3.4

“Sometimes I stare at the crates of chalk and sentimental paintings scattered around the living room, and I wonder why it had to be me. Surely there’s someone smarter, stronger, someone who better understands the function of this thing — this desperate city at the edge of nowhere?

Sometimes I wonder if those people have already come and gone, and people like me are all that is left.”

— Vincent Hall, Encoded Notebook; Section 12, page 23

Thwap. Chloe’s fist collides with my braced arms, forcing me to deflect. It puts her off balance, opening her up to any number of disruption tactics.

I choose a simple throw, lunging forwards and grabbing onto her shirt at the neckline. It’s standard practice, as I was taught at the tower.

Chloe isn’t one to cooperate. She grabs my wrists, and then as soon as I move to perform the throw, bites down full force on my left arm.

“You…!” I let go instinctively, and Chloe seizes the chance to dart forward, grab my shoulders, and launch her knee into my gut.

I grunt, but the muscles in that area are too dense for the blow to do much.

She doesn’t seem to be expecting this. When I reach down and grab her leg, yanking her off-balance and pulling her into a tackle, she doesn’t resist. Not immediately, at least.

We hit the concrete with a collective thump, and I establish a hold.

“You fight like a rabid animal,” I comment.

“Yeah, well, you fight like a robot. Lemme up!”

“I dunno… maybe I’ll just call pest control.”

Chloe scowls, and chomps down on my arm again. At this point, I’m gaining surface-level dents all over my wrists.

“Ugh.” I release her, and wipe my arms against the borrowed cardigan. “Slobber.”

“Hey, that jacket’s one of my nice ones!” she seems affronted.

I wipe some more for good measure. “Don’t drool on it, then.”

She rolls her eyes.

“C’mon, let’s go again.” I’ve been pestering her for a fight since we got back to the shack last night — it wouldn’t do to get rusty, and I wanted something to clear my head.

I hadn’t actually gotten her to agree until this evening, so I want to make it count before she decides to scramble off the roof of this abandoned building we found nearby.

Chloe groans. “But it’s so not fair. You have like, inhuman endurance. I’ve kneed guys twice your size, and they went down squealing!”

I shrug. “Gotta keep up with the team somehow.”

Not true anymore. I try not to let the thought sting.

She throws her arms up. “Yeah, but you also dented the sheet metal last night just ‘cuz of your thrashing! Dented metal! In your sleep! How strong are you?”

I wince. “Sorry. Again.”

Chloe sighs. “Seriously, I thought your power was regeneration, or something. What a pain.”

“…It’s a little more broad,” I admit, crossing my arms. “Human muscles are efficient, but they’re evolved, not designed. It’s not so difficult to increase the density and maximum output, just means I need to eat a little more.”

“Mhm. You know any Muay Thai?”

I tilt my head. “You do?”

Her expression closes off. “…Yeah. Learned it from my dad.”

I get the feeling prodding would not be welcome here.

Chloe moves, settling into a stance I’m unfamiliar with. “Here, I’ll show you some basics.”

—

The movements may be unfamiliar, but the feeling of motion, of training this fleshy creation to move how I intend it to, is not.

Chloe’s instructions are slow, halting, incomplete, but not insufficient. She seems as if she’s reconstructing her own lessons in real time, pulling from an experience far away in the past, digging up old memories in order to form something coherent. Half the time I feel like I should be telling her it’s okay if she doesn’t remember.

Eventually, we settle into a rhythm. The sun crests the city skyline.

As long as I’ve lived here, as bad as it gets… the sunset is always beautiful.

“So…” Chloe starts, hesitantly. “What are you planning, after… all this?”

I snort, almost breaking form as I continue the motions. “After…? I don’t know if there is an after. It seems like things just keep going wrong around here.”

“What? What does that mean — you’re just gonna keep running around, putting out fires?” She replies, sounding confused.

“Putting out fires… I guess that’s one way to say it,” I mutter.

Chloe stops, and stares at me. “Oh my god, you’re serious.”

I pause, and meet her gaze. “…Yes?”

“I hope you know that’s not how any of this works,” she comments, placing her hands on her hips.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I just — I don’t know what you think you’re doing. You can’t just make things better through the power of — of hard work and friendship, or whatever the fuck.” Chloe flips her hair back, affecting an exasperated air.

I narrow my eyes. “You were on board with the detox plan.”

“It’s a good plan! Makes things easier for me around here. I’m just saying you can’t expect it to last.”

Is that how it is?

“…Why not?”

And Chloe’s mask starts to break. Her exasperated, mildly annoyed demeanor snaps into something, sharper, more brittle.

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“Because nothing lasts! You think you can come barging in and fix everything, like it’s so easy for little-miss-perfect-superhero — you don’t know what it’s like! You have no idea how bad it gets! And you’re…!”

She seems to catch herself at the last moment.

“Why?!”

I pause, and open my mouth to respond —

“No — no, don’t answer that.” Chloe huffs, recollects herself. “You should fucking stick to the charity shit. You can’t change anything else.”

And she stomps off to the roof exit, brushing past me without a second look.

I stand alone on the rooftop, wind brushing my hair aside, and sun shining a deep orange onto my face.

—

The door to the shack is unlocked. I can assume I’m not being kicked out or anything.

Metal clangs and shrieks from Chloe’s desk, where she’s tinkering with a contraption that seems equipped with way too many springs. I close the door behind me.

“…Hey.”

Chloe stops tinkering, and swivels around in her chair, lifting a pair of tinted goggles from her eyes.

“What,” she sighs. “I’m not gonna kick you out or anything, if that’s what you were thinking.”

I blink. “That’s… good to know. But I, ah, wanted to talk about —“

“I’m not gonna talk about shit with you, sorry. You don’t get to know my backstory.”

“Right, no, of course not, that’s fine,” I wince. “I just, uh… maybe I’ll talk, and you can, um. Listen, if you want to?”

She leans her face against a hand and motions for me to continue.

I take a breath.

“…I had a friend, who… died — was killed, a few months ago. And I’m not saying this to — to de-legitimize anything you’ve told me, or to try and compare our situations,” I clarify as I watch Chloe’s face twist slightly, “but…”

But she was killed. She was killed violently in a back alley downtown and no one was there to help. All the heroes were busy, doing ad deals, running press conferences —

Brutalizing petty thieves.

I can feel my vision blurring, my blood pumping through my veins.

“But,” I choke out, dragging a hand down my face and trying to force myself to calm down.

“…If it’s impossible for anything to change, then it means her death didn’t mean anything. And it has to mean something. So things have to change.”

I let out a breath. “Does that… make any sense?”

Chloe… smirks. “Yep. It’s terminal.”

“What is,” I huff.

“The crazy. It’s permanent. Sorry.”

“Yeah alright, goober,” I say, helping myself to the couch nestled in the corner. “Sorry for trauma dumping or whatever.” I snag a blanket off the floor and throw my arm over my eyes.

Silence from the workbench. Then…

“I think I get it.”

I lift my arm. “Really?”

Chloe smiles, and it’s a little fragile. “Yeah. Really.”

—

The sound of Chloe’s tinkering seems to vary. Sometimes, the shriek of twisting metal and power tools is almost overwhelming, a sickening cacophony compounded by the thin sheet walls of her makeshift home.

And sometimes, she takes out a small pocket watch. A silver, modern-looking thing, with a polished chrome shell and a simplistic face design. She digs out tiny, delicate tools from deep in her desk drawers, pulls over a professional-grade magnifying glass, and quietly adjusts the gears, the winding mechanisms, all of it producing a soft metallic undertone.

I fall asleep to the sound of ticking, echoing delicately throughout the shack.

—

I wake up to the feeling of being violently jostled by a small steampunk girl at five in the morning. Or around that time, I don’t have a clock or anything on me.

I remember dreaming, but the exact scenario evades me. It seemed… intense.

I shake it off.

“Wh — I’m up, I’m up —“

“Wake up, princess,” Chloe grins down at me. “I’m out of money, so we’re going to the bank.”

I try desperately to blink the sleep out of my eyes as Chloe shoves a hat and sunglasses into my arms and drags me out the door.

“You’re… what? What’s happenin’?”

“Money, dude, get your act together!” She pulls me along until we’re crossing the empty street outside of the shack, headed towards… I have no idea, actually.

“There’s — ugh. There’s no way you’re going to just peacefully withdraw some funds.” I’m starting to wake up a little, and I’m realizing that I am definitely not prepared for a confrontation. My muscle density isn’t as toned as I’d like, I left my calorie bars at home — not to mention the tonfas, and the fact that I only have three pressure boosters online at the moment —

“Oh c’mon, it’ll be fun! I do this all the time!” Chloe pulls a bandana around her face, and hands me a similar one. They’re sepia-toned, and patterned like something out of an old western movie.

“These are so tacky…”

“You’ll wear it, and you’ll like it!” She announces, tying the cloth and slipping down a pair of goggles. We’re nearing the more industrial part of the downtown area, and apparently a small bank as well.

I quickly tie up the bandana.

“Sometimes, when I need a lotta money quickly, or, y’know, I want the attention, I’ll go in and to an actual stick-up or whatever.” Chloe pulls a metal rod from a bag at her bag, that I’m really only just noticing.

“Usually, though, the real money is either digitized, or just… lying around in these convenient little boxes!” She tosses me a rod. “Here, help me pry this open!”

“This feels a bit — uh, sudden,” I comment as we walk up to the front of the bank and stand next to the ATM. I notice a guy stepping out of his car nearby, and immediately pausing upon catching sight of us. He starts to reach for his phone.

“It’ll be fine — use that freaky strength of yours for once!”

I can’t believe I’ve been dragged out of bed at such an ungodly hour to destroy a downtown transfer machine. This is ridiculous.

“This is ridiculous,” I tell her.

Chloe ignores me, winding up and slamming the metal rod into a gap between the concrete wall and the ATM’s plastic casing. The casing itself splinters, but doesn’t break.

Chloe starts trying to lever the casing off the wall while that guy I spotted a second ago shoots concerned glances at us and starts whispering into his phone.

“Chloe. That guy’s literally calling the police.”

“What kind of — hrng — supervillain — guh — are you, anyway?” She’s not having much luck with the casing.

“Are you sure you do this all the time?”

She huffs, and I’m not sure whether it’s from frustration or exertion. “Usually I go to the one a little ways out. But this place is new, and we don’t even have to drive, so…”

“Ugh.” Chloe lets go of the rod. “What a bust. Gonna have to do it the old-fashioned way…”

I glance over at the bystander. The police likely won’t be here for another few minutes.

Looking back at the ATM, I flex my left hand. Still three pressure boosters. And I guess if I’m gonna be a supervillain…

“Where’s the money stored?”

“Huh?” Chloe stares at me in confusion from under her thick rimmed goggles. “Uh. In a case around here, I guess,” she says, waving to an area behind and just below the keypad.

I grip the metal rod in my left hand, and pull that arm back, taking a solid stance. Then, I activate the pressure booster.

A muscle in my arm contracts harshly, spitting out a cloud of steam and intense force. I hear a heavy bang, the shriek of torn metal, and a car alarm going off somewhere nearby.

“Holy fuck, what the hell was —“

The metal rod is driven into the machine at an angle, so I let go of the makeshift weapon and lift my right leg over it.

I activate a second pressure booster, propelling my leg against the rod and embedding it into the concrete hard enough to shatter the material around it and rip the internals out onto the sidewalk.

“Oh my god, what in the goddamn fuck did you do —“ Chloe coughs, waving smoke from her face. I do the same, and as it slowly clears, I can see a couple large trays attached to some kind of mechanical array sitting in the open air.

They aren’t in good condition, but the money itself seems fine.

“Woah.” Chloe breathes. “That’s fuckin’ awesome.”

I barely hold back a grin. “The cops are coming, stupid. You brought a bag for a reason, right?”

Chloe does grin, shoveling cash into her sack as the sound of sirens echoes between steel buildings some distance away.

“Y’know, monster girl, maybe you’re not so bad.”