SwordBright would probably have had a thing or two to say if they had known that Karry had waited all of two hours after their visit to hightail it out of Toronto, which is why they were never going to find out. It wasn’t as if she was leaving the country, or even the province - she wouldn’t, not without getting her necklace first.
It was a strange thing, to know for certain where it was after centuries questing after it. She’d spent more time since her imprisonment in this flesh body searching for her necklace than she’d spent under it’s control, and SwordBright’s grim pronouncement that she could soon he forced into servitude again filled her with anxiety and rage. She longed to have that cursed thing where she could monitor it at last.
And as for SwordBright themselves, she wished to keep an eye on them as well. They knew what she was. Perhaps not the entirety of it, but they had made clear by the way they spoke about her that they had an inkling of her true nature.
Not a suspicion. A belief. And she was a creature who’d been created from belief. People’s admiration and fear of her super villain persona had sustained her, but SwordBright’s matter of fact knowledge of her true self had rippled into the fabric of the universe that morning of their arrival in the past, overwhelming her with waves after waves of dizzying magic. It was heady; she hadn’t felt this powerful for centuries.
All of that from a single idiot child who was immune to magic themselves. What must it be like, she wondered, to serve a tyrant? To have everyone on an entire continent know her name and her power, to have children and witches and clergymen and villains and heroes all forced to look upon her and acknowledge her ancient darkness?
She thought about the Karry from SwordBright’s future-past. The one they obviously had so many feelings about. She must have been so full of powers; it must have been exhilarating.
Had she even asked for their help? Had she tried to break the tyrant’s control over her?
Or had she bent to his will, finally accepting the role she’d been summoned to this world to fulfil, and the power that came with it?
Had she been the one to kill the world?
Katarina shuddered and leaned her forehead on the window of the bus, letting the vehicle’s vibrations scramble the thoughts in her head.
The bus pulled into Ottawa shortly after midnight. The capital of Canada was a rubbish city, she thought, with bars full of drunk francophones and far too many bridges stretching over running water. Unfortunately for her, her only friend in the world thought that the city was charming, so she had to endure it every time she came to visit.
She’d liked it a lot more in the 1840s, before the city went and became respectable. A vampire, or as close to one as she was in any case, could hardly get much work done in a respectable city. And that was without mentioning all of the red spandex-clad heroes that prowled the capital these days. At least SwordBright had a leather jacket, which could somewhat pass as cool. She would die of humiliation if she ever had to fight someone wearing thighs and a cape like an idiot out of some American comic book. Most of them weren’t even wearing those right. She’d been around when thighs and capes had truly, honestly been in fashion, and she longed for the day some hero would manage to properly accessorize, for once.
Karry disembarked at the Ottawa bus station, and was struck by a thought at the sight of the posters on the walls of the platform. She hurried inside the building and tucked herself in a corner, away from the flow of disgruntled travellers. She pulled her phone from her purse and sent a quick text to a number she’d saved only hours prior as “FOOL”.
“Why tf didn’t u ask the CSL?” she typed, meaning the Canadian Superheroes League.
Karry tended to forget they existed, as she was very old and the superhero phenomenon was relatively new, considering. But to someone like SwordBright, who had been a card-carrying member of the CSL ever since they’d first put a hand on that glowy sword of theirs, informing the league of their time-travelling situation should have been their first act upon arriving. A reflex. Unless there’d been some falling out that she was unaware of at some point in the future, in which case she wanted to know about it now so that she could prepare for it.
SwordBright answered surprisingly fast, and she wondered what they were still doing up at this hour.
“They would want to kill u,” read the answer.
She frowned down at her phone.
“Y do u care,” she shot back.
She liked herself alive, or as close as she got, but it wasn’t particularly superhero-ish of them to put her life over the fate of the world. Not that they’d been acting superhero-y ever since they’d returned to the past, but there were limits and she was fairly sure that crossing the CSL was one of them.
She almost wished that they had shown up at her apartment with their sword and tried to swing at her. It had least would have fit in more with their antagonistic relationship up until now than this… texting at 1 AM thing they apparently had going on now.
It took them a while to answer, the ‘seen at 12:49’ staring up at her accusingly for several minutes until, finally, they sent back a single word.
“Vegeta.”
She made a face at her phone and shoved it back inside her purse, frustrated.
Evidently, she wouldn’t get any clear answer out of them. She turned and left the bus station, heading toward the taxi area. It was time to get an outside opinion for all of this, someone who had no stakes in the situation and could truly help her make some sense of all that mess.
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