Thursday, April 14, 2011
"Who the hell are the Travelers?" I asked, striding over to the little girl and picking her back up before hurriedly leaving.
"Nomadic cape team. Nobody knows where they came from, but they've gotten in conflicts with the Protectorate a number of times in various cities, especially New York," she said through the earpiece.
"Why are they
here? Coil?"
She made a nervous sound of agreement as I rushed through the hallways, the girl back on my hip. The shaking was coming in bursts, a pounding that rattled through my bones. "Yeah. Coil. It looks like he offered them something… a solution to a problem? in exchange for working for him in the meantime. He must have done something to alert them before you killed him."
"Was he serious about the help or stringing them along?" I needed to know
why they were acting out, what it was for.
"He would have been serious about helping them as long as they remained useful and it would help him get their cooperation, that's how Coil works. …Work
ed," Lisa told me. "He was a totally manipulative bastard, but he absolutely preferred ensuring his minions stayed satisfied and happy with the status quo rather than alienating them. He just had no reservations with it when he did."
"Were you? Satisfied and happy?" I questioned, heading down the hallway towards the giant storage room.
"Taylor, I—" She sighed, sounding exasperated. "A gilded cage is still a cage."
That didn't answer the question.
"And between this and what I was doing before? I'd rather be involved in this every time," she said hurriedly.
So it wasn't that she wasn't
unhappy, it was that she hated even the
idea of not being free to do what she liked, to grow beyond her boundaries. Even if she never did, it was the fact those limits were even there that chafed.
A loud crash echoed in the warehouse-like room as I entered it on the catwalk, sounding like it came from one of the hallways on the lower floor
"Oh fuck, Taylor get out of there
now."
"
Where is she??" a woman's voice screamed, coming from the same hallway.
Another set of rumbles shook the entire facility.
"That place is going to come down at the rate she's going!
Move!"
I hurried along the catwalk towards the storm sewer entrance I'd originally come in from. "Who is
she? What's happening!?"
"This girl. One of the Travelers, she has to be. There's something wrong with her power, I'm betting she was at the middle of whatever went down in New York when they were there. Her power, it's… it's out of control. She looks normal from the waist up, but everything lower than that is…"
"Monster," I heard whispered quietly over the line—one of the twins.
"Yeah. Monstrous. From what I'm getting her power drives her insane and right now she's absolutely pissed. She's completely given in."
…And there was no reasoning with an insane person. Fuck.
"She's plowing through solid cement walls like they're nothing. The rest of Travelers are following a bit behind her. Just… Taylor, you need to get
out of there before she finds you. Leave this for the heroes to deal with."
But… this was
my fault.
"Taylor,
no," Lisa hissed. "Don't do this. This is not your responsibility."
"
Isn't it?" I asked, finally at the huge door that was the entrance. "Who was the one telling me to take responsibility for my actions? Oh right, it was you.
Last night."
"Fucking…" I heard Lisa mutter. "Taylor, you are
not going to fight against five capes who are strong individually and have been in a team together for
years. I don't care how good you are against normals."
A
crash sounded through the complex, and based on how loud it was they'd finally gotten to the storage room. I could hear wood shattering and metal tearing behind me while I carried the girl through the cement tunnel towards the gate blocking the stairs up.
"What's stopping them from coming after us after this for revenge?" I questioned harshly. "The whole
point of this was to get rid of anything like that, Lisa!"
"I know, I know, I'm sorry," she apologized, and it sounded genuine.
This was not how this was supposed to go. I did not want to have to be looking over my shoulder constantly, waiting for retaliation at any moment. Not when it put my dad and my friends in danger.
This was unacceptable.
And it was, once again, all because of me and what I'd done.
No, this wasn't okay. And for once, I was going to face the fallout of what I'd done without anybody else needing to tell me first.
I looked back towards the door to the complex I'd come from. After a moment, I set the girl on my hip down at the stairs and looked at her. "Can you run?"
She looked at me with teary eyes but nodded. "Yes, but six—" I covered her mouth, cutting her off. I didn't want to know the odds.
"Taylor, don't do this," Lisa pleaded. "Taylor. Please. Don't—"
"Can I ask a question about the numbers?" I said to the girl, and she nodded again.
"What are the odds of the Protectorate winning against the Travelers if they fight now?" I asked her.
She swallowed, her face twisted in a pained grimace. "E-eleven point five three two percent."
Shit, that was low. That was really low.
Lisa made an odd gurgling sound at the back of her throat.
I nodded as the crashes down the tunnel got louder. "Go. Run. Don't look back, okay?"
The girl nodded, and I pushed her towards the stairs. She quickly rushed up them towards the surface and sunlight before she disappeared from sight.
Good.
"Taylor…"
I shook my head, even if she couldn't see it. "No. This needs to end
today."
Lisa sighed, but didn't argue with me, seeming to understand that she wasn't going to change my mind.
"What can they do?" I asked. I was already moving back towards the large steel door I'd cut through the first time. "What are their powers?"
"Ballistic accelerates objects he touches. Sundancer creates a literal miniature sun, heat and all. Genesis can turn into different creatures. Oliver… gets prettier? Trickster can swap two objects of relatively equal mass within his field of view. Noelle, the monster girl…" Lisa swallowed. "According to Coil's notes, Noelle can create evil clones of capes with variations of their powers on contact and once you touch her you're stuck, it's really hard to get away, like flypaper but worse. She has trouble holding back her power from trying to act even when she wants."
And she doesn't, right now.
So don't touch the monster girl.
I had absolutely
no desire to see what an evil clone of me could do with the lines.
"Taylor… please, don't die," Lisa whispered.
I didn't say anything. I couldn't.
It was a weird contrast, entering the complex the exact same way I had before. Except this time the huge room looked totally different, between all the debris everywhere, the dead mercenaries scattered around the room, and the… thing at the center of all the destruction. I crouched by the walkway to make my profile smaller, trying to get a better look.
Tentacles and heads and animal eyes and arms and a number of other biological parts made up the majority of the mass, with a pair of forelegs that looked as thick as my body ending in sharp claws. The conglomeration was as large as my living room. And atop it all sat the torso of a young woman, pale, with straight brown hair and wearing a green sweater.
There was a conspicuous lack of bodies behind her and in the immediate surrounding area.
"The corpses made her bigger," Tattletale said fearfully. "I don't even think she's able to care that they're human at this point. I think it's making her mental state worse, too."
"I can
smell you!!" the girl yelled as she turned towards me, looking around and getting worryingly close to where I actually was. "I know you're here!"
I kept my breathing even, not making any sudden movements to avoid alerting her.
"He was going to help and you
ruined it!" she screamed, and with far more speed than something that large had any right to, she dashed down the aisle, still looking at the corner of the room I was in. "I had hope! And now it's
gone!"
I finally saw four figures emerge from the giant hole in the wall into the room, only half-costumed at best.
They'd been caught off-guard.
One of them, a man in a black suit-coat with a red mask rushed forward, following the path of destruction. "Noelle!"
Lisa's voice suddenly came over the intercom system. "Travelers! We do not want to fight!"
They'd all halted at the sound, including Noelle, and the three that had stayed back near the hole glanced at each other.
Noelle, however, was holding her head and shaking it. I could hear a stream of words came from her, increasing in volume, all the same. "Don't… want to fight? Lies. Liar. No. No. Nonononononononono.
No!! No getting away!"
Without any warning I was on the ground floor, in the middle of all the debris, less than thirty feet in front of the girl.
Fuck.
Trickster must have seen me somehow, even in the shadows on the walkway.
Noelle's head snapped up and around to me. "
You!"
The lines were in focus and a knife in my hand before I even thought about it.
I could see it on her face. She was angry.
So. Angry. Anger and desperation and fear in a cocktail that was absolutely
terrifying. Because she felt like she was backed into a corner, and that meant she had no reason to hold back.
Meaning I couldn't either.
And then I had four tons of flesh barreling towards me.
I
moved.
Noelle had far too much space to move around in this huge room, and it made everything
far worse. Force is mass times acceleration, and she had a
lot of mass, so any chance to build up speed was bad.
If I'd known
just how strong Noelle was I probably wouldn't have turned around in that tunnel and come back.
I ducked and rolled as a tentacle covered in suckers whipped over my head and into the boxes on my left, completely destroying them.
There was a tingle over my skin and then I was back within Noelle's range, her limbs reaching for me.
Fuck. With all the debris being created it was just giving Trickster more material to swap me with. I was barely staying ahead of her and avoiding it all.
I sliced off the malformed hand that had been trying to grab my jacket at the wrist and then fell backwards and under a shelf to roll into the aisle behind me.
I needed to break Trickster's line of sight so that he couldn't swap me with anything and move into a space where it was better for me and not for Noelle.
The first step was already done, as now Noelle was between us, tearing through the row of wooden boxes on the shelves I'd just rolled under like wet cardboard.
Hallway. I needed a hallway. I couldn't deal with her unless her mobility was confined somehow.
That was basically all the plan I had at the moment: restrain her, and then… deal with her.
I somehow knew that she'd never give up chasing me, never stop, and there was no way both of us were coming out of this alive.
(I was completely fine with that.)
I vaulted over the low row in front of me as I kept running towards the wall, using the height to look for a door to one of the hallways that I'd seen from up on the walkways.
The closest was forward and to the right, so I aimed for that.
It seemed even with all the obstacles in Noelle's way they didn't even begin to slow her down.
…I was
really hoping the hallway would.
Lisa growled, wanting nothing more than to throw the headset she had onto the ground and crush it. Instead she rotated and folded the screen of her laptop so that it was more a tablet and stood up.
…And sat right back down, because this was honestly the best place for her to be right now, despite how much she wanted to do something more.
Taylor was being
stupid.
"Look, we aren't here to fight you," Lisa said, still speaking over the intercom next to the Travelers to try and get their attention. Anything that could keep Taylor from having to deal with more than the giant monster-girl she was already engaged with. "We didn't even know you were here. This was solely a strike against Coil. Whatever you think of him, 'he's nice' or 'generous' or 'fair', no. He was a manipulative cold-hearted asshole who thought nothing of employing people by threatening their lives and well-being. He was more than willing to do things like kill an elementary school girl's parents and kidnap her in cold blood to keep drugged and locked up indefinitely just because she had a power that worked well with his."
One of the Travelers, a girl dressed in a suit with suns (
Sundancer), shifted, and Lisa picked up discomfort from her.
"No matter what he promised there was no guarantee he would be able to do it or would follow through. Trust me, I know from experience," Lisa told them, leveraging their growing attention by trying to establish some sort of sympathetic rapport. "I was one of his 'employees'."
Trickster glared at the loudspeaker before turning away and running off after Noelle as she chased Taylor towards an open doorway. The others looked at him, but then turned back towards where her voice was coming from. "Look, we don't have any reason to fight you. We don't
want to. We were only here for Coil. There doesn't need to be any more death today. Is there any way we can stop your girl?"
Sundancer shuffled again, as both Ballistic and the creature Tattletale assumed was Genesis looked over at her. Ballistic said something to her that Tattletale couldn't hear or see, but a few moments later, she started in the direction Trickster, Noelle, and Taylor had gone.
Lisa lessened the mental grip she had on her power and let a couple things slip through before tightening back down on it. She really had been using it too much this week already, and as much it also seemed to be more willing to keep going without punishing her in the form of headaches, she wasn't going to press her luck.
Doesn't like fighting. Would prefer to not have anyone else hurt. Will defend herself and her friends, but will not attack without good reason.
Lisa heaved a relieved sigh. It seemed cooler minds might prevail after all.
A movement caught her attention and she looked up to see one of the sisters getting up and walking away, the other clambering off the bench from where she'd been next to Lisa and moving to follow.
"Hey wait! Where are you going?"
One of them looked back, the one who'd been sitting next to her. "To help Taylor," she said like it was the most natural thing in the world, determination in her eyes.
Lisa blinked, and then the girl was twenty feet away, running after her sister, both heading towards where they'd dropped Taylor off.
"But. You can't just— Argh!" Lisa felt like she was going to go crazy. First Taylor, and now these girls, they didn't seem to understand what self-preservation was. And she couldn't just let them go off by themselves with no idea of what to do.
Why me? Why? Lisa grumbled.
Stupid selfless hero-types, they were starting to make being with the Undersiders seem easy.
Hurrying, she folded her computer up and shoved it in her backpack before slinging it over her shoulder and running after them. "Hey! Wait up!"
I ran down the hallway, bright fluorescent lights above me flashing by. Noelle was behind me, somehow having managed to squeeze herself into the hallway in a way that made me think of an octopus, limbs and tentacles reaching out to grasp and tear at the floor and walls, pulling her forward faster than I'd planned on.
Fast enough it wasn't giving me much time to figure out a better way to deal with her. I jumped over a tentacle that had suddenly reached out fifteen feet to sweep at my feet, farther than what she'd shown so far.
She was
strategizing. Even as lost in anger and madness as she was, she was still planning ahead, trying to trick me and trip me up, putting pressure to test me.
It was a bit scary, I'll admit.
I
pushed forward again, skipping over another tentacle covered in sharp hooks, before there was a sudden
crack and even as I tried to move away something impacted my left arm and chest, pushing me through the door I'd been running past. The bullet wound in my arm immediately felt five times worse, and my shoulder hurt from being used as a battering ram on the door.
I rolled with the blow, moving into what had to be a twenty-by-forty room with crates at the corners and along some parts of the walls. I felt Noelle move up behind me, before pausing at the door.
I thought I might actually have a moment to breathe, but as I turned around her limbs gripped both sides of the door and then simply
ripped the concrete wall aside, rubble piling up and blocking the hallway in the direction I'd been running.
Fuck.
I flipped the knife in my hand around nervously as I looked her over for the bare moment I could. She was covered in the lines like anything else I could see, but finding the line that was
her was surprisingly difficult.
For a second it almost looked like it drifted into existence and then suddenly faded away as if it had sunk into her skin and I wondered just what the heck could do
that even while trying to pull it forward again.
Other sections of her had their own lines, not just for cutting but their own distinct
death and it only made me more confused.
Was she like some sort of chimera? Separate but together? Distinct parts of a whole?
I didn't have much time to think about it as she rushed at me, using the grip she had on the remains of the wall and the doorway to propel herself towards me.
I slashed at the taloned arm that tried to grab me as I dashed right to avoid her as much as I could. I ran towards a pile of crates, jumping
onto them, and then jumping up and
forward as hard as I could while the crates were turned into so much debris from a leg that had lanced out towards me. I took the small amount of pleasure I could from the way Noelle's eyes widened as I flipped over her huge lower section, her head tilting and twisting to follow my path.
I landed on my feet with enough force that it drove me into a crouch, but I used the position and my coiled muscles to push me back up and towards the entrance to the room as fast as possible, barely avoiding the hoof-foot thing that came down where I'd landed, cratering the floor.
I'll admit I was starting to get frustrated. I couldn't
fight her, because with how fucking fast she was, it was all I could do to move and avoid her.
Something
gushed out of one of the near-canine mouths on her side as she twisted around towards me, a thick fluid that smelled like the combination of too-old meat and digestive juices.
Someone was running into my range, closing in on us quickly before they were suddenly where one of the pieces of rubble had been. "Noelle!"
Trickster.
Fuck.
I needed to stop playing defensive and fight back aggressively if I was going to survive, now. Not that that hadn't been true earlier, but now it was even more true.
I dove to the left to avoid a black, chitin-covered tentacle that came down at me from a diagonal, creating a thick line of broken cement.
I growled. She wasn't even trying to hold back, going straight for lethal blows, now.
Fine. She wanted to stop playing around?
I could do that too.
I may not be able to kill
her, but I could kill her
parts, at least.
I moved towards one of the heads at the mid-point of her lower bulk, flipping my knife around and pulling on the lines as hard as I could, trying to solidify one of the weird partial-death lines she had.
Noelle seemed thrown off by the sudden switch in tactics, giving me the small pause I needed to get close and drive my knife into the line of the skull that sat right between its eyes.
Take that, bitch.
I jumped back and away, both Noelle and Trickster seeming to pause, as if to see what would happened, and then Noelle
screamed.
The predatory bovine head I'd targeted sloughed off of her body, a gouge at least as big as my chest coming with it from her mass. It collapsed to the floor, dissolving and crumbling into nothing even as we watched.
Her head snapped to me, and the rictus of pure
hatred that bloomed on her face with a practically-tangible heat behind it looked almost… inhuman.
There was another pair of people entering my range now.
All of Noelle's limbs reached out for me, tentacles swiping through the air and claws scything down as I scrambled backwards. Another jet of …vomit, I suppose, spewed out of one of the remaining mouths towards my head and I ducked to avoid it.
The two people were nearly at us, now. Trickster hadn't moved or done–
A spark ran down my spine, and suddenly I was where the remains of the box I'd jumped off of had been.
FUCK.
I moved back to the end of the room as Noelle shifted her torso towards me, trying to get as much room between her and me as I could. An arm ending in a mutated hand whipping towards my head, and I didn't even have time to think as I held out my knife and let it slice through the limb.
Noelle sat between me and the decimated entrance, already moving to attack as the other two people reached the room. "Noelle!" a voice yelled.
The girl I'd been fighting paused, and for the first time I heard her speak. It didn't come out of just her human torso, but also all the mouths and heads she had below her waist.
I
didn't stop, plotting and discarding paths to get back around her and to the entrance as I ran towards the other side of the room.
"Noelle, stop!"
"
Why!?" she yelled back, with a force that made my ears hurt. "
She hurt me!"
I headed towards another pile of crates, but instead of jumping off of them like before, pressed my momentum forward. I leveraged the rubber soles of my boots to run on the cement wall in a repeat of my time at Bakuda's apartment, if much higher off the ground. My knife was held in my left hand as I used it to create a drag I could push against, sparks tracing the arc I ran for the few feet I could before I pushed off the wall and jumped to the floor, rolling to bleed off the speed.
"And you're trying to kill me," I spat back in irritation, my chest heaving and muscles aching. "So yeah, I'm going to fucking fight back."
I probably shouldn't have wasted the effort to speak, but I did.
"You killed him!" she screamed, and I realized there was no reasoning with her; she was too far gone.
"Yeah, I did," I agreed.
The wail she gave was brain-piercing. Pressing that button probably hadn't been the best idea, but it was too late for regrets.
Another giant foot came down too close for comfort as I twisted to avoid it, adding yet another circle of broken concrete to the room that was slowly becoming absolutely decimated.
Fine, I growled mentally.
"Francis! Help me!"
Fucking—
I felt something shift,
indecision becoming
determination, and was caught trying to avoid another jet of Noelle's vomit when there was that familiar tingling sensation I'd come to hate. An instant later, and I barely had time to blink and react to the fact that I'd switched places with
Trickster, not any of the debris, before I felt a hand land on the front of my vest.
The cement wall I'd been three feet away from less than a second earlier shattered against my back, a crater forming from my impact into the surface.
My head rung, my vision swimming with odd lights dancing in my eyes among a blur of color. Sharp pain lanced through my chest and my left shoulder, and I knew that at least cracked more than a few ribs and dislocated my left arm if not broken that shoulder-blade entirely.
It was a miracle my skull hadn't cracked like an egg, that my neck hadn't broken from whiplash.
Well at least I know I have that brute rating now, I thought deliriously, finding it inappropriately funny but also not able to laugh easily.
"What the fuck, Krouse!?"
"It got her didn't it?" the green smear shot back.
"That's not the fucking point! You know what I do when shit's suddenly in my face and you know I hate it! You fucking
used me to kill her!"
"I don't see what the problem is, it's not like you haven't killed anyone before."
The black blob flared in
annoyance/anger/resentment. "That's not the point and you fucking know it!"
A giggle finally burst from my lips, accompanied by red iron-tasting warmth.
"…She's still alive," blackspace said dumbly.
"Not for much longer. Finish it and we can get out of here."
The black bunny-shape's anger grew. "You know what? No.
No. I'm fucking tired of this. You want her dead? Do it yourself, but I'm done with this, with being manipulated like what I feel doesn't even matter. You don't even
listen to me or Mars or Jess or Oliver anymore. It's all about
you and
her, and I'm fucking tired of it."
"
Fine," the other spat out, moving towards me. "But we're going to be talking when this is over."
There was a familiar
snick that echoed in my ears, a sound like a long-forgotten friend that stirred me from the dark well I'd been slowly slipping into, a song of silver that promised beautiful red and the 「death」 that sated my soul.
Except the song was wrong because it wasn't the right note, it was too far and dull, not the right timbre or rhythm when accompanied by the scuff-taps approaching me, stopping, the sound of breathing getting closer and closer and
(just a little closer)
(just a little more)
the knife in my hand sliced through the beautiful line of death that had appeared right before me.
And then everything was blackness.
Ballistic watched as Trickster suddenly fell to the side,
another knife that the girl had pulled out of God-knew-where suddenly embedded in the side of Trickster's chest faster than he could blink, like it had been there all along.
Fucking Krouse just got killed from of his own stupidity because he'd expected the cape that had literally murdered an entire warehouse of people to be defenseless. And Luke knew exactly what was going to happen next. Noelle was going to finally lose it completely, and unless they could do something fast, they were
all going to die.
There was no "maybe", no "if", it was
going to happen.
Not that he really cared what happened to the girl in the red jacket at this point, but
he certainly didn't want to die.
"FRANCIS!"
Oh fuck, oh shit.
"MARS, NOVA, NOW!"
It was like a raid boss on hard mode without any practice and no chances for revive or wipe.
No time to fuck around. One mistake, you're dead.
Backing up as quickly as he could, his heart pounding, and keeping his eyes on Noelle, he yelled again. "MARS!
BLOCKADE!"
She jolted. "R-right!"
Noelle may have been their leader, but tactics was something they'd all learned more than enough even if she'd always been the best at it.
A ball of superheated plasma burst into existence in front of Sundancer, growing larger and brighter as it moved towards Noelle, who was already half-way to the unconscious girl and Krouse. Sweat broke out of Luke's forehead from the heat.
Noelle roared in rage as the sun stopped, keeping her on the other side of the room. "TRAITORS!"
Ballistic could already see her limbs probing, testing the area of the sun and trying to find a way around it. The miniature star roiled with energy, the wooden crates at the sides of the room closest to it smoking.
"She's really gone, isn't she?" a voice spoke from behind him.
He whirled around, finding a blonde girl with green eyes standing ten feet away in the hallway behind them, her hands raised non-threateningly. Still, his hands had reflexively snapped to the metal bits tucked into his belt, adrenaline rushing through his veins.
A pair of short Asian girls with identical features trailed behind her, one looking at where the girl and Krouse lay five feet away to his right and yelling "Taylor!". before rushing over, the other following immediately.
He hadn't even heard their footsteps.
"You're the voice. On the intercom," he said accusingly, irrational anger welling up. Irrational, because this was something that deep down he always knew was going to happen, even if he didn't want to admit it, and
she certainly hadn't made Noelle go crazy. Still, she nodded.
"Tattletale," she told him, looking over to where the girls were with concern, before looking back at him.
One of the Undersiders. One of Coil's. Or at least that's what he had said. Maybe she hadn't just been saying nice words earlier when she'd told them she'd worked for him.
Another short girl he hadn't even noticed stepped out of the shadows, and she couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve. She moved up next to Tattletale and stood there, eyes darting over the damaged room and everything in it. There were dark circles under her eyes, and it looked like she hadn't washed her hair or showered in days.
"This is Dinah. Coil was holding her here, planning to addict her to designer drugs to get her to work with him," Tattletale said, and he immediately wished she hadn't because it suddenly made everything that much more gray and complicated.
As if they didn't have enough problems with Noelle flipping the fuck out and going into complete murder-mode.
Noelle yelled again, drawing all their attention to where she was trapped, Sundancer keeping up the sun while trying to listen to what they'd been saying.
"Can she come back from this?" Tattletale asked, looking at Noelle, and Ballistic's heart sunk.
He wasn't Krouse. Wasn't Sundancer. Noelle had already been on a dangerous edge for a while, and now…
He just couldn't see it happening. She'd lost every one of the things she'd been holding onto: hope for a cure, the one person who made kept her grounded, any chance for a life in peace, and now her sanity. She'd described her power as a fight with her monstrous half, a fight that slowly chipped away at her mind and self, and from what he could tell she'd just… given in.
He wasn't even sure if there was much 'Noelle' left.
The Noelle he'd known a year and a half ago wouldn't have done anything like this. Wouldn't have eaten corpses, wouldn't have gone on a rampage without thinking about the consequences. The old Noelle would have stepped back and
plotted, but this one had just… raged.
Had it really only been that long?
"No," he said, hating the word even as it came out. He hated saying, hated that he had to be the
one to say it, but it was the truth.
Sundancer's head snapped over to him. "Lu– Ballistic!"
"What!?" he shot back at her, and he struggled to keep the anger he felt about the situation from leaking into it. "You know it's true!
Look at her! The only reason we got her out before was Krouse! Do you really think anything we can do can get her back from this!?"
Noelle was still testing the edges of the sun's field like a wild animal would with a snarl on her face, not showing any of the intelligence that she'd been so proud of as their captain, as the one who'd brought them to Nationals.
"I-I-" Sundancer stammered.
The two Asian girls had gently picked up the girl in the red jacket and motorcycle mask, bringing her over to where the rest of them stood, and carefully putting her down against the wall of the hallway.
"Is she okay?" Tattletale asked quietly, her eyes still on Noelle, and one of them glanced over at Ballistic and Sundancer before looking back at the blonde from her place leaning over the knife girl.
"She's hurt. She needs help. One of her arms is… too loose," the girl told her.
Tattletale looked over at 'Taylor'. "Dislocated. Okay. I know how to fix that, at least. Everything else…" She turned to Dinah. "Can you answer a question?"
The little girl grimaced. "Y-yes. But only one. Please. I can't do anymore today."
"Only one, I promise. What is the chance of Noelle becoming a major threat to Brockton Bay and/or the country if we don't deal with her right now?"
"Ni-ninety seven point two six five percent."
…Fuck.
God dammit, Noelle. God
dammit.
She had told them, made them
promise, that it ever looked like she was gone, looked like her power had won, that they would make sure she would never have a chance to hurt anybody else. That they would do what she couldn't.
One of the twins had stepped away and walked towards Ballistic and Sundancer, a hard glint in her eyes. "Well? Are you going to?"
"Going to what?" Sundancer asked, taken aback.
"She's a…
monster. She tried– is
trying to
kill my best friend because she rescued a little girl and stopped a villain and that messed up her plans," the girl said. "You said she can't come back. That she is completely lost and gone. Are you going to take care of it?"
"W-what!? I can't just—!"
"It's not Noelle anymore," Ballistic said, and the words felt like ashes in his mouth. "She wouldn't have wanted to be like this. You remember what she said after NYC. What she made us promise her."
Mars chewed at her lip, looking at the gigantic form of what had once been their friend and the sun in front of her. "I…"
"…Taylor was right. If you want something done right, you do it yourself," the girl who'd spoken muttered under her breath, looking at her hand and wisps of light that flickered in it. She turned and started walking towards Mars' sun.
"Hey! Wait! You're going to—"
"Ayame!
Tetsudatte kudasai!" she yelled, still walking towards the ball of plasma carelessly, making Ballistic wonder if she had a power like Sundancer's to be getting that close.
The other girl that looked just like her jumped up and rushed past Ballistic towards her sister, who had stretched out a hand towards the star, well within the distance at which her clothes should have been burning.
A stream of plasma flowed out of Sundancer's star and wrapped around the first twin's arm before circling around her front, appearing to travel down to her waist on one side and then back up to the shoulder where she was drawing it from.
"She's …draining it?" Mars said, a look of both confusion and discomfort on her face.
The circle that sat over her like a sash continued getting brighter until her sister reached her and another loop of energy twisted around her, circling her waist before going back to her sister. Suddenly the speed it was getting brighter increased went from "warming up incandescent lightbulb" to "brighter than Sundancer's star" in only a few seconds.
There was a blinding flash that lit the whole room, leaving him blind for a few moments even though Ballistic had already looked away to spare his retinas. When he turned back, there was a seven-foot-wide hole that had sheared off nearly all of Noelle's body, the remaining pieces to the side and bottom slumping to the floor and slowly disintegrating like anything separated from her did.
However, what really drew his attention was the hole—no,
tunnel— that extended into the back wall further than he could measure, the edges glowing red-hot. If it had been any other time, he might have reacted to the ridiculous amount of firepower they'd just displayed. As it was, he couldn't bring himself to care. Not with what it had just been used to do.
Sundancer's sun was gone, and she sat down heavily, tear streaming down her cheeks.
"I'm sorry," Tattletale said softly.
The rest of Noelle's body continued disintegrating until the last bits finally disappeared.
And just like that, she was gone.
Ballistic wasn't sure how to feel, how to react.
"The base isn't structurally sound anymore, so I'd recommend evacuating it as soon as you can. I've got a couple places you can stay and Coil had a few too, and… I can help arrange a funeral for your teammates if you want."
"
Please," Sundancer said, looking up at the other blonde with red eyes. Tattletale just nodded, pulling a card out of a pocket on her belt and pencil, writing on the back of it.
"Text me when you're ready and I'll give you the addresses. I can have a contact come… collect Trickster?"
Thirty minutes ago they'd been all together, three minutes ago two of their members had died, and now they were talking about funerals.
"It's how dying as a cape goes, unfortunately," Tattletale told him, and he jerked in surprise. Had she just—
"It's not reading minds, even if it might seem like it, trust me. I can just pick up body language and expressions really well. I'm
not like that white bitch," she said, and he relaxed a bit. "But yeah, unless you're with the Protectorate, things like…
collection and funerals can be really tricky, which is why I offered to help. I know how hard it is."
"Fine," Ballistic said shortly, and he thought she got the message.
After a moment, he walked over to Krouse's body and arranged it so he was lying flat, pulling out the knife and closing his eyes. He hadn't liked Krouse the same as any of the others on the team, but he'd still been a part of it, and he could at least give him that much.
Tattletale broke the silence, Mars still sitting on the ground, sniffling.
"We'll just leave you alone now. Come on girls, let's try and get Taylor somewhere she can get some medical care. There's a guy I know who can probably help. I'd prefer that over trying to set her shoulder myself."
The two twins walked past them, joining Tattletale and Dinah. They picked up Taylor between the two of them and the group moved away from them, down the hall, leaving Luke and Mars in the room alone.
Alone in silence, still trying to comprehend what had just happened, and wondering what was next and how to continue now that their team was well and truly broken.
A/N: Twins OP pls nerf. (They're also the literal worst matchup for Sundancer to face possible, but hey)
The funny thing is I had this chapter stuck at 2.6k for the last like year, and then two days ago I sat down and was literally "NO YOU ARE DOING THIS NOW FUCK HOW HARD IT IS". And I did.
If only everything were so simple
As always, please review, comment, etc etc.
