Weekly Drabble #79: Time and Again (Patreon)

This week's prompt is from EBB with 'sidestep'. Originally, that was going to be more literally included in the story with an action scene, but I realized the background and interactions were more interesting for this scene, so I expanded them instead. Maybe next time...

Anyways, in this story, we catch up with Justine and Peter, AKA Save Point and Blackjack, as they try to sort out the League's problems in the wake of Justine's little... oopsy/killing spree.

Enjoy!

~

Time and Again:

Every time she fell, he caught her.

Every time he caught her, she pulled away.

“What happened?” he asked the same question every time.

Blue eyes glared at him, flashing balefully. “A meat hook,” she snapped. “A fucking meat hook. I bled out on a meat hook.”

Peter Quintal, also known as Blackjack, winced. “I’m sorry-” he began.

“Save it,” Justine Blanchard told him. “I’ve heard it before.”

He was quiet for a moment, watching as the young woman re-made a temporal anchor. He couldn’t see it or feel it, but he knew it was there. Justine, also known as Save Point, might be the weakest of all the Seeded on Earth. She didn’t have iron skin, impenetrable kinetic shields, superhuman strength, flight or any of the other physical abilities that came with the change from ordinary person to superhuman. She was a little tougher, maybe a little stronger than someone of her build and size should be, but that was it. There were ordinary men and women on Earth right now that could out-muscle her. None of that mattered, though. She was the most dangerous of any Seeded on the planet. Every time she died, she snapped back the loci in time she could create, and she remembered everything – she knew what had gone wrong and how to try again.

She’d been the Liberty League’s secret weapon, allowing them to stop terrorists, respond to natural disasters and intercept their enemies without anyone being the wiser. All it had taken was her dying over and over. Thousands of times. She’d never stopped, though. Not when she’d fought the League’s enemies and not when she’d murdered her colleagues, wiping out the seniormost members of the League and dying hundreds of times more to do it.

With the League’s best members dead and the previously infallible organization floundering, the knives had come out. Tinpot dictators went on the march, hostile Seeded crawled out of their holes to start killing and conquering. It wasn’t the bad days, before the League had been founded, but it was close. It seemed like it was open season on any League member. They’re not scared of us anymore. Peter had confessed to Justine just before he’d broken her out of prison. The League was in shambles and people were scared. They needed a win.

They needed Save Point.

She hadn’t been happy with him. She’d been trying to atone for what she’d done, trying to bury the bloody, coldly vicious parts of her. They’d been fueled and fed by rage and grief, and the skills that had made her even more dangerous had been learned by killing people she’d once cared about. She didn’t want that, she didn’t want anything to do with what she’d done. She didn’t have a choice, though.

Now she was a fugitive again. She could go back at any time, but she wouldn’t. She knew the League needed her. They not only needed Save Point, but the woman who’d taught herself how to kill the most powerful of Seeded. That was why she hated Peter as much as she did these days. He’d made her delve once again into the side of herself that had killed her friends and colleagues, the part that absolutely would not stop until she won, no matter how many times she died, how many brutal, awful, ugly deaths she suffered. The League really did need Save Point… and she’d never forgive him for that.

Wendigo had been the first. That had been one of the conditions of her help. The bestial Seeded had killed Invisi-Lass. Justine had been her friend. She hadn’t even needed to reset once they found him. She’d used a .50 cal anti-material rifle to blow his guts across the frozen streets of the town he’d butchered. Before he could regenerate, Blackjack had been on him, beating him down and leaving him helpless. Standard League protocol was to use no more force than necessary; if an enemy escalated to lethal responses, than League members could do the same, but once a foe was incapacitated they were to be taken into custody. Instead, he’d turned away as Justine cut Wendigo’s head off. They’d burned the rest of the monster’s body. The smell of roasting meat had made him sick to his stomach, but Justine had stayed by the pyre, the dancing flames catching an unsettling light in her eyes, and a small smile on her lips.

If you ask me for this, I’ll be letting that part of me out again, she’d told him that day in the prison. I don’t know if I can put it back.

“How many times now?” he asked.

“Seven,” she told him. They were going after Cannibal Joe. It wasn’t the most imaginative name, but Joseph McLurry wasn’t the most imaginative man. He was still Seeded, a huge, burly swamp dweller with an alligator farm who’d been rumoured to be responsible for disappearing hikers, tourists and hunters for years, but no one had been able to prove it.

Since the loss of so many of the League’s best and brightest, ‘Cannibal Joe’ had stopped being subtle. He’d started kidnapping people. Some ended up as food for his gators, some in his stewpot and some chained up in his house. After half a dozen police officers tried and failed to take him down, the League had stepped in. Vultura and Oakheart had gone after him. Cannibal Joe had an Instagram account. He’d posted pictures of ‘Bayou-style BBQ Chick Wings’ and ‘Oak-smoked ground beef’. Quintal wasn’t going to sacrifice anyone else. Cannibal Joe was his and Save Point’s next target. From what he’d been told, it wasn’t going that well. McLurry was a tough, wily bastard.

Justine had told him she’d been shot, skewered, thrown to the gators, added to Joe’s collection – dashing her own skull against the concrete floor to reset – and now, she’d been put on a meathook like a butchered pig. From what she said, Peter usually died to Joe’s massive cleaver, the man’s thick hands around his throat, or drowning in the swamp. When he was powered-up, Blackjack was stronger and faster than Cannibal Joe, but McLurry was a tub of guts almost impervious to injury. Whenever he got his hands on either one of them, it was over.

“All right,” he said, knowing he’d probably said this before, too. “Tell me what happened.”

Seven times they’d tried. Seven times he’d sent them both to their deaths. Seven times the trauma of her murder staggered her. Seven times he’d been there to catch her, and seven times she’d pulled away. 

Justine wouldn’t forgive him, but she wouldn’t stop until it was done. Eighth time might be the charm. If it wasn’t, they’d try number nine.