A/N - Reference is made during this chapter to a message sent out by Pencil. That message has not been seen yet in the ongoing narrative, but will happen early in the next arc. This interlude takes place partway through that arc.
Austen Deleon had screamed for some time. That was all she could do after being betrayed by several of her top lieutenants, and half of the rank and file gang members, just when she was on the cusp of finally making her father pay for abandoning herself and her mother. She had been right there, his time was over. She was minutes away from cutting through his defenses and telling the man exactly who she really was so he would know that she had done this for her mother, and then they pulled this shit.
She was going to kill them, that much was absolutely certain. Those three pieces of shit who had led this betrayal would get what was coming to them. Unfortunately, it wasn't going to be easy, no matter how motivated she was. And she was very motivated. Those cocksuckers hadn't simply turned traitor, they had linked up with another gang, a brand new one to town. That gang had resources needed to help protect their new Touched. But it didn't matter how protected they were, or how long it took, she was going to make them regret their choices.
Except being obsessed with making someone pay had already screwed her over to start this entire mess. She had been so singularly focused on finally being face-to-face with her father and telling him exactly why this was happening--on making him see just how badly he had fucked up by leaving her mother to be taken in by that cult-- that she had missed what was happening in her own gang.
Her own gang. That was a laugh. Austen was technically part of two different opposing gangs, and neither of them really knew her. As Austen, she was a low-level nobody street runner for Oscuro, her father’s people. But they weren’t her people. She was a spy, she was there to gather information and keep an eye on things to better find ways of disrupting her father’s work. And as Deicide, she was the leader of the Easy Eights. But they weren’t her people either. They didn't really know anything about her. She was nothing more than a mysterious, powerful figure who gave them orders. They thought she was an adult rather than a sixteen-year-old. And they definitely had no idea that she’d been only thirteen when she took the reins and forced the original eight separate gangs to work together. They never saw her outside of the paper armor, never heard her true voice, never really talked to her. They were a means to an end, an army for her to use against her father’s army.
For three years now, no one had known the real Austen. She had escaped the cult that took her mother, killing the bastard in charge in the process, spent three months learning her own power and how to take care of herself without getting caught, and then threw herself into this personal crusade. She was under cover with no one watching her back. No one knew anything about who she really was or what she was doing. There was no one for her to turn to, no one to talk to. When she found herself betrayed by three lieutenants, there had been no one to warn her it could happen. No one had been there to help her notice what was going on right under her nose, and no one was there for her to vent to. She was alone. She was always alone, but this time it had truly backfired at one of the worst possible times. Her father was even stronger now, with new unknown Touched gained through a trade with the gang he had sent her former people to. And that gang had reason to back him in this war. His position was stronger than it had ever been, while hers was precarious, her people entirely unprepared to pursue this war. He had outplayed her, and quite possibly crippled her ability to make him pay for what he had done. Her failure to see the betrayal coming might have cost her any chance she had to see justice for her mother.
So, she had gone out into the middle of nowhere and screamed. She had screamed until her throat was painfully sore, and had taken a literal baseball bat to break every window in the abandoned building she’d found. No one was around, no one was nearby to see her as she let out all of her frustration and anger. She should've seen it coming. She should've known it was a possibility. She should have stopped it before it could ever be an issue. But she didn’t, and now she had to deal with that. She had to find ways of rebuilding the gang, possibly by absorbing another, or recruiting from outside the city… not that that part would be very easy with the lockdown stopping anyone from leaving, of course. Something… there had to be something. She just had to take her time and think about it. And not let herself be completely blinded to what was going on with the people she was supposed to be in charge of anymore.
But to do that, she had to clear her head. She had to push out all her emotions (not an easy job considering how angry she always was) and focus on the next step. So, she went for a walk. Not as Deicide, and not as part of a job for Oscuro. She walked through an outdoor mall as herself. Not that anyone knew her. But she had no ulterior motive, no plan. She wasn’t setting up a heist, monitoring a potential target, making herself useful for Oscuro so they would let her in on more of their plans, nothing like that. She was, quite simply, zoning out and letting her mind wander. Later she would have to focus. For now, she was just walking. It was kind of a new experience. Or at least a rare one.
Standing in front of a shop advertising T-shirts with funny slogans or pop-culture references, Austen looked at herself in the reflection. From here, she just looked like a small, almost malnourished Latina girl with short, almost boyish black hair and oversized clothes. There were dark circles under her eyes, which she took in briefly before letting a soft sigh escape her. She could handle this. There were options, as long as she didn’t let her emotions take over again. She had to control herself, as hard as that was. The Touched lieutenants who had remained loyal could be useful, especially when it came to making traitors pay for--
A cacophony of thunder filled the air, completely cutting off her thoughts. At first, she thought it was gunfire, a lot of the gunfire. But no, it was an explosion. The bomb, if that’s what it was, blew out the second floor of the building just a couple doors down from where she stood in this outdoor mall. Austen felt glass spray across her face and arms, drawing several cuts as she reeled and fell onto her back side with a cry. Yelping like a little girl would've been embarrassing for anyone who knew her identity as one of the big bad gang leaders. But then, nobody did. She’d spent plenty of time and effort making certain of that.
Lying on her back while blinking dazedly at the ceiling, Austen heard people screaming and running around her to get away from the threat. For a moment, she simply stared blankly at the obvious flames and smoke coming out of the other shop. Impossible, this was impossible. Or it should've been. This was Easy Eights territory, deep in the heart of it. And she sure as hell hadn’t authorized a bombing like this. What was going--
Scions. She realized that belatedly, an annoyed growl escaping her. This was the Scions. Of course it was. After that message from Pencil, those fucking candidates of his were out doing… exactly what he’d told them to do. She'd heard whispers about some of those ‘candidates,’ and that one of them was apparently capable of doing something with explosions. And now he was playing with those explosions in her territory. These people who were terrified and running away, the ones who had been hurt or even killed in that shop, they were her responsibility. Yes, she was a criminal, the leader of a bunch of other criminals, but the people who lived in this territory still deserved a certain level of protection from other Fell-Touched.
Her armor was never too far away. At the moment, the thick stacks of paper that could instantly transform into it were sitting in a briefcase that she had stashed in some bushes at the front of the mall. All she had to do was find a nice quiet, empty spot nearby and--
There was an odd, sort of warbling effect in the air just a few feet away, followed by another explosion. This one was different, coming from almost directly ahead of and under Austen. And it wasn’t the same concussive force as the first. Instead, it was like a hole simply appeared in the ground, as though whatever it was disintegrated the pavement, dirt, and everything else instantly to create an empty void. An empty void Austen found herself plummeting into.
Before she had gone more than a few feet, still focusing on summoning a few scraps of paper from her pocket to catch her, a hand grabbed her arm instead. She was suddenly jerked to a halt in mid-fall, looking up to see a familiar figure lying at the edge of the hole, hand extended to hold onto hers. A familiar figure, but in a very unfamiliar situation.
“Skip,” she found herself blurting. Sure enough, the figure lying there, holding onto her arm, wore a short-sleeved white robe over a blue-black bodysuit, the hood covering most of her dark hair while the lower half of her face was hidden by a black cloth mask. The only easily discernible thing about her face through what was left was that she was Asian.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
As she dangled there from the other girl’s grasp, Austen had to remind herself not to say or do anything that would give her away. Skip wasn't here to fight her, because she didn't look like Deicide right now. As far as the Ten Towers Touched was concerned, she was just an ordinary innocent civilian bystander.
That much was proven as Skip grunted and reached down to grab her arm with the other hand. “Don't worry,” she intoned, her voice completely emotionless despite the reassuring words, “I've got you.” Then she began to pull Austen up. The other girl helped a bit, and soon she was back on solid ground. Only then did she glance over the edge and see the bottom of that pit a solid forty feet down. She could have survived by catching herself with her emergency paper, naturally. But that could have meant giving herself away.
Of course, being saved by Skip couldn't be the end of it. Things just had to get worse. Shouts filled the air as men in masks began pouring into the open courtyard of the mall from every direction. They had guns and were shouting for people to move one direction.
Well, she definitely wasn't doing that. Austin picked herself up and started to move toward the front so she could get a line of sight on her briefcase, but before she could go anywhere, Skip grabbed her arm. “Not that way,” she flatly informed her before pulling the girl into the nearby clothing store.
“O-oh, right, yeah, sorry.” Austen did her best to play the part of a shell-shocked bystander. “Who-who are those guys?”
“Bad people,” came the simple response, as the two of them slipped behind a row of tee-shirt racks just in time for one of the masked gunmen to go running past the open door. “Wait here.”
Then she was gone. Austen breathed a sigh of relief. Okay, good, now all she had to do was get to her briefcase. Or at least close enough to open it with her remote and summon those papers. She needed a decent stack to form her armor. Or she could use other paper around here. Not in this place, they had apparently gone paperless for the environment, or simply because they didn’t want to have paper in territory controlled by someone who manipulated it. But there was a bookstore nearby. Which was the better choice, going to the front for her briefcase or toward the back for the bookstore?
Before she could come to a decision on that, Skip was standing right next to her again. It made her jump in surprise. If there was one thing she wasn’t accustomed to, it was having a Star-Touched suddenly appear within arms-reach when she looked like plain old ordinary Austen.
“Sorry,” Skip apologized in that same toneless voice. “There's something wrong with the air. They're blocking teleportation out of the area. I can move everywhere inside, but I can't get out. And they have guards watching the street.” There was a brief pause before she turned to look at Austin. For the very first time, there was something else in her voice: faint curiosity. “Why am I telling you that?”
Austen found herself shrugging. Her voice was a whisper, still playing a part of a scared little girl in over her head. “I guess you just needed someone to talk to? You can fight those guys, right? You can help the other people, I'll just wait here and--”
Before she could say anything else, the sound of footsteps filled the room. A man with a rather large shotgun came in, eyes sweeping over the store as he bellowed, “Anyone in here?! You better get your asses out where I can see them or--”
Suddenly, Skip was standing behind him. She had produced a collapsible baton from her belt, extending it its full length before bringing it down against his shoulder. There was a spark of electricity from the end of it, which clearly coursed through the man’s body. At the same time, she stripped the gun away from him as he fell to his knees, then hit him with another jolt of electricity from the baton that left him twitching on the floor. Soon he was gagged with his own mask and handcuffed. Only then did Skip turn to look at Austen. “I won't leave you for his friends to find. Come on, I can get you out here. Then I’ll come back.”
Blinking, Austen asked curiously, “You can teleport with people?” That was new information if so.
“No,” Skip informed her, voice so quiet it was barely audible. “But I can walk you out. Everyone else is already either gone or under armed guard. Come this way, we’ll get to the roof first. Then it’s just a couple simple jumps to the wall before you can climb down. It’s okay. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.” With that, she started to move to the nearby stairs, beckoning for the other girl to follow.
Well shit. There was no way the Ten Towers Star-Touched hero was going to just walk off and leave Austen here, and anything she said to try to insist on it would just look stupid at best and suspicious at worst. Her only choice was to keep playing the part of an innocent civilian. Restraining the strong urge to curse, she quickly followed after her ‘savior,’ both of them ignoring the muffled threats coming from the handcuffed and gagged man on the floor.
Just a few more minutes, she just had to play innocent for a few minutes and then Skip would finish escorting her off the grounds, go off to play hero, and she would be able to get her paper armor so she could find some real answers about what the hell was happening here.
But yet again, it didn’t turn out to be that simple. No sooner had they reached the top of the stairs to step into what should have been the second floor of the shop, then they found themselves emerging through a doorway that hadn’t been there before, entering a cafe. That was it, just as confusing as it sounded. They climbed the stairs and stepped off the last one onto the top floor of the clothing store, and then they were in the bottom floor entrance of a cafe.
“What?” Austen pivoted, looking back the way they’d come. The courtyard of the mall was right there, instead of the stairs they had just come up. But when she stepped to that doorway, the scene shifted and she was back on the stairs.
“The bombs,” Skip announced. She sounded a bit… pained, which was even more confusing coming from her than most Star-Touched. “That’s why I can’t teleport out of the area. It’s doing something to my power. I can’t make myself immune to it. They’re twisting space, contorting it somehow. And it’s making wormholes that lead around in circles within this area. Right… here too.” She walked over toward one of the tables in a corner of the cafe before her body seemed to twist and shrink, then vanished entirely.
It was rather disturbing to see. But Austen followed suit, emerging into the restroom of one of the other shops. They both moved through the doorway there to find themselves in the dining area of an ice cream shop. “Okay, that’s really weird. But… but why are they doing that?”
“Testing it, I think,” Skip replied tonelessly. “I can… almost sort of feel them, as long as it’s near a spot I walked past before. The air feels wrong. It’s not the way it was before. It’s… disturbing.”
Well now there was a good chance that Austen couldn't get to the paper she needed for her armor even if this girl did leave her alone. She had the emergency pad in her pocket, so she wasn't completely helpless by any stretch, but not enough to cover her entire body. This was going to get complicated. Even more than it already was.
“Can’t get a signal either,” Skip announced, looking at her phone. “There are no reinforcements coming.” She didn’t sound afraid or even agitated. It was like she was reading a phone book, simply stating facts. “I think I can find--”
Before she could finish saying what she thought she might be able to find, a loud warbling sound filled the air. It sounded weird to Austen. Just like the warbling she had heard right before that second explosion that made the pit she had fallen into. But while it was simply ‘weird and uncomfortable’ for her, it was clearly much worse for Skip, who was being directly targeted by it. Suddenly, the girl fell to her knees, holding her hands against her ears with an audible cry.
“Yeah, sucks, doesn’t it?” A man wearing brown-black body armor, along with a black hard-shell helmet that covered his entire face aside from holes for his eyes, announced while walking forward with his hands out. The warbling effect was being projected from there. “I can fuck with your senses, your equilibrium, make you throw up right now. That’s all it does for living people. When I use it on material objects, it makes a bunch of different types of explosions depending on the material. Which also fucks with space for awhile. That’s where these portals come from. Neat, isn’t it?” He gave a low chuckle. “I bet you’re trying to make yourself immune to it right now. But see, that requires you to have a second to focus, to think straight. And I’m not giving you that second. You can’t think, you can’t use your power.”
Austen reflexively took a step, but the man kept one hand focused on Skip, still projecting that debilitating effect, while using his other hand to point a pistol at her. “I’ll get to you in a minute, don’t make me rush. I want to savor this. You know how many points I’ll get in Pencil’s little game if I kill the girl who’s supposed to be immune to everything? Being invincible is his thing. Just stand still and watch this bitch’s brain implode. A few more seconds of this and it’ll start leaking out her ears.”
Fuck! No, no, what the fuck? Austen’s eyes snapped between the crumpled Star-Touched and the man standing over them. Skip had saved her. Sure, she could have survived the fall with her power, but the other girl didn’t know that. And then she had refused to abandon Austen. She had risked a lot to try to escort her out of this place. Her, just an ordinary, nobody girl. Skip had absolutely no way of knowing Austen was anything more than that. She didn’t know her from any other person on the street. But she tried to save her. And now she was… she was…
Like a flurry of rapidly beating wings, the stack of papers from the pad in Austen's pocket flew into the air and hurled themselves at him. He recoiled in surprise, a couple of the bits of paper cutting through his palms and wrists, while others sliced through his face. He staggered, flailing wildly before turning to jump over one of the tables. There must have been a wormhole there, because he vanished from sight.
Growling, Austen went to throw herself after him. But, like earlier, a hand grabbed her arm. Skip was back on her feet, holding her. The two of them stopped short, staring at one another for several long, tense seconds. Finally, the Star-Touched spoke.
“Thank you… Deicide.”
(To Be Continued After The Next Arc)