Of Sisters and Shadows – Chapter 4 (Patreon)

“Kale. Smoothies,” I accuse my tormentor.

“They are healthy and good for you,” she replies, her grin so wide I suspect biokinesis is at play—scratch that, I know it is. Because of course she wouldn’t have enough with being a claimant to the throne of the Fairy Queen, she also wants to usurp the Cheshire’s Cat royal appointment.

“I could gorge myself on fried chicken to the point of overdose and drink nothing but mayo, and you’d still keep me healthy and functional. This is torture for sadism’s sake.”

“Oh? You would rely on your poor, overworked sister to act as your personal nutritionist just because—”

“Fine! Just drop the emotional blackmail, I’ll drink the damn thing—but you better be ready to get a… mop…” After taking a sip of the green glop Mom used to torture me with, I look up at Amy.

She’s smirking.

“Ames?”

“Yes, my dear sister who complains too much, seeing as she hasn’t made breakfast in a week?”

“Why does this taste like chocolate?”

She waggles her eyebrows.

And takes a long, longsip as she keeps letting out these barely not obscene moans of pleasure.

Then she slowly lowers her glass, and a very red, very long, very agile tongue licks fleshy lips clean. Slowly.

How else.

“Why wouldn’t anything taste like chocolate?”

And that may be a perfectly innocent, playful question.

Except she opens her mouth wide, and her tongue extends before curling back to lick off a single, remaining drop of smoothie over the corner of her lips, and I am blushing.

I stare at her, my face carefully impassive and my aura completely retracted.

She smirks back. Defiantly.

… I’m trying very hard to come up with the perfect degree of inappropriate response to this, but so far I can only think about flashing her and watching as her eyes (possibly not literally) pop out of their sockets.

Thankfully for what remains of my modesty and good sense, that is the moment the mist picks to start its song.

***

Amy’s arms are around my neck, her body secure in my arms.

… I miss carrying her by hooking my arms below her armpits, but it looks like, since she’s gotten her own taste of superstrength and durability, she refuses to be dragged in anything but a princess carry.

As befits fae royalty, of course.

“I can… I can almost make it out, you know?” she mutters, her face pointed at the swirling, indistinct whiteness below.

“Talk me through it. Maybe we can piece something between the two of us.”

She purses her lips for a moment, her brow wrinkling.

Not permanently, of course, because that’s yet another thing she won’t ever have to worry about.

No. I’m not jealous. I punch good; that makes up for everything else.

…

Right, the song.

It’s not something you hear, but something you feel. We call it singing, but it’s… like mirrored emotions echoing off each other, building up to patterns and textures, colors. We could’ve called it a tapestry, and it would’ve also fit… except tapestries don’t change.

I once read that literature and music are the arts of time. That other forms of expression—paintings, sculptures—are meant to be taken in at a glance, even if deeper examination will always reveal more. But that is an examination that is up to the viewer, not the artist. You can guide an eye to a focal point, but you can’t account for how long it will linger, to what parts of the image it will go back, what patterns the eye will draw over the canvass.

Music… Music isn’t like that. It takes you, drags you, lifts you, and drops you. It isn’t a single thing to be glimpsed and taken in at your own pace, because the pace is the music. It won’t allow you the freedom of ignoring it and coming back later.

Music makes you feel. It doesn’t ask for permission.

Music changes. And you change with it.

And the mists…

They sing. And we listen.

“Go to the Boardwalk,” Amy mutters.

I shudder at the demand yet follow it. Because I don’t have any better ideas, and because we don’t have a lot of time.

So I flood my shield with the anguish, the rage, the confusion… and the acceptance of facing my Shadow.

And the mists part.

The Boardwalk is… Not what it was when I battled in here. The stores no longer sell my merchandise, and, although there’s still a bit of damage visible, particularly where my fist cratered straight through the ground rather than through my Shadow’s skull, it’s clear things are much better than they were.

And this place is malleable enough that I shudder at—

Amy is pointing at something.

I turn my head, and in the store window of what in real life is a boutique that I always leave empty-handed, there’s a gigantic poster.

Of a movie.

I close my eyes, my throat suddenly tight.

And when I open them, the poster of The Neverending Story is still there.

“Hey,” Amy’s hands are on my cheeks, forcing me to look at warm hazel, “not the time. We can freak out later. At home. Maybe I can wipe up some super-pot or something.”

I blink stupidly at the suggestion.

“Are you offering me drugs?”

She points around us.

“Are you telling me this isn’t already enough of a trip?”

I cock my head, looking at the suddenly flustered girl in my arms.

“While I agree with your point, that seems like an argument for me to say I’ve had enough things messing with my brain, and I don’t need more of—Amy, do you smoke?”

She fidgets.

While in my arms.

Her wings get a bit in the way of the movement until she takes advantage of her backless shirt and shifts them to her hips, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that on some kind of character somewhere…

“I mean, not anymore? Not much point to it, now that I can heal any lung damage instantly. The whole rebellious angle isn’t—”

“You know that’s not what I’m asking.”

“Ah… Once or twice?”

… Great. My sister, the unlimited biokinetic, S Class Threat, is a pothead. Because why not. Something else you want to throw at me, universe? Maybe she also has an incestuous crush—oh, wait, she does.

Then the mists thrum with rage echoing off pride, and I know we’ve wasted too much time.

“Any ideas, Mary Jane?”

“I can make you high with a touch, blondie. Literally, if I mess with whatever you use to orient yourself mid-flight.”

“Lovely. Now, any ideas?” Don’t think about having a dealer on demand, Vicky. You are a superhero, and those don’t spend all day looking at their hands and being amazed at how big they are.

Or throwing up.

Really, those seemed to be the two most common effects from what I saw after that party Dean kept apologizing for having dragged me to.

“Take me to the mall,” Amy suddenly asks.

I raise an eyebrow.

“As much as I would love to get you into something not designed to obfuscate your actual gender, now’s not—”

“That’s where I fought her,” she explains. The ‘her’ doesn’t need much clarification.

“How could you tell? We were in a gigantic cavern made of flesh, I thought it was merely symbolic.”

And Ames looks at me like I don’t have a power that makes brain damage very unlikely.

“Where else would I have a second trigger?” she finally verbalizes.

And I remember. Years ago, Amy crying over me, her hands drenched with my blood, thinking it was goodbye, telling her it was all right…

I fly up. The mists embrace me.

I flood my shield with the regret at leaving things undone, and the gratitude at saying goodbye to the girl I loved most.

And the mists allow us passage.

The mall looks almost normal. Eerily empty, yes, but there aren’t any traces of the battle that went on. It still looks old, older than it actually is, with paint cracked, missing tiles…

And a movie theater that shows only one movie.

…

“Do you—” I start to ask.

“Focus. The song. We need to find them,” she says. And I could almost believe she’s that focused on our urgent mission rather than embarrassed at the very prominent display of a luck dragon soaring through the skies.

Still, she’s right. We aren’t any closer to—

Wait.

“It solidifies the places where battles happened. They remain linked to us, and accessible through the emotions that resonate,” I summarize and look at her to see whether she can pick up the thread, because we need ideas fast.

“But maybe the places are in shift until the battle ends? No, wait—how did you find me?”

I think back on it, and…

“I heard you. You were sobbing.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

I look down at the stubborn girl, because now’s not the time to pretend—

She’s serious.

“I heard you, Amy. You were sobbing, and I knew you were fighting—”

“Through the mist. Through who knows how many blocks of actual distance.”

I close my eyes.

Damn it.

“So, what? We just hope whoever this is has enough of a connection to us that we can just listen and use their voice—no. No. Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

“Vicky?” Amy asks, her voice slightly tremulous, and I split my shield into a thousand threads of gleaming anger and self-hatred, none of which touch my sister.

“It’s far easier than all that, Ames. Just listen.”

She looks confused, still shaken by my reaction, and I…

I close my eyes.

The song washes against me, the notes of pride shattering into glimmering hurt, and each shard of it is molded differently. There’s the pain at failing to live up to expectations, the anguish at needing a front, a mask…

There’s the hate. The hate that turns cold, that turns into resentment and calculated anger.

There’s… Loneliness? No. Not loneliness. There’s distance, a void of silence surrounding individual notes, structuring them, weaving them into another image, a note composed of many others…

There’s a sneer behind a mask, and every emotion dulls as it falls into a mechanical pattern, precise yet devoid of the raw intensity that birthed it.

And I begin to understand the pattern, the rhythm.

The melody.

And, through my shield, through inadequate mastery of my own emotions, I hum along.

Unprompted, not knowing why, I take flight.

And I see a tower of glass and steel as the mists allow me passage—right before they fade.

I blink, disoriented at the abrupt shift in realities, at the way everything around me shifted in hue, and it takes me a moment to process—

The top of Medhall tower explodes.

A gleaming plane of steel shears through it, shards of glass bigger than my torso raining down to the street below.

I fly.

Crystal was always faster, more maneuverable.

Was.

I push with everything I have, my shield splitting in what could look like a thousand dragonfly wings if somebody other than me could see it, and I manage to race the glittering shards in their fall to the ground and the people below.

I stretch every wing as far and wide as they can go, and then they all shatter one after the other.

And so does the glass.

I see people screaming at the rapid staccato, at the cacophonous tinkling repeated over and over.

“Cover your eyes!” I yell as loudly as I can, my throat aching after the strain.

Because I haven’t stopped this.

My shield starts reforming, far faster than it ever did, and I don’t drop in mid flight due to the tiny bit I kept in reserve.

But it’s not fast enough, and fragments of glass that at least are no longer big enough to impale a grown man resume their fall after having their momentum arrested by an obstacle that no longer exists.

The screams start shortly after.

I can see lacerations, many people not having had the chance to follow my hurried advice. Some nasty injuries.

But nobody lying in the middle of the street in a pool of their own blood.

I almost slump in relief.

Then I look at Ames, still held in my arms, and before I can even ask, she shakes her head and points up.

So, with the world’s greatest healer and novice heroine in my arms, I fly up.

***

Medhall’s top floor is a wreck.

Something that I already counted on, but—

“Die!” Krieg screams, a pole of metal shearing with a single punch and shooting toward the gigantic gleaming figure in the middle of it all.

Well, I guess it’s Krieg, because that powerset and being close enough to Kaiser to be there in the aftermath of the battle doesn’t leave me with too many potential suspects.

I drop Amy, and I fly straight at the giant of steel, but not quick enough, because I delayed before making my approach, and I’m still shaken at how many lives could’ve been lost if I’d been just a split second slower, and—

A spear crashes against the first layer of my shield, the shaft warping away from my path at the sheer violence of the impact.

And if it was only that, there wouldn’t be any problem, because I’m that strong, that fast, that durable.

But between one blink and the next, I face a wall of sharp death, and I—

I won’t die from this.

But it sure hurts like a bitch to have my thigh impaled in three different places.

“Victoria Dallon. The only one in your family I respect,” Kaiser’s voice comes from inside the thing.

It’s… It’s based on his usual armor, spikes and sharp angles covering every available surface, but where it usually made the tall man naturally imposing and intimidating, now that he’s thrice his usual height, hunched over to fit in the office, gigantic hands cupped around me…

I swallow.

Because I have no idea what a second trigger would have turned the already nightmarishly powerful cape into.

“Your parents, your uncles? They cowered. Hid beneath their façade or respectability, of playing by the rules. You? You went out and tortured my soldiers, having your worthless sister assist in covering your crimes. It’s a pity we couldn’t recruit you, because you certainly had what it took.”

This would be the point where I got my breath taken away at the literal Nazi considering me worthy of his ideals and methods.

But I remember a blood-drenched cape. I remember the anger my Shadow wrapped herself in.

And I remember claiming it mine.

I tear the spears out of my flesh, but not quick enough that they don’t sprout thorns and hooks on the way out. The fountain of blood would be worrying, but I separate enough tendrils to get inside my wound and tie up any vein and artery.

Sorry, Ames, I’m about to make your job just a bit harder.

I circle Kaiser’s gigantic form, using the time to catalog any useful object around the office, but everything is covered in metal, and I don’t want to let him use it against me.

So I take a page out of Amy’s book and shape my shield into razor-sharp wings right as I fly closer to the lumbering golem.

The wing shatters, but not before leaving a deep gash across the metal.

And right then, the office’s desk crashes straight through my newly made weak spot, the metal crumbling at the impact.

Krieg screams in rage.

And Kaiser chuckles.

“Must you persist in this foolishness? You should know how outmatched you are,” his voice echoes from inside the colossus.

“You killed him! You killed him, you son of a bitch!”

I raise an eyebrow and look at what had been hidden behind the desk currently embedded in enough metal that it’s a miracle the ground doesn’t crumble below it.

Except this is a skyscraper, so everything is made with I-beams, and Kaiser…

Has total dominion over the battlefield.

No. Focus.

There’s a dead person—Max Anders.

And his eye sockets are empty.

… Damn it.

I look frantically around the room, but I can’t find Ames, and—

“He’s a Shadow! No holding back!” I yell, hoping I haven’t given her away while she does whatever it is she’s trying to do.

“Oh? No, Miss Dallon, I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I’m not a Shadow. The true self.

“Not anymore.”

And the ground groans beneath me as fingers of steel sprout and tear through grey carpet.

Then the helmet of Kaiser’s killer—and I never thought I wouldn’t be grateful to someone carrying such a title—shifts, parts, flows.

And I’m facing a dragon of steel.

He lunges toward me even as bars of steel spear down through the ceiling, trying to cage me in.

So I repeat my newest trick, razor wings cutting through everything thin enough and shattering against what proves too tough.

“I always knew you were jealous of Lung, you little Aryan bitch,” I manage to get out.

The dragon roars in steel grinding and crashing, and, for just a moment, I see Max Anders’s face looking at me from inside it, amber eyes glowing.

And I am stunned for a second too long by what I see.

Perfectly smooth, reflecting rods impaled through the totality of his body as he remains suspended inside his armor. There’s blood dripping down the open wounds, but not even a fraction of what should be pouring through such wounds, and Max smiles.

And, suddenly, I find myself straining against metal jaws trying to close against me, my feet flattening teeth, my hand digging furrows through the snout as I try to get a steady grasp.

He laughs, the pressure increasing, three new rows of teeth blooming and spinning along the jaw like the laziest chainsaw I’ve ever seen, and I can only think about stabbing my shield through his eyes and scrambling his brain inside his skull, so I get two tendrils ready, the points sharper than anything made of atoms, and…

And I can’t.

Not even him. Not even at this moment.

I just… can’t.

And then I feel the drowsiness hit me, the world tilting…

And Max Ander’s smile melts into a slack look as amber eyes close.

***

“Vicky?” Amy asks, and her voice is the only thing that exists in a pleasurable, warm haze cradling my thoughts.

“Hmm?”

“Come on, I didn’t hit you that hard. I made sure the effects compounded with testosterone.”

“Hn.” I don’t know what she’s talking about, but that seems like an appropriate answer.

It must be so: she’s sighing.

That’s good, right?

“Let me clear that up for you,” she whispers, and her hand brushes my hair back, and now I feel like I can open my eyes.

So I do. And I look at hazel eyes with a jagged ring of honey.

And I smile. Happy at seeing her.

“I’m doing this the slow way because I don’t want to mess too much with the results, so give it a few seconds to clear out of your system, okay?”

I nod.

Then grab her head and drag her down to kiss her.

She flails against me, but that’s silly, because I know she wants this. Has wanted it for very long. Like, a lot longer than I.

But now I do! We bothdo!

So there’s no reason at all not to do it, not to taste her lips (chocolate? Yay!), her tongue, her saliva, her skin, her tongue once again…

Not to let myself drown in her warmth, my last refuge in—

I blink very slowly, the cobwebs of whatever it is that Amy flooded this floor with finally clearing enough for me to realize what the hell I’m even doing.

So I let go of Amy and let my head crash against the floor hard enough that my shield flickers.

She’s blushing.

Again.

The prettiest shade of red I could ever imagine highlighting the edges of sharp, royal cheekbones, freckles fading into the blush as it crosses over her nose.

She’s also blinking slowly, her lips still open, her red tongue still visible.

“Okay, new family tradition, Ames: from now on, any incestuous kissing shall be done without the use of mind-altering powers, no matter how close either you or I are to dying. Agreed?”

She stops blinking for just a moment, before she does it rapidly.

“Wouldn’t the tradition be precisely the opposite, date rapist?”

“That was the old one. Try to keep up, druglord.”

“You’re such an iconoclast, victim blamer.”

“If I drop you off the building so you can heal the civilians below, can you survive the fall, Princess Twilight Moonshadow Iris?”

“I told you what would happen if you called me that again—”

“I will take that as a yes,” I say.

And throw her off the building.

“You biiiitch—” she starts yelling her parting words.

Then I sigh, resign myself to my fate, take flight, and chase after my sister.

It looks like I’ll be doing a lot of that from now on.