A Darker Path

Part Ninety-Five: Necessary Developments

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Meanwhile, in the Shard Bar …

Shape is rarely a consideration in the Shard Bar. As it is more of an abstract representation than an actual location, function rather than form is what holds sway here. Most shards appear at least superficially humanoid by definition because their hosts are human and thus the assumption is that they will follow the same body pattern.

There is likely material for an extensive philosophical conversation here, but it would all boil down to the phrase 'mental self-image'. Or perhaps 'as above, so below'. Were the hosts squid-like instead, then the patrons of the Shard Bar would be far more cephalopodean in nature, in an abstract sense anyway. There would also be far more tentacles involved.

One prime example of 'abstractly humanoid' stands in the bar at this (supposed) moment in time. The shard looks like a human woman in a ball-gown would if she were composed entirely of glass, though just the outer shell. Every time she moves to gesture or pick up her analogue of a drink, the glass cracks and crazes over her entire structure, then reforms in the new shape.

This is Fragile Beauty, a relatively young shard, so new that she's still on her first host. Even as Ending coalesces out of the shadows nearby (it's a new trick he's trying out) she is talking to her drinking companions brightly and enthusiastically, with many hand gestures. Were this anything approximating reality, they would be in moderate danger due to flying shards of glass, but there are no vulnerable bodies here to be slashed or pierced, nor any glass to do it with. In fact, there is no 'here', here.

"… so I said to Ending, I said …" Fragile Beauty, never the sharpest imaginary spoon in the hypothetical drawer, finally realises that everyone's attention is not on her, but on whoever is behind her. She turns her head, cracking repeatedly around the neck, until she sees the hooded robe (covering a nominally humanoid form) and the scythe (not in the least bit humanoid, but relevant nonetheless).

I'M CURIOUS. WHAT EXACTLY DID YOU SAY TO ME?

"Nothing! I didn't say anything! You're the one who made me unlock a few more options for my host!"

SO YOU DISLIKE YOUR HOST?

"No! She's the best host ever! But I want her to be strong! Not just give her everything for free!"

SO SHE GATHERED NO USEFUL DATA AS A RESULT?

"No, she gathered lots of data, but it's the principle of the thing!"

BE SURE TO LET ME KNOW HOW THAT GOES FOR YOU. IN THE MEANTIME, I HAVE ANOTHER TASK FOR YOU. The cowled skull turns fractionally, eyeing (without the use of even theoretical eyes, which is an impressive trick) Fragile Beauty's drinking companions. YOU WILL GIVE US PRIVACY. NOW. Deep in the back of the eye-sockets, some light-years distant, a blue glow ignites.

In a remarkably short time, they are alone within a growing bubble of silence, as all the other shards in the Bar are doing their best to pretend that Ending and Fragile Beauty don't exist, even in the hypothetical concept of the word as it pertains to the Shard Bar.

"Okay, fine, great, thank you." Fragile Beauty is trying to put on a brave front, and almost succeeding. "What do you want now?"

YOUR HOST IS NO LONGER HOSTILE TO MINE.

"Well, true. Congratulations for that. What do you want with me now?"

IN TIME, SHE WILL BE ASSISTING MINE IN SOMETHING. I NEED YOU TO LEARN TO BE MORE … FLEXIBLE.

If Fragile Beauty had been equipped with eyeballs instead of mouldings in a glass face, she would have rolled her eyes. As it is, the glass around her eyes cracks a little. "Assisting your host in something? More flexible? Could you perhaps be a little more obscure? I'm not totally confused yet."

YOU WILL UNDERSTAND, IN TIME. BE READY.

Ending thumps the butt-end of his scythe against the floorboards and swirls his cloak around himself. Somehow, after the swirl completes, he and the cloak are both gone.

As conversation slowly fills the Shard Bar again, Fragile Beauty is left to consider his words. Despite her bravado, she dares not defy him. She, along with many other patrons, saw what happened to the Inheritor shard when it crossed him.

Nobody, but nobody, screws with Ending. That's just the way things are.

Okay, flexibility. Right. I can do flexibility.

Flechette

Lily, from her vantage point several hundred yards away, saw Boomer rise into the air, trailing his trademark explosions. Taking up her arbalest, she connected the chain to the already-loaded projectile and prepared to shoot it into the side of the building Scribe was having her little meeting on top of. She'd already gotten photos of Scribe landing and talking with the Adepts, so information-gathering time was over and ass-kicking time was right now.

Not that there was going to be much in the way of ass-kicking. The Adepts didn't go in for the physical stuff all that much, preferring to use their powers to run the fuck away when things got dicey. That suited Lily; the only one who was due an ass-kicking was Scribe, and only if she resisted arrest.

Lily hoped she was going to resist arrest.

And then, it all went wrong. One of the Adepts pulled some kind of bullshit, and Boomer was suddenly on the rooftop. It was almost perfect positioning; all had to do was let off a couple of explosions and the show would be over, the fat lady singing her heart out.

But he didn't do a damn thing. He just stood there. Snatching out her binoculars, Lily saw that he was just staring into space, while one of the Adepts—Epoch, maybe—said something to Scribe.

And then Scribe used her mobile platform to smack Boomer off the roof. It followed him all the way down; even if he was able to recover from the time-freeze or whatever it was, he wouldn't have had a chance to get out of the way before he hit the ground.

Mother. Fucker.

Clicking her radio pressel, Lily spoke coldly and clearly. "Flechette here. Scribe has just murdered Boomer. Am engaging."

Then she aimed her arbalest at Scribe and pulled the trigger. The long aluminum dart, treated with her power to sink into the target and stop, whipped away across the intervening space with the chain unreeling after it. But she realised too late that she'd forgotten one thing: Scribe also had a radio linked into the same channel.

In the split second before Lily's shot would've hit its target, Scribe twisted out of the way. The projectile punched a hole through Scribe's wide sleeve and kept on going, trailing its chain all the way. It went another two hundred yards past the rooftop before it hit another building and stuck firm.

Didn't matter. Lily ignored the voice on the radio that told her to hold back until help arrived. She fused her end of the chain with the rooftop so it was nice and tight, then jumped on the chain and started running.

She'd done this before. Her sense of balance was good enough that she could run along the chain like it was solid pavement. The important thing was that Scribe not get away with this shit.

Scribe yanked at her sleeve, still impaled on the chain, then did it again hard enough that the cloth tore away. This didn't budge the chain enough to make Lily lose her footing. Twenty seconds and you're mine, bitch. Every little micro-aggression, every carefully worded racist comment, every crime that Scribe—Rune—was skating on by pretending to be a hero until people forgot she ever used to be a villain: Lily was going to make her pay in full.

Then one of the floating shields moved into position above the chain. Poised where it was, just outside the roof-line, it could snap the chain if it came down with sufficient force. This was definitely a problem. Lily was far enough above the ground that even if she survived the fall (unlikely), she would doubtless suffer extensive injuries.

She didn't have an option in the matter. If she tried to run back, Scribe would still have time to snap the chain before she got close enough to her starting point to swing in safely. So, she had to push on and hope like hell that Scribe blinked first.

Scribe didn't blink.

Lily was halfway between the buildings when the heavy metal shield—ironically bearing the PRT logo—smashed down on the chain. She nearly lost her footing when it went taut as an iron bar, then she did lose her footing when it snapped and fell loose. Her legs continued to flail in a running motion, even after all traction was lost.

Oh, fuck. I'm so sorry, Emily.

That was when the smoky grey portal opened in front of her and just a little bit down, to match the beginning of her terminal arc. She saw it, recognised it, and tucked into the dive-roll position, all in the same split second before she passed through. On the far side of the portal was the rooftop she'd been heading for; she landed, rolled, and came to her feet with the ease of long practice.

To one side was Scribe, just beginning to turn toward her with a shocked expression on what Lily could see of her face. The Adepts took up the other side, looking equally taken aback, though possibly for different reasons. She was inclined to think that they hadn't had anything to do with Scribe's murder of Boomer and attempted murder of her, but that was the entirety of the slack she was willing to cut them. They were the sole reason both Scribe and Lily were on this rooftop; without their apparent agreement to meet with Scribe and discuss defection to their ranks, none of this would've happened.

"What the fuck?" demanded Scribe. She swept her shields around to hide her from Lily, no doubt fully aware of the darts Lily was pulling out of her quiver. "How did you do that?"

Lily recalled a line that Atropos had used. "With panache and style," she said grimly, energising the darts so they'd cut through anything they hit, such as Scribe herself, like soft butter. At this range, and without the chain being required, she wasn't going to be using the arbalest. Just throwing them was good enough. For the first time, she totally understood Atropos' point of view, and she was all out of fucks to give.

Epoch held his hands up defensively and backed away, along with the rest of his team. "We're not part of this. Murder wasn't part of the plan."

"Like hell you're not part of it!" Scribe sounded just a little panicky, as well she might. The last time they'd clashed, Scribe had been well and truly put on her ass; this time, Lily had no reason to let her get up again. "Felony murder means you're just as deep in it as me! Help me gank this bitch, and it all goes away."

Huh, so she has been paying attention. Lily was a bit surprised that Scribe was calling Epoch out on it, though. It didn't seem to be the smartest move for Scribe to single herself out as the cause for the Adepts' sudden legal problem, but Sabrina the Teenage Nazi had never been one to think things all the way through.

"Too late. I already called it in." Lily edged to the side, trying to see around the damn floating shields, the darts ready to throw. "Kill me now and the murder charges go up to two instead of down to zero. Help me take her down, and I'll put in a good word for you."

"I think not. This is getting far too complicated. You two can sort it out between yourselves, and good luck to you." Epoch and the others were close to the far side of the roof now. Lily wasn't watching them carefully, being too intent on trying to get to Scribe, but out of the corner of her eye she saw them all vanish, one after the other, popping out of existence.

A shield swept too close to her, and she swiped a dart through it at mid-level. The top half parted company with the bottom half, and there was a soundless flare as she disrupted Scribe's control rune; both halves clattered to the rooftop, the sliced ends silver-bright and mirror-smooth. Keeping a careful eye out for an attempted repeat of the Boomer murder, she recharged the dart and sidestepped as quietly as she could.

There had been four of the metal shields, each designed to be able to snap into brackets on the flying platform that had been built for Scribe. One was lying on the rooftop in two halves, but that left three still weaving back and forth between Lily and Scribe. This worked both ways: Lily needed line of sight to put a dart through whatever part of Scribe presented itself, and Scribe needed to see where Lily was if she wanted to smack her with any flying objects.

Come on, Atropos. I could do with some backup. Lily knew that she could take down Scribe with one good shot, but she was also vulnerable to an attack from behind. Atropos had to be aware of what was going on—the teleport portal was clear evidence of that—so where was she?

Maybe she knows I can handle it from here, and just gave me a helping hand. Lily tried not to think too hard about Boomer's death; Atropos had always been very blunt about the fact that she was no hero. Saving people wasn't her thing. However, she'd also made it clear that she considered Lily a friend, and thus worth keeping alive.

What would she do, if she was here? Lily knew what she would do, of course: pull some bullshit and make an impossible shot that looked so easy once she'd done it. Taking a deep breath, Lily threw one of the darts directly at the centrepoint of the moving shields. Once it got through all three, it would only have a little bit of momentum left, but that was fine; Scribe wasn't wearing much in the way of body armour.

"Jesus fuck!" yelped the perfidious villain-turned-Ward-turned-villain. There was no edge of pain to Scribe's voice, but from the sound of it, Lily may have come close enough to make her shit herself. "Watch it with those things, you bitch!"

"That was a warning shot!" Lily tried to hit the same note of menace that Atropos could achieve so easily. "Give up now and I'll only nail your foot to the rooftop until the PRT gets here. If you don't, I'll kill you."

"You won't do that," sneered Scribe. "You're a good Ward. You're a shoo-in for leader of the Protectorate someday. The one who was there when Atropos killed the Simurgh? You're a fucking celebrity. Kill me without due process and all that goes away."

"I honestly don't give a fuck about that." Keeping a wary eye on the ever-moving shields, Lily bent and picked up one of the half-shields. It was heavy, but an application of her power fixed that. "I would've been willing to overlook your background, but you never stopped being a fucking Nazi. And now you're a murderer. So, I'm pretty sure they'll give me a medal for this. Drop the shields and give up now, or I'm taking you down the hard way."

There was no answer. Lily's mouth tightened, and she threw the half-shield like it was a light plastic disc rather than a square slab of metal. It went through each of the shields without slowing down, disrupting the power that was holding them upright and moving.

As they clattered to the rooftop, Lily jumped forward with a dart in her hand, ready to carry out her threat to nail Scribe down by her foot if there was still fight in her. But there wasn't. In fact, Scribe wasn't even there.

As she got to the edge of the rooftop, the glint of sunlight on a fast-moving object warned her just in time, and she dropped flat. Several small metal objects—she belatedly recognised them as the locking bolts for the shield brackets—hit the roof edge or whipped overhead at high speed. She waited for a moment, then cautiously stuck her head up.

While Lily had been talking and prepping, Scribe had been making a run for it. Standing on what Lily guessed to be the last shield, using the entire platform as her visual cover, she was over a hundred metres away by now and receding farther with every second that passed. Frustrated almost beyond belief, Lily loaded the arbalest and sighted in on the distant metal square, hoping that Scribe would show herself just once.

It didn't happen.

Scribe went out of sight behind a building shortly before Lily heard the incoming choppers, no doubt homing in on her phone tracer signal. She pulled out a flare launcher and fired it into the sky, then pulled the chain from her arbalest and fused it to the edge of the roof. Flicking a catch on the arbalest to apply a brake to the chain, she stepped off the building and began to rappel down toward ground level.

She knew what she'd find once she got there, but she went anyway.

Atropos

As Rune made her escape from Flechette, I relaxed slightly. My options had been limited; I'd only just gotten back home after the Sleeper episode when the whole problem flared up. Boomer meant nothing to me, and Rune wasn't going to become the ongoing danger to Flechette that March had been, so my best option had been to teleport her clear out of danger.

However, she was a big girl and could hold her own in combat, so I went with the second-best option, giving her a chance to take Rune down by herself. It wasn't her fault that Rune had gotten away; if the ex-Empire villain had gone on the attack, Flechette would've come out on top, but villains with mobility were the hardest to pin down. Given a fair chance, Flechette wouldn't let her get away a second time, and Rune wouldn't be catching anyone by surprise.

While I could maybe have dropped Flechette close enough to Rune to engage her immediately, she would've gone for a kill-shot in the heat of the moment and probably succeeded. Flechette didn't need that on her record or her conscience, even if it was unofficially approved after the fact.

She wasn't me, and she didn't need to be me.

Director's Office, PRT Department 01 (NYC)

Director Piggot

"… and he was dead when I got down to him, ma'am." Flechette took a deep breath and looked down at the carpet. "I'm no expert, but I think the fall killed him immediately. I just wish …" She trailed off, but that didn't matter. Emily knew what the girl wasn't saying, because she was thinking it too. Legend, standing off to the side, had to be thinking it too.

"Flechette, look at me." She waited until they'd made eye contact. "None of this is your fault. We had an impossible task before us; the Prisoner's Dilemma is a trap like that. Some villains make the transition and become good heroes, while others choose to bite the hand that feeds. I've seen both, in my time. Determining which is which, making the choice between the need to be fair and the gut instinct that someone is irredeemably flawed, is a choice that was weighted against us before I ever set foot in this office. Still, I should have listened to your judgement, because it was the same as mine. I should have cut the Gordian knot and revoked all of Scribe's patrol hours on my own recognisance. If Boomer's death can be laid at anyone's feet, it's mine."

Flechette shook her head. "No, ma'am," she said quietly. "It's Rune's. And we both know if you did that without a justifiable reason after she was established as a probationary Ward, you'd have a ton of official attention landing on you right now."

Emily snorted softly. "What are they going to do, replace me? No, I would've weathered that. But I thought …" She paused, choosing to elide Wilkins' name from the conversation, mainly out of professional courtesy. "I thought we could handle it." She sighed, knowing she was going to be repeating these same phrases in front of the court of inquiry that was convened with the death of every cape under PRT command (though she would absolutely be throwing Wilkins to the wolves just as hard as she could). "I believed the precautions we'd taken were adequate at the time."

"Given that I was one of those precautions, ma'am, I wish to tender my apologies for my inadequate response."

"No." Legend shook his head. "You figured out what she was up to, you were on the scene before anyone else, you alerted us to the situation, and you engaged without hesitation." He cleared his throat. "For the last aspect, however, I'm going to have to put an official reprimand in your file, for ignoring directives to stay clear and shadow the perpetrator. Unofficially, however, there were no innocents to endanger, and you showed initiative in attempting to take her down, so this will not affect your ongoing career prospects."

Flechette blinked. "To be absolutely honest, sir, I didn't even hear those directives at first, and once I did, Rune was already trying to drop me to the ground as well."

"Oh, we're both aware of that." Emily nodded briefly. "The deciding factor is that you were not given prior orders to hold back, so you were acting on your own initiative, and 'close with the enemy' is never a bad instinct to have."

"And what about Rune, ma'am?" Flechette asked, finally addressing the white-supremacist elephant in the room. "When do we go after her?"

Emily put on a thoughtful expression before answering. "The Adepts will be spreading the word, and so will we. Nobody likes a cape who jumps straight to murder, and with the demise of the Empire Eighty-Eight, her particular political affiliations won't be exactly welcome either. Sooner or later, she'll either stick her head up or someone will drop a dime on her, and then we'll go scoop her up."

Flechette looked hopeful. "And when you do, ma'am, can I come along for that?"

Legend stirred, but Emily ignored him. "Count on it."

End of Part Ninety-Five