Weekly Drabble #282: Courting Disaster (Patreon)

This week's prompt is from JackBeNimble with "grin or snarl". This went through a few redrafts from starting out as something from City of Shadows, to touching on Rattler and Starlight's relationship, to the aftermath of the von Diem incident, but from the law-abiding side of the equation. Hope you enjoy!

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Courting Disaster:

“Look,” William O’Vail, AKA ‘Boxcar’ said to his companion in his mix of an Irish brogue and Bostonian drawl. “I’m not trying to be a dick about this, you know? Just giving you some friendly advice.”

“I appreciate that,” Kaley Atwell, nom de guerre, ‘Starlight’ replied as she ducked under the rusted rafter Boxcar held up for her, the pair of them heading deeper into the wrecked portion of the city. “But I’ve already told everything I know to the investigators and the League’s leadership. I don’t know why Rattler broke me out of von Diem’s lab and I have no idea who hired her to do it.”

O’Vail sighed. “Kid...” Starlight’s eye twitched. O’Vail was fifteen years older than her and saw it as his duty to impart his wisdom on the younger generation. Sometimes he had good advice. Sometimes it made him stick his nose in other people’s business, like now.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she told him. “I’ve gone over it and over it and over it for weeks with the investigation.”

“Well that’s a bit of a shame,” he said. “Because you’re going to hear it whether you like it or not.”

“Is it going to be anything I haven’t heard before?”

“Maybe not. Maybe yes. Let’s just see.” He paused at a split in the tunnel, then pointed right. “This way.” Fetid rainwater had collected in a stagnant stream. Boxcar had to walk on the stained edges of the tunnel while Starlight lifted herself a few inches off the ground, hovering along behind him. He raised an eyebrow. “Scared of a little dirt?”

“If there’s something down here, we’ll probably both get splattered in sludge before the mission’s over. Until then, why get it on me when I don’t have to?”

Boxcar shrugged.

That was something Tasha had taught her. You have a reputation as a little princess, you know. You should play into that. When Gladiatrix shows up covered in mud and blood, people know she’s ready to wreck their shit. Let them underestimate you.

But Gladiatrix will wreck their shit. I fly and shoot lasers. I don’t get into the fight.

And when someone like me makes that happen? Do you want them to be right, or do you want to surprise them?

“So hear me out,” Starlight’s partner began again as they headed deeper into the claustrophobic debris, the leftovers from a supervillain’s rampage more than ten years ago. Restoring a district of warehouses, packing plants and low-income housing was deemed too expensive for too little gain and the entire had been left to rot. In the last few months, there’d been a number of strange sightings in the area and disappearances among the vagrant population that lived on the edge of the Ruins, as these districts were aptly called. After months of complaints and ineffective police patrols and finally the disappearance of the son of a wealthy and powerful family, the city PD sent a request for metahuman assistance to the local branch of the Liberty League.

Spread thin by events at home and abroad, the League didn’t have a lot of people available. Gargoyle was the best at footwork and he normally kept an eye on this city, but he was on assignment elsewhere. Nightbane was another good choice; she was an excellent tracker in her werewolf form, but like her fellow local Gargoyle, the lycanthrope was also indisposed. Too many jobs and not enough people. Not since the previous leadership and most senior members of the League had been wiped out and every scumbag on the planet crawled out from their rock to take advantage of the chaos.

That was why Starlight, whose powers were best used for air support and scouting and Boxcar, a former pugilist turned moderately-successful PI turned vigilante had been sent out to hunt snipe. The first few days of their investigation, Kaley had been doing aerial reconnaissance while O’Vail explored on the ground, both of the Seeded looking for anything out of the ordinary.

She saw a few things that seemed weird. Most of them didn’t pan out, but O’Vail put some of what he found with what she’d discovered and figured out that there was something happening in the Ruins. What that was, who was doing it, why and what their purpose was – those were unanswered questions. But someone had been marking paths through collapsed buildings and rubble-filled streets, setting up traps for unwary visitors and renovating the abandoned skyscrapers and brownstones.

It wasn’t any of the locals; ever since these twenty-odd square blocks of city had been razed, the rest of the population avoided the place like the plague. The only ones who went in were street derelicts and homeless looking for shelter and places to shoot up. Once their fellows started to disappear, even those had left. On the second day they’d found one other person, a junkie strung out on heroin that they’d had to summon an ambulance for – and the ambulance itself wouldn’t go into the Ruins.

Today, they were going to see just where the markings would lead them.

Kaley shone light from her hands, illuminating their path through. “Do I have a choice?”

“You have to admit it’s weird,” was Boxcar’s answer. “Rattler is one of the top wanted metahumans on the planet. She’s literally a cold-blooded killer-”

“She’s not actually cold-blooded you know-”

“Close enough. Anyways, she’s a mercenary bitch that’s crossed the League more than once. But here’s the thing, von Diem is connected. Brian pumps out disposable cannon fodder for some big names. Hell, from your own disposition, he was going to use you for spare parts. A lot of powerful people would kill for fresh-off-the-bone Seeded organs and tissues. From what I’ve heard, von Diem even had buyers lined up.”

“Your point?”

“My point, kid, is that bailing your ass out of that butcher shop would have pissed of Brian’s older brother and a whole whack of very unpleasant men and women. Much as I hate to say it, that’s not Rattler’s MO. She’s smart enough not to take the really fucked-up jobs or the ones that get her bumped up in priority on watchlists.”

Starlight nodded along. Tasha had been part of some very public incidents, but despite her power set she was considered a lower priority than many other Seeded with weaker abilities. The League didn’t have to worry about her trying to turn people into reptiles or accelerating climate change to warm the planet or other grandiose and insane plots that a lot of other Seeded got into their heads and led to a lot of innocent people suffering. Even among those who sold their abilities and skills, she wasn’t the worst offender.

Roulette was good comparison. The french assassin’s ability to re-orient gravity for herself and others in a limited area wasn’t nearly as dangerous as Rattler’s speed, strength, venom and ability to slice through virtually anything but Roulette was higher on Interpol’s Most Wanted. She would – and had – kill anyone for a paycheck. Rattler had done many dubious, illegal and morally questionable things but she had limits.

That was why Kaley let herself fall for the serpentine mercenary and why she knew Tasha wasn’t the lost cause many others thought she was. That she thought she was. “Okay,” she agreed. “So what?”

“So what is that we have is a top-end mercenary who doesn’t take jobs that make waves taking a job that will do exactly that, all for the sake of someone who nearly blinded her.”

“I forgot about the heat pits,” Kaley mumbled, rubbing her shoulder and the scars the other woman’s teeth had left. Unlike Tasha or some other Seeded, she couldn’t completely regenerate injuries. She lifted her head. “Where are you going with this?”

“You don’t think any part of that is weird?”

“Of course I do. I’ve been saying it since I woke up in hospital being told that Rattler of all people had saved my life. I don’t have any more insight than that.”

“I just think there’s more going on than we’re being told. More than you’ve said.”

“What do you want, Will?” Kaley snapped. “Do you want there to be a big conspiracy here? A case that you can solve and prove you’re not a washed-up PI who spent his days chasing adulterers instead of catching serial killers like Gargoyle? Do you want me to tell you that Rattler and I are secret lovers and she came charging to my rescue when she heard Brian got his hands on me?” She put a hand to her forehead. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all that. I know you’re trying to look out for me, but everyone is and it gets to be a lot.” She swallowed. “I shouldn’t have just unloaded on you. That’s not fair.”

“It’s all right, kid. Sorry if I poked you somewhere tender.”

“‘Tender’ is right,” Kaley agreed. “Can we drop this, please? I really don’t like talking about what happened. I wasn’t just beaten up and kidnapped. I was strapped to a table about to be vivisected with a nutjob surgeon telling me how excited he was for the opportunity to cut me up. The last thing I remember before passing out was seeing one of the world’s most notorious Seeded walk into the surgical room and thinking ‘this is it’. That’s not a fun memory.” She still had nightmares from it, nightmares where Tasha wasn’t there to save her. The most recent one had him removing her eyes. The last thing she saw before she woke up was his face just behind the glint of the knife as he leaned in...

“All right,” Boxcar agreed. “But there’s more to this whole thing. Something’s off about it. I can smell it.”

“Then have fun, I guess.” Starlight sighed. “But if you do find anything, you let me know.”

“Kid, you’ll be the first I tell.”