Chapter Text
My final costume arrived in the mail as a non-descript package, a yellow and white overcoat with silver trim on the edges. It had the silhouette of the high-low dress that I had wanted, but was split open at the leg area for easier mobility. Underneath it was a pair of white shorts that could be swapped out for pants when it got colder. I — and literally everyone else in the family — vetoed the boob window that Crystal had suggested, but I did take her suggestion to have more obviously tinkertech armor on my arms and legs to help the public accept my weapons more easily. Vega had also created an armband with a holographic projection of my cape logo, which was supposed to help me channel my Light more easily. After finding out that power-enhancing technology was normal for Earth Sol, I’d spent days quizzing Vega about it, though what she could make was still limited by the lack of certain materials on Earth Bet.
The other major highlight was the weapons that Vega crafted. Subtle Calamity, a bow with modified tranquilizer rounds for arrows. Retold Tale, a shotgun with energy pellets and Honor’s Edge, a sword with an electrical current running through the blade. According to Vega, the edgy names were a significant part of Guardian culture, and each had important meanings to the bearer. Taking Sarah’s advice, I’d promptly rechristened them as Subtlety, Tale, and Honor.
It took weeks to learn how to use each of these weapons. I spent long hours in the Pelham yard, shooting at the targets set up for Sarah and Crystal. I’d gotten to know my cousin Eric a little better this way, playing video games and pick-up basketball with him when I needed a break from shooting. There was a liberating feeling to letting muscle memory take over as I moved around with the ball, but the one time Dad tried to join in, it got awkward fast as he tried to talk to me about my time on the basketball team.
Tale was the easiest weapon to learn, because it had such a wide pellet spread that I didn’t need to aim much. Most of the work was in gun safety training and practicing some melee hits. Honor was the next one I’d figured out. Mom helped to drill me in swordplay by sparring against her own energy weapons, changing up the style of weapon and techniques whenever I felt a bit too comfortable. It was equal parts fun and annoying; the former because for the first time in a while I felt like I was on a similar wavelength to a Mom I barely knew, the latter because she was very good at fighting with weapons and didn’t hesitate to break into a lecture about how to improve my posture or technique.
Subtlety was the hardest for me to learn, and I still missed the bullseye ring at the center of the target more often than not. I watched some videos of other archer capes, and felt a surge of jealousy at the ones who could make trick shots with their eyes closed.
In between training was the standard family meetings on how to carry the weapons non-threateningly, who and what counted as acceptable targets, and to de-escalate when the more experienced members did as well. It wasn’t as exciting as everything else, but I still dutifully took notes on how I was and wasn’t supposed to act.
Now, for the first time, they were including me in their capture the flag games. Sarah said that it was a team-building exercise to give me experience in a controlled cape fight. It was going to be so cool!
On an early Wednesday morning, we went to a park inside the city. Lush green lawns stretched several blocks wide, broken up by large clusters of trees. New Wave liked to practice in this area for its mix of open and closed space, and how big it was. Crystal quickly flew to set down a line of brightly colored cones down the middle. Then we drew lots to be split into two teams, with Mom, Neil, and me on one side, and Dad, Crystal, and Sarah on the other.
“Practice using our cape names for this exercise,” Mom said. “We’ll know who you’re talking about if you don’t, but you should form this habit as early as possible.”
“Got it, Brandish,” I said, feeling slightly giddy. I pushed my team’s flag into the ground. It fluttered prettily in the wind, surrounded by a grove of trees.
“To recap our strategy, you two will defend while I go for their flag,” Brandish said. “Whatever happens, don't let them get our flag, even for a moment. Deny them their goals. While you might not win that way, you definitely won’t lose, either.”
“Remember not to injure people beyond anything that takes a day or two to heal,” Manpower added. “We’re here to practice, not to hurt each other.”
I nodded solemnly. Each of us had plastic arm bands to simulate zip tying people so they could be arrested, but we were all trusted to judge what a simulated level of hurt was before surrendering.
Flashbang, Laserdream, and Lady Photon stood on the other side. Lady Photon flew into the air. She spoke in a loud voice, which I recognized from all of Mom's lessons about taking command. “Three… two… one… GO!”
Mom turned into ball form, and Manpower punted her off into the distance. She flew through the sky as a bright streak, landing halfway into the other team's territory. After hitting the ground, she rolled for a little bit more, before turning back into human form and running deeper in.
Manpower and I retreated into the trees, where we kept a watchful eye on the sky. I held my bow, Subtlety, by my side with an arrow already nocked on the string. I activated my helmet’s mic. “Hey Vega, what’s happening on their side?”
“Brandish is fighting Flashbang. She, she’s trying to get close to s-slash at him but he keeps throwing grenades at her,” Vega said.
Vega was our spotter. She floated above the treeline to report on what was going on, and warn us if Laserdream or Lady Photon were coming for us. She’d been surprisingly enthusiastic at taking this job — apparently a lot of Ghosts acted as mission control for their Guardians, and she’d been waiting to do this for centuries.
“Oh, um, s-she's running away now, I don't know why. Whenever Flashbang throws something at her she just turns into ball form to avoid it,” Vega reported.
I repeated her words to Manpower.
“Fighting Flashbang is a trap,” Manpower said. “He wants her to fight him, so she doesn’t look for the flag.”
“Lady Photon is coming in, um, at your 2 o’clock!” Vega said.
My radar flashed red — I should have been paying more attention. I raised Subtlety up and fired.
The arrow whizzed by Lady Photon’s foot. I shot again, but she went into a dizzying barrel roll. She waved her hand, and a purple force field bubble sprung up around me, trapping me inside.
I beat at the force field with my fists, but it stayed firm. I wasn’t hitting it hard enough. A quick thought, and Subtlety decompiled into my pocketspace, to be replaced with Honor forming in my hands. I cut my way out of the force field, a task helped by the fact that Lady Photon hadn’t put much charge into the field.
Now I was free, but I had no idea where Lady Photon was. I looked around and saw Manpower leaping from a tree towards Lady Photon. He reached out for a mid-air tackle, moving much further than I would expect a man his size to go, but Lady Photon barely dodged him. He grabbed hold of a tree trunk instead and started climbing higher, no doubt to do the same thing again.
He had to be using his super strength to launch himself so far. Lady Photon could avoid him by flying out of the trees altogether, but that would be good for us, because it would take her further away from the flag. To add to the pressure, I fired more at Lady Photon. One of the arrows hit her in the side, making her waver slightly, enough that Manpower almost clipped her before she could reorient herself. The tranquilizer would kick in after a few minutes, but we didn’t have that long.
In response, Lady Photon shot a few lasers my way. They were fast enough that I couldn’t avoid them, each one feeling like a hard punch despite my armor.
“Fucking fuck,” I muttered. I’d have bruises tomorrow. I took cover behind a tree.
It was like the world’s most absurd game of tag — Lady Photon dodging and weaving with her flight, Manpower leaping through the trees, me hiding and shooting Lady Photon. Lasers crossed paths with arrows.
“Crystal is sneaking in at the back, around the trees!” Vega said.
I looked and saw a white and magenta blur whizz around the outside of the grove of trees. Laserdream! She must have been waiting for Lady Photon to distract Manpower and me. I Blinked after her.
I had a shorter path to the flag through the trees than the circuitous route that Laserdream was taking around them, but she was going super fast. There was no way that I could hit her with the bow when she was flying like this, so I swapped to Tale instead and held it at the ready.
“Vega, how’s Brandish doing?”
“Brandish has the flag. She's running back to our side but it'll take a while, Flashbang is s-still after her. At her current speed, maybe, maybe 2 minutes for her to get here?”
“Got it,” I said.
Laserdream had noticed me noticing her and stopped to hover in place. I sent a warning shot at her, but she was just outside of the range of Tale.
“You’re not getting past me!” I yelled.
“Yes I am! Sorry cuz!” At that moment, Laserdream created a small force field in front of the barrel of Tale, and flew forward in a burst of speed.
I shot once to break the force field, racked the slide, and shot again. She was fast, but being this close to the trees after stopping meant her acceleration took a dip. Laserdream tumbled to the ground, groaning. I moved to tie her up with the armband, but she projected a warning spray of lasers from her fingers, each one going in wildly different directions. I dove out the way, wary of a wayward shot taking me out of the fight.
She was still clutching at her side as she rose into a wobbly hover and kept going.
If Laserdream got our flag over the center line before Brandish did, then they would win. I couldn’t allow that. Deny them their goals, Brandish’s voice whispered in my mind.
I Blinked forward and snatched the flag.
“Oh, you little— ” Laserdream started. “Mom! We need to get the flag from Victoria!” She sent a stream of magenta lasers after me.
All I had to do was keep it away from Laserdream for a minute. I made a beeline for the densest thicket of trees I could find, lasers peppering bark and leaves all around me. Laserdream had a hard time making sharp turns while flying, but my Blinks could handle it as quickly as I could change direction on foot.
A laser seared across my back, feeling like a hot iron. I swore and kept running. Magenta force fields appeared in my path, which I could break easily enough by slowing down to kick at them, but each one cost me precious seconds that let Laserdream gain on me. I swapped to Honor’s Edge to slice through the force fields as they appeared.
I was so grateful for my Light-enhanced body now. Normal me might have dropped to the ground from sheer exhaustion from moving this much. With the Light, I could keep up this near-sprint forever.
Magenta and purple lasers streamed towards me, carving small lines in the dirt. Now I had Lady Photon on my tail, too.
“Vega, tell Manpower to get them off my back!”
A translucent purple bubble sprung around me, reinforced with a layer of magenta, and then more layers of purple. I called on the Light to empower me, creating a Rift under my feet as I hacked away at the bubble.
“This is just a training exercise, Victoria,” Lady Photon called. “I know you’ve already taken some hits, but we don’t actually want to hurt you. Give us the flag and we’ll call the game.”
Fuck that. New Wave had spent too long coddling me, and besides, I wasn’t going to let them win.
I spotted Manpower in the corner of my eye.
“Okay, I’ll surrender,” I said loudly, holding up my hands.
The force field bubbles dissipated. Laserdream approached to tag me with an armband.
At that exact moment, I summoned Subtlety and pierced the flag with an arrow. A quick but weak shot had the flag sailing away. “Manpower, catch!”
He caught it surprisingly gracefully, as if the arrow had been pulled to his hands. He ran off and Lady Photon flew off to chase.
“You’re such a cheater, Vic,” Laserdream said, but there was no real heat to her words.
I shrugged and sat down compliantly to show I was out. “You never said it was against the rules. I’ll be good now.”
Laserdream flew to join Lady Photon in chasing Manpower. They were quickly able to box him in and wrest our flag away from him, but it was too late. I had only wanted to buy a little bit of time, anyways. Brandish crossed the center line with their flag, slightly out of breath but laughing.
Crystal came back to laser the armband off of me. We returned to the middle of the park, now as one team again.
“Good game,” Sarah said, holding her hand out to shake. I took it. Manpower clapped my shoulder, and I smiled. I’d won my first cape fight, and I’d shown New Wave what I could do! Victory felt good.
“I heard that you pulled some unconventional tricks,” Dad said.
“I took the flag for a bit so your team wouldn’t win. Deny you your goals, that sort of stuff,” I said. In retrospect, I felt a little embarrassed — that couldn’t have been the point of this exercise, could it?
“That’s my daughter,” Mom said fondly, pulling me in for a one-armed hug.
I caught sight of Vega, hovering a little bit away from the group. She looked around nervously, like she wasn't sure that she had the right to be here. I couldn't let that go on.
I raised my voice so she would hear. “Special thanks to Vega, who ran comms for me and kept me updated on everything that was going on! We couldn't have done this without her!”
Vega froze in place as everyone turned to look at her.
“Oh, that’s how you knew what was going on,” Manpower said. “Say, Vega, could you do that for the rest of us when we get into fights?”
“I-I don’t know,” she said. “I th-think it would be better if, if I made headsets for all of you, so you could talk to each other directly. And maybe… if I gave you radar displays, you could s-see for yourselves where everything is?”
“We’d appreciate it if you did that for us,” Lady Photon said, with a yawn.
Vega relaxed her petals. I gave her a look. Clearly, she was only doing this so she wouldn't have to be talking with everybody else. Working on her shyness would be a long-term project.
“Does anyone have any injuries?” Dad asked.
“Me,” Crystal said, rubbing her arms. “Whatever Vic’s gun shoots, it hurts.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Nah, you're good,” Crystal said with a wave of her hand. “I got you a few times too.”
At that moment, Sarah slumped over. Manpower automatically caught her, and then gently set her down onto the ground.
“Oh, I think that’s the tranquilizer arrow,” I said. “Hey, Vega, do you have anything so we can wake her up now?”
Vega drifted closer and scanned Sarah, bathing her in a beam of blue light from head to toe. “N-no, I made these nonlethal like you told me to, I didn’t, I didn’t think you’d ever want to bring your enemies back into a fight? I think she’ll be awake in an hour… ”
Carol pursed her lips. “Let's go home so Amy can fix her up. Vega, whatever you’ve done, you need to get working on an antidote as soon as you can. If we’re going to introduce Victoria to the public anytime soon, we can’t have mishaps like this.”
Vega repeatedly bobbed up and down in an apologetic nod. Poor little thing.
We went to our separately parked cars. Mom, Dad, and Sarah all wanted to go home, to get healing from Amy. With Sarah laying down across the back row of seats, there wasn’t enough room for Neil and I, so we were left to drive back in the other car, Vega decompiled with me. Crystal would fly by herself to get to class in UMass BB’s downtown campus.
Neil started up the car to drop me off home.
“That was a really good showing out there, Vicky,” Neil said. “A tad unorthodox, but you did what you had to do.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Neil’s voice turned furtive. “Don’t tell the others that I said this, but we’ve been talking about officially bringing you on to the team as Altair in a couple of weeks. Mark and Crystal think you’re ready, and after what you just did, I think you are too.”
“Wow, really?”
“We’ll let you know when we have a more official date. If nothing else, Carol will want to make sure that you get some rehearsals in before actually speaking to the press. Just thought that you’d want to know.”
I held in an excited squeal. After all the training I had been through, and with everything that Amy had said, I’d been scared that I was never going to be a real part of the team. Now, I had a timeframe in mind. New Wave wasn’t just stringing me along indefinitely. I’d finally be able to help people.
“This is going to be awesome.”
Neil reached out with one hand and affectionately rubbed my shoulder, keeping the other hand on the steering wheel. “Two weeks. Just you wait.”