Dedicated to Bababoey2u, aka my little derpy dragon <3 

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Chapter 22 - Invasion of privacy

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Standing in what she strongly suspected was Sirah’s old sewerage infrastructure, Athira folded her arms.

Despite standing on a raised section of stone walkway that appeared to be dry, foul smelling liquid still lurked at the edge of the tunnels. The entire space was only a few arm spans wide and almost twice the height.

She didn’t have an issue with that, exactly. She’d been in her share of sewerage systems before. It was surprising how many villains thought it made a good lair. No, her issue lay with what was clinging to the walls.

“No comments?” said Athira. Her colour was already crawling beneath her skin, itching to get at the sleeper goo. “Expecting carnivorous ooze in the sewer system, were we?”

The violet globules covering the walls, previously searching the cracks for hells knew what quivered at the sound of her voice. The tremor running through them was visible and fascinating to watch. It moulded their surfaces in a unified wave as they slowly began to pull together into one giant problem.

“This wasn’t here a month ago,” said Beth, apparently not sharing Athira’s appreciation. “We didn’t know it was--“

Although she’d kept her voice to a whisper, the noise only made it more excited. The sleeper’s mass shook as it squelched towards them, now as high as the ceiling would allow. The leftover globules continued to pull together as a second sleeper started to form behind the first.

Athira glanced at the tunnel that was now their only way out. The pole ended a few metres beyond their reach, but distance had never posed a problem for her before.

 “Back up,” said Athira, glancing at the twins. “Go, now!”

She didn’t wait for a response. Athira latched her colour around Chloe’s waist and lifted her body to the pole. When Chloe’s hands were firmly wrapped around its length, Athira raised Beth to join her.

With them out of hers and harms way, Athira turned back to face the sleeper to find it had covered more than half the distance between them. She fumbled for the cloak’s clasp around her throat, letting the fabric drop to the ground.

“Hey!” called Beth from above her head. “You coming? Quick, before it gets to you!”

“I won’t let it get into the city,” said Athira.

She raised her hands calmly, letting her colour coat the skin up to her elbows. Inventive curses came from the twins, but she pushed them from her mind.

You ready, Tal?  asked Athira, drawing a deep breath through her nose.

Ready, came his reply.

I won’t lose control this time. Not like I did on the monorail, or with Reader.

Nope, you got this. And I got you.

Athira nodded. This energy doesn’t dictate mine. I won’t let it.

Just keep it basic and you’ll be fine.

As the sleeper’s limbs reached out to engulf her body, Athira stepped to the side.

She ducked low as she let the momentum from her movement twist her body around and carry her behind the sleeper. She lashed out with her right forearm as it travelled past the violet mass. The colour on her limb cut through the sleeper easier than a knife through butter, leaving a deep, frothing wound in its path.

Athira completed the sequence by turning to face the sleeper’s back. Immediately, she thrust her left arm forward with pointed fingers, sinking it deep into the sleeper’s hide. Withdrawing her hand, the ooze’s glow intensified around the point of shrinking injury.

It’s healing, she realised.

She struck again, faster this time. With every blow, Athira left a little of her colour behind in the sleeper’s body. The flecks of black colour danced inside the violet like miniature black holes. Each time the sleeper tried to seal itself, the flecks would flare up, catalysed by the sleeper’s own regenerative energy to eat away at its flesh like acid.

I will not lose control. Side, duck, sweep around. She kept her colour reigned in, always in contact with her skin as the monks had taught her when she was little.  Breathe through the nose. Quell the fire in your chest.

With Talon and the amulet to guard the floodgates, she’d become all too lax with her discipline. She knew she hadn’t been doing all she could to keep her colour under control, but after the whispers telling her she would end up causing the apocalypse single-handedly, it hadn’t seemed to matter. Reasoning told her better a few people die than everyone if it meant she could stop the ticking bomb.

But no more, she promised herself silently. No more would she let people like Shift and Zoe suffer because she was too careless to guard herself. Unless it was Rathe himself at her feet, she would control her damned colour.

Besides, she thought as her palm cleaved through one of the sleeper’s limbs. Fighting like this is much more engaging than lifting a hand and having your colour do everything for you.

Another two strikes and the sleeper finally halted.

 Athira almost felt bad for it.

What remained of the sleeper’s body was littered with cuts of various widths and depths, depending on which part of her arms Athira had used to inflict it. The violet mass could barely remain upright. It wobbled like a jelly someone had eaten the sides of before the top, unstable and on the verge of collapse. It was clear that whatever her colour dissolved didn’t come back.

She didn’t have much time to study its remains. The second sleeper, now completely formed was upon her.

Athira did the only thing she could to avoid its incoming tentacle limb without inducing the greater parts of her colour. She hit the ground and rolled down the side of the curved platform, straight into the stagnant pools of water.

The smell made her gag. There was no way this liquid had once been water. It was thicker than the sleeper was, for crying out loud. And the colour... Athira didn’t want to think about what had to be in it for that to be possible.

She tried to bury her nose into her shoulder, but no matter where she put it the smell still curled up her nostrils like smoke.

Incapacitated by the smell, she failed to realise all too late that the sleeper was on top of her. It was larger than the first, having taken extra time to absorb all the leftover ooze from the walls, and as such had enough mass to curve itself around her in a way that left her trapped. With every centimetre it grew closer to the bare skin of her hands and face, the more Athira struggled to not give in and just blow it to pieces.

Breathe, girl, said Talon. A wall has never stopped you before.

Athira nodded, about to sink back into the stone to and hope for a nearby space when Chloe’s voice stopped her.

“Now!”

They wouldn’t.

The sleeper’s glow changed. If Athira hadn’t been staring at it, she wouldn’t have noticed the almost imperceptible shift in colour as the fluorescent violet sank into a deeper, more solid shade of purple.

“Got it!”

Athira grit her teeth. Idiots!

Athira crossed her arms over her chest and swiped outward, severing a few of the growing tentacles preparing to eat her. At the same time, a figure whose outline was marred through the sleeper’s goo approached from the opposite side and stuck out two blurred hands.

A second shade of purple appeared on a section of the sleeper’s body. Against Chloe’s light purple, this new shade looked almost blue. It lasted barely a moment before the figure swept their hands aside, taking a chunk of sleeper with it.

That got its attention. Athira, eyes watering from the stench, managed to push herself up. She inched through another pool of liquidised nausea as the sleeper turned and pursued Beth, who was already preparing to take another chunk out of its back.

“You okay?” asked Beth, splattering a second long-distance handful of sleeper against the wall.

“Yep,” said Athira, trying to ignore the growing itch on her skin where the damp suit clung to it. “You shouldn’t have come back.”

“Eh, we’re not good at taking orders,” said Beth. “’Sides, can’t just leave you to these things. They’ve already put one friend in a coma.”

“Can’t hold it much more!” came Chloe’s voice from the bottom of the tunnel. “It’s too strong!”

Athira let go of the colour covering her arms, diverting it all into her hands.

She glanced at Beth.  “Rip it to pieces.”

The purple colour grinned. She turned back to the sleeper, her eyes turning purple as it broke out of Chloe’s mental grip.

Beth’s hands were a flurry of movement and light as she tore into the sleeper’s body. Indigo colour engulfed sections up to the size of a human sized head and flung them at the walls. It all but stopped the sleeper in its tracks, and with Chloe’s colour back in the mix, the sleeper wasn’t going anywhere.

Athira was fairly certain the purple colour and her sister could have handled the sleeper by themselves, if not for the rate it was pulling itself back together.

“Throw them to me,” said Athira, running for the nearest Beth-flung ooze pile. “I’ll get rid of them.”

Athira placed her colour-coated hands into the heart of the violet blob at her feet and willed her colour to surround it. As it had on the monorail, the two energies fizzled against each other, but there was no contest. In a few seconds, black colour had eliminated any traces of the glowing sleeper mass.

She repeated the process with the next sleeper chunk Beth threw at her. And the next. And the one after that.

Each time, Athira was careful not to let her colour leave her hands, always maintaining the contact, keeping it held back. The Sleeper’s energy was still riling up her colour inside, a wild stallion with horns and a legendary temper trapped inside a crude wooden corral, but she was determined not to let it escape. Even if this wasn’t her colour, she could use it. It might’ve seared her veins to do it, but it was hers.

And I’ll be damned if Rathe or that stupid voice thinks they can make me do otherwise.

With every blob she dissolved her confidence grew, until finally, there was only one small lump of sleeper left in the sewer tunnels.

Beth waved a hand in Athira’s direction. “Care to do the honours?”

Athira stood up and moved forward.  She considered crouching down, performing the procedure exactly as she had with the others that’d constructed the sleeper’s mass but decided against it.

She pointed a flattened palm in the blobs direction.

Her colour surrounded it. She closed her fist, and just like that, the blob was erased from existence. 

Athira’s hand returned to her side. Without a word, she walked to her cloak and folded it in her arms.

That was nice, Thira, came Talon’s voice. Haven’t seen you that in control in ages.

Athira couldn’t hide her displeasure from him. If I can still hear you, it means the amulet isn’t as strong as it used to be. I’ve been too careless. She glanced up, catching Chloe’s innocent eye as the purple dropped down to the floor from the tunnel. She’s listening.

Sunshine, rainbows, flower crowns and lovely fluffy blankets are allllll I caaaare abooooout.

Talon, no one wants to hear you sing.

Awh, maybe Chloe’d appreciate it for once?

Athira glanced up, noting the newly pained expression on the red head’s face.

Nope. She definitely doesn’t.

“Where’d you learn to fight like that?” asked Beth.

Athira threaded her hands through the looped fabric of the cloak and let it hang in front of her hips. “The monks that raised me made sure I could defend myself.”

“That young? I knew they were strict but...”

Athira turned away from the tunnel and started walking past her, deeper into the sewers. Beth glanced at Chloe, who shrugged.

“Sorry, I was just curious how--“

“We don’t have time for life stories right now,” said Athira over her shoulder. “Exit’s up there, feel free to use it.”

“And you’d be going where?” asked Chloe. The sound of her light footsteps followed Athira, echoing around the stone walls.

Athira stopped at the T intersection to look at them. “You think that sleeper just appeared on its own? It had to have come from somewhere.”

“Sleeper?” asked Chloe. Then it dawned on her. “You mean the purple thing we just destroyed? Is that what they’re called?”

“Would you rather it if I was referring to your brain?” Athira said.

Chloe’s reply came with a withering look. “Ha ha. You’re hilarious.”

Athira rolled her eyes and decided going left was a good decision as any to begin walking. She’d taken eight steps when the twins popped up either side of her, keeping in time to her strides.

“And you’re doing what, exactly?” asked Athira.

“We know these sewers, where they come out, how they intersect,” said Chloe. “We’re helping whether you like it or not. Mainly because we’re bored.”

“I don’t suppose it’s possible to tell you to go the other way,” said Athira, already knowing the forthcoming answer.

“We’ve never been good at taking orders,” said Beth.

*+*+*+*

Three and a half tedious hours of searching sewer tunnels later, even Athira had to give up.

Past the small section under where they’d come in, there was no permanent light fixtures. They’d been reduced to using a flashlight with a power cell that didn’t quite work unless Athira was holding it. She’d paid attention to Chloe’s speculation on the subject for a whole minute before she blocked it out.

Athira’s frustration only grew when every wall and corner began to look the same. The twin’s ceaseless chatter grated against her nerves to the point where she swore her brain almost shut down.

How do you figure that rock found its way down here?

I don’t know, did we leave it here last time?

I’m pretty sure we didn’t.

Are you sure?

Pretty sure.

I swear it looks familiar.

The only thing to give Athira’s mind a rest from the menial small talk were the tunnel sections that’d caved in over the years.

The first blockage Beth tried to clear, but she tired quickly and despite her earlier confidence, Athira didn’t trust her colour to remain docile with these two around and a sleeper having spawned so close by. The last thing she needed was to get past the rubble-formed barrier to find a nest of sleepers, have her colour go berserk and collapse the ceiling on the twins.

Athira rubbed her palm against her thigh, calming her colour from the thought. Yup, that’d probably be hard to explain to Zoe.

Hey Zoe, you know the twins that dragged me off against my will? They’re kind of trapped a fair way underground under a pile of collapsed sewer stone. My bad.

Although, it wouldn’t particularly be a bad thing. Not really. It would mean she’d never hear their voices ever again.

“Plotting our deaths already, eh?” asked Chloe.

“She think we’re an easy kill or something?” replied Beth.

Chloe giggled. “Well apparently we’re going to get squished beneath that which we currently walk on. Who knows what the outcome will be!”

Not even safe in my thoughts.

Athira rubbed her eyes, trying to scrape together every last bit of mental energy she had to make it through the next few minutes. The only thing stopping her from slipping through the ground to the surface was the possibility of running into a sleeper. With her colour raw and more in control of her body than she was, she didn’t want to risk another Winslo’s point.

Never before had she wanted to see sunlight so much, get rid of this stupid flashlight that was making her hand sweat against the plasticy surface and become a hermit for the next ten years of her life. The twins had done enough talking in four hours to last her brain a millennia.

Athira just wanted to be alone except for her books and the raven in her mindscape. She chewed her lip in thought, letting the image iron her agitation away.

A deep armchair with cushions that made her legs disappear. All the books she’d ever read and those she would read scattered open around her with their contents laid bare for her leisure. Talon, head backwards and tucked into his wings, asleep on a perch nearby.

And for whatever reason, the scene had a new addition -- a turtle curled up in her lap.

“A turtle?” asked Chloe. “I mean, the raven I get, even the books, but why a turtle?”

Athira stopped.

That’s it.

She snapped around to face the red head. Inches from her face, she could feel the colour take over her eyes as the world took on a darkened shade. The agitated colour swelled, finding its way to her vocal chords and bringing them far below their usual pitch.

“I swear to the sins,” Athira began through gritted teeth. “If you don’t stop reading my thoughts I’m going to leave you down here blind.” Chloe opened her mouth to speak but Athira pointed a finger at her chest. “Get out of my head or I’ll shut yours down.”

In the dim light, it was hard to gauge Chloe’s reaction. She thought the purple looked startled, but it could have just been that her brain finally turned off and left her face with a stunned expression in its final moments.

Athira was hoping for the latter as she gripped the flashlight’s handle harder and quickened her pace, trying to put some distance between them.

Maybe she’d gone too far. In all honesty, she didn’t care. Having her mind exposed to someone in such a way that even Talon couldn’t help was torture.

“The hell is her problem?” said Beth as Athira stalked away. “Chlo, you--“

“I’m fine,” said Chloe quickly. “The exit’s just there. Leads somewhere around the business district, I think.”

Sure enough, three steps brought Athira in line with a small alcove and a ladder to the surface. The trio made their way up in a newfound silence.

Athira used her colour to push aside the cap, barely able to contain her need for the surface.

She burst through the opening with a blast of colour, hanging mid air as she relished the freedom. The night air swallowed her body, letting her take her first fresh breath in hours. The pent up anxiety drifted away with the cool breeze as her body relaxed at the sounds of the city at night.

Athira stretched her shoulders down, pushing her hands towards the ground while maintaining her distance to it.

The sky was her place. It always had been. Not some underground system that thought it could hold her, but the air that swept around her and raised her.

 Her colour lifted her body higher, ready to ascend to the height of the skyscrapers that towered many heights above her. Anything was within reach now she was out of the sewers and back into the open skies.

A tingle on her skin made her reconsider. She gingerly picked at her suits damp material.

The first thing I’m going to do is get out of this suit before the “water” starts eating away at my flesh.

She started in the direction of Indigo base.

“Wait!” called Chloe, climbing out from the tunnel with Beth in close pursuit. “Wait, just a sec!”

Athira kept flying.

“Talon! I need to tell her something, tell her to stop!”

Don’t you dare, thought Athira.

Talon was hesitant, but firm. Thira...

Athira turned her eyes to the heavens. Really? You’ve known her four hours and you’re taking her side? Do I mean that little to you?

Might be worth at least listening to her for a second or two.

After all that, the last thing I want to hear is her voice again. Preferably never, if that can be arranged.

It can’t hurt.

My eardrums beg to differ, thought Athira, even as her feet were returning to the ground.

She hovered half a metre above the ground and folded her arms.

 “You have about two seconds before I put you back down that hole and seal the gap,” she said.

“I just wanted to say, I’m sorry,” said Chloe. “It’s... really hard for me to tell when someone is thinking something or speaking it. They sound similar. I honestly didn’t mean to. Most of the time.”

To Athira’s surprise, she sounded sincerely apologetic. But that didn’t mean she was ready to forgive just yet.

She let her feet touch the ground. “You said it yourself. You can’t let people know about your ability. So why use it so frivolously?”

Chloe caught up beside her while Beth lingered behind. “Usually I pay attention to their lips, but it’s too dark down there to tell. Or if I’m not sure, I just don’t reply at all and Beth covers for me.” She paused. “Makes me look like an airhead, but better that than locked up at some Elite facility. Right?”

Athira raised an eyebrow. “So why reply with me?”

Chloe shrugged, biting her lip. “Not often that I can use my colour freely with anyone but Beth,” she said. “Usually I keep it reigned in, in case another purple picks up on it. It’s... not a nice feeling.  I hate doing it.”

Mid way through her sentence, Beth pushed the cap back on to the sewer entrance and stood beside them.

“I still don’t think you’d get discovered unless you started reading Huntress’ or Discord’s thoughts word for word,” muttered Beth. “I get that you don’t like it, but if you’re going to do it at least just deal with it and stop complaining about it every two seconds.”

“Swap colours for a day and let me know if you still have that opinion,” Chloe shot back. “You always say that, Beth, but you don’t get it. No one ever does.”

“No, because you’re the only colour in existence that can’t hold back their colour without suffering withdrawal from it, right?” said Beth.

“We’re really doing this?” asked Chloe. “You wanna go, sis?”

Athira sighed. Happy now, Tal?

“Sure, if you don’t feel like holding back,” said Beth.

“Well maybe I won’t--“

Athira stepped between them.

“Hold this,” she said, handing the flashlight to Chloe, who took it after a slight hesitation.

With that out of the way, Athira pulled back one sleeve of her suit, trying to keep the annoyance out of her movements and failing miserably. The material, still damp with the liquid that definitely wasn’t water clung to her skin, making it harder to pull back in addition to itching like hell.

Stupid stuff won’t even come out like water, thought Athira. It’s the least it could do.

After a struggle, she managed to reveal a forearm and held it to Chloe for inspection. Beth was beside her sister now, who had the flashlight pointed at Athira’s arms to reveal the light blue runes that marked her skin.

Chloe gave her a confused look. “What are the runes for? Power amplifier?” Suspicion crossed her face. “Are you mocking--“

“You’re not the only one that has to keep their colour restricted,” said Athira.

She switched her gaze to Beth. “I’ve had these runes since I was four years old. They grew with me, every step of the way. It’s like fire under my skin every time I use my colour because of them, reminding me that every fragment of it comes with a cost. That if I let it go too far, or if I ever remove them, that fire will get out and a lot of people will die.”

Athira called colour to her palm, letting the black colour linger around her fingers with only hazy white outlines to mark their existence. The searing sensation ran through her veins, but for the first time in a while, she relished the feeling.

 “And yet, I’m still using it. I still can’t help but use the thing that’ll eventually kill me. The fire is a small price to pay for the feeling I get when I use my colour. It feels right. It’s a part of me. It’s never not going to be. And you want your sister to just ‘stop complaining about it’?”

“It really can’t be that difficult,” said Beth, sounding less sure of herself with every word. “I mean, you just don’t use it? Right?”

“Do me a favour,” said Athira, tugging her sleeve back down to her wrist. “Stop breathing for a minute and let me know how much you’d rather breathe whenever you feel like it, as opposed to when someone tells you to. Now can you both shut up?”

Beth mumbled something under her breath and walked off.

“She’ll get over it,” said Chloe. “I think we’re both a bit tired from being down there so long.”

“You dragged me down there,” said Athira. “Hope ‘initiation’ was worth it.”

Chloe shrugged. “Didn’t even get to it, but it’s just a dumb prank we play on purples anyway. Speaking of which...” She tilted her head. “I’m sorry if this is over the line again, but... you’re not a purple colour, are you?”

“You’re about the third person to believe me on that,” said Athira dryly.

“When you use your colour, your mind doesn’t feel like any purple I’ve ever met. It doesn’t feel like any colour I’ve ever met, actually.”

That wasn’t what Athira was expecting to hear. “You can sense it?”

Chloe bobbed her head. “Yea. Beth can too, although she has to concentrate pretty hard to have any sort of accuracy.”

“So,” Athira ventured. “You’re able to see into mindscapes?”

“I wish!” said Chloe. Then she frowned. “Actually, no. I don’t wish. That’d make me an even bigger target for the Elites. But being able to see the mindscapes? That would be amazing. You could learn so much.”

Just like Reader, realised Athira. I think we just figured out why they wanted him so much, Tal.

“The Elites want Reader because he’s a criminal, don’t they?” asked Chloe. “Or has Indigo figured out something...” Her eyes went wide. “This is related to what Jordan was working on with Kione, isn’t it?”

Athira went for the only thing in Chloe’s statement that she could without lying.

“I have no idea who Jordan is.”

Chloe laughed. “Uh huh. Jordan, our team’s orange colour, can’t hide anything from me. He told us he was looking into something relating to the oozes -- the sleepers -- that put Will in a coma, and we got everything out of him, Beth and I. Something about the Elites and Zoe.”

“You and Beth, you’re the two that took out more of those sleepers, right?” said Athira.

“Yup. No one else’s colours on our team affected them, so they did civilian control while we dealt with them.”

“That was the same with us,” said Athira. “Raph’s colour couldn’t touch it, but Zoe’s did. And mine, of course. Shift was making himself useful by getting stuck in a row of monorail chairs.”

Chloe grinned. “That sounds like the Shift I know.”

“Speaking of him, I’d better get back,” said Athira. “This suit’s about to eat me alive and Shift’s probably got himself captured by a villainess planning to marry him off to the highest bidder.”

“I’ll tell Beth you said bye,” said Chloe. “Thanks for the backup, by the way. No one else really gets it.”

Athira kicked off the ground backward, letting her colour pull her into the air slowly. “Heh. You don’t know exactly how much I ‘get it’. Good luck, Chloe.”

“You too!” said the red head as Athira drifted further away. “And Athira?”

“What?”

“You can consider your initiation complete!”

*+*+*+*

A/N - PICTURE ON THE SIDE --> WEAPONISED TURTLE! HELL YEA!   (<3 Gaby for my turtle ;D)