Little Hunter
Nanku watched her mother's startled face.
It didn't last long.
The woman hardened within a blink. Anger spilled forth in its place as she continued to hold the gun steady.
Nanku didn't know what she'd expected.
It took ten years, and the house was gone, but Taylor Hebert had finally come home and confronted her mother. The mother who'd shut her in the house and refused to let her leave. Who got drunk every night, even after she started controlling herself. Who—admittedly—had finally started to recover after two years only for it all to go so horribly wrong.
That always struck her as astronomically cruel.
"Like the universe simply wants us to suffer."
Her mother flinched. "What?"
The utterance was surprised. Confused. Like it was the last thing she expected to hear. It was the last thing Nanku thought she'd say. No. She'd never once thought of saying it.
"I come back, and you point a gun at me," Nanku said.
If that caused any pause, her mother didn't show it.
Annette Hebert—if that was still her name—hardened. "Did Rain send you? Some new way to make me suffer?"
Nanku's brow rose. "Are there other childhoods you ruined?"
Her mother flinched, but the line didn't hit as expected.
Nanku tilted her head. The anger was there, but it felt dull. Ancient and frail.
…
Nanku's lips parted at the realization.
She'd played the moment out in her head so many times. Not just in the last year, but before that. Almost from the moment Pe'dte swept her up and carried her away.
In her mind, she yelled. Accused. Screamed all of Taylor's anger and resentment. Give form to the anger brought on when her mother closed herself up and disappeared when she needed the woman the most. Part of her wanted to be cruel almost. To rub in her mother's face that she'd found her own family and a new mother and she was happy.
In the moment, Nanku couldn't find the energy. She felt empty. All the bitterness and anger was gone. Any sense of a happy or sad reunion didn't emerge to take its place.
The moment was tamer and quieter than she'd imagined.
And she just didn't have it in her to be anything more than mildly annoyed that she wasn't angry anymore.
Without a thought, Nanku took a step forward.
"Stop," her mother commanded.
"You don't command me anymore," Nanku replied.
She took another step and proceeded through the doorway.
Her mother didn't shoot.
Of course she didn't. She wouldn't splatter one daughter's room with the blood of another, whether she accepted that Nanku was who she appeared or not. It wasn't in her, and Nanku tasted it. The woman might be harder, and she might have a gun, but she was no killer.
The look just wasn't there.
Nanku was somewhat sure the bullet would only hurt as well unless it struck her skull.
Her mother backed up as she advanced into the bedroom and…
And that feeling was back. The same one she'd felt around Lily and Dean. From her mother? Strange.
What was the connection?
Looking around, Nanku didn't want to sit on the bed. She instead chose the chair in the corner. A small green chair that seemed familiar.
Was it from Dad's house?
Nanku ran her hands over it curiously, but she couldn't recall. She didn't come to be nostalgic.
Taking the seat, she faced her mother again. The gun was still pointed.
She'd never been shot but she'd been stabbed, beaten, battered, and cut over the years. Her scars attested to that. Nanku felt certain a bullet wouldn't break her skin, but it might hurt all the same. Dealing with internal bleeding had always been a challenge the few times it happened.
Nanku checked the rest of the apartment quietly.
The man was barring the boy's way with one arm, a phone in hand. The police? Probably. Or the PRT.
The PRT.
Nanku's eyes narrowed.
How had her mother known she was here? Some sort of security device? She'd not noticed anything even if she was rushed and not as careful as she could have been. Nothing to be done of it now but the ho—
"You're Weaver," Nanku realized.
Her mother scowled. "Walking all over the unwritten rules today, aren't we?"
It all made sense then.
Most of it, at least.
Why Weaver obsessed over the camp and what happened there. Why she pursued it so much every news article about Nilbog's fall mentioned her. She had a personal investment.
Her daughter died at that camp.
Suddenly, Nanku felt a strange kinship with her mother. Annette Hebert, in the wake of her daughter's death, had done exactly what Nanku sought to do. To make some sort of justice in an uncaring world. Find peace in it through action.
Nanku hadn't felt respect for her mother in a long time, but she did. For a moment at least.
Also confusion.
"Unwritten rules?" she asked, coming back to the room and the angered expression behind the gun.
In the other room, the man was…
Nanku tilted her head slightly.
Odd.
The boy wasn't panicking from what she could tell. He stood still, near Rose's bedroom door with his hand on the knob. Waiting. The man was right next to him, hand on his presumptive son's shoulder. His other hand held a phone. He'd been on it the entire time, talking.
Did it take this long to call the police—
Her mother was Weaver.
Weaver was in the Protectorate.
They weren't on the phone with the police at all.
Understanding clicked together in Nanku's mind and she nodded. "Unwritten rules. Secret identity stuff?"
Her mother managed to look angry through her confusion. "Don't play dumb."
"Playing is for children."
Foolish.
She hadn't thought this through before revealing herself. She'd simply wanted to see her mother. To see her mother see her.
Foolish wasn't a strong enough word. Childish. The action of a little girl desperate for the recognition and validation others could give her instead of what she could give herself. A shadow of Taylor that still lingered and needed to be settled away.
Now she'd exposed far more than she had any right to, and to the—
Nanku stamped down on the thought.
She was overreacting. That would make things worse. Calm and collected. As in a hunt, as in all things.
The PRT—or anyone else for that matter—had no reason to suspect anything abnormal. She was just a long-dead daughter back from the grave with obvious powers. Powers she'd used to survive her assumed death.
Her story would still hold, as would her excuses. If her mother was Weaver, this moment was inevitable. She just had to be smarter in how she dealt with it going forward.
"I'm not a child anymore," Nanku said aloud. She thought quickly and made up her mind. "I want to talk to you. About what happened to Dad, and at the camp. What happened to us."
Her mother's scowl cracked, a flicker of belief appearing in her eyes for a moment.
It was hard to make out, though. Hidden and buried under a dozen other emotions so mixed together Nanku couldn't pick them apart.
She wouldn't make any progress if they simply stayed in a standoff.
She needed to get past this step.
Nanku glanced around the room and found a shirt laying on the floor. A man's from the size, but it would do.
Reaching for her belt, Nanku drew her knife.
Her mother stilled, confirming that she couldn't shoot. She held the gun to make herself feel strong. In control. The one thing Pe'dte always warned Nanku to never delude herself into thinking any tool was more than it was.
Weapons were just extensions of who held them. No weapon could make up for a lack of will to use it.
Not that Nanku intended to complain. Her skin was tough, but not invincible. Yautja weapons were sharper than most humans could probably imagine. She'd never tested herself against a gun. On the one hand, it was a primitive weapon. On the other, even if it didn't pierce her skin she could bleed internally. A nasty fall had confirmed that.
Turning the blade, Nanku pressed the knife to her palm.
She twisted the metal a few times and pressed hard to get a prick. There was a slight stab of pain, but nothing Nanku couldn't handle. Blood spilled over her skin and marked the knife.
Her mother looked shocked, and Nanku pressed the wound to the coffee table before her.
With a swipe, she smeared her blood across the shirt and tossed it to the ground.
Nanku took her mask from her belt and rose as she put it back over her face. Better to be gone sooner than later. Needs aside, she couldn't allow herself to be captured, and fighting her way through the PRT and multiple parahumans from her current position was absolutely foolhardy.
"You can test that. I'll wait."
"No." Her mother jumped up, gun still pointed despite everything. "Stop—"
Nanku slipped the knife back onto her belt and turned toward the balcony.
"I'll be around for a year."
She turned, ignoring the gun and the puzzled expression of her mother trying to work things out.
"A year?" she asked. "For what?"
"To finish unfinished business." Nanku approached the sliding glass door and paused. "You have a new family. So do I. For the best. Ours stopped working when Dad died."
Plugging her mask back in, Nanku immediately activated her cloak and dared a glance back.
Her mother still saw he—No. The aim of the gun was off. It tracked as Nanku walked out the door onto the balcony but wasn't directly on her head. Slightly over her shoulder.
So, her mother knew where she was, but couldn't actually see her.
Good to know.
"I'm not as angry as I thought I'd be," she said. "I want to talk. Mother and daughter, before we part ways."
That sounded awkward aloud, but she was as off her balance as she'd ever been. It was extremely annoying.
She needed to get out. Collect herself and regroup. Analyze a new approach.
Grabbing the bar of the balcony rail, Nanku hauled herself up and dropped to the ground below. She grabbed hold of another rail before hitting the street below. The cloak shimmered slightly, but she curled up and held perfectly still as the rail groaned.
Someone looked up, but only briefly before returning to the phone in her hands.
Her mother didn't follow.
The woman stayed shrouded in the bedroom, gun still pointed.
With a rush, Nanku clambered along the rail and came around the corner of the building. The streets were busy at the hour. It was nowhere near as late as Nanku's previous night-time run. Releasing her wrist blades, she stabbed into the stone and scaled her way back to the roof.
She needed distance and quickly.
Dusk and Dawn scurried around the roof, pacing back and forth nervously. Nanku's power could stop such behavior, but it would run against their instincts. Unlike Earth's near-brain-dead insects, Dusk and Dawn were just intelligent and emotional enough to notice they were being controlled. Nanku preferred to treat her hold over them as a leash, not a control.
"It's okay," she whispered as she came over the lip to their waiting chitters. She scratched Dusk's jaw and rubbed the top of Dawn's head. "I'm fine."
Dropping the cloak, Nanku looked down at the roof and used the dozen bugs she'd planted to see what was happening in the apartment.
Her mother had dropped the gun, which seemed reckless. It lay on the floor of the bedroom while she ran into Rose's room and very cautiously looked the girl over. Her head turned back and forth as if searching. She checked the corners. The animals. The closet and the dresser. The entire room.
The one thing she didn't do was disturb Rose, who slept through the entire ordeal.
Nanku frowned at that.
How often had she been disturbed to be such a heavy sleeper?
When the search finished, her mother sat and heaved heavy breaths for several minutes.
The man—her new husband—found the gun. He unloaded it carefully and set it back in the case by the bedside. The container sealed with a lock, and he hid it under a false bottom in a drawer before slipping into Rose's room.
Nanku concluded they hadn't noticed the bugs, but she was careful with them.
Hearing the hushed conversation between the man and her mother was impossible. Too quiet and muddled. The boy on the phone, however…
"… Yeah… now. Don't know I... Anne's weird."
She only caught a few of the words, but his tone seemed familiar. Friendly.
Weaver was in the Protectorate, and her stepson was friendly? Did they know her that well… Or was the man in the Protectorate too.
He was tall and muscled. Very muscled. Nothing like Danny Hebert, who was a thin skeleton of a man in Taylor's memories. He crouched by her mother, whispering to her and clearly trying to comfort her.
It was strange to see.
Her mother heaving like she was crying wasn't what Nanku wanted.
She noticed the line of cars only as they came around the corner.
Lips set in a line, Nanku jumped the rooftops and used Dawn to propel herself to the opposite side of the street. It was far enough, and there were clusters of industrial air conditioners near the edge of the roof. Dusk and Dawn sheltered inside, while Nanku sat still and watched.
The vehicles were nondescript. They bore logos on the sides about emergency services and red crosses.
They didn't look like nurses to Nanku.
The men and women were too built, and they looked on guard. Too on guard.
The dozen or so men and women proceeded into the building, but it was the capes who confirmed Nanku's suspicions.
A petite girl in a green costume and a boy in red-gold armor. They appeared as if from nowhere and stepped onto the rooftop of the building. A larger man—very well built—followed behind him in a simpler red and white costume. The three searched the rooftop and then gathered together to whisper.
Nanku had several bugs near, but their words weren't any easier to make out.
Fortunately, she had her mask, and all three had mouths in plain view.
"—the Pure, right?" the girl asked.
"Probably," the boy agreed. "They have it out for Weaver pretty bad."
"Kind of crossing a line, aren't they?"
The man scoffed. "Showing up at her home and sneaking into her daughter's room? I'll say. Especially given…"
"Given what?" the girl asked.
"Not important."
The boy seemed to know something, but he didn't say anything.
"Echidna," he mumbled. "The gift that keeps on giving."
Nanku recognized that name. Why did it matter?
"What do we do now?" the girl asked.
"Check around," the man replied, "but stay close. It's possible our visitor is lingering around and watching. Weaver said she had some kind of tinker-tech that rendered her invisible."
"Invisible?" the girl looked out.
Nanku frowned.
Competent enforcers were usually a good thing. At the moment, she'd prefer incompetent.
The men from the vehicles hurried into the apartment, let in by the man as the boy stood off to the side and her mother sat by Rose's bedside.
It was the man who held up the bloodied shirt. It sat tucked in a plastic bag. He'd done that himself.
"Rooftop. Far end and across the street."
Nanku stiffened and snapped her head up.
The girl in the green dress didn't look at her but angled her body.
"Someone's there," she said. "Can't see them, but there's someone at the corner."
Nanku snarled and promptly directed Dusk and Dawn to move. She couldn't fly them off in plain view. She'd revealed too much already.
Dusk and Dawn could climb down the back wall. They'd scurry to another roof, and Nanku could fly them into the air against the dark. She'd wait, keeping focus on her.
"Let me—"
"No," the man in red armor said. He didn't look Nanku's way either. "Stay right here, Vista. Best not to escalate so close. Let's see what she does."
Nanku growled.
She wanted to linger and watch. Understand a potential threat as best she could. Learn its patterns.
Staying where she was known would be continuing a mistake she'd already made.
Rising, Nanku turned and walked away.
The PRT and the Protectorate were complications she'd not expected to run into so soon, let alone run into head-long and blind.