I lay in bed and looked at the ceiling. My body ached from the training, but I was also aching with guilt about what had happened last night. We had gotten lucky but I dreaded having to go to the meeting later anyway. Things had seemed like they'd be a lot simpler when Lorgiaia had shown up in my room that night and blessed me. I'd imagined flying around and smiling for cameras, high five-ing kids, maybe doing some fun photoshoots. but still just being me, overall.
This mess made me realize that I couldn't be me, not really, not without a filter. I had to be Angel Rouge, even when I wasn't. I wasn't a wild child or anything, but I was still a person, and people were jagged and rough, Angel Rouge couldn't be. If just going out to eat without thinking could almost cost us our whole lives as heroes, what would happen if we messed up on a job? Or even just at an event?
As far as I knew, all of us were public with our identities (not that Galorna and Lucy had a choice), so that meant that every time any of us went out in public, we would have to be representing Lorgiaia's church with whatever we did. I didn't even know the major tenants of her religion yet, I'd meant to look them up, but-
My phone buzzed, and I sat up, looking at the notification. It was a message from Drizti.
'hey, we're all down in the kitchen, Galorna is making us breakfast and then we're going to train to get our minds off the meeting later, plz join us?'
I thumbs-upped the message and got out of bed. I still needed to get food for my apartment or I may have stayed in my room, but as it was, I was getting hungry and I still didn't have anything to eat. Maybe I'd get Lucy some groceries too whenever I did go out, seeing as she couldn't go to the store for now.
I didn't hit the shower; no point if we were going to the training floor after breakfast, but I did change into clean gym clothes and brush my teeth. I put my phone in my armband and headed to the communal floor.
By the time I got there, Galorna had already finished cooking. It was fried rice with eggs, veggies, and a red sauce on top, with some kind of grilled steak strips to go along with it. It didn't look much like a breakfast, but it smelled fantastic. The other girls were sitting around the counter at the kitchen while Galorna fixed the plates. I walked up to the kitchen, and Drizti waved at me.
"Hey Candy! I thought you'd be up way before us because you worked on a farm, guess not!" She said. It would seem that she was a morning person; she was way more perky than she had been yesterday.
"Well... I usually go to bed several hours before I did last night, and I had a lot on my mind, so I lay in bed for a while after I woke up" I said, sitting in the seat in between her and Alele.
"We should all try and get up at around the same time, it'll make our schedules easier to coordinate that way." Alele said, taking the plate Glaorna offered her.
"Uuuugh, I just want to go back to bed... My tummy hurts and I look like shit..." moaned Lucy from her position facedown next to Alele.
"Hey, this will fix your tummy, I promise, just eat what you can and drink some water, ok?" Galorna said, passing her a plate.
Lucy lifted her head and saw she was wearing a mask over the lower half of her face. "I... I need to eat on the couch." She said. She took her food and sat behind us, facing away.
I got my food and took a bite. The rice was spicy, but not overwhelmingly so, and the veggies were crunchy and fresh. I took a bite of the steak strips and found they were oddly sweet, like a kind of BBQ, but mixed with the spicy rice, they made a unique mix that I quite enjoyed.
"This is my go to training breakfast, girls." Galorna said proudly as she sat down where Lucy had been. "It's got carbs, fibers, vitamins, protein, it's all in one. Eat up, and once we're done, we'll wait like, thirty minutes to digest and hit the gym. I wanna see if I can get Candy and Lucy's powers to come out today."
"Pleash don' hit sho hard thish time..." I begged, my mouth full.
"I'm going to see if I can get one of those training machines working, something that throws balls or something I can doge. Being beaten by an invisible fist isn't helping my reaction times." Alele said.
"I'd like to practice with my powers more too!" Drizti chirped. "I was thinking if I could line up a few of the green lines, I could make a ladder!"
"Ohh good idea, yeah, I think your power is a lot more useful that we first thought actually, only you can move the bars, right? I was thinking about how you could use it to block doors or even pin people to the floor if you need to!" I offered.
She nodded "Yeah, I really want to see what it can do!"
"So, Galorna..." Alele said. "Do you have any plans about what you'll make that speech on at the fancy dinner in a couple weeks?"
Galorna shook her head. "I'll figure it out. I was in debate, so public speaking isn't a problem for me, I just have to find out what I'm supposed to be talking about. I'm guessing I'll talk about team plans, introduce you guys, and say some nice stuff about the church and the charity. It's a pretty easy speech all things considered."
Wait, you were in debate?" Alele asked incredulously. "I honestly didn't see that coming."
Galorna fought off a frown. "I was in the anime club too, does that more closely fit your image of me?"
"Sorry, I just- Sorry. Yeah, I can see you being a closeted weeb, I just got different vibes from you I guess." Alele said sheepishly.
I focused on my food. I had gotten different vibes too, but to straight up tell her...
"So... has anyone heard from Willa today?..." I asked, dreading the answer.
Everyone stayed quiet for a moment until Galorna spoke for the group. "No, we haven't. I'm guessing she's got her hands full to be honest. I was looking into that villain restaurant we were in yesterday, and the owner is really bad news. His code name is just "Homicide", and the fact that he's operating in the open with that name... It's not a good sign.
He isn't even a fallen chosen, he was one of the guys chosen specifically to fight other chosen by a rogue god, so he has the backing of a full church, but no one knows which one. He likes to pressure and lean on people for favors and money, so if he knows we were there, she's almost certainly in talks with him this morning making a deal."
"Oh... That sounds really bad..." Drizti murmured.
"You actually read up on this, I'm impressed!" Alele said "You might be a good leader after all."
I was a little impressed too, I had just assumed Willa and Oori would explain it to us at the meeting. Looking it up on my own with our database honestly hadn't occurred to me.
"So what can we expect in terms of like, what she'll talk to us about?" I asked.
"No idea, it all depends on if he actually noticed us, or if he cared. I really have no clue." Galorna said, finishing her plate. "Hey, bring me your dishes after, I'll rinse up."
"Ah, no, I can do it," I said, shoveling rice into my mouth "Y' coo'ed I don' mind"
"We don't talk with our mouths full Candy..." Alele said patronizingly.
I rolled my eyes and pushed the rest of the steak into my mouth. I walked over to the sink and turned on the faucet.
"It- ugh- it's no prob, you cook, I clean, it's ok." I said, swallowing hard.
"Hey, if you're offering, I'm not arguing." Galorna said, holding up her hands with a grin.
"Here's mine, I'm going upstairs, I'll be back down for training..." muttered Lucy, dumping her dishes in front of me with a clatter.
I washed the dishes quickly and thought about the team. From what I'd seen so far, it didn't feel like we really 'fit' together. There were little things I'd noticed that made me worried, like, I didn't like how Lucy automatically distanced herself from the meal just now. She didn't seem to be too anti social other times, but that mood shift could be a problem if it wasn't just the result of her hangover.
Galorna seemed to be taking her role as leader seriously, and she was setting herself up as the 'mom' of the group with her cooking and casual comments. Having a team leader also be the team mom sounded nice, until she felt she couldn't make hard choices because it'd hurt her 'kids'. It may have just been her personality, but I could tell it was working on the others, even Alele.
Speaking of Alele... She placed her dishes next to me and gave a small nod as she walked past.
She was... Trying very hard to be the polite, prim one of the group. Almost a queen bee of sorts, but her tears at dinner and her snark were ruining the effect. Even so, I was getting more and more of an idea of her real personality. She did seem like a good person, just rude and selfish to a point. She'd dropped the leadership argument without complaint (well, without too much complaint), so she knew how to let things go, but the way she almost cried over it hurt my opinion of her a lot.
I took Drizti's plate from her as she handed it up and started washing it. Drizti was very sweet and I looked forward to getting to know her more. I liked her a lot, but her powers themselves were weak; even if she got better at them, batons that transferred pain could only do so much, and she could end up being a serious liability in the field. I'd need more time with her to really understand how to work with her, or at least more time to be better friends. Out of all of them, I was looking forward to bonding with her the most.
Overall, everyone had problems, but they were... fine. I could see myself being friendly with... half of them outside of this setting. I wasn't sure how we'd work together though, as a magical girl team or as a hero team. For one thing, we were wildly different sizes, there were a total of 2-3 group poses I could think of that would let us all share a spotlight, and trying to account for a three foot tall person and a six foot and a half foot tall person at the same time in any battle plan would be a nightmare... I hoped I wouldn't be expected to participate in planning the attacks or anything, I could hit a cue, as far as I knew, but I had no idea where that cue would need to be in a theoretical fight. That sounded like something Oori would be good at, but he didn't mention training with us even once, would we just... have to figure it out?
I put the last dish in the dishwasher and turned it on. I still had a good twenty minutes before Galorna wanted to meet, but I headed up to the training center anyway, I wanted to check out what kinds of gadgets we had available to us before I was subjected to Galorna's pummeling again...
~~~
I panted as I dodged the flashing lights that flew towards me from the hard light projector, my arm smacking into Alele as I ducked under a glowing trash can.
"Hey, watch it!" She griped, just as sweaty and tired as I was.
"Shouldn't.... gods, shouldn't you have been able to dodge that?" I gasped, bending the other way to avoid a digital soda can aimed at my head.
"I can dodge the game, or I can dodge you, I can't dodge two things, Candy." She bit back
"I still haven't felt any sort of pull from my power, are we sure I have a combat ability?" I backed out of the machine's field to catch my breath.
"Well..." Galorna said from behind me. "We already have a support, an attacker, and a tactical, so you and Lucy will most likely get one attack power and one tactical power between you, assuming standard team dynamics. It's just way easier to find a combat skill if you do have one, so we're focusing on that."
"Yeah, but... we're Lorgiaia's first team, does she even know about standard dynamics? We could end up both being support, with you being our only attacker." Lucy said from on top of a freestanding ladder of green bars.
Galorna shrugged "Maybe, if so, we'd just have to run missions as a full support team. It'd make me more useless, but we would get to meet a lot more of the big heroes that way, right?"
"Aren't we working with a support team next week?" Drizti said. Her arms were out in front of her and she was collapsing the lower rungs on her ladder to make new ones up top, with Lucy climbing up step by step as she built the new rungs higher and higher.
"Aaagh, gods, I can't focus with all this, can you all shut up? We're training, not chatting." Alele snapped as a digital pencil hit her ear.
"Chatting is important, we need to know each other well enough to work together, just training won't do that..." I said
"Whatever, I'm going to go hit the showers, I'll work on activating my power alone, I can't think like this." Alele huffed.
She stormed away from us, pushing past Drizti on her way out. As she knocked into her, Drizti stumbled, and the whole ladder flickered out. Lucy screamed and seemed to hang in the air for a second before her whole body blurred. Galorna lunged forward, but before she could reach her, Lucy seemed to melt into a black mist. A second later, she was instantly on the ground, no falling, no sign she'd moved. The sound of her impact on the mat sounded out like a crack, and a wave of air blew out from around her. We all stared at Lucy laying on the mat unmoving. Was she ok? The tension was heavy, and I didn't' know how to break it. Luckily, Alele did so for me.
"Oh, oh fuck, um, I'm so sorry, I didn't think- I-" Alele stammered, backing up. She flapped her hands, then turned and ran into the locker room on the far wall.
"Ok, nobody touch her..." Galorna said as she crouched next to Lucy. "Lucy, are you ok? That was a twenty foot fall right on your face, can you move?"
Lucy didn't move for just long enough to make me start to worry, then she slowly pulled her arms up and propped herself up on her elbows an expression between confusion and joy on her face.
"Uh, I... I think I'm fine, actually? It didn't hurt at all, I feel dizzy, but I'm fine... Did- did I do a power?"
"I think so?" Drizti said, a baton in her hand "There was black stuff, and you just were on the ground, you didn't fall, but it sounded like you did? Do you need heals? I'm sure we can get Alele to take some of the pain, she sounded guilty..."
"No, no heals, I'm not hurt." Lucy stood up. "I think I can do that again now, I can feel that part of me, it's like, I was blind to it before, but now... I don't know how I didn't feel it?"
I looked into myself and tried to find a similar thing, something that i was blind to, but nothing presented itself. I'd try again later, in private...
"So what does it do? Is it like, invincibility?" I asked.
"Maybe it skips her past when she would have been injured?" Drizti offered.
"No, it's... It wants me to move... Like, it wants to pull me back and let me go." Lucy mused. She looked around and pointed to a training dummy on the wall next to the elevators, twenty feet away. "I'm gonna try and get that guy, Let's see what this does..."
She braced herself against the floor and tensed.
"Hey, hold on, we-" Galorna said.
Lucy blurred, her body shaping into smoke, and hovered for a second. Then, in a split second, she reappeared in front of the dummy, her fist out. A huge cracking noise echoed through the training hall, and the training dummy exploded back into the wall, splitting the drywall.
"Whoah, what was that?" Drizti gasped.
"Holy shit, you can teleport..." I muttered.
"Ok, come back over, let's talk about this, what happened?" Galorna called out.
Lucy jogged back over grinning. "Yeah, motherfucker! I found my fucking power!"
"Ok, so what IS it?" I asked.
"Ok, ok, so, I started it, and everything got all grey, right? And everything was all slowed down, and I ran over to the guy, and punched him, and then WHAM everything snapped back and it knocked him super hard, way hard, it's fuckin' great" Lucy crowed.
"So what does that mean?" Drizti asked. "I don't really understand..."
"Yeah, ok... Ok, I think she's soft teleporting, popping into the aether to move, but using the momentum as if she'd traveled the distance in the real world? I think it's a build up and transfer of energy to the target." Galorna said, studying the cracked wall from where we stood.
"Gods, I was so hoping I'd get a combat power... This is so fucking cool..." Lucy said. She was bouncing up and down and grinning, I could tell she wanted to go again.
"We need to fix the wall now I guess, did it hurt your hand?" Drizti said, still holding her baton.
"No, it's like, I couldn't even feel the impact until everything snapped back into place, it was great!" Lucy replied.
"Well, let's move the dummies out into the middle of the floor, and we'll do a bit more training with it, but we'll need to take it slow, ok?" Glaorna said. "I don't want you getting power fatigue your first day."
As they trained, I sat on the sidelines. I was disappointed that I most likely wouldn't get an attack power, but I didn't mind being a tactical hero, or so I told myself. Plenty of cool heroes technically had tactical powers. Grounded Mummy was tactical, and he managed to use his earth threads to hold weapons instead of just using them as obstacles, Builder had found out that if she made her constructs with weaknesses or moving parts, she could literally drop buildings on her enemies, and most famously, Moonbug used his personal gravity manipulation to fly and to punch with as much force as a standard brick hero could. He was admittedly the exception to most tactical heroes though, he'd gotten lucky and his power had come with a secondary buff that increased his density as his personal gravity increased, meaning he could tank bullets and shrug off most attacks when he was using his power, even though he didn't have any combat based invulnerabilities.
I doubted I'd get that lucky, but I was creative, any power I got I could use somehow. I still considered Alele's tactical power to be practically S tier, despite her official ranking, so at least Lorgiaia's tactical blessings were useful, unlike some of the more unlucky heroes. I thought of Pea Soup, who could turn her body into a thick fog that made everyone in it (including her teammates) dumber for a while, or even worse, Rotten Fruit, who puked up a slime that made every one around them also start vomiting.
As a magical girl, I very much hoped to stay away from vomit as much as possible.
Tactical powers were a lot harder to discover, I'd need to just be in the right situation, or just happen to feel the pull of the power from inside. It could take weeks before I found out what I could do, and in that time, I'd slip further and further into the role of the 'useless' teammate. I watched Lucy flicker across the room, knocking the dummies away from her, the displaced air popping and snapping every time she came back into reality and I sighed. I would be ok with whatever power I got, for sure, but the security, the popularity, the feeling of being able to defend yourself... I'd really hoped I'd get an attack power.
"Hey, what's wrong? You look down, is everything ok?" Drizti asked, sitting down beside me.
I looked at her and tried to think of how to word it. She was a support, so she was in a similar boat, but supports were usually highly valued members of any team.
"I'm just... thinking about my powers." I said carefully.
She nodded. "Yeah, that's fair. I'm sure you'll find them soon though, we might just have to face off against some bad guys first or something, that would do it I think!"
She was trying to cheer me up. I should just be open about why I was upset, she'd get it I was sure, she'd had power insecurity yesterday herself.
"Yeah, I... wanted an attack power, so I'd feel safer and more important, but it looks like I'll be something tactical." I said.
"Oh, hm, I understand that..." She said, resting her chin on her knees. "I think it'll be ok though. Lorgiaia was getting a team of agents and managers together before she even chose us, so she was most likely told what a team needed to function, I'm sure she won't make you useless."
"That's easy for you to say, you're a support, and you can injure the enemies if they injure us, that's really good, and very helpful." I said, poking her in the shoulder.
"I might not be a support, actually... I think I'm a tactical support, a blended class, those are getting more popular among the gods, right?" She asked.
I thought about it. "I heard about those, there's that one guy who could open doors to a maze from anywhere, and once in there you could eat the berries in the hedges to heal injuries in minutes, right? He was the first one?"
"Yeah, umm... Passkey or something, but after him, hybrid heroes are being made more and more! You could be an attactical, or a tactical support like me!"
"That would be pretty nice..." I said, thinking. "And I would like to have a range of uses. Not to be rude, and I'm sure her power is very versatile, but Galorna's ability seems to just be hitting stuff, but farther away."
"Hey, watch it, I'll figure it out, it'll be 'versatile' or whatever." Galorna called out to me over her shoulder. I blushed, I didn't realize she could hear us from over there...
"Hitting stuff is what she's good at, she's trained for it, it's good for her. Lorgiaia said she'd fit the powers to us, so whatever she gave you, it's going to be good for you too, ok?" Drizti said, rubbing my arm.
I looked at her and tilted my head. "You're pretty smart, you know that?"
She grinned and poked out her thin grey tongue at me. "I just think a lot, I'm dumb as a box of rocks, I swear!"
We giggled at that, and were still laughing when we heard the locker room door bang open. A damp Alele with fresh clothes on stomped out, eyeing Lucy with a worried glance as she made her way to the elevator. She swiped her card, and waited on the doors to open, looking away from us. We all pretended to ignore her but her body language told us she knew we were watching anyway. The doors slid open and she turned to us as she got in.
"I'm not mad at you! I'm just sick and tired of my power not working when I want it!" She shouted.
The doors slid closed and took her up to the top floor.
"Well... I think that was her apologizing?" Galorna said, asking it like a question.
Lucy shrugged. "Eh, she got me my powers, I don't care too much."
As they kept sparring the dummies, I stood up. "I'm gonna hit the showers now that she's out," I told Drizti. "It's getting late, and I want to be clean and not stinky for the meeting this afternoon, whenever it is."
She grimaced, but nodded. "Yeah, me too." She turned to the other two. "Hey, let's hit the showers, it's after midday, the meeting could be at any time now!"
Galorna nodded and headed with us to the showers, stretching her arms as she went. "Good idea. Lucy needs to stop anyway or she'll get power fatigue soon."
"Uh, I'll... I'll just train a bit longer, I'll shower in a bit." Lucy said folding her arms.
"Hey, seriously, no, you should really stop," Galorna said gently. "I know it's cool to have a power, but-"
"That's not it, I just- Uhhh, I really need to just wait..." She muttered.
Drizti nodded, understanding "Oh, ohhh, yeah, no, it's ok Lucy, we don't mind if you're in there too, we're a team, all girls here!"
I realized why Lucy didn't want to join us and cringed. I hadn't noticed yesterday, but she had stayed behind when we all went to get cleaned up.
"Yeah, I get it, but there's private rooms to shower in, it's not a problem, it'll be ok, Lucy." I offered.
"I just- I just started my transition, I haven't earned it yet, I- I don't know, it feels wrong..." She mumbled, her pale face flushed pink.
Galorna walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, if you need to shower separately, I get it, but no one here minds, ok?"
Lucy shook her head. "Maybe sometime, but for now, I mind. I'm sorry..."
Galorna hugged her and patted her back. "I understand, how about you go first? We'll wait out here, and once you're out, then we go?"
Lucy shook her head. "No, I don't want you to wait, I'll wait. I really don't want to cause problems..."
Galorna nodded. "It's not a problem, but I get it. You're welcome to use the lockers and showers whenever you're comfortable, it's ok."
"I hope you feel comfortable around us soon..." Drizti said sadly. "Is there anything we can do to help?"
Lucy shook her head. "It's not that, I just- I'm not comfortable with myself, I'll get there."
"Well..." I said awkwardly. "I hope you can feel comfortable soon, either way. Let us know if like, we need to do anything different, ok?"
"Yeah, ok, will do..."
The rest of us headed into the locker room. I wanted to say something, to ask the others about their feelings with this 'situation', but somehow it felt wrong to talk about. I felt like if I brought it up without Lucy there to hear it, it'd be like we were treating her differently because of it, and that just felt gross. From the looks on the other two's faces, they were thinking hard about it too, but no one brought it up as we gathered our towels and soaps. I understood the reasoning behind Lucy's choice, of course, but I couldn't help but remember her eating on the couch, and wondered if she was distancing herself from the team subconsciously or on purpose...
~~~
For the second time in two days, I entered in the darkened meeting room on the second floor and took my seat. We were all in the same seats we'd sat in the first day, but the computers now had a glowing notification on the screens reading "URGENT MISSION PACKET INFO". Something was wrong for sure, it wasn't asking me to swipe my card, and Oori and Willa weren't here to explain. I tapped on the notification, and a message marked as being from Oori popped up on my screen.
~
"Emergency mission: neutralize or otherwise resolve the situation with Homicide.
The chosen known as Homicide is currently attempting to blackmail Lorgiaia's Angels using footage taken from the security cameras in the "Petit Fleur" restaurant. This information, if leaked, would jeopardize the in-place deals we have with sponsors, as well as cast the church in a bad light. In order to preserve our organization and maintain our status, you will need to eliminate the target, or otherwise make it impossible to leak the information.
How you do this is up to you. This message will delete itself once closed, and all agents involved will deny all knowledge of it if asked. How you approach this mission is up to you, but the public cannot find out about it, remain covert.
Your deadline is tomorrow at noon."
~
I rocked back in my chair, my head spinning. I couldn't think about this, they wanted us to do a mission? What was all that about 'you're all still civilians for now and will be treated as such'? It sounded like we were supposed to kill Homicide, or at least get into his base and destroy the footage. I didn't even have my power yet, could we even do this?
I looked to the other girls. I wasn't the only one who felt worried. I bit my lip and re-read the message. It didn't seem to be optional, it was either take care of the problem, or we'd lose our jobs before we even had our first meet and greet. I try to think of which of us could do things covertly, and the only one who came to mind was Alele. Lucy's power made a lot of noise, Drizti's glowed in the dark, and Galorna was massive enough that sneaking wasn't an option.
"Well, are we doing this?" Galorna asked, standing up.
"We- we don't even know where Homicide's base is, are we just going back to the restaurant?" Drizti asked nervously.
"Hold on, we're going along with this?" I asked. "This sounds dangerous, we could talk it out..."
"We don't have time to talk it out, Candy, we have like twenty hours to do this or we're fucked." Alele snapped.
"Was that a powers pun?..." Lucy asked.
"No. Maybe. Shut up, I can do puns, it's a thing heroes do." Alele grumbled.
"Ok, so, I have an idea about how to find out where his base is, I think." Galorna spoke up.
"Is it in the files?" I asked. I really needed to actually read those at some point...
"No, it's... remember I mentioned I had an ex-girlfriend? She's... into this stuff. I think I can get her to give us some information. I'll see if I can get her to meet us. Lucy, do you have enough of your face masks for everyone?"
Lucy blinked. "Uhhh yeah, I guess, I got like a pack of them, they only cover your nose to your jaw though?"
Galorna nodded. "That's fine. Alele, get started on putting eye makeup on everyone, make them look as different as you can without drawing attention. Drizti, can you use your powers to make stilts? To look taller?"
"I- I could wear a longer robe and stand on a couple beams and just move them? It might look funny because I wouldn't be taking steps, but..."
"Ok, perfect, do that. I'll start making the call, everyone needs to be in the most normal clothes you can, and try to wear something that covers your ear shape, makes it hard to see if you have horns, and above all, everyone but me shut the fuck up while we're there until we're done, got it?" Galorna said, sounding like a drill sergeant.
"Um... What exactly are we doing?" I asked. It was sounding more and more dangerous by the second, and I'd be damned if I was going to die with weird makeup on.
"We're going to the place I met my ex." Galorna said grimly. "Valley City's number one fallen hotspot, The God's Taint."