Seraphim Chapter Thirteen

Seraphim

Chapter Thirteen

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“What fascinating and mind-numbingly terrifying friends you have, Sophia. Interesting taste in sculpture art as well, and an electrifying personality.“ Lisa remarked a bit numbly, staring at the television screen that was displaying an aerial, panning view of the glassified form of Lung.

“First, that joke was pathetic and you should feel ashamed.” The vigilante replied bluntly, Lisa twitching slightly in acknowledgement, before sighing somewhat tiredly. “You’re not wrong, though. She has a lot of power and a different mindset than most people, despite her best efforts.”

“What do you…? Ah, I see. She was raised to think and act like an average human, but she doesn’t… No, she can’t? Some sort of mental condition…?” Lisa mumbled, looking over at her and monologuing as her power went to work. She winced at the reaction to her last sentence, holding up her hands in apology. “Wow, okay, nota mental condition, sorry! You know, for someone you want to spy on and keep under control, you’re really defensive about her.”

“She askedme to keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn’t go overboard. She is well aware that she is different from humans, no matter what she looks like, and is afraid that she’ll start doing what she just did to Lung from the outset, rather than as a last resort.” The dark-skinned girl’s voice was cool, clearly still unhappy with Lisa’s choice in words (and doubtlessly was irritated by her powers, but Lisa was used to that) but not necessarily angry about it either. “She’s putting a lot of trust in me. In us, even if she doesn’t know about you just yet.”

“Well, I owe you for helping get my ass away from the Merchants unmolested, and I obviously underestimated just how scary this city could be despite my powers. I’m going to need more information from you, though, because the more information I have the better my power works.” The blonde responded easily, leaning back in her seat as the news coverage changed from the view of Lung to an interview with Armsmaster. Her eyes sharpened as they spotted Miss Milita and Mouse Protector in the background.

Miss Militia affected by memory restoration. Memories personal in nature and extensive in volume. Embaressed, frightened, longing, confusion. Trusts Mouse, loves Mouse, hurt by Mouse. Hurt that Mouse lied to her? No, not lied, kept secrets. Determined to meet Seraphim in secret?

Mouse Protector unaffected by memory restoration. Never forgot anything, always knew. Ashamed of hurting Militia, knew it was necessary and doesn’t regret it, only regrets the hurt it is now causing someone she loves. Planning to meet Seraphim as soon as possible.

The ringing of a phone led to the TV being muted, and Lisa watched with interest as Sophia glanced at the caller ID before going rigid and answering promptly with a mannerism of deliberate calm. She didn’t need her power to know that the phone call was important, and she definitely didn’t need it to make a very confident guess at just who was on the other end. She might be about to find herself meeting these scary friends of Sophia’s, a concept of which she had two minds. On the one hand, she did get information best from direct observation, and you couldn’t get much more direct than chatting with the person being observed. On the other hand, she hadn’t been joking when she had said that Seraphim and Co. were scary people. Lisa was (with all humility) beautiful, and she was sure that a glass statue of herself would get rave reviews, but she wasn’t particularly interested in experiencing Lung’s transmutation for herself.

“Well, that was them. Looks like its time for an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ meeting about Lung and what the fallout could be. You’re coming with me.” Sophia declared the obvious, sliding her phone back into her pocket without even a glimmer of hesitation or shame for shanghaiing Lisa into a meeting without discussion. Unsurprising, given her particular brand of…difficulties. And at least she had told her before they had been in the car and on their way to the meeting! Speaking of which…

“How are we getting there? Your mother doesn’t even know you have powers, never mind that you’re friends with the Holy Trinity. Does she even know that you’re friends with them in their civilian guise?” Lisa asked aloud, politely allowing her to give an actual answer rather than seeing it with her power and continuing when it was confirmed. “Well, that’s something at least. I suppose we could get a ride from her, but there is still the potential for awkward questions…”

“Taylor said there was no need. Apparently, we’ll be ‘sent for’.” Sophia shrugged, evidently unconcerned, though Lisa could see her curiosity all the same, and the Thinker frowned as she tried to game out what the distant dark-winged angel could mean.

“So, is she sending a car…?”

The question was only half-way out of her mouth when Light bloomed around them, an intricate design that was painfully beautiful to look at spreading rapidly beneath their feet, golden strands of energy blossoming from nowhere. Her power was silent for the first time since her beloved brother’s death, totally silent, and she had but a moment to marvel in awe and, yes, fright at that silence before she vanished.

One moment she had been there, in Sophia’s living room, and the next moment she was somewhere else entirely. One part library, one part armory, it was obviously a hidden and subterranean base of some kind. Someone’s secret refuge, perhaps even a lair, to use the cliched term. Sophia was there beside her, hands balling into fists as she dropped into a rough boxing stance as the two of them faced a small crowd that had obviously been waiting for their arrival.

“Easy there, Sophia. We needed to get you here quickly and quietly, so we cut out the travel time.” The young woman in the middle said, raising her hands slightly in placation. She could only be Seraphim, with the ornate armor covered in holy script that had both summoned girls shivering in a confused mix of fear and awe, much like the designs that had brough them here.

“That, and Taylor really wanted to try out a distance-summoning spell she just learned.” Another of the Trinity added with an audible smirk and a gentle nudge to Seraphim’s side, who swatted back at her with affectionate exasperation.

“…Right. Whatever. This is Lisa, I met her when the Merchant’s decided I would make a good whore and grabbed me off the sidewalk.” Sophia forged ahead with characteristic bluntness, and Lisa had the most interesting feeling of apprehension as she watched the Holy Trinity swell with righteous fury and indignation. Flapping a hand in dismissal, the track star tried to play it off. “We kicked the shit out of them, broke out a bunch of girls and made a couple of other friends, but the point is: she’s a Thinker. A damn good one. She’s going to help me make sure you stay copacetic, Taylor, and she’s going to help us clean up this city too.”

“Charlotte, remind me to hurt the Merchants. Soon.” Seraphim growled, visibly seething, and the girl who had teased her nodded seriously. Seraphim seemed to regard her for a long moment, before reaching up and drawing back her hood to reveal a beautiful young woman with expressive jade eyes and long, gorgeous black hair. “It’s nice to meet you, Lisa. Thank you for helping Sophia, she is very dear to me. My name is Taylor Hebert, better known as Seraphim. My two Pawns, Emma Barnes and Charlotte Aronin. Solace and Artificer, respectively.”

The two girls flanking Taylor also removed their hoods, revealing one to be a model-worthy redhead with topaz eyes. A rare eye-color, that, and combined with the rest of her looks…well, Lisa was actually willing to bet that Emma did do modelling, if only in small amounts given her youth. Charlotte, meanwhile, was just as beautiful but of a more conventional sort, which dark brown hair and grey eyes. Interestingly, both seemed to have some indefinable quality to them that was above and beyond their natural beauty, something that drew the eye to them and made them seem more.

Her power remained silent.

“This is Charlotte’s mother and the Caretaker of this place. She was very close with my own mother and I trust her implicitly.” Taylor continued, gesturing to an older woman that was so obviously related to Charlotte, the introduction honestly wasn’t even needed. It was the final two women, however, that were the most interesting: Miss Militia and Mouse Protector. It seemed that the meeting she had predicted was happening sooner than expected. “Finally, of course, you recognize Mouse Protector and Miss Militia. Magnificent heroes both.”

“Nice to meet you all.” Sophia inclined her head slightly, uncharacteristically respectful, and Lisa had to wonder why. Miss Militia and Mouse Protector were certainly impressive and famed heroes, well respected for good reason, but Sophia didn’t seem like she was trying to restrain fangirling. Was it Taylor’s presence, then, that kept her from resorting to grunts and one-word answers? Lisa had caught a faint blush on her room-mate’s cheeks when Taylor had said that she was very dear to her, so perhaps she was trying to appear mature and graceful in front of a crush?

Her power remained silent.

“So, Miss Militia, Mouse Protector, and Ms. Aronin all knew each other, and your mother? Personally, I mean? Because I haven’t had enough time to do any research on her since the…whatever she did to make everyone forget stopped, but them being here means they were closer than just being Endbringer Battle Buddies.” Lisa asked, actually asked without knowing the answer, using the popular term for people who fought together during Endbriner Battles.

“So it seems, but to be honest with you I have that question myself. Mouse Protector knows more than she should, Miss Militia seems to be remembering things, and I find myself wondering how much more about my mother I do not know.” Taylor said, looking over at the hammy hero, who just stared back. Sighing, the girl gestured over to the library section. “Come, let’s take a seat. This will be a long discussion, so we might as well be comfortable.”

They all settled themselves into a seat, unnaturally comfortable and plush armchairs all, and there was a moment of silently observing one another before Taylor took the lead again, looking nervous despite her obvious attempts at composure.

“As everyone but Lisa knows, I’m not entirely human. I am a Nephilim, a half-angel and half-human girl. My mother was a Fallen Angel, a founder of the Grigori, from another Earth. Which Earth and which Angel she was before her fall, I do not know. What I do know is she came here from what she called ‘Earth Trifecta’ and was a vigilante before starting a family with my father. She was killed a little while ago in a car crash.” Taylor gave the short, short version of her past, and Lisa furrowed her brow. How could a Fallen Angel be killed in a car crash? Didn’t that seem a little…wrong, somehow? “I’ve spent every day since then training to the point that I could start being a hero like she was.”

“I was Annette’s support system and lover back in college, even got to spend some time with her and Danny together before I got married to a PRT Strike Commander in New York. After one of his missions went bad and almost everyone died, he disappeared. Since then, I’ve raised Charlotte and prepared for our return here, so we could support Annette’s daughter.” Ms. Aronin added wistfully, though with a bitter twist to her mouth as she spoke about her ex-husband, and Lisa’s frown deepened. A mission gone bad in New York? Why did that sound familiar…? It was important, she was positive about that, but why…?

Her power remained silent.

“Charlotte and I convinced Taylor to make us Fallen like her, the first members of her Peerage, using empowered objects. We’ve been supporting her ever since. Now, though, we are faced with a situation we hadn’t expected to deal with for some time.” Emma finished, looking over at the two adult heroines, and Miss Militia nodded in agreement.

“With you not only defeating Lung, but killing him, there is going to be a great deal of attention on Brockton Bay and the three of you. There are significant concerns about how much the Empire and Merchants might escalate, not to mention the fact that it was widely considered due to Lung that other gangs haven’t tried to push into The Bay in force.” She said, her voice a mixture of pain and regret, with a lacing of anger threaded through every syllable. If Lisa had to guess, based on her experience, she would say that the older woman was torn between pride and relief that her friend’s child was safe, regret that said child killing someone had been necessary, and angry that said child hadkilled someone. Everything Lisa had ever seen or read about Miss Militia indicated an almost obsessive faith in the justice system, born from childhood trauma. Knowing what she knew about the Kurds, it was a logical supposition that Miss Militia had suffered cruelties at the hands of people who appointed themselves the judge, jury, and executioner, and was stridently opposed to anyonedoing the same. Regardless of reason.

Her power remained silent.

“I’m sure Kaiser would object to the idea that the Asian man was keeping the Teeth and such out of the Bay, as opposed to his glorious and racially superior legions.” Charlotte jested dryly, mouth twisting a bit bitterly, and Sophia snorted a very bitter snort indeed.

“Empire has numbers for sure, and their capes aren’t exactly weak, but they spend more time posturing than they actually do doing something. I mean, goddamndoes Kaiser like his speeches. Man can’t even walk down the street without building himself a soapbox.” She growled, sounding just as bitter as her classmate and pseudo-friend.

“He knows how to play the game. Politics revolves around perception, and the ‘noble knightly crusader’ image he has been carefully cultivating for himself for decadesis pretty popular despite how much people hate his gang’s beliefs.” Mouse shrugged, sounding rather more dismissive than her tired eyes and taught shoulders might otherwise lead someone to believe. “People are fickle, and prone to believing what they are told or see on the surface of a subject. They see all the damage Lung did, without giving a damn about collateral damage or innocent lives or helping fight the Endbringers despite being able to do so on equal footing. They see Skidmark, with his foul mouth, his kidnapping girls to addict and turn into whores, his Tinker-tech drugs. Then they see Kaiser. Well-spoken, courteous, a flair for the sort of chivalrous and knightly dramatics that Hollywood and literature has made us love, made us think of as the epitome of heroics and nobility. A man who always leads every, single, one his subordinates to every Endbringer battle. They see a man that opposed his own sister, because he considered her too radical and aggressive despite their shared beliefs. That kind of stuff makes a huge difference in people’s minds.”

There was a general air of discontented and grudging agreement with her evaluation, because she wasn’t saying anything that wasn’t true. Kaiser knew how to play to the crowd; it was one reason the Protectorate and PRT had such an issue with fighting him. As small and comparatively weak as the ENE branches were, and as unpopular with the public as they were as a result, they had to tread carefully when it came to doing anything that might cost them even more support.

“The point is, things are going to get more complicated for you girls. I would recommend doing that healing clinic you were talking about as soon as possible, and as publicly as you can. Show the city, the world, that you care more about healing people than you do about killing your enemies. Spend time at the hospitals, help repair the damage to the infrastructure.” Mrs. Aronin instructed, voice firm and poise very much like that of the mother that she was. “You need to be loved, not just respected or feared. Annette wiped out selective memories of the entire planet, and that means a whole lot of people are going to be wondering what you are and will be capable of doing…and some of them will be thinking about whether or not they should get rid of you before you get the chance to find out.”

“Father, I never wanted to deal with this sort of crap. I just wanted to be a hero like mom, not deal with politics and paranoia and control freaks that would rather me do no good at all if I can’t be doing their kind of good theirway.” Taylor hissed unhappily, running a hand through luxurious locks and glaring at nothing in particular. Charlotte lay a soft hand on her arm, and when Taylor lay her own over it and squeezed gently, Emma looked away with a slight, unhappy frown and confused eyes. Lisa watched every interaction carefully, intently, scrutinizing it and engraving it to her memory for future contemplation.

Her power remained silent.

“What I want to know is why Mouse seems to know so much more about you and your mother than I did. Why my memory was wiped, but hers wasn’t. Annette was my friend too, I cared for her just as much as Mouse did. If I had known that she had had a daughter, one living in the same city as me…” Militia changed the subject, sounding rather cross and more than a little morose, but Mouse cut her off.

“Yes, you loved her just as much as I did, but you were also a member of the Protectorate. Monitored, with oaths and loyalties to people we couldn’t trust.” The independent’s bluntness was clearly painful for Militia, who looked genuinely hurt by the implication that she could ever be anything other than a protector and supporter for Taylor and her family. “Annette was loyal to a higher calling than anyone in this room can imagine, and I was loyal to her above all others.”

She sighed, rubbing her helmet in such a way that made it clear she would be running her hand through her hair if she was actually capable of getting to it at the moment.

“Damnit, there is so much I want to tell you all, but I can’t. I swore that I wouldn’t say anything until all of you were ready, but I didn’t think that things would go like this so quickly. I knew you would get stuck in, I knew you wouldn’t sit around and watch people suffer when you could do something about it. With your parents, how could you? Annette Fell because she couldn’t watch people suffer, you know?” she continued, sounding exhausted. There was a chiming sound, and she pulled out a phone and glanced at the screen before frowning deeply. “Listen, I need to leave, but I’ll be back soon. We’ll have a talk, a real talk, and I’ll answer any questions I can. What you need to do right now is follow our advice, play nice, and reinforce your image as healers and rescuers.”

With that, the hero popped away, leaving a room of frustrated, exasperated, and otherwise emotionally turbulent people behind her. Despite the discussion lasting several minutes, answers seemed to be thin on the ground, and the pile of questions was only growing. Really, the only thing that had happened was that the three young women had been lightly chastised (or so they felt) for their actions and that some minor background of their natures and the relationships between the older women had been fleshed out.

“…well, I suppose I had better return the two of you to Sophia’s house before you’re missed, and start planning how to make the planet less likely to want our heads on a platter thanks to paranoia.” Taylor finally sighed, obviously less than pleased that a valuable source of information about her mother had just skipped town, and Lisa felt compelled to speak up.

“Actually, I wouldn’t mind us sticking around and chatting so more. I have more questions than I know what to do with, and if Sophia is friends with you guys and I’m going to be staying with her…” she trailed off, and Taylor nodded thoughtfully.

“Agreed. We can chat for a bit then go for a stroll around the Boardwalk. I should make the both of you some protective trinkets…or rather, have Artificer make them. {Item Creation} is not something with which I have a great deal of natural talent, and the safety of friends shouldn’t be entrusted to sub-par tools.” She agreed, sounding pleased and gesturing over to sitting area invitingly. The five young women walked over and sat, an uncomfortable silence settling over them as each thought how best to break the ice, before Lisa squared her shoulders and looked Taylor straight in the eyes.

“So…God is real?”

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Hmm, not too happy with this, but then again this was supposed to be a romantic chapter, but when I tried to do the scenes they felt forced. I think the characters involved just aren’t quite there yet. Soon though!

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