Chapter Text
Toni stepped out of the cabin and breathed in the air that had the faintest bite to it, warning of the winter ahead. It made her smile, tipping her head back to look up at the blue and white of the sky even as she loosely cradled her mug of tea in her hands.
Peace was genuinely lovely to have, and it had taken her far too long to get it. She hadn't wanted to be an author of her struggles like Ben, hadn't wanted to run the Ultor media corporation—though Dimitri's siblings had descended upon that rabidly and had seemed to enjoy it—she had just wanted to have time to actually breathe, relax, and contemplate the future.
It had been five years since the nonsense of Steelport. Almost fifteen since she'd become the leader of the Saints of Stillwater. She was still considered the leader by a lot of the old crew, could still walk into places in Steelport and Stillwater and have whispers surround her about who they thought she was...
She didn't go to either city much, for those exact reasons. She was done with that life, and had no desire to jump back into it. She accepted the residuals from the Ultor media group mostly because Sunny and Luna were family, not because she actually wanted the money, and lived much more quietly now.
Well, as quietly as a mountain town for retired Saints could be, anyways.
“Enjoying the dawn?”
She half-turned and smiled at Victor, who looked sleepy-eyed and content with one of Dimitri's sweater's thrown over a pair of long pajama pants. Not nearly as delicious a sight as the two of them in bed with no clothes at all, but...
“It's a habit,” she said with a small smile as he wrapped himself around her, head resting on her shoulder in a drowsy cuddle. “Sometimes I still don't quite believe it's real. You know?”
He hummed a little in agreement, and pressed a small kiss to the side of her neck, pulling her a little closer. Toni hummed a little herself, tipping her head slightly as he nuzzled at her gently. His touch was soft and soothing, comforting without crossing that line of inviting.
Then again, he rarely instigated when it came to sex, though he was quite happy to be dragged along for the ride.
“It's real,” he said gently. “It took us entirely too long to reach this point, so it'd best stay real at that.”
She laughed softly in agreement, shifting a bit to press a kiss to his cheek.
“No arguments here,” she said genially. “I haven't had to really shoot someone in three years, I'd like to keep that streak going, you know?”
“Who's streaking, and are we paying them to do this?”
Toni couldn't help the snort that escaped as Dimitri joined them, sans his shirt and the hairtie that often bound back the inky black hair that she adored.
“No one's streaking,” she said mock primly, adjusting her stance as Dimitri proceeded to drape himself over her and Victor both. “At least, not around here. Down there,” she waved a hand at the small town that was composed of other former Saints, “is anyone's guess, but here?”
“Ah. A shame. I do so enjoy the days where clothing is optional.”
Victor snorted a little as Toni started laughing.
“I thought that was every day,” Victor said dryly. “As long as we're not going anywhere, and all that.”
Dimitri's smirk was entirely too smug, and Toni made a faintly pleased noise as his fingertips trailed gently over the curve of her chest.
“Are we going anywhere today?” he asked, lightly cupping one breast with his palm. “Because I'm quite sure I can think of a few compelling reasons to find some other use of the time...”
“I'm sure you can,” Toni said in amusement, even as she elbowed him gently. “But it's a supply run day, so there is rather a lot of things we need to get done, including calling Sunny and Luna to get progress reports, checking in with Matt, Viola, and their network, and so on.”
Just because she wasn't officially the Saints' Boss any longer didn't mean she still didn't handle some of the work. It mostly just meant she didn't shoot anyone unless it was absolutely, utterly necessary.
Fortunately, a situation like that hadn't come up in a long time.
“When was that surgery scheduled again?” Toni asked as she gently elbowed Dimitri off her and turned towards the kitchen. It was going to be a busy day, she wanted food.
“Three more days,” Victor replied, sounding somewhere between pleased and eager. “The prognosis is... well. You know.”
She smiled and kissed his cheek as he proceeded to drape across her again as she pulled open the fridge door. Victor had been blind since Maero's bullshit almost a decade ago, and while they'd done a lot to help him compensate with glasses that would give him a rudimentary idea of what his surroundings were, she knew he was both eager and afraid to actually see with his own eyes again.
She could hardly blame him; his blindness had been a source of anxiety for all of them for several years, considering their propensity for being shot.
“You're certain you're comfortable staying in Steelport while we do this?” Dimitri asked as he gathered dishes for them to use. “People will notice you again.”
Toni shrugged lightly, and gently pushed Victor towards their kettle to get water started for tea while she pulled out things to make pancakes.
“If I don't wear the obvious Saints purple, I'm sure it'll get chalked up to mistaken identity. If anything, people will notice you or Modiri more, since you both like to loom at people.”
Victor laughed softly as he took the kettle to the sink.
“It'll be nice to see Viola again anyways,” she said after a moment, pulling out a bowl in which to throw all the ingredients. “She said something about their newest hackers working out terrifyingly well thanks to Luna and Matt vetting the process?”
“I think the less we know about that, the better,” Dimitri said with a small scowl.
“You're just cranky because Luna decided Matt was hers and you're still holding a grudge,” Toni said knowingly, smiling fondly at him as he grumbled. “I'm still impressed he decided that she was someone he wanted to date and held onto that thought for three years before he said something.”
“Only because he overheard her saying she wasn't going to date anyone unless they really impressed her and it took him three years to write a code that did,” Victor put in with an amused smile.
Toni snorted a little, and reached over to flip on the radio.
“-an people are vanishing from all around the globe as the apparent alien attack on the White House continues. Witnesses say that people are being enveloped in pillars of red light before ascending upwards-”
“...I don't remember that from the War of the Worlds radio play,” Toni said after a startled moment, checking to see that she had the thing tuned to the correct setting. Sometimes they left it on CD by accident... “Where's my music?”
“Toni...” and Dimitri's tone made her turn rapidly, following his line of sight towards the window. “I don't think we're hearing a radio play.”
The dawn she had admired only moments ago was now cut by the sight of strange ships that shot across the sky, looking like they'd come straight out of a new sci-fi movie. Smoke rose from the town below, and Toni abandoned their breakfast to run for the weapons instead.
“Dimitri... please tell me what's happening.”
Dimitri looked over at Victor, who had turned the radio off once Toni had darted from the room. There was tension in his lover's voice, and frustration too, which Dimitri understood. This was a situation they had wanted to stay out of, not the least because Victor's ability to see with the wireframe glasses only went so far. Even with technological advances, bullets still traveled to fast to be picked up.
Too fast to be dodged.
Which would make Victor a liability.
“I am uncertain,” Dimitri said, turning back to the window, and putting his arm around the other man as he approached. “There are... essentially ufos in the sky, and they seem to be hovering over the town. I don't see those pillars of red light described by the radio, but there's enough smoke rising to suggest that fighting is taking place down there.”
He itched to call his siblings. To touch base with Luna, Adrian, Sunny, and his parents to see what was happening, what could be expected to happen. Was it a farce, something done by the US Military, or was this real?
If it was real...
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he yanked it out to check immediately.
“....fuck.”
Toni had initially not been comfortable being unarmed, even in the comfort of her own home. She had, slowly, gotten used to carrying nothing, even in her sleep as life had calmed and settled... but that didn't mean the arsenal she'd once carried had actually gone anywhere. She still had well over a hundred knives to choose from for close quarters fights, as well a her favorite pistols and more than enough ammunition to make a military base jealous.
Too many people had tried to kill all of them for her to ever really not have weapons.
So it was the work of moments to strap them on over the pajamas—changing would take too much time, she was going to have to chance it—grab the favorites of her beloveds and scamper back out to them, pressing said weaponry into their hands. Dimitri's rifle and pistol, Victor's electrified staff.
“...what are we doing?” Victor asked, hand wrapping around hers after he accepted his weapon.
“Part of me wants to run like fuck and not look back,” Toni admitted, heart in her throat as a flash of light was followed by a low rumble and the smoke increased from the direction of the town. “I worked hard as hell for my retirement, and I don't want to deal with more bullshit. But I know how this fuckery goes. And I will not abandon what's mine in the end.”
He squeezed her hand and pulled her close to him for a moment. Dimitri came up on the other side, wrapping around them both, and for a few precious seconds, Toni felt like everything would be okay.
And then the roof shattered, and everything went black.
Toni shot awake in her bed, panting for breath and looked rapidly around the room. Dresser, picture frames on top, coat half hanging off it because what was the fucking point of a coat rack anyways? Sidetable, gun in easy reach, drawer half opened to reveal the books and journals she'd been keeping recently. Other side table, lamp off, three knives ready to be thrown across the room...
The bed was small and narrow, and for a moment that brought about confusion. Shouldn't it be bigger, to accommodate...
Accommodate...?
Her head ached, but not like a hangover, and after a moment she shoved the blanket off and passed across a wooden floor that should have been familiar, but wasn't. Why wasn't it familiar? She'd lived in this cabin for seven years now, ever since handing the Saints over to Harley, it should be familiar, shouldn't it?
She moved to the bathroom and flicked on the light, squinting into the glare as she tried to peer at herself in the mirror. Pale and sweating, but that was... normal after a nightmare, even if she couldn't recall what the nightmare had been. Loss? Had she lost something? Someone?
It itched at her as she ran her hands through her hair, making the sweat-dampened strands stick out in every direction. Which... was also somehow wrong. Hadn't she grown it out? She had the time to care for it now, it was supposed to be longer than this, it was..
The world dipped and she hissed a curse softly, then reached out for the handles to the sink, turning then on so that she could splash cold water on her face.
Maybe she'd been sick? Could that explain why the world felt so weird and sideways? Or maybe she was just... having a terribly coherent dream within a dream. She'd had those before, but the tended to be a lot more surreal than waking up in her bed and feeling like something was wrong. Missing.
She patted her face dry and went out to the small kitchen.
Something flickered. For a split second, the surface under her feet wasn't wood. It wasn't anything. She started to fall, reached out to grab something-
And hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of her.
She jack-knifed into a sitting position, heart-pounding in her throat. For a second, everything had been different. Warmer, more open, larger. A place built for three, not one, for company and family, and-
“...Dimi?” she whispered. “Victor?”
Names. Names that filled her with warmth, names that pushed at the ache in her head, that demanded acknowledgment.
She shoved herself to her feet and move back to the bedroom. Her phone had been plugged in and charging, right? She always did that before bed, just to make sure she had it functional for if someone called her, needing advice. She wasn't Boss any more, but people still looked up to her, and she had no problem with helping, so long as she didn't have to take over.
The phone was gone. The bluetooth earpiece was missing too. Toni dumped the contents of the drawer out and found nothing. Then the other bedside table drawer received the same treatment. Also nothing. She tore apart the room, then went into the other rooms; bathroom, living room, kitchen.
No phone.
The uneasy feeling was growing stronger by the second, and Toni stuff-armed her door to be out in the cool air.
But the air felt wrong too. It was sticky and warm, a sensation she hated. She'd moved north with... she'd moved north because she hated being overheated, and suffering long winters was better than brutally hot summers. She'd had snowball fights, gone sledding, learned how to snowshoe, talked about-
Toni retreated back inside after another long minute of looking out at a world that felt inexplicably alien, sat on her couch for a few moments to think, and then nodded to herself.
She would wait for sunrise. And then she would go hunting for her answers.
In daylight, things seemed a little more ordinary, but something was still incredibly wrong. The people in the town of Saints Row smiled, and talked like normal, but the conversations felt... scripted. Like she'd heard them all before, like there was only one way to respond that wasn't the wrong way, and it made her skin crawl.
The edges of the buildings seemed... fuzzy, somehow. Like the brick and the wood didn't quite connect, but at the same time her mind kept trying to insist that it was normal, that nothing was wrong. She'd lived here for seven years, people trickling over in twos and threes as they realized they wanted out of the gang life, but in a way that let them feel the gang community.
Or at the very least left them with some backup if they ended up needing it.
But in her gut she knew it was wrong. Names peppered her memory, and faces. Dimitri, Victor, Modiri. Trevor. Luna. Sunny. Matt. Thinking on them didn't produce memories, but they gave her a sense of comfort, of urgency. They were her people, so where the fuck were they?
But no one she spoke to seemed to know who she was talking about. And that wasn't right. Modiri. Modiri specifically. A name that gave her an impression of always being at her side, no questions asked, and no quarter given. A friendship that was familial and strong, unchanging even as...
Even as...?
Toni snarled a little as she walked into the electronics store and started looking around for a phone.
“-ello? Hello?!”
She jerked, and spun in place, hand on her knife. High voice; woman or pre-pubescent male.... no one was there but the cashier behind their till, and Toni slowly turned again.
Something had changed while her back was turned. The phones should have been displayed where she was looking, but there was just an empty patch of nothing. No cabinets, no screens on display...
At the corner of her eye, something flickered. She turned more cautiously this time, and there in the corner were the phones. A dramatic display, they must've just gotten the newest models... but why over in the corner of the store, and not prominently displayed in the middle? Didn't they want to make sales?
She shook her head after a moment, hand resting on her knife as the unease crawled up her spine. Phones. She was here to get a phone, to put in numbers that were ringing in the back of her brain attached to the names and faces that kept peppering her like she was some sort of unseasoned meal and see if maybe she was imagining thing, or if she was right.
“Toni, please respond!”
It was quieter, not blasted directly in her ear, but Toni jolted anyways, stumbling a bit as she reached for a phone.
Her hand passed right through the display. Oh, there was some resistance, like pushing a hand into a pile of slime, but that didn't change the fact that her hand had passed through the phone on display! Like it wasn't even there!
“What the fuck is going on?!” she hissed, fear flicking the switch to anger. “Who's there, goddamnit?!”
“Oh thank god, you can finally hear me! It's me, Luna!”
“....Luna...”
The voice clicked, like a key in a lock, and Toni staggered, dropping to one knee as memory swamped her.
“Luna, what the fuck-”
“I can give you the long version later. Right now... you've seen the Matrix right? This is that.”
“....if you tell me I have to red or blue pill myself, I will strangle you.”
“I wish it was that easy. Your simulation is already fraying around the edges because you've realized something's screwy. That's what let me get in. You need to.... to destabilize it more.”
“Great. One question. How?”
“....I mean, blowing stuff up worked for me? None of these people are real, none of the property is either. So just... blow it all up. Here! Use this stuff!”
The display before her wavered, literally defragmented before Toni's staring eyes, and then rebuilt itself into...
“A mine launcher???”
“It makes things go boom, all right? Hurry up already, get to destruction so I can get you a way out!”
Toni eyed the mine launcher, then poked it cautiously. It felt solid, and when she picked it up, the weight settled nicely on one shoulder.
She considered her targets, looked around, then shrugged and aimed up.
“I really hope to fuck you're right about this...”
It hadn't taken long for the citizen of 'Sim City But Worse' decided to take offense at her blowing shit up. The fact that everything seemed to fragment like it was made of candy went a long way towards making her feel like she wasn't going crazy, at least. And all right, there was, in fact, something cathartic about just blowing shit up.
When the cop appeared, Toni knew for certain. Because none of her people would have tolerated police in their little town, not with the lives they'd lived.
“You just can't stop yourself from causing trouble, can you?” the cop—the digital simulation of a cop—asked.
“You want me to stop? Let me out and give me back my people,” she shot back, resettling the mine launcher. Gods, she hadn't used one of these since the one time she'd stolen one from a luchadore in Steelport. “Where the fuck even am I?!”
“Now now, can't have citizens getting all tempera-”
Toni had never liked being talked down to. So really, it didn't take her all that long to decide that just firing mines at this asshole was a good plan. And the mines worked... well, sort of. They did blow the mimicry of a human being sky high, but he, it, came back down only a little the worse for wear and started trying to shoot her.
Toni had never been big on video games. At least, not the ones that demanded the same amount of violence her life had already cornered. But she certainly understood the concept of a health bar, and pummeling an enemy until they were fucking dead was not a new concept.
“I've almost got you and exit, just keep- oh shit.”
“Luna???”
But there was only silence from the familiar voice, followed by the silence of the construct falling down and not getting back up. Toni swore quietly and leaned heavily against the have exploded building. Fake or not, the bricks were the right amount of rough to be grounding.
“Well that didn't take long at all. How disappointing.”
Toni snarled, swinging the mine launcher around as someone... essentially phased into being.
He was tall, nine feet at the very least, and a sort of greyish peach color. Not human, to say the least, with three fingers on each hand, spikes in place of hair and armor that looked more decorative than function.
Memory hit her like a truck, and Toni's finger hit the trigger.
She looked up from the destruction of her roof from the protective safety of Dimitri's sheltering stance, admittedly impressed that he'd managed to say upright with that explosion. A good portion of the cabin roof was clean gone, as was a third of the kitchen that they had worked so hard to make homey.
“What the fucking fuck?” she demanded as Dimitri straightened and Victor got up from his crouch.
“You know, for someone who made life quite difficult for humanity for a while, you're quite hard to find.”
The voice sounded British. More posh in accent than either her or Matt. The fact that it was English threw her only a little as the clearly alien being stepped out from the smoke and the wreckage.
“That would be the point,” she snapped, shifting protectively before Victor and taking aim with her favorite pistol. “Get the fuck off my lawn you asshole.”
Two shots. A flare of red light as the alien being vanished, and then a flare of pain as a fist damn near the size of her head hit her in the temple, sending her flying into the cabinets. Or, well, what was left of the cabinets.
“My my, such a temper on you, even after so long. And here I thought you'd domesticated yourself...”
“Toni!”
Toni made a rude gesture even as she struggled to get up. She struggled harder as more red light appeared, lifting a swearing Dimitri and an anxious Victor before they could move more than two feet.
She didn't watch them ascend—if she did she knew she'd falter—instead she threw herself at the alien, knife in hand, with a snarl of fury.
The bastard caught her mid-leap and her knife glanced off the arm bracers her wore as she struggled to make him bleed.
“Well then. If you've got this much spite left, I suppose I truly will have to keep you contained. You'll make a fine addition to the collection, I think. Living at the mercy of Zinyak is such a treat, after all”
He had too good of a grip on her.... but his hand wasn't armored. Even as his other fist crashed into her face, her knife sank deep, and she heard what had to be very volatile swearing even as she descended violently into the darkness.
“Really now, I thought peace was what you wanted considering the effort I required to find you.”
She'd left holes in the scenery around him, but not a scratch on Zinyak. Toni snarled, and wished Luna had given her some knives instead.
“Give. Back. My. People.”
“Didn't you humans outlaw such a thing?”
“That's not what I mean and you fucking well know it,” she snarled. “I will rip this shit apart piece by piece, and then I'll come after you, now give them back!”
So she was maybe a little unhinged. He'd stolen Dimitri and Victor for her, and being fair, those two were something like seventy percent of her self control.
“....let me make something perfectly clear to you.” He waved a hand and the mine launcher abruptly vanished. “I am the architect or your reality. I build what I want,” another hand waved and the 'city' around them was suddenly pristine, “and I destroy what I want.”
The land around was suddenly barren of anything. It was just a void, and Toni swore as gravity itself seemed to suddenly not exist. She wasn't sure if she was happy or not that he caught her by the wrist before she could fall.
“Your bravado means nothing here,” and there was a smirk on that alien face as he dangled her over what felt like a precipice.
“Fighting back is pointless,” Zinyak said with all the patience of one talking to a young child. Toni struggled instantly, attempting to swing herself up so that she could, if nothing else, try and kick the fleshy part of his arm. “Struggling? How quaint. You do not give the orders here, little human. You belong to me.”
He turned and she swung with unwillingly, and was treated to a view of-
“Fucking Steelport,” she snarled.
“Indeed. But with some worthwhile additions of my own. I think they improve the skyline, don't you? In any case, here is your new home. Try to break out again, and you won't have a planet to return too. Ta ta.”
If nothing else, she did expect that he'd throw her, and she did manage to give him both a very fine British salute as well as the expected American one even as she flew through the air.