This was a lot of fun to read. This story doesn't get nearly as many comments and likes as it deserves.I hope you enjoy the thrilling conclusion to Donjon's first multi-part chapter, as well as the primary portion of Arc 1, Collapse! Tune in next Friday for Donjon's first interlude, a look into the head of everyone's favorite mischievous magician.
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I watched with a strange melancholy as some of the first capes I'd met ran off into the distance, leaving me to wait for Bullrush alone. I closed up my little window and started to pace, unwillingly imagining how I'd explain to her that I decided to go on an unauthorized patrol because I was restless and a pretty girl smiled at me. And worse, that I'd screwed up our infiltration by getting caught and forcing Presto to bail me out. It almost made me feel sick, just thinking about it.
Far worse was the uncertainty those creepy vans had planted in my mind when they’d come out of nowhere and made Presto's screens cut out, the feeling I couldn't shake that there was something bad going down in there. Something that might have been stopped if Presto hadn't been drawn away. Ten minutes could be a long fucking time in the wrong circumstances, and every bit of instinct and intuition I had was screaming that those black vans were bad news beyond even what you'd expect for someone involved in human trafficking. I'd said I would stay put, but the last time I'd ignored that gut feeling had ended with my roommates barging into my room and attacking me. Presto might be upset, but I knew I'd never forgive myself if someone got hurt without me having even bothered to look. Besides, more likely than not it would be mundane criminals better dealt with by a professional capable of effortlessly running down vehicles on foot and stopping them in their tracks with her bare hands.
I slid down the outer wall in utter silence, letting the ground flow up to my chest as I reached street level. Concrete and metal parted around me with the ease of a shark slicing through water, only the top of my head visible to allow sight and breathing as I approached my target. The grimy wall of the dilapidated warehouse towered overhead, and I hesitated briefly before parting it like a bead curtain and surveying the interior. The creepy black vans were parked near the garage entrance, a fitting backdrop for the eerily still and well coordinated group of mercenaries opposite the brightly colored Bastards. They were lead by a cold-eyed man in a suit, looking utterly unperturbed at being surrounded by over a dozen power-enhanced mobsters.
"Is this disturbance going to interfere with our transaction?" he asked, sounding like he was talking about the weather. I suppressed a shiver.
The man leading the Bastards shook a head of hair that was more like a mane with an air of impatience. "I told you there's no problem, Shrike chased the magic bitch off. The merchandise is in perfect condition as agreed, not a hair on their heads disturbed."
I slinked around the edge of the warehouse as the suit considered his response, making sure no part of me was easily visible to those inside. The ground beneath one of the mercenary's vans made a suitable hiding place.
"Very well," the suit continued, not bothering with either gesture or inflection. "My employer would prefer me to get visual confirmation before the remainder of the funds are transferred."
"Ah ah, there's rules to these things," said the lion man, waggling a clawed finger. He smiled in a viscerally unpleasant way. "The deal was more than just money. You show me yours, and I show you mine."
The suit was taking some time to think of his response, so I touched the underside of the van to expand my tremorsense. Something I hadn't expected bloomed in my mind, an indecipherably complex device with the shape and dimensions of an egyption sarcophagus. It wasn't built into the van, but it rested on a set of rails carefully fitted for hauling it. I heard a door open and realized I'd missed whatever the suit had to say, too distracted by my power to keep my ear on the ball. Two bedraggled looking people were dragged out of one of the warehouse's side rooms, looking simultaneously terrified out of their minds and utterly drained. It was obvious they hadn't been able to take care of themselves, even from this distance. As I watched one of the hostages -a woman with her hair tied back in a messy bun- tripped and fell before being roughly hauled back to her feet by the bestial Bastards on either side of her.
It took every fiber of my self control not to let my power off its leash, forcibly reminding myself of the consequences not just for the Bastards but to their victims. Even still, the ground around me rippled in a distinctly sharp way, spikes almost but not quite being formed before sinking back into the ground. I tensed, ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble, but it didn't seem like anyone had noticed my momentary lapse. A smidgen of my thinker power helped me regain my focus, and with the clarity it granted I realized something that should have been obvious. The strange device in the van above me was perfectly fitted to the woman they were holding hostage, and I'd bet my left boob that one of the other vans had one just like it for the old professor-looking guy they were holding. It wasn't clear what they were supposed to do, but whatever it was probably wasn't going to be good for the poor people getting shoved inside.
"Everything appears to be in order," said the suit, interrupting my thoughts. "My employer will transfer the funds imminently."
The lion man nodded, gesturing for his men to hand over the hostages. There's no way Bullrush is getting here in time to stop this , I realized.
With a deep breath to steel myself, I drew on that clarity of purpose more deeply than I ever had before. Emotion fell away, the soreness I'd felt from leaping halfway across the city folded into a value-neutral awareness of my body. My thoughts shifted all at once, irrelevant priorities set aside in favor of a razor-sharp focus on rescuing the hostages and taking down the individuals responsible for hurting them without death or serious injury. Before they'd advanced a single step, my hand touched the underside of the van once again and I used my power to seal it completely shut. I slipped underground and advanced to the next vehicle in the line, but there wasn't anything inside besides the seats the mercenaries had presumably rode in on. I sealed it anyway, fucking with the engine block for good measure. As I'd suspected, the last van had another tech Sarcophagus perfectly fit for the other hostage. I slipped back beneath the ground before anyone had time to notice my sabotage, head popping back up just outside the warehouse.
The time spent observing with the tinker proved its worth. Memories of each pair's patrol route effortlessly sprung to mind as I slipped from cover to cover. There , I thought, homing in on a pair of enhanced individuals that seemed more focused on speaking to each other than watching for potential threats. The smaller of the two had some mouse in him, rounded ears twitching periodically as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. The individual next to him was more still, sharp teeth and scales akin to a crocodile's giving her a dangerous air. One of her claws rested on the handle of a gun strapped to her hip.
"I'm telling you I smelled something," said the mouse-faced one, wringing his hands in a steady pattern. The motion served no purpose I could discern.
The crocodile person moved her head in a small circle, apparently in response. "And I'm telling you it's gonna be a homeless guy pissing in an alley. Again."
The mouse hunched in on himself further, but he wasn't able to respond before being bowled over and immobilized with a wave of stone. Crocodile was quicker on the uptake, backing off before I could ensnare her. I rushed in before she sounded an alarm, getting close enough that the silencing device's range encapsulated her. With my armor and the awkward angle she couldn't get in more than glancing blows before the ground beneath her became more liquid than solid, disturbing her footing and letting me get in a few solid hits with fists sheathed in metal. Once she was suitably distracted the concrete beneath rose up to immobilize her, successfully this time. Iron tendrils sprouted from the material covering her up to the neck, forming an improvised muzzle to keep her from revealing my presence the second she could make noise again.
I stowed them in one of the nearby abandoned buildings, behind a door that looked like it had rusted shut before I’d been born. Back in the cool night air, I started my search for the next patrol. With my knowledge of their routes the area I had to search was reduced to a fraction of what it would otherwise be, and before too long I came across a pair of nearly identical young men wielding knives and a baseball bat respectively. They slinked more than they walked, graceful in the way a predator on the hunt was graceful. Scales glistened under the streetlights, poking out from beneath sleeves and collars.
There was no reason to rely on my fists, particularly against foes that were armed themselves. I pulled a stout wooden pole almost as tall as I was from the ground as I silently sliced through concrete behind them. With the poor light, my cloak, and the tinker’s silencing device sneaking close enough for a solid blow should have been trivial. I’d failed to account for enhanced senses. In a whip crack motion, the knife wielding twin turned around and threw one of his weapons at me with blinding speed.
“Cape!” he shouted, movements smooth enough they seemed languid despite their suddenness.
With my thinker power I could trace the knife’s path through the air before it even left his hand, allowing me to completely fail to move out of the way before it rang my metallic mask like a bell. I staggered back, momentarily dazed. Long enough for his accomplice to close the distance, lips pulling back to reveal sharp, stark-white teeth as he probed for weaknesses with his improvised bludgeon. He swung at knees and elbows, seeking to disable them before I found my bearings.
Layers of armor and padding reduced the blows from potentially crippling to largely irrelevant, particularly since he’d lost this fight the moment he’d stepped within a few feet of me. The next swing met wood instead of body, and I felt the vibration travel up my arms as his bat rebounded off an anchored quarterstaff. As with the crocodile, I commanded the ground to liquefy and seize his legs the moment he was most distracted. There was a ping only I could hear as another knife rebounded off of my shoulder, forcing me to take cover behind my assailant’s relative while I imprisoned him and took measures against any more noise.
A vibration brushed the edge of my tremorsense, and before I’d fully registered what was happening a wall sprung up on my flank just in time for a third knife to ping off of it. In an instant, I extrapolated the knife snake’s position based on the trajectory of the throw. The ground under my feet swelled up, and I rode it like a cresting wave straight through the wall I’d created. Momentum lent strength to the simple wooden pole I swung, but he twisted out of the way like a ribbon in the wind. Another swing was similarly fruitless, and he used the opening to drive a dagger into my unarmored armpit. It caught in the dense weave of my bodysuit, giving me the momentary distraction I needed to form a small field of blunted spikes beneath and around us. He stumbled, and in that moment of weakness I tackled him with the full force of my power behind me. I reshaped the ground as we made impact, preventing the spikes from stabbing into him and potentially causing life-threatening injury. I stepped back from my assailant, breathing far harder than I had from the journey here.
I hid the twin snakes in the dusty basement of a gutted apartment building, climbing up onto the roof once they were secure. I all but collapsed the second I allowed myself to stop moving, greedily sucking in the cool night air. Out of danger for the moment, I let go of my thinker power. A half-yelp, half-groan forced its way out of my throat the second I started feeling the full extent of my injuries. A chill ran down my spine. I sat bolt upright, iron talons clumsily pushing back layers of cloth to check for signs of blood, breathing a sigh of relief when I saw the knife had failed to penetrate the last few layers. I couldn't afford to be that sloppy if I wanted to make a career out of this. Hadn't I promised Ajay I would be careful?
Pushing aside memories of blood and failure, I commanded the concrete I stood upon to come alive with thick tendrils. They surrounded me, embraced me, working to shore up and repair as much as possible in the short time I had before the absences of the people I’d hidden away were noticed. The slash in my bodysuit was sewn up with iron thread and sealed with thick staples, damaged armor plates replaced or bent back into shape. An abortive attempt at shoring up the gaps in my defenses with chainmail made it clear I’d need a lot more practice before I could make something that complicated in a reasonable timeframe. How to protect myself?
I held the quarterstaff I’d made earlier in front of me like a spear, tapping my chin in thought. The end was dipped into the concrete rooftop, emerging with a two-pronged iron head akin to a medieval man catcher. No more personal space invasions, I thought.
Another deep breath, and I snapped back into full Thinker Mode. Fear and pain fell away, leaving only a mechanical clarity sharp enough to cut. Retrieving the binoculars I’d received from the tinker, I walked to the edge of the rooftop and began the search for my next target. Across the street and a block away was a pair of horned Bastards conveniently leaning against the wall of a dilapidated corner store as they conversed, seemingly unaware of the predicament they’d put themselves in. I decided to enlighten them, putting the binoculars away and leaping from building to building in utter silence. Soon I was perched on the roof directly above them, cloak the color of midnight hanging out over open air.
One threw an antlered head back, closing her eyes and making a strange repetitive noise. In that moment of distraction I slid down the side of the weathered brick wall, a wave of conjured stone -chemically similar to basalt, according to the power testers- gathering in my wake. The instant before I would have impacted and revealed my position I came to an abrupt stop, allowing the material behind/above me to continue forward on latent momentum. It parted around me like the course of a stream splitting around a rock, and similarly I reshaped it to immobilize my erstwhile opponents rather than crushing them. Practice made the muzzle set-up a trivial exercise, and before a minute had passed I stowed them in separate rooms and went back on the prowl.
The next group I came across was four strong, presumably a pair of pairs that rendezvoused with each other. Two had wolf-like features, one limber and clawed and the other with sensory organs twisted and augmented by Menagerie’s power. The latter was conversing with a short, bird-like individual that shifted in place with sharp, sudden movements. She had a wild head of black feathers instead of hair, hands and feet twisted into wickedly curved talons. Watching over her was a massive individual with equally massive bullhorns sprouting out the sides of his head, muscle piled on more muscle to the point where it would take two of my legs to make one of his arms.
“-don’t like how this night smells,” sense-wolf was saying, her voice a perpetual growl. “We should’ve heard from Jaws and Squeak by now, not like them to miss an opportunity to bitch about having to do watch again.”
Claws-wolf grunted, apparently in response.
“Those icy-eyed assholes give me the chills,” said the crow person, head twisting further than should have been possible to look behind her. “Like they been hollowed out with a spoon or somethin’. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they got the pigs up in the Needle on our tail with whatever fucked up shit they’re doing.”
“Do you think Presto might have come back around?” said the bull, voice softer than I’d expected.
Sense-wolf snorted, head moving back and forth. “You wouldn’t ask that if you’d fought her. Trust me, if that bitch were here she’d make damn well sure we knew about it. Can’t help herself. Hell, there was this one time a few years back-”
She stopped abruptly, ears perking up. Without a word she and her fellow Bastards formed a loose circle in the dimly lit street, each facing out with their backs to the others. A moment later my tremorsense picked up the sound of footfalls, and with my binoculars I could pick out another pair of Bastards coming our way. In the lead was an individual with legs and ears akin to a hare’s, an eight-eyed spider person hot on his heels with well timed leaps from building to building.
“Someone took out the Taipan Twins!” he blurted out the moment he was within sight of the other Bastards.
“Holy shit.” “What happened?” said the crow and the sense-wolf at the same time.
The rabbit shook his head. “I don’t know. I heard a shout and by the time I got there they were just fucking gone .”
The leaping spider arrived and all six of them huddled up, conversing in voices too quiet to pick out even with my tremorsense. I gripped my polearm, considering and discounting different strategies at a mile a minute. They seemed content to stay in one place, so I slipped ahead of them to find the most attractive escape routes. With methodical care, I twisted each road leading away from their current position into a tortured, treacherous landscape indistinguishable from its former shape at a distance. For good measure I hid small pitfalls here and there with no particular pattern, just the right size to catch a foot and not let go. I doubled back, slinking behind them to block off the only other escape route.
My face poked up from the ground, and I noted that they’d formed up and armed those among them with enhanced senses with guns. No time to do this in a subtle way, and I couldn’t risk getting shot either. I let go of my thinker power, gritting my teeth against the pain while I thought of a way to send them running. An idea occurred to me, and a grin spread across my face before winking out the instant I reactivated my thinker power. I let my power off of its leash for a short burst, a chaotic collage of iron spikes, wooden limbs and stone bones bursting forth from the ground like a mushroom unfurling in timelapse. The Bastards reacted immediately, just as I’d hoped. But even fully immersed in my thinker power, my entire body froze up when I realized that some of those shapes hadn’t come from the statue I’d made earlier.
John…
A crack like a hundred fireworks shattered the stillness in the air, but with my discombobulation it took several precious moments to connect the dots and realize I’d just been shot at. The bullet hadn’t gone anywhere near me, bouncing off a human shape I refused to recognize pulling itself out of the ground. I redoubled my efforts, shifting position erratically as I continued to harass them with the images selected to intimidate and baffle. My opponents seemed to be less certain now, so I swept in close and hooked one of the legs of the sense-wolf with my improvised mancatcher. She screamed, and the group broke. The earth I swam in pulled me back, and she was pulled along with me below the street. I stopped before her head was covered, moving to pick off the rest of the ill-begotten gang.
The Bastards and mercenaries in the warehouse had almost certainly heard the gunshot, I didn’t have much time. Throwing stealth to the wind, I leapt after the scattered members of the group, harrying them until they stumbled into my traps in a panic. One by one I immobilized them, not bothering to waste time with muzzles or stowing them somewhere they wouldn’t be easily found. The bull person actually surrendered, though I still made certain to beef up his restraints in case he decided to try using that raw strength of his.
Five down, I thought, turning toward the warehouse. Should I grab the hostages now? No telling how long that seal will last.
Before I’d taken more than six steps something slammed into my back, sending me sprawling face first into the road. I started reshaping it the moment I made impact, turning around just in time to stop the spider’s second leap, pronged polearm catching her on the leg and slamming her down into the ground. I immobilized her with a wave of stone, heading to the warehouse as fast as I could manage.
Two of the mercenaries guarded the entrance, easily dealt with by using the very walls they hoped to protect to hold them still. I ran around the perimeter of the building, sealing every point of ingress and egress. Poking my head inside, I saw that the lion had organized everyone into a defensive perimeter with guns ready to fire at the first sign of trouble. My goal sat in the center, guarded by layers of trained killers and animal-twisted mobsters. I bypassed them, burrowing beneath until I was directly under the two individuals I’d done all this to rescue. A thick circular wall rose up around them, cutting off the access of the mercenaries, and I poked my head above the ground just long enough to take a few deep breaths and offer each of them a hand.
“I’m with the Protectorate,” I said, voice cold and flat. “Please take a deep breath first.”
They looked at each other with wide eyes for a moment, but eventually took the offered hands. The second I had a good grip I pulled them away, using my power to destroy their bonds in the process. We sank deep underground, propelled forward by the material around us until we eventually surfaced just outside of the warehouse. The individuals I’d just rescued fell more than sat the moment my power wasn’t supporting them, staring forward silently. Uncertain what to do, I let go of my thinker power.
“How are you holding up? Is there anything you need?” I asked them, leaning in close enough for them to hear me.
Unexpectedly, both of the middle-aged academics threw their arms around me and started weeping, babbling unintelligibly about what they went through. I comforted them as best I could, repeating that it would be okay in a soft voice again and again, that Bullrush would arrive soon and she’d take care of all of this. My heart nearly broke at the fear in their voices, at how desperate they were that they’d confess their fears to a near stranger. It was distracting enough that I didn’t notice the loud cracking sounds in the wall of the warehouse until it was too late.
A chunk of the side large enough for two people to walk through fell outward, crumbling as it hit the concrete. I sent the hostages running with a push, turning to face the new threat. The lion man, larger and more feral-looking than he was before, stood just inside holding a small battering ram. He had the darkest of looks in his eyes as he saw me, savage fury compressed into something that made me take an involuntary step back. I advanced regardless, hoping to cover the hole before we were overwhelmed by greater numbers. My opponent threw the battering ram to the side like a piece of trash and charged, moving far faster and more suddenly than I’d anticipated. I tried twisting out of the way as he attacked, but he adjusted and smacked his fist into my breastplate hard enough to make me see stars.
My back hit the ground with a muffled impact, and I involuntarily curled in on myself with a groan of pain. Immediately following that was a crushing pang of failure at getting Presto’s quieting card thing broken. The lion man reacted to the sound, seeming briefly surprised before something clicked behind his eyes.
He spoke, anger turning into smugness. “Of course, the magic bitch sent you in with one of her toys. Was wondering how you’d snuck around all my guys.” He cracked his knuckles, that vicious smile making him look more monstrous than the rage had. “Guess newbie needs to learn a lesson about minding her own business.”
I stood up with painful slowness, using my polearm for support. I held it out with a wobbly stance. “Not done yet. Think you -ugh- got what it takes, Mufasa? Bring it the fuck on.”
“With pleasure,” he said, taking a step toward me. On the next, a portion of the street I’d strategically weakened with my power caved in under his weight and dropped him into the sewers below. There was a deeply satisfying splash, some lovely swearing, and a completely repulsive smell.
With grim determination, I advanced on the building without reactivating my thinker power. A portion of the warehouse’s wall detached from its surroundings and acted as a piece of mobile cover while I advanced on those inside.
“I’d recommend you surrender,” I announced with theatrical projection. “The lion’s been caged, and none of your other friends did any better.”
One by one the Bastards put down their weapons, leaving only the question of the mercenaries. They weren’t making any aggressive motions but they weren’t putting their weapons down either. I gave them a challenging look, spikes stabbing out of the ground around me. The suit gave no reaction, slowly turning to survey the scene as a whole.
“Well?” I prompted.
He turned to address the Bastards, ignoring me. “Prodigy will be notified of this failure.”
Then all at once he and the mercenaries he brought with them began to twist and shudder like broken engine blocks, smoke and blood pouring from eyes and mouth and spine. They fell like puppets with strings cut, enormous holes in their bodies where parts of them literally disintegrated in front of us.
That, of course, was exactly when the wall burst from outside in. Bullrush skidded across the floor in her slow, invincible form. She was like a statue of black crystal or a low-poly model of herself that reflected the light in strange patterns.
She shifted back into normal form, regarding the Bastards and mercenary corpses with a completely unreadable look. Her helmet slowly turned to look at me. “Sepulcher.”
I waved at her, face breaking out into a nervous -almost manic- grin under my mask.
Superhero Donjon (Worm OC, Seattle)
- Thread starter Silverstrings
- Start date
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- Tags
- trans protagonist worm
This was a lot of fun to read. This story doesn't get nearly as many comments and likes as it deserves.
- Location
- New Zealand
I'm guessing that the mercenaries are some sort of corpse army, puppeted around by one cape implanting their own organs in them, acting as a hive mind.
Also, I've forgotten. Who is John again?
Also, I've forgotten. Who is John again?
- Location
- In the mathematical center of your mind palace.
He's the guy from the first chapter that got killed by Carmilla's power. She's still a bit hung up on it, as you might expect.
- Location
- Mulberry, Fl
Perhaps the Jon forms infer that she captured his consciousness when her power kills. Make for an interesting Master ability, a minion that doesn't really like you but may help in return for some 'onscreen' time.
Collapse 1-x(Liang Myers)
- Location
- In the mathematical center of your mind palace.
10 Years Ago
Dad taught Liang her first card trick on her sixth birthday. Dead simple, since she was just a kid back then. All it took was some counting and pretending like you were shuffling when you really weren’t. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, like mom used to say. All the kids at school loved it, and after she’d showboated a little -or, well, maybe more than a little- she’d taught Maddy and Lee how to do it too. Soon enough everyone that cared to learned it, and she couldn’t use it to show off anymore. But she did it first and that made her special.
After that, whenever he really wanted her to be good, Dad would promise to show her another one of his tricks. Like how he’d gotten so many coins out of her ear, or how to shuffle cards so they wooshed between her hands without flying everywhere, or how to hide a ribbon up her sleeve so she could pretend to pull it out of her nose. Whenever mom had one of her ‘family gatherings’ with everyone in the neighborhood she’d have Liang get in front and show everyone her new tricks. She was all too happy to oblige.
After dad got sick, he couldn’t do tricks very well any more. But he could still tell her stories about when he was a sailor, and he could still explain how to shuffle the cards so they ended up where she wanted them. They could both pretend that things were fine, that he’d get better and start showing her tricks and making mom smile again. Pretend like she hadn’t seen him sitting on the couch in silence, staring at the ceiling like he thought it might swallow him up and eat him any second. They’d started going to the doctor more and more, and he moved from the couch to a thin white bed.
He didn’t get better, and he never showed her any more tricks. There was a moment burned into her memory, one of many visits to the private rooms they gave people who weren’t going to be around much longer. She’d struggled to make out the tiny whisper his voice had been reduced to, but she and mom had both noticed when it finally went silent. Something behind his eyes left right then, vanishing like one of his coins. There one moment, and then gone the next.
Mom got her a book of magic tricks, though they’d stopped doing the gatherings a long time ago. Liang read it cover to cover, and when the cover fell off from her reading it too many times mom got her another one. Every time she practiced a new trick she’d imagine him guiding her through each step, teasing her fumbles and praising her successes. She didn’t bother trying to be popular anymore, didn’t bothering showing any of them off. That wasn’t what they were for.
Not too long after dad died, mom started dating a guy named Steve. Steve had a lot of opinions on what was appropriate behavior for a young woman. Like what to wear, who to talk to, how to talk, what to think, and most importantly how to keep her mouth shut and look pretty. The final straw was when he decided her card tricks weren’t ‘ladylike’ enough or whatever the fuck and tried taking them away.
A telltale creak on one of the stairs was her only warning, more than enough time to hide her little rebellions away. Everything in the room was immaculate, her preferred decorations torn down and put in storage during one of Steve’s little tantrums. Not that he’d call them that, of course. The cards were placed behind the false back of a desk drawer, along with a tattered copy of her first book of tricks.
Steve opened the door as she was standing up, not bothering to knock. His head swivelled like a desk fan in fast motion as he scowled at every corner of the room. He was white, with balding red hair, and no matter what time of day it was he always smelled like old sweat and cigarettes. Liang pasted on a smile and took on an appropriately fucking ladylike posture as she endured him pawing through all her stuff, opening drawers and turning over covers. She made sure to get in some really nasty looks whenever his back was turned, throwing in rude gestures she’d seen some older kids make every now and then just to spice things up.
He spun around, and she had to work extra hard to keep the sick feeling in her gut from showing on her face. Had he seen? But he just stalked past her, clumsily pulling open her desk drawers. The knot in her belly unfurled a little when he didn’t notice the false backs, and the clear frustration in his posture made it hard to keep from smirking. She kept up the pasted, patient smile while he looked for an excuse to punish her. He turned from the desk and loomed over her.
“Do you understand who’s in charge of this household little missy?” He said, tone angry.
“Yes sir,” she said, keeping the flare of anger hidden behind a brittle smile.
He sneered. “Well who is it then?”
Liang bit back some choice words she’d recently learned. “It’s you, sir. You’re in charge of this household.”
Fucking Steve nodded like the response was barely acceptable. “What are you doing standing around? Get back on your homework.”
She’d already done her homework, but she sat down at her desk with an appropriately demure ‘Yes sir.’ anyway. He didn’t like it when she corrected him. The door slammed shut, and Liang listened carefully to make sure he was really going back downstairs.
The second the coast was clear she burst into motion, moving her mattress aside to get to the clothes she’d hidden away. Practical stuff, none of the frilly crap Steve thought girls should wear. A few loose floorboards hid a spare backpack filled with supplies, slowly saved up and hoarded over months. There was money too, but not that much. Having too much cash on her would make her a target, or at least that was what she’d heard.
A few minutes to get changed, a few more to gather up all her supplies. She told herself again and again that the pulse pounding in her ears was from excitement, that the sick feeling in her gut was just nervousness about being caught sneaking out. It was enough that she didn’t stop until she stood in front of an open window, the preparations she’d made suddenly seeming woefully inadequate for a life on the streets. But well, she’d always done her best work thinking on her feet. Besides she was ten now, basically almost a grown up.
She tossed five months of work into the night air to force herself to move, quietly closing the window behind her. Careful positioning of her hands and feet kept her perch on the window sill, and little by little clambered down to the ground. Her backpack and duffelbag had landed in a bush, muffling the sound of their fall. There was a hiding spot she’d already picked out for them closer to downtown, though she didn’t look forward to the walk there.
Now or never, she thought, treading fearlessly into the dark. She chanced a look back before the house was completely out of sight, knowing it might be the last time she’d ever get to see it. I’m sorry mom.
Her vision blurred and she lost sight of her former home, forcing her to turn back toward the dark. She scrubbed away the dampness in her eyes with a sleeve. No more time for kid stuff.
-||-
8 Years Ago
Grown-ups had no appreciation for the value of money. Take watches, for instance. You could get a perfectly functional watch for like ten or twenty bucks, but apparently that just wasn’t good enough for some folks. Like the snooty business man she’d ‘acquired’ a fancy gem-studded timepiece from, waltzing down the sidewalk without a care in the world. Hopefully this would teach him to be a little more frugal with his accessories in the future.
Liang hid her grin as she pushed open the door to the pawn shop, putting on a pensive, defeated air. It was important not to lay it on too thick, a classic mistake she’d fallen prey to early on was getting so caught up in selling the character that she forgot real people didn’t like being seen like that. They tried holding it in, keeping it inside, trying to keep a strong facade even at their weakest. It was those glimpses of her ‘true self’ beneath the surface that really drew people into the performance.
She made a show of meandering through the small shop, trying to give the impression that she was putting off approaching the counter rather than eyeing the merchandise. It was a pretty typical assortment of ostensibly valuable junk, most of it too unwieldy and distinctive to be worth trying to make off with. There was some jewelry that briefly caught her attention, behind a shoddy glass case she knew would be a cinch to pop open and swipe something from before anyone was the wiser.
Tempting though it might be, she knew it wasn’t practical. There weren’t that many blasian girls around town, if she got clocked taking something that valuable her distinctive appearance would get the cops on her ass before she could say beluga. Picking pockets and running cons was easier, safer. Less chance of getting caught. If she played her cards right they’d never realize anything was amiss, at least not until she and the rest of her gang were long gone.
Enough dilly dallying. Liang approached the counter with hesitant steps, pawing through her bag like she didn’t know exactly where the watch was. At the moment she was dressed in a ‘poor but preppy’ sort of style, a worn out cardigan over a skirt that was just a tad too big. Her shoes were good for running of course, but they could also pass as dress shoes for someone without much money to spare. The shop’s owner was an old balding Asian guy in a dress shirt with rolled up sleeves, wiping at a counter that already looked plenty clean to her. He looked up as she approached, squinting at her behind worn out glasses.
Liang gave him a nervous smile, unwrapping the watch from the cloth that covered it. The other kids made fun of her for always brushing her teeth and flossing and everything even though there wasn’t anyone to make her. They didn’t get how important it was to not look like an urchin. She made a point of letting her touch linger on the watch just a bit, like it had sentimental value. This was the most important part, whether or not he bought what she was selling. Both literally and figuratively.
“Excuse me mister, can you tell me how much this watch is worth?”
The old man behind the counter leaned forward to examine it, brow furrowed in concentration. “May I see it?” he asked, holding out a weathered hand.
Liang nodded, her reluctance to let go of the expensive accessory only partly feigned. He took it in gentle hands, grey-sprinkled eyebrows scrunching together over thick lenses as he held it up to the light. There was a minute shift in his expression. Surprise.
Next would come the obvious question. Where did an obviously not well-to-do girl get such an expensive watch, particularly one styled and sized for a grown man? The first things most people thought of for an incongruity like that tended to be pretty obvious, driven into them by stereotypes and popular culture. Or life experiences, but those were hard to make use of without a lot of really boring reconnaissance -a word she made sure to teach her whole gang when she learned it last week- or pretending to be their friend long enough to learn something juicy and then stab them in the back. She might have been a thief, a congirl, an urchin, and a wannabe magician, but she’d eat garbage before she’d ever do something that gross .
Thankfully that wouldn’t be necessary. This bit would only need to handle one conversation’s worth of scrutiny, it didn’t need anything but a strong backbone and a little razzle dazzle. She took in a quiet, slow breath, something he’d only notice if he was really paying attention.
“It’s- that is, it was my grandpa’s,” Liang said, striving for a forced casualness. A little more roughness leaked into her voice than she’d intended, making her worry she’d overplayed the part.
He got that look in his eye a lot of grown-ups did when they saw kids like her, that kinda-sad, kinda-helpless look like they wanted to make things better but didn’t know how. It was useful -she’d been aiming for it, even- but it hadn’t taken long for her to start getting real fucking tired of those looks.
She pasted on a sad little smile, twisting the knife for both of them. “Mom sent me to sell it so she can pay the bills while she’s looking for another job.”
The old man’s face seemed to droop a bit more with each word, a good indication that he’d been hooked. Now all she had to do was reel him in and clinch the deal.
“It’s genuine, as far as I can tell,” said the squinty old man, which Liang pretended she hadn’t already known. He paused just a little longer than felt natural, eyes flickering between her and the watch. “I’d value it at around $5000. I can only part with half of that I’m afraid, have to keep the lights on in here.”
Liang tried not to gape at him before realizing that would still be in character, too flummoxed to muster any sort of response. That was over twice what the thing was actually worth, she’d looked it up herself before coming here. There was no way he didn’t know that.
“I...” she started, words failing her yet again. “Thank you.”
He smiled, counting out the bills with wrinkled hands and pressing them into hers. “Go help your family.”
“I will,” she said simply, meaning it.
-||-
It was almost dark when Liang got back to the hideout, she’d had a bunch of errands to run once they were finally flush with cash for a bit. Food for everyone, new clothes, Jessie’s medicine, it was disheartening how fast it got used up. She fumbled the door unlocked and shouldered it open, blinking at the sudden change in brightness while she tried to close the door behind her with a foot. Laughter drifted from the living room, putting a smile on her face even through the exhaustion that had settled over her like a thick blanket. The seven of them rented space in a shitty house in a shitty neighborhood that didn’t bother asking questions about who you were or why you were living there so long as you paid on time.
She set the pizza she’d gotten from the place across the street on their already extremely crowded table, displacing more than a few empty soda cans and other assorted bits of junk onto the floor. She did a sort of squat thing while leaning against the edge of the table, carefully lowering the heavy grocery bags onto the floor next to it. By the time she stood up Monica was leaning on the doorway leading to the family room, giving her another one of those ‘concerned looks’ she was so fond of. She was a year older than Liang, Mexican, with long black hair she liked doing up in different braids, though right now it hung freely to just below her shoulder blades. Liang idly imagined brushing her fingers through it, remembering the way it always smelled a little like flowers because of her shampoo.
A loud harrumph from Monica brought her back to the present. “Hey dummy, were you listening?”
“Of course I was,” Liang lied. “You were asking me about today’s haul, which I have to say went swimmingly.”
“No you weren’t and no I wasn’t. Have you eaten today?”
That brought her up short. “Well I had a bowl of cereal and a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, and earlier today I ate a bag of cheetos.”
“Uh huh. Come on, let’s get you something to eat.”
Liang grabbed a slice of pizza and some breadsticks to mollify both her stomach and her best friend, following her into the living room where a couple of the other kids were hanging out and watching some dumb cape cartoon. She made sure to sit down next to Monica on the big couch, trying not to make too much noise and ruin the show. Jessie had her own chair she liked to sit in while she watched her shows, religiously recording them on tape and drawing pictures of her favorite characters. Alex lounged in the beanbag chair next to her, occasionally scratching at the horns sprouting from his head in between his mocking commentary on the ridiculous situations the characters kept finding themselves in.
She leaned back into the surprisingly comfortable couch, closing her eyes and letting the comforting noises of home wash over her.
-||-
This “Morning”
The harsh blare of her alarm clock almost gave Liang a heart attack. She shot bolt upright in her chair, a half-disassembled card gimmick still strewn across the workbench in front of her. A yawn cracked open her jaw, accompanied with a stretch for her arms and neck.
Christ, she thought. I’ve got to stop doing this to myself.
Whatever stray bits of sleep she’d managed to steal felt painfully inadequate, but she pressed onward anyway. Take a quick shower, brush her teeth and hair, put in the hair gel, and then all it took was a thought for her suit to snap into being around her body from the pocket of twisted space she’d hidden it in. A device surgically implanted in her left forearm monitored and maintained it, giving her constant access. Minute twitches of her fingers and eyes controlled a heads-up display that jacked directly into her optic nerve, bringing up diagnostic reports from all the devices she had active.
Sensors, trackers, relays and the like she’d scattered across the city formed a sort of mesh network with each other, letting her access basic information from far outside their normal operational range. It had been slow, careful work to extend her network into the territories of nearby villains, listening devices and the like carefully disguised as mundane objects and placed in key locations. Hiding them well enough to avoid Professor Silica’s watchful eye had been a particularly interesting challenge, one that would be almost impossible to know whether she succeeded in.
More pressingly, the holding for the displacement engine in her right arm mirroring the specialized space twister in her left had gotten a little loose during the night. With barely a thought she drew a specialized screwdriver from another pocket of twisted space and brought up an augmented view of her arm’s internals. The screwdriver was phased just a little bit out of reality, passing through flesh and bone as though they weren’t even there while still being able to work with the material making up her cybernetic augmentations. It took a few tweaks to get everything back into working order again, and she wiggled her fingers to make sure there weren’t any other issues.
Once that was done she could finally get up to speed on the day’s happenings. A message from the Director caught her eye almost immediately, notifying the whole team that they were getting a new recruit today. Liang’s eyebrows crawled up higher and higher as she read through the barebones description of the cape’s particularly colorful trigger. How the hell had she missed this? Whoever this girl was, she was powerful enough to be really dangerous and either had control issues or a serious temper. A bad combination, either way.
Maybe she was being too pessimistic. The Director had said she’d been cooperative and not much beyond that, but Liang was starting to trust the things the PRT told them less and less as time went on. Had they recruited another villain and hoped to cover it up? Had she been more complicit in the apartment’s destruction than the report implied? Liang didn’t know, but she might be able to find out.
She retrieved her mask from the coffee table, carefully settling it on her face while she tried to get her head in the game. The beginnings of a plan formed in her mind, and as Presto started the process of chain-teleporting to the Space Needle a smirk slowly worked its way onto her face. Her last stop was a broom closet on the top floor, with just barely enough room for her to appear inside without intersecting anything. There was an automatic position-adjuster built into all her teleportation tech that always popped her in with an appropriate pose, compensating for some of the inherent problems with teleporting blind. She ducked under a broom barring her path, opening the door into one of the Needle’s less-trafficked hallways.
Her exit was carefully timed to avoid the gaze of the hall’s security cameras, the door opened and closed without a sound. In her eyes the hallway was overlaid with ghostly images representing the ranges of each and every sensor and security device in the building, information she’d painstakingly pieced together over years of working there. A lot of it was her work, or at least based on her work, which was as easy for her to avoid as it was to avoid tripping on her own legs when she walked down the street. She took a moment to refamiliarize herself with this area of the building, bringing up a three dimensional map in the corner of her augmented vision. The moment before a camera swept back to where she was standing she teleported, quick as a thought.
Presto had started implanting tech into herself basically the moment she’d turned eighteen and didn’t have to ask permission any more, her first and favorite of which was a series of teleportation relays evenly spaced throughout her entire body. Her initial non-swapping teleporters had been limited to only a few feet for objects as massive as people, but that distance was a lot less limited for small things. After some tweaking, she’d created a design that distributed the work of teleporting her to a network of smaller devices first embedded in her costume and then eventually throughout her body. They had to be perfectly synced up -lest she end up with chunks of her teleported to a bunch of slightly different locations- but her effective range had been increased tenfold. Fifty feet was as far as she could go at the moment without risking desyncing, but she already a few ideas for increasing that even further.
Her first blink was aimed at the wall opposite the door she’d emerged from, appearing standing sideways on the wall while seemingly leaning on the ceiling. The suit she was wearing had some tech based on Snubnose’s power, largely negating the planet’s pull and creating a weak artificial gravity effect in whatever direction she chose. The weave making up her costume -including her gloves and dress shoes- could shift on a microscopic level, letting her change its surface friction to match anything from oil slick to the pads lizards used to cling to walls. It only took a couple minutes to make her way to the staffroom without being noticed by either man or machine, the relatively small room still crowded with those on a pilgrimage for pastries. Presto popped into an obscure corner of the room, hidden by a vending machine on one side and a beaten up armchair on the other.
Not much time. Presto checked her network again, a grin splitting her face when she saw they’d just arrived in the parking lot. Just as she’d suspected Laura had been sent to pick up their new recruit; the director wouldn’t have trusted anyone else with this. There was still a teleportation relay in her car, probably left from when Laura helped her move into her new apartment. Not a calculated move on Presto’s part; she’d genuinely forgotten that was still in there. Alright, enough dawdling. She activated the displacement engine in her right forearm, using Laura as a sort of interdimensional counterweight to swap their positions. It still took multiple blinks, but not nearly as many as her other teleporter would have.
She popped in with her feet leaning on the dashboard, which might not give the best first impression. Maybe she should have put her pose-adjuster into serious mode first?
“-be fine,” the girl she’d popped in next to was saying, sounding distracted. The young woman Presto had done all this to get a private conversation with was white, almost pasty, wearing a purple jacket that was cut like a light, feminine trench coat, peering out the window from behind a pair of worn out glasses. She was kinda cute, hair cut short on her left side and shoulder length on her right, the bottom half bleached blonde. “Thanks for taking the time to-”
She’d stopped speaking abruptly as she turned Presto’s way, freezing up like a deer in the headlights for a full second. Some part of Liang noted that she had a simple piercing in her right nostril, putting another point in the ‘probably gay’ category. Before Presto could even open her mouth to explain herself, the newly triggered cape next to her let out a shriek of abject terror and somehow pushed through the car’s closed door like it was made of jello before jumping directly onto the ceiling.
I’m a fucking idiot, Presto thought.
-||-
Now
I’m a fucking idiot, Presto thought -not for the first or even the twelth time today- as she saw the destruction around the warehouse with her own eyes. Of course she’d go in. Carmilla was a little naive and a lot anxious, but she’d obviously been itching to get out there and do something. The whole point of inviting her on this clusterfuck of a patrol had been to let her blow off some steam in a reasonably safe way, not throwing her into the first deadly situation they came across completely alone. Blinking to the ground, Presto could see that apparently ‘doing something’ involved making a lot of creepy abstract sculptures.
She found Bullrush talking to a small squad of PRT troops, apparently coordinating with them on how best to contain the zoo people. Presto waited politely for her to finish and emphatically did not teleport in behind the stick-in-the-ass speedster. She really didn’t want to risk another reflexive gut punch. Her eyes wandered as she waited, augmented vision showing just enough information from her sensors to pick out Carmilla’s slumped form leaning against the wall around the corner. Shit. Was she hurt or just exhausted? Presto blinked, realizing that they’d finished up their brief conversation while she was distracted. Bullrush turned her way, somehow managing to glare at her in a faceless helmet.
“Presto,” she said in a flat tone, warm and welcoming as ever.
Presto grinned, slowly counting down from ten in her head and and striving to keep her breathing steady. It wasn’t Bullrush she was pissed at tonight. “What the hell happened here? Looks like an art exhibit came alive and decided to try sculpting people for a change.”
Bullrush shrugged, seemingly unaware of Presto’s agitation. “About what you’d expect. She got restless and decided to scout out the warehouse, allegedly finding incriminating tinker devices concealed in the backs of the vans that would utilize the hostages for some unknown purpose.”
“What do you mean, ‘allegedly’? You can’t check?”
She shook her head. “It’s all melted down to slag, Monster Mash is gonna have to take a look at the bodies to figure out whether they’re kidnapped people or disposable drones. Anyway, at that point Sepulcher took it upon herself to single-handedly immobilize every Bastard around the warehouse and rescue the hostages from the middle of over a dozen trained killers. Afterwards, one Eric ‘the Proud’ Jacobson burst through the wall of the warehouse and punched her in the chest, knocking her to the ground. She dropped him into the sewers and went back to the warehouse, at which point the mercenaries started to shake violently before dropping to the ground completely dead right before I burst in through the wall. Other witnesses on the scene have confirmed the timing.”
Presto stared at her for a few seconds, completely at a loss for words. “Is she okay?” she managed eventually.
“A little banged up, but she’ll mend. Be grateful this didn’t go as badly as it should have.” The last was said with a nod in Sepulcher’s direction, the small gesture almost throwing Presto for more of a loop than her entire last statement. She started to leave, briefly pausing to whisper directly into Presto’s ear. “The two hostages weren’t supposed to be missing, they’ve both been seen going to work within the last six hours. We’ll learn more at the debriefing.”
With that, she shifted. Bullrush’s speedy form was insubstantial, almost wispy, and it was sped up enough that it seemed to vibrate constantly even when standing still. She zipped off at just below sonic speeds, effortlessly navigating around cars and crowds like a silent bolt of lightning.
Part of Presto’s mind raced with the implications of that; potential avenues for investigation, capes that might be able to pull something like this, brief flashes of inspiration for new scanning tech flickering through her mind. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, centering herself and bringing her focus back onto more important things.
She found Carmilla a little ways away from the larger group of PRT personnel, sinking into a little hump of upraised concrete like it was a beanbag chair as she leaned against the wall of the warehouse. She stared up at the night sky with an unblinking metallic mask, seemingly oblivious to Presto leaning against the wall a little ways away from her. It was hard to reconcile that anxious, vulnerable girl she’d spoken to at the Space Needle with Bullrush’s terse summary and the calculated destruction she’d witnessed on her way here. There was something Presto had missed about her, something important. It was time to find out what.
She gently rapped on the wall she was leaning on with her knuckles, causing Sepulcher’s head to suddenly whip towards her. “Seems I underestimated you,” Presto said, flashing a grin.
“Presto!” said Carmilla, clumsily stumbling to her feet. Even with the wall reshaping itself to support her it was obviously a struggle, the newbie hero heavily favoring her left side and trying to hide quiet grunts of pain behind her teeth. It hurt Liang to see her like this, each uncomfortable shift and sharp intake of breath a pointed reminder that Presto hadn’t been there when it really counted. “I didn’t- that is, I wanted to say I’m sorry for getting us caught earlier. And uhm, I sort of broke your telekinetic silencing card thing. Or at least got it broken. I’m really sorry.” She held out the tattered gimmick, no doubt extracted from a heavily dented breastplate.
Was this bitch seriously apologizing for getting punched in the chest? Presto rolled her eyes violently, unable to contain her frustration. “I didn’t come here because I was worried about the damn card gimmick, I came here to ask what the hell lead to this shit. And more importantly, what happened to you? You’re hurt.”
Carmilla seemed taken aback by her vehemence, spending long moments collecting herself before she managed a response. “Uhm- well first there were these snake guys, I think they were twins. One of them had a baseball bat and he hit me a few times before I managed to grab him, and the other one tried to stab me and I got a couple bruises from that. Or well, he did stab me but it didn’t penetrate my bodysuit. Then this lion guy, I think he was the leader or something, burst through the wall like the goddamn kool-aid man. Fucker punched me right in the boob.”
“Okay there’s gotta be something I’m missing here. Why didn’t you just grab them from a distance?”
“My tremorsense- that’s the feedback I get from surfaces I’m touching, it only extends six to ten feet away from me. I can still conjure stuff past that but it’s slow and clumsy, only limited to a few patterns unless...” Carmilla trailed off. A few long moments passed, Carmilla apparently having completely spaced out.
“Unless?” Liang prompted.
Carmilla shook her head like a dog trying to shake off water, focusing back on Liang. “Unless I let my power just… go. It spreads out in every direction, unpredictably drawing from my emotions or subconscious or whatever. And apparently things it remembers.”
Presto quirked an eyebrow. “You care to elaborate on that?”
Carmilla took a slow, deep breath. “I have a perfect or near perfect memory for objects and locations, which works best on things I’ve sensed with my powers directly. Earlier I wanted to scare a group of Bastards into some traps, so I tried making a bunch of parts from a statue I made earlier and while it did do that it also made uhm- it made other stuff too. I think they’re from when I ki- when I found John.” She stopped, unwilling or unable to elaborate further.
John? That must have been the guy she couldn’t save. “Alright. So what made you go in in the first place? You had a perfectly good hiding spot. And sit down, you look like you’re about to fall over.”
She sat, flumping onto the ground like a sack of potatoes thrown onto a pile of mud. “Well I was sitting there feeling like an idiot for fucking up and forcing you to come and rescue me, especially since at that point I knew I’d have to explain the whole thing to Bullrush and I get really nervous around strict authority figure types. And it’s hard to explain, but those black vans really seemed like bad news to me. So I told myself I’d check it out and decide whether Bullrush would be better suited to handling it or not, and then I checked it out.”
“And found weird tinker shit in the vans,” Presto added.
Carmilla nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah it was like this weird sarcophagus thing with tubes and wires going into it, I could sense the whole thing with my power.”
“Could you draw it out or something?” Presto suggested.
“I can do you one better. Just give me ooooooone second.” Carmilla stuck both hands into the wall she was leaning on, forming something just under the surface. It took a minute or two of work, with her occasionally taking out the half formed piece to get a look at it. Eventually she presented a scale model of the fucked up tinkertech coffin with a quarter of it removed to display the interior, casually handing it over.
Presto leaned in for a closer look, her augmented eyes highlighting every key detail. “Sepulcher, this is amazing. Seems you’ve already found us our first lead.”
“Thank you! I’m really glad I can help,” she said, sounding genuinely floored by the praise. Then she paused for a moment, seeming to struggle with herself. “So uhm, are you mad at me? For like, sort of breaking my promise.”
Is that what she thought? Shit. “No no, not at all. I would have done the same thing and been smug about it afterwards. I’m mad at myself for not being there.”
“Oh,” said Carmilla, apparently not up to responding.
“Hey,” Presto said, giving her a little punch on the pauldron. “You did good tonight, saved two people from a real ugly fate. How about we get you home? We could both use some rest after tonight.”
“Uhm,” Carmilla said, sound reluctant. “You might have to go without me. I don’t think I’m up for anymore rooftop running right now.”
Presto shook her head, smiling despite herself. “I meant we hitch a ride on a PRT van, I wouldn’t expect any acrobatics from you after your poor tit got caved in.”
Carmilla snorted. “That would be totally fine by me. I feel like I could sleep for a week.”
Liang helped her new teammate to her feet and headed back towards the Space Needle, tired enough this late in the day that she ended up leaning on Carmilla as much as Carmilla was leaning on her.
Dad taught Liang her first card trick on her sixth birthday. Dead simple, since she was just a kid back then. All it took was some counting and pretending like you were shuffling when you really weren’t. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, like mom used to say. All the kids at school loved it, and after she’d showboated a little -or, well, maybe more than a little- she’d taught Maddy and Lee how to do it too. Soon enough everyone that cared to learned it, and she couldn’t use it to show off anymore. But she did it first and that made her special.
After that, whenever he really wanted her to be good, Dad would promise to show her another one of his tricks. Like how he’d gotten so many coins out of her ear, or how to shuffle cards so they wooshed between her hands without flying everywhere, or how to hide a ribbon up her sleeve so she could pretend to pull it out of her nose. Whenever mom had one of her ‘family gatherings’ with everyone in the neighborhood she’d have Liang get in front and show everyone her new tricks. She was all too happy to oblige.
After dad got sick, he couldn’t do tricks very well any more. But he could still tell her stories about when he was a sailor, and he could still explain how to shuffle the cards so they ended up where she wanted them. They could both pretend that things were fine, that he’d get better and start showing her tricks and making mom smile again. Pretend like she hadn’t seen him sitting on the couch in silence, staring at the ceiling like he thought it might swallow him up and eat him any second. They’d started going to the doctor more and more, and he moved from the couch to a thin white bed.
He didn’t get better, and he never showed her any more tricks. There was a moment burned into her memory, one of many visits to the private rooms they gave people who weren’t going to be around much longer. She’d struggled to make out the tiny whisper his voice had been reduced to, but she and mom had both noticed when it finally went silent. Something behind his eyes left right then, vanishing like one of his coins. There one moment, and then gone the next.
Mom got her a book of magic tricks, though they’d stopped doing the gatherings a long time ago. Liang read it cover to cover, and when the cover fell off from her reading it too many times mom got her another one. Every time she practiced a new trick she’d imagine him guiding her through each step, teasing her fumbles and praising her successes. She didn’t bother trying to be popular anymore, didn’t bothering showing any of them off. That wasn’t what they were for.
Not too long after dad died, mom started dating a guy named Steve. Steve had a lot of opinions on what was appropriate behavior for a young woman. Like what to wear, who to talk to, how to talk, what to think, and most importantly how to keep her mouth shut and look pretty. The final straw was when he decided her card tricks weren’t ‘ladylike’ enough or whatever the fuck and tried taking them away.
A telltale creak on one of the stairs was her only warning, more than enough time to hide her little rebellions away. Everything in the room was immaculate, her preferred decorations torn down and put in storage during one of Steve’s little tantrums. Not that he’d call them that, of course. The cards were placed behind the false back of a desk drawer, along with a tattered copy of her first book of tricks.
Steve opened the door as she was standing up, not bothering to knock. His head swivelled like a desk fan in fast motion as he scowled at every corner of the room. He was white, with balding red hair, and no matter what time of day it was he always smelled like old sweat and cigarettes. Liang pasted on a smile and took on an appropriately fucking ladylike posture as she endured him pawing through all her stuff, opening drawers and turning over covers. She made sure to get in some really nasty looks whenever his back was turned, throwing in rude gestures she’d seen some older kids make every now and then just to spice things up.
He spun around, and she had to work extra hard to keep the sick feeling in her gut from showing on her face. Had he seen? But he just stalked past her, clumsily pulling open her desk drawers. The knot in her belly unfurled a little when he didn’t notice the false backs, and the clear frustration in his posture made it hard to keep from smirking. She kept up the pasted, patient smile while he looked for an excuse to punish her. He turned from the desk and loomed over her.
“Do you understand who’s in charge of this household little missy?” He said, tone angry.
“Yes sir,” she said, keeping the flare of anger hidden behind a brittle smile.
He sneered. “Well who is it then?”
Liang bit back some choice words she’d recently learned. “It’s you, sir. You’re in charge of this household.”
Fucking Steve nodded like the response was barely acceptable. “What are you doing standing around? Get back on your homework.”
She’d already done her homework, but she sat down at her desk with an appropriately demure ‘Yes sir.’ anyway. He didn’t like it when she corrected him. The door slammed shut, and Liang listened carefully to make sure he was really going back downstairs.
The second the coast was clear she burst into motion, moving her mattress aside to get to the clothes she’d hidden away. Practical stuff, none of the frilly crap Steve thought girls should wear. A few loose floorboards hid a spare backpack filled with supplies, slowly saved up and hoarded over months. There was money too, but not that much. Having too much cash on her would make her a target, or at least that was what she’d heard.
A few minutes to get changed, a few more to gather up all her supplies. She told herself again and again that the pulse pounding in her ears was from excitement, that the sick feeling in her gut was just nervousness about being caught sneaking out. It was enough that she didn’t stop until she stood in front of an open window, the preparations she’d made suddenly seeming woefully inadequate for a life on the streets. But well, she’d always done her best work thinking on her feet. Besides she was ten now, basically almost a grown up.
She tossed five months of work into the night air to force herself to move, quietly closing the window behind her. Careful positioning of her hands and feet kept her perch on the window sill, and little by little clambered down to the ground. Her backpack and duffelbag had landed in a bush, muffling the sound of their fall. There was a hiding spot she’d already picked out for them closer to downtown, though she didn’t look forward to the walk there.
Now or never, she thought, treading fearlessly into the dark. She chanced a look back before the house was completely out of sight, knowing it might be the last time she’d ever get to see it. I’m sorry mom.
Her vision blurred and she lost sight of her former home, forcing her to turn back toward the dark. She scrubbed away the dampness in her eyes with a sleeve. No more time for kid stuff.
-||-
8 Years Ago
Grown-ups had no appreciation for the value of money. Take watches, for instance. You could get a perfectly functional watch for like ten or twenty bucks, but apparently that just wasn’t good enough for some folks. Like the snooty business man she’d ‘acquired’ a fancy gem-studded timepiece from, waltzing down the sidewalk without a care in the world. Hopefully this would teach him to be a little more frugal with his accessories in the future.
Liang hid her grin as she pushed open the door to the pawn shop, putting on a pensive, defeated air. It was important not to lay it on too thick, a classic mistake she’d fallen prey to early on was getting so caught up in selling the character that she forgot real people didn’t like being seen like that. They tried holding it in, keeping it inside, trying to keep a strong facade even at their weakest. It was those glimpses of her ‘true self’ beneath the surface that really drew people into the performance.
She made a show of meandering through the small shop, trying to give the impression that she was putting off approaching the counter rather than eyeing the merchandise. It was a pretty typical assortment of ostensibly valuable junk, most of it too unwieldy and distinctive to be worth trying to make off with. There was some jewelry that briefly caught her attention, behind a shoddy glass case she knew would be a cinch to pop open and swipe something from before anyone was the wiser.
Tempting though it might be, she knew it wasn’t practical. There weren’t that many blasian girls around town, if she got clocked taking something that valuable her distinctive appearance would get the cops on her ass before she could say beluga. Picking pockets and running cons was easier, safer. Less chance of getting caught. If she played her cards right they’d never realize anything was amiss, at least not until she and the rest of her gang were long gone.
Enough dilly dallying. Liang approached the counter with hesitant steps, pawing through her bag like she didn’t know exactly where the watch was. At the moment she was dressed in a ‘poor but preppy’ sort of style, a worn out cardigan over a skirt that was just a tad too big. Her shoes were good for running of course, but they could also pass as dress shoes for someone without much money to spare. The shop’s owner was an old balding Asian guy in a dress shirt with rolled up sleeves, wiping at a counter that already looked plenty clean to her. He looked up as she approached, squinting at her behind worn out glasses.
Liang gave him a nervous smile, unwrapping the watch from the cloth that covered it. The other kids made fun of her for always brushing her teeth and flossing and everything even though there wasn’t anyone to make her. They didn’t get how important it was to not look like an urchin. She made a point of letting her touch linger on the watch just a bit, like it had sentimental value. This was the most important part, whether or not he bought what she was selling. Both literally and figuratively.
“Excuse me mister, can you tell me how much this watch is worth?”
The old man behind the counter leaned forward to examine it, brow furrowed in concentration. “May I see it?” he asked, holding out a weathered hand.
Liang nodded, her reluctance to let go of the expensive accessory only partly feigned. He took it in gentle hands, grey-sprinkled eyebrows scrunching together over thick lenses as he held it up to the light. There was a minute shift in his expression. Surprise.
Next would come the obvious question. Where did an obviously not well-to-do girl get such an expensive watch, particularly one styled and sized for a grown man? The first things most people thought of for an incongruity like that tended to be pretty obvious, driven into them by stereotypes and popular culture. Or life experiences, but those were hard to make use of without a lot of really boring reconnaissance -a word she made sure to teach her whole gang when she learned it last week- or pretending to be their friend long enough to learn something juicy and then stab them in the back. She might have been a thief, a congirl, an urchin, and a wannabe magician, but she’d eat garbage before she’d ever do something that gross .
Thankfully that wouldn’t be necessary. This bit would only need to handle one conversation’s worth of scrutiny, it didn’t need anything but a strong backbone and a little razzle dazzle. She took in a quiet, slow breath, something he’d only notice if he was really paying attention.
“It’s- that is, it was my grandpa’s,” Liang said, striving for a forced casualness. A little more roughness leaked into her voice than she’d intended, making her worry she’d overplayed the part.
He got that look in his eye a lot of grown-ups did when they saw kids like her, that kinda-sad, kinda-helpless look like they wanted to make things better but didn’t know how. It was useful -she’d been aiming for it, even- but it hadn’t taken long for her to start getting real fucking tired of those looks.
She pasted on a sad little smile, twisting the knife for both of them. “Mom sent me to sell it so she can pay the bills while she’s looking for another job.”
The old man’s face seemed to droop a bit more with each word, a good indication that he’d been hooked. Now all she had to do was reel him in and clinch the deal.
“It’s genuine, as far as I can tell,” said the squinty old man, which Liang pretended she hadn’t already known. He paused just a little longer than felt natural, eyes flickering between her and the watch. “I’d value it at around $5000. I can only part with half of that I’m afraid, have to keep the lights on in here.”
Liang tried not to gape at him before realizing that would still be in character, too flummoxed to muster any sort of response. That was over twice what the thing was actually worth, she’d looked it up herself before coming here. There was no way he didn’t know that.
“I...” she started, words failing her yet again. “Thank you.”
He smiled, counting out the bills with wrinkled hands and pressing them into hers. “Go help your family.”
“I will,” she said simply, meaning it.
-||-
It was almost dark when Liang got back to the hideout, she’d had a bunch of errands to run once they were finally flush with cash for a bit. Food for everyone, new clothes, Jessie’s medicine, it was disheartening how fast it got used up. She fumbled the door unlocked and shouldered it open, blinking at the sudden change in brightness while she tried to close the door behind her with a foot. Laughter drifted from the living room, putting a smile on her face even through the exhaustion that had settled over her like a thick blanket. The seven of them rented space in a shitty house in a shitty neighborhood that didn’t bother asking questions about who you were or why you were living there so long as you paid on time.
She set the pizza she’d gotten from the place across the street on their already extremely crowded table, displacing more than a few empty soda cans and other assorted bits of junk onto the floor. She did a sort of squat thing while leaning against the edge of the table, carefully lowering the heavy grocery bags onto the floor next to it. By the time she stood up Monica was leaning on the doorway leading to the family room, giving her another one of those ‘concerned looks’ she was so fond of. She was a year older than Liang, Mexican, with long black hair she liked doing up in different braids, though right now it hung freely to just below her shoulder blades. Liang idly imagined brushing her fingers through it, remembering the way it always smelled a little like flowers because of her shampoo.
A loud harrumph from Monica brought her back to the present. “Hey dummy, were you listening?”
“Of course I was,” Liang lied. “You were asking me about today’s haul, which I have to say went swimmingly.”
“No you weren’t and no I wasn’t. Have you eaten today?”
That brought her up short. “Well I had a bowl of cereal and a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, and earlier today I ate a bag of cheetos.”
“Uh huh. Come on, let’s get you something to eat.”
Liang grabbed a slice of pizza and some breadsticks to mollify both her stomach and her best friend, following her into the living room where a couple of the other kids were hanging out and watching some dumb cape cartoon. She made sure to sit down next to Monica on the big couch, trying not to make too much noise and ruin the show. Jessie had her own chair she liked to sit in while she watched her shows, religiously recording them on tape and drawing pictures of her favorite characters. Alex lounged in the beanbag chair next to her, occasionally scratching at the horns sprouting from his head in between his mocking commentary on the ridiculous situations the characters kept finding themselves in.
She leaned back into the surprisingly comfortable couch, closing her eyes and letting the comforting noises of home wash over her.
-||-
This “Morning”
The harsh blare of her alarm clock almost gave Liang a heart attack. She shot bolt upright in her chair, a half-disassembled card gimmick still strewn across the workbench in front of her. A yawn cracked open her jaw, accompanied with a stretch for her arms and neck.
Christ, she thought. I’ve got to stop doing this to myself.
Whatever stray bits of sleep she’d managed to steal felt painfully inadequate, but she pressed onward anyway. Take a quick shower, brush her teeth and hair, put in the hair gel, and then all it took was a thought for her suit to snap into being around her body from the pocket of twisted space she’d hidden it in. A device surgically implanted in her left forearm monitored and maintained it, giving her constant access. Minute twitches of her fingers and eyes controlled a heads-up display that jacked directly into her optic nerve, bringing up diagnostic reports from all the devices she had active.
Sensors, trackers, relays and the like she’d scattered across the city formed a sort of mesh network with each other, letting her access basic information from far outside their normal operational range. It had been slow, careful work to extend her network into the territories of nearby villains, listening devices and the like carefully disguised as mundane objects and placed in key locations. Hiding them well enough to avoid Professor Silica’s watchful eye had been a particularly interesting challenge, one that would be almost impossible to know whether she succeeded in.
More pressingly, the holding for the displacement engine in her right arm mirroring the specialized space twister in her left had gotten a little loose during the night. With barely a thought she drew a specialized screwdriver from another pocket of twisted space and brought up an augmented view of her arm’s internals. The screwdriver was phased just a little bit out of reality, passing through flesh and bone as though they weren’t even there while still being able to work with the material making up her cybernetic augmentations. It took a few tweaks to get everything back into working order again, and she wiggled her fingers to make sure there weren’t any other issues.
Once that was done she could finally get up to speed on the day’s happenings. A message from the Director caught her eye almost immediately, notifying the whole team that they were getting a new recruit today. Liang’s eyebrows crawled up higher and higher as she read through the barebones description of the cape’s particularly colorful trigger. How the hell had she missed this? Whoever this girl was, she was powerful enough to be really dangerous and either had control issues or a serious temper. A bad combination, either way.
Maybe she was being too pessimistic. The Director had said she’d been cooperative and not much beyond that, but Liang was starting to trust the things the PRT told them less and less as time went on. Had they recruited another villain and hoped to cover it up? Had she been more complicit in the apartment’s destruction than the report implied? Liang didn’t know, but she might be able to find out.
She retrieved her mask from the coffee table, carefully settling it on her face while she tried to get her head in the game. The beginnings of a plan formed in her mind, and as Presto started the process of chain-teleporting to the Space Needle a smirk slowly worked its way onto her face. Her last stop was a broom closet on the top floor, with just barely enough room for her to appear inside without intersecting anything. There was an automatic position-adjuster built into all her teleportation tech that always popped her in with an appropriate pose, compensating for some of the inherent problems with teleporting blind. She ducked under a broom barring her path, opening the door into one of the Needle’s less-trafficked hallways.
Her exit was carefully timed to avoid the gaze of the hall’s security cameras, the door opened and closed without a sound. In her eyes the hallway was overlaid with ghostly images representing the ranges of each and every sensor and security device in the building, information she’d painstakingly pieced together over years of working there. A lot of it was her work, or at least based on her work, which was as easy for her to avoid as it was to avoid tripping on her own legs when she walked down the street. She took a moment to refamiliarize herself with this area of the building, bringing up a three dimensional map in the corner of her augmented vision. The moment before a camera swept back to where she was standing she teleported, quick as a thought.
Presto had started implanting tech into herself basically the moment she’d turned eighteen and didn’t have to ask permission any more, her first and favorite of which was a series of teleportation relays evenly spaced throughout her entire body. Her initial non-swapping teleporters had been limited to only a few feet for objects as massive as people, but that distance was a lot less limited for small things. After some tweaking, she’d created a design that distributed the work of teleporting her to a network of smaller devices first embedded in her costume and then eventually throughout her body. They had to be perfectly synced up -lest she end up with chunks of her teleported to a bunch of slightly different locations- but her effective range had been increased tenfold. Fifty feet was as far as she could go at the moment without risking desyncing, but she already a few ideas for increasing that even further.
Her first blink was aimed at the wall opposite the door she’d emerged from, appearing standing sideways on the wall while seemingly leaning on the ceiling. The suit she was wearing had some tech based on Snubnose’s power, largely negating the planet’s pull and creating a weak artificial gravity effect in whatever direction she chose. The weave making up her costume -including her gloves and dress shoes- could shift on a microscopic level, letting her change its surface friction to match anything from oil slick to the pads lizards used to cling to walls. It only took a couple minutes to make her way to the staffroom without being noticed by either man or machine, the relatively small room still crowded with those on a pilgrimage for pastries. Presto popped into an obscure corner of the room, hidden by a vending machine on one side and a beaten up armchair on the other.
Not much time. Presto checked her network again, a grin splitting her face when she saw they’d just arrived in the parking lot. Just as she’d suspected Laura had been sent to pick up their new recruit; the director wouldn’t have trusted anyone else with this. There was still a teleportation relay in her car, probably left from when Laura helped her move into her new apartment. Not a calculated move on Presto’s part; she’d genuinely forgotten that was still in there. Alright, enough dawdling. She activated the displacement engine in her right forearm, using Laura as a sort of interdimensional counterweight to swap their positions. It still took multiple blinks, but not nearly as many as her other teleporter would have.
She popped in with her feet leaning on the dashboard, which might not give the best first impression. Maybe she should have put her pose-adjuster into serious mode first?
“-be fine,” the girl she’d popped in next to was saying, sounding distracted. The young woman Presto had done all this to get a private conversation with was white, almost pasty, wearing a purple jacket that was cut like a light, feminine trench coat, peering out the window from behind a pair of worn out glasses. She was kinda cute, hair cut short on her left side and shoulder length on her right, the bottom half bleached blonde. “Thanks for taking the time to-”
She’d stopped speaking abruptly as she turned Presto’s way, freezing up like a deer in the headlights for a full second. Some part of Liang noted that she had a simple piercing in her right nostril, putting another point in the ‘probably gay’ category. Before Presto could even open her mouth to explain herself, the newly triggered cape next to her let out a shriek of abject terror and somehow pushed through the car’s closed door like it was made of jello before jumping directly onto the ceiling.
I’m a fucking idiot, Presto thought.
-||-
Now
I’m a fucking idiot, Presto thought -not for the first or even the twelth time today- as she saw the destruction around the warehouse with her own eyes. Of course she’d go in. Carmilla was a little naive and a lot anxious, but she’d obviously been itching to get out there and do something. The whole point of inviting her on this clusterfuck of a patrol had been to let her blow off some steam in a reasonably safe way, not throwing her into the first deadly situation they came across completely alone. Blinking to the ground, Presto could see that apparently ‘doing something’ involved making a lot of creepy abstract sculptures.
She found Bullrush talking to a small squad of PRT troops, apparently coordinating with them on how best to contain the zoo people. Presto waited politely for her to finish and emphatically did not teleport in behind the stick-in-the-ass speedster. She really didn’t want to risk another reflexive gut punch. Her eyes wandered as she waited, augmented vision showing just enough information from her sensors to pick out Carmilla’s slumped form leaning against the wall around the corner. Shit. Was she hurt or just exhausted? Presto blinked, realizing that they’d finished up their brief conversation while she was distracted. Bullrush turned her way, somehow managing to glare at her in a faceless helmet.
“Presto,” she said in a flat tone, warm and welcoming as ever.
Presto grinned, slowly counting down from ten in her head and and striving to keep her breathing steady. It wasn’t Bullrush she was pissed at tonight. “What the hell happened here? Looks like an art exhibit came alive and decided to try sculpting people for a change.”
Bullrush shrugged, seemingly unaware of Presto’s agitation. “About what you’d expect. She got restless and decided to scout out the warehouse, allegedly finding incriminating tinker devices concealed in the backs of the vans that would utilize the hostages for some unknown purpose.”
“What do you mean, ‘allegedly’? You can’t check?”
She shook her head. “It’s all melted down to slag, Monster Mash is gonna have to take a look at the bodies to figure out whether they’re kidnapped people or disposable drones. Anyway, at that point Sepulcher took it upon herself to single-handedly immobilize every Bastard around the warehouse and rescue the hostages from the middle of over a dozen trained killers. Afterwards, one Eric ‘the Proud’ Jacobson burst through the wall of the warehouse and punched her in the chest, knocking her to the ground. She dropped him into the sewers and went back to the warehouse, at which point the mercenaries started to shake violently before dropping to the ground completely dead right before I burst in through the wall. Other witnesses on the scene have confirmed the timing.”
Presto stared at her for a few seconds, completely at a loss for words. “Is she okay?” she managed eventually.
“A little banged up, but she’ll mend. Be grateful this didn’t go as badly as it should have.” The last was said with a nod in Sepulcher’s direction, the small gesture almost throwing Presto for more of a loop than her entire last statement. She started to leave, briefly pausing to whisper directly into Presto’s ear. “The two hostages weren’t supposed to be missing, they’ve both been seen going to work within the last six hours. We’ll learn more at the debriefing.”
With that, she shifted. Bullrush’s speedy form was insubstantial, almost wispy, and it was sped up enough that it seemed to vibrate constantly even when standing still. She zipped off at just below sonic speeds, effortlessly navigating around cars and crowds like a silent bolt of lightning.
Part of Presto’s mind raced with the implications of that; potential avenues for investigation, capes that might be able to pull something like this, brief flashes of inspiration for new scanning tech flickering through her mind. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, centering herself and bringing her focus back onto more important things.
She found Carmilla a little ways away from the larger group of PRT personnel, sinking into a little hump of upraised concrete like it was a beanbag chair as she leaned against the wall of the warehouse. She stared up at the night sky with an unblinking metallic mask, seemingly oblivious to Presto leaning against the wall a little ways away from her. It was hard to reconcile that anxious, vulnerable girl she’d spoken to at the Space Needle with Bullrush’s terse summary and the calculated destruction she’d witnessed on her way here. There was something Presto had missed about her, something important. It was time to find out what.
She gently rapped on the wall she was leaning on with her knuckles, causing Sepulcher’s head to suddenly whip towards her. “Seems I underestimated you,” Presto said, flashing a grin.
“Presto!” said Carmilla, clumsily stumbling to her feet. Even with the wall reshaping itself to support her it was obviously a struggle, the newbie hero heavily favoring her left side and trying to hide quiet grunts of pain behind her teeth. It hurt Liang to see her like this, each uncomfortable shift and sharp intake of breath a pointed reminder that Presto hadn’t been there when it really counted. “I didn’t- that is, I wanted to say I’m sorry for getting us caught earlier. And uhm, I sort of broke your telekinetic silencing card thing. Or at least got it broken. I’m really sorry.” She held out the tattered gimmick, no doubt extracted from a heavily dented breastplate.
Was this bitch seriously apologizing for getting punched in the chest? Presto rolled her eyes violently, unable to contain her frustration. “I didn’t come here because I was worried about the damn card gimmick, I came here to ask what the hell lead to this shit. And more importantly, what happened to you? You’re hurt.”
Carmilla seemed taken aback by her vehemence, spending long moments collecting herself before she managed a response. “Uhm- well first there were these snake guys, I think they were twins. One of them had a baseball bat and he hit me a few times before I managed to grab him, and the other one tried to stab me and I got a couple bruises from that. Or well, he did stab me but it didn’t penetrate my bodysuit. Then this lion guy, I think he was the leader or something, burst through the wall like the goddamn kool-aid man. Fucker punched me right in the boob.”
“Okay there’s gotta be something I’m missing here. Why didn’t you just grab them from a distance?”
“My tremorsense- that’s the feedback I get from surfaces I’m touching, it only extends six to ten feet away from me. I can still conjure stuff past that but it’s slow and clumsy, only limited to a few patterns unless...” Carmilla trailed off. A few long moments passed, Carmilla apparently having completely spaced out.
“Unless?” Liang prompted.
Carmilla shook her head like a dog trying to shake off water, focusing back on Liang. “Unless I let my power just… go. It spreads out in every direction, unpredictably drawing from my emotions or subconscious or whatever. And apparently things it remembers.”
Presto quirked an eyebrow. “You care to elaborate on that?”
Carmilla took a slow, deep breath. “I have a perfect or near perfect memory for objects and locations, which works best on things I’ve sensed with my powers directly. Earlier I wanted to scare a group of Bastards into some traps, so I tried making a bunch of parts from a statue I made earlier and while it did do that it also made uhm- it made other stuff too. I think they’re from when I ki- when I found John.” She stopped, unwilling or unable to elaborate further.
John? That must have been the guy she couldn’t save. “Alright. So what made you go in in the first place? You had a perfectly good hiding spot. And sit down, you look like you’re about to fall over.”
She sat, flumping onto the ground like a sack of potatoes thrown onto a pile of mud. “Well I was sitting there feeling like an idiot for fucking up and forcing you to come and rescue me, especially since at that point I knew I’d have to explain the whole thing to Bullrush and I get really nervous around strict authority figure types. And it’s hard to explain, but those black vans really seemed like bad news to me. So I told myself I’d check it out and decide whether Bullrush would be better suited to handling it or not, and then I checked it out.”
“And found weird tinker shit in the vans,” Presto added.
Carmilla nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah it was like this weird sarcophagus thing with tubes and wires going into it, I could sense the whole thing with my power.”
“Could you draw it out or something?” Presto suggested.
“I can do you one better. Just give me ooooooone second.” Carmilla stuck both hands into the wall she was leaning on, forming something just under the surface. It took a minute or two of work, with her occasionally taking out the half formed piece to get a look at it. Eventually she presented a scale model of the fucked up tinkertech coffin with a quarter of it removed to display the interior, casually handing it over.
Presto leaned in for a closer look, her augmented eyes highlighting every key detail. “Sepulcher, this is amazing. Seems you’ve already found us our first lead.”
“Thank you! I’m really glad I can help,” she said, sounding genuinely floored by the praise. Then she paused for a moment, seeming to struggle with herself. “So uhm, are you mad at me? For like, sort of breaking my promise.”
Is that what she thought? Shit. “No no, not at all. I would have done the same thing and been smug about it afterwards. I’m mad at myself for not being there.”
“Oh,” said Carmilla, apparently not up to responding.
“Hey,” Presto said, giving her a little punch on the pauldron. “You did good tonight, saved two people from a real ugly fate. How about we get you home? We could both use some rest after tonight.”
“Uhm,” Carmilla said, sound reluctant. “You might have to go without me. I don’t think I’m up for anymore rooftop running right now.”
Presto shook her head, smiling despite herself. “I meant we hitch a ride on a PRT van, I wouldn’t expect any acrobatics from you after your poor tit got caved in.”
Carmilla snorted. “That would be totally fine by me. I feel like I could sleep for a week.”
Liang helped her new teammate to her feet and headed back towards the Space Needle, tired enough this late in the day that she ended up leaning on Carmilla as much as Carmilla was leaning on her.
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- Location
- United Kingdom
This is really great so far! All of the oc's seem interesting, and the ones we know more about (mostly Carmilla and Presto so far) have been really engaging. Looking forward to the next chapter, and the rest of the story!
As a side note, it's awesome to have a trans girl as the protagonist. Not enough of those in fiction.
As a side note, it's awesome to have a trans girl as the protagonist. Not enough of those in fiction.
Aftershocks 2-1: A week later, Carmilla is still settling into her new home and new role as a superhero.
- Location
- In the mathematical center of your mind palace.
Donjon has returned! Sorry for the long delay, I'm afraid I wasn't quite able to keep up my writing pace once I ran out of backlog. But fear not, more Donjon is on its way.
-||-
“I’m honestly not sure where to begin,” I said, sitting on the supple faux-leather couch the Seattle protectorate’s current in-house therapist kept for her patients, mask in my lap. It was sturdy, reinforced inside and out to accommodate capes with particularly heavy bodies or gear. The woman whose couch I was occupying sat cross-legged on a large office chair across from me. She was on the younger side of middle aged, with light brown skin and dark wavy hair tied back into a bun; her look gave off a sort of ‘cool english teacher’ vibe, thick glasses and a cardigan festooned with pins worn over a brightly colored dress that was nearly a match for my own. “Uhm- what was your name again? I’m sorry, I’ve just been so busy this last week that I keep losing track of things.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” she said, waving off my concern with a genial smile. “My name is Dr. Adelina Oliveira, but everyone here just calls me Ina,” she continued, seeming completely at ease in her quiet office on the western wing of the Needle’s fiftieth floor. It was decorated with the sorts of knick knacks I’d come to associate with therapist’s offices, little Buddha statues and uncut gemstones decorating shelves and tables. The only item of note was a small bird skull on her desk, mounted on a metallic stand right next to a miniature zen garden. “Take as long as you need to formulate your thoughts, okay Sepulcher? Or would you prefer Carmilla?”
I shrugged. “Either one’s fine I guess, they’re both my name,” I said, immediately contradicting myself with my next statement. “Let’s go with Carmilla for now.”
Ina nodded. “Carmilla it is.”
I looked down at the golden heart-shaped mask in my hands, impenetrable black lenses meeting me stare for stare. A few meetings with PR had resulted in a look with a lot more thematic coherence, the eyes and nose resembling a barn owl’s. The rest of my armor still hadn’t been finalized, more because I hadn’t really had the time to work on it than anything else, but once it was finished it would be etched on all the edges to resemble feathers.
Right now I was just wearing one of my new dresses for my costume -bright and summery in utter defiance of the season- along with the official security card I’d gotten on my first day here. Laura and Liang had taken me shopping the day after the whole warehouse thing, probably to keep an eye on me as much as anything, but I couldn’t deny how nice it had been to be able to just get things I liked without having to worry about scrimping and saving for every purchase. “It all just feels so strange. Like- like this is a dream I’m gonna wake up from at any moment. That’s normal, right? After such a big upheaval?”
Ina nodded again, face breaking into a gentle smile. “I think almost anyone in your position would experience some disconnect while they adjusted to their new normal. Considering what you’ve gone through I’d say you’re doing an admirable job of coping.”
I smiled back, hesitant. “I’d guess the first thing to note is that I’m trans. Like, a trans woman. There were signs going back as far as I can remember, but I only like consciously realized it when I was eighteen, after high school. I started HRT a bit over a year ago, in March 2008. My parents aren’t supportive, and I was basically forced to come out to them when my mom found one of my bras back in January,” my voice grew in intensity as I continued, a familiar bitterness rising to the surface. “They don’t even say my name, you know. I don’t mean they insist on using my dead name, I mean they don’t use any name or pronouns for me at all. They do fucking conversational gymnastics to avoid it, since they know if they used my dead name or called me ‘he’ I’d correct them. It makes me feel like a- a fucking non-person!”
A distinctly sharp ripple moved through the couch at my displeasure, bringing my rant to a sputtering halt. I took a moment to breathe, trying to tamp down the indignation and sorrow to more manageable levels before continuing. “Anyway. I also have a history of depression, with some pretty severe episodes preceding my dropping out of college.” I sighed.
“There’s nothing for you to be ashamed of, Carmilla,” Ina said, frowning in sympathy. “You were going through a tumultuous time in your life, with very little support from your parents, it’s understandable if some things fell by the wayside.”
“More than some things,” I muttered. “Back when I was in the dorms I basically holed up in my room for days at a time. Once I’d missed a bunch of calls from my mom because I was basically only eating and sleeping and she was so worried she ended up calling the campus police to check on me after knocking on our front door failed to rouse me. That was embarrassing, to put it mildly.”
“It sounds to me that you were in a pretty severe depression, like you said. Is it really reasonable to blame yourself when you did the best that could be expected of someone placed in, to be frank, really shitty circumstances?”
I frowned in thought. “The thing is that I’m not sure if I did do the best I could have. There were so many times I could have walked a few minutes from my dorm to class and just… didn’t. Or even if I did walk to class sometimes I’d just stand outside the door or pace. Or if I did go to class and get myself to go inside I’d find it almost impossible to focus or take notes. And I procrastinated almost all of my homework to death anyway.”
You’re pathetic, echoed a sneering voice in my mind.
“I just don’t understand what’s wrong with me,” I said, the words popping out of my mouth unbidden. “Why am I such a fuckup?”
Dr. Oliveira frowned, sitting up straight and placing her sandaled feet onto the cheap carpet. “Carmilla, you are not a fuckup. And there is nothing wrong with you. What you’ve learned is that that’s not a good learning environment for you, nothing more and nothing less.”
I sat there in silence for several moments, mind whirling in tight circuits of self-loathing, eventually giving her a reluctant nod. “It’s just so frustrating when I know what I need to do and why I need to do it but can’t bring myself to actually, you know, fucking do it.”
With a chill, I wondered if my thinker power had been a twisted way of resolving that frustration. Which, come to think of it, was probably something I should bring up with Ina.
Ina was already responding. “There will always be a gap between what we envision ourselves doing and what is practically possible; expecting yourself to march in perfect lockstep with what you imagine you should be capable of is only going to lead to disappointment.”
I tilted my head quizzically. “Well sure, but shouldn’t we still strive to be better?”
“There’s a difference between setting specific, achievable goals and setting yourself up for failure.”
I slowly raised a finger until it was level with my face, slowly lowering it again when I failed to think of an adequate response. Eventually I nodded. Now or never, I thought. If I brought up the emotion damping thing it’d probably take up most of the session, but… it was probably for the best. There had to be someone I could talk to about this, to make sure I wasn’t losing perspective.
“Okay,” I said, realizing immediately that that probably wasn’t the best opener. “So you know how I have a thinker power?”
Ina nodded. “I was sent your file the day you arrived here, I seem to recall you had an enhanced awareness and memory for locations?”
“That’s pretty close, yeah. I can also visualize things with almost perfect accuracy and consistency, predicting the arcs of thrown objects and the like.” I sat there uncomfortably for a few moments, silently bargaining with myself. I sighed. “There’s something I haven’t told anyone else about yet. So I can turn its intensity up and down sort of like a dimmer switch, all the way down to almost nothing. The catch is that the more uh, thinker… juice? I use, the more disconnected I get from my emotions. It gets to the point where I can’t even interpret expressions when it’s all the way up. Or feel pain, or exhaustion, or hesitation. Everything gets reduced down to concrete, specific goals.”
Ina nodded, not seeming put off by that little revelation in the slightest. “First I want to congratulate you for reaching out to someone about this, it obviously wasn’t easy for you.”
I nodded, silent.
“What are you concerned about, specifically? It’s not uncommon for powers to have mental or emotional side effects, I know or know of quite a few capes that have learned to live with them in a healthy way.”
I took a moment to get my thoughts in order before responding. “It’s just, I’m scared of how cold I get when I’m like that. What if I go too far and don’t even realize until it’s too late?”
“Let’s elaborate on that. What would going too far look like?”
“Well… as an example, let’s say I set myself the goal of stopping a robbery. Unless I specifically note to do so non-lethally my emotionless self would have no compunctions about just like, stabbing them to death if it’s the most efficient option.”
Ina made a thoughtful sound, pulling her legs up as she leaned back in her chair. “How much nuance is there in these goals? Could you set a rule that requires you to check with your emotions or a teammate whenever hurting someone seems like a good option, for instance?”
My head tilted as I considered that. “That could help. I’m not sure if there’s a limit to the number of conditions or subgoals I can set at once but I’ll give it a try.”
I closed my eyes, drawing in a deep breath as I drew more deeply on my thinker power. Not so much that I lost myself, just enough to visualize my intentions in full detail. The texture of the world still seemed to change, shifting to something sharper and colder. Alien. I hadn’t realized how uncomfortable suspending myself in the middle of the two states could be, still having just enough feeling to realize something was off with my perceptions. Best to make this quick.
Normally when I set a goal with my thinker power I just visualized the result I wanted and used that as the standard to judge potential courses of action. What if I reversed that? Visualizing exactly the result I didn’t want and keeping it suspended in my power’s ‘working memory’ as a contingency, applying to every future goal I set.
It was so much easier to set reasonable limits in a specific context, with known variables. How could I explain something as abstract as the value of human life to someone that understood everything in terms of physical systems? It wasn’t like there were a whole lot of examples I could pull up from my power’s memory, I couldn’t sense living things. Maybe it’d be best to wait until I’d studied anatomy and constructed a decent mental model of the human body, unless- I froze.
“That’s certainly an interesting expression,” Ina teased, bringing me back to the present. She gave me a small smile tinged with motherly concern. “Penny for your thoughts?”
“John,” I said, devoid of context. My voice was mechanical, my eyes locked onto the carpet. “I was there when- when it happened. I was kneeling right next to him in a pool of his own blood, and uhm. When he d-died, my power could sense him just like how I can sense the couch I’m sitting on or the floor under my feet, and I never forget anything I sense with my power. Ever.”
Ina’s voice was gentle but firm. “What happened to him wasn’t your fault, Carmilla.”
I blinked, shifting back to my normal self. The pain in my heart and the wrenching in my gut sharpened in a distinctly unpleasant way, but fully experiencing it let me understand it. I sighed, almost going limp on the couch. “I know that like, intellectually. Almost none of what my power did when it manifested was under my control, and neither were the actions of the other people in the apartment complex. From an outside perspective I’d consider it a tragic accident.”
She nodded.
“But… my power is part of me. Its actions are my actions, and it’s my responsibility to keep it from hurting anyone else. If I don’t try to learn from every mistake I made, no matter how small or understandable, it’s like the suffering I -or at least, my power- inflicted on them was for nothing.”
“Please be kind to yourself,” Ina said, brows knitted in a serious expression behind her glasses. “Making mistakes is part of being human, you don’t need to self-flagellate for not knowing exactly what to do in a completely unfamiliar crisis situation.”
After a moment I nodded, managing a smile. “You’re right. It’s just hard, you know? I think even without my power I’d never be able to forget my roommates attacking me, let alone everything else.”
Ina smiled back, though there was a sad look in her eyes. “We have time. You’re a kind, intelligent, self-aware young woman, I know you can find your way to a better place.”
Something still sat uneasily with me. “I need to tell someone about my power. On the team, I mean.”
“Maybe this week you can work on finding someone you’re comfortable knowing about your thinker power; not to necessarily tell them right now, just find someone you think would be a good candidate. There’s nothing wrong with taking your time on things like this, making certain you have someone worthy of trust.”
I gave her a tight smile, trying not to worry about how they’d react.
-||-
I sat alone in the Protectorate headquarter’s dining area, a bowl of microwave cheesy spiral noodles and broccoli in front of me. My only company was Gasconade’s cat, Merlin, who was currently napping in the box my new desk had arrived in. He was majestic -as fluffy and grey as his namesake- and according to Presto there were persistent rumors that he had powers of his own. Knowing her, she was probably the one that started them.
There was about half an hour left before I had to meet Bolster for my daily humiliation session -or combat training, same difference- and I was struggling to work up an appetite. Maybe it’d be more appealing if I added some spices? I stood up, ambling over to the Protectorate’s shared kitchen space. It was bizarre how quickly living in the Space Needle was becoming ordinary, even boring. My standards for normal had gotten a pretty thorough kicking, and I doubted they’d ever be quite the same again.
As if summoned by the thought Gasconade -no wait, Jaager- walked into the kitchen from the PHQ’s lobby, wearing a dress shirt and suspenders without his customary hat and jacket. I gave him a smile and wave, uncertain what to say or how to approach him. He seemed distracted, casually waving back as he passed into the dining area.
“Merlin! I was wondering where you’d run off to,” sounded his voice through the doorway. Following that were the sorts of gushy nonsense noises any reasonable person made around cats, particularly while petting them. It endeared me to both of them immediately.
The spice cabinet was depressingly bare, something I swore to myself I’d rectify on my next grocery trip. There was salt and pepper at least, and I made certain to add a particularly generous helping of the latter. I needed a ton of the stuff for it to really register as spicy. I warmed it back up in the microwave and gave it a vigorous stir with my fork, nodding in satisfaction when I took another bite. My newly upgraded meal in hand, I made my way back to the lounge.
Jaager was sitting in a booth with Merlin resting comfortably in his lap, typing up what was presumably a report on one of his patrols on a laser keyboard. Clever, I thought, his power obviously doesn’t transfer through light, or else anyone that looks at him would get reset. At the same time there was something profoundly sad about it, that he couldn’t even type on an ordinary computer without his power undoing all of his work. I wasn’t even sure I could call it a power, it was more like a mummy curse or the work of an evil genie. My heart went out to him, but I wasn’t sure how to help or what he needed.
For the moment he was as relaxed as I’d ever seen him, judging by his body language and Merlin’s persistent purring. Maybe all he needed was another friend? As far as I was aware we were the only two Protectorate capes actually living on-site, so we’d probably be seeing a lot of each other regardless of what I did. Might as well try and get to know him.
-A darker, more cynical part of me figured that if this was another situation like the one with my roommates it’d be best to find out sooner rather than later. Jaager seemed nice but well, Ray had seemed nice too.-
I sat in the booth across from him, carefully setting my food on the table. He was using some kind of holographic screen, presumably provided by Presto, translucent enough for me to make him out pretty clearly through it. More like looking through a tinted window than anything else.
“Hey Jaager,” I said once I’d settled down. “What are you working on?”
His head snapped up, seeming to notice me for the first time. “Oh, hello Carmilla. Just some after action reports, nothing too exciting I’m afraid. It’s been quiet these past few days.”
“Probably for the best.”
He ‘hmm-ed’ in agreement, continuing to type away with Merlin purring up a storm in his lap. I smiled.
“So how did you two meet? We’ve had a lot of cats over the years, but there have only been a couple willing to sit in my lap like that.”
Jaager chuckled, giving Merlin a scratch behind the ears with hands that looked like they’d been painted by Monet. “Well that’s a hell of a story.”
I shrugged. “I’ve got time. Besides, it’d be nice to have something to think about that isn’t my upcoming combat training.”
His face didn’t really have expressions per se, but I still got the impression he was smiling. “It was a few years back actually, only a few months after the Leviathan attack in ‘03. I was on one of my patrols, trying to keep things from getting too out of hand, when I heard a sad little meow coming from a bit of piping that had busted open. There was a kitten stuck inside.”
“How did you get him out?” He couldn’t very well have just picked him up.
“Time and patience. I couldn’t touch him directly, but I could still widen the hole he’d fallen into and coax him out. Took me almost an hour. I’d been intending to call a shelter to take him in afterwards but he wouldn’t stop following me.”
I smirked at him. “Uh huh, the classic ‘he followed me home’ line. He’s been living with you ever since?”
“Yes ma’am,” he said, voice drier than a tundra. “Merlin likes coming with me on my patrols sometimes, I’ve got a leash for him and everything.”
“Aren’t you worried about him getting hurt?”
“Of course I am, but there’s not much risk when I can just let go of his leash and let my power do its thing.”
Oh, duh. “That makes sense. How old is he? About six right?”
“That’s a harder question than it sounds. He hangs around me often enough that no one’s quite sure how old he really is, regularly getting sent back in time will do that to you.”
I ‘hmm-ed’ in understanding, thinking about the implications of that. “He reminds me a lot of Blazer. Adventurous, friendly, completely covered in fluff. He like playing with laser pointers?”
“Oh he loves the damn things. Or hates them, not totally sure. Haven’t met many cats that don’t.”
“He’s- that is, he was a really good cat.” I sighed, scrubbing at my eyes with the back of my hand. “I really miss him. Maybe it’s silly, but I wish he’d been there to see me finally come out and start being a girl in earnest.”
“Sounds like he means a lot to you, I don’t think it’s silly at all.”
I gave him a slightly watery smile. “It’s- well. Whenever my dad would get mad and start yelling, which was a lot, Blazer was always there meowing at him and distracting him. It’s- it’s like he was protecting me. Maybe he didn’t understand the significance of what he was doing, but him being there helped get me through some of the hardest times of my life. Without him, I don’t know if I’d have made it through high school.”
Jaager went silent, apparently not quite sure how to respond to that. There was a pregnant pause, just long enough for me to start wondering if I’d overshared and made everything awkward.
“Do you want a hug?” he asked in a surprisingly uncertain voice, interrupting my frantic mental search for a topic change.
The question threw me for a bit of a loop, but it didn’t take long to decide. “I would. Are you sure?”
In lieu of answering he saved his work and started standing up, prompting me to do the same. It was a lot like how I imagined hugging a statue would feel, his body unyielding and slightly cool to the touch. Maybe it wasn’t quite on par with the hug I got from Snap, but Jaager made a damn good effort.
-Maybe this wouldn’t be like Ray after all.-
“Thank you,” I said after we’d disconnected. “Sorry for dumping all that on you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he responded, waving a hand dismissively. “That’s what friends are for, right?”
My response was interrupted by the sound of a door opening on the other side of HQ, just barely picked up by my tremorsense. “Someone’s here.”
“Oh? I wonder who it could be.”
An idea occurring to me, I returned to my spiral noodles and devoured the remainder as quickly as I could before returning to the location I’d be getting reset to. Jaager gave me what I liked to imagine was an amused look.
“I see how it is,” he said, voice taking on a wry tone. “You only accepted the hug because you wanted free food.”
I very nearly asked him how he ate when he didn’t have a mouth or anything, but I had a sinking feeling the answer was he couldn’t. Instead I smiled, raising up my hands in mock surrender, “You caught me red-handed chief, but in my defense it was really good.”
That prompted a snort from him as he directed his focus back to writing. I’d never seen him eat, drink, sleep, or do much of anything besides working in the week we’d been living in the same space. Most of our interaction before this had been him jokingly offering to help us move furniture before going off on another one of his patrols. My room wasn’t all that big, so we’d kicked the boxes out into the lounge while we put the furniture together, which were quickly colonized by Merlin. I could have used my power to make all my furniture, but I could also have chosen to live in the sewers as a mole person. Both scenarios had a similar appeal.
My view suddenly shifted to a slightly different angle, arms awkwardly hugging the air. Part of me was certain whoever it was would walk in at just that moment, but sadly life didn’t always have the comedic timing we wished it did. I sat back down at the booth, noticing for the first time that one of the cups scattered about the table wasn’t getting picked up by my tremorsense. It was a really fancy chalice, made of what looked like polished metal shaped into elegant patterns and decorative spikes. I leaned in for a closer look, gingerly picking it up.
It was surprisingly light, but covered in sharp edges to the point I was nervous about handling it, let alone actually drinking from the thing. Honestly I was reminded of those stupid “ninja” weapons they sold in malls that were always completely impractical and covered in superfluous spikes. I held the cup into the light, marveling at how intricately put together it was. As far as I could tell it was made entirely of blades, the flat surfaces of progressively finer and finer blades approximating a rounded surface.
Part of the bowl-thing popped out, making me jump a little. It had unfolded into what looked like a mechanical spider leg, and before I’d quite processed that it gave me a little wave. I shrieked, scrambling back with enough haste and raw panic that I tripped and tumbled ass over tit. The first thing Bolster had taught me was how to fall, and with the ground’s assistance I was able to turn my bumble into an improvised backwards combat roll. In the same motion I summoned a short wall and pulled a mancatcher out of the ground, coming to a stop in a low stance I’d been practicing for the last few days.
The ‘cup’ had rearranged itself into something resembling a spider, constantly retracting and replacing its limbs as it moved. Almost like a liquid in how smooth the movement was, how precise.
“Hey Edgar,” Jaager said absently, not even looking away from his work.
I growled in frustration, barely stopping another ring of spikes from forming. “What the hell is it with capes and jumpscaring people? I’m getting really fucking tired of the surprise introductions.”
I liked to imagine the spider apparently named Edgar looked ashamed, and as he started moving I realized who I’d been yelling at. True to his name, Music Box made almost melodic sounds with every movement, just ever so slightly off from being a true song. Like something halfway between a xylophone and a violin.
He landed on the ground and started reinflating, for lack of a better word. Dozens of tiny limbs constantly retracted and readjusted, bringing his skin back into place and closing up all the gaps. Sharp mechanisms worked beneath the surface, visibly distending the skin of his face as it made the necessary adjustments.
“Gonna be completely honest with you,” I said, swallowing uncomfortably. “That was much worse than the cup turning into a spider thing.”
“So I’ve heard,” Music Box intoned, a slight accent to his voice. He was tall and spindly, dozens of different tools and implements hanging off of a dark grey costume with white highlights. He sighed, craning his neck down to look at me. “I’m sorry for scaring you, Sepulcher. I have to confess that I’d been planning to play a prank on Jaager, but I hadn’t wanted to interrupt your conversation. And then you picked me up and I didn’t know what to do, so… uhm. I’m sorry.”
I let out a sigh of my own, the tension slowly bleeding away from my shoulders. I smeared the mancatcher into the wall I’d made, moving and reshaping it around one of the room’s concrete support pillars where it hopefully wouldn’t bother anyone. “You don’t have anything to apologize for, really. I’m just… I’ve been high strung lately. It’s been a stressful few days.” Stressful few months, I mentally corrected. Years.
“You’ve had a lot of changes thrown at you at once,” Music Box said, “I know a bit of how stressful that can be.” He cleared his throat awkwardly, turning toward a deeply unimpressed-looking Jaager. Changing the subject about as gracefully as I would have done. “Gasconade, duty calls. P and B are calling a meeting, I think we’re finally getting some new assignments.”
“You really oughta leave the pranks to Presto,” Jaager said with a wry tone, gently shooing Merlin off his lap while he got up. He put his coat and hat back on, straightening his shoulders and his tie. “It was good talking to you, Carmilla. I’m glad you joined the team, it’ll be nice to have some decent company around here for a change.”
I smiled, waving the both of them goodbye. They kept up a stream of banter as they exited the PHQ, voices slowly fading from my ears and then my tremorsense. After a few moments I sat back down at the table, poking at the noodles I’d made.
-||-
The gym’s double doors were far more imposing than their size would indicate, more because of my knowledge of what was behind them than anything else. I took a deep breath. And then another. One more.
Okay, I was being ridiculous. Setting my jaw, I leveraged a bit of my thinker power to overcome my nervousness and pushed the well-worn wooden doors aside. Bolster stood in the center of the spacious and well-appointed gym, a precariously tall stack of chairs next to him. He looked toward the source of the noise, face changing from careful concentration into a bright grin as he saw me.
“You’re late,” he said cheerily. “Again.”
“I am,” I responded, not really sure what else to say. “My only excuse is that I’ve been exhausted lately, been staying up too late.”
He waved away my concern, gesturing back toward his stack. “I’m good at finding ways to amuse myself while you pace outside the door. Now, how about we practice returning to your stance immediately and instinctually?”
I groaned internally, getting my limbs in approximately the right configuration. The very instant my feet were in place he kicked out with eerie efficiency and precision, almost gentle, knocking me back off balance immediately. It was like fighting a chess computer, his power guiding him unerringly toward structural weaknesses with near-perfect accuracy. There was no possible way for me to match his skill in close combat.
I set my jaw, getting back into place.
-||-
“I’m honestly not sure where to begin,” I said, sitting on the supple faux-leather couch the Seattle protectorate’s current in-house therapist kept for her patients, mask in my lap. It was sturdy, reinforced inside and out to accommodate capes with particularly heavy bodies or gear. The woman whose couch I was occupying sat cross-legged on a large office chair across from me. She was on the younger side of middle aged, with light brown skin and dark wavy hair tied back into a bun; her look gave off a sort of ‘cool english teacher’ vibe, thick glasses and a cardigan festooned with pins worn over a brightly colored dress that was nearly a match for my own. “Uhm- what was your name again? I’m sorry, I’ve just been so busy this last week that I keep losing track of things.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” she said, waving off my concern with a genial smile. “My name is Dr. Adelina Oliveira, but everyone here just calls me Ina,” she continued, seeming completely at ease in her quiet office on the western wing of the Needle’s fiftieth floor. It was decorated with the sorts of knick knacks I’d come to associate with therapist’s offices, little Buddha statues and uncut gemstones decorating shelves and tables. The only item of note was a small bird skull on her desk, mounted on a metallic stand right next to a miniature zen garden. “Take as long as you need to formulate your thoughts, okay Sepulcher? Or would you prefer Carmilla?”
I shrugged. “Either one’s fine I guess, they’re both my name,” I said, immediately contradicting myself with my next statement. “Let’s go with Carmilla for now.”
Ina nodded. “Carmilla it is.”
I looked down at the golden heart-shaped mask in my hands, impenetrable black lenses meeting me stare for stare. A few meetings with PR had resulted in a look with a lot more thematic coherence, the eyes and nose resembling a barn owl’s. The rest of my armor still hadn’t been finalized, more because I hadn’t really had the time to work on it than anything else, but once it was finished it would be etched on all the edges to resemble feathers.
Right now I was just wearing one of my new dresses for my costume -bright and summery in utter defiance of the season- along with the official security card I’d gotten on my first day here. Laura and Liang had taken me shopping the day after the whole warehouse thing, probably to keep an eye on me as much as anything, but I couldn’t deny how nice it had been to be able to just get things I liked without having to worry about scrimping and saving for every purchase. “It all just feels so strange. Like- like this is a dream I’m gonna wake up from at any moment. That’s normal, right? After such a big upheaval?”
Ina nodded again, face breaking into a gentle smile. “I think almost anyone in your position would experience some disconnect while they adjusted to their new normal. Considering what you’ve gone through I’d say you’re doing an admirable job of coping.”
I smiled back, hesitant. “I’d guess the first thing to note is that I’m trans. Like, a trans woman. There were signs going back as far as I can remember, but I only like consciously realized it when I was eighteen, after high school. I started HRT a bit over a year ago, in March 2008. My parents aren’t supportive, and I was basically forced to come out to them when my mom found one of my bras back in January,” my voice grew in intensity as I continued, a familiar bitterness rising to the surface. “They don’t even say my name, you know. I don’t mean they insist on using my dead name, I mean they don’t use any name or pronouns for me at all. They do fucking conversational gymnastics to avoid it, since they know if they used my dead name or called me ‘he’ I’d correct them. It makes me feel like a- a fucking non-person!”
A distinctly sharp ripple moved through the couch at my displeasure, bringing my rant to a sputtering halt. I took a moment to breathe, trying to tamp down the indignation and sorrow to more manageable levels before continuing. “Anyway. I also have a history of depression, with some pretty severe episodes preceding my dropping out of college.” I sighed.
“There’s nothing for you to be ashamed of, Carmilla,” Ina said, frowning in sympathy. “You were going through a tumultuous time in your life, with very little support from your parents, it’s understandable if some things fell by the wayside.”
“More than some things,” I muttered. “Back when I was in the dorms I basically holed up in my room for days at a time. Once I’d missed a bunch of calls from my mom because I was basically only eating and sleeping and she was so worried she ended up calling the campus police to check on me after knocking on our front door failed to rouse me. That was embarrassing, to put it mildly.”
“It sounds to me that you were in a pretty severe depression, like you said. Is it really reasonable to blame yourself when you did the best that could be expected of someone placed in, to be frank, really shitty circumstances?”
I frowned in thought. “The thing is that I’m not sure if I did do the best I could have. There were so many times I could have walked a few minutes from my dorm to class and just… didn’t. Or even if I did walk to class sometimes I’d just stand outside the door or pace. Or if I did go to class and get myself to go inside I’d find it almost impossible to focus or take notes. And I procrastinated almost all of my homework to death anyway.”
You’re pathetic, echoed a sneering voice in my mind.
“I just don’t understand what’s wrong with me,” I said, the words popping out of my mouth unbidden. “Why am I such a fuckup?”
Dr. Oliveira frowned, sitting up straight and placing her sandaled feet onto the cheap carpet. “Carmilla, you are not a fuckup. And there is nothing wrong with you. What you’ve learned is that that’s not a good learning environment for you, nothing more and nothing less.”
I sat there in silence for several moments, mind whirling in tight circuits of self-loathing, eventually giving her a reluctant nod. “It’s just so frustrating when I know what I need to do and why I need to do it but can’t bring myself to actually, you know, fucking do it.”
With a chill, I wondered if my thinker power had been a twisted way of resolving that frustration. Which, come to think of it, was probably something I should bring up with Ina.
Ina was already responding. “There will always be a gap between what we envision ourselves doing and what is practically possible; expecting yourself to march in perfect lockstep with what you imagine you should be capable of is only going to lead to disappointment.”
I tilted my head quizzically. “Well sure, but shouldn’t we still strive to be better?”
“There’s a difference between setting specific, achievable goals and setting yourself up for failure.”
I slowly raised a finger until it was level with my face, slowly lowering it again when I failed to think of an adequate response. Eventually I nodded. Now or never, I thought. If I brought up the emotion damping thing it’d probably take up most of the session, but… it was probably for the best. There had to be someone I could talk to about this, to make sure I wasn’t losing perspective.
“Okay,” I said, realizing immediately that that probably wasn’t the best opener. “So you know how I have a thinker power?”
Ina nodded. “I was sent your file the day you arrived here, I seem to recall you had an enhanced awareness and memory for locations?”
“That’s pretty close, yeah. I can also visualize things with almost perfect accuracy and consistency, predicting the arcs of thrown objects and the like.” I sat there uncomfortably for a few moments, silently bargaining with myself. I sighed. “There’s something I haven’t told anyone else about yet. So I can turn its intensity up and down sort of like a dimmer switch, all the way down to almost nothing. The catch is that the more uh, thinker… juice? I use, the more disconnected I get from my emotions. It gets to the point where I can’t even interpret expressions when it’s all the way up. Or feel pain, or exhaustion, or hesitation. Everything gets reduced down to concrete, specific goals.”
Ina nodded, not seeming put off by that little revelation in the slightest. “First I want to congratulate you for reaching out to someone about this, it obviously wasn’t easy for you.”
I nodded, silent.
“What are you concerned about, specifically? It’s not uncommon for powers to have mental or emotional side effects, I know or know of quite a few capes that have learned to live with them in a healthy way.”
I took a moment to get my thoughts in order before responding. “It’s just, I’m scared of how cold I get when I’m like that. What if I go too far and don’t even realize until it’s too late?”
“Let’s elaborate on that. What would going too far look like?”
“Well… as an example, let’s say I set myself the goal of stopping a robbery. Unless I specifically note to do so non-lethally my emotionless self would have no compunctions about just like, stabbing them to death if it’s the most efficient option.”
Ina made a thoughtful sound, pulling her legs up as she leaned back in her chair. “How much nuance is there in these goals? Could you set a rule that requires you to check with your emotions or a teammate whenever hurting someone seems like a good option, for instance?”
My head tilted as I considered that. “That could help. I’m not sure if there’s a limit to the number of conditions or subgoals I can set at once but I’ll give it a try.”
I closed my eyes, drawing in a deep breath as I drew more deeply on my thinker power. Not so much that I lost myself, just enough to visualize my intentions in full detail. The texture of the world still seemed to change, shifting to something sharper and colder. Alien. I hadn’t realized how uncomfortable suspending myself in the middle of the two states could be, still having just enough feeling to realize something was off with my perceptions. Best to make this quick.
Normally when I set a goal with my thinker power I just visualized the result I wanted and used that as the standard to judge potential courses of action. What if I reversed that? Visualizing exactly the result I didn’t want and keeping it suspended in my power’s ‘working memory’ as a contingency, applying to every future goal I set.
It was so much easier to set reasonable limits in a specific context, with known variables. How could I explain something as abstract as the value of human life to someone that understood everything in terms of physical systems? It wasn’t like there were a whole lot of examples I could pull up from my power’s memory, I couldn’t sense living things. Maybe it’d be best to wait until I’d studied anatomy and constructed a decent mental model of the human body, unless- I froze.
“That’s certainly an interesting expression,” Ina teased, bringing me back to the present. She gave me a small smile tinged with motherly concern. “Penny for your thoughts?”
“John,” I said, devoid of context. My voice was mechanical, my eyes locked onto the carpet. “I was there when- when it happened. I was kneeling right next to him in a pool of his own blood, and uhm. When he d-died, my power could sense him just like how I can sense the couch I’m sitting on or the floor under my feet, and I never forget anything I sense with my power. Ever.”
Ina’s voice was gentle but firm. “What happened to him wasn’t your fault, Carmilla.”
I blinked, shifting back to my normal self. The pain in my heart and the wrenching in my gut sharpened in a distinctly unpleasant way, but fully experiencing it let me understand it. I sighed, almost going limp on the couch. “I know that like, intellectually. Almost none of what my power did when it manifested was under my control, and neither were the actions of the other people in the apartment complex. From an outside perspective I’d consider it a tragic accident.”
She nodded.
“But… my power is part of me. Its actions are my actions, and it’s my responsibility to keep it from hurting anyone else. If I don’t try to learn from every mistake I made, no matter how small or understandable, it’s like the suffering I -or at least, my power- inflicted on them was for nothing.”
“Please be kind to yourself,” Ina said, brows knitted in a serious expression behind her glasses. “Making mistakes is part of being human, you don’t need to self-flagellate for not knowing exactly what to do in a completely unfamiliar crisis situation.”
After a moment I nodded, managing a smile. “You’re right. It’s just hard, you know? I think even without my power I’d never be able to forget my roommates attacking me, let alone everything else.”
Ina smiled back, though there was a sad look in her eyes. “We have time. You’re a kind, intelligent, self-aware young woman, I know you can find your way to a better place.”
Something still sat uneasily with me. “I need to tell someone about my power. On the team, I mean.”
“Maybe this week you can work on finding someone you’re comfortable knowing about your thinker power; not to necessarily tell them right now, just find someone you think would be a good candidate. There’s nothing wrong with taking your time on things like this, making certain you have someone worthy of trust.”
I gave her a tight smile, trying not to worry about how they’d react.
-||-
I sat alone in the Protectorate headquarter’s dining area, a bowl of microwave cheesy spiral noodles and broccoli in front of me. My only company was Gasconade’s cat, Merlin, who was currently napping in the box my new desk had arrived in. He was majestic -as fluffy and grey as his namesake- and according to Presto there were persistent rumors that he had powers of his own. Knowing her, she was probably the one that started them.
There was about half an hour left before I had to meet Bolster for my daily humiliation session -or combat training, same difference- and I was struggling to work up an appetite. Maybe it’d be more appealing if I added some spices? I stood up, ambling over to the Protectorate’s shared kitchen space. It was bizarre how quickly living in the Space Needle was becoming ordinary, even boring. My standards for normal had gotten a pretty thorough kicking, and I doubted they’d ever be quite the same again.
As if summoned by the thought Gasconade -no wait, Jaager- walked into the kitchen from the PHQ’s lobby, wearing a dress shirt and suspenders without his customary hat and jacket. I gave him a smile and wave, uncertain what to say or how to approach him. He seemed distracted, casually waving back as he passed into the dining area.
“Merlin! I was wondering where you’d run off to,” sounded his voice through the doorway. Following that were the sorts of gushy nonsense noises any reasonable person made around cats, particularly while petting them. It endeared me to both of them immediately.
The spice cabinet was depressingly bare, something I swore to myself I’d rectify on my next grocery trip. There was salt and pepper at least, and I made certain to add a particularly generous helping of the latter. I needed a ton of the stuff for it to really register as spicy. I warmed it back up in the microwave and gave it a vigorous stir with my fork, nodding in satisfaction when I took another bite. My newly upgraded meal in hand, I made my way back to the lounge.
Jaager was sitting in a booth with Merlin resting comfortably in his lap, typing up what was presumably a report on one of his patrols on a laser keyboard. Clever, I thought, his power obviously doesn’t transfer through light, or else anyone that looks at him would get reset. At the same time there was something profoundly sad about it, that he couldn’t even type on an ordinary computer without his power undoing all of his work. I wasn’t even sure I could call it a power, it was more like a mummy curse or the work of an evil genie. My heart went out to him, but I wasn’t sure how to help or what he needed.
For the moment he was as relaxed as I’d ever seen him, judging by his body language and Merlin’s persistent purring. Maybe all he needed was another friend? As far as I was aware we were the only two Protectorate capes actually living on-site, so we’d probably be seeing a lot of each other regardless of what I did. Might as well try and get to know him.
-A darker, more cynical part of me figured that if this was another situation like the one with my roommates it’d be best to find out sooner rather than later. Jaager seemed nice but well, Ray had seemed nice too.-
I sat in the booth across from him, carefully setting my food on the table. He was using some kind of holographic screen, presumably provided by Presto, translucent enough for me to make him out pretty clearly through it. More like looking through a tinted window than anything else.
“Hey Jaager,” I said once I’d settled down. “What are you working on?”
His head snapped up, seeming to notice me for the first time. “Oh, hello Carmilla. Just some after action reports, nothing too exciting I’m afraid. It’s been quiet these past few days.”
“Probably for the best.”
He ‘hmm-ed’ in agreement, continuing to type away with Merlin purring up a storm in his lap. I smiled.
“So how did you two meet? We’ve had a lot of cats over the years, but there have only been a couple willing to sit in my lap like that.”
Jaager chuckled, giving Merlin a scratch behind the ears with hands that looked like they’d been painted by Monet. “Well that’s a hell of a story.”
I shrugged. “I’ve got time. Besides, it’d be nice to have something to think about that isn’t my upcoming combat training.”
His face didn’t really have expressions per se, but I still got the impression he was smiling. “It was a few years back actually, only a few months after the Leviathan attack in ‘03. I was on one of my patrols, trying to keep things from getting too out of hand, when I heard a sad little meow coming from a bit of piping that had busted open. There was a kitten stuck inside.”
“How did you get him out?” He couldn’t very well have just picked him up.
“Time and patience. I couldn’t touch him directly, but I could still widen the hole he’d fallen into and coax him out. Took me almost an hour. I’d been intending to call a shelter to take him in afterwards but he wouldn’t stop following me.”
I smirked at him. “Uh huh, the classic ‘he followed me home’ line. He’s been living with you ever since?”
“Yes ma’am,” he said, voice drier than a tundra. “Merlin likes coming with me on my patrols sometimes, I’ve got a leash for him and everything.”
“Aren’t you worried about him getting hurt?”
“Of course I am, but there’s not much risk when I can just let go of his leash and let my power do its thing.”
Oh, duh. “That makes sense. How old is he? About six right?”
“That’s a harder question than it sounds. He hangs around me often enough that no one’s quite sure how old he really is, regularly getting sent back in time will do that to you.”
I ‘hmm-ed’ in understanding, thinking about the implications of that. “He reminds me a lot of Blazer. Adventurous, friendly, completely covered in fluff. He like playing with laser pointers?”
“Oh he loves the damn things. Or hates them, not totally sure. Haven’t met many cats that don’t.”
“He’s- that is, he was a really good cat.” I sighed, scrubbing at my eyes with the back of my hand. “I really miss him. Maybe it’s silly, but I wish he’d been there to see me finally come out and start being a girl in earnest.”
“Sounds like he means a lot to you, I don’t think it’s silly at all.”
I gave him a slightly watery smile. “It’s- well. Whenever my dad would get mad and start yelling, which was a lot, Blazer was always there meowing at him and distracting him. It’s- it’s like he was protecting me. Maybe he didn’t understand the significance of what he was doing, but him being there helped get me through some of the hardest times of my life. Without him, I don’t know if I’d have made it through high school.”
Jaager went silent, apparently not quite sure how to respond to that. There was a pregnant pause, just long enough for me to start wondering if I’d overshared and made everything awkward.
“Do you want a hug?” he asked in a surprisingly uncertain voice, interrupting my frantic mental search for a topic change.
The question threw me for a bit of a loop, but it didn’t take long to decide. “I would. Are you sure?”
In lieu of answering he saved his work and started standing up, prompting me to do the same. It was a lot like how I imagined hugging a statue would feel, his body unyielding and slightly cool to the touch. Maybe it wasn’t quite on par with the hug I got from Snap, but Jaager made a damn good effort.
-Maybe this wouldn’t be like Ray after all.-
“Thank you,” I said after we’d disconnected. “Sorry for dumping all that on you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he responded, waving a hand dismissively. “That’s what friends are for, right?”
My response was interrupted by the sound of a door opening on the other side of HQ, just barely picked up by my tremorsense. “Someone’s here.”
“Oh? I wonder who it could be.”
An idea occurring to me, I returned to my spiral noodles and devoured the remainder as quickly as I could before returning to the location I’d be getting reset to. Jaager gave me what I liked to imagine was an amused look.
“I see how it is,” he said, voice taking on a wry tone. “You only accepted the hug because you wanted free food.”
I very nearly asked him how he ate when he didn’t have a mouth or anything, but I had a sinking feeling the answer was he couldn’t. Instead I smiled, raising up my hands in mock surrender, “You caught me red-handed chief, but in my defense it was really good.”
That prompted a snort from him as he directed his focus back to writing. I’d never seen him eat, drink, sleep, or do much of anything besides working in the week we’d been living in the same space. Most of our interaction before this had been him jokingly offering to help us move furniture before going off on another one of his patrols. My room wasn’t all that big, so we’d kicked the boxes out into the lounge while we put the furniture together, which were quickly colonized by Merlin. I could have used my power to make all my furniture, but I could also have chosen to live in the sewers as a mole person. Both scenarios had a similar appeal.
My view suddenly shifted to a slightly different angle, arms awkwardly hugging the air. Part of me was certain whoever it was would walk in at just that moment, but sadly life didn’t always have the comedic timing we wished it did. I sat back down at the booth, noticing for the first time that one of the cups scattered about the table wasn’t getting picked up by my tremorsense. It was a really fancy chalice, made of what looked like polished metal shaped into elegant patterns and decorative spikes. I leaned in for a closer look, gingerly picking it up.
It was surprisingly light, but covered in sharp edges to the point I was nervous about handling it, let alone actually drinking from the thing. Honestly I was reminded of those stupid “ninja” weapons they sold in malls that were always completely impractical and covered in superfluous spikes. I held the cup into the light, marveling at how intricately put together it was. As far as I could tell it was made entirely of blades, the flat surfaces of progressively finer and finer blades approximating a rounded surface.
Part of the bowl-thing popped out, making me jump a little. It had unfolded into what looked like a mechanical spider leg, and before I’d quite processed that it gave me a little wave. I shrieked, scrambling back with enough haste and raw panic that I tripped and tumbled ass over tit. The first thing Bolster had taught me was how to fall, and with the ground’s assistance I was able to turn my bumble into an improvised backwards combat roll. In the same motion I summoned a short wall and pulled a mancatcher out of the ground, coming to a stop in a low stance I’d been practicing for the last few days.
The ‘cup’ had rearranged itself into something resembling a spider, constantly retracting and replacing its limbs as it moved. Almost like a liquid in how smooth the movement was, how precise.
“Hey Edgar,” Jaager said absently, not even looking away from his work.
I growled in frustration, barely stopping another ring of spikes from forming. “What the hell is it with capes and jumpscaring people? I’m getting really fucking tired of the surprise introductions.”
I liked to imagine the spider apparently named Edgar looked ashamed, and as he started moving I realized who I’d been yelling at. True to his name, Music Box made almost melodic sounds with every movement, just ever so slightly off from being a true song. Like something halfway between a xylophone and a violin.
He landed on the ground and started reinflating, for lack of a better word. Dozens of tiny limbs constantly retracted and readjusted, bringing his skin back into place and closing up all the gaps. Sharp mechanisms worked beneath the surface, visibly distending the skin of his face as it made the necessary adjustments.
“Gonna be completely honest with you,” I said, swallowing uncomfortably. “That was much worse than the cup turning into a spider thing.”
“So I’ve heard,” Music Box intoned, a slight accent to his voice. He was tall and spindly, dozens of different tools and implements hanging off of a dark grey costume with white highlights. He sighed, craning his neck down to look at me. “I’m sorry for scaring you, Sepulcher. I have to confess that I’d been planning to play a prank on Jaager, but I hadn’t wanted to interrupt your conversation. And then you picked me up and I didn’t know what to do, so… uhm. I’m sorry.”
I let out a sigh of my own, the tension slowly bleeding away from my shoulders. I smeared the mancatcher into the wall I’d made, moving and reshaping it around one of the room’s concrete support pillars where it hopefully wouldn’t bother anyone. “You don’t have anything to apologize for, really. I’m just… I’ve been high strung lately. It’s been a stressful few days.” Stressful few months, I mentally corrected. Years.
“You’ve had a lot of changes thrown at you at once,” Music Box said, “I know a bit of how stressful that can be.” He cleared his throat awkwardly, turning toward a deeply unimpressed-looking Jaager. Changing the subject about as gracefully as I would have done. “Gasconade, duty calls. P and B are calling a meeting, I think we’re finally getting some new assignments.”
“You really oughta leave the pranks to Presto,” Jaager said with a wry tone, gently shooing Merlin off his lap while he got up. He put his coat and hat back on, straightening his shoulders and his tie. “It was good talking to you, Carmilla. I’m glad you joined the team, it’ll be nice to have some decent company around here for a change.”
I smiled, waving the both of them goodbye. They kept up a stream of banter as they exited the PHQ, voices slowly fading from my ears and then my tremorsense. After a few moments I sat back down at the table, poking at the noodles I’d made.
-||-
The gym’s double doors were far more imposing than their size would indicate, more because of my knowledge of what was behind them than anything else. I took a deep breath. And then another. One more.
Okay, I was being ridiculous. Setting my jaw, I leveraged a bit of my thinker power to overcome my nervousness and pushed the well-worn wooden doors aside. Bolster stood in the center of the spacious and well-appointed gym, a precariously tall stack of chairs next to him. He looked toward the source of the noise, face changing from careful concentration into a bright grin as he saw me.
“You’re late,” he said cheerily. “Again.”
“I am,” I responded, not really sure what else to say. “My only excuse is that I’ve been exhausted lately, been staying up too late.”
He waved away my concern, gesturing back toward his stack. “I’m good at finding ways to amuse myself while you pace outside the door. Now, how about we practice returning to your stance immediately and instinctually?”
I groaned internally, getting my limbs in approximately the right configuration. The very instant my feet were in place he kicked out with eerie efficiency and precision, almost gentle, knocking me back off balance immediately. It was like fighting a chess computer, his power guiding him unerringly toward structural weaknesses with near-perfect accuracy. There was no possible way for me to match his skill in close combat.
I set my jaw, getting back into place.
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- Location
- New Zealand
Welcome back. I liked the bit about no-one really knowing how old Merlin is due to the constant time resets.
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