Silver Eclipse

Chapter 1: Reimmersion

It took me a long time to gather the courage to leave Chronos alone. I went on missions with Dust, Pink, my kitty, and even women I’d never seen before but going out alone was a big hurtle. Sure, I’d encountered some pretty nasty villains before—but nothing even close to Yanta’s level. I’d never had someone shove a rod into my head before, and I didn’t—and still don’t—want that number to change if I can help it. There’s nothing worse than the feeling of hardware being inserted into your head. Trust me. I’ve had my head filled with pink bliss, with devious dust, and had legs wrapping around the inside of my mind… None of them comes close to the feeling of having your mind wrapped around a wooden pole.

Even the pain of failing The Lady doesn’t begin to compare to that feeling. I can’t think of anything that could… And I don’t want to be proven wrong.

Not that I think proving me wrong is an especially difficult task, quite the opposite. I’ll admit to still being a bit naïve and a bit inexperienced. Before Yanta my most difficult enemy had just been too fast for me. I’d never even experienced my mind being melted down before…

The whole world is different when there are worse things to be afraid of than death. Death is nothing compared to having your brain shattered into five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred pieces. Almost anything is better than that in ways I can’t even begin to describe and I won’t even try. There’s no point if you already know how it felt for me to experience, how it felt for me to feel so segmented and…

But this isn’t about that story. That already happened. It ended happily after ever after with a long night of fun rolling around on The Lady’s bed. That night was pure pleasure, pure bliss, pure satisfaction and… It wouldn’t be right to kiss and tell, would it?

Either way, that was a year ago and a lot can happen in a year. So much can happen in a year that by the end you don’t even feel like the same person. Oddly enough though, surprisingly little really changed. Life in Chronos isn’t monotonous, but it’s something you get accustomed to and you find the rhythm swaying you along like a sometimes gentle and sometimes chaotic stream. Even when it’s chaotic you learn how to move with it. You learn how to dodge the rocks jutting up in the middle of the stream and you learn what places on the shore actually provide safe haven.

Safe haven is bored though, so eventually you learn when Dust is just in for a quickie, or when Pink really is offering only one lollypop. Other times you hole up in your room with your kitty and have a lot of shining silver fun. After all, these hands were made for sparking or something that sounds just a little less corny.

Recruiting gets really routine after awhile and with backup it’s pretty hard to fail. Working with a partner can sometimes have drawbacks though, but still, I’m ranting about the past.

The biggest change, even if it’s just enough change to make things the same as they used to be, is that The Lady finally let me go on patrol again. It took a lot of begging, a lot of pleading, and a lot of promising to be back each night before dawn to get Her to let me out just for my own silly little patrols. Just like before most of the time I don’t even find anything vaguely interesting. Sometimes though I stumble upon something and I can solve it a lot quicker, a lot easier, and a lot more efficiently.

On those rare times when I actually get to do some good for the world a good chunk of the time I end up with someone to bring back to Chronos. The Lady can find a good use for just about everyone. If she can’t Dust or Pink generally can. I’ll admit the thought of having my own silvery harem is tempting but in the end it’s just too much work.

I’m perfectly satisfied with just my kitty, my nightly pillow, and occasionally playing around with the dustling or the candy queen. Of course I’m still The Lady’s toy, but that goes without saying. Why wouldn’t I be? She treats me so well, and she wasn’t lying when she said “anything.”

Still, I have my patrols. My biggest worry to be perfectly honest is running into another of Yanta’s coven. By now I feel pretty confident that most run of the mill supers aren’t that tough to take down. Most people that would go after my mind are rather easily fended off. Not everyone has Windy to help stabilize their powers. That would make my job even tougher than it already can be sometimes. Just how Windy does it is still a mystery to me but some things I’d rather not know. I still am not curious where my blood goes during an annual physical as long as I’m given an honestly clean bill of health.

Health coming up in my crazy little rant reminds me of another reason why I really need the experience of being on patrol. Silly as it is I need the risk. I need the feeling that I’m doing something foolishly heroic that no one’s telling me to do. No one ever really encouraged me to start being a heroine. No one really wants their daughter to give up a perfectly good education to spend her nights on rooftops and fire escapes while working a crappy job. I can hardly imagine my mom would want me working for Chronos…

We didn’t really talk much before anyway. It’s no loss.

What really worries me is that we still have Yanta’s body. She’s not dead, but her brain can’t exactly form coherent thoughts. Killing her seems cruel, but letting her go just isn’t an option. So our indecision is made even more cruel, because she’s kept in a room somewhere and probably one of Windy’s machines keeps that silver I put in her head working overtime.

There’s nothing better to do, but there’s really nothing worse. Sometimes it seems like Dust would rather just kill her, but she owes me and she knows it. I’m not sure if it’s just me or I don’t think either Dust or Pink have made a really powerful attempt to turn me into a plaything or a dust bunny since I saved them. Maybe this is just that I’ve gotten better at dodging the really intense attempts, but I’d like to think that it’s their way of paying me back for saving their lives. The Lady would have sent someone else to save them, but it was me and something special about the way my head works is the only way I was able to pull it off.

No one really knows how I pulled that off though. Windy doesn’t know. The Lady doesn’t know. The same programming in my head from The Lady is in all the rest of her agents’ heads, but they all just stayed obedient little toys for that damned witch. No exact part of my brain seems to be responsible for any powerful reconstructive abilities and I still can’t explain why Yanta’s fraying didn’t leave my mind in tatters.

At best I’m just crossing my fingers and bullshitting explanations. That’s all anyone ever really can do anyway. Even science is a lot of “please don’t prove this freakishly wrong in twenty years.” Right? Okay, so that’s me really crossing my fingers there but even still…

Tonight, here I am again. I’m all dolled up in my old uniform I would wear back when fire escapes were my domain. It was a pretty small request. She didn’t mind me getting it back at all. The white of the gloves and the boots contrast even more now that my skin is even darker, more tanned looking silver.

Eventually I might need to have a new uniform made if for no other reason than this one is too much reminiscent of my old life that doesn’t really matter as much as I pretend it does sometimes. I’m patrolling again, and I’ve stopped some pretty nasty crimes sometimes I can feel that I’m trying to pretend I’m Sarah LaSilvas. Maybe one of these days I’ll tell The Lady that I have some lingering mental issues from my old life, some silly need to save the world, but for now that really doesn’t matter.

The night is young, The Lady expects me back before day break, and I’ve got a city to patrol. It’s thoughts like that, thoughts so silly in a cliché way that make me consider asking for a silvery cape just for the sake of it. Either way, all of those thoughts are true so I’d better head out and find a fire escape.

Old habits die hard. When they don’t have to die what’s the point in trying to get them to stand still long enough to try killing them?