Summus Proelium

One thing was for certain, Skip was right about us needing an explanation about what the hell was going on right then. First, however, the other girl disappeared for a few seconds, saying she would return as soon as possible, but that we should wait without jumping in because things weren’t what they seemed to be. She promised we would get answers if we were patient. She just needed us to trust her.

In that time, I quickly took my bluetooth earpiece and put it in before adjusting the thing to change my voice properly so it would match the voice she was used to hearing from Paintball. It was a good thing Skip hadn’t made us say much in front of her. Between that and the fact that I had put my mask and helmet on and shifted into my, uhh, masculine form just before she showed up, I really was lucky. The thought of how bad this could’ve been if she had found us while I was still very obviously Cassidy Evans sent a shudder through me. Skip was cool and all (at least I thought she was cool, even if this whole not letting us rush in to save Deicide thing was confusing) but still. I really didn’t want to deal with her finding out my real identity right now, thank you very much.

She came back before we could do much more than look at each other in confusion while the fire from that explosion continued to utterly destroy the auto shop that had been there. “Okay, I have permission to tell you. But only you.” Her gaze was hard and pointed. “You cannot tell the rest of your teams. This is very important. The secret cannot go any further than you two. That’s it.”

Well, I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I didn’t like the idea of keeping secrets from my friends. And from the look on Amber’s face, she wasn’t a huge fan of it either. But did we really have that much of a choice? Besides, this was Skip. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be asking us to keep quiet about anything that awful. This felt more like… not giving away personal secrets. Though I wasn’t sure exactly what that had to do with us having seen Deicide get blown the fuck up.

In the end, the only way we were going to get any answers, especially about why Skip didn’t want us to go down there, was by agreeing to keep it secret. So, that’s what we did, swearing we wouldn’t tell our teams what we were about to find out. But we also both added that we were only swearing to that as long as it wouldn’t end up putting those teams in any immediate danger.

Obviously, Amber and I watched and listened in rapt attention as Skip explained the actual situation. Or at least as she gave the short version. Which was already wild enough by itself.

It turned out that Deicide wasn’t dead after all. Everything we had just seen, that whole situation, was fake. That was why there hadn’t been more of an escort for that truck, and why she had seemed to be so obsessed with getting into the thing. Deicide wasn’t dead, she was switching sides. Which, yeah, was absolutely mind-blowing enough all on its own. Deicide was changing sides? Or, rather, the person behind that identity was switching sides. She was allowing Deicide herself to be considered dead so she could pretend to be someone else and… and… wow. Just fucking wow. I had no idea how to react to that, to be perfectly honest. It was just a lot to absorb.

Amber obviously thought so too, because she held up a hand for Skip to stop once we got that far, turning to look back at the destruction below. The firefighters had already shown up, bolstered by a couple Ten Towers trucks helping to make sure the blaze was completely contained. With the suppression technology they had, it only took a few minutes to deal with. Obviously, that location had been chosen carefully to ensure the fire wouldn’t spread too far.

“So you’re just going to let her walk away from everything she’s done?” Amber finally asked after taking a moment to stare at the fire. Her voice was as flat as Skip’s normally was, her emotions about this hard to actually read beyond the actual words she was saying. “All the trouble she’s caused, the people she’s hurt, the deaths she’s responsible for. Everything she’s done, and you’re going to let her walk away from it just like that? She gets another chance to be better, just because she decided to switch sides?”

Below us, more police cars had shown up, and everyone was starting to gather to stare that way. I could see news vans arriving as well. Yeah, this was already turning into a big story. Of course it was. They wanted all those people to be talking about the supposed ‘death of Deicide.’

“It is not the most… perfect of solutions,” Skip admitted simply. “Many would agree that she belongs in prison for her actions. And yet, prison would take her off the board. It would prevent her from utilizing her gifts for the benefit of humanity. Is it better to make her sit in a cell doing nothing? Or even on Breakwater if enough decided she belonged there? Or should she be made to do some good with those abilities? She has caused, directly and indirectly, the deaths of others. But she can also prevent many deaths if her gifts are put to better use. She was never the most… intentionally dangerous, evil Fell leader in the city. Not the best either, but certainly far from the worst. She has a goal, one she saw as only attainable through her previous actions. We have convinced her that changing sides, that becoming something better, can help with that goal. I believe, given the chance, she may become a truly better person and help many people.”

Amber and I exchanged looks at that. But honestly, what were we supposed to do, start crowing to the public that Deicide wasn’t dead after all? Even if they did believe us, which was doubtful, we would be throwing away any trust we had with Ten Towers, and probably other groups. Beyond which, Skip was right, the woman could do better things this way. Besides, she was being taken in by Ten Towers, and I had to believe they’d keep an eye on her. To which end, I finally turned to ask, “You’re just going to pretend someone who happens to have her exact same powers and is also a grown woman showed up right after she ‘died?’

Skip shook her head at that, pausing a bit before gesturing to Amber. “You may wish to don your disguise before we go any further. Unless you want her to see you in your civilian form like this.”

Again, the other girl and I looked at each other. Apparently Deicide herself was going to come explain things. What a treat. Maybe she could convince us that she really was willing to change.

Taking the special domino mask from her pocket, Amber set it against her face and let the thing attach. Her features shifted just enough that she wouldn’t be recognized, nose, eyes, and other subtle parts of her face changing alongside her hair color as that shifted from black to blonde. With that, she was disguised.

I was also hoping this wouldn't take long. As shocked as I was by this whole news, it was also June, making it a bit too warm to wear a ski mask under my helmet. This was probably the hottest day we'd had so far. So maybe it was a good thing that I wasn't allowed to be running around in costume right now. I was going to have to figure something out if we were going to be doing this stuff in the summer.

But then, I didn't have time to think about being too warm. Because a figure floated up on a platform made from dozens of pieces of paper before landing on the roof next to us. A figure in a ski mask not unlike my own. And that really wasn't the only immediately apparent similarity between us.

“Uh,” Amber managed, “what the fuck is this?”

Deicide, because that had to be who this was, wasn't a grown woman after all. Even behind that ski mask, that much was obvious. She was clearly a teenager. She had to be. Under that paper armor she wore all the time, behind the disguised voice that came from those books that always floated around her, the actual truth was that she couldn't have been much older than I was.

That was a realization that made me rock backwards on my heels. Deicide, a teenager? She had been practically a kid the whole time?! She was--holy shit. No, just--what the fuck? I couldn’t process that. Not this easily or quickly, at least. I needed some time to let that really sink in.

As for the girl in question, she looked back and forth between us before audibly coughing. “Okay, this really isn't how this was supposed to go. No one else was supposed to know anything about this.” She shot a quick look toward Skip, her tone somewhat sharp, but with obvious nervousness just below the surface. This situation made her uncomfortable. More than that. She was afraid. Which, I supposed, made sense. As confused as we were, this was probably the most vulnerable she’d ever been since ‘becoming’ Deicide. “We had a deal about keeping this secret. No one else knew anything about me for that entire time, and now it's you, your sister, that… guard, and these two. This whole thing is getting entirely crowded for my taste.”

Skip, for her part, replied in as flat and apparently emotionless of a voice as ever, “I could hardly have planned for both of them to be nearby in their civilian lives. Let alone that they would pursue the situation against the orders to stay out of things. That was an entirely unexpected development.” She paused before pointedly adding, “Sometimes, one must run with those.”

I immediately gave an audible snort despite myself. “Right, yeah, sometimes unexpected things happen. Like, oh, just for a random hypothetical example, you might find out that someone you thought was a grown adult running a criminal gang is actually a teenage girl who wants to fake her death and switch sides so she can become a hero after all. You know, after extracting a favor for handing over a vial that was necessary to save an innocent child’s life. Something like that.”

To her credit, Deicide-- or the girl who had once used that name-- visibly flinched. I heard her exhale before meeting my gaze. “I'm sorry. I honestly had no idea that doing that favor would put you in that much danger. I wouldn't have sent you to investigate Amanda Sanvers if I had known who she really was. I thought getting that information would be useful for stopping the Scions.”

Beside me, Amber spoke up. “I guess you could say it eventually led to that, but only after they did a lot more damage. And only after several of us were almost killed by that bitch.”

“Which isn't exactly directly your fault,” I noted. “But it is the truth. And you didn't choose to switch sides then. You didn't have a change of heart when you found out what happened. You kept up with this war against Oscuro. Which hurt and killed people. So why the change of heart now? None of that made you switch sides. None of it stopped you. And I doubt it was just a result of that whole quarantine situation, since that’s over. What happened to make you suddenly decide that letting Deicide die and taking up a whole new Star-Touched identity is the way to go?”

Amber and I both watched expectantly for an answer to that while the girl looked at Skip, then turned back to us. “This may not be what you want to hear, but it's about Cuélebre. It’s always been about Cuélebre. I have my reasons, personal reasons that I'm not getting into, for wanting him brought down. That's all I ever wanted. Call it an obsession if you want. It probably is. And it's definitely personal. I want him stopped. I need him to be brought down. Color it with whatever friendly euphemism you want, but that’s what it comes down to. I want Cuélebre to be stopped.”

Amber gave her a long, pointed look at that. “All the shit you've done, all the shit you've let your underlings do, it's all been one long ploy to use them against Cuélebre? You must really fucking hate that guy. And you know what? I don't really care about your personal reasons. Okay, that's kind of a lie. I do care. I'm curious about what can make you so pissed at that guy. But not nearly as much as I care about the fact that you let innocent people get hurt thanks to that obsession. You haven’t decided to become a better person thanks to real growth or anything, have you? Skip just convinced you that you have a better chance of getting this revenge you want if you switch sides. You weren’t getting anywhere as Deicide. Half your lieutenants betrayed you right at the worst possible time, and now Cuélebre’s probably even stronger than he ever has been. He’s got more allies now, a whole other Fell gang willing to work with him. You had to switch things up, find a new tactic. And Skip happened to be there, somehow, to give you this idea. So now you can become a new person, a new identity, and have all of Ten Towers to help with your vendetta. Does that sum it up?” Though a few words sounded a bit harsh, overall she kept her tone even.

Skip started to say something, but the former Deicide raised a hand to stop her without looking away from Amber and me. “You're right. I've made some very bad choices. I've done bad things. I let my obsession drive me and stopped thinking about the consequences of what I was doing. I will tell you this, if it helps at all, whatever my initial reasoning for changing sides, I intend to do so to the best of my ability. I intend to help, to do what I can to put this city back on track. Not just to stop Cuélebre, but in general. You may try to have me sent away if you choose to go that way. You can expose my secret and force me to go into hiding. That’s your choice. I wouldn’t blame you for making it. I don’t have a dramatic reason for changing my mind. No terrible personal sob story to justify this sort of shift. All I can do is tell you it was never about becoming a master supervillain, never about taking over the city. I want to stop Cuélebre. And now… now maybe I can work to make up for the things I did before. I will try. That’s all I can promise. I will take it seriously and do everything in my power to help.”

I could tell Amber was really doing her best to find an appropriate response to that, and discarded several. Finally, she took a deep breath. “Okay, there’s-- there’s so much I could say to that. Things about you deserving prison for the stuff you’ve done, but quite frankly they’d all be pretty hypocritical given… given a lot of things. And you’re both right, if you go to prison, you won’t be helping people. You’ve got such a strong power. Being a villain was idiotic in the first place. You could’ve done--” She stopped then, breath catching. “Whatever, this whole city is just… good guys are actually bad guys and bad guys are good guys and--and fuck. But sure, fine, you want to be good for awhile and see how that fits, you go ahead and give it a shot.”

Her hand rose, pointing at the girl in question. “But let me tell you this, I will be watching. You might have a stronger power than me, but I can ruin your fresh new life. I can point the media at you. If I think you’re not taking this seriously, if I think you’re using this as a cover and going back to your old ways, if I think you’re not trying to be the best Star-Touched you can be? I’ll make sure everyone knows the truth about the whole thing being faked. So you better actually fucking try. And yes, that is a threat.”

Not-Deicide took a moment to consider her words, silently watching and staring. It was honestly almost scary, the way she could stand so completely still. I could see her eyes through the mask, and they barely blinked through those long seconds. Then she bowed her head slightly. “Fair. And, to be honest, knowing that someone is keeping their eyes on me is probably for the best. I’d prefer it to be someone like you.” I was pretty sure she was smiling just a bit at the end.

Raising my own hand for attention, I put in, “She won’t be alone with that, just FYI. We’ll both be watching you. I don’t--I’m glad you want to switch sides, whatever your reasoning. Seriously, you could do so much good with that power. But you are getting off, like, super-easily. Even if joining Star-Touched and getting into fights constantly does put your life in danger and there’s the whole constant exhaustion thing and people expecting you to--okay maybe it can be pretty tough after all. Still, don’t think you can go halfway and still do Fell shit on the side. If you’re gonna switch sides and join Ten Towers, it has to be all the way. You have to actually change and stick with it.”

“And for the record,” Amber noted after I’d gotten all that out, “none of this actually explains the original question we had. How are you going to explain someone showing up with Deicide’s exact powers immediately after she ‘dies?’ I think people might notice the stunning similarity.”

So, Skip and the other girl told us about this so-called Power Recycling. Apparently whenever a Touched died, their power (or some version of it) ended up reappearing elsewhere, with someone else. It had been observed over time, but wasn’t common knowledge because the recycled powers tended to appear on opposite sides of the country, or even other continents.

It all sounded ridiculous, and yet… well, was it any more ridiculous than any other aspect of these powers? Seriously, they were given out by small glowing orbs that just appeared, took the person into some other reality or whatever for a minute to see images from our own minds, then spat us back out with brand new spiffy superpowers. The whole damn thing was absurd. So why not? Why couldn’t the powers then be passed off to someone else after the first person died?

Then I remembered something, a comment that had been made on the SPHERE forums toward the start of my whole… Paintball thing. I wasn’t sure why it had stuck with me, sitting at the back of my mind, but the moment I started thinking about what Skip and Not-Deicide were saying, it popped right back up again. “Wait, someone online, they were talking about my powers being similar to someone else’s, someone who disappeared shortly before I um, showed up. It wasn’t about power recycling at the time. They thought I might actually be that person, but if they were--”

“Starfade,” Skip supplied. “His name was Starfade, from Indiana. His powers were somewhat different than yours, using colored lights to give people boosts instead of paint. But there is a definite similarity. And… yes, given the timing of his death, we believe it is an example of Power Recycling. For rather apparent reasons, no one felt right bringing it up to you before. It is somewhat morbid.”

Somewhat morbid. That was one term for it. I… had no idea how to react to the idea that my powers had been inherited from another Touched who died. Did that make us… like… related somehow? Was it weird to even wonder about that? Was it weird that I wanted to find out more about this Starfade guy? He had lived all the way over in Indiana, and yet… yeah, I wanted to learn about him. Maybe even visit his grave or memorial somehow and let his… whatever know that I was using his powers to do good things. Yes, weird, but I still wanted to do it.

For now, however, I shook that off. I would deal with it on my own time. “Okay, we get it. We’ll keep your secret, for now. Like we said, we’ll be watching.”

Those eyes shifted over to me, and I could see so many thoughts behind them, as the girl behind the mask met my gaze. “Then I’ll do my best to be an entertaining subject to watch.”

“Don’t worry about being entertaining,” Amber put in. “Just start helping people instead of hurting them. And maybe think about working overtime with that.

“Because you have got one hell of a mountain of moral debt to work your way through.”