Missy would admit to being in a particularly shitty mood this particular Tuesday morning.
Her foul mood was only compounded by the fact that it was Tuesday, agreed upon to be the single worst day of the week by most, but that wasn’t the actual root of her problem. No, her foul mood mostly stemmed from the late night she had last night, and the horrible morning she woke up to.
Her time as Vista had run a little over as she spent extra time at PHQ to attend a team meeting that was mostly Shadow Stalker getting chewed out by Miss Militia for once again breaking protocol (as if anything else was new), and when she came home, it was to a reheated dinner and a buttload of homework. Once that was finished, she collapsed into bed, promising herself that tomorrow would be better, only to be woken up a scant six hours later by shouting. She didn’t know the particulars of the conversation, but it ended with her dad slinging his phone across the room and crying in his room where he thought she couldn’t hear.
So yeah, Missy wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine right now.
Missy slumped in her seat, her chin propped on her hand as she stared blankly at the whiteboard. Mr. Hendricks was droning on about something related to the French Revolution, his voice a dull drone that suggested he cared about the subject as little as they did. The words washed over Missy but she barely digested them. She could just study up on it later if they were going to have a test on it.
Missy tapped her pencil against her desk, her mind going back to last night. The girl sitting in front of her turned around to shoot her a dirty look, but Missy ignored her, lost in thought.
The worst part was that she couldn’t even talk to anyone about it. The Wards didn’t know about her home life, not really. They knew her parents were divorced, but that was about it and she wanted it to stay that way. The last thing she needed was pity from Dean or awkward attempts at comfort from Carlos. And her mom... well, her mom was part of the problem, wasn’t she?
She could talk to one of the older heroes, but the idea of doing that felt weird. She trusted them: Miss Militia, Assault and Battery, even Armsmaster, to some extent, though she doubted talking to him about her parents’ hostility toward each other would elicit more than a frown and a recommendation to see the on-site therapist who Missy was pretty sure actually hated his job.
Missy let out a huff as she remembered something. This weekend was her mom’s weekend. Which meant she’d be shuttled across town to spend two days with the same woman who’d reduced her cancer-ridden dad to tears.
Maybe I can pick up an extra patrol shift, Missy thought, her pencil tap-tap-tapping against the desk. I know Dennis would let me take his spot if I asked him nicely. The hard part would be convincing Carlos and MM to let me work so much. I’ve already hit my hours this week and Piggot had a talk with me about that last time I tried something like this.
The bell rang, loud and sharp, and Missy nearly jumped out of her skin. She blinked, looking around in confusion as students began to pack up and file out of the room. Wait, what? Class was already over?
Missy glanced down at her notebook, finding it mostly empty except for a few doodles in the margins. The entire period had just slipped away from her, lost in a fog of tired frustration and lingering resentment.
She gathered her things slowly, shoving her textbook into her bag without really looking at it. It was unlike her to zone out that hard during class. Even on her worst days, she usually managed to at least pretend she was paying attention. But today, her brain had just checked out.
Probably because there was nothing to interrupt it, she thought wryly. Normally, Roxanne would have done something by now to bring the whole class to a halt. She’d gotten caught sleeping or with her headphones in, or maybe just picked a fight with the teacher for the heck of it. It was annoying, sure, but at least it broke up the monotony.
Missy’s hand paused on her bag.
Roxanne.
Missy turned in her seat, her eyes finding the empty desk in the back corner of the room. It was the same desk that had been empty yesterday, and the day before that, and last Thursday and Friday too. Now that she was thinking about it, she hadn’t seen Roxanne since their argument in the hallway last week.
Strange. It wasn’t like Roxanne to miss this much school. Sure, she skipped sometimes, and she’d been known to ditch afternoon classes when she got bored, but she rarely ditched school altogether, even when the teachers were on her case.
Maybe she had the flu or something? Or maybe she finally did something bad enough to get suspended for more than a day or two. Everyone knew that Roxanne was on thin ice with pretty much all of the teachers; there wasn’t a single one who she hadn’t managed to anger or disappoint in the past three years. She probably just managed to stretch their patience a little too thin.
Serves her right.
The thought was a little mean, but Missy had had it up to here with the other girl’s constant foul attitude. It was like she thought she was the only one in the world who mattered, like they all didn’t have their own problems. She was a troubled kid, but she was also kind of a bitch who needed a good smack in the face from life.
Missy shook her head and slung her bag over her shoulder, pushing the thought of Roxanne Schaffer out of her mind. She had enough problems to deal with without adding that girl’s drama to the pile. Whatever was going on with her, it wasn’t Missy’s problem anymore. She’d tried to help, she’d been rebuffed, and she was done sticking her neck out for someone who clearly didn’t want it.
[TONE]
The rest of Missy’s week shaped up as usual. Home, class, hero stuff, all of it passed like usual. Roxanne didn’t show up on Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or Thursday. By Friday, her usual desk in the back corner had been taken by another kid, something that would never usually happen as long as she was around to snap at whoever tried.
But that never happened, and soon enough, the weekend was upon them and Missy had better things to worry about than a missing troublemaker.
The weekend turned out boring but not exactly stressful. Patrols were uneventful apart from some civil unrest, and on Sunday she and Dennis strolled around the Boardwalk to take and sign photos with kids half Missy’s age while their parents gushed about how cute she was.
By the time Monday rolled around, Missy was in a much better mood than usual. At least, until she walked into her first class of the day and was met with a police officer standing at the front of the class, arms crossed and a serious expression on his face.
“One of your classmates has been reported missing,” he said as they all gathered in their seats. “If any of you or your parents have information regarding the whereabouts of Roxanne Schaffer, please tell your principal. By our reckoning, she’s been missing about two weeks.”
The officer continued, outlining the basics of a missing persons case and providing the usual platitudes about coming forward with information, but Missy barely heard them. Her eyes drifted to Roxanne’s empty desk, yet again occupied by someone else who was suddenly looking very uncomfortable.
Two weeks.
Missy swallowed as she connected the timelines. Roxanne had been gone since right around the time they argued in the hallway. The last time Missy had seen her, she had been pissed off and telling Missy to piss off, which wasn’t anything new. Now though, Missy’s mind went back to the welt along the other girl’s hairline. From a fight, she’d said, but Missy had been in enough of those to know that you didn’t get an injury like that from a regular fistfight. She’d skimmed past it in anger at the other girl’s attitude at the time, but now that anger was gone and a pit of worry had slotted neatly into the place where it had been.
Roxanne didn’t want Missy’s help. She’d made that clear several times, but what if she needed it anyway?
Missy’s hand came up hesitantly, and the officer paused mid-sentence, eyebrows raising. “Yes?”
“The last time I saw her, she had a pretty bad bruise on her face. Like she was hit with something.”
The officer’s expression shifted, becoming more alert as he pulled a small notepad from his pocket. “Can you describe the injury, miss?”
Missy nodded, her throat tight. “It was on her temple, just below her hairline. Purple and swollen, like she’d been hit with something hard. She said she got it in a fight at the orphanage, but...” She trailed off.
“But?” the officer prompted.
“But I don’t know,” Missy finished lamely. “She didn’t want to talk about it. She never wants to talk about anything.”
A few students turned to look at her, their expressions ranging from curious to uncomfortable. Missy resisted the urge to fidget in her seat. She wasn’t used to being the center of attention in her civilian identity.
The officer scribbled something in his notepad, then looked back up at her. “What’s your name, miss?”
“Missy Biron.”
“Thank you, Missy. You may not think it means much, but every little bit helps.” He turned back to the rest of the class. “Again, if anyone has any information, please don’t hesitate to speak to your teacher or principal. Even little things can be helpful.”
The officer said a few more things and then left the room, no doubt to head to the next class that Roxanne attended. Missy wondered if she’d see him again as whispers sprung up around her, curious students spreading the latest gossip. That Roxanne Schaffer, the angry girl nobody really knew or liked, was missing. And nobody had even noticed for two whole weeks.
Or at least if they had, they, like Missy, didn’t bother to say anything about it.
[TONE]
Patrol that day was particularly grueling, though not in the interesting way. Several hours of dealing with random disturbances and mind-numbing boredom wore down at Missy’s soul.
She tossed her helmet onto the couch as she walked into the Wards common room, the visor landing on the cushion with a soft thump. She could hear voices further down the hall, probably Dean or Dennis, though she couldn’t make out what they were saying. Probably something about patrol schedules or team exercises. She didn’t really care.
She flopped onto the couch beside her helmet, grabbing the remote and turning on the TV. The screen flickered to life and she immediately set about flipping through the endless amount of channels that came with whatever cable package was set up in here. The news, a reality show about capes, a cooking competition, some old movie, nothing that caught her eye. She kept looking, feeling herself slowly relax into the cushions as she began to unwind.
Chris came in a moment later, pulling his helmet off and tucking it under his arm as he ran his hand through his sweaty hair. He always complained that the helmet was hot but never actually bothered bringing up any changes with the costume department. Missy personally thought it didn’t bother him as much as he said and he just liked to complain.
He lingered by the couch and Missy could tell he wanted to say something.
“What?” she said, not looking up from the TV.
He shrugged. “You just seem a bit off today,” he said carefully. “I figured I’d check in.”
Missy sighed, letting her head fall back against the couch. “I’m fine. I just heard some news earlier and I’m having a hard time dealing with it, that’s all.”
Chris hummed before asking hesitantly, “Your parents?”
“No, they’re bad but not as bad as last week.”
She didn’t say anything else and Chris seemed to take the hint, because he didn’t push any further. Instead, he wandered over to the kitchen area, pulling out his phone.
“I’m gonna order some pizza,” he called over his shoulder. “You want any?”
Missy perked up from her slouch and turned a grin his way. “I’m not in a bad enough mood to turn down pizza.”
Chris laughed, a short sound that cut through the quiet of the room. “Alright, I’ll get three. Pretty sure Carlos is coming in tonight so there probably won’t be many leftovers.”
“Sounds good.”
Chris headed down the hall, phone already pressed to his ear. A moment later, the sound of his footsteps faded, leaving Missy alone with the hum of the television and her own thoughts.
She stared at the screen without really watching it, some sitcom playing out in front of her with a laugh track that felt hollow. Her mind kept drifting back to the classroom, to the officer’s words, to the empty desk in the corner that didn’t belong to Roxanne anymore.
Two weeks.
It was a long time. Too long. The officer had said it like it was obvious, like they should have all noticed sooner. And maybe they should have. Maybe Missy should have said something days ago, when she first realized that Roxanne was gone. Instead, she’d written it off as suspension or skipping or just the girl being difficult, and now...
She shook her head, forcing the thought away. Roxanne was tough. Annoying, abrasive, and about as friendly as a wet cat, but tough. If she got herself into a bad situation, Missy couldn’t see her just rolling over and letting something bad happen to herself.
She probably just ran away, Missy told herself. Kids from the orphanage do it all the time, right? She probably got sick of the place and decided to strike out on her own. She’ll turn up in a couple weeks, angry as always.
It was a nice thought. It didn’t exactly lift her spirits, but it did comfort her a little, even if she knew how unlikely it was.
The pizza took an hour to get there. It was still pretty good.
[TONE]
Colin’s eyes strained from lack of sleep as he hunched over his workbench, fingers and tools going to work on the exceedingly delicate insides of his halberd. Routine maintenance ensured that everything was in its proper place and free of any overt wear, allowing him to focus entirely on his current task.
He was halfway through reconfiguring the grappling hook mechanism when the intercom crackled to life above him and a tinny voice came through the other end.
“I believe your last design was more efficient, Colin,” Dragon said as she glanced over his work from her side of the connection. Normally such critiques would bother him, but he respected the woman’s opinion as much as he could respect one that wasn’t his own. Besides, it wasn’t as if she was wrong.
“In some situations,” he conceded, using a micro-screwdriver to adjust a tension spring. “But this updated design is better in general applications. The previous model had a higher tensile strength but it also took up an additional four centimeters of shaft space. This one retracts more compactly, which allows room for the upgraded sensor package I’ve been wanting to install.”
“Ah.” There was a pause, the kind that Colin had learned to recognize as Dragon thinking rather than waiting for him to fill the silence. “You’re making room for the molecular bonding scanner.”
“Among other things.” Colin set the screwdriver down and picked up a pair of tweezers, carefully inserting a small cylinder into the shaft of the halberd. “The last design was too specialized. If I encountered a situation where I needed a quick retract and redeploy, the mechanism would jam point twelve percent of the time. This one reduces that to less than point oh-two percent.”
“And the trade-off?”
“About three meters less range on the maximum cable extension,” Colin replied. “Workable, given the benefits.”
“I see.” Dragon’s voice carried a note of amusement that Colin chose to ignore.
He fitted the cylinder into place and reached for his soldering iron, placing it to his halberd.
“How is the suit coming along?” he asked, not looking up from his work. “The Veil I mean.”
“Slowly,” Dragon admitted. “I’ve been dealing with some issues with the power distribution system. The reactive armor plating draws more energy than I anticipated, and I’ve had to redesign the conduit layout twice now.”
“You could use a secondary capacitor array,” Colin suggested. “I encountered a similar problem with my own armor last year. Routing excess power through a buffer system before it reaches the primary distribution nodes reduces strain on the main power supply by approximately seventeen percent.”
“I considered that,” Dragon said. “But the weight becomes problematic with the additional hardware. The suit is already nearing maximum operational weight for atmospheric flight.”
“You could compensate with lighter alloys. The titanium-tungsten blend I developed for the deployment system reduced overall weight by twenty-two percent without sacrificing structural integrity.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” A pause. “Speaking of your deployment system, have you had any luck with the telemetry issues you were experiencing last month?”
Colin’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “I resolved it. There was a calibration error in the targeting software. It was accounting for wind resistance at sea level rather than the adjusted atmospheric pressure at higher elevations.”
“And you didn’t think to mention this?”
“I’ve been... busy,” Colin admitted. “There was something else taking the majority of my attention.”
“Anything you’d care to share?”
Colin set down the soldering iron and reached for a small wrench. “A possible Tinker,” he said. “One specializing in sonic weaponry, if readings are to be believed. They were making quite a bit of noise the past month or so. Being reckless.”
Were? Dragon caught the past tense immediately.
Colin paused in his work, his hands stilling over the halberd. “The activity ceased about two weeks ago. No more incidents, no more signatures, nothing. Either they left the city entirely or...” He let the sentence hang unfinished.
“Ah,” Dragon noted quietly, and Colin knew she caught the meaning of his words. She was good at that, reading people and their intentions. He sometimes wished he shared some of her skill.
Colin lightly nudged a monofilament wire into place. “It’s unfortunate. Their specialization seemed broad. If they just put more thought into what they were doing and joined the Protectorate, we could have made something out of them.”
“It’s a shame.” He pulled out a small tool meant to measure the gaps of air between his halberd’s components. “It would have been nice to have another competent Tinker around.”
“Colin!” The reprimand was harsh and immediate, and Colin’s hands stilled before he accidentally messed something up.
It took him a moment to understand why she was angry. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, setting his tool down. “Kid Win is proficient when he puts his mind to the task, but a fresh specialty would help us both.”
Tinkers were rare enough as it was, with Brockton Bay housing only three out of nearly three dozen capes in total. Himself, Kid Win, and Squealer, though calling her a Tinker was pushing it in his opinion. Their powers worked best when there was inspiration to draw from, and another Tinker’s work was a good way of getting that.
“I know you didn’t mean it like that, but you should still watch what you say,” Dragon chided softly. Colin took the reprimand without complaint, though he was frowning as he got back to work.
It took a few minutes for her to speak again, time which Colin spent refitting the wire housing which held his grappling hook in place.
“So you think this new Tinker was found by one of the gangs?”
“It’s the most likely possibility. They were reckless, likely too young to realize the danger they were putting themselves in. I imagine they’ll—or at least their technology will—turn up eventually, though with who, I can’t say."
“A pattern we’ve seen too often,” Dragon said solemnly.
Colin grunted in acknowledgment. He’d seen it happen before, more times than he cared to remember. A new Tinker would appear on the scene, full of fire and determination, convinced they could make a difference on their own. Then, weeks or months later, they’d vanish, only to resurface in the employ of one gang or another. Sometimes they were willing recruits, seduced by promises of resources and protection. More often, they were less willing.
“Perhaps they simply moved on,” Dragon offered, though they both knew how unlikely that was. “Relocated to another city.”
“Perhaps.”
He tightened the last connection on the grappling hook mechanism and set the wrench aside, reaching for his diagnostic tool. The small device hummed as he ran it over the modified section of the halberd, checking for any faults in the wiring or structural integrity.
“Everything looks good,” he murmured, more to himself than to Dragon. “The new design is functional.”
“A successful modification then,” Dragon said. There was a warmth in her voice that Colin had come to appreciate, even if he didn’t quite know how to reciprocate it. “You’ll have to let me know how it performs in the field.”
“I will.” Colin set the diagnostic tool aside and leaned back in his chair, rolling his shoulders to work out the stiffness that had settled in during the hours he’d spent hunched over his workbench. A glance at the clock on the wall told him it was later than he’d thought. Past midnight, and he had an early patrol tomorrow to test the new design.
“I should head to bed,” he said, though the words tasted like ash in his mouth. Sleep was a waste of six hours he could use to do something productive, but he’d learned the hard way that pushing himself too far only led to mistakes, and he couldn’t afford those.
“A wise decision,” Dragon agreed. “I’ll let you get some rest then. Goodnight, Colin.”
“Goodnight.”
The intercom clicked off, leaving Colin alone in his workshop. Usually he preferred it that way, but he’d admit to feeling a lingering loss as her presence disappeared. He stared at the halberd for a long moment, his mind drifting back to the Tinker he’d been tracking.
Their specialty was fascinating, the kind of thing that could revolutionize crowd control and non-lethal takedown methods if properly developed. The readings he’d picked up from the incidents were crude but impressive, the hallmark of a Tinker who was working with limited resources. Given proper funding and guidance, they might have been extraordinary.
Instead, they were just another statistic in a city that chewed up independent capes and spat them out.
Colin stood and crossed to his workbench, powering down the tools he’d left on. His mind wandered as he went through the motions, shutting down systems and securing his equipment for the night.
He briefly wondered what had happened to them. Had the Empire found them first? The ABB? Or had they simply pushed too hard, drawn too much attention, and paid the price for their recklessness? It happened more often than anyone liked to admit. New capes were like baby sea turtles, scrambling toward the ocean while predators picked them off one by one. Only a fraction ever made it to the water.
He shook his head, banishing the thought. It didn’t matter now. Whatever had happened, the outcome was the same. Another Tinker lost, another potential ally gone.
Colin turned off the last of the lights and headed for the door, his footsteps echoing in the empty workshop. Tomorrow he would test the new grappling hook design, run his patrol, and continue the endless work of keeping Brockton Bay from collapsing in on itself. The mystery Tinker would fade into the background, just another name on a list of capes who didn’t make it.
It was simply the way things worked.