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Missy Biron groaned in despair as she heard the notification sound for a new email from her cell phone. It’d been less than a year since she turned eighteen and aged out of the Wards, and despite months of saying no to the Protectorate’s increasingly generous offers of employment, they still sent at least one email a week begging her to at least come down and talk.
Sometimes during those first few months she would sit and stare at the emails, considering if it would be that bad. There were friendly acquaintances of hers in the Protectorate. Some time around when she turned sixteen they stopped treating her with kid gloves, something she thought she wanted more than anything else. She had even led the Wards for over a year before aging out.
But then she took one moment to look at herself. The scars ripped across her body, some of them from when she was as young as thirteen. Mental wounds from the hundreds of conflicts she’d been in. Grief that still persisted from when Daybreak, her original Wards mentor, died not even two months after joining the Protectorate.
Sometimes Missy wanted to be Vista again. Sometimes she craved the rush that came when she felt completely outmatched, fighting for her life. But she would never again be able to do it as a job, endlessly, day after day.
Knocked out of her musing by her bus reaching its stop, Missy walked out towards her apartment. Her money saved from working as a Ward for nearly 8 years left enough for her to take a year off before thinking about college or a job very comfortably, living alone and away from her family. She sat down at her computer, and decided to see if the latest email had anything different to say.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Job Opportunity
Hello.
We are reaching out to you to inquire about hiring you for a temporary position with the potential of keeping you on in a longer term position.
Our company often hires those who have been disillusioned or failed by the system, and your particular case has recently come to our attention. I understand if you may be reticent to accept this offer out of hand
We propose a meeting at the following address so you can meet one of our team leaders and she can introduce you to the expectations of the job in a less sterile environment than online communication, and if that goes well then perhaps we could meet face to face.
Thank you for your time.
Attached to the email was an address that a quick internet search revealed to be a hole in the wall pub.
Missy almost deleted the email and reported it to the PRT before even bothering to consider anything it was talking about. Whoever sent it clearly knew she was a Cape, and they were getting close to breaking the unwritten rules just by sending the email, despite her personal email not having her civilian name in it. However, she took another look at the name of the pub. Somer’s Rock. She had been told about this pub before while she was in the Wards, something about Marquis and covert meetings, but the important part was that she was fairly certain it was considered some kind of “neutral ground” among the gangs.
It was still a bad idea that could end up any number of terrible ways, but perhaps slightly less of a bad idea. It could be the Empire trying to recruit her, but with how many capes of theirs she’d injured or captured, it was more likely to be an ambush than anything.
Maybe Missy was indulging in some wishful thinking, but she really wanted to see this out. She was so frustrated, and one quick cape job might be what she needed. She’d probably deny anything, but… she was going to go to the meeting, against her better judgment.
-
Missy had never been in a pub before, due to her age. Regardless, she was pretty sure that this was very far from the normal pub experience. Wearing the most makeshift of costumes, with a balaclava and a hoodie, she walked into a room that was completely empty except for two other people. Oddly enough, she only vaguely recognized them despite obviously being parahumans.
The first, and clearly the leader, was a woman in a costume designed with functionality in mind, including a bulletproof vest and a mask that wouldn’t be out of place at a riot. The second was a very large man, clearly a changer or Case 53 of some sort, with translucent skin and small shell-like growths across their body. It’s only once they introduced themselves as Faultline and Gregor the Snail respectively that she recognized them.
Faultline’s Crew had moved to Brockton after Missy had already left the wards, but she did get a little information about them from idle gossip from friends still in the Protectorate or Wards. All she knew for certain is that they were mercenaries with no plans for doing jobs within the city, and that they didn’t kill.
Faultline spoke up after Missy was silent without introducing myself. “Would you like us to call you Vista? Or do you have another name you’re using now?”
“Oh shit, I didn’t even think of a new name. Uh, call me Twist,” she said, blurting out one of the names suggested when she had first joined the Wards all those years ago.
Faultline quirked her head in what seemed to be amusement. “Okay then, Twist.”
The costumed woman began to talk about the kind of job that Missy was being considered for (a simple break-in and grab of some files, from a morally reprehensible pharmaceutical company in Providence, less than 2 hours away by car.
Missy had expected to deny this job out of hand, but the more Faultline spoke, the more interested the young Shaker became. By the time Faultline was asking questions to make sure Missy would fit in with the group, it was a foregone conclusion that she would be committing to at least this one job.
-
The mission had gone off without a hitch. Gregor had stayed behind to take care of Labyrinth, who was apparently having a bad day with her powers and had to stay at their base, but Missy had worked very well with Faultline and Newter. The combination of pulling objects close for Faultline to cut, or people close for Newter to incapacitate, made them extremely effective together, especially for a job grabbing information from a secure location.
Faultline had offered Missy a more permanent place on the team, and she accepted in a heartbeat. The occasional job where she had the chance to use her powers without any extremely amoral actions? It was easy to decide after meeting such a friendly team. She shared her face with Faultline, and the older woman seemed surprised, but insisted she’d unmask in return once Missy had fully joined the team.
All that Missy had left to do (besides perhaps building a new cape persona) was meet the last member of the team. Labyrinth was apparently having a fairly lucid day, so Faultline was leading Missy up to the second floor of one of the clubs downtown, which apparently doubled as the crew’s base.
Faultline spoke up as they approached a door in the cozy upstairs living area.
“Labyrinth’s power is complicated. She’s rated as a Shaker 12 by the PRT, an at will reality warper, but often the more extreme effects of her power come along with a decrease in lucidity. She enters a dissociative-like state often when she is using her powers, and it’s hard for her to communicate sometimes. I don’t think you’ll have a problem with any of this, and I don’t think she’ll have a problem with you, but just stay calm for both of your sake, and listen to me if I tell you to leave the room.”
Missy nodded and continued towards the door, slightly more nervous at meeting someone with such a high Shaker rating, but Faultline had been a good judge of character so far, and as such she put aside most of her anxiety.
Faultline opened the door and Missy stepped inside the room, only to freeze as her vision met sharp blue eyes. Her constant mental map of the world around her met millions of small distortions in space. Pockets of shifted space appeared and disappeared too often to keep track of. She reflexively pressed against multiple newly created contortions of space at once with her power, and the searching look that had been scanning Missy’s face snapped to look directly into the green eyes that had not left their place.
Waves in space converged in one location, then another, as pillars began to rise slowly out of the ground. Missy was completely lost in the world around her at this point. Unable to see anything besides bright cerulean eyes, but experiencing the entirety of Labyrinth's power. Her own power began moving, shifting, almost out of control as the second distortion power began riding alongside the first, helping to pull the pillars out of the ground, helping to shape arches from the ceiling, trying to open their world to a foreign sky.
It was unlike anything Missy had ever experienced in almost a decade of using her power. She wanted nothing more than to continue helping realize this vision. The beautiful mind of the girl in front of her, brought into reality. A powerful push against her chest, and the loud sound of a door slamming in her face brought Missy out of the fantastic world she had taken a hand in creating.
“I told you to leave the room. Multiple times,” Faultline said, with ice in her voice, “Get out. Don’t come back.”
Missy was in shock. She wanted to explain a million things at once to Faultline. How amazing of an experience that was, how she didn’t hear anything, how she COULDN’T hear anything.
What came out instead, in a pleading, begging tone, was, “Please open the door again.”
Faultline gave a look to Gregor, and Missy couldn’t even get her thoughts in line enough to protest as she was dumped out onto the street, feeling as if she had just lost something that she could never get back.
-
A week passed as Missy got back into her previous routine. She was doing the exact same thing she had two weeks before, but everything felt different now. Everything felt dull. Fake and too real all at the same time.
Missy’s power scanned the world around her like it always did, but now she would almost physically jump every time a bump would enter her awareness, hoping that it was a small bubble of distortion that would mean Labyrinth was nearby.
She felt as though living a waking dream, impossible to remember as time passed. She felt empty, confused, and lonely. All because of an experience that can’t have lasted longer than a minute.
-
For the third time in three days, Missy found herself standing outside the Palanquin, looking up towards the second floor of the club. This time, however, she was startled by a woman with an angular face and long black hair standing next to her.
“You miss her, don’t you?” the woman said.
The voice was instantly recognizable as Faultline. Missy jumped back, surprised that Faultline would greet her so civilly, and unmasked at that.
Missy rambled out a stream of apologies as she tried to get her thoughts together. “Oh shit, I shouldn’t be here I know. Don’t worry I was just going. I’m really sorry for what happened.”
Faultline shook her head. “No need to leave. I’m sorry for how I treated you when you left. I thought Labyrinth was having a panic attack and that you were ignoring me.” Faultline looked up at the room where Missy knew Labyrinth likely resided. “She hasn’t stopped asking for you, you know. I’ve never seen her so interested in something as she is with meeting you again.”
For the first time in a week and a half, Missy Biron allowed herself to feel hope. “Really?” she asked.
Faultline nodded. “I can take you up to her now, if you’re up for it. She managed to explain to me that you helped her, in some way. I couldn’t understand her explanation, but I trust her judgment.”
Missy couldn’t stop herself before saying, “Please? She’s all I’ve been able to think about.”
Faultline raised an eyebrow, but proceeded to lead Missy up to the living area above the club.
Before anyone could stop her, Missy pushed open the door to Labyrinth’s room.
Their eyes locked once again, but unlike their previous meeting Missy refused to be frozen in place.
One step forward. The ground began to shift into vibrant grass, an unnatural green that could only be the color of Missy’s eyes. Each singular blade of the meadow beneath them was pulled and shaped as the space around it was shifted to press against it.
Two steps forward. The ceiling opened up barely a sliver to a bright blue sky, vibrant in the exact color Missy could see surrounding Labyrinth’s pupils. A small divide was all that was needed for a second force to pry the sides of the ceiling away, rapidly expanding the opening into the otherworldly heavens.
Three steps forward. The new world that they had begun to shape together shot outwards. Both Shakers pushed everything away from themselves, content to be alone in the world they had created together in a manner of seconds.
Unwilling to wait for even one more step, the girls closed the space between them with their powers as they embraced.
“Hello. I’m Missy.”
“Elle.”
They stayed in each other’s arms, interacting only through impossible warps of the fabric of reality around them, for a long, long time.