Hunter of Light: The End

Dust whirled through the air, kicked up by the rotors of the abomination flying in front of her. Annoying, but her costume included a dust-mask, which made it tolerable.

"Y'know, I always hated it in games when their idea of a miniboss was just a dude in a helicopter," Freyja said, hovering on her boulder. "Seems lazy, y'know?"

"What, you'd prefer a normal dude that just took ten times the bullets and didn't die to three rockets to his face?" a confused Trainwreck asked, lights dancing on his missiles. They were trying to lock on, but her stones didn't exactly have a heat signature, limiting the man to manual aim.

"I mean, it'd be much more realistic, wouldn't it? Plus, I work for Lustrum now, I'm contractually obliged to love killing dudes!" she replied.

"Well, then you're shit out of luck. I'm a helicopter, not a dude," Trainwreck yelled back.

Well, they'd both been yelling. Helicopters were really hecking loud, and steam-powered helicopters like Trainwreck had turned himself into were even worse.

"Can't you be both? Like how in the Cars universe, there's boy cars and girl cars? I mean, helicopter isn't really the same thing as gender, right?"

"Those movies were totally racist! The Helicopter should've gotten his own movie, not those stupid airplanes!"

"That's what you're taking away from this? Really?"

"Look, I just want my rights, okay? My struggle is just as relevant as everyone else's!" Trainwreck yelled, firing a missile as he did so.

Freyja leaped from rock to rock as the missile impacted, locking her previous ride in time. Bakuda's work, she was sure.

"Look, I have no fucking clue how you feel, waking up without memories and shit in a weird body. But… I really don't think that means it's exactly the same as other people's struggles?" she replied, placing a small van between her and her enemy.

"So what? I should just sit back while everyone else gets to be what they want to be?" he asked, flying around, trying to get an angle of attack.

"Well, I dunno? It's just… Being a helicopter is obviously different from being like trans or something, right? I mean, I think I have to hate both, since I'm working for Lustrum and everything now and all that shit gets really confusing," Rune said. "I mean, I think there's something with brain chemistry and stuff?"

"So what, just because I wasn't born with the brain of a helicopter, I can't become one? That's nonsense! It just means my brain is the first brain for sentient helicopters!"

"That doesn't make any sense! It's obviously different!" Rune yelled, throwing her van at the guy.

"I just want to be who I want to be! What's wrong with that!" he shouted back, evading the van.

"Nothing? Everything? I don't know? It's just… You don't even think you're a different person, you think you're a thing, an unperson! You can't just go and claim that that's the same thing! Hell, you doing that is probably setting back their struggle!"
"Which is what you want, right?" he asked, firing another missile. Lacking a quick way out, she hesitated, and as the projectile impacted, the floor beneath her turned into loose gravel, giving her a fraction of a second to jump off.

Was that what she wanted? She thought as the ground quickly approached. She'd dropped away from her uncle's racist ideology as hard as she was dropping to the ground right now, without really thinking about where she'd be landing. And while rampaging through the city with Lustrum had not only been fun, but also given her a massive amount of Twitter followers, she found herself not really caring about the finer points of the ideology.

Even before, she'd always just wanted a place to belong, away from her parents. Say the right words and wear the right clothes, and large swathes of people suddenly became your friends.

Until they beat you up and threw you into solitary of course, but those were mere details…

Then again, Lustrum had been sent to the birdcage before… Following her specific brand of femi-nazi-ism was… perhaps not the most tactical idea.

But what else? She couldn't go back to the Empire either, Purity had destroyed it wholesale… pondering, the boulder she'd sent after herself finally reached her, allowing her to hold onto it and decelerate while looking for Trainwreck in the sky. He was chasing after her, and from the look of it, he'd forgotten about the van still flying around above them.

"You ready to surrender to me now!?" Trainwreck yelled out, two of his missiles lighting up.

"To you? Never!" she replied.

"Than die!" Trainwreck yelled, firing his last two explosives while she finally found her purpose. Sending her boulder crashing towards the large library building below, she jumped off, grabbing hold of the cloth on a flagpole in front of it, the cloth ripping in her hands as it took her speed while her van crashed into Trainwreck from above.

"It's 'THEN' you fucking idiot!" she yelled as the helicopter crashed into the pavement, mangled rotors no longer sustaining its flight. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something moving away from the wreckage through the dust, steam and fire, but she didn't care enough to chase. Instead, she walked into the damaged, and mostly empty, library building. Wading through water and passing between flames (Her boulder had broken a water main, and one of the missiles had proven incendiary), she eventually found the title she needed.

Strunk And White, The Elements of Style.

XXX

"Taylor, are you all right?" Crystal asked, running into the old room. Her girlfriend, she loved that she could say that now, stood victorious against the vilest of fiends, a low-level thug for hire called Grue.

"Fine and dandy!" the girl replied, trying to take off a pair of boxing gloves as Crystal enveloped her in a hug, allowing the girl to squeak out only a single sentence: "Where's everyone else?"

"Dunno. Some sort of bomb went off," Crystal said, reaching for her phone. There was a selfie from her cousins, standing victorious over Bakuda. "But I think they're alright."

"Good, then we can go on and find my dad, and my mom I guess, and maybe Amy's father."

"You have any idea where they are?"

"Not really. I'd try to call him but… my dad doesn't have a mobile phone, not since my mom died in that car crash. She'd been texting.

"Oh honey," Crystal said, hiding Taylor's face against her, then coming to a realization. "You're a real idiot sometimes, you know that right?"

"What?" she asked.

"No phone? Because your mom died in an accident?"

XXX

"Hey Kurt, it's me, Taylor."

"Heya kiddo! How's it going?" the man replied, panicked noise in the background. "We're running away from the complete and utter destruction of the towers, you?"

"Underground boxing ring, it's complicated. Hey, do you happen to have dad's phone number? I lost it."

"Sure thing sweetie, it would be weird for him not to have one, since he has an important role in the organization and it's useful if he's available at all times! I'll text it to you, okay?"

"Kay!" Taylor replied, hanging up since there was no need for further pleasantries, just like in the movies. "Say, Crystal, you think one of your friends at the PRT could help us track his number?"

XXX

"Dad, mom, how you doing?" Taylor asked, her hands glowing with energy as her girlfriend held her in a bridal carry. A bit embarrassing, a bit amazing, a lot useful in this context.

The two of them turned towards the girls, Annette quickly covering up with a blanket while Danny was forced to use his hands.

"Little Owl, this is not what it looks like," her mother said.

"What, so you're saying you didn't fake your own death, go to the birdcage, break out of the birdcage, recruit a nazi, start a gang war with a different birdcage escapee and lure dad out of the safehouse?"

"Oh that? Yes, that I did. I mean this. I'm uhmmmm…. I was just, you know, beating him in a wrestling match! Taking this man down like we should all take down the patriarchy!"

"Mom!"

"What is it kiddo?"

"I know what sex is!"

"Really?" Annette said, her eyes suddenly focusing on Crystal. "What have you been doing with my-"

"I'm fifteen! Almost sixteen! I actually aged while you were off being in prison!"

"Well, while I approve of you choosing a girl, I-"

"Shut up! Just don't say it! Don't even imply me liking Crystal has anything to do with that. And you!" she pointed at her father, spit flying out of her mouth. "Not only do you move from a fucking birdcage convict to a crazed Nazi that just blew up half the fucking city, you were so goddamn stupid enough that you then CHEAT on that woman? Are you for fucking real?"

XXX

Sophia looked out over the running hordes of people, holding her crossbow and trying to look intimidating and authoritative.

"Y'know, I think we're missing something important," Dennis said, playing with his phone.

"Really? Don't be fucking stupid. It's us, Armsmaster is over there on the other guard point with Dragon and Miss Militia, and Vista is on the console. If there's anything important going on, don't you think us fan-favorite capes would be involved?"

"I guess," Sophia said, wondering what everyone else was up to. Maybe tonight, she could finally go out and take down Grue, she'd been looking forward to being the first person to get the guy arrested.

XXX

"Cheating? I'd never…" Danny stammered, looking in fear at his now deadly daughter.

"Really? Then what the hell does this look li-" Taylor's tirade was interrupted as the door to the motel room's bathroom opened, a naked lady with shining (literally) hair and eyes stepping out.

"Oh, hi there Huntress. I'm sorry, but I think you two are a bit too young to-"

"I quit!" Taylor yelled, randomly shooting bolts of destructive light out of her fists. "I quit, I quit, I quit! Crystal, take us away!"

Crystal obliged, flying away from the crappy motel as fast as she could, holding the emotionally devastated girl close to her.

Soaring through the sky, a sea of lights below her as the evening set, she nearly crashed into a flying boulder carrying Rune, or whatever she went by these days. The girl was sitting there, closely studying a book as Crystal ignored her, aiming for a home she hoped would still be standing.

Taylor was a crying bundle of shadows, the twisted degeneracy of her father too much to bear. Crystal didn't mind, assuaging someone's worries was what a girlfriend did, and all the crazyness of the last few days had only strengthened their burgeoning relationship. They'd work something out, make their relationship work, live to love another day.

XXX
"Operation Explore Powers, day One Hundred and Twelve
"It has been almost four months since I last dropped a world, and it has become exceedingly clear that my abilities were not meant to be used over such long timescales. Even without my little Sarah to help me, I am quite sure which of the two worlds I created is the fake. Starting slowly, events in one of the timelines have escalated to a level that is not only disastrous, but also quite silly. It is as if, lacking grounding in reality, the agent responsible for my abilities simply made shit up in an exceedingly intoxicated state of mind.
"As such, I shall be dropping this instance, and retaining the other, and while I have not found the root of the divergences, several factors have become clear. The individual D. Hebert's relationships are of exceeding importance. I can only hope that the instance of reality in which he is a supervillain dating Protectorate hero Dauntless does not end as disastrously as the one in which he dated Purity.
"Coil, signing off."

The End