Summus Proelium

Jennica was giddy. Everything was going perfectly according to plan. Well, maybe not the plan that the other would-be members of the freshman class of Scions thought they were all following. But then, they were short sighted idiots. Why would she work with them as anything other than a means to an end? Her entire goal, from the very start, had always been to get everything she wanted and never have to rely on anyone who could disappoint her. Depending on a bunch of psychotic murderers who would eagerly stab their own mothers in the throat if they thought it was funny for a second would have been the dumbest way imaginable to go about that. And Jennica was a lot of things, but dumb wasn't one of them. She’d had plans this entire time.

One of those plans was to get rid of her competition in this little game. Tractor wouldn't be an issue. He was an idiot who had clearly overextended by trying to play with the big boys instead of being a minion where his impressive power could've helped him without his stupidity getting in the way. The best way to get rid of him had been to whisper a few things in his ear about how he could impress Pencil. Or rather, allow him to ‘overhear’ murmurs about what she was going to do and allow him to bully her into giving up the plan and letting him take it. He had ‘forced’ her to give him the details about where she had been planning to strike deep in Deicide’s territory. Under ‘duress,’ she had even surrendered the crate full of bomb vests she had picked up. Of course, she’d made certain he took the paper with the bomb defusal details with him, ‘just in case.’ A paper which Deicide would obviously sense and be able to tug out of his pocket so she could read it and see what was on there. If she couldn’t just read it anyway without all that. The fact that those books that hovered around her constantly spoke for her by flipping to the exact right page made it seem like she probably had some ability to instantly read things around her. But either way, she’d deal with it. And once she did, Tractor would be going away so he wouldn’t be an issue anymore.

That, of course, left the rest of this little group. They weren't quite as stupid as Tractor, but it still wasn't hard to set them up for failure. When she had seen those two unknown Touched following them to the storage facility, Jennica had made certain not to let anyone else notice the pair. Ensuring those two were able to see where they were so they could go get help, she’d watched which way they went before taking the time to set up several of her blue stones across the buildings in that general area.

For the longest time, she’d had no idea what the blue stones even did. But recently, Jennica had discovered that they allowed her to see through any inanimate object like a camera. All she had to do was attach one blue gem to an object, then look into another blue gem and she would see anything from the vantage point of that first gem. She could also set it to alert her when there was motion or some specific image came into view. In that case, she’d set it to alert her when either or both of those two she had seen trailing them came into view. The gems had a view of not only the streets surrounding the storage facility, but the rooftops as well.

With that system in place, Jennica had had plenty of warning when those two had approached the place with Paintball in tow. And boy was that interesting. That group had been expanding recently, so were those two part of it? Wait, were they actually Calvin and Hobbes? They weren't wearing the same suits, but maybe they have been upgraded or something, and the general body types fit. Were the powers she’d seen them use a product of those suits? Honestly, she had no idea, and it didn't really matter. The point was that they were coming, which meant it was time for her to leave. She’d already made an excuse about needing to take care of something important, so it wasn't hard to slip away. It wasn’t like this group of idiots were expecting trouble so soon. And as soon as she was safely out of the line of fire, she released the stones she’d put on those prisoners. Let the morons who thought she was on their side deal with the incoming Paintball and all the trouble he tended to bring along with him. Soon, like Tractor, none of them would be a problem anymore.

With that out of the way, she would be the only remaining candidate for Pencil to bring into his group. And considering he would've lost Box in the same move, he’d obviously need new blood even more. Between that and the fact that Cup was out of commission, Jennica would waltz right into his circle of trust.

Oh yes, Cup. Poor, poor Cup. It really was tragic that she’d managed to get herself infected by the prototype biological agent they’d been investigating. Too bad the seal on that vial had been broken while she was examining it, and the detector that should have warned her about that had malfunctioned. Neither of which, obviously, had anything to do with the red stone Jennica had used to puppet the man responsible for checking over those very things. It was just a total accident, clearly.

Cup was sick, ensuring that Pencil was completely beside himself and not thinking nearly as clearly as he would have otherwise. One of his own trusted people was about to be arrested, along with the rest of the candidates who could have helped him. Jennica would be his only choice to bring in on things. Which was obviously going to be even more important now that there was some cunt out there who could actually hurt him.

That part Jennica hadn’t counted on in this whole ‘get herself into the Scions without any real competition’ plan. But she also wasn’t going to object. It was a happy coincidence, another thing that distracted Pencil and made him even less likely to see the threat coming at him. The threat named Jennica. Or Trove, as she called herself.

Yes, the truth was that Jennica had no intention of really joining the Scions. Not for long, anyway. Her entire goal, from the start, had always been to make a comfortable, perfect life for herself. From the time she had been born, no one had ever wanted her. She was cast from foster home to foster home, treated like a mistake, and generally ignored at the very best. From the time she’d first Touched and gained her powers, Jennica had painstakingly plotted out a way of ensuring she would never want for anything again, and would never depend on anyone again. She wasn’t going to be a Star-Touched. Why would she? People hadn’t helped her, so why should she risk her life to go out and fight supervillains just for a regular salary? She didn’t want a regular salary. She wanted to be filthy rich, and to be set up for a life of comfort forever.

That, of course, left being a villain right out as well. At least, a permanent villain. Fell-Touched tended to get money, yes, but they were always being hunted. She didn’t want that. There was no way to be comfortable with your money when you kept having to look over your shoulder for superpowered idiots coming to arrest you.

If she wasn’t going to be a villain or a hero, that left Sell-Touched. And yet, even that was hard to pull off properly without making too many enemies of both sides. She’d needed something big, something she could use to make a powerful name for herself without making enemies of one side or another.

That had led her to the Scions. Not because she really liked them or wanted to join them. No, they were the perfect targets. What better way to make a name for herself than to be the person responsible for turning in Pencil and Cup? It wouldn’t matter what else she did in the process. Being the person who made sure those two ended up on Breakwater would allow Jennica to write her own ticket anywhere she wanted to go. There were multiple rewards from various groups for their capture, all adding up to millions of dollars. Between that and the goodwill she would have from all the people for bringing those two to justice, Jennica would be able to ask for anything she wanted. She would be able to go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. And the best part was that since the Scions would be completely dismantled in the process, there would be no one left of any consequence to come after her.

So, she’d begun developing her own undercover plan. It had to be realistic, and people had to die to make it happen. But that was okay. You had to break a few eggs to make an omelet. And in this case, the omelet was the capture of Pencil and Cup, and wiping the Scions off the face of the map. Which meant people would forgive an awful lot of broken eggs. Anything she did to get to that point would be forgiven. If not openly, then at least surreptitiously. They might still condemn her in public, but no one would seriously go after her once she took Pencil off the table as a threat.

Everything was proceeding properly. The other candidates would be finding out just how screwed they were right then, Pencil was desperate and not thinking properly, and all she had to do was mosey on back to the apartment building and… handle things.

Within the hour, this would all be over, and she would be set for the rest of her life.

**********

Haley Torres was annoyed. Things were not going according to plan. Not her plan anyway. The former Minority-turned-Sell-Touched known as Echo had come back to Detroit specifically to find out what had happened to her old friend, Irelyn/Flea. Granted, Irelyn probably would have raised questions about the term ‘friend’ considering how they had left off their relationship. She hadn’t reacted well to Haley turning her back on being a cheap goodie good for the Minority and choosing to become a mercenary instead. But no matter what Irelyn thought, Haley still considered her a friend. And finding out that her friend was in some sort of Touched-Tech manufactured coma or something had brought her back to this city for the first time in years. She came to find out who was responsible for hurting Irelyn, and to make them pay.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t had much luck with that so far. But she did have some clues. One of which was the fact that the Scions had apparently tripped over one of the labs used to create the bioweapon. She needed to find out what else they knew, or what they had. Which meant tracking some of them down.

That had eventually led her to the storage facility they were using as a hideout and a place to keep their hostages. But before Haley had been able to plan out a good entrance that wouldn’t leave her in a stupidly vulnerable position, she’d spotted something else. One of those Scion candidates, the one called Trove, was leaving the place. Now wasn’t that interesting and convenient? For once since she’d arrived back in Detroit, something was going her way. Charging straight into the hornets nest back there was a bad idea, but one lone girl? She could deal with that, and get some actual answers out of her.

So, Echo followed that lone would-be Scion. She wore her usual costume (quite similar to what she had worn as a member of the Minority years earlier) of a Touched-Tech reinforced white turtleneck that would guard against most small-arms fire or other similar impacts as well as certain temperature changes and the like, an equally reinforced dark blue trench coat, black cargo pants with matching combat boots, and a white helmet that covered her entire head, with a blue visor over her face.

It wasn't hard for her to track the girl moving through the alleys below while she stayed on the rooftops completely out of sight. She didn't even have to look that way. Her hearing was enhanced enough to track the girl’s footsteps perfectly without looking at her. Which meant she avoided being seen herself. It was an advantage that had helped her a lot over the years, not only with tracking people, but eavesdropping as well. She could be at the far end of a street away from her target and perfectly hone her hearing in order to tune out every other conversation so she could focus solely on listening to what they were saying.

Her practice with that enhanced hearing also meant that she could tell when the girl below her was using her phone. She could hear those fingers tapping across the screen. Only then, when she knew the girl would be occupied with that, did Echo take the chance to peek over the edge of the roof and look down that way. Normally, it would've been impossible to see the phone screen from here, but Echo held both hands up in front of her face as though she was holding a pair of binoculars and recreated a soft squeaking sound of the actual thing being adjusted. Her power allowed her to duplicate the effects of objects she had heard. Which meant that, as soon as she made that sound (itself far too quiet for her target to pick up on), she might as well have been holding real binoculars in her hands. Her vision immediately telescoped, allowing her to see the screen.

Rideshare. The girl below her was calling for a rideshare to pick her up. Really? Something that mundane? Oh well, Haley could work with that.

Pulling back to avoid being spotted, she listened to the sounds of the girl taking off the long red raincoat, black cloth mask, and goggles that had marked her as Trove, shoving the ‘costume’ into a backpack before stepping over to the mouth of the alley to await the car that was on its way to pick her up. She was actually humming nonchalantly to herself, clearly in a good mood.

From her spot on the roof, Echo was able to see when the car (whose description she had seen on the phone screen while looking through her ‘binoculars’) turned onto the right street. Traffic in this area was pretty light, so there were no other vehicles around to spot her as she created an invisible wooden plank and ran from the rooftop to the ground just in time to put herself directly in front of the car. Its driver skidded to a stop, mouth opening to ask who the hell she was. But before he could actually voice the question, she held a hand out with five hundred dollars in cash. “The person you’re about to pick up is one of those Scions. I need to borrow your car for five minutes. You can walk down the street and pick it up after that. Take the money and get out, or I can knock you out and take it anyway. You have five seconds to decide.”

Needless to say, within fifteen seconds, the driver was waiting on the sidewalk with his new cash in hand, while Echo was in the driver’s seat. She had donned the hat and jacket he had been wearing over her own costume, using that as a very slight disguise while she pulled up to the curb where Trove was waiting. She didn’t even look that way, turning to stare in the other direction so the only thing the girl would see was the back of her head covered by the hat.

Sure enough, Jennica was barely paying attention. In her civilian guise, she just looked like any other slender (almost malnourished) black teenage girl wearing ratty old jeans and a tee shirt advertising a local band. She waited until the car stopped, then opened the back door and got in. “You know where you’re going, right? I need you to step on it. There’s a hundred buck tip in it for you if you get there in the next ten minutes.”

“Oh,” Echo noted, “however will I resist a hundred buck tip from a psycho murderer?”

Jennica started to react to that, of course. But before she could so much as move, Haley pointed her hand into the backseat and ‘Echoed’ the sound of gas being shot out of a hose. But not just any gas out of a hose. This was the sound of a particularly potent knock-out gas, invented by a Tech-Touched she had run into six months earlier. The actual gas would knock people out for hours. Unfortunately, Haley’s power couldn’t duplicate something like that. The best she could manage was to knock someone unconscious for about sixty seconds. But that was enough, especially in this confined space. It would’ve been harder to pull off in open air, yet in the back of a car like that, the wannabe Scion was knocked out almost instantly.

Wasting no time, Echo hopped out of the driver's seat and opened the back. She dragged the other girl out and down through the nearby alley she had just been standing in, leaving the car for its driver to pick up. Knowing her new captive would wake up any moment, she dragged her far from where anyone would see, and took a moment to bind her hands and ankles with stay-down cuffs she had appropriated for herself. Then she sat the girl up against the side of a dumpster and waited for her to wake up.

Once she did, Jennica immediately jerked against the dual cuffs on her wrists and ankles. “What the--what the fuck?! Who--wait.” She looked that way, taking in the sight. “I know you. You used to be one of the Minority people around here years ago. Then you got smart and went for the money. You’re like my idol. I mean, you would be if I had idols.”

“Well, that wasn’t how I was expecting you to react,” Echo noted. “Does that ‘almost your idol’ thing extend as far as telling me everything you know about what the Scions found in that bio lab without me having to take the time to beat it out of you? Cuz that really would simplify things.”

“What?” Jennica blinked that way a couple times. “You wanna know--oh.” She snickered once, then laughed and shook her head. “Dude, have I got an offer for you.

“You and I? We’re gonna be rich.”

******

Bang

“We were supposed to be rich, you stupid cunt! Why the fuck won’t you listen to me?! Hey! Hey stop it! What the fuck do you think you’re--ooof!”

That was the sound that people within the front foyer of the Conservators headquarters were treated to as Echo, in full costume, literally kicked the door open and dragged the would-be Scion known as Trove through the entrance before tossing her onto the ground. The stay-down cuffs made sure she stayed put.

“Oh come on, people,” Haley spoke loudly into the stunned room, “the name’s Echo, you had to know I’d come back eventually.” Her eyes scanned the group, settling on one of the receptionists. “Becky, still no promotion, huh? Told you this was a dead-end job. And speaking of dead ends, I guess I’m right back home again, just in time to help you all make sure there’s still an actual city for Flea to wake up in. Speaking of which, I need to talk to whoever’s in charge around here. You know, if anyone is actually interested in bringing down Pencil and his lot once and for all.

“Take your time deciding, I’m sure there’s no rush.”