Chapter Text
My whole life had been spent waiting for something. I’d always hoped that someone would come along and reveal that I was destined for something greater, like being a secret wizard or the heir to a fae bloodline. Or even a superhero. There were so many times when I’d just stopped whatever I was doing and wrestled with the idea that this was my one life, that I actually was who I was. A lot of that had been because I was trans, knowing something was terribly wrong but not being able to describe or point to it.
A lot, but not all. As we entered the diffuse light of late autumn, eyes blinking against cloud cover that seemed to glow with an inner light, I saw the vast bulk of the Space Needle rising above us like a glistening giant. After the second Space Needle had been destroyed, it had become a matter of civic pride for practically everyone in the state to keep it from ever happening again. All sorts of solutions were proposed, but ultimately it was decided that the newly rebuilt and redesigned Space Needle would become the headquarters of the Seattle Protectorate. Even though it was still a tourist trap, knowing that it now served such a vital function in keeping the city running gave it a gravitas it hadn’t had before. It meant something now, and that meaning elevated it from an architectural gimmick from the sixties into something I could be proud to be a part of.
Laura chuckled. “It really is something, isn’t it? Even after four years it still takes my breath away.”
I nodded, a big grin on under my mask. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s dull,” Presto cut in, in a tone of voice you’d normally reserve for someone saying sand was good to drink. “Give it time, you won’t be so excited once you see most of what’s happening in there is pencil-pushers pushing pencils.”
“Well, sure, it is probably mostly cubicles. But not being interesting isn’t necessarily the same thing as not being important. Society can’t function unless someone does all the dull-but-vital stuff that keeps everything running.”
“Thank you!” said Laura, giving Presto a look of mock judgement. “It’s good to know at least one hero in this city appreciates us.”
“Of course I appreciate you guys,” Presto responded, sounding genuinely hurt. Then she grinned. “Without the PRT, who’d be there to get us coffee? No one, that’s who. It’d be a damn tragedy.”
“That’s so good to hear!” said Laura, giving her an apparently gormless smile.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yup. If that’s all you need us for, I can just let the director know we won’t have to renew your budget for next year. Not sure how familiar you are with the logistics of tinkering, Sepulcher, but it’s probably not a surprise that nanotech super materials and specialized microprocessors are a hell of a lot harder on our budget than a little coffee. Or a big head.”
“Don’t listen to her, Presto.” I chimed in. “If anything your head is noticeably smaller than average.”
“The nerve!” Presto gasped in a perfect haughty noblewoman voice, holding a gloved hand to her breast in mock offense. “Whatever happened to cape solidarity?” I met her stern expression with one of my own, looking into amber eyes sparkling with hidden amusement. She broke first, a few giggles becoming full blown snorting laughter as I visibly struggled to control my face. I laughed too, relieved in a way I couldn’t quite articulate that they didn’t think I was annoying.
We made it to the front entrance, where Laura’s badge let us completely bypass the lines and security the public had to deal with. Perks. Once we got checked in I received a plastic guest pass with ‘Sepulcher’ printed on it. I put the lanyard around my neck, feeling a little tingly at the prospect of literally hanging my cape name over my chest. It reminded me a bit of how it felt to start going by Carmilla last year. This time, though, the new name was supplemental rather than replacing one that no longer fit. I’d goddamn earned being Carmilla, and no one could ever take it from me.
“Alright, Sepulcher,” said Laura, putting extra emphasis on the name. Reminding herself? “Where do you wanna go first? We’ve got like an hour and a half before the director’s available.”
“Hmm…” There were a lot of different places I wanted to see, but none of it struck me as particularly more urgent than anything else. “What about the gift shop? I haven’t been here since it got rebuilt, I’m kind of curious what’s changed.”
“Excited to get your hands on an official Presto action figure?” the woman herself asked, smirking at me. “Or are you just really raring for a mug?”
“I already have your action figure,” I corrected. A second later my brain caught up with my mouth and suddenly my entire face felt like I'd just opened an oven and shoved it right in. The unrestrained delight lighting up Presto's face emphatically did not help. This was going to be a thing, wasn't it? Fuck.
I cleared my throat with all the grace and subtlety of a bird breaking through a window, its broken, twitching body scattering everything on the dinner table. “Anyway. Shopping isn't really on the agenda, I've got approximately none money until whenever I start getting paid.”
“And if it were, there would be absolutely nothing wrong with that. To be completely honest, I’ve got more than a few action figures myself. They’re neat,” Laura said, narrowing her eyes at the smirking magician in preemptive disapproval. Presto adopted such a look of cherubic innocence that I almost bought it myself, despite having endured one of her tricks already. Laura rolled her eyes at Presto’s antics. “Assuming everything goes well, you should be getting an advance on your pay either tonight or early tomorrow. That’ll be enough to take care of all the basics.”
“Is there a chance of it not going well?” I asked, suddenly nervous.
“Hypothetically,” Laura responded. “But-”
Presto interrupted with a laughing snort. “Ha! The Protectorate is absolutely desperate for capes, you’d basically have to be a serial killer to get turned down. I mean shit, how do you think I haven’t gotten kicked out yet?”
“Not quite how I’d have put it, but she’s basically right. Especially the last part,” Laura said. If she was upset at being interrupted there wasn’t any sign of it.
“Huh.” I said eloquently, processing all that. “Good to know. Though I have to wonder what that says about my future teammates.”
“They’re good people,” Laura reassured me. “I’ve worked with most of them for years, long enough to know who I can count on when the chips are down. With a couple exceptions, that’s all of them.”
“I wonder who those exceptions might be,” I said speculatively, giving Presto a significant look.
“She’s saved my life, actually,” Laura said seriously.
For the first time I’d seen her, Presto seemed out of sorts. She’d taken off her top hat, running her hand over dark hair slicked back with something that emphasized the curliness rather than hiding it. It was in a butch, modern sort of style, the sides and back shaved short. She noticed me looking at her and smiled, idly spinning the hat on her finger. “Like what you see?” she asked, putting a hand on her hip and twisting her body just so.
I wrenched my gaze toward the floor, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
Laura playfully punched Presto in the shoulder. “Leave the poor girl alone. We were supposed to be giving her a tour, remember?”
“You’re just jealous that she doesn’t have your action figure.” She threw back, holding her arm like she’d just been grievously wounded.
“I don’t have an action figure.”
“Exactly.”
The entrance to the gift shop was as impressive as the rest of the building, fancy-looking automatic doors leading into an artfully designed storefront. The products were mostly the sorts of things you’d find at any gift shop or major store that licensed Protectorate merchandise, but every effort imaginable had been made to attract the eye or present them in an unconventional way. A detailed statue of one of Dragon’s mechs guarded a pile of collectibles like a hoard of gold, a plastic ‘stone’ platform holding the classic Protectorate lineup was seemingly held up by an Alexandria action figure below it, and Armsmaster stood guard over the video game section. Before we were more than a few steps inside a crowd of tourists materialized from thin air in front of us, voices overlapping each other as they clamored for autographs or pictures or just attention.
I froze, brain struggling to keep up with the separate actions of over a dozen excited people. Before I could start well and truly panicking, Presto was there among them shaking hands and flashing that smile of hers. She signed autographs and took pictures, doing her best to direct the crowd’s attention away from us. The second they were distracted Laura took my arm, leading me off to the side.
“Not a fan of crowds, I take it?” Laura asked quietly.
I shook my head. “It’s just too much for me, you know? I can handle public speaking or performing, but being surrounded by that much noise drives me up the fucking wall. No pun intended.”
“I get it, we can’t all be social dynamos. What did you want to look at? This place is pretty big, we could probably spend the whole hour here if we wanted. I’ve gotten lost in here like three times.”
“That definitely won’t be a problem. I wanted to see the stuff dedicated to local heroes, you can get Legend bed sheets or whatever anywhere.”
Laura smiled, turning to lead me on a meandering journey through the oversized gift shop. Shelves rising twice as tall as me blocked our view at each turn, a consumerist labyrinth pulling my attention from every angle on every wall. It took a few detours to make it, despite the section dedicated to the local cape scene being by far the largest and most lavishly presented. A huge grin split my face as I took it all in, dozens of heroes and a smattering of defeated foes arranged in a sort of diorama at the center of the largest open space in the store. Shelves radiated out from the central point in a pleasingly geometric arrangement, each focused on one of the power categories the PRT used.
I brushed my fingers over each piece of memorabilia as we passed them, making absolutely sure that they stuck in my power’s memory. Not just because I wanted to mentally come back here without the people or annoying music, but also because I figured it’d be a lot easier to remember all these capes and their powers if I could visualize their places on the shelves. Unfortunately there were plenty of ambiguities when it came to what categories a given power was in, and that had required them to make clear distinctions where there hadn’t necessarily been any. Like, for instance, whether I’d be considered a shaker or a striker. My power required physical contact -the basic definition of a striker power- but its effects could be applied in a large radius around me, which was very much a shaker thing. Where would I fit in here?
To my surprise, a number of local hero teams with only loose Protectorate affiliations at best were represented. The Mercer Island Pioneers had their own display, a poster with all six of them arranged together prominently posted on the side of one of the aisles. Voxel and Flicker -the leader and heavy hitter, respectively- stood in the center with heads held high. I knew the armored tinker beside them was Amalgam, and the human-shaped window to space floating above them had to be Vagary, but I didn’t recognize the cocky looking woman in a comparatively casual costume or the dark haired girl all but hiding behind the others. Were they new additions or had I just not been paying enough attention?
The Protectorate’s display was the largest by far, no surprise considering the sheer number of capes they had. Not to mention it was literally their own gift shop. A life-sized statue of the local team’s leader Mesh loomed over it, brandishing twin hard-light tomahawks represented in translucent plastic. He was a tinker specialized in cybernetics, his whole body a carefully honed instrument that represented literal decades of fighting and self-improvement. Presto and Bullrush lead a stealth focused sub-team that already had a few prominent captures under its metaphorical belt. They’d worked together since before they graduated the Wards two years ago, often enough that it was no surprise rumors had started spreading about the two of them. False ones, if Presto was to be believed.
I very purposefully didn’t pick up any Presto action figures, knowing in my bones that the second I touched one she’d appear out of nowhere and smirk at me. I grabbed one of Monster Mash’s instead, noting how it disappeared from my power’s awareness the second it wasn’t touching the rest of the shelf. I read the blurb on the back of the box, hungry to learn everything I could about this new part of my life. He was a tinker with a classic mad scientist look that made creatures instead of technological tools. Stitched together monsters were his forte, but over his and Mesh’s decades long cape career he’d made everything from giant cybernetic dogs to specialized bacterial colonies that safely ate fire. As capes went he was practically ancient, and they’d somehow stayed together through the whole thing. There was so much I wanted to ask them.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Laura asked, leaning on the shaker aisle. “You’ve been quiet.”
“Are they worth so little to you?” I quipped, flashing a grin at her. Then I sighed, looking for the right words to express what I was feeling. “It’s just that I’m worried. I have a history of being given promising opportunities and letting them fall apart. What’s gonna happen when I mess up again?”
Laura gave me a sad smile. “You’re being too hard on yourself. And anyway, it’s not like you fuck up once and then get sent home. There’s an adjustment period, tutors, teammates to support you. You’ll have room to make a few mistakes.”
“I’m mostly worried about someone getting hurt because I fucked up.”
“Sepulcher, relax. You’re not going into a life-or-death situation on the first day, or even the first few weeks. And besides, your team is gonna have your back no matter what. Trust them.”
I nodded, taking the words in. It was too easy to fall into a pit of self loathing and hopelessness that kept me from improving myself or making any forward progress. This was the best opportunity I’d ever had to finally be free from all the baggage I’d accumulated over my life, a way to forge a new self that I could be truly happy with. I just had to take it one step at a time.
With that thought I put him back on the shelf, flashing Laura a smile.
“Want to go find Presto?” I asked. “I think we’ve seen about everything there is to see here.”
“Were you gonna get anything?”
I shook my head. “No money.”
“Right, sorry,” she said, rubbing her chin. “Say, how about I get you one of these things? Consider it a welcome present.”
I blinked. “Are you sure? You really don’t have to.”
“Don’t even worry about it, this has been a hell of a lot more fun than filing incident reports. Which one did you want?”
“Well, thank you then. I’ve been meaning to get Flicker for a while, her power is so fucking cool. She sees into other dimensions and shit.”
Laura nodded, grabbing one of the Flickers off the shelf. “Sees into them, pulls stuff from them, and on top of that she can fly. Damn shame she never joined up with us.”
I nodded absentmindedly. “Fuck. Strange to think I’ll probably be meeting her at some point.”
Laura nodded. “Where are we headed after we grab Presto?”
“Up.” I said simply.
-||-
I patted my bag as we entered the large, crowded elevator, reassuring myself Flicker was still there. The elevator was tinker stuff -smoother, faster and more expensive than it had any right to be- and it gave a perfect view of the city despite being in the middle of the building. I could feel the walls passing rapidly outside the elevator, noting exact distances in my mental map of the building as the city spread further and further before us. Fifty feet, two hundred feet, four hundred feet, eight hundred, and before I knew it we’d stopped right at the observation deck nine hundred and fifty six feet in the air.
“You’re fogging up the glass,” Presto noted cheerfully.
I glowered at her, moving my hands and face from where I was leaning against the wall-spanning ‘window’. The crowd of people we’d had to share it with were finally thinning out, making their way to the observation deck or the restaurant or the publicly available parts of the Wards and Protectorate headquarters. Crowds always, always put me on edge.
The elevator lead out directly onto the outer ring, which was completely open to the public and contained the aforementioned restaurant and observation deck. The floor looked like some kind of structural glass, letting us see all the way down to the parking lot we’d come in from half an hour ago. With my power, however, I could tell it was the same technology that was on the inside of the elevator. Laura looked a little green in the gills, grumbling to herself as she stepped onto the surprisingly grippy surface and marched mechanically to one of the benches opposite her.
“Are you not a fan of heights?” I asked as she sat down, tentative. “We can go somewhere else if you really want.”
“I’ll be fine as long as I don’t try looking around and moving at the same time. I’m just gonna sit here and make a few calls. You two have fun, yeah?”
“If you’re sure.”
“She literally works here, Sepulcher.” Presto said drily, a slight smile on her lips. “I’m pretty sure she can handle it.”
“It’s called being polite. Not that you’d know anything about that, oh great and powerful Presto. Or should I say… Pest -o?”
Laura and Presto met each other’s eyes in silence, then looked back at me. There was a pregnant pause as the flow of people parted around us. After a seeming eternity, it was Laura that let out the first giggle. Soon all three of us were laughing, presumably more at the ridiculousness of the situation than my lame joke.
“You’re alright, Sepulcher.” Presto said, giving me a little poke in the side. “But don’t think you’re getting away with that pun scot-free.”
“Oh? You planning to punish me?” I grinned at her, eager to see her reaction.
“Alright, I was asking for that one.” She stabbed a finger at me. “But no more freebies, you hear me? New girl only gets so much slack.”
“God, get a room already.” Laura said, not bothering to look up from her phone.
“We’re already in a room, technically.” I noted.
Presto rolled her eyes violently and all but dragged me away from the bench.
“Where are we going?” I asked, letting myself be pulled along. People were staring at us as we passed by, but that was probably just because we were obviously both capes and had nothing to do with my appearance. Could they tell I was trans? Would they have a problem with it if they did?
“The observation deck. It’s got this view of downtown that’ll knock your socks off.” Presto responded, flashing me another smile.
There were large windows regularly spaced along the outside edge, letting us catch glimpses of the Seattle skyline we’d come up here to see. They weren’t glass, however. As we approached I could see that they were forcefields being projected from the wall, and though they felt solid and slightly tingly to the touch I couldn’t affect them with my power at all. Like solidified air.
“Come on already,” Presto said testily, pulling me away from the window. “We’re basically here, all we need to do is wait for the telescopes to open up.”
“If we still need to wait, why did you drag me from the window? It was neat.”
She rolled her eyes. “We need to get in line, duh.”
I raised a finger in protest, before slowly lowering it as I failed to think of a rebuttal. “Alright, you got me. You’re right.”
Presto didn’t bother hiding her smug grin as she pulled me along, full lips pushing back her cheeks and making her eyes sparkle with amusement. She seemed so at ease in her own skin, the smooth movement of her shoulders and hips reminding me of the way a cheetah’s shoulder blades languidly shift up and down as they walk. She navigated a course through the sea of bodies, pulling me along in her wake. Tourists looking to ask questions or get autographs from her were diverted with a few carefully chosen words and a smile, never drawing her into a long conversation.
I almost groaned aloud when we finally made it to the southern observation deck’s entrance. The line extended well past the area marked off for it, the area dense with people making use of the tables and chairs. We took our place at the back of the line and I concentrated on my breathing, trying to ignore the bubbling babble of noise smacking against my ears and the floor. My foot started tapping, and I let it.
Should have brought my headphones, I thought.
Presto was saying something, but I was only half paying attention. My eyes tracked each person in turn, but there were enough people to make following all of them an exercise in futility. What if one of them wanted to hurt me? How would I be able to tell or prepare against it? You never knew who’d take a dislike to you and decide to make something of it, couldn’t tell where resentment lurked beneath the surface. Something moved in front of my face, and I squawked.
“You alright Sepulcher?” Presto asked, lowering her hand. “You seem kinda tense.”
I was tempted to deflect, but her concern gave me pause. I sighed. “Hate crowds, always have. I think my power makes it worse.”
She gave me a searching look. “This feels like more than that. It’s okay if you wanna do something else, you know.”
I looked up, a thought occurring to me. “Are there any forcefields between the ceiling and the roof?”
“Don’t think so, why?”
In lieu of answering, I walked up the side of the internal wall and unceremoniously pulled myself into the ceiling. Since I could control it and didn’t need to see to know where I was, the metal encasing me from head to toe was comforting rather than confining. It buoyed me, carrying me skyward like a strong current. After a few moments of silence I crested the surface of the roof, immediately feeling a cold wind whipping at my hair as I did so. I slowly rose the rest of the way, wishing fiercely that my peacoat had survived the apartment’s destruction. My feet were still covered with concrete, a precaution against getting knocked off the building.
I quietly gasped as I took in the entire city from nearly a thousand feet in the air. Downtown Seattle was to the south, glass and steel skyscrapers stabbing up from the hilly ground like a patch of crystal. Surrounding it on all sides were a chaotic mix of trees and buildings spreading out past the horizon. Mount Rainier towered in the distance, more occluded by atmosphere than not.
This is my home now. I thought, plopping down on the edge of the sloped, circular roof.
None of it felt real. Not my roommates attacking me, not John dying, not being here, and especially not my powers. If I wanted to, I could just jump off this thousand-foot building and be fine. I’d be able to feel the wind in my hair again, that sense of freedom I had when I’d soared all too briefly in the forest. It was so tempting to just run away and hope things would eventually start making sense again.
I took my glasses off, and the world blurred to the point that I couldn’t pick out individual buildings on the skyline any more. They went in my bag, which I hugged close to protect it from the wind. I shut my eyes tight, focusing my attention on my sense of the surrounding material. The roof was mostly concrete and metal, which were both of a higher quality than what my power was capable of making. There was an elegant latticework of steel just under the surface, and imagining how it might extend throughout the rest of the structure helped calm me down and ground me.
“Hey,” Presto said just loud enough to hear, standing a comfortable thirty three and a half feet behind me. “Room for one more?”
I nodded, wary.
She approached with surprising carefulness, sitting down a few feet to my right without making any sudden movements. Probably trying not to startle the dangerous, unstable parahuman.
“You wanna talk about it?” she asked, apparently casual.
I thought for a moment, body tensed against the wind. Eventually, I nodded.
Presto produced a card from somewhere and positioned it directly between us. When she let go it remained, somehow suspended in thin air. My ears popped as the air pressure shifted, wind dying down to almost nothing and making the cold much easier to manage.
“What is that ?” I asked, realizing too late that I didn’t need to raise my voice any more.
“The four of diamonds, obviously.”
“Could you not be a smartass for five seconds? I was just curious.”
She raised her hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. It uses specialized telekinetic projectors to normalize air currents around it. I made the thing to keep people from hearing anything in its area of effect. The wind stilling was just a happy accident.”
“And floating in the air? Is that also the telekinetic projectors?”
She nodded. “If it can move that much air, it can lift itself. Just a matter of tuning the vectors.”
I nodded, promising myself I’d get all the details about her tech I could later. “So when you asked me if I wanted to talk, what were you referring to exactly?”
“I was referring to how you almost got everyone in the lobby doused with containment foam.”
“Oh fuck,” I said, scrambling onto my feet. “I’m an idiot. I didn’t even think of that! Did anyone get hurt?”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Presto said, waving me back down with gentle motions. “Nothing happened. The security systems in the public areas aren’t sensitive enough to detect your power. Please, sit, I promise everyone is okay.”
I reluctantly gave way to her prodding, lowering myself back onto the cold roof next to her.
“Do you know?” I asked after a moment.
“Know what?”
“My- my trigger event. What happened after. Do you know?”
“Only what’s publicly available,” she said. “Incident at Evergreen State College, powers going out of control, new cape joining the Protectorate. Playback didn’t deign to share his notes with anyone but the director, and she’s onto me by now. Can’t hack info that’s only in her brain.”
I hugged my bag tight, sinking further into the roof. My body felt cold in a way that had nothing to do with the chill. “So you know I’m a killer.”
“Putting aside the debate about who’s responsible for what, I’d say there’s a pretty fucking big difference between someone that’s killed and a killer.”
I hesitantly nodded. “I’m worried I don’t belong here. You know I’m a mess, right? For fuck’s sake, I couldn’t even make it through college. How am I supposed to keep up?”
She shook her head, amused and sad at the same time. “We all are, Sepulcher. You don’t get powers if you aren’t at least a little messed up. I say stop thinking of why you can’t do this, and start thinking of all the reasons you can. You’ll be surprised how much longer the second list is.”
“Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind.” After a moment’s hesitation, I took off my mask and put my glasses back on. “Can we just sit and talk for a bit? I don’t think I’m ready to face the crowds yet.”
Presto took off her mask, flashing me another brilliant smile. She held out a gloved hand to shake. “Liang. Glad to officially meet you, Carmilla.”