May 16, 2011

12:00 pm

Lunch hour at Arcadia High was a lax affair. Students could eat in the nondescript cafeteria, but in the springtime many went into the courtyard to enjoy the sunny weather. Victoria and Dean were no exception.

Victoria was in a rosy mood. She was wearing a flower-patterned summer dress, one she had spent two hours picking out at the Boardwalk for just such an occasion. Tight enough to show off her curves and statuesque frame, loose enough to billow with her movements, to give them a sense of airy emphasis and flourish.

Dean had been appropriately wowed. He had remained ever the gentleman, of course, but he couldn't disguise how he could barely take his eyes off her. His was an honest appreciation, too. She had checked that it was genuine, made an extra effort to suppress her aura for the first ten minutes of homeroom before she let herself relax.

What pleased her the most was the way he had complimented her, giving her points for style with a twinkle in his eye. He wasn't like the others. Ninety five percent of boys her age were simply stunned by her platinum locks, bright blue eyes, and awe-inducing aura. But Dean made it clear that he wasn't attracted to her simply for her genetic and parahuman gifts, but also for the ways she cultivated her beauty - her style, her personality, her confidence in her own skin. It was inordinately pleasing. She had been literally walking on air for the rest of the morning.

Only an inch off the floor, of course. It would be bad form to flaunt her powers in class.

Dean pushed open the heavy door to the courtyard and gestured with his free hand. "After you, my dear Victoria." he said, a wry smile on his lips.

"Why thank you, my most darling Dean." she replied, tongue firmly in cheek. It was silly of him to act like she needed his help - she was strong enough to bench press a tractor-trailer - but his attempts to be a proper boyfriend were endearingly old-fashioned. Somewhere deep inside her was an eight year old girl raised on Disney movies, who was tickled pink at being treated like a princess.

Victoria scanned the courtyard for free seats, but the tables were packed. Damn. Everyone was eager to take advantage of the good weather. The only sliver of space was at a table on the far side of the courtyard, where a group of freshman girls were sitting.

One of the girls noticed her gaze, and soon the rest of them cut off their conversation and gave Victoria and Dean their undivided attention. Well, of course they did. She was a glorious superhero and he was the varsity athlete and high-society heir of the Stansfield family. The picture-perfect couple that teenagers across the Eastern seaboard could only dream of being.

It would be simplicity itself to convince a few of their star-struck admirers to give up their seats...but no. Today she wanted time alone with her boyfriend. She cranked up her aura a notch and gave the girls her best publicity photo smile before turning back to Dean. If their admirers were going to stare, it was the least she could do to give them the glamour they were looking for.

Dean had already come to the same conclusion. "Shoot. The good seats are taken and the grass is still wet from the rain last night. Nowhere to sit. Want to go back inside?"

To hell with that. Being a superhero came with perks. "We're not eating inside on a day like this! Let's take a Skybox seat."

Victoria pointed straight up at the sky.

"Flying?" Dean raised an eyebrow. "Sounds risky to go that far for the sake of a lunch in the sun." He cleared his throat, raised his voice so that onlookers could hear. "Not all of us have superpowers to protect us, you know."

Victoria scoffed. It was Dean's obligatory ration of one public comment per day claiming that he didn't have superpowers. The PRT had suggested it as a way to firm up his secret identity while he dated Victoria, and he followed their advice religiously. What a boy scout.

"Afraid I'll drop you? Oh ye of little faith."

"Of course not, Victoria. I'm saying it can't be comfortable for you. Holding me up with one hand, eating your lunch with the other..."

Victoria smirked. "Well then, you'll just have to sit on my lap."

Dean chuckled. "I get it. You'll hold me tight in your arms, for safety of course, which means I'll have to feed you by hand. A win-win scenario."

"See, you get it." Victoria took a step forward...

...then stopped and turned to meet the eyes she sensed on her back. Brown eyes framed by freckles and frizzy brown hair. Jeez, she should have known. Her sister was watching them flirt.

Amy sat alone on the concrete sidewalk in the corner of the courtyard, a math textbook open on her lap. When Victoria met her gaze Amy quickly looked down at her book. As if to pretend that she had been studying all along. As if she hadn't been forlornly staring at her sister and her boyfriend.

Victoria sighed. Her sister was never comfortable with Dean. Amy did her best to disguise it. She tried to avoid him, she never spoke poorly about him behind his back. But Victoria couldn't miss her repressed grimaces when Dean came up in conversation, her disapproving glances whenever she saw them flirting.

Victoria hadn't been able to figure out her deal. Sometimes she thought that Amy had a crush on Dean that she was determined to hide. Other times Victoria got the vibe that Amy looked down on Dean, that she thought he wasn't good enough to be Victoria's boyfriend. As if Dean had seduced her with superficial charms, his wealth and pedigree and emotion-sensing powers, and while beneath it all he was an evil beast whose craven heart of darkness would bring her to ruin. Or some such melodramatic nonsense.

It was ridiculous. Yeah, Victoria was way more awesome than Dean any day of the week. She was well aware of that. Her superhero name was Glory Girl for a reason. But occasionally, when she was feeling especially honest with herself, she could admit that Dean was more decent than her as a person. Dean had taken the name Gallant for a reason, too, and he did his damned best to live up to his name every minute of every day.

It was what made him so attractive. He was the only boy she had met who could truly stand up to her passion and force of personality. If she had suggested an airborne lunch to any other boy they would have accepted in an instant. A pack of feeble-minded yes-men. Her power only made it worse. It was all too easy to overwhelm the poor boys with her awe-inducing aura, unless she made a conscious effort to scale it back. And every time they dared to disagree with her opinions she could hear a faint quaver in their voice, the primal fear that she could snap them in half like a twig if they got on her bad side.

Dean was different. He wasn't intimidated by her high-flying passions, and he had the grounding to bring her back down to earth when need be. Yeah, it led them to fight sometimes, and that sucked, and the hard feelings never fully went away. But they had always made up and come back together afterward. She liked to think that they learned from each other and came out better people in the end. Some days she could even convince herself that they were more than just high school sweethearts, that they were destined for a more permanent relationship.

And Amy knew all of this. She knew it better than anyone. Amy had never shied away from calling her out on her faults, and she wasn't half as diplomatic about it as Dean.

"You're being unreasonable, Victoria. He dislikes your favorite band, but that doesn't make him a 'self-important pretentious asshole'.

"You were supposed to write a five paragraph essay like the rest of us, Victoria. Not charm the teacher into giving you a B for a two paragraph essay with window dressing."

"You didn't have to shatter the mugger's knees, Victoria. No, no one is ever going to believe that was an accident."

But there Amy was, sitting alone and glumly pretending to read a math textbook while she brooded over her sister's boyfriend, even though she knew damn well how high he ranked on the list of eligible candidates. It was depressing. Amy was such a worrier. And that made Victoria worry about her, too.

Victoria leaned forward and gave Dean's arm a squeeze. "Just a sec. I think my sister needs a dose of good cheer."

"Yeah. It's impossible to miss." said Dean. "I didn't want to say anything, because she doesn't like it when I read her, and..."

"Yeah, I get it. I'll be right back. Here, hold onto my lunch. Don't start without me."

Dean chuckled. "Why? You want to feed me by hand, too?"

Victoria rolled her eyes. "Yeah, sure thing, my most darling Dean. If I don't drop you first."

Victoria strode over to her sister. Amy didn't look up until her shadow covered her math textbook.

"Amy."

"Vicky."

Victoria leaned over her sister and made a show of examining her book. "Calculus sure is entertaining, huh. Congratulations on taking full advantage of lunch break."

"You know I don't have time to study after school. I'm due at the hospital at-"

Victoria put her hands on Amy's shoulders. Amy stopped and looked up at her.

"I know what you need, Amy." said Victoria.

Amy's eyes widened. "Um. And what is that?"

Victoria shifted her grip, took Amy under her arms, lifted, and-

And then they were flying through the air, hair blowing in the wind, making a circuit around the school grounds at a sedate twenty miles an hour.

Amy gave an undignified yelp but managed not to squirm. "Victoria! What the hell!"

"You need to cheer up! There's no better cure than a quick upsie-daisy and a fly around the block."

"When I was ten, maybe! Stop screwing around and put me down!"

"Oh, so you're saying you don't like it?"

Amy pursed her lips, and a hint of red came to her freckled cheeks. "No. It's nice..." She shook her head. "...it would be nice if you gave me a warning instead of yanking me into the air like a lunatic. You're embarrassing me. Treating me like a child."

Victoria shifted her grip, moving Amy into a more comfortable bridal carry with practiced ease. "I'm not embarrassing you. I'm taking care of my sister. My awesome sister, who spends all day brooding over other peoples' boyfriends instead of finding bright spots to cheer about in her own life."

Amy didn't meet her eyes. She looked down at the school grounds, a a hundred feet below them.

"Come on, Amy. You're a superhero for God's sake. The world is your oyster. You just have to reach out and take it."

Amy chewed at her lip. "That's...not as easy as you make it sound. We can't all be you."

Victoria studied her face carefully. "Hey, look, you don't have a condition, do you? You're not depressed or anything like that?"

"I...no. I don't think so."

So Amy was seriously considering the idea. This was bad.

"Everything's going well at school? Not going to fail calculus?"

"I'm fine."

"No problems at the hospital?"

"Not...not really, no."

"So it's something at home, then, or..." A memory rose up in her mind. Oh, Ames. "You're still thinking about the bank thing."

Amy's lack of response was enough of a confirmation.

"You can't let that Tattletale girl get to you. Her power is literally the ability to be a mega bitch. If you let her get to you, then she wins."

"I know. You don't need to tell me."

"Look, Amy, I'm not going to ask you about the 'secret' you think Tattletale figured out. I'll just say that if this is about your bio-Dad, you're blowing it way out of proportion. Whatever your bio-Dad did doesn't reflect on you. He could be Allfather for all I care. Your real dad is Mark Dallon, and he's a superhero."

"I don't want to talk about it."

Victoria sighed. "Okay. I won't make you talk about it. But remember that I'm here for you, okay? I'm your sister. You can trust me." She looked Amy in the eyes. "I trust you. One hundred percent. I don't keep secrets from you because I don't need to. So it hurts me to see you like this. It hurts to watch you get yourself so twisted up inside, and you won't let me help because..."

Because you don't trust me like I trust you.

Amy's face fell, her eyes wide and watery, on the edge of tears. Damn it. She hadn't meant to shame her. It just came out that way.

There was a long silence, with only the sound of the wind as they circled around the school grounds. Victoria studying Amy, Amy staring at her hands. Finally Amy muttered under her breath, barely louder than a whisper. "I might not deserve your trust."

Damn it. "You didn't do anything actually evil, did you? You didn't let someone die, or give someone cancer, or-"

"No! No, nothing like that!"

"Then they don't have anything on you. And they won't have anything on you, because you won't do anything bad, because you're the most moral person I know. You're the one who's always telling me 'That's unnecessary force, Glory Girl!' 'That poor gangbanger doesn't deserve a punch in the face, Glory Girl!' Right?"

A little color came back into Amy's face. "Yeah, but-"

"Plus you're a healer, for chrissakes. You're practically a saint! I saw you take a punch from an alcoholic asshole after you couldn't save his daughter, and then you healed his fucking liver the next day!" Victoria felt her aura ratcheting up a notch. She took a breath. "So trust me. I know you. You're not going to do anything bad. And you're stubborn as hell, so nothing's ever going to change that."

Amy looked down at her hands for a long moment, then nodded. She turned back to Victoria and opened her mouth to speak...but no words came out. She simply stared straight ahead, mouth hanging open in shock.

Wait. Amy wasn't staring at her. She was staring at something behind her. Victoria felt a shadow pass over them, and she spun in the air to see what it was. Her breath caught in her throat.

A great pale shape, silhouetted against the sun. A giant woman clothed only in wings. Wings of all shapes and sizes, wings sprouting from everywhere on her body.

The Simurgh.

The Endbringer was close, close enough that her largest wing nearly brushed against them as she flew past them. She was moving at a steady clip toward Downtown, her face in profile, slate gray eyes aimed at her destination. For long seconds Victoria watched her flight, the Endbringer's wings flapping gently in a delicate dance without regard for lift or aerodynamics.

The Simurgh...hadn't seen them?

Victoria felt Amy trembling in her arms. She swallowed. "Amy. We have to find Mom and Dad-"

The Simurgh turned her head ever so slightly, as if to watch them out of the corner of her eye, and the air came alive with sounds.

A sickening, inhuman cry. Like a chorus of screams heard from a great distance, growing closer and louder with each second. The Simurgh's telepathic song that brought madness and disaster to all who heard it.

A piercing wail, from everywhere in the city. The air raid sirens. Why did they take so long to go off? They were supposed to have telescopes tracking the Simurgh twenty four hours a day, they were supposed to get minutes of warning of her attacks!

A loud crack from the ground, followed by dozens more. In seconds the air was filled with tree trunks, chunks of concrete, segments of chain link fence, all rising in a whirlwind to converge on them from every direction.

Victoria stared at the attack, frozen in place. She had fought telekinetics before, the Empire's Rune and Krieg, but it had been nothing like this.

"Victoria!" cried Amy.

Her sister's call jolted her into action. Victoria flew them up and away from the oncoming storm of debris. The storm turned to follow and it was faster. She juked in the air, managed to dodge a tree trunk by inches, then took a hit from a streetlight that shorted out her forcefield.

"Hold on Amy!" Victoria shifted her grip, hugged her screaming sister close and dove through the edge of the whirlwind, trying to get down to ground level so she could use the school for cover. She dodged a chain-link fence, kicked aside a tree trunk, then rotated to protect Amy from a telephone pole that came spinning toward them from the side. Her forcefield came back up just in time to absorb the blow. Then she was in the clear, diving toward the school grounds-

And with a sickening ripping sound, the school gymnasium tore away from its foundations and rose up to meet them.

Victoria had less than a second to react. She used it to spin in mid-air, putting her body between her sister and the oncoming threat. Then she felt a sharp crack against the back of her skull and the world went dark.