself swaying to the beat in time to the bulk of the metal's movement, ignoring the dull ache in my ears from noise over exposure.
"Good evening, miss."
It was tougher than I expected to drag my eyes over to look at who had spoken, and I was surprised when I did. The speaker was a tall, obese man wearing a pale green hoodie over a pair of comfortable looking jeans, his hands were tucked into the front pocket of his hoodie, and his hood was pulled up to obscure most of his head. Most. What parts of his face that were visible were covered in shell-like obtrusions. Even stranger, his skin was translucent to the point I could kind of see what might be his skeleton—it was difficult to say for sure in the dim lighting of the area where we stood.
"The hell is going on with your skin?" I distractedly asked then winced when I played that back in my head. "Um, sorry. That was rude of me."
"It was, yes," he agreed, his words slow and carefully enunciated. He had a faint accent, so I guessed he was a foreigner who had to think through what he wanted to say in English. "I accept your apology."
I breathed a small sigh of relief. "Good."
He didn't say anything further, and eventually I realized I was staring at the dancing again, feeling the tiny weights of metal sashay with the music. Could... Could I do that with my power? I had broken that door's lock, so I wasn't sure how fine my control was. Still, I had come in here to get more metal anyway. I could kill two birds with one stone.
I reached out with my power and gingerly settled it over the people on the dance floor. I didn't want to yank on anyone's pants, so I tried to focus on pieces clustered together, figuring they would be coins. The music switched over to something vaguely electric with a pulsing bass, and before I knew it, I had tugged the coins up into the air and began to swish them to and fro in time to the beat. It was so beautiful. I spun each of them as I made them dance through the air, and the flashing lights twinkled and sparkled off them in a dazzling array that was simply mesmerizing to watch. There was a mixture of murmuring, outrage, and above all cheers from the dance floor, and though I was worried people had noticed I was pulling away their metal, what was done was done. More importantly, I noticed as I manipulated my borrowed playthings that I didn't feel as frantic anymore, which was a definite plus.
"Your power is very beautiful."
"Thank you."
A beat of silence passed between us.
Wait, what?
I snapped around to face him with wide eyes, my fight with Tammi at the forefront of my thoughts as I readied myself to flee. In an instant, all the metal over the floor showered down on the dancers, and where before the crowd had been largely thrilled by my display, a mass cry of outrage rang out. But my focus was solely on the person I'd been speaking with. He had—correctly!—identified me as a cape, and much more importantly I had just admitted I was by accident.
Dammit, he was clearly a cape too. How did that thought not occur to me before? I mean, for fuck's sake, I could see his teeth through his closed mouth. "I'm... I'm not actually, um... W-Why would you think I did all that?" Smooth. Very convincing, June. 10/10. Definitely not lying out your ass.
He tilted his head again, his curiosity palpable. "You are wearing a mask... It is a reasonable conclusion."
I all but slapped myself in my haste to feel my face with my hands. "Oh my fucking god I forgot I was wearing a mask."
The cape chuckled, "Yes, I see this."
I took a wary step away from him. "Do... Do we have to fight? I've already been in one today, and I'd rather not be in a second." It didn't occur to me until after the words left my mouth that I had potentially said too much.
He slowly shook his head. "I do not wish to fight."
Oh thank—
"But I will if I must. Please tell me why you are here, Miss."
Fuck fuck fuuuck. It was all too easy to imagine this hulk of a man attacking me like Tammi had, and I began to tremble, reaching out to the coins littering the dance floor in case things got hairy. I wasn't sure what to tell him. It felt like a bad idea to give personal details like being new in town, but maybe an abbreviated form of the truth? At this point, it was a given I wouldn't be staying here the night with no one unaware. "I, um, needed somewhere to stay the night. That was warm, I mean. This place seemed... Yeah."
It was hard to read his expression between the shadows partially obscuring his face and how tough it was to actually see his skin as opposed to what was under it, but he seemed to be considering what I had said. Eventually he replied, "Very well, we need not fight. You may stay here one night. I must ask you to clean the floor, however. We do not want anyone to hurt themselves tripping."
Clean the...? Oh. I realized the music had stopped, and when I glanced that way, I saw the majority of the crowd had shuffled to the edge of the dance floor. It was tough to read their expressions as well, since the lights were still pulsating and whirling between colors at random intervals. Dammit, I suppose he's already figured it out anyway... "S-Sorry, I'll take care of that. Um... Where should I...?"
"I am going to pull out my hand and point somewhere. Please do not be alarmed."
He did as he said, and though I still tensed in case he might attack, his forewarning helped me not freak out. It was a near thing though, since his fingernails were a rotten brown and looked like they might fall off if touched. "Oh my god, your fingernails! Are you... are you hurt?"
He paused, his hand halfway through rising to point somewhere. "I am not in pain, no."
Interesting choice of words. Second language problem, I guess? "Okay, good. You had me worried I needed to call an ambulance or something."
"Thank you for your concern," he replied, sounding faintly amused. He finished raising his hand, indicating the front exit, which was opposite our position in the room. I couldn't really see anything over there, and a check of my power revealed too many points of metal to pinpoint determine anything. "A bouncer by the entrance has placed out a box. Would you please place everything in there?"
"I can't see him from here. Can I move closer?"
"You may."
I jogged away from the cape, moving in that direction and skirting around the dance floor. As I did so, I lifted all the metal from before into the air once more, drawing a mix of startled and delighted gasps from some of the crowd. I felt like I had to say something, so I yelled, "My bad, everybody!"
Some of the people in the crowd closest to me turned to look, and I heard more than one murmur, "Cape."
I could see the entrance better by that point, and I saw a bulky guy next to a large box that might have been intended for use in a warehouse—I wasn't really sure. I approached and gestured at the box. "Put everything here?" The guy nodded, so I pulled all the metal I'd left hanging in the air and began to dump it into the box. I missed some at first, but I waited until I had the rest in before lifting those bits back into the air and trying again. Once I was done, I gave the bouncer an awkward wave, which he returned with another silent nod.
I turned around and saw that though the cape from before had followed me over, he had stopped about fifteen feet away to give me space. Now that I had turned to him, he slowly closed the distance. "Thank you very much."
The sound system kicked back on, and the DJ announced, "Sorry for the disruption, everyone. If you've lost anything, then please check in with our staff at the entrance on your way out, and we will do our best to ensure everything is returned properly."
I ignored the message and the restarted music in favor of replying to the cape. "Sorry about that. I, um, don't really know what came over me."
He paused long enough that I almost began to say something else, but he eventually said, "There are intricacies to some powers that take time to learn. No apology is necessary. If you will follow me, then I will show you to where you may stay the night."
He turned and started towards the side of the club with a balcony, and I followed, still careful to maintain some distance in case this was all a ruse. When we reached the stairs leading to the balcony, the bouncer stepped aside but the cape stopped and turned to face me once more. "I have forgotten to mention something. There is another individual like me on the balcony."
I hesitated a second then asked, "This isn't a trap or something, is it?"
Once again, he sounded faintly amused when he replied, "If it was, then asking me would likely not give you the answer you seek. Nevertheless, this is not a trap. We have some living accommodations upstairs, and you are welcome to use them for the night, as I previously said."
I turned his words over in my head. He wasn't wrong. This could be a trap, and he certainly wouldn't tell me if it was. Still, if trapping me or whatever had been his plan, then I had to admit he could have caught me off guard multiple times already. 'Actions are clearer than words,' or whatever the saying is. "Okay. I'd like to go upstairs."
He nodded and turned to lead the way. In short order we ascended two switchback flights of stairs, and true to his word, there was another cape on the balcony. Like my guide, his appearance was... different. His skin was unmistakably a bright neon orange, even in the dim light, his purple hair seemed dyed but might be natural given his skin color, and he had a tail that looked like it was nearly as long as I was tall. Thanks to him being shirtless, I could also see he had some sort of tattoo near his heart, but I couldn't make it out under the circumstances. I couldn't say whether he was definitely my age or not, but he was certainly much younger than the cape guiding me.
The boy with the tail waved cheerfully and grinned widely. "Quite the show, Coiny!"
"Huh?" 'Coiny?'
"I dunno your name yet, and I have to call you something."
"Introductions have not been made yet. My name is Gregor. It is a pleasure to meet you," my guide—Gregor—said.
"Yo, I'm Newter," the orange boy—Newter—affirmed with a swish of his tail. "Pleased to meet'cha. So what's your cape name, Coiny?"
When I dithered, Gregor interjected. "You need not give it, if you do not want to."
"I, um, don't really have one?" I hesitated then tacked on. "I sort of only got my powers today."
"No shit?" Newter said with a laugh. "Hell of a show for a newbie."
"Thanks. I guess 'Coin' is fine for now, but not 'Coinsy.' That sounds ridiculous."
"Fair enough. So, you ain't got anywhere to live then?"
"Newter..." Gregor said, his tone warning.
"Fine, fine, yeesh. I'm not trying to fish for personal details or anything. Just making small talk."
I glanced from Newter to Gregor and back. "I just need somewhere to stay tonight. At least, assuming my cousin doesn't kill me when I get home tomorrow..." Aw fuck, that was telling... I suck at this secret identity shit.
"Do you need a phone to call? It would be best to not worry them unnecessarily."
I shook my head. "Would if I could, but I dunno her number. I had it on my phone, but it..." Got completely submerged in salt water and partially crushed under my body while I was being forcibly drowned. "It's busted."
"Unfortunate. Are you hungry? We can acquire you food."
I shook my head to dispel the dark thoughts threatening to eat me up and instead focused on the fact that I was quite hungry. I had intended to get dinner after visiting the market earlier, but after everything with Tammi, I hadn't gotten around to it. Besides, I would have needed to steal it, since the few bills I'd had on me had been in my bag and were destroyed along with the paper that had my address on it. "That'd be great, but I don't have any money..."
"It is okay," Gregor said, dismissing my concern. "I will pay. Do you have a preference, Coin?"
I frowned. "I don't like owing anyone."
"You may pay me back later if you insist, but you should eat if you are hungry."
"But…"
"Hey, you could pay us back with a repeat show," Newter interjected with a grin. "We'll provide the metal this time."
"Newter—" Gregor started to once again reprimand, but I cut in excitedly, feeling a little funny again.
"Sure! You have more metal? Can I keep it? Please say yes!"
Newter nodded with a grin. "Ask and you shall receive! Consider it on the way. Now, what do you want to eat?"
"Awesome! Oh, and um… A cheeseburger and a coke?"
"Ooo, I think if you're quick, Fugly Bob's is still open, Gregor. I'll chip in on the delivery and Coin's meal."
Gregor took his leave without further comment, but I barely noticed, the thought of all that metal drawing my eyes back to the crowd below us. There was less metal on the dance floor now, but there was still enough that I found myself staring.
"You alright there, Coin?"
"Yeah..."
"Have your eyes on anyone in particular down there?" I hummed noncommittally, and he pressed on. "You picked the ideal night to come up here for the first time, by the way. If I hadn't been taking care of something for the boss, there would've been a whole bunch of unconscious girls. It's normal for me, but it might've been weird for you."
Distracted though I was, that still caught my attention as being peculiar. "Hm? Whyzat?"
"My power gives people who touch me a crazy drug high. Non-addictive and with no hangover or side effects, which is good for pleasure but bad for combat. I usually invite some of the lady guests up for conversation throughout the night and facilitate them getting high if they want."
"Oh. S'a weird power."
"It makes me popular with the fairer sex, so hey, no complaints out of me! Feel me, my dude?"
I frowned a bit. "I'mma girl."
"Oh. Oh. Huh. I'd thought... Eh, never mind. Shutting up now."
Nothing else was said for some time, the thump of the bass and the high energy of the melody filling the silence between us. A part of me felt awkward and wanted to fill the quiet—if one could call it that—with talk, but every time I tried to think of a conversation topic, I got distracted and forgot what I'd been trying to think of.
"You sure you're okay? You seem a million miles away."
"I'm good..."
"If you say so. Ah, here's that metal you asked for."
My head snapped around, and a smile split my face in two when I saw I'd been brought three boxes full of assorted metal. I'd been so lost in the flow of the metal on the dance floor that I hadn't noticed the lady and two guys coming with them. I knew these were here for me, so I didn't bother asking for permission before grasping everything inside and sending it all swirling into the air with a gasp of delight. It was an eclectic mix of items including blank CDs, keys, chains, cutlery, screws, pots and pans, scrap metal, and coins of all denominations
It was beautiful.
I immediately felt better, the haze that had settled over my thoughts without my notice lifting in an instant. Recalling Newter's request, I sent the motley array of metal swimming through the air until they were over the dance floor and sent them spinning around in place and around one another. The crowd roared its approval once more, and I grinned in response. Altogether I held thousands of items under my sway, and it was as easy as breathing.
I was choking on water as I struggled to breathe.
My swarm dipped for a moment, but I hastily reasserted control as I took a deep breath to calm myself. It's okay. I'm totally okay. I'm in the middle of a nightclub, nowhere near water. No chance of drowning here—no way, no how!
The lone woman who had helped bring up the boxes stepped over to the rail, staying a respectable distance away without being so far as to require shouting to be heard over the din. "You almost dropped them again. What happened?"
I glanced her way. She had tanned skin, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and looked to be older than Masuyo though not by much if I had to guess. Her white dress shirt had its sleeves rolled up and was carefully tucked into a pair of black slacks. I didn't need to look down to know she was wearing steel-toed boots of some kind. I debated whether to answer her. She had been asked to bring up metal, and I was clearly hanging out with Newter. Ah, and the mask—I kept forgetting about that. It was pretty likely I was the cape making the metal dance through the air, so there was little point in pretending I wasn't.
"I didn't. I mean... I guess I did, but I caught them all."
"It doesn't seem like it's a limitation... Were you thinking of something and got distracted?"
I winced, doing my best to shove down the feeling of drowning while trapped in that car. I'd originally thought about keeping that trunk, but the more I thought about it, the less and less I ever wanted to see it again. "Yeah. And I, um, don't want to talk about it."
She nodded once at that. Not quite curtly. She came across as to the point but not rude. I had to give her kudos. I'd tried to strike that balance a few years back, but I had stopped when I eventually realized I would never be capable of walking that line. Instead, I just just leaned into being rude. It was a hell of a lot easier. "Fair. Regardless, your control is impressive for someone who just got their powers."
I pulled back some of the coins and rotated them before me in a vertical ring, noticing for the first time that they weren't all US currency. There were some coins I vaguely recognized as being Canadian, but most of them were kinds I didn't recognize. One silvery coin in particular stood out to me, since it had a hole in the middle. I brought that one closer and could just barely make out the embossed '50' on it, the rest incomprehensible in the low light. Without warning, I sent it rocketing towards her forehead. Reacting in an instant, the woman swiped at the coin, and blue and red energy crackled when she struck the coin mid-flight. I took an involuntary step back as the two halves of the coin fell to the ground.
"Jesus, Coin, what the hell?" Newter said incredulously, instantly tense and ready to fight. His tail sliced violently back and forth the air.
"I only told Newter and Gregor that," I remarked, my eyes still locked on the woman. I noted she had struck down my projectile seemingly without moving anything except her one hand. You get some badass points for that, lady. "You shouldn't eavesdrop, you know."
"True, though the punishment should fit the crime, wouldn't you agree?" she replied, unperturbed. "Does eavesdropping necessitate death by a coin punching through my brain?"
I gave her a startled look. "The hell? Fuck, lady, I was just trying to scare you to try and figure out why you'd been snooping! I wasn't going to actually hurt you!"
She crossed her arms. "That was a stupid plan, if true."
"It is true. And, um... no comment?"
"You didn't lose focus this time."
I blinked at the apparent non-sequitur, then I realized she meant the assortment of metal still hanging over the dance floor like a constellation of reflective stars. "Huh."
The woman reached into the breast pocket of her shirt and withdrew a card that she held out to me. I tugged the two halves of the coin she'd split up into the air, grabbed it in a pincer movement using them, and brought it over to me. A phone number was the only printed information on it, each digit a clear bold that was slightly raised, but text was written on the back in clear penmanship: "09/29 5 P.M. 10,000."
"My name is Faultline. As it stands, I do apologize for eavesdropping on your conversation, as I'm sure you apologize for sneaking into my club and breaking our loading dock door. You are welcome to sleep in our accommodations tonight. If you are interested in mastering your power and joining our mercenary group, then return here this Wednesday at that time. Call if you absolutely must reschedule. Have a good night, Coin."
"Wait!" I called out when she turned to leave. She paused and glanced at me over her shoulder. "10,000? What does this mean?"
"That would be your signing bonus."
My jaw dropped, and she left without another word. Conversation between Newter and me wasn't stilted after that, but it didn't quite flow freely either. It was likely my fault, since I had a lot on my mind—namely the card and pieces of coin I had tucked into my pocket.
Three capes all in one place... Insta-high skin, splitting things in half, and who knows what Gregor can do. And I broke in here wearing a mask. This could've gone so wrong, so fast.
I made my excuses to leave the dance floor not long after Gregor returned with our food. I safely returned most of the metal to the boxes, though with their permission I happily stowed the coins in my backpack. I ate in the privacy of the room I would be sleeping in for the night, and though the burger was amazing, I had to admit it was greasy and fatty to such a degree it was probably liable to cause a heart attack. Once I was finished, I laid down and pulled the halves of the broken coin out of my pocket and idly pushed them together.
The coin became whole, a thin, jagged scar cutting down its middle.
#
Author note (06/04/20): Minor correction made to the date on the card Faultline gave June. I was mistakenly working off of a September 2011 calendar, but this is September 2010.
Last edited: Jun 4, 2020
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Eva Grimm
May 24, 2020
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Eva Grimm
Eva Grimm
#narcolepsyproblems
She/Her
May 28, 2020
#17
Thank you so much for your replies and questions, everyone! Here's our next chapter, featuring the return of everyone's favorite: Aisha!
#
Penny 1.4
Wearing borrowed clothes to school on my second day hadn't exactly been my plan, but I suppose it was better than wearing ill-fitting clothes instead. Minor victories. The plain, turquoise t-shirt, comfy jeans, and tan jacket had already been in the room when I entered it last night along with a couple twenty dollar bills and a note that they were 'payment for the show.' I had scowled a bit at that, but I had ultimately decided to keep the money. I needed some right then, and it was true that I'd been a crowd pleaser. I pulled the clothes on and idly wondered who they belonged to. They weren't Faultline's—she was definitely taller and actually had a figure. These seemed like they belonged to someone closer to my age who dressed for comfort over style. I only passed one staff member on my way out, and when I asked where the three capes I'd met last night were, he said Faultline was out on an errand and the others were still asleep.
The quiet that hung over the club was pretty disconcerting in a way. It just didn't seem right to see it like this, without the flashing lights and pulsing beats, so I made my leave quickly enough after asking the guy where I could get breakfast. Bus fare cost a 1.25 if I remembered correctly, and while I had a quarter—at least, I was sure I had a quarter somewhere in my bag—I needed to break a twenty to get a dollar bill. I was hungry and wanted breakfast, so if I could kill two birds with one stone? All the better.
Once he'd given me directions to a nearby coffee shop, I ducked around the corner of the club once I'd left out the front, and I tugged off Tammi's domino mask once I was reasonably certain no one was looking. The shop wasn't far away, and I got there quickly enough by foot. It wasn't until I had ordered my croissant and bottle of coke—the person at that counter had given me a look when I'd ordered that instead of coffee—that I saw the clock on the wall and realized I had only a half an hour to get to the school. There was no way I could figure out the bus transfers and actually get from here to there in time. Hell, I was pretty sure I wouldn't even get halfway there before I was late, and I still needed to stop by the office to ask, "So, does anybody know where I live?" I wanted to do that before school, so I could go straight to Masuyo's apartment after and get my own clothes.
Well, there's one way I could get there in time, I thought.
Once my order was ready, I practically swallowed my croissant whole, I ate it so quickly. Once I only had crumbs and half a coke left, I hastily exited the shop and made my way back towards the Palanquin, bottle in hand. If capes like Gregor and Newter were known to associate with the club, then anyone who saw what I was about to do probably wouldn't think as much of it. Made sense to me, anyway, and I didn't have a lot of time to ponder a better idea. I simply ducked back around the side of the building again and pulled the mask back on. Once it was in place, the coins I'd had stored in my backpack and kept feather light with my power swarmed out of my bag and wrapped around—
I was trapped in the trunk, darkness everywhere—
The coins clattered to the ground as I shivered. Shitfuck! Nooope, that ain't gonna work.
I almost resigned myself to just being late, but then I glanced at the coins clustered on the ground in a ring around me. Wait, am I over thinking this? I stepped onto a portion of the ring, wrapped the rest around my feet, then lifted that up into the air.
Fuck YES, I can fly! I thought while hovering a foot above the ground. Then I tried to take off like I'd seen Legend do and released a startled shriek when I nearly fell on my face. Whoops. Well that was graceful... I guess I gotta add metal to more points of my body, if I don't want to flop over and literally break a leg. It took me the better part of a minute to find a happy balance between 'stable enough to fly' and 'nononodarkplaceisbad!' but I eventually settled on wrapping coins around my feet and legs up to my knees, wrapping some around my hands and arms up to my elbows, and wrapping some more just underneath my nonexistent bust. It didn't feel that dissimilar to wearing boots, gloves, and a belt, albeit a ridiculously high belt, but what mattered was it worked.
I was flying! It was amazing! Granted, I didn't seem to be flying incredibly fast or anything like that. It was hard to judge with certainty, but I appeared to be out pacing most of the cars I flew over below. But hey, I also didn't have to deal with other drivers, stop lights, or even following streets, so perks—namely, flying!
I flew away from the rising sun towards the northwest while drinking the remnants of my coke, and I spotted Winslow in short order. I didn't have a watch and my phone was still deader than a doornail, so I didn't know how close to the bell I was cutting it. I did see students outside though, so that meant I wasn't late yet, at least. I quickly found a place to touch down discreetly and began to pull my coins back into my bag. The imagined image of my bag slurping up the coins and burping made me giggle a bit, and soon enough I was tossing the coke bottle in a nearby dumpster and leaving the alley. Correction—I pulled off the mask and put it in my bag before I left the alley. Forgetting I had been wearing it the night prior was once more than I ever wanted to make that particular mistake, thank you very much.
From there the journey to the school's office was straightforward. It wasn't far from the entrance, though I did take some time to marvel at how much metal was in the school. Lockers, light bulbs, piercings, jewelry... Hell, I could sense, judging by their relative sizes and weights, what were likely knives and guns. It was mind-boggling to realize just how much metal could be in a place when I hadn't really paid it any attention before. Still, I was on a time crunch, so I forced myself to stop trying to count how many people were carrying weapons—spoiler alert, it was a lot—and made myself actually walk into the office. Just like yesterday, the secretary kept her eyes firmly on her monitor until I was actually standing in front of her desk. Only then did she acknowledge my presence with a brief glance, a perfunctory, "What do you need?" and returning her gaze to her monitor.
She did a double-take and stared at me, her mouth agape.
Oh boy, I thought wryly, she's stepped up her rudeness. Which of course necessitated an appropriate response. "Careful, you could swallow a fly like that."
"You're—"
"June Fujiwara," I stressed, remembering all of yesterday's hoopla and deciding to get ahead of it this time. "Listen, weird question, but uh, do you have my cousin's address on file? Phone number too, actually. And on a related note, could I use your phone?"
"Omigod! Jake!"
I involuntarily looked up at the (regrettably) familiar name, winced when I realized what I had done, then blinked when I finally acknowledged that, yes, Masuyo was standing in the open door to the principal's office. In the blink of an eye, my cousin rushed across the room and wrapped me in a hug, which no, nope, nuh uh, not happening. I shoved her off, and she gave me a hurt look. I had no idea why though, or why she'd hugged me. We had only really known each other for less than a week, so why was she acting like this? There had to be more there, and it probably tied into why she took me in when Mom died, but asking her about it in the middle of the school's office while Principal Blackwell and Secretary McRudeFace were watching was a wretched idea.
"My name is June. And, um… Hi, Masuyo?"
"Ja—June, where were you? You never came home last night!"
And so we reached the question that I probably should have decided on an answer for before now, though to be fair, I hadn't expected to run into Masuyo at Winslow. I'd thought I would have a whole school day of generally ignoring teachers to come up with a plausible lie. Sorry I didn't call, but the paper containing your address and phone number got blown away by a gust of wind into the bay, and when I tried to catch it, I accidentally fell into the water and ruined my phone and all the contents of my bag. Thankfully a friendly do-gooder whose name I've conveniently forgotten saw the entire tragedy unfold and, moved by my plight, housed me for the night and gave me these dry clothes to wear. No, I don't recall where they live—I'm a wide-eyed kid in a brand new city, how could I possibly be expected to recall an important detail like that? Or this person's name? Or what they looked like? Or what their house looked like?
You know. A plausible lie. Not at all like that one, AKA the lie I spun on the spot because I was caught on the wrong foot.
Masuyo sighed and ran a hand over her face while Blackwell and McRudeFace simply stared. "June…" she started to say before pausing and holding up her finger, a look I couldn't decipher crossing her face. Personally I was just pleased she used my goddamn name this time with stuttering or needing me to prompt it with an opstay with the akejay. "Just… We'll talk more when we're back home, okay?"
"Sure." Putting that off forever, if I can help it.
"I'll… See what I can do to get you a new phone. I'll check my finances when I get home."
I had to bite my tongue to not snap at her over that. She keeps doing this. Why does she keep doing this?
"Do you have money or did that get ruined too?"
Really trying my patience. "I have money." That was actually the truth too. I had who knows how much money in coinage of varying currencies in my backpack at that very moment, plus a few bills too.
Her expression tightened a bit, and she pulled out her wallet anyway, like she was uncomfortable and trying to hide it. I honestly had no idea how I kept my expression aloof—I was seething. Determined not to make a scene in front of the school staff, I silently resolved to slip the money back into her wallet later or, if she noticed, say a friend gave me lunch.
If she was going to continue being like this, then I would definitely need to consider Faultline's offer. Or else just use my powers to make my money in some other way. I was no stranger to stealing clothes, makeup, purses, and all that jazz, and it would only be easier with my new powers. In fact, now that I had powers, I could finally get access to the sorts of things I hadn't been able to steal before. Namely, hormones for my transition. I could just rob a pharmacy for them. For that matter, any pharmacy I robbed would have valuable drugs like narcotics I could sell, and places like that were doubtlessly insured against robbery.
The idea of running on my own was very appealing, since I liked being self-sufficient, but if Brockton Bay was anything like home, then the statistics for being a solo villain—or hero, for that matter—were probably shit. And if Faultline had ten grand to throw around as a signing bonus, then working for her would probably be pretty lucrative.
It was food for thought.
#
Masuyo left shortly after giving me some money—ugh—a new slip of paper with her address and phone number on it, and since first period had started by that point, I was sent to class with a note and a fresh copy of my schedule. I had different classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays than the rest of the week, and I was pleasantly surprised to find I shared the class right before lunch with the girl who had shown me the way to the office yesterday. Our seats weren't next to each other or anything as convenient as that, but that still meant I knew where she was once when the bell rang. Not that I could possibly miss her in that outfit. Jeans with holes everywhere that revealed purple fishnets, a white crop top featuring a flaming skull with a black speech bubble and red symbols clearly meant to be censored swearing, and an over-sized bomber jacket. And neon green lipstick. Can't forget that. How on earth did she get away with wearing that here?
"Hey, wait up!" I called out as I jogged a bit to catch up to her out in the hallway once class was over. It seemed like she wasn't heading in the direction of the cafeteria—at they very least, the rest of our class was heading the other way—but she might have been heading to her locker to get a bag lunch or something, so I didn't pay it any mind.
She gave me a confused look when I slowed to a walk next to her, but recognition lit up her eyes after a second. "Oh hey, newbie. What up?"
I briefly entertained the thought of telling her what had happened yesterday sans my gaining powers, just for the look on her face, but I ultimately rejected the thought. "Eh. New school shit. I haven't got anybody to sit with at lunch. Mind if I tag along?"
She tossed me a look. "I'd been planning to peace out and hang out on the Boardwalk. You down?"
I cocked my head a bit in thought then shrugged. "Sure, I guess. Any particular reason you wanna play hooky?"
"Do I need one?"
"Nah. Just curious."
She smirked a bit. "Awesome. Name's Aisha, by the way."
"June."
"Like the month?"
"Yup."
"A'ight. Let's bail, Junebug." She pointedly ignored my glare at the horrible nickname, and it just so happened that she almost tripped over a small pile of pennies someone—certainly not my power when nobody was watching!—must have dropped on the ground.
It turned out she had been walking to the rear entrance of the school where the kids smoking reefer had been the day prior, which made sense. If anybody in this dump were actually going to stop us from leaving, it seemed more likely to happen walking out the front door. The rear entrance was on the west side of the building, and though we needed to head east in the grand scheme of things to head towards the bay, we very deliberately made our way south for a while before finally grabbing a bus towards the Boardwalk. Nobody really paid us any mind beyond an eyeroll and a "don't cause any trouble" from the bus driver, who seemed like he was long past caring about kids playing hooky. Aisha clearly knew the city well, as she naturally weaved comments into our chatter about how the street we just passed was constantly being fought over by the E88 and ABB, the Merchants—a gang of drug users and pushers, apparently—frequented that neighborhood to the north, and so on. We thankfully didn't need to take any transfers, which explained why Aisha had walked as far as she did to catch that particular bus line, and reached the Boardwalk after a little more than half an hour.
The salty smell of the breeze wafting in from the ocean hung heavy over the area, which was littered with people walking to and fro on a long wooden walkway over the beach with periodic docks and stairs of the same material respectively jutting out into the water and descending to the sandy beach below. An eclectic array of shops were located along the walkway, ranging from ice cream parlors with homemade flavors to gift shops carrying tourist bait trash to boutiques selling dresses that probably cost more money than I'd ever seen in my life. The effect left me a bit homesick for Coney Island, truth be told. It probably would have been worse if there had been an amusement park, but even if there had been one, it would have been impossible to mistake this place for home. Coney Island didn't have bulky, uniformed men who I was pretty confident weren't police positioned here and there amid the crowds, nor did it have the sight of a forcefield over a retrofitted oil rig out in the water. Some kind of bridge made of light suddenly stretched out from it in a gentle arc, connecting to the paved road on the other side of the shops, and two motorcycles crossed it, the roar of their engines matched by some cheers from people who were probably tourists. The riders were clearly capes, and though I recognized Armsmaster's blue tinkertech armor and halberd slung across his back, I didn't know the lady in army fatigues, combat boots, an American flag mask over the lower half of her face, some sort of sash around her waist in traditional USA colors, and her hair pulled back into a ponytail—another casualty of my limited research time before coming to Brockton Bay.
"I recognize Armsmaster," I spoke up, drawing Aisha's attention, "but who's the military lady?"
She gave me a funny look for a moment then shrugged. "Miss Militia. So wait, you new to the city too?"
"Yuuu-p," I replied, popping the final consonant, drawing a snort from her.
The capes finished crossing, and the bridge melted away, so traffic began moving normally again. "The hell you doin' moving to Nazi Capital USA?"
I somehow laughed and sighed at the same time. "Mom finally killed herself. OD, not that I was expecting her to go any other way." A bit of discomfort entered her eyes and posture, so I promptly deflected. "So, what'cha wanna do now that we're here?"
She shrugged, some of the uneasiness in her body language fading. "Food first, then some ice cream. I gotta hankering, and I wanna enjoy that shit before it gets too cold for it."
Well at least she waited until it was in the low 70s to satisfy that particular desire. Just thinking about having ice cream in yesterday's weather sent a shiver up my spine. "Sounds good. But, um, most of these places look real expensive."
She snorted. "Costs more than it's worth, most of it. You gotta know which places are worth buying from and which places are worth stealing from."
I glanced her way and watched as frustration tinged with embarrassment spread across her features. I didn't know what to make of that, so I just responded normally, hoping she might drop a hint about what was up with that look. "Makes sense. There were some stores back home where it was easier to shoplift than others." I glanced askance at a not-policeman as we passed through his line of sight. He met my eyes briefly, and I resisted the urge to look away immediately. That was one of the first things I learned when I began to steal—avert your eyes too quickly, and you seem like you're up to no good. If you stared for a couple of seconds then slowly moved your gaze away, you would come across as curious instead. "We didn't have whoever these jokers are skulking about though."
"Yeah, you gotta watch out for the Enforcers. They catch wind you're a thief, then BAM!—you're tiny pieces in a dark alley." Oddly, she sounded relieved, which what the hell, but then I put two and two together and realized she was relieved I hadn't made a big deal about her mentioning stealing. Her earlier embarrassment abruptly made much more sense. And, okay yeah, weird to just put it out there like that. We had code phrases, gestures, and the like back in Brooklyn, which was useful for discreetly finding a fence but inconvenient when you were first starting off and didn't know what to say and do. Did they have that here? Maybe they had and I'd missed the signals because they're different?
Whatever. Problem for another time. "They sound like a fun bunch. So, any place around here that won't charge a hundred bucks for a veggie wrap?"
Aisha laughed incredulously. "A veggie wrap? The fuck you eating that shit for?"
I poked her stomach, exposed as it was by her crop top, and she scowled and swatted my hand away. "Some of us have to diet to stay thin."
She rolled her eyes at that. "Whatevs. I know a place, c'mon."
'A place' apparently meant a rundown diner off the main strip a block away from the actual Boardwalk. It looked like a bit of a dive, but I was willing to withhold judgment until I'd actually tried their food. There had been some unpolished gems back home too, but I roughly suppressed those thoughts. If I kept comparing everything in Brockton Bay to back home, then I was bound to get caught up in a funk. You live here now, I thought. Get used to it.
A waitress bustled over when we stepped in and frowned once she got a good look at us. "Aren't you two supposed to be in school?"
Aisha opened her mouth to reply, but I beat her to it. "Flatterer. We aren't that young."
The waitress raised an eyebrow. "Uh huh. I guess it ain't any of my business, as long as you're paying. Booth or table?"
"Booth," Aisha chipped in.
She grabbed two menus from a nearby box then lead us over to a free booth, laying them down on each side before stepping aside to let us slip in. "Know what you want to drink?"
"Lemonade," Aisha responded at the same time I replied, "A coke."
Once the waitress left, Aisha raised an eyebrow. "Thought you were dieting or whatever?"
"I am?"
"Uh… A coke ain't diet food."
"Well, I mean, I'm not dieting all the time," I defended. "I get veggie wraps, salads, and the like for lunch, but I do whatever's convenient for breakfast and dinner. And I can't not have a coke."
She grinned. "Riiight. Sounds like the makings of a good diet. You'll be five hundred pounds in no time."
I kicked her under the table. She kicked back, cackling.
Yeah, I had a feeling we were going to get along just fine.
I took a second to examine the menu and confirm they did indeed serve veggie wraps here. When the waitress came back with our drinks, she took Aisha's order—a chicken sandwich with fries—then turned to me and asked, "And you, sir?"
I scowled. "I'm not a guy." She gave me a skeptical look, and I grit my teeth. "Look, I'm here for food, not your opinions. Just get me a fucking veggie wrap."
"There's no need to swear," the bitch haughtily replied.
"Then maybe you shouldn't be giving people shit over how they look," Aisha sneered. She visibly looked her up and down. "Ain't like you got room to be talking."
That got her mad. "You know what? I've changed my mind. Get out of here before I call a truancy officer."
"Happily," I bit out, spitting in the drink she'd just brought to the table.
The two of us left, and Aisha paused to flip the bird at the waitress at the door before cackling and running out when the lady yelled at her. I watched with a smirk from the sidewalk, basking in the vindictive pleasure of being defended by a friend.
"Didn't realize this place had started hiring assholes. C'mon, let's find somewhere else."
"Sounds good."
A short while later, we were enjoying some hot dogs from a good cart Aisha knew of, leaning against the boardwalk railing and chatting idly about random topics. I'd never been the sort to comfortably sit around with someone in silence, so the babble was a-okay in my books. Oddly, I found I got really uneasy if I looked at the bay's waters for too long, so I made a point to face away from them.
After the previous topic reached its conclusion, Aisha unexpectedly asked, "Do you get that a lot?"
"Get what?" I asked, thrown by the non-sequitur.
"Get mistaken for a guy."
I sighed bitterly. "My whole damn life," I replied, actively avoiding why. "I'd been hoping it would be different here. Would've made being forced to move here worth it, at least."
She tilted her head, a considering look on her face, then nodded. I almost questioned why, but she spoke up before I could ask. "That sucks." She paused. "I guess I did that too. Sorry again about that."
With how unapologetic Aisha seemed to be in every other way, especially her attire, it felt important that she had apologized—twice over the same thing, no less—so I gave her an easy shrug. "You've been chill since. So, y'know, we're cool."
She smirked. "You been to the Market yet? We should go Saturday and see about getting you something rockin' to wear to school Monday."
"You mean that big flea market off of Lord Street? I'm down with that."
"Tourist," she said with a roll of her eyes, though I could hear the humor lacing the words. "Brocktonites just call it the Market."
"Okay, 'Market' I can get behind, but 'Brocktonites'? You've gotta be kidding me. That sounds so lame."
"The hell else we gonna call ourselves? Bayers? Brocktonians? Brockers?"
I laughed at the last one. "Okay, I'll give you that. I guess it's not your fault whoever founded this place didn't pick a kickass name like 'New York City.'"
"You're joking, right? They just took the name of the state and tacked 'city' on the end!"
"And I suppose John Doe Brockton or whoever founded this place using his last name with 'bay' on the end is better?"
Our hot dogs consumed, we continued our friendly bickering while window shopping for some time before parting ways for the day. Of course it wasn't until after Aisha had left that I realized I was an idiot—knowing the address of something didn't actually translate to knowing where that street is.
And Aisha could've given me directions too. Fuck my life.
#
It thankfully didn't take me very long to get back to Masuyo's apartment. In the end, I asked one of the Enforcers if I could borrow their phone's map app, posing as a tourist looking for my aunt's house. I was only lying about the exact details, so it was easy enough to be convincing, and I got a small thrill out of being a thief right underneath the asshole's nose. I was careful to only search for the name of the street—I didn't want the asshole to come knocking later after all—then found a secluded place to take flight with my power, mask in place. Once I'd found my way to the street, it didn't take that much longer to actually find the apartment building. It was a little ways due east from Brockton Bay University, just a bit north of the north end of downtown, so I was confident I could find it easily enough in the future.
I carefully descended, stowed my coins and mask, then made my way inside, easily retrieving the metal key from the sea of metal in my backpack by flexing my power. Out of habit I almost tossed my backpack onto the floor by the door as I slipped inside, but I aborted the motion halfway through at the last second. If I left it there, then Masuyo might think to move it, would doubtlessly notice it was insanely heavy, and would probably investigate. I had no idea how I could explain my stash of coins, so it was better to avoid the scenario altogether. I tugged the bag back up onto my shoulders and started towards the pullout couch I was sleeping on instead, flipping on the lights as I entered the living room.
I was halfway through unfolding the bed when Masuyo emerged from the hallway leading to her room and the bathroom. She breathed a sigh of relief. "Good. You're home." Not hearing a question, I didn't bother replying. After I got the bed fully unfolded, she asked, "So… How was school?"
Something about the way she said that made me suspicious, so I glanced at her over my shoulder. "It was fine. Why?"
"Nothing interesting happened?"
Ugh. Did the school call her about me skipping? Maybe I can divert her attention? "I guess… If making a friend counts."
Masuyo's eyebrows rose. "Oh? Who is he?"
I crossed my arms. "Her name is Aisha."
"Ah, sorry, I just thought… Well, never mind. It doesn't matter what I thought." Damn right it doesn't. "I'm just… I'm just glad you're here. You scared me when you didn't come home yesterday!"
A part of me really wanted to tell her This isn't home, especially after my bout of homesickness earlier at the Boardwalk, but I managed to hold my tongue. This place may not be home, but it was still a roof over my head. Yesterday had made it abundantly clear that was nothing to scoff at. "Yeah… My bad."
She ran a hand over her face, a look of frustration peeking out from between her fingers but disappearing by the time they slipped off her chin. "I checked my finances, and I'm sorry, but I can't get you a new phone until after my next paycheck on Friday. We can go to the mall on Saturday, okay?"
I bit my lip, feeling frustration well up in my gut. When I had lived with Mom, I'd grown used to being self-sufficient while she lived from drug trip to drug trip. The only things she had ever done for me were giving birth and somehow—and god only knows how—managing to pay rent regularly enough that we hadn't been tossed out on the street. Then along comes Masuyo trying to pay for everything, someone I hadn't known until Social Services introduced us and said we were family. And don't get me wrong: I didn't doubt that we were related or anything like that. Sure, I had some freckles and my hair edged more towards brown than her midnight black hair, but we had the same button nose and cheekbones, and our eyes were the exact same shade of chocolate brown. I could definitely see us being cousins. To get back to my point though, I was frustrated because I wasn't used to someone caring about me. She was concerned when it seemed like I didn't have lunch money earlier and made a point to give me some, even though it was obvious she didn't really have the money to give. I was used to going hungry when I didn't have lunch money—AKA all the goddamn time. Then she got all freaked out enough to apparently try to hunt me down at the school when I didn't come home last night. I was used to being at home whenever I pleased because I could count on Mom being too high to notice my comings and goings. On some level I knew I should be happy to have someone in my life now who gave a fuck, but it was weird.
I didn't want weird. Leaving home behind and moving to this stupid city with its modern day nazis was weird enough. Nearly getting killed after my first day of school, my third day in this bloody city because I was trapped in the trunk, can't get out, ple—Fucking stop it brain!—because I'm trans or Japanese or both or because I was a convenient target I don't fucking know was the worst kind of weird. I was full up on weird, and I didn't know how to or want to handle Masuyo caring about my wellbeing.
"Don't worry about it," I replied, trying to keep my voice level. I wasn't sure if I succeeded or not, but I tried dammit.
"It's not a problem."
Trying wasn't the same as succeeding. You fucking liar. "Stop it."
"Huh? Stop what?"
"Stop lying to me," I hissed. "Stop it."
"I'm not… I don't understand?"
"I don't want your goddamn charity! I don't want it or need it!"
"J-June…"
"I was fine when Mom was only good for a bed to sleep in, and I'll be fine now that she's dead and you're doing it instead. Just… just stop worrying about me and get out of my life, okay?" Fuck, she was crying. I didn't mean to… Fuck. "I'm going out for a walk."
"June, please… It's almost dark. It's not safe."
"I'll be fine. I just… I need some fresh air. Go study your nursing books or something." Do something that matters instead of worrying about me.
I grabbed my bag and left, doing my best to ignore that she was still crying when I walked past.
73
Eva Grimm
May 28, 2020
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Eva Grimm
#narcolepsyproblems
She/Her
Jun 1, 2020
#30
What's that, you say? We haven't had any real action since 1.2? Well, I guess I'll just have to rectify that.
#
Penny 1.5
The moment I was outside the apartment and sure I was alone, I pulled on my mask, wrapped myself in the coins needed for flight, and took off. I wasn't in the air for long though—my mask had all but flown off. I quickly descended, grabbed the domino mask from where it had fallen, and pressed it into my face. The problem was easy to identify but left me unsure how to proceed. The adhesive was almost entirely spent, so without something to tie it on securely enough to not fall off mid-flight, it was a wash. That meant I needed to replace it.
The thought of finding Tammi and robbing her for another was humorous to think about but quickly discarded. Tracking her down would be damn near impossible, and if I was being honest with myself, my victory last time had relied more than a bit on surprise and luck. I should really figure out what her cape name is when I can… Wouldn't want to blurt it out by accident, else I'll have nothing to hold over her and keep mine secret.
Most capes I knew of wore some variety of mask that covered the eyes and had a variety of shapes and sizes, but where would I get one that would fit and stay on? I knew a few capes from back home who used full face helmets, like what a motorcyclist wore, but the thought of wearing something like that reminded me too much of the feeling of being unable to escape the trunk and sent a shiver up my spine.
I suppose I could just not wear a mask? I mockingly thought. Just kidding. That's fucking stupid. Nobody sane would do that.
No, it seemed to me that the best choice was a mask that covered the lower half of my face. Something like what Miss Militia, the cape I'd seen earlier at the Boardwalk, or Butcher used. Not the recently killed one, Butcher XIII—he wore a mask that covered the eyes, I think. The new one, Butcher XIV, wore a mask that left everything from the eyes up exposed, or so I'd heard. Something like that would work well and would hide the freckles dusting my cheeks, which were probably one of the main distinctive features I had. I knew exactly where to go to get the perfect mask too. Holding my soon-to-be-replaced mask to my face, I took off into the air.
Darkness had started to descend over the city, but it hadn't quite taken hold yet. The twilit sky provided some degree of illumination over the buildings below, leaving one half of each stained red and the other side in shadows. The sounds of city life had dwindled as well but were still present as cars crawled across the pavement and people walked to and fro, resembling ants more than humans from up here. Yeesh, hello newfound feelings of superiority. Careful you don't get your head stuck in the clouds while you're up there, eh? I started moving roughly north toward the Boardwalk, where Aisha and I had passed a store earlier that specialized in accessories like hats, jewelry, and scarves. The mannequin in the window there had been sporting, among other things, an attractive silver, metallic looking scarf that had practically shone in the afternoon sun. My new mask.
I was surprised when I quite quickly passed a bubble of light and sound I recognized as Palanquin. I hadn't realized Masuyo lived so close to the club. Which actually meant if I had searched a bit further west last night, then I might not have met the capes at Palanquin. I ground to a halt mid-air in surprise when my thoughts about masks and Palanquin collided. Gregor and Newter hadn't worn masks, which made sense when you were so distinctive you made them pointless, but Faultline had met me without her mask on. Did that mean something? It seemed like it had to, but I couldn't figure out what. I pondered that while continuing towards the Boardwalk, but by the time I reached my destination, I was no closer to an answer than I'd been when I started, so I set the matter aside. I'd just have to hope it didn't come back to bite me in the ass.
The sun had completely retreated behind the hills by that point, leaving the street lamps and shop lights to illuminate the still somewhat busy looking Boardwalk. Out over the dark, ominous waters of the bay, the glowing oil rig the local Protectorate heroes had emerged from earlier shone brightly. I hadn't given the place much thought earlier, distracted by good company, but that place had to be the headquarters for the local Protectorate and Wards. It didn't make sense for it to be anything else with the forcefield and light bridge alone much less with how pretty it looked, all imposing towers, elegant arches, and colorful spotlights. Brockton Bay knew how to give its heroes fancy digs—I had to give it that much. I idly considered flying closer to check it out with my power in addition to my eyes, since I couldn't feel anything from so far out, but I could all too easily see myself getting shot out of the air or—shudder—given a recruitment pitch.
Sorry, Brockton Bay, but the only way I'd go hero was if Legend himself personally asked me to, and even then, I'd have to think about it.
Still, the proximity of the heroes meant I needed to play smart, not go in guns blazing or to show myself before I was ready. A good thief controlled any interaction with the mark from start to finish. I kept myself high enough up that I figured I would be difficult to see against the dark sky but low enough I could still see each store's sign, then I began searching for the shop I had in mind. I found it before long, but rather than going straight for it, I backed away a block into the somewhat more dimly lit street a block away before bringing myself lower. Instead of going all the way down into the closest alley, I brought myself down to the roof of the shop across the street from the boutique and perched on the ledge facing the store. This side of it faced into the city instead of the wooden boardwalk and the bay, but I figured it might have mannequins with the same accessories on this side too. No dice, unfortunately, and I didn't detect anything with my power that resembled a scarf in shape either. I hadn't actually expected the scarf to be made of metal, but I was glad I had checked. I would have felt very foolish later if I had realized I could have just used my power to directly retrieve the scarf instead of indirectly.
I glanced at the people below to verify nobody was looking up, then I quickly crossed the distance over to the store. I made my way to the other side of the roof and peeked over to check for any Enforcers, finding only two in sight. More importantly, they had metal on them. The usual stuff like pant buttons were a given, but each also had metal bars of some kind and steel toed boots. It was hard to tell exactly, but the bars felt roughly two feet long and didn't seem to be… full, I guess was the best way to put it. It felt like multiple pieces of metal stacked, so I tentatively identified them as collapsible batons, given who I was dealing with. Below me I sensed some much, much smaller metal rings collected together in a way that indicated they were the hand displays showing off rings, which meant the scarf was just a bit to my left. Wait, no—my right. I'm facing away from the window instead of towards it.
Conveniently this store was on the end of a strip, so I took some of the coins I had left in my backpack because I wasn't using them and shunted them over the roof towards the alley between this strip of stores and the one adjacent. I was all set to plow through the glass with a barrage of coins, when some other metal objects in the store gained my attention. Namely, a couple pieces that kept periodically ejecting a part of themselves out once every other minute or so before that part was pushed back into the whole—cash registers were the only thing that made sense. They were roughly against the side of the shop that was the exterior of the strip, and underneath them was something heavy that had a separate but connected circle on its front.
A safe. I had heard tale of a few safe cracker jobs back home, but I'd never been on one myself. Those kinds of jobs weren't the kind of work that you got in on as a fifteen-year-old unless somebody you knew was already on the job, and even then, you had to be good. A safe was either a goldmine or a fool's errand, depending on when and how often it got emptied. It was a gamble.
It would be easy pickings with my power.
So the safe, the cash registers, and the scarf, I reviewed, reevaluating my approach. I tentatively reached out with my power and tried to gauge how heavy the safe was. It was definitely far heavier than anything else in the store, I decided, but compared to a shipping container, it was nothing. I'd had trouble in the Boat Graveyard when I tried to control that second container, but I had no trouble controlling all my coins. It had to be a weight issue of some kind, but it wasn't clicking exactly how it worked. That meant I would try to move the safe and cash registers first and, if that failed, I would settle for the scarf. It was my original purpose in coming here, anyway.
I spared one last glance towards the luminous oil rig in the distance and, seeing no bridge, I struck. I grabbed the safe and registers with my power and lifted them into the air, drawing a crunching sound I could just barely hear through the roof below me and a couple of screams that I could hear much better. The Enforcers I'd been keeping my eyes on started to move towards the store, and I tugged on their boots, causing them both to fall face first into the wooden boardwalk. Beneath me, I had my coins burst through the glass, drawing even more screams, and had them wrap around the mannequin that should have a single earring and the scarf around its neck before yanking it clear along with any coins I managed to identify. I could have gone for jewelry too, but I had no idea what might be in people's ears or around their necks, so that was too hazardous. The people who had been running the registers seemed to be frozen in fear if their wobbly but stationary metal was any indication, so with the way clear, I sent the safe hurtling through the nearby wall.
Or I tried to, anyway.
The safe seemed to sink into the wall a bit, but a bit wasn't, as you might imagine, through the wall. The Enforcers were trying to get up below, so I tugged their feet out from under them again, directed my coins into the alley and up to me, then grit my teeth and slammed the safe into wall again. Then again. It finally went through after the fourth try, which was good, because I had to put the Enforcers down a third time, and I was about ready to give up on the safe and registers. The coins had reached the roof by this point, and I grabbed the scarf off the mannequin as I pulled the registers through the hole in the wall below. With my bounty in tow, I took off into the air, ignoring the couple shouts of "Cape!" from the people below as they noticed me—or maybe just the safe and cash registers—cutting through the air away from the Boardwalk. Behind me, the Protectorate's HQ hadn't stirred. Perhaps a minute flat, and I was out.
Perfect.
#
So I had a minor problem. An oversight, really, in the planning phase of my robbery. I hadn't considered what to do with the money in the safe and registers.
I couldn't really add the coins to my growing collection, since my bag was mostly full as it was, and there was a respectable amount of bills between the registers and the safe, once I'd ripped them all open with my power. There was no way I could store the money at Masuyo's apartment. Even if I'd had my own room, there was no way I could explain where I had acquired this much money if Masuyo found it. That meant I needed to find somewhere else to put it that nobody was likely to stumble upon.
My thoughts initially went to Palanquin. Faultline had referred to her team as being mercenaries, so they probably wouldn't blink if I showed up with cash looking for somewhere to stash it. Might demand a portion of it, since I was a… prospective member, I guess. I didn't mind that so much, especially if she was actually going to deliver on the signing bonus she'd mentioned. Problem was she reminded me of some of the people I'd worked with back home who were strict about when and where 'business' was performed. She might have specified tomorrow as the meet-up because that was the next day she'd cleared Palanquin for dubious activities. It was a risk, and I would rather risk losing this money than losing ten grand. That meant Palanquin was out.
I considered the abandoned docks where Tammi and I had fought but, yeah… no. If I never saw that place again, it'd be too soon. Still, thinking of the abandoned docks reminded me that when I'd been examining that map a few days back I had also seen train tracks extending out of the north and northwest ends of the city. I didn't know for sure if they were still in use, but given how close they were to the docks, I was willing to bet they'd fallen out of use when the shipping industry had dried up as well. It was a possibility, anyway, so I decided to head up that way to check.
I tossed Tammi's mask with its spent adhesive into my backpack and tied my new mask—This is my mask!—securely around my face, leaving only my eyes and my still unfortunately short hair visible. At least it's long enough to be considered a pixie cut. Where's a cape with hair growing powers when you need one?
While flying north looking for the train tracks, I noticed something crazy—or rather, three somethings. Three monstrous hell-beasts as large as vans came into sight below me, tearing down the street at speed. For a moment, I thought they were racing at me, and I tensed, already reaching out to what metal I could find in the area. Thankfully, the creatures pivoted and started heading vaguely west, seeming to not see me at all. It was hard to tell from as high up as I was, but now that they weren't at the edge of my sight, I got a better look and found they were lizard-like. They kinda seemed like crazy muscular and agile versions of those Australian whatever-they're-called dragons. Well, whatever they were, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with them and whatever cape—because a cape was obviously involved—made them. Or are they the capes? I mean, I've already run into two capes who aren't totally human… Regardless, I climbed a bit higher into the sky as I continued along my way, doing my best to make note of the area in case the cape—or capes—frequented this place.
Eventually I spotted the tracks up ahead and began to descend. It was impossible to say for sure with the darkness and how far away from the docks I was, but they did seem to run that way. I decided to mark 'railroad runs to docks' as a 'maybe' and began trying to search for a good place to make a cache. Unfortunately, this area was leaps and bounds worse than any part of the city I'd seen so far, spare the docks. Though there were a few lights on here and there, vast swaths were shrouded in blankets of darkness that made it difficult at best to distinguish any details about the various buildings. What little I could see was mostly boarded up haphazardly, in complete disrepair, or both. It was disorienting. I barely felt like I was still in Brockton Bay. Not that what I had seen up until now was in good shape—principal among them the dumpster that was Winslow—but if Winslow was a dumpster, then this place was a dumpster fire.
That was of course the moment a literal burst of fire shot into the sky a block away.
This goddamn city, man.
When I turned to face the source, I found I could just barely see a crowd of people over there. One deep, booming voice was yelling furiously at the rest of them, but I couldn't actually understand what was being said from this far away—just that he was real pissed off.
It wasn't a huge gout of flames, barely visible from over here and only because of how dim it was, but my curiosity was stoked regardless. I almost started flying over straight away, but then I remembered I was still holding onto the safe in which I had piled all the contents of the registers before abandoning them. I glanced around. This place looks so abandoned, that I could probably stash it on any old roof… I quickly examined the area, but found that none of the nearby roofs looked like they might actually be able to support the weight of it. Shrugging, I took off towards the area where I'd seen the flame, bringing it with me. I can always stash it later.
As I grew closer, I didn't find any active fires, but I did find a tall, shirtless dude with a deep, accented voice and dragon tattoos covering most of his exposed skin who was yelling furiously at some other guys, all of whom were all wearing various combinations of red and green and cowering before him. And with good reason—he was clearly a cape of some kind. I could feel the metal mask he was wearing, even if I couldn't see it, but more importantly, metal scales were slowly emanating out from the middle of his back.
"I don't care about your excuses! They are less than worthless!"
The red and green flagged the men as ABB, the one gang I focused on in my limited research time before moving to Brockton Bay. Flames lighting up the sky near here? A tall guy with scales? There was only one person this could be.
"Thieves have stolen from us, and you don't even know how many there were or what they look like! Failures, all of you!"
This was Lung. I needed to get out of here now, before this could get worse.
No sooner had the thought entered my mind, a man appeared next to Lung wearing a red demon mask and tight, black outfit that had oblong metal spheres strung along its front that I couldn't make out. Literally appeared. One moment he wasn't there, the next he was kneeling at the leader of the ABB's side, his head bowed in deference and his arm up and pointing—at me.
Lung whipped around in an instant to face me, the two glowing orange eyes set in his full face metal mask locking onto me.
Oh fuck me.
I immediately turned to fly away, but then something was on me what the fuck. Metal spheres—the teleporter?
"Stop running and submit."
"Fuck you!" I adjusted for the added weight even as the weight increased and I felt more spheres on top of me.
I felt Lung jump into the air, and I chucked the safe at where I guessed he would land based on the arc of his jump. More metal spheres appeared above me, the weight increasing, then something was in my eyes. Shitfuck why?!
I would have missed with my initial toss of the safe, but even blind, I could feel where Lung was based on his scales and mask. Ditto for—for fuck's sake, what is going on with this teleporter? More of the smoke. Or is it ash? I keep feeling metal appearing and disappearing, but what does that mean? The second burst of whatever the shit blinding me was nearly made me lose my concentration, but I managed to course correct the safe. Not that it mattered, since Lung dodged at the last second, even though it had been coming from behind. Does he have boosted perception or something too? For fuck's sake, is turning into a healing metal rage lizard that can shoot fire not enough for you, you overpowered prick?
"Give up. You cannot win," the teleporter said directly into my ear.
"Get off of me!" I shrieked. Just like at school, I could tell the ABB members on the ground had weapons, so I grabbed them and pulled them up towards me as fast as I could, ignoring the shouts of the unpowered mooks. Lung leapt again, this time towards me, and I pushed myself sideways in an attempt to dodge. Another cloud of smoke-ash burst, and I regrettably inhaled some of it, causing me to start hacking and coughing. One of the weapons felt like a gun while the rest appeared to be knives, so I tugged the gun to me while flinging the knives at Lung. He dodged most of them, but I forcefully redirected one to an area that, based on what I could feel, I presumed was the an area of his body not covered in scales yet. He howled with fury, and I wasn't honestly sure if that meant I had hit him or if he was pissed that I had tried to. The gun slapped into my hand, and an arm wrapped around my neck in sync with another weight settling on me. Already oxygen deprived from coughing up the smoke-ash, I gasped for air, which just resulted in yet more of the mystery substance getting into my lungs when another set of the metal spheres vanished.
I weakly aimed the gun and pulled the trigger. Nothing—the safety was still on. I had no time to find it, so I reached out blindly. I grabbed the safe and sent it hurtling at me. The spheres reappeared a roof over this time, and I was still being choked. That's it, I dimly noted. He not just a teleporter—he's cloning himself.
Lung leapt at me instead this time, apparently not daunted by the safe. I felt his scales flex and swipe at the safe as if to strike it out of the way, then I sprung my trap with a cry of, "Joke's on you, asshole!"
I had figured he would be the sort to try and brute force his way through a problem and had already merged the coins into the body of the safe to give me more material to work with. Once he was on top of it, I tore it asunder and wrapped it around him in an globe. The teleporter on top of me vanished, blessedly freeing me from the choke hold but unfortunately shrouding me in smoke-ash again. I shoved myself down towards the roof and away from the two of them but kept my attention on Lung, knowing I wouldn't get a second chance at this—he wouldn't be fooled a second time. Lung roared, though the sound was muffled by the metal I had almost completely enclosed him in, then suddenly there was heat. Finally out of the cloud, I could breath and see once more, and I watched as the orb I was making changed color to orange in seconds, my work being reduced to liquid.
I can still control it! C'mon, it's not over yet!
I finished the globe with the molten metal, then pushed it elsewhere.
I felt the metal spheres appear behind me before I heard him—the teleporter was striking again. I wouldn't know for precious seconds if Lung was really trapped or not, but there was no rest for the wicked. I shoved the spheres into the teleporter as forcefully as I could, drawing a grunt from him as I felt another of him appear to my left. The instant I felt the spheres, I was shoving him again, but this time I pushed down as well as away, smashing him into the roof. The first hurled a knife at me, which I diverted towards the second instead, only for a third to appear to my right. The first vanished in a cloud of ash—definitely ash—and I turned my attention to the second while shoving the third to the ground like the second. The knife sank into the second's leg as he reached up to his chest and pulled something metal out of one of the spheres. What was…?
Oh shit.
I clamped down on the goddamn frag grenade with my power and yanked the third up from the ground by his costume and held him between us even as a fourth appeared behind me. I felt the grenade explode, but thankfully my power was apparently proof against the most of the effect of a frag grenade. The internal explosion still happened, if the force I felt push against me holding it in place was any indication, but other than a grunt of pain from the second, there was no huge, painful explosion. The third tried to pull two pins from the grenades strapped to his chest, but I was able to hold the pins in place this time, now that I knew what he was doing. I felt the fourth try to lunge at me from behind while a fifth appeared high above me—maybe fifteen feet?—and a sixth appeared a moment later a bit further away this time. I pushed away the fourth and fifth, and tugged the pins out of the sixth's grenades. He must have noticed because he hurriedly began to rip the bandolier from his costume while the third disappeared, and feeling no new clones appear, I took the brief reprieve to find the safety on the gun still in my hand. I flicked it off as he tossed away the bandolier and when I felt the seventh appear, identifying him by his knives this time, I whipped the gun around and shot.
I hadn't had time to brace like people did in movies, and I quickly realized why they did it. Pulling the trigger resulted in a powerful kickback that threw my aim wildly off course and sent pain lancing up my unprepared arm, but even though the bullet missed by a mile—and I could feel it while it moved!—the teleporter apparently decided he wasn't going to win this fight and bailed, clones appearing in a pattern moving away from the area by rooftop. The ones near me collapsed into ash, and the sphere around Lung was still in place, the glow of molten metal lighting up the area.
I actually did it… I flew over to the edge of the roof and tossed the gaping ABB members a big, shit eating grin—not that they could see it, I realized in hindsight. "Can the ABB capes beat me in a two-on-one fight? Magic Lung ball says: 'Outlook not so good.' Catch you later, losers!"
I flew off into the sky, giggling at their indignation. Totally not maniacally because I'd gotten by on the skin of my teeth. Definitely not that.
67
Eva Grimm
Jun 1, 2020
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Eva Grimm
Eva Grimm
#narcolepsyproblems
She/Her
Jun 10, 2020
#35
Author notes at the end!
#
Penny 1.6
School was pretty boring on the average day, but there was something especially boring about school the morning after a fight for my life with the ABB. I honestly debated bailing again, but I had already gotten enough crazy looks last night when I arrived back at the apartment in sweaty and rumpled clothes. If Masuyo got a call from the school right now, then she might decide I wasn't worth the trouble and toss me out. If everything worked out with Faultline, then I'd be okay with risking that, but until I had a guarantee of a different roof over my head, I wasn't about to take the risk of living on the street.
The one good thing about going to school was I had Computer Science on my MWF schedule. My middle school had a similar program I had taken for the chance of having extra computer access—a precious commodity in my experience—and apparently this class covered the same material. That meant I was able to finish up early and do a bit of research on PHO, Parahumans Online, about the local gangs' capes. I navigated to the site and started with checking out the ABB first, where I confirmed there was nothing on Lung's wiki about boosted perception. Was I wrong about him having that, or was it just an unreported power? It seemed equal parts plausible and implausible. On the one hand he had so many powers that what's one more at the end of the day, but on the other hand, did he steal the whole goddamn bucket of powers when they were being handed out or something?
In any case, I also found some info on the teleporter. Oni Lee, a known serial suicide bomber, and that was headache inducing to wrap my mind around. Every time he had teleported last night, the person left behind had burst into ash after a few seconds. That tracked with the info on the wiki, but… Did he teleport and leave a clone behind, or was the clone what remained and the original Lee died the first time he used his power? Was he actually somehow aware of and in control of all the versions of him, so it became functionally pointless? All of the Lees I fought last night had acted independently, so I was inclined to think there wasn't an overarching control just because how could anyone process all of that… Then again, I was somehow a human metal detector and could move shit with my mind. Powers were grade A bullshit that made no logical sense, so who was to say?
More important than reading about the ABB though, I had finally looked up the E88. It took me a bit to read through all the E88 capes' wikis, in particular the descriptions of publicly known powers, but I eventually found that Tammi's cape name was Rune. More importantly, however, I realized the E88 had a fuckton of capes. Ten active capes, another active but never with E88 underlings, and four more in alleged retirement? What gang has that much firepower?! A quick count of the active Protectorate and Wards, the heroes younger than eighteen-years-old, showed there were fourteen altogether. That meant Brockton Bay had so many nazi capes that they literally outnumbered the government funded heroes. Just… just what the fuck.
And one of those nazis knew my name.
I am so fucked, I thought, struggling to keep my cool and not have a public freakout in the middle of class. Naturally, a loud ringing noise pierced the calm, relative quiet of the computer lab, which startled me badly enough that I almost started to pulverize everything with my coins. Fortunately I kept my backpack zipped up in the school to avoid wandering eyes, so all I accomplished at first was my bag awkwardly stretching its seams to the breaking point and lifting into the air. That stayed my hand long enough for me to realize the noise was just the bell for the end of class—and blessedly my last class—so I dropped my power. The resulting thwump of who only knows how many pounds of coins hitting the floor drew some eyes my way, which I pointedly ignored in favor of logging out of the computer and getting the hell out of there. I had an appointment to get ten grand and, hopefully, some goddamn backup in case the fifteen capes in the Empire—Oh shit, probably the two in the ABB too! Fuuuck—decided they wanted me dead. Or alive, for that matter. Neither sounded particularly appealing.
I slipped into the hallway, which quickly devolved into a morass as everyone left their final classes. Thankfully, my locker wasn't terribly far away, and after shoving my textbooks inside, I made a beeline for the closest exit. I probably would've been out the door and on my way to Palanquin in under two minutes, but I was distracted by my power sensing something odd. And by something odd, I mean something that was not possible. Even though my powers were only two days old, it was still strangely natural to align the metal I sensed with what I was seeing. Take the three gangbangers in the empty classroom at the end of the hallway. I couldn't see them, but I could distinctly feel the three metal rectangles with blades concealed inside—switchblades, had to be—as surely as if I had my hand on each blade, and every other piece of metal in the room was unnaturally still. Not that I had three hands, but… Okay, analogy broken—whatever. The point was, I could feel with acute clarity where they were, and I could see the classroom, so 'there are three probable gangbangers in that classroom down there' was obvious to me. And that sort of observation made sense too. Gangbangers huddling together to discuss knifing someone, selling drugs, or whatever they do in an empty classroom? Yeah, sure, everything's kosher.
Several pieces of metal being pulled through a locker door and everything being left intact? That was not possible.
Almost unconsciously, I turned away from the exit and—oof, okay, it turns out stopping in the middle of the hallway while everyone was trying to leave wasn't exactly a great idea. I stumbled a bit and tried to keep my balance by tugging my backpack in the opposite direction, but that was a stupid mistake. I had forgotten how little fine control I had and completely overcompensated, yanking myself backward and falling onto my ass and my lumpy, hard backpack. Several students nearby snickered, though a few looked concerned and one or two looked confused. I flushed and rose to my feet, careful not to flash anyone since I was wearing a skirt. One Vietnamese boy wearing red and green leered at me, and I sneered back, not wanting anything to do with someone in the ABB.
I grabbed my backpack, careful to only use my power enough to make the coins inside weightless this time, and ran off in the direction of the person carrying the pieces of metal that had been pulled through the locker door. It was an odd collection of metal, and I wasn't sure what to make of it. One piece was a rod with an oval loop at the end, and there was a pair of hinges and a latch, but there were three pieces that had me confused. They had regularly spaced holes along each of them and what seemed to be levers over each hole that cover the opening if engaged, and one of the pieces had a bigger hole separate from the rest with a raised oval of metal lining it. I tried to imagine it, but even though I vaguely felt like I should recognize it, a mental image of the items eluded me.
Whoever had the items didn't seem to be in a tremendous hurry, so I thankfully caught up quickly enough. As the back exit by the dumpsters came into sight, it happened again. The items were pushed straight through the side of what I was pretty sure was a dumpster and then stopped moving altogether. The person who did it started to leave, their phones—Maybe I'm misjudging one of the items… Why would someone have two phones?—bouncing along with their steps. I rushed over and looked through the inserted glass windows in the doors. What I felt lined up with the only person nearby, a tall black girl with straight brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, so she had to be the person I was looking for.
I pushed open the door and curiously called out, "How did you do that?"
The girl whirled around and fixed me with a burning glare. "The fuck you talking about?"
"You… um…" I started to say before trailing off, my thoughts catching up with my words and realization dawning. Oh shit, I'm an idiot. The girl had powers! And I had just called her out on it while she wasn't wearing a mask. The last thing I need is another Tammi situation. Abort, abort! "You know what? I'm just gonna head back inside now. Bye!"
"Hold up!" she shouted at me, but I was already fleeing back inside. Holy shit, she's fast, I noted as I looked for somewhere to hide. The girl had been a good distance from the door when I'd called out, a bit more than a hundred feet maybe, but she'd already closed half the distance. I ducked into an empty classroom on my right, but that was a terrible place to hide since it was one of the obvious first places to look, so I immediately crossed over to the window, tugged off my backpack, and unzipped it. Coins flooded out at my command and carried my mask in their wake. I had no time to tie it on though, since the cape had dashed up the stairs and was flinging open the door. I held it over my face with one hand while hastily preparing to fly with my coins, tossed open the window with my other, then climbed through with my backpack in hand. Apparently luck was on my side in that moment, since she ran to the room on the opposite side of the hall first, so I was able to safely make my way through and lift up into the air. By the time she got to the classroom I'd used and ran over to the window, I was already on the roof, not bothering to fight back a grin as I watched her lean out the window and look back and forth.
"… fuck … she go? … far," I could just barely make out from up here, only catching pieces of what she said. Her head vanished back inside, and I felt her make her way further into the school, moving back and forth between rooms.
"Well that was close," I muttered as I returned my attention to the items in the dumpster. My curiosity getting the better of me again, I grabbed a hold and tugged them up out of the dumpster, and they moved in sync with each other. I resisted the urge to facepalm when I the small, black instrument case. "It's a flute!"
But why would the cape put it in a dumpster? She could have been getting rid of evidence, but that seemed unlikely. She had pulled it through a locker door—was she a thief? Hiding something stolen would've made sense if she had been expecting to be confronted about it—I had done the same a few times—but usually the idea was to play it cool when approached, and her reaction had been anything but. A bendable plastic tube was attached to the case by looping through itself, and the other end was looped around an old leather name tag with an insert. I carefully examined it, wary of getting filth on my hands, and though some trash had seeped into it, I could still somewhat make out the name Annette Hebert in fancy script. I briefly debated whether I should keep and sell it myself, but I still didn't have a fence in Brockton Bay. I could sell it to a pawn shop, but they kept records of their sellers, and I didn't want this Annette to be able to track me down. I also didn't have a fake ID for June instead of my deadname yet, and I would sooner shout from the rooftops that I was a parahuman than do any form of business by my deadname.
Maybe I'll get a reward if I return it?
I didn't want to risk flying back down and being spotted, so I stashed my coins and mask once again and made my way over to the roof access door. It was locked, because life just couldn't be that simple, but fortunately it was one of those doors with a push bar. The bar being on the inside was no deterrent—I simply pulled it towards me as gently as I could and tugged the door open by hand. My good fortune continued when I found an old tarp on the landing inside. There was no way in hell I was touching the filthy flute case I had been levitating with my bare hands, after all. I set the flute on the ground with my power, set down my backpack, and withdrew some of the coins. I couldn't make a knife with my power, per se, but using the mass of a few coins to fashion a vaguely pointy shaped lump of metal wasn't too hard. I used that to stab and cut at the tarp until I had a decent sized hunk torn off, molded the lump into a metal sphere, then made my way down the stairs with the lump in my bag and the handle of the flute case, now wrapped in tarp, in hand.
It took me a bit to find my way back towards where the locker had been, since I was coming from an unfamiliar direction, and by that time most of the students had cleared out. That made the half circle of giggling girls around the area where I recalled the locker being all the more obvious. In the middle of the group with their back to the lockers was a person—I couldn't readily distinguish a gender—with long, curly black hair and glasses in a drab hoodie and jeans, who was facing a curvy redheaded girl.
"P-Please, Emma," the black-haired person stammered, looking and sounding like they were seconds away from crying. "Just give it back!"
The redhead, Emma apparently, smiled while tucking a lock of her long hair behind her ear. At least, I thought that's what the cruel, mocking upturn of her lips was supposed to be. "Oh Taylor, how many times do I have to tell you? How would I know anything about where you misplaced your mom's flute? You really should keep better track of your valuables."
I frowned a bit. Had she said 'Taylor'? The name tag had said the flute belonged to an 'Annette Hebert,' but then, the bitch had said it belonged to Taylor's mother. That might actually be a good thing. Adults were more likely than teens to give rewards for returned items. "Yo," I called out while walking over. "What's your mom's name?"
The girls in the circle stared at me, clearly nonplussed, and Emma grit her teeth tellingly at the sight of the flute in my hand, but I only had eyes for Taylor, whose eyes widened at the sight of the flute case, her mouth dropping open somewhat. After a moment, they managed to get a hold of themself and reply, "Annette. My mom's name was Annette."
"Was"? Yikes, not touching that with a ten foot pole, I thought while indicating the flute by holding it up just a little. I guess I'm banking on sentimentality. "Then I guess this is yours. The case is a little… gross though. May want to check inside—I didn't look at anything but the name tag."
"Thank you so much!" Taylor exclaimed as they push past some of the girls and rushed over. Having heard them speak a bit more and finally seeing them up close, I suspected they were a girl, but I decided to withhold judgment until I heard them say one way or the other. Because damn did they dress androgynously. Actually, I wasn't even sure androgynous was the right word for their fashion sense. They looked more like they were trying to blend into the wall than anything else. Body type fell solidly into androgynous, though it was hard to tell through those clothes. Face seemed feminine. The only real thing of note about them was their hair, which I was firmly jealous of. "Yes, that's it! Where did you find it?"
"In the dumpster out back," I replied as I handed it over, taking care to pass it by the part covered in tarp. I purposefully avoided mentioning the cape for the moment, since the more distance I could put between myself and her, the better. The last thing I needed was her recognizing me and asking questions about how I'd up and vanished out from under her nose.
"Well, it looks like Taylor's got herself a friend," the bitch sneered as she stalked over. "Careful you don't end up pushing this one away too. It's not like anybody else in school can stand to be around you." I'd been halfway through opening my mouth to point out that it was hard to be somebody's friend when I had only just met them, but hearing that last bit gave me pause. I might have written it off as hyperbole, but Taylor's flinch at the remark was damning. Really? Nobody at all? When Taylor didn't verbally reply the bitch tsked, spun on her heel, and stalked off. "Do try to be more careful with your mom's things. They're all you've got left of her now, after all."
My eyebrows rose at that guts it would take to say that in casual conversation, and the rest of the girls dispersed as well. "Well. She seems like a right cunt." Taylor's head jerked towards me, her jaw mouth hanging open once more. "Still, if you don't actually play in the band, it might be best to not keep that here if it's that important to you. Winslow has proved to be nothing more than a dump so far."
They visibly shook away their surprise—not used to swearing?—and asked, "Are you… new here?"
"Yuuup," I replied, dragging out the word and popping the 'p.'
"Then you don't…" They sighed and started to walk away. "Thank you again, but, you shouldn't have stood up for me. Just keep your distance."
I'd been ready to ask about a reward, but listening to them say that with such abject dejection made the words die on my lips. Taylor trudged over to the closest women's bathroom—Going with 'girl'—to presumably wash off the case, and I decided to just let things be. I was about to make ten grand, so it wasn't worth being pushy with someone so down on their spirits. Instead I turned back the way I came, made my way back to the roof, and retrieved my coins and mask from my bag.
I had an appointment to keep.
#
If the flaring lights and thrumming beat had made Palanquin seem alive the first time I visited it at night, then the utter lack of noise and movement made the nightclub dead in comparison now during the day.
Palanquin hadn't yet come to life yet if the utter lack of noise and movement was any indication, but there was still a bouncer guarding the entrance. Seemed like it was the same guy, actually. Not that I interacted with him last time, what with having entered the club through the loading dock. The card I'd been given my first night here said to be here by 5p, and I didn't need to check my analog watch to know it read 4:52—one of the silly, tiny perks of my power. I touched down on the sidewalk a handful of yards away from the bouncer and crossed the rest of the distance on foot. Once I was closer, the bouncer pulled open the door and held it for me, clearly expecting my arrival. "Boss is in her office. Please wait on the balcony, and I'll let her know you're here."
I gave him a brief nod and murmured, "thanks," as I stepped inside. Having a guy hold the door for me made a small warmth blossom in me. It was silly and not at all feminist, but it felt still felt like validation, even if he hadn't probably meant it that way.
The interior of the club was well lit, but even if the lights had been dim, it would have been hard to miss the balcony stairs much less Newter as he waved at me with a grin while leaning against the balcony. "Yo! You came!"
I started walking towards him with a grin of my own, not that he could see it through my new mask, and replied, "Well yeah, of course I did. How's it hanging, Newter?"
He flipped over the balcony guardrail, slapped his hands on the base of the balcony, and swung underneath it before somehow clinging to the underside of the balcony. "Well now that I'm hanging, all seems fine," he answered with a chuckle.
I couldn't help the laugh that escaped me, his humor infectious. "Awesome! I didn't realize you could do that too!"
He winked. "There's a lot more to me than meets the eye."
The innuendo made me blush a bit, and I couldn't quite meet his eye as I diverted, "So, um, where is everybody else?"
"Boss is in her office, and I know Gregor's hanging around here somewhere." He launched off the ceiling straight to the floor and landed with preternatural grace. He bowed with a flourish and gestured towards the stairs. "Ladies first."
Goddamn traitorous body, I bemoaned, fighting down the urge to self-consciously pull my mask up a bit higher to hide my burning cheeks. "Actually, um, I can fly now." Ugh, that came out sounding like a question, stupid! I lifted myself up into the air as a demonstration, which elicited a whistle from him.
"Hot damn, that's nifty. I was wondering why you had all those coins on you. Thought it was just a costume thing. I like the new mask, by the way."
"Thanks! Flying is so cool!" I pulled the coins wrapped around me out over the empty dance floor, and feeling frisky, I pulled out the rest of my coins as well. I actually needed relatively few coins over all to fly, so I was able to easily fill most of the voluminous space over the floor with metal and set them all to swirling through the air.
"Right on! Hang tight a sec, let me get the lights," Newter said with a laughe before racing over to the DJ stand with a swift burst of speed that reduced him momentarily to an orange blur. "Yo, got any favorites? I can put on some tunes too while we wait on Faultline."
"Got any AC/DC?"
"Oh hell yeah, you like the classics too?" The lights turned off, briefly leaving the room dark but for some of the evening sunlight pouring in through the windows high up on the walls, but the dance lights kicked in shortly after. Rays of pink, gold, orange, blue, green, and more illuminated the area and made my coins glitter and sparkle as Newter queued up Back in Black. As the drummer tapped out the tempo on the cymbal and the guitar entered after with the familiar rift, memories came to mind of nights listening to mom's old records and hanging out in some of the dive bars back home that would let me in. A smile grew on my face as I drank in the atmosphere, satisfaction settling within me. With just a thought, the coins began to lazily circle the dance floor in a wave, the twirling coins moving like a current at the beach but prettier by measure. This blew skulking about in bars or my own home out of the water by a long shot.
I could definitely get used to this.
"Newter, lights back on," a voice called out over the music, and when the music cut out and the lights switched back to the basic ones from before, I saw Faultline on the balcony with Gregor slightly behind her and to her right. "Coin," she continued, a terseness to her voice that made me pause. "We have a lot to talk about. Let's adjourn to my office."
"Sure," I replied as casually as I could. I condensed my loose coins into a pile on the balcony, not bothering with my backpack for the sake of simplicity, and flew over towards the balcony myself. I gave Gregor a tiny wave as I touched down and a, "Heya, Gregor," which drew a small smile from the man. Faultline once again wasn't wearing a mask, and I speculated that the staff must know who she was. She spun on her heel and crossed over to a doorway off the balcony, and I followed with Gregor and Newter, who had just jumped up onto the balcony as well, behind me.
A hallway ran along the other side of the wall, but in stark contrast to the balcony, this area had stone walls. Small micro cracks crossed over sections of the walls, and torches set in sconces were littered evenly along the length of the hallway with alcoves containing strange, creepy busts of angels and demons alike spaced out between them. Standing in the middle of the hallway, staring absently at the wall to our right was a girl with long, platinum blond hair. She was around my height but looked to be a couple years younger than me, and seeing her just standing there, unnaturally still in the midst of the moody atmosphere was somewhat creepy.
"Hello, Elle. I didn't expect you to be up." The girl, Elle apparently, didn't respond to that, but I didn't hear any impatience in Faultline's voice at the lack of reply. "Are you okay?" Still no response. "Elle, we have a guest with us today. Would you please reign in your power?"
That got my attention. Another cape running around unmasked? "So is the creepy layout her power, or did you all decide to get creative with the staff areas?"
Faultline tossed me a brief look over her shoulder, but before I could begin to decipher it, she had turned back to Elle. The girl turned more or less to face us, but she seemed to be focused on something else, her gaze distant and still not saying anything.
I tilted my head, bemused. Was the girl special needs? She certainly seemed to be. I hadn't been around too many people like that, but I did know that you had to be extra patient when interacting with them. Patience wasn't exactly one of my virtues, but I resolved to try. No sense not getting along with a soon-to-be teammate.
I paused a beat and debated how to introduce myself. Faultline, Newter, and Gregor had been calling me 'Coin,' but I didn't care for that name that much. It was a serviceable placeholder but too bland and uninteresting to keep. That being said, I hadn't given any thought to what my cape name should be, so I didn't have anything picked out yet. I hesitated just a bit to give out my real name, but I was about to join the team, right? And I'd already seen everyone else unmasked, so it seemed natural they would expect me to reciprocate. I reached up to my mask and tugged it down, revealing my cautious smile. "Elle, right? It's nice to meet you. My name is June." The gloomy dungeon appearance around us began to bleed away and leave behind a corridor more in line with what I had been expecting when I stepped through the door. The process was fascinating to watch, and at the center of it all, Elle finally seemed to look at me, her gaze somewhat more focused. She still didn't say anything, but I doubted it was intentional. Probably… Oh, what is the word? Nonverbal?
Faultline turned to face me in full. She had a look of surprise in her eyes that quickly settled back into a serious expression I was beginning to think was her usual mien. "I was going to wait until after our discussion to unmask and share names."
I shrugged. "Didn't mean to throw off your timing. I'm joining though, so it doesn't matter, yeah?" At her carefully blank look I tensed, though I did my best to not let it show. "Faultline?"
She sighed. "Yes, that is still my intent, but the nature of the offer I made you was predicated on the assumption that you were a fresh trigger, a tabula rasa in the Bay's cape scene. At the time I was confident in my assumption because I make it my business to keep an eye out for such things, and I had heard no word of a ferrokinetic." Her expression shifted a bit, but I couldn't quite read how. "However, I have reason to believe you stole from a store on the boardwalk between then and now and got into a cape fight. Another fight, if what you said to Gregor Monday is true. That changes things."
Fresh trigger? Tabula rasa? Ferrokinetic? "I didn't understand some of that, but I understood enough to know you're saying I'm not getting my ten grand," I said with a scowl as the last of the… environment Elle had made vanished. Had it been a castle? Closest thing I could think of. I bit my lip, thinking of the hormones I wanted to start and how I wanted to get actual independence instead of relying on Masuyo. I had been counting on that money. It was the main reason why I had decided to join! "Maybe I'd be better off solo after all."
"You wouldn't be," she denied, shaking her head, "and that's one of the things we need to discuss." She paused a moment, then held out her hand. "Since you gave your name under the impression the original offer stood, it's only fair I offer my own name in the interest of trust. My name is Melanie Fitts, and I promise that I am not trying to swindle you, June."
My eyes narrow a bit at that, since that's exactly what someone trying to swindle me would say and the name could easily be fake. Still… None of them seem the type to suddenly get all aggressive and force me to join. I crossed my arms, ignoring her extended hand, and replied, "I don't like this at all, but I guess it doesn't hurt to hear the new offer. If I don't like it, then I'll walk away, got it?"
Faultline lowered her hand and gave me a curt nod. "Of course. Newter, take Elle back to her room, then join us in my office."
"Sure thing, Boss," Newter replied, sounding remarkably casual in spite of the terse discussion. I glanced over my shoulder at him, and he shot me a grin and a thumbs up. "Love the freckles, by the way."
Goddammit. I turned away so he couldn't see my reaction. "Lead on, yeah?"
Faultline lead Gregor and me to the doorway at the end of the no longer transformed hall, and the office behind the doorway was a strange mixture of cluttered and organized. The heavy oak desk in the center of the room was covered in an eclectic mess of paperwork, heavy books, pens, notepads, and a laptop, but the shelves lining the back wall had a sense of order, even if the books lining them were of a variety of sizes and colors. A pair of short filing cabinets were set against the wall opposite the window, where a pair of thick curtains were drawn and completely blocking all incoming light. Two oak chairs that matched the desk sat between the door and the desk, and I flopped into one while Faultline crossed to the high backed chair on the opposite side. Gregor ignored the remaining chair in favor of standing by the file cabinets. When I looked his way, he gave me what seemed to be a reassuring look, though it was still somewhat difficult to tell with his skin even though the lighting from the overhead lamp was satisfactory.
Faultline leaned back in her chair and gave me her full attention. "Before we begin, would you prefer to go by Coin or June? Or have you chosen a cape name?"
"June. No cape name yet, and I don't like Coin."
"June then," she acknowledged. "I'll start with explaining a bit about our crew. As I mentioned when we met, we are mercenaries. Anyone can hire our services, and the only jobs we won't do are those entailing murder or breaking the unwritten rules. Are you familiar with the rules?"
I blinked, perplexed. "Um… There are rules?"
"Yes. Different areas have slightly different variations, but in general the rules are to avoid lethal force, never rape or sexually assault anyone, and respect other capes' secret identities. There is also a truce during Endbringer attacks, but that doesn't apply in the day to day." She must have seen the look on my face at the mention of secret identities because she learned forward with piercing eyes. "June… Have you broken a rule?"
I gulped. "I, um… Kinda?" Her expression darkened, and I hastily explained, "She did it first though!"
"Explain. Do not divulge any secret identities, if you uncovered one."
I couldn't help but fidget under the intensity of her gaze. "The day I got my powers… I, um… I was… I didn't know who she was at the time, but Rune tried to k-kill me. She… she knew who I was, called me by… well, not my name, but…" She probably doesn't know what a deadname is. What's the simplest way to explain? "My, um… old name?" That'll have to do. "Anyway, I managed to stop her when I got my powers, but she knew who I was and had hunted me down once already…"
"So you unmasked her," she finished for me. When I nodded, she sighed minutely. "Do not tell me what her name is, if you know it, but please confirm whether you know her name as well."
"Yeah…"
"Was that you in the video on PHO?" Gregor interjected. "A video was posted of someone in Rune's costume stealing clothes from a merchant at the Market, but our knowledge of her power is that she must first touch the item to control it."
I nodded. "She… t-tried to d-drown me in a car," I only just barely managed to say, shivering at the thought of being trapped in that darkness, gasping for air and choking on water. I quickly moved on, trying to push it out of my mind. "I just moved here Saturday, and I didn't know how to get to my cousin's. I was wet and cold and had nowhere to sleep… I stole some clothes and ended up here because it caught my eye."
"You don't need to say anything more about your trigger event," Faultline said, drawing my attention back to her.
There was that word again. "You said something about a 'trigger' before too. What does that mean?"
"Think of it like the worst day of your life—a do-or-die moment, pure despair when something awful happens, or something similar. Something about the event 'triggers' powers in an individual. Avoiding discussion of trigger events is not an unwritten rule, per se, but it's considered bad taste to ask about one." She leaned back in her chair once more, but there was still a measure of focused awareness in her eyes. "There was a robbery of a store on the boardwalk yesterday where several items including a safe and cash registers were lifted by an unseen force and smashed through a wall. I trust that was you?" I nodded hesitantly. "A cape fight between a ferrokinetic and Lung and Oni Lee occurred sometime last night as well. Also you?"
"Right," I affirmed, putting together from context clues that 'ferrokinetic' was probably a description of my powers. "That… I was defending myself, honest!"
"I didn't say you weren't. Briefly describe the fight for me. How it started, went, and ended."
"Um… I was looking for somewhere to stash the safe from the store, and I saw a burst of fire up by the train tracks. I got curious, and when I checked it out, they saw me and attacked. Lee kept trying to dogpile me with clones, and Lung was scary as fuck. I managed to use the metal from the safe to trap Lung, and Lee was easy enough after since I could sense him."
"Ah… You sensed the metal on him? The grenades and knives?"
"Uh huh."
"Tell me, June, why do you think Lee was trying to dogpile you?"
That confused me. Why would that matter? "I dunno?"
"You don't see it?"
"See what?"
"June, they wanted to recruit you."
My jaw dropped. I had been worried I would be recruited by the ABB—it was why I'd paid more attention to them than the Empire at first—but it hadn't occurred to me that was what they were doing that night. "Shit."
Her lips twitched into a ghost of a smirk before vanishing so quickly I almost wrote it off as a trick of the mind. "Indeed. I should think it's needless to say that recruiting you into our group when you have attracted the attention of not just one but two of the city's big gangs is… a more interesting proposition than recruiting someone who is a relative unknown."
"So… you don't care about me making off with the safe and registers?"
"Comparatively no. I'm sure the PRT would not be pleased, but no worse so than they are when we're paid to perform criminal activities."
There was a knock at the door. Faultline bade them enter, and Newter came in and sank into the free chair, glancing between Faultline and me. "So what's the word? Is she joining?"
Faultline steepled her fingers before her. "We were just getting to that. June, my offer is this: You are welcome to join our crew, but I will not be paying a signing bonus. Some of our clients may view hiring you as a risky proposition with the heat from the E88 and ABB, so that money will go towards covering any gap. You will avoid getting into any more cape fights outside of those we encounter on the job. You will still get an equal cut of all work that we take on as a crew, though I will deduct a small portion of your cut until the costs of your costume are covered. Does this all make sense?"
I gave her a careful nod. As much as I hated to admit it, I did see her point. If the gangs still had it out for me, then recruiting me was a gamble for them. That didn't make it any better that I was losing out on the money, but if the jobs paid enough and I got an equal cut, then I would still have a healthy amount of money coming my way. Plus I would have a team at my back if… no, more likely when the gangs came after me. I worried my lip then asked, "How much money are you paid for the average job? How often do you get them?"
She waggled her hand in a so-so motion. "It's easier to note that we don't take jobs that pay less than fifty thou. We generally have a job at least once a month."
My eyebrows shot up. Faultline, Gregor, Newter, Elle, and me. That meant, "Five way split?"
"Barring more members joining, yes." I wasn't great at math, but fifty grand divided by five was easy to figure out. Ten grand minimum every month or so? That was serious money.
Faultline looked considering for a moment before adding, "It's worth noting that travel is involved on a semi-frequent basis. You mentioned you live with a cousin?"
"Just met her," I said waving that off. "If you've got a place for me here, then I'm outta there."
"You should not be so quick to abandon family," Gregor interjected. "Are you certain you wish to cut ties?"
I shrugged. "I'm not saying I'm cutting entirely ties. I'm just saying I'd rather live here, see her only when I want—on my terms."
"We can spare the room," Faultline said, the corner of her lips turning up ever so slightly. "You'll be joining then?"
I grinned. "Definitely."
Newter fistpumped the air with a cry of "hell yeah!" and Gregor gave me a small smile. Faultline stood and held out her hand once more.
This time, I shook it without reservation.
#
And that's the last chapter in the arc centered on June. One interlude is up next, then we'll be into the second arc. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this arc has been primarily focused on learning about June as a person. Arc 2 will be focused on June's cape identity and how she fits in with FLC and the cape scene at large. There will definitely be a huge focus on action in the next arc, and I'm really looking forward to that!
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Eva Grimm
Jun 10, 2020
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Eva Grimm
Eva Grimm
#narcolepsyproblems
She/Her
Jun 19, 2020
#42
Penny 1.z
The girl in the mirror checked over every minute detail for the third time, searching for any imperfections while occasionally glancing the clock on the wall as the second hand ticking down in a constant beat.
06:42 PM
She sucked in a deep breath through her nose and blew it out through her mouth, repeating until she felt a tenuous calm settle over her. It was the sort of calm that almost undoubtedly wouldn't hold up when the time came, but it was the best she could do, so it would have to be enough. She had been dreading the coming conversation for too long for her anxiety to actually rest until it was done and past, and she was afraid it might not get better even after that.
One of the many domino masks she had been given was affixed to her face, the fresh adhesive holding it securely in place and surrounding her pale blue eyes in darker blue. Her light blond hair flowed down over her shoulders, obscuring some of her spare robe, which felt a bit off on her shoulders. She doubted there was actually a difference between it and the original—more likely just a superstition born from nerves—but it knowing that rationally didn't change how it felt to wear.
She glanced at the clock again—06:45 PM. She took another deep breath, in and out.
"Showtime," she muttered before turning and leaving the bathroom. She nearly had a heart attack when she found her cousin—second cousin, really—leaning against the wall of the hallway across from the bathroom door. "Jesus fuck, Nikki, give a girl some warning next time maybe?"
The other girl glared at her balefully, the expression not diminished by the black eyepatch with its white Odal—also known as Othala—rune. "Really? I'm in costume, and you use my real name? You're lucky it's only Victor and me here, Rune."
Rune winced, clearly abashed. "Right, sorry, Othala. Can we… you know, not do this right now? I'm new, I fucked up, I get it. I'll do better."
Othala crossed her arms over her chest where her namesake rune was emblazoned on her dark red bodysuit, the black symbol resting within a white circle and a black border. "I'd be more sympathetic if you weren't making such huge mistakes. Tossing out my real name while I'm in costume, botching the hit Victor gave you to prove yourself..."
Rune studiously looked away. "We need to get going if we're going to be on time."
"Fine. Let's go."
The pair moved together down the short hallway and into the main room of the empty office space where Victor was seated on a stiff, black leather couch waiting. The blond-haired man was garbed in a costume featuring a black breastplate with a v-shaped neckline over a fitted blood red shirt, black pants tucked into black combat boots, and a black domino mask. He stood. "Ready to go, love?" Othala nodded, a grim smile on her face, and he turned to leave without greeting Rune at all. Rune frowned but said nothing, understanding—if not appreciating—why he was giving her the cold shoulder.
The trio made their way to the elevator Rune had used earlier that evening to reach the faux consultation agency on the eighth floor. She didn't know for sure whether this facility had already been under the Empire's control when she joined or whether it had been purchased especially for her use after she joined. Although Othala and Victor's house was not that far away, the building was a mere two blocks away from The Towers, the apartment complex Kaiser had set her and her family up in. More damning was neither Victor or Othala could fly, so they would have no need for a top floor facility and with keypad protected, exclusive access to the lone elevator in the building that could reach said floor and the roof above it. In any case, she was completely unfamiliar with the building beyond what she used it for. She knew some sort of health clinic was on the first floor, but she had been encouraged by Victor to avoid it and all other floors because "even the best security can be fooled by making yourself known," or so he had said back when he first brought her here.
She had been so pumped and high on life then, everything happening so fast. Triggering and breaking out of juvie, being introduced to Kaiser by her uncle, moving to Brockton Bay, finding out she had parahuman family, getting to design her first costume. It had felt like her life was finally turning around, but then she had been introduced to the rest of the E88's parahumans, and it all started going down hill. Kaiser, Fenja, Menja, Krieg, Hookwolf, Stormtiger, Cricket, Victor, and Othala—a full nine capes, and that wasn't even counting the five she had been told were no longer active but were still in the Bay. Nine capes, and the only one who wasn't an adult was Othala, but she was seventeen and married to Victor. Hookwolf, a savage beast of a man, had sneered at the idea of bringing a teenager into the group, which had prompted Stormtiger and Cricket, who were firmly in his camp, to likewise complain. Kaiser had proposed she prove herself, and she had passed every test thrown her way by the other capes, from being a guard for drug shipments to roughing up shops that hadn't paid the Empire for protection. The last thing she had needed to do, the lone test proposed by Hookwolf himself, was kill an enemy of the Empire—practically, that meant some random minority.
Which was how Fucking Fujiwara came into the picture.
It should have been easy. Right around the time she'd decided it was time to work on the last test, one of the informants in Victor's network had turned up a juicy hit. A Japanese boy who had transferred into Winslow High School and not only had the audacity to try and claim he was a girl but had admitted he was really a boy and dressed and acted like a girl anyway. Information like this wasn't important enough to bring up to Kaiser and was normally handled on the ground level, especially as initiation—her initiation this time. The informant had provided the guy's picture from his school ID and the time classes let out at the school, and Victor had passed it on to Rune with the warning to do it somewhere quiet. Since she didn't go to school herself on account of being a juvie runaway, she had done a stakeout of the school on the roof. She had expected it to take a few days to actually find the guy amongst the sea of people, but she had lucked out and spotted him that very day. After stalking him to the Market, the guy had actually done her a favor and started heading towards the Boat Graveyard, so she had used her power to borrow a nearby car and kidnap him.
It should have been easy. Take a recording of drowning the fag while using her power to hold up the phone. No muss, no fuss, and a recording of her first kill to shove in that bastard Hookwolf's face at the next meeting. Instead, she had been left broken and beaten, and to make matters worse, the prick had used her stolen costume to embarrass the E88 at the Market. Videos had been on PHO within minutes, and despite the Empire's best efforts to contain it, the internet had been the internet and kept reposting. The worst part had been how plausible it had all looked, employing her costume and her modus operandi. The voice had been off, but she was a new cape known only by a fledgling reputation and hadn't been caught on video yet, leaving nothing to compare against. Everybody except the people who knew her had been fooled, and that was a problem. One day, one video, and a month's work had gone straight to hell.
Rune did her best to keep the sour look off of her face when the elevator opened and she stepped inside. The 'consultation agency' took up the entirety of the top floor, so it was a short ride to the roof, where the three of them stepped out and passed through a set of double doors secured by another keypad. There, roughly in the middle of the roof, was a large, circular metal platform with a raised railing at its perimeter and arcane characters inscribed around the exterior of its base. It had been a gift from Kaiser upon her joining, and Rune loved it.
"Fuck." Seeing the question in Othala's and Victor's eyes, she gestured at her gift. "I just remembered that bastard's power works on metal. I won't be able to use this!"
Othala's eyes slid closed, and her expression seemed to convey she was trying to will herself to be patient. Victor barked out a single laugh. "All the more reason to finish this quickly. It stays grounded after today then."
The trio finished crossing over to the platform, Rune swearing under her breath the whole way, and as they stepped on, Rune took a moment to lay her hand on the rail, pushing her power into the heavy object. It smoothly lifted from the roof under her direction, and she flew them towards their destination: A German restaurant at the edge of downtown and the commercial district called Abend Stube. Rune had almost laughed aloud the first time she'd been told it was a frequent location for E88 meetings. She was a hundred percent on board with putting the other races in their place, but she thought doing it in the name of a political party that failed a few decades shy of a century ago was moronic. Holding meetings at a German restaurant just further fit into the stereotype and was completely ludicrous.
Not that she would never admit any of that aloud, even in presumed safety. Some things were best said only in the safety of one's head.
The sun had begun to set around 6:30, and the encroaching darkness masked the group's flight to the restaurant from wandering eyes. Still, Rune was careful to not descend until they had actually reached the skies over the restaurant itself. "Wandering eyes are not the same as actively searching ones," Victor had advised when they first began practicing using her power for flight, and she could definitely see his point. She brought them down onto the restaurant's roof, and in short order they all descended the roof access ladder and entered through the employee's entrance of the restaurant. The entrance lead to what amounted to a foyer that had lockers for the employees to store their things, a single unisex bathroom, a doorway to the kitchens, a doorway to the restaurant itself, and a doorway—the only doorway—leading to the private backroom. The latter had a keypad akin to the one protecting the elevator at the facility she had changed at earlier, barring access to anyone outside the E88 or those allowed inside. The enticing smell of meat and warm bread wafted into the room from the kitchen, and Rune took a moment to briefly savor the scent as she checked the clock hanging by the doorway to the kitchen. 6:59 PM—they were on time.
Kaiser was already seated at the head of the table and waiting, his elbows braced on the table and his fingers laced together before him. Rune had been brought to the regular dining room once before by Othala and Victor, all of them in their civilian guises, and the lighting had been somewhat dim. Ordinarily the private dining area was as well, but it was brightly lit on this occasion, so much so that Kaiser's armor cast a bit of a glare in her eyes. Ordinarily the restaurant would have laid out multiple tables together to create a sort of rectangle, and the Empire capes would sit in the same places. Kaiser would be seated at the head of the table with Fenja and Menja at his side, Hookwolf would take the first seat on the side to Kaiser's left with Cricket and Stormtiger following, and Krieg would take the first seat on the side to Kaiser's right with Victor, Othala, and Rune claiming the following seats. This time, however, only one table had been laid out, and none of the other Empire capes were present. Rune paused briefly at this confirmation the evening's meeting would not be an ordinary one, and she did her best to not let her fear show in her body language as she fell into step behind Victor and Othala. There were two seats to Kaiser's right, and one lone seat on his left. It was a given that Victor and Othala would sit together, which meant she would be sitting alone.
The message was clear: Victor was no longer able—or maybe willing—to shield her any longer.
Rune carefully took her seat, reflexively suffusing the chair with her power when she pulled it back from the table. Kaiser didn't speak or move until after all three of them had taken their seats, and even then, he merely slid a tablet Rune hadn't noticed until that moment across the table and tapped the 'play' button. She gulped as a particularly clear video of Fujiwara's stunt in her costume at the Market began to play.
"That's right, pitiful shopkeepers! Your clothes belong to the Empire! Bow down before our superiority complex and despair!" the bastard yelled in an abysmal attempt to approximate her voice before zooming off screen cackling. Rune flinched as a blade erupted from the tablet—no, from the table through the tablet—shattering the screen and cutting off the bastard mid-cackle.
"I trust, Rune," Kaiser intoned, his rich voice so casual he could just as easily have been discussing the weather instead of making threating gestures with his power, "that my displeasure with your handling of this matter is self-evident."
"Yessir," she quickly answered in what was most definitely not a squeak. That would have been undignified.
Still, even if she had, which she hadn't, nobody could blame her. Any solid surface within his reach was a pincushion waiting to happen. She didn't know how far his reach was or whether he actually needed line of sight either, so for all she knew, he could off her from a mile away without looking.
"Excellent," he drawled while leaning back just a bit, pulling his elbows away from the table. "It should be equally clear that I expect a swift response. Make an example out of him publicly."
"Yes sir," Rune replied, trying to force her fear levels down from I might be about to die levels down to reassure him so I don't die. "I'll find Fuj—"
Another blade shot out of the first one, aimed straight at her neck. It ultimately stopped short, but she had already unconsciously slid the chair back a solid foot with her power before she noticed. Rivulets of sweat carved their way along her face as she stared at the blade, terrified.
"I was under the impression you had been instructed regarding the Unwritten Rules," Kaiser intoned dangerously, the false warmth from earlier gone. "I have no time to play the teacher, Victor. Clean up this mess." He pushed his chair back, rose to his feet, and calmly strode past her. He stopped just behind her chair, and she couldn't resist a tiny whimper as the second blade began to slowly extend towards her once more. "You would do well, Rune, to mind your mentor. Make an example, lest I do so instead." Then he left, the door to the private room swinging shut behind him.
Rune immediately tugged her chair back again to escape the advancing blade. The edge stopped immediately, and when she reached up to touch her neck and examined her fingers, she found them slightly bloody.
Victor rose to his feet and pushed back his chair in one swift movement then crossed the room to where she sat panting, adrenaline thrumming in her veins. "You know what you did wrong?" he questioned, his voice hard as ice.
"N-No!"
"Really? You can't even fucking guess?"
Rune looked back over what had been said and done, wracking her brain. "I… I was saying Fuj—his name, then Kaiser… But, the Unwritten Rules don't apply here!"
He took a step closer, looming over her, and she stared. "They do apply. You don't go after a cape's secret identity or their family."
"But… But I didn't—"
"You didn't before, no," Victor interrupted. "But the moment that kid became a cape? The Rules applied."
"But if that's true, then he broke them when he stole my phone!" Rune argued, stubbornly trying to prove she had done nothing wrong.
"The phone I told you not to take with you on duty?" She winced at the reminder. "That would ordinarily have been enough for him to be free game, except it's pretty clear from your story he was a fresh trigger. Allowances are made for people like that because they don't know any better yet."
"Then what am I supposed to do?" she hissed. "He doesn't have a cape identity, so how can I go after him?!"
"He doesn't have a cape identity yet," Othala said, finally entering the conversation from her seat, "but he will. Few people with powers wait long before going out as a cape. I don't think I've ever heard of someone waiting longer than a month."
"A month?!"
"You need to start hearing the whole message, not the parts, kid," Victor said as he turned on his heel and walked back over to Othala. "Next time we won't be able to bail you out."
Rune's jaw dropped. "So then… You're?"
"Helping?" He extended his hand to Othala, who daintily placed her hand in his before rising from the table. Rune couldn't help the tiny pang of jealousy that flared up at that. Her cousin made being the perfect lady look so easy. It wasn't a difference of age, or she doubted it, at least. Two years wasn't that big of a gap in her eyes. So why did doing the same always make her feel so awkward, like she was playing pretend? "Yes, we convinced Kaiser that you were caught off guard because you had never been around someone else triggering and hadn't been in a cape fight yet.
"You've got one chance."
She gulped. Her eyes flicked over to the blade that still hung perfectly perpendicular to the floor, its metallic gleam ominous even though it was no longer bearing down upon her.
"So fight me," she blurted as the couple came around the table. Victor gave her a look then broke the blade in half before breaking it free from the portion growing from the table. He stole skills temporarily or, if done for long enough, permanently. He was no brute who could snap metal—Othala must have given him super strength.
"Fight you," he echoed as he continued to break the blades down until they were small enough to be carried outside.
"If I can't take on F—him—until he's a cape… then I need to practice fighting capes so I'm ready for him."
Victor gave her a toothy smile.
66
Eva Grimm
Jun 19, 2020
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Eva Grimm
Eva Grimm
#narcolepsyproblems
She/Her
Jul 5, 2020
#46
Sorry for the delay, everyone. My partner's health has taken a turn for the worse, and I've been focused on taking care of them while juggling getting them an appointment with a new neurosurgeon. Not fun, let me tell you.
This chapter is un-beta'd, but I've done a final read through, and everything seems to be in order. Please let me know if anything seems awry!
#
Forge 2.1
The downside to choosing a mask that covers the bottom half of your face, I discovered later that night, is that you can't easily eat or drink anything. I gave my philly cheesesteak a longing, hungry look then flicked my annoyed gaze over to where Newter was distributing water into spoons using some sort of tool I couldn't remember the name of. The two girls sitting with us, brunettes I hadn't bothered to pay attention to the names of, were watching him with a hungry look in their eyes. "C'mon, Newter, I wanna eaaat!"
"Patience is a virtue, Thrash," he replied with a chuckle.
I gave him a bemused look and puzzled that one over. "Not seeing it. How the hell is 'thrash' related to metal?"
"I get it!" interjected one of the girls. No one cares if you get it. "Like thrash metal music, right?"
"Nailed it!"
"Oh come on," I groaned. "I don't even like metal music!"
"Not his fault you have bad taste, Blue Steel," the other girl quipped with a smirk while he dipped his tongue into each spoon and carefully handed her and the first girl a water laden spoon each.
"Ugh, is this another reference I'm not getting?"
"Yo, I've seen that one," Newter snickered. "Earth Aleph movie. Zoo something. Stupid but hilarious."
"Yup," the second girl confirmed. "So I just drink it all?"
"Yes," I impatiently answered in his place, having watched him go through the drill twice already with the five girls zonked out on the nearby reclining seats. "Just swallow it already!" I clutched my philly to me in a likely vain attempt to keep it warm and started imagining its taste. The thinly sliced, perfectly cooked steak, the heavenly melted cheese, the grilled onions and mushrooms to add texture and flavor…
"That's what she said," quipped the first brunette, shooting a raised eyebrow at where I was holding the sub in what I belatedly realized was a suggestive way. Both brunettes burst into giggles, and I flushed with embarrassment. I honestly debated using my powers to chuck them over the ledge for that.
They finally—finally!—drank the tainted water, and as they flopped back onto their seats with faraway eyes, I yanked down my mask and all but ripped the paper away from my sub. "Took them long enough. God." I took a bite of the sub and failed to repress a moan as my taste buds roared their approval. The swirl of metal over the dance floor began to flicker and dance somewhat erratically, but the dancers below seemed to approve if their cheers were any indication. Faultline had suggested I keep it up as practice, if I was going to be hanging out with Newter anyway. It was no skin off my back, so I hadn't argued against it.
Newter smirked a bit but said nothing as he twisted the cap back onto the water bottle and tucked everything away. Once that was done, he finally said, "So nothing's clicking for you yet?" I shook my head, silent because my mouth was still full of delicious goodness. "Eh, you'll figure it out. You've just got to nail it down before our next gig. You do not want PHO or the PRT to name you."
I swallowed and took a drag from the coke at my feet before replying. "Like Chubster, right?"
"Nah, he actually chose that name himself."
"You're joking."
He laid a hand over his chest in a 'who, me?' gesture. I rolled my eyes at him and pushed the last bite of my philly into my mouth. Unfortunately, I had overestimated how much I could fit in there and found myself with cheeks puffed out with food. Still, I wasn't going to spit it out—ew—so I struggled to chew while I balled up the paper the sub had come in and tossed it towards the trashcan. The paper bounced off the rim of the metal can, and I moved the can with my power in an effort to catch it. The movement made it start to tip over, and in my haste to prevent that I over-corrected in the other direction and sent the whole thing tipping over.
Newter eyed the spilled waste then turned back to me with a smirk. "I'm sure that went much more gracefully in your head." I leveled a mild glare at him, pushed myself to my feet, and started shoving all the trash back in. "Yo, mind asking Pierce to send up some more girls, since you're already standing?"
"Seven not enough for you?"
He shrugged. "The night is young."
I huffed as I set the trashcan upright and crossed back over to where I'd been sitting. "I don't mind asking him, but if hanging out with you is just going to be a nonstop train of watching other girls get high, then I'll call it a night."
"Oh?" he said, his tone different in a way I couldn't place. "If you'd wanted to try it out, you just had to say so."
"What? Nooo." I shook my head and tapped my arms together in the form of an 'X.'
"Huh? But you said—"
"I said I'm not interested in watching other people get high all night. That doesn't mean I want to get high. Because I most emphatically do not."
He said nothing for a moment, and I almost repeated myself, thinking he hadn't heard me over the loud music, but he finally spoke up. "So what did you have in mind?"
I shrugged. "Nothing in particular, I guess. We could maybe 'window shop,'" I threw in finger quotes.
"No independent stuff, sorry. Boss hasn't laid out all the rules for you yet, I guess. Since you're part of the team now, anything you or I do alone affects the team too, y'know?"
"Well fuck. That's annoying," I complained, crossing my arms. It made sense if I was being honest, but that didn't mean I had to like it. "Um, we could talk…? Anything else would be an improvement."
He tilted his head. "Bad experience with drugs?"
"I mean, don't get me wrong, I've smoked weed once or twice. Not my favorite thing, but I get it. I just don't want to do that right now."
"Then why…?"
I hesitated a bit, unsure how much I wanted to mention. Ultimately, I decided to just be frank, since there was a not insignificant chance I would let it slip by accident at some point anyway. It was awkward topic, but I didn't mind super much beyond that. "Well… I mentioned I'm new to the Bay, right?" At his nod, I continued. "I don't want to get into it, but my mom died from OD'ing."
"Oh shit."
He looked honest, but was it just an act? From what I'd seen so far, he was all about letting the good times roll. He didn't seem to actually be capable of being serious. I ended up grunting out, "Yeah," and left it at that.
We sat there in silence—well, we weren't talking, but it was for from silent—for a bit, and eventually I sank more of my focus into finding and touching all the metal nearby with my power. Another thing Faultline had asked me to start practicing. 'You need to know where metal is before you need it,' or something like that. I was annoyed I had 'power homework,' but at least it was a damn sight better than the regular kind.
"I don't remember my family at all," he abruptly announced, catching my attention once more.
I looked at him in surprise. "Really? Why not?"
"I'm a Case 53. Gregor too."
"Is that supposed to mean something? It sounds… vaguely familiar, but I'm not familiar."
He languidly stretched in his chair before laying back and resting his head against the headrest. "Means we just showed up one day with no memory, a creepy tattoo, and a monster body."
Is that what the tattoo over his heart is then? He had a stylized 'C' there, and it was the only tattoo I'd seen on him. Considering he was almost always shirtless, I would only have missed other tattoos if they were on his legs. The last part of what he said made me frown. "You're not a monster."
"We are to some people," he said with a shrug. "Doesn't bother me too much, but it used to bother Gregor a lot. He's better about it now though."
"You're not a monster," I repeated, leaving no room for discussion. "You're more than your appearance, and fuck anyone who says otherwise."
He smiled just a bit at that. It was fleeting, and I almost missed it in the dark club lighting, but I was confident I saw it before his expression settled back into something vaguely neutral. "Maybe you could wear a suit of armor, dress like a knight? It'd fit with this whole, 'defender of the downtrodden' you're evoking right now."
I snorted at my mental image of myself riding around the city on horseback in medieval armor. "Ah yes," I intoned with mock severity and a florid bow. "Lady… um, Knightsalot at your service, sir."
Newter burst into laughter. "You are so shit at names!"
"Hey, I came up with June just fine!" I bit out, somewhat offended at the declaration.
"Huh?"
Ah hell. "Anyway, I'm getting tired," I said with a faux yawn. "I'm gonna go catch some Z's. Night, Newts."
"God, please don't call me that," he remarked with an over-exaggerated cringe, obviously struggling to maintain a straight face. "Have mercy on me!"
"No promises," I replied in a cheery, sing-song tone as I carefully reclaimed and deposited all of my coins into my bag to the disappointment of the crowd.
#
"We're here."
I looked up from where I'd been perusing the phone Faultline had provided me this morning—complete with an explanation of "this will come out of your paycheck," the money-grubber—and paled when I saw where she had driven Newter and me. "No."
Newter twisted around in his seat with a confused look, while Faultline's eyes flicked to me in the rearview mirror but didn't betray what she was thinking. "Elaborate?"
"Somewhere else." I struggled to not cringe away from the sight of the Boat Graveyard clearly visible through the tinted windows and windshield. "Not… not here. Anywhere but here."
Newter turned to face Faultline, and the two shared a silent conversation for a moment. "Okay," Faultline said. "What is it that's bothering you? I need to know, so I can move us somewhere better."
I fidgeted and looked down at my lap, scowling at my inability to continue looking at the place. "I, um. I triggered here."
"Fuck," Newter remarked, succinctly summarizing my thoughts on the matter.
Faultline's eyes widened minutely before settling back into indifference. "If I put a building between us and here, would that be enough?" Faultline inquired. "I don't want to subject you to trauma, but this area is the best suited to testing the limits of your power while maintaining a low profile and staying in the city."
"Maybe?" I allowed, not quite sure.
She twisted the leather steering wheel, her fancy car smoothly rotating in response. I did feel better once I wasn't looking at the abandoned docks and sunken boats and relayed as much to Faultline, eliciting a nod of acknowledgment from her as she brought us back a block and pulled around the other side of a sizable abandoned building made of concrete and metal that appeared to be a cross between boat repair facility and warehouse. Best as I could tell, everything in a four or five block radius of the docks was likewise deserted, which just added to the decaying air of the 'graveyard.' She turned towards a giant metal bay door that was street level, and taking the cue, I lifted the door fifteen feet or so—more than enough room for the sleek vehicle to slide underneath.
"How much metal is in your range right now?" Faultline asked, her tone all business as she flipped down the welder's mask that served as her mask. The stylized crack across it passed roughly over where I expected the bridge of her nose to be.
"A lot." She crossed her arms and waited. I did my best to resist the urge to glare. "I don't know what kind of answer you're looking for. It's not like instinctively know how many pieces of metal are nearby, how much it all weighs, or whatever."
"And now we know that about your power," she replied in a clipped tone before opening the door and climbing out.
"Oh." I blinked. "That… makes sense, I guess."
Newter snickered at me as he popped open his own door, and I took a moment to push down the urge to make him trip on coins before tying my mask in place and moving to follow.
Faultline was facing me as I hopped out and seemed to be regarding me. Her costume was a weird combination of utility and style that looked like some sort of welder crossed with a samurai to me. She wore what looked like an armored vest, a large skirt split into parts that clearly didn't hamper her movement, and wide sleeves that obscured her arms while still allowing her to easily reach the items strapped to her upper arm. In between the splits in the skirt and peeking out from beneath her billowing sleeves, I could just barely make out a myriad of belts and holsters all over that held a mix of tools in place. I could feel most, but not all, of the items she had strapped to her, and the costume made it difficult to read her body language.
"So you cannot determine the exact amount or weight of metal nearby," she finally stated after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence. "Do you feel metal shifting into and out of your perception?"
"Um. Well, I can feel you moving around because of all the metal on you." I trailed off for a moment then belatedly added. "Newter too. Button on his jeans."
She nodded. "Yes, you had mentioned as much regarding your fight with the ABB. That's not quite what I am asking. As you pay attention to any individual pieces or groups of metal, do you lose sight of metal you could see until that moment?"
"Oh, um… I can feel new metal as I walk close enough or lose sight of it as I move away, but not while I'm just chilling in place."
"Anything else you can feel about the metal? Can you tell what kind of metal it is? Whether something else is attached to it or on it?"
"Can't tell metals apart, but I can feel shape and kinda how heavy it is, and I've been making guesses about what things are based on that."
"So you were being exact when you said you couldn't tell how much it 'all weighs' earlier, however you can roughly guess how much an individual item weighs."
I self-consciously crossed my arms. I'd known we were coming out here to test my power, and Faultline had warned me she would be asking a lot of questions, but it still felt like I was being interrogated. "It's… easier to compare how much something weighs next to something else." I gestured at a shipping container in the warehouse, visible only by the sunlight leaking through from where I still held the garage door open. "I can tell that weighs more than your car." And speaking of lifting those… "I think I have a limit to what I can lift too? When I fought Rune, she tried to throw two of those at me. The second one sort of… um, slipped between my fingers. Something like that. Had to block one with the other instead of just taking control of both."
Faultline made a considering sound. "Interesting. It's not a limit on the number of objects. You control thousands of coins at once all the time…"
She trailed off and turned to face the shipping container I'd indicated. I looked to Newter, and he remarked, "Probably thinking up a test."
"Yes," she distractedly replied. "Yes, that should work." She turned back to face us. "Lift that shipping container into the air and hold it there. While you're holding it, I want you to bring out your coins and see if you can still control all of them."
I shrugged and tried to lift the container only to fall over backwards when my backpack suddenly became crazy heavy. The door also slammed into the ground with a bang, cutting off our light.
Fortunately, that meant I didn't flash my teammates when my skirt flipped up over my belly. That would have compounded my mortification over my power failing like that.
A flashlight cut through the darkness, and Faultline crossed over to me and gave me a hand up. "Lost control?"
"Yeah," I said frowning.
"Put down your bag and try again."
I shrugged off my backpack and let it fall to the ground with a metallic clunk. Free of needing to control them, I tried to lift the container. Strangely, it wouldn't budge. The hell is going on?
"Coin?"
"Trying," I grunted through grit teeth.
"If you cannot lift it, then stop. That's informative enough." I released my grip on it and sagged in relief. When I tossed her an inquiring look, she explained, "I suspect the limit is not the number of items you can lift but how much weight you can lift."
I'd thought something similar when I was robbing the store on the Boardwalk, but still… "I don't get it though," I protested. "This feels like the same weight as the one I used to fight Rune. I mean, I don't remember exactly, but it's about the same."
"Perhaps," she conceded. "But that container may have been empty or otherwise contained less weight than this one. Your power might only provide weight feedback for the metal itself."
"That's a fancy way of saying my power is really just focused on metal shit." I turned my power on the shipping container again, but this time I focused instead on ripping it apart at the seams instead of lifting it, and when the sides and top tore away, I saw it really was packed to the brim with wooden crates that contained who knew what. More importantly though…
"Yuck!" Newter complained, pinching his nose, while I grimaced. If Faultline was bothered by the rancid stench, then it must've been concealed by her mask. Or else she was just completely unflappable. Both seemed equally plausible from what I'd seen of her so far. "What reeks?!"
I promptly reassembled the container over the bottom chunk that had been under the crates, and though the smell got a bit better it still lingered. "Smells like rancid milk," I groaned, abruptly thankful for the mask covering my nose.
"It may very well be," Faultline stated, some discomfort evident in her voice. Ha! Guess she's not so unflappable after all! "Certainly food products gone bad at any rate."
"Whatever it is, it's awful," Newter pressed. "Can we head outside where it doesn't smell like something died?"
I grabbed my backpack off the ground and lifted the door once more, then the three of us quickly left through the gap, which I carefully set down this time, since we were ostensibly trying to be discrete.
"Do you feel any other storage containers nearby that you can pick up? I'd still like to confirm my hypothesis beyond a doubt using my original test. Put your bag on the ground first."
"Sure, there are plenty," I confirmed while dropping my backpack. I picked up one of the containers at random, and in less than a minute I had it hovering nearby, perfectly still in the air.
"Okay, now hold that in the air and try to bring out all of your coins." I reached down and unzipped the backpack, and while I was able to pull out most of them out, I wasn't able to grab them all before I began to feel like the rest were slipping between my fingers like trying to grab at water with splayed fingers. Faultline glanced down into the bag and nodded to herself. "That's enough, Coin. Thank you."
I carefully set down the container. "That's it then. I can only control so much weight. Good to know."
"Yes. It's a shame you can only lift that much, since an armored car would be much heavier, but it's good that you can work with individual parts. The next hypothesis I want to confirm is your compulsion."
I was about to ask why she'd specifically brought up an armored car but was caught off guard by the last part. "My… compulsion?"
"Correct. You acted quite strangely at two separate points the night we met, seemingly fixated on something we couldn't see. I reexamined those situations after, and from what I could glean, it seemed you weren't controlling metal at the time. Hence I suspect you have a compulsion to use your power regularly. It would explain why you were so emphatic about keeping some of the metal we gave you that night and why you always carry around coins in your backpack."
"That's not why," I objected, floundering to explain myself. "I—that is… I just don't wanna be caught off guard like I did with Rune! The coins are easy to carry and around manipulate, especially if I need to fly!"
"If that's all it is, then you won't object to a simple test. Put all of your coins on the ground in a pile, and don't use your power on them or any other metal in the area." My revulsion at the idea must have shown on my face, since she added, "Newter and I are here, and we would protect you and end the test if an attack did happen."
I begrudgingly lumped the coins together in a small mound on the ground then released my power's hold over them. It was weird just… letting go. In hindsight, I had been constantly using it to control metal in one way or another since Monday, spare when I'd been asleep.
"Perfect, that will do nicely."
"Sure, sure," I muttered. Trying to distract myself from the odd feeling, my eyes flicked over to Faultline. "So. Um. What exactly is your power? Like, how does it work? Do you just split things in half?"
"Something like that," she replied. "I make cuts in non-organic objects at the atomic level."
I blinked, trying to wrap my head around that description. "Fancy cutting. Got it."
"An excellent summary," she drawled.
I smirked a bit at the reaction, but my expression quickly twisted with confusion when I realized I was staring at my coins. When had that happened? Weird. I started to reflexively settle my power over them, but paused when I remembered I wasn't supposed to. But… why? It was suddenly hard to remember.
"Don't use your power."
I sluggishly tugged my gaze away from the coins. Faultline—right. She asked me to stop. "'Kay," I grumbled, shuffling my feet and looking around for something to distract myself. I realized I was staring at Faultline's metal welder's mask. Not having meant to stare, I scrambled to say something. "Fancy cutter. What's the biggest cut ya ever made?" I pantomimed slicing through something with my arm with a "kashew!" Her power had made a sound when I saw it the other night when she split my coin. I think? Whatever.
"'The biggest cut' I ever made, hm?" It sounded like there was a hint of a smile in her voice, but I couldn't tell if she was actually smiling. I was staring at her mask, so I'd see her smiling if I could. "Well, I cut through a building once, and it collapsed. There was definitely luck involved with that though."
"Snazzy," I murmured, trying to visualize it, but her mask was pretty distracting. My lips curled in frustration as I struggled to look away, and when I finally managed it, my gaze immediately fell on the pile of my coins. I don't like this. Why am I doing it again?
"You're doing it because we're testing your power," Faultline said. Huh. Did I say that aloud? "Yes, you did."
I growled with frustration. I tried to turn away again, even if it meant I would just start staring at her mask again, but I just couldn't manage it. I realized I was trembling and crossed my arms to try and stop it. So many coins. Money. I need that. Need hormones.
"Hormones?"
Newter? Yes, belt buckle. He's the belt buckle. A whining sound reached my ears. Familiar… Me? Too much. Just… I just need to for one second. It's just a second, right?
"Okay, I think that's more than enough," the metal mask said. "You may use your power again."
Permission. The coins on the ground shot towards me at speed and abruptly twisted to swirl around me in a vortex, gently stirring the air around me in their wake. I was in the eye of a metal tornado, the world blurred by a storm of my own design. I don't know how long it took, but I eventually stopped shivering and felt calmer, if a bit light-headed. I tugged coins from the storm and wrapped them around me as I would for flight but just used them to stabilize myself instead as I let the storm die down into a ring of coins around me.
Faultline and Newter stood nearby, and though I couldn't see Faultline's expression, Newter's was pinched with a mixture of emotions I couldn't place. "Feeling better?" he asked. Was that worry?
"'Course I am," I deflected, trying to wrack my brain for exactly what had happened but came up mostly blank.
"Your compulsion put you in an altered mind state," Faultline answered my unasked question, her tone heavy with something I couldn't identify. "I apologize for forcing you to go through that, but we needed to know how you would act at what levels of deprivation." She waved the phone in her hand. "I recorded everything, in case we need to refer back to it later."
"So it's real?" I asked bemused and shaking my head. It was difficult to recall what had happened between putting down my coins and picking them back up. It wasn't that there was a gap in my memory, but it was difficult to focus on it, and what I could remember was mostly a blur of feelings. I held out my hand and tugged the phone towards me, and Faultline made a noise half annoyance and half disappointment.
"Ask next time, but go ahead and watch it."
Whoops. Right, trying to stay on her good side. I shot her my best look of contrition, hoping she would chalk up my behavior to this 'altered mind state' she claimed I'd been in. I tapped the 'play' button on the phone, not expecting much, then watched with embarrassment and mounting horror as the video showed me quickly grow loopy. I stared obsessively at metal, began thinking aloud… I even started acting like Mom did when she couldn't get her fix. The whole process took only three minutes by the video's timer. "The fuck? What the actual fuck?"
"You don't remember it at all?" I looked up and unconsciously flinched away when I saw Newter had stepped closer while I was watching. He'd stopped just outside the ring of coins, distant enough to prevent accidentally touching him, but his silent approach had still startled me. He frowned at my reaction, an expression that seemed alien on him. For the short time we'd known each other, I had come to associate him almost exclusively with grins and laughter. I shook my head wordlessly, unsure what to say. To think, even. I shivered again at the thought that I might never have known about this if I'd stayed solo. I might have even accidentally gotten stuck like this, if I ever got trapped somewhere without metal in range.
Faultline crossed over to us and held out her hand. Recognizing the silent command for what it was and too troubled to even think about disobeying right now, I moved the phone to her hand through the air. Once she had slipped it back into her pocket, she spoke up, "There's more testing I would like to do, but I would understand if you aren't feeling well enough to continue."
"I'm fine," I groused, albeit somewhat unsteadily. I frowned then repeated myself with more certainty. "I want to continue."
Newter made a noise of protest, but Faultline gestured at him. He crossed his arms but didn't say anything further. She waved at the coins on the ground. "You moved those very quickly. Do you know how fast you can move them? A rough estimate will do."
"Maybe 40, 45 miles an hour? When I fly, it looks like I'm faster than the cars on the street below."
"Hm… I wonder if…" She didn't finish the thought for several seconds, seemingly thinking through another test. "This would be cleaner and more exact if we had the proper equipment, but we shall just have to make do. I want you to move a coin at max speed, then I want you to move that shipping container in the same way. I will observe from the side and try to compare speeds. Your power is affected by weight, but powers are finicky. It may be that you can move them both at the same speed. It may be the shipping container moves slower or quicker. It certainly seemed to be fast when you initially retrieved it."
It didn't take long for me to oblige and send each item in turn hurtling forward while Faultline watched. Once I was done, there was an undercurrent of excitement in her voice. "To the naked eye, I didn't see much difference at all—interesting. I'd bet the difference boils down to air resistance, but it's impossible to say right now."
"So wait," I said, beginning to cotton on to what she was thinking. "I could just smash people with heavy objects at speed then, right?"
"No, even better!" Newter interjected with a grin. "You can pulverize them from above! They'd never see it coming."
I grinned back, the funk from earlier finally dissipating in the wake of my excitement. "Awesome!"
"You would need to exercise appropriate restraint," Faultline pointed out, being a party pooper. "Remember, avoiding lethal force is one of the unwritten rules. But yes, this has definite tactical advantages." She pulled out her phone and checked the time. "I have some other tests I would like to perform, but we should head back before too long. Otherwise, Gregor won't have enough time to help you retrieve your belongings from your cousin before our meeting."
"Whatevs," I replied with a shrug. "What next then?"
Apparently a lot. I actually started to regret insisting I was good to continue earlier—the woman was like a slave driver! She put me through a battery of other tests regarding how fine my control was—it basically wasn't, but I'd already known that—and the kinds of shapes I could manipulate metal into—spoiler alert: a whole lot of shapes, so long as they didn't require fine details. I was actually a bit upset when I realized I couldn't use my power to make a badass sword. I'd known I couldn't make something small like a knife, but a part of me had been hoping I would be able to upscale and find a point where I could actually make something sharp. The best I'd been able to manage was essentially a large cleaver-like sword that had something of an edge, but I'd abandoned that when Newter joked my cape name should be 'Cloud,' which was apparently a reference to some Earth Aleph video game. No way was I going to let myself be associated with a dumb name like that or some game I'd never even heard of.
Eventually we moved on to reviewing my fights with Rune and Lung, so Faultline could get an idea of where I was at with fighting. "Could you feel his scales?" Faultline asked when I'd finished describing the latter fight.
I blinked, nonplussed. "Um. I think I could?"
"Then why didn't you use your power to hold him in place or even slow him down?"
That was a good fucking question. "I dunno…"
She hummed at that. "I'd imagined your power was Manton-limited. A partial limitation might fight." I tilted my head in confusion, and she tacked on, "It's the principle that most powers tend to either living creatures or inanimate objects but almost never both. For example, my powers only work on inanimate objects. They wouldn't work if I tried to use them on you or Newter."
"So what you're saying is… Lung's scales are living metal or something, so my power might not work on them the same as normal metal?"
"It's a theory. We don't exactly have a readily available means of testing that, so just keep it in mind. Besides that, you mentioned trapping him using the metal from the safe, and you've quite clearly demonstrated that you can manipulate metal. What I don't understand is how you kept him contained using metal. Lung is incredibly strong and, with his pyrokinesis, could have quite possibly melted a hole through the metal."
"Oh, right! It's hard to explain, but I surrounded him in a sphere of metal then pushed it… um, I call it 'elsewhere.'"
Newter snickered. "'Elsewhere'?"
I stuck my tongue out at him, or tried to anyway, getting a taste of my mask for my effort. I flipped him the bird instead. "Ass."
"Your excellent naming skills hard at work," he smugly retorted, seemingly unbothered by being given the finger.
Faultline cut in before we could keep going at each other. "Focus. What happens when you push something 'elsewhere'?"
"Um. It gets tougher? I also can't move it with my power until I bring it back from there."
She turned on her heel and started walking towards the shipping container. "Show me." She gave me a few seconds to push it elsewhere then reached out to touch it, the blue and red light of her power crackling over the surface of the rusted red metal.
Nothing happened.
Newter stared, his mouth agape. "Holy shit."
Faultline placed her other hand against it and got close enough to push her toes against it too. Her power flared once more, this time much more brightly and for several seconds, but the container remained unphased.
She turned back to face me. "Can you undo this?" Her tone was tinged with the faintest signs of excitement again.
"Yeah."
"How long does it last?"
"Um. I dunno, actually. I've always just brought it back."
"It must have a time limit," she rebutted. "Even if the PRT didn't report an immovable sphere large enough to contain a human, I still would have heard rumblings in my network of such a thing."
I shrugged, unsure what to say. "I did leave pretty quickly after the fight… Could be a time limit, I guess. Or maybe it stops once it's out of my range?"
"Then here's how we'll test it…"
#
"Okay, it's coming up," I said as I felt the metal in my range quickly slip away as Faultline drove us back towards the Palanquin. I'd left a shipping container hanging in the elsewhere far, far up in the air above the Boat Graveyard.
"That's a shame," Faultline replied. "Your range isn't quite as far as I'd hoped." She slowed down, which wasn't a problem, as we were still on an entirely abandoned street. I grumbled a bit at that—my power was impressive, dammit—but I forced myself to let it be. Instead, I joined Newter in rolling down my window as he did the same on the other side of the car, and together we leaned out to watch. "Right about… Now."
The container slipped from my control, and it immediately began to plummet towards the earth. It quickly picked up speed, falling faster and faster… Until a metallic bang rang out, echoing and resounding through the area and sending a plume of concrete dust up into the air that I could see in spite of the building blocking my sight of the impact. A part of me wanted to go see what the damage was—it had to be a lot, solid concrete or not—but Faultline had already said we wouldn't want to stick around once it hit, so I slipped back into the car and rolled up the tinted window. Safely hidden from sight, I tugged my mask down and left it hanging around my neck.
Newter shot me a grin from the passenger seat. "Like I said. You'll pulverize them."
"Totally," I replied before gesticulating widely and jokingly declaring, "Watch the skies, Brockton Bay! Metal Rain is bringing the pain!"
"No, no, can't use that name," he said with a laugh. "Too close to Iron Rain, Kaiser's sister."
"It was just a joke anyway, you spoilsport."
A sly look abruptly crossed Newter's face. "Actually… I've finally got the perfect cape name for you."
I rolled my eyes, fully expecting another joke name that I'd hate or not understand the reference of. "Uh huh. Do tell."
"Meteor."
I blinked. Meteor… I met his eyes, a smile slowly growing on my face.
69
Eva Grimm
Jul 5, 2020
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Threadmarks Forge 2.2
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Eva Grimm
Eva Grimm
#narcolepsyproblems
She/Her
Jul 10, 2020
#52
Chapter notes at the bottom!
#
Forge 2.2
"That's it right there," I said, pointing out the tall, concrete apartment structure where Masuyo lived. I'd been right in my initial assessment—she really didn't live far from Palanquin. I'd noticed previously that she lived relatively close to the university, just north of downtown, and only a bit west of Palanquin. In hindsight, Palanquin's placement probably explained why it was able to draw such large crowds. It got the college aged partying crowd and the office workers who want to let loose after a hard day's work. I tried to imagine Masuyo dancing the night away at Palanquin in the sorts of skimpy outfits I'd seen at the club but couldn't quite manage it. Maybe she was secretly a party girl, but from what I'd seen so far, I had her pegged as the straight-laced type that would hang out awkwardly at the edge of the room, dragged there by friends if she even went at all.
Gregor pulled into the parking lot nearby and angled the mini-van towards a free visitor parking spot. Like Faultline's car, all of its glass was tinted, but beyond that it really was your garden variety mini-van. I had chuckled when I first saw it and jokingly asked Gregor if he had aspirations to be a soccer mom, which had pulled a chuckle out of him.
"You said you do not have much to move?" he questioned as we climbed out together and he pulled up the hood on his hoodie, casting a bit of shadow over his face. It wasn't late enough for the sun to really be setting yet, so anyone who paid close attention would still notice he was a cape.
"Yeah. I never really had much, besides some clothes and a few other things." After a few moments, I remembered to throw in, "And hey. Um, thanks for driving me."
"You are welcome," he quickly replied. I would have thought he was uncomfortable, but he sounded at ease when he said it. Like he was used to it, expected the words. What was up with that? Did the rest of the team depend on him a lot? "Please lead the way."
I pushed my musings aside and made my way to the elevator. I could count the number of times had I ridden it up to her apartment on two hands. It felt a little weird that this would be the last time for the foreseeable future. I had only just moved here not even a week ago, resigned to the fact I was moving away from the only home I had ever known in my life. Well, not the only apartment, but Brooklyn had always been home. I doubted Brockton Bay would ever come close.
The doors slid open at the right level, and I led Gregor down the hall and around the corner to Masuyo's apartment. I tugged open my bag, and the key readily flew into my hands. I could feel a pants button and a pair of stud earrings moving around in the tiny kitchen left of the apartment's entrance that I tentatively pegged as Masuyo. As I unlocked the deadbolt, I quietly informed Gregor, "Cousin is here. Lemme talk to her first." He nodded and stepped away from the door to lean casually against the hallway wall.
"Welcome home," Masuyo cheerfully greeted me from my left. Far too cheerfully, considering I hadn't been back here since yesterday morning and hadn't called. Even if the school hadn't cared enough to inform her I didn't show up earlier, she doubtlessly would have noticed I didn't sleep here yesterday. She had to be faking it, but what would be the point? Some misguided attempt to make up for the other night? We hadn't spoken since I blew up at her beyond exchanging awkward "morning"s yesterday. I'd felt kinda bad about making her cry and had wanted to clear the air, but it was a situation I had no real reference for. Mom had usually been drugged up out of her mind, and the few friends I'd had over the years were made of sterner stuff, so I hadn't expected Masuyo would take it so poorly or known what to do about it. The smell and sound of sizzling meat drew my attention to the stove where several hamburger patties were browning in a large skillet. There were also some fresh toppings like lettuce and tomato on a cutting board nearby next to some ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise bottles. This was too much food for one person—was she expecting company? She couldn't have known I would be arriving now.
She eventually looked my way when I unintentionally let the silence linger too long and seemed to understand my unspoken question. "A friend of mine from class is stopping by in a bit to study. Have you eaten yet? I have enough meat to make you some patties too."
I shook my head. It'd been bad enough I had to rely on Masuyo for my first few meals here, but Faultline had given me a small advance on our next job once I'd explained I had nothing to my name after my fight with Lung. I'd get food later. "I'm actually just grabbing my things. I need to pay you back too."
"You don't—" She paused for a fraction of a second, a look of frustration passing over her face, then immediately switched gears. "What're you grabbing?"
I opened my mouth to reply but paused when it hit me the blunt response I'd been about to give would likely lead to her getting upset. Again. And Gregor would be here for it this time. Fantastic. I wracked my brain for a way to avoid that but came up blank. I just didn't know her well enough, an issue complicated by her acting like we did. I'd couch surfed at a friend's once for a few months back when mom started having regular orgies at the apartment, and it'd been no big deal when I peaced out after Mom finally decided she was done with that lot. If you'd asked me a week ago, I would've thought moving out of Masuyo's would be like that but for the complication of Social Services being nosy. Now I knew better. Or rather, I knew how much I didn't know about her. So my options were 'take a shot in the dark and hope I can lie through my teeth well enough to avoid her suspicion despite the fact I am literally taking all of my shit with me,' which was liable to make her more upset if—when—she realized I was lying… or I could just go stick with tried and true 'blunt as fuck.'
"June?"
Blunt and honest it is. "All of it. I'm moving out."
Her cheery expression vanished in an instant. She'd definitely been faking it. She had to for it to fall away like that. "What're you talking about?"
"I got a job, and I can afford my own place," I smoothly lied. It was close enough to the truth. The best lies were. "How much do I owe you for the food and phone? Rent too." I'd almost forgotten the last bit. I had money and the promise of more to come, so I didn't want to freeload on rent either. Wiping the slate clean and starting over on a level playing field, I could maybe see myself developing a real relationship with Masuyo then, not this pseudo-shit she's got cooked up in her head. I'd never known any of my relatives besides Mom, so it might be nice.
Might not be too.
She stared at me like I'd grown a second head. "You don't… What are…" She shook her head, clearly unsure where to start. "Huh?"
Heh. Eloquent. "I mean it. I've got a job. You don't need to do anything for me anymore. I'll be out of your hair starting tonight."
"I really don't understand your fixation on this. I'm glad you got a job—work experience could be good, really—but you don't need to worry about that sort of stuff. That's my job as an adult."
I clenched my hands at the condescension but did my best to ignore it. I didn't want to make a scene with Gregor here. "Whatever. Agree to disagree. I'm still moving out."
She ran a hand over her face. "June. That's not how this works."
Losing patience with her, I dismissively replied, "I really don't have time for this," and started towards the hallway and rounded the corner to the closet. My clothes and my secondhand, battered suitcase were both stored in it. "We have places to be."
"Who is 'we?'"
Gregor apparently took that as his cue to come in. I felt the metal on his jeans slowly round the corner, and he cautiously asked, "Is there anything I should take down while you pack?"
"No, no. It'll all fit in my suitcase. Just gotta pack it real quick."
"Who are you?" Masuyo demanded, strangely undeterred by the unknown man entering her apartment. She probably figured he was relatively safe since he was with me, but still, she had more guts than I had thought. "And what—"
She gasped, having probably seen his skin. I ignored her, expecting a mutter or exclamation of 'cape' to follow, and started to shove what few clothes I had extracted from the suitcase so far back into it.
"This is your fault, isn't it? You're with them, aren't you?" The skillet left the stove. "Why can't you bastards just leave June alone?!"
Woah, wait—what?
I abandoned my suitcase and quickly returned to the living room and matched visuals to what my power was telling me. The patties that had been in the skillet were piled in a lump on the edge of the burner where she must have haphazardly dumped them in her haste to arm herself, and I could already see smoke starting to rise from the mass of meat. More concerning was how Masuyo was menacingly waving the probably still burning hot skillet at Gregor, who had his hands in the air and was backing away slowly towards the door.
"I do not know what you are talking about," he replied, but she either couldn't hear the honesty in his words or just didn't care, since she made another threatening swipe at him.
"Masuyo, what the fuck?"
Her eyes flicked my way for only a moment before they immediately returned to giving Gregor a death glare. "My phone is in the other room. Call the PRT. Hurry!"
"Please calm down, miss."
She swiped at him again, and I growled out, "Put that down now, or I'll make you."
"There is no need for that," Gregor hastily replied, his eyes on me. "If you can handle carrying your things, then I will wait outside."
That was apparently the wrong thing to say, since Masuyo's eyes flashed with something like understanding. "A master…? Get out of our home! I'll never let you monsters have her!"
I saw red. She made to lunge at Gregor, and I tugged the skillet sharply left. Now swinging too hard and too quickly, she lost her balance and yelped as she fell to the floor in a heap. The skillet slipped from her fingers and slid towards me. "I told you to leave him alone!" I snarled. She made to reach for the skillet's plastic handle, and I sent it skidding further into the living room with a negligent flick of my power.
"J-June?"
There was fear in her eyes, and the sight brought me up short. Intellectually I'd known that her eyes looked just like mine, but seeing the fear in them now… Suddenly all I could think of was drowning in the graveyard and how afraid I'd been. The wind out of my sails, I averted my gaze and gulped. "Stay down," I commanded, much softer than I was originally going to.
"Masuyo, is everything alright?" a voice from the hallway said. "I heard shouting…"
I glanced up and saw it was one of the neighbors, a little old lady whose name I couldn't remember but whom I vaguely recalled being introduced to by Masuyo when I arrived last Friday. Gregor didn't turn to acknowledge her, likely to avoid another person freaking out over his unique appearance. Masuyo was already trying to get the PRT involved, and that was the last thing I needed. That meant I needed to undermine her credibility in case she tried to ask this lady for help. It was a Thursday night—I'd known college kids to party on Thursday nights. Alcohol. "Hi again. Sorry, she's had a bit too much to drink and shouted when she slipped."
"Who… Oh yes, right. Jake, was it?"
I stiffened at the name and didn't miss Gregor's eyes flicking my way. I nearly corrected her, but managed to hold my tongue. The last thing we needed was to engage her more than necessary right now. "I'll help Masuyo to the couch. Have a good night."
She clucked her tongue. "You shouldn't be so hasty, young man. It's rude you know," she remarked, but she thankfully turned to leave. "I'm just next door if you need any— I'm sorry, is something burning? I smell smoke."
"Left the burgers on too long," Masuyo shakily said as she rolled onto her side. "Sorry, Mrs. C. Won't happen again."
"See that you do," the old bat loftily said. "And do be more careful, Masuyo!"
The lady finally left, and after a few beats of awkward silence, Gregor took a few steps backwards towards the door and gently pushed it closed. The smell of burning meat was beginning to hang heavy in the air, and small clouds of smoke were beginning to waft from the stove. He moved to take care of it before the smoke alarm could go off, and I turned my attention back to Masuyo, who was staring at me again. There was still fear in her eyes. I wasn't sure if that was good or not. Either way, I couldn't let this shit go on. "Listen up, and listen good, Masuyo," I growled at her, clenching my fists to try and control my anger. "You have no right. You have no goddamn right. You think you can just waltz into my life, drag me from my home, and tell me what to do? To act like we have some kind of bond, when you're just some stranger I met a week ago? To threaten my teammate and call him a monster?" My traitorous thoughts helpfully reminded me I had been rude to him when we met too, but I ignored it. I was altered, or whatever Faultline called it. It's not the same.
"You can fight him off," she whispered, her eyes flicking so quickly towards Gregor that I almost missed it. "You don't have to do this."
"You really believe that? That I'm being controlled?" I shook my head in disbelief. "Listen up, 'cause I'm only gonna say this once. The only person in charge of my life is me. Not you. Not anybody else. Me. Go sit on the couch and be quiet. Do not touch that frying pan until we've left. We've wasted enough time dealing with your nonsense."
"June…"
I ignored her and returned to the closet to resume packing. It took a minute, but I eventually felt her slowly rise and move towards the couch. I carefully kept an eye on her with my power as I grabbed my iron and miniature ironing board, but she didn't go for the frying pan. Giving the closet one last look over, I tugged the suitcase out of the closet's floor and into the hallway as Gregor rounded the corner.
"I will take care of that. You should say goodbye."
"I don't think she deserves it after this," I muttered.
"There has clearly been a misunderstanding," he disagreed, his tone imploring. "A significant one, it seems. You will both probably feel different come tomorrow. I said it before: You should not be so quick to abandon family."
I glared at him and I was just about to tell him where he could shove his ideals about family, but I remembered my conversation with Newter about Case 53s, and my jaw shut with a click. I glanced past him towards Masuyo, who was still staring at the two of us with wide, fearful eyes. I sighed bitterly. "Family isn't all it's cracked up to be," I disagreed. He opened his mouth to retort, and I quickly added, "I'll talk to her. Just… Don't be surprised when nothing comes of it, okay?" We stared at each other for a minute in silence, and eventually he nodded and turned sideways to give me room to pass his bulk in the narrow hallway. I sighed again and stepped past towards the living room. Now that I was closer, I could see silent tears were falling from her eyes as she stared at me, and I winced. That was twice in three days I'd reduced her to tears. Why was it bothering me so much? She was nothing to me—no one.
And yet her eyes looked just like mine.
I struggled to find the words that wouldn't make things worse but came up short. Behind me, I heard Gregor zip up the suitcase and move to the exit. Knowing we had a meeting to get to, I forced myself to pull the card out of my pocket and toss it on the rug covering the living room floor. She didn't so much as glance at it—she only had eyes for me.
"Bye, Masuyo."
I turned and left without another word. Behind me I heard her sob, and I quickened my pace, uncomfortable. Gregor and I left as quickly and discretely as we could, neither of us saying a word. The sun was finally beginning to retreat behind the mountains bordering Brockton Bay by the time we loaded up the car and left. It wasn't until we were halfway back to Palanquin that I finally broke the silence. "Sorry 'bout that. I didn't expect that reaction from her."
He said nothing for a moment as we made a left turn, his hands smoothly guiding the steering wheel through the maneuver. "You need not apologize for her behavior. She clearly had me mistaken for someone else."
A beat of silence passed. "I, um… I was going to tell you. That… isn't how I meant for you to find out."
"I am sorry if this offends you, but I had suspected that may be the case."
I clenched my fists and looked away out the window. "Figures," I said. "You're not the first, and you probably won't be the last."
"That is why you need money, yes? Living expenses, true, but medical reasons."
"Ain't your business," I muttered, much less heatedly than I had intended to say. It was a bit rude of me, and a part of me recognized I should take it back and apologize, but when I turned to look at him I found my mouth wouldn't form the words. I turned back to the window and stared at the buildings and people as they passed by, a quiet settling over the van for the remainder of the brief return trip. Depressing thoughts threatened to make themselves heard, but I shoved them down deep with practiced ease. I had no time for thoughts like that. There was no rest for the wicked.
Eventually we reached Palanquin, and Gregor pulled the van into one of the parking spots in a gated, private lot that wasn't far from the loading bay. Not far away I could see the line that had already begun to stretch around Palanquin, and the music and lights inside were already in full swing. He turned to face me after slipping the gear shift into park, and I unconsciously turned to face him. "If you say you are a woman, then you need say no more, Juniper. It is so."
The use of my full name startled a strangled laugh out of me, and I realized with a jolt that tears were leaking from my eyes and carving their way down my cheeks. I hurriedly looked away, tugged my mask from my bag, and tied it around my face. I was going to need it anyway. Faultline had warned me to wear it when coming and going with Gregor and Newter to prevent people from connecting my unmasked face with Meteor, the new cape on the team.
"L-Let's go," I said, stumbling over the words as I pulled the handle to open the door. Gregor began to climb out as well, and I started towards the front door but quickly had to stop when the crying got so bad I couldn't see. "Goddammit," I muttered, swiping at my eyes and sniffling. "Stop fucking crying."
My bulky teammate carefully stepped over to my side. "The only person in charge of your life is you," he murmured just loudly enough for me to hear, "but your teammates are still here to help you." I gave up trying to hide the tears as a bad job and just turned to look at him. Strangely, instead of the condescension, disdain, or even annoyance I expected to see in his expression, he wore a sad, gentle smile. I stared, my vision still half obscured by my watery eyes. What was this? Why was he looking at me like that? I averted my gaze, and resumed wiping away the tears until they finally began to taper off. I expected him to get tired of waiting on me and leave, but he never did.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why aren't you going inside?"
He took a moment to respond, maybe searching for the right words. "Because teammates do not abandon one another."
I scoffed. "Not in my experience."
"You will find we are different."
I turned to look at him again. The gentle smile from before was now an expression of calm assurance. He believed it. I could see it—he really believed that was true.
"I won't be surprised if nothing comes of it."
"Do not be surprised if it does."
#
I critically eyed myself in the bathroom mirror one more time to make sure there weren't any signs I had been crying. Satisfied, I slipped out of the bathroom and made my way down to the room where the meeting would be held.
"Yo, Newter, Elle," I greeted the other teens when I slipped in. The room was decently sized without being huge and had a large, roughly rectangular wooden table in the middle with seats surrounding it, a white board with a variety of colored dry-erase markers lining its tray, and a projector screen with a metal pull-down handle. At a guess it was supposed to be a conference room, but that sort of thing was outside my experience, so it seemed more like a weird classroom to me. Faultline would be 'teaching' us what we needed to know about my first job, so the comparison was fitting in a way.
"Yo yo!"
"Hello, June," Elle quietly greeted as well.
My eyebrows shot up in surprise as I took a seat across from Newter. "Today's a 'good day' then?" She looked away, her cheeks slightly pink. She hadn't been in the room when I'd woken up, so I hadn't noticed. Palanquin had other rooms, but Faultline had placed me in the same room as Elle. I'd objected, since I was used to living 'alone,' but Faultline had argued it was good for camaraderie. That was the sort of reasoning that was hard to argue against without making me out as 'not a team player.' I didn't think I would be let go from the team if I had drawn a metaphorical line in the sand, but I also hadn't wanted to deal with the ostracization that might follow and capitulated. Besides, I didn't think I would mind that much. Elle seemed to be a quiet type, and while I normally didn't hang out with people like that, they were—by definition—quiet at least.
"I was just telling her you settled on your cape name," Newter chimed in with a grin matching my own. "S'about time you settled on one! So indecisive!"
I was still in a mood, but that didn't mean I wasn't so far gone I couldn't go for the obvious joke. "There's nothing wrong with holding out for the right one," I replied. "I'm a girl with standards." He chuckled at the double entendre, and I smirked, feeling just a bit better. Elle glanced from me to him and back again, and though she didn't comment, a small smile found its way to her face. Yeah, definitely a quiet type.
Faultline and Gregor entered the room a moment later, and her gaze moved straight to me. "June, Gregor was just telling me about your trip."
Ah fuck. Of course he told her. "Okay…"
Newter looked intrigued, and she regarded me for a moment longer before asking, "Do you need a new ID? I already gave you an advance, so it would need to wait until after this job unless you want to spend that advance, but I have contacts I can tap."
She really is shameless about charging me money, I thought, though I didn't mind too much. She was holding me accountable for what I owed. I was willing to bet Faultline understood what Masuyo just didn't seem to get. If you paid your own way in the world, then you were free. If you didn't pay, then whoever did? They owned you. "I need that, yeah. Thanks."
Faultline nodded in acknowledgment. Newter's curiosity was palpable now, but I studiously ignored him. Gregor took a seat by me, and Faultline tugged down the projector screen before moving to the head of the table and setting down her laptop. The projector came to life, and a blueprint for an armored truck splayed across the blank screen. "An armored convoy will be transporting a prisoner from a holding facility in Providence to the PRT building in Boston. We've been engaged to break out the prisoner and transport her from Providence across the border to Montreal. The prisoner is Paige Mcabee, also known as Bad Canary."
Well, now I know why she was concerned about whether I could lift an armored car earlier.
"Wait, Bad Canary the singer?" Newter interjected. "Dude, her shit's good. You can't listen to 'Lineless' and not feel something."
"If you're done educating us about her musical talent, Newter?" Faultline drawled. He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, and she pulled out a laser pointer—Goddamn, she's like a real life Batman. How much random shit does she have stored in her costume?—and began to gesture at a section of the blueprint that seemed to be detailing the bottom of the vehicle. "The transfer will be occurring almost two weeks from now on a Sunday afternoon, presumably to limit the traffic the convoy will encounter will still maintaining high visibility. We will be ambushing the convoy in the city, as any attempt on the highway will be too open and at speeds that aren't safe to engage without risking serious injury to the prisoner, guards, and drivers nearby. Based off our testing earlier, my original hope that June could remotely lift the car into the air and forcibly move it to an isolated location won't work. June, we'll need you to damage or remove the drive shaft to stop the vehicle then remove the rear doors so we can extract the prisoner."
"I have no idea what that is," I pointed out. Cars and their construction weren't a hobby of mine.
"I figured that may be the case. We'll practice before the mission at a junkyard, but we'll need to do it at night to avoid arousing too much suspicion. Elle, we will discretely set up position long enough beforehand to give your power time to saturate the area in case we encounter resistance and need to fight." She turned to Gregor next. "Assuming there isn't a parahuman escort, which we'll get to in a minute, you'll need to create an adhesive to hold the guards in place and prevent them from firing their weapons long enough for Newter to get in and touch everyone."
"Bad Canary too?" Newter asked, his tail thrashing a bit, though it seemed to avoid moving anywhere near Elle.
"Yes, it will be safer to transport her that way," Faultline affirmed. "The PRT will have her bound in some way that prevents her from using her power, but we shouldn't take any chances."
"Woah, woah, woah, hang on," I cut in. "Powers?" I looked at Newter. "I thought you said she's a singer?"
"Her voice is her power," Newter explained with some enthusiasm. "Makes her sound amazing!"
"More importantly, it gives her a master rating," Faultline added, giving Newter a look. If his grin was anything to judge by, it didn't really seem to bother him. "Are you familiar with the standard PRT power classifications, June?"
"Kinda. Master means she can control people, right?" That raises all sorts of questions about Masuyo's reaction to Gregor earlier…
"Not all masters control people, but yes, a 'master' designation means the power focuses on controlling others or creating minions. An obvious example is Heartbreaker, but a less obvious example would be someone like Blasto, a tinker who specializes in plant-based minions. Pertinently, Paige Mcabee can make anyone who listens to her music incredibly suggestible, like a form of hypnosis. The PRT have allegedly given her a master rating of 8."
Newter whistled at that, and I gaped. "I thought the PRT only assigned numbers that high to big threats. The fuck did a singer do to get that reaction from them?"
"It's been freely reported that she was arrested, but the PRT have been keeping the exact charges under wraps under for the sake of operational security while making security arrangements. Our employer, however, has stated she allegedly got in an argument with her ex-boyfriend and told him, 'Go fuck yourself.' Apparently he… brutalized himself in order to do so." We all paled at that, and Elle pulled her feet up into her chair and hid her face in her knees. "That's assuming our employer has good information and isn't withholding anything." She gave each of us a significant look. "We have no way to prove whether these rumors are true or false, and until such time as we can prove definitively that she is not a threat, we must treat her as if she is one. We do our job, and we get out of there. Our employer has quite explicitly confirmed we do not need to free her from her bonds—we need only extract her from the convoy and get her to a drop point in Montreal."
Gregor leaned forward. "This is a PRT convoy. What resistance might we expect to encounter?"
"From the information I've been able to gather regarding the security measures being taken, it's unlikely the Boston Protectorate will get involved in the transfer until the convoy reaches Boston city limits. Night and Fog, two capes with known E88 affiliations who moved to Boston last year, have been attacking some of the high poverty areas like Fenway, and the Protectorate are likely to keep their capes and PRT platoons closer to home in case of another assault. They're sparing the armored truck and two officers to ride in the front of the vehicle, but that should be it." She tapped her keyboard, and the pictures of three capes replaced the blueprints. "That means any resistance is likely to be in the form of capes from Providence, either because they've been contracted or otherwise because they feel it is their duty to ensure Paige Mcabee faces justice. Providence isn't a small city, but the cape population is—enough that it doesn't have its own dedicated PRT force. That narrows down what capes we may face."
Her laser pointer danced over the leftmost image, which showed a reedy guy with a wavy blond hair wearing a blue and green outfit reminiscent of a scuba diver, though he wore boots instead of flippers. Some sort of breathing device was built into a mask that covered his face. The outfit looked ridiculous to me, especially the wave emblem on his chest. "This is Riptide. He's publicly known to be a blaster who creates waves of water out of thin air that he can send flying at opponents. It's widely speculated that his power has a secondary effect of causing targets hit by it to be struck silent for some amount of time. He's never admitted to this aspect of his power, but so many reports exist asserting this effect that there's likely to be at least a grain of truth to it."
The red dot moved on to dance over the picture in the middle. This one featured a guy of average build wearing a red toga like someone from Ancient Greece, though the golden laurel atop his head, golden domino mask over his eyes, and golden, winged sandals would have made him look out of place or at the very least overdressed. "This is Rubicon. He's a mover, a minor speedster with the ability to ignore gravity enough to run on walls but not fly. More importantly, he leaves burning circles in his wake that expand to a set size and burn everything they touch except for the surface itself. The circles disappear when he stops moving, and from what I can glean, the circles grow to approximately a three foot diameter."
She moved on to the last image, and her tone shifted somewhat. "And this is Boudicca. All of these individuals have powers that can prove troublesome in the right circumstances, but she has the most potential to fail our operation. She is a brute and striker, and her power is the least well known despite her being the preeminent hero in Providence. When she strikes others, she gets stronger defensively and weaker offensively. When struck, the opposite is true: She gets stronger offensively and weaker defensively. The offensive boosts are focused on strength and speed, and the defensive boosts are regeneration and resistance to harm. All of that alone would make fighting her difficult, but she can also 'mark' her opponents with glowing symbols that seem to boost the effect of her powers on that person." The woman in the photo didn't look intimidating if you only considered her slightly taller than average height and the visible gray in her shoulder length brown hair, but her armor, a mixture of bronze plate over leather and forest green cloth, in combination with her bronze helmet, green visor, and light blue warpaint painted a different picture. "If we encounter her, then Elle, June, and I will disengage to a safe distance if possible. Newter would be our best means to put her down, and Gregor might be able to pin her down at low strength levels with adhesive, but it is best to avoid engaging her at all if possible."
"What about capes besides the heroes," Gregor pressed. "Is there anyone else who may interfere?"
"It's certainly possible, and we'll be going over known villains and rogues in the area, but before we do, does anybody have any questions regarding these three?"
"What if Rubicon jumps?" Newter spoke up. "Not even like across roofs or whatever. What if he literally jumps in place? Does that leave his shit on the ground?"
Faultline considered that for a moment. "That specific situation didn't come up in the intel, but there was speculation the reason the circles vanish if he stops moving is because the power has a failsafe to protect him from it—that the circles vanish if one would touch him. The people pushing that idea forward argued videos always show him jumping over his circles if he has to cross where he already ran. If that is true, and it is unconfirmed, then I would imagine the answer is no."
"So dude's gotta keep running around if he wants to maintain any defensive advantage from the circles," Newter summarized. "Coolness."
"Um, I've got one," I said. The four sets of eyes swiveled to me, and I took a moment to regain my cool. I would've thought I'd be used to that sort of thing from school, but apparently having the attention of a room full of capes focus on you was more intense. "So about scuba guy's silence thing."
"Riptide," Faultline corrected. I swore I saw the corners of her lips twitch into a smile, but it was gone in a flash, if it even happened at all.
"Sure, him. If he does have that secondary effect of making people silent, then wouldn't that affect him too if he got hit by it?"
"Perhaps," she allowed, "but not necessarily. Powers are finicky like that. Some have built-in failsafes, like the one we just speculated Rubicon has, but not all do. New Wave tried to suppress it, but there is a video in circulation of Flashbang being shot while creating one of his namesake flashbangs, which caused him to drop it and hurt himself quite badly."
That made me wonder what ways I might accidentally hurt myself with my power. Obvious ones like dropping something on myself stood out, but I'd heard of metal poisoning before. I think you had to eat some to get it, but it might be possible I could get it from coins rubbing on my skin when I fly. I'd have to look into it.
Faultline looked at each of us in turn. "No more questions? Then let's review who else we might encounter…"
#
"June, if you wouldn't mind staying for a moment."
I froze halfway through standing up. Gregor, Newter, and Elle all slipped out of the room now that the meeting was over. Elle had given me a tiny wave when she walked past that I hadn't known how to respond to, but if she'd expected a certain reaction from me, then she hadn't let any disappoint show on her face. "Um, sure? Everything okay?"
"I just wanted to take some time to talk with you about your costume."
"Oh. Okay. What about it?"
"I mentioned earlier that I have certain contacts. That of course extends beyond fake IDs. Although you've been making do with your coins and scarf, I can acquire other items for you as well."
"At a cost, yeah?" She smirked, and I rolled my eyes. She didn't need to be so smug about it. "I don't have anything in mind."
She drummed her fingers on the table, the smirk fading and a a far away look entering her eyes as she stared at the currently blank projector screen. "Aesthetics can be a factor, though I strongly recommend you focus more on practical aspects, things that will keep you alive. At least for now."
"You mean other than a shit ton of coins, so I always have enough metal on hand?"
"I mean like dirt or powders kept in metal spheres to be thrown at the enemy as a distraction. Goggles for your eyes, to prevent an opponent throwing something similar at you. Sharp caltrops, since you don't have the fine control needed to make something similar. You mentioned on the way back from power testing that you can only push one item into the 'elsewhere' at a time, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to carry a thin, lightweight metal shield that you can easily take cover behind without needing to merge coins together first."
Woah. I hadn't thought of any of that. The goggles definitely would have helped a lot against Oni Lee. "Okay, you got me. That all sounds pretty good." A thought occurred, and I added, "Actually, a mask with a… what do you call it, a filter? Think that's right. Anyway, that would have been good to have against Oni Lee. I was choking for half that fight."
She made a note of that on her computer. "There are construction masks with filters to prevent inhalation of dust. Wearing something like that under your current mask would probably be sufficient, but I'll see what options are best and let you know the costs. We can discuss options more tomorrow evening." She returned her attention to me. "Beyond that, there's the matter of your changing genders." I tensed, ready to defend myself despite the calm air about her. "There is a reason I mentioned to the team you are using a… I suppose it is not so much false as it is a new name. Regardless, I mentioned it because it is important to head off potential trust issues by making it clear there's a chance someone may call you a different name. As for your gender… I would recommend mentioning it to the team, but that is far more personal, so I will leave that to your discretion."
I groaned and shoved my face into my hands. "I've already had to do this shit twice now. It's getting real fucking old."
"I can only imagine," she remarked with a shrug. "Gregor mentioned you may have medical needs, and you said something similar in your altered state earlier. Though it's possible to buy these things outright, it's very easy to under or even overdose, and there can be drastic consequences. I can't let you take a shot in the dark with your body like that. It wouldn't be right."
I surged to my feet, my fists clenched. "So what, you want me to just deal with it? You think I'm gonna accept that? You have no idea what I'm going through!"
"I own several businesses through shell companies," she answered, her expression neutral but her tone firm. The non-sequitur threw me. What did that have to do with this? "I will hire you, or rather the 'you' we generate false documentation for, at one of them. With you on a payroll, I'll be able to give you medical insurance in a way that won't be traced back to here. My sole caveat in providing this for you is that you see a doctor about your treatments and follow their medical advice. I trust that is acceptable?"
"W-What…?" My anger left as quickly as it had come, and I dropped into my chair. "I don't… Why?" Her neutral expression softened just a bit at that. I stared at her, unsure what to make of her. Where was the money-grubber who was charging me for a fake ID and my costume pieces? I frowned, trying to figure out what prompted this change. "I don't need your charity. People normally pay for that, right? Just… Just charge me."
She tilted her head and regarded me for a moment. "'You have no idea what I'm going through,'" she quoted. "Do you know what a hysterectomy is, June?"
Again, I was completely thrown by the abrupt, strange shift of topic. "It's where a doctor takes out some of a woman's baby stuff, right?"
Faultline leaned back in her chair, her eyes drifting to the ceiling. "More or less. It's the removal of the uterus. And do you know what an oophorectomy is?"
"No…?"
"The removal of the ovaries. Those are what generate hormones in a biological female, so anyone who has both ovaries removed needs to take hormones to replace what the body no longer produces." My eyes widened and my jaw dropped. Is she saying…? "It's a delicate balance. Too little, and there's discomfort, but too much, and there are consequences like cancer." Her eyes returned to mine, and I could only imagine the shocked expression on my face. "You want me to charge you for this. As I'm sure you've grasped by now, I am someone who collects what is due. Still, I offer… discounts to my crew. You are aware of Case 53s?" She waited just long enough for me to nod. "Gregor is paying me to find more details, to solve the mystery. I am not charging him as much as I would a client outside of our crew who asked the same, but there is still a cost to everything. Likewise, you are a part of my crew and are entitled to the same. Regarding this particular matter, seeing a medical professional would… put my mind at ease. Accordingly, I am willing to take your acceptance of my help in this matter as payment owed.
"I will ask you again. Is this acceptable?"
"Yeah… Yeah, okay." There was no other answer I could give. I wanted to ask questions, but I forcibly smothered my curiosity. It was a hassle explaining I'm trans when I didn't need to, and if I wasn't wrong about her… Well, I could return the favor. "Thanks, Faultline."
She raised an eyebrow. "You may call me Melanie when we're in private, June."
I huffed out a small laugh. "Sure… Melanie. I think I'm gonna call it a night."
"Sleep well. Don't forget you're running exercises with Newter and Gregor tomorrow afternoon."
I slipped out of the room. Gregor and now… Melanie. It was weird. I wasn't used to business associates giving a damn about my personal life. Back home, I had been polite if it was necessary but otherwise hadn't given two shits about the people I worked with or their opinion of me, and the same had been true from their end. This crew though…
Elle was in our room when I entered, curled up against the wall up at the head of her bed with her pillow stuffed between her back and the hard surface with her eyes fixated on a book in her lap. The pillowcase, like her bedspread, was vibrant and colorful—a rich, royal purple with flowers and birds adorning it in two lighter shades of purple as well as pure white that offset them. It was notably the only decoration on her side of the room, and her bed was the only furniture besides a small bedside table and a dresser. My side only had a bed and my suitcase for now, but I already had plans to get some more furniture and a computer after I got paid for the prisoner job.
I flopped onto my bed. God, I hadn't really done anything physical all day, but I was spent. Testing my… my compulsion—God, it still feels unreal—was bad enough, but everything with Masuyo, Gregor, and Faul—Melanie after that? I glanced at the other girl, who seemingly hadn't moved a muscle since I entered. "Whatcha reading, Elle?"
She jerked a bit, like she had only just then realized I was in the room. "Oh, hello." She looked down at her book and frowned a bit. "It's about a girl who finds another world in a wardrobe."
"Sounds fitting. For your power, I mean."
Elle nodded absently. She hesitated, chewing on her lip for a second. "Um… I haven't gotten very far in. Would… would you like to read it too?"
I considered how to answer. I was drained and pretty sure I would fall asleep in short order, but… there was something hopeful in her eyes, and the others had told me about how her powers affected her. Today was a good day, but tomorrow? Nobody, least of all Elle, knew what it would bring. Maybe it was because I'd learned today how easily my own powers could overwhelm me, but…
Teammates don't abandon each other, huh? "Alright, budge over," I said, swinging my feet around to the floor and grabbing my own pillow. "I'm really tired, so don't get all offended when I fall asleep, got it?" She nodded somewhat excitedly and scooted over to leave some more room at the head of her bed. I tossed my pillow against the bare patch of wall and slipped onto the colorful bedspread beside her. She held out the book, and I realized with some amused exasperation she didn't want to read to me—she wanted me to read to her. Not quite what I'd had in mind, but whatevs. I took the book and flipped it back to the beginning.
"Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy…"
#
God, what doesn't happen in this chapter? 2.1 one feels practically empty in comparison. June and Masuyo have another of their, err, family bonding sessions, June gets outed to Gregor, we learn about the crew's next job and some of the capes they may face, we learn some shit about Faultline, and we get Elle cuteness. This chapter is the longest so far too, but it just didn't feel right to put that third scene anywhere but here. We've got two more chapters before an interlude, then the crew are off to Providence to "rescue" Canary. Don't fret though—you won't need to wait that long for some action!
A bit of a personal stuff: I'm not really religious beyond striving to be a better person in general, but if y'all wouldn't mind keeping my partner in your thoughts, I would greatly appreciate it. They're having some neurological issues that are resulting in lots of bad headaches, general discomfort, exhaustion, and a growing frequency of seizures. We've seen this in the past, but we're needing to see a new neurosurgeon about it due to insurance issues, and the next stage won't be happening until late July.
Last edited: Jul 10, 2020
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Eva Grimm
Jul 10, 2020
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