"Oww..." Vista groaned pitifully, eyes blearily blinking open, only to close again immediately as the harsh light of the sun struck her directly.
"Vista!" An oh-so-familiar voice shouted, and before she even knew it, Vista found herself being carefully aided in sitting up, her head still aching something fierce as memories slowly returned to her.
And when they finally did a few moments later, Vista couldn't help but jolt. "A-Aegis?" She asked through gritted teeth as the boy in question kneeled next to her. "We're alive? I-is everyone else..." She stopped herself, her throat bobbing painfully.
The ENE Wards had not exactly been having the best of times in the past few weeks. First, they had gotten a new member, one who apparently had some serious beef with Sophia, serious enough that the other girl had been forcefully transferred out.
Things only got worse from there. Lung broke out of prison and went on a rampage with his new minion Bakuda, killing thousands and almost bringing the city to its knees.
Then, after he and Bakuda were killed by a combined attack of both the Protectorate and the villains, the Teeth decided to come to town, and they had brought with them yet another orgy of violence, one that had lasted all the way until... Until...
Vista clenched her eyes shut as Aegis helped her fully stand up, the young girl wobbling on her feet as she tried to get her mind back in working order.
It was hard to remember, but as her nausea slowly left her, Vista slowly comprehended what had happened.
Oni Lee had attacked them, wanting revenge for the death of his old boss. Why he had targeted them and not the adults was a mystery, but she remembered him bringing with him some of Bakuda's old bombs, and it had only been because of the new girl that they hadn't been immediately killed by the suicide bomber.
"Shit..." She hissed. "Fucking demon ninja bastard." She cursed.
It was telling that Aegis didn't even bother trying to reprimand her for her language.
"Quiet down, Vista." He instead chose to say, his voice little more than a murmur. "We're in unknown territory right now, and the others are still unconscious."
At those words, Vista could only blink stupidly, her still foggy mind quickly clearing up as she glanced around.
They were in a clearing surrounded by trees, and as Vista listened, she could hear the chirping of birds and other animal sounds in the background, making it pretty clear that they were probably in a forest of some sort.
More importantly, however, were the four other figures lying deadly still on the floor, and the sight of her teammates lying so still and silent sent a jolt through the space-bending girl.
Gallant and Kid Win both lay there on their backs, both boys clad in their respective armor, and next to them was Clockblocker, the clown of the Wards, who looked so silent and peaceful as he too lay on the floor.
A little separate from the three boys was the new girl, Phantom. Vista had always thought she was creepy, something not at all helped by her standoffish if understandable attitude as well as her power in general.
But as she lay there, sleeping peacefully, it was hard to remember those thoughts about her pale-skinned, lanky teammate.
"Are they going to be okay?" Vista asked Aegis, worry clear in her voice and face as she bit her lip hard.
"They should be. I got knocked out too for a bit when the bomb hit, but I recovered quickly and I didn't actually get hurt." Aegis explained as he led Vista over to a fallen log, motioning the young girl to sit down on it before doing the same himself. "So, I doubt the bomb was made with the intent to hurt. No, I think that was more of a teleport bomb of some sort." He theorized.
Vista hummed, accepting his explanation for now. "Right. Do we have our phones with us?" She asked, and predictably, Aegis shook his head.
"We do, but they're fried. I tried using mine and Clock's, but neither would turn on. We're gonna need to wait for Kid to wake up and take a look at them." He told her, reaching into his pocket and grabbing his phone, which he handed to Vista.
And, just as the red-clad brute had claimed, the phone refused to turn on no matter what Vista did, much to her annoyance and dismay.
"Damn it." She sighed, handing it back to Aegis. "Right. Can you do some aerial recon? I'm guessing you didn't so far because you had to keep an eye on us, right?" She asked.
"Mhm," Aegis grunted approvingly, even as a teasing smile appeared on his face. "Just so, intrepid leader."
Vista blushed slightly at the comment, glaring at Aegis. "Don't even start with that." She told him, earning a short laugh in response.
Technically, Aegis was the team leader, but with everything that had been happening as of late, that rank meant a lot less than it did even just a month prior... Which even then was more of a symbolic thing anyways.
After all, when you had the Butcher looking to carve you apart and make a Christmas tree with your organs, there wasn't exactly a whole lot of time or need to adhere to a traditional leadership structure.
Vista shuddered slightly at the memories that thought invoked, and her fists briefly clenched hard enough to bleed as she remembered Browbeat. She hadn't really known the boy all that well, but they'd still exchanged a few words here and there during the few days he'd been on as a Ward before the Butcher had eviscerated him.
Pushing away that particular horrifying memory, Vista refocused on the situation at hand. "Right. You recon and I'll hold down the fort. Try and see where we are- the sooner we're found, the sooner we can go back." She said.
Aegis grimaced, his good humor immediately leaving him at those words. "Right." He murmured as he floated up into the air. "Stay strong, Missy. I'll be right back."
And with those last words, Aegis flew up into the sky. Vista watched him go for a bit, keeping her eyes on him as he floated high up before flying off sideways, rapidly cutting off her line of sight to him.
The young hero sighed, bringing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them as she looked back at her teammates, finding all four of them still unconscious.
She sighed.
God damn Bakuda. Even in death, she still found ways of being a complete and utter bitch.
Vista had never been a big connoisseur of forest wildlife, or just wildlife in general, really.
However, as she looked up at a curious-looking crow staring down at her from where it resided on the branches of a tree, she couldn't help but admire its beauty.
Unfortunately for her, however, she didn't get to do so for long.
"Where are we."
Vista startled, a half-screamed curse leaving her lips as she whirled around, power instinctively reaching to create space between her and whoever had spoken, but Vista clamped it down as she came face-to-face with a now-conscious Phantom.
"Fuck me, Phantom, you gotta stop doing that," Vista told the only other girl on the team as she rested a hand over her chest, feeling her heart still thundering in her chest. "You'll give someone a heart attack one day, seriously."
Phantom said nothing, her face expressionless beneath the upper-face Venetian mask she wore.
Vista sighed as she held back a shudder. Phantom wasn't a bad teammate, and there were very few people that Vista would rather have on her side during a fight over her, but god could she be difficult to deal with at times. "I don't know. Aegis went out ten or so minutes ago to take a look, and he hasn't come back yet."
Phantom nodded sharply. "I see. Phones?"
"Broken. We were hoping Win could fix them when he wakes." Vista dutifully answered.
"Annoying," Phantom remarked, a comment that Vista could wholeheartedly agree on. "... We're lucky to be alive." The other girl added after a few moments.
"We are. We very much are." Vista agreed, a soft shudder running through her.
Phantom, to her credit, had no such reactions, her eyes narrowing. "We need food, water, and shelter. Without them, any plans will be useless." She mused aloud, obviously more so for Vista's benefit than for any personal one. "Hopefully Aegis will find a river, and we'll need resources for Kid Win to make a water purifier. Food should be..." She trailed off, her eyes switching over to the bird watching them with an honestly unsettling intensity.
Before it could even react, Phantom's hand shot out, transforming in an instant into a long lance of what looked like solid darkness, closing the distance between bird and girl in less than a second before impaling the bird right through.
"Not an issue. Plenty of animals we can hunt if we need." Phantom finished as her arm retracted back to normal, depositing the rapidly dying animal into her hands.
Vista nodded at that, not even blinking at the display of animal cruelty.
Say what you will about Brockton Bay, but out of all of America's cities, Vista firmly believed that it held the number one spot in its ability to desensitize people to violence and bloodshed, especially considering the latest series of insane maniacs that had plagued it.
"We'll need a fire to cook that." She remarked, watching as Phantom deposited the bird's corpse at the left end of the log she'd been sitting on. "Never thought wilderness survival training would actually come in handy."
"Neither did I," Phantom said, her lips quirking up into what could generously be called a slight smile.
It was then that three almost simultaneous groans alerted the two girls, causing them to quickly turn to look at their teammates.
Kid Win, Gallant, and Clockblocker were awake. Phantom and Vista shared a quick glance with each other before rushing to their aid.
"... So, to summarize, we're alive but lost," Gallant said as the six Wards sat in a circle around each other, Aegis having recently returned from his scouting to the pleasant surprise of his whole team now being awake.
"Great." Clockblocker bemoaned, letting himself fall onto his back with a dull thump, his head hitting the soft grass. "Just fucking great."
"Come on, Clock, don't be like that." Kid chastised as he fiddled with his phone, his tongue sticking out as he used what few on-hand tools he always had on him for emergency repairs to work. "It could be worse. At least we're alive and not in an empty world or whatnot."
"That's not necessarily a good thing," Phantom murmured, glancing at Aegis. "Were there people in the villages you saw?"
Aegis nodded. "I did. Not a lot, but those were definitely people."
Phantom nodded back at him, giving him a small smile that caused the boy to look down, a not-so-small blush on his face. Phantom maturely ignored Clockblocker's snickers as she continued. "We're going to have to be careful when we approach them. We're in unknown territory, and considering Aegis said the villages looked primitive, we might not be in the USA anymore." She grimaced. "Worst case scenario, we're in the CUI. Less bad one, we might be in Africa."
Needless to say, the mere mention of the boogeyman state to the vast majority of parahumans instantly brought the mood down.
Still, Aegis spoke. "No. Not Africa." He denied. "I couldn't see well from so high up, but the people were all white, and I couldn't see any colored people there."
"Ah. Well, that's not good." Gallant murmured, receiving noises of agreement in return.
For a bit, the six Wards remained silent as they each processed the events in their own ways, keeping to their own thoughts as they pondered.
It did not last long, of course, as Phantom spoke up once more. "We need a plan," She told her team. "Kid Win, how is the-"
She was cut off, however, as a sudden noise startled the group. Almost as one, they all shot to their feet, turning in the direction of the source of the noises, which grew and grew until they became recognizable as the sounds of dogs and men.
There was laughter and barking and yelling. The Wards all tensed even further, exchanging glances with each other as they quickly tried to decide what to do.
Fleeing was an option, but not a good one. They didn't know the area, and they had too many slow members with them to hide at a moment's notice effectively.
Stand and fight it was, then.
The sounds grew closer and closer with each passing second. Perhaps some other Wards teams might have started panicking or lost cohesion in the face of such tension, but unfortunately for these Wards, they were used to far, far worst than some mild uncertainty.
After all, compared to the dead-set certainty that there was an immortal maniac that wanted to brutally murder them and their families, one that had tried to do so many, many times, and even succeeded once, this was nothing.
And then, suddenly, a man popped up at the edge of the clearing, followed by another, and another, and then some more, followed by some big hunting dogs.
There was a sudden pause as the newcomers noticed the Wards, boisterous conversations dying down as they took in the weirdly-dressed boys and two girls in the middle of the clearing.
This pause, unfortunately, did not last for very long as one of the men- an overweight older man with a large beard and mustache- stepped forward, a snarl on his face.
"Poachers!"
