Dreams of Angels, and the Falling Thereof

Interlude 1

Papillon/Melody Duke - Confirmed dead

Nebuloss/Picadilly Mauser - MIA

Harbinger/Marcette Chen - Confirmed dead

Bayonet/Kilian Kilroy - MIA, presumed dead

Blackjack/Danh Nguyen - Confirmed dead

Whiteadder/Noelle Harvey - Confirmed dead

Orca Supreme/Lukas Hamburg - Confirmed dead

Kool-aide/Aiden Castleton - Confirmed dead

~~~~~~

She inhaled.

She exhaled.

She brought the wine to her lips, and read the document again.

~~~~~~

Melody Duke

Picadilly Mauser

Marcette Chen

Kilian Kilroy

Danh Nguyen

Noelle Harvey

Lukas Hamburg

Aiden Castleton

~~~~~

She would commit this list to memory, until the case was long behind her.

She read the list again. Took another sip of wine.

She read until a fog crept over her vision, blurring the words in front of her, scrambling the order in her mind. Sleep had begun to smother her when she least expected it, setting her eyes to drooping, her head lolling off to one side. She stifled a yawn, blinked away the exhaustion, and read the list once more.

How much longer would it get? A new body turned up every time the killer moved cities. The victims were composed of both unfortunate civilian casualties, and her primary targets; superpowered youth. Each corpse was more horrifying than the last. They were mangled in a new way, surrounded by signs of increasingly violent struggle. The killer was getting ever more brutalistic with her acts, the woman knew. And yet, each time she saw a new child, killed and frozen, she felt slightly less disgusted. There was a point at which all that damnation toppled beneath its own wretched weight, and one's emotional reaction to the most heinous of acts was reduced to comfortable numbness.

She was interrupted by a knocking at the door. A petite young woman, with short, mousy hair and large-rimmed glasses, poked her head in.

"Miss Godiva? You have a visitor."

"...A visitor? It's 2 am, darlin', who'd be here at this hour?" She chuckled, despite herself, and then paused. "...And for that matter, why're you still here?"

"Oh, ah, um, well, I got behind on my paperwork, and since I couldn't sleep, I figured I'd try to get some of it done after hours..."

Godiva sighed. "We're all behind, darlin', it's fine. Say-- and this is going to make me look just horrible, but what was your name again?"

"Eden Smith, ma'am."

"Smith... Smith... Right, that's right. So terribly sorry. Been through three assistants in the past month, hard to keep them all straight."

"It's quite alright, ma'am."

Godiva stifled a yawn. "So, who's come a'knockin' for lil' ol' me?"

"It's, uh, Justicar, ma'am. From the St. Louis branch. He's waiting downstairs."

Godiva laughed once more. "'Course it'd be him. No one else'd risk disturbing my beauty sleep. Send him up, will you?" She began adjusting her floor-length locks of hair, trying to make them look somewhat presentable, despite her unfortunately obvious case of massive bedhead.