Phantom Violet Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2: DUST YOURSELF OFF AND TRY AGAIN

July 17, 1998

Val enjoyed her patrol time, even if it usually involved a headache and maybe a fight. It got her out of the house, away from people, and let her enjoy her dance music in peace. Most nights were pretty calm, too; while the Seeded Beast appearances were picking up slightly, they were going from happening every 2 weeks to not quite weekly. And while they had once been as scary to her as they were to civilians, she was starting to see them as old hat. Considering she had only been Phantom Violet since mid-April, she thought that level of confidence & comfort with her role reflected well on her.

Patrols were usually simple - walk around like normal, feel the presence of Seeded Beast & follow it, transform, and dispose of it. Now that the days were longer, it wasn’t as odd for her to be walking out after dinner. Her father & stepmother seemed to be bemused with her new routine, while her stepbrother didn’t care - as usual. That was fine - if he did care, he’d probably run his mouth to his asshole friends and leave Val to contend with Deanna again. School was bad enough on that front. She usually tried to be home by sunset, but tonight she could feel one. She had a duty - no, a moral responsibility - to track it down and keep others safe. Her dad would probably understand.

She had just started to approach the park, pretty sure that she had traced it to the decaying seating stand by the baseball diamond, when she heard an unwelcomely familiar voice.

“Val! Vaaaalll!”

It was Seth, her stepbrother, running towards her from the parking lot. When their parents had first married, they got along well enough; but once Deanna & her posse decided Val was an easy & fun target, that had changed. Seth’s best friend was Deanna’s boyfriend, and he seemed just as asshole-ish as her. Multiple times, Val had asked Seth to intervene in some way. Multiple times, he said that he would. And yet, the only change was that things escalated. So clearly he wasn’t trying to help her in any effective or meaningful way, even if he wasn’t an active part of their tormenting. Thus Val now tried to keep her interactions with him to a minimum.

That was a little tricky to do when you share a house and try to keep your parents out of your business. Including your superhero rounds.

“Why are you here?” Val said, trying not to sound testy but somewhat failing.

Seth leaned over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath, his too-long bowl cut hanging over his face. “Your dad… your dad sent me,” he said as he turned his face upwards. “He’s worried.”

Val felt a mild pang in her head, emanating from the general direction of the stand. It was definitely hiding in there, and she couldn’t go home until it had been dissolved. If that was where it had taken cover, it probably wasn’t particularly tough; but it was still a potentially grave threat to any normal people. She had to finish her duties.

“I’m fine,” Val said. “Tell Dad I’ll be home in like twenty minutes. I wanna finish my walk.”

“No way! If I come home without you, he’ll lose it,” Seth argued. “He’s heard about those animal attacks. Thinks you’ll get eaten by a bear or something.” He reached to grab Val’s arm, but she dodged him.”

“No! Just- … Just let me finish my walk and get a little space,” Val snapped back. “Just go!”

An unearthly loud trilling sound started to come from the stand, akin to a pitched-up impersonation of a cat’s purr. Shadows behind the broken chain link fencing started to solidify and congeal around two pinpoints of unnaturally bright light. The trilling amplified as the shadows seeped out of the structure and began to creep towards the two, pinpoints focused on the two humans the whole time. Finally, it took form - a black, inky weasel made of churning darkness & rot, twice the size of a large horse; its thick, sharp claws dug into the soil and wilted the grass beneath its feet.

Val steeled herself. This Seeded Beast was bigger than the ones she had encountered in the past, and given how it had assumed a weasel as its husk, it was probably going to be fast. Behind her, Seth was audibly making nonverbal stammers of disbelief.

“What the hell…,” Seth finally said, his hushed voice cracking.

The Seeded Beast kept its “face” trained towards Val. Just as much as she could sense them, they could sense her. That was why she tried to lure them away from any potential prey and focus on her. But it had no doubt noticed that there was someone else with her who wouldn’t fight back.

Seth grabbed her arm again, noticeably shaky. “We gotta go!” As soon as he turned around to run with her, a mass of the Beast’s body circled around the two. Its face stayed trained on Val, its front claws stayed still.

Val instinctively pulled Seth away from its body. “Don’t touch it!” she yelled. She gestured at the dead grass, he could put two & two together for once.

“This is one of those things people keep seeing, right?” Seth asked.

“Just stay still,” Val said quietly. “Don’t provoke it.”

“How are you so calm with this?!”

There was always a part of Val that she didn’t like to listen to, even though it was always the first one to speak. It was a voice of spite, one that was prompted by anger & frustration. Right now, that part was screaming at her: Shove Seth into it. Let it devour him. Let his shitty friend Erik & especially Deanna know what you can do if they keep it up. What can happen to them. It’s not like Seth is gonna even try to protect you, so why bother to protect him?

Val hated that voice. It reminded her too much of her mother. Even if listening to it might be easier, that just made it worse for her to do what it said. She had been entrusted with this power to protect people, no exceptions; she half believed that it was due to the way her fondness for superheroes had shaped her worldview. None of the heroes she wanted to emulate would ever listen to that voice. They’d all ignore it and do their duties, even if it was harder in the long run. Because the right things to do usually were the harder ones.

She’d sort out the explanation later. Right now, she had no actual choice.

“Viola Sororia!” Val shouted.

“Wha- aagh!” Seth said, cut off by a sudden burst of light.

The Beast reared up its head, its trill turning into a shriek-like war cry, its body still coiled dangerously close to the two. It dove towards the light, only to find its jaws held back by a pair of hands grappling it.

Val as she had been was gone. In her place was the strong & charming Phantom Violet.

At least Val thought she was far more strong & charming after transforming.

She pushed back at the Beast’s jaws with her hands, stepping forward heavily while using as much strength to brace herself as possible. Its long body began to flail and loosen its barrier as it worked to focus its strength on its neck & counter her efforts.

“Seth, when I say so, you run,” Val said firmly, straining against her foe.

Seth said nothing.

“Okay?!” Val said firmly but slightly angrier.

“What… what did you…,” Seth finally stammered.

“We’ll talk when I’m done here!” Val let her annoyance at this moment give her a strength boost. She lunged forward and shoved the Beast’s head backwards at an awkward angle; its body reflexively pulled itself straight to steady itself, breaking its coiled barrier. “Go! Go!”

Seth’s footsteps took off away from the fight. Hopefully towards his car, but Val had a bigger priority than checking whether he’d stick around to gawk. At least he was out of any active danger, and she could focus on the fight.

Val shifted her focus from its jaws to its throat, charging and wrapping her arms around its neck in an awkward two-arm chinlock. It continued to thrash, trying to throw her off or bite her; once transformed, she was safe from its rotting touch, but its teeth & claws could still wound or even kill her. She pulled her right hand away from it just far enough to summon her bow, then tried to grapple it into the Beast’s mouth to serve as an impromptu bit. Instead, it jerked its front half violently backwards, knocking it free of Val’s grip. Before she landed on the ground, it was already running towards the main body of the park.

“Dammit, get back here!” Val said as she hurried to her feet and ran after it as fast as she could. While she was at least twice as fast as a normal human when transformed, she still couldn’t quite catch up to the Beast. Worse, the fall had been hard enough to hurt her tailbone, making the mad dash irritatingly painful. She swapped her bow to her left hand and summoned several energy arrows with her right. She fired them as a cluster, hoping that at least one would hit her target. While two flew over the Beast harmlessly, two hit its undulating back and one hit its rear foot. With a shriek, it stumbled and swirled around to face her. The Beast’s eyes no longer were little sharp pinpoints - they were wild, spiny glares of harsh light trained on her.

“Yeah, that’s right, I’m your opponent!” Val said, channeling her frustration into play-bravado. She fired a single arrow at its face.

The Beast lunged towards her with its jaws wide; the arrow flew into its maw, hitting the back of its throat. It staggered as it landed roughly on its feet and started to gag. Val sidestepped out of its way and briefly felt a tinge of pity for it - it was acting less like a monster and more like a dog with a piece of biscuit caught in its throat. But then she saw the path of dead foliage, withered grass and trees starting to visibly decay just from having been grazed by it. As much as it might act like a normal animal at times like this, it was still from the Aegror. It was a being of pure destruction, and it was her job to end its threat.

Val dissolved her bow, placed her left hand in a sideways V over her brooch, and pointed her right hand at the Beast in the same gesture. “Violet Voltage!”

Pale lavender lightning crackled along the Beast’s body, traveling between the energy arrows. It shrieked one last lingering time before it finally dissolved into a quickly dissipating deep gray mist. Val watched it warily until she was sure that it was truly gone.

“Is it gone?” Seth’s voice asked from behind her. After an initial jump, she sighed; in the heat of the fight, she had almost forgotten about him.

Val turned to face him, still transformed. “Yeah…” She realized that her Phantom Violet uniform made her almost as tall as he was, maybe taller given his fearful slightly-hunched posture. As much as she liked this, she made herself detransform. “Look…” She sighed. Nothing she could say would convince Seth to keep quiet. He couldn’t even get his friends to leave her alone - assuming he had even tried. But despite what that awful part of her said, she couldn’t let him get hurt. So she figured that futile pleading was her only option. “Pleeeease don’t tell our folks… Pleeeeease.”

“That’s why you’ve been out walking every night?” Seth asked. “You’re the girl they’ve seen?”

Val nodded.

Seth stared at her for a tense moment, then finally spoke. “How?”

Val sighed. “It’s a long story. Just- … Just please don’t say anything to anyone. I don’t want whatever’s behind these things to find out through rumors and stuff, cuz then they might… find our home. You get that, right?”

For what felt like entirely too long, Seth looked nervously down at the ground. Val quietly prayed to herself that, just this once, he’d respect her enough to honor her request. At this point, she felt it was obvious that divine intervention would be required to make that happen.

Finally, Seth looked up and stared her in the eyes. His expression was far more serious than she had ever seen in the past. “I won’t say anything,” he said. “I promise.”

—----------------

Present

Val had decided to settle into the old Boscov’s for a change. The food court was full of too many things for Owen to get into, the Macy’s was usually the spot where people filming the mall liked to go after the fountain, and thanks to Hydrangea, the Sears wing & the central court had been trashed. The Penneys had experienced some sort of roof collapse in her absence, so it was also off the table. Thus Val had decided to set up a spot by the built-in glass counter that once sold fancy chocolates and reflect on the previous night.

Somehow, she knew that middle-aged man who had been threatened by Hydrangea. He certainly recognized her, and while she couldn’t totally place why, he looked very familiar. The type of familiar that came from someone aging more than anticipated. But she didn’t really want to reconnect with anyone, whoever he may be; she had already lost so much before coming back and found nothing but more losses upon her return home. One suspect kept popping up in her mind, but she deliberately ignored it, no matter how many times it resurfaced.

She simply didn’t want to see Seth again.

Yes, she had been surprised that he actually had kept his promise to keep her identity secret, at least until she ran away. Yes, she had come to regret not saying a proper good-bye to him. Yes, he was pretty much the only family she had left. But the prospect of directly talking to him about everything - everything that had happened after she left, everything she had gone through in the fields - made her feel almost as sick as sensing an agent of the Aegror.

Plus, if Hydrangea was back, who’s to say that the rest of the Twelve Traitors wouldn’t follow? They’d no doubt see the only living relative of Phantom Violet, the last of the Phantom Garden, as easy prey. And even if Val didn’t always feel like a true superhero anymore, she still felt compelled to follow their standards.

Voices in the distance snapped Val out of her thoughts. It was midday, usually not a time that the people who liked to film old malls (for some reason) would be visiting. As far as she knew, no one actually had called the cops after her fight the night before, and she doubted the owners cared enough to survey any damage she had caused. The voices were just distant enough from her new spot to be unintelligible; Owen hadn’t even heard them, continuing to enjoy a nap in a sunbeam from the faded skylight. Quietly, Val stood up and navigated her way to the Boscov’s second story mall entrance.

It used to be that Val’s senses only boosted once she was transformed. Since waking up, however, she found it to be her permanent situation. Naturally, it took some adjusting and probably played a role in some of her previous… endurance tests. Going from hearing the normal sounds of a busy road to being able to hear every car’s radio & occupants on top of their mechanical systems was a considerable leap. Even now, she hadn’t fully adjusted, hence why she tried to seek out quiet solitary spaces.

Once Val reached the mall entrance, she stood just out of the doorway; in that position, she could better catch the echoed conversation over any other ambient sounds. It seemed as though it was originating from the central court, by the ruins of the fountain. And she could definitely pick out a voice that she had heard in passing the previous night.

“See, that’s where the attacker threw her,” the middle-aged man’s voice said. “Then she must have pulled her on the whip for a bit, cuz she didn’t go straight down. She hit there, then landed on the cage sculpture. As you can see.”

“Yes, we already took some samples,” an older man’s voice said. “You said that she was unharmed?”

“No, not at all. She wasn’t killed, but had a big gross wound anywhere she hit the fountain. There was a piece of it in her head, and she just yanked it out. It impaled her, Allan. Have no idea how she got free of it…”

“Hmm… And you’re sure it was Val? Not her sister?”

“Positive. I’d recognize that getup anywhere. But I said her name to her and she didn’t respond.”

“She probably didn’t recognize you.”

“Or she was ignoring me. Secret identities and all…”

Is that what he thought? Val smiled a tiny bit to herself; she had always tried to model herself on comics, and that meant maintaining her identity. It had only been due to her reaching a breaking point that she had revealed it publicly herself, and that was now so long ago that most folks would have forgotten. Seth had even managed to respect it - maybe for her sake, maybe for their family, maybe for his own safety. This was, however, proof that he was indeed the man from last night.

“Aside from her costume, how did she look?” the older man asked.

“She… well… she looked the same. Like, not in that way where you’d recognize an old friend after years or something. I mean, the same. Like the difference between tenth grader and college freshman.”

A pause.

“That’s still a big difference.”

“No, not really. Only on TV cuz they always cast thirty year old models as kids. Look, the point is, she should be around my age. But she’s still young. She’s young, and she survived all this.”

“Look, I know this is hard-”

“You have no idea, Allan…”

Val furrowed her brow. Her father had worked with someone named “Allan”, one of his friendlier colleagues. And usually their workplace was one where once someone had a job there, they’d be there until retirement. She never fully understood what her father did exactly, but if this Allen guy was the same man she had met and was investigating last night’s scrap, it gave her some vague ideas.

Gradually, the feeling of being stared at started to strike her. Val looked away from the door to find it was due to Owen. He stared at her with as much of a look of annoyance as a cat could muster; after a few seconds, he expectantly smacked his lips twice. This could only mean one thing - he was hungry.

It was at that point that Val realized that she had left his food stash back in the old food court. And so long as the investigators were there, she wouldn’t be able to get it.

“In a bit, buddy,” Val whispered. She wasn’t sure if they’d hear her, so it was best to play it safe.

Owen stared intently at her for a moment, then opened his mouth to deliberately yowl the loudest, most demanding meow that he could muster.

“Meeeeeeeeer!”

“Shh!” Val said, waving her hand at him as though he understood human gestures. “In a minute…”

“MEEEEEEEER!”

“Hey, you hear that?” the man’s voice said.

Of course he could hear it. Anyone within a mile of the mall could hear it. That was just the volume & power that a hungry cat could summon.

Val scooped up Owen as soon as she heard the approaching footsteps and retreated into the Boscov’s once more. She wasn’t ready yet. Maybe she’d never be.

—----------------

Seth wasn’t much of a runner, unless on a treadmill. But the sound of a loud cat prompted him to sprint towards the Boscov’s wing. The cat Val had been doting on, the one in the mall video, that had visited his house - that had to be what he had just heard. Maybe Val was with it, or it wanted to find her & could help him in some way. He had to find it, because then he’d probably find her.

He slowed down as he approached the still intact Boscov’s gate and tried to put his hand on it as quietly as possible. Seth had always been easily distracted by background noises; now, as he struggled to hear anything beyond the gate in the empty store, he found himself growing irritated with the ambient sounds of the Foundation personnel recording the scene. But he wasn’t in any position of authority to make them stop their work. He had to try and least get the cat’s attention. Hopefully Val would follow.

“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” Seth called through the gate. He waited. And waited. “Here, pspspspsps…” More waiting. He thought he heard something deep within the store, but there was still no sign of the cat. “C’mere, kitty cat… c’mere… uh… hmm…”

While Seth was pretty sure that cats were nowhere near as trainable or smart as dogs, he did know that they could at least learn their own names. And he had heard Val call it a name. A normal “people” name, not something you’d expect for a cat like Mittens or Fluffy. It was vaguely familiar, too. Knowing Val, he was pretty sure that she’d name any pet she had after a wrestler she liked, but he never really paid enough attention to catch any names beyond the most famous ones, even if she talked about them. It wasn’t out of ignorance or disdain; it just never stuck with him. But he remembered one thing - Val usually liked guys who were good at kicking people in the head.

Seth pulled out his phone and quickly searched for “wrestlers known for kicks”. Most of the results were either after Val’s departure or used obvious stage names. Two seemed to ring a bell and used normal names, however, so he decided to try those.

“Here… Shawn?” Seth said through the gate. Silence. “Shawn kitty, kitty…?”

From within the darkened empty store, a single sound replied.

“NYAUGH!”

If Seth didn’t know better, he’d think that the cat sounded offended. He shrugged and tried the second name.

“Owen…?” he said sweetly. “Owen kitty, kitty…?” One again, he waited.

After a long wait, the cat trotted into view. It sat across from him on the opposite side of the gate, its long tail curled around its front legs. It looked at Seth expectantly, as though wanting something in return for showing itself. Seth then realized that he had no idea what a cat could actually want. He didn’t think that they were particularly food motivated like dogs could be or were wild about toys. Maybe it wanted attention? Seth gingerly stuck his hand through a gap in the gate and wiggled his fingers, trying to offer the cat a nice petting if it would just come within reach.

“C’mere, Owen,” Seth said as he continued to gesture towards the cat. “Pspspspsps…”

“Meer,” the cat said. It refused to move.

“C’mon, fella, just wanna pet your little head…,” Seth said, trying too hard to sound sweet. “Gonna give you some skritchies… maybe talk to your owner… c’mon…”

The cat watched him for a few moments, then unceremoniously walked back into the darkness.

“Aw, c’mon!” Seth said in annoyance as he struggled to free his hand from the gate. “I just wanna…”

“Seth,” Allan’s voice said firmly from behind him. “Let her go for now.”

“But I - agh!” Seth shook his now freed hand in the air, then flexed his fingers to make sure nothing was broken. I need to know if I’m right-”

“You will. Just… give her some time. We’re gonna be watching this place, so if something happens, you’ll know. And if there’s another attack, she’ll probably show up. Hopefully.” Allan put his hand on Seth’s shoulder and lowered his voice. “Think of it from her POV. This is a lot for her to handle, if it’s truly her. We don’t want to give her more stress, okay?”

Seth sighed and slowly nodded. Allan was right - a lot had changed, a lot of people that both he & Val cared about were gone, and a lot more time had passed for him & his world than for her. Coupled with the behavior pattern in the case file, it was obvious to see that she was having a hard time adapting. If he was in that situation, he’d react the same way; a few years ago, he practically did. He walked slowly back towards the investigation team with his boss, leaving behind the Boscov’s. A direct reunion would simply have to wait.

—--------------

By the time everyone had left and the mall had returned to its silent decay, it was dusk again. Val had endured hours of the full gamut of hungry cat tactics - screaming, innocent begging, screaming, frustrated nipping, screaming, faux-affectionate snuggling, screaming, deliberate ignoring, and screaming. She hated making Owen wait so long, but she was genuinely worried that if the people investigating saw her cat roaming around, they’d take him to some shelter. At best. Even if he didn’t appreciate or even understand it, protecting Owen was literally all Val had.

Well, not quite. The conversations she had heard confirmed it - Seth was here. He had been here last night, he had come back today, and he’d probably keep returning until they could talk. That was something Val just couldn’t bring herself to do. He’d have too much bad news, that she had already learned, and he’d pepper her with questions that she didn’t want to answer. It was too much for her already. She needed to focus on other concerns.

The first order of business was to make sure that no one had found Owen’s food stash. Val hurried to the food court; while she had been hiding, the investigators had strong “DO NOT CROSS” tape around the broken railings and the fountain ruins. She stopped to survey the damage. Pieces of bent piping were scattered around the bottom, now with twice as much broken tile and a healthy coating of her blood. Several of the planters had been knocked to the ground as well. Char marks dotted the walls surrounding the fountain, obscuring the once prominent labelscars from the previous tenants. At least the path to the food court was still open enough to reach it.

Val glanced down at the floor. The plant with the heart-shaped leaves was still there, alive and well despite a coating of dust from the chaos around it. She laughed to herself in a manner mostly devoid of actual joy; of course it was still there, just like she was.

“Meer!”

Owen trotted up to Val’s side and stared at her with what she thought was a sour expression.

“Okay, okay…,” Val said as she resumed her walk to the food court. “But we’re taking it all back to Boscov’s so this doesn’t happen again.” She stepped gingerly around the plant and continued the walk, shadowed by the expectant gray cat.

The food court appeared to be largely untouched, to Val’s relief. When she saw the middle-aged man - rather, the now middle-aged Seth - not only call her cat over but successfully guess his name, she was worried that he would try to use Owen to get to her. She wouldn’t put it past him to steal her kitty’s food or set out a trap & use him as a hostage or a negotiation tactic. She knew that Seth never really noticed anything that she liked or disliked, which was only marginally better than using them against her like his friends did. And hopefully he wouldn’t think to harm an innocent pet just to get her attention. But he wasn’t the only person at the scene earlier, so who’s to say that his colleagues wouldn’t be that cruel? She jumped over the counter of a former pretzel shop and ducked below to get to the cupboard where she had stashed her cat food.

In front of the cans & bottles of water she had stored, there was a neat little stack consisting of a fabric-covered book, a shoebox, and a folded piece of paper. Val idly picked up the paper; the outside had her name written on it in somewhat familiar handwriting. She took a deep breath and opened it.

Hey Val -

I know I’m the last person that you’ll want to see, I get it. I want to talk to you & apologize for everything. That includes reading your old journal, which I had to do for work. I’m sorry for that & for a lot of other things.

If you don’t want to talk, I understand. But if you do, I’ll be at home. I left your journal for you, along with a pen & some new shoes. The thought of being barefoot in this place makes my skin crawl.

Please stop by anytime if you want to talk. And please be careful.

Love, Seth

Val exhaled a sound somewhere between a sigh and a grumble. There wasn’t much choice, was there? If she didn’t want to talk to Seth, odds were that the investigators would return; they would probably be far less obliging, more likely to take her by force for interrogation or experimentation. Even if she was afraid of any questions Seth might have or of getting into a fight with him, a talk with him was bound to be better than a glorified arrest. “Better the devil you know” and all that.

The sudden sensation of cat teeth gently prodding at the skin on her legs pulled Val out of her thoughts. Owen was biting her calf - not hard enough to break skin but just enough to get her attention. His eyes stared directly at her the entire time. She folded the note into a small rectangle and tucked it into her side pocket, then gave Owen a pet to get him to stop.

“Okay, okay,” Val said. “Gimme a sec.”

She pulled out the shoebox and lifted the hinged lid; inside was a new pair of slip-on black canvas sneakers with white soles. These were the kind of shoes that she liked - simple, comfy, and cute but not showy. Seth probably got them because they were a safe bet, though, not because he actually thought she’d like them. After dusting off the excess debris from the soles of her feet, she slipped on the shoes, then stared at them and wiggled her toes a bit. Almost made her feel like a normal person again.

Val then picked up the cat supplies and stacked them in the box; she balanced the journal on top and hooked the pen left next to it onto the bib of her overalls. Then she stood up, her feet not low-key painful for the first time in days.

“Let’s go, boy,” she said. Maybe, while she watched her cat eat, she could figure out her next step.

—----------------

There was no light aside from stars. So many stars. They were more plentiful than she had ever seen before, even more so than out in the woods; while most had a whitish tint, there were some that twinkled with gentle pastel tones that shifted randomly among the stellar clouds. Around her was water, inky yet warm, keeping her afloat and facing the stars. The water was almost indistinguishable from the sky, except for the ripples that emanated from around her body, not so much a reflection as an extension. Soft waves rocked against her - not tidal, not the result of anything else moving, just… happening. And all around it was serenely quiet.

Val never gave it much thought while she was in that place, but now that she had been forced to leave it, she missed it. Desperately.

Sleep wasn’t a necessity, and it definitely didn’t bring her that same sense of comfort & tranquility; if anything, sleeping just made her more upset, since it let her mind dredge up the things that she deliberately tried to avoid. Instead, she had discovered the “delights” of being awake at all times and thus learned how deep her sense of boredom could get. Hence the earlier exit attempts, at least to a degree.

Once settled into the Boscov’s with a fed & calmed cat, Val had tried to read her old journal. The last entry - January 12th - just brought back bad memories of Deanna and of the destruction of her proudest creation. She briefly tried to write a new entry, but after sitting with the tip of the pen on the date line for entirely too long, she gave up and left nothing on the page but an accidental cluster of ink dots. Finally, she decided to go explore the back rooms to entertain herself; her eyes could handle the lack of light, and it was bound to be more interesting than the empty displays on the sales floor. She managed to find two things - a tattered silk scarf that could double as a cat toy and a leather messenger bag with an inexplicably high price. After some thought, she theorized that the bag had probably been stashed there for an employee to pilfer, and she appreciated that it had been hidden so well that it had survived to this point. But other than these two objects, it was devoid of anything interesting. She gave up on this little “adventure” and returned to the body of the store.

Val settled into her “campsite” by the former candy counter, where Owen was curled up asleep on the long-neglected carpet. She quietly opened the bag and stashed away the remaining few cans of cat food, the last water bottle, the scarf, and her old journal. That way, she had everything together and organized in case she had to relocate again. And she half-suspected that she did as she kept quietly mulling over the invitation in Seth’s note.

On one hand, it would mean a proper environment to live in, one with proper furniture & fixtures, where she wouldn’t have to worry about Owen being neglected. On the other hand, it would make Seth an easier target, aside from how nerve-wracking the prospect of directly talking to him might be. At least one of the Twelve Traitors was here, and Val doubted that she was alone. They had already endangered him once; she definitely didn’t want a repeat.

“Gah!”

The unwelcomely familiar pain from Hydrangea’s arrival struck Val again, now centralized in the side of her head. She grabbed the spot that stung the most and fell to her knees, catching herself with an audible palm slap that startled Owen from his sleep. Through the throbbing, one thought went through her mind - You can’t stay here. They know you’re here & so do those other guys. You gotta move.

Even though her legs were trembling from shock & pain, Val stood up and steeled herself. In one smooth swoop, she grabbed her bag in one arm and Owen in the other, then sprinted to the back rooms; making her way swiftly to the first floor, she carefully maneuvered through a broken delivery truck gate. Outside of the mall, temporary chain link fencing had been erected around the perimeter, roughly ten feet tall and with caution signs attached every few feet. She ran to gather momentum, then jumped over the fence. Neither the jump nor the landing were what could be considered graceful, but Val didn’t care. She ran to a darkened street lamp in the parking lot, where she dropped the bag and pulled out the scarf. Then, as best she could, she tied one end around Owen’s neck & the other around a gap at the base of the lamp. Owen looked at her with a mix of confusion and betrayal.

Val hastily patted his head. “Sorry, buddy, but this is the safest place for you,” she said, even though she was sure he couldn’t understand her. “I know you’ll get free if you need to. I’ll be back.” She paused. “Hopefully.” She gave him a quick kiss on the head, then hurried back into the mall.

—--------------------

It didn’t take long for Val to track down the source of her pain. Hydrangea was back, surveying the damage to the fountain. She wasn’t alone this time, either. Another young woman of the same age and build was with her, standing by with crossed arms. She had a natural fairness to her skin tone and slick bluish-black hair cut into a bob. Her ankle boots & the detached sleeves on her folded arms were similar in color to her hair but had a far thicker & shinier texture, as though they would be hard to the touch. A short transparent capelet - white with black polka dots - hung over her upper torso; underneath was a red minidress of a material similar to the boots & sleeves but less rigid, accessorized with translucent leggings of blue-black scattered with white spots. A withering multi-layered white flower held the clasp on her capelet shut, its edges starting to brown. This gave Val one hint as to the newcomer’s name.

Peony. The former Phantom Peony.

Val stealthily ducked into a back office corridor; she had to stay somewhere that would let her safely observe the pair while not being noticed. And given that both of them had the same boosted senses that she did, that would take some effort. She held her breath and focused on the two as they examined the fountain.

“Impressive how you managed to miss with this one,” Peony said. “All this and you couldn’t even kill her.”

“I should’ve killed her!” Hydrangea argued. “I mean, look at this!” She gestured to the dent on the second floor. “Look at this!” She then gestured to the fountain. “Both of these were kill shots! If her neck didn’t snap, she should’ve bled out on this thing! Look at all this…” She swiped her two forefingers through the remnants of a deeper puddle of Val’s blood and held them up to Peony’s face. “Anyone else would be dead!”

Peony sneered in disgust at her companion’s blood-dipped fingers and pulled away from them. After a moment, Hydrangea looked at them again, then abruptly licked them

Val grimaced.

“It tastes normal…” Hydrangea said. “What gives with that girl?”

“She’s still here,” Peony said. “She’s not gonna go anywhere with normal people.”

“People come in here, though,” Hydrangea countered. “You’d think they were coming to visit ancient ruins or something…”

Peony pulled her right arm out from under her capelet and held her chin in thought. “Say - did this hurt? I know it didn’t kill her, but did she show any pain?”

Val felt her stomach drop. She had tried to bluff her way through last night’s attack, but the reflexive reaction to hitting the wall had been a slip. When she struck that, she had felt vertebrae shattering and innards rupturing in a blinding moment of agony that would have mercifully ended for anyone else. Yet she wasn’t just still alive, she was awake; only the sudden paralysis of her lungs kept her from screaming as the fountain’s jagged pipe sculpture tore through her. The only thing that kept her warm after so much of her own blood seep out of her body & onto the tile was anger - anger that someone was being threatened. Anger that she had been so thoroughly ambushed. Anger that they were back. That anger had allowed her to power through even the most painful bite from a Seeded Beast, and it served her well enough last night to eke out a “win”. Only Val was allowed to get hurt, and only Val was allowed to inflict that pain on herself.

“I think so… She flinched at my whip,” Hydrangea said.

“Well then,” Peony said, sounding suspiciously brighter. “I think I know what to do.”

With a stifled inhalation, Val started to step back as quietly as possible. She had to at least stay out of their way; if they tried to leave, she’d transform and confront them, since if they got out of this area they could potentially be a threat to others. But there was no way to transform without notice, so she was stuck without the majority of her skills & abilities. She had just started further back when she felt a small, sharp bite on her left calf.

A horse fly was latched onto her, digging its mandibles deep into her skin. She tried to knock it off, but its bite was too tight & it ignored her entirely. Then another one bit her right leg, on the side of her knee, just as fiercely. An odd writhing sensation started to crawl beneath her skin; this escalated into deep burning pain followed by spreading weakness. Bruises began to fan out along her legs, and she stumbled to the ground, unable to support her own weight. As the skin finally broke, oddly large maggots crawled to the surface, eating the edges of her wounds. Val stared in horror; she could see past the blood into her bones, where even more maggots were agonizingly chewing to get to the marrow. Blood and stray bits of tendon & muscle matter poured out onto the floor and saturated her shorts & shoes.

Not even the burning had hurt this much. Val choked back her screams, but she couldn’t stop her eyes from tearing in pain. She struggled to speak enough to say the words, to save herself by transforming.

Unfortunately, a white leather whip lashed around her throat & jaw before she could. She suddenly found herself violently pulled backwards, through the corridor and into the mall. By the time she had regained her bearings enough to assess her situation, she was being held up by the whip, now wound around the second floor railing, her ravaged & skeletal legs dangling helplessly over the floor. The two Traitors stared at her with satisfied expressions. She desperately grabbed at the whip around her neck to get even a little bit of air.

“Thanks, Peony,” Hydrangea said. “That was a good idea.”

“Of course it was,” Peony responded. “My babies always do a good job.” She looked at Val with a smug smile. Her eyes were glittering, iridescent pools of black, like the shell of an insect. “You can transform if you want. Go out with your boots on… so to speak.”

Val pulled harder on the whip and desperately gasped. Electricity couldn’t stop them; if it could, she would have been done with Hydrangea and been able to catch her, instead of watching her escape. She had no choice but to fall back on an option that she didn’t want to use. Using it was almost taboo to her. But if she wanted to stop them from hurting others, she had to do it.

“Jenn… sorry…,” Val croaked.

“What was that? Couldn’t hear you,” Peony said with a giggle.

“Viola… ODORATA!”

An eruption of light & sound knocked the two attackers backwards and snapped the whip. Val was transformed, but in lieu of her usual footwear, she was held standing by what looked like white metal armored boots with bracers along her thighs. Thus, she could stand, but she couldn’t move; it would simply take too long for the damage done to her lower legs to heal. White metal gauntlets were over her gloves & forearms as well. Each had long curved blades jutting out from the backs of the hand-covering sections, sharp & sturdy. For making Val use these, she promised herself then & there that she’d never let them leave this mall under any circumstances.

“You - you thief!” Hydrangea shouted as she scrambled to her feet. Peony stood behind her, using her colleague as a shield. “You grave-robbing thief!”

“So that’s your limit?” Val responded coldly. These were the last people that she wanted to lecture her. She raised her arms over her head, the blades crossed but not touching, then swiftly pulled them down to let the tips of the blades touch. “Violet Vibration!”

A concentrated burst of sound, not unlike the tone of a tuning fork, fired towards the two Traitors, knocking them back into the wall. The metal fixtures in the mall, from the railings & fountain pipes to the door frames & support beams, began to shake in time to the vibration wave. As the quaking escalated in intensity, chunks of the structure started to fall; gradually, the second floor began to loosen and slide towards the first.

“Dahlia?! Dahlia!” Peony shouted in a panic, oblivious to Hydrangea’s struggle to stand. “Get us out of here!”

The inky shadows from the previous night bubbled up from underneath the two. They both sank into them in a hurried, inelegant scramble. Val glared as the last of the shadows faded into the standard level of dimness, then lowered her arms numbly to her side.

Hydrangea wasn’t wrong - she was a grave-robbing thief. Her own sister’s grave, no less. The biggest taboo among the Phantom Garden was stealing another’s Atrium Seed, and she had broken it. Val hadn’t meant to steal Jenn’s powers. It was just that all she had left her twin was a jagged half of her Atrium Seed, shattered when she was mortally wounded. Jenn had entrusted it to her, and Val had used its power in what she had thought would be her final stand. She never truly meant to use it again, yet she had succumbed to desperation.

She felt dirty. Disgusting. A grave robber. A weakling still coasting in the wake of her stronger, more competent sister. A vile unkillable cockroach who barely counted as human now. Only good for fighting until she literally burns out again. Tears of revulsion & rage & helplessness started to rush down Val’s face.

As she stood immobile in her metal boots, sobbing wordlessly, the Triboro Mall fully collapsed around and above her.

—----------------

It was around 9PM when Seth arrived at the scene. The sensors installed by the Foundation had alerted him that something had happened at the mall, but he had expected a fight at most, if not just Val or her cat tampering with them out of curiosity. He definitely didn’t expect the collapsed structure that greeted him within the fencing. He hastily parked his car and ran over to the barrier, staring at the wreckage in disbelief.

“Waaaaooooohhh…”

The long, forlorn yowl pulled Seth’s attention to a lamp post not too far from the fence. There, he saw a messenger bag and a tied-up cat. Val’s cat - Owen. He thrashed and pawed at the makeshift red leash around his neck, then looked at Seth with a mix of desperation & disdain. Out of all the things Val would take the time to do, she had taken the time to get her cat to safety. 

Seth ran back to his car and opened the trunk; he then hurried towards Owen with a small plastic carrier cage. The cat’s ears flattened.

“Ssh… I know this isn’t great, kitty,” Seth said as he opened the door. “But I gotta get you outta here, and she’s gonna want to see you.”

He quickly ushered Owen into the cage and slammed the door shut, the red fabric still tied to the post. He untied it, then awkwardly pulled the “collar” end off from through the grate, getting some light scratches for his troubles. After pulling the fabric out of the cage, he jammed it into the messenger bag and carried both to the side of his car. Now Seth could concentrate on finding Val. He dashed off to the opposite side of the wreckage on foot. There were already personnel there, along with the local police & fire liaisons to the Foundation, on the other side. Some were using heat sensing equipment, some were making video records of the scene, and some were moving the debris by hand. As Seth entered through the fence, he saw a couple of people wheeling a stretcher towards a parked ambulance. Immediately, he took off in a run and approached the lady at its head.

“Did you find her?!” Seth blurted out, ignoring the lady’s attempts to speak. “Is she okay?!”

“Whoa, whoa, wait,” the lady said, raising her hands to stop him.

“I’m the case manager… from Lambert…,” Seth explained as he caught his breath.

He glanced down at the stretcher as best he could. Val was indeed on it, but she wasn’t awake. Several wounds & bruises marred her face underneath a breathing mask, and the sheet that covered her body had stains of blood seeping through from other unseen injuries. This was worse than any of the times he had seen her come home after a confrontation with Deanna; in a way, it was worse than the sightings in the case file, since this was far less abstract. He wanted nothing more than to hug her and tell her everything would be fine, even if he was sure he was the last person she’d like to do so.

“We already got the call from Director Vernon,” the lady said. “He said bring anyone we find to the facilities for treatment. He’s really gonna want to see her… cuz of her legs.”

“What about her legs?” Seth asked.

“Well… when we found her, they were down to the bone, and the bones had been damaged, too. But just getting her on the bed to stabilize her… they started growing back. We have the blanket raised so they don’t get irritated, but last I looked, muscle tissue was just starting to regrow. And that’s just the easiest part to see. Given her injuries, this girl should be dead.”

“She, uh… she has a knack for surviving things,” Seth said. “That’s why I have her case.”

“Well, it’s our job to help her with that, so if you don’t mind…,” the lady said. She signaled to the man at the foot end of the stretcher, and the two resumed their walk to the ambulance.

Seth watched numbly as they left the scene, sirens running. Once again, his relative lack of experience with & distaste for field work was making itself known; this was probably the most incompetent and useless he had felt since he had been told his position had only been given to him because of his stepdad. He was the last on the scene, he had no idea what to do, he was surrounded by people who did know what they’re doing, and he had no real authority or presence. All he had been able to do was rescue a cat.

He sighed and trudged back to his car. Whatever the competent people could find would be reported to him in the morning. Right at that moment, he wanted to make sure that he was there for Val. He had to start re-earning her trust. He looked at the cat in the crate as it stared up at him warily; making sure she and her kitty were comfortable after all of this was probably a good start.

“Let’s go, little guy,” Seth said as he opened the back door of his car. He put the bag on the seat, then picked up the crate. The cat gave him a loud hiss. Not a good sign. “Shush, we’re going somewhere safe. You can keep her company.”

Seth placed the cat crate on the floor of the back seat, then got in the driver’s seat. He sped out of the lot; if he was lucky, he wouldn’t be too far behind the ambulance heading for the Foundation. But he also knew that luck wasn’t too fond of him.

—------------------

Val didn’t expect to find herself back at the camp, yet there she was.

When the Phantom Garden was gathered, they were divided into groups; each group was to be mentored by an older, more experienced member. They only had two weeks upon arriving at the camp to learn & train before they’d have to take to the battlefield. That was the camp - a place between worlds, created solely to stop the Seeded Beasts at their source. All this had been explained upon their departure from their home and again on arriving within the Atrium. However, even at that point, the full reality - that they were basically in magical girl boot camp - hadn’t hit everyone.

But Val remembered where it all ultimately led, even though those around her clearly had no idea. Just seeing them again made her ache to her core.

Phantom Marigold, who fled to who knows where, unable to take the carnage. The uncertainty of her fate was the worst part, but it no doubt ended like the rest.

Phantom Trillium, the shield bearer, already shaking in terror at the prospect of training. Yet her shields never fell, at least until she did.

Phantom Dicentra, who wanted to be the morale booster who buoyed everyone’s spirits. She was the first to fall.

Phantom Coralbelle, who Val never wanted to see again.

Phantom Osmanthus, who seemed to be too fussy and pampered for such a task. Yet she had embraced it the tightest and was one of the fiercest fighters until the end.

And next to her, the other Phantom Violet - Jenn. Her stronger, smarter, more sociable twin.

At the center was Phantom Iris, their mentor, a Japanese woman who appeared to be about college age. She seemed no-nonsense at first glance, but there was something of a sisterly aura to her. Someone they could depend on and who would help them when needed.

All of them wore outfits similar to Val’s, albeit in different color palettes and with variations in footwear & arm gear. When transformed, they all sported similar grass green hair as well, albeit each had a unique style. Each had a choker that bore a small pendant of colorful petrified wood, similar in style to the one Val wore with its empty gold frame. This uniform marked them as part of the Phantom Garden and served to unify them, at least superficially.

Iris was speaking, but Val couldn’t hear anything. Even when she concentrated as hard as she could, she couldn’t pick up a single sound coming from her mentor, not even the sound of her footsteps. She remembered this; she knew everything that had been said. Why was it silent now?

Even the colors around her seemed duller. The Atrium was a beautiful place - a forest of infinitely tall trees in an unearthly kaleidoscope of colors; its floor was thick with soft grasses & clover, and streams of clear yet dark sparkling water flowed gently, resembling a liquid starfield. The canopy still somehow allowed ample light to reach them on the ground, yet it would be replaced by a velvety starry sky dotted with pastel twinkling lights. Despite being thoroughly unnatural compared to an earthly forest, it somehow felt safe & warm & welcoming. But at this moment, Val found it to be washed out and to have gone eerily still.

Val looked around at her teammates. Trillium was wailing and trying to get out of training, but once again, there was no sound to be heard. Dicentra started to talk, but she too was silent. Val decided to do a test. She stood up and walked over to Iris, who was waiting to resume her instructions once Trillium had calmed herself.

“Hey,” Val said firmly to Iris. “Hey!” She tried to touch her shoulder, but Iris casually stepped out of the way as she continued her lecture. Val turned to her teammates. “Can anyone hear me?”

“Maybe they don’t want to hear you.”

That was Jenn’s voice.

Val looked at where her twin was seated; she was the only one looking directly at her, while the others all diligently paid attention to Iris. Despite the statement, Jenn had a familiarly sweet smile on her face. She had always been the cuter sister, ever since childhood. While technically identical, her freckled cheeks and more toned athletic build contrasted with Val’s plain face and too-thick thighs & hips. Even their eyes were different - Jenn’s were a warm kindly brown, while Val’s were a cold weary gray. While they had identical uniforms, Jenn had been given a much more versatile toolset, and her hair was way more elaborate & elegant with its thick ponytail & accent braids. As much as she loved her sister, as much as she tried not to be jealous, Val still felt a pang of it on occasion. And the blunt sudden words Jenn had spoken weren’t helping that.

“Jenn?” Val asked as she walked over to her. Jenn smiled and patted to invite her to the seat beside her, which Val slowly took. “Why did-”

“Oh, I think you know,” Jenn interrupted, her tone still oddly sweet.

“Your Atrium Seed is a symbol of your bond and worthiness to be chosen by the Atrium,” Iris’s voice suddenly said. “Think of it as part of your soul. It was made just for you and reflective of your inner self, of your duties as a protector. You should never give it away, and you definitely shouldn’t take someone else’s.”

“That’d be, like, stealing someone’s soul, right?” Trillium asked, her voice shaking. She abruptly covered her head as if protecting herself, raising her voice to a shout. “Aaaahhh, I don’t wanna lose my soul!”

“It’s okay, Trill,” Dicentra said, placing a hand gently on Trillium’s shoulder. “I’m sure none of us would do something like that.”

That’s not how this went, Val thought. No one really said anything. What is going on here…?

“You can’t even lend it out to a friend?” Marigold asked. “Even if they need help?”

“Think of it like this,” Osmanthus said. “What if that friend just… decided to keep it after that? There’s no guarantee they’ll return it. People can be pretty selfish.”

“Yep…,” Coralbelle added. “That'd be worse than being a traitor, probably.”

“Wow, looks like everyone here has your number, Val,” Jenn said, tone still chipper. “Here I was thinking you kept what was left as a keepsake. But you wanted my abilities all along, right?”

Val’s stomach lurched. “No! Never in a million years!”

“You always wanted to get in there and mix it up, just like those stupid games you played or those dumb wrestlers or those awful comics. But you couldn’t do that with your little bow & arrows. So you waited till I was gone to steal mine for yourself. Right?”

By now, the other’s conversation had stopped; they had all turned their attention to Val, making her even more confused & panicked. Iris glared sternly at her. Dicentra looked vaguely sad, while Trillium stared at her with visible fear. Osmanthus had a weary expression of disappointment, while Coralbelle had a smirk. Marigold seemed both confused and alarmed. And all the while, Jenn just… smiled at Val. Her sense of disturbance spiked. She wanted nothing more than to flee, but no matter what she thought or tried, she couldn’t move from her seat at all.

“Jenn, please, you know I’d never do that unless I had no choice,” Val explained, almost pleading. “I - I’m sorry. I was backed into a corner the first time, and that second on-”

“You ate it, Val,” Jenn said, her tone a little firmer. “You ate your Seed and what was left of mine like the pig you are, and you didn’t even have the decency to die after you were done.” She placed her face alongside Val’s and spoke directly into her ear. “Mom was right about you.”

Those words hurt Val worse than any wound.

—---------------

“Ah!” Val gasped. She lay still for a moment, catching her breath, before she finally started to take in her surroundings.

She was on a bed - not the cushiest variety but soft nonetheless. A fairly firm pillow was under her head, and a thin blanket had been draped over her chest & torso, leaving her bare legs exposed. She felt something on her face that tickled her nose and was cool to the touch, which she eventually realized was an oxygen tube. Her arms had been deliberately placed on top of the blanket so her right arm could be hooked to an IV & her left to a pulse monitor. As she tried to sit up, she felt the bed starting to move underneath her, folding into a slight seated position. Her overly worn clothes were gone, replaced by a cotton backless gown.

Val clearly knew a hospital set up when she saw it, and this qualified.

She looked at her now seemingly unharmed legs. They felt fine, and they moved when she wanted them to do so, indicating that there probably wasn’t any lasting damage. She could only imagine what the staff thought of her. Surely no other patient could regrow skeletonized lower legs. Then she looked at the plastic ID bracelet on her wrist. It read:

• POLLARD, VALERIE A
• CASE: 123551-42511545
• CONTACT AGENT: NEWMAN

As she tried to decipher the bracelet, a door to her right side opened. Owen trotted in and immediately hopped onto her lap, purring loudly & headbutting her hands. That relief that he was okay buoyed her considerably; even if it wasn’t the case, Val had decided that her true mission was to protect this cat & be his companion. It was a much nicer option than facing the Traitors again.

Little by little, however, a few nagging thoughts crept into Val’s head, churning in her mind as she petted her cat. First, there was the matter of her legs. A hospital would no doubt try to mend or, if no other options seemed feasible, amputate them; instead, this facility was apparently content to let them heal on their own, as though they knew that they were dealing with something unnatural. That same laissez faire approach had been taken to her other injuries as well. She distinctly remembered feeling something drop through the back of her neck and poke out of her chest during the mall’s collapse, but there was no evidence of surgery having been done. The only reason she had blacked out was sheer exhaustion from the combination of blood loss, asphyxiation, & plain old pain. All of those things needed treatment, yet she had just been put into a bed with minimal fluids & sensors. As if they knew she’d be fine.

Then there was the matter of the ID bracelet. There was no way for the staff to know Val’s full name; maybe they could guess her first name if they’d found her bag with her old journal, but the rest wouldn’t be in there. And the “contact” was listed as “Newman”. Yes, it was a somewhat common name, but it was also the name of her stepfamily. Given that she’d seen Seth earlier, either they knew him or he had found her - maybe a little of both. But a normal hospital would probably have listed her as a “Jane Doe” of some sort.

Finally, there was Owen. It was doubtful that a regular hospital would let her keep a pet nearby. The gently rumbling ball of fur on her lap would be considered too unsanitary to be loose in a hospital, yet he had been allowed to see her once she was awake.

That place. That weird place where her dad worked. That’s where she was.

“Val?”

In the light of the door was a figure, that of a lean man, probably middle-aged by this point. But even if the glare behind him obscured any of his features, Val recognized his voice. She couldn’t avoid it anymore - it was time to talk to Seth.

“Are you awake?” he asked.

“Yeah…,” she replied uncertainly.

“Is it okay if I turn on some lights?”

“Yeah, I guess…”

Gradually, the illumination in the room brightened, a much more pleasant experience than the neon lights she had expected. Once she adjusted to the brightness, she could see Seth by the open doorway. She knew, from having seen him earlier and from her own fact finding, that much more time had passed for him than for her. He wasn’t the first example of this she had seen, either. But seeing him in his casual clothes with bags under his eyes & flecks of gray in his facial hair, looking as though he was in the same age bracket as their parents, was surprisingly jarring to her. The awkward half-smile on his face made things worse.

There really wasn’t any choice now. They finally had to talk. She took a deep breath and started to slowly pet Owen’s back with her right hand.

“Can I sit and talk a bit?” Seth asked as he gently closed the door.

Val glanced to the left of the bed, where a simple chair had been placed for any potential visitors. “Sure.”

Seth walked over, adjusted the chair’s angle so that he could see Val better, and sat down. He looked at her and awkwardly slapped his hands on his knees; for some reason, he was as anxious as she was, even though she was the one with the weight on her back.

“So… are you feeling okay?” Seth asked.

“More or less, yeah,” Val replied.

“Are you hungry? I can get you something.”

Val tightened the thin blanket in her left hand; honesty was probably the best way to handle this talk. “It’s okay, I don’t need to eat anymore. It’s… weird.”

“Oh. But do you want anything?”

“I dunno… Seth, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?”

“I know you saw me hit the fountain, and you probably saw the mess I made of myself… Did you see anything else?”

Seth sighed. “I saw the train. The case file has descriptions but no photos. Look, Val-” He picked up her left hand and held it between his hands, trying to avoid jarring the pulse sensor. “Before we go any further, I just wanna say -” He stared directly into Val’s eyes; their teariness made him look even more tired to her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about being a shitty brother and thinking my friends actually would listen and not actually helping you. I know you probably don’t believe me, but I really am sorry.”

Val mulled this over in her head, not sure how to respond. Her failure to forgive enough to say a final goodbye was one of her many mistakes that played on repeat in her mind more times than she could count. She was sure that Seth had given up caring about her as a result and had been ready to write him off as a potential contact. And given that he was really the only person left that she could readily contact, she had dreaded this moment. But she knew that she couldn’t just clam up or ignore him now that this moment was here. If he could say what he’d said, she had to find some strength to do the same.

“I- uh…, I’m the one who should be sorry,” Val started. “I should’ve said goodbye cuz I didn’t really know what I was getting into. And I scared everyone when I ran away, and when I flipped, and I even ruined the shoes you got… I’m just a dumbass, and I’m sorry…” Her voice started to crack. Like she had expected, the first pebble of regret & guilt was about to turn into an avalanche.

“Don’t be upset, okay?” Seth said, squeezing her hand a little tighter. “None of the stuff that happened was your fault - it’s mine cuz I was a shitty brother and cuz I never really saw what my friends were actually like. And I don’t know what happened after you left, but if you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t make you. I’ll tell ‘em not to bother you for a report.”

“Not right now… I can’t do it right now,” Val said weakly. “Coming back where I came from, after I lost Jenn and all my friends… and then there’s like no one here… I’m just…” Val looked at him and put her right hand on top of his hands. “I’m so glad you’re still here, Seth.” She paused briefly, glimpsing the plastic tubing that now draped over her cat’s head. “I’d hug you, but there’s the line… and Owen… so…”

Seth stood up from the seat and gave Val an awkward sideways hug around the shoulders. She placed her hands on his arms as best she could to return the gesture. It had been so long since Val had last felt this secure; even before her departure, the last time had been when she was staying with someone briefly while she had run away from home, and he clearly hadn’t mirrored her feelings. This hug brought her back to moments that were bittersweet - her father after the divorce, promising that he loved her; Jenn, after that last shared birthday, assuring her that their mother was wrong. With this hug, Seth was telling her what they had. Val was still welcomed, she was still human, and she was still family. Despite herself, she found that she had started crying.

“Oh no, don’t you start,” Seth said with a laugh in his voice. “If you start, I’ll start.” He stepped away and wiped a couple tears from his eyes, despite the smile on his face.

“Too late,” Val said with a lighter tone as well. She wiped a few tears away with her palm and absently resumed petting Owen; he looked at her indignantly for such a rude gesture. “So… what now?”

“Well…,” Seth started as he returned to his seat. “They’re gonna have you stay here for a bit, just till I put your room together at home. It’s gonna be in one of the suites, though. They’re like little apartments. I told ‘em to make sure there’s cat stuff in there, too. They’ll probably wanna do medical tests-”

Val grimaced. Seth held up his hands as if to stop her train of thought.

“- buuuut only when I can go with you and only with permission. They’re gonna want a report, too, about everything, but again, I told ‘em not to pressure or upset you.”

“About everything,” Val repeated warily.

“Yeah, everything that happened to you after you left. They can cool their heels till you’re ready. From what you’ve said, it… uh… it sounded rough.”

“That’s a good word for it, yeah.”

“Then I won’t pry, and I won’t let them pry, either,” Seth said. He gave Val a gentle pat on the shoulder, then stood up from his seat. “It’s almost midnight, and I’m running on fumes. You don’t mind if I leave, do you?”

“No…,” Val said. A small part of her did, but she understood that, unlike her, normal people needed sleep. “So long as Owen can stay.”

“Owen? That’s his name?... Huh, I guess right.”

“Yeah…” After you guessed super wrong and thought I’d name him after the most annoying dude ever…, she thought to herself. She smiled slightly as she continued to pet her cat. “He kinda keeps me calm.”

“He knew when you were awake. Kept pawing at the door. Pretty good for a kitty.” Seth gave Owen a light pat on his back; the cat’s tail snapped quickly, like a whip. “They’ll probably have your suite ready by breakfast, and then I’ll come over around lunchtime. That work?”

“Yeah. That’ll give you time to rest a bit.” Val resisted the urge to add “cuz you’re still normal” to her reply, even though it was true.

Seth leaned over for another sideways hug. “You rest and relax till then, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay, see you tomorrow,” Val said, again awkwardly hugging him back.

She watched as Seth dimmed the lights in the room back to sleep conducive levels and waved at her before closing the door. After waving back, Val’s hand flopped onto the bed. A strange sense of numbness hit her, as though multiple emotions were somehow negating each other. She was relieved that Seth had apologized and that soon she could go home. Yet, at the same time, this was just one meeting with him; so much time had passed for him that, as much as they both wanted to believe otherwise, he was basically a stranger. Things that were still raw wounds for her had mended long ago for him. And he was really all she had besides Owen. How much of this was a sincere happiness that she was back, versus a desire to keep up appearances? Val’s first reunion with a familiar face hadn’t gone particularly well, so why should this one?

The prospect of medical tests didn’t sound particularly good, either. There was so little that she knew about this place that her guard refused to drop. And then there was the matter of figuring out why the Traitors were reappearing on top of that, something that would no doubt complicate everything further.

Val leaned back against the pillow and stared up at the darkened ceiling tiles. There was so much more to worry about now…

She closed her eyes and sighed. Maybe, at least for one night, she could return to that sea of pastel stars, if only for a moment.

—-------------

For every place as mundane and earthbound as the Triboro, there are an infinity of places that exist between, within, without, and parallel to them. Strange, undefinable places that will contort themselves should something from a mundane earthbound plane land within them. Even if those things have been warped into something removed from their original nature, these planes would still twist into some semblance of these visitors’ native realities.

Thus the existence of the hall of the Great Aegror. At a glance, it looked like ruins - of an ancient Greek temple, of a formal Victorian skyscraper, of a Gothic cathedral, of an avant-garde concert hall. All at once, it was each of these in a discordant pile of ash-kissed rubble and crumbled roofing, eternally shrouded in hazy dusk. Nothing grew within the cracks of the floor or the gaps in the piles; the very nature of the Great Aegror was antithetical to it. No wind blew to disturb the settled layers of ashen debris. It was a dull, stagnant place - as the Great Aegror favored.

This hall couldn’t be reached by just anyone, only those bound in service to the Great Aegror. Hence, it was serving as a meeting place for the scouting & hunting team.

“You have no idea how tired I am of bailing you out.”

The voice wasn’t particularly harsh or loud, but somehow the monotone made it more distressing to the audience. The source of it was a rather slight young woman, her stiff seated posture on a slab of ruins accentuating her willowy build with oddly square shoulders. She was alarmingly pale, nearly gray, with prominent cheekbones and tightly pursed lips adorned with deep aubergine lipstick; her impossibly black hair - worn in a waved style reminiscent of 1930s glamor & decorated with a wine red spiky flower clip - only made her complexion look even more unnatural. Her attire was as old-fashioned as her hairstyle - an oddly short deep red-purple dress with a skirt that ended midway up her thighs. An antique white square-shaped sailor’s collar topped it, decorated with a long black silk scarf that trailed off into wisps of churning & swirling black energy. Short flared bell sleeves ended just above her elbows, and dainty wrist gloves to match her collar, trimmed with black lace, adorned her hands. Black leather ankle boots with pewter hooks to hold the laces and dark stockings with visible back seams covered her legs. Accenting everything were gaudy bits of jewelry - a choker, rings over her gloves, large clip-on earrings - designed to mimic the flower in her hair. Glassy, solidly lavender pupils with no irises looked out at the two figures before her with tangible judgment.

“Apologies, Dahlia,” Hydrangea said, already kneeling and dipping her head. “It won’t happen again.”

Dahlia - the seated woman - lowered one eyebrow. “I’ll trust you, Hydrangea,” she said. “You understand your role. Now, Peony…”

Peony remained standing, her arms defensively crossed underneath her capelet. “It’s just the one of her,” she said. “Nothing we can’t handle.”

“She’s a distraction, Peony,” Dahlia responded. “We’re here to hunt for offerings, not play with stragglers. The Great Aegror is depending on us.”

“With all due respect, Dahlia,” Hydrangea said as she rose to her feet. “This one isn’t just a straggler. She’s very hardy - and she stole someone’s powers.”

“And she probably looks down on us,” Peony snorted.

“How vile. I guess the Atrium was more desperate than we thought.” Dahlia raised her right hand elegantly to the side of her face and paused in thought. “Can you sense where she is?”

“Not really,” Hydrangea replied. “When I first saw her, I thought she was some vagabond. So I killed her to get to the other person there.”

“But you didn’t kill her,” Peony corrected her, smiling slightly.

“Neither did you,” Hydrangea countered. "I don’t think we can…”

"Then don’t bother with her,” Dahlia said flatly. “Focus on finding sustenance for the Great Aegror. We can’t spread out our range, so we’ll have to work with what’s in this region. I’m sure you can find something to work with. If not, I’ll ask Feral Juniper to assist you.”

Hydrangea looked at Peony with a disgusted expression. Peony sighed and shook her head in annoyance. No one had any real desire to work with that particular added complication. Dahlia noticed the reactions and allowed herself the slightest hint of a smile; sometimes, the threat of an irritating burden is more effective than one of violence.

“Let the straggler focus on cleanup,” Dahlia continued. “Even an immortal foe can be worn down by enough defeat. And if we can do so effectively, we can present her to the Great Aegror.”

“Understood,” Hydrangea said firmly. “I’ll scout out potential targets.”

“Same thing here,” Peony said. “I’m sure my sources have some leads.”

“Very good. I trust your performances will improve,” Dahlia said.

With that, Dahlia threaded some of the black energy wisps from the ends of her scarf between the fingers of her right hand. Through a series of delicate & intricate gestures, she reshaped them into a wrought iron spherical cage with a handle. A vortex of impossibly dark black, with a pinpoint speck of bright white at its core, formed in the center of the cage, making it resemble a bizarre lantern. The shadows along the hall deepened and then retreated, concentrating into a churning puddle in between Dahlia’s seat and the others. She then held her left hand out, arm straight & palm facing upwards; the other two followed suit, although Peony’s form wasn’t as crisp as her comrades.

“Let us repay the mercy of the Great Aegror by showing none to those It abhors,” Dahlia said, as if reciting a benediction. “Let us forever serve as Its heralds and attendants, chosen by It to be Its hands. And let us never falter.”

“Let us never falter,” Hydrangea and Peony replied in unison.

The two lowered their arms and walked calmly into the shadowy puddle, sinking into it and disappearing from sight.