#spherica

Spherica’s little heist that day had gone off without a hitch– that is, her parts had. A few pieces of the heroes’ equipment, just to give her engineer some more things to work with, and a file or two from their surveillance records, so she could ensure that the heroes didn’t actually have any leads as to where her base of operations was. Nothing too difficult to get in and get out with alone, especially when she knew the place, and when everyone present was too distracted by her associate to question the presence of someone who looked exactly like her hero sister. (Until they realized that “The Comet” was on patrol at that time, but by then she would be long gone.)

Heatwave’s little distractions were always done at the same intensity, whether he was covering for subtle reconnaissance or for a multi-stage bank robbery, and that was no different today. Luring the patrolling heroes into chasing him around, playing his games, keeping everyone at headquarters busy with updates on the fight and damage control reports. This was his specialty and nobody could deny that he was very good at it! But there was one little thing she had heard over their comms that had her worried.

Not that he was cooperating enough to tell her what it was.

“I’m fiiiiine, I’m telling you! It’s not the first time somebody’s landed a hit,” his voice came into her ear while she paced in the rendezvous point.

“But it is the first time that a hit has made your communicator go static for over twenty seconds. Just– tell me, is there blood?”

The length of his pause was not reassuring in the least.

“Nooo…” and that just about confirmed it.

“I’m getting the first aid kit.”

“Wh– hey, I said there wasn’t any!” It may just be her, but she could swear she was picking up on a pained undertone now, underneath his usual lighthearted overconfidence.

“Are you applying pressure? Keep your hand on it until you get here, how close are you? Who was it that–”

“Hey, heyyy, it’s fine, stop mother-henning, I’m almost there!”

“That is not a real word, and I will not stop demanding updates until I know you aren’t bleeding out over the city, Heatwave.” Fortunately, this mini-hideout wasn’t just stocked with one of those dollar store kits; she’d had the foresight to add actual bandages and gauze, though now she wished she’d raided some of the hero headquarters’ quick-treatment items while she was there. “Are you feeling lightheaded at all?”

“I mean, like, only a little biiit?”

Spherica took in a steadying breath, and switched the channel she was speaking through.

“Moth.” Ignored the startled squeak from the other end that told her she’d interrupted something. (Not anything too important, since there were no following sounds of clattering or explosions.) “Are the connections secure?”

“They should be?” A short pause let her hear the sound of things being shuffled around and some light typing. “Yeah, yes, mm-hm they’re completely secure right now. Why?”

“Thanks.” Valorie switched back to the first channel. “Damien–”

“ACK–”

“–Damien if you pass out from blood loss you’re off missions for a week–”

“I’m fine Val–!”

“You don’t know if the connection is secure!”

“You said mine! And everyone knows your real name anyway! Whoa-aah okay that was, hahaa–”

“Are you passing out right now? How close are you?”

“Gimme like ten seconds I’m on the fire escape!” To corroborate his story, she could indeed hear some footsteps echoing up from outside the window. Irregular and unusually heavy footsteps for how Damien normally moved.

“I’m letting you in, do not try to climb through the window yourself or blood loss will be the least of your problems.” Gauze, bandages, things to clean the wound with, and she was just hoping there wasn’t too much in his hairline, both to keep treatment simpler and to avoid his complaining about not being able to use all his various products on an injured area. She tuned back to their general comms channel and muted, just in case anyone else developed head wounds they wanted to downplay to her.

Hewas trying to climb through the window himself, which didn’t seem to be going well, but more importantly, Valorie could see that this was not just a flesh wound. Even taking into account the fact that cuts on the head always bled more than one expected, and even with Damien’s efforts to keep pressure on it, it looked like he had lost a lot. A significant amount more than he’d been trying to let on.

“Damien you idiot I said don’t try to– Give me your arm– Not that arm keep applying pressure, the other arm, I said not to climb in by yourself! Are you sure you weren’t followed? Damien?” There were no clear signs of pursuit outside, but she took one hand off of him to shut the window and pull the curtain shut, just in case. After guiding him two steps in, she had to stop and brace them both as his weight increased, no longer holding himself up. “Damien!”

“I actually kinda feel lightheaded now that you mention it actually?” Fortunately, he was still maintaining pressure on the source, though it seemed like it was taking all of the effort he could’ve been using to keep himself upright.

“It might get worse before it gets better, I’ll have to look at it in a– not right now, put it back, wait until you’re sitting down!” Seeing him wince, she took a breath, trying to even it out and focus as she lowered him onto the old couch. (Heedless of the blood that would get on it, because it wasn’t the first time this couch had gotten stained in this manner and it wouldn’t be the last.) “Volume, I apologize. Alright, let me see it?”

“Y’know that new guy?” Damien started, keeping his head turned so she could work but reaching up to pull his mask down around his neck. It didn’t look like anything was wrong with the rest of his face, though the contrast of everything under his mask being clean made the bleeding area stand out much worse.

“Tigerblaze?” Carefully pushing hair out of the way with one hand and holding a bit of gauze in the other, she had started dabbing at the area around the wound and resisted the urge to reprimand him for snorting at the name, as the immediate wince seemed enough to indicate his regret.

“S’that really his name? Like on the real records and everything?”

“Yes, and he’s not new, he’s in from Maryland until Sunday.” Fortunately, it didn’t look like there was anything stuck in the cut that she would need to get out the tweezers for.

“Ooohhh that makes more sense, I thought he was, like, a sidekick, but then we got a little 1v1 before ‘Thena showed up and it was like, dang bro– ow– it was like daaang bro that guy hits waaay harder than I thought, yknow?”

“Mm, I know it’s hard for you, but I’m going to have to ask you to stop talking while I work on this. Your head is moving too much.” He grumbled but complied as Valorie tried to gauge whether he would need stitches for this. It was an irregular shape, not deep or dirty enough to cause severe problems, but not shallow enough to trust it to heal well on its own. Her observation that it did, in fact, extend past his hairline was not encouraging.

“Okay, I think we’re going to put something over this to stop the bleeding, then get back to main base and put in stitches.”

“It needs stitches? But it’s not that bad–! Ow ow ow quiet okay yeah,,”

Surprisingly, he managed to keep quiet for the remainder of her bandaging process. She would have to keep him away from mirrors for a while, so he couldn’t discover how poorly his hair looked after all this…

“Stay here, try to get out of your suit, carefully, and I’ll get everything else ready.” Starting with washing her hands, wondering how bad it was going to be to get all the blood out of the Heatwave getup, gathering up their civilian disguises and definitely keeping blood from touching those…

“Siren, I have the record you asked for–”

“What did you just call me?” The man or perhaps woman turned from examining the contents of a shelf to give Valorie a bit of a Look.

“Siren.” She cocked a hip and placed a hand on it, doing her best to return the Look without craning her head weirdly, considering that she was a bit too short to look down at her client. “Your street name? With the likelihood of this place being tapped by about twelve different interested groups since the last time you dealt with them, I’m hardly going to use your givenname.”

“That’s not the one you used last time, Spherica.” Sass for sass, she had to respect it.

“You have several names out there. Do none of your clients tell you about them?” It seemed that this record was not going to be accepted immediately, so she walked further in, setting it on a table and lowering herself into an armchair. “There’s enough aliases floating around that I have to go overtime just to verify whether a mention of you is you or just some upstart, or someone from out of state, and that on top of the potential for imitators…”

“Siren’s a bad one, there’s already a mermaid themed cape using it. Did you steal this, by the way, or do your identity theft thing?” Not-Siren came closer to inspect the record, picking it up and turning it over, probably looking for a price tag.

“In Philadelphia?”

“What?”

“Is the mermaid-themed Siren operating in Philadelphia? I should have heard of it if there’s a new one, for any affiliation.”

“Still on that, huh? No, Siren’s out in… Lancaster?” The record was removed from its case and examined under the light. “Hey, this is fresh! I thought you’d be going for secondhand.”

“No, secondhand’s worse quality and hurts small businesses.” There was a little bowl of hard candies within arm’s reach of her, but she was refraining from getting too close to them immediately.

“So you did steal it.” That was absolutely correct, but,

“I never said that. It would be pretty suspicious for my sister to be out secondhand record shopping when it’s currently her night shift, though, wouldn’t it, Dr Diva?”

Judging by the sound that followed this, if Not-Dr-Diva had been drinking something at the moment, that drink would have found itself quickly airborne and splattered over the wood floor and probably some of the furniture.

“They call me what,” came out strangled enough that Valorie could believe they had been choking just a second ago.

“That or Diva Doctor, nobody’s entirely certain which order it ought to fall in.”

“I’ve never even considered that many years of medical school, not– Not all healing types are medical types, all I do is sing!” Strangely, but in a way that was thoroughly in the norm when one was used to dealing with Not-Diva-Doctor, that raised voice managed to be soothing instead of grating.

“Then maybe you’d prefer Songbird?”

“That one’s taken by at least one person per state and you know one of the new sidekicks is looking at it for their temp alias.” Not-Songbird carefully slid the record back into its case and moved to line it up in an empty space on their shelf. Then turned around, giving Valorie a suspicious once-over. “You don’t have any more for me, do y–”

“Now that you mention it, Mx. Minstrel–”

“Oh not another–”

“–you wanted tabs kept on the requests, and I have one asking if you do rap?”

“Badly.” 

“More of a demand than a request, really, but they won’t be able to back it up with anything substantial so I’m sure they’ll take whatever you want to give…” she paused as though not quite finished, just for the few seconds of tense, anticipatory eye contact before her next, “…Supercore.”

“That one’s not even a name! It’s not related to singing or healing, who came up with that one?”

“It’s the name of a niche aesthetic and music genre started onli–”

“Started online, of course it makes no sense.”

“A lot of my information comes from online sources, you know. Aside from the public hero profiles. People post a lot of footage, say a lot of things in supposedly-secure chatrooms…” The bowl of candy was calling to her too strongly to refuse by now. She casually selected something with a pink wrapper and passed it between her fingers for a minute before acknowledging it any further.

“Good thing we have our little arrangement, so the only thing I ever need the internet for is…” They paused when Valorie tapped one finger to her ear with a glance around, a reminder that the place was probably tapped. “…Alright, you know I make a whole deal out of not caring how my recordings sound, but I’ll admit that I know how to look up video tutorials.”

“Remarkable.” Finally looking at the candy, she found that it had a picture of a strawberry, and the label and ingredients were written in Hangul.

“I’d think you would agree with me about how nonsense the aliases that come from the internet are, all things considered, Spherica.”

“That was from the press,Balladeer. Where did you get these?”

“H-Mart had some on sale. Upper Darby, if you’re interested in identity theft this weekend.” They started rearranging the throw pillows, seemingly just for something to do with their hands, but possibly to annoy anyone with too poorly-placed of a recording device. “Balladeer?”

“I swear that some people just looked up synonyms for ‘singer’ for thirty seconds before picking one they thought was interesting.” Instead of tearing the wrapper open like a regular person, Valorie decided to see if she could get this one to pop by holding it just so and squeezing between thumb and curled forefinger.

“Interesting is a stretch. I know I’ve done some Johnny Cash covers, but that’s hardly my specialty… Spherica. Dear. Why did you… perk up like that, when I said Johnny Cash?”

“It turns out,” Valorie started, still wrestling with the surprisingly thick wrapper,

“Oh no.”

“…that some people decided to refer to you by other singers’ names. Mr Cash.” With a pop, the candy was freed.

“No.”

“Or would you prefer Mariah Carey, ma’am?” It was going to be difficult to keep a straight face with candy in her mouth while also pestering her client who was most certainly not Mariah Carey, but Valorie would manage.

“Nooo… That was one time.”

“Other options include–”

“Stop this at once, young lady,–”

“–Idol.”

“Too short, and I’m not famous enough.”

“I may contest you on the fame, Composer.”

“I have never composed once in my life since the day I was born.”

“Serenado,”

“No,”

“Seranada,”

“I’m sensing a pattern,”

“Serenadie,”

“Was this from the same people that came up with yours?”

“No, but it was used in the same circles that used The Vocalist.”

“With a capitalized ‘The’? Really?”

“I’m afraid so, Melody.”

“That one’s already taken at least twenty times, with a wait-list.”

“That’s rather unfortunate, Singster.”

“You’re making these up now. By yourself. In your head, right now, you’re making it up.”

“You have no way of proving that without using the internet, Doc Ditty.”

“Don’t ever say that in my office again, young lady.”

“It’s a deal, Caroler. Or Carol if you prefer.”

“And don’t say that one too much or you’ll summon… Her.”

“Word on the street is she’s been gone long enough to likely be dead by now, actually.”

“And? Word on the street is also that she’s too evil to die.”

“Just keeping you up to date, Cold Canary.”

“That sounds like turn of the century slang.”

“…I’m not certain it isn’t.” The candy was very good, she noted, even though she’d been talking around it since she put it in, not quite a realistic strawberry flavor but it certainly tasted very pink. “You know, I found a thread about you where they were trying to come up with an alias that would evoke a speakeasy lounge singer.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“Teenagers, most likely, working on rumors and nothing else. I gave it a quick look into, no real information breaches. The most they got to was Speakeasy Singer before deciding it was too long and returning to calling you Dr Lullaby, which you may note is the same number of syllables.”

“Why’s everyone convinced I’m a doctor? I’m not even a trained nurse!” Not-Dr-Lullaby and Valorie both glanced around in what had become their usual ‘cursory wiretap acknowledgement’ way with that last sentence.

“Easier shorthand, I suppose. Though that does remind me of a couple more of your nicknames…”

“Are you ever going to run out of those?”

“Perhaps next time. I do have to leave soon, I have… another appointment, you could say.” Standing, she used the rustle of her clothes to mask the sound of her pulling out a folded note, holding it out between two fingers.

“I see, I see, you stick around exactly long enough to bother me but not long enough for me to dish any back, ah?” They stood, doing the same sound-masking trick while accepting the note but not unfolding or giving it a real look just yet.

“Someone in my line of work always knows when to retreat. And I don’t want to be stuck around here when you deal with your potential surveillance. I know you could fix any physical damage after the fact, but I would much prefer to keep my eardrums in a continuous state of…” The wording was going to be awkward, she realized now, but she pressed on, already waving a hand as if to dismiss the way it was phrased. “…remaining unbroken.”

“I’ll tell you if I start calling myself anything silly while you’re out, so you can throw out all your painstakingly collected lists.”

“I’ll make sure it gets laughed off the forums when you do, Beyonce.”

“That’s it, out–”