Amaranthine

Kennedy knelt, running a hand over Warhawk’s crushed wings. They’d always felt warm, like a pan that was just starting to heat up. Now they were cold, their vitality lost along with their shape. She searched for a seam, finally finding it and working her talons in. After a minute of strain, she screeched in frustration.

“Fuck! Qi! Get these open!”

Qi laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, pulling her back while Cait gathered her into her chest.

“Probably best not to look if you don’t have to babe,” the big blonde said, running her fingers through Kennedy’s hair.

Kennedy’s fingers clenched again and again around patches of Cait’s uniform, trembling as she felt wetness on her face. The metal of Warhawk’s wings shreiked as Qi forced them open, before stopping with a delighted gasp from the dragon.

“H-hey…” said a familiar, timid voice, and Qi dove a talon into the crumpled bronze ball, coming out with a shaking blonde boy, ruffled but unharmed. The big dragon pulled him into a hug, and given where his face ended up, she probably gave the poor guy a scalie fetish too.

“KEVIN!” Cait yelled, elated, and suddenly Kennedy was being dragged along into a 4-way hug around the shocked boy. “Fuck me, dude, if you had died I guarantee your mom would’ve become the world's greatest supervillian and none of us could’ve blamed her. Good work surviving."

Kevin’s eyes boggled as he was crushed between musclegirl and dragon titty, but he was beaming, and reached out to return Cait’s hug.

“Did Warhawk make it?” he asked, once his face was unmuffled by breast.

“What?” Cait asked, glancing nervously at the crumpled bronze ball. Kennedy wriggled out of the group hug, scurrying over to it. She braced herself, and looked inside.

Instead of Sandra’s broken corpse, she found two bloody messes where the wings had joined to her body. Despite the gore, her heart soared.

“Holy shit! You guys! She might be okay!”

Cait ruffled Kevin’s hair as she pulled away, running over to boggle at the scene inside the ball.

“What the fuck? I mean, yeah, she’s not in there, but if her wings got taken off in the air, babe….”

“No! The wings didn’t make her fly! She could always do that! The DC added them to make her more maneuverable and deadly!”

“….. that’s insane”

“Welcome to the Divine Coalition! We have to find her!”

Cait laid a heavy hand on Kennedy’s shoulder, shaking her head.

“No,” she said, her voice hard. “We have to find the real Bookkeeper. With TuTulang down, this is the best chance we’ll have. We have no idea how long it’ll take to resurrect him.”

Kennedy snarled at the Amazon, throwing a punch into her sternum, before immediately frowning and rubbing at the spot.

“Fuck! I—” she sighed, looking up at Cait in apology. “I’m sorry, you’re right, I just….”

“I get it,” Cait said, smiling and smoothing Kennedy’s hair back. The sharp points of her talons tickled against Kennedy’s scalp. “Listen, we gotta get Kevin out of here. Let’s send Qi back with him, let AEGIS know to start looking for ol’ Sando while they don’t have to deal with a skeleton army.”

Kennedy nodded, and they tasked the dragon with getting the boy back to safety. As she sprinted away, Kennedy felt a pang of loss as her link faded as well. She looked over to see Cait staring at her claws as they morphed back into her own huge, but very human, hands.

“That’s fuckin’ weird,” she said, flipping her hand over and back again. She grinned at Kennedy, mischeif in her eyes. “Wonder if it’d be like givin’ yourself a stranger, you know?”

Kennedy rolled her eyes, cuffing Cait’s shoulder playfully.

“Nah, kinda hurts actually,” Kennedy admitted, as she hefted Hotglue. “Now help me bind the absolute shit out of this guy, we gotta pay Grandpa a visit.”

It was a banner day for Kennedy’s powers. First, it seemed much more likely Cait’s new nasty morning breath had been her doing, rather than the Amazon developing talons and fiery halitosis on her own. Now, looking down at the mockery of a fallen friend hanging from her own hands, another surprise revealed itself.

She’d caught flashes of this, ever since the first fight against the characters, but had always waved it off as a trick of the light. Now, the thin, but definitely there thread of pale gold light that extended from Hotglue’s chest into the distance was undeniable.

“It’s kinda like Samasara’s karmic links,” she explained as Cait followed her along the thread’s path. “Different though, less distinct. No fucking idea why I can see it, although I imagine it’s stronger now because we’re closer.”

“Babe, I just breathed fire and grew claws, I think there’s probably a hell of a lot we don’t know about your powers.”

Kennedy flashed a grin over her shoulder.

“Right? Man, glad I don’t have something simple like absolute invulnerability. It’d be so goddamn boring.”

“I mean, comparatively!” Cait agreed, returning Kennedy’s grin with a chuckle. “Don’t gotta be interesting to be useful though. I just solo’d TuTulang, motherfucker killed a whole city!”

Kennedy had to concede the point, and the two bantered back and forth as they ran through the city. They were only ever interrupted long enough for Cait to bonk Hotglue on the head every time he woke up. Last thing they needed was running commentary from the Bookkeeper.

After a short while, Cait slapped herself on the forehead, then picked up Kennedy and her prisoner to boomsprint through the city. The two of them combined weren't even close to Qi's combat weight, so they were blazing through the city.

Before long, the urban landscape broke into another park, and a huge modern art styls bulilding rose in the center. A sign at the edge of the clearing read ‘Winnipeg Museum for Human Rights’ and Cait and Kennedy shared a look before bursting into laughter.

“I mean, a little on the nose right?” Kennedy asked, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye.

“Right!” Cait agreed, straightening up, and steeling her expression. “C’mon, lets go kill this drama queen.”

“Really? I thought it—” Hotglue’s voice cut off with a yelp as Cait’s fist reached back to slam into his battered jaw for what must‘ve been the fifteenth time.

“Goddamn it’s gonna feel good to do that to the real thing. I’ll take point from here, let me know if the thread does anything wonky.”

Kennedy jogged behind her, wishing Hotglue's face wasn’t covering her girlfriend’s ass. She could use the pick me up.

Cait punched through the doorway, bursting into the wide open lobby of the museum. They’d worried they’d have to hunt for the bastard, but it looked like they’d gotten lucky.

The old man floated over a balcony, book hovering over his hand as pages flowed out of it to construxt figures on the floor. Cait didn’t waste time. She reached back to snap Hotglue’s neck, and Kennedy watched the Character fall to pages as Cait boomed forward, scattering the nearest in-construction entity.

Even as she did, more were completed, and soon the Amazon was in a melee with Altereds of all shapes and sizes. Kennedy, though, only had eyes for the Bookkeeper. Eyes filled with rage, pain, and the resolve to make this bastard feel all that pain and more.

The lobby was a latticework of those golden lines, leading to the Characters Bookkeeper conjured as fast as his power allowed. Kennedy could feel them as much as see them, almost hearing each snap as Cait ended the threat they were attached to. That feeling… one, right next to Bookkeeper, felt familiar.

As the pages built up into a tall, lean, figure, a tiny ball of light at the end of that thread dropped towards it. Trusting her instincts, Kennedy reached out to it, opening a link not to Bookkeeper, but directly to this soul.

‘Finally’ Chance's voice rang out clear as day in her head. ‘Ain’t gonna have long. Tell Dawn I loved her, and kick this motherfucker’s ass.’

The surge of loss, love, anger and pride hit Kennedy like a wave, filling her up and over bursting. But it didn’t matter, as the world slowed down to give her time to collect herself. Her mind refocused, and her eyes locked onto the Bookkeeper, face slowly morphing to an expression of dawning horror.

Then Kennedy was next to him, so quick his head was still looking at where she’d been, rather than where she was. She stilled for an instant, just long enough for his head to snap in her direction, relishing the terror in his eyes. Then her shin slammed into his knee at the speed of sound, his old bone shattering like an egg.

He toppled over, finally just the crazy, old, evil pervert he’d always been, completely powerless to stop Kennedy as she did the same damage to each and every one of his joints. The cracking and popping and screaming should probably have sickened someone with a healthy mindset, but that didn’t describe Kennedy. How could it, after the childhood this motherfucker had given her?

When she was done, not a single limb, not a single finger, pointed in the direction you’d expect. He laid there, twitching like a bug that a child had torn apart and put back together wrong. As Chance’s power faded, Kennedy slowly, almost sensually sat on top of the Bookkeeper’s shaking chest, drinking in the fear and agony in his eyes.

Then he spoke.

“Kennedy,” he gasped, “wait, its not too late. We can fix this. You… you are more powerful than I ever imagined! Think what we could do! My granddau—”

Kennedy’s fist slammed into his jaw, turning it to powder and changing whatever bullshit he was about to spew into a pained gurgle. It was Kennedy’s turn to speak, even as she rained down more blows.

“I AM MY MOTHER’SSAVAGE DAUGHTER,” she screamed, punctuating each word with a punch hard enough to crack her own bones, were it not for Cait’s strength. By the end of that sentence, The Bookkeeper was more meatpie than human, and his gurgling breath had stopped. Kennedy sat back, exhausted. “And I’ll never be yours again.”

“But you might yet be mine, Kennedy.”

The frozen spike of fear cut straight through the rush of victory and revenge that filled her heart, sending her eyes skyward to meet their mirror. Golden eyes, cold, in a mockery of her own warmth, stared down from a face that shared many of her own features. As she watched, the rest of her father materialized.

In her elation, she hadn’t noticed the faint shining sphere rising from the Bookkeeper’s remains. Now, her Father gathered it into his arms, cradling it like a child, before, with a breath, it was snatched away inside of him. His head snapped back, eyes now lambent with power as his whole body shook. Slowly, from each and every page, each and every fallen skeleton, more of those souls began to rush towards the floating ghost.

And Kennedy could feel their fear.