2103:12:03:00:41:57

  Crowsong and I were huddled together side-by-side underneath two of those shiny emergency blankets, taking sips of our cups filled with some kind of… soup stock? It wasn’t tea or coffee, I knew that much, but who knew what it actually was.

  The ache in my ribs and elbow was quickly fading thanks to a bone-setting-gel injection given to me by the ambulance personnel. Crowsong hadn’t been hurt much at all, so despite the disastrous battle, we weren’t that bad off. And as Soliloquy promised, the feeling of hopelessness had left quickly.

  Even so, some vague ‘inner cold’ remained. Of course, that might have nothing to do with the spell he’d used on us. Even without the villain’s power-induced helplessness, the night had been a rough one to say the least.

  But while we had it bad, Marching Orders had it by far the worst. She was inconsolable. Two of her fellow Sentinels had died, their bodies – or lack of body in Elegast’s case – gone far beyond the threshold where resurrection was viable. And that so soon after her mentor Rhennish’s near death experience and temporary… leave of absence.

  That wasn’t the kind of thing a teenager, even a teenaged vigilante, should have to deal with.

  I bumped Crowsong’s shoulder and nodded towards March. She sat some distance away, near the pile of armor that was once Elegast and next to the ambulance that held Jagar’s body. She was giving her own report – we’d given ours first to give her some time – to the Guardians’ liaison officer.

  “Should we do something?” I asked Crowsong.

  “Like what?” Crowsong asked in return. “It’s not like we can help or anything. Just… give her some space to grief.”

  Her words made logical sense, but it didn’t sit well with me. Even from far away – far away enough for no words to reach our ears – I could tell she was mechanically going through her report. There was little emotion to her expression, only a tired, stricken, red- and dead-eyed look that told more than tears and sobs ever could.

  “It’s not about helping,” I said. We couldn’t help; it was too late for that. “It’s just… are we going to leave without talking to her?”

  That didn’t seem right. And from Crowsong’s look, she didn’t think so either.

  Still, she was clearly hesitant. “I don’t… I’m not good at comforting people.”

  “And you think I am?” I asked. I’ve never had to comfort someone before – except maybe Mom, sort of, during our first meeting. But I had read up on grief and grief counseling as part of my more general research into therapy, though of course the grief part was more useful when explaining Mom’s behavior than my own. “But I think in this case something’s better than nothing. And who knows, maybe we’re good at it.”

  Crowsong looked at me for a moment. Then, she snorted, saying, “Alright, Let’s go,” before standing up. Rude.

  I stood up and followed.

  March had already finished giving her report by the time we got there. She sat silently on a curb, covered in the same type of blanket as us. She was staring at the ground, cup of warm soup substitute in her hand without taking a sip of it.

  “Can we sit?” Crowsong asked.

  March didn’t look up.

  Crowsong turned to me, questioning, and I gave a shrug in response. We separated and sat on either side of our fellow vigilante.

  Again, March didn’t respond to us, so we listened in silence to the sounds around us: the shuffling and talking of law enforcement, medical personnel, USAR firefighters (no sign of Mom thankfully), and a few specialized… I didn’t know the term, but ‘emergency architects’ was the gist of it.

  Before, they’d sounded worried about the building collapsing, but since it hadn’t yet, wasn’t groaning, or rumbling, or crumbling apart, and the first responders had installed some kind of temporary struts to support it, people's worries had long turned to calm discussion.

  After a minute of neither Crowsong or I speaking, I decided to take the leap.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked March.

  “What do you think?” she replied. There might’ve been a sneer in it, but even if it was, her heart wasn’t.

  “Pretty bad.”

  She exhaled humorlessly at that. A not-snort.

  “…Does your mentor know yet?” I asked.

  The lightest shudder. “How can I- what do I even…” she trailed off, a light shudder passing through her.

  “I can give him a call,” Crowsong offered. “If that’s okay with you?”

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  March didn’t answer for a few seconds, before nodding in response. Crowsong patted March on her shoulder twice before leaving, phone in hand. Of course she would flee the moment she-

  I cut off that line of thought. It was unhelpful, besides the point, and still a good thing for Crowsong to do – even if I doubted the altruism behind her motive somewhat.

  I did make use of it thought. I lightly bumped March and said, “Look at how she flees.” I nodded to Crowsong. “What a great and tough mentor, ready to fight the worst of the worst without fear. But when it comes to feelings? She becomes more awkward than a duck in a goose pond.”

  It wasn’t my line, though I had no idea where I’d gotten it from. Probably some movie or another.

  “And then she runs away. Or changes topic, or puts up boundaries she herself then barges over. Took me a while to get her to open up,” both in and out of mask, “and even then, it feels more by accident than effort.”

  There was a soft agreeable hum coming from March, which was a good sign. I’d read that talking about yourself could help open people up? Something like that anyway. I hoped it worked.

  “Other than that though, she’s great. Taught me how to fight, how to use my powers, how to think about heroics… even if we disagree sometimes.”

  She didn’t respond, but from the corner of my eyes I saw her looking at me, listening in with… not quite rapt attention, but with intent all the same. Which was good. It felt kind of like a battle, but in reverse, with me trying to cede the advantage instead of gaining it.

  “And then she berates me when I do something stupid. Like-” with Darkstar when he blew up my falcon form, I wanted to say. But that would strike a bit too close to home. “Like on my first night out masking. Or not that long ago when I chased a car through the street in ostrich form. Those kinds of things. Mentor stuff, you know?”

  I let the silence linger, leaving a deliberate opening for March to strike. A silence for her to fill.

  “I know what you’re doing, you know?” March said. “The sentinels trained me in interrogations too.”

  I blinked. “Is that what I was doing?” I asked. “I just did as my therapist does.”

  Maybe a bit of a faux pas in Treaty terms to talk about my personal life like this, but whatever. March snorted, and that was what I cared about.

  And then, she began opening up. “Once,” she said hoarsely. She cleared her throat and began again. “Once, not long after I joined the Sentinels and before Rhennish became my mentor, Jagar set me up to spar with another vigilante – well, two, really. A pair of junior supers a bit older than me – Modi and Magni, if you know them.” She swallowed. “Anyway, they’d been doing this longer than me and were more experienced, especially back then. But they didn’t know this, so they went all out and I lost. Badly.” She laugh-sniffled. “I was so scared after that. I was fourteen at the time, and I got it into my head that this was some kind of a test before I could really be let in to the Sentinels – because there was no way they could’ve just accepted me, right?”

  I nodded. I remembered a similar feeling with Crowsong.

  “So, when I lost to them, I felt like crying. And then Jagar – lunk that he is – walked up to me, all tall and menacing, and then I did start crying.” Another snort and sniffle. “And then he didn’t know what to do anymore, so he became all flustered and panicky, not knowing how to soothe me. And Rhennish started berating him, and Elegast began lecturing him in that tone of his, and… and…”

  She was full on crying now – but not hyperventilating, thankfully. I put a hand on her back and began rubbing circles as March continued.

  “A-And I don’t even want to take revenge,” she admitted between sobs. “I mean, I do – I hate Soliloquy and want to kill him, hurt him so badly that-!” A sharp inhale and she retook control of her voice. “But I- I can’t- I’m terrified to fight against him again, so scared I- I can’t even fantasize about it. H-how fucked up is that, that- that I can’t even imagine getting revenge for them.”

  I remained quiet.

  “H-He just… took my minions like, like it was nothing. A few words and I was powerless.” She opened her hands, revealing the brass-knuckle bells. “I-I rang them, and they did nothing. I shouted at my knights and they did nothing. I tried dispelling them, and nothing happened! What can I even do against that?!” She broke down in tears.

  I remembered my own powers getting disabled. However briefly it was, it’d been terrifying to have something I relied on so heavily, something so integral to my concept of self be stripped away with a simple sentence. As March said, taken like it was nothing.

  But, well… “Then hit him before he can talk.”

  March looked at me, crying broken by confusion. “W-What?”

  “If you hit him before he can talk, he can’t do anything. Or summon something with range and strike him down while he’s unaware. Or keep summoning and unsummoning things so he can’t target a single one for long.”

  March stared at me with mouth open.

  Before I could elaborate, Crowsong returned from her phone call. “He won because he ambushed us. Because he was prepared,” she said. “I won’t say he wouldn’t have won in a fair fight, but fair fights are rare. Right now, it was him that ambushed us. But we can do the same.”

  I let Crowsong take the word and remained silent.

  My mentor sat down next to March once more. “He has a terrifying power, but if it didn’t have limits, he would’ve been the head of the Jannacht – or maybe even a Triumphant. Not an officer send to establish a new branch.”

  “Limits?” March asked, a bit of motivation, of hope creeping in.

  “The exact details of his power aren’t known, but he’s been around long enough for people to see patterns in how he uses it, and for his opponents to dig deep and publicize his weaknesses. For example, the lines he speaks – he has to prepare them, remember them without help from his power and imagine the effects he wants them to have. The target of his words and the power behind them also need to be dramatically appropriate. Like, he can’t just say ‘die Crowsong’ and expect me to keel over.”

  March shakily nodded.

  “And whatever lines he uses, he’s never used one twice,” Crowsong continued. “For example, while he might find another way, he can’t take control of your summons using the exact same lines as before. Or stick me and crow-Jester together by saying that ‘birds of a feather flock together’. So, we know that he must prepare appropriate lines for his targets, must imagine fitting effects, and can only use a line once, meaning he ultimately has a limit to how many things he can do in one battle. That’s plenty enough info to stick him with.”

  I took over. “And who knows how many more limits there are,” I said. “He’s clearly on a timer. And he summoned those dice at the end by accident, so his control isn’t perfect.”

  Crowsong nodded, adding, “And there must’ve been a reason why he didn’t go after Jagar or Elegast immediately. Maybe he needs to setup a ‘scene’ or something for his powers to work. Or else, why risk talking? Why not attack straight out of an ambush?”

  “So there are hundreds of ways to defeat him,” I concluded. “We just need to find the right one, the right moment and strike first.”

  Not that I believed we actually could or would, let alone should. While junior masked going out to fight an adult wasn’t Treaty-breaking per se even if they aimed to kill, it was also the kind of thing that led to tragedy. There was allowance for reasonable self-defense in the Treaty, and as that rogue speedster Ceryneian had said, the Treaty was all in the enforcement of it, not the letter.

  But that wasn’t what March needed to hear.

  “You really think…” March said, still hesitant.

  Crowsong nodded and spoke with conviction. “We’ve got your back, and so does Rhennish. And once the news breaks that Soliloquy’s on a hero-hunt, the Guardians, the Wardens, other vigilantes and who knows who else will also join. Trust me, before you know it, both he and the Jannacht will be dealt with.”

  Silence returned as we let March think, though I did some thinking of my own as well. Statistics proved that encounters between heroes and villains were less deadly on either side when compared to villain-to-villain encounters. Information on the masquerade in New York showed that that same pattern held for Soliloquy and the other New York Syndicate masked that joined him.

  This break in tradition – if it could be called that; self-preservation fit better – was significant. Soliloquy, a villain not exactly known for his ill-temper, was now killing heroes without even bothering to pretend it was in the heat of the moment. Add to that what he’d said about the Jannacht arrival here, about diplomacy and accusation, about augurs, and-

  “Okay,” March said, a heavy breath untensing her posture. “Okay. I believe you.”

  “You better,” Crowsong said. Though her beak obscured it, I imagined Crowsong was smiling. “Also, Rhennish is on his way. So you better prepare for a concerned-”

  A familiar flash of light, and Jauntiste appeared with-

  “March!”

  -Rhennish in tow. The man ran towards his protégé, who herself leaped to meet him. They embraced one another in a heartwarming scene that many around them took a moment to appreciate.

  I shuffled closer to my mentor. “Why don’t we ever do that?” I teased.

  She snorted. “I’ll die before I give you a hug.”

  I frowned. “Don’t say that,” I said.

  She must’ve noticed my tone, because she flinched.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that – not right now, anyway.”

  I nodded in acceptance, said, “Know what can make it better?” and opened my arms wide.

  It was meant as joke but, to my surprise, Amber- Crowsong leaned in after a moment’s hesitation. It was awkward and short, little more than a pat on the back – she clearly wasn’t a hugger – but I enjoyed the moment, counting it a victory on this otherwise bleak, bleak day.