Christmas Castles
In the whispering glow of the nearby fireplace, Deadspring’s swift and surefire fingers hovered over one of her rooks, drumming a chaotic dance against the calloused pads of her thumb. Her eyes flicked to her king and back, as the spidery shadow of her hand danced in reflective harmony amidst the other chess pieces scattered about the board. For several long moments the choreographed duet continued, until the heroine’s hunched form finally sat erect once more, digits now moving to her face and ceaselessly fluttering at her lips while she pondered.
From a semi-reclined state on the opposing leather sofa, Dakota Sunrise lifted her head slightly and peered out from under her seasoned fedora. One eye crept open momentarily to visualize the status of the game before sliding closed again, her head lolling down in quick succession. The contented sigh which followed, elicited solely by the delightfully sedate ambiance, was mistaken by her counterpart as an indicator of impatience.
“Yes, yes. I know. I know,” Deadspring chattered, hunkering forward over the table once more, “Move, move already.”
Fingers that now hovered over a solitary bishop began their well rehearsed routine again, and the winsome smile which creased Dakota’s mouth was lost to all but the rugged powerhouse herself. Her opponent was a stimulating challenge to be sure. The humor simply stemmed from the fact that the blonde haired tanker thoroughly enjoyed the naps she was able to slip in while Deadspring toiled endlessly over her choice of moves. A Wii sat dormant in the entertainment center nearby, one delicate controller melted into a fused mass of plastic and circuitry, and Dakota thought the evening was richer for it. Christmas Eve was a time for reflection and revelry, even within a sisterhood known as the Lethal Ladies.
The smooth rumble of machinery and a crisp whiff of December air heralded an arrival through the third story flight bay down the hall. The supergroup base had long ago been outfitted with access points well above and below street level to facilitate more discreet entrance and egress, and all members of the coalition had been encouraged to use them as needed. Deadspring remained trained on the battle before her despite the interruption, but Dakota once again tilted her head ever so slightly, listening for telltale signs of trouble.
The entire complex had been quiet throughout the snow filled evening, with only a skeleton crew of members on hand. Fortunately, many of the evildoers in Paragon City found going about their nefarious tasks during the holiday to be in somewhat bad form. Psy-Ren’s voice could still be made out using her cell phone in the adjacent lounge, and Arctica and Sunbreak were down in the kitchen working on this year’s ice sculpture. Something to do with fireworks Dakota had heard, but she hadn’t nosed around too much for fear of spoiling the surprise.
So when Gilgallon floated into the room on a buffeting cushion of wind, both of the chess players took mental note of the teenager’s arrival, exchanging only a look as the pair savored the last, fleeting moments of serenity. The more veteran members of the Lethal Ladies were exceptionally tolerant of Gilgallon’s nature, as the effort of containing the fury of nature’s wrath was evident in the young girl. Despite her control though, she had a penchant for chaos and destruction the likes of which only Cirelick truly approved.
Rising up over the back of the sofa, the seventeen year old reined in her windy output and plopped forcefully down on the sofa next to Dakota in a flash of royal blue and white costumery. The final puff of air and the jarring impact rocked the chessboard dangerously, and Deadspring reflexively pressed one fingertip onto a toppling king to stabilize the piece. Dakota’s king for those keeping track, and hopefully a foreshadowing of the game’s conclusion the scrapper mused.
“Gilly,” Deadspring said by way of greeting.
“Deadly,” Gilgallon replied jauntily, blowing a few strands of silvery white hair off of her face and brushing snow from her shoulders and inadvertently onto the recumbent tanker nearby.
Dakota only glanced at Gilgallon with one of her Mama Bear looks.
“What?” the adolescent replied defensively, “It’s not like I rode a tornado in here.”
“This time,” Deadspring deadpanned.
“Ugh,” Gilgallon grunted, rolling her eyes as only a rebellious teenager can do, “Destroy one room, and you never live it down! And that was like two months ago, and I told you I don’t like spiders.”
Realizing that she was once more dwelling upon a topic that she had so earnestly tried to put in the past, the stormy youth clammed up rather suddenly and turned her head to survey the immediate area. Dakota chuckled lightly at the wild memory of the young girl innocently stumbling upon some of the more lifelike Halloween decorations which had been scattered around the base. Gilgallon’s shrill cry had been subsumed by a screaming funnel of wind which had caused several thousand dollars worth of damage before being safely dissipated.
The supergroup moniker of the Lethal Ladies was well earned to be sure, though at times such potent forces under one roof did prove challenging. An ember popped loudly as the three women reclined in the evening silence, each withdrawing into their own thoughts once more. With a teenager present, that brief respite did not last.
“So who’s your secret Santa?” Gilgallon tossed the question lightly into the air.
“Gil,” Dakota began to chide, having dodged this same question repeatedly throughout the entire month of December, “You know we’re not going to t–”
“Foxy,” Deadspring interjected flatly, finally picking up her only remaining knight.
Dakota’s head spun so swiftly that the fuzzy bear ears on her hat brim wiggled in response, but the image was overshadowed by Gilgallon’s whoop of delight. The young girl fished out a small pad and pen from a sleek pocket and made a notation, the tip of her tongue darting out unwittingly as she scribbled. The catastrophic girl had long since forgone technology as a lost cause when she realized that not many of today’s techno-toys could survive when lightning did your bidding.
“You enjoy doing that, don’t you? Egging her on,” the tanker asked wryly of her scrapping opponent, “You always seem to forget that taunting’s my job.”
“The exchange is tomorrow,” Deadspring countered with a shrug, setting the knight back down in the exact same spot from which she had lifted it, “She’s not going to figure out who has her by then.”
Gilgallon meanwhile was still scoping out her list of carefully filched names and humming merrily to see if her deductions drew any closer to granting her that magical answer.
“Plus, it buys us some quiet,” Deadspring confessed with a grin.
Dakota playfully weighed the value of that notion in mock seriousness and received a sour elbow from Gilgallon in response. “You want me to really make some noise?” the spirited girl threatened, and Dakota raised her hands in surrender. Nothing Gilgallon could muster would really even scratch the nigh indestructible Dakota, or even Deadspring for that matter, but the living room furniture, the walls and the cars in the adjacent streets were another series of casualties all together. Playful banter concluded, the trio lapsed once more into a brief silence as Christmas secrets and the promise of gifts exchanged were contemplated.
“Have you guys seen Fate?” Gilgallon then asked, gaze bouncing back and forth between Dakota and Deadspring, “Tonight I mean.”
Deadspring lifted her eyes skyward in mourning of the evening’s earlier serenity now lost. One of the reasons she had agreed to work on Christmas Eve was the quiet that came with the holiday. The same quiet which was now being thoroughly riddled by one of the youngest members of team Lethal. Dakota raised a finger to preempt any rebuttal, and then pointed back down toward the game at hand, encouraging her to make a move sometime tonight.
“No, I haven’t,” the experienced tanker then responded to the question. Something in the tone of Gilgallon’s delivery had caused Dakota to shimmy up on the sofa into a more vertical posture. Someone had awakened the slumbering bear at last.
“When Arctica said she was covering for Fate tonight, I didn’t think much of it,” Dakota elaborated, “Why? What’s up? Need help with something?”
Gilgallon lost her train of thought for a moment as the twinkling lights from the ten foot Christmas tree were reflected keenly in Dakota’s round glasses. A smile came to the young girl’s lips as she momentarily reminisced about all things festive, and then just as quickly, the shadow of her fate ebbed across her features as a haunting reminder of what was long in the past. ‘Long in the past,’ she mulled to herself. Hardly eighteen months had paraded by since she had made her choice, but each month easily felt like a year. Life was change her father had always said, and never before could a statement have been more prevalent to one so inexperienced in the ways of the world.
The reverie passed in a fleeting instant, and Gilgallon smiled once more at one of the surrogate mothers that sat across from her. Dakota raised her eyebrows in supportive expectation.
“Yeah, well,” Gilgallon demurred now that the spotlight was trained on her, “I think I, well, discovered something, of fair importance, but I’m not entirely sure what to do about it, or if anything should be done about it, or even if I should even share it at all. I mean, it’s not like I tried to figure it out, not like the secret Santas. Nothing like that.”
“Gil,” Dakota addressed the teenager, not out of impatience, but out of a more primal urgency. As Gilgallon began to rattle her words off in an accelerated tempo, her adrenaline and energy rose comparably, and the temperature within the room had begun to dramatically plummet.
“I think she’d be mad if I told you,” the child of the storm continued to blather, totally unaware of the shift in climate or her visible puffs of breath, “And I don’t want that, but I think I’ll explode if I don’t tell someone, and I’m pretty sure she’s in over her head, but that–”
“Gil!” Dakota barked at her with some force, breaking the girl’s runaway train of thought. The girl instantly fell silent with a struck look of confusion on her features.
Deadspring was glancing over amusedly with her chin resting on one balled fist. Dakota had taken off her glasses and was cleaning them with a section of her cotton shirt. Even Psy-ren had ducked into the room to see what was afoot, mumbling something into her cell and closing it with slow purpose.
A fine layer of frost had coated the room in a glittering sheen. Only the hearth and the few warm bodies occupying it had been spared the icy treatment. Gilgallon pursed her lips in a muffled curse as she took in the scene and immediately floated up off of the sofa.
“Just a sec,” she paused her ramblings with a pleading hand before zipping down the hallway, calling back over her shoulder, “I’ll handle this!” The rumbling of the exterior bay door sounded, and the teenager darted back into the slick chamber moments later on a chill gust of air. With embarrassing alacrity, she spun in midair once, sending forth great plumes of steam which billowed outward and rapidly turned the room into a cloudy sauna.
“I told you we should install a foghorn,” Deadspring’s detached voice floated up from mist.
Almost immediately Gilgallon sucked the tremendous quantities of moisture in the air backward into a spiraling whirlwind which swirled around her in an ever tightening circumference. Despite the severity of the display, her impressive control left only a few ruffled magazines and toppled a single white pawn, before the versatile defender flew back down the hallway with her congealing storm directly in tow. A thunderous rush of air preceded the rumbling of the bay door once more, and seconds later, Gilgallon plunked onto the sofa as though thoughts of modifying the local climate had never even crossed her mind.
Dakota removed her hand from the top of her head where it had been holding her fedora in place. Deadspring uprighted the pawn on the chess board, and Psy-ren emerged from the protective alcove of the hallway, intent on joining the ensuing conversation.
“Maybe if you just got to the point…?” Dakota suggested in her chuckling, supportive tones.
“Right,” Gilgallon replied with a single nod, her features beginning to glow a bit more as the fire rekindled in the dry air, “Well, basically, I’m a little worried about Fate.”
Dakota’s head tilted slightly, and Deadspring glanced up as well at the voiced concern.
“I think she’s Santa Claus,” the teenager said with crisp and utter sincerity.