Chapter Text
Compass
It wasn’t the first time Viking had been thrown through a truck this week, but that didn’t make it feel any better. He shrugged off the rubble, looked at the truck, and groaned. Doovid Transportation again? At this point, Viking felt like he should send the man a gift basket.
Around the corner, the sounds of a battle continued. Clearly Ruby was continuing the fight without him. He stepped, and there was a hard snap as he vanished.
He reappeared above the battle just in time to see Ruby take a hit. He winced. Those beams were no joke. Seconds later he felt a subtle pulse as her injuries vanished as though she had never had them. Still, things seemed to be going bad.
Normally, The Milkman wasn’t much of a threat. He would just show up every other week, infecting people with his mustache, or running a criminal game show, or impersonating a businessman, or whatever other scheme he had cooked up . However, this week the mustachioed madman had gotten his hands on some kind of magic orb that let him punch way above his weight class.
“Oh, Wayfinder, you’re back.” the villain said. “Sorry about that. Orb says I gotta take you two out, nothing personal.”
Viking vanished again, stretching space to appear back next to Ruby. “You alright?”
Ze pulled zirself up, wiping away a little bit of blood trickling out of zir nose. “I’m fine. We have to get that orb away from him.”
Viking grabbed Ruby’s arm and the two of them vanished as another beam of energy blasted the ground where they just were. “I’ll distract him, you grab the orb?”
Ruby nodded and started to run towards The Milkman. Currently, he appeared to be fiddling with the orb, humming to himself as he did. Viking teleported behind him, the clean snap that always accompanied him turning the villain’s attention around. “Oh, you’re back!” Milkman said, full of his standard cheer despite the fight they were in. He spun the orb around and fired off a ray.
This time, though, Viking was ready. He focused, letting his body turn intangible as he spun for a kick at The Milkman’s head. The beam passed through him as his kick passed through the villain, an experience that Viking knew could be very disorienting. The villain cried out in shock, flailing his arm out to where Ruby was waiting with their arm outstretched to grab the orb.
Milkman suddenly pulled it back, shifting the orb to the other side of his body. “Aha! I was ready for your tricks this time…wait”
Viking felt the familiar pulse as Ruby used his power to take himself back a couple seconds in time, vanishing from this time and shifting to one where he had come from the other direction. Ruby reached out a hand as he leaped.
Then Milkman went flying through a nearby building.
Seelie
Vintage winced as the villain went through the wall. She might have put more power into that than she had intended. She had just wanted to pin the villain to the wall, not send him through it! Judging by the looks on the faces of the two heroes that had been fighting him, she had definitely overdone it. She sighed and flew down to meet them.
They did not look happy.
She hadn’t met them, but she knew them by reputation. Wayfinder, dressed in a yellow and blue aviator jacket with matching goggles as a mask, stood with arms crossed as she flew down. Timekeeper wore a long coat in purple and red, with a pair of glasses rather than the goggles or a mask. Despite the lack of mask, Vintage still felt as though she could never quite get a good look at their face. The pair wore matching pendants - a compass for Wayfinder and a clock for Timekeeper.
“I think you owe us an explanation.” Wayfinder said, looking at Vintage. “Showing up out of nowhere and launching The Milkman through the wall? After we already had the situation handled? You owe us a favor.”
Timekeeper glanced at their counterpart. “I don’t know if that’s necessary. She was just trying to help.” They looked at Vintage. “You must be new around here, I don’t think we’ve met.” Fae waited expectantly for her to chime in.
“I…just thought you could use the help? I saw Wayfinder go through that truck, and…”
Wayfinder sighed. “Look, I get it. It’s nothing against you, really. But we’ve got this handled. The two of us work just fine as a pair, we don’t need any more help.”
Timekeeper glanced at Vintage. “Don’t take it too harshly. It’s not like we would have actually caught Milkman anyway, he always seems to get away somehow. I don’t think you ever said it, what’s your name?”
Vintage swallowed. “I’m Seelie. You’re right, I am new. I hope that I can make a better impression going forward?”
Wayfinder spoke. “Just don’t forget that IOU.” With that, he put his hand on Timekeeper’s shoulder and the two vanished with a crack .
Vintage stared for a second. That was how that conversation ended? Really? She flew up to the top of a nearby building. Maybe she could still find the villain… who was she kidding? He was probably long gone, and she could see the hole in the wall where she had accidentally thrown him.
She sat down. That was about as bad a first impression as she could have had. Interfering with an ongoing fight, causing property damage, and she didn’t even catch the bad guy. She had wanted to help out, become friendly with some local heroes to establish herself and get into their good graces, but she had completely failed on that front. Wayfinder seemed irritated with her at best and was apparently convinced that she owed him a favor, and while Timekeeper had been a lot nicer about it, fae hadn’t really disagreed with what Wayfinder was saying so much as how he had been saying it.
If Vintage was being honest with herself, she wasn’t actually as upset about Wayfinder's irritation as Timekeeper's. A part of her rebelled against the honesty, but it quickly lost out as she remembered the conversation. Her cheeks flushed red. She had known that Timekeeper was attractive, she was ready for that and she was ready to be professional, but then she had heard their voice and every ounce of charm and cleverness had vanished completely. She groaned and buried her head in her knees.
This had been a terrible first day as a superhero.
Witch
Marmalade pulled her jacket a little closer against the chill. It was still early fall, but she had underestimated how much the temperature would drop with the darkness, and how late she would be at the library. She sighed. Her research was turning out to be a lot more complicated than she had expected it to be. And now she was walking home, shivering in the cold night as the streetlights lit the sidewalks dimly. She could make it home a little earlier if she took a shortcut…
She looked down the back streets she would have to cross. They were shadowy, only the occasional light dotting the way, but it would cut a decent chunk out of her walk back to her apartment. And besides, this part of town was practically crawling with heroes and vigilantes - she had heard that the last person to try accosting a college student headed home had been found the next day with several broken bones, courtesy of the vigilante Tanuki. She was probably relatively safe, and it really was remarkably cold out tonight.
Marm made up her mind, setting off on the shortcut. She walked quickly, keeping an eye out as she went just to be safe. She still had to eat dinner before she could collapse into bed for the night.
There was a flash of pain in her foot as she accidentally kicked something hard. The sound of something scraping against pavement echoed through the alley as she saw some kind of glass ball roll down the street.
She stepped closer to the orb. It was a faint purple color, the glass glinting softly in what little light there was back here. She couldn’t figure out where it could have come from.
Wait…what was that? In the orb, she could swear she saw the faint outline of shapes shifting around. She crouched down, reaching out her arm to pick up the orb and bring it closer to see.
The moment her fingertips brushed the orb, Marm felt like her arm had been encased in ice. The cold air of the night suddenly felt like a sauna compared to the searing, freezing cold that was spreading through her body. She cried out in pain and tried to jerk her hand away from the orb, but she could no longer move her arm. The cold kept spreading throughout her body, the darkness around her seeming to grow as she felt her stomach drop out like she was falling.
Everything around her went completely dark. The cold finally filled every part of her body, and as she started to pass out, she faintly heard a voice in her ear whisper-
Perfect.