Chapter Text
Getting shot is always such a bore.
“Really?” Ange shouts at the idiot wearing empire colors, who felt the need to— jesus, she hates how damn loud the things are in close quarters— unload his gun even though the first bullet clearly did fuck all. Now there’s going to be property damage, and she knows from experience how damn expensive it is to repair bullet holes in your walls. “Come on, man! Now someone is going to have to fix that shit! Be considerate!”
The nazi screams a bunch of slurs at her. She sighs and drifts over to poke him in the stomach. He's blown clean off of his feet from the force, slamming into the tile of the grocery store and promptly dry heaving. Yeah, in the earlier days of patrol she'd punch them, and...well, after the first time you feel bones breaking like cheap chocolate in your hands, you learn to be more careful. She moves to zip tie him as he's dry heaving on the floor of the grocery store. “Kids these days. Wait, no that makes me sound like a boomer. Uh, criminals— no, that’s still boome-rish. Forget it.” Zip-ties cinched tight, and that’s all of them dealt with. The others are lying in a moaning heap of regret outside the store. Ange taps on the counter, leaning over to look at the still crouching owner of the 7/11. Poor guy had to take cover and pray. “It’s okay!” She chirps. “They’re dealt with. You can call the PRT now.”
“T— thanks, um…”
“Guardian.” She reaches out a hand, and after a moment of hesitation, the clerk shakes it fervently. “Do you want me to wait with you until they arrive, or do you have this under control?”
“I… I’d like that. If you don’t mind.” A hand through the hair. “I just…”
“Hey, man. It’s cool. Do you mind if I grab a water?”
“Huh?”
“Believe it or not, wearing this does get kind of hot at times.” She drawls, tugging at her costume. It has the intended effect— it’s still shaky, no doubt from the adrenaline still pumping, but he smiles.
“Right. Uh, yeah. Go ahead.”
“Thanks!” She obtains her bottled water and returns to the counter, lightly stepping on the squirming nazi to remind him not to try and go anywhere. She slips up her mask just enough to take a nice, refreshing swig of water. Oh, and she slips the guy two dollars. She has a little pouch in her costume that she keeps some cash in exactly for this. “So, aside from these asswipes trying to rob you, how’s your night going?”
Credit where credit’s due: the PRT responds fast. She’s not even waiting ten minutes before the vans come up and the swanky uniforms step out. Ange’s always been a little disconcerted by how militant the uniform looked, armored up and faces covered, but fortunately, they quickly got comfortable enough with you to raise their visors once the criminals were safely in the vans. Also, most of them tended to be big softies, surprisingly. (There was, of course, always the concern that some of them might be on someone else’s payroll, but it wasn’t as if she was ever careless enough to let anything remotely important slip with them, so...it’s probably fine.)
“Sup, officers.” She gives a friendly wave with the greeting, and one of them even waves back as the others move in to secure the criminals and assess the damage (Hah! She was careful not to bust anything. No more property damage charges for her!)
“Guardian— nice to see you again. I’m Adams, we met a few weeks back during an assault by some Empire members.”
“Ah, right, I remember,” Guardian lies, because she’s done this song and dance so many times that it’s nearly impossible to remember all of the Empire shit she’s busted and PRT personnel she’d met. “Anyway, fairly simple smash-and-grab by these guys. I trust you don’t need me to stick around?”
“Nah. Although… uh, personal favor? It’ll be real quick.” Guardian tilts her head in place of raising an eyebrow. The man lifts his visor briefly to scratch at his brown mustache, dim blue eyes glancing away before sliding it back down. “See...uh, my daughter’s a big fan, and her birthday’s coming up…” Guardian can’t help but laugh.
“Her dad works for the PRT, and yet she’s a fan of an indie hero? Oof, man.”
“Well, I guess when your dad works with them, some of the shine wears off.” The man chuckles good-naturedly even as he pulls out his phone. “So…”
“Yeah, sure. What kind of pose?”
“Oh, uh, I was hoping you could wish her a happy birthday?”
“Awwww. I can do that, but then I gotta head out.”
“Course’, just one sec, this stupid phone doesn’t always register through the gloves— oh, and her name’s Hannah.”
“Right. Lemme know when you’re ready.” The other officers come out of the shop, dragging the nazis behind them. One of them laughs even as he loads the criminals into the marked van.
“Well, well well— now I understand why you wanted to respond to this one, Adams. Determined not to be lame like last year?”
“You know it, Frederick. Now— Guardian, going in three, two, one…”
“Hi, Hannah! Happy birthday from Brockton’s own Guardian— and I know your dad’s a total dork, but go easy on him, k? He just got bullied by me and all of his friends.” Adams laughs as he puts the phone away into one of many pockets.
“Thanks, ma’am. Really.”
“No problem, officer. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta get back to my job.”
“Right, right. Good luck out there.”
“Same to you!” Ange shouts as she takes to the sky, going up, up, and…
Well. You know.
She stares out over the glimmering nightlife of Brockton Bay, windows burning like a warped mirror of the darkness above, man-made starlight imitating nature’s own wonders, both of them running unrestrained to meet each other at the ocean’s end. From this far away, Brockton could almost be mistaken for beautiful.
Almost. Ange knows better.
(She loves Brockton, she can’t not, because this city has a way of endearing itself to you, but even the hardiest folk here never quite forgot they lived on a cliffside, and the waters beneath are yawning and dark. Erosion is a slow and insidious killer.)
She debates with herself for a few minutes before checking her watch and deciding that she may as well turn in early tonight— normally, she liked to patrol till around three in the morning, but tomorrow was...well, The Day. She needed to be rested up.
So, she flies home.
Waking up is always a bit of a dangerous process, both for her alarm clock and her savings, because when you’re groggy and something’s screeching in your ear, it’s surprisingly easy to forget you have super strength and crush the annoying little shit and then have to pay for another one and Ange really can’t afford to do that until her next paycheck comes in, so...gently. Up, into the shower, she’s got the routine down to ten minutes, out, use her powers to flash-dry her hair (After a few mortifying incidents, she'd learned the exact distance she needed to hold her sword for it to perfectly warm her hair without any...additional adjustments.) Breakfast! Eggs, bacon, green onions and warm toast with a side of salad because sadly, she didn’t get any carb-burning powers in the package. Which, honestly, makes her wonder what her powers are actually fueled by. Ange’s noticed that she feels stronger after she spends a lot of time in direct sunlight, but she’s pretty sure that’s just a her thing, not a cape thing in general, or more people would be active during the day and not the night, instead of visa-versa. And yeah, powers didn’t really make much sense in general once you really started looking at them, but there was just no way something as tiny as the Corona Pollentia in her brain was supplying her with enough power to fly, give her enhanced strength, the forcefield, and the laser sword, right?
Ugh. Why couldn’t superpowers come with some kind of manual? Figuring all this shit out on your own was time-consuming and expensive. Maybe she could try convincing a Protectorate hero to let her rent out one of their power testing facilities for a few hours… ugh, but they’d probably try to convince her to join.
Which…
Whoops! That’s her phone alarm, she’s gotta dash to class. And alas, because Ange does like living, she can’t just fly in and save an hour of time, so...to the bus stop she goes. It’s always crowded and smells like shit because in Brockton you’re either rich or you’re broke, and...uh. She’s trying to think of an upside but nothing is happening. The bus just kind of sucks. Really, the only thing it’s good for is checking her phone to see if she’d missed anything last night. More Empire hit-and-runs, going for either just some basic cash or attempted kidnappings. Apparently, there was some activity with the Teeth near the docks, but another independent took care of it (she idly wonders who it was, hopes that the Sentinels get ahold of them. Independents have it pretty rough, in Brockton. Which is another reason why she really needs to stop putting it off and actually consider—)
Her phone buzzes. A name pops up in green at the top, and everything stops.
stinky baby girl <3 <3 <3
- Hey! Getting on the plane!!! See you tonight at the airport!!!
Finally. Finally.
God, this day can’t go fast enough.
Eventually, she is freed from the sweaty hell that is the bus, and she’s off and moving. Brockton University is…well, to say it’s a pretty campus would be an overstatement. Actually, it would be an outright lie. Unless you’re one of those people (read: government shills and literal psychopaths) who are a fan of the myriad shades of concrete and blocky, ugly brutalist architecture springing up from the broken sidewalk and beaten parking lots like a great gray bruise on the landscape. It’s a brisk walk through old hallways that smell like piss and disinfectant to her first and best class of the day: classical lit. Now, the subject material itself is interesting… most of the time, but that’s not why it’s the best class of the day. It’s definitely not the cramped classroom with a projector that barely worked half the time or the godawful wifi that crashed every other hour. No, far from it. The reason why it’s the best class of the day is because of the professor.
Annette Hebert.
Ange has a…well, as Alys put it, a huge, colossal, gargantuan, going straight super-turbo-hell on the CW baby gay crush on Professor Hebert. And yes, her professor, but come on! Look at her! She made a sweater vest and a simple dress shirt look hot. And her curly brown hair, oh my god.
Legs for days and a voice worthy of the sirens themselves… Ange’s pretty sure she could listen to her talk for hours… oh shit, fuck, she needs to be taking notes on this part. Honestly, the worst part of the class was probably how all of these greek philosophers and kings and whatnot all had names that made her brain want to jump out the window and back into daydreaming about— no, no, focus, you can’t flirt with your professor if you have a bad grade in her class (a thought about extra credit enter’s Ange’s mind, she considers it for a moment before crushing it under the weight of her sheer willpower and also the sad reminder that it would be, strictly speaking, illegal.) The rest of her classes, sadly, did not have hot professors. Doubly tragic, they were kind of essential for her major. Why had she chosen to go into Chemistry again?
Oh, right. She’d hoped it would be useful for her other job. On the other hand, she kind of needs a job that ideally pays well and gives her enough time at night to run off and go save lives. It’s looking more and more like a job as a chemist might not be that, but she doesn’t want to change majors again… speaking of paying well (or rather, not) she needs to remember to pick up coffee for the team at the student resource center.
The one class she wishes would go on longer ends after only a mere hour and twenty, and as always, she thinks about going up and asking Annette…something. Anything.
But she doesn’t (because Brockton needs Guardian more than Ange wants Annette, and she’s already sworn to put the wellbeing of others above her own.) So she just walks away.
(it shouldn’t hurt this much to be in love.)
Eventually— eventually, she’s free from academic and work obligations and catching a bus to the airport, because it’s time.
Brockton’s own little fortress of steel and glass to trap misguided tourists and annoy locals is in the running for the lamest airport in the world, but at the moment, Ange couldn’t care less, because every step across the dirty tiles under fluorescent lights is bringing her closer to—
“ANGIE!”
Her world goes black for a moment as a human-shaped teddy bear bowls into her at something approaching terminal velocity. Ange screams loud enough that for a moment she’s worried about the integrity of all the glass, but then she feels the warmth of human connection wash over her, and everything bad just melts away. Her assailant pulls back once she’s made her best attempt at crushing Ange’s spine and gives a pearly-white grin.
“Brockton smells like shit.”
Ange laughs.
“Yeah. It grows on you, though. Welcome to America’s backside, Alys.”
Her best friend.
God, it’d been too long.
“Oh my god, “ Alys says as she stumbles into Ange’s apartment with all the affect of a woman irreversibly poisoned, the low lights making her piercings glimmer and her light brown hair shine (only a few lights are on because Ange’s phone and laptop give off enough light to make the rest of the space bright enough for habitation, and this saves on the electric bill.) “I thought the airport smelled bad. You go on that hellride every single day? I thought my nose was going to burn from all of the cigarette smoke.”
“You sound like such a Cali girl right now, Als.” Ange teases as she helps bring in Aly’s bags. She’s only staying for the long weekend, heading back on Sunday evening, but she naturally brought way too many clothes. “Over here, if a place doesn’t smell like ashes or piss, you’ve probably wandered a little too far.”
“Jesus. How did you survive moving here?”
Ange shrugs.
“Like I said. This city has an odd way of growing on you. And getting a free ride makes a lot of other things easier.”
“Ugh. Don’t rub it in, miss all A’s. I got a B- on a Calc test last month and my mom flipped.” She scratches her undercut and sighs. “Not as bad as when I got this haircut, though.”
“I was going to say, you look rad as fuck with it.”
“Thank you. Although the internet agrees with you.”
“The internet likes anything to do with pretty women, except for the fact that the woman has agency involved.”
“Noooooo college has turned you into a doomer.”
“Excuse you! I’m probably, like, the most optimistic person in a 5 block radius!”
“And there’s that Cali like. You sure you’ve managed to go local, hon?”
Ange responds by throwing her snacks at Alys. Alys retaliates by throwing a pillow. Things escalate as the clock winds back, just for a little while, and the world becomes bright and beautiful as she and her best friend in all the world shriek and laugh as they dance and play and share stories late into the night.
(There are moments where the truth rises up in Ange’s throat, but it always gets stuck because Alys’ warm brown eyes are glittering in the light and she just wants a few days of uncomplicated happiness. So she swallows it back down and smiles.)
Eventually, Alys’ endorphin high leads to a crash, and it’s about 1 in the morning when they’re finally going to sleep. Alys hasn’t changed since she was a kid: she falls asleep fast and nothing short of an air raid siren is going to wake her up. She also still snores loud as fuck. Angie’s been recording some of it for the last few minutes to send to her friends later. It’s a good distraction from the gnawing guilt in her stomach.
There were tons of other heroes in Brockton. They had a strong Protectorate line up, The Sentinels had lasted over five years as a team, and there’s other independents to pick up her slack. It’s fine if she doesn’t go out tonight, right?
Ange glances over at her closet. The thin strip of white visible through the crack glares at her.
Heroes don’t get to take the night off.
An hour of patrol. Two at most. That should be fine, right?
But what if Alys woke up and she wasn’t there? What if she thought something had happened, because Brockton has a reputation, and she ran out looking for her? How could Ange possibly explain that? Hell, what if she saw her leave or come back in costume? She’d had the cosplay explanation locked and loaded just in case the suit got discovered, but flying back in through her window at night would be…well. Pretty hard to keep it a secret then. (Maybe, some part of Ange that she’s decidedly not listening to, that’s what she really wants. For her to not have to make the decision, for it to just happen and not make her hurt anymore.) Protecting her secret identity was protecting her longevity as a superhero, and that was more important, right?
She checks her phone. It’s only 1:17 AM. She narrowly suppresses an exhausted grown.
Fuck it, she thinks, walking back over to her cramped couch (she and Alys had fought for an hour over who would take the bed, but eventually Alys relented when Ange made the blatant lie that she slept on the couch more often anyway.) Brockton would survive a night or two without Guardian.
But then her phone buzzes hard enough in her hand that for a moment, she’s worried Alys might wake up. Ange glances at the screen.
It’s a PARALERT warning.
EMPIRE ACTIVITY ON 15th AVENUE.
HOOKWOLF AND PURITY SPOTTED.
PROTECTORATE FORCES ENGAGING.
MAINTAIN A TEN-BLOCK RADIUS.
THOSE OUTSIDE THE AREA, STAY AT HOME.
Ange changes in the bathroom and slips out the window.
The fight’s well underway when she gets there. Purity’s handiwork is easy to spot, buildings burning and the air thick with the smell of melted stone. Guardian arrives just in time to see one begin to shift; she throws herself into a power dive and sails through an open window to scoop up the people inside, opting to simply bust through the next wall to clear them of the collapsing apartment complex and swiftly deliver them to the relative safety of the PRT squadron vans that had begun to establish a perimeter around the chaos. She does a once over of them both (they’re young. Younger than her. Couldn’t have been out of highschool. Was she too late to save their parents?) to check for any serious injuries, but nothing presented itself and she handed them over to the medics without fuss, moving to rejoin the fray. She spots a familiar figure facing off against a monster she knows all too well, and summons her sword in a flash of light to assist.
She crashes down on Hookwolf like the wrath of god, pounding his form hard enough that the street beneath them shatters. The neonazi makes a sound rather like a bunch of knives having sex with each other, sharp steel screeching against each other as edge runs down edge. She imagine that’s what his form translates his laughter to, and then his entire body shifts as thousands of blades spin and she disengages as fast as he can before the sheer damage of Hookwolf spinning with impossible force shreds her energy supply to nothing.
“Armsmaster,” she offers as she retreats beyond his effective range. “How goes the fight?”
“The others are engaging with other Empire members or helping civilians evacuate the estimated combat zone. We have to keep him occupied until they arrive.” Brockton’s own implacable tinker states with his trademark voice of gravel.
“I don’t suppose you have any secret, new technology you’ve been hoping to try out on him that you only just finished tonight?”
“Sadly, no. I do, however, have an electromagnetic based pulse cannon installed in my halberd, and I’m quite eager to see what it’ll do to him.”
“That is quite literally the sexiest thing I’ve heard all day. I’ll try to get you a clean shot.”
“I appreciate your assistance. Go.”
Ange rockets forward once more to meet Hookwolf in midair as Armsmaster circles around. She knows better then to try and grapple with the metallic beast, his form could shift in an instant and do horrendous harm with just glancing blows, she’s mostly using her sword to try and knock him about— the blade of pure light growls and sparks against his hide as she batters him around, managing to avoid the worst blows but not quite doing enough harm to force him to retreat. (She never does enough to keep the fucker down, but by god if she had the chance—) A low, electric drone reaches her ears and she brings up and around her sword once more, shoving Hookwolf back, back, one more step, and then she dives straight over him, twisting in midair so she can land in a thrust, her blade sinking right into his metallic throat.
She doubts it’s enough to actually hurt him, but it can’t be pleasant, and she just needs to buy enough time for—
“Now!” Armsmaster barks, and she sails up and away as the blue-clad knight aims his halberd, blade bisected to reveal a rail-gun-like barrel that’s crackling with energy, and pulls a trigger. A barely visible wave of pure electromagnetic force slams into Hookwolf. Immediately, his metallic form goes wrong, blades shivering and shifting out of alignment as phantom sparks erupt across the neonazi’s knife-hide, and he howls.
Now, that sounds like pain.
Guardian relishes every moment of it.
She moves down again once she sees Hookwolf moving, the effect of the tinker device sadly not lasting very long, and he’s bolting towards Armsmaster with fury in his glowing blue eyes, but Armsmaster manages to expectly side-step the vicious swipe, bringing his halberd up and around and slamming it’s butt into the underbelly of the beast, popping him up for Guardian to snatch one of his limbs and simply fling him up, hard as she can, because for all of Hookwolf’s powers, he had no true aerial mobility.
Armsmaster tags him with another teeth-buzzing pulse before he even hits the ground. The impact shatters the pavement once more.
“I only have a few shots left before I drain the battery.” The hero warns as their quarry rises once more, murder in every quiver of blades. “And it seems to only stun him, at best.”
Right. Because god forbid someone actually finds a way to properly hurt him… Fine. Whatever. Ange’s here to protect people. Thrashing nazis is a side-benefit.
“How long till that back up arrives?”
“ETA is three minutes.”
“Alright.” She sucks in a deep breath, gauges how much juice she has left. She should be able to handle three minutes of melee with the monster so long as he didn’t land too many serious blows. “Alright.”
Guardian and Armsmaster move to meet Hookwolf once more.
Ange nearly collides with a few skyscrapers on her way back home. Her powers protect her from actual injury but they don’t, sadly, protect her from pain, so she has an absolutely monstrous headache right now. Hookwolf had called in his little bitch boys once Armsmaster had blasted him enough, and fighting Stormtiger was rather like trying to catch a mosquito, but the mosquito had a bunch of knives to throw at you and also the occasional miniature tornado. Ange’s energy reserves were down to almost nothing— she’d long since dispelled her sword and was very carefully flying home.
Eventually, she spots her little apartment building and slips into the open fourth floor window, making sure that her costume doesn’t catch on the latch again (that had been so embarrassing.) She glances over to look at Alys sleeping on the bed.
Except she wasn’t on the bed.
Huh. Guess she had to use the bathroom around…shit, how late was it? Two in the morning? Something like that? Ange quickly shuffles out of her costume and back into her pajamas (workout shorts and a thin t-shirt). Lucky for her, anyway. She lies back down on the couch and waits to hear the telltale complaining of her old toilet.
She waits five minutes.
She waits ten.
Fifteen.
After about thirty minutes pass and she’s still not sleeping, goddamn it, she feels compelled to make sure her friend hadn’t fallen asleep on the can somehow. Gently, she walks up to the bathroom door and knocks softly.
“Hey,” she whispers. “Alys? You good in there?”
Nothing.
She knocks a little louder.
“Alys.” She says, not quite speaking at a normal tone but certainly louder than before. “Yo. Wake up, hon.”
Nothing.
Lightning begins to creep up her spine, every nerve sparking. “Alys?” She says, and she knows it’s really fucking early but now she’s properly conerned. “I’m gonna open the door, ok?” She does.
Alys isn’t there.
Ange whirls, all desire to sleep forgotten, a few empty sparks of power flickering across her skin as her sword tries to form in response to her heart beginning to surge with fear. “Alys!” She barks, properly shouting now, whirling to see if this is a really, really bad prank and she’s just hiding somewhere in the closet, but as she turns she sees something that makes the entire world just go little sideways.
Her door.
It’s open.
Just a crack.
Ange lives in Brockton.
She always locks her door.
She very nearly breaks it rushing out, desperately scanning the hallway for any sign of her friend. Nothing. Nothing- okay maybe- maybe she's just getting some fresh air! Ange barrels down the stairs, her boots pounding as she races down one, two, three floors, four to go, goddamn it why does she have to live on the top floor- she hits the bottom and then the final door, and fierce, biting cold doesn’t even register on her bare feet and arms as she runs out into the street, praying (but knowing that she didn’t) for Alys to just have taken a quick walk. People still on their late-night business stare at her from cars as they honk past, gawking at a superhero in white screaming a name into the empty night.
“Alys!”
She starts moving. She doesn’t really know where.
“Alys!”
She tugs her phone out of her pocket, dials the number. It rings, the sound deafening out all the rest of Brockton.
It rings once.
Twice.
Three times.
Hey! You’ve reached Alys Cavara. Sorry that I missed you, unless you’re one of my exes, in which case, stop calling me. I’m sure that I’ll get back to you as soon as I get back home! If I don’t return your call by the end of the week, assume I’m dead. Byeeeee.
Click.