"Hey. We're nearly there." Mar's voice was quiet but insistent, indicating she had been trying to wake Jesse up for more than a little while.
"Mmm." She mewled, cracking one eye open to stare up at the inside of the car. She had to spend a few moments acclimating herself to her actual body before responding. Some people might assume that because her power was based on sleeping, that she might have developed something of an aptitude for waking up quickly - but it really didn't. In fact, it was quite the opposite. The longer she stayed awake, the more of a 'charge' she developed for her power, allowing her to create bigger, more complicated, more powerful projections. Naturally this meant that she tended to have odd sleeping hours. Stay up too long to charge up. Sleep too long to work. And at the end of the day, neither experience was particularly restful.
It was definitely fun at least.
"What day is it?" She asked, using her arms to pull herself up into a sitting position in the back seat where she had been laying down.
"Wednesday. Do you want me to stop and-" Marissa asked her, and she had to resist the urge to roll her eyes. Without Luke to look out for all of them, Mars had become aggravatingly 'helpful'. The fact that half of her reasons for doing so amounted to 'avoiding Krouse' was probably the only reason she tolerated it. She couldn't begrudge her friend the opportunity to avoid the idiot.
"No, it's fine. Just drive, I know you suck at it." She teased, covering up the irritation she was feeling. She and Mars were the only Travelers left as far as she was concerned. They could only rely on each other. She wasn't sure if they had a kill order on them yet, but she was sure she would eventually.
Which made it vital that they get the hell out of that city and find somewhere to hide until things calmed down.
"I- I'm really not comfortable with this." Noelle whined, her human upper half just high enough up that she was able to speak with them where they were standing on the catwalk above.
"I assure you Miss Meinhardt, this is a neccessary step on the path to curing you. You may perhaps have heard of a local Cape called Nexus?" Coild answered, hands clasped behind his back as two of his mercenaries wheeled a hospital bed into the empty concrete room Noelle was living in. On it was a young girl.
Jesse - Genesis, when she was working - watched curiously as they did so. Presently, she was inhabiting the body of a female warrior, tall and covered in armored plates. It wasn't her best work, but it felt sufficiently heroic, and it let her walk around the base without too much trouble.
"A bit." Noelle hedged in response to the question. She was suspicious, which was fair. She tried not to question the wisdom of their leaders plans - Krouse was an idiot but he was usually a competent idiot - but even she could see the dubious benefit in trusting a man who's entire theme was snakes
"Well you see, her power periodically changes into something it thinks she needs. In order to cure you, I will have to create enough leverage to make her 'need' to heal you." He explains.
Something about that explanation felt distinctly off to her, but she dared not speak up. They were hiding the loss of Luke and Oliver well enough, but they really needed a win soon or things were going to go poorly.
"But... she's a kid." Noelle tried again weakly.
Noelle was many things, but proud of her power, she was not. The tumorous collection of limbs and teeth that made up her lower half was something she studiously tried to pretend didn't exist, when she was even lucid enough to do so.
"And in order to leverage her without hurting her, I need this from you. I am doing my utmost to meet my end if our agreement." Coil explained soothing. His voice was, for a supervillain, surprisingly reassuring, provide a you werent looking at him while he spoke.
Noelle look from Coil, to Krouse, and then to Dinah, before hesitantly, looking down at herself with an expression of sorrow and shame.
"Okay." She finally offered in a small defeated voice.
"I'm not that bad at it." Marissa returned in a good natured huff. She had honestly been in higher spirits this last week than she had been in the year before. Not being attached to the eternal quest to fix Noelle, constantly living at the edge of society while Krouse planned their next caper had worn on the girl. She wasn't by nature violent or hateful, which made the fact that she had the most dangerous and offensive power among them particularly poignant.
"You are. I can't believe noone's pulled us over yet." Jesse continued, carefully using her upper body to rotate herself so her feet were in the ground, and then - steadying herself with one arm - grabbed for and snapped in her seatbelt. They drove on in companionable silence for a time until Marissa interjected.
"...what are we going to do when we get there?" She suddenly asked, her tone somewhat lost.
"I dunno. There are what - two capes in the place? Who names a town Gosnold anyway?" She answered.
"Jesse. I don't want to be a cape. Why can't we just, get a job like normal people?" Mars countered.
"We aren't citizens. We aren't even legally people here Mars." She chided the girl gently. She tried not to be smug about it. She didn't like Krouse much anymore, but she loved her powers. They were the best thing in her life. She could be anyone, do anything. All her dreams could be reality.
"Still..." She hesitated.
"We have to take care of stupid too." She pointed out, causing Mars to flinch.
The process was quick and - mostly - harmless. The girl was wheeled down to the ground, where she was carefully abutted up against Noelle for the split second it would take for her power to get a 'sample' of her. Then they all waited roughly five minutes while Noelle uncomfortably fidgeted, doing her utmost to not look down. Instead she spoke quietly with Krouse and Coil, who were standing on the catwalk above. The dubious task of capturing the resultant clone fell to her, because, among other things, she was in no actual danger from her much larger, more dangerous friend.
This wasn't her real body after all.
Eventually, with a horrendous squelching sound, a perfect duplicate of the girl was disgorged from one of Noelle's many, many orifices, and she darted forward, snatching her by an ankle and yanking her away as quickly as possible, causing the duplicate to squawk in displeasure.
"None of this is real you know! You'll never know if you wen't to sleep one night and never woke up!" The little girl howled at her the second they made eye contact. She twitched slightly at the accusation, but pressed onward, grabbing both of her arms and holding them behind her so that the mercenaries could administer the sedative. That had hit unexpectedly close to home, and it set alarm bells to ringing in her head that she couldn't quite think to act on. In order for this to work, their employer had told them, the duplicate would have to be... disposed of... in a particular way. To make the death believable.
"They only keep you so you'll kill for them! She'll be disgusted with you if you ever fix her!"
Of course, this meant that the unstable clone was free scream while she held it still. Which was unfortunate, because once she laid eyes on Noelle, she suddenly stopped moving.
"They're lying to you! They're all dead! Dead!"
At this, Noelle stopped talking and paused, her entire torso tilting downward.
"Noelle don't listen - you know how these things are." Krouse rushed to reassure her, leaning over the railing to get her attention. Coil was already stepping back, attempting to leave the room. Unfortunately, it was too late. A single flesh tendril slapped upward to catch the skinny villain, creating an audible crunch as it squeezed tight around him and causing him to gasp out in pain and panic before going limp. Like the head of a snake, Noelle's torso bent forward, putting it close enough to look down into the clones eyes, and the mercenaries to either side of her gulped, raising there weapons and being summarily dismembered by the grasping claws and teeth that made up Noelles lower half.
If she could sweat right now, she absolutely would. Noelle wasn't just dangerous, she was the most dangerous being she could easily think of besides an actual Endbringer. They had managed to corral in the past, to keep her somewhat contained until she could calm down - but that was when all of them were together. They hadn't even had to try since they lost Cody. Now... now the best options was going to be to run.
"Explain." Noelle hissed, in the sibilant tone that told Jesse that the actual Noelle had basically completely checked out.
Maybe she could salvage the situation? If she just snapped the things neck then -
She froze, finding all of the eyes on Noelle's lower body staring directly at her. Noelle swore she had no control over it most of the time. But sometimes...
She decided that now probably wasn't the moment to draw attention to herself. So instead of actually following through on her idle thought - she turned her power off-
-and woke up in a cold sweat in her wheelchair.
"Mars. Mars we have to go." She blurted out to the other girl sharing a room with her, reading a book under the only light in the room.
"Wha-" The redhead began to ask, only to be cut off by the sound of a hundred bestial mouths screaming in protest.
"She found out." Was all Jesse could say by way of explanation.
"Y-yeah. We should... get him some water, before we hit town." She offered weakly.
Jesse rolled her eyes at the concern being shown for their least liked teammate, but patiently allowed Mars to pull over to the side of the road, open up her wheelchair and help her slide into it. After which, they both moved to the trunk of the beat up hatchback they'd been driving, and with great trepidation on Marissa's part - popped it open.
Krouse - or Trickster in costume - was in the rear, his arms and legs ducktaped together. He was in his casual clothes, which they had managed to get him into while he was unconscious after being attacked by Noelle, and had a blindfold on. That was one upside to knowing everything about each others powers.
They knew how to stop eachother. And Trickster typically needed to be able to see to use his own.
"We have to go back! Noelle - Noelle's probably being hunted down right now!" The moron begged them, struggling desperately against his bindings.
"Krouse. They're going to kill us. I loved Noelle like a sister but what left that building wasn't her." Marissa begged in return. Jesse couldn't understand why. They both hated him. But she supposed Mars was just more compassionate than her. Too attached.
"Then just let me go! I don't need you!" Trickster yelled back, struggling even harder.
"Because you'd do something stupid and get yourself killed, or get Ollie killed." Jesse answered matter of factly. She didn't bother to explain which of those mattered more to her. It seemed fairly obvious to her.
"Fuck Oliver! That little fucking shit could have avoided all of this if he just came back when I fucking told him to! This is all his fault!" Trickster - definitely not Krouse, because the man in front of her had been consumed by his powers every bit as much as Noelle had been - raged. Jesse was honestly torn on the topic herself. On the one hand - yes, Oliver had absolutely sold them up the river. On the other, if she'd known she could get away from Krouse and Noelle, she'd probably have taken it. Hell, Nexus apparently could heal anything. She might be able to walk.
Opportunities lost she supposed. Maybe she would try and get in contact with Oliver later. When the heat had died down and killing her wasn't just legal, but a moral imperative to the rest of the caped community.
"Krouse- if we let you go, will you leave us out of it?" She asked before Mars could get into an argument with dumb dumb. The idiot stilled at her statement.
"Jesse, come on. I know thinks look bad but-" He tried. He always did that. He held them together with obligation. Until Oliver had left them, she'd have bought it to. But not anymore. Unexpectedly however, she wasn't the one that had to cut him off.
"No. Krouse, I'm out. I don't want this anymore. I just want a normal life. A house. A job. Some flowers. We aren't going home, and Noelle isn't getting cured. You can stay or you can go, just choose one and do it." She declared with more heat than Jesse could easily remember the timid girl ever actually demonstrating in public.
Krouse, for his part scowled at her, which was all the answer either of them needed really.
She hoped for his sake that he was smarter than usual by the time he made it back to the bay.
Or not.
Good riddance.