Volume 2: Prophase

Issue 6: Show and Tell

Jannette Adrian Churchwell

By Nova

“So you’re sure about this?” Ripple asked as she linked her left arm through my right.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve done this stuff like a million times before.”

“I can call you an Uber or something too, you know,” Ripple said.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I know how your power works, it’s totally safe.” I paused for a moment. “Right?”

“Oh yeah, definitely,” Ripple said with a little awkward chuckle. “You’ll barely feel anything. But… hold on tight, alright?”

I nodded. “This isn’t my first time in the air.”

Ripple sighed. “Alright,” she said, “on the count of three.”

We had walked up from the river back onto the road. The police had cordoned off the area, and the middle of the road was clear of everything. The sun was up, but we hadn’t drawn a crowd. The only people watching us were a few cops standing at the perimeter.

Ripple took her spear and planted it on the ground in front of her. She shifted into a squat, which I clumsily imitated. “One,” she said. I could feel a vibration running through the ground beneath my feet.

“Two,” I said. Pebbles danced around my shoes as the vibrations intensified.

“Three!” we said together. With a sudden shock, the ground shattered beneath our feet. Ripple rocketed into the air, pulling me along for the ride. Despite the sudden acceleration, my arm wasn’t pulled from its socket, and instead all I felt was a sudden tug as if Ripple had yanked me into running speed. It was disorienting, but not painful, and I had my wits about me enough to watch the ground disappear beneath my feet with shocking suddenness. In a second, we were hundreds of feet into the air. Buildings turned into multicolored blocks, people turned into ants, and we were soon so high that the haze blanketed the city in a soft blue.

Despite the immense speeds we were traveling, I could barely feel the wind on my face. This was different from when I flew with Seraph, which must have been because of Ripple’s power. I didn’t completely know how it worked, but I knew that she could nullify and intensify kinetic waves. She could do this to control momentum, leap high into the sky, shatter entire buildings with one punch, or, as I had just discovered, nullify the worst of the effects of wind while flying.

Once we had reached an altitude of a few thousand feet, we began to descend. I noticed that we seemed to be falling in a very specific direction. We were in less of a fall and more of a glide. I clearly didn’t know as much about Ripple’s powers as I had thought…

We had crossed over the Bay and were now descending over what looked like San Bruno Mountain. Ripple pointed toward a cluster of trees on top of a hill a mile or two away. “See that?” she yelled. “That’s where we’re going! Watch for branches!”

“Branches?” I yelled back, but we had crossed the distance far quicker than I expected. Before I realized it, the trees had passed under us. Then, in an instant, we were among the canopy. Leaves lashed at my face, though lashed wasn’t really the right word. We were traveling fast enough that even these lighter branches would have split my face open but instead they bounced off me like flower petals in the wind. Ripple’s power must have still been at work as foliage rebounded from us without leaving a scratch.

After a few moments of skimming through the canopy, the ground suddenly came up before us. I nearly let out a surprised shriek as we hit the ground at what felt like a few hundred miles per hour, striking with a thud that shook the trees around us. Dust swirled around us, blinding me momentarily, but I felt Ripple let go of me and I staggered away as the dust settled.

We stood in a small crater, only a few feet away from a tiny shed; the kind that they use for maintenance access for cell towers and water pumps. A small trail led to its door and down the sloped, forested hill, curving through the brush and out of sight. I turned to look at Ripple, who shot me a smile. “Told you it’d work out,” she said.

“I guess so…” I chuckled awkwardly. “Where are we?”

“My hideout,” Ripple said. She plunged her spear into the edge of the crater. The soil rippled around it and the crater collapsed into itself. In an instant, the only thing left was a patch of disturbed dirt—hardly the most conspicuous thing to find in a forest.

I glanced around, not sure where to look. “You mean that shack?” I asked.

“Yep,” Ripple said. She walked over to the shack and pulled out a small key. The door was locked with a padlock, which she quickly unlocked and threw open, revealing another, metal door, this one without a handle. She placed her hand against it. There was a low buzzing noise, and the door split open with a hiss, revealing a surprisingly spacious room: walls bedecked with what looked like spare costumes, tools, and other miscellany. Ripple glanced around, and, seemingly satisfied no one was watching, stepped inside.

“I know it’s pretty spartan,” Ripple said, “but it does what it needs to.”

I nodded. “Your security is… high tech. All I have is a lock on the handle…”

“I did that for a while, but I was able to call in some favors and got this little thing installed overnight.”

“Ah.”

“I have some other precautions too, in case of peeping-toms,” Ripple said. She pressed a series of buttons on her wrist, and took a step inside the shed.

I looked around. “Um… Neat?”

Ripple chuckled. “Sorry, uh, pick up that rock and throw it that way.”

Confused, I grabbed a bumpy stone and lobbed it in the direction Ripple was pointing. About ten feet into its arc, the air around it suddenly flickered, glitching like a broken screen. “Whoa,” I said, impressed, “holo-field or something?”

“Yep,” Ripple said. “Again, called in a favor for this one. Nothing special, but it means that anyone who happens to stumble into the forest isn’t likely to see me messing around with the place.”

I shook my head. I knew Ripple was on the next level, but I didn’t really realize just how far ahead of me she was. Even when I had the “garage,” it was nothing like this. My “security” was a passcode I memorized and a discrete entrance in an alleyway. Even when I… had resources, Ripple still outclassed me.

“Are you going to stand out there all day?” Ripple asked. “Come on in.”

I sighed and took a step inside Ripple’s hideout. It was bigger than my walk-in-closet, though not by much, and looked to serve a similar function. The only thing missing was a trophy wall like mine… Did Ripple not care for that sort of stuff? She was digging through a cabinet, not looking at me as I entered. “Hit that button there,” she said, motioning at the wall behind me without looking up. I pressed it and the door closed behind me.

“Fancy,” I muttered, thinking back to my squeaky closet door.

“It was a big favor I had to call in,” Ripple said with a chuckle. “But I think it worked out… Ah, perfect,” she said, pulling black leggings out of the cabinet. “What do you think?”

“Y-you changing now?” I asked, a sudden panic rising in my chest.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Ripple said. “Sorry, I should have asked… are you comfortable with that?”

“I-I-” I stammered, the idea terrified me more than I cared to admit.

“You can stand outside if you’d like?”

“N-no…” I said. “I’m a doctor, sorta, and my powers… well I’m not worried about that.”

“Oh… Oh!” Ripple said, as if struck by an epiphany. “Look… I figured you were okay with, uh, unmasking… If you aren’t d-”

“I-it’s fine,” I said, cutting her off. “It’s just been a while and I wasn’t expecting us to change in a shack in the woods…”

Ripple nodded. “I get it, I should have been more clear.”

We stood in silence for a moment. “Unmasking” was probably the most dangerous thing you could do as a hero, at least if you asked me. I turned my gaze toward Ripple’s wall of tools. “I-I’m-” I stopped. “It’s fine,” I said. My hands slightly shaking, I removed the blue surgical mask which covered the lower half of my face.

Ripple removed her helmet and set it on the bench next to her. Jet black hair fell to her shoulders, framing a light brown face with dark brown eyes. Some wrinkles flanked each eye but, other than that, she looked younger than I expected. She was a hero long before I was and now, looking on a face entirely unfamiliar to me, I realized how little I knew about her.

Ripple cleared her throat. “Alright,” she said, “let’s get out of our costumes.”

I nodded. “Y-yeah, though I’m not sure you have anything my size…”

Ripple started digging through her cabinets. “You… might be right,” she said, shooting me a glance. She towered over me by at least a head and, by the looks of things, she hadn’t quite prepared for a visitor of my stature.

“Hmm.” Ripple pulled out a maroon sweater at least two sizes bigger than me. “What about this?”

“I mean, I’d fit in it.”

“Yeah, roll up the sleeves and you’d be fine.”

“And I hear street-urchin chic is in.”

Ripple chuckled. “I think that’s the best I got, and you’re definitely gonna want to lose the bloodstained lab coat.”

I hadn’t really looked at myself since I woke up. Glancing down, I saw my lab coat caked in dried blood… Hopefully mine. “Yeah… I hope you have a good washing machine,” I said.

“I’ve been doing this far too long to not have a decent washing machine,” Ripple said with a smile.

“Well g-good,” I stammered, “Cause it looks like my scrubs are a total loss.”

“Heh, don’t worry about it.” She stopped to think for a moment. “You know… If you just wear the sweater, I think you could get away with those… scrub-pants?”

“They’re just called pants,” I said with a slight chuckle. She was right though, to the untrained eye they just looked like blue sweats.

“Guess that makes sense. Here,” she said, tossing me a small white wipe, “you got blood on your face.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“T-thanks,” I said. I wiped down my face. The white wipe darkened to a crimson.

She glanced my way as I scrubbed myself down. “You’re good,” Ripple said.

“Thanks.” I tossed the wipe in a nearby trash can. I quickly stripped out of my costume and threw on the maroon sweater. It hung off me like a trash bag, but at least it made me look less like a car crash victim. I glanced over and saw Ripple now wearing black leggings and a plain gray t-shirt. She was slipping her costume into a little cubby on the wall. It was strange seeing her in civvies… She looked so normal. It was hard to believe she could be anything but a regular person.

Which, I guess, is why the costumes worked so well. It transformed us from people into icons.

“Here, put your costume in this.” She offered me a plastic bag. I stuck my bloody costume into it, and she stuffed the bag into her backpack. She swung the bag on and slipped into a pair of tennis shoes. “Ready?” she asked.

I nodded and we left the shed. Ripple pressed a button on the doorframe as we passed through it. The door closed behind us and sealed with a hiss. She swung the other door closed and slid the padlock over it. Satisfied, we headed down the path, which twisted through the underbrush for a few minutes, until it dumped us on what looked like a regular hiking trail.

“Where now?” I asked.

“Home, it’s not far,” she said. I followed her as she set down the path. With the backpack and the tennis shoes, she looked like a regular woman out on a morning hike. I, on the other hand, knew I looked like a mess. My hair felt matted by sweat, my pants were torn and slightly bloody… The few others we passed on the trail shot me a look of concern as we headed through the forest, down the hill.

We suddenly emerged from the forest, and found ourselves on a suburban street. Nice houses sat in a row in the neighborhood in front of us, as cars slowly cruised down the road. “Follow me,” Ripple said, heading down the street.

“Do you… live here?” I asked. The houses looked very expensive, like they were worth a million, maybe more.

Ripple gave an awkward sort of chuckle. “Yeah,” she said. “I got lucky with some sponsorships…” she whispered, “like, really lucky.”

“Makes sense…” There was no way anyone could afford any of these homes from the stipend alone… but what kind of sponsorships could fund something like this?

I opened my mouth to ask her, but she suddenly stopped in front of a two-storied home. “Here we are,” Ripple said. As nice as it was, there was little remarkable about the place, I had to admit. The lawn was clean and well maintained, but there wasn’t any fountains or lawn gnomes or anything like that to decorate it. In fact, if it wasn’t so clean, I’d almost think no one lived in the house.

But Ripple walked right up to the front door and unlocked it. It swung open to the soft ringing of a bell. “Come on in,” she said as she stepped inside.

The interior was just as clean and nice as the outside, and similarly lacked decoration. There were a few photos and paintings on the walls, and a few plants in the corner, but little else. As I followed her through the hall, I could see that the furniture—while similarly nice—seemed utilitarian in its placement. While very nice, the house lacked the sentimentality that I expected out of a home.

“You’ve lived here long?” I asked, curious if the spartan decor was the result of a recent move.

“A couple of years, not too long I guess,” Ripple said. We had come to a stop in what looked to be her kitchen. A smooth, black marble counter stretched in front of me, a few stools pulled up to it. “Hungry?” Ripple asked.

My stomach growled, betraying me. “Maybe a little bit,” I said, cautiously taking a seat at the counter.

“I’ll see what I can cook up,” Ripple said, rifling through her cabinets. I pressed my palms against Ripple’s marble counter, the cool mineral soothing my warm and trembling skin. She pushed a bowl of cereal in front of me. “Eat up,” she said with a smile. “Not sure how your power works, but if you’re anything like most of the regenerators I’ve met you’ll need some calories to replace what you lost.”

I took a few reluctant bites. The cereal was cold and soggy in the milk; I never cared for eating it this way. I shot a feigned smile at Ripple. “Thanks,” I said, “but it’s… complicated. I don’t really understand it myself.”

Ripple shrugged. “Does anyone really understand their powers?”

“Well, I understand the rules, that serious healing needs a lot of energy, but, well, I’m not sure where that energy comes from.”

“I mean, I get that. The laws of physics don’t really work with powers, I mean, look at mine. I literally tell physics to stop when I want to.”

I shook my head. “I know what you mean… but I’m talking some serious energy here. I can rebuild an entire arm in a few seconds if I really push myself, but all that matter has to come from somewhere. I know energy can turn into matter… but we’re talking a serious amount of energy needed in a really short period of time.”

“How much energy are we talking?”

“I’m… not sure.” I thought for a second. “I’m no physicist-”

“Don’t worry, I’m not either,” Ripple said.

“But I remember some stuff from college about special relativity and all that stuff.”

“Ah, so like E = mc2 and all that Einstein stuff?”

I nodded. “Yeah, and if you plug in a gram of matter into that equation—not even the 4-ish kilograms that a full arm weighs—the energy needed is more than a hundred terajoules.”

Ripple looked at me for a moment in silence. “Again… I’m not a physicist… that sounds like a lot but, well, how a lot is it?”

“More than the atomic bombs that ended World War Two,” I said.

“Ah,” Ripple said. She looked up at her ceiling for a moment.

“I’m not the only one with a crazy energy requirement for their powers,” I said. “It’s just… weird to think about.”

We stood in silence for a few moments. I took a few more bites from the soggy cereal. “Well…” Ripple said, breaking the silence. “I don’t think there’s much use in thinking about that sort of stuff sometimes.”

“You’re probably right.”

“It’s a shame most of the powerologists don’t have our perspective,” Ripple said with a wink.

I chuckled. “Yeah, but we’re too busy for stuff like that.”

Ripple stirred her coffee for a second. “Speaking of busy…”

I shifted awkwardly. “Yeah?” I asked, knowing what she wanted before she asked.

“How’s your work in the Mission District going?”

I sighed. “I mean, you know as much as I do.”

“I know what Ramirez told me,” she said, “and I know that you both think the people went missing because of the monster at Chapel High.”

“Sounds like you have the full picture…”

“I have the facts,” she said plainly. “I want your… perspective.”

I sighed. “I looked around the neighborhood for a while after you gave me the tip, didn’t dig up any leads until Ramirez basically told me who did it…”

“You still caught some murderers and terrorists, that’s not nothing.”

“I barely caught them. One of the gangsters got away and a whole van full of terrorists did too.”

“That’s still better than all of them getting away.”

My bowl rang out with a clunk when I dropped my spoon into it with a suddenness that surprised even me. “You know it’s not about that,” I hissed.

Ripple raised an eyebrow, but didn’t look surprised. She seemed to be waiting for me to continue, but, stunned at my own outburst, I wasn’t sure I could. My hands shook slightly as they pressed against the countertop. I took a few deep breaths to steady them as I looked down at my bowl—at my sad, soggy cereal.

“It’s been a few months, right?” Ripple asked, breaking the silence.

“Yeah…” I said.

“Look, a lot of heroes get their start working with a partner, it doesn’t make you weaker.”

“It’s… more complicated than that.”

“I know, trust me, Seraph has a reputat-”

“A reputation? Have you ever really worked with her before? Reputation doesn’t do it justice.”

Ripple seemed to consider this. “I worked with her before, maybe I didn’t see her at her worst, but I’ve seen what she’s capable of.”

I snorted. “Alright, you know what I’ve seen?” Ripple was silent. “I’ve seen bodies mangled, men hung by their entrails, organs torn out and force-fed to their owners… torments that she invented because I was there.” I closed my eyes, trying to force the images from my head. “I’ve heard from you and the others that she was bad before I got there, but when she found me…”

“It’s not your fault that she did those things.”

“I helped her.”

“No, she used you, we all know that and no one thinks any differently.”

“I still could have left, hung up my mask and gone back to med school, but I stuck around for four years.” I sighed. “But that’s not what… bothers me right now.”

“It’s okay if it still does, you went through a lot.”

“No, I’ve gotten over it,” I lied. “But, after a few months… I’m thinking… am I really all that better without her?”

Ripple shot me a puzzled expression. “What do you mean?”

“Together, me and Seraph would have captured all those terrorists, and probably interrogated any useful information out of them too.”

“By torturing them,” Ripple said.

My shoulders sagged. “I can’t do what Seraph does, even ignoring the powers stuff, she’s willing to do anything short of murder to get the job done.”

“Short of murder?” Ripple said, raising an eyebrow. “I figured she only hasn’t racked up a kill count cause of you.”

“Trust me,” I said, grimly. “If there’s anything good about Seraph it’s that she doesn’t kill. I’m not even sure she would to protect herself.”

“Why?”

“She says it’s so that her victims can ‘repent.’”

“You don’t sound convinced, what do you think? Something psychological?”

“I’m not that kind of doctor.”

“But?”

“But nothing.” I sighed. “She has the strongest moral code of anyone I’ve ever met, it’s just straight out of the Old Testament rather than the modern day.”

“I guess that explains why she’s not in prison.”

I nodded. “As far as I know, Seraph has never hurt an innocent person.”

“The police love her too.”

“Not the ones I like to work with.”

“But still a lot of them.”

“Sure,” I said. “But what she did… What she does in the name of ‘justice’ is… Well, it’s inexcusable.”

“I’m happy we’re on the same page,” Ripple said, “but that doesn’t answer my question: what about this is bothering you now?”

“Well, it’s like I said…” I stared up at the ceiling. “Maybe I’m just not as good on my own… Maybe more people, in the long run, would be helped if I worked with Seraph instead of on my own.”

“Stitch…” Ripple said. She walked around the counter and stopped beside me, resting a hand on my shoulder. “That’s not true… Your power, it’s so much more than… Seraph’s insurance.”

“You mean I could work in hospitals and stuff?” I snorted. “Tried that, you know why healers like me don’t spend their days in the public hospitals?”

Ripple shook her head.

I continued, “Guess what happens if you refuse to be the personal healer of the rich and famous?”

“They threaten you?” Ripple asked, alarmed.

I shook my head. “I wish, but that doesn’t usually work. I’m tough to put down, as are a bunch of the other healers, and they know that.” I took a deep breath. “They threaten our patients, their families. Turns out, press the right buttons and even people on their deathbed will refuse you if they got to them first.”

“Why hasn’t-”

“Someone stopped them? Too much money is put into the medical industry, trillions world-wide is spent on everything from nanotech to bedpans. I don’t even have a face for them. It’s not a fight I can win… All I can hope to do is drop in randomly enough that I can help the few I can.”

Ripple sat in silence for a bit, seemingly processing this information. “Still,” she said, finally. “You’re undervaluing your own achievements. You stopped a van of terrorists that no one else would have stopped, you apprehended murderers before they could go to ground, and that was just this week!”

I looked down and didn’t say anything.

Ripple continued, “You now have a new way of doing things, and that’s okay, but you can be a good hero without Seraph.”

“But will I be as good as I was?”

“Stitch…” Ripple said, but before she could say anything else a pale gray cat hopped up onto the counter.

“Oh!” I said. “Who’s this guy?” I reached out to stroke his fur. He purred as he pushed his head into my hand.

“Egg,” Ripple said with a slight smile.

“Egg?” I asked, incredulous.

“Heh, yeah,” she said.

“There a story to that name?”

“No,” she said, a little too quickly. Before I could say anything else, she gave me a close look. “You know,” she said, “we’ve been calling each other by our ‘hero names,’ even though we’ve been out of costume for a while.”

“I guess you’re right,” I said. I didn’t really notice—I rarely spoke to anyone out of my costume anyways.

“Well then,” Ripple said, with a smile. “We’ve committed one of the big faux-pas of the job.”

“What’s that?”

She leaned in. “Never go by your hero name without a mask, you never know who’s listening,” she whispered, conspiratorially. My heart raced for a moment, but as she pulled back I saw her smiling broader. She must have been joking.

“Oh, heh, s-sorry,” I said, chuckling awkwardly. I stuck out my hand, which shook slightly. “J-Jannette Churchwell, nice to meet you.”

“Linda Li,” she said, shaking it. “Nice to meet you too.”

“Linda?” I asked, a little more shocked than I cared to admit. My power told me that Ripp-I mean, Linda wasn’t too much older than thirty, even accounting for the stress of the job. Linda was the kind of name my grandma would have, not a successful superhero.

“Hey,” Ripple said with a smirk, “that’s pretty big coming from a Jannette.”

“That’s fair…” I admitted. The only person I had met with my name was my grandma.

“Alright, Jannette… Can I call you Jan?”

“S-sure!” I said.

“Alright, Jan, what now? I have a guest room upstairs if you nee-” She stopped, and pulled out her phone.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Ramirez,” she said. “He says that he has some interesting information he wants to share with us.”

I looked myself over. “Can I take a shower first?”