(INTERLUDE) SHOOTING STAR
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pctKPSrVDss
2002, Democratic Republic of Congo:
"Maybe we should cancel plans for Sunday. I can't
believe how much History homework we got," Eve mumbled.
"Better History than math," Félix shrugged.
"You just like History better because you're hot for teacher," she grinned as they both entered the threshold of the family apartment. Her twin brother and her had teased each other over respective crushes since middle school, and showed no sign of stopping now that they'd turned eighteen.
"Or maybe I just enjoy knowing why our motherland is now called Congo instead of Zaïre."
"No you don't. Mom, we-"
She paused, seeing the expression on her mother's face. "Mom? Is everything all right?"
Her mother silently pointed to the TV set.
The news was on.
The Cognoscenti were dead.
Eve stared in shock.
The Cognoscenti. The international, nonprofit team of Thinkers gathered from all over Africa, working together to find solutions to the problems plaguing the continent. Stopping wars, stabilizing governments, fixing economies…
And somehow, despite all their Thinker powers, the
entire team, down to the last parahuman, had been killed by a single bomb. The bomber, an associate of the team, left a message claiming the Cognoscenti were unwitting pawns of the Simugh.
Any thoughts of sisterly teasing, crushes, and plans for Sunday were replaced by the all-consuming knot in Eve's stomach.
2004, two months into civil war:
"Félix, listen to me! For God's sake listen to me!" she said as she desperately tried to stop the bleeding.
A stray bullet. Not even meant for them, just a sudden fight breaking between the army and the rebels in the middle of the city. Not even to the chest, it had just hit his leg. Why was it bleeding so much? How much blood did he
have?
"Félix, please, keep breathing, just, don't go to sleep, talk to me, please talk to me," she kept mumbling panickedly as she tied a knot above his injury - was that how you stopped a hemorrhage?
Her brother said nothing. A minute later, he was no longer breathing.
Later on, she remembered screaming, and then being knocked out by an explosion. It was only days later, while recovering from her own injuries, that she realized she had caused the explosion herself.
2006, three months after Triple Alliance takeover of Kinshasa:
The man with the trimmed beard stepped in her way. "Where do you think
you're going?"
"Same place as you."
"Don't think so. This isn't-"
"Look down."
He instinctively glanced down, seeing that her actual feet were hovering an inch above the floor. His objections to her attending the meeting evaporated after that.
There were less than twenty people inside, but everyone had a reason for going up against the Triple Alliance.
"So what's your story?"
"There isn't much of it," Eve replied. "I got my powers early in the civil war. I fought the rebels in the early days, but never joined the army."
"That was before the Triple Alliance?"
"Yeah."
"So what's your beef with them?"
"I've seen how they treat civilians. Anyone willing to set the world on fire just to stand on top of the ashes needs to be stopped,
hard." The Triple Alliance weren't the ones who had killed Félix, but they were just another set of power-hungry warlords destroying the country.
"As good a reason as any. So what can you do?"
She grinned. "I've learned first aid, but mostly? I fly and shoot explosive rays. And I do both of these things very, very well."
"That I'd love to see. You got a name?"
"Météore's as good as any."
2009, three weeks after taking down the governor of Kisangani:
"What I'd like to know is how you found us. No offense, but the Triple Alliance have been hunting me for years."
"I have ways," the world's greatest Tinker replied. "Forgive the question, but… Golden Fist, the governor of Kisangani. What was the strategic logic behind killing him?"
"It wasn't strategy," Météore sighed. "It drew attention to us, forced us to evacuate, and the Triple Alliance replaced him easily." She paused. "He was a monster. He
reveled in doing horrible things to anyone who refused his requests, and flaunting how he could get away with it. If we let people like him do whatever they want, if we can't protect the people from him, what's even the
point of the resistance?"
"I get your meaning," Dragon nodded, or at least her robotic suit did. "Météore, I'll be honest. As things currently stand, I don't know
how to take down the Triple Alliance. But the world is
full of monsters like Golden Fist. The Guild tries to take as many of them down as we can. Someone like you would be extremely useful."
She paused to consider. "I wouldn't be stopping my work with the resistance."
"Of course."
"And you'll use your teleporter to help me smuggle refugees out of the country."
"A few dozens is simple enough. More than that could be hard."
"And you'll provide my men with material."
"We can't smuggle weapons-"
"Not weapons. First aid kits, traveling gear… heck, a single thousand dollars can make life
much easier for a few dozen rebels around here."
"...I think that can be arranged."
Météore mentally noted to herself to track down her parents. She'd avoided her hometown for years, even if the Triple Alliance didn't know her civilian identity… she hoped… but getting them out of the country would do wonders for her peace of mind.
2010, Alexandria:
It had been a tough fight. Her body armor was intended to defend her from bullets, but a hit from Malik Almawt's beams would still have meant instant death.
Thankfully, her speed in the air and ability to turn on a dime had kept her from getting tagged as she had kept distracting him with her explosive blasts - long enough for Narwhal to slice his hand off. At that point, the fight had become far more manageable.
"Good job out there," the leader of the Guild told her as they waited for everyone to gather where Strider could teleport them out. "First time taking down an A-Class threat?"
"Yeah. I mean… I've been in an Endbringer fight. This was nothing in comparison."
"I hear you. A-Classes are a nightmare, but at least they sometimes
go down."
Météore nodded grimly. Over the past year, she'd seen deployment with the Guild six times, counting today. Malik Almawt's capture was the greatest victory she'd witnessed heroes have, all things considered. She didn't regret joining the Guild - she had little doubt that they'd helped a lot of people on the way - but every month made her more aware of how
outmatched the heroes of Earth-Bet globally were.
Last week:
"...avoid taking your forces to Kamina; the Thinkers there
will locate you," Tattletale warned.
"Our safehouses in Kamina have always been just fine before."
"That was
before we took down Madame Lustucru and then had a joint Nigerian-Kenyan army occupy Kolwezi. The Triple Alliance have to take the Guild, and by extension you as a resistance leader, a lot more seriously than they used to."
"Fair point." Tattletale was not the easiest person to work with (even if one chose to forget she was a villain), but her tips over the past few days had done a lot of good for the resistance. Figuring out Mobutu was the mole in the Iceberg Cell, cracking the latest code for Triple Alliance communication, correctly guessing some blackmail material on one of the parahuman officers in Kinshasa… the girl was a good ally and terrifying enemy, of that Météore had no doubt.
"I'd tell you not to rush into taking on the Triple Alliance," said the blonde, "but rushing into danger is what you usually
do."
And then, of course, there was
that aspect of Tattletale. She tended to be the answer to the question nobody asked.
"I know you're good at being a moving target," the Thinker went on, "but for a glass cannon, you're still taking awful risks in battle."
"So does Legend."
"Legend has
much better range, and his powers tend to be indispensable. If he shows up, it's usually in a situation that hinges on his participation. You're
useful, but you're not an A-lister. Most battles you're in won't be lost because you're a little more defensive. But you keep fighting like your death would be a small price to pay."
Météore gave her a level stare. "I'm not trying to die."
"No, but you're not trying that hard not to, either." Her eyes narrowed. "More like you feel you're part dead already, and you've got less to lose. It goes back to your trigger event," which Météore had, quite literally,
never explained to anyone, "to the death of your twin sister." A pause. "Brother. Your twin
brother."
"Good talk, Tattletale," Météore said icily as she flew away, cutting off anything else the girl had to say.
Not the easiest person to work with.
Perhaps not entirely wrong? But not entirely right, either.
Did she feel like she had died a bit with Félix, that day? Certainly.
Did she put herself through a lot of danger in order to get a good shot in during battle? Frequently.
But she didn't want to die.
She just recognized that… other people didn't, either.
And if every time Météore risked her life, several people survived… that was a pretty good exchange rate, as she saw things.
Now:
"Eidolon, keep culling their numbers! Everyone else, target any monsters who manage to reach the docks!" Legend shouted through his comms. Flying several hundred feet above the ground, he was beyond the range of most monsters' ranged attacks; whenever any of the flyers got close, he would briefly accelerate, moving several blocks away in half a second. His beams, unhindered by distance, kept accurately striking enemies; several of his attacks had curved to enter the storm drains and destroy anything inside.
Eidolon was using a combination of a Breaker power (making himself intangible and impossible for the enemy's attacks to affect), a Shaker power (creating a sphere around himself, approximately 50 feet in radius, that disintegrated all organic matter), and a Mover power (allowing him to rapidly teleport across the battlefield); he was constantly blinking from location to location, taking out clusters of monsters while avoiding getting in range of his teammates or the coast. Météore strongly suspected he'd killed a four-digit number of Nilbog's creatures by now.
Dragon, via her omnimetal Azazel suit, was focusing her attention on flyers, taking them out with missiles, energy beams, anti-material gunshots, and in some cases built-in melee weapons. A few had managed to land hits on her, but the damage was fairly minor. At least, by Météore's reckoning; she was hardly a Tinker.
Meanwhile, Dauntless and Météore kept flying fast at low altitudes, blasting at monsters that were reaching the urban area despite Eidolon's best efforts.
Nilbog's army was suffering fatalities at an extremely rapid pace.
And it was not enough. Météore could tell. There were simply
too many of them. With every passing minute, the numbers getting past them were greater, the pressure building up, the attacks she had to dodge more frequent. It was reaching the point where, despite rising target density, she was attacking less and less frequently, due to the near-constant need to defend.
Should I stick to high-altitude fighting? I would no longer be able to hit their ground forces, but at least I'd only only have to worry about their flyers-
At the last moment, she became aware of a ground group aiming at her, and zagged thirty yards to the left, barely avoiding dozens of spines - each one long as an arrow, strong enough to pierce concrete, and shooting up in the air as fast as a bullet.
And that's when she realized her desperate dodging had taken her close to a flyer.
She shot up.
Almost in time.
A glob of blue acid had hit her right leg. It was quickly eating through the body armor. It had also instantly erupted into flame.
She was only vaguely aware of the flyer being killed by a micro-missile from Dragon as she screamed in pain and accelerated to her top flying speed to shake as much of the burning acid as she could. At last, despite the pain, the flames seemed to have died down, but her flying had only gotten her closer to the larger enemy concentration. She could already see a squad of flyers heading her way.
Shit shit shit, I should just retreat while I still-
And that was when a sudden implosion caused over a dozen of the enemy flyers to be instantly flung together into a single spot, crushing them.
Then a cape she didn't recognize launched himself at some of the ground-based monsters, grabbing one of them and using it as a weapon to clobber the others.
Quickly looking around, she saw several capes she didn't recognize, and barely caught sight of Strider teleporting away.
"Brazilian reinforcement reporting," one of them saluted before focusing her attention on Nilbog's monsters.
Despite the intense pain in her leg, Météore grinned.
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