Chapter 12: Interlude - Vista's Bad Day
Interlude X.2
+++Missy Biron+++
Missy Biron did her level best to mentally drown out the sound of her parents arguing in the downstairs living room again. This was made all the harder by the fact that both were screaming at the top of their lungs at each other, again. For the third time this week, and it was only Thursday!
Tonight's entertainment seemed to be her mother berating her father for being seen leaving his secretary's private home early this morning, while her father was loudly castigating her mother for 'embarrassing them' by getting publicly drunk on wine at some important party or another. The fact that the two were already divorced and thus didn't live in the same house, let alone have any say on each other's lives was conveniently ignored for the sake of shrieking at each other as loudly as possible. The fact that both had come together to do it face to face, rather than using a phone, was simply to add to the fun involved.
Note the sarcasm there.
'The same old shit, just on a different night.' Missy thought with a tired sigh as she padded to her bedroom. One of the things she liked about her home was, due to the size and layout, her room was nearly on the opposite end of the house from the living where her parents liked to carry out their constant arguments. The additional floors, walls, and distance helped muffle the sounds and help helped her feel as far away from the constant problems that highlighted her parents' relationship as she could.
Slamming the door shut behind her, the girl flung herself on her bed and started to brood. Life had not been going her way recently, if it had ever been doing so at all. Her home life was shit, her life at school was boring as hell and her life as a superhero was, while marginally better than her home life, still somewhat shitty.
Missy knew that her parents loved her, both made that obvious whenever she spent any time alone with either one of them. The problem was that they seemed to hate each other more than they ever loved her. They constantly tried to use her against each other in whatever petty power plays and schemes they were trying to launch against each other, so much so that she had long since given up trying to mediate between them.
School was so-so, mostly because it was…boring. She was a smart girl and the coursework was fairly easy, even if she took into account her 'extracurricular activities' cutting into her studying time. She had a few casual friends but no one that she would really call her BFF. Her work as the strongest Shaker in Brockton Bay, Vista, made having friends that close something of a complication if they were canny enough to notice when she wasn't there, Vista was and vice-versa.
In truth, she preferred being a superhero to her life as a civilian. Being Vista was leagues better than being Missy Biron.
Unfortunately, things weren't exactly sweet on that front either. She was currently thirteen, soon to be fourteen, and had Triggered a month shy of her eleventh birthday. She had joined the Wards not long afterwards, swiftly followed by her parent's divorce.
It hadn't been so bad at first, publicity patrols and the like, but then she rapidly discovered that being cast as the 'cute and perky one', especially in a Ward Team full of boys and no other girls, was less than pleasing because she was constantly babied by the others, both on and off the field.
It really, really pissed her off. She was the strongest Shaker on the East Coast! She could bend space into a pretzel! She could reduce a car to the size of a Tonka truck or turn a marble into a boulder! She was not someone who needed to be coddled!
What was almost worse was that the Wards operated on an age-based leadership system rather than a tenure-based one. This meant that despite having over two years of experience as a Parahuman and as a hero, Aegis was made the leader of the Wards after Triumph graduated to the Protectorate rather than Vista. Any time she offered suggestions or opinions, she was given an unintentionally condescending platitude and thereafter ignored.
Worse, she had developed a crush on Gallant, Dean Stansfield, who was currently dating Victoria Dallon, known better to the public as Glory Girl of New Wave. The jealousy was very irritating, and she was currently blaming the entire debacle on puberty and all the stupid hormones involved. She did her best to ignore the crush, but it had her acting up and she knew that Dean knew about it because he was an empath.
God, how embarrassing did puberty have to be?!
She had spoken with Miss Militia about her position in the Wards and her growing restlessness and the older heroine had been sympathetic, but utterly unable to do anything to change the policy regarding Wards leadership, especially since Armsmaster was nominally in charge of the Wards and Director Piggot had ordered the Wards transferred to the PRT Building almost as soon as she was assigned to Brockton Bay, at least according to scuttlebutt.
PRT Troopers tended to gossip more than old women and her powers were great for eavesdropping.
Hearing the front door slam as her father left, Missy knew that her mother would go straight for the wine rack for more liquid comfort and then straight to bed in short order. In a matter of about half an hour, Ms. Biron would be dead to the world until the morning.
The temptation to go out and do something alone as Vista arose to plague her yet again, as it had done so for months. Missy knew that Wards were NOT to do solo patrols and especially not at night, but she was getting so tired of the unwitting condescension of her peers, of the cruel, deliberate contempt and condescension from the former vigilante Shadow Stalker, to even having to endure yet another night of hearing her estranged parents turn the air blue with curses and foul language towards one another.
Her decision crystalizing in her mind, Missy swung herself into an upright position and got up. Heading to her wardrobe, she opened it and moved the cover of the false bottom of it to one side, exposing her spare costume. All Wards, except for Gallant and Kid Win, had a spare costume at home in case they were called into the PRT Building in a hurry.
She had never worn it…until now.
Slipping her regular clothes off and pulling her costume on, slowly and deliberately, was a decidedly intoxicating feeling for Missy. She wasn't a goody two-shoes like Shadow Stalker snidely called her, but she was also not someone to buck the rules simply because she could like the other girl did, so this feeling that she was doing something decidedly against the rules was…quite the heady feeling.
If it was why the aggressive ex-vigilante did solo patrols as much as she did, Missy could kinda understand, to a point, why Stalker did it.
Didn't change the fact that the other girl was a Grade-A bitch.
Placing her visor over her eyes, Vista looked around Missy's bedroom and smiled wryly. She looked so out of place in her own bedroom!
Checking the time on her bedside clock, the Ward saw that roughly twenty minutes had passed since her father had left. A few more minutes and she could leave.
Waiting patiently for ten minutes, Vista tiptoed out of her bedroom and immediately heard the sound of her mother snoring her head off through the open door of her bedroom. Closing it gently as she always did when she made a late night trip to the bathroom, the young heroine headed down and left via the back door. Her mother always forgot to lock it.
A few quick steps and a some space-twisting and she was two blocks away standing on top of a rooftop before anyone could even notice her.
"Now then…" she muttered softly. "Let's see what I can find out in the Bay."
Later
Rooftops, Lower Docks Area, Brockton Bay
The answer to that question, evidently, was 'not much at all.'
Even though she knew that most people would be at home, in bed, at this time of night/morning, it was still so surprising for Vista to see the city she had grown up in so quiet. Even more so thanks to the PRT reports that her security clearance could access pretty much painting this particular area as a hotbed of gang-related activity that neither the PRT or Protectorate could spare the resources to deal with.
That burned Vista. She was a hero and had powers that other people didn't possess. She wasn't into burning her candle at both ends like Panacea seemed to do, but doing what she could to cut down on crime? That she wanted to do, and the Protectorate wouldn't let her!
'That isn't fair; the Wards here get more actual hero work than other cities do.' She scolded herself guiltily as she closed the gap between one roof and another so she could cross them. 'Wards in other cities are lucky if they see any kind of actual fighting every few months, if that. We're lucky if we're only involved in a single fight every week and they still on treating us like spun glass.'
She could understand why that was: the Wards Program was designed to teach and protect heroes younger than eighteen or twenty-one, depending on their state's rules regarding that sort of thing. Casually sending their young counterparts out to face the likes of Kaiser and Lung wouldn't be good publicity for the Protectorate or PRT, let alone a good idea point-blank. Still, it burned her to put up with doing photo shoots and publicity patrols when her home was being crushed in the grip of the gangs.
Shadow Stalker felt like that as well, very deep down, and Vista knew that a few of the other Wards felt the same. Not enough to actually go out and do anything about it, but still.
The former vigilante Sophia Hess was rude, acerbic, proud, condescending, arrogant and utterly sure of herself. Vista did not like her whatsoever, which is why the fact that she agreed, ever so slightly, with the crossbow-user on this subject both rankled and mortified the Shaker to the bone.
The sound of dogs barking and snarling made Vista freeze where she stood. It wasn't just one or two either; it sounded like a whole pack of them, but they were muffled, as if they were in a building…
She tracked the barking to a large warehouse that should have been empty at this time of night. Instead, it was full of men and women as she peeked in through a dusty window. They were crowded around a chain-link ring, which had the banners of the Empire 88 hung above them.
'Hookwolf's dogfighting ring!' Vista easily deduced with a chill down her spine. The chief enforcer of the Empire 88 was infamous for being a brutal man who took pride in running both bloody fighting rings and blood sports like dogfighting rings. Stormfront, the Empire 88 front site, practically boasted of it, but the locations were set at random and passed along via word of mouth and disposable paper fliers. The only time they were discovered was after the fact.
'Trust me to find one when I can't do anything about it!' Vista cursed in her mind. While she'd freely admit to liking cute things as much as any girl her age, especially animals, she was also very aware of her own limitations. From what little she could see, there were over two-dozen members of the Empire 88 in there as crowd control-slash-guards, as well as two Parahumans that she recognised.
Stormtiger and Cricket, two of Hookwolf's direct subordinates, were keeping an eye on the proceedings. Stormtiger was an aerokinetic, able to shape the air around him into blades and either using them to cover his hands like claws or fire them off as projectiles. Some reports had him flying using aerokinesis too. Cricket was someone with enhanced reflexes and some kind of sound manipulation, according to the Thinkers, anyway. She was deadly with her twin handheld scythes. Kamas, Vista dimly recalled them to be called.
Carefully, Vista eased her way away from the building. She knew when she was in over her head and trying to get involved in all of that ticked all of the boxes. All she could do was try to anonymously send a tip to the police about the location of one of the warehouses that Hookwolf used for his dog fights. It sucked, but what else could she do.
'It's odd though…scuttlebutt has it that Hookwolf personally oversees all of his dog fights when he can.' She thought as she hopped across to another building. 'Guess I caught them when he couldn't make it.'
Just as she was thinking that, the sound of footsteps following behind her, on the rooftops, made her peek over her shoulder. A topless, muscled man with a swastika tattoo on his right arm, 'E88' tattooed on his left arm and a vaguely wolf-like metal mask over his face, framed by his blond hair.
Hookwolf.
"So, one of the little pups from the Protectorate dares to enter the den of wolves by herself." The Enforcer said as he rolled his shoulders to loosen them up. "I'll have to thank Cricket for telling me someone was lurking outside. I'll enjoy delivering your broken body to the PRT Building."
Vista didn't hesitate to compress the distance between herself and the roof several buildings away and stepping over it before returning it to normal before she started to run. All she could do as she ran was curse herself up and down for being stupid enough to come out like this!
'If I ever get out of this mess, I am never breaking protocol again!' she swore.
The sound of running feet behind her gained to a metallic ring to it and then the pace changed to something with four legs. It didn't take a genius to figure out the Hookwolf had assumed his customary Changer state of a large, metallic wolf, made almost completely out of razor-sharp blades and hooks.
Lovely.
Gritting her teeth, Vista bent space again, stepping off the roof onto solid ground and then restoring the building to its proper height. She was too exposed up on the rooftops, with almost nowhere to hide. Down here though, Hookwolf would have to deal with cramped streets and alleys in his large wolf form, while she, being relatively petite for her fourteen years, would have little trouble moving around.
She started running.
Hookwolf howled as he leapt off the building behind her and landed with the sound of metal breaking concrete and started his pursuit. She stretched the distance between them, but he ate up the distance and certain points had living beings, stray dogs, cats, homeless people, that prevented her from fully using her powers in the alleys, something she'd forgotten to take into account. Even a bunch of bugs could stop her from using her special warping power and, unfortunately, the streets around here seemed to be practically teeming with insects. Cockroaches mostly.
Ick.
"Shit!" she hissed as he caught up with her and swiped at her with a paw covered in sharp implements of death, not to mention its actual claws. She barely managed to stretch space between herself and the attack, but failed to take into account for the other foreleg. It batted her through the air and across the wall, grazing her head and making things spin for a moment. She still had enough presence of mind to stretch the space between herself and Hookwolf to the length of a football field as she staggered up and started to run.
'This isn't good.' Vista thought fuzzily. Getting hit in the head was not good for a Parahuman if you weren't a moderately powerful Brute; the Corona Pollentia and Corona Gemma, the speculated source of a Parahuman's power, was located in the brain. Lose them and you aren't coming back, and damaging it was not good either. It could send your powers out of control from a mere concussion, which it was possible that she'd gotten from that airtime earlier.
Stumbling out of the alley, Vista almost groaned as Hookwolf followed her. She focused and the space between them grew as she retreated, but her power did not work as fast as it could have. If she just had a bit of time, she could twist things into a pretzel around the Empire Cape.
Sadly, it didn't look as if she'd get that time.
Just as she thought that, a pair of powerful water jets slammed into Hookwolf out of nowhere and sent him flying back into the alley he had just left and straight into the group of trashcans and dumpsters along one side of the small gap between the buildings.
"What the-?!" Vista yelped, gawking at the sight of Hookwolf sent sprawling like a ragdoll. Also, he had a trashcan embedded on his face. She looked around for who the hell had helped her, but it didn't look like-!
No, there! Her eyes widened as, out of thin air, an armored figure with glowing blue wings and a skull-like helmet appeared, floating in midair. The blue glowing eyes of the helmet passed over her for a moment before locking onto Hookwolf, who had just pulled the trashcan off his face.
"Hookwolf, why don't you pick on someone your own size?" the floating Parahuman asked in a modulated voice that nevertheless sounded mildly scolding.
All Hookwolf did was snarl and start to charge again, this time using the buildings to leapfrog between until he could jump into the air, aimed right at the Tinker (there was no way someone dressed in armor like that wasn't a Tinker).
"Watch out!" the Shaker shouted, but her warning was unneeded; the Tinker merely raised one arm and pointed it at Hookwolf before firing off another powerful blast of water (which seemed to expand from a thin, Super Soaker stream to a hydrant-sized water blast seconds after leaving her arm) that slammed into the Empire Cape again, but this time the water seemed to come alive, wrapping around the struggling wolf like a giant amoeba seconds after impacting, leaving only his head free. In no time at all, Hookwolf was locked up in the water completely.
"Had enough?" Vista's mysterious savior asked.
That just seemed to made the Changer even more furious and the numerous spikes on his body suddenly redoubled in number before they started rotating like some kind of blender from hell, eviscerating the form of the water ball holding him and letting him drop down to the ground, which he did head-first and with a loud metallic clang.
"Vista." the Tinker spoke up, drawing the Shaker's attention. "Do you feel up to tag-teaming a Nazi?"
A grin crossed Vista's face. Despite the initial words that the other Cape had said, it seemed they had confidence in her abilities, as they hadn't implied she was weak or anything with their words; simply asked her if she wanted to help fight Hookwolf.
"You bet your suit I do." She said grimly and set herself ready to fight. Shakers always needed time to use their powers, whether it be time to analyze the best way to use their powers or time for their powers to work to their fullest capacity. Vista was in the second category. As she'd had some time to get a feel for her surroundings, she could now fight to her utmost.
Time she showed a Nazi who the big wolf on campus was.