Flock sat opposite Cassandra in delightful awkwardness, while Tee and Ellis held hands on the wall to her left, looking between them like they were observers at a game of… sports. Flock tried not to dignify their looks with a response, but they were hard to ignore. She squinted at Cassandra, who squinted right back. While she didn’t have any trouble holding her own against the large woman’s gaze -- which was a relief, considering how weak she was to both Tee and Ellis -- she also felt she wasn’t taking any real ground. The drone hummed happily as they made their way down to Flock’s compound. It was going to be a long flight. Shakes coughed awkwardly. Mandy tried to say something and got so many angry glares she immediately stopped, giggling nervously. 

“What are you looking at?” Cass finally asked, the first to break the silence. There was a sigh of relief that seemed to come from two places at once. Flock didn’t avert her gaze.

“I’m trying to figure out,” Flock said, “what makes you so special.” She chewed on her tongue for a few seconds, letting her words hang in the air for a few seconds. “I’m fi--”

“Well, I--”

“No, y--”

“You go first, I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” Cassandra said. 

“No, that was my fault,” Flock said, squeezing her eyes shut and hoping the bottom would fall out of the ship -- quietly, so the drone didn’t actually pick it up as a command. “I… We put a lot on the line to find you two,” she finally said. “I was trying to find Ellis’ partner, and we did. But then it turns out that you’re so important enough to both of them we might have just kicked off a war between the upper and lower floors for… a clone of Tore?” Cassandra began to argue, but Flock held up her hand. That did nothing to quiet Cassandra’s tirade, and Flock just crossed her arms and waited for Cass to finish.

“-- not a clone.” Cass finished, and she crossed her arms too, daring Flock to disagree.

“I know,” Flock said. “I was about to say that.” She muttered a curse under her breath. “I know you’re their old friend M--... What is it, Cassandra now, right?” She saw Cassandra tense up when her old name was about to be mentioned and she felt a pang of guilt in her gut. Then Cass nodded. “I’m just curious what makes you special. Tee is…” She glanced sideways at Tee, who returned her look with such ease it made Flock’s ears burn. “Ahem,” she said. “But you’re just… what, you’re strong? What’s your story?” Cassandra took a deep breath, and then huffed, crossing her legs.

“I went to college with them,” she said, and raised her eyebrows. Flock knew Cass knew she had no idea what College was, and the cheeky smirk on her face told Flock that Cassandra reveled in that fact. “In fact, I’ve now known them for over a decade. They’re the closest thing I have to real family,” she continued. Her tone was more serious now. “I love them more than anything. Anyway, I was dumped here six years ago, alone.” Flock raised her eyebrows. From her short conversations with Tore, she hadn’t picked up it had been that long. In her defense, she had barely been interested in Cass when she thought she was an imposter of Tore’s. “I met Tore. Got murdered pretty badly. She gave me a rez, and then I tried to make my way in this weird-ass city of yours. Trained with Tore and took over the mantle when she retired. Finally found Tee last year. Got caught because of your message.” She crossed her arms again and leaned back. “That enough for you?” Flock nodded. The question, ‘What the hell is college?’ burned on her tongue, but she didn’t want to give Cass the satisfaction. Still her story did instill her with a fairly high sense of respect. If she was telling the truth, Cassandra surviving here, even with a teacher like Tore, was impressive. Cassandra cocked her head. “So what about you?” she asked. “Why are you ‘the Queen?’

Flock pulled up her nose. “Is that really what you’re asking? Why, are you curious?” They sat in silence for a few seconds. If a fly flew between them, it would have spontaneously combusted. “Just ask what you want to ask, Cassandra.”

“What makes you good enough?” Cass asked, her voice cutting through the air like a knife. Flock saw Ellis and Tee sit a little closer together, neither of them wanting to intervene. “What makes you good enough for Ellis. For Tee, for that matter?” Cassandra demanded, and Flock couldn’t help but respect her for that, too. She wasn’t being contrarian and difficult for its own sake. She was protecting her own, her tribe, maybe in a way she couldn’t before. 

“Do you want to hear my story, mercenary?” Flock raised an eyebrow. Cass shrugged.

“It’s a start,” Cassandra said. “I don’t really trust crime lords -- or ladies -- as a general rule. And don’t worry, I know about your secret charities. Just because you’re secretly doing good deeds… hell, it might make you a good person, but it doesn’t necessarily make you good enough.” For reasons she was going to have to investigate later, that last bit stung Flock a whole lot harder than it maybe ought to. 

“Well… my predecessor was some wannabe Warlord who had killed his old boss. I don’t remember his name, honestly,” she said, remembering the sorry state Black-62 had been in when she’d taken over.

“King Techno,” Shakes piped up. Flock made sure the look she shot him was only grateful. He was only trying to help, after all, and she’d need him to fill in some of the blanks.

“Really?” Cass said, scoffing. Shakes nodded with painful sincerity. 

“Anyway, the old King was an incompetent bastard with a plan to take over the floor and then surrounding ones with an army of drones,” Flock continued. Cass smirked.

“I see you learned something from him, then?” Flock just nodded. 

“I killed him. Well,” she looked at Shakes. “We got each other, pretty much. Shakes worked for the guy, but he used a deadstone on me instead of the old King.”

“Why?” Cassandra asked, looking at Shakes with genuine surprise.

“She knew ‘bout the picture,” he said as if that explained everything. When that didn’t seem to be enough for Cassandra, he continued. “Not hidin’ it anymore now’days, but back then that was my big secret, yeah? Picture of… ‘e used to mean a lot t’ me.”

“I’m sorry,” Cassandra said. Her voice was soft and empathetic, and Flock couldn’t help but smile. Anyone who took to Shakes couldn’t be all bad. “Losing people is hard.”

“Yeah,” Shakes continued. “First man I ever… we was close. Real close. Anyway. Flock knew ‘bout ‘im somehow or other. Convinced me to ‘elp ‘er. I sawrit was one or th’ other, so I picked ‘er.”

“I wish I remembered that,” Flock said with a wry smile. “But I’m glad you trusted me.”

Shakes nodded. “Me too, boss. The ol’ King was a right nob.”

“Why don’t you remember?” Cassandra asked. Flock sighed. 

“The old King had some genetically engineered bodies in storage. Probably for deadstone use. They have… had a chip in their brain that doesn’t degrade around magic. And it gives full control over most unprotected electronic systems.”

Cassandra looked at her. “And Shakes put you in one of those?” Flock nodded.

“And I destroyed all the others. But it turns out a shard of metal makes you lose a lot of your memories. Well, all. Including who you are. But whatever reason I had for attacking the King of Black-62, I was apparently going to carry it out. Shakes helped me with a lot of the management, while I slowly built a new persona, a new identity. And here we are, fifteen years later,” Flock said. “I’ve been keeping Heroes at bay, and helping everyone in my… territory. But nobody up top was supposed to know about that.”

Cassandra sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I’m really trying here, Flock,” she said. “I’m really trying to figure out why you rub me the wrong way, but you seem like a pretty good person, all things considered.” She rubbed her face. “Whatever.” She waved at Tee and Ellis. “They trust you. That’s enough for me. You have my blessing or whatever.” Tee laughed softly, and Flock couldn’t help but blush a little, and obviously, neither could Cass. They had that in common, at least.

“On final approach,” Shakes said, looking at a little panel on the wall. The flight had gone by faster than Flock had expected. She took a quick look at the outer cameras of the drone, and saw the hatch on the roof of her compound open. She stood up as the Drone slowed down to land in the hangar, and Cassandra mirrored her. Flock stuck out her hand.

“For them,” she said quietly, so Ellis and Tee couldn’t hear. Cassandra looked at her for a moment, and then shook the hand again. There was a lot more understanding there than there had been the first time they’d shaken hands. They all exited the drone while two more of them landed in the hangar, and the mercenaries and heroes on their side poured out. Flock wondered which ones would accept an offer of employment.

“He coming too?” Shakes asked, as he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Flock turned around, wondering who he meant. The cloaked figure sitting on top of the drone had a face like someone had worked out their frustrations on a particularly sensitive peach. But that didn’t stop him from jumping into a portal in mid-air and appearing some twenty feet behind her with a ‘fwoompf’. Haze was still holding the knife he’d had when they confronted him. 

“Are you still here?” Cassandra growled and hefted her hammer. She swung it at a seemingly empty spot of space, just as Haze teleported there, and he only barely judged it. “You predictable little fuck, just give up.”

“You ruined everything!” Haze shouted, and Flock noticed it was aimed at her. At least, she thought he was. It was hard to read his expression -- to understand him at all. Cass had done a real number on his face, and she was about to follow up. The rockets on her hammer flared up and she swung at the excessively-disgraced hero. Flock could tell he was about to teleport again, and remembered distinctly what had caused his teleportation to malfunction when he’d first made an attempt on her. One of her drones speared his cloak to the floor, and Haze went ‘fwoompf’ just as Cassandra’s hammer was about to make contact with him. 

There was a flash of black as a sphere ten feet across blossomed and disappeared. And just like that, Cassandra and Haze were gone. The head of Cassandra’s hammer, however, had been outside of the range of the portal, and was still being driven by the jets. Flock only noticed its momentum -- and its considerable weight -- when the massive thing hit her square in the chest. She felt herself crumple like a tin can as she was thrown across the floor of the hangar. The hammer quickly lost speed and sputtered to a halt somewhere on the ground. Flock’s vision was quickly going red as she looked up at the roof of the hangar. 

“Whuh?” she managed as Shakes quickly appeared in her vision and put something on her chest. Immediately, her entire body screamed in protest. “Fuck,” she hissed through her teeth. Shakes made shushing noises as the Deadstone did its work.

“Where the fuck is Cass?!” Flock heard Tee screaming. Ellis’ voice was too quiet for her to pick up individual words. “No! I’m not losing her again, Ellis! We have to find him, and we have to bring her back!!” They sounded almost hysterical, and Flock mused, as things slowly started to go black, that someone who Tee and Ellis cared that much about was probably worth getting to know. 

“We get the Queen to a rez room,” Shakes said. “She’ll ‘elp you find the little prick.” Flock heard soft sounds of confirmation coming from Ellis, who also appeared in her field of view after a few seconds.

“Hey you,” she said and tried to smile, coughing up a little blood. He looked so worried. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Shakes got me a Deadstone. I’ll be just fine.”

“What if you lose your memory again, without that thing in your brain?” he asked. Fuck, she hadn’t considered that. 

“Well,” she said, trying to keep a brave face, “then I--” She stopped to cough up a lot more blood. Fuck, dying hurt. “Then I look forward to getting to know you again.”

“Bad news,” she heard Tore’s voice a little ways away. How rude of her to interrupt a tender moment between Flock and Ellis. “I have found Haze,” the old mercenary said. “Most of him.”

Oh. She heard Tee yell in frustration and agony as things started to go black.

Elamimax

AAAAA

So things are, as they always are, scary and difficult and the end of the year is coming up and what even was 2020? If you would consider joining my patreon, I'd really appreciate it. It pays for my medication and my rent, and it lets me write stories like this regularly. Subscribers will get access to every single chapter right now, as well as stories that aren't available to the public right now. Keep in mind that commissions for Among Brighter Stars are open, so people can commission additional chapters to be written. 

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<3