Realign 14.l
Saturday, August 11
The ringing of her cell phone beat an aggressively chipper rhythm into Laura's head, and she reached over to her nightstand and tapped the accept button without opening her eyes. There was only one person she had given that particular ringtone to, which meant she had a decent guess what this call was about. "What is it?" she asked anyway.
"What do you think about Lady Sureshot?"
That did make her open her eyes because what? "What the hell are you talking about?"
"My magic cape costume name!" Kayleigh said, as though that was supposed to be obvious to anyone she would have asked that random question.
"If I'm going to hang out with you and Taylor and Missy doing this whole magic thing, I need a cool name. I can't go around calling myself Kayleigh, now can I? I know Samantha does, but apparently she can turn into a raccoon when she doesn't want to be bothered. I can't, so I need a different name, like Cailleach or Calamity Witch."
Laura's face scrunched up as she tried and failed to follow the leaps of logic Kayleigh has just described. She supposed it did not really matter; somehow, someway, she had ultimately arrived at a somewhat reasonable conclusion. "How long have you been thinking about this for that to be your best idea?"
"…Since Wednesday?"
And that was the best she could come up with? Laura shook her head. "It sounds like something from a kid's Saturday morning cartoon."
"Yeah, you're right." Kayleigh agreed that name sounded dumb? That was a shock.
"It doesn't have enough oomph, enough pizazz."
Or maybe not.
"What about you? Are you going to keep going with Cailleach, or do you think you'll pick something else?"
She huffed, though her heart was not in it. "You talk like I've already decided to do it. I'm not jumping into something like this with both feet without looking twice where I'm about to fall. I'm not that desperate for power."
She was not desperate! Curious, sure. Tempted even. But not desperate. Her powers might be weak, but they were hers. When her 'magic' could only be tapped into with one of these Devices, would it really be hers, or would she just be running around with power loaned from Dragon and Shipwright and Taylor?
Even if what Shipwright had told her about that Armed Device of hers was almost attractive enough for her to agree to it despite those worries. The idea of having protection equal to a high-level Brute? Protection stronger even than Taylor's, which had been enough to let the girl all but shrug off a rocket-propelled grenade straight to the face? Not just protection, either; she would have the strength to attack at her fingertips as well, and Shipwright said she could probably create a spell that duplicated the effect of her powers relatively easily.
It offered her everything she could want for no real cost, and that meant it was an offer too good to be true. There was a catch here, she knew it, but try as she might she just could not find it.
A small sound almost like a sniff came from the other end of the line, and Laura's heart twisted in her chest when she realized how her last comment must have sounded.
"I just want us to share something," Kayleigh whispered.
"All of us. It's magic, and it seems to be pulling all of us together. If it weren't for this, we'd all be on different sides. You and Taylor would be bitter enemies, and I'd be standing on the sidelines where I couldn't help either of you. Just because I'm not a cape doesn't mean I don't want to stand right there beside you."
"I know, Kayleigh. I know," she said nearly as softly. "I… I just don't know how this will really work. What happens if I take the offer, become a hero, and then we have to fight Winter Hill? What do I do if I have to fight people I've shared the last year-plus with?"
What should she do when it was her own father standing across from her?
"Maybe talk to Taylor about it?" was her best friend's immediate suggestion.
"Do you really think she'll force the issue if you say you don't think you can fight your old teammates? I don't."
Honestly? Laura did not, either.
Kayleigh seemed to take her silence as confirmation.
"So it's an easy problem to fix. Besides, there's more you can do than go out looking for a fight with Winter Hill. Not that I think you can put that off forever…"
"What are you talking about? You just said you didn't think I'd have to fight them!"
"No, I said I don't think Taylor
would make you fight them," Kayleigh told her gently.
"I'm worried the capes won't give you any choice. You said they don't care when you go out to check on people, but when they find out there's a new cape who won't back down? Or worse, they find out it's you? You don't want a fight, but will they?"
That was an angle she had not considered, and she felt something pressed against her lips. She was biting her nails again. Dropping her hand back to the bed, she did her best to ignore her father's words bouncing around inside her head.
'You're a cape now,' he told her on more than one occasion when she had just joined the gang,
'and capes don't show fear. Fear is for the weak.'
Not that he ever cared about her little nervous habit before she gained powers, a different part of her whispered traitorously.
"You're not going to give up on your people," Kayleigh continued with all the confidence of someone who had far too much faith in her,
"and they won't let you do what you want. Not unless you show them you're not someone to mess with. That's kind of the thing, though, you know? From what Taylor and that Shipwright guy were talking, it sounds like you'd be strong enough that you can protect your chunk of people without help whether or not anyone wants you to do it."
"Maybe." It was all the answer she could give right now.
It took a few minutes to convince Kayleigh to go back to figuring out her new name, and Laura sighed and shook her head. She was not foolish enough to try predicting what Kayleigh would come up next, but surely it could not be any worse than 'Lady Sureshot'.
The dilemma gnawed at her, and she wandered out of her room and down the stairs as she tried to chew on it in return. Poking her head into the kitchen, she found her mother chopping vegetables and generally working on dinner. She was probably the worst person to get unbiased advice from, but she was also the only one Laura really had on hand. "Hey, Mom? Do you have a minute?"
Her mother nodded her head. "Of course, honey. What's on your mind?"
"Well, um…" Why was this so hard to admit?! "I was talking to someone a couple of days ago. A cape—"
The knife her mother was using on a bunch of carrots came down harder than she probably intended. "Laura! I've told you before, I don't want to hear anything about what you and your father do after dark."
"But Mom—"
"No!" She spun around, pale blue eyes narrowed and premature white streaked through her dark brown hair. "That is a rule in this house. I don't want anything to do with Winter Hill."
"I'm planning to leave!"
Laura's words caught her by surprise, and from the slow blink they surprised her mother too. "You're… Leave? What… What do you mean?"
She rubbed her arm uncomfortably. It was hard to put into words what she was feeling or thinking, even to herself. She did not know if she could explain it well enough for her mother, who wanted to remain intentionally unaware of everything cape-related, to understand. She still had to try. "I met a cape several months ago, and recently she said she had a way to… to change my powers. Make them stronger, different. She had one condition to do it. You see, she's a hero, and she says she won't do anything that makes the gangs stronger. If I want her to improve my powers, I have to go straight. I can't be a villain anymore."
"You'd have to be a hero." Laura nodded, and her mother reached back to the counter to put the knife down on the cutting board. "And you said you're planning to leave. You've already decided to go through with it?"
"Not really? Not for sure. She's still waiting on my answer. I don't want to say yes if everything is just going to go wrong as soon as I do. Like Dad! He knows what I can do, and it isn't like he'd take me just not wanting to go out anymore as a good reason."
She sighed and leaned against a nearby chair at the head of the table. This was the hardest part of the offer Taylor made. It was not as if she could switch sides without consequence. No, she would still be living with a gang leader, the very kind of person Taylor intended to fight off. There was no way she could cover up her change in powers and allegiance.
Accepting a Device was a pipe dream, after all.
"Maybe he would," her mom murmured, and she looked up to find her mother looking out the window. "Cape powers are weird. Did you know there are capes whose only powers are to shut down other capes' powers? Some of them can do it permanently. There's a cape known as Slender out on the West Coast who is known to target villains. One touch, and their powers are gone forever."
What she had just heard caught Laura off-guard. Not that there were power-nullifiers; that was old news, and they were the bogeymen of capes all over the world. What was so surprising was that her own mother would somehow know and have such detailed information about some cape on the other side of the country. "How did you learn that?" she could not help but ask.
"…I never wanted you involved in your father's business," her mother admitted. "I did everything I could to keep you out of it when you were little. If it weren't for the
damn Warlocks…"
Her eyes moved to her mother's right hand, and even though it was out of sight she could clearly picture what it looked like. The middle three fingers all chopped off bit by bit to the second knuckle and the ends burned shut with a lighter pulled out of a biker's pocket. A biker she had frozen along with all of his buddies when she Triggered watching her mother be tortured just for the fun of it. If her mother was not left-handed like Laura herself was, she would have been crippled for life, and all so a bunch of douchebags could have a laugh.
Taylor once asked what happened when she froze someone. She did not know, but she did know that collapsing a building on top of them would still kill them.
Her mother let out a sigh and continued, "Anyway, after that happened, I… did some reading. There's lots of guesses on the Internet about how people get powers, but not so much about how to get rid of them. It isn't something capes are comfortable talking about, apparently."
Damn right they were uncomfortable talking about it! A cape's powers were their entire identity. Laura shook her head. That was not the important part of this. What was more important was whether her mother was really implying what she thought she was.
"I actually considered contacting Slender and begging him to take your powers away. If you didn't have powers, your father wouldn't have a reason to force you to work for Winter Hill. You would be safe. Then I found out anyone he's ever taken powers from has died under mysterious circumstances. That ruled him out from ever putting his hands on you." Her mother sighed and turned back to look at you. "If we need an explanation, that might be the best one. Not him specifically, but someone like him. You were out doing whatever it is you do, and you ran into a new cape you didn't recognize. He took away your powers, and now you're just a normal girl. It is possible, so your father shouldn't ask too many questions, and he'll be too worried about a new cape who can take away his own powers for him to pay attention to any changes in your routine for the next few weeks."
Much as she never would have believed it before tonight, that was actually not a bad plan. It had the advantage of being true, at least in the broad strokes. Taylor was talking about removing her power, and Taylor was a relatively new cape. It would cause panic, but that was not the worst thing she had ever done. There was just one rather glaring problem facing them. "Lies have a way of coming apart at the worst possible time," she reminded her mother. "What happens if Dad finds out the truth?"
He would not be happy, that was assured. If she thought he would be angry with her quitting, finding out she had lied about it would just make it all the worse.
"Then you run." She looked back at her mother to find her mother no longer looking at her. "You get far away from here. Kayleigh's father is too close to this; you can't hide there. Call your new friend and tell her to give you somewhere to lay low. I'll come by in a few days with clothes and anything else you need."
"What about you? He'd be just as angry at you as he would be at me."
Her mother tried to give her a smile. The effect was ruined by the tears starting to fall from her eyes. "Don't worry about me. I'm the one who married him, even if I didn't know what kind of man he really was. I made my choice. You didn't. If he finds out, worry about yourself first."
Any response she might have prepared shriveled up and died in her throat. Laura knew her parents did not always see eye-to-eye. She knew her mother wanted nothing more than to pretend their family was normal and not neck-deep in organized crime. She knew her father focused more on Winter Hill than he did his family. It had been one of the best parts of joining the gang, at least at first; spending more time with her father.
She never would have guessed that her mother was willing to risk the full anger of a Brute and already half-resigned to the consequences.
"Blasted onions," her mother tacked on as she rubbed her eyes. "They always make me cry."
Laura's gaze drifted over to the two onions sitting untouched on the counter. "Mom…"
"None of that, honey. Go upstairs and tell your friend you want to accept her deal. You can't know sometimes if there's a time limit or not on offers to change your life. All too often there is. You can't let fear and doubt hold you back when you see something better down the road." A crippled hand came into view and fiddled with a gold ring on her mother's left hand. "If you do, you'll look back on it later and realize what you settled for instead is so much worse."
Leaving the kitchen, she made her way back to her room and looked down at the phone sitting innocently on the bed. Her hands shook as she picked it up and started to type. Several failed attempts followed before she looked at the message that was left. It was hard to believe that this was all she could come up with, that this was all it might take for all her fears to become horrible reality. Or for things to change for the better in every way. There was no way to tell.
Before she could second guess herself, she hit the send button and watched the animation that signified a successful text. Everything was about to change with just two little words, two words she would never be able to take back.
"I'm in."
I don't know how obvious it is, but Slender is based off Seraviel's story Manager. It's a good read, I highly recommend it. Come to think of it, this might have been the story that introduced me to Worm. 🤔
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