Killing Olympia

By the time I got back home early in the morning, I'd been thrown into the bay by a Kaiju, caught two sedans that fell off the side of the Athena Bridge, and split a breakfast burrito with a guy I helped find his cat on my way back home. I sent a handful of criminals packing to the Olympiad, mostly by pointing at the building and waiting for them to get the message before the message became slightly violent with just a touch of I'll really, really hurt you, dude. Exhausted? Ha. I wish I was exhausted. I nearly stumbled my way up the porch stairs and barely managed to get the front door open. I dumped one of my spare backpacks in the foyer and shut the door with my foot. I found my way to the couch and collapsed onto the cushions and groaned into them. I rolled onto my back and grabbed a blanket off the chair beside me and threw it over my head. I was out before I knew it, and awake even faster, too.

I blinked through eye crust and a stale, gravel-tasting mouth. I was sweating underneath the blanket. I got it off my body by kicking it away, throwing it on the floor. I glanced at the clock hanging above the tv. Midday. I shut my eyes and sighed through my nose. Mom used to get so worked up when I slept until lunch, but I haven't gotten an earful yet, so that was a win. I wanted to get up. I wanted to eat. I probably wouldn't stop eating until the fridge was empty. I checked my phone first, and found several messages from Bianca asking if I was alright after the night I'd just had, so I sent her a picture of myself—a mess with gravel in my hair and dirt on my cheeks, but wearing a tired smile and giving her a thumbs up. Em had sent messages too—pictures of her and Grant with the New Olympus airport in the background. I smiled and switched off my phone. Guess sparky found her spark again.

At least one of us was having a good time in the relationship department. I yawned and stretched my arms over my head, then a dull stab of pain made me cringe and hold onto my ribs. Not yet. Got it. I tried again, slower.

"You're awake," Becca said, passing the couch on her way to the fridge. She nearly ate as much as I did on most days, sometimes even more. I wondered how she was burning all those calories, but where Lucas barely ever ate anything, his sister was the reason the fridge was barely stocked up these days. She tossed me a cupcake from the counter. I caught it and sank my teeth into sugary, frosty goodness, groaning quietly. "Had a busy night, huh?"

"Kinda," I muttered, slowly sitting upright. I finished the cupcake, then licked the sprinkles off my fingers. Becca stood beside the couch, chewing on an apple, one hand on her hip and looking at me like I was some alien. I frowned, then looked right back up at her. "What? And if you're gonna complain about the dirt on the couch—"

"Have you seen the news recently?" she asked.

"Didn't have the time between having a building falling on me and getting punched last night."

She grabbed the remote and turned on the tv, flicking to Olympus News and turning up the volume. A bright red Breaking News banner scrolled across the bottom of the screen, right next to a picture of myself covered in dust and choking on the pavement, because sure, use the one photo that made me look like I was always on my hands and knees trying not to vomit. I sat back on the couch, then frowned as one of the anchors kept talking.

"And what right does she even have to some kind of call to arms?" a strong-jawed guy said. He spread his hands on the desk in front of him. "That's mutiny. Treason. We punished people for that back in the day, so why should Olympia keep getting away with it? She's broken the law too long, and now she's encouraging others too?"

"John, you're missing the entire point of what she said," the lady beside him said. It was some kind of panel, a gathering of boring-looking adults in suits and figure-hugging dresses sat at a long white table. Old photos and videos of the Olympians played behind them as they spoke. "She acknowledged that it's dangerous to be a superhero, right? And this is Zeus' kid we're talking about. She's tougher than steel, and now she expects kids, children, to go out there and risk their lives? There are legal ways to save the day, not how she goes and does it."

An older man with silver hair pointed at the screen. "Kids, trust me, don't listen to her. Stay in school."

"Unless you've got a calling," strong-jaw said. "Then call up the Olympiad and do it right."

"Because what she did yesterday wasn't," a darker-skinned man said. He leaned against the desk and slightly lowered his voice. "She said it herself. She's not her father, she'll never be—don't rally around her words."

I scoffed a little and stood up. Bunch of jackasses. I walked past Becca and headed for the cereal boxes on the top shelves, floating my way up there. "You'd think they wouldn't care about what a teenager's got to say," I muttered under my breath, opening the fridge. And, of course, there wasn't any milk. I sighed, then shut the door. I'll probably have to go and grab some myself. I massaged the back of my neck and decided to finish the cereal dry.

Becca switched off the tv, then turned around. "They're calling for your head in the capital."

"Yeah?" I said through a mouthful. "What else is new?"

"Rylee, honey," Becca said, leaning against the kitchen countertop. "This isn't one of those things that you wave off and pretend didn't happen. People care what you say, and if you told the world to ignore the rules and go out there to actively break it, then you're threatening a lot of people with fragile egos and rigid spines, Ry."

I picked cereal out of my teeth. No, wait, that was gravel. I spat it into the sink and ran the faucet, washing out my mouth. I needed to shower and get ready. I didn't know what today had to offer, but that was the fun of this.

Everyday was a gamble, some kind of sparkly new adventure, even though I was still sore all over.

I used my t-shirt to wipe down my face, then said, "It's a stupid law, Becca. It only mattered a decade ago, but if I'm wrong about the world needing more superheroes, then the president can come over here and tell me that to my face instead of saying it tucked in the White House." I walked past her and stopped in the foyer. I swore I left my backpack here this morning, didn't I? "Hey, did you see my bag? It had all my stuff inside of it. It was just here."

Becca slowly shook her head. "You really don't care at all, do you, love?"

"About my costume?" I said. "Because I care about that a lot. I go through too many of those things."

She smiled a little, then jerked her chin over my shoulder. "Ronnie threw it into the laundry."

I frowned. "You let mom do laundry?"

She shrugged one shoulder. "We've got a few more purple shirts and undies around now, but I came back when she was already pulling them out. She tries her best for a gal who never bothered learning how to do this." She got closer and patted my back. "She said you needed to talk to me about something. Whaddya need from your favorite aunt?" I didn't think I had many other aunts in the first place, but I didn't want to burst her bubble either.

I explained everything that had gone on yesterday, from meeting Kincaid earlier in the day to the botched date with Bianca, and finally to the new cartel I needed to get my hands on. And the more I explained myself, the more I realized that my life was maybe just a little too busy for its own good. This wasn't healthy, a part of me knew that, but as long as Bianca wasn't really herself, then I wouldn't be putting my feet up just yet. By the time I was done, Becca was silent, nodding, had her arms folded and wasn't even looking at me anymore, but over my shoulder. Huh, was all she said, then took a deep breath and massaged her face. Then she flashed me a tiny smile.

"Great job finding us a lead on your own," she said, elbowing my arm. I pursed my lips to stop myself from smiling. Not the time to start grinning at a 'thank you.' "I've heard whispers, but most things in our business tend to be whispers the longer they remain rumors. How much did Lucas teach you about being covert? Staking locations, planting bugs, things like that." I stared at her. Becca slowly nodded. "Right. Well, better now than never. Get yourself showered and something to eat, then see me in the basement. It'll be a crash course, but we start tonight."

"Why don't we just go and grab them right now?"

"Things like this require a little more finesse," she said. "Strong-arm the wrong people, and mouths start shutting, leaving you with loose ends and apparent suicides, and dead bodies don't answer questions very well."

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Fair enough. I agreed to meet her in the basement, where I was pretty sure she was spending most of her time instead of in the spare room or anywhere else in New Olympus. Her job was getting mom and Bianca home, and now that both of them were, I had no clue what exactly she was doing anymore. Little by little, more and more suitcases had arrived at our door. She'd stopped borrowing mom's clothes and using dish soap for shampoo. What had started out as temporary was starting to feel full-time, but I didn't mind it. This house always felt too empty.

It didn't hurt having another cape around, anyway. Unconventional, sure, and definitely on a watchlist somewhere under so many different code names I'd probably never even know. I wasn't even sure Rebecca was her real name. But whatever. I play dressup everyday, so who was I to judge what a grown woman did with her time?

I showered, dressed, and grabbed myself a handful of protein bars from deep inside my backpack. I found Becca right where she said she would be, and I do not remember our basement looking like this. We used to throw old cardboard boxes down here, and once fought off a horde of racoons that were trying to grab themselves a home from two people barely living in this house. The entire place was still pale grey concrete, except she now had a wall of monitors and screens humming quietly in the corner, a table with various pieces of tech in even more varying states of disassembly, punching bags, weights, old records in their pale sleeves, and… I stopped walking around.

Becca stood beside me, folding her arms and grinning. "Like it?"

A row of mannequins stood along one wall. A few wore pieces of her gear. Most of it black and silver, with a white Shrike mid-flight engraved on the shoulders, almost more like a rank than any kind of superhero crest.

And then there were the faceless mannequins wearing my costumes. A lot of them were torn. Even more were burnt, spitting cotton at the seams, a little bloody, and very ruined. I gingerly touched a partially naked mannequin wearing nothing but the golden utility belt I'd worn the night Dennie died. My head suddenly felt light as I glanced at the others. Mouth dry. Heart beating hard and slow against my ribs. I slowly stepped backward.

I swallowed, then glanced at Becca. "How?" I whispered.

"Can't take all the credit," she said. "Lucian's little girl handed them over. The mannequins were easy to get, since not many fashion stores are running in Lower Olympus right now. You'll have to ask her about the suits."

"Ava did this?" I whispered, shaking my head slowly.

My first thought was why. What did she get from doing this?

But…was it weird that I was smiling? Was it normal that I laughed a little and couldn't believe my eyes?

Maybe this weird feeling in my chest was some kind of sickness, because I wouldn't normally feel this way about Ava for, well, anything. She was a shitty person. But I guess I was, too, and…Gods. I mean, just look at these things.

I cleared my throat, then massaged my eyes. "I'm fine," I said, looking away. "Something's in my eye."

"I didn't say anything, love." She patted my shoulder. "I wanted it to be a birthday present, but I've always had a bad habit of keeping gifts secret. You live the life we have, and giving people what they deserve is a game you don't always want to play." She glanced at her own suits, each one of them the same, each one of them just a little different from what Lucas' used to look like. Her voice got a little quieter, a little huskier. "One day they're here, the next they're not. Give people their flowers when they're still around to smell them, right?" She looked at me. "But how about we get started? I know you probably want to get out there and start fighting today's problem."

And for the next several hours, that's exactly what we did. Today's problem was learning how to plant tiny cameras and listening devices in places people couldn't easily find. It almost became a game, and I found out just how competitive Becca was. I had to plant at least twenty of them around the house in the space of an hour without her finding any. I failed. Fast. It was like she could do this blindfolded. Under the coffee tables. Behind the kettle. She shook the tiny Cleopatra plushie I had on my shelf, rolled her eyes, and pulled it out from the cotton inside her. It took her ten minutes to dismantle my hour of work. When it was her turn, I found one, purely out of sympathy.

"A thug wandering around wouldn't look as hard as you," I groaned. "Cut me some slack, B."

"The point is that we're not just dealing with an average thug," she said, reaching under her collar and pulling out the final microphone. She smiled. "Impressive. Didn't know you could even move that quickly either. But if you can move that fast, so can a speedster, and I've met plenty who study forensics and crime scenes. They think fast, move faster, and if we're not careful, this cartel would sniff us out and move shop the second they know."

So we tried again. And again. Until I nearly threw my hands up and gave up when she walked in on me trying to hide one deep inside the sugar bowl. I sucked at this. Hitting things was easier. Actually having to avoid someone and hiding these things was another game entirely. And when it came to finding hers, all I had to do was listen to the tiny hum of static coming from weird places inside the house…except not really. She planted tiny duds that emitted noises, wasting my time finding tick-sized speakers that made looking for the real ones a lot harder.

But as I kept trying and searching and cursing every time she found one, I kept wondering how.

I mean, Becca was great at this. I found Lucas' cameras and microphones in just a few minutes.

The thought of those being Ava's, or maybe the Olympiad's, crossed my mind, and neither made me feel any better about having lived in Dennie's coffee store. But Ava had that black cat scoping my window every other day, right? Maybe the Olympiad had been watching a lot longer than normal. I didn't want to think Kincaid was the one behind it. I wouldn't be giving him any flowers soon, and I didn't want to start leaping to any conclusions.

"Hey, don't be so hard on yourself," Becca said, patting my back. "I struggled at first with this, too."

"Lucas planted several in my room," I said quietly. She paused, standing in front of the table filled with gadgets. "I found those ones so easily. But I can barely find the ones you're putting up. I don't know, I'm just—"

"Lucas was never any good at his job," she said dryly, back turned to me. "Now, we're going to—"

"He was a lot of things, but…come on, he was one of the greatest detectives ever, right?"

Becca's knuckles pressed against the table. The pale bulb hanging above her head turned her skin pale. She sighed quietly, then said, "Lucas was subpar. Our dad was a hardass. Not the kindest guy. Not a single nice bone in his body. Lucas was the runt of the family, and dad wanted him to be scrappier, have 'more heart' and 'believe in himself' a lot more, because he wasn't smart, he wasn't brave—and every day I blame that asshole for making Lucas think he had to be some kind of avenger for the weak." Becca rolled her neck, still not facing me. "Lucas looked spectacular to anyone who didn't know what they were doing. He wasn't a negotiator. He wasn't a force of nature. He stole what I made for myself and tried to make it his own, because he couldn't understand how I managed to get my shit together whilst the rest of us didn't." Rest of you? There are more out there? "His tracks were messy, his fighting was reckless, and he could play pretend all he wanted, but he was never meant to be what he wanted to be."

And suddenly, it made sense why he screamed and begged and pleaded for me to stay with him.

Who the hell did he have left? Nobody. Not a soul.

But he dug that grave for himself. People deserved chances, but he had all the chances to change and never took them. Besides, Becca's shoulders were tenser, almost every muscle down her back had tightened—I could hear them clench, like cords of rope straining to keep her back straight. So, slowly, I picked up another bug, then left.

This time, she found all of them.

Except one.

The one I hid in the gap between the Shrike sigil and the costume's hard padding.

Becca's smile slowly spread across her face as I pulled it out and tossed it to her. She caught it, turned it in her fingers, then threw it back. "Keep it," she said. "It's a rite or passage. You can leave now. We'll go at midnight."

I raised an eyebrow. "Go where? I thought you didn't know where they were."

"You took so long hiding a lot of those things that I figured I should do some digging," she said, throwing her thumb over her shoulder at the wall of computers. "I want to watch them first. Make sure we've got the right place. Field experience is a lot more valuable than anything you can learn indoors, so eat, get some rest, and get your gear ready. It'll be a long night of staying in one place and waiting, and if I were you, kiddo, I'd probably choose something that isn't so…flashy." She looked over at the mannequins, then pointed at one near the corner.

I took in the baggy black pants, the boots and the tight spandex top. Instead of the metal ski mask around the mouth, either Ava or Becca had added a black domino mask that would sit above my nose, whiting out my eyes. I slowly nodded, liking the tiny golden lightning bolt stitched into the spandex, right above my heart, and there on the belt buckle. Either Ava was trying to win me over some more so I could end up doing stupid for her, or maybe…

Or the devil's daughter hadn't been lying from that very first moment we met.

She said we were natural enemies, but she also said she was a fan.

I thought she was being snarky when she said that.

But I guess I might be wrong. So, for once, I'll admit that Ava might be worth keeping around. What's a legacy except a story, right? I ran my hand over the tiny yellow lightning bolt, trying not to smile at the sight of it.

"Gonna need a code name, because calling you Olympia would connect dots in the heads of people who we'd rather not be mingling with often," Becca said, sitting herself in front of the computers. "Shrike is mine. Some things don't change. I thought it would be easier to fix the damage Lucas did to the family legacy a day at a time."

"Tempest," I said quietly, stepping backward. "Someone I knew used it. She deserves the recognition."

"It might get messy," Becca said, then, in a slight sing-song, said, "Blood, guts, a little bit of crime."

"I'll do it how she'd want it done," I said, heading up the basement stairs. "I'm heading out."

"Don't forget to get some milk from the store!" she called. "Oh, and check your collar."

I paused at the top of the stairs, then plucked a tiny mic off my t-shirt. All that back rubbing she was doing, wasn't it? Hell, there wasn't even one of them there. I found four nestled under the seam. I fake laughed at Becca, who winked at me and turned around in her seat, facing the computers. And I thought Supers were a pain.

It's the normal people I should be worrying about most.