A Very Weaver Summer Vacation

[Nailah Weaver]

Every movement is smooth, almost perfect in it's simplicity. Every step, every turn of the head, even the focusing of her eyes fills her with purpose. To call it deja-vu doesn't do it justice how right it feels for everything to be in service of a goal. To move like she's following a well-worn groove, muscle memory of the future leading her with absolute certainty.

The swelling of noise around her pulls her out of her revery. She has to squint to see the crowd past the circle lights above them, a chaotic mass of shadows that's cheering and shouting at the shirtless man stepping into the ring. The lack of a shirt shows wiry muscles tense underneath his skin as he tilts his head left and right and rolls his shoulders. The dirty bandages around his hands match her own, she can feel the slight give and the tension as she clenches her fists. Her paws slide in the sawdust on the floor, dropping her stance ever so slightly, claws scratching at the concrete underneath, just enough to make the crowd holler at the display.

They circle each other slowly, the Chinese man opposite her trying to read her body-language, trying to figure out the trap. Mutant or not, there's no reason he shouldn't have the upper hand over a young woman barely two-thirds his weight but relying on her opponent's overconfidence is almost too obvious of a ploy. He feints a sudden advance and she doesn't even move a muscle in response, her tail calmly swaying behind her, no bristle in the feathers of the wings folded against her back, smiling an almost detached smile. It's aggravating but not enough to taunt him into anger. The crowd shouts non the less, getting louder the more the two fighters are dragging out what they came here to see.

And then the tension finally snaps in a burst of movement as Nailah launches herself forward. Her opponent's knee lifts into her path and his leg swings out in a sideways sweep. The sphinx is already going into a slide and immediately rolls to the side as the heel crashes down to the floor where her head was moments ago. She's grinning as she feels her hair get swept in the air displaced from the blow barely an inch away from her. Her leg moves almost on it's own accord, slashing for the fighter's other leg and forcing even more of his weight on the foot he tried to stomp her with. Forcing her stomach muscles to roll her shoulders into the ground she flexes her legs and hips of the ground and her wings boost her forward so she jumps to her feet behind her opponents, back to him.

They both spin to face each other and exchange a flurry of blows and counters, hand blocking elbow, lower arms clashing against each other, twisting strikes out of the way to open for a riposte. Finally Nailah leans away, pulling her fist back. It's almost too clearly broadcast but the fraction of a second of hesitation in her opponent's read is all she needs and she rushes forward with her whole body, digitgrade thrusting her forward as her fist passes any attempt to block. She can feel the hairs on her forearm brush against those of her opponent as he fails to close the miniscule gap in his defense and her fist hammers against his solar-plexus. Staggered he backs away from the blow to avoid Nailah's attempt to follow up with a left hook but as her miss carries her forward she spins into it, weight shifted to her left foot her right leg rises into the momentum and cracks against his skull, sending him to the ground as she finishes her aerial movement and lands in a three-point crouch. Breathing heavily her wings spread wide and she grins as the crowd erupts into a mixture of cheers and obscenities as money changes hands.



One month previously...


Nailah looks up at the large board of flights and down at the ticket in her hand. Heathrow to Atlanta to Phoenix, Arizona. She really owes her parents an explanation. A better explanation than the one she gave them in the hospital. It's her fault they got hurt in the first place. If she hadn't been playing hero then Hazard might not have targeted them. After everything they did to protect her, keep her from getting hurt they're the ones who paid the price and she just... The ticket crumples in her hand as it clenches. Hazard's dead - his own fault from the looks of it - and even though she's the one who put him in prison in the first place, she doesn't feel much closure about it. Not when it comes to her parents. She wants to make a difference, make things better and the whole Hazard affair is, at best, a wash. She dragged in March, that felt good. But it didn't quite had the impact on Janice that she'd hoped for. And then she didn't really seem to care much about her fake dating Jez. That one stung somehow and she's not entirely sure why.

Nothing's quite right, solved or better. Not yet.

Her plane ticket goes discarded in a trash bin.

She'll face her parents when she has something to show for her defiance. Something big. When she's made a difference.

[Nailah Weaver]

Making a broad declaration is much easier than actually following up on it. Especially when she's not really sure where to start on something big, something that'll have a tangible impact. Putting crooks and thugs behind bars can only have so much of an impact, especially when she can already hear her dad telling her how that's a job for the police and asking her if the UK's police force is so incompetent that they need a teenaged girl doing their job for them. But hoping for some big threat to tackle feels awful, much like she sometimes feels torn about Hazard just dieing in a prison break simply because she had no hand in it. Which is just wrong, she shouldn't wish that she could have been the one to killed somebody or that a hateful monster like Hazard would still be alive just so she could keep foiling his plans. That's just messed up. As is hoping for some big catastrophe just so she can be the hero who saves the day; but there has to be something pro-active she can do.

The others who broke out of Muir. Reach, Conduit, Thresher, Cailleach. She could be a bounty hunter of sorts, just without the bounty part. Only the cool parts of it and none of the seedy money ones. Yes.

A smarter Nailah would have recognized what was happening, a decision narrowing potential futures down to one that reached back and reaffirmed said decision by making it feel like deja-vu, the right thing, something that was supposed to happen. The right way of thinking, the correct decision. An older Nailah could have told her about the dangers inherent to her power and not questioning herself more, but of course that version of her was currently fading in prominence in the branching timelines ahead of her in favor of a more reckless and cocksure one. But the grizzled and scarred Nailah looking back from the future was without a doubt cool and who could argue with that. Not a confused and rudderless 18 year-old at the very least and so a path unfolds to her.

Find a camping store half a mile south from the airport.
Get a backpack, rations, water tablets, sleeping bag, tent.
Fly south-east until nightfall.

[Nailah Weaver]

The clerk at the store had tried to sell her on a bunch of stuff like a compass and one of those survival knives with flint and a such in the hilt. She'd ended up caving on the later but who needs a compass when she has a superior sense of where she's going. Like a bird flying south for the... summer. Well, close enough anyway. And now she's in the air, gliding far above the landscape and just soaking in the moment. Cars are tiny dots on the arteries of highways between stretches of meadows, cities and forests. Soon the landscape beneath her drops away in a sharp, white precipice and grey waves roll across the Channel until they lap at the coast of France. Forest and fields stretch towards the horizon, rising into large pockmarks of meteor craters that have long since eroded into overgrown mountains filled with lakes that glitter in the midday sun. Past lush hills dotted with cities and towns until mountains grow in the distance, first stone ridges and finally peaks that even now are still capped with just a dash of snow. The following day she's flying through valleys and over meadows filled with wildflowers, flanked by huge mountain ridges and occasionally other birds that approach to investigate the strange creature that has intruded on their dominion. A couple times she spots hang- and para-gliders using the same updrafts as her on the mountain flanks and she waves at them with a giant grin on her face. And eventually the Alps give way to the slow decline from mountains into verdant hills of Northern Italy South Tirol, the land stretching out like a ribbon in the Mediterranean beneath her. On the third day she passes idyllic little white cities along the coast and crosses over the turquoise expanse of water towards the low mountains of Greece in the distance until isolated villages give way to the city clustered around ancient ruins and nestled up to the water where modern docks and cranes contrast with history. And trusting in her powers Nailah flies straight for one of the large container ships as the sun is setting behind her, finding the one container with a lock that's worn and rusted enough for her to leverage it open with her camping knife ("Sturdy enough to be used as a crowbar!" the clerk had informed her), finding two rows of strapped down motorcycles on the inside, leaving her enough room to move one of them aside and create a cozy little spot to put down her sleeping bag.


The ship sails down through the Suez Canal and as it makes it's way through the Red Sea and towards pirate-infested waters rumors begin spreading among the crew of a stow-away hiding on the ship. Until they keep passing seemingly abandoned speedboats with agitated (or sometimes even still unconscious) pirates aboard, bemoaning the fact their weapons have been dumped overboard. Then the rumors begin to become more superstitious, especially when people bring up the shadow they see at night, the flapping of wings and soon the sailors are convinced they've picked up a guardian spirit of some sort and it certainly seems to enjoy the honey cake they leave out for it, judging by the fact the plate ends up empty but the spirit unseen, no matter how much someone might try to keep an eye on it. Between their chores and shifts and sleep, there always seems to be a window the plate goes unwatched. Meanwhile Nailah is blissfully unaware of what the sailors are talking about. Even when she overhears them it's all Greek to her, literally, but she certainly enjoys the cake to go with her rations. She's almost a little thankful for the existence of the pirates, because she was starting to get bored and they're a welcome distraction. The thought is a little messed up, but it's not like she's making anybody be a scummy pirate, so it's alright. Plus there's cake.


Eventually the ship reaches the open ocean and things get a little more quiet, passing through endless waves, briefly docking at a bustling harbor flying a flag with a golden sword-wielding lion on a dark red background. Nailah has no idea where this island or the distant mainland on the horizon is but she approves of the flag design. And soon it's out into the open sea again, though for not quite as long before mountainous islands full of verdant jungle pass and the ship moves into the Malacca Strait just around dusk, a city sparkling in the far distance like a beacon, it's shining towers reflected in the waves as they get closer and the dim, dirty foundation of the city comes into view, easily overlooked and dismissed in the dark of night. Especially when, with the ship's engine humming, waves lapping at it's metal hull and most of the containers unlit and dark, there's a growing bright light in the sky. Too slow for a shooting star and soon much too bright too as a meteoric streak of fire careens across the night sky like a brilliant gash across the firmament, almost rivalling Madripoor's lights for a moment before it passes behind the mountain of the island and is silently swallowed up by the night and the ocean...

[Nailah Weaver]

She'd always pictured Madripoor as an abstract place full of adventure and gangsters to stop, dangerous but exciting. What she instead finds is that it's full of desperate people trying to make do in a place that just feels oppressive with a constant moisture hanging in the air and condensation dripping down and collecting in the sometimes literal garbage in the alleys and streets. It adds a foul note to the smells lingering in the air, mostly cabbage, rice and fish, punctuated by cigarette smoke and sweat. Even just walking through the stall-lined streets feels like she's marinating in the city's atmosphere, all while the clean and shining buildings of Hightown are visible from pretty much anywhere, rising above the pea-soup of the dirty masses. She slowly realizes why cleaning up the city was never really an accomplishable goal for Onyx and she can't help but question her assumption that that's why her power led her here.

Everywhere she turns people are either miserable or trying to rise above by putting others down. Guns and drugs are being sold out in the open and she doesn't have to look hard to see the signs of the same being true of people. Quite literally, as posters glued to walls and electricity poles advertise 'labor-auctions' and similar euphemisms for slave trade. No one is even trying to hide it and what would she even do to put a stop to it? Dropping crooks off at the police station does little when so many things aren't even considered crimes or are straight up being perpetrated by what passes for cops but are really just formalized protection rackets And her path continues to steer her past it all, having her ignore the father pleading with a group of thugs dressed as police dragging off his teenage children. She trusts her power to steer her right but it's getting harder to keep that faith every day she spends here, working her way towards some increasingly abstract goal...

The meager amount of money she brought along carries her further than she would have expected as she finds herself asking around for a black-skinned woman, being met with either scared silence or the expectations of money for what amounts to scraps of rumors and hear-say. And finally her journey through the seedy underbelly of Madripoor leads her to the back-door of a not-so-underground fighting ring where the supposed 'Black Devil Woman' has been seen. Probably infiltrating this hive of scum and villainy, she figures. So she'll do the same. The idea of surprising Onyx by having a bout in a seedy ring is more exciting than she's willing to admit to herself, but her path finally feels right again. She'll just spend a couple days earning some money pretending to be a fighter, get enough of an in to get matched with Onyx. Easy...

[Nailah Weaver]

Here and Now...

Nailah's still catching her breath as she stands at the open chain-link door of the arena, gathering her winnings from a grizzled man who clearly is begrudging having to part with his money when there's a sudden disturbance in the crowd on the opposite end of the arena. Shouts of "黑邪女!" ripple through the room and the man handing Nailah her winnings glances up from the dollar bills and at Nailah. "再去一次? Zài qù yīcì? Again? Go again? You, go!" he repeats and pushes the bundle of money against Nailah's chest, shoving her back into the ring insistently, nodding at her. "是, Shì!" He looks noticeably relieved when she gives him a swift nod and responds with a accented "Shì." herself.

This is presumably why she's here after all. She turns around with a big grin on her face, mouth forming the beginning of a loud, cheerful "Onyx!" as she catches the stark black and white outline of a woman in the corner of her eye, but the name dies on her lips when she gets a full look at the woman that has stepped into the ring opposite her. She's a black devil woman alright, but she's not her former girlfriend mentor sparring partner.

[The Void]

Void doesn't say a thing, a hole in reality in the shape of a person, only given some definition by the frozen grin of razor-sharp teeth and piercing eyes.

[Reach]

Behind her, pulling the door to the ring close a man in a white dress-shirt runs his hand over his mouth and immaculately groomed goatee. "Have fun!" Reach laughs.

[Nailah Weaver]

Like a rabid dog let off the leash Void surges forward, concrete floor cracking where the balls of her feet touch the floor.

Nailah is frozen in shock for a moment but her power makes her move before she's even really grasped what's happening, throwing herself to the side, feeling Void's hand sweep the air above her head. She hasn't even hit the floor yet and her power is already screaming in her head with instructions on how to roll. A number of larger feather break as she tumbles over her wings but it's hard to mind when Void's foot slams several inches deep into the floor where Nailah's leg would have been. Unlike a normal opponent rushing her the black and white woman did not crash into the chainlink fence of the arena but simply stopped on a dime and spun after her.

The next thing she knows, her power simply tells her to tense her back and brace herself as she's lifted off the floor and flung across the room, slamming into one of the fence-posts and has the wind knocked out of her even before she falls and hits the ground. Disoriented and dizzy she pushes herself up, wincing in confusion at the sudden stinging pain shooting through her hand, making her nearly collapse again. She has to blink her eyes before the image in front of her parses properly. There's a smear of blood on the floor and where her little finger should be is just a ragged wound. With a grimace of pain she turns her head and sees Void still standing several yards away, blood smeared across her mouth and closing her jaw with a sickening crunch that Nailah can hear even from where she's slumped. The sound repeats a couple of times as Void watches her wince with each one before swallowing. She didn't even notice, Void had been so fast. She's just toying with her...

[The Void]

"One..." Void croaks with a voice that's barely used, holding up one of her own fingers.

[Nailah Weaver]

Why would her power have steered her into this? She must be missing something, some weakness or trick to Void's power maybe. Her eyes dart around as she slowly backs away along the edge of the arena, tearing at her jacket with one hand to get a strip of cloth to fashion into a crude bandage. The crowd is still watching, making noise, though they're no longer pressed up right against the chainlink, leaving a respectful couple feet. Everyone except Reach who is leaning against the fencing with one arm above his head. Maybe...

"Good thinking, but no, my power doesn't hurt her either." he says as he catches Nailah's look. "Didn't your precognition tell you that? No, Hazard mentioned it's not that straight-forward for you, is it?"

The mention of Hazard almost distracts her enough to miss Void lunging for her again but her power has her paws already aligned and claws gripping at the floor and she's throwing herself aside before she's even really processed what's happening. One juke to the right, duck and trust she'll escape unscathed this time as she passes underneath Void's raised arm, inches from the monster's invulnerable skin, twisting just in time to evade the arm coming down hard. And then her heart skips a beat as she finds herself reaching out to shove the back of Void's shoulder hard. It feels disturbingly warm and smooth for something so hard it hurts her hand to strike, but while her claws scrape futilely against Void's skin she does manage to offset her balance just enough. Void stumbles and in trying to catch herself her foot smashes a couple inches into the floor and she hits the chainlink fence. Or rather she falls right through it and tears it like tissue paper before landing in a crouch and baring her teeth in her impossibly wide mouth.

Nailah's eyes are wide, hand still extended as she tries to shake off the shock of what she just did and just how little it felt like she was in control.

"Oh hello. What's this then?" Reach grins and tilting his head at Nailah. "Void. Again. Take her whole hand this time." he says with an almost clinical detachment and his black-and-white companion explodes forward.

And this time Nailah is barely keeping up with her own movements. She certainly doesn't initiate any of them, her muscles moving with a will of their own as she jumps, her tattered wings helping her flip forward and she can only watch in horror as she extents her hand towards Voids head. But the woman's sharp teeth don't close around her hand, instead she finds her palm touch Void's forehead and she leverages her to complete her flip over her and landing gracefully behind her. And then her throat suddenly constricts. She miscalculated somehow, she got her hands around her neck and... no... she's talking. Well, she's moving her throat and making sounds. She's not intending to but she can't seem to stop herself either.

"Call her off." What is this? This isn't how she talks. It's so harsh and commanding. "She'll tire me out eventually but not before I put a bullet through your head with his gun." she goes on, pointing one of the spectators in the crowd. She sounds so matter of fact she even convinces herself and Reach does in fact raise a hand to indicate Void to stop. "I remember setting out to do something big a long time ago. I was just too naïve to realize what it takes to really make a difference in the world but you know what they say about hindsight."

What? No, what am I saying? Am I just distracting them? But then why am I not taking the opportunity to run? Go! Move! But not a single muscle is making a move.

"From where I'm standing it's really quite obvious what needed to happen, so thanks for forcing me to realize that the only sensible thing is to do is to cede control to the one who knows what's best. I needed that."

No! I don't! This... is this me? How... what... This isn't what I wanted!

"Can you imagine your very existence being held hostage by your younger self? Having to keep nudging and steering yourself just so you don't simply fade away into some unrecognizable version of yourself based on all the terrible ideas and thoughts you had years ago? Quite lucky it only cost me a finger, really."