"That's a good idea," she says thickly, feeling suddenly queasy as the panic subsides.
She pulls out the basin and leans over it for a few moments, but forces her stomach to settle. The alien sensations still assault her brain as they keep moving: up, down, out, in.
She turns, and they stay behind her. But the man's back in her vision. "Who-- what--" she starts. She shuts her eyes and tries to order her thoughts.
"Okay," she begins again. "Can you tell me what's happening?"
"You've become a Metahuman. There aren't a lot of us, but there seems to be more of us every day. I'm sure you'll figure out a way to use your wings to murder people. I've seen the reports on you. Men, women, children... you have a lot of blood on your hands." He spits. "I'm glad they're not white anymore, now that I think of it..."
He shakes his head. "Anyway, you get a reprieve of sorts. I'm told you'd rather die than betray your murderer's code. Well, I don't much care if you'd rather die or not. You won't. I can... and I will... find out where your murderous friends are... and we'll make sure they don't do any more villages like they did Rozovka."
Flashes of memory, disjointed, gory... over a hundred... entire village... slaughtered to make way for the oil pipeline... not a single survivor... body parts.. blood... praise from her bosses for a job well done... children's toys.. coated in blood...
Briana presses a hand against her temple and tries to force the images away. "NO! I can't! I won't!" she says, repeating the words she wishes she'd said all those months ago.
She buries her face in her hands. "The message didn't get through! They weren't supposed to be there!" She looks at the man, face a mask of anguish. "You have to believe I tried!"
She wrings her hands and begins pacing the cell, wings flapping agitatedly. She presses her head against the cell wall and screams, this time in grief. She'd felt the useless rage, pain and grief before, but had restrained herself. She never had the opportunity, so now, here where nothing else mattered, she gave over to the crushing remorse she felt and wailed.
After exhausting herself, she sits, hugging herself, barely aware of the large wings drooping behind her. She looks up at the man flatly, waiting for him to pronounce judgment.
When Briana looks up at the man for her judgement, the man is no longer there... nor are the bars... nor the mirrors...
Instead, there's a smokey haze in the morning air. Buildings, some still burning, are all around her. Cyrillic writing on them.. her Russian is rusty.. but Rozvovka is prominent on several buildings.
The streets are stained with blood, her boots squelch in it. The new wings are gone... her body armor, the armor she wore in the field, is on her skin now. As she whirls around, the bodies of the dead surround her, the burned meat smell in the air as fresh as it was... today... the day she walked down the streets.
"Why? Why'd you kill my mommy?" A young voice asks from the bushes. A young girl, holding her bloody doll, steps out, her body riddled with bullet holes.
"Who.. who paid you? Who wanted us dead? Who wanted this? What monster did you work for?" A pained voice says from behind. When she whirls, a man, his arm missing, and his head showing prominent bullet wounds stumbles, shambles, like a zombie. His tongue thick as he asks his questions.
"Tell us! Tell us who did this to us! We can't rest until we know!" A tortured voice gasps, and a teenage girl drenched in blood, with torn clothes and bruises on her face, stumbles out of a house, reaching toward Briana. "TELL US!"
"TELL US! TELL US!"
The entire town begins to echo with the cries as the butchered dead begin crawling to their feet, their dead eyes staring toward Briana as they come for her.
The old training resurfaces and she draws her sidearm while looking for an exit. "I don't know!" she screams as she falls back from the press of bodies. She turns and takes aim at a bloodied youth, but she falters from taking the shot. Instead she shoots several times at a nearby door, blowing away the deadbolt. She pushes past the bodies and shoulders her way into the dim interior.
Briana runs down a grimy hallway and then up a flight of stairs. She takes the steps two at a time, fleeing the haunting specters until she bursts out onto the roof. "The Cadre's the best of the best!" she yells as the bodies spill out after her. "I don't know who's in charge! The pipeline was a joint venture by Rangipoor and Petrochem!" she shouts.
She backs up to the edge of the roof.
"Tell us!" A voice says, as an elderly woman claws her way over the edge of the roof, her body bloody and broken. "You murdered us! Me.. my husband... my daughter.. may grandchildren! You! You did it! You have our blood on your hands!"
The gun slips from Briana's slick hands, clattering to the roof, splattering blood from it's grip. Her hands are red, dripping blood. "You murdered us... for what? For who? Who did it? Who helped you? Who?"
Hundreds of bodies clamor around the building, pushing each other up, the entire village, from the oldest grandparent to the youngest child, all croaking the question of who.. Who... WHO!
"You'll never get the blood off your hands..." The man's voice is the only one who's voice is clear. The man from the room.. the man by the mirror... Standing.. no leaning, against the door that leads down. The door rattles in it's frame, making him jerk and move slightly with each attack on it by the corpses. "You'll never be rid of them.. they'll haunt you... unless you do what you can. Tell me who did it, who was behind it, who pulled the triggers. Maybe you can rest in peace afterwards... But I swear, if you don't, you'll have to watch their faces..." He tilts his head. "Or maybe you enjoy it? Maybe you'd like to relive it, actually watch them die? Would you enjoy that, shooting them? Maybe the girl with the doll?" His voice goes on, inextricably, intractably, like biting off iron with each word.
The 911 operator tries to get her name, but once she hangs up, it's done.
The number on Zhombei's card is answered on the 4th ring. A man's voice asks how she got the number.
"I see, and what does the card look like?"
"Yes, I see. What do you need?"
"NO!" Briana screams as she recoils in horror.
She buries her face in her hands. "I sent word! I don't know why the message didn't get through! You were supposed to evacuate! You would have had enough time!" she explains desperately, looking back up at the looming blood-stained bodies.
"We got our orders via coded signal. Papa Base pinged the target. I took the forward squad in to neutralize the resistance. I gave the orders -- hostile targets only! I thought the non-coms would've been moved. I didn't know that Silencer was coming in after us. I-- I didn't know!"
One of the corpses speaks. "It was our home... what right did you have to take it over... to kick us out... no money.. no place to go... where could we leave to..."
"They didn't even try... just walked from home to home... raping... stealing.. killing... no mercy.. they laughed..."
"Who?"
"Why?"
"Where?"
The questions keep pounding, and Briana can feel something in her mind cracking, like a damn... something hard and unyielding... something blocking things off.. like a dam... a cork in a bottle... pressure...
Memories.. of meetings she never was at... was she? Faces... things she doesn't remember doing... but memories... pushing at the damn... at the cork...
And then the damn cracks... the cork pops... and something inside her... something not of her creation... training... conditioning... something else... cutting off memories without code phrases... but the code phrases are shredded...
"A humanish man that called himself Zhombei."
"It's just an aluminum card with pretty much nothing but this number on it."
"Well I was drugged, nearly killed, and saved by a man with insects trying to crawl out of him so some answers would be nice. Starting with something simple, What is going on?"
Who attacked her and why?
How long had Tracy been working against her?
Who is Zhombei?
Who is she talking to?
Could they arrange a meet up?
"Confirm valid card. No questions or other information on the phone. Wash the business card with mild acid, stomach acid will work, lemon juice, whatever. A second number will be shown, call that and we'll arrange pickup. This phone will no longer answer after I hang up."
The phone clicks and goes dead.
It was worse.
Worse than she'd ever imagined she was capable of. Atrocities, evils, hidden even from her, to keep her doing those same things over and over again. Doubts, reservations, and guilt, all removed to ensure clarity of purpose.
She gave it up. Every name, face, voice, piece of handwriting, scrap of code. She wanted it out of her, purged from her mind. Her soul.
"I didn't know -- but I did, didn't I?" she asks in a small voice to that presence in her mind. The weight of her memories crashes over her, swells, and crashes again. "Quick or slow were my choices, and I chose slow. It's nothing less than I deserve, huh?"
She closes her eyes and waits.
"Wai-." She tries to stop them before they hang up but failed. "Calling the number isn't enough? Yea I'll just throw up on a card to find a secret phone number that's not crazy at all." She sighed and pocketed the card as she kept heading to the nearest town
more specifically to the nearest bar."Something strong with lemon." Once she'd gotten the drink and paid she'd split it between her and the card until the new number showed up to call."We done with all the cloak and dagger now?"
...and waits... and waits...
Eventually, when she opens her eyes (or eye), the town is gone. The silk wraps cling to her body, her hair hangs down in sweat soaked tangles, her wings hang limp.
There are scorch marks on the floor of the room, and several of the glass mirrors have shattered.
The man still leans against a wooden wall, the mirror he was leaning against now on the floor in shards.
"Well... that depends. We knew you'd have some barriers to compartmentalize the information. We've caught a couple of CADRE operatives, nobody as high as you. But it looks like you were middle management at best, even though you thought you were a senior commander." He has not a scratch on him. "Be careful with those red feathers, they pack a punch. So, you want to die now, huh? Well, I'm sure my boss would oblige... she has a personal grudge against your former employer, and she's not known for restraint with people like CADRE." He stands up, and then lifts a few inches off the floor, and glides over to the bars, close enough so Briana can see his eyes directly. "So if that's what you want, I'll go get her. I saw enough to know that not all the things you did was under control of someone else. But... if you want a chance to try to make up for your life so far... I might be able to talk her into letting you. You might even, if you're lucky, get to take a shot or two at the CADRE upper management... no promises though. But you can help people who have no chance on their own."
Violet is at home, resting quietly, on a Saturday afternoon. The TV is on, pizza pockets are steaming on the table, and soda is fizzing softly in her glass. The afternoon SyFy bad B movies are about to start, Sharktoberfest, followed by Sharktopus vs Lavalantula, and then finally the premier of Sharknado VI : Galactoshark!.
And then the doorbell rings, which is enough to make Violet jerk and jump, nearly knocking over the pizza pockets. She wasn’t expecting anyone, ever. Reaching out her mind, she finds… a shielded mind, that resists her efforts to poke around.
Carefully she opens the door a crack, to find a man dressed in an old fashioned flight jacket and pants. A leather mask covers his face.
”Hi. You can call me Ace. I’d like to talk to you, if you don’t mind. Inside though, if you don’t mind. I don’t know how long your nosy neighbor will be fooled by a Jehova’s witness knocking at your door.” The man says, taking his leather gloves off, one by one, while waiting.
Violet stands at the door for a moment, blinking slowly, lacking comprehension of the scenario laid out before her. It takes her a moment to realize that she is standing at an open door in little more than her lazy-day pajama top while a strange looking man addresses her in broad daylight.
A moment later, she twigs to what he just said: the neighbors won't be fooled by a Jehova's Witness. Jehova's Witnesses absolutely don't dress like this. That means he's...
Oh.
Violet smiles broadly. It's a fake smile, but she's a good actor, when she needs to be.
"Won't you come in?" She steps back and motions him in to the apartment.
After he enters, she calmly and quietly closes the door, leaning against it and locking it.
"So," she says, pointedly. "Who are you and how are you doing what you're doing? And what do you want?"
Hotaru is alone for a half an hour, long enough to wonder if the silence, that she's not heard for two decades, is going to drive her insane. And then the squealing phone is back, trying to make connections with a non-existent tower.
The gray furred woman is holding what looks like a couple of pizzas in boxes, and a bag of sodas. "Thought you might be hungry. We have time to eat, before I take you back. I'd have been back sooner, but you kept walking in front of the mural and screwing up my line of sight." She says, sounding mildly annoyed as she motions toward the tiles on the wall with her head. "Now, eat, and tell me where you live, so I know where to take you back to."
She opens a box, and it's a cheese pizza. The box reads 'Addommè Pizza, Streatham'. She slides the pizza box toward Hotaru, sitting it on the empty instrument tray. The other box, from the same place, she sits on top of a defibrilator. This pizza has what looks like spinach, pineapple, and anchovies on it. Taking a big bite, she opens a diet Coke that has an odd can design. "Somph, vhere fromph?" She asks through the pizza.
"If you don't like the cloak and dagger, we can hang up now." The woman on the other line says, sounding mildly annoyed. "We're doing it for all our safety. Now, where are you currently, we'll have someone come by for a face to face talk... someone besides Zhombei, we get a lot of complaints when he does face to face." There's some mild amusement.
"You can call me Ace, that's good enough for now." He takes a seat on the couch. "If you want to go get dressed, go for it. I'd personally prefer you did, if you don't mind."
"I like your necklace, by the way. And the fur is cool, too. I'm from Louisiana." she says, and then realizes that's not really what she meant, but rather, just what she was used to telling people when they commented on anything she did unusually. "But I live in Tennessee. A place called Cookeville. It's pretty small, even the college only takes up about four blocks... though that's sprawled out across eight or so." she seems somewhat disappointed by the concept of 'going back'. "Sorry about blocking you off... do you use symbology to travel, or what? Where are you from?" she asks as she reaches for a Soda, believing she'd been offered one, but she couldn't be sure. "And what else do you need to know to get me where I'm supposed to be?"
Briana's mind works, her training again coming to the fore. Her tactical mind surveys the destruction and notes the untouched man in front of her. The survivalist in her latches on the chance to keep on living. Her defense mechanisms begin blocking off the nightmarish images before they destroy her. Another part is still bewildered by her new appendages and screams to be heard. But the human part of her jumps at the chance for redemption.
She sits silently for a time, cycling through each voice. The wings next, she promises, then looks directly at the man. "All right," she says softly, voice raw from her earlier screaming. "A chance. I'll take it, if it's possible. I don't know how it can, though."
She winces as the enormity of the task settles on her mind. She sinks to the floor, as if it was a physical weight crushing her. She clutches her head and her wings reflexively fold over her. She stays there for a while, trying to salvage something of her original personality before she gives over entirely to despair.
"You can call me Ace, that's good enough for now." He takes a seat on the couch. "If you want to go get dressed, go for it. I'd personally prefer you did, if you don't mind."
Violet chuckles and shakes her head. "And leave someone I don't know where I can't see them? You must think I'm crazier than I am."
She raps her fingernails against the door a few times, frowns, and then:
"Give me one good reason why I should let you out of my sight long enough to do that."
The woman shrugs. "Sure.. go for it, high in salt, I need the salt." She says between gulps.
When her necklace is commented on, she looks down. "Oh, got it because it ticked off mah mom. Growing fur ticked her off more." She laughs. "Cookeville? Holy crap... I don't got anything in Cookeville. Is it near Memphis, or Nashville, or Johnson City?" She asks.
"Because you'll know if I move." And with that, he generates a low-level telepathic field. Not enough to even bounce off Violet's mental shields, but enough so she could tell if he were moving around outside of the living room, even from another room.
"And how does this thing back here work?" she says, hand pointing at the symbology on the wall.
"Temper, Temper." She'd give the woman her general location and head outside, once the call was over she would wait outside on firm ground to hide the fact she suddenly weighted easily more than a train. She'd already been ambushed once today she didn't plan on being caught off guard again.
The woman turns her head, and looks at Zack. "You missed a spot, Snailboy." She says, and then goes back to cleaning up. When the two are done, she looks at the damaged building. Less than 15 minutes have past, and the police are still on their way, sirens in the distance. "I left the cops at the local ER, they should be fine. Get out of here, before someone sees you. Learn to blur your face, or get a better mask than a dime store ski mask. Fortunately for you, Siren shattered all the cameras for 4 blocks. If you manage to avoid getting arrested tonight, check the card in your back pocket." She says, and zooms away.
Zack feels a brush against his pants, and when he reaches back, there's a small card in his pocket where his wallet used to be. Written on the card is 'Idiot never bring ID on a job' in a crabbed pen, and embossed below that is a phone number.
"Stay away from my phone then, it's a major pain when I have to get a new one." She says, making a cross sign to ward off Hotaru, before snagging another slice of pizza. "I see, hmm, well, I guess you're taking a bus from Nashville then, sorry, that's as close as I can get you. G-man's not there anymore." She says, without following up on where he is now. "Hmm, knowing her... you'll have to do some community service."
Looking at the wall, the girl swallows and washes down the pizza. "It's a load bearing structure, it holds up tha weight of the roof, and transfers that weight to tha floor, while leavin enough space between tha two for us to eat pizza and do surgery, sometimes at the same time." She grins. "So, G-man said you had a forcefield, is why he brought you in, instead of getting you to a trauma ward. What else ya got?"
Briana stirs.
Her mind had been cracked open, fractured, and turned inside-out. She had been shown a harsh insight into who she was -- who she had been -- and was now battling a terrible form of self-loathing. A great part of her sought oblivion, or the torment due her in the afterlife if such a thing existed.
But there was a nugget of self left. Something that recognized that maybe the true villains lay elsewhere. She had been manipulated, that much was clear. Her dissatisfaction with the work, her desire to leave, those were true. She had no desire to return to her old life -- that thought made her feel sick.
She pushed herself back up to tell the man to send for his boss, the one who would kill her or save her. But he had left. She was alone.
Movement behind her shoulder catches her eye. All right, then. Let's take a look, she thinks. She regrets the loss of the mirror, so all that's left is craning her neck around to get a view. She reaches behind her and feels her back. It's almost as if she has a second set of shoulders, anchoring the limbs with new bone and muscles.
She thinks about moving them, and they respond clumsily, but powerfully strong. Her left wing smacks hard against the bar with a muffled ring and the recoil almost knocks her off her feet. "Oh!" she exclaims as she registers a small bloom of pain from the impact on the wing.
Briana tries bringing them in slowly, then extending them. She senses the joints and the muscle groups, deliberately feeling them as part of her.
"Unreal," she comments as she slowly asserts control. She fans them out as far as they will go and realizes the cell isn't big enough. She steps to the side and squeezes one wing through the bars. She feels the muscles stretch and cord, the ligaments and joints between the bones. She tries to pull them back and the one between the bars gets caught briefly with a surge of panic. The free wing beats hard, flapping like a wild thing while she works to pull the other one back.
With a twist and a mental effort to override her new instinct, she's able to pull the wing free. She starts to fall backward onto the cot but her wings again flap reflexively and with a whoosh of air she's off the ground. Again instinct controls her new limbs and she is suddenly battered against the bars. Her head connects with one of the cell bars and she falls to the floor, dazed.
She shakes her head clear with the realization that finally catches up to her. I-- I have wings. I can fly!
** spoiler omitted **
"Montana? Man, I got nobody up there right now. Hang on..." The woman puts Aegis on hold, and comes back five minutes later. "Ok, there's a couple of hotels in that city, can you afford them? If so, there's a Motel 6, and a Hyatt. If you can stay at one of those for a day or two, I can get someone out there tomorrow, day after at the latest. That ok? Sorry, spread a bit thin at the moment."
"Don't worry boy, I had a good life after all, even got some grandkids, even if I started a bit later than most. Sorry, but I don't have any information on that... I don't even know what it is. Is it a tv show or a book or something?" She asks, taking her plate back into the kitchen to throw away the scraps and wash it. She talks through the door while doing so.
Over the next month or two, Ty gains mass, and control over his mass, until he can form a small humanoid figure, about a foot tall. Then, as he continues to grow from eating, he realizes he needs a mixture of both food and petroleum products to stay healthy. Ideally, a mixture of powdered plastic and synthetic motor oil mixed in with his food.
Eventually though, Granny broaches the subject of him helping others, and if he's agreeable, he leaves the old house built out in the middle of nowhere for an equally remote, but less isolated, location with a half-dozen people who also have fantastic powers...
"You can hear my phone? Even when I'm talking on it? They're supposed to be encrypted, you shouldn't be able to decrypt them. Micron is going to be pissed he has to redo all the encryption chips." She sighs, before taking another bite. She looks thoughtful at Hotaru as she munches. "Please don't try to duplicate the pattern, that would be a major pain. I'll have to change this one as it is." She says, squinching her nose in obvious annoyance.
Then she eats two more slices silently, just studying Hotaru. Finally she finishes off another soda. "Sounds like you don't even know what you can do yet... but those abilities sound useful to me. I'm betting the government would really love to get ahold of you, imagine all the mass surveilance they could without a court order or anything with you." She nibbles her lower lip. "So, I guess what we do with you is up to you. You don't know who or where we are. That pattern will be changed in a few hours. Our crypto guy is gonna have to redo our crypto circuits... again... Beyond that though... depends on you. You seem to have been keeping a lid on your powers for years, so it's not like we have to worry about you suddenly going on national tv and telling people what you can do. And short of an accidental run in with a metacrook, nobody is gonna know that you're anything other than an elctronic clutz, and there's tons of those."
She polishes off the last slice of her pizza, and washes it down. "Up to you as I said. We could use the help, but we only draft people if they're in danger, or put them somewhere safe if they are a danger to themselves or others. You're neither, so you do whatever you want." She stretches. "Now, if you want to go home, I can get you as far as Nashville. On the other hand... if you want to do something more interesting than waiting on tables, and like the idea of keeping people out of science labs... Maybe we can find you a better job..."
Time passes and Ty is ready to leave and start a new chapter in his life.
”Good bye Granny and thank you! You saved my life, if you ever need anything send word and I’ll be here quick as I can.” Love ya, bye, he thinks one last time as he walks out the door.
"The thing is... I've got a lot going on. I mean, I guess it isn't all extremely important... but I've got my dad and mom. I've got student loans, a job, and a full load at school. So... I guess it's more... what sort of stuff do you need me to do? Would I be able to contact my parents? What could I even tell them?" she says, sounding slightly exasperated. "It's pretty clear you guys are the better guys, if not the good guys, and since you're offering me a ride home, that says something all on its own. Trinity would want community service... what do you think Gridlock'll want for bailing me out? What would all of you want?"
For Ty, the second teleportation trip is a lot different from the first. This time, the woman can actually talk to him, and hear him respond, now that he's learned to talk again. He's found that her name is Shimmer, and she's actually shorter than he is now, although last time she was like a giant to him.
The room they teleport into is small and square, about 5ft by 5ft. "Ok, first rule of silo club, is nobody talks about silo club. Second rule of silo club is, nobody hangs out in this room. In fact, never come in this room, ever, without me. Except when cleaning it, and always keep it clean. Cleaning hours are on the door, outside the room" On the floor of the room is an intricately painted mural containing elaborate geodesic designs that interlock.
"Ok, so, this is the living quarters." She leads him out into a hallway, there are a half-dozen rooms. "First come, first serve. All the rooms are the same, so it doesn't matter which one you get. The one on the end is taken. Write your name on the door." The door on the end reads 'Whippoorwill'. "Your code name, not your real name. Only give that to people you trust. Kitchen is downstairs, as is living room, and bathrooms. I'll be dropping off people all week, training starts next week."
Briana can hear Shimmer chattering in the hallway to the first recruit. The first person she's met, other than Sanction (the woman who nearly killed her), and Ace (The man who broke her mental conditioning). The girl teleports, and CADRE would kill half a city to have her abilities at their disposal.
Sanction had made it clear that she still didn't trust Briana, but she was going to give her one, and exactly, one chance. Briana had better prove herself at helping other Metas... and at taking down abominations like CADRE, and certain rogue government programs, some of whom contracted with CADRE. The first time Briana screwed up, would be the last time, it was evident. Ace had been slightly more sympathetic, once he broke her conditioning, but he'd also seen a lot of the things she'd done willingly, and so that sympathy was tempered with an iron will to abide by Sanction's orders.
She snorts. "G-man would want a burger and fries and a movie. Me? I just want a vacation... man I never get a vacation, it's just thwip thwip thwip, Tokyo, Milan, London, New York, Paris, St. Petersberg, over and over again." She sighs, then shrugs. "Anyway, if you got a lot going on, I can understand you turning us down. I can't promise you money, we get by on what we can scrounge from bad guys, or worse guys, or what our people already have when they join. You couldn't tell ANYONE about us, ever, unless you're saving another Meta. And even then, you don't tell them about us unless it's life or death, like you. You put them in contact with someone who puts them in contact with someone, who screens them, and eventually brings them in, if possible. You're kind of an exception, usually we know ahead of time someone is a potential. As to what we need done... we try to keep a lid on things. We think the government is aware of us, at least peripherally, but as long as we keeping things from blowing up, they seem to not be willing to make the noise it would take to catch us. Kind of a catch 22, to catch us, they have to push things public, which isn't what they want. So we play cat and mouse. We try to get the really nasty ones off the streets, and put them where they can't do any harm." She grins. "I got a really nice little desert island picked out for Snowjob, as soon a someone manages to knock him out long enough for me to teleport him somewhere. We have some old abandoned military installations with regular jail cells for the ones that we can keep in those. Mostly we put them on very remote places with no way out and I thwip in food regularly."
Heading to the first room Ty says, “I’ll take the fir As he proceeds to write His name on the door he thinks, I don’t really have a code name, what should I write. He considers for a moment and writes GOO on the door.
Looking back at shimmer he asks, “What other facilities does th
"Because you'll know if I move." And with that, he generates a low-level telepathic field. Not enough to even bounce off Violet's mental shields, but enough so she could tell if he were moving around outside of the living room, even from another room.
"Good enough," Violet replies, her tone somewhere between excitement and curiosity. Stopping at the table to gather a handful of pizza rolls and stuff them into her mouth, she moves quickly into the bedroom. A few minutes later she emerges wearing a black sweater dress, purple tights, and a pair of flat-soled black boots. Certainly not nearly as outlandish as this "Ace" fellow, but sufficiently appropriate for unexpected company. And something tells her he's about to insist she run, so the boots should do nicely.
Violet sits down opposite him, hairbrush in hand.
"All right," she says as she starts to work the knots out of her hair. "What's all this about, Mister Rocketeer?"
Briana opens up her door and stands in the threshold. She's wearing a loose-fitting tank top that leaves her back uncovered and tight-fitting jeans. The giant wings frame her form as she leans against the wall, folding her arms.
She arches an eyebrow at the newcomers. When the oddest-looking one scratches his name on his door, she tilts her head curiously. "Goo?"
Goo looks at the other resident as she comes out of her room. “You look like an a he comments.
He tries to smile, “Yes I am G “You must be Whip With a shake of his head he adds, “I read your na
"I am," she confirms, though she looks uncomfortable about being compared to an angel. "That's an interesting name. Is it... literal?"
Whippoorwill also acknowledges the gray woman. "Hi. Who are you?"
"I am," she confirms, "That's an interesting name. Is it... literal?"
Goo replies in his oscillating voice, “Pretty mu Trying to be polite he asks, “How long have you be
She grimaces. "They won't tell me. Best I can guess is a week or so. Probably longer, though."
Interesting they are withholding information from her, Goo thinks. “Why won't they tel
Pointing at her wings. “Do those w
"We have been looking for you for 10 years now." He says quietly. "Your... father... had been in contact with us, he wanted our help. It was, unfortunately, back in the very early days, when we were still just a dozen or so people. Someone let your father's employers know what was happening. We don't know who it was, he called us and told us someone he trusted had let him down. The next day, we found out he was dead in a car crash, him and his wife. After that, we tried to find the location of your... home." He sighs. "We never found it."
He looks Violet in the eyes. "We recently ran into someone that fit the description of your brother... but it wasn't really him, it was a... not a clone, but a.. duplicate.. an imperfect one. However, we managed to get ahold of one and get an expert to examine it before it turned into dust. We haven't been able to find where it came from, but with it, we had enough to conjecture what you'd look like. So we put out the word, and had a lucky break when someone saw someone with violet eyes moving in to a house here. We followed up, and here I am."
The woman laughs. "Yeah, protocol. Boss is big on protocol. If you ever meet her, she's scary. Anyway, we change it regularly anyway. If something happened to Trinity, we'd be in major trouble. Honestly, I don't even know where we are, never been outside the complex's rooms." She shrugs. "I don't think anyone knows where it is, except maybe Trinity and the Boss." She looks Hotaru over. "If you're joining... I'll put you in contact with a recruiter, I don't do that. I tend to freak people out..." She 'shimmers' and then is looking at Hotaru, upside down, her feet planted firmly on the ceiling. "Not as much as Dead Man Walking, but close." She holds her hand out shake hands.
When Hotaru shakes hands... the duo vanish, leaving the leftover pizza behind for Trinity to b#@!$ about.
The gray haired woman smiles. "I"m Shimmer. I brought you here, while you were unconscious from the last of Ace's... treatments..." She shrugs. "He put you in your room, we left. You woke up. The end." She waves. "I gotta go pick up someone... In a podunk town 80 miles from anywhere... I hate podunk towns..." Her form shimmers and she vanishes.
Hotaru seems slightly startled when she appears upside down, then grins. "Like Nightcrawler." she affirms, then shakes the hand... with a thwip.
When Shimmer disappears, Whippoorwill shrugs and spreads her hands. "It's like this around here. They might be more forthcoming with you. But they've been tight with information so far."
She steps away from the wall and her wings shift and twitch. She looks over her shoulder. "They seem to." Her right wing extends out, brown feathers interspersed with bright red ones splay out wide. She does the same with the left, until she nearly takes up the entire length of the hallway.
She shuts her eyes in a show of concentration as they start to beat. Reluctantly they fold back behind her. "Sorry," she says opening her eyes and looking at Goo. "They really need to stretch."
"We have been looking for you for 10 years now." He says quietly. "Your... father... had been in contact with us, he wanted our help. It was, unfortunately, back in the very early days, when we were still just a dozen or so people. Someone let your father's employers know what was happening. We don't know who it was, he called us and told us someone he trusted had let him down. The next day, we found out he was dead in a car crash, him and his wife. After that, we tried to find the location of your... home." He sighs. "We never found it."
He looks Violet in the eyes. "We recently ran into someone that fit the description of your brother... but it wasn't really him, it was a... not a clone, but a.. duplicate.. an imperfect one. However, we managed to get ahold of one and get an expert to examine it before it turned into dust. We haven't been able to find where it came from, but with it, we had enough to conjecture what you'd look like. So we put out the word, and had a lucky break when someone saw someone with violet eyes moving in to a house here. We followed up, and here I am."
Violet pauses in her hair brushing at the mention of her father, and blanches, frowning, when her brother is brought up.
She wants to tell this man to get the hell out of her apartment. She also wants to fling the hair brush into his face and demand to know who he really is.
But if he wanted to hurt her, he'd have done so already, wouldn't he?
"You... have my attention. I'm listening," she says, quietly. Drawing her feet up underneath her, she puts the hairbrush down and picks up the nearly empty plate of pizza rolls.
She motions the plate toward this "Ace," in the universal "Are you hungry?" signal.
"Pepperoni and mushroom or sausage and cheese."
Ace waves a hand. "Sorry, vegetarian. Thanks though. That's about it. Your father wanted you out of the laboratory, he didn't tell us a lot, other than he had come to regret his role in the experiment. We suspect it was his employers who killed him, but we can't confirm it. He wanted you out of the lab. He wanted you with people who know what you can do, and can help you learn to control it, and to learn to use it to help others."
Ace shrugs. "He died trying to help us, we owe him. So, if you want to try to find a home with people that will understand you, and who try to counteract people like those who killed your father, and who abuse their powers, or who kidnap and experiment on people like us, then we can try to make a home for you. This is strictly an up to you offer, no threats if you don't, and we back off if you don't want to. Like I said, a debt is a debt, but if you don't want the payment... we go away. So up to you."