Tornado carefully made her way across the pipes that ran near the ceiling of the room, taking care not to make a sound and give herself away.
Below her were four people, including potato kid, standing in the center of the dimly lit room. The pipes she walked on continued down the walls and led into a different room at the back. There were some old storage tanks, too, but they looked old and filthy, like the entire facility wasn't in use anymore.
When she reached a good position to jump the men from above, Tornado crouched down and hesitated. She was expecting far more than just four people, based on what the boy told her. Why was it just him and some older men? She had a hard time believing he'd kill the boss on his own if she didn't interfere. What were the chances she was being lured into a trap?
She took a dagger out of a holster on her utility belt and gave it a nervous look. She never used lethal weapons while wearing the Tornado suit, especially considering her blue power could turn any object into a weapon far sharper than any dagger. Not that she'd ever used her blue power against people, either. In fact, her enemies had probably already forgotten about it by now.
It was three years ago when she first donned the blue costume with the yellow "T" on it, just the way she envisioned it as a child. And with that childlike purity came a vow to never use her powers to hurt people—or to take a human life at all—because heroes don't kill.
But potato kid gave her a harsh reality check regarding her little crusade, and it'd become clear to her that she hadn't achieved a single thing in those three years. Tonight, she brought a dagger with her, reminding her that she came here with the resolve to break that vow, and to finally join the world of grown-ups.
Down below, one of the men talked to potato kid about money and power, lecturing him about what it means to be an adult. He exuded a commanding aura over the other three, suggesting he was indeed the new boss, or at least someone with power. Tornado scowled and tightened her grip on her dagger as she thought back to what the boy told her, about how they preyed on children as young as ten years old. She saw it with her own eyes, earlier today, having been completely blinded to it up until now.
Then, the man patted potato kid on his shoulder and turned around, giving Tornado a better look at his face, and she recognized him. It was the very man who talked to the little girl with the yellow scarf earlier today.
At the time, the man gave the little girl some money, making her happy, and Tornado couldn't bring herself to interfere, like a coward. It was that same cowardice that brought her here in the first place, and now was her chance to rectify that.
Tornado gathered her rage and turned it into focus, trying to suppress any moral doubts about what she was about to do, and jumped down from the ceiling pipes.
Before she touched the ground, the boss noticed her and looked up at the ceiling, causing her to land on him from the front and pushing his back to the ground. His head hit the ground hard, and the man went unresponsive for a couple of seconds. During this time, Tornado pressed her dagger to the man's throat but hesitated when she saw flashes of that classroom in the back of her mind.
"Oh sh—" Potato kid gasped and stepped back.
Three times she tried to command her arm to shove the dagger through the man's neck, but her body refused to listen. And it didn't take long before the opportunity was taken from her when she felt a dart hit the back of her head, followed by a strong electric shock.
Tornado screamed in pain and dropped her dagger when all of the muscles in her body locked up. Before she could fall on top of the man underneath her, he came to his senses and kicked her away, allowing him to come away unscathed.
One of the men was tasing her from behind, and he wasn't stopping. Tornado couldn't move her limbs anymore, and she was powerless to fight back as long as the current continued.
But it went on and on, like they were torturing her with it. The men laughed, and the boss had taken a camcorder out of a bag and started filming her writhing in pain. Behind him was a clock, and Tornado could see that at least thirty seconds had passed since she jumped down from the pipe.
"Up, up!" the boss yelled while looking at the display on his camera.
Following his command, someone behind her turned up the current, making the pain even worse. Just when she was starting to be able to move her head and look around, she was now completely stunned again. This went on for another whole minute as they kept turning the power up on whatever fucked up taser the gangsters had gotten their hands on.
Eventually, the boss turned on some music, then grabbed a bolt cutter and handed it to potato kid.
"You're up next, kiddo," he said with a playful grin.
"Want me to turn it off?" another man asked.
"Nah, she's not fried yet, I can tell," the boss replied.
"W-Won't she die?" Potato kid asked anxiously.
"Die? Lil' Tornado here's got super strength and super health. She's not like the rest of us mortals," the boss responded and whistled at someone else, who promptly walked into view holding two extension cords.
"Now, kid…" the boss said as he came closer, filming Tornado's anguish from up close. "You gotta work your way in. Start with the fingertips, then move up to the joints, same for the toes, you get the idea."
Hearing that, a panic started welling up inside of Tornado's chest. She'd heard stories of what kinds of torture methods the cartels used, and it looked like she was about to become another example of it.
"After that, I'll let you skin her," the boss continued. "And you wanna know the best part? We don't even gotta drug her to keep her alive."
The three men and potato kid laughed, and a dreadful fear went through Tornado's chest. Compared to what they were about to do to her, being tasered was nothing.
Inside, her cells were growing restless and starting to fight back. Little blue and pink critters, swimming around in her bloodstream, acting on her behalf and making her stronger than everybody else.
"Up! More!" the boss yelled.
"Uh, I don't got any more," another man replied.
Tornado was moving her limbs and slowly getting up.
"W-What do we do?" Potato kid asked, nervously holding the bolt cutter with both hands, looking hardly qualified to use them.
When Tornado got on one knee, she looked over at the man who was holding the taser. He looked scared, like someone who stood face to face with a lion that wasn't giving in to the sedative.
Running on adrenaline and whatever her cells were doing, Tornado pulled the dart out of her head and made it glow blue, causing the device to fall straight through the man's hand and onto the ground.
The man screamed when he saw half of his hand missing, retaining only his thumb. Potato kid dropped the bolt cutter, and the boss filmed, looking lost for ideas.
Out of the four men, only one reached for his gun, and Tornado took to a sprint, grabbing the gun before the man could fire. After a bit of a struggle, Tornado managed to aim the gun at the man's head and pull the trigger, officially ending her vow after a three-year stint.
"Ohh!" the boss gasped with intrigue, having moved his camera to follow the action.
Next, the man who'd already lost his hand tried to grab his gun, but he was having trouble without his dominant hand. With no time to think, Tornado ran over, grabbed her dagger off the ground on the way and rammed it into the man's chest.
As the man fell to the ground, Tornado turned to the boss, who lowered his camera and turned his gaze to the exit with a panicked look in his eyes. Tornado was now closer to the exit than he was, yet he gunned for it anyway.
Still high on adrenaline, Tornado ran faster than him and intercepted him well before he covered even half the distance to the exit. In a last-ditch effort to save his own life, he tried tackling her with his superior body weight, but Tornado used her blue power on the dagger and cut his throat along with any other parts of him that were in the way. As a result, the man collapsed on top of her, tackling Tornado and letting out a high-pitched yelp as his final words.
Tornado struggled to crawl out from under his body, kicking it away in anger and panting as she got back to her feet.
"It's… safe… you're…" she said while out of breath, turning to potato kid.
But when she locked eyes with him, she found him reaching for a tommy gun out of a suitcase he'd just opened. Frozen, he looked back at her like a deer in headlights.
"You're…" Tornado muttered with heartbroken eyes when she realized what he wanted to do with the weapon.
The boy said nothing, and the two stared at each other intensely. Eventually, he pressed his lips together and swallowed, then turned his head to the gun like he was conflicted about whether to take it or not. The two teenagers stood there, unmoving, and the boy did not reestablish eye contact with her, instead opting to move his gaze across the ground to try and get her in his peripheral vision. A painful truth was becoming clear.
Potato kid was the first to break the tension, reaching for the gun and turning to Tornado with clear intent to shoot her. A brokenhearted Tornado listened to the call of her instincts and took to one last sprint, making her cape turn pink and hurrying to stop the boy before he could fire the gun.
It was apparent that potato kid had no experience handling this kind of weapon, because when he fired, the recoil overpowered him and made him miss his target completely. He stumbled backwards, unable to stop Tornado from tackling him to the ground and landing on top of him.
"You!" an out-of-breath Tornado yelled and put her dagger underneath his chin. "You tricked me!"
In a futile effort, the boy tried to aim the gun, which he was still holding onto, at her head. Tornado needed no effort at all to rip it out of his hands and throw it away.
"You were… You were…" she yelled until her voice cracked a little. "Were you really gonna cut off my fingers?" she asked with teary eyes. "S-Skin me?"
The boy didn't respond and instead looked at her with resentment, and most of all cowardice, in his eyes. Tornado gasped when she saw that the answer to that question may have been "yes".
Her lips started twitching.
"B-But you said—J-Just because I rejected you?"
Then, something in his eyes clicked, and he finally talked with a complete change in tone.
"No! No! I wasn't gonna do it, I swear!" he pleaded and moved his hand around to try and reach for the gun. "I was gonna kill him with this! That's why I—"
"Liar!" Tornado wept and ran the dagger up through the boy's head.
With her eyes shut tight, she pulled the dagger out, then continued on the boy's chest, stabbing him multiple times while crying.
"!!!"
When she felt something hot near her hand, she opened her eyes and saw that the dagger and the boy's chest were alit with blue flames. Tornado gasped and jumped back.
"No! I didn't…"
But when she looked around, the blue flames were consuming the whole building. Now with holes in the outer walls, the storm outside was shaking the building up, and it was coming down.
Tornado squealed in fear and dropped her dagger, grabbing onto her head and frantically looking for the nearest exit. Before she left, she gave one last look at potato kid's remains and froze. Her heart ached at the idea of leaving him behind, but the blue flames had already claimed his body, and her deed could no longer be undone.
♦
"They're doctored," Tatters explained.
They were standing outside the remains of the refinery building, looking out across what used to be the frozen lake. Now, there was pitch-black tar covering it, and it was slowly rising until it would no doubt flood the city. The sun was setting and the storm was right above the tar lake, giving the dark sky an orange glow.
"Why? What's the point?" Jenny asked, standing next to her.
"To torment me," Tatters replied emotionlessly.
Jenny looked at Tatters with sympathetic eyes, then turned to the other blonde in the distance. Tornado was knee-deep in the tar, walking away from the refinery and into the depths of black as if trying to drown herself.
"I can feel everything she can," Tatters continued. "It probably wants to weaken me to take control of my body," she looked down at herself, "to hurt you and Circus, and everyone around me…"
Next, she looked up at the stormy sky as the wind ruffled her braids.
"And then, it'll be able to feed on me again."
"There's gotta be something I can do," Jenny said while looking at her hand. "I even made it all the way in here."
Tatters gave her a look of appreciation, but she didn't share Jenny's optimism.
"If he's been with me since I was little, I'll just have to live with him 'till I die."
Jenny closed her hand and gave Tatters a worried look, then turned to the blonde in the tar, who was now submerged up to her chest.
"H-Hey! She's gonna drown herself!"
"Good. It'll be over soon."
Jenny turned to Tatters and responded with an outraged frown. The wind was getting heavier and Tatters' cape was blowing back at the height of her shoulders.
"You can get outta here and save Circus," she continued.
Tatters didn't look Jenny's way, but Jenny's body language more than conveyed her disapproval.
"It's not real. I never drowned myself," Tatters repeated.
Jenny turned around and poked Tatters in the chest.
"You're real!" she exclaimed, then pointed at Tornado. "And that's still you!"
"That's…" Tatters stuttered while rubbing the spot where Jenny poked her, "not…"
Then, Jenny raised her arm and playfully tried to punch Tatters' shoulder, but this time, Tatters jumped away in time to avoid it.
"C-C'mon!" Jenny said with an embarrassed smile like she didn't just miss. "Depend on your friend for once!"
Tatters looked surprised at Jenny's familiar words, and it made her chest tingle.
"W-What could you possibly do now?" she asked with her hands still covering the sore spot on her chest.
Jenny cleared her throat and took a step towards the lake. In the distance, Tornado was covered in tar up to her neck and was about to go under. Jenny turned her hair blue and put one foot forward, like she was about to fly off.
"Hey!" Tatters pulled on Jenny's forearm to stop her from leaving.
In response, Jenny made eye contact and gave Tatters a thumbs up.
"I'm gonna give it a good ending!"
Tatters' eyes widened as she released her grip on Jenny's arm, then watched as the girl floated into the air, with her hair glowing brightly against the dark, orange sky above. She didn't know what to say back, and her mouth was slightly agape.
Jenny took her silence as approval and blasted off, flying against the heavy storm and giving the sky a light blue hue, like an aurora.
♦
The thick tar pressed strongly against her body as she sank down into the depths. This was the final step, and a fitting end to today. Now, all that surrounded her was darkness, and that darkness was about to envelop the whole city with her.
Now that she'd seen potato kid's true colors, she knew that no-one in the city was on her side, not even the little girl in the yellow scarf. Maybe she'd have to run a dagger through that girl's head one day, too.
Tornado had already exhausted her tears during the last couple of days during which her worldview came apart. Now, she sank with emotionless eyes, unable to see a thing through the thick, black tar, uncaring whether or not she'd ever see daylight again.
Then, a hand came reaching down from above, and when Tornado opened her eyes inside the darkness, she could see a faint, blue glow through the dark liquid. Weakly, she raised her arm to accept the gesture but stopped before touching the strange hand. If she was to take away anything from today, it was that no-one could be trusted, especially not if they had something to offer. Tornado could never tell from the surface what people were really feeling, so it was best to assume the worst.
But the hand did not go away. In fact, it waved around, trying to find her, and even slapped her in the face by accident. Eventually, the strange hand caught onto hers and started pulling her up towards the light.
Back above the surface, Tornado gasped for fresh air and saw a beautiful girl with glowing blue hair, floating above the tar, pulling her up.
"Hey!" the beautiful girl said excitedly, unaffected by the heavy winds and floating steadily in place.
"H-Hey," Tornado said timidly.
Next, the girl pulled Tornado further up and tossed her in the air, letting go of her hand. Tornado wiggled her arms around as she rotated in midair and eventually balanced herself with her head pointing up. Somehow, she was flying in the air and not falling back into the tar.
"What's your name?" the girl asked with wide, interested eyes.
"I'm—" a confused Tornado hesitated to answer.
"I'm Jenny!" the girl happily introduced herself, floating around Tornado and sounding like a flying saucer.
Tornado looked down at her ruined costume. It was torn all over the place and covered in black tar, but the yellow "T" was still mostly intact.
"I'm… Tatters…"
"I know!" Jenny replied.
"You know?"
"I'm a friend!"
Teenage Tatters looked at Jenny with skeptical, tired eyes.
"I don't have any friends."
Then, Jenny stopped in front and held out her hand, like she wanted to touch palms.
"Give it some time!"
Teenage Tatters clutched onto her own hand, pondering whether to touch palms or not, then pulled it against her chest instead.
"Are you, like, an angel or something?"
After some thought, Jenny replied.
"Yeah!"
Then, enticed at the prospect of touching the hand of an angel, teenage Tatters pressed her own palm against Jenny's.
"You did good today," Jenny said with a comforting smile.
"I… did?"
Slowly, the world around her faded to black, until there was nothing left except herself and the angel.
"Uhuh," Jenny nodded with a warm smile.
Eventually, she, too, started fading away until their hands were no longer touching, and teenage Tatters was all alone.
"W-Wait!" she muttered and looked around the darkness until she locked eyes with someone else.
♦
The teenage blonde stared at her with big, surprised eyes, like the girl knew she was looking at her future self. Slowly, Tatters approached, until they stood face to face. At sixteen, the height difference wasn't that significant anymore, and the teenager's eyes were almost at the same height as her own.
Tatters had seen everything, including what Jenny told her.
"You did."
The teenager studied Tatters' outfit, checking out her black cape with all its history in the form of patched-up holes and other battle damage.
"But I… killed him…" the teenager sobbed, allowing herself to open up to a familiar face.
"It's okay, I had to kill someone the other day, too," Tatters said and stepped closer. "Sometimes, you have no choice."
Tatters put her hand on her younger self's shoulders.
"You're the only one who can."
And in the blink of an eye, the teenager had turned into a child, wearing a garbage bag over her head. Tatters swallowed and got on one knee to meet the little blonde's teary eyes.
"Hey there…"
Then, the little blonde's exhausted yet bewildered eyes followed her hands as Tatters undid the chain that kept her cape fastened.
"Here."
And Tatters wrapped the black cape around the little blonde's shoulders.
"It was never your fault."
In response, the little blonde gasped and stared at Tatters with wide eyes for a second until eventually more tears came out. Then, she leapt forward, pushed her face against Tatters' chest and cried. A stunned Tatters needed a moment to compose herself before easing her arms onto the little blonde's back and giving her a comforting rub.
"It was never your fault…"
Slowly, the darkness around them turned into light, and the little sniffing blonde started fading away with the rest of the world. Tatters ran her hand underneath the garbage bag on the little girl's head and rubbed her hair, and the little blonde rubbed her head back and forth against Tatters' chest until she faded out and became one with the light.
♦
Her face was pressed against the grass when she woke up, and someone was lying on top of her.
"Hey! You're awake!"
Circus' voice. Tatters looked up to find her trusty sidekick crouching by her side.
"We made it in time," Jenny's voice sounded from the person on top of her, exhausted and happy.
"You're not hurt?" Tatters asked Circus.
"Nope! But you were pretty scary!"
Circus wasn't aware of what had just happened, and she looked suitably unconcerned.
When the person on top of her wasn't making an effort to get up, Tatters took matters into her own hands and pushed herself to her feet.
"Whee!" Jenny softly made her excitement known as she clasped her arms around Tatters' shoulders, holding onto her until her feet were no longer touching the ground.
"What're you… doing?" Tatters grunted, turning her head and almost touching noses with Jenny.
"Sorry! Sorry!" Jenny said and let go, landing on the ground behind her with a mischievous smile.
Then, Jenny put her hands on her hips and straightened herself up, giving Tatters a proud look.
"What?" Tatters asked.
"We did it!" Jenny proudly replied. "A good ending!"
Tatters turned her head to the collapsed church, of which not even a single wall remained.
"It'll just happen again," Tatters retorted, "and you can't always be there to help."
"What did you do?" Circus joined the two and asked.
Jenny put her finger to her bottom lip and made a thinking face, then ran back to her car without saying a word, leaving Tatters and Circus behind. The two made eye contact, and Circus took a step closer.
"Hey," she put her hand on Tatters' shoulder, "are you okay?"
"I'm f-fine!" Tatters blushed and brushed Circus' hand away.
"O-Oh…"
By the time Jenny returned, the two had sat down on some of the debris. Jenny carried two wristbands and handed one to Tatters.
"Is this…"
"If you press it, I'll come right away!" Jenny excitedly explained.
Tatters accepted the item and stared at it in awe, gently brushing her thumb over the button. Jenny handed the other one to Circus, who graciously accepted it.
"You'll… come over? Every time?" Tatters asked timidly.
"Of course!" Jenny said. "It's what I do."
Tatters looked at Circus, who was excitedly putting it around her wrist like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Okay," Tatters complied and did the same.
She couldn't take her eyes off it, even after putting it on her wrist.
By her side, Circus couldn't resist and pressed the button all the way down, making Jenny's hair-antenna pop out and point her way.
"Whoa!" Circus exclaimed.
"Y-Yeah," Jenny said with red cheeks, pushing the flap of hair down against her head like she was embarrassed of it.
"I think…" Tatters spoke up, tilting her head down in embarrassment, "I think I…"
Jenny and Circus looked at her with great curiosity.
"I love you guys…" she whispered under her breath.
Jenny and Circus, having clearly heard her words, fell silent and looked at her with red cheeks, then jumped at her, taking her in for a hug from both sides.
♦
One day until Crawling Chaos finds Jenny's world.