Chapter 32: Chapter 2.10 (Rune)
Notes:
Minor content warning, similar to the Kara talk.
Chapter Text
SUN FEB 27
After I woke up, I sent Cass a text about today. I didn't expect her to be up this early, but whenever she was up, she'd get back to me on whether or not she wanted to stop for breakfast somewhere, or just meet up. Hopefully I'd have an answer before I decided to eat something. After that, I went down to the basement for half an hour of weight training. The kitchen was still… in progress. I didn't want to go back to my normal habits of having breakfast in there until it was fixed up. I'd just feel bad about it, and I had too many things dragging me down to invite more.
On the topic of distracting myself from things, I chose to focus my thoughts towards today. Planning with Cass, then Parian's with Gram, Then… I dunno. I could always train with whatever time I had left, I suppose. I guess first, I should figure out what to do with Cass. I spent the rest of the workout trying to think of things to do together, be it coffee, breakfast places, shopping, lunch or dinner restaurants, hobbies we shared… I couldn't think of anything good. So I went and got dressed, figuring that Cassie of all people wouldn't care if I was sweaty while we hang out, and started on a jog to the Boardwalk.
It was on the jog I discarded that line of thinking entirely. This was a business meeting, more than anything. It didn't have to be fun, just secret. It didn't take me long to realize the obvious answer was meeting her at Tukson's and asking for the tea room. It felt weird going without Amy, but it was the most private place that came to mind.
I stopped at a little deli off the boardwalk to pick up a couple breakfast sandwiches, and I was halfway through the second one when Cass finally got back to me. She said she could just eat at home unless I had plans. I said that was fine, and asked her if she knew Tukson's Book Trade. She replied that she could find it, asking why I was wondering, to which I answered that it was private, since we needed to talk. She went quiet for a bit after that, and I wandered the streets for a few blocks window shopping before she asked when to meet. I suggested 9:30, in a little under an hour.
I kept up my wandering after she agreed, starting to mosey in that general direction. When I got to the right block, I briefly debated stopping in at Parian's early to do my business as Terraform. I hadn't gotten any calls from her, but she did say the costumes would be done after the weekend was over. It seemed like her store got most of its business in the afternoon and evening though, with only one person I thought was a patron, and two more women who looked like employees. I was pretty sure one of them was Parian, but she didn't have her costume on. Probably best to wait.
There was still twelve minutes before when I'd said to meet, though. I sent her a text saying I was here, and a minute later got a reply saying she was on the way. I found her when she was a couple blocks out, making her way this way, occasionally checking her phone, and glancing about vigilantly. I don't think she expected to be followed, but it was good she was checking just in case. In the end she was a few minutes late, but I didn't comment on it.
"Hey, Cass. You okay?" I asked when she got closer, glancing over her shoulder. I didn't see anything suspicious, and hadn't noticed anyone following her for the blocks I'd been watching, but I wanted to show her I was keeping an eye out, too.
She seemed to notice, from the way she tensed. She didn't glance behind her, though. "Yeah, we're good." She didn't think she'd been followed, then. I nodded to the door, and led the way in.
Tukson was in the back doing inventory, since his shop also had a dearth of patrons this early. He heard the door, and popped his head out of the back room by the time we'd made it into the shop proper. His emotions were a mix of confusion, mild alarm, and a whole barrel of amusement, despite his masterful poker face showing only a quirked brow.
"Hi, again. Can we use the tea room?" I asked, projecting a confident smile.
He gave Cass a stern inspection before nodding. We were halfway up the stairs before he spoke. "Does Amy know you're having tea with other girls?"
I was tempted to retort that I wasn't gay, or that we weren't dating, but I swallowed thickly as something in my gut stopped me. "It's not an activity that demands any measure of exclusivity." I sniped, instead.
He snorted, and barked a quick laugh. "Just like your mother. Remind me to tell you about some of her college hobbies, sometime."
That caused me to stop and stare for a moment. I'd known they ran with Lustrum together back in the day, but it hadn't quite sunk in until now that the friendly if intimidating bookmonger had known my mother longer than Dad. My brain restarted, and I caught up with them, getting a confused glance from a worried Cass when I did.
"Back in a sec." He said, shutting the door behind him.
Cass sat and clicked her tongue before the silence could get awkward. "So, you have your own burly bouncer type?"
I considered how to answer, while slowly navigating into my own chair. On the one hand, I could just be honest, and trust her to be cordial given the full explanation that he used to run with my mom in a feminist movement. It didn't take a genius to assume he'd been a woman at the time. On the other, I could just say it wasn't her business, and give her the chance to get to know him a little before dropping anything that might color opinions given bigoted preconceptions she hadn't trained herself out of yet. I sighed, and settled for a middle ground. "He and mom used to run in the same cape gang, before I was born. Don't ask which one."
She blinked, surprised and intrigued. "Huh. Neat. So, uh, you said you wanted to talk shop?"
"Yeah," I nodded. "I talked to my team, most of it, anyway, and we've decided to help. Before that though, I have to ask; what do you plan to do, after you're out of the Empire?"
She glanced away, thought for a moment, and shrugged. "Either move until they stop chasing me, or join up with a different group, I guess."
"We're willing to take you on, if you don't want to move. We can hide you until the Empire isn't a problem anymore. You could fight, but coming and going to those are extra times you can be followed or found." I decided a calm pitch was probably best.
"Who's even on this team of yours?" She asked with an incredulous lilt to her voice, masking how wary and alarmed she felt.
"Me, a girl younger than us called Shatterpoint, along with Glory Girl and Panacea." I stated neutrally.
Her eyes widened and her lips pursed, trying to hide the shock and amusement that flared within her. "You're actually poaching from New Wave?" She tried to keep her voice calm, but it came out a touch shrill.
I sighed, dropping my head into my hands. "Not really? Vicky's convinced they can be on two teams and it'll be fine."
She shook her head. "That's stupid and short-sighted. It's never going to work."
"She's determined to try." I trailed off, without disagreeing. I shook my head, grabbing a pen from my hoodie and an old receipt from my wallet, and scribbled down my address. "This is where I live. We have a spare room, and we can feed and house you safely for as long as you need. As long as we keep the blinds drawn, and you don't leave after you show up, it should be perfectly safe as long as it needs to be." She took the sheet, looking down at it while feeling surprised, worried, and conflicted. "If you're in danger, need to leave, or if they try to make you do anything else criminal, especially hurting people yourself or enabling hate crimes, I need you to drop everything and come to my place. Do you understand?" I gave her a second, but she was silent. "That's the price of our help. No more hurting people. If we're ever going to get the heroes off your back, we need to draw the line, now. You're not a villain, anymore. Understand?" I tapped the table several times as I spoke, to emphasize the stern tone.
"You know they know we're friends, right?" She said fearfully, her eyes still on the address, which she waved slightly. "They'll check here eventually, if I disappear."
I shrugged. "Normal goons we can take without obvious powers. We can reinforce the house to make breaking in harder. I can dig a bunker in the basement or something you can hide in if someone tries while me and dad are away." I didn't expect we'd ever need it, if we could just ask Dinah what the odds were every day. It wouldn't be a terrible thing to have though, especially if it made her feel better. I wasn't sure yet if we'd ever be telling Cass she'd have a precog looking out for her, after all. "If they try to come with capes, I'm fucking Terraform. We kick their asses and turn the Bay against them for attacking me in my home." She didn't seem entirely convinced by my over-exaggerated bravado, but she did still snort and smile, the edge taken off of her fear. I reached over to take her hand. "You'll be okay, Cass. We'll keep you safe. And when this is all over, I want you on our team."
She pinned me with a misty stare. "What...? But..."
I shushed her, holding up my free hand. Seven seconds later, Tukson knocked on the door before letting himself in. He took one look at Cass, glanced down to our still-touching hands, and rolled his eyes. "Bloody heartbreaker..." He muttered, deadpan but amused, depositing the tea set.
I groaned and slumped forward, while Cass tore her hand away before glaring at us. "I'm not some dyke." She spat quietly. The ass just snorted, shrugged, and left again. This left her settling that ire entirely on me.
"Not that team." I grumbled from where my head was settled on the table. The joke took the edge off Cass' bout of homophobia, and I crawled back upright to give her an unimpressed stare. After giving her a few seconds to stew and realize she'd fucked up, I shook my head. "Shatterpoint and I think our team is the best place for you, right now. Amy's willing to go along with it, and Vicky hasn't been informed yet, but would've been outvoted if she disagreed. Her joining up was a recent thing, and we didn't plan for her to be at the last team meeting." Not to mention the first proper team meeting, but that didn't need to be mentioned. I busied my hands pouring tea while I gave her a bit to consider it. "So, that'll make five capes on the team, plus probably the rest of New Wave in a pinch, plus whoever else we recruit in the next few weeks. Not enough to stand up to the whole Empire, but I don't see them committing everything at once, do you?" She glanced aside, considering it. "Please. Be a hero? Join my team?"
She swallowed thickly and nodded. "Alright. Hero. Sounds good." She said with a brittle smile, trying to force herself to feel optimistic about it.
"Good. Thank you." I gave her a bright smile to try and help boost that dour mood. "Now, we need to plan, some. I said I was worried about you being forced to hurt people, but I have no idea what Rune's average day is actually like. What does the Empire have you do?"
She hesitated, and I wasn't sure if it was some flagging remnant of loyalty, or natural delinquent obstinance, but either way, it folded as she started to speak. "Rune... isn't a heavy hitter. Not really. Tactically I'm better on the defensive, where I've had time to tag a bunch of shit that I can pull into the fight whenever I need to. We don't get many fights like that though, so I'm usually hanging back throwing whatever I can find, or being the big stick the other guy doesn't want to make us swing. The heroes hate escalating to the point where I'm tearing up buildings for ammo, so they usually break off before then." She shook her head. "I'm not involved in the ground level stuff often. Usually I'm playing scout or just the retreat plan. It's hard to justify throwing the first car when the natural response is grenades and firebombs, you know? The heroes are different, but they're usually raiding our stashes or shipments, smashing our shit until we force them to run away. It's only Hook and them that actually pick fights, usually by being too obvious where they're at and daring the heroes to come at them." She slumped a bit, features pinched. "A lot of what I do is just show up at the rallies, look good for my age group, drive recruitment up. Sometimes I hang around gun or drug shipments just in case. Empire buys and sells a lot of shit other gangs need, or send shit to or from Europe or wherever else. The Merchants are fucking posers pretending to know what they're doing, the Empire's been a trade power for decades. It's the whole reason to have your gang on the fucking coast."
"So it's all guns and drugs?"
She shook her head. "Nah, that's just the expensive shit worth guarding. Mostly drugs. Empire doesn't peddle much, but they sell literal tons of the shit to people that do. They also bring in black market things for other groups, there's at least one warehouse where they make Nazi shit... you wouldn't believe the market for it, in the States..." Her mood took a sharp turn downward. "...people, too."
That was rather alarming. "People? Like human trafficking? I thought that was the ABB's thing." I said quickly, my nerves getting the better of me.
"I mean, it is, but... Kaiser doesn't want us Herrens to know, but I'm pretty sure at least a couple of the white indies who've disappeared over the past few years were sold off to Gesellshaft, to be broken or bred."
"Bred?" I snapped, in shrill incredulity.
She seemed unfazed by my alarm, and shrugged. "Capes breed capes. Second gens have an easier time triggering, and almost always do trigger eventually. Same with third, though I don't think there's many fourth gen capes, yet. Surprised you didn't know that, hanging out with New Wave."
"But..." I couldn't keep the horror off my face, or out of my voice. "people buy capes, to..." I couldn't even finish the sentence, the thought was so terrible.
"Well, yeah." She said, starting to feel worried on my behalf. "What'd you think... no, back up." She held up her hands, heaving a deep breath which reminded me to stop hyperventilating. "Think about it for a sec, how many capes in the Bay, and how many of them are men?"
She seemed to be waiting on me. "Most of them?" Which didn't really make any sense, but...
"And how many should be, considering women have a lot more reasons to be attacked, or used, or fired, or cheated on...?" She waved away her angry listing. "Especially with the ch- the Asians and their brothels? ABB should be torn apart from the inside, from all those rape triggers, but they're not." She pinned me with a steely glare. "Makes more sense if Lung's just killing them, or selling them off to people who don't care they might not be white, like the Yangban, the Fallen, the Mexican Cartels..." She petered off a bit as she wracked her brain. "...I think there's a group on the other side of Canada, too... Elite might buy them just to put them to work... point is, shortage is supply, not demand. Makes too much sense, with the numbers problem."
Disparity, my chaotic mind supplied, though I didn't voice the correction. "Oh god." I muttered, hugging myself and shivering. I suddenly felt dirty and scared, and I had no idea how to make it stop. "It's so horrible..."
"Hey," She muttered, tapping my shoulder to get my attention, "it's... uh. It'll be okay?" She sounded confused and out of her depth. "We're, uh. We'll fix it, right? Big damn heroes?"
I could tell she didn't really care. She was so inured to the plight of those girls... it was just a part of how the world worked, to her. But... she was trying to cheer me up, at least. "Yeah." I muttered with a nod, deciding that if that's how the world worked, we'd just have to change it. "Big damn heroes."
She gave a brittle smile, happy I'd dragged myself out of my mood. "Right." I said, trying to force more strength back into my tone. Subject change. Topic bad, switch it up. "You, you're okay? You're safe at home, not going to be forced to fight heroes or hurt people if you can't help it?"
Cass shrugged. "Safe is relative, but they're not going to beat me, or try to kill me without a lot of proof I'm not useful anymore. They might try to lock me up, ground me or something..." She shuddered. "I can handle that. Kaiser's been pissed at me lately, I've been getting shit details and..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "Started at Canberra, keeping me close instead of letting me have the easy border job. Been getting hints," She spat. "that I need to contribute more, and stay under his thumb. He's not going to start fights just to shove me into them, though. I don't think I'm in any more danger from the heroes than usual."
"Well..." I drew the word out with a hum. "If you have to fight, I want you to try and get away, de-escalate where possible. If you can't, there's a chance we might be able to claim you without trouble, if you go in quietly." She scoffed, and I cut back in. "I know, but it's better than nothing, right?" Ugh, abort. Abort. "Do you have anything else you know that might help with keeping you safe or planning all this?" I paused for effect. "...aside from the Medhall thing."
She blinked a few times, her mouth snapping shut. "Wait, you know about that?"
"Anders." I spat coldly, clicking my tongue when she flinched. "Yeeeup. I know about that. There's a lot of people who are not happy with the Empire, enough to figure some things out."
Cass stared, then snorted, then snickered. She was roaring in a snorting belly laugh when I snapped. "What? What's so funny?"
"You are the best kind of stupid." She howled, taking a moment to suck in a few deeper breaths while I blushed and glared. A few seconds later, she'd worked her way down to a relatively normal speaking tone. "You can't twig me for a month, and then you out Kaiser to my face." She very nearly devolved into another fit, but held it off. "That's ballsy, and backwards, and... you're amazing, Tay."
I rolled my eyes away, still blushing. "Glad I could entertain you."
She waved her hand, eking out a few last chuckles. "Nah, you're great. But holy shit can that get you murdered fast. If I wasn't actually on board, you'd be dead before Monday." She tapped the table and gave me a stern look. "Do not fuck around with that shit."
"Right." She was treating it a lot more seriously than I'd expected, given her blasé attitude toward her own secret identity, but I didn't have experience with many criminal outlooks to compare it properly. "You're safe, that's good. Can you help us take them down from the inside, at all?"
Cass froze and swallowed, blinking back into motion as she fell into thought. "They don't tell me or Othala much besides what our jobs are, when we get them. Victor gets more info, but he's pretty tight-lipped. He's been getting more distant and passive-aggressive since we moved to the Bay and he wound up responsible for me." She snorted and glanced to the side, feeling amused, vindictive, wistful, and... aroused? Yeah, not touching that. "Can't imagine why..." She sang with a smirk.
"What about the rest of the Empire?" I asked, breaking her out of her reverie.
She hummed. "I guess... I could take that internship he's been trying to foist on me? I've been avoiding it since it's just more work for nothing but making him happy, but..." She pondered it for a bit, before shaking her head. "I can't really start asking around. I never cared about anything the Empire did enough to stick my nose into it, it'd be suspicious if I started. That said, they ignore me. I can listen in, and Hook's crew at least have never been subtle." She shrugged.
I nodded. "However much you think you can do safely. I won't make you take the job, or put yourself in danger just for information." I drained my cooling tea to give myself time to think, prompting Cass to sip cautiously at hers. She didn't seem like much of a tea person, so I wasn't surprised. I poured another and spoke up. "Okay, you should probably start keeping some bug-out bags handy just in case." She scoffed and nodded at the obvious advice. "Whenever we're ready to hit the Empire, or whenever you're in danger, you can come to my house, or Amy and Vicky's, the Pelhams might help if you said you were friends with Amy, or we set it up beforehand..." I thought for a moment, pondering the man sitting at his front desk downstairs, and the very large guns locked up under said desk. "Tukson would probably help you, if you could make it here."
Cass hummed thoughtfully, and nodded. "Can we just... fake my death, or something?"
I'm pretty sure she was joking, but it still got me thinking. "Maybe not, but we might be able to convince the PRT to announce they'd caught you. Then the Empire could waste resources trying to get you out, and fail because you were never there. Depends on whether they have spies, and how much info they get from them."
"That... might work?" Her head tilted, and she shrugged. "I know they've got people, but I don't know who, or how deep."
I nodded along, sipping at my drink. "Keep that as a 'maybe' plan. We might be able to work something out to actually 'capture' you, to sell it properly." She looked incredibly unsure of the idea, but that was fine. I snorted and smiled. We didn't need to work out every little detail of some master plan right this second. The more complex the scheme, the less likely it'd work, anyway. "Any other plans or ideas for now, or can it wait for school?" She shrugged and shook her head. I checked the clock. Not even 10:30, yet. "I'm busy this afternoon, but I've got time for an early lunch, if you wanted to find a place?"
She didn't have anything better to do, and wasn't interested in sticking around to check out the books today. We left, and wandered the shops near the boardwalk until we found a by-the-slice pizza place to stop in at. After that, I ran home for a shower before I had to head out again.
Notes:
A reminder that neither Taylor nor Cass are right about absolutely everything. Cass is working from incredibly biased opinions, filtered through incorrect bigoted stereotypes. She is VERY wrong about Lung, for instance.