Super•Villainous

LIX

I trusted Ren about as far as I could throw him, but I had no choice except to agree to his plan after hearing all that he claimed about Atticus's inner thoughts. How could I not? Assuming he was telling the truth, I stood a chance, however small, of reversing the damage done to him in the same way I'd unintentionally healed his psyche the first time around.

Ren hit the nail on the head with his accusations of moping; my catosprophising-prone mind jumped way too fast to the conclusion that all was lost. I presumed that because Atticus didn't immediately heal himself of the new imbalance created by absorbing more power than his body was capable of safely regulating, it meant the damage had been too great, not taking into account the fact that there'd been only a few minutes of contact between us to reverse days of torture before again negating that progress when Tempest, Will-O, and Ferrus proceeded to try to slice, incinerate, and perforate him to death, respectively.

Atticus burned through my healing too fast. At least, I hoped that was the case. Otherwise... I didn't want to think about otherwise, what that meant I'd have to do. For him. For everyone else.

Ren and I were of the same mind when it came time to discuss when we ought to act. Now. As soon as possible. Sooner than that.

Discovering just who amongst the remaining Supers considered themselves allied with Ren was a source of increasingly raised eyebrows, the news overshadowed by a poisonous bitterness that Ren saw into each person's mind and found resentment against how the Constable operated the Guild, yet Ren hadn't, evidently, found a whisper of those same treasonous thoughts in Ezra. Ezra might not have known all the wrongdoing at hand, but surely he'd seen enough. Still, he chose his precious Guild over everything. That betrayal would sting for a long time. How could I be so wrong about someone? How could I have thought well enough of him to call him a friend?

Ren's coup, if I could call it that, began with a text resulting in the disappearance of two of the Constable's personal guards, the first cogs moving to set a much larger machine into motion. Flicker materialized beside us on the rooftop, a shorter girl with long, wavy hair in tow. Her mask covered three quarters of her face, save the space surrounding light, caramel eyes framed by short brown lashes. They flicked to me, unsurprised by my presence, and then back to Ren.

"You know Flicker," Ren introduced by way of a small hand gesture, "and this is Aegis. Feel free to thank them for risking their necks with you. They'll be doing the dirty work of getting you close enough to the target for you to work your magic. I don't care how you do it, just resolve the situation, be it with death or otherwise. As for me, I have the enviable task of trying to draw our dear leader's attention away from your mischief. I would ask you to wish me luck, but, frankly, I do not care, and luck cannot be in my favor where I am going."

Following that bit of melodramatic verse, he clumsily departed alone down the treacherous ladder of crumbling roof, leaving me to my acquaintances new and old.

I stopped myself from asking their motivations, specifically Flicker, a Guild Elder, of all people. He had everything in the world to lose, and very little to gain for his treachery, outside of peace of mind. In my limited experience, peace of mind was rarely enough. It didn't matter. Ren vetted his intentions and found them true, so that was good enough for me. No conversation was worth wasting any more of our precious few minutes of daylight left.

I held out my hand, palm up, for him to take. "Let's get this over with."

*~*~*~*~*

The sudden cold made my breath hitch in my throat. Flicker teleported us to the fringes of the storm, close enough to avoid the other Supers attempting to maintain a safe distance while they attacked, yet far enough that we didn't risk materializing with one of the many frozen projectiles hurtling through the air protruding out of our bellies.