Chapter Text
~*~
Hey Leo,
How’s life in the big city treating you? I’ve heard it’s pretty exciting up in Hellsalem’s Lot. Maybe a little too exciting, to be honest.
Things at home are about the same as they’ve always been. Ever since our trip to Liberty Island, Mom and Dad have been super weird about talking to me. Who knows what’s going on in their heads. I’m glad I still have you to write me, though.
It’s quiet upstate, and I guess that’s both a blessing and a curse.
I haven’t been sleeping well. I’ve been having some weird dreams
It’s a little too quiet, if you ask me. I miss you. Without you around, I don’t have anybody to keep me company except Toby. And he’s nice, but he’s not that exciting, even if I’m pretty sure he has a crush on me.
(“I don’t, for the record,” Toby mutters, glancing up from the half-written letter. “That would be terribly unprofessional.”
“Oh, that’s where you draw the line?” Michella giggles. “I just called you boring!”)
I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since you moved away. I know, time flies when you’re having fun, or at least having a hectic life surrounded by magic and monsters. But what about us normal people out in the countryside, huh? Time out here feels like it’s slowed to a crawl.
I don’t know about you, but I could use a little excitement, and I could always do with a visit to my big brother. I know work’s been tying you down lately, and you said you’d have a hard time getting away.
I might just have to come over there myself, and take a little adventure of my own.
Hope you’re ready for me, Leo. I’ll see you soon!
...Not actually, but, you know what I mean.
Love you!
- Michella
~*~
The intersection between two worlds: Hellsalem’s Lot.
Libra. A secret society of superhumans toiling in the shadows to preserve the fractured balance between worlds.
That thankless work makes Libra the hated enemy of anyone trying to tip the scales in their favor-- criminals, gang leaders, warlords. These unsavory types will pay millions for any information that can fuel their vendetta against the heroes cutting into their profits. Knowing any details about Libra, such as the identities of their agents, or the location of their headquarters, is an excellent way to put a price tag on your brain-- and a target on your back.
“Which is why ,” Steven huffed, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation, “family or not, I wish you would have told us before bringing your sister to Libra headquarters.”
“I did,” Leo said. “I sent Zapp ahead to tell you we were coming.”
Steven glanced at Zapp, sprawled out on the couch. Zapp shrugged.
“I forgot?” he said lamely.
Michella giggled, a hand to her mouth. “Leo, why didn’t you just call?”
Leo winced. “My cell phone got… stolen.”
“Well, you didn’t have to bring me to your office. What happened to your apartment?”
A night from two weeks ago flicked across Leo’s head. Explosions were involved.
“...It’s not important,” he muttered.
“It is important, Leo,” Steven chided. “A lot of dangerous people would pay a high price to get their hands on us, or anybody who knows who we are and where we work. Having civilians in the office? It’s a security risk.”
“I didn’t mean to cause Leo any trouble,” Michella chimed in. “But believe me, you have nothing to fear! I swear, today isn’t going to end with any Libra secrets walking out the door.”
“ Rolling out, maybe…” Zapp muttered. Chain thumped him on the head.
“And besides!” Michella continued, cheerful. “This is kinda cool. You’re like superheroes, right? Or secret agents, with secret identities? Your secrets are safe with me. After all, I don’t know what any of you look like, and it’s not like I know any of your real names.”
Steven blinked. “...How do you mean?”
“Oh, come on, mister,” Michella giggled. “You mean to tell me your real name is Steven Starphase ?”
Leo stifled a snort. Zapp guffawed.
“She’s got a point!”
“Like you can talk…” Chain muttered.
“What? What do you mean by that?”
“Your name is ‘ Zapp ’.”
“Yeah? Your name’s ‘ Chain ’!”
“Alright, alright!” Steven said, heading off another pointless argument. He sighed. “We all have other duties to attend to, so I apologize for this being all the welcome we can give. Miss Watch, Nurse McLaughlin, do enjoy your stay here at Libra. Leo…”
Steven sighed, shaking his head.
“...Leo, once Klaus gets back, the three of us are going to have a talk about security.”
“Yeah, sure…” Leo winced, sheepishly rubbing the back of his head.
“Leonardo,” Gilbert said, appearing at the ready with a tip of his head. “I took the liberty of preparing a room for your guests. If you would follow me…”
~*~
Michella’s room at Libra HQ was sparsely furnished, its most distinct feature being the tinted floor-length windows looking out over the skyline of Hellsalem’s Lot-- not that Michella could appreciate the view. And it’s not like there was that much to see-- Hellsalem’s Lot was just as chaotic and violent as it had always been. Look out any window in the city, and it would be no surprise to see bullets or bodies flying past.
Toby heaved a sigh, plopping down onto the edge of one of two twin beds and setting his bags in a pile beside it.
“For the record, I was against this,” Toby muttered.
“Don’t mind him,” Michella said, waving a hand.
“What’s the matter, Tobe?” Leo asked with a playful grin. “You didn’t miss me?”
“I didn’t miss traveling,” Toby grumbled. “I didn’t miss the hassle of trying to get a wheelchair and my medical bag through customs. All so I could bring your sister to a city with a sky-high mortality rate.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Leo shrugged.
“There’s a non-zero chance of Michella dying just by going out onto the street,” Toby said dryly. “You kinda want that to stay at zero.”
“Enough, Toby,” Michella said. “We’re going to be fine. But I think we left some luggage out in that lounge. Could you…?”
“Yeah, yeah…” Toby sighed, before hoisting himself to his feet. He flashed Leo a pointed look, before stepping out.
It was amazing how much tension slipped away when Leo and Michella weren’t under Toby’s contractually obligated watchful eyes. Leo flopped down into an armchair with a satisfied sigh, looking out at the bustling streets of Hellsalem’s Lot below.
“That guy worries too much,” Leo chuckled.
“It’s kind of his job,” Michella said. “It’s probably why Mom and Dad hired him.”
Michella reached out, beckoning. Leo obligingly took her hand, and she laced their fingers together with an affectionate squeeze.
“How are Mom and Dad, anyway?” Leo asked.
Michella’s serene smile flickered and fell. “...We’re, um… we’re… not… talking.”
“What? Why?” Leo wondered. “...Is it because of this trip?”
“Well, no, but that definitely didn’t do me any favors…” Michella sighed, and pouted, her chin in her hand. She gave Leo’s hand a squeeze. “...Look, it’s, uh… it’s a long story. And I kinda don’t wanna get into it, so…”
Leo nodded. “So, how’s the house?”
“Quiet as usual,” Michella said, a gentle smile returning to her face. “There’s nothing like upstate New York to fill you with cabin fever. If I didn’t get out of that house, even for just a little bit, I think I would’ve lost my mind.”
Leo laughed. “You sure picked a weird city to help you stay sane.”
Michella smiled, but it was a pained smile. She gazed out the window over the streets of Hellsalem’s Lot, her grey-blue eyes empty and pale. Ever since Liberty Island, she could see only darkness-- at least, that was all she could see in her parents’ house upstate. But now that she was back in the city, she could see little points of light on the edge of her vision. They were like stars peeking through the darkness of the night sky; but if they were stars, they were bad ones, stars of ill omen, because whenever Michella saw their flickering light it sent a knot of dread coiling in her stomach.
Back upstate, she was willing to write the lights off as just… daydreams. Her, nodding off in her wheelchair, while the rest of the world ambled lazily by. But now…
“Leo,” Michella began.
“Yeah?”
“If you had a… weird problem…,” Michella swallowed, “then you would need a weird solution, right?”
“I guess? I mean, that’s kinda the whole reason I’m here now.”
Michella made a face, but continued. “Do you think I could ask some of your friends a few questions? There’s been something… weird, going on lately. I could use some weird advice.”
“Well, sure. When it comes to, like, supernatural stuff, Libra knows all about ‘weird’.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Michella said. “Either with your coworkers, or, uh… anyone else.”
“Hey,” Leo smiled, squeezing Michella’s hand. “Don’t worry about it. If anybody knows anything about magic or supernatural weirdness, it’s my buddies here at Libra. And if anybody messes with you because of it, you’ll have me and an office full of magical badasses protecting you.”
“You really mean it?” Michella beamed.
“Yeah, I do!” Leo grinned. “This city might be crazy, but you’re in Libra’s hands now. There’s no safer place in the world!”
The window exploded.
Leo leapt to his feet, shielding Michella with his body, powdered glass speckling his coat.
“What just happened?!” Michella wailed. “What was that crash?!”
“It’s fine!” Leo cried, frantic. “It’s fine, it’s fine!”
There was a figure sprawled out on the guest bed Gilbert had so kindly prepared for Michella, partially smashed into the floor by the force of its impact. The man, dark-hooded and with limbs wrapped in gauze, groaned beneath his eerie ivory mask, glaring like a single-eyed skull out across the city skyline. He hoisted himself out of the crater his crash-landing had crunched into the floor and flexed his spindly fingers, too tall and skeletally thin to be human.
Something shot through the window in pursuit. The hooded figure swatted it aside, and it stuck fast in the floorboards- a spear, long and pale white, as if carved from bone.
Leo saw the twinkling crimson thread linking the spear to its wielder an instant before she arrived-- shooting in through the shattered window like a comet, grabbing her spear and using it to anchor herself for a spinning kick. Her boot crunched into the hooded man’s jaw and sent him reeling.
The Watches gasped-- Michella because she saw those flickering white lights again, on the edge of her vision, and Leo, because in the spearwoman’s aura, he saw the unmistakable glimmer of crimson wings...
“I’ve got you now, you cheeky little shit!” the woman cried with a devilish grin, spinning around her spear and then perching on the haft, jutting at an angle out of the floorboards. She gathered crimson light to her fingertips, before leaping back in a somersault, drawing her hands to her chest.
“ Bloodline Battle Technique: Red Roses, Fall Like Rain ! ”
The woman threw her hands forward, and a ghastly spray of red flew between her fingers, transforming into a shredding hail of crystalline shards--
“ Esmeralda Blood Freeze: Escudo de Cero Absoluto ! ”
The room exploded into a mist of chipped ice and deflected blood shards. Leo, Michella, and the hooded man all looked up past the remnants of a frozen barrier, still wisping smoke. They found Steven at the door, stomping forward and cracking iced-over floorboards with every step, glowering at the girl in the window, perched atop her spear.
“Steven!” she whined, pouting like no tomorrow. “You ruined my finisher!”
“Raynie!” Steven snapped.
“‘Raynie’?” Leo wondered.
“Take this outside , Raynie,” Steven scolded. “We have guests .”
“Fine…” Raynie sighed. She hopped down from her spear, plucked it out of the floorboards, and casually hurled it into the hooded man’s chest. The tether linking her to her spear glinted crimson in the light. She vanished, reappearing above the man with her spear back in her grasp. She leveraged her spear with both hands and casually flung the man out the window. She grinned, blew Steven a kiss, and vanished out the window close behind.
Steven rolled his eyes.
“Steven,” Leo stammered, his heart still pounding. “She’s a… she’s a--”
“She’s a friend,” Steven said. “Sort of. One that’s less-than-considerate of collateral damage. Are either of you hurt?”
Leo patted himself down. It was hard to tell if the white powder dusting his coat was glass or ice.
“I think your ice wall took the worst of it,” Leo said, “how about-”
A pained gasp stopped Leo in his tracks. He looked down--
--and saw the shining crimson shard transfixing Michella’s thigh.
Leo’s heart caught in his throat.
“ Michella! ”
~*~
An hour later, they were at the hospital. Toby was speaking to the staff, medical jargon that Leo couldn’t decipher that just rubbed his nerves raw. Leo took a shuddering breath, drawing his sleeve across his eyes. He sat at Michella’s bedside, his head in his hands.
Michella reached up and flicked him in the forehead.
“ Relax ,” Michella said, smiling. She patted the fresh line of stitches holding together the stab wound in her thigh. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Your first day in Hellsalem’s Lot, and you already needed stitches…” Leo mused, shaking his head. Michella reached up and flicked him again.
“I’m fine , Leo,” Michella insisted. “It’s not like I was using that leg!”
Leo pouted, and looked away. Michella touched his face, reading the frown in his jaw, and flicked him in the forehead a third time, for good measure.
“Hey! Quit it!” Leo grumbled.
“Relax, Leo,” Michella said. “You worry too much.”
“Of course I do,” Leo said. “I’m your brother.”
Michella grinned, her heart aching with affection. It made a fine counterpoint to the ache in her thigh.
“Hey,” Michella said. “Help me into my chair.”
Leo pulled up Michella’s wheelchair, took her hand, and helped her shimmy on over. She sighed and settled in, pulling her blanket over her lap. She didn’t let go of Leo’s hand.
“My tortoise knight,” Michella cooed. “Standing between me and a shattering window.”
“Yeah, well…” Leo smiled, poking at the specks of blood like shaving cuts on his cheeks. “If I’m gonna get covered in broken glass, I kinda wish I had a thicker shell than this hoodie.”
Toby ducked into the room, shaking his head.
“We’re in the big city less than 24 hours, and look what happens to you already,” Toby tutted.
“Imagine what we could do when we really try,” Michella chirped.
Toby heaved a long-suffering sigh, and went off to fill out some more paperwork.
Michella sighed, content, squeezing Leo’s hand. She could see the lights again, flickering on the edge of her vision.
“You have my deepest apologies,” Steven said, and Michella flinched, gasping. “For a civilian, and a guest, no less, to be caught in the line of fire like this… it’s reprehensible. If there is anything we can do for you during your stay, anything at all, please, do not hesitate to ask.”
“Th-Thank you…” Michella said, her jaw tight.
Steven nodded, curt, and walked away.
Michella raised a hand to her mouth, trembling.
When she had looked at the woman, Raynie, earlier, she had seen the white lights. She saw them here, too, in the hospital. But looking at Steven… looking at Steven was like staring at the sun with her eyes screwed shut. Blinding, blistering, save for the single dark silhouette where a man should have been.
“Hey,” Leo said, squeezing her hand. “Are you okay? You look kinda… nauseous.”
“I’m fine,” Michella said, swallowing her nerves along with her bile. “It’s just the… medicine.”
Leo grinned, teasing. “Man, I’m not glad that you got hurt, obviously, but I am glad that Steven’s footing the bill. If this is how much people charge for medicine, who knows how much it’ll cost for a miracle.”
Michella frowned. She pulled her hand away, and started wheeling herself towards the door.
Leo watched her, puzzled. “H-Hey. Hey, where are you--”
“I’m going for a walk.”
Leo quirked his lip, aiming for levity. “Heh. You, uh, you mean for a--”
“You know what I mean,” Michella snapped. She left Leo in her hospital room, reaching after her in wonder, a question or an apology halfway past his lips.
~*~
Michella wheeled herself away in a huff, going as far as her arms could take her. Under normal circumstances, being blind and in a wheelchair made it difficult to storm off after a disagreement. But there were lights in Michella’s vision, and they guided her down the hospital’s dreary corridors, following the stars in her eyes and the scent of fresh air.
Michella wheeled herself into a wooded clearing, feeling the texture of the ground change from linoleum tile to grassy earth. She slowed down, easing herself into the clearing. The lights continued dancing in her vision, gathering like fireflies just behind her eyelids. She stopped when her foot bumped into something, and she reached out, groping. She felt cool stone, and a carved inscription, and she quickly wheeled herself back out of respect.
“A cemetery…” Michella breathed. “At a hospital? ...That’s morbid.”
It sure is. That must be why nobody comes here but me.
Michella felt a chill run up her spine. She took a deep breath, and cradled her head in her hands, digging her knuckles into her temples.
What, was she hearing things, too, now? Wasn’t it bad enough when she was just seeing white lights everywhere when she was supposedly blind?
Either these were intrusive thoughts, or this city really was making Michella lose her mind.
Maybe she really needed a miracle, after all.
Michella grit her teeth, and shook her head vigorously, as if she could shake the treacherous thought right out of her skull.
“Damn it, Leo…” Michella hissed. “I love you, but I swear, sometimes, you’re no better than Mom and Dad…”
Leo, huh? Wonder if it’s the same Leo I knew.
Michella gasped. She bolted upright, searching for the voice.
“Hello?” She called out. “Is-- Is someone there?”
Wait, what? You can hear me?!
Michella’s eyes grew wide, lights glimmering within like the last stars peeking through the pre-dawn clouds.
“I can…”
Michella stared, amazed.
“...I can see you.”
In the shadows of Michella’s vision, the white lights gathered together to form a girl: one dressed all in white, looking for all the world like an angel-- or a ghost. And to her credit, the other girl seemed just as stunned as she was.
“ Who are you?” she asked, and her features grew more defined in Michella’s vision-- flaxen hair. Green eyes…
“Michella Watch,” she answered, her eyes shining like the moon through the clouds. “Leonardo Watch is my brother. Who are you ?”
The girl took shape in Michella’s vision, becoming so much more than just a figure made of light. She stepped forward, becoming solid, light becoming flesh and fabric, the ghostly whisper becoming a voice that made Michella’s heart skip in her chest.
The girl smiled-- playful, but there were tears in her eyes.
“You can call me White.”
~*~