34

ty very much for your comments. I read them all, but I don't have the time to reply to all of them or i just dont have anything to rly say besides "ty".

:)

enjoy a huge chappy

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

"We're missing something. It doesn't make much sense otherwise." Alexandria noted, making connections in her mind, discarding them once she'd poked enough holes in them, then repeating.

The computer screen in front of her was frozen on a still frame from Coil's confession footage.

Finally, they had found a combination of Master powers that worked on the man.

Mostly because Coil seemed partly immune or resistant to emotional manipulation. Very strongly so. They could get… some results, but the effects seemed extremely diminished, and the moment the Master lost focus or stopped exercising their power, the changes just didn't stick. A few seconds later and Coil would be back to keeping his mouth shut.

So even if it was the most time-consuming Mastering she'd ever seen, they eventually cracked through the effect. Mostly. He was silently crying while talking to them like a robot, but he had talked.

It still wasn't enough.

"No, it really doesn't." Eidolon hummed, fingers tapping the table.

"I don't have a Thinker power like you two, so, could you try to summarise your scepticism? It doesn't seem that complicated to me. A bit stretchy on the suspension of disbelief, but peripherally possible." Legend mumbled, rubbing at his chin as he swung his chair towards them, pausing on the last five minutes of the video.

Alexandria's jaw shifted, a tiny bit.

"It's not that simple. Nothing connects right. I cannot tell if this is such a multi-layered plot we can't make heads or tails of it despite our resources, or if it's a series of nonsensicalities providing the illusion of such. Coil claims that 'Summoner', the person supposedly responsible for this mass anti-thinker effect, is Taylor Hebert, and that she has some kind of giant shapeshifting, Brute, and Master ability. And some kind of teleportation. That's not how powers work. At all. She can't be a Trump because Shadow Stalker was on the other side of the school when she Triggered and so was Rune. The mechanics of trigger events just don't allow her to be a Trump here, and it's pretty much impossible to have such a combination, especially of such strength. Grab bags exist, but she wasn't part of a cluster trigger, we'd know since hers was so public and scrutinised. So there has to be some other explanation for the abilities displayed. Some power-sharing, maybe. Or she fooled Coil, expecting something like this." She hummed, quietly. 

Eidolon tilted his head in agreement.

"There's also the annoyance of Taylor Hebert, or Taylor Livson, herself. People are changed by both trigger events and their powers, yeah, but I find it highly unlikely and suspicious that a teenage girl left the asylum after three months of catatonic behaviour and barely a month of being conscious and aware, then decided to change her name, duck out of the Ward program for no seeming reason, send her father away in a cryptic new life, and then take over a supervillain before faking her own death. Considering that in her Wards interview, Alexandria and every lie detecting program in existence feels like she was being entirely sincere, it just doesn't make any fucking sense. We're missing something big , and I cannot tell what it is." He added. "It all feels like a giant red herring, you know?"

Legend's brows lowered.

One of her own rose, curious.

"You think there's another figure pulling the strings of the people pulling the strings?" She asked.

Eidolon worked his jaw, frowning.

"I'm not sure, but it's a possibility."

She didn't outwardly react, but inwardly, she was concerned. She liked the challenge, the puzzle, the plot, she wanted to unravel it all, but they didn't have the time.

Contessa was a person who had shaped the world, and kept it in shape. She was the reason there were few to no anti-cape sentiments in the USA. She was the reason that a regular person executing a cape with a sniper rifle was unheard of, to keep that possibility and thought out of the public consciousness, to cement the feeling that guns were useless against capes, even if that was extremely incorrect.

Contessa had shaped the American continent and the world into its current cape culture, and without her, everything felt like it was a moment away from crumbling.

She kept thousands of agents in line by existing, she kept a solid third of all their operations functional and hidden. Politicians, lobbies, companies and backroom deals and entire networks of people, they all depended on Contessa's paths catching betrayals and information slips so she can prevent them before they happen.

The longer they went without her the bigger the chance something would go catastrophically wrong.

So, much as Alexandria would like to untangle this, they just didn't have the time for it. Every second Contessa was a twitchy wreck, watching her paths rot before her eyes and unable to do anything about it, the closer they got to a catastrophe of world-ending proportions.

Of course, they weren't entirely reliant on the woman, but the chance of failure went from small to high in the course of a week.  

"With powers involved, the possibilities are endless. It could be a doppelganger who killed Taylor Hebert at some point then took over to ensure its own agenda. Then they faked the death of the person they took over to cast more confusion and free themselves of their old persona, or some such deception. It could also be an intentional misdirection. Alternatively, Miss Hebert, or 'Livson' as she changed her name to, could be under some kind of Master effect, or there could be a complicated agreement between Taylor Hebert and someone who is providing the ability to teleport and have an anti-thinker field to the girl. The Yangban have a cape like that. Ability sharing is exceptionally rare but not unheard of. The long and short of it is that we don't know enough." She finished, glancing at Keith. Or, Legend, rather, while his mask was on.

Legend frowned.

"I'm not too… deep into all of this, and I'm fully aware there are tons of things you guys do I'm not aware of and will not be trusted with, but uh, don't you have someone who could just find this person? You talked about something of that nature in the past."

"They can see everything, but they can't know everything or remember everything. They identify people on visual cues, like an ID in their pocket, or how a person in their periphery refers to them as, what hidden papers in their closet say about their identity. When someone lacks anything and everything connecting them to a solid identity, there's not much he can do to find out where our 'summoner' is. Even monitoring the word itself on a multiversal scale hasn't given anything but false flags and it's severely overtaxed the agent." Eidolon said, more or less ranting with frustration, working his gloves through his hair.

He revealed a bit too much, but she couldn't bother with that right now.

"We're probably not going to uncover this, not without more information. Information gathering takes time. I think we'll just have to make a decision and rush through it, ASAP. If this anti-thinker field affects Scion, we cannot afford to kill Summoner or whoever is giving her that anti-thinker field. We need them. They would be a game-changing presence if they could scramble dozens or thousands of Thinker powers that Scion has in his arsenal. Doctor Mother spent some time observing things and she thinks that she's only lower priority than Contessa and Eidolon. I happen to agree. She's certainly more important than me and you." She summarized, nodding to Legend, allowing her lips to dip in distaste.

Legend's brows rose, "Really? That important?"

Eidolon scoffed, scowling at the screen.

"If Scion's thousands of pre-cog and thinker abilities he's got could be blocked by her, then yes. She could help me beat Scion more than anyone else I can think of at the moment."

She resisted the urge to sigh.

David always had to make everything about him. His ego needed a check, sometime yesterday, but she couldn't be arsed and Contessa couldn't path him into being less arrogant.

"The point is. We need to make a decision, and make it fast. Contessa…" She frowned, thinking of how to say it. "Is becoming a decoration more than an asset, the longer this continues. We need to put an end to this, now. "

Perhaps the wording was a bit strong, but it was true.

Contessa was starting to become… more than twitchy. She was erratic and flighty.

The woman had grown so reliant on Path to Victory doing everything for her that she could barely function without it. Not on Earth Bet or Aleph, at least.

She was no psychologist, but she could easily recognize that look of sudden, panicked dread that took over the woman's face during a discussion with her, that sudden snap where all her cool composure and stature and expression and stance all just cracked and tilted and broke in a thousand imperceptible ways as her eyes widened in fear.

Contessa wasn't scared of her, Alexandria.

She just lost the ability to Path her long-term, at that moment, before promptly retreating like a frightened bird.

That was likely what she was scared of, and Alexandria couldn't blame her. She'd likely feel the same, were she to suddenly lose her power or be unable to use it.

The woman was practically on house arrest working on vials with Doctor Mother, and even on Earth Belial, she was reporting that she was rapidly becoming completely blind to anything beyond that specific facility and the Garden of Flesh. At least anything that mattered.

Eidolon sighed, a growly noise.

"I say we just door the girl into a cell and-"

"No." She shut that down instantly, allowing a frown to mar her features. David's mouth clicked shut, and he turned to glare at her.

His ego, for being so large, was unfortunately fragile.

"Standard escalation of force. We're going to have to go in hard and fast, but let's not just be outright hostile. Let's door this Taylor girl somewhere in Brockton Bay, somewhere private, show off how Coil is perfectly fine, and try to convince them-"

"Oh, just convince them!" Eidolon said with overblown joy, putting his fingers up to his temple then opening them while throwing his hand away as if mindblown. "Of course! We just have to politely convince someone, maybe a teenage girl, to go off to another planet in another world until the end of the universe comes via angry golden alien, after kidnapping her Mastered supervillain. I'm sure that'll go just splendid. "

"We can try. " She snapped, wishing she could still crack her knuckles. "I think the end of the universe being at stake and a two to five year timeframe in a cozy village in a medieval world where they can play god over the peasants is quite a convincing argument. If that doesn't work and they don't want to prevent the end of this universe, we can just grab them and throw them into a barren planet with a giant building full of supplies and let them stay there away from Contessa until we need them."

Or try to Master them.

Legend frowned, working his jaw for a moment, before nodding.

Eidolon made an affirmative grunt.

"And if the girl's nothing but a red herring, mastered, or some meaningless puppet to hide the real Summoner?" Eidolon asked, dryly.

"We kill or interrogate everyone involved until we get them. We're running out of time, we can't afford to open some long-winded investigation. This Lisa Wilbourn girl might have to be collected as collateral. Coil said they seemed quite close."

Legend frowned heavily, turning away to stare at nothing, pensive.

"I… I can't condone that. Or be involved. They're just kids. " He whispered, then sighed. "But you're going to do it anyway." He shook his head as he got up, walking away, shoulders heavy.

"We don't even know if Taylor Livson is a child, or Taylor at all." Eidolon pointed out.

Legend didn't reply.

She wanted to apologize to him, but she knew it'd ring hollow.

Rune didn't think that she was evil.

Sure, she wasn't a good person, she couldn't claim as such no matter what kind of mental gymnastics she might try, but there was quite the large fucking difference between being disgusted at the sight of a black guy dirtying the streets with his existence and wanting to kill the guy.

The former was normal, albeit more racist than the average person, the other was just fucking psychotic.

Inferior people were still people, and despite the world's preconceptions of her for being part of E88, she wasn't very keen on fucking murdering anyone.

No amount of dehumanising bullshit could make her look at a black guy in the eyes and just casually slam a baseball bat into his head until he fell unconscious, likely to die in the hospital from brain haemorrhage. She just couldn't.

She hated having to chaperone some of the initiations. A test by Kaiser.

One she failed by puking on her third security escort, where an asian girl and a lighter was involved, and could conclusively say had added considerable weight to the scale of her current decision.

She just couldn't fucking do it.

She'd even gotten into arguments over it when some fucker or another tried to goad her into popping someone's skull like a grape.

Did she think the dirtskins were inferior people?

Yes. It was fucking obvious, in every way possible. Observable in reality, in history, on the world map, everything.

Did she think they weren't people?

No. She could never understand how someone could look at a person and dehumanize them so completely and utterly to where killing them or maiming them was considered a good deed. She sure as hell couldn't do it.

Did she wish they'd go back to their warzone shithole and stop dirtying the white countries with their stink?

Yes. White countries had enough problems, and so did the people living in them, no need to burden all the good people with their existence unnecessarily. And she could admit much of that belief was taught, but she couldn't say she believed it was wrong. There was too much stuff that made too much sense, and if sense didn't work, the emotional knee jerk disgust would do the trick regardless to at least make her dislike their kind.

But there was no way to kick them out except with force, and she just wasn't willing to fucking do that.

A line she couldn't cross. Maybe her early childhood was too cushy, maybe her kindergarten and elementary school teachers were too nice people and taught her too much compassion for this line of work, whatever it was, she just couldn't do that.

She'd rather deal with her personal disgust than know the only reason she couldn't see black people was because they'd been lynched or murdered out of the country.

If someone else heard her thoughts, they would likely be beyond puzzled and confused at the strange lines she drew within her mind, how arbitrary and almost nonsensical they were, and she couldn't blame them. Sometimes it didn't even make sense to her. Days where she was stuck in this internal debate, going in circles until she gave up and went to sleep. But most of the time, it made sense to her.

One thing to dislike or even be disgusted by someone, and an entirely different thing to want to genuinely harm them or ruin their life or end said life.

She just couldn't fucking do it. She didn't want to, either.

That wasn't the sole problem, of course. Her situation was a massive shit heap, but at the top of it were her own values, if someone as young as her could be said to have such things.

It all just added up over time.

She also missed her family, truth be told, even if she was the one who broke ties with them in a wild spur of teenage rebellion that led her in this pit that felt like it kept getting deeper.

The second part which weighed in on her current decision, was the sheer whiplash she got when she came here and saw all the racism towards asians and hispanics.

Which a Brocktonite would be confused about, because duh. E88, hates anything that isn't white.

Except it's not like she was given a fucking briefing about any of that. She just wanted to leave her controlling family, contacted some relatives who still had ties with the Empire even after the Herren clan broke off, and ended up here in what felt like a blur of action.

She fit in here, somewhat. She was given respect, and treated like an adult. Somewhat.

But the ideology of the gang slowly began to confuse her.

She wasn't exactly a white supremacist, as much as she believed that some people were just inferior. Whether it was culture, their race having a bad run of luck in the genetic lottery, or just a mix of a dozen things, she wasn't truly sure, but the first part, she had been pretty easily convinced of.

The wording of 'white supremacy' insinuated there was some desire to dominate or lord over the lessers or whatnot, and it might be something others in the gang wanted and wished for, but she sure as hell did not. It was more of an observation of reality to her than an ideology.

The Herren clan might be considered backdoor hillbillies, but they weren't. Her family had convinced her through equal parts logic, raising her, and lived experiences from her brief stints in the public education system, however brief they were before she was taken back in for private teaching.

And she'd always brushed aside racism towards the rest of the people her family disliked, because despite her needling, they'd never really presented her with anything to convince her, and she hadn't had many if any negative experiences with anything other than black kids in the schools she'd been sent to.

But here? The E88's rhetoric?

It made no fucking sense.

For her case, she was convinced by logic and observable reality, and then emotion grew from there. There was a process to her thoughts.

She was cautiously open to the idea because she grew up being tugged between very kind people early in her life and her own family which was very open about their beliefs, then in time, evidence came because her family saw she wasn't being convinced, and she came to believe some parts of the whole… ideology. If it could be described as something so coherent.

If someone asked her why she thought black people were inferior she had entire fucking sheets of explanations that would make even a skeptical guy pause and frown in thought.

People that thought the E88's only recruitment strategy was to have a fat white guy scream "they're coming for your jobs" at people were idiots. There were many, many good arguments to convince someone. Hell, some of the more intellectual people in the gang even quoted fucking Plato and Aristotle to explain some of their ideas, which flew over her head, but it proved that not everyone involved in this line of thinking was even remotely as stupid as the media and common people seemed to think.

Just very hateful, and if initiated, very immoral.

Oh of course there was the buck-toothed white trash here and there, but the Empire was a gang built around an ideology, and that tended to draw more than just druggies and gangbangers, like with the ABB.

Regardless, her original thought process was that she had seen why, and been convinced of why, through many more avenues than just 'I was raised this way', and came to believe some parts of the whole.

Which meant, in short, that she understood the racial hate towards black people. It was logical, it had data points, she could see with her own two eyes why it was there, it made sense. Their negative impact on the world, everything they touched, and her personal quality of life in the public education system was indisputable as far as she was concerned.

So why did the E88 here hate Asians?

She asked. She expected something vaguely well-formed, some kind of idea, hell, maybe a giant sheet of graphs like what she'd been shown back home to convince her of the main enemy.

All she got when asking here, was some contradictory insults about how Asians were bugs or something. Not a single real reasoning was brought up. Nada, zit, nothing.

So she looked into their culture, their home countries, she looked at the same data points her folks in the Herren clan had used to convince her, because she was an emotional person like everyone else, but she still liked to operate on logic first of all.

Mnh, mostly.

And it continued to not make sense.

Asian culture was… honestly admirable, weirdly enough. At least the parts she looked into like Korea, China and Japan when it was still around. Their work ethic made her brows raise, their academic scores were great, better than white people, their contribution to the economy was not a negative red line going down smoothly off the chart like with other inferiors, it just-

It made no sense. It confused her.

Same thing with hispanics. They didn't even do anything! They were basically performing and doing the same as whites! Across the whole board of graphs she could get her hands on!

The worst people had to offer was something about cartels or something, and she wanted to groan and just scream that 'that's not even in fucking AMERICA, WE'RE THE CARTEL EQUIVALENT HERE WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!'.

There was nothing she could find that justified anything past the animosity towards black people, not here in Brockton. Too many conflicting points, too many conflicting opinions, too many ethnically ambiguous people in the gang to even make their own hatred make sense.

There was a guy there who looked Mediterranean, let's say, instead of Greek or Iraqi or Turkish. And nobody called him out on it, and he himself didn't seem fussed over it.

She kept asking and talking and the more she talked the more she realized that none of this shit was… resonating with her. She rarely if ever got to hear an answer that made sense to her or that she could accept without killing any sort of morality and faith in actual information rather than rhetoric.

Hell, she wasn't sure if it was resonating with even the top dogs, so to speak.

Not even E88 capes were really into the whole shtick. About half were actual believers, the rest seemed uncaring.

The real believers were the twins, Krieg, Viktor and Crusader. Maybe Kaiser too, she couldn't read the bastard.

So she kept asking. Anyone and everyone willing to give her an answer, no matter how much it pissed off the big dogs in the gang.

Oh Asians were bugs because their work ethic was too good? Because they're too obedient? So now you were complaining about them having too much of a good thing James, weren't you complaining about the 'nigs' having too little of the same ethic and being too rowdy and being good for nothing thug wannabes and wow is that not ironic coming from a fucking flunkie like you.

Fuck James. Absolute dipshit.

It was goddamn infuriating, to come here and slowly realise that she was not surrounded by people concerned about actual problems, but merely a bunch of angry, lost people whose search for meaning in a meaningless world led them to an ideology that didn't make much sense as a whole, guided - mostly - by blind emotion instead of observable reality or data.

So that was another giant rock to add to the scale which led to her current… situation.

Another far larger problem besides the nonsensical fucking crap she was hearing and her rapidly dirtying image of a supposed noble and reasonable cause, was the general vibe she got the longer she stayed.

She could feel how Kaiser and his dogs kept trying to control her thoughts and direct them, almost like her controlling family, and it fucking pissed her off, one word at a time. It felt like she was just having other people dictate her every move without hope of advancement.

Kaiser trying to set her up with Theo and making creepy comments about her private life had practically unfurled the entire armada of red flags and started waving them in her face as well.

The creep was just itching to get her a 'partner' her own age so they could "hit it off" and then make more fucking soldier babies for the Empire or whatever he wanted out of it. Kaiser thought he was being slick and sneaky in his maneuvering and prods, trying to make her a fucking breeder for his worthless army of muppets. 

They could frame it like she would be fulfilling a noble role and helping the cause and the white race et cetera all they wanted, which… honestly, she even somewhat agreed with, because yes, motherhood was the most noble and worthwhile endeavour a woman could partake in and there could always be more white people in the world, that'd be great and all, but she was fucking sixteen right now and too confused about who the fuck she even was to consider any kind of relationship. Especially with an empire kid.

Not happening. Maybe when she was in her mid-twenties she'd try to find a good guy and make a nice family and whatnot, but there was no way she was going to let that be tied to the gang in any way.

She didn't have a… terrible childhood, but she didn't want her own kid to be raised like that and around such ideas. Not because she disapproved, of course not, but because of how mentally and emotionally taxing it was to live like this.

People really didn't realize how much hatred burned and ate away at someone until they had to live with it themselves. And even then, they could probably never see her side of it, having that fire since she was a preteen, nestled in her chest.

It was draining and taxing in a way she couldn't say was good to her mental health, at all. If she had less morals she could easily see herself indulging in a hate crime or two to just satisfy or get rid of that soul-devouring acid inside her that burned and burned and never left.

She could see why people in the gang would do the things they do, because if she was any more of a bad person or more violent, she'd probably do the same, if only for relief.

Then, Maria. Or, Othala, in public.

She loved Othala, she really did, and the girl was family. A second cousin, yes, but still family. The girl was sweet to the bone, without a doubt the kindest soul in the entire gang. Despite all that, she didn't want to end up like her.

Would she too be barely seventeen and have to go up to a young cape one day and talk about how she and her chosen partner were 'trying for a new addition to the family'?

She kind of liked Viktor. He was a very decent person to her. He was one of the few if only people who she felt like… could really see her, and liked her. He was almost family, through Othala.

But.

Viktor was thirty-fucking-something.

Othala couldn't legally drink yet.

That brief discussion had made her stomach feel… unpleasant, even if Othala seemed perfectly content and happy with her lot in the gang.

Neither of them were people she'd denounce, but it was still weird, to have an age gap that large and knowing Othala was practically set up with Viktor by Kaiser.

Thank god she ended up with Viktor rather than literally any other male in the gang, because he was honestly the best of a bad lot, but still, the whole situation was… vaguely gross.

The inner scale she held had gone from heavily weighed in the Empire's favour to a fairly ambivalent, sour feeling that had her eyeing the exit doors, despite the fact that they were winning.

There weren't any exits though, not really.

Another small pebble to the scale was how the Empire had reduced her to a fucking taxi service because Purity picked up the two murderfreaks and dipped for wherever the hell she had been to until now.

All she did these days was be ordered around to pick people up and drop them off somewhere. Kaiser's hit and run tactics had been working wonderfully, but she didn't fucking care if it was working or not, she wanted to either actually do something or be allowed to relax at home. It was so frustrating to have to waste hours of her life doing this shit. She'd rather be doing anything else.

She could be watching a movie, but no, she had to wear this stupid suit and go push her chest out and use her power to taxi a bunch of people around in the freezing, wet noons and nights in this shithole of a city.

Told to do things by others and told to sit in her place.

The scale tipped a bit more towards just… leaving.

The fight with Lung down at the Docks had also proven as a nice deterrent for her. She'd only watched from afar, but it was enough.

It was one thing to know something and another to see it.

Having seen the fiery equivalent of Leviathan ravaging that stretch of desolate concrete while wiping the floor with the local Protectorate had made it abundantly clear to her that fighting that motherfucker was suicide.

Then, they found Spitfire. Viktor's stolen skills helped a lot with tracking someone down. 

And of course, Tammi was called forward to act as transport and support. She got to personally ferry their newest catch to Kaiser himself, for whatever reason, and she couldn't really say she was completely against the girl joining. She could use another girl her age around. They might even be friends. She seemed nice, if extremely green from how terrified she looked.

Maybe she could finally make a connection to someone other than Viktor. A somewhat normal one.

Then Kaiser just shrugged in the face of her denial, and said she'd make a decent enough breeder for Gesellschaft.

Like the girl wasn't even human. Like she was just a hole and her power.

She wasn't stupid. She'd looked up Gesellschaft, having heard the whispers in the high ranks.

They were fucking monsters, and not in the good way that made Hookwolf grin. They were monsters in a way that made the Yangban look like a good alternative.

It wasn't hard to extrapolate what would happen to the girl after they sold her. German media was very open about what their local nazis did. A good way to utterly demonize them, not that it worked. It just looked like propaganda from the government, trying too hard.

The point was that it was true, and Kaiser had confirmed it.

Brainwashing, torture. Forced breeding programs, forced trigger events.

It made her fucking sick.

It made her chest tighten to the point it felt like it was hard to breathe.

It was as she was securing the last zip tie that she finally made a decision.

A stupid, hasty decision, one borne of urgency and mounting discontent and a faint sense that she didn't belong here.

"I'm sorry." She had whispered to Viktor, who'd only let himself show a slight frown at Kaiser's decision, eyes forward as she secured the struggling girl by his side.

He didn't acknowledge her in any way, likely thinking she was talking to the panicking girl trying to squirm out of her bonds.

It took the action of her placing her palm on the flat of the truck's back for him to realize what she meant, and stiffen.

Then all hell broke loose, and she used her knife to free Spitfire to the best of her ability, making a moving warzone as she struggled to get them out of Empire territory.

Now, here she was. In the back of a truck, again, just this time, heading to an unknown place with a fuckload of complete strangers and a black girl that was staring at her. Incessantly.

At least she could bicker with Spitfire every now and then in the relative quiet of the transport, while the blonde chick with the domino mask and weird bodysuit and bracelets got her own little corner deeper into the bunk, whispering heatedly into her phone with a hand over her mouth as the Travellers practically shielded her.

She still had no clue who the fuck that was.

The confusion was paired with the fading of that adrenaline high she'd been surfing off of since she first made her decision, and she was starting to feel that familiar sensation of jittery weakness.

Nothing like Spitfire though.

Spitfire was downright quivering in her seat, trying to discreetly take deep breaths and looking like she was quite confused about why she was feeling so strangely.

She was also still unmasked, and it didn't seem like any of the people in the transport were carrying spare domino masks around, which probably left the girl feeling uniquely vulnerable, even if almost everyone kept their gazes politely turned away.

She frowned, and fingered at the zipper holding her hoodie in place. 

Eh, she never liked this stupid suit anyway. Felt too much like an Empire suit rather than a Rune suit.

She unzipped it, then yanked the cord out, before unsheathing her knife and frustratingly chewing a hole through the damn thing by twisting the tip into the fabric, back and forth until it poked through.

"What's with the random DIY session?" The black girl asked, and she ignored her as she threaded the cord through the holes and made a simple knot at the back.

It was pretty shitty, but it should help, somewhat.

She thrust the makeshift facemask to Spitfire, whose entire body jumped at the simple brush of the fabric meeting her bare arm, before her head jerked to her.

She shook the hoodie.

"Wear it. It's a shit facemask, but if you tighten it up by yanking the cords at the back, it'll tighten enough to make do until we get to wherever the fuck you guys are taking me." She offered as a simple explanation.

"Ah… oh. Thanks." Spitfire hurriedly mumbled out, and yanked the hoodie out of her hand with shaking fingers, putting the cord coming off the corners of the hoodie over the back of her head, then tightening it until the hoodie was acting like a very heavy, baggy facemask.

"Also, you're crashing after an adrenaline high. It's normal after something like that. Drink something sugary later."

She ignored the looks from the truckbed's occupants.

Hookwolf told her to do that, and it actually worked. Somewhat. Sure helped keep her feet under her after a fight, until she could go crash at the apartment-

The apartment she could no longer go back to. The apartment that had everything that was hers and was provided by Kaiser.

Her mood took another nosedive, the reality of the situation weighing on her shoulders.

She felt trapped. Alone.

Fuck, she had nothing but her power now. No allies, no belongings, no- no fucking nothing.

Her eyes flicked up to the Travellers opposite her, most having gone back to talking about random inane crap, while the girl in the black bodysuit and red suns stylized all over it seemed to be studying her.

It was probably a bad idea to jump into something right after jumping out of another, but fuck, she didn't have many options and from what she knew of the Travellers, they were far better than the Empire to run with and they'd wander away from the Bay, away from all this crap.

"So… I'm shit out of luck and I just betrayed my gang to save a random girl I've known for less than an hour. You guys got an open spot, or are you just taking me along because I helped?" She asked, keeping her tone even, despite her emotions swirling into a soup of isolation and long-awaited panic.

The tophat guy took off said tophat, tilting his head to the blonde in the corner.

Said fellow blonde with a bodysuit poorly concealed beneath casual clothes- and absolutely fucking strapped because holy shit that was a huge fucking gun how did she not notice that before-, turned, and held up a finger, before hurrying back to her phone.

Tophat- oh, Trickster, she remembered now-, gave her a look, then shrugged.

"I'm not opposed at all, but the decision isn't really up to me. We've got a weird chain of command here. I'm the group's leader, but H- Insight over there-" he tilted his head to the blonde, "- is above me. And her, uh, sister, she's top dog."

Her brows lowered.

A few dots connected as she realized that Insight was actually Tattletale, considering how she called Grue a 'teammate' and complained about Lung trying to kill them.

She didn't know Tattletale had survived. Resilient girl.

Imp made a sound like a 'huh' of intrigue.

"So, you guys really don't mind a random white supremacist gangster joining you out of the blue?" Imp asked, brows raised, laughter in her voice.

Her brows lowered more into a scowl.

Imp saw it, and raised her hands.

"Hey, you're pretty chill for a nazi and all that, but come on. This is weird." Imp said, gesturing vaguely at the oddly silent Travellers then back to her.

There was something a bit odd about this whole situation, yes, enough so to where she didn't even object to the nazi label.

Now that she thought of it, and wasn't stuck in her own head thinking about how much she'd fucked herself over to save a stranger, she realized that there was a whole lot of shit that was really odd about this whole thing.

Trickster opened his mouth, hesitated, then gave another glance to Insight, who was still on the phone, her whispers growing heated and worried as she massaged her forehead. Then he shook his head, and went back to fiddling idly with his hat in his fingers, glancing about.

The Travellers were never the type to just jump into a gang conflict, from what she knew. They were just a random group of capes that seemed to be on a tour across America doing god knows fucking what. So they just… what, happened to go out of their way to help Spitfire in the hopes that she'd join them?

There was also the oddness of this sister figure and the odd nonchalance they had towards her. Did Tattletale and the Travellers both get nabbed by a new player or something?

Fuck, the bay was already busy enough. She wanted out.

As she thought, she idly watched the Travellers shrug, except the girl with the red suns on her.

She was expecting more hostility, truth be told.

"Well, anyways. So, hey, Rune." Imp began, swinging slightly from side to side. "Got a question. Would you have still saved Spitfire, knowing she's friends with me?"

Her brows rose in sheer incredulity, offence rising and dragging anger alongside it.

The hushed, somewhat awkward silence continued for a beat.

"Are you fucking serious with that question?" She asked, incredulous, and felt even more pissed off when the ni- when the bitch nodded.

"I mean, yeah? I don't know ya, chief. All I know is that you're from a nazi gang. Throw me a bone! Humour me!" Imp exclaimed, light heartedly, and she felt a tiny bit of the tension inside her fade.

Right, no, that made sense.

No shit, she was still wearing a goddamn Empire bodysuit.

"Yes, I would have. Being racist is entirely separate from being a fucking monster and letting something like- that, happen to someone. The former is just a character flaw, at least to most people, the other is just evil." She said, tightly pressing down on her frustration, because she might have to join this team with Imp and she wasn't in a good enough position to be antagonistic to her, even if she disliked the fact she was here.

Spitfire gave her a befuddled look, while Trickster tilted his head, swinging the hat back on his head.

"Makes sense." Trickster nodded.

"It does?" Spitfire mumbled, jittery and soft and confused.

"I- why be racist at all? Like, why be a dickhead for no reason?" The girl with the red sun-themed dress spoke up, halfway between angry and just confused, and Rune felt her eye twitch.

The fuck kinda question was that? Where was this girl raised, the world's most sheltered neighbourhood? Or was it just wilful ignorance?

"There's so many reasons and justifications that your question is the equivalent of asking a teacher to give a scientific thesis on a new theory in an off-hand, spoken conversation, and expect it to be concise and legible." She dryly replied, a line that… she couldn't lie, she'd had prepared in her head ages ago in preparation for a potential debate that never happened until now.

"I mean- gah, that sounds poshy and arrogant as fuck." She huffed, leaning back to stare at the canvas covering on the truck's roof. "It's not that complicated, but its too big of a conversation to have in the back of a truck and one that I'm frankly not interested in having right now because I'm kind of having a permanent internal debate going so kindly fuck off. I don't wanna talk about it." She grouched, and the sun girl opened her mouth, let out a sharp, baffled sigh, then closed it.

"You do know I'm gonna needle the shit out of you to explain the whole shtick, right? It's not every day I can communicate with a tame nazi! Captured in the wild, in its natural environment, and cooperative!" The girl stage-whispered, her voice getting all… weird, like she was trying to mimic some old man's british accent or something.

"Can't wait…" She hummed sarcastically, unamused, and crossed her arms, observing Imp and trying to weigh her emotions about her presence here.

It was so much harder to hate and dehumanise someone when they weren't a caricaturized image in one's head, but a breathing, present person, however fucking obnoxious.  

There was some distaste there, a mild tang of disgust, but it was nothing like the burning acid in her chest whenever she passed through this shithole of a city and saw what Imp's… people, had turned the place into. Like walking through a metaphor of why they were an infection to America.

Face to face, it was hard to genuinely hate someone she didn't really know.

Asking herself why she disliked the girl then trying to push the reason away and ignore it, to experiment, was equally as difficult.

She removed the ever-present concept of race hanging over Imp's head, squinting at the curious-looking cape, and…

She was just another… girl. A bit more bouncy and annoying than she'd like, but that was about it.

It was so fucking confusing.

She didn't even know what she felt anymore, bouncing between disliking Imp for her race then pushing past that to just see her as an individual rather than a symbol or representation of her race and people and crossing over into mildly annoyed acceptance but certainly not likeness.

Why was this so fucking hard? Why did she keep doing these stupid goddamn mental experiments that always gave her another piece of strange self-knowledge that left her more and more perpetually confused?

"I know I'm pretty, but I have a feeling that's not why you're staring." Imp said, rocking side to side like a hyperactive toddler.

"Hm." She grunted, wordlessly, and turned her head away to stare out the open back of the truckbed.

Nothing to do but wait.

Twenty minutes later, during which time her nerves continued to endlessly ramp up, the truck stopped.

She felt isolated in a way she hadn't felt in a long, long time.

In a way she'd only felt when she was in prison and Triggered.

Trickster got up, and stretched, while the guy in the aggressive football-adjascent outfit slowly rose with a groan. The girl with the sun patterns stayed seated, while Imp jumped up, leaning forward to stare out the back of the truckbed with open curiosity.

"Well, we're here, and Insight isn't done with her phonecalls. You guys coming?" He asked, jerking his thumb to the, frankly, abandoned looking box of concrete that could only be called a store by the most generous of folk. The only notion of safety the place provided was a very rusty wall of those wiggly sheet metals winding around the sides and out of the back, where they'd parked. 

"Where is here anyway?" Spitfire asked with clear trepidation, her voice and body significantly more relaxed than earlier.

Good, someone else was a bit skeevy about being taken to the sketchiest looking building she'd ever seen right after a very life-threatening situation.

"It's a safehouse. It's much better on the inside, it's supposed to look like a locked down piece of trash from outside. Come on, I'm sure you two want a shower. And you won't get seen, don't worry." Trickster said, gesturing to the back of said building as he climbed out.

Oh, fuck.

She really wanted a fucking shower. So fucking bad.

She was covered in trash, puke, sweat, dust and dirt and dried blood. She'd never felt so utterly filthy as right now before in her life.

She was still uncertain and- though she would never admit it- she felt quite vulnerable and isolated in a way that was viscerally uncomfortable.

She had expected to be kicked out of the truck the moment it stopped, not to be invited inside alongside the rest.

Then again, the Travellers were villains, maybe that helped.

She nodded, and hurried to the edge of the truckbed, jumping off and straightening up just in time to watch Spitfire do the same and crumple to the floor with a startled yelp.

By instinct, she went to grab her before she fell, but only managed to drag herself down with her, her legs tangling with Spitfire's arm and sending her sprawling to the floor elbows first, a little sideways.

She hissed in pain as she scrambled upright.

"For FUCK'S S-" She startled, whirling on Spitfire, then bit her tongue, squared her shoulders, and took a deep breath as the girl made similar hisses of pain and rose to her feet, knees quaking.

Be nice. Be nice, Tammi.

"Sorry." She growled quickly, reaching out to stabilise her. "Weak knees. Normal to get after your first couple brushes with real danger. It wears off quick." She explained.

Another nugget of "wisdom" from Hookwolf.

Spitfire nodded.

"Oh, uh, alright. Thanks?"

She huffed, let go, and turned around to march into the safehouse behind the girl that she just realized the cape identity of, Sundancer.

She was getting to that shower first, niceness be damned.

Insight kept her distance, still on the damn phone and looking increasingly troubled as she followed Ballistic in, last in line.

Rune almost stumbled on the slight upstep of the linoleum floor inside the building, and decided to stop looking at everyone in hearing range like a skittish rat and pay attention to what was in front of her.

It certainly looked like a safehouse.

It reeked of an enclosed space, plastic, and faint gunpowder.

Two couch beds against what might have been front store windows once before they were bricked up, giant crates and shelves lining the walls, covered in random shit she could summarise as what one would need to crash a big group in here for a week or two, lit up by a crappy yellow lightbulb in the ceiling, its wires exposed.

Two benches were near the center, covered in toolboxes, while under and around them, various cans and tubs of stuff she had no idea the purpose of were tossed about, along with a surprising amount of protective gear. The biohazard and contamination kind.

It was essentially a giant concrete box crammed full of stuff everywhere. 

The only lacklustre part was the lack of floorspace. If the building was about forty by forty feet, only about half of those were unoccupied by one thing or another.

Her eyes lingered on a pistol laying in the open on a military green crate, barely the size of a suitcase.

"Shower's back there. Don't take too long, there's probably not that much warm water here." Ballistic piped up, pointing to a tiny hallway in the corner she hadn't even noticed, likely thinking she was looking around for the shower, and she turned to him with a nod.

"Thanks."

No need to be rude to what… might be her new team?

Fuck, she had no idea.

She quickly went to the shower, and planned to use all the warm water.

If Spitfire wanted to warm herself up, she could just hawk up a loogie on the shower floor, it wasn't her problem.

Besides, it was always best to cry under a warm showerhead than a cold one.

She hoped Othala would forgive her.

Viktor could suck shit, but she hoped he wouldn't hate her either.

Notes:

In which we get two different POVs from two different unlikable characters.

If you say you dislike Rune and what she believes, that's cool and all and completely normal, but frankly I just don't care much about the real world political side of sht and I will delete any comments complaining about it.

This is a fictional, not a political debate about current real world topics. If you can't separate the two, that's not my problem, but it will hinder your experience, plainly put.

That aside, I want Rune in the story, so I have to fit her in in a way that is both realistic and makes sense considering her past. Think what you will of her opinions, good or bad, I could geniunely not care LESS. This chapter isn't about that, specifically, but more to lay the foundations of redemption or at least an uneasy change with Rune further down the line like in Ward.

Also, one thing that always bugged me in stories with Rune in them is that people just do NOT handle her well at all.

If they add her, they tend to do one of two things: either make it so that she doesn't REALLY believe what she believes in canon because that's the easy road, or they make her change opinions faster than one changes their jacket. One is just a mini-AU, the other is unrealistic and stupid because that's not how people work unless they never believed what they said they did in the first place.

Wildbow handled Rune excellently, so I took some light inspiration from how he handled her in Ward and added some of my own experiences of having a shifting worldview and the confusion of identity and belief that comes with it to hopefully make something that's both realistic, and has a plausible way to change.

Yeah that is about it. This story will have in-world politics to keep things believable and realistic to some extent, but if you can't separate Earth bet fictional politics from irl Earth politics, at least have the grace to keep your whining to yourself.