March 3rd, 2005
New
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
March 3rd, 2005
"It feels wrong we have to walk through all this. We're superheroes!" Eve muttered. Her socks were soaked through, and the hem of her skirt wasn't doing much better."Do you think your rose boyfriend has a car? If he wants to help, he could give us a fucking lift," Kimiyo added.
It wasn't raining hard, but the chill wind coming off the ocean drove it with a speed and intensity that made it seem more than it was. Eve and Kimiyo clustered under their wide umbrella, while a third figure picked her way along beside them in a hooded raincoat, staring at her feet like a little kid splashing in puddles in rainboots. She stopped suddenly, turning her whole body to address her huddled friends.
"Is Prince Bramble still on this plane?" she asked again.
"I'll tell you if he leaves," Kimiyo snapped, sounding a bit frustrated. The raincoated figure kept staring, Kimiyo finally sighed, checked their surroundings, and handed the umbrella off to Eve. She stuck out a hand with a little rolling flick, and a single black cord wove itself into being. It was pulled taut, straining, one end aimed at Kimiyo's heart and the other somewhere up the road.
"I hope he is, I wanna hit him with my new mace," Eve said, smiling widely. She'd earned it, there had been a whole quest for it and everything, retrieving it from the Quicksilver Lake at the heart of the world. Prince Foxglove had pursued it to fuel some kind of superweapon; Prince Rose's blade was faster.
"I still think it's a scepter," Brigid opined. "So, Kimmy-"
"Kimiyo." The list of people allowed to call her that these days was one person long.
"...sorry. Kimiyo, how do you know that string is him?"
"I just do, Brigid. It's magic," Kimiyo sighed. Eve, who was already managing a duffle bag, attempted to shift hands just as the wind picked up. The umbrella dipped, and both girls were spattered in rain before she got it back in place.
"I told you a raincoat would be better," Brigid said as Kimiyo snatched the umbrella back. "Anyway, it's magic isn't much of an answer, you know. There's obviously rules, because you can make consistent predictions, so why can't you tell me?"
"This isn't like a math thing you can just break down. It's intuition," Kimiyo countered. Brigid's expression made it clear that she didn't put much stock in that. "Look, I saw the rope form when we met him, and could recognize it when it appeared again."
"So it looks different?"
"It feels different," Kimiyo said. Brigid stared a while longer, not making eye contact, then nodded.
"Okay. So perhaps they vibrate at different frequencies and you're sensitive to them," she concluded. "What's interesting to me is you can summon them outside of your transformed state. Useful, though, once I figured out we could do triangulation with them."
"Yeah, well, they were useful before too. And I'm not summoning them, I'm just making them visible to- look, it's magic. Why are you like this?" Kimiyo asked. Beside her, Eve was frantically checking her pockets for something to wipe her glasses down with and get the rain off.
"Well, I do have aspergers," she said matter-of-factly. "But actually, I think that might be, as you said, magic. You said you have perfect recall?"
"She does!" Eve cut in, smiling widely. "She remembers everything from as long as I've known her. She can remember our conversations word-for-word even years later, it's so cool."
Kimiyo blushed, looking away reflexively.
"How would you know she's remembering it correctly if you don't have perfect recall yourself?" Brigid asked. Eve opened her mouth to answer, stopped, and stared off across the street, her brain turning the question over to look for handholds.
Kimiyo sighed, zipping open Eve's duffle bag. Andy poked his head out, eyes darting about at the rainy street as Kimiyo drew out a stack of papers. They ducked under an awning as Kimiyo handed them to Brigid.
"Okay. Worksheet H-8-10; section 8. Question one, x - 5 divided by 6. Question two, 2x -11 divided by 6. Question 3-"
Brigid nodded along.
"Okay, stop. I believe you," she said. Then frowned. "Do you happen to know any of the answers?"
"... that's not what's being tested!" Kimiyo protested, snatching the papers back. "You can't make us do any math anymore, the place burnt down. And good riddance!"
"I dunno, I was kinda having fun?" Eve opined. "Well, up until it turned out to be a plot by the Dark Queen. Brigid's a really good tutor."
"You were coming along very quickly," Brigid agreed, and Eve beamed, pleased with herself.
"I still say we should burn down all the other Kumon locations just to be sure," Kimiyo added sourly.
"Girls, the mission," Andy reminded them, ears flat to his head. "And do zip up the bag again; I don't much care for this rain."
They continued down the street, jumping a puddle at the crosswalk and hurrying as the night wind picked up. They were close now; the neon sign for the 24-hour gym was glowing bright, visible now over the curve of the steep street.
"Have you always had perfect recall?" Brigid asked. Kimiyo nodded. "Have you always been able to see your strings as well, or only since you first transformed?"
"Not… see them exactly, not always. But I knew they were there," Kimiyo explained. "Sometimes I could, and with Eve."
"Interesting. What about you, Eve?"
"I don't have any cool powers when I'm not transformed. I just get ESPN," she grumbled.
"Hmm," Brigid said, in a way that made it clear she very much doubted that telepathic powers were real.
"It's not even that good, mostly I can just see Kimmy, and Prince Rose sometimes. That part's probably magic soulmates stuff."
Kimiyo bristled.
"How old is this guy anyway?" she hissed.
"I dunno, but like… magic soulmate stuff," Eve repeated, then smiled. "He's so cool. He said he'll teach me to swordfight! Dunno if that'll help with the new mace thingy, though."
Brigid nodded, clearing her throat.
"I haven't been able to use Spark's elemental powers myself, but I have had an unusual ability to identify materials by touch that didn't feel incongruous to me before last week; I suppose it didn't occur to me that regular people can't do it, or perhaps simply that they didn't know enough to make the ability useful. I'm also beginning to suspect that portions of my intelligence might be similar to your perfect recall. I may be borrowing specialized brain structures from an extraplanar source or something along those lines, which would explain some inconsistencies when I got intelligence tested."
"Mhmm, mhmm," Eve nodded along, not understanding a word.
"What's interesting is the fact we have powers outside of our transformation, and the fact we had them before we ever got our necklaces, means the necklaces themselves are just amplifiers, not sources. Unless there's some strange violation of causality afoot, in which case we're very much at sea. Do you have any insight, Androcles?"
The tiny cat poked his head from the edge of the bag.
"You're just as smart as the Queen said you were," he said. "I know that Fate has chosen its champions already, so I suspect you are right. Your necklaces are gateways to power, but they amplify what is already inside, rather than granting something you did not have."
"You said there will be two more Knights?" Eve asked, and Andy nodded.
"At least two. One of the necklaces is the Sapphire Zebrawing; I do not have it and do not know where it might be, though I know it belongs to the bodyguard of the Queen herself; I can only assume that Butterfly Shine is guarding the young Queen now, where-ever and who-ever she is. The remaining necklace I have is the Amethyst Fritillary of Butterfly Heart. The Queen spoke of her as a great and powerful warrior, fearless, noble, and true to the last."
They arrived in front of the gym. Kimiyo subtly brought the black string back into view; it pointed directly through the door.
"How do we want to do this?" Brigid asked, reaching into her pocket. There was a glint of gold in her hand, the diamonds of her necklace dancing in the neon lights.
Eve gasped.
"Fast, we need to go fast. Somebody inside is in danger. T-there's a girl, she's realized something's wrong, they've got her cornered-"
There was an enormous crash through the window in front of them, and a muscular woman spilled out in a hail of broken glass, crashing against the street and rolling into the gutter. Eve recoiled, then moved forward to help.
The woman pushed herself upright, and the false flesh of her face was hanging loose, dripping like a melting candle to show the blue steel of the creature below. It hissed at the three girls, then leapt back through the broken window, clawed hands tearing apart the frame.
"Get your fucking hands off me!" somebody called from inside. There was a heavy sound, metal on metal, and Eve winced as she got a flash of a dumbbell crashing into somebody's face.
"Maybe that's her?" she proposed, pulling off the duffle bag. "Okay, ready?"
The three of them raised their hands.
"For the Kaleidoscope Crown!"
"Unmei no Ito yo, Waga o Michibike!"
"Ex Tenebris Lux!"
"Transform!"
"Henshin!"
"Transforma!"
Ward was first through the steel door, smashing it off its hinges and sending its dented bulk skipping across the road behind her as she pushed off of it. There, elevated slightly on the raised area behind the bikes and treadmills, there were three women fighting. Two adults and a familiar teenager that made Ward's face go hot.
Riley Carter threw a dumbbell in the way of a claw and then grabbed the demon by the head, driving it into the railing full-force. The metal deformed around the impact, then Riley screamed and dropped, her arm a bloody mess of shredded muscle as the demon behind her racked down. It was raising a claw for a second blow when a mass of red strings descended on it from above, wrapping around its neck and limbs and jerking it forcefully into the ceiling.
Ward deflected a thrown weight with her shield (it smashed through the cash register and embedded itself in the brickwork) and threw her shield over the prone Riley to cover her. The demon raised back a bladed arm, fire rippling across the edge.
Spark was faster, whipping her wand around in a dance of silver lights.
"Ventus Impetus!" she called, visible tendrils of wind swirling around her, sending the dollar bills from the destroyed register billowing in a complex vortex around her. There was a horrid howling noise that shrieked through the room as a hurricane-force wind blasted through the broken window, and Ward held tight to the wheezing figure under her shield as it battered against her.
The demon swayed slightly as the flames on its blade sputtered out, then burst back to life.
"Shit," Spark said, then ducked out of the way just in time as most of a leg press machine was thrown at her head.
Ward placed a hand to the floor and pushed herself upright in one motion, folding the shield away to grab the demon by its collarbone and smashing her gauntleted hand into its face with the other. The clothes and skin at its chest tore away like wet paper as the creature crashed down the short stairs, and she turned just as the other ripped itself free from Sage's strings and dropped back to the ground.
The shield reformed itself to catch a gout of flame, and she pushed forward, her hand going to her belt. Not to her sword, which remained sealed in its scabbard, but to the handle of another weapon hanging beside it. An elegant and beautiful mace, silver and obsidian and inlaid with a rainbow of gemstones, the golden flanges the double curve of butterfly wings.
Her fingers gripped the handle, and she felt a power surge through her like none before. A warmth and confidence surged through her, an invisible choir of thousands of others who had come before rang in her ears, exalting her to take up their cause, this precious weapon, and to succeed where they failed. She felt invincible.
She swung the butterfly head of the mace into the demon's twisted face, and with a horrid crack, it snapped at the handle. A glob of burning metal crashed into the wall alongside the bent pieces of the macehead, and the decapitated demon was now little more than a red-hot streak across the floor, wall, and ceiling.
"Goddamnit! Come on, I just got this thing!" Ward complained, looking at the elegant handle and tearing up. "N-no fair, if it was one-use I shoulda hit Prince Whatshisfuck with it!"
"Ward!" Sage called, and she turned to see the two of them struggling with the other demon, which was attempting to pull itself out of the cocoon of ropes binding it to the bottom of the stairs. Spark was doing something with her wand, trying to fix something maybe, her bursts of incomprehensible Latin creating little more than misfired sparks.
"Dawn's Ray Touch!" Ward called, and drove the bent handle of the mace through the demon's eye. It burst into flames, and Spark finally got her wand to do something, spraying a jet of water to put out the rapidly spreading fire.
"Prince Bramble is gone," Sage reported, as Andy bound through the window. There were sirens in the distance. Ward groaned, took one last look at her ruined mace, and then leaned down to Riley's side. The blonde girl looked up at her with unfocused eyes, shivering as shock went through her. Andy jumped up alongside, a golden necklace in his mouth; he lay it down by her hand.
"It's her. No mistaking it," the cat reported. "Butterfly Heart."
"Hey cool, you're that superhero," Riley muttered, her voice faint and uneven. She'd lost a lot of blood, it was a miracle she was still conscious. "You kinda look like a girl from my class."
"Well, you should stop hitting on her, she has a boyfriend," Ward instructed, laying her hand carefully on the bloody mess. "...can I kiss you? It's for healing, I promise."
The light of Bright Star Aura was already flaring before she'd even said it.
"Whatever you say, cutie," Riley mumbled.
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