Capítulo 2423: 6
Chapter 6: Overture 1-5
Overture 1.5
For a long moment, I could do nothing but sit there, frozen. The girl in black and purple spandex stepped closer, a Cheshire grin pulling her mouth upwards and her eyes glittering in the dark — green or blue; I couldn't tell in the poor lighting. She had the sort of lean figure that told me she took care of herself, but whether that included some kind of martial arts or strength training, or even more intimidating, a Brute power, it was impossible for me to see. As skintight as her costume was, it wasn't quite formfitting enough to give away muscle tone, or if it was, again, the lighting was too poor to tell.
Then, the moment passed, and I tensed and prepared to fight her. As tired as I was, I could at least pull out Medea and use spatial transportation to escape, as long as I could put enough distance between this girl and me.
But the girl only laughed and raised her hands in the universal sign of surrender.
"Hey, hey, calm down," she said. "I'm not here to fight!"
She stepped onto the sidewalk next to me, then plopped down with a sigh. I didn't relax, and when she glanced at me, she sighed again, frowned, and muttered, "Oh, for goodness' sake."
She slung an arm over my shoulders, pulled me close, and even as I tensed up more, she planted a swift peck on the exposed part of my cheek.
I felt myself flush, and almost without realizing it, all of the tension drained straight out of me.
"Uh-bwah?"
"Consider that a down payment," she said, grinning, "as a thank you for saving our butts, tonight."
"I…what?"
It took a moment for what she said to make it through my head. In hindsight, that kiss was probably designed to do exactly what it did: make me drop my guard and throw me off balance.
"You saved our butts," she repeated. "Me, Grue, Regent, Bitch — or Hellhound, if you want to keep things PG — if you hadn't been here, Lung would've turned us all into cinders."
"You're…"
Something clicked into place in my brain. She said that I'd saved her and three others — her friends? Her teammates? I had no idea — from Lung, who was going to…
"You're one of the kids he was talking about," I said slowly. "The ones he wanted to…kill?"
"Yep, that's right!" the girl smiled. "Name's Tattletale, and you saved my butt from becoming a smear on the pavement — seriously, thanks for that."
She offered her hand, but I didn't take it. After a moment, she let her hand drop, but didn't really seem disappointed. Like maybe she'd expected that I wouldn't take it. I still wasn't quite sure what to make of her.
"Anyway," said Tattletale, "we spent most of the day arguing our plan, once we heard he was after us. Got pretty heated, at times. Eventually, we decided, screw it, we'll meet him head on. Wasn't sure how that one was gonna go, but it wasn't like we had many more options. Better than letting him burn down the Docks looking for us."
"You…were gonna fight him?" I asked. "I didn't…"
I didn't see you, I didn't say. It sounded like I was accusing her.
"We ran into Oni Lee, first," Tattletale explained, unbothered. "Scary guy, but there's a reason he's not in charge of the ABB. We went back and forth for a little bit, then he got spooked and skedaddled when Lung and the rest didn't show. And by the time we got here to fight Lung, well…"
She gestured down the street, at the damage Lung and I had caused in our fight.
"You seemed like you had the fight well in hand, and Lung was burning way too hot for our tastes. I like my skin and my costume separate, if you know what I mean."
I grimaced and rubbed at my arm where Lung had burned me. Luck, it seemed, was on my side, because the injury didn't carry over — or, given Siegfried's ridiculous constitution, it might just have healed before I dropped out of it. Either way, I did know what she meant.
"So…where's the rest of your team, then?"
Tattletale shrugged. "They didn't want to stick around. Me, I figured the least I could do was say hi to the latest hero on the streets, especially since she pulled our collective butts out of the fire — almost literally, in this case."
"Ah…you're welcome?"
What did you even say to that sort of thing?
"So…what did you even do to get him so angry at you? To the point that he was coming after you himself?"
Tattletale hummed. "Ever heard of the Ruby Dreams?"
I shook my head a little. "No," I said.
"It's a casino," she told me. I had a feeling I was starting to see where this was going. "Owned by Lung and the ABB. It's a front for his gang, where they do stuff like sell drugs or launder their money. Big part of their enterprise. Not vital, but big enough to hurt, and well within ABB territory."
"And you…what? Busted it up?"
Tattletale laughed. "We robbed it," she corrected. "Went in there, took whatever wasn't nailed down, then left. In, out, no one really got hurt, except Lung's finances. Showed everyone that it was an ABB front, too."
"You robbed it?" I asked incredulously. "What, like a villain?"
Tattletale just shook her head. "How do you think independent heroes make any money? If you're not part of the Protectorate, you don't have tons of donations coming in like New Wave, or you're not selling, I dunno, costumes or something on the side, the only way to get anything is to take it from the villains. It's not like they earned it all legally."
"Sorry," I mumbled.
And it wasn't like the idea that "hero" and "villain" weren't clean, clear-cut lines was a new one, either. One of the things I had discovered in my research was that a lot of heroes and a lot of villains depended entirely on context and culture. Someone like King Arthur would've been a hero to the defending Celts, but a vile villain to the invading Saxons or the fading Roman Empire. Too, some villains had become villains after being abandoned by everyone and everything they might have counted on — like Medusa and Medea, both victims who had been left behind by those who should have rescued them.
Considering what things were like at Winslow, it wasn't all that hard to empathize with them.
"It's fine." Tattletale waved it off. "I think most of the populace probably doesn't understand what it really means to be an independent hero, or that some villains only get the label because something really screwed up happened to them in a really public place. Sometimes, the line between one or the other is separated by how good you are at PR."
It sounded…dark, cynical. Hero and villain were sometimes a matter of perspective and who was telling the story, yes, and I had a unique insight on how true that could be, but all the same, I couldn't help but wonder…
"Is it really that bad?" I asked.
Tattletale glanced at me, pursed her lips, and for a moment, didn't answer. Maybe she was weighing the pros and cons. Maybe it was just that uncomfortable a subject.
"Do you know what a Trigger Event is?" she said at length.
"I…vaguely remember reading something about it."
One of the first things I'd done once I realized I had powers was to go and look them up on Parahumans Online — PHO — to see what I could find out. I'd learned a lot of very helpful things, particularly on the FAQ thread that had the PRT's power classification system, but one of the things most parahumans refused to talk about was how they got their powers. There were vague mentions of "Trigger Events" in relation to them, but no one had really been clear about what one was or how they worked.
"It's your One Bad Day," said Tattletale. "Sometimes, it's watching your best friend get murdered. Sometimes, it's sitting there while your parents argue as they go through a divorce. Sometimes, it's being shoved into a pool when you can't swim. Trigger Events are different between each parahuman, but universally, they suck. As a consolation prize, though, you get superpowers, like flying through the air or shooting laser beams out of your eyes or whatever. I'm sure you don't even need to think about it to remember when yours was."
"Ah." I wasn't sure what to say to that. The Locker was…something I'd rather forget, if I could. "Yeah."
Tattletale blew out a sigh from between her lips. "Not everyone gets a clean trigger, though. A lot of us, the fact that we even have powers is something that isn't obvious, so when we get them, no one can even tell. Some people, though, theirs are messy. They trigger, they don't have control of their powers, it's a high stress situation, and someone gets hurt or killed, and everyone watching it happen knows who's responsible. And in a situation like that, without someone like the PRT or the Protectorate to help control the narrative…"
I looked down at the asphalt, and what she was saying felt all too real. It could have been me, in fact. The Locker had been my first Install, done more on instinct than out of any real intent, but if I hadn't been so panicked that I threw it away as soon as I could, if I had burst out of that locker with all of that power, half mad from everything and lashing out in my pain and anger, would that have been me? Would I have killed Emma, Sophia, and Madison, only to realize exactly what I'd done once I couldn't take it back?
If I had, I could only imagine I would have run. I would have turned and ran away, and then that would have been me, all over the news, everyone calling me a murderer. I could even imagine a teary-eyed Alan Barnes talking about his monster of a daughter as though she were just an innocent victim.
"You get labeled a villain."
And what would that have done to Dad? To know that I could never go home would be hard on me, but how would Dad deal with it? Having his daughter on the run, never able to see her again, after everything else? Having so many people to blame, but no one to really take it out on but himself? Everyone telling him I was scum, that I needed to be put down, that the PRT were gonna bring me in, and that he should be ashamed of me…
Dad had already broken when Mom died, and he hadn't really put himself back together. Losing me, too, would…
"Yep," Tattletale said grimly. "And once that happens, you've got no secret identity, you've got the heroes trying to bring you in whenever they see you, and basically the only option you've got left is…"
"Start robbing banks or stealing wallets," I finished.
"Or join a gang."
The bitterness in Tattletale's voice startled me. When I looked over at her, she had hunched over herself, folding her arms across her knees, and she was scowling darkly.
"Sometimes, you can't help that one," she said, something strange in her voice. More personal, maybe, like she was drawing from an example of something she'd actually seen happen. "Some asshole comes along and puts a gun to your head, says, 'Join or get a nine millimeter lobotomy,' or threatens to kill everyone you care about. A lot of independents wind up in that kind of situation, especially in Brockton."
She glanced my way.
"You probably don't have to worry about that. You're basically Eidolon Lite. Only an idiot or someone with more pride than sense, like Lung, would actually try anything against you." She gave a short, quiet laugh. "Honestly, I pity the guy who tries to pick a fight against you. Siegfried is frightening enough, but he's a pretty straightforward guy. Someone more like a wizard would be completely unfair."
I jumped a little, startled. "How did you…"
She tapped the side of her head, grinning that Cheshire grin. "Not that hard to figure out, really. Plus, I heard some of what you were talking about with Miss M. and Armsmaster. They were right, you know. Triumvirate tier. Easily."
I flushed and looked away, oddly pleased. Even hearing it before from Miss Militia and Armsmaster didn't make it less flattering to hear again.
It was an incredibly heady feeling, receiving that kind of praise. I'd known almost from the moment I started experimenting with my powers that they were probably in the same tier as Alexandria, Legend, and Eidolon, and I'd never really forgotten that. To hear other people say it, though, to get that sort of…validation after nearly two years of Emma's insults and snide comments from her hangers-on, it felt…good. Better than good. Better than I had a word for, really.
"Well," said Tattletale, "anyway, there's still a couple of things I needed to talk to you about, but it's getting really late. You need to get home and I need to get back to base before my teammates form a search party and come looking for me."
From a pouch somewhere on her hip, she pulled out a small notepad — barely more than a stack of post-it notes, really — and a pen, pressed it up against one thigh for stability, and started scribbling across it rapidly. When she was done, she tore away the topmost sheet, clicked her pen and put it away, then turned back to me.
"Here." She handed it to me and I took it. In the dark, I couldn't read what it said. "That's my personal cell number and my username on PHO. Give me a call or send me a PM or something and we'll meet up tomorrow after you get out of school, yeah? We can go over everything else important then."
"I…okay." I nodded. "Sure. I'll do that."
She offered me the grin that I was starting to think was her trademark. "It's a date."
I felt my cheeks flush again as I remembered the kiss she'd given me before, and like I had with Armsmaster, I found myself wishing my mask had covered my full face, if only to hide my embarrassment.
"I…yeah."
Tattletale stood up, stretching her legs and brushing dirt off of her rear. After a moment, she turned to me again, offered a smile and a wave, and said, "Goodnight, Apocrypha."
"Goodnight," I replied almost automatically.
Then, she turned away and started off at a jog — like she was in a bit of a hurry but not rushing desperately — and she turned a corner and was gone.
And suddenly, I was alone again and somewhat cold. Even though it was on the cusp of summer, it was still a fairly chilly night, and my costume apparently wasn't much designed for the cold. For a long moment, I just sat there, feeling the skin along my arms prickle underneath the bodysuit, thinking about everything that had happened. About how strange and impossible it seemed, like something out of a book or a TV show.
I'd gone out tonight with no plans of getting into a major fight, with the idea I might stop a drug deal or a mugging or something. Small time stuff, just something to sink my teeth into. Instead, I'd found Lung, decided to fight him to protect the kids he was talking about killing, beat him up after he and I trashed a street together, later found out those kids were actually a group of teenager capes who'd pissed him off by robbing his casino, met Armsmaster, who told me I'd be welcomed into the Wards with open arms, met Miss Militia, who told me much of the same, and…maybe made a friend?
It felt almost like too much. There should be a limit on the number of world-altering things that happened in the course of an hour or two, and this night had long surpassed that limit. I…should probably go home and get some sleep; I could consider all the ways in which my mind had been blown tonight tomorrow, after I'd had some time to process it all.
With that decided, I hefted myself to my feet and tested out my legs. My knees didn't wobble and I didn't feel like I was moments from collapsing, so I took that as a sign that I'd gotten enough of a second wind to make it back home and used one, big leap to propel myself up onto the top of the lowest building — conveniently, a short, squat thing that was probably a bakery, or at least had been one at some point in its lifetime.
Once I'd gotten back up there, I turned back towards the safer part of town, where there were still lights and electricity on, leaving the Docks to my back. Then, I took off at a run, leap across to the next roof, and started back towards home.
It took maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, hopping roofs. Much, much faster than if I'd run back home along the roads or the sidewalk. I was probably going to be spoiled by it; after making my way through town that quickly, even the bus I took to school would seem to be moving at a snail's pace. I could see myself wanting to get everywhere I went like that, and there would undoubtedly be days where I was running late and would have to convince myself to walk or run or use the bus, like a normal person.
I arrived back home much in the same way as I'd left. Once I got close enough that I risked being seen, I slipped back into my Hassan Install — and discovered, when I checked, that the eighty splits I'd used to distract Lung had completely replenished, like none of them had ever been killed — shimmied open the window to my bedroom that I'd left oh so slightly cracked when I went out, and shut it behind me with a click.
Safe and sound back in my own room, I dropped out of the Hundred-faced Hassan and straight back to normal, unremarkable Taylor Hebert, dressed in my pajamas. I was, once again, an ordinary high school student who had to get up and go to school in a few hours. To look at me, you'd never think I'd fought and defeated the strongest, most dangerous cape in the Bay just an hour ago.
Once I returned to normal, the exhaustion hit me again all at once. My whole body ached faintly, like I'd pushed myself too far too fast on a run, only all over, and it was all I could do to peel back my covers and slide in between them.
Even so, as my head hit the pillow and my eyes drooped closed, I couldn't help the smile that curled on my lips. I'd done it. I'd gone out and become a hero.
And Emma and Sophia could never take that away from me.
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