Chapter Text
[ 2005 - Montreal, Canada]
Thanatos watched in bewilderment as Warhead scoped up a handful of snow and brought it up to his face.
"Don't eat that, it's not ice-cream-" She chastised the man dryly. Warhead looking up from the puddle of water in his palms - it had melted in between picking it up and her telling him. Though he was technically faceless in his changer form, the shaker still emoted, but it was harder to discern his thoughts through posture alone.
"I wasn't going to," he assured her, steam wafting from his fingers. In fact, there was a faint shimmer around the man - the cold simply did not affect him. It made him a great bed warmer. Thanatos squinted, but let it go.
"Sure," She agreed halfheartedly, returning her gaze to the large complex looming in the distance. They were currently trudging along a snow covered path of road in the middle of the Canadian forest around Montreal. At their current pace it would take them at least a quarter of an hour to reach their destination. Of course Thanatos could use Strider to deposit them there at any moment, but that would defeat the purpose of going in quietly.
She took a deep breath, and turned back towards Warhead and pointed at the ground.
"Stay put. Stay here. If there is an emergency, you can come to me. BUT! There's basically nothing but masters in there, and I need you to be safe, okay?" Thanatos explained, staring at the swirling cuts in the metal bomb skull that seemed to be Warhead's eyes. "Do you understand?"
"I understand," he echoed. "I remain here. I will come for an emergency."
"Good."
And with that single word she was off, combining her gravity control, which she had picked up during the mission in France, with her flight to accelerate forwards. Snow and dust created billowing clouds under her feet as Ciara zoomed forwards, and she quickly looked down at her hand to make sure Gray Boy's was still active as well. Even if she was always aware of her active powers, having a power-backed sense for it, she liked to double check with her real senses. Her power tended to visualize collected shards in an abstract and non-intuitive manner - that meant certain shards could feel weirdly similar to her. And picking the wrong one in a high-stakes combat situation wasn't a blunder she would allow herself. So she had trained with the ones deemed most powerful and versatile to form a core, an inner circle she could practically utilize in her sleep.
She hadn't yet reached that level of mastery with gravity control, or… some sort of 'apotheosis' according to her power, meaning it would soon make room for more familiar shards, once she reached the villa in the distance. Her feet touched down, and Thanatos jogged a few feet to bleed off speed before walking up to the metal gate separating the property from the forest. She then rang the doorbell and waited. While doing so a small weapon abruptly came to rest on her hip, pulled from space - a baton. Something to be used in close quarters, if necessary. Gravity and flight were dismissed as well, replaced with Musketeer and Gavel.
Tendrils and needles probed at her brain. Nerves plucked like strings, emotions wobbled to and fro. And then it was gone, and it was back again. Thanatos shuddered.
The gate opened and a woman with a severe scowl lunged at Thanatos - a Striker shard. Her hand formed a finger gun, pointing at her assailant, and then a corpse hit the ground, a smoking hole burned through the woman's chest.
"Bang!" The robed cape added (a little late), adjusting her gray hood to better cover her features with its shadow. As she stepped over the slowly cooling body, another shard joined her court and Thanatos lifted a finger.
'Pull.'
Children and women screamed when the entrance was ripped open with a tearing noise.
Focusing on Musketeer, she had a dozen translucent rifles manifest around her, which then began aiming at the steadily growing group of people.
"I'm looking for a certain Cherié Vasil."
Thanatos' head snapped back as a gunshot rang out -
She blinked, and then frowned. The one who shot her died with another hissed, "Bang!"
"Alright, does anyone else want to try?" Thanatos demanded, hands on her hips and irritation visible on her face. The one daring to shoot her hadn't even been the host of a shard. She sneered and raised her voice again. "Where is Cherié?"
Faces scrunched and twisted cruelly - too many powers trying to attack her mind or body or -
The room filled with flashes of light, before an array of unnatural rifles hovered behind her back, aimed at the 'family'. The group had swollen into what was practically a crowd.
"Here's what we're going to do," Thanatos declared, before one of the weapons discharged into a man. "I am going to start killing you all, one at a time, until you give her up or she steps forward."
A villa's main doors banged open, and Thanatos' head snapped towards it — fearterrorlovehatedisgustlustnothingnothing-
The effect stopped, and she closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as the now in monochrome bathed door banged open, again, and again, and again. The wash of intrusive sensations merely increased - if not in intensity, then in volume.
Heartbreaker was not a handsome man. It was public knowledge that he was a conniving, mid-tier-looking piece of shit that most people wouldn't even piss on if he caught on fire. His repeatedly resetting expression changed between a myriad of emotions, caught in a simple, 1 second loop. Thanatos worked her jaw, watching him as her own body jittered with dozens of resets. Her head hurt, and then it stopped, and then it hurt, and then it stopped. She turned back towards the crowd.
"I don't know why this is so hard," Thanatos drawled. And then, with an electric whine, one of her rifles discharged and the corpse of a powerless peon-nobody hit the ground smoking. She was angry. Without Warhead there to latch on to, she found herself unbalanced. All these nothings that she couldn't simply kill to assuage her irritation, all these powers tugging at her, all this fucking noise that the girl couldn't drown out, no matter how loud her music roared through her headphones.
Her eyes closed.
'You crush my heart and say it's nothing-'
The rifles aimed forwards, and a thunderous cannonade fired off. The gathered group of parahumans and sacrifices screamed, but were drowned out the deafening barrage as Thanatos annihilated the house around them, filling the air with the stench of ozone and burnt housing materials.
There was a fair bit of satisfaction coursing through her at the knowledge that a certain Vasil had been forced to watch the entire scene, seeing his work be annihilated.
Thanatos grit her teeth as several powers were gathered like dust swept aside. Her eyes fell on a little girl, a hole in her forehead and bearing a noticeable resemblance to a certain time-looped serial rapist. She hadn't meant to kill that one, nor had she intended to take the power attached to the girl. Ciara was in trouble.
'-spit in my face, my love-'
She opened her eyes. Very carefully, she realigned her rifles, taking aim. Every single parahuman still alive was now being targeted. Several of them had injuries. Nine bodies lay on the floor.
"Three."
The Vasil's seemed too focused on the injured, the dying.
"Two."
A young teen was shoved out of the crowd.
Thanatos smiled at her.
"Well hello there little lady," she cooed, having her gun's muzzles slowly shift away from the compound, and the mess she had left in her wake. A hand was offered, outstretched to the shaking girl. Brown eyes dripped with fearful tears. The second strongest woman in the world didn't feel a thing at the sight. "Take my hand, please. I need your assistance, Cherié Vasil."
'-give it up, I'll leave everyone-'
Shaking fingers met hers, and Thanatos grasped them tightly. She was just about to teleport the both of them away, when her eyes roamed over the monochrome bubble and its prisoner.
She dismissed the shaker effect with a thought, causing a confused Heartbreaker to unceremoniously face-plant into the gravel path leading to the mansion's entrance. Ciara took a moment to appreciate his pained grunt and the sound of his nose's bone losing a fight against the gravel, before shuffling her powers.
A moment later they were gone, a muffled thunderclap left in their wake.
<><><>
Appearing in a clearing half a kilometer away from the compound.
Warhead, the ever loyal hound that he was, had remained in place and not moved an inch. A large circle of wet grass had formed around him as the snow melted in the short time it took for Ciara to complete her mission.
"Warhead," Ciara called out, offering her other hand. She staunchly ignored Cherié's hiss of fear. "Mission complete. We're going home."
"H-home? Where's home?" The teenage parahuman demanded, tugging on a hand that shifted, but did not budge.
Ciara closed her eyes, enjoying the familiar feel of the rough fuses sliding across skin when their fingers knitted once more. It helped distract her from the sickening worry that filled her gut.
"Door."
A golden-glowing portal opened. The three of them walked through it, some more reluctantly than others. Ciara patiently waited for the door to close before she started speaking.
"Home is the compound. This is where we are based - we, including you now, Cherié. You have been recruited. I suppose that means you're our teammate now."
The girl stumbled, pulled along by Ciara's relentless walk. They stopped in front of a door. Hot sludge dripped over Ciara's fingers, scalding her flesh. She flickered as René's fuses dissolved, making her skin burn.
"What the fuck?" Cherie audibly gasped, jerking away from Ciara's hand at the sight. This time successfully, as the woman let her go. René shook his head slowly, practically deflating as he let go of his changer form. His light didn't shine as bright when he was human. Ciara looked back towards the girl, idly reaching up without looking to help brush the weirdly-dusty material from his face. Ciara knew his green eyes would be staring blindly ahead, waiting for the next command, ready for when she looked his way again.
"He's - human under all that?"
"No," Ciara snapped icily, baring her teeth. "Warhead is more than human."
She pointed at the door in front of them. "This will be your room. There is a woman who needs to meet with you. We may see you again tonight, we might not. Don't keep her waiting any longer - her time is precious, and if you piss her off, she'll just kill you."
Cherié paled and ripped open the door, practically stumbling into the room. Ciara let herself lean on a wall, trying to control her breathing and squeezed her eyes shut. René offered no help, but Ciara pretended it was him that leaned into her supportively, and not her struggling to pretend that her tool had a caring mind. He couldn't help with the turmoil Ciara was currently spiraling through, biting into her fingers so hard that she flickered, over and over and over again.
"I fucked up," She hissed, more to herself than to her partner in terrorism. The admission hurt, but more than that, she dreaded what would come next, the consequences of her blunder. Contessa punishing her once again.
It wouldn't be hard to punish Ciara. That hurt to admit, much more than admitting she had failed expectations once more. She was reduced to a fragile mess in front of Contessa, a glassy ball that would simply shatter with any amount of pressure. Pressure that only She knew how to apply.
When Ciara opened her eyes again, Contessa stood in front of her. As perfectly still as a statue, carved from marble - not so much as even a single hair was out of place. Staring at Ciara. Disappointment written in the faintest turn of the lips. How was it that Ciara was only ever looked upon with contempt by Contessa?
She let out the faintest of disgusted scoffs and started to walk away, not even bothering to tell Ciara anything to her face.
"Punish yourself - I don't have time for your screw-ups. You do it, or I'll do it to the tool instead."
And that was that. Ciara's head hung. Her body shook, tears dribbling down her cheeks. She stared numbly at the white tiles below still-snow-covered shoes, at the little puddles growing underfoot.