(5) Re-Evaluate
A state of emergency was called, and the usual restrictions were lifted off the Wards so they could all pitch in where they could. Kid Win worked alternately with Armsmaster and PRT bomb squads to locate and, when possible, disarm Bakuda's explosives. Vista became a high-priority asset, able to use her powers to help extricate trapped people in freshly-demolished buildings. Aegis didn't need as much sleep as the rest of them, so he pulled triple shifts playing bodyguard to everyone else.
Gallant tried to get Miss Militia's attention and time, but she was needed with the rest of the Protectorate, working at all hours of the day to find Bakuda, to fight the ABB, to hopefully recapture Lung. In the meantime, there were more important things: try to help out where he could, try to locate people that had been trapped and overlooked, try to get a hold of Victoria when she wasn't in the thick of things, to press a kiss to her knuckles and whisper, 'Be safe.' None of it was easy. Gallant's vision swam with blues and oranges and fitful swathes of black. All over the city was fear, fear, fear.
"So, you're having trouble seeing where people are?" Taylor was the only one not helping. She wasn't fully trained for the Console yet, and her power left her too weak to be competitive in person. From the sullen embers that ate the the edges of her colors like burning paper, she wasn't happy about it. She stopped sulking on the couch and considered his frustrated confession, instead. "Well… you could take my Shade with you. She can obey orders, I'll tell her to listen to you."
"I don't know about that…" Gallant looked away, unwilling to say no to Taylor's face when she was just trying to be useful. Aegis, in the middle of cleaning sweat and dust out of his mask, had a different opinion.
"If it works, I don't see the harm in it. Gallant, you could swap with me for the next shift, I was going out with Clockblocker and a rapid response team. Would that be alright?" He looked up at Gallant and gave him a crooked, hopeful smile. Aegis was covered with trailing motes of dark green fatigue, a few ripples of black despair flashing between them like startled fish. He needed a rest, needed time to collect himself; Gallant could not in good conscience refuse him.
"Y-yeah, that would be fine. If Lantern's sure her Shade will obey, I mean. But… doesn't having it out for long make you tired, Lantern?"
Taylor gave a halfhearted shrug. "You'll only be gone for a couple of hours, right? It should be fine. As long as I'm asleep she'll listen to you, so I'll just take a couple sleeping pills and nap until you get back."
With the plan decided, Aegis left to go let one of the adult heroes know about the changes, while Lantern crept off to her room for a moment and came back with a bottle of sleep aid medicine. She shook it, pried off the top, and swallowed two pills with a glass of water from the small kitchenette before replacing the lid; from the looks and sounds, the small bottle was perhaps three-quarters full. As Gallant watched, her shadow wavered and moved strangely under the light of her lantern. Over the next few minutes it grew darker, more defined, until the shadow pulled away from Lantern altogether, only to crawl along the carpet and vanish into the much fainter shade cast by Gallant's armored boots.
"There. The Shade will get up from the floor in a while." Lighter greens flickered around the edges of Taylor's cloud and smothered the embers and she smiled, just a little; happy to be helping in the crisis, or happy to help him, or happy to be doing something heroic with her power at last. "Just… you will come wake me up as soon as you get back, right?"
* * *
The Shade was not-quite weightless, Gallant found. Once they were on the move, it crawled back out from his own shadow and pulled itself out of the ground, then wrapped its slender arms around Gallant's neck and shoulders. When he walked, it drifted slightly in the air, trailing behind him like a cloak. He had to explain the arrangement to Clockblocker and Kid Win and the PRT squad they were assigned to; it was met with equal parts skepticism and relief.
"Whatever works, I guess," Clockblocker said with a shrug. "So uh… what do we call it? Lantern? Lantern 2.0? Shade?"
"Lantern calls it her Shade, yeah."
"Fine by me. Hey Shade, what's shakin'?"
He wasn't sure if Clockblocker had expected a response, but after a moment the Shade leaned forward a little over his shoulder and murmured, East of here, a small liquor store. Its walls have cracked apart. There are two employees still inside.
"Uh… what?" Clockblocker faltered, and Gallant tried to look at the Shade still pressed close to his neck.
A nearly the same moment, the PRT corporal guiding the team pressed a hand to his headset, listening. "Head's up, another detonation just occured on E12th, prelim reports says a sonic bomb. Move out."
The liquor store wasn't far, and Gallant caught Kid Win shooting him and the Shade an uneasy look when they arrived. There were two women inside, one unconcious and the other with a broken arm, and it was careful work to lift the shattered walls off of them. Kid Win had a machine copied from the basic idea of a vehicle jack for the task, and Gallant was helping to hold it steady when the Shade leaned her head close to his. That one. She steals from the till. A little here, a little there, whatever she needs for pills to help the pain. An injury that never healed. Gallant tried to shift his grip on the slab of drywall and concrete, suddenly feeling the barely-there weight of the Shade so much more keenly. The manager knows. And he knows she will never look at him like he wants her to. But still, he blames it on the other girl. Every day she leaves a little more frustrated, a little more tired.
Kid Win's machine finished lifting the broken wall off of the second clerk, and paramedics stepped in to strap the woman's neck into a brace before lifting her out of the rubble. The Shade leaned forward and turned her head, just enough for Gallant to catch a glimpse of a greyscale smile. She bought a handgun yesterday.
Cold sweat slid down Gallant's spine, and he could easily imagine the stark blue of it. He wasn't sure what to say, or what he could say, and then the PRT corporal alerted them to another wreckage with suspected survivors, and there was no time for mulling over what-ifs. They moved from emergency to emergency, and the Shade hung 'round his neck a little heavier with every whispered secret.
* * *
It was a little over five hours before their shift was up, and the squad returned to the PRT building for a rest. The Shade had long since grown too heavy, too defined, and had taken to walking beside Gallant where she could murmur the locations of civilians and, quieter, tidbits that were better off unsaid. The oilslick of colors drifting through the Shade's body were so pronounced, it might have been difficult to tell her apart from a real person if not for the pitch black shadows she was made of. She grew quiet on the return to the PRT, and did not break her silence until Kid Win had shuffled off to his room, leaving Gallant alone with the Shade in the Commons.
Dean?
He'd been about to lead the Shade back to Taylor, but the utterance of his name made him stop and turn. The Shade had never said his name, or anyone's. And there was something in her tone, a wavering dull orange of fear, that had never been there before either. Dean took off his helmet and watched as the Shade rubbed her hands over her arms. Dean... I feel cold.
It's... it's hard to move, and...
...why am I so cold... I'm scared... I-- I didn't mean it, I'm sorry, Dean, I'm so sorry.
Dean's heart thudded painfully against his chest, as an unnamed terror started to clench in his gut. He reached out, but the Shade collapsed into black motes. The shadow spilled to the floor and raced down the hall, towards Taylor's dorm. Dean was fast on its tail, and he got to the slightly-open door moments after what remained of the Shade. Taylor, he could see through the crack, was lying on her bed wrapped in a blanket. Her colors were so desaturated in sleep it was hard to see them at all. The bottle of sleeping pills was on her nightstand, the cap off, and--
The Shade's face filled the open crack of the door. She pulled it shut, wrenching the doorknob out of Dean's hand with the force. "H-hey! Hey! Taylor!"
Dean twisted the knob and the door opened, unlocked and unbarred. Taylor was sitting on the bed, still tangled in the blanket, and her cloud of colors quickly gaining hue as she woke up. "Mm? What?"
"Taylor, are you okay? Where's..." The Shade was nowhere in sight. Of course it wasn't. Taylor must have recalled it when she woke up. Dean's pulse started to slow and he let go of his deathgrip on the doorknob, all at once feeling awkward for bursting into a girl's room.
"Yeah, just--" Taylor yawned, and finally escaped the blanket. "Just sleepy. How'd it go? Was my Shade helpful?"
Light greens and hopeful gold tickled at her edges. What else could he say, but "Yeah, she was."
