Chapter 17
A Darker Path
Part Seventeen: A Walk in the Park
[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
Cauldron Base
Contessa
Alexandria's voice echoed down the corridors. "Oh, what the fuck?"
Fortuna didn't even bother using a Path on that one. She's read the PHO post.
A moment later, Alexandria swooped to a halt in front of her. In her hand, gripped almost tightly enough to crack the casing, was a tablet. "What the hell is going on in Brockton Bay?"
"Atropos is a Thinker," Fortuna reminded her, somewhat unnecessarily. "At least as good as me." That confession cost her the pound of flesh closest to her heart, figuratively speaking. "It looks like she figured out our feudal experiment, and how we were giving Coil free rein in the city. At least. She might know more."
"And she's killed Coil, and straight-up told us that we're not welcome in her city. And more people are delving into the name Cauldron than ever, because we can't redact it!" In a cartoon, steam would've been leaking from Alexandria's ears by now.
"On the other hand," Fortuna pointed out, "she's announced that the Nine are next on her list, and she's flat-out announced that she intends to kill the Endbringers when and where they show up. Not fight. Kill."
Alexandria blinked. "Is she insane? Challenging the Nine as well as the other teams on that list? Calling out Valefor by name? They'll be falling over each other to see who can tear her head off first."
"It's only insanity if you can't pull it off." Fortuna waited to see if Alexandria would take the hint.
The black-costumed woman frowned thoughtfully. "You believe she can? Without assistance?"
"Do you believe she can't?" Fortuna raised an eyebrow. "Since she started her operations, a grand total of twenty-three capes have either died, left Brockton Bay, or been captured by the PRT. Several more are planning to leave as we speak."
Alexandria shook her head. "It's a whole different level of scale. She can't possibly think she can take them all on, and win."
"The last time I underestimated her, I ended up looking down the barrel of her pistol. The one she took from Oni Lee's corpse." Fortuna shuddered. "It's a mistake I don't intend to make a second time."
"But Butcher and the Teeth … the Fallen …" Alexandria shook her head. "They can't be beaten. Not conventionally."
"Whoever said Atropos was conventional?"
"Well, you're no help." Alexandria vanished again, flying up the corridor.
Cookies, Fortuna decided. What I need is cookies. "Doorway to where I can buy cookies."
Cookies, she understood.
08:45 AM
Taylor
Dressed in my costume, complete except for the coat, mask, and hat, I sat in the passenger seat and peered intently ahead through the windshield. Instead of the black long-coat, I wore the white lab-coat I'd souvenired from the PRT building that one time; my accoutrements were in the black leather bag I had slung over my shoulder.
"Westlake Park, coming up," Dad said, entirely unnecessarily. Like me, he was almost certainly suffering from nerves. "Do you want me to pull in and park?"
"No." I put my left hand on my seatbelt catch, my nerves melting away. "That corner up ahead, with the bushes up to the sidewalk? Slow down all the way, going around it."
"Uh, okay." He gave me a dubious look, but started slowing for the corner.
I popped the seatbelt and let it retract, then put my hand on the door handle. As we went into the corner, I pulled on the handle and pushed the door all the way open against the resistance of the turn. Then I slid out of the seat and stepped onto the asphalt, clearing the car by inches. The last of the turn swung the door shut and it latched closed as I continued up onto the sidewalk and onward into the bushes.
Once out of sight, I shrugged out of the lab-coat and replaced it with the long-coat, then took my glasses off and replaced them with my mask and hat. With the lab-coat and glasses in the bag—now slung over my shoulder—I strode out of the bushes, on track to meet with my current number one fan.
Tenebrae
If there was anything worse than Aisha when she was smugly certain about something, Brian decided, it was Aisha when she had the jitters. He was beginning to regret not insisting on danger pay. Much more of this, and he was going to go nuts.
"Where is she, where is she, where is she?" fretted Aisha, fidgeting so hard Brian was sure people in Boston knew she was twitchy. "She said she'd be here. She said!"
"Relax," he said automatically, though he knew it would do no good. "Are you sure you both agreed on Westlake Park?"
"It was her idea," Aisha insisted, swinging her legs back and forth on the picnic table bench like a metronome on speed. "She said right here, nine o'clock."
Brian automatically checked his watch. "You know it's still ten minutes of nine, right?"
"What?" she grabbed his wrist and stared at the clock face. "Can't be. Must be slow."
"Nope. I set it to the time on my phone." He pulled out the phone to show her. The times matched, near enough.
"Here, let me check mine." She dug out her own phone. The time on it was fifteen minutes ahead of his. "See?"
Brian shook his head. "Aisha ... why is your phone set up like that?"
She regarded it dubiously for a moment, then her expression cleared. "So I can remind myself not to be late."
He sighed in mild aggravation. "Okay. Just saying? That's probably not—"
"Excuse me?" The voice came from behind them. "Is this picnic table booked, or can anyone sit here?"
Brian turned at the same time that Aisha did. Even as he opened his mouth to politely inform the newcomer that they were waiting on a friend, he registered who was standing there.
Tall, slender, wearing a black long-coat, morph mask and hat. The coat flapped open gently in the gathering breeze, revealing a sheathed knife of some sort and a pistol in a shoulder holster. Brian felt his mouth go dry.
Atropos had arrived.
Taylor
"Holy shit!" blurted the teenaged girl. "You came!" Leaping up from her bench, she took two rapid paces toward me then stopped short. In a display of what was possibly the worse acting I had ever seen, she strove to put on an air of nonchalance. "I mean ... 'sup?"
"Hey, Aisha." I was grinning under the morph mask, which I knew they couldn't see, but it transferred to my tone of voice as I held out my hand to shake. "It's good to meet you, too."
Grabbing it with both hands, she shook it vigorously. "Holy shit, it's really you." Her voice teetered close to fangirl-squee. "Did you really wreck all of Skidmark's shit? And make the wheels fall off Squealer's shitty-ass ride?"
Holding up one finger, I reached into my pocket and produced one of the small remote transmitters I'd rigged up a few days ago. As she watched avidly, I made the finger-gun gesture, then clicked the button as I mimed shooting the 'gun'. Nothing else happened, of course. "Boom," I said cheerfully.
Aisha's eyes were wide by now. "Holy crap," she breathed. "So when you did it there ..."
"This was in my left hand, yeah," I said, then looked at Brian. "Feel free to tell Armsmaster that. It's nothing he won't already know."
He was already looking apprehensive; now, he went paler than anyone I'd ever seen with his skin tone. "Shit," he muttered, curls of darkness beginning to waft out of his palms. "This isn't—I'm not—"
"Jeez, relax," I said with a chuckle. "It's good that you're here. I know this isn't a sting or a bust. You're not here in any official capacity. Just to make sure Aisha's okay. I get it."
The darkness went away and he lost some of the pallor, though there was a slight sheen of sweat on his brow after the fact. He stared at me, probably trying to make out my expression through the morph mask.
"Yeah, Brian, unclench," jeered Aisha, rolling her eyes extravagantly. "My girl Atropos is chill. She's not here to hurt us. Are you?"
"Not in the slightest," I confirmed. "And I'll go one further. I'm not going to hurt any member of the PRT, Protectorate or Wards, or any hero in town, unless they aggress on me first, and even then I promise not to kill them." Strolling around the table, I seated myself opposite them. "I don't promise not to embarrass the fuck out of them, though."
Aisha cackled out loud. "See, Bri? This is why she's so damn cool." Hopping up from her seat, she grabbed up her phone as she rounded the table to me. "Get a photo of us, then I'll grab a selfie."
Brian sighed. He still looked apprehensive, but not to the level that he looked like he was about to pass out. "I'm sorry, Atropos. Aisha's never really learned about personal boundaries, or that you're supposed to ask about that sort of thing first."
I chuckled. "It's all good. If she bothers me, I'll just do this." Slipping one arm around her neck, I made sure not to apply dangerous levels of pressure to her carotids as I gave her a brief noogie.
"Wha—hey!" Her squawk of protest was cut off as I released her, then she glared at Brian, who was chuckling. "What's so funny, asshole?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all." He rubbed his finger across his lips. "Are you okay with me taking your photo, Atropos?"
"Sure, but wait one second." Reaching inside the long-coat, I drew out the bodice shears. They gleamed in the sunlight, the edges glittering dangerously.
"Whoa ..." breathed Aisha, staring at them. "Where did you get those from?"
"Kaiser's personal collection, about eight hours before I killed Coil with them." I snipped the air a couple of times. "Careful, the outer edges are sharp too."
Reaching out, Aisha ran one finger over the detail on the handgrips, then trailed it cautiously down the blade. "That is the most motherfucking badass thing I've ever seen," she declared, "and I once saw Lung set fire to an eighteen-wheeler full of booze and ride it into the Bay."
"When did you see that, and why were you close enough to see it?" asked Brian, suddenly intent.
She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at him. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
"Mmm." He gave her a medium-level stink-eye. "Let's leave this family discussion for later. Did you want to pose with those shears for the photo?"
"Yeah," I said, then opened them up behind Aisha's head so they stuck up like bunny-ears. Then, with my other hand, I made the 'live long and prosper' sign out of Star Trek. "Aisha?"
"Hang on." She threw the horns with both hands at once then nodded, grinning with her whole face. "Do it."
The electronic shutter on Brian's phone clicked once, then he turned it the other way and took another pic. "Okay, more pictures?"
"Selfies!" Aisha picked up her phone.
I put the shears away, then reached into my bag. "Sure, but then I've got a surprise for you."
"Surprise?" Brian looked apprehensive again.
I chuckled. "Don't worry. Nothing bad. Aisha's gonna love it to bits."
"I am?" She looked at me like a kid finding an unexpected present under the Christmas tree. "What is it?"
"You'll see." I leaned in toward her. "Selfies, remember?"
"Right, right." It seemed the promise of a surprise had put her off her stride; it took three attempts to get the camera set up for the first one. But she managed it, and took a fairly credible picture with the park's small lake in the background, along with the two people who were feeding the ducks there.
I knew who they were, of course, and what was about to happen.
Panacea
Amy hunched her shoulders into her hoodie and tossed a handful of oats onto the surface of the small lake. The few ducks that had chosen not to fly south, or got left behind, paddled over and started dipping their bills in the water, collecting the pieces. They didn't look thrilled, and she could sympathise with them.
"I don't even know why I'm here," she groused, glaring at her sister's back. Vicky had chosen to show up in costume, for some incomprehensible reason. "You're the one who got in the shit with the PRT, not me."
"If by that you mean I'm the one who called out the PRT for their weak-sauce attitude toward Atropos, then sure," Vicky sniped back. "Aunt Sarah sent me to feed ducks here until I figured out where I'd gone wrong. She sent you along to make sure I didn't just go off and spend the day at Dean's or something."
"So, go," Amy invited. "I honestly couldn't give a flying fuck." She was lying, of course. But that wasn't exactly something she could tell the truth about. Spending time with Vicky was always something she was down for, but when Vicky had her nose out of joint it was a lot less fun.
"I can't." Vicky threw a handful of oats at a bunch of ducks and scored a direct hit; they scattered, quacking in agitation. Once they'd settled down, they shook themselves to get the oats off their feathers and onto the water, where they scooped them up. "If Aunt Sarah asks you where we've been …"
"… I'll say we were here." Amy looked around aimlessly. There was a group of people at a picnic table some distance away. One was dressed oddly, all in black.
"You can't lie worth a damn." Vicky's tone held no censure. It was a fact of life. "She'll know, and then I'll be in trouble all over again."
"So why did you even call them out?" asked Amy, peering across at the other group. "You had to know they'd complain to Aunt Sarah." The one in black was wearing a hat and a long coat, and either had close-cut hair or …
Vicky threw some more oats to the ducks. "Because Mom's right, and all capes need to be held accountable for shit they do. And the PRT's all 'no, don't engage with Atropos because it might be dangerous' but she's a fucking murderer and punching beats Thinking in combat. Nobody can think straight with a busted nose, and if the Thinker wants to talk, I'll bust their jaw as well."
"She seems to be pretty good at what she does," ventured Amy. "Even not counting Oni Lee, she managed to fuck up four supervillains pretty good. None of them saw her coming, and she took them down by the numbers."
Vicky rolled her eyes. "Because she had time to prepare. Also, she murdered Shadow Stalker. Admitted to it, right there. But what's the PRT saying about it? Nothing. 'Cannot comment on an ongoing investigation', my muscular gluteus maximus!"
And that was the trouble with teaching Vicky something. Amy had explained various parts of the body to her sister once, and Vicky had latched on to the name of the ass muscle forever after. "Well, maybe they can't."
"Pfft, I don't see why not. We're affiliate capes, right? But even Dean's all, 'sorry, not allowed to talk about it'. If not to his own girlfriend, who?" Vicky froze, her gaze fixed on the picnic table. "Holy shit. Holy shit. Ames, you see that?"
"Those people? What about them?" Amy knew damn well 'what about them'. But the chances of Atropos actually showing up at random in the same park she and Vicky had been sent to seemed minimal to zero. Also, there were two other people with the maybe-Atropos, and she hadn't had any associates that Amy had heard of.
"That's Atropos, I'd swear to it!" Vicky pointed. "I watched her fucking murder Lung, and I couldn't do a damn thing about it. Well, now it's different."
"Vicky, wait a minute. Let's just take a—" But Vicky was gone, rocketing across the park, bag of oats dropped and spilling on the ground. The ducks, sensing a feast, waddled out of the water, quacking loudly.
"Fuck it. Enjoy." Amy dropped her bag next to Vicky's, and started running after her sister.
Tenebrae
Brian had no idea what was going on. Aisha was being her usual self, and Atropos was … playing along? Clowning around? For a terrifyingly effective assassin, she seemed intent on enjoying herself, even pulling out her own phone for a couple of selfies.
It was not how he'd expected this to go.
Then Atropos took the Polaroid camera out of her bag, and Brian grinned at the look of confusion on his sister's face. She peered at the admittedly odd-looking device, her head tilted to one side, for all the world like one of Rachel's dogs when it didn't understand a command.
"Okay," she said. "What the fuck is it supposed to do?"
"Prints out a physical photo," Atropos explained.
"You're shitting me."
"She is not," Brian assured her. "Those things have been around for years. Longer than I've been alive."
"Yeah, right," jeered Aisha. "That thing looks like a Tinker threw it together yesterday. Out of spare parts."
"Oh, ye of little faith." Atropos' voice took on the quality that made Brian think she was smiling. "Come on, I'll set it up to take a timed photo." Placing it on the table, she pressed a button and stepped back until she was standing directly in front of it. "Both of you get in the frame with me," she urged. "We've got about eight seconds."
"Oh, this I gotta see." Aisha crowded up on one side of Atropos, so Brian naturally moved in on the other side.
If sitting back and watching his sister clown around with a terrifying cape assassin was deeply weird, he didn't even know what to feel about standing so close he was shoulder to shoulder with her. There was an air of palpable danger about her, or maybe that was just because he knew what she was capable of. And as for her personal combat capability, she moved like the best fighters he'd known, always perfectly in balance with her surroundings. Except where it came to Aisha; Aisha, she let inside her guard.
The Polaroid camera beeped once, then twice more. He forced a smile onto his face, because he didn't want Aisha grumping at him for screwing up the photo.
beep-beep-beep-beeee—
"Down!" shouted Atropos; at the same time as he felt the shove, his leg was kicked out from under him so he went sprawling. Distantly, he heard Aisha yelp in protest, but all that was overshadowed an instant later when something swept over them and the picnic table dissolved in a shattering crash.
He rolled over and did a kip-up to get to his feet, looking around to see what the fuck had just happened. Thankfully, Aisha was okay, sitting up with her hair falling across her eyes and an indignant expression on her face. The picnic table had been demolished, and Atropos was already standing, left hand extended as though she'd just caught the camera that was now in her hand. In her right, she held the photo.
Some yards beyond the wreckage of the table was Glory Girl, just now slowing down and turning around. "Stand still!" she shouted.
"Nuh-uh," Atropos retorted flippantly. "Here, catch." She tossed the camera to Brian, then stood there waving the photo in the air.
"Glory Girl, stand down!" Brian called out as he automatically caught it. "This is a really bad idea!"
"It'll be a bad idea for you to get in my way." Glory Girl clenched her fists. "This is between me and Atropos."
"Oh, for fuck's sake, why can't you just fuck off?" demanded Aisha. "We were having a perfectly fun day here, and you had to come in with your 'hurr durr me big hero' shit."
"She's a villain," Glory Girl explained slowly, as though to a child. "And a murderer. I'm a hero. Stopping people like her is what I do."
"You're a humungous twatwaffle, is what you are," declared Aisha impudently. "She's the hero. How many villains have you stopped this week? How many have you chased out of town ever?"
Brian wanted to facepalm. Not only was his sister arguing with Glory Girl, but insulting her as well. He didn't even want to know where she'd gotten 'twatwaffle' from. "Aisha …"
"Well, she is!" Aisha actually sounded upset now. "Atropos is cool! Because of her, there's barely any villains left in town!"
"And there'll be one less in just a second," promised Glory Girl. Brian felt waves of fear pulsing out from her. It was never any less real, even when he knew where it was coming from. She lunged forward, gathering speed in an obvious move to punch Atropos as a fly-by attack.
Atropos barely seemed to move, but she swayed aside just far enough to avoid the attack. Moreover, her hand darted out; when Glory Girl came to a halt, she was no longer wearing the tiara. She didn't seem to realise it for a moment, until Atropos tossed the headgear to Aisha. "Here. Souvenir."
Aisha seemed to be one of those people who reacted to fear with defiance. She caught the tiara out of the air and brandished it like a weapon. "Hah! Score!"
"What the fuck?" Glory Girl felt at her head. "Hey, give that back!"
"Go away and I'll think about it." Atropos' voice was steady. If she was feeling the same level of fear as Brian, she was a master at hiding it. Her hand went into her pocket, then came out with a shiny quarter. She flipped it in the air, then caught it without looking. "Right now, you're intruding."
"I'll show you intruding!" shouted Glory Girl. As her voice rose to a shout, she lanced toward Atropos again.
The quarter spun into the air once more as Atropos did a perfect limbo twist to avoid the charging attack. Glory Girl, for her part, choked and grabbed her throat, then crash-landed in an ungainly sprawl beyond the wreckage of the table.
What the fuck? Did she just flip that coin into Glory Girl's mouth?
Brian hurried over, but Atropos got there first. She dropped with one knee into Glory Girl's stomach; the stricken superhero let out a loud hacking cough, and the coin was expelled upward with some force. Atropos caught it out of the air, then dropped it into her pocket and drew the shears again.
"Hey," she said, and rapped Glory Girl on the forehead with the heavy blades. "Pay attention."
Slowly, Glory Girl's eyes came back into focus, and she found herself with the tip of the shears an inch from her eye. "What … what the fuck?"
Atropos hit her with them again, just hard enough to leave a bruise. "I said, pay attention. I know how to bring your power down. I know how to kill you. Do you understand?" Clack, went the shears
"Wha—will you stop fucking doing that!" Glory Girl began to reach for the blades, then froze as Atropos used the very tip of the shears to snip off one of her eyelashes.
"Yeah. It's inside your field. I can put it straight into your brain. It will kill you." Atropos' voice was implacable. "I can do this at any time. Do you understand?"
"I … yeah, I understand." The admission was wrung grudgingly out of her throat. "Do you want me to beg for my life? Is that it?"
"No." Atropos' voice never changed. She wasn't gloating or even admonishing Glory Girl; merely establishing a fact of life. "Next time, if someone tells you to back off … back the fuck off."
Staggering footsteps and heavy panting heralded the arrival of someone Brian belatedly recognized as Panacea. "Please," she gasped. "Please … don't kill … her. Oh god … I need to do … more cardio."
"Wasn't going to," Atropos said. "But your sister could've fucked up really badly just then. She could've hurt my friends here. So … a favour for a favour. I keep quiet about this, and you do something for me, later on. Deal?"
Panacea blinked at her. "A … favour? What sort of … favour?"
Atropos snorted and tapped Glory Girl's forehead with the shears again. "Nothing hugely illegal. Okay?"
"Do I have a choice?" The New Wave healer looked at where her sister was still staring at the shears.
"There's always a choice. Is that a yes?"
Grudgingly, Panacea nodded. "Yes. You don't talk about this, I do you a favour later."
"Awesome." Atropos sheathed the shears, then came to her feet and stepped back in a move so smooth Brian would've sworn it had to be rehearsed. "Sorry about the rough stuff, but some lessons need to have a point before people take them on."
Aisha cackled out loud. "Well, that lesson certainly had a point!" She fitted the tiara on her head, sitting up at a jaunty angle.
Cautiously, with one eye on Atropos, Glory Girl rose into the air. "I want that back. Right now."
"Nope," said Atropos, before Aisha could even protest. "Call it an asshole tax. Take your sister and leave before anything else happens."
"Yeah … let's just … go," panted Panacea. "Are you … okay?"
"She stole my tiara!" Glory Girl pointed at Aisha indignantly.
"No, I stole it and gave it to her," Atropos corrected her. "As I said, asshole tax. Now, fuck off before I decide to get creative."
"Ooh, ooh, get creative!" Aisha urged. "I wanna see this!"
Panacea shook her head. Making a wide berth around Brian and Atropos, she took Glory Girl by the arm. "Let's go home now," she stated firmly. "Before this day goes even further off the rails."
"But … my tiara …"
Atropos shook her head. "Not yours anymore. Bye."
"We've got spares," Panacea stated. "C'mon. Let's go."
Reluctantly, Glory Girl picked up her sister and lofted into the air. Pausing, she looked back at Atropos. "This isn't over."
Atropos pushed her hat back and made a come-at-me gesture. "Anytime."
It almost seemed as though Glory Girl was going to take up the challenge, but Panacea punched her in the shoulder and muttered something about "any more favours". Turning, the brightly clad teen hero flew away, gaining altitude until they disappeared from view.
"Well, that was a thing." Atropos waved the photo—which she'd kept in her hand the whole time—in the air again, then looked at it. "Huh. Action shot."
When Brian looked at it, the colours were still fading in, but it showed Glory Girl's face, charging at the camera, right at the moment when she'd realized her target was no longer in front of her, and that she was about to impact the table at speed. "Wow. Damn."
"Lemme see, lemme see!" Aisha plucked the photo from his fingers. "Okay, that's amazing. The look on her face is classic. 'The moment when she knew she done fucked up.'."
"It is pretty cool, yeah." Atropos retrieved the Polaroid camera from Brian. "Thanks. So, I'm thinking of taking a few selfies with this—signed, of course, for my favourite fan—and then … say, Brian, you brought a car, didn't you?"
Brian nodded. "The PRT's letting me use a hire car to get around and take Aisha to appointments and stuff. Why?"
He couldn't see the expression on her face, but he imagined it to be a calculating smile. "How would you like to help me put a really severe crimp in the Brockton Bay drug trade …?"
Aisha's delighted whoop came as no surprise at all. His sister hated drugs. "Um … would you be needing me to do anything illegal? Because I'm not allowed to do that."
"Nope." Atropos shook her head. "I just need transport from place to place, then you can wait outside while I do my thing. I'm not even going to kill anyone who doesn't try to kill me first."
He glanced at Aisha. She nodded enthusiastically. "Say yes, Bri! Say yes!"
Deputy Director Renick didn't tell me what to do in this situation.
Shit … um … keep her happy while not doing anything illegal?
With a sensation of stepping onto a tight-rope over a bottomless pit, he nodded. "Uh … yes?"
This time, he knew for a fact that she was smiling under the mask. "Excellent."
This is going to make for one hell of an after-action report.
End of Part Seventeen
[A/N: I'll be holding off on writing more on this for a couple of weeks, sorry. Other obligations.]