Battlecry

by Emerald Dodge

  But as I stared at the three gaunt-faced young men in front of me, taking in their pleading expressions, I could not help but remember the fifth principle.

  Diligence. I will spare no effort in the defense of civilians or my teammates.

  I hid my face in my hands and stepped away from the wall. “Just do it. Quickly.” I slowly turned around.

  Gentle hands—I couldn’t tell whose—gathered my hair together. There were a few sharp snips, and then I felt something I hadn’t felt in years: ends of my hair brushing my shoulder blades. My head was already noticeably lighter.

  “We’ll talk to Ember when she wakes up,” Marco whispered. Reid made an assenting sound.

  I kept my face in my hands to hide the most embarrassing tears I’d ever cried. I hadn’t been allowed to prepare for this loss, and it was a heavy loss, indeed. I had little in the world, but I had the respect of civilians, and Elder St. James had always let the girls know that their beauty had everything to do with that respect.

  “Jillian, will you look at me?” Benjamin’s voice lifted my spirits, though not by much, because I was keenly aware that the one person whose attraction I desired more than anyone else’s was literally standing on locks of my hair.

  I raised my head and met his kind gaze. He didn’t look repulsed.

  “Let’s give them some privacy,” Reid said, pulling Marco out of the room and shutting the door behind them.

  Benjamin caressed the ragged ends of my hair. “You look really good. I think your hair has natural wave.”

  “I’m ugly now,” I mumbled.

  “You haven’t seen yourself yet. I can see you, and I say you look magnificent, so there.” He was still playing with my hair.

  “You’re just saying that to be nice.”

  “Oh, really?” Benjamin pulled his hand away. “You seem to think I grew up in your camps, with your weird teachings about beauty. Well, I didn’t. I think you’re hotter this way.”

  I was about to tell him off for making fun of our teachings again, but then I realized what he’d said afterward. “You think I’m hot?”

  Nobody, not even Matthew, had ever described me as “hot”, and that was a word we had at the camps.

  Benjamin rolled his eyes. “Have you seen you? You’re a tall, dark, ass-kicking superhero. Of course you’re hot.”

  Then he grabbed me around my waist and kissed me.

  29

  “Are you punishing me?”

  Ember stood in the corner of the living room with her head pressed firmly to the wall, much like I had a few hours before. Her wild eyes darted from the scissors on the floor to the front door. I didn’t need telepathy to know that she was considering fleeing the convent, possibly back to Oconee camp.

  “No,” I gasped. “Never. After all we’ve been through, how can you think that of me?”

  “Hair-cutting is for…for whores!” She grabbed her hair and stuffed it down the back of her shirt. “You’re doing this because Patrick tried to rape me.”

  Her accusation stabbed at my heart. I kicked the scissors into the kitchen.

  “Ember, no. Look at my hair. I cut it because our long hair is too noticeable. My new haircut means I can better protect all of you. Don’t you want to help me do that? This is something we can do together to help our team.”

  “Why doesn’t Benjamin have to cut his overgrown mess? He’s in hiding, too.”

  She had a point.

  “Benjamin, can you come down here, please?” I called loudly. The guys were upstairs, no doubt pretending they couldn’t hear the drama downstairs.

  A door opened and shut, and then Benjamin appeared, tromping down the stairs. “What’s up?”

  “Ember raised a good point about haircuts.” I gave his hair a significant look. “We’re not the only ones who can cut their hair.”

  Benjamin sighed. “Yeah, I figured this was coming. Where’re the scissors?”

  I pointed to the kitchen and he went to retrieve them. I turned back to Ember. “I’m not going to force you to cut your hair. But would you consider doing so if Benjamin did?”

  She made a face at me. “Swear that this isn’t about what Patrick did.”

  Instead of answering, I approached her slowly, pulling her into a hug. “I swear. Listen to my thoughts. We’re going to stop him, Em. We’ll make him pay for what he did. Cutting our hair makes it so we can live in peace until the time is right.”

  Ember wrapped her arms around me, and we stood there in the dim living room until Benjamin, standing in the doorway, cleared his throat.

  We broke apart and Ember wrinkled her nose. “You first.”

  He pulled a folding chair into the living room and handed me the scissors. “I don’t care what it looks like, just as long as it doesn’t look like a dog chewed on it.”

  I ran my fingers through his thick, wavy hair and pouted. I’d tangled my fingers in it while we’d kissed, pulling him closer to me, delighting in how he looked and felt nothing like a camp boy.

  Though I couldn’t recall moving, I’d ended up against the wall, Benjamin’s muscular body flush with mine, his hot breath in my mouth, his heady scent swirling, our hands roaming…

  Ember smacked me upside the head.

  I blushed furiously. “Um, yes, I’ll give you as best of a cut as I can. I’ve never done this before, so don’t expect anything spectacular.” I snipped an experimental lock, then another. It wasn’t so bad. Soon a dark blond ring of hair encircled Benjamin, and the hair left on his head had a ragged, uneven texture that, unfortunately, did kind of have a chewed-on appearance.

  “All done,” I squeaked, grimacing. “Your turn, Ember.”

  Benjamin stood up and touched his hair, tugging on it. “It doesn’t feel so bad. I bet I look good. Do you need me to make any other sacrifices to the superhero gods?”

  Get Reid, I mouthed. Benjamin ran up the stairwell. After a few seconds, I heard Reid and Marco’s hysterical laughter.

  “The power of a crush,” Ember muttered, sitting down and slumping forward on her knees. “Just get it over with. Your length.”

  “Can do.” I pulled her hair out of her shirt and carefully measured where I needed to cut. Like me, she covered her face with her hands.

  I worked quickly, mindful of how much each snip of my own hair had assaulted my ears. Her beautiful red hair fell on my feet, leaving a ragged shoulder-length style similar to mine.

  She swished her hair around. “My head is so light. How do I look?”

  “Gorgeous,” I said, grinning. I was so lucky Benjamin had met me first.

  Reid’s footfalls on the stairwell made Ember freeze momentarily, then gather her hair in her hands behind her head. “Don’t look at me!”

  I gently removed her hands from her hair. “He’s going to have to look at you sometime. It might as well be now. After you’re done, let’s go out and test our hairdos. We need to buy more supplies, and I need to stop by the shed and get our things.”

  I left the living room to give them some privacy, trusting that Reid would have the grace to shower Ember with praise, though of course she’d know if he was lying.

  However, I didn’t think he’d have to. I didn’t know the depth of their feelings for each other, but I detected something more than mere infatuation between them. I recalled Reid’s barely-controlled fury with which he faced Patrick in the library, understanding now that at least part of that fight had nothing to do with me.

  30

  After a late dinner we congregated in the living room to begin training exercises.

  Marco and Reid sparred, reviewing basic hand-to-hand moves. I placed a sticky note on the wall and began the slow process of teaching Ember how to throw my knives, which had been rescued from the shed. Benjamin, who couldn’t participate in physical training because of his sprain, sat against the wall and watched us for a while before deciding to read the newspaper I’d purchased while shopping for supplies.

  Benjamin wrinkled his nose as he began to
read. “The Times-Mirror is such a sensationalist rag. Give me the Washington Post any day.”

  “What’s it say?” Marco asked through his mouth guard, blocking Reid’s punch with is forearm.

  Benjamin began to read with overdramatic enunciation.

  “…our city’s heroes, saviors of so many citizens, bravely fought against their much-praised former leader, Atropos, in a heart-pounding fight to the death at the John Mosby branch of the Saint Catherine Library. Though the reasons for the showdown remain unclear, unconfirmed online rumors indicate that a massive rift in the team has been forming for months, primarily concerning Atropos’ treatment of his teammates. Anonymous sources report that when the smoke cleared from the battle, team heavyweight Battlecry emerged as the new leader of the beleaguered crime fighters.”

  Benjamin rolled his eyes. “And then there’s a million quotes from dippy Atropos fangirls defending him, or trying to excuse his actions. This one chick here says she doesn’t believe the rumors that he beat you guys up, and even if they were true, he’s probably very sorry. Ugh, gag me.”

  I didn’t want to hear about Patrick. “Any news about Hurricane Anastasia?”

  Ember hurled her new hunting knife into the wall, missing her target by three inches. She’d already improved since we’d begun training ninety minutes before.

  Benjamin flipped to the weather section. “Oh! Here’s some good news. It’s been downgraded back to a tropical storm. It’ll make landfall tomorrow, but NOAA doesn’t think it’ll be too bad. The city might get some flooding in the lower areas, but I doubt we’ll be called in for rescues or anything.”

  “This entire city is a ‘lower area’,” I reminded him. “We’re at sea level, and there are more creeks, rivers, and marshes around here than dry land, I think. We might not have to do rescues, but there will be displaced citizens for a while. Could be that crime rises because of opportunistic scumbags.”

  Reid signaled for Marco to stop, then pulled out his mouth guard. “If that’s so, we’ll have to let the police handle it unless they ask us for help. We’re in hiding, remember? I know it’s hard, but we’ll have to ride this out.”

  I yanked the knife out of the wall. “I know,” I grumbled.

  Ember took the knife from me. “If the storm does get bad, do you think they’ll call in other Super teams? Who’s nearby these days?”

  I plopped down next to Benjamin and grabbed a juice box from a small pile next to him. “I don’t think they’ll call in another team, unfortunately. Apparently the cops aren’t big fans of us.”

  “It would be nice to see another team, though,” Reid said, a hint of wistfulness in his words. “My brother Reuben serves in Baltimore. I haven’t seen him in years.” He sighed. “I miss him.”

  “I grew up in Annapolis, so Baltimore’s team was always in the news,” Benjamin said. “Which one is he?”

  Reid sat down on the floor near us. Marco and Ember followed suit, settling down and opening their own juice boxes.

  “Obsidian. He can manufacture a shadowy substance and turn it into weapons.”

  “I know who you’re talking about,” Benjamin said, nodding. “What were his teammates’ names, again?” Curiously, his gazed dropped to his juice box and he began to read the nutrition facts.

  Reid thought for a minute. “The leader is Imperator. The others are Obsidian, Tiger, Argentine, Valkyrie, and, darn, what’s-her-name, the newish one?”

  I scowled. “Artemis.”

  Her real name was Berenice Grantham, and she’d grown up in Chattahoochee camp with Marco and me. She was several times stronger than me, but lacked my speed, senses, and reflexes. She’d always been a bully, and when she’d been called into service she’d driven her thumb into my eye one last time by stealing the codename I’d always wanted.

  Patrick probably would’ve given me the mocking codename Battlecry no matter what I’d asked for, but I never was able to shake the feeling that Berenice had stolen something from me. She probably thought my assigned codename was hilarious.

  “Even if the city requested another team, they wouldn’t go so far afield as Baltimore,” Reid pointed out. “More likely they’d call in the Columbia team. I met their leader a few years ago when he visited my camp for one of those courting swaps. His name is James McClintock.”

  Marco swore so colorfully that the four of us paused simultaneously and stared at him. Such language was more commonly heard from me, or Patrick.

  Ember sipped her juice. “I assume there’s a story there. I’m all ears. I gotta hear this.”

  Marco’s demeanor changed in the blink of an eye, going from defiant to defeated, his shoulders slumping. He scowled at the mouth guard in his hand. “James is from the Ozark camp.”

  “So?” I asked. I’d met a few people from the Ozark camp and hadn’t seen any reason to toss profanity their way.

  Marco looked at me then in a way I’d never seen him look at me. Disgust, anger, and hurt warred in his eyes—hurt was the most apparent. My simple question had obviously been the wrong thing to say.

  “Do you know why the Arkansas camp was founded? Do you really know?

  “Ozark camp was founded in 1969 because the other camps were getting overcrowded,” Reid said slowly.

  Marco threw him a look of sarcastic pity. “Yeah, 1969. Six months after the elders lifted the ban on interracial marriages. Take a wild guess where the dissenters decided to move.”

  Benjamin leaned towards Marco. “Are you telling me there’s an entire camp of superheroes in Arkansas built around racial purity? Holy crap.”

  Ember, Reid, and I stared at Marco in shock. I’d never heard that version of events, nor did I want to believe it. Ozark camp was home to several of my Johnson relatives, though I’d never met them. But I also trusted Marco.

  “How have we never heard this?” Reid asked, frowning. “James never expressed any bigoted opinions to me when I spoke to him.”

  Benjamin laughed without humor. “That’s not usually the sort of thing people volunteer.” He turned to Marco. “But James said something to you, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, when his team visited one winter. He was having trouble getting his fire started, so I offered to light it for him, and he told me to piss off. I asked him what I’d done wrong, and he looked me up and down and said I was unnatural. I asked my Dad, and he got real quiet and said the Arkansas families didn’t think he should’ve been allowed to marry Mom.”

  I pictured my Aunt Grace and my Uncle Harold as I’d frequently seen them growing up: holding hands, watching their five children at play or training, their pride evident to all. The thought of not being allowed to marry someone because their skin tone was different was almost ludicrous to me.

  Now, a Super marrying someone without powers? That wasn’t natural. The elders ordered people to be whipped over something like that.

  “So let me get this straight,” Benjamin said. “Ozark camp are a bunch of racists, and the Idaho camp is somehow even more legalistic than all the others. Do all the camps have their own unique weirdness? Does Oconee have human sacrifices?”

  “Why, yes,” Ember exclaimed with feigned surprise. “We capture sarcastic supervillains and roast them alive for the summer solstice. I haven’t been to a roast since I left, though. I miss the screams.”

  Marco’s indignation was replaced by amusement. “Damn, Ember.”

  I looked Ember in the eye. “If that comment was meant to offend anyone here, think again, because there’s no supervillain in this room, and I won’t stand for you to threaten the family members of people in this room.” Ember opened her mouth to argue, but I shook my head. “This isn’t open for discussion.”

  I turned to Benjamin, who straightened. “Stop with the sarcastic comments about us and our camps. We’re all superheroes, but we’re all human beings, too, with all the flaws and warts that entails. You may not be a supervillain, but if you want to make comments about terrible things our relatives have done, I’ll tell you
a story about three headless corpses I inspected last month.”

  Benjamin paled. “Sorry,” he muttered. “But going back to Marco’s story, though…I’m amazed that you guys didn’t know about the racism in the camps. It’s curious that the Arkansas camp is the racist one, though. I hate to say it, but this is Georgia. If any of the camps had a racist undercurrent, I would’ve guessed it would be the ones in the Deep South.”

  Marco, Ember, and I gasped at once. I gestured wildly between the three of us. “Did one of us give you that impression?”

  Benjamin held up his hands. “No! No, please believe me, that’s not what I meant. What I mean is that with the region’s history, I would’ve thought that the Georgia camps would be the likely candidates for problems with interracial relationships.”

  We all looked at each other. I knew I wasn’t the only confused person in the living room. What did our region have to do with racism? That was like saying something about the land and water in Idaho made Reid’s camp stricter, which was patently absurd.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “People in Georgia marry different races all the time.”

  “Well, yeah, but there’s always been more racial tension in the South than elsewhere in the country. The Confederacy and segregation and all that, you know?”

  “What’s the Confederacy?” Ember asked.

  I also wanted to know, since I’d never heard the word, nor did I have any clue what he was getting at. I thought segregation might have something to do with superheroes living apart from civilians, but that didn’t jive with what he was saying about Georgia or racism.

  Benjamin didn’t answer right away. Instead, he quietly took in our blank expressions. I got the distinct impression he was doing some careful thinking. “What do you guys know about the Civil War?”

  “Civil War?” Reid repeated. “How can a war be civil? That’s an oxymoron.”

  Benjamin stared at him, stunned. “Who was Abraham Lincoln?”

  That was an odd question. Why would Benjamin quiz Reid on trivia? Civilian education was stuffed to the brim with unimportant information that clogged up their minds. Our educations were superheroism-oriented.