Of Sisters and Shadows – Chapter 10

Do you know what kind of music I don’t enjoy?

Death Metal.

Heh, get it?

Look, I swear it makes sense: up until this very moment, I’ve been punching a metal, dead Nazi around about as hard and rhythmically as that song Carlos swore I would enjoy, and that just made me ask Amy to check whether I had lost any hearing after the tortuous experience.

So, Death Metal.

…

I may not share this one masterful pun out loud. You know, just in case it leads to litigation over copyright infringement when it’s inevitably stolen by comedians who, unlike a certain sister with no sense of humor whatsoever, recognize quality material when they hear it.

Yup. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Much like I’m sticking to the roof after my last clash with the ginormous T-1000 canid had me ricochet off an unpredictably placed claw that made all but the last layer of my shield crash. Said last layer, of course, lasted just long enough to introduce me to the metal rafters of this abandoned warehouse, missing the glaring spotlight to my right by an uncomfortably narrow margin and leaving me barely any time to desperately hold onto the now bent length of mostly rust before I fell down and into the whirring maw of jagged teeth waiting for me.

It’s the quiet moments like this that give one a chance for self-reflection, you know? Self-reflection such as: why the Heck am I tangling with the monster version of a cape who, when alive, went into melee against Leviathan?!

I mean, it’s, of course, out of my heroic sense of duty and not at all because I’m a rash, impulsive, barely adult teenager who’s already jumping into a relationship with her non-blood-related sister after having convinced her to wait and give me space. Not at all. I, Victoria Dallon, am mature beyond my chronological age and only take any important steps after careful consideration of all the pros and cons involved. Cons such as having to tell Mom why there’s a vegetable horse in our backyard and why half of it exploded after my first bondage experience—

Oh. My shield’s back. Just in time to stop my very productive, calm, and mature self-reflection.

Thank fuck!

Okay, new plan, because denting shapeshifting metal with another Alexandria flyby may not be the most strategic use of my capabilities, and Amy is still healing whatever it is that Hellhound commands, and Hookwolf’s Shadow seems to be quickly getting bored of waiting for me to fall from the rafters—

Duh.

Way to play to the blonde stereotype, Vicky.

Anyway, I am already grasping said rafter, so I just leverage my flight to pull down, and the metal shrieks in protest as the rust violently flakes off when I twist the beam into a new shape as I dive down, changing course at the last second when giant jaws snap up at me as welding spots and screws keep being torn apart behind me.

The sheets of corrugated steel above me protest as their support is taken away, and the spotlight swings violently, sending the entire warehouse into racing shadows going from side to side disorientingly right before the beam I’m dragging behind me smacks Hookwolf on its not-quite anatomically correct snout.

To very little effect.

But that’s when I dive back down, under him, the beam finally tearing itself free from the ceiling as I pass under a belly made of spears and corkscrewing blades that drip down on me too slowly to catch me.

Then, as the beam crashes against the floor and almost makes me drop it with the sudden jerk, I’m past him.

And I pull.

The beam bends once more, strained between my strength and Hookwolf’s weight, but it holds enough to lift him, to get his claws off the floor, and I fly back above him to try and wrap him with—aaaand he’s splitting down the middle.

Gross.

Seriously, it’s just… disturbing. Nobody should be able to dissect themselves just to avoid being bound, and—okay, this is interesting.

As in, as soon as he disconnects, the lower quarters of the wolf go still before falling and crashing, the impact against now powdered concrete enough to send sharp shrapnel flying off from the no longer living metal, and the front of the animal shifts into a bipedal shape with its three heads lined up vertically along its torso.

It’s still a giant. Still three times my own height, and I can see it quickly regrowing its lost mass.

But it’s a start.

So I fly up once again, and I grab a twisted, almost loose, sheet of corrugated steel hard enough to punch my fingers through it just so I can get as good a hold on it as I can before I tear it off its remaining support and fly back down to Hookwo—shit.

I twist at the last second as a harpoon of writhing metal flies right by my cheek, shaving a few layers of my shield and spearing right through my improvised weapon.

And the ceiling behind me.

I try to pull it past the living metal, but it’s growing thicker, fixing the sheet in place, and—and I just saw how to fix this.

So I shape a wing of my shield into the thinnest edge I can manage and slice through the impromptu beam Hookwolf made to stop my attack, but the metal is revolving, sprouting blades to threaten me, and so I lose three more projections from my aura in the attempt.

Then another tendril shoots at me from below, and I manage to slice the first one off, combining my slash with a diving dodge. I fly lower, assisted by the weight of the sheet I’m once again supporting, even if the holes I stuck my finger through are tearing and won’t withstand any more abrupt changes of direction, much less with how weighted down it is by the remaining metal from Hookwolf’s attack sticking through it.

So. One chance.

Which, really, to anyone who’s never been in a fight? Newsflash: that’s the way things work.

You don’t get do-overs. You don’t get time-outs. You don’t get anything but a narrow window of opportunity and a single moment to take advantage of it or lose it forever.

Pretty much like life, now that I think about it.

So I turn my straight shot at Hookwolf into a soft, quickly accelerating curve despite the sheet I carry with both hands whistling in the air below and behind me, and another harpoon is shooting straight at me, whatever improvements Amy just made to my dynamic vision bringing it into stark relief, aimed to my left eye, to punch through the last remaining layers of my shield and my skull.

So I go faster.

And, right before it brushes my shield, I abruptly stop and spin in place, all of my earlier momentum transferred to the sheet now angled edge-wise to my turn.

Just as I feel the fingerholes tearing, I let go.

And the dull, enormous blade flies right at the monster, crushing the harpoon before crashing right through Stormtiger’s mask.

And then I accelerate yet again.

I grasp the edge of the sheet, enveloping it with as much of my shield as I can spare to keep it straight, to keep it from crumbling, and I push as hard as I can, taking the monster at an angle past the huddled monsters, Hellhound, and Amy. I snarl at him as Stormtiger’s mask distorts when the steel farther bites into and past it, embedding itself into the bipedal body with three heads even as clouds of powdered concrete rise up from the twin trails of destruction brought about by its bestial claws trying to stop me, trying to anchor the monstrosity in place and resist my charge.

I push harder.

Layers of my shield break under the strain when the sheet it’s trying to support buckles under them, but I have enough, I still have enough to make this work, so I speed up, as fast as I can go despite its colossal strength and grotesque body trying to stop me, and I finally manage to slam him against the warehouse’s wall, the concrete shaking and cracking with the impact but holding.

Great. One chance.

I pour all of it. All of it except a single wing, and I push as hard as I can on the reinforced sheet until it bites deeper against him. Until the whirring mass of hooked, clawed, spiked tendrils in front of me splits.

The lower part stops moving, frozen in place.

The upper part, the wolf’s head and half of Stormtiger’s mask, splits off and tries to reform over the sheet now embedded in the wall behind it.

And, as it does, as it tries to come up with a new body to attack me with, I see a single ball of flesh amid the whirring, shrieking blades.

Two harpoons shoot at me.

One, I avoid by whipping my face to the right, fast enough that the damn thing pulls at my trailing hair when it passes me by.

The second, I tank with my forehead.

And, right as the frantically positioned layer of my shield that I just pulled from the metal sheet shatters, as my protection dwindles in front of an enemy barely more monstrous than what he already was when he lived, I shoot that single wing of sharpened shield straight through the ball of beating flesh.

Blood spurts from it, far more than it should hold, and the wolf’s head crumbles, hooks and razors clattering over corrugated, bent steel and toward powdered concrete.

And I…

I sag with relief, all of my muscles unclenching at once as I finally allow everything that could have gone wrong just now to rush through my exhausted, taxed mind as even my flight refuses to work anymore, and I drop on my knees, the last of my shield taking the brunt of my not-at-all-overdramatic, shut-up-Amy, post-fight crash.

It’s… It was close. Far too close.

It worked, yes, but… but I relied too much on my new enhancements, on my reflexes to get close and personal, when I could have bombarded him with debris until I buried him and—

All right, not the time. I’ll grab my notebook and brainstorm on everything that could’ve gone wrong later. Right now I just need to breathe and take in air that has enough gray dust in it as to coat my whole trachea, and, oh, crap, I hope Amy can clear this up, because what I’ve read about silicosis is not pretty, and I think I’m about to have a delayed panic attack, or something, I don’t even know. PTSD? Can you get PTSD from something that happened seconds ago? Or is it just TSD? I should ask Amy. I mean, sure, her degree is only honorary, but if she doesn’t know, it’s also a good chance to rub it in that it’s only honorary, and—

And what is that light?

***

“Now will you let me heal you?” I ask the moronic martyr wannabe who’s too attached to her pets.

While fending off one of said pets with my wings, because, for some reason, the rottweiler has made it its life mission to get around my defenses to slobber all over my face.

…

Time and place, dog. Time and place.

Also, I hope you won’t get it in your stupid, Jurassic head to throw me off a damn window afterward. God knows it’s starting to become downright Pavlovian at this point.

But, right before the most obstinate patient I’ve ever had (and that’s tough competition) can finally give me her permission to, you know, save her reverse crazy-cat-lady ass, something resounds across the whole warehouse.

Dreading what I’ll see, I turn around and—Vicky is tearing the building down.

Why am I even surprised that she’s tearing a building down?

I mean, this is basically paradise for her, isn’t it? A place created by the mists where she can unleash her earnest urban-remodeling tendencies without fear of reprisal (that is: Mom’s lectures). A place where she can use architecture to beat up Nazis.

… I’m suddenly tempted to ask what some of her college classes entail, because if any of those are about interior decoration, she needs to get her money back.

Or, you know, ask them to give her extra credit for using a Nazi supervillain as a centerpiece.

Anyway, concerns about the rooftop falling on my head aside, Vicky seems to have well in hand the current fight, given that she’s wasting so much time and effort into making it as flashy as possible, despite Crystal and her phone not being here to take advantage of it, so I should get back to the stubborn redhead, and—oh, for fuck’s sake.

The roof. She’s using the roof as a weapon.

Really? Really, Vicky? I give you enhanced reflexes and enough of a boost to give you time to thinkwhile in the middle of a fight, and that’s what you go with? This is you eating the checkers and claiming it was ‘unconventional tactics’ all over again, isn’t it?

“What is she…” Hellhound hesitates to ask. Likely because she’s too polite to finish that sentence with all the expletives it deserves.

“If you ask her? Winning. If you ask me? Giving me a headache and making me ponder how much of her higher education has been a waste of time, money, and my patience.”

The non-Nazi (allegedly) supervillain stares at me in incomprehension, proving once again the irreconcilable divide between heroes and villains, and I shrug before reaching for the mangled thing she used to call an arm, and I now call a crunchy hamburger.

You know, because of the bone shards.

…

I may keep this one to myself. Just because I don’t want Vicky to feel vindicated regarding her own (lacking) sense of humor.

Still… Okay, it’s bad. She would have lost the arm if I wasn’t here, but maybe she could have survived with a tourniquet. Knitting the bone back together feels surprisingly straightforward, the surface liquefying at a thought to fill in the missing pieces Hookwolf’s strike tore off, but I built biomass reservoirs in my wings for a reason, so I craft a quick channel from them to my shoulder blades, and then down my right arm, a small tendril of smooth muscle cells pumping a slop of calcium, proteins, and far too many nutrients for me to count straight into the wound I am unhygienically touching.

Aaaaand she’s hissing. Because I forgot to turn off her sense of pain.

…

In my defense, my sister is fighting a Nazi kaiju right behind me, and it’s a non-biological one, so I can only play support and hope that everything I just did to her body works precisely as it’s meant to work, because she needs to survive this, and it’s taking everything I have to focus on the wounds rather than—

Wait.

“Can’t you send your dogs to help her?” I ask as I numb the pain of everything I’m about to do to her while nerves inside her body stretch in search of their missing halves.

Hellhound stares at her flesh crawling down smooth bone and takes a moment to look right into my eyes.

“What?” she stupidly asks.

“Your dogs. The ones I just healed. Can’t they help? Can’t they… I don’t know, hold him down, or sniff out a weakness, or something.”

“They are hurt,” she says. Slowly. And dragging out her words.

Because she’s lost too much blood, and I was just focusing on the very visibly wound right in front of my eyes rather than checking the entirety of her body, and—fuck. That’s brain damage.

Okay. Okay, don’t panic. I’ve been… experimenting. I’m still afraid to do to myself what I think I can achieve if I really let loose, but…

First order of business: redirect everything available.

Okay, now just… flood her with more nutrients, stimulate the bone marrow to produce the missing blood cells, artificially oxygenate the whole cortex, regrow damaged capillaries, cleanse vertebral arteries of dead matter, and…

And now do the one thing I’m terrified of.

Because… I don’t really understand this.

I get everything about biology, the mechanisms down not to the cellular level, but below that. I understand how proteins work, how to turn a perfectly functional structure into a devastating, self-replicating prion. I can read DNA like it’s a picture book just telling me that the cow goes moo—unless I feel like giving more elaborate vocal folds to said cow.

I can tell with a touch everything that an animal was, can be, and was meant to be.

But… thoughts? Memories?

Even if they are engraved in flesh, I can’t understand them. My power doesn’t allow me to glimpse into that.

And I don’t know how much, if anything, Hellhound is missing.

So I can only look for what looks obviously wrong and… tweak it.

Her amygdala seems to have gotten the worst of it, where emotions are processed, so that would be fun, but I can restimulate some quick growth, restore missing functionality, let her—

Under my hand, Hellhound jerks.

And then she screams.

The mists sing with her, echoing rage, and sorrow, and fear, and desperate love, and—

And, as amber light washes over me from where Vicky was very loudly fighting Hookwolf…

Hellhound vanishes.