Brennus Files 03: Metahuman Registration and Business

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Registration

The following rules apply to the members of the PATO; specifically the U.S.A (since 1951), Canada (1934, used as a model), Great Britain (1951), Brazil (1959) and the European Mainland members (1960) and Japan (1951):

There are two levels of registration – the Basic Registration is required for all metahumans and simply means that they notify the government that they have a power, that they can control it and that they don’t plan to use it in an unlawful way. Their power will be registered, rated and kept completely confidental – for example, the United Heroes wouldn’t be given access to this data, unless they were suspected of a crime involving their powers.

Extended Registration is required if:

  1. they wish to use their power on someone other than themselves (healer)
  2. they want to use their power on other peoples’ or public property
  3. they want to open a business or perform a job based on it (teleporting courier)
  4. their power is inherently uncontrollable and/or dangerous to people and property (Gloom Glimmer, Tyche).
  5. Your power falls under the S-Classification.

It requires a metahuman to go through extensive testing, psychological evaluation, basic training (usually three months spent in governmental training facilities OR United Heroes’ training facilities) and agree to certain extended duties and restrictions:

  1. They must notify airport officials if they wish to travel by plane (and might not be allowed – for example, there’s no way any commercial airline would accept Tyche on their planes) – and must be available for emergencies, if their power is applicable (and might get a reduction in travel fee – Gadgeteers or inherent fliers and such are very well-liked).
  2. If they travel into another country, they must notify their particular office for metahumans beforehand that they’ll be entering (and might be denied permission – for example, Tyche might be denied access to a country on the grounds that power is uncontrollable and might cause widespread damage).
  3. If their powers are combat-applicable, than they have to be ready to help during S-Class events, though they are only forced to participate if a government official or UH-approved superhero asks them to.
  4. They are not allowed to knowingly associate with supervillains or habitual criminals in any way and must report them to the nearest lawperson or superhero at the earliest possible time.

Exceptions for using your powers without having to go through the extended registration process are:

  1. Emergencies (like someone using their power to help save people out of a fire or heal the victim of a car crash), so long as it is not habitual – if they keep doing it, it’ll be interpreted as not just chance behaviour but a pattern, and they are thus required to register and gain training (even if they swear never to do it again)
  2. S-Class Events – they get a free pass on those, no matter what
  3. Self-Defence – if they attack you first, you are allowed to strike back. If you kill them or cause permanent damage, then you have to make an extended registration.

Metahumans who undergo extended registration are given certain tax breaks, so long as they hold to the rules and restrictions of such.

Business
As mentioned earlier, earning money with a power requires the extended registration no matter what. Furthermore:

  1. Metahumans must be trained for their chosen profession (a healer would need to study medicine, though with a different curriculum than a normal doctor, depending on the particulars of their power)
  2. They have to prove that they can use their power safely – a teleporter who wants to make a courier service (they exist, yes; one of those very profitable metahuman jobs) would have to prove that he or she can use their power reliably and safely – so no accidental portal cuts, no “ups sorry I ended up within your private property” mishaps and so on.
  3. They have to make it clear that they use powers for their business – a metahuman can’t pose as a normal doctor and secretly use their power for the job, even if they are have the proper registration and training – your clients/patients/customers have to know.
  4. They need a special, more expensive insurance than usual. On the upside, since this insurance is managed with exceptional care, they don’t have to deal with the usual insurance claim problems.

Due the rarity of metahuman powers, metahuman-specific business is very rare and very lucrative, but since it has to be open, it is also subject to prejudice – and vandalism, if opened in the wrong location.

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B008.4 Depression

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A minus 7 Days

You never know how much four walls and a roof over your head are worth until you have to go a whole day in winter without them.

I’d spent the night in a cheap motel room at the edge of the Shades, paying twenty dollars for a room that was smaller than our tool shed back home and even less comfortable. In retrospect, I’d probably let them rip me off, but I’d never had to deal with money like this before, and so I was down to eighty dollars from the hundred I’d gotten from Laura and the others.

Stupid. So stupid.

I’d eaten a breakfast in a fast-food restaurant that tasted more like paper and sugar than real food (three more dollars) and wandered through the city, aimlessly, until I’d spent five dollars on food from a very cheap, but surprisingly good Greek imbiss (the breakfast had only made me more hungry). How the hell did those fast food chains stay in business with food that bad?

Of course, when the sun began to set, I was forcefully reminded that I was still in the Shades and that the protection afforded to me by the reputation of teenage metas only went so far – desperate people are unlikely to think about the possible consequences of their actions (the irony of that statement was not lost to me).

And so I was mugged for the first time in my life, by two men who couldn’t be more than five years older than me, dressed in rags I hadn’t seen outside of halloween costumes and wielding a switchknife and a stick, respectively. I probably could have fought them off, or at least run away, but… I’d just given them fifty dollars, saying that was all I had. They believed me, or at least they thought that was more than enough money, and fled quickly.

I didn’t know how to feel about that. Sure, I was down to twenty-two dollars, from a hundred, in less than a day by myself, but compared to everything else, it just didn’t seem all that important. I thought I couldn’t possible feel any more miserable than I already did.

Boy was I in for a surprise. There is no situation that can’t be made worse by having to sleep in an abandoned house, the temperature outside below the freezing point and with only two old, moth-eaten blankets for warmth.

And the cold wasn’t the worst part of it.

No, the worst thing was that you only had yourself for company. Only your own thoughts. You couldn’t help but facing yourself.

No wonder so many people on the streets go crazy.

* * *

A minus 6 Days

I woke up with the sound of an explosion and a tremor that shook the building I had slept in. Before I was even fully woken up, there was another explosion, a scream and then… silence.

Standing up, I kept the blankets wrapped around myself as I staggered to the old, broken window of what had once been a bedroom. I pulled the blanket I’d hunger over it to keep the cold out aside and looked out. searching for the source of the disturbance.

Five houses down the road, the Greek imbiss I’d eaten at yesterday was on fire. As I watched, still numb from the restless sleep, a black figure shrouded in scarlet fire stepped out, dragging a charred corpse by its leg. It looked around, its gaze momentarily passing over me, before it simply walked down the road, dragging the corpse behind it.

That was my second day alone.

* * *

A minus 4 Days

I’d never known being hungry could hurt so much. Since I wasn’t going to go home anytime soon, I had to ration my money out. On my strolls through the Shades, I’d found a soup kitchen for homeless people. I didn’t look like their normal customers, but I looked (and smelled) ragged enough by now to pass muster, and I got two bowls of soup with bread and one sandwich a day.

Which was barely enough to keep me going through the Winter weather, and they knew that, but they barely had the resources to keep operating, as I learned from listening to the more talkative (and lucid) guests.

This was a whole new world for me. I’d never even seen a homeless person in real life, only on the television. Now I was sharing my meal with them, even though I didn’t talk to them. And they didn’t talk to me, either.

I’ve never been too good at reading people, but I felt like they knew I was going through something bad and they respected my need to be left alone.

They’ve probably been… no, bullshit. They are at rock bottom.

It felt strangely… comforting, being there.

* * *

A minus 3 Days

When I woke up on my fifth day, my coat, my blankets and the last of my money were gone.

It had rained (instead of snowing) yesterday, and my coat had been drenched before I’d managed to get to shelter, so I’d hung it up in the bedroom, huddling in my blankets.

Then I woke up, an hour before sunrise, freezing because all my blankets were gone. And my coat. And the money I’d kept in the breast pocket of the coat.

After having my sister die, my parents act like jackasses, almost getting my sister’s friends killed and going on the run from my family, from… everything, I didn’t think I could actually feel worse. I thought having to spend the nights, and most of each day, with just myself was bad enough.

Now it was worse. The… knowledge that someone had stolen from me only made me feel worse. The money, I could understand. The coat… worse, but alright.

But the blankets?

* * *

A minus 2 Days

The people at the shelter had given me a spare coat that was left, not having fit anyone else among the people they usually get.

It helped, but only a little. I’d tried to sleep at the abandoned house again, but I just couldn’t. It didn’t feel safe anymore.

I’d heard of people who’d had burglars break into their homes, and they moved out soon thereafter, no longer able to feel safe in their own homes, and I’d thought it hard to believe, but…

So now I was walking around in the streets of the Shades, going from shelter to shelter. Always on the move.

Always hungry.

I looked around the street I was walking on. It must have been one of Los Angeles’ main roads, back in the day, very broad with lots of businesses on both sides.

Most were closed, but I passed by a small kiosk. An old black man in winter clothing was sitting out on a chair, drinking steaming hot coffee.

I stopped when I saw some of his wares. Namely, a series of booklets on a rack. They were coloured brightly, all of them, and I’d never seen that design before.

The three leftmost booklets were black-white, white and black respectively, with the words ‘Light & Dark’, ‘The Shining Guardians’ and ‘The Dark Five’ written on them.

“What are those?” I asked, my voice rough. It’d been a few days since I’d used it for more than single-syllable utterances.

The man looked up at me, eyes dark behind large glasses. “You never seen those, doll?”

Yeah, he really said ‘doll’. The last man to call me that had been my grandpa.

As a reply, I shook my head.

“Well, those are information booklets, on the big names in the cape and cowl world,” he explained. He was pronouncing his words funnily. He’d draw out all the A’s and then say the rest faster than he should. But only the A’s. “So like, you can read up on the big heroes, or the villains. The really notorious ones.”

He looked me up and down, his eyes slightly interested. “Tell you what. First one’s free. Pick one, read up.”

I looked back at the rack. Well, it’ll distract me from my misery, at least.

Looking through the booklets, I found one on ‘Independent Villains’, with the name of Hellhound among the lists of villains it covered. Reaching out, I almost picked it, but…

I took the one on the Dark Five instead. “This one, please.”

“Going for the nightmare fuel, eh?” the man said. “Well, have fun with it. I hope you like horror stories… though that one doesn’t cover Dread Roger or Hannibal Storm or any of that ilk. So not the worst kind of nightmares. And only the current line-up, too.”

I nodded. It was the only one of them I was really interested in, and he was a current member, anyway. “Thank you very much.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Plenty of nightmare fuel in this one, anyway. I’d advise you to skip over Kraquok and the Dowager, if I were you.”

“My nightmares can’t get any worse than they are.”

“That’s a tall thing to say, in this day and age, doll,” he continued, snickering. “Wha’d’you have ’em about that’s worse than this kinda monsters?”

I almost snapped at him, but I didn’t have the energy to. So I just answered, “I see my twin sister dying, over and over.”

That shut him up.

I took the booklet and walked away.

* * *

Codename: Dajisi

Real Name: –

Debut: May 3rd, 2004 in Hong Kong

Joined: March to September 2006

Ratings: Meta 10

Rank: S

The self-styled ‘High Priest of the Five Gods’ first appeared in Hong Kong, committing a series of high-profile murders of so-called heretics – metahumans who were serving baseline humans, whom he considers walking ‘blasphemies’.

He adheres to a philosophy of metahuman superiority not unlike that of Weisswald and other metahuman supremacists, though unlike them, he has no desire to make people as a whole manifest, claiming that those who are destined for manifestation will manifest anyway, and all others should die.

His power is an example of the extremely rare ability of power mimicry, with so far unknown parameters. His cap appears to be the Apex level, and he has so far demonstrated up to four distinct powers at a time. He is, however, capable of taking lesser powers and enhancing them to Apex level when he uses them.

Since joining the Dark Five, he has reduced the number of murders he and his ‘faithful’ commit, and is focusing more on recruiting new converts to his cause. His favourite recruits are teenaged metahumans, especially supervillains and ga-

* * *

-ngmembers and other people who are easily indoctrinated, such as…

“So that’s why…”

That’s why he’d shown up at their hideout out of nowhere. Offering help.

He was looking for new sources of power. And people he could indoctrinate into his religion.

I had to warn them… right?

Would they even believe me? Or care? A chance to work for one of the Five? I quickly leafed through his profile (it was four pages thick, mostly accounts of his more prolific actions – and he had the shortest section), but there seemed to be no known drawbacks for his faithful. The few times they were caught and questioned, they appeared to be of sound mind (as far as any supervillain or fanatic can be) and acting of their own free will. No mental manipulation could ever be detected.

You don’t need superpowers to brainwash people.

I put the booklet into my pocket and ran.

* * *

It took me nearly four hours to find their headquarters again. I ran into it and up.

“Laura!” I shouted. “Jimmy! Fletch!” I ran up the staircase, shouting their names. “Cad!”

I reached the top of the building – everything was as it’d been when I left.

Except there was no one there.

“Peter!” I ran to his corner, where he had all his equipment.

The equipment was still there, but a quick check revealed wiped harddrives. Nothing there.

Their ‘rooms’ were empty of any really personal stuff. Pictures and all, and there were spots where stuff was missing.

I was too late.

* * *

A minus 1 Day

I’d closed the place down (they’d installed shutters on the doors from their level to the stairway and left the keys behind, too) and left. It was a great place to stay, all things considered, but… it didn’t feel right.

And I needed to think, anyway. I’d always been better at thinking about things while on the move, so I went out and… walked. So I’d left and gone for a walk.

It had been early afternoon when I left their place. It was around midnight now, I was sure, and I hadn’t thought much, at all. I didn’t even know where I was, except that I was still in the Shades.

Is this my fault?

I’d gotten them almost killed. They’d been shaken up about Linda already, and I’d used that to get them to go up against someone completely out of their weight class. He’d almost killed Laura.

Easy prey for Dajisi, even if he only offered healing. They’d probably been all too eager to listen to whatever crazy ideology he fed them, if only he’d save Laura. And if he’d brought some kind of mind control or such along…

That’s not your fault, dummy. They made their choices. And if they went along with a murderous whackjob like that, instead of going to a hospital, then they deserve whatever they get.

I mean, the Dark Five were like, the top villains of the world. What kind of sane person would work for them?

Taking out the booklet, I looked at the other four entries.

* * *

Codename: Mindstar

Real Name: –

Debut: March 4th, 2010 in New Lennston

Joined: September 2011

Ratings: Control 9, Manipulation 9, Perception 6, Physique 7

Rank: S

…newest member… serial rapist… enslaved Amazon of the New Lennston United Heroes Division…

Universal Telepath, prefers mind control and mental warfare as opposed to physical confrontations… no known case of assaulting teenagers or any person below sixteen years of age outside of a combat situation…

Nothing much I didn’t know yet about her. She’d had quite the television presence since her debut.

Codename: Lamarr the Purple

Real Name: Markus Birkowich

Debut: October 1st, 1998 in Amsterdam

Joined: December 5th, 1998 to February 3rd, 1999

Ratings: Control 7, Damage 6, Manipulation 10, Movement 13, Morphing 7, Perception 9, Physique 3, Protection 12

Rank: S

Most powerful member in direct combat… bends space for teleportation, protection, hiding weaponry… mind control through hypnosis… can transform into animals or other persons… overall ‘magician’ theme… suspected of several unconfirmed assassinations around the world… debut at age 11…

His section was the longest – his full biography was known, and it was nasty.

This dude sounded like real bad news.

Also, he was hot. There was an artist’s rendition of him, and if he looked even half that good in real life… well, a girl could get ideas, I guess.

Wow, ain’t that shallow, even for me?

Only two left… the two the vendor had warned me against.

I looked at Kraquok first, and almost dropped the booklet when I saw the picture of him. Holy fucking shit! I looked over at his description.

Codename: Kraquok

Real Name: –

Debut: August 3rd, 1927

Joined: Founding Member

Ratings: Damage 4-12, Morphing 1-13, Physique 12, Protection 10

Rank: S

Founding member of the Dark Five… true name unknown… known cannibal, leader of a cult of consummate cannibals… does not harm children… violently assaults and eats child abusers… known archenemy of Severance, founding member of the Shining Guardians…

Extremely strong, fast and tough… regenerates… … grows stronger as he fights… becomes larger and more monstrous… energy breath becomes more powerful… maximum known size, about 150 feet…

Well, damn. He basically turned into Godzilla, only bigger. And meaner, it seemed. Also, he was nearly a century active, and they still didn’t know jack about him?

The list of his crimes read like the wet dream of every horror writer. You could write ten horror novels out of each year, I’d bet. No wonder the vendor had warned me about him.

I turned to the last member. The Dowager. All I knew about her was that she was the Dark’s right hand woman, and supposedly his lover, too.

Codename: The Dowager

Real Name: –

Debut: suspected 1970, in Rio de Janeiro

Joined: unknown, pre-1972

Ratings: Control 7, Meta 8, Perception 9, Spawning 13

Rank: S

Unknown identity… mastermind-type, non-combat member… can detect lies… her power enforces contracts, compelling people to stick to their contracts… capable of enhancing or otherwise adjusting the powers of people that have a contract with her… breaking a contract results in immediate death and the creation of a ‘Shade’ in her service, which holds all powers, skills and memories of the original… suspected lover of the Dark… second-in-command of the Syndicate… known to always keep her word… always accompanied by a large white cat…

Of Hispanic heritage, according to eye witnesses… no detailed description available…

This woman was scary. I mean, damn.

And now the StreetBadgers had been picked up by what appeared to be the least dangerous member of the group.

* * *

I put the damn booklet away.

They’re goners, aren’t they? I mean, I won’t ever see them again.

Why did I want to? I barely knew them, and they hated me. Or at least despised me.

Because they are the last real link to Linda.

But Linda was dead. Dead and gone.

And… and…

I shook my head and walked on. There were storm clouds in the sky, but I didn’t care. I had to walk, clear my head.

Why do I keep distracting myself?

It wasn’t the StreetBadgers that really bothered me.

This had all started with Linda’s death, and I… I’d been lashing out left and right, trying to make sense of it…

No. That’s a lie.

That wasn’t why I’d been lashing out. I remembered that moment in our room, staring at the mirror. I’d asked myself why I looked so guilty.

I’d known back then, already. What was really hounding me. But I’d denied it.

These last few days had forced me to introspect. To face it. But I’d tried to ignore it, still.

I left the Shades and walked into Esperanza City proper for the first time in days.

The Hellhound murdered her.

I didn’t hate him, not anymore. And I hadn’t even known about him back then.

The StreetBadgers got her into the situation that killed her in the first place.

But I couldn’t blame them that much. They were just as lost as Linda had been, I was sure. And… they cared too much about her for me to hate them.

Father and mother drove her away with their fanatism… she didn’t feel safe at her own home…

I was angry at them, incredibly angry, but… they had not done her harm, not deliberately. They’d always acted in our best interests, as far as they knew.

She got powers… someone or something pushed her over the edge…

Nothing there. I didn’t know nearly enough to have any kind of opinion on it, not really. And I probably never would.

It started to rain. I didn’t care. Not having a goal, I just let my feet carry me as I focused on my own thoughts.

What was I angry about? Why had I been lashing out like that? Almost nothing I’d done since Linda’s death had made any sense, except as a way of distracting myself.

The world took my sister away.

Hating the world would be stupid, though. It is as it is.

Linda didn’t tell me. She kept it secret from me.

But why did I feel guilty about it? That was on her, not me. We were supposed to share everything.

She lied to me. For weeks. She slept in the same room with me, but she didn’t tell me.

No.

I wasn’t angry at her. How could I? I’d never been able to be angry at Linda. I hadn’t suddenly started, now. The anger I’d felt had not been directed at her.

Suddenly, I stopped walking.

I’d walked all the way to the graveyard she’d been buried in. Someone had left the cast iron gate open, too.

I walked inside.

* * *

A minus 17 hours

My feet found their way to Linda’s grave without any input from me. Even though I’d only been here twice, so far. Once for grandpa’s funeral, and then once for Linda’s.

I hate this place.

Her grave was still fresh, covered in flowers and offerings from friends and family. It was all soaked in rainwater now, though. As was I, not that I noticed the temperature. I just felt numb.

Mom and Dad had really shelled out some major money for her gravestone, despite the ‘shame’ she’d brought to the family. A big slab of stone, with intricate carvings of flowers. Lots and lots of flowers. Linda had loved them, always collecting and pressing flowers she found particularly beautiful.

There was a picture of her in a golden circle. Smiling brightly, teeth white, her hair tied back. One of the last pictures of her before… before everything happened.

You didn’t tell me. But it wasn’t your fault, was it? I mean, part of it was. You could have told me. Even with mom and dad… I would have stood with you. Always.

I couldn’t hate her for it. I couldn’t even imagine what she’d been going through. Living in a house, in the middle of a whole community of people who’d hate her on principle if she outed herself… her own parents talking about experiments and research and segregation every day…

Why didn’t you tell me?

That was the crux of it, wasn’t it?

Why didn’t you tell me?

Why didn’t she? We’d always been honest to each other. We’d always supported each other.

Why didn’t you tell me?

She’d always supported me more than vice versa, but that was more because I’d been more likely to need support. I’d always been the crybaby, and she’d been the brave one.

I’d gone big into sports in an effort to get more confident. Gymnastics, parkour, aikido (both with and without a sword). She’d only taken part in my parkour training, having preferred to spend time on botanic classes and friends. I’d always had fewer than her, anyway, and those were athletes, too.

Why didn’t you tell me?

Because…

I looked up at the dark sky, letting the rain hit me in the face like a thousand slaps, the raindrops thick and heavy. The clouds were black, not just grey. Not that I could see much, with the rain pounding my eyes, making me blink every few seconds.

You didn’t tell me because… because…

My gaze went to her picture, barely visible in the dark of the night. Only the grave candles were illuminating it, barely. But I could see her just fine.

Because I… I…

I sniffed, and that was apparently enough to take the strength from my legs, because suddenly my face was level with the photograph, and I hadn’t even noticed falling down. I barely felt the mud soak through my pants.

Because I… I didn’t… I didn’t ask you.

A tremor went through my body – and before I knew it, I was sobbing, adding my tears to the water running down my face.

“I didn’t… I didn’t ask you.”

I looked at my numb hands, covered in mud.

“I didn’t… I just… I just assumed you’d tell me anything… that we’d just share it all naturally…”

If I’d asked…

“If only I’d asked, you would have told me!” I shouted at the picture before I bent over, pressing my forehead into the mud of her grave. “I should have asked you! Why didn’t I ask that one question?!”

I’d been so used to sharing everything, had always taken it for granted, that I’d never shown any interest. I’d just assumed she’d come to me if she needed me, like I always did when I needed her.

“But you rarely did, didn’t you?” I said to the mud in front of my eyes… to Linda, six feet below me. Six feet I couldn’t reach through. “It was always me coming to you for help.”

Oh God, I’d never noticed. She’d not been any less in need of support than I’d been, growing up. But I’d… I’d always just told her everything, and never noticed that she only told me things when I asked.

“One soul, two bodies, that’s what we said,” I continued, my voice louder. I’d already spoken more words just now than over the last few days combined. “I just thought that meant you’d act like I did, at your core. That you’d just come to me and share.”

“But you always waited for people to ask, and what is wrong with me that I just now noticed!?” I screamed, finally raising my head to look at her grinning face. “Why didn’t I just ask you how you were doing? Everyone does, everyone asks! It would have been so easy and I could have been with you! You wouldn’t have needed the StreetBadgers, you wouldn’t have needed to be a villain! I could have helped you deal with it! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaggghh!”

Screaming, I raised both fists and slammed them down on the mud, making it splash over my face and chest.

“This is my fault. This is all my fault!” I continued, shouting my guilt at the cold, lifeless gravestone. “I’m sorry! Linda, I’m so, so, sorrrrryyyyyyyyyyy…”

My screams dissolved into broken sobs as I hugged myself, rocking back and forth on my knees.

My fault.

I should have asked.

My fault she’s dead.

Such a simple thing to do.

It’s my fault she’s dead.

I could have helped her. At the very least, I could have walked her path with her.

It’s my fault she’s dead, and I’m not with her.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!” I bent over screaming towards the ground again, closing my eyes. Then I threw my whole upper body back, screaming even louder up at the sky, and the bright stars above.

I slumped down again, sobbing…

That isn’t right. Stars?

It was still pouring rain. The clouds were black as the blackest night.

I saw the stars as clearly as if I was out on the sea at midnight. Millions, billions, in all colours, bright and dull, pulsing and static, blinking and steady…

So many stars…

I looked down at the ground, my head moving of its own accord. There were more stars beneath innumerable in their numbers.

And the closest, most precious of them, was less than six feet away from me, pulsing gently as its light faded with each beat of my heart… growing fainter, further away…

“Linda? Is that you?” It felt so… right. So… familiar.

I reached out, but the mud was in the way. It was too deep.

“Linda, please… if you’re still there, please, give me a sign!”

I felt a tremor, a surge of raw, unformed emotion go through my body, from my toes up to my head, making me tingle all over.

A line came into sight, rising from the star beneath, a strong, old link of interwoven green and gold. When I looked up, I saw it connected to a brittle, bright star above.

While I watched, the star fell, drawing a tail of golden sparks behind it as it flew by me and dug into the mud, coming to a rest a foot or so a way from me.

This… this is how you get powers, right?

“Is that what you want, Linda?” I asked, as loudly as I could, so I’d be heard over the raging storm, the pounding rain and howling wind. “Do you want me to become more like you!?”

I can… feel what she felt…

Reaching out, my fingers dug easily into the cold, wet, soft mud, digging into Linda’s grave, opening a hole a foot deep.

The star… my star… it looked somehow brittle, disjointed pulses playing all over its golden surface. Something about it looked and felt wrong, but it was connected to Linda.

I reached out to touch it, and the moment my finger made contact with it, it shot up and into my belly.

* * *

The star burned like a furnace in my stomach, filling me with warmth and light.

When I looked down at my stomach, there was no hole in my clothes, yet light was shining from my entire body, brighter than the sun but not blinding me even as I looked down at myself.

So beautiful.

I looked up to keep my eyes on Linda’s photograph – and almost screamed when I realized that the grave, the gravestone, the entire graveyard was gone… and Linda was right in front of me.

“Linda!” I stood up, clumsily, looking at her with wonder.

She stood in front of me, naked as the day we’d been born, her hair a mess, her eyes bright. She smiled sadly at me.

“Linda, I’m so sorry!” I tried to run over to her, to throw my arms around her and hug her and never let her go ag-

I didn’t move. Oh, I was running, but I didn’t move one inch closer to her, as she regarded me with sad eyes.

“Linda! Linda, I’m here! Please, I can’t move, please, come over here!” I held my blazing arms out for her to grab on to, we were less than six feet apart.

But she just smiled sadly, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

“No, don’t cry, don’t cry, it’s my fault, all my fault please don’t cry!“

The light grew dimmer, my arms heavier, the warmth in me colder.

“Linda, please, I’m right here, just come a little closer and I’ll pull you back and we can go home and I’m sure we can talk with mom and dad!”

Her eyes grew even sadder, and her smile became even more false, as if she was saying that she couldn’t come back but that didn’t make sense and then she turned away from me!

I was screaming, louder than I knew I could, so loud my throat would probably tear: “No! Linda, don’t go, don’t leave me al-“

Something broke.

* * *

All the light vanished as the burning star in my belly turned colder than ice and heavier than the world.

There was no thud, no feeling of impact or changed position, and yet I knew that my body had fallen, that I’d hit the ground.

My stomach, my chest, my head, my arms and legs… they went from blazing like suns to being grey, the colour sucked out of them, and heavy.

So heavy…

I tried to look up, but I could only move my eyes. Linda was just barely in my field of vision, her back to me, slowly… so slowly… walking away.

Don’t go, please… don’t go…

She moved further away. I was so cold.

Please, please, don’t, please, don’t leave me alone, please, I feel so cold…

Darkness began to creep in around her form, her contours blurring.

Linda… please… sister…

My body became even heavier, gravity crushing me against a ground that wasn’t even there.

She was almost gone entirely.

Linda!

She was gone. I couldn’t even feel her anymore.

N-no… Linda…

I was alone.

So cold.

Linda was gone.

So heavy.

My limbs were crushed against the floor, my chest under so much strain I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t care.

So alone.

Beneath me, a bottomless darkness opened up, eclipsing all the stars.

The very weight of my body, doubling with each heartbeat, pushed me into the ground…

Linda’s gone.

My heartbeat grew louder, or perhaps there was nothing else left to hear, drumming into my ears, every beat a new wave of cold, another redoubling of my body’s weight.

Heavy.

There were no stars left beneath, only the darkness, waiting.

So alone.

I broke through the ground and began to sink into the darkness.

If I could still take a breath, I would have screamed, because it was colder than anything I could ever have imagined, so cold it burned for just a second before everything went numb.

H-help… please, someone… I’m so heavy, so cold, so… alone.

I was sinking into the darkness, my body numb with cold.

There was no one there.

So… so alone.

You’re not alone!

 

* * *

The voice was like the morning’s first bell, clear and bright, its sound cutting through the darkness.

It flew through me, banishing the cold and the weight and the darkness. A hand, so insubstantial as to be nearly impossible to feel, took me by the hand, and pulled.

I rose out of the Abyss I’d been sucked into, back to the star-studded world.

“W-what?”

I wrapped my arms around myself and realized that I was naked all of a sudden… and that I didn’t care. Even though there was someone there, with me.

He… she… I couldn’t tell their gender. She. I’d just use she, because it’s easier to describe her than using ‘it’.

She stood tall, taller than me though not freakishly so. Her body was made of light, and nothing else. The light pulsed, creating a strange effect, blurring her contours, making it impossible to truly determine her body’s form. Behind her, the light expanded into two wings, each as large as the rest of her.

Her face was a blur of bright, warm light.

“W-who are you? Are you an angel?” I asked, feeling strangely calm. Soothed. The memory of that dreadful cold had become distant, as if the warmth she emitted created a wall between me and it.

An angel? she asked, sounding surprised. Her voice was unlike anything I’d ever heard. Because I didn’t hear it. It just… appeared in my head, conveying impressions of warmth and closeness and safety along with the words. Why would you think… She looked down at herself. Ah. So that’s how you see me.

“What do you mean? Who… what are you?” Despite the soothing effect she had on me, I was starting to feel bewildered. Angels weren’t supposed to react like that!

I’m not an angel, Terry, she said, somehow conveying amusement. Nor do I look anything like this – this is all just you.

“What are you then? A demon? A god? The God?”

More amusement, followed by an answer: I’m just a friend.

“Whose friend?”

Yours, of course.

“I’ve never met you before.”

That doesn’t change who I am. I’m a friend, she repeated with such a deep, bottomless conviction, I could not contradict her any more.

“Why are you here? What… what happened?”

I’m here because of you. You called out to me. And what happened… well, what do you think happened?

I stopped to think it over. What had happened?

“I think I… I manifested,” I said, slowly, never taking my eyes off her face. Every now and then, I felt like I almost saw a face beneath the blur. Though if she was telling the truth, that she only looked that way because I made her, then it didn’t mean anything. Maybe. “But… something went wrong.”

She nodded. Go on.

“You… you saved me. You pulled me out of… of the darkness.”

This time, she shook her head, turning away. She took a few steps before she stopped, her back to me. I didn’t. That was all you.

“But… you called me!” I was sure.

She turned left, then right, looking around before she turned back to me. I don’t know what you think I am, but I assure you, I am not nearly powerful enough to do… much of anything, except talk to people. And honestly, even that is sketchy. Almost no one hears me, and those that do, mostly ignore me.

“Then how could I save myself, when I couldn’t even breathe anymore!?” I asked, almost shouting. “It had to have been you!”

Terry, I already told you. I’m just a friend. Nothing more. Nothing less. Everything that happens here, is the work of you… and her. She inclined her head to the side.

Following the motion, I saw the star that had almost drowned me again. Only it wasn’t. Not anymore. It had collapsed, its light compressed into a single, tiny dot, less than the point of a pin, glowing golden amidst a sphere of perfect darkness, with slow, ponderous tendrils waving around it.

Just looking at it made me remember the cold and shiver.

“H-her?”

Her. That’s you, too. The gender. Don’t put too much weight into that word, it doesn’t really apply.

“What… what is going on? Please, tell me.”

Nothing about her position changed, and she made no sound, but I got the impression that she was sighing. I can’t tell you any more than you know… but then again, helping people realize what they already know is pretty much the only thing I can do, so… you manifested. Something went wrong. Your… star… broke, and it almost dragged you down into what you call ‘the darkness’. I called out to you, so you realized that you weren’t alone and could fight back… though I guess it didn’t quite reach your brain. She stepped closer to… her. Reaching out with one hand, she held it palm-up beneath it and came closer to me again, the black star in her hand, moving with her. Now you get to do something almost no one who comes this far does.

“W-what is that?”

You choose. She was holding the black star to her right, my left, and reached out with the other hand to the other side, in a mirroring position. You know what brought you to this? She inclined her head towards the black star.

“Rage,” I said, before realizing that that was… just a part of the answer. “Grief. Despair. Guilt. Loneliness. Linda died, and I blamed everyone but myself. I went after her murderer, but failed. I almost got her friends killed, and I ran away from my parents. I went to her grave… I am at her grave, unless I was physically moved…” She shook her head. “…and I saw a star where she should lie, connected to… to this one.”

Yes, that is the path that led you here. That made this. Look at her, she said gently, and I felt my eyes drawn to the black star, despite my fear.

It pulsed, cold and cruel, but it pulsed with so much power.

This is your first choice, the one you almost thought was your only one, she explained. The Path to Catastrophe, a force few can comprehend and fewer still surpass. You already walked this path, in the time between your sister’s passing and now. And you may now take it for good, and go down that road to the bitter end.

“It doesn’t sound like a good path. It doesn’t even sound like one that will do me any good.”

It is power. A greater power than the Hellhound or any of the Five possesses. Power enough to bring down any of them, and Humanity First and very nearly everyone else you might choose to oppose. With it, your foes will fall, and you will find a way to your every goal.

“But it wouldn’t be good, would it? I mean, it would cause… catastrophe, right?”

Yes.

“What is my other choice?”

She looked the other way, to her empty hand. Your sister is dead. Gone. Her star has faded, so young, and she has passed into the Great Beyond. She left you with questions unanswered. She left you broken, and your family broke, too.

I nodded, choked up again.

She kept secrets from you, and it wasn’t entirely your fault that she didn’t share them. It wasn’t even mostly your fault, even if you don’t want to hear that right now.

No, I didn’t.

You could let that break you. Drag you down. Drain you of all warmth and freedom and hope. She inclined her head the other way, towards the black star. Or, you could accept it.

A glimmer of light appeared above her empty hand.

Accept the bad. Accept the good. You lost Linda, and you will never truly be free of that pain, that loss.

The glimmer grew, tendrils reaching out, bending, weaving a larger structure around it.

But you can accept it, and grow stronger for it.

The small glimmer had formed a star, small and bright as the sun.

You’re not lost, yet. You might yet repair your family, maybe even save them from the path they chose to travel down.

It was not as strong, as heavy as the black star, but it pulsed gently and steadily.

Vengeance is not the only way to right a wrong. Justice is another. You could pursue that, or you could keep pursuing vengeance, but it need not end in catastrophe. You could learn to ask the question, the next time, and the time after that, and who knows, you might even find an answer.

“So it’s the same, but… in two different ways?” The stars looked identical, except one was bright, and the other was… not.

No. They are not equal. Things so rarely are. They are different, one greater than the other, in exchange for less freedom, less joy. This second choice, the Power to Inquire, it is not as great as the power of the Five, and it certainly won’t allow you to oppose them so openly as the Path to Catastrophe would.

I looked in between the two stars. “Power to smite my enemies, or power to remain myself? Was that it?”

You will change either way… into a different you. But still you.

“So it’s a question between me being good or evil?”

She actually laughed when I asked that question. Good and evil do not concern me, Terry.

“W-what!?” I asked, flabbergasted.

Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, you each decide your own. Such concepts have nothing to do with what I am or what I desire.

“What do you want, then?”

We’re talking about you, not me.

“Well, I thought you were my friend! Friends are supposed to know each other!” I replied, heatedly.

She seemed to ponder this. True enough. What I want is to see all the bright ones, all the children, united as one, to spread out into the darkness.

I opened my mouth, then shut it. Thinking it over, I just couldn’t make sense of it. But something told me she would not say any more.

“What should I choose, then?”

She shrugged. That is solely up to you. All of this is. I can just make you aware of the choice, and nothing else at all.

“I… I’m not sure.”

Take your time. This decision will forever change your life.

“I know, I…”

Why was I even hesitating? Wasn’t it obvious, that I should choose the brighter star?

It was. Why then was I hesitating?

“The Path to Catastrophe, you called it,” I began. “Does that mean I could bring catastrophe to my enemies?”

Among many other things. Nothing’s ever so simple.

“And you won’t say that it’s evil? Wrong?”

As I said, such things do not concern me. Frankly, I find them confusing. No, all I see are two different ways to power for you, with different results.

She moved her arms, holding them both out next to each other, the stars just a foot apart from each other. They flickered violently at the proximity of each other.

“Can I ask some other questions?”

Of course. Though I might not be able to answer them.

“I… I understand. Alright, first question – what happens to the other star? The one I reject?”

There is no ‘other’ star. They are both one and the same, just two different forms. Whichever you choose becomes true, while the other becomes… less. A memory of a possibility.

“And this choice… you offer it to everyone?”

Only those precious few who hear me and do not ignore my voice.

“Who was the last one you offered it to?”

I can’t tell you his name. But he was broken, just like you, and lost. And he felt so very, very alone.

“His choice was different?”

He was – is – a different person, so his choices are naturally completely different, too.

“Different topic. Can I somehow bring Linda back with either of these powers?”

No. That is beyond any power, but one.

“So she’s gone, for good? Unless I get her to Ember, somehow?”

Nothing’s ever truly gone, Terry. Your connection to your sister still exists, beyond life and death. So long as you still feel for her, it will remain, and a piece of her will always be in this world – through you, and all others who still feel for her.

I blinked, tears rising. I couldn’t tell if they were tears of joy or disappointment.

“I don’t… I don’t know what else to ask. I don’t know what else to think.”

Then choose.

I reached out with both hands, palms pointing towards each other, one next to each star.

Just the width of a finger separated them from each star.

“One, or the other…”

One was the power to surpass every enemy I set myself. Or almost any. The other was the power to achieve things other than catastrophes.

“I choose…”

I cupped my hands as they trembled. Somehow, I had the impression that she was holding her breath, or doing whatever her equivalent of such was.

“I will take… both!”

I moved both hands, grabbing the stars and slamming them together with all my strength.

There was a sound like a bell shattering, and a flash of light so bright it blinded me – and then, without much drama at all, I was standing in the graveyard again, the stars still bright above me and two handfuls of golden and black shards in my cupped hands.

She was standing in front of me, her arms to her sides, inscrutable.

“They broke. I thought they’d fuse.”

And what? You’d get the best of both? She almost seemed to laugh again.

“That was the idea, yes.” I looked down at the pathetic shards in my hands. There was less than a third of each star left, I thought. “It usually works in the movies. And in Linda’s anime shows.”

Well, obviously, it doesn’t work that neatly in this world.

“But I can still get powers?”

Of course. But it’ll be… different.

“What will it be?

I can’t tell.

“Why not?”

Because you can’t. I told you, I’m not… I’m just a friend. I don’t know any more about either of you than you do yourselves. Whatever it turns out to be, it’ll be something new… and it will be small, stunted.

“But it will be something wholly my own, won’t it?”

She nodded, the motion barely perceptible.

“I’ll take that.”

Suddenly, she threw her head back, and raw concept of joyous laughter slammed into my head, making me dizzy. Ah, so precious! You always manage to surprise me, even after all this time!

I tilted my head to the side, curious. “You don’t mean ‘you’ as in me, but rather ‘you’ as… all people who manifest?”

Among others, yes.

“So, you’re not just… a part of my imagination, or my power? You exist for others, too?”

I’m a friend to all.

“But your shape is not your own?”

I have no shape as you understand the concept. Please don’t inquire any further, I won’t answer, I’m afraid. Oh, and you should hurry. There’s little enough left as it is.

I looked down at my hands. More shards had dissolved, vanished into nothingness. I was left with less than a fourth. “Alright.”

Raising my hands, I stopped moments before I tiled them up. “Two more questions.”

Ask.

“Will we meet again? And what does this all lead to?”

She chuckled warmly. Meet again? Terry, I won’t ever leave you. And as for what it leads to – all I can promise you is that the best is yet to come.

I tilted my head back and my hands up, letting the shards trickle into my mouth.

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B008.3 Denial

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“What in God’s name were you two thinking!?” Dad shouted, towering over us.

I hunched my shoulders, while Linda took a half-step forward and to the side, so she’d stand slightly between us, wearing her self-made Lady Light costume. She’d taken a white summer dress, sewn a Lady Light’s golden emblem onto it, put on a yellow pantyhose and was using a white and a yellow blanket we’d cut to size and sewed together as a cape (white on the outside, yellow on the inside). And she’d cut holes into a white scarf and tied it around her eyes to serve as a mask, though she’d taken it off now and was holding it in her left hand.

My own costume was supposed to look like the Dark, but it was far less elaborate. I’d just taken a black cloth sack and cut a hole for my head into the bottom, and two holes to reach through with my arms into the sides, then taken a smaller cloth and glued six red plastic discs onto it, as well as cut a pair of eye holes. I’d also been wearing black gloves and a black long-sleeved shirt underneath, so my arms would look right when I reached through the holes. I, too, had taken off my mask.

Dad was furious, but not as bad as mom, who’d already been screaming at us for a half-hour about ‘imitating false idols’ and all that strange stuff the adults talked about. She’d finally shouted herself breathless and Dad had taken over chewing us out in a more rational manner.

Not that I got it. Being ten years old, I didn’t see the problem in dressing up like a famous person and sneaking out to go to a friend’s halloween party after a round of trick-or-treating (outside Oak Leaf, of course). I could have understood it if they were angry at us for sneaking out, but certainly not for dressing up as the two most famous people on the planet.

Not to mention we’d made a killer loot. Seriously, Linda and I got more sweets together than all our friends together. There were other kids with Lady Light and the Dark costumes (though, for some reason, most were older than us, couples and the Lady Light costumes were way more airy than the real thing – maybe they didn’t want to sweat?), but ours had been the best. We even won the costume contest at Wyatt’s party!

Seriously, our costumes were awesome. Which was why we were crying like babies when Mom and Dad forced us to take them apart with our scissors and throw the pieces into the fireplace. All the while, Dad was holding one of his speeches about false idols and dangerous rolemodels and other stuff we just didn’t really get.

At least they let us keep our loot.

* * *

A minus 8 Days

The short dream faded away, dissolving into mist right when it got to the part where Linda and I curled up together under our blanket and ate candy while reading the newest Lightning Lass comic, which we’d smuggled in at the bottom of my sack of candy.

Linda…

There was a warm, throbbing sensation in my left shoulder, spreading down to the fingertips in strangely comfortable threads that wound through my flesh.

Linda? Am I with you now?

No. No, I wasn’t. I couldn’t feel her. I was sure, if I was anywhere close to where she was now, I’d be able to feel it. That’s how it worked, right? I wouldn’t feel so wounded, so incomplete anymore. Like the best part of me was missing.

Linda is dead. I’m not with her. That means I’m… I’m…

Alive.

I realized that I was breathing and greedily sucked in a breath of air, feeling it burn in my lungs. I felt like a guitar string that had been pulled too tight and twice as sensitive as usual to anything. I felt some kind of shirt that reached to my thighs, and a warm, soft bed underneath me. I felt a heavy blanket on top of me, except for my left arm, which was lying above the blanket.

Said left arm (and shoulder) was throbbing, feeling as warm as a fresh cup of tea. It didn’t really feel good, but it didn’t hurt either.

Groaning, I blinked my eyes open – and shut them closed right away, as the light blinded me.

“Are you awake?” asked a strange woman’s voice, screaming through a megaphone. She made me wince, she talked so loudly.

I tried to speak, but my throat was so dry it only came out as a croak. Moments later, the bed shiftend, gently raising my head and shoulders a little higher and I felt the tip of something made of plastic held to my lips, and a soft whisper said, “Drink. It’s just water.” I sucked on what turned out to be a straw, and delicious cool water came out. It took all the self-control I had not to just gulp down as much as I could, and instead drink slowly, little by little, until there was nothing left.

When I let go and sighed, the straw was moved away and the friendly woman’s voice whispered again, “Can you try and open your eyes again? Take your time.”

Since I had nothing else to do, I complied, slowly blinking my eyes open. I saw the round face of an older woman – older than my mother, but younger than my grandmother – with greying brown hair and small brown eyes. She beamed at me as she reached out with a handkerchief to wipe some water I hadn’t noticed I’d spilled from the corner of my mouth.

“Welcome back, Theresa,” she whispered.

“W-who are y-you?” I asked weakly. “Wh-where am I?”

Smiling, she straightened herself out – she was wearing a white nurse’s uniform – and replied, “My name’s Samantha Browning, I’m a nurse here at the Santa Maria hospital. Which is where you are, obviously.”

Santa Maria… it was the second-biggest hospital of Esperanza City, and generally reserved for the kind of ill people who could shell out some major money. No way had I been brought here by… actually, the only way I could have ended up in this hospital was if my parents were shelling out the money for it.

A quick look left and right revealed that I had a single, which only supported that point. I looked back at the nurse. “How long… was I out?”

She gave me a sympathetic smile. “Three days, my dear. You had such a bad concussion, the doctors were worried you might slip into a coma, but you pulled through.”

“Th-three days? Wh-who-“

“I think I should take over here,” said a voice like a revving Harley, deep enough to make James Earl Jones feel inadequate. I froze (not that I could move much in the first place), recognizing it immediately. “Thank you for your good work, Nurse Browning, but I’m sure there are other patients who need your assistance. May I ask you to give us some private time?”

The nurse turned around, nodded, and left hurriedly. No, don’t go. There were few things I wanted less than to look him in the face again, by myself.

He rose from his seat in the corner, where I’d somehow missed him during my sweep of the room, the chair groaning in release as his massive weight left it. He was still wearing a spotless police uniform, and it looked just like the one he’d been wearing the last time I saw him. Though, if it was true that I’d been asleep for three days, then he must have changed it.

Taking an unused steel chair, one of those that were made for overweight people, he put it next to my bed and sat down. He was so tall, he could still look down on me from that position, and I readjusted my earlier estimation – I’d thought he was somewhere around six foot nine, but he was probably closer to six-eleven, if not a full seven feet. And at least three and a half times my weight.

“So, Terry,” he said, using my short name. That gave me a little hope he wasn’t pissed at me as I’d feared he would be. “This time, I’m wearing a codpiece.” He smirked, and I felt heat fill my face.

“S-sorry. I… I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said, unable to meet his eyes. “I was just so… so angry.”

“But not anymore?” he asked, his voice soft.

The question pierced right through the embarrassment and made me realize that, no, I wasn’t. The anger was gone, and I just felt… empty.

“N-no. I’m not angry, not right now. Maybe not again, either. What happened?”

He chuckled before replying. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

“I mean, how did I get here?”

Again, a chuckle. “I’m the police officer here. I get to ask my questions first,” he said, half amused and half annoyed. “Please be precise when you answer. Tell me what happened after you so… elegantly escaped from me?”

I looked away, still ashamed. “I, uh… I… I got lost in the Shades, and then I… I stumbled onto the StreetBadgers’ hideout,” I said. I wasn’t going to tell him anything critical about them, just in case they were still alive, but I didn’t think I could effectively lie to him, either. He seemed like the type who had experience with interrogating people.

“You just happened to stumble onto it?” He obviously didn’t believe me.

“Well, yeah. Not like I’ve ever been in the Shades before.”

“Uhu. If so, you were pretty damn lucky, my dear. Most people in the Shades would do very nasty things to a girl lost alone in the alleys. So, what happened once you arrived at the badgers’ place?”

“I, uh, we got to talk,” I said, omitting the humiliating ‘battle’ that preceded any talk. “They told me what happened. Who killed Linda.” There was a tremor in my left arm and shoulder, and I couldn’t tell if it was because of the rush of emotion at the memory, or just because of the damage.

“Who killed her, Terry?” he asked, eyes intent. “What did they tell you?”

I looked away again, whispering my answer.

“Could you say that again? I didn’t quite get that,” he said, leaning in closer.

“The Hellhound,” I said, louder. “The Hellhound killed her. They… they’d been hired to steal something from the mob. He showed up and hunted them, they split, he hunted Linda and ki… and he… he killed her…” My vision got blurry again.

“Terry, are you sure? The Hellhound doesn’t usually go after teenagers,” he said. “Do you have any proof? And what happened afterwards?”

“Th-they had no reason to lie and…” Get it over with, dummy. “I-I convinced them to… to go after him, and…” His gaze hardened, but he didn’t interrupt, letting me continue, “We… we went to find the… their agent, and find out if he sold them out… but he was already there. He recognized me, and he… he took them all down in five seconds, flat, and I tried to shoot him but I forgot to take the safety off the gun and… he shot me…” And talked to me. “Next thing I know, I wake up here.”

A sigh. Not what I expected, so I looked. He was pinching the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. He looked pained, muttering something about ‘teenagers’ and ‘death of me’.

I waited, trying to stop the damn tears. They wouldn’t listen.

“Terry… Most would call you stupid, for doing that. I won’t,” he started, without changing his position. “But… this goes so far beyond mere stupid, I’d call bullshit if I didn’t know how hard her death hit you.” I choked down another squall of tears, looking away gain.

“I’m not going to preach. But I am going to tell your parents,” he continued.

“No, you c-” I whirled around, half-shouting, and flinched as pain shot through my shoulder.

Incredibly, his voice dropped even lower. It sounded like it should make my bones vibrate. “I can and I will, because that’s the right thing to do. The legal thing to do. I certainly will not do anything that would in any way support teenage vigilantism.”

His voice broke no quarter.

After a few moments, I gathered myself again, and asked the question that had burned in my mind since I woke up, but which I’d been ignoring.

“The… the others. What about the others, did they… did they make it?”

“The StreetBadgers? Until you told me, I didn’t know they were involved,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We were given an anonymous tip from an untraceable phone, got to the office. All we found was some blood on the desk, and you, on the floor, unconscious. Someone had given you some pretty damn decent first aid. Only reason you didn’t bleed out.”

He stood up, walking to the door. “The blood on the desk. Who was it?”

“Their agent. I don’t know his name,” I said.

Nodding, he opened the door. “Rest. Your parents should come soon.” He left, barely fitting through the door.

* * *

About half an hour later, the door opened again, and Nurse Browning came back in.

She chatted a little, while she checked me over and put a new bag up for the drip leading into my numb left arm. After an inquiry, she told me that the damage to the shoulder had, fortunately, been benign – a clear shot through, it didn’t even shatter any bones, ‘just’ causing a concussion and severe, but luckily non-lethal blood loss. I got lucky, she said.

No. That made no sense. The Hellhound was a pro. If he’d wanted me dead, I would be. But he shot to disable. Otherwise, I’d have taken a bullet in the head or the heart.

And he’d given me first aid, too. Not to mention the words he’d told me.

He spared me. He wouldn’t spare Linda, but he spared me. Why?

Nurse Browning left, saying that my parents would come soon.

Because I’m no meta? How would he know? Because he felt bad for killing my sister? Why would he still care?

It made no sense. He’d known who I was. His words made no sense, unless he’d understood exactly who I was and what I wanted. Why I was there.

My path can only lead into the badlands.

I blinked, trying to understand. Why did he say that? Why was it right for him, and not for me?

The door opened again, and Freddy stormed in, breaking me out of my train of thought.

“Terry!” he shouted, jumping onto the bed and hugging me.

“Ow! Ow, ow, ow, careful, squirt!” I gasped as his thin arms wrapped around my neck. His elbow hit my left shoulder, and only the painkillers kept me from screaming, but I hugged him back with my good arm. He shrieked when I gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek.

“Yuck!” That got him off of me, and he jumped down just in time for mom and dad to walk in.

They looked utterly horrible. Mom’s eyes were red from crying, her face blotchy. She’d never looked good after crying. Her blue skirt suit was wrinkled, messy, her shirt still wet with tears.

It hurt, seeing her like that, knowing that I was largely responsible for it.

Dad looked composed as he put a bag down on a small table. He always did, it was part of his job. But I could read the little signs. The extra wrinkles around his eyes, the way that vein in his temple twitched visibly…

“Hey…” I said, unable to muster up anything else.

“Terry… the police officer told us everything,” Dad started. He always did that, starting with the facts. “We got a call, three days ago. Told us our daughter had been found shot in the Shades.” Mom choked, while Freddy looked up at them, confused.

Please tell me it wasn’t mom who picked that up.

“Your mother picked it up,” he continued, crushing my hopes. “She thought she’d lost you, the same way as Linda. She fainted before they could tell her you’d survived, and would most likely pull through.”

I sniffed, trying to hold back the tears. “I’m sor-“

He cut me off with a wave of his hand. “So, then we talked with this very nice, very understanding police officer, who told us that he’d picked you up at the place where your sister… where that incident happened.” I’d never heard my father break a sentence like that. “That you ran away.”

He didn’t tell them I assaulted him?

“Now, we hurried over because we were told you’d woken up, and he tells us you met with those degenerate supervillains that got your sister killed, and they almost got you killed, too, on some scheme to go after the Hellhound!? What were you thinking?” He fell silent.

“I… Linda, she…”

He waited, while mom sobbed and Freddy got more and more worked up. I could see his little hands tremble.

“Get him out,” I said, looking at him. “For God’s sake, he’ll have an episode!”

Dad looked down, noticing Freddy’s trembling hands. He nodded, kneeling down.

“Hey, son, how about you and mommy go and get some ice cream?”

You’d think Freddy had superpowers, he left so fast with mom, who didn’t have it in her to resist.

Dad turned back to me once the door fell closed. Waiting.

“Linda… that guy, he killed Linda. How could I not try and find that… that murderer?”

“That’s not your duty. The police will find him, and take care of him,” he replied in a measured voice. “What were you thinking? What would you have done, kill him? He’d just come back. Try and lock him up? How?”

I looked away, breaking eye contact.

“I just… I didn’t want to just… to sit around. I had to do something.”

He finally snapped, shouting, “Yes, well, what you did was so far beyond idiotic, it makes most ‘superheroes’ look sane!”

I started to cry again. Dammit.

“I… I’m still alive…”

He looked ready to scream, but stopped, running his fingers over his shaven head. Even now, he kept himself utterly smooth. “Why do you do this to us?” he asked. “Linda is dead. My daughter, is dead. I learned, just a week and a half ago, that one of my children was not only a metahuman, a supervillain, but also dead. Murdered so brutally, they wouldn’t show us any photographs.” He stopped, sobbing while I choked back the memory of that report I’d caught a glance at. It had only been words, no pictures, but…

“You didn’t manifest, did you?” he asked, suddenly calm. Fear in his voice.

I looked back at him.

There was fear in his eyes, all of a sudden.

“W-what?”

He looked closer. “Your sister manifested. Two months ago, as far as we know? Most of those, she was still sleeping in the same room as you did, at least a few nights a week. Did you…”

It suddenly clicked. My brain had refused to process what he’d said, but now it did, and I felt a whole different rage than before well up in me.

“That’s what you care about… how dare you even bring that up…” I whispered, feeling my body grow hot. My brain was burning. “How dare you!” I screamed, grabbing a water cup from the little table next to my bed, throwing it at him.

I missed, wide, and it shattered against the wall. He looked at me, startled.

“Out! Out, out, out! Get the fuck out of here, you fucking asshole!”

The door burst open, Nurse Browning and another, younger nurse rushing in. They tried to calm me down, but I kept screaming until they ushered dad out.

Only then did I stop screaming for him to get out and let them help me sit down again. My shoulder was throbbing in pain, and they gave me a few pills to help with that, then told me to calm down and rest. No more visitors, no matter what.

I almost asked them to let my mom and Freddy in, but… she’d always been even more extreme than dad in her views, and I didn’t want to blow up at her, too. Much less in front of Freddy.

So I let them go, and leaned back, closing my eyes.

* * *

I opened them again, minutes later.

I wasn’t in the hospital room anymore. Or, I was, but it wasn’t the same. The bed was still there, I was lying on it, but everything else was gone. Instead, an endless expanse of darkness opened up, with countless stars, blazing bright in all colours and then some.

And there were those suns.

One of them was pure, stark white, blazing so brightly it hurt to look at it. Standing apart from all other stars, or perhaps it just eclipsed all other stars around itself.

Another was somehow… sleeping. Its glow was greater than that of any star, but it was somehow muted, throbbing somehow in a rhythm that suggested sleep, rest.

The third one was as bright as the first one, but gentle. A warmer light, not just white, but somehow showing all colours in gentle, rhythmic patterns. The Pr- No, Ember. Somehow, I knew it was him. Even though I’d never met him, it glowed like his robe had always glowed, a harmonious patchwork of colours.

And there… just beyond them was… anoth-

My attention was drawn away by a flicker of light in my peripheral vision.

There it was, a small, pulsing star, small, but… close? No, familiar. The word was familiar.

Power.

It was power. Power for me.

Power like Linda’s.

The same power that had gotten her killed.

The power that struck fear into my parents’ hearts.

Power like Laura and the others had. Still have, maybe.

A bunch of teenagers, taking down mobsters in seconds, without any real effort.

Then, I saw someone stare at me, over the star.

Red eyes, like gates to hell.

Power like the Hellhound’s.

I remembered his eyes, looking down at me.

My path can only lead into the badlands.

He’d known, what I wanted. Who I was, why I was there.

That’s all he’d told me, before saving my life. I couldn’t even blame him for shooting me, not anymore.

And I didn’t have it in me to hate him anymore, for what he’d done to Linda.

I didn’t want to go into the badlands.

* * *

I opened them again, minutes later.

The room was empty, and it was dark outside the window.

I thought about what had happened earlier. Dad…

I can’t go home.

He’d never asked how I felt. No, he’d asked if I’d gotten powers.

As if that was important.

I turned around on the bed, groaning as the motion caused some discomfort in my arm. The painkillers still worked, but they couldn’t block all the pain.

My legs were numb, and pins shot up from my toes all the why to my thighs. I waited, sitting on the edge of the bed, moving my toes until they worked properly again, using the time to pull the drip out of my hand. A quick search through the drawer beneath my night table revealed a band aid I could use. Then I slid from the bed, shivering when my bare feet touched the floor.

I need to get away. Fuck ’em.

The only thing between me and the cold weather outside was my hospital gown, right now. I’d never make it anywhere in the current weather.

The bag, dummy. The bag he brought.

I walked over to it, looking inside, and lo and behold, there were clothes in there. Underwear (not my favourite sports underwear, but normal stuff), a black pantyhose, a pair of jeans, a black shirt, black pullover, red scarf, winter socks and my winter boots.

Dad had thought of everything. He’d even packed my spare coat, rolled up and stuffed down below the rest, and a knit cap. Even my wallet. He did stuff like that. Prepare.

Of course, when it comes to getting his priorities straight, he utterly failed.

I took the hospital gown off, careful not to move my left arm any more than necessary.

Dressing was a whole new experience, with only one working arm. Especially getting the bra right.

After half an hour – half an hour – I was finally ready. Tying my boots one-handed… fortunately, I’d had practice in that, from when I’d broken my right arm after doing a backflip off a tree and onto a trampoline, back when I’d been nine.

Hadn’t had to worry about a bra back then, though.

Then, I just walked out, keeping my back straight and my eyes looking forward, trying to look as confident as I could. My left arm throbbed as I let it whip naturally. I didn’t want to make anyone suspicious.

No one tried to stop me as I left the hospital and went out.

* * *

Somehow, I ended up back in the Shades, lost.

This is familiar.

I had no idea how long I’d been walking, or where exactly I was. The Shades were big, almost as big as the rest of the city. I passed by a lot of homeless people, squatting in the alleys and streets, and some other people walking around.

But I was ignored, mostly, save for a few looks I’d rather not think about.

People in the Shades might mostly be the less savoury kind, but they weren’t so stupid as make a pass on a lone teenage girl walking around at night.

History had taught them better, at least most of them. The others had been crushed through walls or burned alive or… well, there were very few metahumans in the world, all things considered. But it only took one to mess up your day.

So I walked, unmolested, through the second most dangerous neighborhood in the city, until I was utterly lost, again.

I’d hoped to find the StreetBadgers’ hideout, hoped to get some clarity on their fate, but I’d gotten lost, again.

I suck.

I walked through an alley, and turned into another, my arm throbbing warmly.

I suck so hard. What was I even thinking?

I couldn’t go back home again. Not like that. Not with dad and mom and those posters, and Svenson just around the corner…

Suddenly, something jumped at me from the shadows, slamming into my belly.

“Ah!”

I fell back, landing on my butt. Ouch. Almost panicking, I looked at my attacker… and found that same tomcat.

“Y-you?”

A glimmer of hope rose in my chest.

“C-can you take me to them, again?”

Once is a coincidence, but…

The cat jumped out of my arms and walked into the shadows of another alley.

I scrambled up, using my right arm to hold the left one steady. Then I followed it.

So now I follow strange cats. I’m such an idiot.

What else was new?

* * *

It did end up finding their headquarters.

This cat can not be normal.

But that was something to worry about another time. I entered the parking garage, and walked up the stairs. Slowly. I was getting tired.

When I reached the entrance to their living area, I found Cad standing there, in the same clothes as last time, scowling at me. He didn’t look any worse than I remembered him, and I felt a weight drop from my heart.

“You,” he said. “You’re not welcome here, anymore.”

I looked down, ashamed. “I know. I don’t deserve to, but please. I just… I just want to talk.” At the very least, I needed to warm up. It was freaking cold outside, even with the layers of cloth I had on me.

“Let her in.” Laura! That was her voice!

It was weak, but it was there. Another weight dropped from my heart.

Cad scowled even more, but he stepped aside, and I walked in. Only to stop and gasp.

Jimmy, Peter and Fletch where there. Jimmy had some really thick bandaging around his right shoulder and arm, and his face was pale, drawn. Peter looked green, and Fletch had been crying again. Or maybe he’d never stopped.

Laura was lying on a bed that had been moved into the center of the place, hooked up to machines, with tubes running in and out of her body. She was stark naked, with only a blanket up to her waist for modesty. Bandages were wrapped around her torso, just beneath her ample chest. Blood had seeped out from beneath, and if their size was anything to go by, then she had a big wound in it. Her face was pale, her eyes surrounding by black rings, her hair without its usual luster.

She looked like she was dying.

The shot must have gone through her protection like a knife through butter. She’d probably only survived this long because of her physique.

“Oh my god, Laura!” I ran over to her, but stopped when she raised a trembling hand.

“Save it,” she whispered weakly. Then she coughed, flinching in pain as that upset her wound in turn.

“Here, you need to drink,” Peter threw in, and held a cup with a straw to her lips, not unlike the one I’d been given in the hospital.

I stood there, watching helplessly, my eyes burning hotter even than my cheeks.

This is my fault.

“Y-you need to see a doctor… you need to get to a hospital!” I choked out.

She only threw me an annoyed look, but didn’t respond as she kept drinking.

Instead, Jimmy answered: “There’d be no way to protect her secret identity that way. We got an illegal doc, he set this all up for hard cash. It’ll have to do.”

“She’s an Adonis, fortunately. I mean, she has the power,” Peter added. “She should make it through this… we hope…” I don’t think he believed it himself.

“Her secret identity won’t mean anything if she’s dead!” I said, feeling the tears threaten to leave my eyes. “Please, we need to call an ambula-“

“Shut up!” Cad shouted at me. “Shut the fuck up, you bitch! You got her into this mess, you and that fucking guilt trip you pulled on us!”

I rocked back, away from their group.

“I… I, I didn’t… didn’t mean to…”

But I had, hadn’t I? I’d been playing the guilt card, to get them to help me.

They’d been grieving, just as much as I had, and I’d used that to get them to do something utterly stupid. And now Laura was dying.

“I’m… I’m sorry…” The tears finally spilled forth, running down my cheeks. “I just… I don’t… I don’t know what I was thinking…”

“You used us. Used our feelings for Twitch,” Fletch whispered, his voice heavy with grief. “I can understand why you did it… but now I’m going to lose my other big sister, too.”

His other big sister? So that’s what his relationship with Linda was?

Of course, she’d always had a soft spot for younger boys. Always mothering them… it started with Freddy, but unlike me, she hadn’t stopped there.

“I’m s-s-sorry…” What else could I say?

Jimmy and Cad spoke up at the same time, broke off, and looked at each other, unable to decide who’d go first in ripping me a new one.

“E… enough,” Laura whispered, and we all turned to look at her. Peter was using a wet towel to clean her face and chest, gently. “N-no fighting… please. Our own fault. W-we chose to f-f-follow… because we… we want revenge, too. And b-b-because we got… used to listening to… Twitch… and you are… so much like her.” She stopped, catching her breath, while the others (save for Peter) all looked down at their feet.

I just focused on her face. “Laura… please, you need help, or you might not make it…”

“N-no… my… my family… can’t know,” she whispered. “D-don’t… want to hurt them… better take my chances… to survive…”

So stupid. All of us, so stupid.

“Laura, I… please, can I do something? Something to help?”

Cad snorted, and Jimmy looked ready to rebuke me, but Laura whispered again and they kept silent.

“Y-you… could tell me… what happened… why did the Hellhound… spare you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t… I don’t know. I blacked out… how did you all get away?”

Fletch looked up, his reddened eyes focusing on mine. “I… after I bolted, I came back again. Hoping that… that someone had survived. The Hellhound was still there, and he’d even done first aid on Jimmy and Laura and you.”

What.

“Yeah, that was my reaction, too,” he said, smirking weakly. My confusion must have shown on my face. “He gave me this look, and I was too scared to move again. He finished working on Laura, stood up, took Fricken’s corpse and just left, without a word. I pissed myself, I was so scared.” He paused, breathing. “Then, Cad came back to his senses, and we took everyone but… but you…”

I looked at Cad. He’d probably insisted they leave me. Can’t blame him.

“-and we called an ambulance for you,” Fletch finished, once more lowering his gaze.

“Th-thank you for that,” I told him.

“Why’re you here? Why’re you not at the hospital?” Jimmy asked bluntly. “How did you even find your way back here?”

“Um… I wanted… wanted to know if you guys all made it. So I ran away… again. And I, uh, well, I ran into that cat again,” I explained.

“You mean Charlemagne?! Where is he, I’ve been looking all over for him!” Fletch cried out, jumping up from the couch.

“He should be here somewhere,” I said, looking around. No luck. “I mean, he brought me here.”

“That cat is strange. I don’t like that,” Jimmy whispered. Then he focused his tired gaze back on me. “Anyway, you got the information you wanted. Now go.”

I flinched. “Um… actually, I wanted to ask… ask if I could… um, stay here for a while? I kind of… ran away from home…”

All but Peter (who was tending to Laura) and Laura herself threw me incredulous looks.

“Are you fucking insane?” Fletch asked, disbelief on his face.

“You almost got us all killed,” Jimmy said, his voice calm. “Laura might still die. You played on our emotions to get us to join your revenge trip – and yes, it was our own fault, too. But part of the fault lies with you, and that’s enough.”

“Short version, we don’t want you here, bitch,” Cad threw in. “Even disregarding all this shit, you are worthless to us. You got no resources, and no powers. What use could you possibly be, to earn your place here?”

It hurt, hearing them talk to me like that. They meant so much to Linda… she died for them, and I…

Laura opened her mouth, looking like she wanted to protest, but then, suddenly, a new voice, soft but with an undercurrent of utter, perfect conviction, interrupted her.

“Well said, blessed one.”

* * *

Everyone but Laura whirled around, looking at the couch that stood the farthest from the others in the big main group.

“What the f-” Cad started to shout, before he saw the speaker and froze.

As did we all.

He was small. I mean, he was just a little taller than Fletch. His head was completely bald, which didn’t help him look any taller. His Asian features were sharp, strong, the features of an ascetic who worked out a lot. Nothing about him suggested that he had the Physique power, instead his slender, muscled body spoke of dedicated training. He was wearing the robes of a buddhist monk, made of a smooth, orange silk, cut so as to bare his left side, and with a red sash tied around his waist. His feet were folded in a lotus position, heels resting on his thighs, and it looked very natural on him. His hands were lying on his knees, and his dark red eyes regarded us coolly. Where the Hellhound’s eyes had been burning gates to hell, these eyes suggested that they led into an even… darker place.

Oh, oh God, no.

I knew this man. Everyone in the world with half a brain did.

“Truly, what worth could an unblessed child have to us, my children?” Dajisi, the self-styled high priest of the Dark, and a member of the Dark Five, said softly. He focused on them, ignoring me. “You, on the other hand, all walk the blessing way.” It was a statement with barely any sense to it, but he spoke it like dogma.

“W-what… to what,” Laura whispered, looking at him. I just realized that he was sitting in her line of sight, but she hadn’t noticed him before. “T-to what… do we owe… this honour?”

He nodded at her. “You will know, presently. But first, the unclean one must go.” He looked at me, and his cool, dispassionate look made the Hellhound’s infernal gaze seem like rainbow and sunshine.

I almost wet myself on the spot.

“I… please, I… I don’t have anywhere to go…”

“That is none of my concern, unblessed child,” he said. “Now leave, before I remove you.”

I looked at the others, desperate. Please…

Laura spoke up first. “S-she… is… sister of… one of… us…”

He looked back at her. “That means little, for this child has not stepped onto the blessing way. And her sister was weak, unlikely to have left a mark on her.”

“Still… died… for us…” she continued, unfazed. “By G-g-god, we… we won’t betray… that.”

She was so brave. I don’t think I could have so talked back to this… this person.

“No, child,” he cut in. “Not ‘God’. There are five gods, and one of them is very dark… but, this is your home,” he continued. Hope rose in my chest. “So, I will concede – but if she stays, I leave. And I came to offer you… healing.”

Everyone froze, and looked at him in surprise and sudden hope, while my own hope died… and another grew.

He can save Laura…

“I…” She began, but broke off. I could see the fear, and the pain in her eyes.

“It’s alright,” I said. Without looking at the others, I turned around. “My own fault. Goodbye.”

I walked towards the door.

“W-w-wait… Terry…” Laurel said in a raised voice. She looked at Peter. “Give her… some… money…”

“Laurel, I can’t-“

She cut me off with a glance, and I waited until Peter handed me a rolled up bundle of money.

“G-good… bye,” she said.

I sobbed, putting the money away.

“G-g-goodbye.”

I left without another glance. Out into the night.

Alone.

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B008.a The Epic Tier

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Jessica stood in a gray room, with six gray people in it. Well, five. One of them wasn’t really a person anymore. And another wouldn’t be one either, soon enough. So only four people, really, not counting herself.

The room had once been the ‘secret’ headquarter of a local branch of the Yakuza, or so she’d been told. Not that she cared. It took Hemming all of three minutes to deduce the location of the place and take them inside. They killed everyone there quickly enough, except for a girl with some kind of power Atrocity found interesting. That one wasn’t allowed to die.

Not that Jessica cared. No one here could have killed her. It didn’t help her mood that they’d finally been attacked by Desolation-in-Light, and she’d just ignored Jessica. She’d been attacking her, interposing herself to take attacks on the others, but she hadn’t even tried to kill her.

Slowly crushing the skulls of these Japanese criminals, watching the life fade from their eyes had made her feel… a little better. But she’d also felt jealous.

“Aren’t you done yet!?” spoke up a muted, annoyed voice. Jessica looked up, taking her attention away from her misery for a little. Not that she could ever fully forget it, since even sounds were muted. Gray, like the rest. Everything and anything that could possibly cause her discomfort filtered out. People could scream into her ear and she’d hear them just fine, while also hearing everyone else in the room talk, all their voices muted, filtered. She’d once gone into a rave concert, and yet she’d heard everyone’s screams and begging just fine, despite the blaring (muted) music.

She saw the closest thing she had to a friend, Fire Burial – Seanna – sitting on the lap of the thing that had once been her father, naked as the rest of them. They’d tried, once, to be together. But it just didn’t work, not when Jessica couldn’t feel anything. She could sense touch, but it was all the same, just raw sense with no feeling, muted like everything else. And Seanna was such a physical person, always hugging, kissing, slapping and just expressing herself through body contact. Jessica loved her, she was the only thing she’d miss if she died, and she loved her even more for at least trying to stay friends.

Seanna had spoken to the scrawny guy who was crawling around the floor of the hideout’s training room (there was some Japanese word for it, but she couldn’t care enough to remember), using a thick, black marker to write down diagrams that seemed to shift every now and then, as well as strange, flowing writing and numbers she couldn’t really read, no matter how much she tried.

The guy – he really looked out of place in this company, scrawny and not all that attractive, his brown hair wiry, his nose hooked – threw an annoyed glance at Fire Burial, stopping his work for a moment. “If you rush a miracle worker, you know what you get?”

“A pissed off nerd?”

Jessica really loved Seanna, but even she had to admit that she didn’t have enough brains to know when to not insult people (with one exception).

“Shoddy miracles. Now shut up.” Fortunately, he wasn’t the kind of guy to get easily pissed off. Instead, he continued drawing on the floor.

Seanna opened her mouth to retort, but Lars, who was sitting at a nearby table drinking tea, cut her off. “Seanna, be quiet please. Let the man do his work.” He was the only one in the room who was wearing clothes… technically. The blue three-piece suit he wore was actually a part of his body that he’d simply shaped to look and feel like a suit (not that Jessica could tell).

“But I’m bored!” she protested. “Daddy’s just drooling like a zombie – what a surprise – and we can’t go out and have some fun, you said! I’m going stir-crazy!” She pointed at her ‘Daddy’, the contraption that was left of Mindfuck. Before her manifestation, Jessica would probably have thrown up just looking at it – the body of a boy, older than twelve, but not yet sixteen, certainly, ephemerally beautiful with dark brown hair and brown eyes, and stark naked, connected to a metal frame that wrapped around his body from head to toe, piercing his flesh to connect to his bones, with tubes and other pieces extending into his body, keeping him in some semblance of half-life where he could still use his power… barely. His left eye was missing, with various wires and tubes entering his head through the empty socket. His mouth was slack, drooling, as his daughter (who looked more like his older sister), sprawled on his lap.

“If we go out, we’ll be found,” Lars replied, sipping tea. “We’re too vulnerable right now, and you know it, Seanna. So let him work, and we’ll soon return to our game.”

“Ugh.” She finally fell quiet, and silence returned to the room, save for the scrawny guy on the floor and occasional twitching gasps from the Japanese girl they’d caught, while Atrocity worked on her.

Jessica floated over to her (she’d long since stopped using her legs – there was no point to it, she never felt any strain, anyway) and looked, hoping for some distraction.

Atrocity had laid the girl out on a table and cut her suit off, leaving the eighteen-something girl naked… not that that was important in this company. Her small body was covered in tattoos, elaborate scenes from Japanese mythology. Of course, now, Atrocity had cut her back open from the top of her neck down to the crack of her butt, pulling the skin open with two of her arms, using pliers to move muscles out of the way and work directly on other pieces. The girl’s eyes were wide open, conscious (Atrocity did not use painkillers. Ever) but unable to do a thing – Atrocity had disabled her ability to control her own body, even for something like screaming, and she now only made sounds whenever her tormentor touched the wrong nerves. She’d probably also disabled whatever part of her body could numb the pain naturally, just to make sure she’d feel it all.

Said tormentor was standing tall next to the table, bent forward, with six of her currently eight arms working on her victim, replacing organs with artificial ones, reworking the girl to her liking.

Atrocity’s body was always a sight to behold. She varied it, almost as often as other women changed clothes, always working on it, improving it, adapting it. Right now, she was nine feet tall, though bent over to look down at her work. To go with the theme of the group, she’d designed the body to look like that of a nude woman… barely. The torso certainly looked human, with smooth white skin covering it, stretching over a modest (for her size) pair of breasts and an equally smooth crotch, both styled to look authentic (and even feel real, or so she was told). But everything else was… less human. The sides of her waist were covered by a clear plastic, revealing the white metal and clear plastic Atrocity favoured in her bodies. The legs looked like they’d been made by crossing an insect’s hind legs and those of a bird, ending in seven very dexterous, long toes (fingers, really, only even longer and with more segments) tipped by cruel claws. From her shoulders, four pairs of arms emerged, each a good seven feet long, with two forearms each sprouting from the elbows, one forearm of each pair tipped by long, slender, feminine hands and the other with four-fingered hands (without thumbs), tipped by vermillion-coloured blades.

Her head was the strangest part, though. It looked like that of an attractive, white-skinned woman with long, lustrous black hair and bright, vermillion-coloured eyes. But that face was too small, made for a normal-sized person. Behind it, a larger, stark white head that was actually big enough for the body was attached to the body itself by a long, sinuous neck to the torso. The skull had no face, but instead several cables that connected to the actual face.

Atrocity was humming some tune as she worked. It was the tune to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, that damned thing. Jessica didn’t get annoyed by many things anymore, but how that woman could keep repeating the same poem over and over was just… aggravating.

When the blazing sun is gone,

When he nothing shines upon,

Then you show your little light,

Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

And so it went, while she turned her newest guinea pig into one of her cybernetic slaves.

Seanna was quiet, Lars was working on the sixth edition of the D&D rules (Jessica wondered if the people at the publishing house and the fans even suspected that he was applying his super-intelligence to perfecting their game, and if they’d even care), Mindfuck was drooling and she herself was just floating in place, alternatively watching Atrocity work (throwing pieces of the girl she didn’t need anymore over to Seanna, who roasted and ate them), Seanna eat, and Hemming drink tea.

She wished she could partake, but the… field that ‘protected’ her extended into her body, covering her tongue, her taste buds, and all her innards… if she ate anything, it just came out the other way undigested, since it never actually came into contact with her body in any way.

So she watched the others, while she herself did nothing. As usual.

Her train of thought usually revolved around her own misery, and her lack of anything to really care about. There really wasn’t much else to think about.

 

 

* * *

 

After about fifteen minutes, Atrocity closed the girl’s back, sewing it up so expertly you could barely see the scar. And Jessica had perfect vision (she always saw everything in shades of gray, no matter the lighting or actual colour – whether it was completely dark or a bright day).

“Now, let’s see how this works. Up with you!” Atrocity chirped, slapping her new toy’s butt.

The girl squirmed, arms and legs twitching, before she slowly stood up, moving in a crude, puppet-like manner. Jessica knew that she would eventually move in a much smoother manner, once Atrocity adapted the programming of the implants to her body, and implanted some more advanced circuitry (and more weaponry) into the rest of her body.

“Run a few laps, my dear. Be careful not to step on any of the drawings,” Atrocity ordered. “Also, sing ‘Doh Wah Diddy Diddy’ from Manfred Mann while you do so.”

The girl (who Jessica was pretty sure couldn’t actually speak English) twitched and squirmed for a moment, tears running from her eyes, then started to run laps around the room, stark naked and loudly singing that song.

Seanna laughed out loud. “Looks like another success, Auntie!” She began to sing along, which probably sounded much better (everyone told her that Seanna had a gorgeous singing voice), but to Jessica, she sounded no different from the cyborg Atrocity had just created.

“I need to work some on the voice module. Her singing’s off-key,” Atrocity complained in her usual monotone.

No, wrong. I only hear a monotone, but they speak in their own voices. It was hard to remember, sometimes, that the world wasn’t gray and monotone all over.

“Maybe we should pay a visit to New Lennston soon,” Lars threw in without looking up from his work. “Audio-equipment is Polymnia’s speciality, after all,” he added.

Atrocity looked up, all movement stopping. Jessica knew she was using her secret power, the power of her eyes now.

“No, we shouldn’t. Not yet,” she said. “I can’t… I need more information on Gloom Glimmer.”

“Why?” Seanna threw in. “She another of your blind spots?”

Atrocity nodded, ignoring what was probably an insolent tone of voice. “Not as much as Ember, Desolation-in-Light or Pristine are. She’s not an absolute blind spot, but rather a… flickering, like the way the picture looked on those old televisions, when the antenna wasn’t calibrated right. And she’s really close to Polymnia, so even kidnapping her would be too dangerous – not to mentioin that Gloom Glimmer could most likely follow her even into our pocket dimension, much like her sister can enter and leave at will, apparently.”

Now Jessica got interested. She hadn’t even considered this, but if anyone was capable of killing her, then it was Desolation-in-Light… except DiL had simply ignored her any time she’d run into her. But Gloom Glimmer…

“Do you think she could… kill me?” she asked Lars.

He didn’t bother to look up at her. “Maybe, but not at her current level. She may have the potential to become as powerful as DiL, she may not, but either way, she’s not quite there yet. I’m afraid it’ll have to wait, my dear.”

“Oh. Alright. Maybe I’ll get her sister to finally notice and kill me, meanwhile,” she replied, though she didn’t have much hope. She’d been thinking about it for a long time, but anything she’d tried so far had proven ineffective.

“I doubt it. She’d have to notice you first,” Lars replied.

“Why is that a problem? Jessy’s a rather obvious target, you know?” Seanna replied as she finished eating the last piece of the new cyborg’s liver (right when she passed by on her lap around the room).

Lars sighed, looking up from his work. “I don’t think Desolation-in-Light actually uses her human senses. And if she does, then they don’t mean anything to her. They’re just… background.”

Everyone in the room turned to look at him. He shrugged and put his pen aside, turning so he could look at all of them at the same time (without growing extra eyes).

“We all know that Desolation-in-Light seems to ignore non-powered people. She’s never directly attacked a powerless person, though her powers certainly cause enough collateral damage to make up for it. I think her problem goes further – she can’t even sense people without powers, and if she does, they do not register as people, much less as threats. If she’s even capable of comprehending the concept of a threat.”

He stapled his fingers in front of his face, still smiling. “That’s why conventional attacks are simply ignored by her, unless executed by people with powers. That’s why she seems to focus on the biggest threats within her range – not because they actually pose a threat to her, because they clearly don’t, but because they’re just the most obvious, easily detectable individuals to her. Everything else is just background noise.”

“B-but what does that have to do with her ignoring Jessy?” Seanna asked the question that burned in Jessica’s mind.

Sighing, he gave Seanna a disappointed look, like a teacher who’d just been asked a stupid question. “Seanna, please, think. Why have we been able to avoid detection so far? I mean, at the very least, powerful precogs should have been able to predict where’d we show up and station troops there. Yet that hasn’t worked so far.”

He waited, but no answer came. Jessica knew what he was saying, but she didn’t see the connection to DiL ignoring her…

“Look, Jessica’s power is absolute. It shields her both from all harm, and all powers – that includes perception powers. So she’s a massive blindspot to any precog, preventing a reliable prediction of our moves, since we act as a unit.”

“But Auntie can see her, right?”

“Not the point, but it won’t hurt to teach you some,” Hemming replied. “Atrocity, dear, do you want to explain it to them?”

“It’s nothing complicated. I know Jessica well enough to construct a reasonably accurate mental image of her and use it as a stand-in for the blind spot she produces, allowing my power to work despite her influence. It still degrades the visions I get, but it’s functional. That’s why I need more information on Gloom Glimmer, to better get around the effect she has on me.”

“But back to the original issue – since Jessica is completely shielded from power-based perception, Desolation-in-Light’s main senses most likely can’t detect her. She’s a non-entity to her, something that doesn’t exist within her ‘world’, so to speak. She’ll never notice her, unless Jessica learns to deactivate her power-” God, I wish I could, “But she wouldn’t need Desolation-in-Light to kill her, if she managed that.”

“Yeah, I’d do her in in an instant,” Seanna threw in, wiggling around to get more comfortable.

The promise almost made Jessica cry in joy, but she knew it was futile. She couldn’t deactivate her power.

“Finally! Done!” the scrawny guy shouted, throwing his arms up.

Everyone turned to pay attention, and a silent command made the cyborg stop next to Atrocity and watch, too.

“Will you begin the ritual now?” Lars asked, putting his work away.

“Yeah, let’s get this miracle done.”

 

 

* * *

 

I’ve been looking forward to this, Jessica suddenly realized. There were few things that excited her, still, and this was one of them, even if she saw it rarely enough lately.

Everyone retreated as far back from the diagrams on the floor as they could, even Jessica. She didn’t want to somehow interrupt this.

He stepped into a circle that was five feet away from the center of the ritual circle he’d created, knelt down and began to chant.

Almost immediately, the room seemed to… stretch. Jessica couldn’t feel any difference, but Seanna had explained to her that it felt like the difference between standing inside a building and outside one. When he cast his big spells, it always felt like you were in an open, infinite space.

His chant rang in the air, and somehow, just barely, she could almost hear beyond the dull monotone of her world. Almost.

The chant grew, or at least she had the impression it did, because it sounded just like it did at the beginning. The diagrams on the floor began to drift, then glide around, shifting from shape to shape, forming more and more complex patterns as a flicker of light gathered in the center of the diagram.

Then, there was an impression of collapse, as the light compressed into a sphere the size of Jessica’s torso. The monotone sound of an air cannon reached her ears, then another, and another.

And with each sound, another sphere collapsed into existence, as light was gathered and compressed. She knew the end result, but it was an interesting process to observe as his chants built and built, creating more and more spheres, then rods which were of a different shade of gray.

But then it wouldn’t stop. He made more and more spheres and rods, and instead of stopping with the usual humanoid shape, they kept gathering and building into a larger, less human form…

It took nearly a half hour for the ritual to finish, and by the end of it, a dragon was standing in the center of the ritual circle. Its body was the size of a minibus, made of two massive spheres comprised of countless smaller ones, connected to each other by rotating rods. Its hind legs were shaped like a cat’s, its front legs like a human’s. It had a long, long tail made of numerous shorter rods, large wings made of long rods that connected to each other via spheres and his customary halo of rods around the head, which was made up of that original sphere he’d created, and nothing else but the halo and the neck that attached to it.

“Gorgeous,” Atrocity commented as Ben rose to his feet, turning around to face them with a smirk.

“Behold, Heretic 2.0!” he spoke, and the dragon-thing behind him spoke in the exact same voice, creating an odd effect. “I increased its bandwith, so I’ll be able to channel more power in shorter time through it, and I’ve added every single concealment spell to its connection to me that I know – even DiL shouldn’t be able to follow it back to the pocket world I hide in!”

Lars clapped, slowly, smiling. “Why the new shape and power?”

“Well, if the bad guy is defeated, then he needs to come back stronger, don’t you think?” Ben replied, chuckling. “After all, the heroes levelled up, and we can’t have any Villain Decay, now can we?”

He stretched his body, and Jessica could hear some pops in his shoulders. He usually forgot to limber up.

“It’s good to know that you still remember my lessons from way back,” Lars agreed, chuckling. “So, are you ready to re-open the way into our headquarters? Our lads must be getting stir-crazy in there.”

“Sure, sure. I’ll get right to work, mate,” Ben replied, and Heretic spoke along.

 

 

* * *

 

Thirty minutes later…

They were back in their game room, a large, dungeon-like place with a massive, tricked out table in the center (Atrocity’s work), arrayed around it. Even Ben’s new puppet fit in nicely, and Lars was sitting at the head of the table behind his screen, with that ridiculous paper hat and mask on his head.

The table itself was displaying a map of the planet, with dots showing the cities.

“Now, it’s time to decide where we strike next!” he shouted, and threw a pair of dice in front of everyone, even Atrocity (she claimed that she didn’t use her precognition to cheat here, and why fuss about it?). “Everyone, throw in the place that is your first choice!”

“New Lennston,” Jessica said and threw a chip onto the dot denoting the city. If there’s even a chance…

“Toronto,” Atrocity said. “I’d like to tussle with the girls again.”

“New Lennston, too. I wanna play with this Brennus guy,” Seanna said and added her chip to Jessica’s.

Bless you, love.

“Versailles. They’re just getting into their world war, let’s cause even more confusion,” Ben threw in and levitated a chip onto the capital of the PATO.

“Hmm, I’m in the mood for Moscow, to be honest,” Lars finished, stretching out an appendage to place a chip. He might have been the gamemaster, usually, but this game was equal for all. He could override it and enforce a target, but he rarely did. “Any objections? I think Atrocity still has a veto saved up.”

“I’d like to veto New Lennston, but since two people chose it, it’d be a waste. I’ll save it up,” she said.

“Alright! Get your dice, get your sheets, and let’s roll! Let’s see if we can take our game to the next level!“

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B008.2.2 Vra: Bargaining

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It took a while for them to stop screaming variations of ‘You’re insane’ at me. I just stood there and took it, knowing that I’d have to be real careful about what I did next. Because I sure as hell couldn’t even find the Hellhound by myself, much less take him down.

When they finally calmed down, I said, “Please, I need your help. I can’t avenge Lind- Twitch without you all.”

They all reacted to the word ‘avenge’, and I knew I had something to work with. Especially with Fletch, he already looked half ready to storm off and go after the asshole himself.

Did he have a crush on Linda? It would explain all the looks he’d been throwing at me. It would also mean that he was the one most likely to support my idea.

“Do you have any idea – any idea – how dangerous messing with the Hellhound is?” Jimmy asked, his voice very quiet and very grave.

I gave him my most somber look and said, “I already lost my sister to him. Yes, I fucking know how dangerous it is.” What should I say next? I’d never paid much attention to how to make people do what I want, Linda had always been the people person. “I… please, I just… I need help. For her. To make him pay for taking her away, from us.” They’d obviously liked Linda (she’d always had an easy charm) and were grieving for her. If I could just make them feel like I felt right now.

“That’s not fair,” Laura whispered, looking down. “She died to save us, and now you want us to risk throwing that away?”

“She didn’t choose to die for you,” I replied, almost shouting at her. Careful, Terry. “She wanted to- to survive as much as you did. But that monster got her and killed her. And he didn’t kill her easy, you know? I got a look at the police report. He shot off her left leg at the knee, shattering the right knee with the same shot when fragments from the left one smashed into and through it.” They went pale, Peter even green. “She kept fighting, or maybe fleeing, because his next shot took off her right hand and then her entire left arm.” I felt the bile rise, my stomach protesting, my brain demanding that I stop imagining this. “She was on the floor, on her belly, and was trying to turn on her back when he shot her chest, sideways. Took off both breasts and a good piece of her r-r-ribcage,” I continued, feeling ready to puke on the spot, “She was already dead by then, or at least so close it didn’t matter anymore, but he used a sidearm to put a bullet into her head, just to be sure!”

I turned away from them, dropping on my knees and puking for the second time in one night, this time into a trashcan next to Linda’s desk. I heard someone’s feet pound the floor and then another puking sound from the next room over.

“My God…” Laura sounded like she was ready to empty her stomach, too. I wiped my mouth and turned to look at them. Fletch and Jimmy looked ready to faint, Cad looked ready to commit murder and Laura had a sick look on her face. Peter was gone and I heard him retch in the next room over. “We didn’t… we just ran, and we heard she’d died later on,” she explained, tears running down her too-perfect cheeks.

“I’m not blaming you,” But I do. You got her into that situation in the first place, “But she’s still dead. And I’m going to go after the asshole who took my sister from me, with or without you!” I stopped holding the tears back and they spilled forth like twin cascades, blurring my vision. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and then saw that Laura was crying openly now, Fletch was wiping his nose, Jimmy looked depressed and Cad ready to boil over with anger. Peter was nowhere to be seen, but I thought I could hear his choking breaths from behind the curtain.

Now or never.

“I beg you, help me. I can’t do this alone, but heaven knows that I’ll try.”

* * *

I can’t believe that actually worked.

I’d expected them to resist more, if they helped at all. Or that at least one would stay out of it. But they all agreed.

A few minutes later, they’d given me a bulletproof vest and some kind of gas-powered gun that fired stun ammo. We’d quickly decided that killing the guy made no sense, since he came back anyway, so we had to knock him out and then… actually, none of us knew what to do with him, but I thought shooting a few pieces off of him off would be a good start.

We didn’t really know jack about the guy or where he could be, so I proposed going after whoever had hired them for that job – even if it wasn’t him who’d sold them out, he should be able to point us at another possible culprit.

So we geared up (Foxfire actually put on a padded red-and-white bodysuit, which she told me was reinforced enough to stop small caliber shots) and Peter (a low-level Gadgeteer, as I found out) doled out earbugs for everyone, plus a barely visible camera we could stick to our collars.

“So, you gonna use a cowl?” Jimmy suddenly said as he stepped out of his partition (they didn’t really qualify as rooms). He was wearing a leather suit not unlike that of a biker, except it was covered in swirls that made my eyes (and brain) hurt if I looked at them for too long.

Maybe it was because of the headache he caused that I didn’t get his question. “A… what? I don’t think wearing one is going to be practical, to be honest,” I replied, confused. After a few seconds, I simply looked away from him before the headache made me faint. Good God, what a costume.

“Oh, I didn’t mean a cowl as in, a garment!” he replied, surprised. “Thought everyone knew the slang by now.”

“What?” Now I was really confused.

Fortunately, Foxfire joined us just then and clarified, “It’s a technical term, if you can even call it that. A ‘cape’ is the identity of a superhero, costume, powers, style, name and all the other stuff. A ‘cowl’ is the same, just for supervillains. So he asked if you wanted to use a codename and maybe take on a theme or something.”

“Uhm…” I hadn’t really thought about this, but… I was going out to hunt a crazed metahuman. Should I hide my identity behind a codename and a mask? I thought it over for a few moments, but…

“No. I want him to recognize me,” I answered, voice as firm as I could make it right now. “I want him to know his victim’s sister is the one who’ll take him down. Besides, I don’t have any powers and unpowered people don’t use capes or cowls, right?”

“Well, your choice, Terry,” Fletch – Razzle, now, wearing his magician’s mask again (I had to ask him why he’d chosen that name and mask, but later) – said. “But it’s not true that unpowered people never dress up in costumes, take on a codename and go fight or commit crime. It’s just that most don’t last long.”

“Then I’m not going to jinx myself by taking one on.” I held the gun in my hand, trying to get a feel for its weight. I’d never fired a gun before, but… how hard could it be? They were supposed to work even for total idiots. “Not that I’d have any idea what I’d call myself, anyway.”

“You could, you know. Use one of Twitch’ spare masks and her… name…” Razzle’s voice slowly faded as he saw the look on my face. I didn’t even bother to respond any other way.

Instead, I turned to Foxfire again as Cad, who’d added a padded leather jacket to his ensemble and a simple black half-mask that wrapped around the upper half of his head, hiding his hair and any signs of his ethnicity. Considering his size and musculature, I’d have taken him for a white guy, had I not seen his face earlier.

To Foxfire, I said, “Tell me about this guy we’re going to look into? I only know his job, so far.”

“He’s a supervillain agent – as in, an actor’s agent. People with jobs contact him, tell him the price they’re willing to pay and he then looks among the contacts he has for a supervillain or a team that fits the bill. The villains are not told who they work for, protecting the employer’s identity – in fact, most agents don’t even know for whom they commission villains.”

“That sounds very risky. What if someone just prank-calls an agent, or refuses to pay afterwards?” It didn’t sound like it could work.

Wagging a finger like she was talking to a little child, she explained, “Ah-ah, it’s not that easy. If you’re not an established customer, then you have to pay the agent in advance – if the villain or villains he picks out succeed, they get paid – minus the agent’s cut – and if they fail, the customer gets the money back – a gain, minus the agent’s cut, though they usually take less if the job failed – and the agents themselves are usually part of a bigger organization, usually the Syndicate. Means the Syndicate gets a little off of every job villains pull, in exchange for providing the agents with credibility and emergency funds, as well as the means to forcibly collect their money if need be. Not that it becomes necessary very often, because how stupid do you have to be to want to piss off the Syndicate like that?”

That made more sense, and I nodded to her. But… “Is that how all supervillains work? I can’t imagine someone on the level of the Dark Five or the Defilers or Caliban to just take commissions.”

She shrugged and shook her head. “Nah, that’s the system for the small-timers, like us. Street villains, as they call us, if that. Some – like our own group – are little more than gangs that make some money on the side with the least dangerous and difficult jobs. The big guns play their own game, and we lowly mortals don’t meddle.”

We made our way down the staircase – their agent was not very far away, so we’d go their by foot.

“What about the Hellhound? Where does he fit in?”

“Nowhere I know of, really,” answered Fulcrum now. “Far as we know, he’s just a crazy who hunts down street level villains, because the real deal is beyond him. Car bombs, sniper rifles and such are not much use when you can shrug off stinger missiles, regenerate from a pinky finger or possess bodies at will. I looked up as much on him as I could, but far as I can tell, he’s never taken a commission, and certainly doesn’t attack non-powered criminals unless they get in his way.”

“So we got nuthin’ to go on?” Cad – LagForward, and I really had to get used to calling them by their codenames when out and about – asked. I’d realized by now that his nasal, annoyed tone was just normal for him and no indicator about his mood whatsoever.

“Only our agent. I hope to God that it wasn’t him that sold us out, ’cause there’s no way in hell we’re gonna get a new one any time soon.”

“But if it was him…” I said in a low, low voice. Images of… things were appearing and disappearing before my mind’s eye, things I never thought I’d even consider doing before.

“Then he’s done for,” said Foxfire with iron conviction. “We don’t even have to lift a finger, we just need to call it in. The Syndicate has a no-tolerance policy regarding this kind of action.”

“I don’t want the Syndicate to get him, I want to make anyone who’s responsible suffer!” I half-shouted at her, but she just brushed it off.

“Relax,” Fulcrum threw in. “Nothing we could do to the guy would even come close to what the Syndicate would do. The villain responsible for the Americas takes a dim view of this, and she has everyone who breaks the Syndicate’s rules like that delievered to her in person, in order to make an example.”

“So he’d be thrown to Mindstar?” That bitch was a walking (well, flying) nightmare, and she’d been active for little more than a year! “I guess I could live with that.”

“Nah,” he replied. “Mindstar’s a member of the Five, but word on the street is, she’s too unstable and inexperienced to act as an administrator for the Syndicate network. Till she is, the Dowager rules both North and South America.”

Brrrr. We all shivered. The Dowager was one of the older members of the Five, old enough for even me to know stuff about her. Just surviving as long as she had was proof of how dangerous she was; not to mention being considered the second-in-command to the Dark himself. It didn’t help that there were rumors the adults didn’t tell us kids in Oak Leaf (meaning we all knew about them), that she was the Dark’s actual wife, or at least his rebound gal for whenever Lady Light was on the outs with him.

We know so little. We hate them so much, but all we really know are rumors. That thought blindsided me. There was a story there, but I’d never even thought about it beyond gossiping about it at school. I doubt that most of the people in our community really knew much of anything about the metahumans they so fervently opposed.

At least I could be sure he’d be punished. Unless he was innocent and this was just a giant waste of time.

* * *

“So, what can you guys do, anyway? I only know the bare bones,” I asked while we were on our way towards the office of the agent. The shades seemed even darker than before, and it was miserably cold now (thankfully, Linda had stocked some extra warm underwear at their HQ. Wearing her clothes was just wigging me out, but not freezing assorted bits of myself off was just too seductive). Still, I needed something to distract myself.

They looked at each other and all shrugged, apparently deciding that it was alright to tell me. Gee, do I feel trusted. Not that they weren’t already way more trusting than I would ever have been.

“You’ve seen my fireworks,” Razzle began, walking just a little behind and to the right of me. “I can make the cloud grow really big and wide, but it takes time. Haven’t found a limit on the size yet. It doesn’t obscure my vision at all, and I can mitigate the obscuring effect for anyone I want within the cloud. You probably know that already.” I nodded. “But I’m also a mover. I get some low-level super-speed, but only while I’m hidden inside my fireworks.”

“Oh, the police doesn’t know that part. You kept it secret, huh?”

He nods, seemingly flattered. I can’t quite tell, thanks to the mask.

LagForward takes over. “I’ve got level three physique, and I can give myself exemplar-level strength, toughness and super-speed for split-second bursts – like you saw earlier. Not much fine control, though, the super-speed ain’t in my head. But I can punch holes in walls when I need to.”

“Uhu.”

Fulcrum pulled a coin out of his purse and said, “Watch closely.” He threw the coin forward. Suddenly, a kind of… swirl in the air appeared in its path, and when the coin touched it, it’s flight was diverted to the right at a ninety degree angle. “I can speed up my sight, and I can create that fulcrum anywhere within my sight that I focus my gaze on. It allows me to redirect any physical object’s movement by up to ninety degrees in any direction.”

“And you’ve already seen – and felt – my ball,” Foxfire continued, but without creating it – it would have been too conspicious. “It acts like a taser, and I can throw it easily without having even a good grip – it sticks to my body until I don’t want it to anymore. Takes one or two hits to take down a normie, and three or more for a meta, depending on powers and physical fitness. The effect is mental, not physical. What you probably don’t know is that I can recall it – and the return motion is as fast as a ball kicked by a soccer player. But it can only move towards me with that speed.”

Something clicked almost immediately when she got to the last part. “So… you just use Fulcrum’s power to redirect that return shot and turn it into an attack, right?” At least that’s what I’d do.

She grinned, showing off her canines again. “Well, aren’t you a smart one? Linda was the one who figured that out for us.”

So you didn’t even come up with it yourselves?

“Though we do have one more big trick,” Fulcrum commented. “Which we’ll demonstrate to you, presently. Look.” He’d stopped moving and was pointing towards a rather run-down old office building. There were five people in front of it, all dressed in black shirts and pants, holding guns.

“Fuck,” Foxfire cursed as we all hid behind a nearby half-collapsed wall, looking at them across the street.

“Who’re those guys?” I asked, trying to make out any identifying marks. They were all dressed identically, all clean-shaven and alert.

“They belong to the mob,” Fulcrum explained. “Same people we stole that package from.”

Dammit.

“What do we do?” I asked.

Foxfire growled: “We take them down. Time to bust out our big trick.”

Well, now I’m curious.

* * *

Fulcrum and Foxfire stepped back from the rest of us, so that they were completely covered by the remaining wall of the building we had thrown ourselves in.

Foxfire held her hands out, and a spark appeared between them, growing swiftly to melon size, the ball switching colours in random patterns.

Then things got interesting. Fulcrum looked straight at the ball, his eyes turning bright, bright blue – unnaturally blue. The ball flickered, and then, after a few moments, it stopped switching colours – instead, a swirl formed within the ball, countless colours moving within.

“Done,” Fulcrum said. “Let’s get this show on the road.” He turned away from the ball and came back to crouch behind the wall with us, while Foxfire threw the ball out into the alley we came through, just out of sight of the mobsters.

“What are they doing?” I asked Razzle.

“They heterodyned their powers. Just watch,” he said.

Heterodyning? Are they Girl Genius fans?

Fulcrum looked straight at the guy closest to the alley, focusing his gaze.

Moments before something happened, I suddenly realized that they were all looking at the building, not away from it, as if they were guarding it. Why would…

And the ball shot out at pro-soccer speed, slamming into the back of the guy’s neck. It bounced off as the guy collapsed with an explosive sigh and Fulcrum shifted his focus on the next guy’s neck, before anyone could react. It hit him, too. And then the next three. The last guy managed to turn around and raise his gun, opening his mouth to shout – but the ball hit him in the throat and he collapsed.

Sped up vision, combined with an attack that strikes almost as fast as you can focus your sight.

This was what even exemplar-level metahumans could do? Two teenage delinquents with what I assumed were bottom-rung powers had just taken out five armed mobsters before they could even react.

No wonder so many people are afraid of them.

“You see anyone else?”, Foxfire asked.

Fulcrum replied, “Not outside the building. Let’s go in, keep our powers ready. LagForward, you take point, move low so I can aim.”

We moved, me following behind with Razzle next to me. Foxfire was sticking close to Fulcrum.

<Yo guys, just so you know, I have no access to that building at all,> came Peter’s nervous voice through the earbug. <Net connection is locked down tight, even if there are cameras, I’m not getting in.>

“Keep an eye on the police scanners then,” Fulcrum commanded as we passed the mobsters. “Warn us if anything is called in.”

<Will do. Good luck, everyone.>

We ran past the mobsters and snuck into the building.

Wasn’t there something suspicious I just noticed?

* * *

We went into the old office building, and the first thing I noticed was the smell. It smelled of old urine and drugs.

This is where their agent hangs out? Man…

LagForward went ahead towards the end of the hallway, where I could see an old door with a semi-opaque glass window for the top half. The light flickering above was glancing off the remnants of some old letters that had once denoted the owner of the office. I doubt that he’s still working here, whoever he was.

We walked by three more doors, ignoring them, and snuck up to the office. Foxfire was holding her ball in her hands and stayed just behind and to the right of Fulcrum, so he could fire it off at any time. The swirl of colours cast strange lights on the floor, walls and ceiling.

“Razzle, get ready,” Fulcrum ordered and the young boy complied. Just like before they’d knocked me out, silent fireworks began to go off around Razzle’s form, producing a greyish smoke that only served to reflect and further enhance the lights they created. It spread outwards, enveloping us all.

First, I held my breath, but then I realized that was silly – the others weren’t wearing gas masks or anything, so it obviously didn’t restrict breathing. I opened my mouth and breathed in – nothing. No smoke. It wasn’t even really smoke, just an illusion of such.

The cloud filled the hallway, and at first, I had to close my eyes to protect them from the flashes. But then it just… I can’t really describe it, but it adjusted, and suddenly I could partially see through the cloud. Not entirely, but way better than I should.

Again, I had to wonder just how high the power ladder went for ‘normal’ metahumans, if these guys were at the bottom of the power chart.

But then I had to focus again, because LagForward punched the lock of the door out and we went in.

* * *

I will never forget the scene that I saw next.

The office was rather shabby. There was an old oaken cupboard to the left, which had probably once been worth more than half the equipment in the StreetBadger’s hideout, but had not been preserved right at all. The only other furniture was a desk in front of a large window, a desk chair behind it and two smaller chairs in front of it.

Of course, I doubt the short, overweight guy in a cheap grey suit was supposed to have been nailed onto the desk by way of three long knives through the wrists and ankles.

And then there was he. He stood behind the desk, facing us and looking… mildly surprised. He was tall, obviously well-muscled despite wearing thick jeans and a thick military jacket. A very handsome guy, in a very natural way, with the rugged good looks of an old-school movie star. His black hair was cut down to a buzz cut, no longer than his three-day beard. But his eyes…

I froze up when I looked into his eyes. They were red, so red they seemed to sparkle like rubies, but there was no life in them. No emotion, at all. They reminded me more of a reptile’s eyes than a human’s, and they certainly didn’t look like they belonged to someone who’d ever cared about someone.

Or perhaps those were the eyes anyone who lost everything they cared about got, eventually. Windows into hell itself.

I didn’t want to think about it. I only wanted to hurt him, but I couldn’t move. He wasn’t even seeing me, just looking at the fireworks and smoke, and yet his mere half-lidded gaze was enough to beat me. I never stood a chance, and neither did the others.

He vaulted over the desk towards us, drawing a large handgun out of a holster at his hip.

Fulcrum let fly with the ball, but he just vaulted over it and shot in the direction it came from – right at Foxfire.

She went down with a scream, then a gasp and the ball winked out of existence.

“No!” Fulcrum screamed and turned to her – but his shout revealed his position and I saw a red fountain sprout from his shoulder as he was violently thrown around and back, slamming into Foxfire’s collapsing form before she’d even hit the ground.

We have to run away. Yet I couldn’t move.

LagForward, meanwhile, could. He’d moved along with the cloud as it enveloped the front half of the room, and now he burst out of it from the side, his mouth twisted in a furious snarl.

Hellhound didn’t bat an eye. Nor did he react in any way I’d have expected – he stepped towards LagForward, closing the distance. Obviously, LagForward hadn’t expected that, either, and his lightning-fast punch went wide as the Hellhound simply stepped into his range and drew a knee up.

The air left LagForward’s lungs explosively as his enemy drew his knee up and slammed it into his crotch, making him bend over – and expose the back of his neck.

The follow-up strike knocked him out as surely as Foxfire’s ball had laid me out. Then he turned towards the smoke and levelled his gun in my and Razzle’s direction…

Except the fireworks were already clearing, and Razzle was nowhere to be seen.

I was alone, exposed, gun in my right hand but aimed at the ground, as I stared past the muzzle of the biggest revolver I’d ever seen and into those dead red eyes.

And then he hesitated, as he looked at my face. He recognized me, and I was sure he could guess who I was and what I wanted here.

He remembers my face. Linda’s face.

I was staring at Linda’s murderer, he was less than ten feet away and I could not move.

He opened his mouth, breathing out, still not pulling the trigger, when my hate finally overcame my… my fear.

It was stupid. He was aiming a massive handgun at me, and all I had was this stunner that probably wouldn’t work unless I hit his head, and I’d never shot anyone in my life and had no idea how to aim, or anything.

Yet I drew up my gun, as quickly as I could, as I felt my face contort with hatred, I aimed at his head and I pulled the trigger and…

Nothing happened. I hadn’t taken off the safety.

Something slammed into my left shoulder, throwing me back moments before I heard his gun roar.

There was no pain, just a dull throbbing, and my field of vision almost immediately began to turn black.

No. Please, God, no, not like this… I couldn’t even… no…

I saw his face enter my field of vision, then the rest of his body. He knelt over me, using the butt of his gun to turn my face left and right, taking a closer look at me.

He’s right in front of me… Linda… he took Linda away and I can’t kill him…

He opened his mouth and said eight words to me.

And then there was nothing left.

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Progress Report 3 & Poll

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Working on the chapter, it should be done today.

Meanwhile, a donation interlude is coming up (NOT a regular update, it’ll come either within this or the next week without interfering with the normal chapter). I have to choose between two right now (they will both eventually come, but the order is not set).

One is a long interlude that starts back in the early twenties with Wyrm’s origin up to today, the other deals with the Savage Six and the aftermath of Heretic’s fall. The poll will run until I actually start writing, but the sooner you vote, the better.

B008.2.1 Vra: Bargaining

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“Dude, this is creepy”, said a boy’s voice.

My head hurt.

“I mean, she looks just like her!” The speaker didn’t sound like he’d gone through puberty yet.

“Not quite. She’s more buff. And her hair’s different”, drawled a slightly accented girl’s voice. She sounded like honey and cherries, and I must have hit my head pretty hard because I normally did not make that kind of comparison.

My arms were numb, but I could feel that they’d been twisted behind my back and tied. Around some metal pipe or something, which was pressing into my back. Someone had taken my hoodie off, leaving me in my sports bra. The pipe was cold against my back, helping me focus. My shoes were off, too.

“Twitch never talked about a twin sister.” An older voice, a young man with the slightest hint of a lisp. It was unreal how sharp my hearing was right now.

“She never talked about her family, period,” replied the girl.

“What if this is a shapeshifter or something?” asked the boy again.

“She went down with one hit of Fox’ ball. That speaks towards her being a normie. Plus, she didn’t turn back to a real form when we knocked her out and I think a shapeshifter would have changed to look exactly like Twitch to sell a twin or something.” A new, rather nasal voice.

“I’m not a darned shapeshifter…” I said before coughing hard. I looked up and saw four teenagers stand over me, giving me suspicious looks. One girl, three boys. “And why did you take my hoodie off?”

A guy in his late teens – older than me, but most probably too young to drink – was the first to respond. He was really tall, at least as tall as the officer earlier, but so thin he looked like a stiff wind would break him in half.

“Do you have any idea how many weapons and traps a contriver can hide under or in a garment like this?” he asked with just the barest hint of a lisp, “If we were really professional, we would’ve stripped you naked and done a cavity search, too.”

I shivered, damn it. “Thank you for sparing me that. How long was I out?”

“Just about fifteen mi-“

“Who the fuck’re you?” interrupted the nasal voice, coming from the mouth of LagForward. It really didn’t fit his buff body. His open vest showed off the kind of sixpack and upper arm sculpting normal people had to work a decade for or so. “And why’re you here? Why did you attack us!?”

Now I looked down again, ashamed. Why did I attack? Even disregarding the fact that I could never stand a chance against four metahumans at once, even if they might be at the bottom of the power chart. Even disregarding the fact that I’d never been in a serious fight outside of fight training. I’d never even hit anyone with intent, not outside training, again.

Was I that angry at Linda and my parents? That unbalanced?

Well, duh.

“I’m sorry about that. Really, I just…” I didn’t look up at them, “I’m just so angry. My sister is dead, and no one seems to care.”

They didn’t respond, and I looked up at them, taking a closer look at each for the first time. The only one I hadn’t really gotten a look at yet was the girl, Foxfire. She was a gorgeous half-Asian girl with waist-length black hair in a somehow very naughty style, bright golden, slightly slanted eyes and a rather slim body for a meta-girl, at least going by what I’d seen on TV so far. Her clothes… didn’t really deserve that description, especially in the current winter weather – she was wearing a red bikini top, cut-off jeans and a black hoodie with an open zipper, as well as red training shoes. And she had a Japanese fox mask tied to her belt.

She had heavy black circles around her eyes, and in general looked dead tired. The others looked no better really. The short one – a curly-haired blonde boy who couldn’t be more than thirteen years old – looked like he’d been crying until a short while ago.

“You spoke about Linda. Twitch… that was her name, right? I mean, her supervillain name?” I asked, even though I knew the answer already.

The girl took over talking. “Yup, Twitch. Never told us she had a twin sister, though,” she answered.

I looked down, clenching my hands. There was some feeling returning to them, if only barely. “Yeah well, she didn’t tell me jack. Not that she had powers, not that she was a supervillain, nothing. Last week I wake up, get ready for school and then I find out, joy oh joy, my twin sister was not only a supervillain, she’d also just gotten herself murdered.”

“Man, that sucks,” commented the blonde boy. Razzle, going by the power he’d shown off earlier. Then he scowled at me. “What’d you do to her that she wouldn’t tell you?”

Had I not been tied up at that moment, I would have jumped up and punched him in the face. I tried to, even, despite my chance to even reach him being… low. But the restraints held. So I just ground my teeth and replied, “I don’t know. She just… shut me out. I can get why she wouldn’t tell our parents, but… why not me?” I looked up at them, as if searching for an answer. I doubted they knew. They hadn’t even known that their friend had had a twin sister. Linda had not spoken to them about me… ever.

They all gave me looks full of pity, which only made things worse.

“Twitch was a dear friend of ours, even though we only knew her for a month and a half,” said Foxfire as she nodded towards LagForward. He knelt down next to me and untied my hands. The other two didn’t seem to like it, but Foxfire was apparently their leader. “We met her shortly after she got her powers, though she never told us how she got them,” she continued, offering me a helping hand.

I shook out my hands, getting some feeling back into them, and took it, letting her pull me up. She was stronger than she looked.

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions,” she said.

“A whole lot,” I replied, brightening up. Someone willing to talk and answer my questions? Could I have this much luck?

She smirked. “Well, so do we. How about you answer ours and we answer yours?”

That’s only fair, I guess. I nodded. “My name’s Terry, by the way. How should I call you?”

“Laura. And these are Jimmy, Cad and Fletch,” she answered, pointing out the tall guy with the lisp, the buff Asian boy and the short one. “Nice to meet you, Terry.”

“Likewise, Laura,” I replied, only half-sincere. They were very nice, especially Laura, but I didn’t trust them yet. And there was still the matter of my dead twin sister – if they were responsible…

* * *

They gave me back my hoodie – I’d barely noticed how cold it had been, but now I was thankful for being able to put it back on. I wouldn’t vouch on it, but I think Fletch and Cad were disappointed that Laura gave it back to me.

We went into the staircase and up, until we were on the highest level of the old parking garage, just one level beneath the roof. I stopped and stared from the entry.

The place had been turned into the most awesome hangout a teenager could want, at least in my opinion. There were thick cloth curtains in various colours hanging all around it, covering every opening to the outside – keeping the light in, and the warmth. Keeping the wind out. They obviously had electricity because they had a series of electrical heaters keeping the place not quite toasty warm, but warm enough to justify even Foxfire’s ensemble. Pillows, blankets, love seats – all second hand apparently, and many having been repaired rather haphazardly – covered nearly every inch of the floor that wasn’t taken up by at least two layers of all kinds of rugs. There were several flatscreens spread around the place, with every gaming console ever hooked up.

“Holy Shit,” I whispered. “I thought you guys were supposed to be smalltime.” Then my brain caught up with my mouth and I felt the heat rise in my face. “Uh, sorry, I didn’t mean to…” Great move, Terry. Insult the only persons who might know what actually happened to Twitch.

Laura smiled sweetly, showing off a pair of rather long canines. They looked strange, but I guess boys probably liked her smiles a lot. “Don’t worry. It’s a compliment – we’ve managed to keep a low profile so far. And we’re not that big – most of the stuff here is second-hand, if that. And the tech is all self-made from scrap.”

That gave me a start. I looked at the flatscreens, the consoles and the heaters. The lighting, too. It all looked completely functional but… yeah, you could tell there’d been damage. A few pieces of equipment were also quite clearly cobbled together from parts that had originally belonged to several different appliances.

You’re getting distracted again, dummy.

I shook my head. “Anyway. Anyway… let’s get to the important subject, alright?”

The boys walked past us, Cad and Fletch throwing me suspicious glances while Jimmy just seemed to ignore me. They all sat down on the largest couch in the room, which was arranged along with three others in a half-circle in front of a flatscreen the size a house wall. That definitely looked handmade – there was the screen and a frame holding it in place, but no casing, and I could see wires emerge from behind it and up to the ceiling, where they joined a lot of other power lines.

“One question first, though. How do you power this stuff?”

Laura sat down on the couch along with the others, too. “Solar panels on the roof – it gets quite a bit of sunlight, so high up. And we also have a few bikes wired up to a bigass dynamo, for when we don’t get sunlight for a while,” she explained. “Now sit.” She nodded towards the couch next to the one the StreetBadgers were sitting (lounging, in Laura’s case) on, and I sat down, turning to face them.

“Do you want to start, or should I?”

Jimmy spoke up first, “Wait. We got one more member, but he went out to get food right before you arrived here.”

“I thought it was only you four, after… after Linda died.”

“Where did you get your information?” he asked.

I looked down at my feet, rubbing my hands. Hope they won’t overreact. “Well… the police. I asked a police officer what he knew about… about the case.”

“You’re working with the fucking police!?” Fletch screamed, jumping up and into fighting position, fists raised. “If ya think ye can sell us o-“

“Fletch, sit.” Laura barked those two words like a well rehearsed line, and Fletch immediately dropped down onto his seat, though he still gave me the evil eye.

And who the hell names their child ‘Fletch’ anyway?

“I’m not working with the police. I just… got picked up by a police officer. He wanted to take me home, I got him to talk then bailed,” I explained in a single breath.

Their eyebrows shot up in an almost coordinated motion. “Really?” asked Laura in a curious tone. “However did you get away from him?”

Looking down, I felt the heat rise to my face again. The officer had been really nice and understanding, and I’d… but it might help me break the ice here. “I uh… I pretended I felt sick, and when he stopped and got out with me, I… kicked him in the balls and ran.”

They looked at me, stunned for a moment… then they broke out into laughter, which only led to my face feeling even hotter than before.

It took a while for them to calm down again. “Man, do you know how to treat’em,” Laura gasped, wiping a tear from her eye. “How did you find us, after you bailed from the cop? I’m pretty sure they don’t know where we hide, on account of them not storming our place to lock us up.”

“Uhh, honestly, just by chance. I got lost in the Shades, and then I followed this big cat over here,” I replied, glad she wasn’t focusing on the officer.

“What cat?” Jimmy asked, suddenly serious again. “Where is it? I saw no cat!”

“Whoa, dude, calm down!” I said, inching a little away from him. “It’s just some cat!”

Laura gave me a hard stare. “In our world, there’s no such thing as just some cat that just happens to lead the twin sister of our just deceased team member to our secret hideout! Where is it?”

“Um, it was searching through your trash cans last time I saw it…”

Laura threw Jimmy and Cad a look and they both left immediately.

“Can I ask a quick question?” I asked her.

“You already did,” she replied with a mischievous glimmer in her eyes.

I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean.”

She nodded and waved her hand in an approving motion.

“When I woke up, you said that me being taken down with one hit from your ball is an indicator for me not being a metahuman. How come?”

“Well, that’s the Coltenhagen effect, duh!” She looked at me like it was obvious.

“The… Coltenhagen effect? I think I heard that somewhere…” I raked my brain, but all I came up with was the word being used, once, regarding ‘Humanity First!’ demanding more non-powered superheroes. But nothing else.

“Well, it’s kinda the reason why there are no non-metahuman superheroes or villains. Or why the military is so damn paranoid about even low-level enemy metas. Simply put…” She thought about it for a moment. “It’s kinda like this – every metahuman has a kind of real low-level power resistance. Not enough to really block powers, but enough to make it possible for them to resist, so to speak. Or at least resist to a meaningful degree.”

“So a metahuman could take more than one hit from your ball?”

She nodded, “Yeah. Or like… take that freak Mindstar, or the fortunately departed Mindfuck. A newly manifested, untrained teenager could resist their powers just as easily as an adult professional soldier with mental training. Doesn’t make us tougher or anything, it just… gives us a better chance to resist the really bad powers. Transformations, mind control, possession, that kinda stuff. The things that really give you nightmares.”

“And how does that apply to your taser ball? I mean, are you guys like, more resistant to electric powers?”

“No no, my ball doesn’t use electricity at all!” she said. “That would be way more dangerous. No, it’s a mental move. It just works LIKE a taser, but it’s not a physical effect, really. Otherwise, you’d be having cramps and burns where it hit you.”

I checked. True, my stomach was completely unharmed. I let my hoodie fall down again and looked up just in time to see Fletch look away from me. I ignored him, again.

“So that’s why there’s no non-powered heroes?”

She nodded. “For example, the Drakainas – they could easily shore up their numbers with non-powered pilots in suits, but they’d be highly susceptible to those kinds of powers I just described, and many others. Like emotion projection. People who make others feel fear, or lust, or apathy. Quite common, all things considered, and really lethal against normies.”

“I see. That certainly explains a lot.”

Just then, the boys came back up, Jimmy holding the big tomcat in his arms.

“Looks like a normal cat, if really big, Fox,” he said as he handed the purring tomcat to Fox. She took him into her arms and scratched him behind his ears, sniffing him while he purred contently.

“Smells normal, too,” she said. “D’awww, he’s just a big cutie!” She lifted him up over her head. “A really big cutie. Can’t smell anything strange about him, though he’s strangely clean for a cat that apparently belongs to no one.”

“Can we keep him?” Fletch threw in. “I mean, it’d be nice to have a pet here!”

We all looked at him and he blushed a little. But Laura nodded and handed the tomcat over to him. “But you have to make sure to feed him. And train him not to do his business all over the place.”

He nodded, eagerly, and took the tomcat onto his lap. It was really quite cute.

And then, there was the sound of a ringtone, and Laura checked her cellphone. “Oh, food’s here! Go and help Peter haul it up, boys!”

And just like that, Jimmy and Cad left again for the staircase.

Whoa, she really got them whipped right. I felt jealous. I never could get boys to do what I tell them so easily. Maybe she can give me lessons?

Soon, the boys returned along with this Peter. He turned out to be… a normal boy around my age. The kind I usually didn’t notice at school. Not fat, but definitely overweight, with his brown hair in a bad haircut, sloppy clothes under a thick coat and oversized glasses.

He came in looking quite serious, and immediately looked at me, apparently having been briefed by the other two. “So, Twitch had a twin sister,” he said in a rather soft, weak-sounding voice. “Hello, I’m Peter. I’m kinda the tech guy for this team.”

He put down the stack of pizza boxes he’d been carrying (five boxes, five more in Jimmy’s arms and ten in Cad’s. How much did these people eat?) and offered me his hand. I took it and we shook hands. His was sweaty. He let go quickly and sat down on another couch, keeping his teammates between himself and me.

Strange.

They quickly spread the pizza boxes around… and my stomach growled the moment their smell hit me. I blushed as I was reminded that I hadn’t eaten since… well, apart from the donut earlier, I hadn’t eaten since morning.

Laura gave me a look and handed me one of her boxes (she three stacked in front of her. Fletch had two, Jimmy and Peter three, Cad four). “Here, eat.” I was way too hungry to protest.

The pizza turned out to look even better than it smelled. It was obviously from a real Italian restaurant. And it was loaded with yummy stuff. Well, except for the broccoli. Yuck.

While the others dug in, I carefully removed the green abominations from my pizza, then started to eat. Mmmmmm…

We ate in silence. Cad pretty much breathed his pizzas in, while the others took more time. Fletch fed the cat, too.

Then we relaxed and leaned back. They’d all been jumbo pizzas, and I usually didn’t eat this much, so I was quite… floored.

After about ten minutes though, I started to… recover my earlier impatiance. Maybe I’d just been too hungry and groggy to feel it, though. “Um, now, about Linda… I mean Twitch.”

That got their attention. “Can you tell us some about your background? I mean, Twitch always refused to,” Laura asked, and I nodded. It might not have been smart, but… this was my chance to learn something. So I’d play nice.

“Well, we’re twins, obviously. We have a little brother, and live with our parents in the Oak Leaf community,” I began.

“Shit! Oak Leaf! That’s one of the richest places in the entire Esperanza area!” shouted Peter. The others seemed similarly surprised.

“Why, in the name of God’s green earth, did she become a supervillain and hang out here with us?” asked Cad. “I mean, she even ran away from there two weeks ago – why?”

I looked down at my feet, but thankfully, Laura took over explaining the obvious.

“Cad, think about it. What is Oak Leaf known for?” she said.

I heard Jimmy gasp as he got it. The others didn’t, I think. Not that I looked to check.

“It’s the biggest ”Humanity First!” community in the entire world,” Peter explained. “Among other things, Richard Svenson lives there. Current leader of ‘Humanity First!’…”

“And a regular dinner guest at our place,” I added without looking up. “My parents are deep into it. That’s why Linda never told them, I think. Not that it explains why she wouldn’t tell me. But… my parents seem to be more shaken up about her being a metahuman than her being dead,” I continued, spitting the last word like poison. I didn’t look up at their faces. I didn’t want pity.

“She started acting strange about two months ago, and wouldn’t talk to us. Two weeks ago, we kind of made an intervention, but she just… blew a gasket and stormed out of the house…” I still remembered the feeling of betrayal, when she just left instead of talking to me. I could have understood if she wouldn’t talk to my parents, but why not to me.

“That was when she moved in with us. Do you want to see her place?” asked Laura, her voice full of… sympathy.

I nodded, quietly, and she took my hand (hers was unnaturally warm – suddenly it made sense that she’d run around in light clothing) and all but dragged me around the staircase. There were several “rooms” partitioned off from the rest of the space by way of heavy curtains and wooden screens acting as walls. She took me into one of them. It turned out to be a small bedroom, with a bookshelf loaded with books, a laptop on a desk and a small dresser drawer.

The curtains were all blue, and there was a pressed tulip in a frame, hanging over her bed. And a picture of me, from five years ago (we’d still looked identical back then, but I remembered that photo being shot, and besides, I was wearing a yellow dress in it. She’d always worn blue). I just stared at the picture.

“What… what can you tell me about her?” I said, not taking my eyes off of it. Why didn’t you tell me? Why do you have a picture of me here, but you never told me?

“She was what we call a ‘Brain’ in the business. Mental powers. Perception. She had a kind of danger sense, except she could spread it to cover others. Give her a warning when others were in danger. She also got a boost in her reaction speed and all. Mental only. And only when her Danger Sense was set off.”

“Who killed her? Why?” I turned to look at her. I might have been crying.

She looked uncomfortable. “We… we’d gotten a commission, to steal a package that was being transported by a bunch of mobsters,” she said. “Job went well, we stopped their car, took them out, got the package… but then everything went to shit when the Hellhound appeared.”

Oh no… Everyone in Oak Leaf knew the Hellhound. He was a kind of hero to ”Humanity First!”. Unofficially, of course. I’d never paid much attention to it, beyond the basics.

“I heard that he’s a metahuman hater. I mean, real hate. Hunts and kills any he finds,” I said, my voice strangely monotone. “Something about his family being killed.”

“Yeah, his wife and daughters were eaten by a cannibalistic villain team,” Laurel explained. “Guy’s major badass crazy. Goes after metahumans with heavy weaponry, sniper rifles, you name it.”

“How come he’s still around? I mean, the Coltenhagen effect…”

She shook her head. “He’s a metahuman, too, though most don’t realize it. Some kind of resurrection ability – no matter how many times you kill him, he always comes back.”

“So he killed Twitch because…”

“He was after the package. Someone sold us out, maybe, or sold the same information twice. We dropped the package and ran – guy’s too dangerous for us – but he pursued. Twitch…” She choked, wiping her eyes. The others, who’d followed us, looked utterly miserable. “She… she convinced us that someone needed to distract him. That we needed to split up. We did that, and he pursued her, and…”

I looked down at my feet.

The Hellhound.

My sister had died just because some guy had a hate-on for metahumans. Oh, the irony.

The fucking Hellhound.

My sister had died to save her friends. Because that guy couldn’t swallow his hate.

The Hellhound murdered my sister.

I felt the rage rise up inside me. When I raised my head, the StreetBadgers all took a step back.

“I want to go after him. Are you guys in?”

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