Summus Proelium

A staggering amount of thoughts went stampeding through Austen’s mind in those brief moments after Skip called her by her Touched name. But while she was mentally reeling, the other girl had already grabbed her wrist and was pulling her away from that spot. At first, Austen reflexively tried to pull away from the Star-Touched. But Skip was insistent and dragged her away from there. Fortunately, it only took Austen a second to catch herself and realize the girl wasn't trying to arrest her or anything stupid like that. She was getting both of them away from that spot before the bastard with the debilitating powers came back.

So, Austen stopped pulling away and started moving with Skip. After, of course, summoning all the paper from her pad. She considered having it hover around her threateningly, but stowed it instead. Her identity might have been exposed to Skip, and possibly to the man who was trying to kill them, but that didn't mean that absolutely everyone who saw them had to know about it. There might still be a way to salvage this.

The two of them moved back the way they had come, passing through the twisted wormholes that led to the restroom of the other shop and then into the café. From there they returned to the top floor of the clothing store, retracing their steps.

Once they were in that spot, the two girls moved to a corner of the room. They were partially hidden by all the racks of shirts and pants, at least enough to have a fighting chance if their new friend or his armed buddies showed up. Not that either of them verbally exchanged any thoughts about this, or about anything else while they were moving back the way they had come and positioning themselves. They simply did it without talking. Which gave Austen more time to think.

Skip knew her identity, an identity that absolutely no one other than Austen herself had been aware of for all this time. She had successfully kept her Touched identity, or even the fact that Deicide was actually a young teenager rather than an adult, completely secret for so long. Even the Ministry didn’t know who she really was. And now it had been blown right in front of one of the most important Star-Touched in the city. At least as far as keeping that information secret went. Skip’s sister was the leader of the local Ten Towers team. There was no way she wouldn’t tell the woman what she had discovered. That secret was too valuable.

There had to be something Austen could do to keep that secret. But the only thing that came to mind was to kill the girl in front of her. And that was something she dismissed as quickly as the thought came. Even if it had been possible and she could actually affect the girl who could make herself immune to anything she thought about (and being cut by Deicide’s paper was definitely something she could think about), she just… wouldn’t. If she had been okay with Skip dying, she would’ve simply let that asshole do it in the first place without exposing herself. She could have let the Star-Touched die, then killed the would-be Scion and kept her secret completely intact.

Why didn’t she do that? Why hadn’t she simply allowed Skip to die and--no, she wasn’t going to think along those lines. There wasn’t time, and it would just spin her around in more circles than she couldn’t possibly hope to get through. The fact was, she had made her choice. She’d stepped in, exposed her identity, and saved Skip. She wasn’t going to backtrack on that now and try to kill the very same girl. No matter how confusing it was, no matter how complicated it made things, she’d made the decision.

Now she just had to figure out how to actually move forward with that.

If Skip had any emotions about what she had just discovered, she didn't betray that fact. Her voice remained as flat as ever as she simply met the other girl’s gaze. “We deal with this situation and stop the explosive man. Then we talk.”

Right, of course. The man himself was still a problem. Austen didn't even know whether he'd figured out that she was Deicide or not. After all, it wasn't as though he'd gotten a good look at what was flying at his face and cutting him before he dove through his wormhole thing. And he didn't know whether it had come from her or not. He'd been so focused on taunting Skip, he'd practically seemed to forget anyone else was there. The man very well might not have figured out her secret the way this girl had.

Or maybe he did, which made him a threat all of his own. And unlike Skip, that was a threat that Austen didn't feel at all conflicted about ending. As a matter of fact, she didn’t even care whether he knew her identity or not. The man wasn’t walking away from this.

All of that played through her mind in an instant before she gave a short nod. “Fine.”

Some people might have doubted her sincerity, especially when it came in that single word with no elaboration or promise. But Skip seemed to take it as gospel and simply looked across the room toward the spot they had passed through to get into this area. “I made myself immune to his power, at least to the best of my knowledge. We shall see if it works.” There was the slightest betrayal of emotion there. She had nearly died a minute earlier, would have died if Austen hadn't stepped in. They both knew that. Life and death situations were pretty normal in that line of work, of course. Especially for a group like Ten Towers. But Skip herself probably hadn't personally been through it that often. After all, she could make herself immune to anything she was aware of. Whenever she put herself in danger, it was after she knew what was going on and could use her power to protect herself.

Even as Austen had that thought, however, Skip quietly spoke. “I have nearly died before. Being immune to what I am aware of doesn't always help when it comes to Touched Tech or powers. This isn't unheard of.” She paused before adding, “But it is rare.”

Clearing her throat pointedly, Austen stared at the other girl. “Did you just read my mind?”

She couldn't see the lower half of the girl’s face through that dark mask. But she was pretty sure there was a hint of amusement despite their situation playing through her eyes. It was faint and you had to look deep to see it, but it was there. “No, I don't have that power. But it's not that hard to guess what you would be thinking, especially when you kept looking at me. You're also afraid that I'm going to tell the rest of my people your secret.”

Austen stared right back at her, starting to bluntly ask if she was or not, despite their agreement to talk about it after this was over. But before she could get the words out, they both heard someone coming. It wasn't the Touched man himself in that case. Instead, it was a man with a shotgun who quickly made his way through the room, his gaze flicking around as he walked in a way that made it clear he didn't know they were there. And also made it clear he was pretty terrible at searching rooms. Definitely no real training. If he had been one of her people, Austen would have made him regret ever getting up that morning.

Oh wait, she could still make him regret that. While he was sweeping the shotgun over the opposite side of the room from where they were, she sent a flurry of flying paper that way. The man twisted and fired a shot at the loudly fluttering ball. But his shotgun did little to her empowered paper. And absolutely nothing to the several extra sheets she had secretly sent in much more quietly to cut his weapon in half. He was still blinking down at the destroyed pieces of his gun when Skip launched herself that way and planted her fist in his face. As he stumbled, she caught his arm and flung him forward past herself while stepping aside. At the same time, her leg snapped out to trip the man.

Austen was already right there. Some of her papers covered her face just in case, while others went over her fist to reinforce it as she lashed out. The man went stumbling right into her swinging paper-empowered fist.

Just like that, he went down and stayed there. The two of them stood over his unconscious and unmoving form for a moment before Skip produced a set of zip ties and secured him. Then she looked up at the other girl. “That's one of them taken care of.”

“But not the most important one,” Austen pointed out. “And they still have a bunch of hostages. That seems like something you would be concerned with.”

“I am,” Skip confirmed before adding a flat, “Are you?”

There was a lot behind that question. Austen let it pass over her before replying in a voice that was flat as Skip’s own. “I’m willing to help you save them if it means getting to that guy.”

After a brief pause, the Ten Towers Touched inclined her head. “Acceptable.

“We need to plan.”

******

In the center of the outdoor mall’s main courtyard, every customer and employee that the would-be Scion and the armed thugs assisting him had been able to gather together were huddled in a large group. This was the main food court, but all the tables and chairs had been tossed aside to leave an empty floor so the guards could better keep their eyes on the two hundred or so hostages and know if they tried anything. Or if anyone new tried to slip in amongst them. Worse, from any potential rescuer’s point of view, was the fact that every fifth hostage was wearing a bomb vest. The slightest provocation could end in the center of that courtyard becoming a crater full of nothing but splattered human remains.

There were twelve masked Prev thugs, all of them spread equal distance around the central area where the hostages were. They each had their guns at the ready, and a barrier of overturned tables and chairs both in front and behind them to duck behind if they needed to. Their eyes scanned the mall around them, watching for any disturbance, including an area in the corner where several television monitors had been hastily erected to show the parking lot all around the mall. There were police cars out there, but not nearly as many as there would be if the city hadn't been going through so many problems. And the few who were there didn’t dare come past the edge of the mall grounds, not when they knew there were hostages and an unknown Fell-Touched in there. They didn’t have the manpower for that sort of situation. Not yet, anyway. And changing that would probably take quite awhile. The resources of every law-enforcement and Star-Touched group in the city were stretched thin, though they weren’t completely broken. Eventually, enough of them would pull themselves free of what they were busy with to form a group that could force their way into the mall. One Fell-Touched and a dozen Prevs weren’t enough to stop that, even with hostages. They had to have other plans.

But, of course, for now, the psychos didn't have to think about that. They had a couple Touched right inside the mall to worry about. Which the man in charge of this whole endeavor had made clear as he walked in a circle around his assembled troops, still wearing his black body armor and black hard-shell helmet. His face was hidden behind that helmet aside from his eyes, but the anger in his voice was apparent as he loudly demanded to know where several more of his people who had silently disappeared were. When he received nothing but shrugs, the man sent twin blasts of his power at two of the men. They crumpled, grabbing their heads as the warbling effect pounded into them. It wouldn’t do lasting damage, but it got his point across. As did his added, “Buddy system! Keep your eyes on each other! If that Towers twat or whoever the fuck was with her poke their heads out of wherever they’re holed up, I wanna know about it! For fuck’s sake, you think we’re gonna impress Pencil like this? Get it together, bastards! We’ve got a job to do, so let’s do it, huh? We’ve got a statement to make!”

“Yeah?” The somewhat disembodied, echoey female voice came from a spot above the assembled people, as a white-clad figure began to walk down a set of glowing white squares that appeared in front of her feet with each step. Paper. The figure was armored in paper, and the squares she was stepping on were paper as well. A dozen books hovered around the figure, circling her while their pages flipped back and forth. The voice seemed to be projected from the books themselves as the words on the pages being flipped to were vocalized one at a time to create new sentences. “And what statement are you trying to make? That you’re all tired of living? Because you didn’t have to take civilian hostages in my territory to illustrate that. Jumping off a bridge would have done the trick and saved everyone a lot of time.”

“Deicide, it was you who jumped in back there after all.” The Fell-Touched man glared that way, raising his hands, though he didn’t use his power just yet. “Where were you hiding, huh? Couldn’t even take the time to introduce yourself? I mean seriously, how rude. The name’s Tractor. Nice to meet you. See, how easy was that, huh?”

The man, Tractor, made a soft chuckling sound at the back of his throat that sounded like a blender trying to grind something too thick. “And what made you step in to save some Star bitch you shouldn’t give two shits about and the nobody kid she was running around with? Just gotta ruin everyone else’s fun?” Even as those words left his mouth, the man abruptly sent a blast of warbling air from both hands. The blasts struck the paper armor, but seemed to do nothing. There was no reaction from the figure. It seemed that whatever energy she enveloped the paper and books in that protected them from being damaged by bullets or other attacks stopped his power from turning the material explosive as well. Nor did she react to what should have been a crippling wave of nausea and internal pain.

Once he saw that wasn't working, Tractor halted his attack and stared up at the figure who was still standing on a couple pieces of hovering paper, right out in the open. “What, nothing? Not even a little woozy? Are you even a real person in there? Hey don’t tell me the rumor about you being a Touched book is actually true. Wait, no, I got it. You’re a Touched bookstore aren’t you? There’s one around here, should we burn it down? Would that finally kill you? Or since you insisted on butting in here, maybe we should just--” He held a small pen-shaped remote up in one hand and made a satisfied sound while viciously shoving his thumb down on the button. As he did so, a collective scream went up from the hostages nearby.

And yet, other than those screams, nothing happened.

He tried again a couple times, his gaze snapping toward the people there with the bomb vests. “What th--” Then he saw it. Several wires on each vest had been cut, clearly before Deicide had even shown herself. A handful of tiny paper squares, too small for his people to notice, hovered in the air over the crowd.

“How the fuck would you know what wires to cut?!” the man demanded, voice rising a bit. “There were like ten fucking booby trapped ones and I’m the only one with the fucking diagram!” Just to check, he yanked the piece of folded notebook paper from his pocket and stared at it. Sure enough, his notes about which wires would disable the bombs were intact. He clutched the paper in one hand while glaring up at her. “You know what? Fuck it, shoot those cocksuckers!”

His people tried, they really did. However, as they raised their weapons to take aim and fire right into the newly-panicked crowd, each man found a very important piece of their gun missing. Those tiny pieces of paper hadn’t simply cut the wires from those bomb vests and left it at that. They had also carefully cut away the triggers on every gun, leaving the men unable to actually pull anything in order to make the gun fire.

By that point, the paper-armored figure had stepped down off the last of her hovering squares, standing directly in front of the would-be Scion. The books flipped from page to page as her voice to address the gathered troops. “You are in my territory. Usually, I’d simply kill you for that. But in the interest of not traumatizing my citizens even further, I will give you one opportunity to surrend--”

Before the last word had even finished being uttered, the rest of the troops threw down their useless weapons and fell to their knees with their hands behind their heads.

“Oh, you useless fucks!” Tractor ripped a small plastic ball from his pocket and held it between himself and Deicide. “Oh you’re in there after all. I see those eyes, right there.” He laughed while using two fingers to point at the visible eye holes that had formed in the paper armor, allowing him to see the very human pupils staring silently at him. “See, there’s your mistake. Cuz if you’ve got eye holes, it means other stuff can get in. Stuff like--this!” With that, he used his power on the ball, making it blow apart in his hand even as he gave it a toss that way. As he’d noted when he was gloating over Skip before, when his power was used on objects, it made them explode in various ways depending on the material itself. In this case, the plastic ball blew apart into a cloud of incredibly noxious poison gas.

And yet, again the gas seemed to do nothing. Even Tractor, several feet away, was coughing and reeling from the potency of the nearby gas. Despite that, however, he was still eagerly staring through the cloud at what he expected to be a crumpled figure. If the gas affected him so much, anyone who was in the middle of it would be… would be…

The figure stood there, utterly unaffected. And as his mouth fell open in confusion, the paper armor broke apart, all the pieces scattering off like a flock of startled birds. Which revealed a very different, somewhat smaller girl within, who dropped to the ground and stepped forward through the gas to move right in front of the startled man as soon as the armor holding her up pulled away.

“Surprise,” Skip announced tonelessly, before snapping a pair of stay-down cuffs onto his wrists.

“Oh, you think these can hold me?!” Tractor sounded hysterical in that moment, already starting to point his fingers inward to use his power on the cuffs. But before he could, several sheets of paper abruptly wrapped around his hands to function as mittens. The warbling beam of his power couldn’t escape to hit the metal.

While the man ranted about how much they’d both regret pissing him off, Skip first ordered one of his own people to disable the cell jammer they had set up, then used her phone to inform the cops outside that it was safe to come in. Before long, Tractor and all of his people had been taken away, and the hostages were being interviewed.

Skip, however, vanished as soon as it was under control. She reappeared in the upper floor of one of the nearby shops, where Austen had been watching through a window the whole time.

“Thank you,” Skip addressed the other girl. “They are safe now.”

“Yeah,” Austen agreed. “And after everyone saw all that, if he does figure out that Deicide was the teen girl who was with you, everyone will just think he’s getting confused about you being inside the armor. That was a good way to stop that little problem. Not the best way, but good.” She went quiet then before looking that way. “So what now?”

Watching the authorities debriefing and helping the former hostages below, Skip replied, “You helped save those people, and you agreed not to kill anyone. I will keep your secret. That was our deal. So you may leave in peace. Unless…”

“Unless?” Austen squinted that way suspiciously. “If you’re about to try to extort--”

“No,” Skip interrupted. “This is not an extortion.

“It’s an offer.”