Chapter Text
The Archmother’s herald quakes beneath the onslaught, crying out for aid, but Pocket has nothing left to give. They stand alone amidst the rival ritualists besieging the Patron. They open their suitcase, and magic bursts forth, coating the enemy in the plague they’ve taken it upon themself to contain. Even afflicted, most ignore Pocket in favor of taking down the Patron, but two dive straight for them.
Once, they nearly died from a single bullet to the chest. Now they take a dozen, with a bite of bitter magic to add insult to injury. Even with devils from their past demolishing their future, their final thought is, humiliatingly, Oh, shit.
Bells ring in the distance, grieving the early hour. These days many churches are more decorative than devotional, at least to the deity they were originally built to honor, but they can still be trusted to keep time throughout the city.
Pocket blinks drearily at the plaster ceiling. For a moment, it could be any solemn morning.
On the final dolorous chime, they bolt upright, patting frantically at their chest. No pain follows. Stranger still, they wear no bandages. When they peek down the front of their sleep shirt, they find their chest marred with sparse hair and a single years-old scar.
“Are you up, dear?” Ligaya Flores’s soft voice wafts into the tiny bedroom alongside the smell of garlic and frying eggs.
Pocket rented the bed before the Maelstrom arrived. Has she let them stay for free while they’ve convalesced?
“I’m up,” they call. “I’ll be right there, Ms. Flores.”
In the bathroom across the hall, their toothbrush rests right where they left it. They could probably stand to shave, but their razor is missing. Their facial hair has hardly grown anyhow.
Despite their insistence that she has no obligation to feed them, Ms. Flores has cooked breakfast every morning since they arrived. When they emerge from the bathroom, they find her at the stove in her bright little kitchen, juggling three pans at once.
Diminutive in reality, she carries herself like she’s eight feet tall. Gray-streaked hair tumbles from the loose bun atop her head to frame the near perfect circle of her face.
“You really didn’t have to,” they say, gesturing lamely at the stove top.
“Have you seen yourself, payatot? I’d feel like a criminal if I let you starve.” She scoops a mountain of garlicky rice onto a cheery yellow plate, followed by matching foothills of eggs and sausage. Her age-spotted arm strains before the heaping plate lands with a clatter on the table. “You’ll need your strength,” she says firmly.
Their ears ring with déjà vu as she flutters like a plump bird until they sit. “Thank you for taking care of me,” they say. “How much do I owe you?”
“You paid already.”
“Well, that was before, wasn’t it?”
“You paid through the week,” she says with a dismissive flap of her hand. “Now eat.”
That much they can do, at least. They shovel food into their mouth while she retrieves two coffee mugs. She pauses at the window. “It looks bad. Are you sure you need to go out there?”
Dizzy again, they ask, “What do you mean?”
“That’s what you told me yesterday, isn’t it? To stay indoors while you go do something foolish.”
“Yesterday?”
“Are you alright, dear?”
Their legs feel numb as they rise to join her at the window. Outside, a dark cloud circles in a doleful sky tinged with the miasmal yellow of dawn and an impending eclipse.
Maelstrom.
“Ms. Flores, do you keep a calendar?”
“Of course, dear.” She waves them over to the writing desk in the family room. Next to a framed photograph, there’s the calendar. Xes mark the days gone by, but the date of the ritual remains glaring in its emptiness.
With rubbery knees and a mouthful of ash, they go through the motions of getting properly dressed and collecting their things. They barely hear Ms. Flores when she bundles them into their coat and scarf and admonishes them to be careful.
On leaden feet they descend the stairs and lurch out onto the windy street. A newsboy shivers bravely at the end of the block, unable to unbind the stack lest all his papers go flying. “Get inside,” Pocket tells him after they’ve checked the date on the front page.
The ritual felt so real. They can even remember everything that preceded it. The night before, they sat paging through one of Christie’s mysteries while Ms. Flores hummed to the radio a hair off the rhythm, kindly mending one of the less hopeless tears in their coat. It was as calm an evening as they were likely to get before the Maelstrom. In the morning they woke to the bells’ lament and Ms. Flores’s cooking. They arrived at the ritual site last among their allies, then endured agony after agony, humiliation after humiliation.
No dream has ever felt as real as that.
Everything they’ve worked for over the past five years fell apart in a matter of hours, because they don’t have the killer instinct, because their fellow ritualists couldn’t agree on a strategy, because Pocket simply wasn’t good enough.
Failure’s trade-off ought to be the freedom of nothing left to lose. Instead, they have… whatever this is.
They light a cigarette with shaking hands cupped against the wailing wind. After all their preparations, it’s only natural to have vivid nightmares. As for the memories, it’s a phenomenon common enough to have a name; déjà vu feels real by definition.
No amount of either nicotine or reason steadies their nerves, but their walk grants them enough time to repeat the argument until it adopts some semblance of truth.
At the cultists’ hideout, they meet their fellow mystics: the pit fighter, the Wraith, the ghost, Professor Dynamo, and blessedly, Mo and Krill. For a moment the world tilts; overlaid atop the present are images of them all riddled with wounds. It still feels like a memory.
Pocket finds all eyes on themself.
The professor speaks first: “Arin, what are you doing here?”
Flinching, Pocket asks, “Can we worry about that later? Just get this done?”
Dynamo’s noise of protest might be breathy if he had any lungs. “I just found out you’re alive.”
Pocket forces themself to look at him directly, no matter how much it twists their gut. “Later, please. There isn’t time.”
Dynamo concedes with another wordless sound. He doesn’t need a human face to demonstrate his disappointment.
He can’t be their focus. There are too many other things to worry about.
The strategy is to work in twos and threes until they can breach the enemy’s first line of defense. As the last to arrive, Pocket doesn’t get a choice in working partner — or at least not one that doesn’t require them to address Dynamo again.
They get saddled with Jacob Lash, the fighter from the Bear Pit. Pocket has never been, but Lash’s reputation precedes him. The man is twice their width, a solid wall of muscle. In defiance of the chilly morning, his sleeveless top bares tattooed arms nearly as thick as Pocket’s waist.
“I didn’t sign up to babysit,” Lash says with a dramatic groan.
The phrase reverberates inside them, one more vertiginous layer of dream sense. What would they have said if they heard it before? Nothing, most likely.
Now they ask, “How old do you think I am?”
“I don’t know, kid. Twelve?”
“Twelve. Really?”
He rolls his eyes. “Young. Whatever. I’m giving you shit.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Sure.” Lash’s eyes narrow. Some dim light of intelligence glints in them when he looks Pocket over again, reassessing. “Twenty-four,” he says.
“Surprisingly close.”
Lash smirks, satisfied with himself, and Pocket escapes further scrutiny. Their tentative peace only lasts as long as it takes for the ritual to begin, and for Pocket’s past to race back to them.
Bells chime mournfully in the distance. Pocket blinks at the low plaster ceiling. For a moment, it could be any other morning.
On the final peal, they shoot upright, groping at their torso.
“Are you up, dear?” Ms. Flores’s voice floats alongside the smell of eggs and garlic rice.
“I’ll be down in a minute.”
They brush their teeth, splash water on their face, then head to the kitchen. Ms. Flores stands at the stove again, cooking three things at once.
“You really didn’t have to,” they mumble, rubbing their forehead.
“Have you seen yourself, payatot? I’d feel like a criminal if I let you starve.” She scoops heaping servings of rice and eggs and sausage onto a plate, then sets it on the table. “You’ll need your strength,” she says, waving for them to sit.
“Thank you.” The food is filling, at least, even if they’re distracted.
Ms. Flores grabs two coffee mugs then pauses at the kitchen window. “It looks bad. Are you sure you need to go out there?”
They chew on increasingly flavorless eggs while they wonder what they’re supposed to say. They settle on honesty: “I’m not sure, actually.”
“Here I thought you were hellbent on doing something foolish.”
A glance at Ms. Flores’s calendar shows the same as before: big Xes marking off every day leading up to the Maelstrom. The sky outside seethes with the impending storm.
They’ve had recursive dreams before, loop after loop until they awaken, but none has ever felt so real. Safer to assume this is something else. The suitcase ribbits as if in agreement.
They take a deep, steadying breath. “Thank you, Ms. Flores. For everything.”
“Of course, dear. Don’t forget your coat and scarf. It’s cold out there.”
Again, they walk to the hideout. Again, they have to brush off Dynamo’s attempt at a conversation.
Again, Lash says, “I didn’t sign up to babysit.”
“Worry less about me and more about that golem’s uppercut.”
He scowls back, which makes his already squinty eyes nearly recede into his face. “That was a fluke.”
“I didn’t mean the past. I saw him on the way here today. He’s not with us, though.”
That’s what went wrong before. Lash spent half the ritual complaining about Bebop. Maybe if it’s not a surprise, he’ll do better.
He’s already muttering to himself. He doesn’t stop until they’re standing in front of the guardian. Pocket tries not to assume the worst, but it’s hard to keep the faith once the bullets — and hooks — start flying.
Bells, breakfast, Ms. Flores’s kindness. Coat, scarf, a cigarette to steady the nerves. One foot in front of the other until they arrive at the hideout. They’re last again.
Lash eyes them head to toe. “I didn’t sign up to—”
“Can someone else deal with this guy? Or let him work alone. I can help somewhere else.”
“Don’t tell me you’re intimidated,” Lash says.
“I’m not,” Pocket says with as much patience as they can muster. “Anyone?” Dynamo looks like he might say something, so they ask, “Mo? Krill?”
Krill hesitates. “While we would love to work with you, I’m not sure you’re going to convince her to change her mind.” He gestures to Wraith.
“He’s right,” she says bluntly. “If you wanted a choice, you should have gotten here earlier.”
“You’ll be fine, Pocket,” Krill says. Mo places a huge paw on Pocket’s shoulder. “The Lash has an excellent reputation as a fighter.”
Lash’s chest puffs out. “See? Nothin’ to worry about, kid.”
“I wasn’t worried for me. I don’t want to work with some insecure meathead who’s going to get in his head when he sees that golem on the enemy’s side.”
“Insecure?” Lash laughs. “Please. The Lash has an unimpeachable self-est— wait, what golem?”
Pocket starts counting down the seconds before they wake up in that bed again.
It isn’t wholly Lash’s fault. Alongside the hook and the bombs and some sort of laser gun, there’s something worse: Maggie McGinnis, head of research and development at Fairfax Industries. An unrepentant war criminal at the top of their father’s payroll, McGinnis has brought all manner of toys to the ritual. Pocket can see the souls it takes to operate most of them, perverse technology horrifyingly similar to the power contained in their suitcase.
They can’t decide if it’s worse for her to recognize them or for her to simply not care who it is she mills down. She’s an amoral creature regardless, one like their father, who cares more for profit than for human life.
They take special satisfaction every time one of her turrets explodes in a burst of their spirit power, but neither they nor any of their allies can stop her inexorable march toward the Patron.
In many ways she’s the worst of the mystics working for the Hidden King, but she isn’t the only one Pocket hates.
They taste blood on their teeth again every time they see the assassin. Calico’s cold mockery cuts to the bone. As dispassionate and indiscriminate in her violence as McGinnis, the only true difference between them is the scale of operation.
Pocket doesn’t hate Mina Ha. She’s a distraction though, a reminder of the vicious world they left behind and the life they could have had. They might have considered her threatening but never deadly before now. Five years changed a great deal, including her very species.
Pocket could blame Lash for many things, and they do, but they aren’t so deluded they can’t see the real problem.
If only that self-awareness changed a goddamned thing.