บท 5: [5 - A heart to heart]
Powder ran out of the door, desperately trying to escape the crushing blame of causing her gang to fail yet another job.
Bloomer should have worked, her other smoke grenade had worked perfectly when she tested it at home, what could have possibly changed since then?
It wasn't fair.
She sprinted forward, jostling many passers-by who yelled at her in anger and annoyance, their shouts driving Powder further through the crowd.
The little girl darted to the right, disappearing from the street and into a back alley that led to her quarters.
It was pitch black, with none of the usual green lighting that came from the lamps hanging on every other street.
Powder continued running, familiar enough to run straight through the alley before her, light or no light; having used this as a shortcut many times before.
The blue-haired girl wiped away her streaming tears; an unstable, uncharacteristic anger overtaking all of her remaining rationale. She was going to get home and fix it, it would work next time. It would work perfectly.
Powder's resolve was cut short however, when she slammed head-first into a large object directly ahead of her.
Dazed, she fell to the dirty, cobbled ground; squinting up to see what she had run into.
"Oww."
A dark figure in front of her slowly turned around, his piercing violet eyes flashing dangerously in the blackness of the alleyway.
"A-ah, I'm sorry." Stammered Powder, her head spinning. She crawled away from the monstrous man blocking her path, utterly terrified of what he would do in response to her offensive blunder.
The man walked towards Powder, his glowing eyes the only indication of how close he was. He reached down and grabbed her frail arm with his own before pulling the small girl to her feet.
"Walk with me child."
The man's voice was low, and Powder was surprised at the tenderness contained within his tone.
It was… Soothing, somehow.
She nodded unconsciously, rubbing her throbbing forehead while speeding up to match the taller man's pace.
"Why the tears?" He asked her kindly, glancing down at the child who was struggling to walk beside him.
Powder bit her lip, unsure whether to tell the stranger the reason for her upset. She decided to do so, an unnatural amount of trust towards the man reawakening inside of her.
Reawakening?
The world shivered unpleasantly.
"Me and my friends took a job, we were supposed to steal a new batch of wares from the traders docked at the bay. We had it all worked out, nobody would have ever known it was us."
"But?" Questioned the man, suspecting that there was a second part to the story.
"I- I blew it." She admitted, eyes downcast. "One of my smoke bombs didn't go off and we got stuck in the same place for too long. The guards beat the shit out of Vi and Claggor before finally letting us go. We would have gotten off way worse if we didn't have Vander as our father."
"I see."
Hmm. He supposed he could do at least this much for her.
If she was already making semi-operational smoke grenades then it wouldn't matter too much if he pushed her in the right direction.
Maybe utilising one of his own earlier hadn't been as much of a risk as he had thought it to be.
"Your hand child." The man asked, reaching a decision and pulling an oddly shaped object out of his cloak.
The girl beside him couldn't make out what he wanted to give her in the darkness of the alley but held out her hand anyway.
He dropped the thing onto the outstretched palms, which dropped substantially under the unexpected weight.
"Try not to accidentally pull the pin, or you'll be in for a very colourful surprise."
The pin?
"One of my own." The man continued. "Perhaps you will learn something useful from it, but you will get no guidance from me on the matter."
If the child could disassemble it and figure out its inner workings, she could apply it to how own creations and propel her ingenuity to even further heights. The progress she made would be entirely up to her own efforts however.
He smirked silently, time to give the girl a taste of her own medicine.
"Is this… A smoke bomb?" Asked Powder, squinting down at the explosive now held in her grasp.
"Correct."
"It doesn't feel like a smoke bomb." She said dubiously, touching the rough metal with her fingertips. She winced as her digits passed over a series of particularly sharp edges, leaving a few light cuts on her fingertips. "It's like a head, I can feel its teeth."
"I wouldn't expect it to be any other way, my Lady had quite a flair for drama after all. Every one of the gadgets she designed had her heart poured into them."
Callain's hand traced the mechanical armour he had been gifted by his mistress, scarred fingers scraping quietly across the red and black paint that covered them.
"Just like me then." Said Powder, grinning up at him toothily.
The young girl had no idea how accurate that statement was.
"Where are you going?" Powder asked the man, a part of her wanting him to stick around so she could show him her own creations. Remembering she didn't even know his name, Powder quickly asked that too as not to seem rude. "Who are you?"
The stranger paused for a second before answering, deciding to fully sell the image he had painted to Vander and adopting it as his new identity.
"My name is Callian Bright, vassal of the Painted Lady."
Powder, happy at not being rebuked by the man, started to get overly excited at the prospect of a new friend. "A vassal? What does that mean?"
"It means I am sworn into servitude to my Lady, and in exchange, she protects me and my interests."
"Oh." Said Powder, confused by the foreign concept. "That doesn't seem very fair."
Callian laughed at the childish comment, partly agreeing with her. "Normally I would agree with you. It does seem like a silly thing to do does it not? But I serve someone far greater and far more important than myself."
The man paused again, thinking back to when he was a younger, more impressionable man. "I, like many others, chose to stand under her banner because we were all fighting for the same thing."
"And what was that?" Asked Powder, who was fiddling with the contraption he had given her.
"Freedom."
The girl stopped playing with the bomb, looking back up at the cloaked figure beside her.
"Did you win?"
The smile dropped off Callian's masked face, and his breath became a tad uneven as he remembered the devastated streets that were the only thing left of his Zaun.
The bloody corpses had been piled so evenly you couldn't even walk without treading on another person's body.
His voice was hoarse, breaking slightly under the strain of thinking about what had happened. "No. Nobody won that war."
Powder stayed silent, grabbing at Callian's long cloak in an attempt to comfort him. "We didn't win either." She mumbled. "My parents died trying to fight for our freedom too."
Callian brought a hand out of his cloak and stroked the girl's head.
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"I'm sorry too." She said, looking up at him sadly. It was an unusually mature thing to hear from a girl of that age, but loss changed people in unimaginable ways.
He knew that fact well.
They walked on in silence until the alley widened out, transforming into a proper street once more.
The cloaked figure was finally illuminated under the green glow of the surrounding street lamps, causing Powder, who had always had impeccable eyesight, to take notice of the strange mask the man wore.
"Is that an owl?" She questioned, pointing up into the man's hood.
Callian started, unsure as to how the little girl could see underneath his hood.
His comrades had sewn a few runes onto the underside of his cloak to ensure that most of his face stayed hidden from view, no matter the angle people looked at him from.
How could Powder see through it?
Well, there was no use crying over spilt milk, if the enchantment wasn't working then that was just the way it was.
Maybe the warp interfered with the runic matrix somehow? No, that wasn't it, or his armour would have stopped working as well.
In all fairness, sewn runes were only an experimental subject in the future and were not something that had been extensively tested. As was time travel.
The thought that Powder, along with her father Vander, were special in some way never occurred to the man.
Such a thing was inconceivable to him.
But the world was changing.
Callian pulled his hood back, allowing his floppy, dark blue hair to roam free for the first time in hours. The base of his shoulder-length hair was divided into a collection of short little braids, with each binding string either a light pink or matte black.
The white, featherless owl half-mask he wore stretched from the top of his forehead to the tip of his nose, giving off an eerie impression to those who looked at him, especially when coupled with his unnaturally violet eyes.
"Yes, it's a custom of my people. A uniform of sorts." He said, clearly unwilling to share anything else on the matter.
"Ah, okay." Replied Powder, looking as if she were about to say something else, but wisely deciding against it.
Callian's sensitive ears pricked up as he heard a set of heavy footsteps hitting the cobbled pavement of the alley behind him.
He was tense at first, before recognising that the small amount of time between each step was far too frequent for the person approaching to be an adult.
He debated putting his hood back up, however choosing not to. Hiding his identity didn't seem feasible anymore, not after finding out his cloaking no longer functioned.
The mask alone would have to do.
"I believe one of your friends is approaching." Said Callian, glancing over his shoulder at the girl who was trailing behind him, now completely engrossed with the gift he had given to her.
"Huh?" She looked up, confused. "What do you mean?" Powder was oblivious to the rhythmic pounding of the approaching child, whoever they might turn out to be.
He had doped on such a massive amount of shimmer that the shining liquid had practically replaced all the blood in his body, corrupting him on a cellular level. It was a miracle his skin hadn't turned that same nasty grey, just like every other subject he had seen.
Except for one. The two of them were lucky in that aspect.
An increase in hearing was one of the many boons of the doping process, not that he was aware of this or the risks involved when he took it for the first time.
"Powder?!" A faint yell echoed out from the alley they had just left behind, the worried voice a distinctly feminine one.
Powder stopped, turning to face Callian in bewilderment. How had he known she was coming?
"That's my sister, Vi." The girl said, quickly pushing past the surprise she felt at the masked man's prediction. "I should let her know I'm alright."
Powder fiddled with one of the pouches hanging from her belt, dropping the smoke grenade inside it and buttoning the flap closed.
Before the girl could turn around and walk back to the alley; Vi burst onto the street, skidding to a halt and staring around desperately.
The teen's eyes softened slightly upon seeing her sister, before narrowing again when she took in who was standing behind her.
"Get away from my sister." She snarled, striding up to Powder and dragging her away from the masked man. The pink-haired girl whispered in her ear angrily, warning her of the danger the man posed. "Vander said he's dangerous, just what were you doing with him?"
The stranger's eyes flashed violet again, making Vi grit her teeth warily as she guided her younger sibling away from him.
"Dangerous?" Questioned Powder, looking back at Callian, perplexed.
He had seemed so nice though?
The stranger's thin lips parted and he bid the smaller girl farewell before turning around. "Goodbye… Powder."
The name felt odd on Callian's tongue, His Mistress had never once called herself by that name before.
How strange.
"Goodbye! And thank you for the you-know-what!" Yelled the little girl, startling her older sister who began hissing animatedly in response.
"The you-know-what? Powder what are you talking about? Did he give something to you?"
"It's none of your business." She snapped back, with Vi recoiling in shock at the sudden venom contained within her little sister's tone.
The masked man took one final glance at the unhappy duo before turning the corner of the street and disappearing from his sight.
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(Total word count: 2178)
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