2 months 29 days after Jaeger’s attack
The robber ran around the corner; he was already taking to the sky, but Hawthorne didn’t make much effort to follow. She clasped her hands together and the sleeves of her suit sprouted vines that grew and wound together.
A flash of blue filled the intersection and the thief arced over the bank he’d been robbing. Hawthorne tossed the vines into the air. The ball of plants smacked the robber as he fell and cocooned him in their grasp.
He landed with a soft thud. Hawthorne lightly tapped the bundle with her foot. She could feel the vines constricting against the thief’s struggles, but they were in no danger of breaking. She set a time limit before they’d fade away; the cops knew how to get through anything she could make, but she never felt right leaving someone tied up if she didn’t know they could get out eventually.A gentle blue light descended behind her. “Cops are almost here. You wanna stick around?”
“I snagged his mask while the bank’s cameras were still on him. Let’s go before-”
Applause and cheers filtered out from the bank.
“Too late,” Burnout said. “Just wave. It’s all it takes and you have to get used to it.”
Hawthorne joined Burnout and waved at the crowd. “I think liked it better when they didn’t know who we were. At least back then it felt like the thank-yous actually meant something. At this rate, we’re going to wind up on the news every time we go on patrol.”
“It’s not nearly that bad. Plus, we did take out Trump and Jaeger; it’s not like we don’t’ deserve some recognition.”
Hawthorne looked to the bank’s roof. There wasn’t anything there, but she nudged Burnout and pointed anyway. He glanced up, and took a second to follow her when she launched herself to the roof.
The sun was setting in the distance. Hawthorne’s arms and legs felt like lead after yet another day of patrol after a full day of work. She took her time walking to the other side of the roof, Burnout hovered just behind her.
“I need to get home,” she said. “Let the others know I may not be coming tomorrow. Work’s not going to be letting up for a while.”
“I’ll tell them. I don’t think anyone will have a problem with it. It’s not like we have a real reason for meeting up anymore.”
Hawthorne shook her head. “We have the only reason we need.”
She leapt away before Burnout could ask her what she meant.
The air was cooling quickly, and the rushing wind soaked into her aching muscles. There was a cat circling on the ledge of the building below her. Its tail was held high in the air and twitching slightly, but it vanished from beneath her before she could get a closer look.
Even with the roots absorbing most of the bow, the pain in her legs grew worse as she landed. She only had another block before she could sneak back to her car, but at this rate she would barely be able to walk in the morning.
Of course they still met up for a reason. She believed that, even if she didn’t understand it. No matter how ready all of them were to commit to being heroes, there was still something missing before they could go out on their own. The others felt it too, even if Burnout had his doubts. They still needed each other’s support, especially after Will vanished.
She jumped again, the anticipation of the cold air was enough to keep her moving. There was a cat circling on the ledge of the building below her. Its tail was held high in the air and twitching slightly, but it vanished from beneath her before she could get a closer look.
Maybe they just needed closure. Will had brought them together to decide whether or not they were going to be heroes, and even if they had all decided they were, they had never been able to announce it. They had all just…naturally reached the point where they didn’t have any doubts. It could be, that all they would have needed was for Will to get them together and tell them that they were heroes after all. But they hadn’t even gotten that much from him.
Hawthorne froze.
She had moved in a straight line. It couldn’t have been the same cat. Seeing a few cats and dogs wasn’t that strange, especially with rooftop parks on half the apartments. But the way it moved; the way it’s tail bounced as it walked. It all seemed too strange.
The pain in her legs doubled. She had been on patrol all day, and she was only a block from her car. She would never forgive herself in the morning if she spent another half hour on the streets just because she saw a couple of weird cats.
Hawthorne pulled a seed from her vest. It wasn’t a particularly special seed, but it was one of her own creations. Hawthorne dropped it into a crack on the roof and let it sprout just enough to keep it in place. It would be easy enough to find when she needed it.
She trudged to the other side of the roof. Her car was in the lot just below her.
Her mask unwove from her face around the corner from the lot, where there were no cameras and no people.
She climbed into her car carefully and, not for the first time, wished she’d picked up the version with the massager build into the seat. It would have helped with the soreness; it might have even been worth the fact that she’d probably end up falling asleep with it running instead of going home.
Even the five minute drive home was enough to turn her legs to jelly for the walk up to her apartment. It took her two tries to unlock her apartment door before she was finally able to collapse onto bed.
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