Bud: [Soul Engine, has been designated for:
[X] Miss Kim
"Bow to your opponent." Spoke the bored sounding older woman officiating her spar.
Willow did as she was asked, as did dozens of other people filling the wide room at varying intervals.
It was a fairly typical afternoon in the Dojo, and she was slowly beginning to hate that fact. She had passed an innumerable number of tests to join Accord's ambassadors. She had demonstrated competency in several areas of management, doggedly mastered all of the skills he prescribed to her, and done things she found deeply unpleasant to even contemplate - all so that she would be approved by him. All so that he would grant her powers, like he had promised. All so that she could be in control again.
It felt like a metaphor for her entire life. Work hard. Succeed. Then have it all taken away by a single final failure, amounting to nothing.
She hated it. She resented it.
But she struggled on, because frankly, she just didn't have it in her to quit.
"You may begin." The old woman called to her, causing her attention to snap to focus on her opponent.
Kim Park was like the physical representation of everything she hated about this place. In most ways, she was Willow's exact opposite. She had come from nothing. Had nothing. And then inexplicably had stumbled face first into everything she could possibly have wanted. Respect. Prestige. Even a certain amount of power, at least, in so far as anyone could be considered to have 'power' when in Nexus' general proximity.
Also the woman was an absolute demon when it came down to a physical confrontation. There was a certain violent desperation in all of her movements, controlled, directed, but still - desperate. Willow would have likened it to the obscene strength a Mother could show when their child was in danger, except that at least had obvious side effects after the fact.
Kim Park never dealt with any of that bullshit.
Something she demonstrated by lunging towards Willow with a force that would have been frankly off putting if Willow wasn't also entirely too aware of the fact that literally all the woman did was eat, sleep, and practice fighting.
However, since she was aware, and since her own preferred style of combat was Wing Chun - which was entirely designed to deal with aggressive attacks like this - she was more than prepared for the lunge.
Quick as could be, Willow left her arm slightly from it's position, and rotated it upward at the elbow, slapping away Kim's blinding fast punch with her wrist and then - instead of following up with a quick chop of her own - immediately backed up.
Which turned out to be the best choice she could have made as her opponent had immediately turned the momentum of her strike into upward motion that would have driven her knee into Willow's side with all the momentum and strength the smaller woman could manage.
A little known fact about training with Aspirant. The vast majority of the trainees on the grounds weren't here for sport. They were here because they had been victims, and refused to ever be such ever again. This, ofcourse, meant that most of them fought and acted like losing would put them immediately back into an Empire or ABB whorehouse.
The injuries they suffered training this way were both obvious, and educational. They would have probably hospitalized everyone present at this point, except that Aspirant both owned and was exceptionally free with the slips of paper Nexus was known to keep her healing power in for later use.
Thus, the Dojo functioned in a very 'survival of the fittest fashion'. These weren't tournament rules. There was no safety equipment. The rules were merely 'don't kill anyone'.
Did it result in a small army of disturbingly well trained and brutal combatants? Yes. Did it mean that the speed they learned and improved at was almost supernaturally fast? Also yes.
But it also meant that Willow knew exactly what having her ribs piercing a lung felt like, and she was not at all eager to experience the sensation again.
Regardless, having dodged the attack, Willow patiently observed her opponent as she skipped backwards to reset her stance and stay clear of Willow herself.
"You really should try a style with more kicking. You know we've been studying Capoeira for weeks because Aspirant thinks it suits you right?" Kim pointed out lightly, although Willow noted that her predatory smile and pointed search for easy openings to abuse never at any point ceased while she made conversation.
"Capoeira is impractical and inelegant. It's fancy dancing, and half the movements start or end in an ugly crouch." She returned, a bead of sweat trailing down her neck.
"So? Nexus said it would work, and Aspirant said he'd teach you." Kim replied. She said it like having the two's stamp of approval meant it must be true, and perhaps she was even correct. But there was another reason Willow couldn't afford to specialize in such a belligerent looking fighting style.
Her employer would never allow her to make use of it while she was wearing a personally crafted evening gown from him, which she had been guaranteed by Citrine would be the format her costume would take. That wasn't an option - it was a requirement for her service. This was the entire reason she had chosen to specialize in Wing Chun - it was almost entirely focused on the upper body. The problem, ofcourse, was that it also required she be able to react to enemy attacks faster than any given enemy could think to respond to her. It emphasized speed and control more than anything else, and she was finding that she was not suited to either aspect of the style - at least, not when interacting with the amazons that called this nightmare of a Dojo home.
The most annoying part was that she was actually very good at Capoeira. She had adapted to it like a fish to water - exactly as had been intimated to her.
Unfortunately, her more pressing reason for ignoring that particular talent wasn't something she could actually explain to Kim. Which was why she got pestered about it nearly daily. The short defacto leader of the local 'Ladies of War' as they were jokingly referred to by the castle staff, had practically stuck herself to Willow's side the day she showed up, and had incessantly mothered her the entire time.
Which was, again, very infuriating given her status as a nominally undercover agent.
"I can't. Can we just try to kill each other with our hands? Like normal? Please?" She begged, hoping to skip past the awkward conversation. She put the thought into action by accompanying her request with a swift step forward placing her just outside of her opponents effective reach.
There was a fancy asian sounding name for the concept, but she had never been able to fully remember it. All she knew was that everyone had an effective zone around themselves within which they could act upon others in a timely and effective manner - and responding to anything outside that range was almost invariably going to cause them to overextend.
"Fine. Are you coming on Patrol tonight?" Kim asked, immediately changing the subject.
She also shifted slightly forward, forcing Willow to move back in order to avoid that same zone of influence - and thus avoiding being slammed in the side of the head by Kim's knee.
Again.
"I- can't. I have a date." She replied automatically, using her preplanned cover for anytime she had to meet with Accord. It had worked out so far. Basic spycraft told and a general understanding of the women here told Willow that the people here were eminently uninterested in romance of any kind. She would call them militant about it, but they weren't. Most of them had just had more than enough men in their lives and were largely happy with not admitting more - much to the castle staff's chagrin.
It was a weird divide really. Most of the staff were men, and most of the fighters were women. Willow suspected that the only reason this hadn't caused issues was the mutual respect and fear both groups had for Nexus and to a lesser extent, Aspirant. It was an uneasy kind of coexistence. Not because either side had really done anything but just because of the circumstances behind them.
She hadn't been catcalled or heckaled since moving into the area though, so she supposed that was a plus.
"A date huh?" Kim mused absently, eyes briefly fogging over as she frowned slightly and pondered the statement.
Willow really, really didn't need the famously violent girl who had functionally adopted her to take an interest in that particular topic, so she bit the bullet and stepped into her reach, attempting to make an open palm strike against the side of her head.
Faster that she really thought was fair, the tiny asian woman snapped back to focus, jumped inside of Willow's extended reach, and elbowed her in the diaphragm so hard that she lifted an inch off the ground, stumbling backwards and gasping for air that just wouldn't seem to come.
Kim blinked in a slight daze at the results of her actions, before smiling sheepishly and apologizing.
"Sorry, sorry. I was surprised so I reacted too fast." She apologized while their referee meandered over at speed to check for broken ribs or any other pressing medical concerns she would need to call Aspirant for.
"Th-... that's… fine…" She wheezed out, already knowing the likely result of her actions before she had taken them.
It was just the price she paid to be effective at her job, which, in this case, was learning personalized martial arts from the Dojo then becoming a Super Villain and going to Boston.
...when had her life become so weird?
She let the thought rattle around in her head for a moment, doing her best not to glance around the Dojo at the other three participants present that also worked for her employer. They were all men, and while that wasn't inherently wrong or frowned upon, it wasn't uncommon for them to suffer a slightly greater than normal number of injuries by the end of any given day.
But, they were still healed, and otherwise treated like anybody else there to learn, so they made little issue of it. Willow didn't know their names, only recognizing them from their short briefing before being sent here to learn, but she did know that they were doing much better than her in their studies.
"Sooo…" Kim trailed off leadingly while she waited for Willow to catch her breath.
"When do we get to meet the lucky guy?" She asked innocently.
Willow was still puffing and wheezing at the time, but she did manage to get enough oxygen in her to respond to the question with a lengthy, put upon, groan.
Meeting with Accord was always unsettling. It wasn't just that she had personally witnessed him order the deaths of several people at this point - likely intentionally, as an object lesson in why loyalty was always the correct choice - it was that it took literally hours to prepare for it. Her Boss, as good as he was at pretty much everything else, was known to punish, brutalize, or execute people for the most trifling of slip ups.
Thus, she had to spend hours managing her personal appearance in order to appear before him. She had a personally chosen dress from the man, specific combinations of makeup that she had to apply, check, clean, and then reapply until it was practically seamless on her. She had to wear a very expensive custom bra in order to guarantee there would be no bra lines to marr the aforementioned dress.
Every hair had to be perfectly in place, every eyelash set, every detail, managed.
By the time Willow was done, she had transformed herself from a moderately attractive woman into someone who looked like she had just walked straight off the front page of a magazine. It was impractical. It was a lot of work. It would be impossible to maintain under any kind of strain or exertion.
But it was what would please Accord, so this was what she went with.
At length, she finished preparing herself - stringently brushing her flat ironed hair into a mid length bob and slipping into the pale grey evening gown that was designated for her use - and left her home, managing to step out onto the street at exactly seven pm, exactly as one of Accord's minions pulled up to her rented apartment in a normal looking car that probably wasn't allowed within two hundred feet of the man himself for fear he would plot to throw it into the sun.
It took precisely thirty minutes to arrive at the small out of the way office Accord was using to coordinate his business in the city, and Willow was entirely unsurprised to find four identical vehicles pulling up outside the building at the same time as her own - each one disgorging another of the candidates for recruitment that Accord had hand picked to be here today.
None of them bothered to speak to each other as they entered the building. None of them felt the need to. They all knew why they were here. They were all dressed for the occasion.
And they all knew the cost of failure.
There was a brief period of waiting as they clustered together in the small waiting room between the rest of the building and Accord's office. In most cases, this room would be just that - a waiting room. In Accord's case, it was closer to an air lock. A way to filter what came into, and out of, his field of view by his trusted lieutenant.
Said lieutenant - Citrine - entered the room shortly after they had, and had spent exactly ten minutes carefully examining each of them for anything that would displease the man behind the door.
It was nerve wracking. Not just because of the very real chance of grievous bodily harm or death should she not measure up - although experience told her that, just like always, she would eventually fail in that - but because if this meeting went well, then she would be done with this city and its people. She would vanish from the Dojo, never to see or contact Kim ever again. She would never greet the gate guard - whose name she didn't know - ever again.
It was a weirdly somber thought to have, given how excited she had originally been to be done with the place. Even now, she didn't really want to be here, getting her bones shattered multiple times a day, getting pestered by the other girls to come running with them, being constantly treated like some dreg of society that needed help and companionship.
And yet she felt she would miss all of that, all the same.
Only now, she was certain there was no going back. Not when she was this close.
So, once Citrine finished her examination and waved them towards the door, she hardened her heart - and filed in with the others.
"Good evening, everyone. I have very little time, so this will merely be a report followed by the granting of your respective powers. A full determination of what those powers are, as well as a more proper celebration of your induction into my organization will take place upon our successful return to Boston." Accord spoke firmly from his seat in the immaculately clean and polished room. His hands were tented together atop his desk, and his mask, a wooden thing that articulated with his facial expression somehow, was set in a placid neutral state.
He paused for exactly five seconds after he finished speaking, as though awaiting any questions or interjections, then allowed his mask to shift into a very slight smile when no one spoke or moved during that time. With an orchestrated casualness, he reached beneath his desk and withdrew a large black suitcase, depositing it gently on the polished wood of the desk, opening it, and turning it to face all five of them. Inside, were exactly five glowing vials of some indescribable liquid, the colors and hues of the substance shifting and moving in a hypnotic almost preternatural fashion.
Predictably, not one of them changed in demeanor or focus, keeping their eyes focused on Accord and Accord only.
"Very good. Mister Billington. Describe your progress, achievements, and thoughts on your fellow candidates." Accord ordered, allowing the suitcase to remain open and facing them in an almost taunting manner.
"Yes, sir. I've been learning a modified form of Silat, and have been acquitted as highly competent by my peers. I successfully win three in every five spars I participate in. I judge myself to be of average competence compared to the other four present, and have detected no obvious intent to betray your or turn coat in any of the others." The man to the far left of the line explained succinctly.
Willow… started to sweat, at that. She wasn't incompetent, but because she had been almost exclusively sparring with Kim, she almost never won. She could only hope her choice of sparring partner would work in her favour while making this report.
Being the second last in the line - consisting of three men and two women, including herself and one larger woman she hadn't seen in the Dojo at all - all three men went before her, allowing her ample time to structure her own forthcoming response before she had to give it.
Or… so she would have hoped. The last man in the line before her, a sickly pale tall blond man, gestured rudely at her as his turn came.
"Sir. I have been learning a combination of LINE and Aikido, personally vetted by Aspirant when he has the time to assist. I judge myself the most competent among us in our assigned task, inversely proportional to this one, who demonstrably fails in most spars and is uncommonly chummy with the leader of the bitches there." He said with a relaxed and proud demeanour. Accord stared at him for a full ten seconds before turning to Willow, who was… unsure if she should ask for permission to speak or raise her hand or… anything really.
When the silence stretched for slightly longer than was comfortable, she found herself without a choice in the matter, and - as she had many times before - simply bit the bullet and spoke. Sort of.
"Permission to respond, sir?" She asked delicately.
"You may." Accord allowed, tension in his shoulders relaxing slightly at the request.
She took that to mean she had done something right, then forged onward.
"I rate my competence as roughly average in Wing Chun - solidly in the middle of the rest of the group. The leader of the locals chose to attach herself to me, and I have since been unable to spar with anyone else. As she is both the leader of the group, and it's most competent fighter, I believe it an inappropriate comparison to judge my competence based on how I perform against a superior opponent." She explained in as measured a tone and cadence as she could manage while literally arguing for her life.
"You run around with them after hours beating guys up for-" the pale man argued pointedly, only to be interrupted.
By a bullet, that landed perfectly between his eyes, fired from a gun that Accord had drawn from within his desk.
"Do not speak out of turn. Chummy, despite what the oxford dictionary might say on the topic, is not a word I would like to hear used in regular conversation." Accord said softly, completely ignoring the sound of the doors opening, and the two men that rapidly dragged the corpse out of the office as he set the weapon back down on the desk.
"A question. Did anyone else make note of Miss Adam's choice of companion?" He asked in a conversational tone, turning back to the start of the line.
"I made note of it, sir. I did not deem it detrimental to our assigned task." The first man stated succinctly.
"I would like to second the aforementioned statement, sir." The next man agreed quickly.
"I see. Would you characterize those interactions as traitorous in nature?" Accord asked again.
"In truth, sir, I-" The first man began but was cut off.
"Please answer with either 'yes' or 'no', only." Accord ordered.
At this point, every muscle in Willow's body was tense, and it was all she could do to stave off the violent shaking she feared she would seal her fate if revealed. She had done nothing wrong! Surely just interacting with the wrong people couldn't be enough to put her to death, could it? Surely this too, wouldn't just be another 'almost succeeded' in the massive list of her achievements?
She was saved from ever having to find out, for good or ill, but a soft tapping at the window behind Accord.
It was to be noted that this window faced the bay. There was no feasible way for a person to reach it, and no real way for an attacker situated on another building to see into it. There was always the concern that a Cape might achieve that somehow, but she assumed that if Accord allowed it, that he had a plan for such things.
What was lightly tapping at the window however, was not a cape. Or even really a human.
What was tapping at the window, was a pigeon, with the most bizarre color pattern she had ever seen. It looked like it was wearing a tiny tuxedo
"Shit." Muttered the man to her left, swiftly drawing Accord's attention and ire.
"Do not-" He began to rapidly demand, stretching his hand back towards the gun on his desk.
Only he didn't quite manage to make it, before the window exploded inward, showering almost everyone present with a hurricane of glass shards and cutting winds.
Willow, at that moment, found herself at a crossroads. She both didn't want to die, and was now thoroughly unwilling to trust that she wouldn't simply because she hadn't technically failed at anything. So she did something exceptionally stupid. She bolted forward, slammed the lid of the suitcase in front of her shut, and then turned to sprint out the door with it under one arm.
It didn't occur to her until much later that the storm of glass had almost gone completely around her, distracting her fellows long enough for her to make said escape.
When she exploded into the waiting room, she was expecting lots of things. Men with guns pointed at her. Citrine with her power already active. Possibly even some hitherto unknown cape in Accord's employ that would catch and kill her on the spot.
What she got was-
"Willow! This way!" Kim cheered at her, completely ignoring a bloodied hole in her shoulder as she waved at her from atop the unconscious - and brutalized - bodies of two fo Accords men.
"What- why!?" She practically screamed at the woman, even as she followed her back up the long hallway.
"Pigeons." Was her only answer. Willow was sure the woman thought that was an adequate response, but at the moment she wasn't feeling particularly accommodating so she couldn't help but demand an elaboration.
"The what?!" She screeched as the made it to a stairwell full of more of the Dojo's women, all clad in whatever protective gear they could apparently scrounge up.
"The- you know the Pigeons are like, hella smart right? I train with Jeeves all the time and he's like, way more dangerous than-" Kim started to explain, making a swift hand gesture at the women lining the stairwell that got them all moving back down in the opposite direction they had come.
"The fucking birds have powers? All of them!?" She yelled in dismay as the sound of gunfire began to roar through the building.
"Probably. I think they keep it a secret. They're like the CIA, but Pigeons." Kim answered her with a snicker as they barrelled forward.
Willow tried very hard not to be disturbed by this fact.
She didn't succeed, but she tried.
"Whatever. Fine. How much do you know about -" She started to ask uncomfortably, not sure how to justify any of this to her - yes she should probably admit it now - friend.
"Enough. What's in the suitcase?" She asked curiously.
"Super Power Sauce." She responded instantly.
"Cool. We'll give it to Nexus when we get back." Was her lackadaisical response.
"What? No! It's mi-" She started to say then stopped and skidded to a halt as they turned a corner and ran almost directly into the edge of an expanding field of orange that tinted everything on the other side of it the same color.
Willow managed to stop in time. Kim, did not - and thus tumbled blithely forward into the zone as she attempted to stop before hitting it.
The response was almost instantaneous, as every visible part of her clothing and skin began to viscerally hiss and pop, bubbling in places like cheese left in the oven too long. Willow was immediately horrified by this, but didn't get more than a second to even process what she was seeing beyond the sudden screaming of her companion because the culprit behind it stepped into view nearby.
"Please return the briefcase. I can allow these women to survive - there is really no use angering Nexus by killing them - but I cannot allow you to steal that." Citrine said in a diplomatic but annoyed tone. Willow considered that statement for what it was, and judged it likely to be true. The thing was, she was now faced with a choice.
Powers, or Friendship.
As early as a month ago she would have chosen the former without a thought.
Now she was less sure.
Glancing at Kim again, she determined that she wasn't in immediate danger of death, even if she was clearly incapacitated by the sudden proccess of having all of her skin melt off.
Well, she supposed she had always been sort of greedy. To her, it looked an awful lot like everything besides Citrine in that hallways was starting to melt. And if that was the case...
Willow rapidly popped the lid of the suitcase, ignoring Citrines demands that she not, then withdrew one of the colored vials and kicked the rest forward - into the yellowish orange shaker effect that was melting everything. The results, she assumed, would be both obvious and instant as Citrine opted not to destroy the precious substance.
What Willow hadn't expected was for Kim's screams of agony to peak, and then for Citrine to just… fall over.
It didn't last long, and she doubted she would get a better chance than this, so as both fallen women were beginning to stir on the ground… she popped the lid on the container in her hand, and downed it in one smooth motion.
How does one describe having their consciousness unravel in two directions at once? Were powers supposed to hurt this much when you got them? Or was she just dying? She went temporarily blind, deaf, and dumb, and when she returned to consciousness, she felt… different.
Also, the hallway they were all in was glowing furiously, which… was concerning. Glowing was rarely good when enemy capes were involved. Assuming the glow was coming from an enemy anyway. When she finally opened her eyes and pushed herself upright, it was to find Kim on the ground nearby, kneeling but conscious, and her eyes glowing a faint golden light.
"Kim?" She whispered, then jerked backwards as a golden pulse expanded from her friend, washing over her and then returning to its point of origin, like a visible example of echolocation at work.
"Owe." She whined, fumbling in a pouch at her side for a minute before withdrawing a paper tag and ripping it. The resultant glow rapidly returned the color and… skin… to her face.
Willow tried for a moment to understand what she was seeing until it occurred to her that Kim must have been carrying the same healing tags that were regularly used in the Dojo. Then she grinned. She could feel her own power dimly in the back of her head, just asking to be used on the still disoriented Citrine.
So thinking, she directed her attention towards the yellow clad woman, and 'activated' her new power.
What she got wasn't what she was expecting. Oh, she hit the woman, but it was with a jet of water that seemed to come from nowhere, pushing her back slightly but not doing much more than distracting and drenching her.
Ah. She finally had a power, and it sucked. That was… unfortunately in character for her.
She was just about to give up and accept death when Kim sprinted forward towards Citrine, who responded by… expanding another of her Shaker fields around herself. Willow expected this to be the end. There was really no way for a normal person to defeat a cape. It just wasn't done.
Which was, she figured in retrospect, assuming Kim wasn't a cape.
"Gemstone Shattering Defense!" The little asian woman yelled, before doing something… bizarrely flamboyant looking… with her arms. Again, there was another pulse of glowing golden energy from her, and the orange field expanding from Citrine… well for lack of a better word, it shattered. Like a pane of glass laying across the air. It cracked, crunched, and then vanished.
Willow chose not to question the bizarre declaration that had preceded this, and instead chose to capitalize on it, focusing on drawing back the water she had launched at Citrine, and being pleasantly surprised when it dragged the woman bodily towards her.
She figured if she left her, she would eventually be sucked into the… hole… that was firing the water at her, even though it was obviously much too small for her to fit through, but that wasn't really Willow's intent in the first place.
Instead, when the disoriented woman got close enough, she punched her in the head as hard and fast as she could.
Which was, all things being equal, quite hard.
The enemy cape hit the ground like a sack of bricks, and she and Kim stared at each other for only the briefest of seconds.
They had an entire conversation in those silent moments.
'You have powers!'
'So do you!'
''We have powers!''
'Do you-'
'Should we-'
'We should probably talk about this later.'
'Right. Totally.'
And so it went. They managed to largely escape unmolested after that, and Willow didn't begrudge Kim for handing the remaining four vials of super power granting fluid off to another woman for safe keeping. Some time later, they were both drenched in water, sweat, and blood, and standing with all the other Dojo women in the courtyard, ignoring the curious looks from the dock worker staff who were still up at this hour.
"So… thanks." She offered lamely when neither she nor Kim spoke right away.
"Don't worry about it. It's what we're here for." She said in a matter of fact way that was slightly alien to Willow in how staunch the conviction behind it was.
"Still- I mean I know I- you know. Thanks." She tried again, lamely. She was usually much more eloquent than this, but she was now unemployed and, presumably, an enemy of a well known crime lord.
She wasn't really looking forward to going back to her apartment tonight, if she even dared.
"Mm. Sooo…" Kim hummed, before stretching her arms upwards. Willow immediately tensed. This was the 'I'm about to ask you something uncomfortable' So. She was very used to it at this point.
"Guess you got dumped?" She asked, surprising her with how non invasive the question was.
"I guess so?" she responded slowly, confusion evident on her face.
"So you're single now then?" Kim continued.
Willow stared at her. Just… stared at her.
"...yes?" She continued, still very much confused.
"Do you want to be?" She asked innocently.
Willow opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Closed it. She considered the unnatural interest Kim had shown in her for as long as she had known the other woman. She reoriented her perception on the topic to include romantic interest, and suddenly, it was a lot less suspicious and annoying.
It was just like the adult version of pulling someone's hair because you liked them.
"This explains so much." She found herself saying aloud, much to her own chagrin.
"Ah. Sorry. Super inappropriate. I know a lot happened and all. Just forget I even-" Kim began to babble uncomfortably, turning red and stepping away.
"I'm not sure leaving the grounds for a date would be a good idea for me right now." She replied, evading answering directly for a second.
"They built a theatre in the castle like, last week. Bet I could get us in." Kim responded cheekily, though still blushing.
She looked down at herself. She had no spare clothes, since there was no way she was going back to her apartment, her dress was torn and bloody, her hair was a mess, and her makeup had run down her face in thick rivulets that could not have been appealing to look at.
"Only if you have a spare change of clothes for me. This is just plain inappropriate." She answered before she could fully process what she had agreed to.
She was about to take it back, or clarify that she wasn't agreeing to anything, but then she saw Kim's face, smiling so widely it was almost uncanny.
And she just couldn't bring herself to do so.