Hell, were they even doing Gallant justice?  The guy who’d set out to be the literal knight in shining armor, lived his life with more chivalry than any five people you plucked off the street?  All he got was a photo and a name on a memorial.

I mean, Taylor’s narration from 8.8 went into quite a bit of detail as to why doing all that much more causes problems, but I get how this would feel insufficient.

“You okay?” Flechette asked.

Vista tore her eyes from the portraits, “I’m fine.  Let’s go, Weld’s waiting.”

…yeah, let’s.

She looked at her own picture.  In contrast to the boys’, it was vibrant, filled with color.

Oh, so they all have pictures here, not just the recently deceased ones. I see.

Her eyes, costume and the frame of the picture were a high-saturation blue-green, the background of the image a sunset orange to highlight her blonde hair.  Vista was young in that picture too.

They’re all so young… that’s the point of the Wards. To have a place where young capes can have official support and supervision, rather than getting themselves killed while going solo.

Her photo had a missing fang tooth on the bottom row, which created a small, dark gap in her awkward smile.  She’d been just a month shy of turning eleven, then.

In other words she’s been a Ward for a little over two years.

Since she was ten.

I wonder if the PRT has a lower limit here?

She hated that picture.

Another reminder of how everyone sees her as just a kid, I suppose.

She hated it all the more because she couldn’t help but wonder if the time would come when that picture would be hanging over the front desk in black and white, smiling that guileless goofy smile that was everything she didn’t want people to remember about her.

Ouch.

Her train of thought stopped dead when her eye fell on the portraits on the wall above the front desk.

…oh boy.

Gallant.

Three feet high and two feet wide, the two pictures were black and white, bordered by foot-wide black frames.  The pictures themselves were head-and-shoulders shots of Aegis and Gallant, both in costume, masks on.  She knew from her own experience that the pictures would have been taken in their first week on the team.

Huh. Seems like an odd choice to not use updated pics.

Gallant looked so young.  He had still been so young when the tidal wave had smashed into him and caved in his chest.  Only seventeen.

Out of respect for the dead, I am trying so hard to rein in my desire to make an ABBA reference right now.

“Amazingly mature?”

Maybe that’s not something Vista hears as much as she’d like to. Or maybe she’s a little offended that Flechette didn’t expect it from her.

They had reached the PRT building.  A trip that had taken them thirty minutes on the way out had taken them four on the way back, with the aid of Vista’s power.

Pretty sweet!

Flechette held the bulletproof glass door open, raised a hand in greeting to the PRT uniform who stood alert on the other side.  “You know what I mean.”

Does she, though?

Vista had to bite her tongue.  Pointing out that people were being condescending had a way of making her look petulant, which only compounded the problem.  Yes.  Because any maturity on my part is something special. Doesn’t matter that I have nine months of seniority over Kid Win, being thirteen means everyone expects me to be squealing over Justin Beiber or the Maggie Holt books, or dressing in pink or-

Welp, looks like it was the latter option.

Also I’m glad you have better taste than squealing over Justin Bieber. I’m not even talking about his music – from all I’ve heard, the guy’s a douche.

…wait, he had gotten famous all the way back in 2012? Sheesh, time flies.

“It’s not that complicated.  Everything’s like wet clay, and I’m smudging it around.”

Huh. I like that metaphor.

Vista deemed her work done, started walking forward.  Flechette followed, eyeing the distorted sidewalk at the edges of the effect.

Sounds like a good thing to pay attention to, especially if the edge of the sidewalk is made of bricks with dividing lines

every foot or so, perpendicular to the road.

“You’re powerful, kiddo,” Flechette said.

“Kinda.”

Heh, yeah.

I remember when Vista was first brought up back in Agitation, it was mentioned that getting ones powers early tended to make them stronger. I wonder when Vista got hers, and how.

“You could be one of the top dogs in the Protectorate, in five or six more years.”

Vista frowned, “They said the same thing about Dauntless.”

Dauntless died to Leviathan, didn’t he?

*search*

Yep, in 8.3.

So does that mean Vista isn’t sure she’ll survive that long?

“One of the Protectorate members who got killed, if I remember right?”

Vista nodded.

Flechette frowned, “That’s… unexpectedly dark, coming from you.  Where did that come from?”

The depths of her mind, I suppose. Vista is not one to judge by her cover.

Vista stepped out into the middle of the road at the edge of the fissure, then concentrated.  She felt her power extend to every solid object in front of her, formed a map in her head.  There was nobody out there, which made it easier.

I suppose to do this in one step, they need a straight line, preferably without anything blocking the way.

Unless her power happens to be able to create straight-up wormholes, but then why would it require them to go over here and be easier to do when the area between the locations doesn’t have many people?

Slowly, carefully, she began adjusting.  She truncated the length of Lord street, then did it again, repeating the process to make the four lane road shorter and shorter.  The fissure down the center of the road squeezed against itself like a compressed spring.

I wonder how it would look from the side. Like, coming in towards the truncated section of Lord Street from a perpendicular street.

“This is disorienting,” Flechette spoke, as she gazed at the scene.  “My power gives me a grasp of angles… and I’m worried I might have a seizure if I try to use it to get a sense of what’s happening here.”

Heh, yeah, good point. Things seem to get sort of non-euclidean once Vista’s power gets involved.

She suppressed her annoyance at the child’s gift and offered a smile instead, “Thank you, Parian.”

It’s interesting that despite Parian being significantly older than her, Vista still thinks of her as a “child”. It fits with the fact that the same sentence continues to indicate irritation with being patronized, too.

“Let’s go,” Flechette spoke, “Back to headquarters?”

“Back to headquarters.  Come on, we’ll take my shortcut.”

Must be handy to be able to create shortcuts on the go, wherever you want.

They walked two blocks east to reach Lord street.  Beneath the water’s surface, they could see a fissure that ran down the center of the road, zig-zagging from one lane to the other.

Lord Street sounds familiar. Wasn’t this one of the locations we saw during the Leviathan fight?

*blog search*

Doesn’t seem like it, unless it wasn’t mentioned by name or blog search is missing it. It was mentioned before in Interlude 5 (Faultline’s club, Palanquin, is two blocks from Lord Street) and 6.7 (most people out and about downtown would be near Lord Street, celebrating the end of the curfew). It sounds like it’s one of the main streets downtown.

That said, it’s two blocks east of a neighborhood that’s north of Lake Heroic and was just barely missed by Levvy. It’s entirely possible that parts of the battle did happen on Lord Street.