Summus Proelium

The meeting was set for midnight. So, naturally, Austen made her first pass around ten o’clock. She didn’t go into the place, an old apartment building, on that pass, of course. That would have been idiotic. And she didn’t walk past as herself either. Not as either of herselves, in fact. She wasn’t Deicide and she certainly wasn’t Austen. No one who saw her would have recognized the girl who strolled by casually while seeming to focus more on her phone than where she was going. Mostly because the appearance she was using was a random setting on a rather expensive incogniter she had liberated some time ago. The thing was worth a pretty penny, as were the special batteries it liked to eat through. So she didn’t use it much. But this was worth it.

Granted, she didn’t think this was an intentional trap on Skip’s part. If she had, Austen never would have even thought about showing up. But for all she knew, the girl was being followed or tracked somehow. She didn’t trust those people she worked with not to figure something out and set up a trap. Even though Skip had promised not to say anything about who she really was, the mere mention that she had interacted with her and might again could make them try something.

Austen wasn’t willing to take that risk. So, she went past the building once as a blonde girl on her phone, a second time fifteen minutes later as a boy with a basketball who very nearly sent it through a window on an out-of-control dribble (which gave her the chance to check the reflections for anyone who had been on the opposite side of the street while she was passing the first time), and then a third time thirty minutes after that as another boy arguing with his girlfriend on the phone (a different one than she had used while passing the first time).

Only then, after those three first passes spaced over about an hour revealed nothing of interest, did she switch her appearance to yet another holographic setting and make her way into the building. That time, she looked like a pizza delivery girl (Austen had left the pizza boxes themselves behind a dumpster in an alley earlier to use as a prop for just this purpose), checking an address on her phone before heading in. That gave her the chance to walk all the way upstairs, checking each floor to see if anything untoward stood out either to her eyes or her powers.

Nothing. There was nothing at all. Even when she switched to a fifth identity in the public restroom and took yet another pass all the way through the place, she couldn’t find any indication that there were any Ten Towers or law enforcement people anywhere nearby. Well, that wasn’t quite true. One of the third floor residents was a cop, but he seemed to live there judging from the exhausted argument he was having with his kids over whose turn it was to take the trash out. So either this trap was far more elaborate than she was willing to give them credit for, or it was (so far) on the up and up.

Even then, she didn’t go straight to the apartment they were supposed to meet in. Not only was it still only about eleven-twenty, but she didn’t plan on being in the room when Skip got there anyway. Instead, she went to the apartment on the floor below. She had already done her research earlier, found the name and number of the man who lived alone in that place, and sent him tickets to a basketball game he wanted to see, with some letter about him winning a fan contest. They were good seats, so he hadn’t asked too many questions.

All of which meant the apartment below their meeting spot was empty tonight. It only took her a second to break in through the flimsy lock. Faster than using a key, probably. She went straight through, shut it behind her, and turned to find a spot to wait forty-five minutes until--

“You’re later than I expected.”

The voice was flat, its speaker sitting on a recliner on the other side of the small main room. She was illuminated by a nearby table lamp, giving Austen a good look at her face. Or at least the top half, considering the bottom was covered by a black cloth mask. Even then, she was also wearing a dark hood that covered the top of her head. Austen could essentially only see her eyes and forehead. Eyes and a forehead which had half a dozen papers shaped like knives flying straight at them before she had even finished that single sentence.

“Skip,” Austen snapped, stopping her reflexive attack in that instant. The paper blades hovered there, as she glared. “What’re you doing here?”

Seemingly paying no attention to the near-attack (and why would she, considering she could just be immune to them), Skip replied in a simple, almost monotone voice. “We planned to meet tonight, didn’t we?”

Austen let the papers fly back to her pocket, disabling the incogniter. There was no point, Skip had seen her unmasked face already, back when that Scion culero had attacked the mall. She squinted that way. “Yes, we were supposed to meet. In forty-five minutes, and up one floor.”

Skip’s reply was as dry as ever, though Austen thought she could detect the faintest hint of amusement in it. “Then I presume you got lost and also don’t carry a way to keep track of time.”

Looking around the room and taking in the clearly bachelor-decorated space for a moment, Austen finally sighed and snapped her fingers. A flurry of papers launched themselves from her pockets and formed up into a chair, which she sat down on. “Okay, I guess I’m impressed. For the record, I didn’t do anything to the guy who lives here.”

“I know,” came the easy response, “I upgraded him to box seats.”

Pushing away the slight smirk that crossed her face at that, Austen cleared her throat. “I guess that means this whole thing wasn’t an elaborate set-up to trick me into breaking into someone’s home so you could arrest me for that and thus keep your promise not to say anything about the whole Fell-Touched thing.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Skip agreed. “Although there are people out there who would be happy to see you in prison. Or juvenile detention,” she amended after a moment of consideration. Then she focused on the girl across from her. Austen felt the intensity of her stare. “You’ve hurt people. And allowed people to be hurt. People have died because of orders you’ve given or allowed to be given.”

“Is this meeting meant to be a lecture?” Austen asked, keeping her own voice as flat and emotionless as the other girl’s. “Because I know. Believe me, I know exactly what I’ve done, what I’ve let happen. You can believe me when I say I did what I could to curtail the worst of it or not, it doesn’t really matter. I’ve still let bad things happen. I’d like to think I had more noble intentions at the start of this. Not fully noble, not good. I came into this with a selfish plan, but I thought I could at least control things. Right now, I can say things would be worse without me. My lieutenants, they would’ve been harder to control, harder to keep in line. If it was up to them to decide which was in charge, they would have gone to war over it. But that’s not an excuse. I know what I did. I tried to make things safer, better in the territory I control, but people still got hurt. People still died. There’s bad shit out there, and I’m not a hero. I’m selfish as fuck. I did this whole thing for revenge. I want to hurt someone, because he hurt my family. But I needed an army to do it. Now--” She paused, frowning as she leaned back in the paper seat. “Well, I guess it’s not as much of an army right now. Not with those traitors.” She said the last word with as much venom as she could put into her voice.

“The person you’re targeting, it’s Cuélebre, isn’t it?” Skip guessed, head tilting just a bit when Austen’s gaze snapped that way. “It wasn’t difficult to work out. Only a few people would require an entire army, as you put it, to take down. Especially for someone of your power. If he was just a man, you could have dealt with him by yourself without all of… that. And the rivalry between your two gangs is fairly public. I am capable of basic arithmetic. He’s been your target, and now he’s even further from your grasp after you were betrayed. Your group has… problems. I assume they’re in no condition to carry on a full-scale war at this point. Or at least not particularly eager to.”

Reaching into her pocket, Austen retrieved a pack of Skittles and emptied a few into her hand before popping them into her mouth. Only after she had chewed and swallowed the candy did she reply. “Do you have a point with this, or is it just your way of rubbing it in? Or maybe you’re just trying to bore me with--” She stopped, leaning forward just a bit to squint that way. “... Are you wearing a toy sheriff badge?”

“No,” was the flat answer. “It’s an insect babysitting badge. My niece gave it to me. I like it, so I wore it tonight.”

“What’s it like, living like that?” Austen wondered aloud. “The kid’s so obviously different, she can’t go anywhere without some elaborate disguise. Like one of these.” She tossed the incogniter bracelet up and down a couple times thoughtfully. “But that means no casual walks outside, every time she does anything in public it has to be planned and careful. If she’s out as herself, you or her mom have to be in disguise. Not hard to figure out that whoever’s with the famous red-skinned, white-haired girl with bug eyes is one of her relatives. If she’s seen with someone in public, that person gets a microscope put on them. Can’t casually have friends over, can’t tell anyone where you live, not really. Not if they aren’t in on the secret.”

Skip met her inquiring gaze. “If you’re asking if I resent my niece, the answer is no. She’s worth all that and more.”

Austen smirked to herself. “You know, if anyone else was saying those words in that voice, I’d say they were very bad liars. But you… what’s your deal? Why do you sound so… disinterested all the time?”

If she was offended by the question, Skip didn’t show it. But then, that was the entire point of the question to begin with. She simply replied, “I have a form of Alexithymia along with mild Autism. Would you like me to explain what Alexithymia is?” She waited for the other girl to gesture for her to ahead before continuing. “A loose translation of the term is 'no words for emotion.’ Broadly speaking, it refers to a person who has difficulty identifying their feelings, and differentiating between normal bodily functions such as being tired or hungry, or emotions such as sadness or anger. There is more to it, but in my case, it means I’m often too distracted analyzing and deciphering my own emotions to express them. Think of it as if someone poked you in the arm, and you had no reflexive reaction. Instead of moving your arm immediately or retaliating, you first had to consciously think, ‘I’ve been poked.’ Then consciously think, ‘The poke happened in my arm.’ Then, ‘It was my right arm.’ Then, ‘Someone has poked me in my right arm.’ Then, ‘I should look to see who it was.’ By the time you look, the feeling of being poked has faded. I do feel emotions, but in a different, more analytical way than you. There’s more to it, but it’s hardly relevant to the discussion at hand.”

“And what is the discussion at hand?” Austen mused, watching the other girl closely. “First you said something about an offer, then you had to run off to help deal with that Scions emergency. I mean, the other Scions emergency. Now I’m here, and unless one of those fucks is about to crawl out from under the couch and start something, no more distractions. What offer?”

There was a moment of silence before Skip began to explain. “Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’d like to convince you to cease your operations as a villain and change sides.”

Snorting at that, Austen retorted, “Maybe it’s escaped your notice, but you defend the system. I don’t particularly like the system. The system screwed over a few too many people just because they don’t happen to be born lucky. And I mean that in more ways than I could possibly explain to you right now.”

“You aren’t doing anything to help the system, or those affected by it,” Skip pointed out mildly. “Perhaps you’ve helped a few within your territory, but they’ve simply exchanged one type of problem for another. Gang violence and crime still exists in the areas your people control.”

“As if it would be better if I wasn’t controlling things?” Austen shot back before catching herself. “It’s like I said, all my lieutenants would still be doing that shit if I wasn’t there. But they’d be doing worse things. I put a stop to more than you know. I protected my people. No, it wasn’t perfect. Yes, I did bad things and let bad things happen. But better bad than worse.”

Skip replied very plainly. “There are people who were hurt or whose loved ones are dead who would disagree with how well you handled those issues.” She held a hand up to stop Austen from retorting. “But that is only tangential to the point. Your situation is now worse than it was. The odds of you, in your gang’s current state, being capable of challenging Cuélebre any time soon are low. He has solidified his position and weakened yours. Worse, the new gang he has traded members with will be likely to ally with him in any open conflict. He has the ability to call in favors.”

“So, to counter this, I should switch sides and come help you people?” Austen’s tone made it very clear how little regard she held for such an idea. “Even if I was inclined to do something like that, something tells me a few people might have a problem with it. Unless you expect me to help you from inside a prison cell.” She paused briefly before adding, clearly unseriously, “Or maybe that was your plan from the start. Convince me to try to switch sides and then whoops I’m in jail.”

“I notice that none of your rebuttals involve talking about how much you love crime,” Skip replied, her eyes watching Austen’s. “Your reasoning for doing all of this wasn’t to get rich, or to have power over others. You want one thing, to stop Cuélebre, or hurt him, or… more than that. But that’s what you’re after. If you wanted money, there are plenty of ways to get it that don’t involve being in this much danger. Especially given that little ‘reading what’s written on any paper in your vicinity’ power. You could have exploited that to get all the money you’d ever need and not let anyone know. Getting passwords, secret information to sell, any of that would be a piece of cake. You wanted Cuélebre. And now, as I said, he’s even further from your grasp than ever.”

Holding out the bag of Skittles toward the other girl, Austen coolly replied, “And you’re telling me that you can make that happen? I should just come over to your side and watch everything I did as Deicide get magically forgiven?”

Skip took the bag, emptying a few candies out into her palm. She regarded them briefly while shaking her head. “No, Deicide can’t be forgiven. She has to die.”

Austen stiffened briefly, then stopped and frowned. “That wasn’t a threat.”

Raising the candies to her mouth and carefully sliding her fingers under the cloth mask to eat them without exposing herself, Skip shook her head. “No, it was not. I said Deicide has to die, not you. Ten Towers can provide a body for that.”

The idea made Austen laugh. “So we fake Deicide’s death, then--what, I show up five minutes later with the exact same powers? I think even the slowest people in this city might figure that one out.”

“I take it you’ve never heard of reincarnation.” After saying that, Skip gave the girl a chance to react incredulously before continuing. “Not of a person. Look here.” She reached down to the table where the lamp was, picking up a computer pad before passing it over.

Austen squinted at her for a moment, then exhaled while taking the pad. Reading things manually always took so much longer than just allowing her power to do it. She scrolled through the open file, sitting up a bit through the process while making a soft, thoughtful noise.

Finally, she cleared her throat. “So according to this, when a Touched dies, their power invariably shows up somewhere else within a short time.”

“Their power or a very close approximation of it,” Skip confirmed. “Ten examples in that file, and there are plenty of others. It hasn’t picked up mainstream understanding yet because they tend to appear on opposite sides of the country, or even on separate continents. Between that and the fact that different Touched tend to express and use the same power in different ways, with different costumes, it’s easy to get lost. But Ten Towers operates in all these places. We accepted power reincarnation as a fact some time ago. Power Recycling, some call it.”

“That raises an awful lot of questions,” Austen noted. “But let me guess, Deicide dies in some big public way, leaving a body behind to be identified. Then somehow I pop up somewhere else and Ten Towers, realizing how useful someone with that power could be, drops by to play recruiter.”

“That does sum it up,” the Star-Touched confirmed. “And what better time to do that than during a lockdown like this? We can smuggle you out of the city. You make yourself known far away from here, playing rookie Touched. Show the same powers, but pretend you barely know how to use them. And do so in different ways than Deicide did. Once the lockdown is lifted, our people will bring you to the city, and you can work with us. No longer a criminal, no longer hunted, and with the full resources of our organization to help you deal with Cuélebre.”

“You know, for Star-Touched, you all seem remarkably fine with letting me get away with the bad things I did,” Austen noted curiously.

Skip met her intense gaze unblinkingly. “We look for the bottom line, the best option. In this case, you could accomplish far more, both for us and for the public good, if your energies were turned toward something productive. Locking you up stops you from hurting more people. Converting you does the same, but also puts your gifts to a better purpose. Given your enemy is someone we would also like to be stopped, that’s… I believe what they refer to as a three birds with one stone situation.”

With that said, she rose from her seat. “That is the offer. Take some time, mull it over. Whatever you decide, my promise stands. I will not expose your identity or other secrets until or unless you continue criminal activities and are captured separately as part of that. Now, since we’ve finished early, perhaps you’d like something to eat?

“After all, you might still be hungry considering you threw away that pizza.”