Leaf
Chapter Twelve
It began with an explosion. Someone had bombed a building, then bombed several other buildings. The heroes flew off to save the city while Amy rolled out of bed, got into her Panacea costume, and went to the hospital.
That was what people expected, and she couldn't let them down. Sometimes it was relaxing, easing the suffering of those going through surgery or chronic illnesses, and sometimes it was a mess. Then the ABB attacked the hospital itself. About a dozen of them shot up the ceiling, demanded Panacea, and in her red and white costume she couldn't hide if she tried. They grabbed her, put a bag over her head, and carried her off. No one put up a fight. Everyone who could fight was out trying to put out fires and restore the peace. The people in the hospital just wanted to stay alive.
The explosion she heard after she was dragged away suggested that they hadn't.
They blew up a hospital, she thought numbly. That's a war crime. Not that these people cared. The Empire Eighty-Eight thought of the Holocaust as a good start, and the Azn Bad Boys were doing their best to race them to the bottom.
When the bag was pulled off, Amy found herself kneeling before a woman in a gas mask and a man in a wheelchair.
"Hello Panacea," the woman said. Her voice was distorted and mechanical, like a text-to-speech app. "Do you know who I am?"
The woman was in costume, and the ABB only had two capes left, so that narrowed down the list. Amy hadn't even seen a picture of her before, but she didn't need to. "You're Bakuda."
"One for one. Next question. Do you remember Fleur?"
Amy's blood froze. Fleur. Aunt Jess. As Uncle Mike's girlfriend, she hadn't really been part of the family, but that was something that she and Amy had had in common. Unlike Amy, Aunt Jess could belong anywhere just by how she was with people.
She had died when Amy was ten. She could remember a swarm of news reporters coming after her that same day for a soundbite or a comment, because what did losing a family member or a friend matter when there was a story?
"Yes."
"Last question. The stupid Empire wannabe who killed her, what did he do wrong?"
What did he do wrong? Where to begin? He killed her, shot her when she was out of costume and just coming out the door. Not even Kaiser approved of that. Amy had never had a romantic view of cape life, but the Empire lived on stories as much as the news media did. The Empire had more capes than any other team in the city, and if people realized that anyone could just shoot them dead, they would suffer for it too. But the boy had killed Aunt Jess anyway, hoping that the Empire would applaud his gall and cowardice and overlook his weakness and stupidity.
"Everything."
Bakuda considered that, then shook her head, imitating a disappointed teacher. "Partial credit. He aimed too low. He was too lazy, too greedy, and too impatient. If he had coordinated a bit and killed all of you at once, if he had, for example, planted explosives in the houses of all the team members and—"
An explosion rang out behind Amy, the force of it knocking her face down on the floor. Bakuda grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head back until she was looking up at the villain.
"I don't do half measures, Panacea. If I kill someone, I kill their friends, their friends' friends, and anyone who might be angry enough to want revenge. Now, one more question to make up for the last one. Are you going to give me a reason to kill you?"
Amy looked into the black, reflective lenses of Bakuda's mask. She shook her head.
"Good. Now, I'd like you to meet a friend of mine." She yanked Amy's hair upward, raising her painfully to her feet, and made her face the man in the wheelchair. "He ran into a group that loved half measures, left him broken but alive, and let him crawl home. You are going to heal him."
She nodded. That's why you went through all this trouble to bring me here. You won't kill me as long as I'm useful. You won't kill my family as long as you need me. And she had healed criminals before, at hospitals and to get her sister out of trouble. Aside from the constant threat of a violent death, this really was no different. "I'll need my hands free."
Bakuda made a sound that Amy recognized as a laugh only by the accompanying body language, and shoved her forward.
She nearly fell, but the man's good arm shot out like a snake and grabbed her exposed face. On contact, his biology opened up to her like a book, revealing every cell, every signal, every broken bone. And his brain. Amy had seen brain damage before from concussions and drug abuse, but this brain had gone far beyond what it should have been able to survive. It was a desert! Entire sections of the brain had been left blank!
But there was one part of the brain that was completely active that few people had. The Corona Pollentia. This man was a parahuman, so either he was a new recruit, or he was ...
Amy pulled away. A look of frustration crossed the man's face as he groped the air in front of her, but he said nothing.
"Is there a problem?" Bakuda said behind her.
Oni Lee. That was who Bakuda wanted her to heal. Amy didn't kill people as a rule she had set for herself long ago, but if she mended his bones and got him back into fighting shape, how many would die? Would Oni Lee kill a hundred more before someone finally took him down? Maybe. But if she didn't ...
She thought of Victoria, strong, beautiful, proud—and reckless. She thought of her dying like Aunt Jess, or smeared across the wall, or a smoldering corpse on the ground. If Victoria were here ... she'd fight back. She'd do something brave and stupid and, and get herself killed.
But she wasn't here right now. Victoria was out there, saving the day like she always did as predictable as Amy was with her hospital visits, and when the fight was over she'd predictably fly home into a trap.
If she healed Oni Lee, the chance that he would kill someone was nearly certain, but the chance that one of his victims would be her sister was much, much less. What choice did she really have?
"No," she said. "There's no problem." She stepped forward, felt the murderer's fingers clutch her face again, and hated herself.
WWW
"Aegis, I want to see you in my office," was not an invitation for a friendly chat, not when it came from Director Piggot. Clockblocker had once described it as a premonition of doom. Put your affairs in order, he had once said, for the bell tolls for thee!
His teammate had been joking at the time, but he wasn't entirely wrong. As Aegis flew back from a bombed office building, he ran his mind over every possible thing that he could have done wrong from team assignments to rescue methods to crowd control strategies. Did he take too many risks? Too few? Should he have spread the team out more to cover a wider area? Not likely. Without anyone on comms, coordinating everyone at a distance could have been trouble.
But when he arrived at the PRT building, he stopped wondering about what he had done wrong in the field and started wondering about what had happened here. Bullet holes in the walls, a crashed truck in the middle of the lobby ... blood on the floor.
What the hell happened? Aegis knew that he hadn't taken charge like he should have, like a leader should have. He hadn't ordered Vista to go up alone against the Undersiders any more than he had ordered Shadow Stalker to go back her up. They had decided what to do, and he had gone along with it.
He passed by the broken elevator and flew up the stairs to the fourth floor. It might have been faster to go outside and come in through her office window, but Piggot always hated it when people did that. Or at least she had hated it the one time he had done it, and he had never tried it a second time.
"Come in," the director said after he knocked. Piggot looked up at him, put down the papers she had been reading, and gave him her undivided attention. "I'll expect your report of the night's activities before you leave, Aegis, but for now I need you to listen to what has happened here."
"Is everyone alright?" he said. "Vista, Shadow Stalker ..." Whose blood was that?
"No. Neither of them are." Her voice was firm, but not cruel. "The details are still being gathered, but we do know that the Undersiders attacked the building shortly after the bombing started. Shortly afterward, Oni Lee and a handful of ABB members broke in to free Lung."
"Oni Lee?" God. It was just supposed to be the Undersiders here. "How bad are they hurt? Will they be alright?"
"I'm getting to that. Firstly, Oni Lee's attempt failed, in large part due to Vista's actions this evening, and Lung remains in custody."
Right. Because that was the most important thing.
"Shadow Stalker suffered minor injuries and has already been treated. Hopefully spending the next few weeks on crutches will help curb some of her headstrong recklessness." She sounded doubtful. "Vista was decapitated."
Aegis nodded. Shadow Stalker was arrogant and foolhardy at the best of times, and while this was a terrible time to have anyone on the team out of commission, he ...
"What?"
"Oni Lee teleported behind her and cut her head off. From what I understand it was one of the first things he did after arriving, so Vista can't be blamed for not falling back in face of a serious threat. She has fortunately recovered since then."
Aegis opened his mouth and closed it. "She recovered from ... I'm sorry, Director, but at the risk of repeating myself, what?"
Piggot took a sip of coffee. It was, to Aegis, the longest, slowest sip in the history of coffee mugs. "Do you recall the injuries Tattletale had when she was brought in?"
He nodded. "Broken neck, broken jaw." What does that have to do with anything?
"And yet she was able to walk away last night."
"So I've been told." Vista lost her head but she's better now.
"And the Undersiders had extra help as well."
"A jailbreak specialist, Leaf," he said, wishing that Piggot would hurry up.
"Regent and Hellhound didn't acquire Leaf's services for her experience breaking out of this building," Piggot said. "At least not entirely. We have reason to believe that she was recruited for her ability to heal."
Aegis stared at her. "Leaf? She has friction negation, right? And something about plants, and can project a sword. Since when can she heal people?"
"We didn't know about her projection abilities until after we arrested her. Either she can develop new powers over time or she's simply good at hiding the ones she has. Regardless, after Oni Lee decapitated Vista, Leaf was able to recover her head and reattach it."
His mind felt blank. He spotted a chair on the side of the room. "Do you ... do you mind if I sit down?"
"Go ahead."
He struggled to process everything as he rested his head in his hands. He had seen people die before. He had seen people die twenty minutes ago, but it was completely different when the one who died was a friend. And then to have that person die but not be dead was like having the rug pulled out from under him.
"Is she okay now?" he asked. "Any ... trauma? Brain damage?"
"We're still doing tests, but so far the only sign of brain damage is some short-term memory loss, and since Vista does not remember being harmed in the first place, she isn't suffering from any trauma."
Aegis looked up. "She doesn't know?"
"Not yet. And that could be a problem."
"A problem? If I found out that I had died, I'd be freaking out, and I ..." He wasn't sure how to finish that sentence. He had been doing this longer? Vista had nearly a year on him in the Wards. He was older? He was still too young to die. He wasn't sure how old wasn't too young to die, but seventeen wasn't the cutoff point.
I've looked death in the face more than she has, he decided. He couldn't remember how many times he had been shot, stabbed, run over, or chewed on, but he was always able to keep going. He had even lost his head once, and it had been an experience he never wanted to repeat, seeing with his skin, hearing with his bones, thinking with his liver and his lungs. He had ended up needing stitches, but this was Vista. There wasn't anyone on the team that he wouldn't take a bullet for, and he'd take one for her even without his powers.
"And under what circumstances would you like Vista to 'freak out?'" Piggot asked. "If she figures it out on her own, she'll believe that we hid it from her because we didn't trust her with the information. And she'd be right. That's just the best case scenario. The worst is that she finds out the next time your team engages the Undersiders in the field and breaks down then."
Yeah. That made sense. Better to air your issues out somewhere safe than where there could be lives on the line. Still ... he let out a weak laugh. "She's going to need some serious therapy after this."
"Fine."
He looked up. "What?"
"Fine. I'll sign off on it if it proves necessary."
He stared at her. "I thought you hated therapists."
Piggot gave him a flat look, and he realized that he had crossed the line and accused her of having human feelings. "I've found requiring people to feel sorry for themselves in front of professionals to be a waste of time, money, and only encourages them to feel sorry for themselves even more. But in the event of actual trauma like this, therapy is appropriate."
His eyes widened. "Well, crap."
WWW
Healing Oni Lee was just the beginning. Amy got a short break in a locked room where she dreamed about Victoria crashing through the walls, punching Bakuda's head clean off her shoulders (or sometimes something less lethal), and then carrying Amy to safety.
Just like in the bank. Hell of a week. Hell of ... two days. It was just after midnight Saturday morning and the bank robbery was Thursday afternoon. God, she had been taken hostage twice in less than forty-eight hours, and she was still recovering from the first time.
Unlike that mind reader who had walked off a broken neck like it was nothing. Amy had spent the whole day terrified that Tattletale was going to come back for her with all her dirty secrets, and then Bakuda had caused a state of emergency before she could fall asleep. When she finally had a moment to rest while the mad Tinker was wreaking havoc without her, she was exhausted beyond belief but still too on edge to rest.
The door opened, jolting Amy from her thoughts, and Bakuda came in. Two of her henchmen grabbed her, put a mask over her head, and marched her off. They ... they weren't wearing gloves. All she needed was skin contact to take over their biology, give them any number of diseases or drug them into unconsciousness ... and she had that.
But what good would it do? If she put one or two thugs to sleep, a third one could just shoot her. Even if she made an airborne pathogen, Bakuda's gas mask would filter it out, and she was the one Amy needed to worry about. But ...
But Bakuda didn't know what Amy could do. Panacea was a healer. Even in the card game she was a support cape with no attack action. As a hostage, she was useful to have around but certainly no one to worry about, right? Maybe if Bakuda let her guard down Amy could ...
She was in a van. She could hear the engine, feel it lurch from one way to another, and then finally stop. She was dragged out again and into ... a hospital?
It wasn't one she recognized, but it had a hospital feel. A bit on the small side, judging by the hallways. Less people came through here, less equipment. No, it was more of a doctor's office or a clinic than a hospital. The place was used for checkups and routine examinations, not emergencies or overnight care. It was run down though, and not in a way that could have happened over night. The windows were broken, the walls had ... were those bullet holes?
"It's embarrassing," Bakuda said, "how much of a monopoly the Empire had on black market medical care. Every time your family breaks a dealer's arm, Kaiser gets paid. Luckily we were able to borrow the facilities for the night. Don't slip on the corpse on your way in."
Amy looked down and wished she hadn't, but she couldn't look away. A coat that once was white, a buttoned down shirt and tie, sprawled out on the floor, covered in flies. If the body still had a head, it would have been staring at her.
"I ... I'm not going to heal anyone else for you," she forced herself to say, looking up. "Not until you let me speak to my family." She wasn't just a prisoner, she was a hostage. That meant she had value, and if she could leverage that value ...
Bakuda turned around slowly. Amy knew all about the major cape poses and had helped Victoria practice most of them. The arm fold, dynamic akimbo, three point landing, up up and away. Vicky was thrilled when she found out that the levitating lotus was a real thing and almost wanted to get a sword just so she could stab the sky. The slow turn wasn't to look at someone, it was for someone to look at you looking at them. Right now she's going to say something menacing.
"What makes you think," she said slowly, "that you have any say in what happens to you?"
Amy didn't have good instincts for facing threats like this, but she could think things through and even swallow her fear if she had enough time to work through it. "If you wanted me dead you would have killed me by now. I'm a good healer, one of the best in the country, and that becomes more useful the longer a conflict lasts. But if you want me to cooperate, I want something in return."
Now are you going to push harder or ...
Bakuda tilted her head slightly. "Does this sort of thing happen to you a lot?"
"It happens enough."
"Well." It was hard to gauge her tone, but her posture was suddenly cheerful, almost friendly. "I hope that this event leaves a mark on your mind. And you will talk to your team, not because you want to, but because I want you to."
Amy held back a sigh of relief. "Okay. That's fine."
"But first, it's time for a little operation. How do you feel about brain surgery?"
"No. I talk to my family first, and I'm not healing anyone until I do. And I don't do brains, period. It says so in my PHO article."
Bakuda nodded, seeming thoughtful. "Yes, I thought that was strange. Why that distinction? You can handle the peripheral nervous system just fine. Why not the central nervous system?"
"It's too complicated." That was an easy lie, a practiced one. "The rest of the body is just machinery, and no one if their arms and legs are mostly right as long as they're working. But the brain? Messing with the brain is like trying to build a computer out of sticks and stones."
Bakuda paused as if considering that. "No, I don't buy it. The brain's a pile of meat as complicated as a box of Legos. And I can build a computer out of sticks and stones." She stepped back, a spring in her step that clashed with her gas mask and mechanical voice. "Fortunately, you're not going to be performing the operation. I am."
They took her to another room, strapped her face down onto an operating table, and tied her down. Amy heard a mechanical buzzing noise, like a bonesaw or a drill, but she couldn't see anything.
"Hey Panacea," Bakuda said as the buzzing lulled. "Can you heal yourself? Medice, cura te ipsum and all that?"
She considered lying on principle, but she foresaw that backfiring. "N-no. Hey, have you done this before?"
"With my eyes closed. Can you get sick?"
"No."
"Then I won't have to worry about disinfectant either."
"Wait, what do you mean either?"
"I don't like drugging underaged girls when I can avoid it. A weird rule considering the company I keep, but I manage to have fun anyway." The buzzing noise revved up again like a car engine. "Now do your best not to squirm; that will only make things infinitely worse."
"Worse? Worse how? I've done everything you wanted! What are you going to do to me?"
The buzzing roared against her ear then fell silent. "Shhh. You'll find out. But while you have an open mind, let me tell you what Lung once told me about fear."
WWW
Vista wasn't grounded. She hadn't been sent to her room, and she certainly wasn't being punished. But dammit, she felt like she was in prison.
Protocols had a place in any organization, but with the city on fire, the PRT building several kinds of wrecked, and Lung (maybe just almost) having escaped, was now really the time?
Yes, apparently, according to more important people than her. Which meant pretty much everyone besides the janitor, and Vista had some doubts on that front. Still, there wasn't much she could do besides fill out the Master-Stranger questionnaire, which was made up of security questions (What is your mother's maiden name? What street did you grow up on?), personality questions (What is your favorite color? Describe your ideal vacation.), and questions she didn't even know what to do with (Pick a number between one and ten, seventeen different times.).
After that and her five different brain scans, there wasn't much she could do but wait.
When Gallant came by to visit her, she could have kissed him. For purely platonic reasons, of course.
"Hey, Missy," he said, taking off his helmet. "How are you holding up?"
"Frustrated beyond all reason. I don't even know why I'm here! I know you could, like, just look at my mind and tell I'm not being Mastered, right?"
He studied the space around her head. "Your cloud looks pretty normal, considering the circumstances. But you know the director doesn't like to rely too much on Thinker observations and Tinkertech. Too unverifiable."
Vista understood the logic behind that, but that didn't mean it was any less frustrating. "How was your night? Everyone get back okay?"
"Yeah, we were fine. The bombings have stopped, and it looks like you and Shadow Stalker saw more action than the rest of us put together."
Vista smiled at that. Dean always knew what to say to make her feel better. Of course, his powers helped him cheat a bit, but the fact that he was willing to try in the first place meant a lot. "How is Sophia?"
"She got beat up a bit, but she'll pull through. I haven't been to see her yet."
Vista ... took some pleasure in hearing that, a bit more than she should have. Of course Vista would never want to see her fellow Ward killed in the line of duty, but the girl had been horribly condescending the last time they had spoken. And Dean had come to see her first, so ... no, don't read too much into that.
"Did anyone else get hurt?"
"Some PRT troopers, what with Hellhound's dogs running around and ABB thugs shooting everything in sight, but that's just a matter of bruises and broken ribs. Zero casualties."
Vista looked down. She had changed into civilian clothes since being put in quarantine, partially to get her own costume put through the wash. She remembered the blood that had stained it, the blood that she had woken up in. But there were only bruises and broken ribs?
"Missy?" Gallant said, keying onto the emotions he could see around her head. Hell, she had such a lousy poker face he could probably see it in her eyes.
"You ... you wouldn't lie to me just to make me feel better, would you?"
He frowned thoughtfully. "No," he said finally. "I might want to, but that would backfire as soon as you found out. It's basically the Santa Claus rule."
Vista looked up. "The Santa Claus rule?"
He nodded. "Anyone who's too old for Santa Claus is old enough for the truth."
She smiled despite herself. "You just made that up."
He shrugged. "It's still a good rule. But I'm serious. If something's classified or private, I might keep it a secret, but I won't lie to you. I promise."
Sometimes ... sometimes Vista wished that something horrible would happen to Glory Girl. But not too horrible. Maybe teleported to another dimension or back in time, but that was it. She wasn't a monster.
Two pale eyes looking up at her, like diamonds in a pit, framed by fire, expecting to be saved.
Monster.
Vista pushed the thought away. She had stopped the monster. It was the right thing to do! She'd had no choice!
A strong, gentle hand gripped her shoulder, making her flinch. "Missy? What's wrong?"
She looked up into Dean's bright blue eyes, then faltered and turned her head. "Nothing. Nothing, I'm fine, it's ... it's just been a long night."
He didn't let go of her shoulder. "Hey. Look at me. You can tell me that you don't want to talk about it, but just be honest with me."
Have you ever killed anyone, she wanted to say. I have. She was annoying and childish and made me look bad, and I've been telling myself that that wasn't why I did it since it happened, but another part of me is always thinking, "Bonus. Two villains for the price of one." If I told you that, would you look at me the same way? Would I stop being a little girl in your eyes? Would you see someone you can trust to make the hard decisions when I need to? Or would you just see a killer?
But she didn't. Maybe hiding from her problems wasn't the mature response, but she'd rather keep Gallant believing in Santa Claus, for at least a little longer.
"I don't want to talk about it."
WWW
I wish Vicky were here.
Amy sat huddled in a corner of a hospital room, guarded by an unspeaking ABB thug. She had been here ever since Bakuda had dragged her in front of a camera for the villain's hostage video, so Amy had technically spoken to her family. She had just done it while reading a script, her head still throbbing from Bakuda's amateur surgery.
Did you see the video yet?
The whole team probably had. By now, all of New Wave would know that Amy was alive, and that if they tried to rescue her or made any move at all against the ABB, she'd die. Amy knew that her sister wouldn't come crashing through the wall to save her like she had done at the bank, but ... but it didn't hurt to dream.
She glanced up at her guard. Her one guard, because she wasn't considered a threat. He was on his phone to pass the time, but reached for the switchblade in his pocket whenever she spoke up.
Amy wondered if he had ever used it before. It might have just been for show, but she had been around long enough to know about the ABB rite of passage. She had healed as many of their victims as she could, but she couldn't be everywhere at once, and often could do nothing besides witness the remains. Bloodstains, broken bones, missing teeth, carved off ears and eyes. Not every time, though. Even when the heroes didn't arrive in time, the newest members of the ABB didn't always kill people.
They just needed to prove that they could.
If Vicky were here ... if Vicky were here, I wouldn't have to feel afraid.
Bakuda had lectured to her about fear. You could get anything you wanted, control anyone you met, through fear. It had seemed important to the villain to drill that point home as she drilled a hole into Amy's head. The wound didn't bleed and it wouldn't get infected, but God it throbbed.
She'd burst through that wall like it was made of paper, backhand that guard so hard he wouldn't be able to move, take me in her arms, and I'd feel safe again.
The only time Amy ever felt safe was when her sister was with her. The only time she ever felt good or happy or, or anything besides hollow and empty, it was when Victoria was by her side. Or, if she wanted to get technical, when she was at Victoria's side. That was how it always worked. There was Glory Girl, beautiful, confident, the complete Alexandria package and the indomitable will to go with it, and Panacea, the stupid, idiotic sidekick at best and tagalong fangirl at worst.
That's not true. Amy could almost hear Victoria's voice in her head. But what did she expect? She was scared, alone, and had a hole in her head. Besides, Bakuda was a bomb Tinker, not a brain surgeon, and Amy knew better than anyone how fragile that organ was. You're the strongest, smartest person I know. You always have been.
Well, that was a nice thing for her hallucination to say, but the fact was that only one of them had super strength, and the other one had freckles. She remembered the last fight she had been in, if she could even call it that. She had tried to play the hero, and her world had nearly ended. She was afraid that if she tried something like that again against someone like Bakuda ...
Afraid? Why should you be afraid of anyone? You're the scariest person I know.
It all came down to fear. Only ... only Bakuda didn't understand fear as much as she thought she did. Victoria's aura filled her enemies with terror that they couldn't control, but they could control how they reacted. Some villains ran away, some surrendered, and others ...
Amy realized that she was staring at her guard just after he did, and she looked down before he could get suspicious.
She was afraid. Bakuda could blow her up on a whim or go after her family and Amy was far from home, so of course she was afraid. And that fear made her feel sick and weak, but most of all it made her feel ...
She jolted to her feet and her legs, stiff from being in the same position for so long, weren't ready for her. She stumbled forward toward her guard as he was reaching into his pocket, and she grabbed onto his wrist.
His biology filled her mind, cells without number, interconnected in infinite complexity, but clay in her hand that she could reform at will. Flesh, blood, bone, heat, electricity, motion, tissue, life.
He tried to shove her away, but not as strongly as he could have, seemingly more worried about dropping his phone than dislodging her. She caught a glint of steel in his other hand, grabbed onto his peripheral nervous system, and set it ablaze.
He screamed as every pain receptor in his body activated, but only until he ran out of breath and he didn't have the strength to breath. Amy kicked the knife out of his hand, grabbed him by the back of his neck, and put him to sleep.
With him out of the way, she reached for his phone. The screen was cracked, but it was still working. Now ... now if she could only remember her sister's phone number.
Of all the goddamn stupid roadblocks in this goddamn stupid plan. She'd seen her sister's number thousands of times, but she never needed to remember it because it was always on her phone.
Think. I know it ends twelve-twelve, and there's a five in there ... six-five-one, twelve-twelve go.
She held her breath.
It rang, long and slow like a flatlining heart monitor.
Come on, come on.
Beeeeeeeep.
A voice came from the other side of the door. "Hey, Jouji. You okay in there?"
Crap!
"'Cause we heard something. That cape isn't giving you any trouble, is she?"
"Hey, this is Victoria Dallon. I can't make it to the phone right now—"
Damnit! It was too much to hope that she would answer a strange number in the middle of the night, especially on a night like this one.
The door opened, slowly at first until the unconscious guard's body came into view, then swung open revealing a tall Asian man with a gun in his hand. Amy hit speaker, tossed the phone to the side, and lunged at him.
"—so leave a message and I'll give you a call as soon as I get back from saving the world."
The barrel of the gun looked Amy in the eye, and she froze. The gunman glanced at the phone, then at her, and put a finger to his lips.
If she could just yell out her location for Victoria to hear ... but she didn't know where she was. She was in what looked like one of the smaller health clinics, and the ABB territory was most of the docks which wouldn't narrow down the search.
No. What she needed first was to deal with the man with the gun, and she could think of no application of her powers to make herself bulletproof. She held up her hands in a gesture of surrender.
Grab his wrist! Just one step forward and you have skin contact.
No, one step forward and she had her brains splattered all over the wall. He advanced and she retreated, and a second ABB member came into the now crowded room and turned off the phone. "What did you do to Jouji?" he demanded. "What the hell did you do to him?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Was that the smart thing to say? Maybe not, but it was what Victoria would have said, and Amy had learned long ago that invulnerability was mostly an act. It only took two good quick hits to hurt her sister, but as long as Victoria presented herself as untouchable, most people wouldn't even try to hit her once.
And Amy was invincible, in a way. Bakuda might blow her up on a whim, but at the moment Amy was more valuable to her as a prisoner than anyone else here was as a henchman.
The man slammed his gun into the side of her face, and she saw stars. "You wanna start something, cape?" She was on the floor, and the man kicked her in the stomach. "Do you have any idea what Bakuda will do to me if you cause trouble? Any idea what she'll do to me if she notices me when she's bored?"
Amy ignored the pain. Her hand shot out like a snake and grabbed onto his exposed ankle. "Maybe," she said through gritted teeth, "you should have thought of that before you started working for her!"
He tried to shake her off, but she held on like her life depended on it, all the while reaching into him with her power, looking for the quickest anatomical weakness to exploit. After spending her entire hero career doing the opposite, this was easy.
Forced apoptosis occurred in his spinal cord just below the neck, and he dropped like a puppet without its strings. She scrambled toward his dropped gun before it even hit the ground and pointed it at the last gang member.
He was on the shorter side and looked more like a fresh-faced kid then a hardened killer, but Amy knew better than to put too much stock in looks alone. He had a knife in his hand, which he dropped, and raised his arms in the same gesture of surrender that Amy had used a minute before.
"Get on the ground." Amy didn't know the first thing about using a gun. Where was the safety? Was it even on? But it didn't matter as long as she could look the part of a professional.
And it worked. The man got down on his knees, his eyes wide and face pale. "Please," he whispered. "Please."
She put the second guard to sleep and got up, facing the third. "You'll wake up in an hour," she said, approaching him. "You won't even feel a thing."
"She'll kill me."
Bakuda. Lung had been the main force behind the ABB for so long, but Bakuda had managed to recreate the gang around her in a matter of days. Amy wanted to blurt out a heroic cliche like how crime didn't pay, but then she thought of the bombings, being woken up in the middle of the night because people were dying and needed Panacea to heal them. Then Bakuda bombed the hospital too.
Only, it wasn't just Bakuda. She may have made the bomb, but it was ordinary people who thought that a gang membership was an easy road to money and power that planted the bombs and kidnapped her. People like him. Villains. Criminals. Terrorists.
"Tough."
"No, please." He grew more terrified with every step she took toward him, but was too afraid to back away. "You're a hero! This isn't what you're supposed to do!"
She thought of Victoria, of all the worthless criminals she had almost killed that Amy had needed to heal. She thought of how she had criticised her brutality, looking down from her ivory tower in contempt.
Most of all, she thought of the bank, of how different it was when the scum and villainy of the city was rubbed in your face, of how different it was when the people you loved were put at risk. And she thought of how much she wanted—needed—to give those people exactly what they deserved.
"No," she said, brushing a finger against his forehead. "This is exactly what heroes are supposed to do."
He fell asleep and collapsed at her feet. He could deal with Bakuda when he woke up, and Bakuda could deal with him. That wasn't cruelty. If anyone deserved to be left to the mercy of criminals, it was other criminals, and by the time that happened Amy would be long gone.
Only ... there was something wrong with him. Now that she had the time to stop and focus, there was a foreign object and signs of recent surgery into the back of his head. She touched the other two gang members as she went to retrieve the phone, and found the exact same scarring in their heads.
Same as mine. She couldn't sense her own body with her powers, but dull pain reminded her exactly where Bakuda had cut and drilled into her skull. Did these people have bombs in their heads too?
No, no, that would be too ridiculous. Gang members weren't known for making wise life choices, but no one would willingly join a gang that came with mandatory kill switches. It had to be something else, like a tracking chip or something.
Oh, crap. If they were just tracking chips she'd be fine. Bakuda would know that her guards were exactly where they were supposed to be, but if they had something more advanced in their heads? Would she know that all three of them had fallen asleep? Would she get suspicious? Hell, if it was some sort of surveillance device, Bakuda might have heard everything that had happened and would already be on her way.
She didn't have time to waste. She was able to unlock the phone with the first guard's thumb print and started sending Victoria a text as she crept out of the room.
WWW
After finally being cleared after an eternity and a half, Vista was free to go. Even wearing clothes straight out of the gift shop and a domino mask, she was still recognized as Vista by anyone who cared to look, but being out of costume helped her blend into the background.
The stairs looked like they'd gotten hit by a tornado after a certain point, one made of fire. Eventually the stairs disappeared entirely leaving nothing but a long drop with claw marks in the walls. If someone like that had got out into the city ... then far more people would've died than just one. She wasn't going to boast about what happened, and she might not even talk about it more than she had to, but she'd made the right decision.
Shrinking the space between her and the bottom, she stepped off the stairs and onto the floor of the Wards HQ. It was a good thing she had decided to head upstairs during the fight instead of staying down on comm duty. The rubble would have trapped her there, though now it had been cleared away. She left the space compressed so the nonfliers, Gallant, Clockblocker, and Browbeat, could go up and down without assistance, and stepped inside.
The team was moving boxes and stacking them up near the entrance. Kid Win spotted her first. "Hey, Vista! You made it out of quarantine. Hey guys! Vista's back!"
"Vista?" Clockblocker said, sticking his head out from around the corner. "No way! And just in time to help us pack!"
Vista looked around at all the boxes to be moved. "So we're really moving?"
"Yup," Clockblocker said. He wiped a fake tear from his eye, an act that was slightly ruined by his mask. "I'm really going to miss this place."
"I thought this was only until they got the repairs done," Browbeat said. "Aegis said it would be two weeks at most."
Clockblocker gestured emphatically at the newest member. "Yeah, sure. If you want to be reasonable about it."
Browbeat looked around. "What's wrong with reasonable?"
Clockblocker waved him away. "Nothing. Nothing. Just make sure that all your personal effects are out of your room when it's time to go."
"But ... I just got here. My room doesn't have any personal—"
"More importantly, Vista! What's this story I'm hearing about you fighting off two gangs at once on comms duty? On comms duty. That's, like, a reverse gangbang, right?"
"No," Gallant said, coming through with Aegis. "That's not it at all. Also, remember when you asked me to tell you when your sense of humor crosses the line?"
"I have literally never asked you to do that."
"Okay, I asked myself to do that. And this was one of those times."
Clockblocker cocked his head. "It was? Huh. I'll have to look that up later."
"Please don't."
"Anyway," Clockblocker said, turning back to her, "what happened? I know it started with two different gangs running prison breaks and it ended with Lung taking a nap at the bottom of the elevator shaft, but I'm going to need you to fill in all the details."
Vista looked away. "I don't know. I mean, it's not really that much of a story."
Clockblocker put his hands on his hips. He was far more expressive with his gestures in costume than out of it, sometimes coming off more as an inexperienced but enthusiastic actor than anything else. "Really," he said. "You beat off everyone single handedly, but it wasn't 'that much of a story.'"
"I ... it wasn't single handedly. Shadow Stalker was there, remember? How's she doing? I heard she got hurt."
"Gasp!" Clockblocker said, holding his hands over his mouth. "You mean Shadow Stalker decided to be a team player? That's an even bigger story!"
"I ..." Crap.
"She doesn't have to talk about it if she doesn't want to," Gallant said. It was nice of him to speak up for her, but the fact that he picked up on that fact only showed how obvious her discomfort was.
"Why would she not want to talk about it?" Clockblocker asked. "If it were me who pulled that off, you wouldn't be able to shut me up."
"Can we now?" Browbeat asked.
"I'd be all, 'Hey, you know that guy who soloed the entire Protectorate? Yeah, he was a pretty tough guy, but then he ran into me. That's right, move over Saint, there's a new dragon slayer in town!"
"Okay, that's nice," Aegis said, coming over. "I need to borrow Vista for a moment. Vista, a word?"
"What?" Clockblocker asked as Vista followed the team leader to another room. "Really? You're not even going to ... I thought we were only hazing the new guy!"
"My name's Browbeat," Browbeat said. "And I specifically requested you not to do that."
Aegis took her to one of the bedrooms. His bedroom, but without all the things that made it his. The same bed, desk, and dresser that everyone had in their rooms were still there, but it didn't have any uniquely Aegis traits anymore. The list of Fyodor Dosoyevsky quotes taped to the wall, the picture of Carlos' family on the desk, or that poster of a model suggestively holding a basketball were all gone, and now Vista didn't feel like Aegis belonged there any more than she did.
It occurred to her that she was going to need to pack up her things too. Packing had always been for other people. Other Wards joined up and graduated or moved, but she was always here. Her parents, with the shared custody fiasco they had going on, packed their bags at the end of each month and moved out for the other one to arrive, but she always stayed.
"So what did you want to talk to me about?" The wall behind her bulged out into something resembling a bench, and she sat down.
Aegis took a deep breath as though bracing himself for something unpleasant. "I talked to Dean after he visited you. He said you were upset about something, and I think I know what it was."
Vista looked up at him. "You do?"
He nodded and turned to a blank space on his wall. "Dang it. The first quote on the list was incredibly relevant, but then I packed it. It was something about honesty and not lying to yourself, but now I'm stuck having to paraphrase it. You'd think that after all the time it spent on my wall I'd have the damn thing memorized, but ..." He shook his head.
"What?"
"Nevermind. What I'm trying to say is that sometimes it's easy to keep secrets from your friends because you don't want them to get hurt, but that never works out in the long run. Best case scenario you end up with a divide between you and your friends, worst case they find out and stop trusting you."
Vista hung her head. "Yeah." She could feel that divide already. She couldn't tell Gallant what was bothering her, she couldn't accept Clockblocker's praise for stopping Lung, she couldn't be part of them after what had happened. She'd had two wrong choices, and she picked one. That wasn't something to be proud of, and it didn't seem like something Gallant would understand.
"So I think it's best to put all the cards on the table and just ... just come out with it."
Could she? She knew she couldn't tell Gallant, but Aegis wasn't perfect like Gallant was. He didn't shine the same way. Aegis was ... grubby was a way to put it. He treated his hero costume like work clothes and he treated being a Ward like a job. Stopping Lung the way she'd had to, it wasn't heroic, but it had needed to be done. "I ..."
"There was blood on your costume," Aegis said. "It was yours."
Vista blinked. "What? Mine? I know it was my costume."
"No, I mean it was your blood."
She blinked again. "What? What are you talking about?"
He hesitated. "The blood on your ... wasn't that what was bothering you?"
"I ... guess? A little, but I know that blood wasn't mine."
"Then what was bothering you? Gallant said you were ... I think he used the word 'distraught?'"
"I ... I'll tell you later. But what do you mean it was my blood? Because there was a lot of blood there, and I would have noticed if I were missing that much. As well as, I don't know, a huge gaping wound?"
"How much ... how much do you remember? Of what happened?"
"Of that part? I remember Tattletale telling me how she was going to knock me out if I didn't do what she wanted, and then I woke up a while later. And that's it."
Aegis stared at her, worried, concerned, as though she were on the verge of ... something, maybe just on a verge in general. "How did you feel when you woke up?"
She shrugged. "Fine. I mean, a couple of troopers were practically smothering me with how much they were fussing over me, but other than that I felt ... fine." Not even a headache. What was it that Tattletale had said? That she'd end up with a concussion for the next few weeks? But she hadn't. She had been able to get back in the fight as soon as she woke up. She looked up at Aegis. "What really happened up there?"
He took a deep breath. "I want you to know that the only reasons I'm telling you this are because you deserve to know, and because I believe you can take it. Oni Lee attacked you, and you ended up pretty badly hurt."
"Okay." She didn't remember seeing Oni Lee, but a lot of her memories were hazy and she knew that he had shown up. "How badly are we talking about? One of his grenades or what?"
"No, he cut your head off."
Vista stared at him, then smiled. "No, really. What happened?"
"That is what happened," he said distantly. "I watched the security feed while you were in confinement. That's why you were in confinement; they wanted to make sure you were still you after you ... got hurt."
Vista furrowed her brow. Had the PRT troopers been more overprotective than usual? And Piggot had sent her into Master/Stranger isolation. At the time it had seemed like Piggot just being Piggot, but ...
She ran her fingers down her neck. There wasn't any cut or scar that she could feel, but when she had woken up there had been blood all down the front of her costume. None of it was on her face.
"So ... so how'd I get better?" Breathe. Breathe even when the air inside of you feels colder than the air in the room.
"One of the Undersiders was able to ... put you back together. They have a healer that we didn't even know about until now, but that explains how Tattletale was able to recover like she did."
Her eyes widened. "The Undersiders? No, that can't ... you mean Tattletale healed me?"
"No, it was their new member. Leaf."
Leaf. Two diamonds in the pit.
He rambled on, though Vista barely heard him. There was a ringing in her ears. "I don't know what her endgame is, or if she even has one, but I'm not looking that gift horse in the mouth."
It was people like her that gave child capes a bad name, treating everything like a game, never taking anything seriously. Not like Vista had done.
"Piggot thinks they might try to use that against you the next time we run into them, but I don't know. Maybe it was an 'enemy of my enemy' thing."
The city was better off without her. She might not have been as bad as Lung, but the city didn't need more villains. How many times in the last few hours had Vista told herself that? And what was the other thing she told herself? Oh, right.
She'd have done the same to me.
"Or maybe they wanted us to owe them a favor. They may try to contact you in the future, and if they do ... Missy? Missy? Are you ... Vista!"
She blinked. "Wha?"
He gave her a worried look. "Are you ... no, stupid question, of course you're not okay. I'm guessing you need some time to process this, but if you need to talk to me, I'm here. So is Dean, and he's better at this sort of thing than I am. And if you want to talk to a professional therapist, Piggot already okayed that."
"Okay."
"Okay ... what?"
"Okay." She looked up at him, or at least toward him. Her eyes couldn't seem to focus, and she saw two Aegises sitting in front of her instead of one, both half there. "Was there anything else?"
He stared at her. "... No, that was it. Vista, are you ..."
"I'm fine. I got through it, didn't I?" Not everyone did. "And I slept through the worst part, so ..." She stood up. "Is it okay if I get started on packing? There's work to do."
"I ... okay. Yeah. But if you feel like you need to ... well, you know. Yeah."
Vista nodded and took her leave. Aegis didn't follow her and the hallway between his room and hers was empty. She pushed her door open and stepped into the room she had created for herself over the years. Pictures, posters, books, souvenirs. Her whole life was in here, and she needed to put it all in boxes and take it away.
But not yet. For now she sat on her bed and looked down at her palms. She'd start packing after her hands stopped shaking.
WWW
This is Amy.
She typed out a message on her stolen phone as she crept through the darkened hallways of the unfamiliar building. The soft beeps it made were less dangerous than any spoken message would have been.
You're not safe.
House might be rigged to explode.
Get out.
She couldn't afford to be seen. She had gotten this far only by luck and the element of surprise, and neither of those would last. She had to be fast, but more than that she had to be careful.
In a health clinic.
Don't know where.
Near the docks?
She stayed in the unlit hallways, listening for sounds of people and following the neon green exit signs when she dared. The main exits would be guarded, but maybe there was a staff exit somewhere? An emergency exit? No, that might set off an alarm.
Call you when I know for sure.
I love you.
Too distracted by the phone, her night vision compromised by the glowing screen, Amy didn't notice the man in front of her until he swung his sword, and even then she heard the blade whistle through the air more than she saw it. She jumped back with a yelp, letting the phone slip from her hands to clatter onto the floor, and saw a man in a demon mask in front of her.
She ran, all attempts at stealth abandoned. There was no point in running from a teleporter, but there was no way she couldn't run. She had barely gotten ten feet away from him when he appeared in front of her, pulled the pin out of a grenade, and held it out to her as though offering her a gift.
She turned around before it went off, and even with her back to it the flash of light and deafening thunder clap left her dazed. Finding herself on the ground, she pushed herself to her feet and continued running, only to find Oni Lee waiting for her at the end of a hallway.
She turned and kept running. Running, running, running. Her lungs burned and her feet ached, but she couldn't stop. She couldn't think, she couldn't fight, she couldn't do anything but keep running. She knew he was toying with her, but she'd keep running for the rest of her life because as soon as she stopped she would die.
Only as soon as turned a corner into a small, deadend room, she tripped over a body and realized that Oni Lee wasn't toying with her.
He was herding her. And she was right back where she had started.
"You've been busy," said a distorted, mechanical voice.
Lying face down on the floor, Amy didn't have the strength left to get up. Because she knew that voice, had heard far too much of it in the past few hours, and she knew that if she looked up, she'd be looking into the masked face of the devil herself.
"I thought I had you under control," Bakuda said, sitting on a nearby examination table. "But control isn't really part of my power set. It's the opposite, really, with bombs and people alike. Setting them off. Triggering them. Making them explode. And you've exploded nicely. I left you alone for an hour, and you've already killed three people."
I ... killed ... No, no! She pushed herself to her knees and reached over to the body she had tripped over. He was sleeping peacefully, still knocked out from her power, but alive.
Then his head exploded.
Amy stared numbly into the empty space where his head used to be, his bloody remains smeared over her face and dripping into her open mouth. No ... no ...
"Can't have people sleeping on the job," Bakuda went on. "It makes for an unprofessional work environment."
Amy turned to her, trembling from head to toe. "You ... you ..."
"Me," Bakuda agreed, and the second unconscious guard's head exploded, spraying blood and gore across the room. "Rather dull bombs, all things considered. Not my best work at all. A hack like Armsmaster could have pulled it off, and he probably wouldn't have needed an extradimensional payload. But they're so simple I can practically make them in my sleep. And when you're making hundreds at a time, you need to cut corners."
She felt numb and cold and sick. "Hundreds?"
"I've been doing some recruiting recently. Lung took anyone who would rather fight than pay, but I'm taking anyone who would rather fight than die. And when you have the absolute certainty throbbing in the back of your skull, not a lot of people choose to die. I tripled the member count in the past week alone, mostly with saps who have never been in a fight before in their lives. But they know that if they annoy me, they die. If they fail me, they die. If they cross me, they die."
Amy flinched, expecting her head to explode with each word. It probably wouldn't even hurt. Just an instant, then oblivion. But having it not happen while knowing that it could made it so she could barely breathe.
"But enough about me, let's talk about you. You're a healer, great support but garbage in a fight. At least that's what they told me. But I hear rumors. Word gets back to me about you threatening chronic diseases or body disfigurements. Well, I assumed you were bluffing, but ..." She gestured toward the room.
Amy clenched her eyes shut, not wanting to look at the bodies. Bakuda may have blown their heads off, but Amy had left them there. Amy had left them there for her.
If anyone deserved to be left to the mercy of criminals, she remembered thinking, it was other criminals.
I wasn't expecting her to kill them right in front of me! I thought ... I thought ...
I thought that by the time she did, I'd be long gone. I wouldn't care as long as I couldn't see it.
"And here you are, causing me trouble, and I've got enough trouble already. Most of my recruiting was to make up for losing Lung, but basic thugs are a dime a dozen, and the ABB needs the sort of panache that you need capes for, Panacea. So I'm going to make you the same offer I make everyone I implant a bomb in. Would you rather kill? Or die?"
It took Amy a moment to understand what Bakuda was saying, and even then she couldn't believe it. "What?"
"Kill? Or die? The Empire has over a dozen capes right now, and me and Oni Lee make two. Convince me you have what it takes to be a soldier in my army and I'll let you live. I won't even make you fight other heroes. Or I can blow you up as an example to the rest. You pick."
"I ..."
What choice did she have? Die now or die later? And as long as Bakuda only made her go against villains ... she didn't have much experience with that, but she remembered Tattletale at the bank. Amy had crossed a line that day. She had been stupid and petty and cruel ... but she hadn't been wrong. She had been worried when she had heard that the villain had escaped that same night, but if she could do it all again, she would. She might even go further.
"I'll do it," she said. "I'll work for you. I'll fight with you." For a while at least. She could heal ABB members and even use her powers offensively on other villain gangs if that meant staying alive, and Bakuda couldn't keep her forever. If she could escape during the chaos of a fight ...
"Prove it." Bakuda gestured to the one last guard on the floor with his head still attached.
"What?"
"Initiation. Prove you have what it takes. Prove that you'd rather kill than die."
Amy's eyes widened. "That wasn't part of the deal! You said—"
"I said I wouldn't make you fight heroes. He's not a hero. Personally I'd love to have Kaiser asleep on the floor for you to prove yourself, but he's closer."
"But ... but ..."
"He'll die either way. He let you escape, so either I kill you both, or you kill him and save yourself."
"I ... I don't ..." She had rules. She was not brave or strong or confident or even good most of the time but she had rules. Pretending that she was willing to kill people was fine, but actually doing it? That wasn't a step in the wrong direction, that was a step off the cliff, a step that she could never come back from.
But who comes back from being dead? If I die here ...
She had filled up her life with tripe and garbage. Going to school every day learning about subjects she didn't care about and seeing classmates she never bothered to know, hours spent at the hospital that had become nothing more than drudgery long ago. If she died here, she wouldn't miss most of what she left behind ... but Victoria.
If I die here, I'll never see her again.
And she needed to. She intimately, desperately needed to, one last time.
"I don't want to die," she whispered, and she knelt down to the last of the three that she hadn't gotten killed yet, and touched his face to finish her work.
His biology filled her mind for the second, no, the third time. This was the guard who had been in the room with her while the others had waited outside, the one she had spent the most time with, even if she spent most of that time feeling sorry for herself. And the first time she had touched him ... it had been to hurt him. Out of all the ways to distract him, she had chosen pain.
She focused on the chip implanted in his head, resting between the dura mater of the brain and the skull. Had he been a member long, or had he been part of the hundred plus "new recruits?" People taken from their homes, violated with explosives, forced to fight and kill for an insane villain under threat of death.
Like her.
Like her! Oh god, they were like her! And she had ... she had already gotten two of them killed with self righteous glee, exulting in her own power. If she had just tried talking to them, tried seeing them as people instead of focusing on beating them down ...
She could have saved them. She could have saved herself. The four of them could have worked together to contact the heroes or hell, just walked out the front door! Bakuda wouldn't have even noticed she was gone until she was beyond her reach.
A real hero might have saved everyone.
A real hero would have tried.
Amy pulled her hand away from the boy, covered her eyes, and began to cry.
WWW
Vista didn't spend much time thinking about justice, despite her position. She didn't worry about the abstract. That was for other, smarter, higher people. How many years in prison did a murderer deserve? How long did a drug dealer have to be locked away before justice was served? She didn't know. She just did what she could to make the city a better place.
And that was mostly what it was in the end. Were people better off now than they were before? That was what they cared about, that was what was real. Justice sounded good, but when given a choice, people would choose prosperity every time.
But if that's the case, why am I here? What am I hoping to find when I know I won't be better off for knowing it?
She sat alone in front of a computer console. This was where it had all started, not too long ago on comms duty, deciding that the smartest thing she could do was to charge upstairs and solo a gang or two. She had blacked out for the most important part, but the system would have recorded it. She pulled up twelve different lobby cameras across three screens, and she pressed play.
There was always something uncanny about seeing herself on video that Vista had never gotten over, no matter how many times it had happened. And it happened all the time. Even outside of the countless public relations events and the community outreach programs, she couldn't go out on patrol without half a dozen pictures of herself ending up online. She always felt disconnected seeing herself, like she was looking at a puppet instead of at a real person.
Which was good, because otherwise watching herself die on screen would have stuck with her. She rewound the video to watch Oni Lee kill her a second time over, and she felt like she was watching low budget special effects instead of a personal, near-death experience. He cut off her head, walked off with it, and all she felt was ... nothing.
But that overwhelming apathy didn't extend to everyone else on screen. She saw Leaf freeze in shock as though she had just lost an old friend instead of a one-time enemy. She saw her get shot, shrug off the bullet wounds, and race to pry Vista's head back from the man who killed her. Vista felt the pain and desperation in her that she couldn't manage to feel in herself as Leaf put her head back on her shoulders and brought her back to life with what might have been a kiss.
Then Leaf collapsed into a projected chair, too exhausted to stand. There was something wholly vibrant about her person that ... that was just gone. It had cost Leaf to heal her, Vista realized, it had cost Leaf her strength when she had needed it the most. When Vista had seen her for the next time, for the last time, Leaf was still drained.
She weakened herself to save me, and when she needed my help I killed her for it.
The videos continued playing as Vista pushed herself to her feet and stumbled toward her room as she thought back on her actions under a newer, harsher light. She took a sudden turn and half dashed, half lurched into the bathroom and flung herself at the toilet just in time.
The taste was acrid and bitter as she threw up. She spat and wiped her nose and mouth with a length of toilet paper. Had she really sacrificed Leaf to save as many people as possible? When she reduced the equation down to simple arithmetic it made sense, but when she replaced Leaf with a total stranger, Vista felt like she would have done anything she could to save them.
She looked down at the pool of bile in the toilet bowl, and it seemed to mock her. This is what you really are on the inside. She shuddered in revulsion.
"I'm a hero," she whispered, as if saying it would make it true.
But those words had never felt like such a lie.
WWW
A/n So, writer's block is a thing. But like any block, it can be broken by bashing your head into it hard enough. Or, preferably, someone else's head, but that comes with its own mess of complications.
First off, I would like to thank my editor and beta reader Exiled Immortal for editing, beta reading, and preventing me from committing some truly embarrassing mistakes, including but not limiting to thinking that I could use Google Translate to make some ABB members speak bastardized Japanese. It turns out that the internet does not know everything.
I'd also like to thank my patrons, Exiled Immortal, Prime 2.0, Sphinxes, Kelsey Bull, Hubris Prime, Apofatix, Janember, and Yotam Bonneh for their support.