Leaf
Chapter Twenty-Two
AAAAHHH! AAAHH! AAH! AAH! AAH!
Leaf looked up at her from the kitchen table. "You okay in there?"
Vista nodded and continued screaming internally. Leaf. Leaf was here, in her kitchen, eating her breakfast, and Vista was ... Vista was still in her pajamas. Pajamas with cartoon dinosaurs.
She darted into her bedroom and slammed the door.
"Okay," Leaf called after her. "You, uh ... you ... Imma go check out your pantry, 'kay?"
Why do I even still have these? she thought, struggling out of her nightwear. She was throwing them out today. No, she was burning them, so there would be no trace they ever existed.
What to wear, what to wear, what to wear? Something professional, right? But the only thing she ever wore in professional settings was her costume. Wait, Leaf wasn't in costume. She was wearing a spontaneous mix of ill-fitting bits and pieces without a mask, instead of a spontaneous mix with a mask. Was that important? Cross that, of course it was important, but what did it mean?
She looked down at herself. What she should be worried about was Leaf wandering in here while she was changing. She had already broken into her house, and if she walked in while Vista was still in her undies she might die of shame—which wouldn't do her any good because Leaf could raise the dead.
She pulled on a pair of jeans; a casual look was likely best, and, and a light blue blouse? It matched, so yes. Should she do something with her hair? Oh, God, she had bedhead! It was all matted on one side and, and ... she didn't have time to do anything more than run her fingers through it. If she grew it out a bit she might be able to tie it in a bun or something, but, but there wasn't time for that! Leaf was out there, waiting for her to ...
To do what? What was she even doing here? That was what she should be worrying about. Vista had spent at least an hour with Tattletale during their team up, so that would explain how the Undersiders would know where she lived, but that didn't explain what Leaf wanted. Vista owed her her life, but she had also tried to kill her, so what was she here for? A favor, or revenge?
She opened the door and stiffly walked back into the kitchen where Leaf was eating Frosted Mini Wheats from the box. "I'm sorry for keeping you waiting," she said. "I wasn't expecting company." Vista swallowed. "May I offer you some tea?"
Was that right? It sounded polite—it seemed professional in her head, but out loud it just sounded dumb.
Leaf put the box on the counter and smiled at her, and Vista realized just how ordinary she looked. When she had joined the Wards, Vista had been given lessons on how to present herself so that people would know she could handle herself. Leaf didn't have any of that. She remembered her trailing a cloud of luminescent smoke that day, her eyes shining like diamonds in the morning sun, but now there was none of that. Vista might have passed her a dozen times on patrol, and never looked at her twice.
Leaf stuck her fingers in her mouth, pulled her lips apart, and stuck out her tongue. "Blegh!"
Vista blinked.
"Nothin'?" Leaf winced. "Oh, storms, this is worse than I thought."
"What is?"
She took a deep breath, then looked her in the eye. "I got bad news. You died."
Vista nodded slowly. "Yes? I know." Which felt weird to say, but, yeah.
"And ... you're still dead."
She blinked. "What?"
"I got your bits and pieces to keep movin' around," she explained, "but that's gonna wear off soon. And when it does ..." She bit her lip. "You're gonna start eating people."
What? What? She was a ... she was a ... "Is this a joke?"
Leaf looked her in the eye, her expression completely serious. "Yes." Then started sniggering. Sniggering. Like a five-year-old at a fart joke.
"I don't believe you. I don't believe you! You come over here to ... to tell me I'm a ... Argh!" She pointed a finger at her. "You're worse than Clockblocker!"
Leaf stopped. "Who?"
"Clockblocker?" she repeated. "He's my teammate? His costume has a lot of clocks on it?"
She laughed out loud. "You got a teammate named Clockblocker?"
Of course she would get a kick out of that. "I can't believe you saved the world. That is so messed up."
She laughed. "I know, right? It's crazy! So how've you been? I meant to drop by earlier, but I've been busy."
Busy. Leaf had been sighted a few times according to PHO (the least reliable news source if Vista's own discussion page was anything to go by), but her most recent appearance had been last Monday with Panacea. She had shown up out of nowhere to help heal Bakuda's victims, and Panacea's security detail had seemed too surprised to even try to arrest her. Afterwards there had been some speculation about whether or not Leaf was going to turn hero, but ...
"Clean your own damn house."
But that didn't seem likely.
"Drop by?" Vista repeated. "Drop by to do what? Raid my kitchen?"
"Yup," she said, plucking an apple from a basket.
"Right. Oh, don't eat those, they're—"
Crunch.
"... fake."
Leaf stared at her, with her face filled with shock and betrayal and her mouth full of pulped wood, which she tried, through sheer force of will, to chew. Then she ran over to the sink to spit it all out. "Why'd'you got fake food in here? What's even the point?"
"My mom thinks they look nice."
"Oh yeah, sure, good enough to eat. Starvin' boobytrapped snacks in this place. Could've warned me."
"Sorry," Vista said. Then she started to laugh. Maybe she shouldn't have, but after spending every morning and night thinking about Leaf, what she might do next, what Vista could say to her next time they met, she realized something about the girl she had for so long dreamed of and dreaded. She was a dork.
Leaf started laughing too, and soon they were laughing together. "This is all crazy, you know that?"
"Crazy as a bag o' minks."
"But seriously, are there any side effects to, uh, what you did to me? And don't make any zombie jokes. They're not funny."
She shrugged. "Beats me. Wyndle says there ain't, but I don't think he knows as much as he says he does. Meet any gods?"
"What?" Who was Wyndle?
"Gods. You know, someone to carry you off to the Tranquiline Halls, or wherever dead folks go 'round here."
Tranquiline Halls? "I had a weird dream about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but that was it."
Leaf perked up at that.
"So, no, nothing important." At least, it better not be. If an internet meme turned out to be the one true faith, she really would go crazy. "Hey, can I ask you something? And can you be serious for two minutes?"
She shrugged. "I can try."
One question. One question that had bothered her ever since she had found out that she had died. "Why?"
She nodded slowly. "Ah. That one."
""Yeah. That one."
She walked over to the wall and looked at a picture hanging there. Vista with her mother, both all dressed up with forced smiles. It wasn't for the wall or even for the photo album, it was to show her father that her mother was winning their divorce. That her half of the family made a whole instead of ... instead of a hole.
Not that Leaf could see any of that. To her, it was just two people smiling for a camera. "Your mom seems nice."
Vista didn't respond.
"You ever see someone die before?"
She nodded. Not often, but ... enough.
"You ever forget seein' someone die?"
She shook her head. "Is that it? Is it that ... simple?"
Leaf shrugged. "Ain't nothin' wrong with simple. Someone's gotta care. Otherwise ..." She shrugged again.
"Then why are you a villain?"
She blinked in confusion. "'Cause it's fun. Why're you a hero?"
"I became a hero because ..." Why? It seemed so long ago when she first joined the Wardes. She wished she could say she had some heroic motivation back when she was ten years old, but the truth was ... "Because I thought it would be fun."
"Is it?"
Vista thought about everything she had seen, everything she had done, and shook her head. "No, but it lets me make a difference. And ... like you said, someone has to care." Maybe she had ended up finding her heroic motivation along the way. But ... a real hero wouldn't have done what she did. "I'm sorry I tried to kill you." God, that sounded trite. "I owe you one." That was even worse.
Leaf shrugged. "Well, I stole your breakfast, so I'd say we're even."
Vista stared at her. "But we're not."
"We're close enough, at least." She gave Vista a vaguely annoyed look. "Hey, I can't keep track of every time someone tries to kill me. I ain't got enough fingers. If you want to, go ahead, but leave me out of your justice fetish."
Vista gawked. "My justice fetish? Hey, wanting to make amends for my mistakes is not a—"
"Justice fetish!" she called out in a singsong voice.
"Say 'justice fetish' one more time, and I swear I'll—"
"Justice—"
Vista threw a fake apple at her.
She dodged it easily, spinning on her heel with a dancer's grace. "F-e-t-i-s-h."
She threw a second apple to the side, then bent the space between them so it hit Leaf right in the face. "Ha!"
"Ow! First you try to kill me, now this?" An expression of persecuted melodrama spread across her face. "What happened to your amends?"
"Oh, so now you bring it up, when it's convenient?"
She nodded. "Yup."
Vista shot her a dirty look. "You are such a villain!"
Leaf held up her hands triumphantly. "Finally! You get it!"
Vista gave her a flat look. "Is that what this is all about? All this ... nonsense? You are just impossible, you know that?"
She nodded. "Yup. 'Sides, I had to make sure you weren't dense." She leaned in close and lowered her voice. "I got a message for you."
WWW
Tattletale checked her phone for the third time that hour. No message from the boss, and they still had five minutes before midnight.
"So," Regent said, leaning against a brick wall. "Who do you think is going to show?"
They were in a dark alley, all dressed up and ready to go. A rooftop might have been more dramatic, but this was the sort of neighborhood where people got nosy about things like giant dogs prowling around above them.
"I'll give the Travelers a soft maybe," Tattletale said. They were new and cautious. They wouldn't just look a gift horse in the mouth, they'd hand it over to a horse expert for inspection, then look the inspector in the mouth. Would they check out the site? Sure. Would they actually go in? Only if they were desperate.
"Skidmark's little garage band, sure, I think so." Maybe not on time, and maybe not well, but they'd show. "The only one I'm certain of is Coil."
Though knowing Coil, he had a fifty-fifty chance of attacking a completely different target just to be predictably unpredictable, but he'd be on time to the second.
"Who's that?" Leaf asked.
"Mysterious mastermind in a gimp suit," Regent said. "What about the heroes?"
The heroes. It all depended on them. The different villain teams would weaken the Empire Eighty-Eight and steal their resources, but only the heroes would take their capes off the streets.
Fortunately, the heroes were even more predictable than Coil.
"They'll argue about it," Tattletale said. "A lot. They'll probably say something like ..."
WWW
"This is obviously a trap," Battery said as the heroes were gathered around a meeting table. "And a set up."
"A trap up, if you will," Assault added.
"We know it's a set up," Director Piggot said. "But is it for us, or for the Empire?"
"Miss Militia?" Armsmaster said. "You know them better than any of us."
Miss Militia hesitated. "Leaf is honest about the big things, and mischievous about little things. I'd say this would qualify as something big if she were working alone, but she's not. It mostly comes down to Tattletale. She's the brains of their organization, and she's as unpredictable as she is brilliant."
WWW
Regent snorted. "She would not say that."
Tattletale laughed. "You're right. She doesn't know me that well."
"Right," Regent said. "That's what's off about your Miss Militia impression."
"But seriously," Grue said. "Can we count on them? And just give me a straight answer. You don't need to act it out."
"Oh come on," Leaf protested. "It was just getting good!"
Grue let out a sigh and muttered something under his breath. "Okay, fine."
Tattletale grinned. "Then they'd say ..."
WWW
"I will not allow us to be made pawns in someone else's game," Armsmaster said, standing up from the table. "Once their fight is over, we'll strike. If Hookwolf is incapacitated, the Empire's forces will be down one of their strongest fighters, and if the Undersiders lose they will be down most of their firepower as well as their transportation. Either way, we surround the site and take them in. All of them."
WWW
"Wait, us too?" Leaf asked. "What for?"
"Haven't you been paying attention?" Regent asked, twirling his scepter. "We're dangerous criminals."
"Downright dastardly," Tattletale agreed.
"But didn't we help them with those ABB people?"
Grue snorted. "You can't expect goodwill to count for anything with the heroes unless they're offering you a plea deal. But if anything, they helped us with those guys."
"Hence the dangerous criminals thing," Regent added. "Especially if they think we took down Bakuda through skill and planning instead of, you know, dumb luck."
Leaf let out a laugh. "Would they really believe that?"
Regent shrugged. "Sure. They're a paranoid lot. When something happens, no matter how ridiculous, no matter how convoluted, just say, 'All according to plan,' and they'll believe you."
"Really? I'll have to use that sometime."
"Some of that actually was according to plan," Tattletale insisted. "Just because you were playing with your scepter during the planning section doesn't mean we made it up as we went along."
"See?" he said to Leaf. "If you were a hero, you'd believe that."
"Weird."
Tattletale shook her head. "But yeah. We might not be public enemy number one, but we're fair game. If they see an opportunity to take us in without embarrassing themselves, they'll take us in."
The fact that Leaf had visited Vista in her home helped with that. Had Leaf meant it as a threat? No. Had Vista taken it as one? No. But the PRT? They took everything as a threat. That made them easy to manipulate.
"Huh," Leaf said. "Good thing we won't be nowhere near them."
Tattletale laughed. "I know, right?" They were at least half an hour away from where Hookwolf expected them to be, and three other gangs and the heroes were going to be dividing their attention. Maybe they didn't have the most lucrative target on the list, but they weren't likely to face a single cape.
Maybe she was just being overly cautious, but she had seen how badly a simple plan could go for them. She could handle a boring night now and then.
Grue checked his phone. "It's time," he said. "Let's go."
WWW
A/n And that's the end of the chapter. There were some pretty good ideas for how Rachel could beat Hookwolf, and I think my favorite was for her dogs to hold swords in their mouths like that one boss from Dark Souls. It's kind of disappointing in a way, but the Undersiders just doing crime in a completely different section of the city seemed like the practical, if boring, solution.
I'd like to thank Eschwarz and HanChenYou for editing this chapter and for being the first people to read it. And as always, a shout out to my Patrons Exiled, Prime 2.0, Sphinxes, Hubris Prime, Janember, Yotam Bonneh, Lord of Edges, LordXamon, Victoria Carey, Kurkistan, Christopher Harris, Luminant, Jan, Jamie Hayes, and Ian.