Downtown, Hope & Anchor Pub

October 1st, 00:15

---

The building is silent as everyone inside waits for their Boss' word.

Sitting around the centre table is all the parahumans of the Tenth Suit of The Red Hearts.

On one end is the Boss, Wash, or Ten in this 'official' setting, with his assistant, Elsie, standing dutifully and deferentially behind him. To the right, perpendicular to his Boss, sits Alphonse in a full suit of bulky, gunmetal-coloured medieval steel armour, with an arc of conical spikes shooting up over his shoulders, and another horn jutting out of his forehead.

Opposite Alphonse and to Wash's left, sits Kleus who, despite being just inches shy of seven foot, still sits a good head shorter than Alphonse's armoured form in her white dress. She is the only one other than their Boss who ordered a drink, and she casually sips from the alcoholic beverage, idly twirling her dark locks with one finger as she completely ignores the atmosphere, her yellow eyes more focused on her drink than her Boss.

However, in clear contrast to the rest of the room that is mostly casual, with a slight helping of tenseness, Leech stands out. Instead of simply sitting there, unharmed, Leech is clearly injured, one hand holding some pretty sever burns that will likely leave permanent nerve damage. His other side is even worse however, as his entire shoulder seems to have been mulched, leaving his arm dangling loosely and lowly.

Because of all of this, he sits there, shivering uncontrollably like he just got out of an ice bath. Not out of nerves nor out of pain, but simply because his body is too damaged right now for him to keep still. Though, he assuredly is nervous and in incredible amounts of pain, but he'd never shiver from that alone.

He had just finished going through the day's events, or rather, yesterday's events, even if it was only a few hours ago; and now, he is simply sitting there in silence, waiting for Wash to respond.

Yet, Wash remains silent, simply leaning back into his chair with his eyes closed and arms crossed, a light frown on his lips. The only sound in the building being the occasional ruffling of Kleus' clothes as she sips her drink, and the soft drip. Drip. Of Leech's blood slowly streaming out of his mangled arm and falling from his index finger to form a small pool on the floor.

Eventually, after minutes of silence, Wash's voice cuts through the din, level and calm. "You failed."

Two simple words manage to bring the tension in the room to a whole new height, gaining the full attention of all present. Cold sweat gathers on the backs of the non-parahuman's present, and even Kleus looks up from her drink.

"Yes," is all Leech says, nodding his head and answering only to what Wash said and not trying to lie or make any excuses.

"You were specifically asked to bring whoever was distributing TGT to me alive, yet you allowed yourself to be repelled by a pair of Heroes, one of whom is a child." He pauses, meeting Leech's mostly placid stare with his own, not paying much attention to how pale and clammy his face has gotten. "But," he accedes with a nod of the head, "at least you got some useful information for us."

With that said, Wash nods his head to Kleus, and she quickly gets to her feet and moves over to Leech, finally having received permission to heal him. Wash doesn't appreciate failure after all, though he can usually be rather forgiving so long as the order didn't come from the Big Boss.

So Kleus knew it best not to heal Leech until she is sure Wash is okay with it, and Leech didn't bemoan her for doing so. In fact, he agreed with her completely. 

Of course, that isn't to say he isn't happy to finally get fixed up, even if he is most certainly not looking forward to the process. Kleus isn't a very gentle woman most of the time.

A fact that gets reaffirmed as she finally reaches behind his seat and simply grabs roughly his broken shoulder, digging her sharp-nailed fingers into his body, flesh parting before her fingers like the red sea.

Leech only lets out a slight whimper at the agony of her rough treatment, wincing but keeping from reacting too violently.

After adding five new holes to his shoulder, Kleus brings her hand away and hovers it over his shoulder, before bringing her other hand forward and simply slashing her sharp, claw-like nails across her wrist.

Blood pools out, faster than should be natural, and falls down onto his shoulder, covering it and splitting into five streams that further push into his body. It is uncomfortable and very much painful, but Leech bears with it as she starts the agonisingly slow healing process.

"So," Wash speaks, and everyone listens, "now that we know this...Circus is a part of this whole TGT deal, where does that leave us?"

He doesn't specify who his question was intended for, but Elsie steps forward slightly regardless. "Thanks to the Big Boss, we know that TGT is part of a Clown's game, so we know the supply. Now, thanks to Leech, we know that Circus is the one dealing the supply. However, I think that they are likely to change their method after this supposed close call."

"Change how?"

"Well, they likely believe that they narrowly avoided a dangerous fate. I believe it likely that they will look to recruit someone else to act as a middle-man so that they aren't at risk again."

Wash brings a hand to his chin, stroking his light stubble contemplatively. He find's Elsie's theory both laughable and annoyingly probable. It's not like he wants to kill the weird definitely-not-a-Clown person after all.

He just wants them to stop dealing on his turf without paying their dues. Red Heart territory is Boss' territory after all, and nobody is allowed to break Boss' rules in Boss' territory.

Besides, they aren't stupid. Circus is clearly just a pawn in a currently unknown Clown's game, or, now that he thinks about it, it's perfectly likely that Circus is actually a Clown pretending to be someone else pretending to be a Clown.

Either way, he doesn't really want anything to do with TGT. It doesn't seem like good business. Though, considering how much the drug's effects resemble The Clown, that's no surprise. Nothing involving Her is good business. Not when She's not explicitly a part of the action, at least. And considering no one has seen hide nor hair of her since Oakland, well, he doesn't want to get involved.

"If Circus does hire help, do you have any idea who they might look for?"

There's a brief silence as they think on his question, and he uses the time to inspect Kleus' work, seeing Leech's shoulder looking much more shoulder-like than it did five minutes ago. Her power is pretty slow to heal, but it is effective. Leech will probably be all fixed up in less than ten minutes.

"My best guess would be Love Triangle, a small time Villain group, just teenagers really. They aren't much, so it shouldn't be difficult to buy them, but they're good at not getting caught. Plus, they're really the only capes she could hire in the city."

Before anyone else speaks, their attention is drawn to Alphonse, who has his hand raised in the air like he's in a school waiting on a teacher. Seeing them all staring at him in silent question, he shuffles for a moment, his armour creaking, before squeaking out, "Um, excuse me?"

His nervousness gets a chuckle out of Wash and a fond smile from the others at the table. 

"Alphonse," Wash says, his tone fondly exasperated, "how many times we gotta tell you to loosen up a little? We're all friends here, you can speak freely."

"R-right. Sorry. Uh, I just wanted to ask, uh, why uh...why can't we just, I don't know, message Circus on PHO? Everyone's on PHO, or FoolsNet, o-or we can get their number and text them? Or something?" His voice gradually gets quieter as he finishes his question, and Leech is the one to answer.

"We've tried, but Circus seems to think that we're lying or something, so th- fuck it, I'm just calling 'em a him. He refuses to meet with us to discuss, and when I asked if he'd at least just stop dealing on our turf, he only sent a nerd emoji, a middle finger emoji and a poop emoji in response, so I think he'll need some 'convincing' to abide our rules."

"O-oh, sorry," Alphonse answers, though no one is really sure what exactly he was apologising for.

The room lapses into silence once again, the only sound being that of Leech's shoulder slowly being knitted back together. He's still going to need some time to recover, as he was left untreated for a good few hours before now. He's missing a lot of blood.

But even without wanting to clear everything up with their Boss beforehand, his treatment still would have been delayed by the simple fact that they don't want to advertise Kleus' ability to heal.

Healers are incredibly rare after all. Powers just don't seem to care about healing others. And the only powers that do heal, only do so as a side-effect, rather than simply healing being the main purpose.

"Alright," Wash eventually says, "we'll have our people on the street keep an eye out for any dealers in our territory that haven't accepted our terms, and I want you," he nods to Leech, "to be available as a quick response to deal with anyone dealing without permission. Beyond that, we'll get into contact with the PRT, pass over what we know so they can do all the leg work for us."

With his orders given, Wash nods his head and finally reaches for his drink, his face relaxing into his usual casual expression as he brings his drink to his lips and takes a sip.

After putting his drink back down, he reaches into a pocket and pulls out a deck of cards, smacking them on the table, a collective sigh sounding out with his following words. "Cool, now that business is done, anyone wanna play poker?"

---

PHQ, Wards' Room

October 5th, 17:30

---

"Anyone wanna play poker?"

Emma's head falls to the side from where she is reclining on the sofa, and she gives Mary a dry look. "I don't trust you to play any gambling games without extorting something from me."

"Tsk, oh ye of little faith," Mary responds, plopping herself next to Emma on the couch, and offering her open bag of little cookies, to which Emma gratefully takes a pair and pops one in her mouth.

Swallowing the treat still hurts a little bit for Emma, her recent stab wound still not being fully healed, but it's a lot better now. It's still going to leave a nasty scar though, which Emma finds faintly upsetting.

"What do you think, Vista?" Mary tries again, causing the younger girl to perk up, just generally excited at the prospect of doing something as 'grown-up' as playing poker. "Wanna play?"

"Sure!" She exclaims, before abruptly freezing, "I uh, I don't know how to play though."

Mary happily waves her off, "don't worry, I'll teach you," she says before twisting around to where Suzuya is juggling a lot of knives while leaning on the back legs of a his chair, and she throws a cookie as hard as she can at his head.

Thunk.

"Ow!" Suzuya cries out, his lapse in concentration making him miss the next knife, "crap!" And he is forced to hurriedly use his power to pull himself backwards and out of the way of the falling knives, causing his body to ragdoll over the ground for a bit.

"Mary!" Emma shouts out in outrage with Vista gasping in shock, while Mary herself simply falls to her side, clutching her belly with one hand and pointing at the fallen Suzuya with the other as she laughs her ass off.

Pouting, Suzuya quickly palms one of her knives and launches it straight at Mary's face, causing the girl to jerk to the side with an, "eep!". But Suzuya doesn't let up and throws another knife at the same time.

Reflexively, Mary's hand snaps out in front of herself in defence, just in time for the flying knife to impale her palm all the way through. Both Emma and Vista stare at the impaled hand in muted shock. They've all seen Suzuya and Mary play-fight with each other, but it's never drawn blood before.

However, Mary doesn't call out in pain or anything of the sort, instead, she simply gives Suzuya a dry look. "That was rude."

"Hmph, it was karma," is Suzuya's response, and Mary can't really argue with it, so she simply shrugs.

"Fair." With a casualness that doesn't suit the situation, Mary simply grabs the hilt of the knife and pulls it out, causing rivulets of blood to spill over her palm.

Placing the handle of the knife between her teeth, Mary brings her uninjured hand back to her palm and ignites her fore and middle fingers with a small flame, before running them over either end of the wound, a faint sizzling sound following the action.

Then, she simply gets up and moves over to the kitchen, puts her hand and the knife under the sink and dries them both with a kitchen towel and then returns to her seat, chucking Suzuya's knife back to him in an underhand toss.

"So," she says, as if she wasn't just stabbed, "we all cool on poker?"

Emma and Vista collectively decide by silent agreement to just follow Mary's lead and pretend that nothing happened. They reason that if she's so unconcerned about getting stabbed, then her power can probably cover it.

It's the same reason they wouldn't be all that worried about Aegis, since he can survive just about anything.

"I'm not playing until I know what you want to bet," Emma stubbornly answers, her faith in Mary having gotten lower and lower the better she's gotten to know the girl.

"Who says we have to bet anything?" Mary's innocent voice has the opposite effect of being convincing. Something that is clear by the looks she receives, causing her to shake her head in mirth. "Fine then, we can just play for money. Buy in is everything you have on you, minimum bet one dollar, all good?"

As Wards, they get paid a salary, even if most of it goes into a trust. But they at least all have some money, and since they aren't adults, minus Mary now, they don't really have anything to spend said money on.

So none of them object. Emma is fine playing for money, she was just worried, reasonably, that Mary would want to bet something else, or try and convince them to play strip poker or something.

Though, as she thinks that, she turns to the pre-teen Vista and shakes her head. Maybe not then. She might not have a high opinion of Mary, but she doesn't think that she'd want to play strip poker with a literal child.

Either way, they quickly get to their feet, Emma wincing slightly at the pain in her abdomen, before moving to their adjacent rooms to scrounge whatever wealth they can get.

By the time Emma makes it back to the front room, everyone else is already sitting around the centre table. It's only the four of them in the room, as Gallant and Triumph are still in the hospital, and Aegis and Clockblocker are out patrolling with Challenger and Mimic respectively.

Looking around, she sees Mary shuffling a deck of cards, with a couple of hundred dollars in front of her. Vista has a similar amount, while Emma has a bit less, only a hundred and twelve dollars. Suzuya however, has, Emma quickly counts, seventeen one dollar bills and three empty sweet wrappers...

She gives Suzuya a look, and realises that he's also moving his eyes between their piles of cash and realising the difference. Without hesitating, he quickly turns to Mary, a smile on his face. "Ne, Ma-chan? Can I borrow some-"

"Not a chance in hell."

"Please?"

"You literally just stabbed me."

"...So?"

Mary sighs and passes a few bills over, bringing him just over a hundred dollars, and Emma does her best to suppress the feelings the action cause in her. She doesn't want to acknowledge that she might be jealous of their relationship.

They both fight all the time and argue a lot, but at the end of the day, everyone knows they'll have each other's back when shit hits the fan. They might not be related by blood, but they are siblings in every other meaning of the word. Emma ruthlessly represses her sadness at the fact she doesn't have anyone to care so much about her in her life.

"Yo, you gonna sit down?" Mary's voice snaps her out of her mind, and she realises that she's just been standing there, lost in thought.

"Right, sorry," she says, moving to sit next to Vista, Mary and Suzuya opposite.

However, when she sits down she fails to suppress a light whine as the action pulls at her healing gut, sending streaks of pain lancing through her body.

Almost immediately, Vista's voice sounds out from her side, reeking with polite concern. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine!" Emma snaps back, perhaps too quickly, as the younger girl quickly leans back as if burned.

"You sure you're okay?" Emma turns her scowl to Mary, who isn't looking at her, focusing on dealing out the cards.

"I'm fine." She says, her tone much calmer this time, and Mary merely hums in response.

"If you say so," the older girl says, clearly willing to drop the subject, for which Emma is grateful, "now let's play already, opening bet ten bucks."

As Mary explains the rules of the game to Vista, Emma pays the game half a mind as her mind once again falls back to the ongoing TGT investigation.

By virtue of being stabbed, she was allowed to take part in the meetings that the Wards aren't usually invited to regarding the case, alongside Mary, since she's Protectorate age now.

There has been annoyingly little progress on that front, unfortunately. After their meeting, Circus seems to have gone to ground, and as if that wasn't bad enough, their attempts at getting to Love triangle ended up in failure.

She still has mixed feelings about the fact that the same gang that Leech, the man who stabbed her, belongs to gave them information on the case. They were pretty transparent that they just wanted to use the Heroes to stop a rival from infringing on their business, but so long as less Villains are on the street, Emma can deal with it.

It's not like they are just going to suddenly stop targeting Red Hearts, but just because they are enemies, doesn't mean they can't help each other when benefits align. Still, it's not like the information they provided was anything they hadn't already figured out or thought possible.

They already came to the same conclusion about Love Triangle getting wrapped up in this all, but that's besides the point. What matters, is that they utterly failed to bring in any of the three small time capes, even with Red Heart giving them some of the small gang's common haunts that they didn't already know about.

It was like everything was working against them, just a string of bad luck after bad luck allowing the trio to escape and go to ground too. It's annoying, but she has no choice but to simply wait for another chance.

However, even beyond all of that, one thing has been lingering in the back of her mind since that day.

She saw them. Clowns. Two of them.

Most people know about The Clowns at least peripherally, but very few actually know many details. Most people don't even truly understand what The Clowns are, thinking of them just like some gang.

Fools, the lot of them.

No one knows how many Clowns there are, nor how much influence they have. They're a dangerous mystery that hides in plain sight.

The presence of Clowns in Brockton can only be a bad thing, TGT being a clear example. Emma is fairly certain it's a Clown Tinker producing it, a theory most around her accept. But she has no idea if it is one of the Clowns she saw who's the Tinker, or if it's not even either of them.

In the end, she hasn't told anyone about what she saw.

Clowns have a demoralising effect on people, and she doesn't want to have any of her co-workers distracted by the fact that at least two Clowns are in the city.

With a shake of her head, she banishes such thoughts from her head and focuses on the game of poker that has just come to an end.

Suzuya shows his hand first, and Emma's mind boggles at the sight of the royal flush, immediately turning accusing eyes on Mary, who smiles serenely. Before she can get a word in, Vista throws her hand down with a high pitched squeal, face full of joy, and Emma feels her lips twitch at what she sees.

Another royal flush...

With a smug grin, Mary lays down her hand, and Emma isn't even surprised to see the third royal flush.

She looks down at her own hand, and then turns back to Mary with a glare as she sets it down.

A queen high... and the queen was from the community cards. She didn't even get a pair.

"Fuck you."

Mary laughs, and despite herself, Emma feels her lips twitch into a smile as well.

---

Columbus, Ohio

October 5th, 23:00

---

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away from Brockton Bay, an unusual scene is taking place.

Sequestered deep underground lies a room.

Inside of this room, a soft, high pitched, humming can be heard, coming from a small blonde girl, swaying side to side as she hums to herself, a light smile on her lips.

The scene itself should be one that brings a smile to one's face, of childish innocence and joy.

But this little girl's actions and expressions are ruined by the blood soaking her arms up the the elbows, as well as drenching the white surgical vest over her front. Even worse is what lays around her.

Near a dozen metal tables fill the room, each with a naked human strapped down in tight restraints. Each person is unconscious, but still alive, as visible by the soft rise and fall of their chests.

But the blood staining the edges of their bodies and the table and floor around them speaks to the kind of treatment they are getting under the little girl's tender mercies.

With a wet squelching sound, the girl triumphantly pulls a bloodied red organ out of the man before her's torso.

Smiling, she quickly turns to her side, where a spider-like robot is sitting in wait, two of it's limbs held up to her like a pauper begging for money. She giggles a little at the sight, before handing the organ off, idly watching the spider-bot skitter away.

She takes a moment to stitch the man back up, before turning away to join the spider-bot on the other side of the room, a skip in her step as she does so.

The other side of the room is vastly different. With a lot more open space and the walls filled with technical equipment, it looks a lot more like a lab and a lot less like a morgue.

She doesn't waste any time picking the bloodied organ back up and placing it in a specially made machine, beginning the same process that she has done many times over by now. She watches with glee as the organ is reduced to a pulp, and as the resulting liquid moves through the various tubes.

Even as she hums, she focuses on her work, occasionally turning a dial or editing settings on the fly, her power filling in blanks and whispering to her how to step closer to the perfect formula she desires.

By the time the fluid reaches the end of it's refinement process, it gets deposited into another machine that has five nozzles sticking out form under it, and the girl quickly places five standing disposable syringes underneath it, before pressing the 'on' button.

A few seconds later, and it is done.

With glee practically glowing from her radiant smile, the girl holds the syringe up to her face, spinning it around until her eyes fall on the symbol, her symbol. An open, laughing mouth with a big red nose on top.

Turning her head up, she looks above her machines and onto the wall behind them and smiles.

Specifically, she stares at a large framed photo hung up on the wall.

It depicts what looks to be a simple, happy family.

First there is herself as the shortest, wearing a chequered white and black doctor's outfit, her long blonde hair flowing freely in the wind of the Olympic Mountains where the photo was taken. On the opposite side is a boy who seems to be a few years older than herself and wearing the same outfit in opposite, his short, toxic green gair standing out against his vaguely annoyed looking face.

Then, lastly is the woman in the middle hugging both of them to her sides. She looks rather silly, dressed in a large, royal looking cloak with three fancy pauldrons layering each shoulder over a sheer wine-coloured flowing night piece and a too small pink shirt under it all.

Most notably however, what really draws ones eyes when they look at the picture, is the woman's eyes.

For they shine like jewels, glimmering and glowing like molten suns. Her eyes are captivating in their intensity.

Her eyes bring forth a feeling of danger, even through a photo, merely looking in those glowing eyes could cause one to feel as if they are being watched by a predator.

But most importantly... Her eyes glow red.

"I think I'm close to perfecting it," she speaks to the photo, staring right into the fear inducing eyes as if they are the solution to all her woes, "it shouldn't take long."

She pauses, as if expecting a response. But only the ambient noise of her lap answer her.

"I'll make you proud, I promise," she says again, her voice gaining a slight warble to it, as if she is holding back tears. "I'll do my best, and I'll make you really, really proud. And then...then, you'll come back, right?"

She pauses again, and this time the silence feels so much more painful.

"I will make you proud. So proud that you will come straight back." Her voice drops down an octave, raw with such emotion that she can barely push her words out in the quietest of whispers.

"Please. I will make you proud, so please. Please come back, Mommy."

---

A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

Hehehehe, did you like that bit at the end? If I've even made one of you feel depressed, then I will count this chapter as a win >:D

And, for the sake of readers in the future, ahem, Oh~, such mystery~ who is this little girl~ oh who could say!?~ 

:D

Anyway, I'm having fun keeping things mysterious, even if everyone reading this rn will obviously know what's up lol.

(4)Advanced chapters on pat.reon, link in description and profile. Also, join the discord with this invite code! Pj3Dttwses