Leaf

Chapter Nine

Sometimes being a hero was fun. Sometimes it was exciting. Sometimes it could be downright terrifying.

Tonight was not one of those times.

Vista had woken up in the middle of the night with a call to action. A PRT van drove her to HQ ... where she sat at a computer while the rest of her team saved the city. Aegis was flying in and out of burning buildings, carrying people to safety. Gallant was evacuating civilians and stopping looters, doing what he could to calm the panicked masses. Clockblocker was freezing the injured until paramedics could get to them. Kid Win was with Aegis, putting out fires with his definitely-not-a-freeze-ray-that's-a-stupid-name-why-would-you-call-it-that gun. Browbeat, who had joined that week, was out there! Heck, even Shadow Stalker was doing search and rescue, and she had all the bedside manner of a diseased troll!

Meanwhile, Vista, one of the most powerful and experienced members of the team, the girl who could warp space at will, was staring at a computer screen.

"Why would they blow up a hospital?" Clockblocker said through the comm. "I mean, there's supervillainy, and then there's just being a complete asshole. What's wrong with her? Does she just hate people?"

"Bakuda's a supervillain, Clock," Aegis replied. "That's what they do. And we'll deal with it. That's what we do."

"But, I mean, where do we even send them? The next hospital over right before Bakuda bombs that one too?"

"She'll run out of bombs eventually," Kid Win offered. "Almost no one can mass produce Tinkertech."

"Almost?" Shadow Stalker's voice was dripping with sarcasm. "Fantastic. I'm just oozing with confidence."

"Yeah, but what else is new?" Clockblocker said.

This went on. Whenever there was a whitelisted villain like Uber and Leet, Circus, or the Undersiders they had fought just the other day, Vista could go into the field. But whenever the Empire or the ABB pulled a job? Whenever there was the slightest hint that the villain in question was a homicidal maniac? In short, the villains who really needed to be stopped? As soon as they showed their faces, Vista was suddenly a delicate little girl who needed to be protected.

That was true for all the Wards, which was why they were on cleanup duty and doing search and rescue while the Protectorate heroes were the first responders, but at least her teammates got to be second responders. She might as well be playing solitaire for all she was contributing.

Then an alarm went off.

"Hold on, guys, I think the PRT building's being attacked." She accessed the security cams. "No way."

"More bad news?" Aegis said.

"Sort of. It's not the ABB, though. Just the Undersiders."

Tattletale was with them. They had brought her in yesterday—or two days ago now that it was after midnight—with a broken neck. Despite that, she had escaped only a few hours later and didn't seem to be hurt at all. No one was sure how yet, but the possibilities ranged from a Stranger power to fake her injury to Tinkertech medication that her team had somehow acquired.

The latest briefing had mentioned that they'd recruited a new cape, a girl named Leaf who was something of a jailbreak specialist. It sounded like Leaf had gotten herself arrested on purpose a few weeks ago just to see if she could escape. And she could, easily. The PRT seemed physically incapable of taking any parahuman under fourteen seriously, and that bias benefitted some capes more than others. It was Leaf who had sprung Tattletale out of the hospital wing the night before. Her powers were—Vista quickly looked up her file—friction negation and a sword sharp enough to cut through metal. So a mix between Brandish and Assault, kind of? And something to do with plants.

Regent was still Regent, a minor annoyance unless you let him taze you, but Hellhound was down to one dog. The dogs were the scariest part of the bank fight, and Vista could handle just one.

"I'm going to deal with them."

"What? Without backup?"

Vista wanted to say, I'm not a little kid, Aegis. I can handle some minor villains all by myself. But nothing made her sound more like a little kid than asserting that she was not a little kid, which was frustrating beyond all reason.

"She'll have backup," Shadow Stalker said. "I'm heading back right now."

Vista froze. Was Shadow Stalker of all people being supportive?

"Hold on," Aegis said. "We don't know what they're up to. If they're not working with the ABB, they're not a priority, and if they are, then it's too dangerous.

"They're not a priority for you, Shadow Stalker snapped. "You arrested Grue without me, and I'll be damned before I let the rest of his team break him out without me too. I'm going, Aegis. Either you can give me the order, or you can write me up for it afterwards, I don't care which."

Oh. Nevermind, it was just Shadow Stalker's Grue obsession acting up again. For a moment she'd been worried.

"Whatever you guys decide to do, I'll be upstairs," she said. "I'll watch out for Hellhound's last dog and try to slow them down however I can."

She raced toward the elevator and got inside. It was Tinkertech and felt like it was standing still when it was going several times faster than its normal counterpart. It was still a wait, though, a wait before a fight.

Gallant focused on his teammates before combat, trying to cheer them up or calm them down as he saw fit. Browbeat's preparations, she learned just the other day, were more physical. His body inflated like a balloon, only instead of air he filled himself up with rock hard muscles. Shadow Stalker got angry—angrier—clenching her fists and snapping at anyone who spoke to her, trying to work herself into a frenzy to increase her heart rate and filling her blood with adrenaline.

Vista let her awareness ... spread out. Her nerves ended where her skin did, but when she wanted to, her senses could flow through the entire PRT building and into the streets beyond. With so few staff left in the building, she could practically feel it, from the top of the roof to the bottom of the Wards HQ, like clay beneath her fingers.

It took her a while to expand to her limits, but when she had the time, when, for example, she had been sitting in one room for the past hour in front of a computer, she was a giant.

The door opened to the ground floor, and what she saw was pretty much what she had expected. Her power recoiled from people, leaving a sense of wooden stiffness in occupied spaces, but those blind spots allowed her to infer where people were even when she couldn't see them.

There were twelve PRT troopers in the lobby, although half of them were already stuck to the ground with their own containment foam while a couple others were being bowled over by a girl riding a mutant dog. That was Hellhound; Vista wasn't sure why she was splitting off from the rest of her group, but she wasn't about to complain. Regent was making disdainful gestures with his scepter, causing the remaining troopers to miss or hit each other with their foam. Tattletale and Leaf were running for a different group of elevators.

Outnumbered as she was, Vista decided on a simple strategy: divide and conquer. The Undersiders had always been a slippery bunch, but tonight they were on her turf.

With decisive intent, Vista blocked off the entrance to the hallway that Hellhound had just vanished down, ensuring that the biggest combat threat wouldn't be returning anytime soon. A sudden muscle spasm forced her to one knee but she gritted her teeth and maintained her focus. She enlarged several pieces of furniture to gargantuan proportions, hemming in Regent and cutting off his line of sight. The muscle spasms intensified, then relented; he had his hands full now with the PRT troopers trapped with him.

That left Leaf and Tattletale. Leaf's friction negation made her immune to containment foam, a bad matchup for the troopers. Could she share that immunity with her teammates?

Whatever. If the troopers couldn't help her then she'd do it herself. Leaf shouted in surprise as the floor itself sprung up as a barrier in front of her. Another barrier swiftly separated her from Tattletale. Within seconds the little villain was enclosed on all sides, but before Vista could consider her next move, Leaf was clambering over the unnaturally stretched floor tiles as though she did this every day.

Vista took a moment to process that. The surface she had created was perfectly smooth, and more than tall enough that a girl like Leaf shouldn't have been able to climb it. Was her power more friction manipulation than friction negation? Tattletale shouted something, prompting Leaf to look around until her eyes settled on Vista. A playful grin appeared on the villain's face. Vista felt an instinctual twinge of alarm and responded by stretching the distance between them a good twenty times its natural length. Undeterred, Leaf got a running start and then dropped to her knees, shooting forward across the ground. Vista turned and ran for another hallway, kneading the floor with her power so that it rippled and swelled and sunk into what should have been a grueling obstacle course.

Leaf was flung from her knees and onto her belly when she hit the first hump, but this didn't arrest her momentum at all. Instead she continued to slip and slide across the warped terrain like a skier on a slope of bunny hills. Or a penguin.

"Woah!" Leaf said, laughing and sounding far more enthusiastic than Vista would have liked. "Nice! This is awesome!"

"Stop enjoying this," Vista muttered. What was this, a school playground? This was why nobody took capes their age seriously. There were so few child capes on the scene, and one idiot could give them all a bad rap; would it kill this girl to have some dignity?

They sped into the hallway, Leaf gaining ground with every moment. Vista had been preparing for this. In an instant she pinched off the hallway between her and the villain, stretching the walls, floor, and ceiling until they touched and formed a barrier. With another flex of her power she pinched off the other end. She heard a loud bump and a groan as Leaf finally came to a stop. Vista allowed herself a satisfied smile. The villain was trapped.

Then, to her astonishment, a silver blade poked through the stretched surface and began carving through it as if it was butter. It took only a moment to cut a circle, from which shining white steam began to seep. The newly carved plug slid forward and promptly returned to its original proportions as chunks of drywall, concrete, and plaster. Leaf stuck her head through the resulting hole, still grinning, and then launched herself at Vista.

Vista stretched the space between them as far as she could to buy herself precious seconds. As a last ditch measure she bent the whole hallway at a right angle so that Leaf's momentum should have sent her crashing straight into a wall. Instead, a silver stake appeared in Leaf's hand, which she drove into the floor, allowing her to swerve easily around the corner and right into Vista.

The two of them were instantly tangled up and sent tumbling across the ground. Vista felt her concentration break; all of the careful changes she'd made to the area slowly reverted back to normal. Dazed by the impact, Vista tried to cling to the conviction that she hadn't panicked, she hadn't yelped or squealed. She'd done everything she could to not embarrass herself.

And yet here she was, pinned to the ground by a girl who was no older than her, and a great deal more immature. She fumed silently. Leaf smiled wider than ever, her eyes sparkling through her mask.

"Tag."

Vista blinked. "What?"

"Tag. You know how tag works, doncha? You can't use your powers on me after I've tagged you."

That ... it wasn't like it was a game with rules, but she couldn't bend the space between them if there was no space between them. Vista considered CQC for a moment. She was the worst fighter on the team, but she knew she could hold her own against most people in her weight category, and Leaf was the first villain she had faced in costume that was her size. But Leaf wasn't exactly unarmed, and that raised the stakes as much as it lowered Vista's odds. As much as it galled her, she had no choice but to play along.

"Okay, I'm tagged. Now what?"

Leaf hesitated. "Dunno. Hey, Knowitall!" She slid her arms under Vista's armpits and wrapped her up in a bear hug before pulling them both to their feet. "What do I do with this?"

Tattletale sauntered into view in no apparent hurry, despite the sounds of Regent still tangling with the remaining PRT troopers. It seemed that she had every confidence her teammate would be able to take care of himself, just like she'd been confident that Leaf would prevail when she sicced her on Vista. Tattletale smiled at her, and that smile chilled Vista to the bone.

"Hey, Vista," Tattletale said. "We never got the chance to talk last time we met."

Talk. Right. Glory Girl and Panacea had talked to her at the bank, and afterwards they had been traumatized. Panacea didn't go out in the field much, but Glory Girl had fought some of the biggest, scariest monsters in the city without taking them into custody in an ambulance, and yet it was this Tattletale who had gotten to her. Tattletale, who apparently could walk off a broken neck. Tattletale, who could read minds. Tattletale, who could break people in ways that physical force never could.

"But we don't have the time right now either," she said, her voice curt and businesslike. "So I'll make this quick. You have two choices, Vista. One, you cooperate. You call it a night, let us grab Grue and Bitch's dogs, and we'll be out of here before you know it. No one gets hurt, and we can all go about our business.

"Two, we knock you out, and you know that won't be as clean as it is in the movies. You probably won't end up with permanent brain damage, but you'll have a concussion and have to stay out of action for the next couple of weeks. And let me tell you, you think tonight is bad with Bakuda introducing herself to the city? The next week is going to be pure hell, and your team's going to need you more than ever. No one's going to be disappointed in you if you lose a fight when outnumbered four to one, but if you get yourself hurt at a time like this? You'll be letting them down."

Vista took a breath and said nothing. She had expected to be threatened, blackmailed, and patronized (she always expected to be patronized), but she had not expected to be reasoned with. Glory Girl had made Tattletale sound like the devil haggling for souls, not like ... not like Gallant trying to convince her not to take foolish risks.

"The only one who might give you a hard time is your resident psycho, Shadow Stalker," Tattletale continued. "But Leaf beat her up a couple weeks ago, so that would be grossly hypocritical of her."

Vista looked over her shoulder at Leaf. "You fought Shadow Stalker?"

"Knocked her out and left her in a dumpster," Tattletale said.

Leaf grinned. "That's how I joined the team."

Vista tried to imagine Shadow Stalker—intense, aggressive, and vicious to the point of cruelty—in a fight with Leaf. Leaf, with her dorky grin, childish glee, and ... and was she wearing a Protectorate T-shirt like the kind they sold in the PRT gift shop? That was in terrible taste no matter how she looked at it. "What?"

"It's a funny story," Tattletale said. "I'll have time to tell you the whole thing if you pick the first option, though if you don't choose now I'm going to assume you're stalling."

Stalling would have been a good idea. She didn't know how much backup her team was sending, but time was more on her side than theirs, not that she had much of it. Vista focused on the issue at hand. True, mass-murdering terrorists were a higher priority than bank robbers, and there was no guarantee that the heroes were going to bring in Bakuda any time soon. Tattletale made a lot of good points all around, but it was Tattletale making them.

Her team would understand no matter what she did. That was the thing about them, they expected so little of her when she knew that she could do more. But if she stood her ground until the villains beat her senseless, her teammates would think her foolish. If she rolled over for the villains and let them break out their teammate, they'd think her weak.

There wasn't a way to win in this situation. Just two different ways to lose.

As she tried to think, Vista gradually became aware of a rumbling sound, distant but growing louder by the second. It wasn't only her who had noticed. Tattletale's head swiveled back towards the lobby and her eyes widened. "Get down!" Tattletale yelled.

Vista dropped to the floor, dragging Leaf along with her. When a Thinker sounded that panicked it was a good idea to listen. Almost reflexively she raised the floor into a hump that would cover them. Moments later there was a tremendous shattering and crashing as a truck burst through the front of the building before screeching to a halt in the center of the lobby. The back of the vehicle slid open and armed ABB members began spilling out.

Tattletale took one look at Vista, her expression unreadable. Then she grabbed Leaf by the arm and scrambled up over the hump and back into the lobby, leaving the young Ward by herself. They were probably worried about their teammates, Vista realized, but it still annoyed her to be left behind. She climbed to her feet and followed.

The lobby had become a warzone. The ABB was firing indiscriminately; those few PRT troopers who were free to run were making a swift retreat. With practiced skill Vista raised barriers and dug trenches against the hail of bullets. She dove into the nearest trench herself. Peeking out from cover she spotted Regent taking shelter on the other side of the room behind a pillar, pinned down by gunfire.

"Leaf!" he called.

Like a glowing streak Leaf shot out into the thick of the ABB, leaving behind a stream of white light in her wake. Regent waved his scepter and whole groups of gunmen slipped and fell in unison. He let out a scream and clutched his arm, seemingly unable to perform that feat again. Meanwhile Leaf scurried among the gang members, touching as many of their weapons as she could, making those glow as well before they promptly fell to pieces.

Vista felt her pulse quicken as a bullet caught Leaf in the shoulder, and then in the throat. The girl flopped to the ground, but more of that strange light began to steam from the wounds, healing them rapidly until Leaf was back on her feet and sliding into cover beside Regent.

A Brute rating on top of everything else? Vista made a mental note to file a complaint about the threat assessment the Wards had been provided. She hadn't memorized every detail, but Leaf's file had made her sound like a minor threat at best. The Undersiders were clearly treating her like a heavy hitter and she was delivering.

I guess they don't think she's too young to see action.

Shoving that thought aside and refocusing on the situation, Vista tried to plan her next move. Could I trap them together? Let the Undersiders and the ABB wear each other out until backup arrives? Maybe, but she couldn't be sure. If it was the ABB and the Empire, then that would absolutely work, but for these two gangs she wasn't certain. They were fighting now, but they might call a truce instead if they became desperate, and then Vista would be doubly screwed. Besides, they both operated out of the same territory, didn't they? So it would make sense that they'd be familiar with each other, and it wasn't like their objectives were mutually exclusive. The Undersiders wanted to break Grue out of his holding cell, and the ABB ... probably wanted to do the same for Lung.

Oh crap. Oh crap! If Vista was right, then the entire bombing spree was nothing more than a distraction, and the real fight was playing out right in front of her. Fighting the Undersiders was one thing. They hurt people, but they hadn't killed anyone since they became a team. But the ABB? Most capes played by certain rules, but the ABB had enough normal members who didn't mind shooting anyone who got in their way, cape or not. And out of the capes they had, Bakuda had shown complete disregard for human life tonight, Lung was more of a warlord than a gang leader, and Oni Lee ...

If Aegis were here, he'd tell her to retreat to the Wards HQ, no questions asked. Piggot would agree with him, because dead Wards were terrible publicity. And the Youth Guard? Ha! The Youth Guard would demand to know why she was up so late past her bedtime. Everyone above and beside her would tell her to get down, stay down, and leave the heroics to the adults.

But they weren't here. She was. Besides, it wasn't like Leaf was waiting around for someone else to handle this.

She stood up and looked and felt her way across the battlefield. With the entire area saturated with her power, she took the entire lobby—and twisted it like a corkscrew. It was a new trick she'd been practicing, one that everyone in the rooms above and below her would hate her for. She couldn't move people, but by warping the space between them, many of the criminals would find their fellow intruders standing on what they perceived to be the ceiling.

Clockblocker once described the experience as riding one of those more questionable carnival rides after gorging yourself on cotton candy that had been laced with LSD. Hypothetically.

Vista smiled to herself as most of the fighting came to an abrupt halt. The combatants were too busy trying to make sense of up and down to focus on punching, stabbing, or shooting each other. This was working. Now she just had to wall off the separate groups and hold as many as she could until—

A hand grabbed her by the hair from behind, yanking her backwards so roughly that she screamed in the pain. Who? How? She should have been able to sense anyone sneaking up behind her ... unless they were a teleporter. And the ABB only had one cape who could teleport.

"You children and your games," Oni Lee said.

Vista heard the sound of his sword as it whistled through the air. She felt a sharp pain in her neck, and then she flew.

WWW

It had been fun, for a bit. First the lawmen had tried shooting them with their goop, and Fancypants had made them twitch so badly they shot each other, and then the girl in green had shown up, and she'd made the room wiggle and wobble like jelly. It was a shame they didn't have more time, because together they could have made the world's greatest fun slide. The possibilities were endless.

Then the new guys with guns had turned up, and they weren't shooting goop. Fighting them was less fun and hurt more, but Lift had still managed to enjoy herself as she cut loose and helped ruin their night.

Then ... then Oni Lee had appeared, and it all turned red. They didn't cut rubies that red. No garden grew flowers that red. And there was so much of it, enough to cover the floor and paint the walls, all from one little body. She ... she had been tying the room up in knots, and ... and ...

It had been an instant. All it took. All it was.

"Mistress!" Wyndle shouted.

She had frozen in place right out in the open, staring at the headless little corpse on the ground. The men with guns didn't hesitate. A series of bullets caught her in the back. It was like being stabbed with hot pokers, knocking her to her hands and knees even as her awesomeness worked to repair the damage.

A bestial growl announced that Fluffy had returned. She had found her dogs, and they were quickly growing to match the one she was riding. There was renewed gunfire, followed by screaming. Out of the corner of her eye Lift saw a dog picking up a man in its mouth and shaking him like a chew toy.

Time. It wasn't too late, not yet. And if Oni Lee wanted to start stealin' heads, then she could steal them right back. He carried the head with his fingers tangled in her hair, still dripping from the neck. He held the head in front of a fabrial like some kind of key. A moment later the elevator door opened up.

Lift dashed forward and tried to keep her balance on Slick feet. She had seen voidbringers do it at Thaylen's Field, but she hadn't been too successful at imitating them. She couldn't stop or turn on Slick feet, but storms she was faster.

The room she sped through was a twisted mess, and she had to keep moving while hoping that what she saw as up would become forward by the time she got there, but already the world was unraveling, trying to forget that Vista had twisted it up in the first place. The world always forgot you when you were gone. People lived and died on it, cultivated it, and called it Mother, but it was nothing more than a big stone.

Oni Lee stepped into the elevator. Lift bent her knees and then hurled herself forward at the last second, tackling him from behind. He stumbled, but Lift held on, long enough to get one hand on Vista's head. She made it Slick and when it slid from his grasp, she snatched it. With the prize in hand, she kicked off away from him. She landed on her back outside the elevator, Vista's head cradled against her chest and staining her shirt. Oni Lee looked down at her, his hand on the hilt of his sword, but she formed a shardblade in her own hand, four feet long and as menacing as Wyndle could manage. It was a threat so obvious even Oni Lee couldn't miss it.

He didn't. "Run and hide, little one," he said, not moving from his position. "Lung waits below, and I have no time for you."

The elevator doors slid shut. Good riddance. She hurried to Vista's body. It lay in a pool of blood that was slowly spreading. She stuck the head on the neck and prayed to whatever gods were still alive and whatever Heralds weren't yet broken that she wasn't too late. She was faster than she'd been when Darkness' minion had slit Gawx's throat. She was slower than when Darkness had cut down Tiqqa in the Yeddaw market with his shardblade.

Knowitall had started yelling something and was running toward her, but she'd deal with that later. She bent down close to Vista's face and breathed out, emptying herself of all the awesomeness she had left. Not too late. A could of shimmering light left her mouth, floated there—not too late—and entered Vista's. The seam around her neck vanished without a scar as her chest swelled with air.

Lift tried to push herself to her feet, feeling as hungry and as tired as she had ever felt. She managed to form a Wyndlechair beneath her in time to collapse into it. She wanted to eat something, sleep, and then eat some more. Knowitall came up to her and put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"I wasn't sure you could do that," she said. "But I knew you'd try. Of course you'd try, no matter who might be watching. And if word gets out that you can raise the dead, well, let's just say that stunt didn't work out too well for Jesus. We'll just have to hope that the heroes will be able to keep a lid on this, and who knows? You saved one of theirs, so you'd think they'd owe us something. C'mon. Let's go home."

Lift looked across the lobby. It was torn up, gouged and pockmarked in ways and places that shouldn't even have been possible. The rest of the ABB members had retreated out the shattered front entrance when faced with Fluffy's dogs. She was atop one of them, pacing back and forth, keeping watch in case of another attack. Fancypants was leaning against the truck in the middle of the lobby, waiting for the two of them.

"What about Skullface?"

"The jailbreak's a bust. I thought the ABB might try something, but I assumed Lung was going to be in the PHQ. I guess they moved him here for, I don't know, medical reasons? And Oni Lee wasn't supposed to be on his feet yet, but it looks like they kidnapped Panacea and made her heal him." Knowitall smiled to herself. "They probably threatened to kill her and blow up her family if she didn't cooperate, so there's a silver lining to all of this."

Lift looked down at Vista. Her green costume was stained in blood and her blond hair was matted to her head, but she was breathing. "He's going after Lung."

Knowitall nodded.

"Skullface is down there too."

She nodded again.

"He's gonna hurt him?"

"I can't say for certain. Lung's high security, Grue's on the low end, so they're not going to be in the same cell block. The only way Oni Lee would know that he's even down there is ... if he read the newspaper and heard about Grue's arrest. So it's possible, but I'd still say that Grue's chances are better than yours if you went down after him, in the state you're in."

Her state? She still felt weak. Strength before weakness.

Lift looked up at her. "I'm a better thief than he is."

"And he wouldn't hesitate to kill you. You would."

She didn't deny it. "That don't make him better'n me." Life before death. "Get the others and go." Fluffy's dogs wouldn't fit in the elevator when they were big, and Lift couldn't risk taking anyone else. "Me and Skullface'll meet you back home."

Knowitall shook her head. She looked sad, like she knew that nothing she said would make a difference. "This won't end well."

Journey before the destination. Nothing ended well. That was the problem with endings. But it wasn't over yet, not unless she left now. Unless she left Brian trapped with two people who wanted him dead. She didn't know if she could make a difference as hungry as she was, but she couldn't not try. She promised she would long ago. Lift gave Knowitall the most confident grin she could manage. "I'll be back before you know it. We both will."

"Wait." Knowitall reached into her pocket. She pulled out two candy bars. "I don't know how much you can get out of these, but you should at least eat something before you go."

Lift snatched them from her hand. "You had these the whole time?"

She shrugged. "For emergencies. And if you're going to toy with death anyway ..."

Lift tore off the wrapper of the first one and stuffed it in her mouth. Good didn't begin to describe it. It was full of nuts and nougat and caramel and chocolate. Chocolate, slightly melted from being in Knowitall's pocket, which melted further when it touched her tongue. It was the flavor of the Highstorm and distant lands and ancient gods all in one.

There was no time to waste. Lift turned and formed a shardblade in her hand. She cut a hole through the elevator door and on the other side saw a deep pit with a cord hanging in the middle. She could climb down to the prison floor with Wyndle, ignore the elevator and take the stairs ... or she could actually get there in time to make a difference.

She stuffed the second candybar into her mouth—she could live on these things—and jumped into the pit. She grabbed onto the cord, wrapping her arms and legs around it as she slid down to slow her fall. It had worked the night before, but that was with Wyndle. This time, the cord got hot. It burned and cut, leaving holes in her pants and blisters on her hands. When she finally hit the bottom, her hands were raw and bleeding.

"Mistress! You're hurt!"

"No, really?" She summoned her awesomeness to heal her hand, and in a few seconds it was as good as new. Maybe not the best start, but she had plenty of awesomeness left. Nothing to worry about.

"Mistress, I know you never listen to me when I say this, but please be careful. Even if you can heal someone else's decapitation, you may find reattaching your own head to be more difficult."

She cut a hole through the top of the elevator and hopped down into the box. "You say somethin'?"

"Your friends would be devastated if you didn't make it back."

She stopped, feeling, for the first time since they got here, small. Stealing was supposed to be good, harmless fun, but even if you weren't going to hurt nobody, you didn't always come back. Sometimes you got arrested. Sometimes you got killed. But ... but storms, she did not have time for this! If you hesitated right before you jumped, you weren't never going to make it.

"I'll be fine," she said, and she cut a hole through the elevator door onto the prison floor.

Then it exploded.

WWW

A/n And that's a wrap. And by wrap, I mean cliffhanger. You know how the prison break was originally one chapter and then two chapters? Well, now it's three chapters. Um, I'm not doing this on purpose, I swear.

I'd like to thank everyone who has left a comment or a review. I know I haven't been able to reply to all of them, but I appreciate all of them. I'd especially like to thank my s, Sphinxes, Exiled Immortal, and Prime 2.0 for their support.

An extra shoutout to Exiled Immortal for editing the chapter as he has done for the many chapters that came before. I have him basically do my entire fight scenes because when I do it, it comes out looking like a toddler mashing two action figures together. Sometimes a fight scene lasts a few paragraphs. Sometimes, like here, it's more than half the chapter. If you liked the way these fights played out, check out his RWBY time travel fic, Ready or Not.