The din of dozens of murmured conversations filled the former church gym turned homeless shelter cafeteria. Everyone was asked to keep their voices down in respect of others, of course, but between the amount of people, the acoustics of the room, and the problem many of them had with their hearing (among other medical issues), the place was still quite loud. Add in the clang of plates and utensils, as well as the occasional heavy rumble of trucks passing by outside through the door that had been propped open to let fresh air in, and it was often hard to hear oneself think properly.
As the cheap, cracked orange plastic plate hit the metal counter in front of her, gripped tightly in a dirty gloved hand while its owner kept his face covered in heavy scarves despite the heat outside, Cassidy Evans smiled genuinely before scooping a portion of baked beans with hot dog bits mixed in onto it. “Thank you for coming, sir, I hope you have a bright day!”
His response was a grunt before he moved on to take a small container of milk from the crate nearby. The next man, wearing bermuda shorts and a tank top (more in keeping with the heat), stepped up and she gave him the same greeting, along with the same heaping scoop of food.
He, in turn, stepped over to the crate and reached in, only to pause and look down. The man ahead of him had taken the last carton. “Oh, uh…” Sounding embarrassed to even be asking, he hesitated before pushing on. “I don’t suppose there’s a uhh, umm… never mind.”
“Coming through!” The chipper voice of Paige Evans called, stepping over that way with a new crate filled to the brim with more cartons of milk. “Fresh from the cooler, go right ahead.” Setting the crate on top of the empty one, she gestured. “Get ‘em while they’re cold.”
After the man had gratefully taken his fresh carton and headed off to eat, Paige stepped over next to Cassidy. She gave the next person in line, an elderly black woman, a charming smile and thanked her for coming before speaking quietly to the smaller girl next to her. “Mother called. It’s an emergency. We need to go.”
The word choice of ‘mother’ was a simple code. If Paige had said ‘mom’, Cassidy would have known that whatever was going on was personal, normal family business. But the word ‘mother’ meant it was… well, family business. Ministry business. Which meant it wasn’t something she could put off. If her mother had called Paige-- she checked her own phone while scooping food onto the next plate. Sure enough, she had missed two calls somehow. Oops. Two calls and another call to Paige about Ministry business meant she really couldn’t put it off. So, Cassidy flagged down someone else to take over her job, then stepped away from the counter. Together, she and Paige briskly walked through the room, politely but quickly greeting people on their way until they reached the propped-open door. With a word to the homeless shelter organizer there about needing to take care of some family stuff, they stepped out into the warm (almost hot) open air. There was a line of people out there waiting to come in and take their turns eating, so the girls couldn’t talk freely just yet. They waved cheerfully, expressions betraying nothing more than being welcoming and thankful for the opportunity to help as they quickly crossed the parking lot.
Only once they were fully out of earshot did Cassidy speak again, her voice low. “What’s going on? It’s not one of Pittman’s lost creations again, is it?”
In the wake of Anthony’s murder (as well as his family and their household staff), Cassidy had Touched before her family could erase her memory of the event. Her parents took Paige in once they learned the situation about who and what she really was, and the two had become more than friends. They were literally adopted sisters, to the point that Paige had entirely stopped referring to him as her father. Sterling was her father. Pittman went into hiding for awhile, as Paige and Cassidy trained under Plan Z herself. Not that Paige needed as much training, but still. She enjoyed spending time with her friend. Two years into that, Pittman had made the mistake of showing himself, and the two of them had worked together with Plan Z and several more of the Ministry’s people to ensure that the man would never be a problem again.
Well, not as himself anyway. There had been a couple times over these past few years where someone stumbled across one of Pittman’s hidden labs and unleashed some of his biolem creations, which ran amok and caused issues. But it had been most of a year since the last one of those, and Cassidy had hoped that they’d found them all.
“No, it’s not him,” Paige easily replied. She was far more cheerful when it came to the subject of Pittman since she had personally made certain he was dead and buried. Well, burned to ashes and scattered, anyway. “It’s Luciano.”
“Luciano?” Cassidy echoed, pausing to consider as the name bounced around in her head. “Nope, I have no idea who you’re talking about. Wait, is he that weird new radio DJ with the stuffed pig that he makes do all the--”
“No, not him,” Paige quickly interrupted with a grimace as the two of them moved through an alley together. “He’s a nobody, really. Barely worth mentioning, most of the time. Runs a couple blocks on the edge of Oscuro territory. Low-level drug distributor with a dozen guys.”
“Okay,” Cassidy replied, “so if he’s barely worth mentioning… why are we mentioning him?”
With a snort of amusement, Paige raised her hand with the keyfob to her car (well, the most mundane one of several) pointed ahead. With a click of the button, she unlocked the dark red sedan while answering the other girl. “He owed Cuélebre money. Cuélebre wanted to collect for some reason. I guess some people he works with are pretty anti-Oscuro, so when they found out about Luciano owing him a debt, they decided he didn’t need to be alive anymore. So with Cuélebre on one side demanding money and his former partners on the other trying to kill him, our pal Luciano decided to call a Ministry phone number some dipshit gave him. He requested an exit. Dad quoted him a price to get him safely out of the city and away from everyone he pissed off.”
Stepping down into the passenger seat of the car, Cassidy made a noise in the back of her throat. “Something tells me Dad wasn’t expecting him to come up with it.”
“Probably not,” the other girl agreed while getting in. The car was already started, and she pulled away from the curb while adding, “But he’s a real problem solver. And he decided the best way to solve this problem was to start a murder spree through the city. Apparently a bunch of other people owed him money and he thought it’d be a good idea to kill a few of the smaller fish to convince the bigger ones to pay up immediately. At last count, he was up to five drive-bys, a raid on some nobody pusher’s apartment building, and he set fire to a crackhouse. Next to a daycare. It’s too late for the kids to be there, but still. The fire spread, so now they don’t have anywhere to go tomorrow.”
“So now he’s a big enough problem that we need to deal with it,” Cassidy finished.
“Exactly,” came the response. “But you know the rules. He got the money he was asked for, and Dad is a man of his word. We have to get him out of the city safely.”
“And once he’s there?” Cassidy raised an eyebrow while looking sidelong at her adopted sister.
“Once he’s there,” Paige replied, meeting her glance. “We make sure he won’t be a problem anymore.”
*******
A couple hours later, there was a slight complication as Paige and Cassidy drove their ‘guest’ into the city of Pontiac, where he had requested a drop off. Namely, they were being followed. Both girls had noticed it fairly early into the trip, though Luciano was oblivious. Mostly because he was lying across the backseat and couldn’t look outside to see the van and truck tailing them.
In most cases, being tailed wouldn’t have been an issue for long. But through unspoken communication mostly involving glances, the two girls had agreed to wait and allow both vehicles to continue following them. Considering the situation, they were both curious about who they were and what they might do. Besides, given the girls weren’t planning on allowing Luciano to live for much longer anyway, whoever was following him might end up being interesting.
“Oy, can I sit up now?” the heavyset Latino man demanded. “It’s damn uncomfortable laying down like this the whole time.”
Truthfully, he could’ve sat up awhile ago. But neither girl had felt like telling him that. Now, it hardly mattered. So Cassidy shifted in her seat to look over at him. He wouldn’t see Cassidy Evans, of course. Nor would he see Paige Evans when he looked at her. Thanks to their mother’s illusion power, both girls would be seen with very different appearances, untraceable back to their true identities. Cassidy looked like a pale girl with dark blonde hair and a light dusting of freckles, whereas Paige had short red hair and deeply tanned skin.
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“Sure, sit up,” Cassidy informed him. “Stretch your legs a bit. Stick your head out the window like a dog and howl if you like.”
Muttering under his breath about being saddled with a couple clueless little bitches when he’d paid for real protection, the man sat up and shifted in the seat. Though he didn’t take her up on the offer to stick his head out the window, he did roll it down and put his arm out, drumming along the outside of the door while starting with, “Right, you’re gonna wanna take a right up--”
Abruptly, he was interrupted by the sound of a gunshot, as a bullet ricocheted off the door barely an inch from his exposed arm. As he screamed and fell sideways once more, Cassidy turned to look at the girl next to her, speaking calmly. “Well, that settles it. They’re not on his side.”
“What the fuck?!” Luciano bellowed, clutching his arm in shock while another shot took out the passenger-side mirror, and a third blew a hole in the rear window. “What the fuck is going on?!”
While Paige spun the wheel to take the car down a sideroad, Cassidy casually replied, “You know, for someone who was just responsible for like a dozen drive-by shootings, you seem oddly confused about what they are.”
“Not used to being on this side of them,” Paige pointed out, her voice equally laid-back even if her driving wasn’t, as she sent the car from one side of the road to the other to give their pursuers an even harder time with their shots. “Probably needs some sort of muscle memory, then he’ll get it.”
“Oooh, I know,” Cassidy chirped. “Try acting like you’re holding a gun and lean out that window so it feels like you’re the one shooting. You’ll have to lean out pretty far though. Make yourself a really good ta--I mean really put yourself in that mindset.”
“Would you stupid cunts actually do something already?!” Luciano all-but shouted while more gunfire pinged off the car. “Bad enough that I paid good money and all those stupid fucks could give me is a couple brainless bimbos! Could you at least pretend to do the job you’re being fucking paid for?!”
Rolling her head back a bit, Cassidy looked not into the backseat where he was, but toward Paige. “Pleeeeeeease?”
“You really want to entertain yourself?” Paige nodded over her shoulder as another gunshot rang out. “Why don’t you go deal with those guys?”
“Oooh.” Cassidy visibly perked up. “That I can do.” Even as she said that, the girl was tugging a short, curved metal band from her pocket. She turned to look out the shattered rear window while slapping the band against her own forehead. The moment she did so, the band extended in every direction, becoming a smooth, featureless metal helmet with no eye holes or anything else to break up its flat surface. At the same time, the bracelets on her wrists expanded into full metal gloves. She gave Luciano a thumbs up, voice slightly distorted. “See ya in a minute!” With that, the girl turned to face the front while giving herself a hard shove backwards in her seat. Instantly, she vanished, going through the seat like it wasn’t there.
“The shit?!” the man blurted, jerking upright in his own seat while staring that way.
Paige, for her part, simply took the car on a hard right down another street, though she slowed down slightly.
“What’re you doing?!” Luciano bellowed. “Speed the fuck up!”
“Nah,” she replied, “I don’t wanna leave her behind. She gets kinda cranky if she has to walk too far. And trust me, you do not want to give her an excuse to drive that van to catch up with us.”
Meanwhile, back in the van itself, the girl in question had gone through her own seat in Paige’s car and appeared coming out the side of the front passenger seat in that vehicle. She ended up crouched in the space between the driver and passenger there, with three more guys behind her. All five were completely shocked by her sudden appearance.
“Hiya!” she cheerfully greeted, while her right hand snapped out. A blade extended from the back of the metal glove, slicing into the front passenger’s throat even as he started to yank his gun back in the window so he could aim it at her. As blood exploded from the man’s throat, he reflexively fired a shot into the windshield. But it was a windshield that Cassidy herself was looking at and focused on, so the bullet didn’t shatter the glass. Instead, it vanished right as it would have struck the windshield, emerging from the left-rear passenger window to embed itself in the head of the man sitting there, who had just been lifting his shotgun. His body fell sideways into the man next to him, who had only just been reacting to the figure appearing directly in front of him when suddenly his buddy beside him was dead with a gunshot to the side of his head. A gunshot which technically came from another friend in the front passenger seat, who was also dead.
The way the seating arrangements in the van went, there were the two men in front, two in the middle, and one man in the far back. Given the two who had been killed now, that left one in each row of seats alive. Well, for the moment. Cassidy wasn’t planning on letting that last very long.
The driver had shifted in his seat enough to yank his own pistol out and started to point it at her. But she simply snapped her hand forward into the dash. It came out through the window beside the man in the third seat, and she caught him by the hair. As he cried out, Cassidy yanked backwards, pulling his head sideways (from his perspective) until it emerged from the dashboard, right in the path of the driver’s gun as he pulled the trigger. He was dead before he even understood what was happening, and Cassidy gave him a shove back through the dash so he could slump in the rear seat. In the same motion, her other hand caught the driver’s wrist before he could adjust his aim or even react to having shot his own companion in the head. He was already screaming, but that got worse a moment later, as she used both hands to shove his arm upward. His hand disappeared through the roof of the car, and he felt open air. He blinked in confusion while staring into that featureless metal mask for a moment, before Cassidy turned to look through the windshield. The man looked as well, one hand still on the steering wheel. Just ahead of them, he saw… his own hand, clutching the gun. It was sticking up out of the road, right in front of the van. Right in front of the--
And then the van, at full speed, ran over his own hand. He felt one wheel, then the next, slam into his hand. The van jolted wildly, both from the impact and from his own foot shoving hard on the gas reflexively while his other hand left the wheel. The girl released his arm, and he jerked it down. He’d dropped his gun back on the street, and was screaming as loud as he could as he stared at his mangled, ruined hand.
Meanwhile, the man in the middle seat had finally gotten himself together enough to point his own gun that way. But Cassidy threw herself sideways and disappeared back into the seat there. She reappeared through the front of the rear-most row of seats, directly behind the man in the middle row and next to the body of the man whom the driver had been forced to shoot in the head. Before the man in the middle seat could even start to understand where the terrifying girl had disappeared to, she was already tapping him on the shoulder. With a scream, he spun around in his seat and opened fire, shooting seven, eight, nine times before realizing that he was shooting at an empty seat as the girl had ducked down. No, he wasn’t shooting into the seat, he was shooting through it. His bullets were--where were his bullets--
From the front passenger seat, Cassidy whistled for attention. The man in the middle spun back that way, just in time to see the driver with his mangled hand laying slumped over the wheel. Dead from the bullets that he had just fired.
“Who the fuck are you?!” the sole surviving man screamed, lifting his pistol once more. He pulled the trigger, but the gun clicked on an empty chamber. He’d already fired all his bullets.
“Me?” the girl replied while tilting her head. “I’m Votary.” Even as she said that, the van was still cruising on its own remaining momentum straight toward a building. “And you, well…” Before the man could react, she tossed herself backwards against the passenger seat once more, appearing beside him. Both of her hands snapped out, one in either direction. Her right hand caught hold of the seatbelt, which she buckled onto herself in one smooth motion, while her left hand caught the man by the neck, giving him a hard shove forward while he was off balance. His head was pushed through the back of the driver’s seat and out the front of the wall of a building. The same building the van was careening toward on the last of its momentum. The gas wasn’t actively being pushed, but they had been heading down the street at a solid clip before the driver was killed.
Faced with a look at the front of the very same van he was sitting in, the man had time to scream once, before the vehicle collided with the wall his head was sticking out of.
Grunting with the impact while the front end of the van collapsed (part of it appearing through the back of the seat she had been pushing him through), Cassidy released her grip on the man. Turning her head a little, she murmured, “Now, about that truck…”
A short time later, Paige pulled over into an alley, while Luciano cursed her about stopping. She got out of the car and opened his door, bluntly ordering him to emerge. “The guys in the van are dead, believe me. They’re not gonna come after you anymore. See?” She pointed to the apartment building across the street. “That’s where you asked to be dropped off, right?”
While he was reacting to that, Cassidy came strolling around the corner, still wearing her metal mask. Paige walked that way. “You take care of both vehicles? I didn’t see what happened with the truck.”
“Van, yeah,” the other girl replied. “As for the truck… Well, we need to talk about that.”
So, the two held a brief, murmured conversation. Luciano couldn’t hear what they were saying, and really didn’t care. He was out of that fucking city, and ready to move on. “Hey! You did your job, so thanks, I guess. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got shit to do.”
“Did you hear that, Kourai?” Votary asked the girl beside her.
“I did,” Paige confirmed. “We did our job.”
“Good,” a third figure, this one dressed in a dark ski mask, announced while coming around the corner at a quick stride. “Now let me do mine.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Luciano demanded.
“She’s the girl who was in that truck,” Votary casually replied. “Girl in the truck, this is Kourai and Luciano.”
The newcomer didn’t even spare a glance at Paige. Instead, she focused on Luciano, reaching up to yank her ski mask off to reveal short brown hair and clearly mixed-race skin. “My name’s Eleanor Murphy,” she snapped. “You killed my fucking brother, you stupid piece of shit.”
“Hey, I--” Luciano started.
Before he could say any more, Murphy raised the pistol she was holding clutched tightly in her hand, and unloaded on him. Four bullets hit the man in the chest, one in the leg, one in the hand, and one in his throat. He hit the ground, choking and dying there in the dirt.
Paige and Cassidy exchanged glances, before the latter raised her hand to rest it on the newcomer’s shoulder as she pulled the trigger several more useless times while glaring at the fallen man. “Hey there, Eleanor Murphy.
“Have we got the club for you.”