She hears the missile; she doesn't ever see it. It's a muted roar in her ears, and she's whirling around, eyes wide, when the world comes crashing down in a riotous fury of fire and smoke. The roof caves in and she soars upwards. Her vision staggers black for a moment on impact, and then she looks down to see a yellow force field pushing back the flames while she holds the sagging latticework of metal up, an Atlas with pink hair and dark circles under her eyes. 

Two of the children are huddled down (but not together, as if even now they can't seek comfort in one another, in touch), staring at the hungry flames with dull, glazed eyes. The girl stands with her hands out, staring at them as if she can't believe what she's doing. The yellow blur flickers for a moment and heat rushes in. 

Fuck. If she could just--if she could just hold the roof up and be down there at the same time, but she can't. She strains, but she can't make her TK move an inch outward. It remains stubbornly fastened to her like a second skin. All she gets for her trouble is a pulse of throbbing pain at her temples, and the flames rise a little higher and the roof creaks above her, and she's running out of time. 

"Can you hold that and move?" she asks the girl, and then repeats herself sharply until the child looks up at her. 

"I-I don't know," she stammers, and Thalia has to work to keep her tone level when she says try. 

It turns out it doesn't matter if she tries. She can't do it. She takes a step forward and the edges of the force field remain rooted firmly to the ground. The two boys crouching in fear don't even blink when she moves away from them. Thalia snarls and throws her shoulders, her fists back, with all her strength. The section of the roof she's holding up smashes into a hundred scattered pieces and she throws herself on the kids as they begin to fall. A few baseball sized chunks bounce off her head and back, but they don't even make a dent in her shielding. 

The smoke is rising. She's running out of patience. It's just her, now; the other woman is gone, and she doesn't even know what she could do in this situation, hadn't seen her in action. When she offers her arm to the girl, the kid flinches. Thalia swallows another snarl. It won't help. 

"We're just leaving," she promises. "You only have to hold onto me for a moment." 

A few minutes of cajoling later, they rise out of the hole in the roof and touch down outside the warehouse, all three kids bundled under her arms like rugs. They're limp, unprotesting once they'd finally given in. It feels like transporting boxes instead of people. It makes her want to vomit. The medical responders are outside at least, and she begins to land, the thought of handing the kids over to the experts filling her with dizzying gratitude. 

Aegis watches her soar with eyes as blank and disconnected as any of the children. His finger tightens around the trigger. His hands are shaking too badly for a headshot, but he sights through the scope and puts a bullet in the oldest boy's gut as easy as breathing. The pink-haired woman freezes in the air, blood splattered dark against the black of her uniform, and the sound of a high, terrified scream cuts through the night. 

Beside him, the target hisses. Good job! he says, as if Aegis cares. Aegis gets up and starts to move to his next vantage point, waiting patiently for the slow, cumbersome target to follow him.

physis

There is the sudden recoil in her arms, the child's body trying to tear itself out of her grip from the force of the shot. There is the damp, warm spray of blood across her chest, and arms, and face. There is the girl's terrified shriek pealing out in the air, climbing octave after octave impossibly; there is the low gurgling noise the boy makes, the dark stain spreading across his shirt even as she lands too fast, too soon, crashing to her knees on the asphalt, and letting the other two tumble out of her arms, offering him to the medical responders, and it doesn't matter that she can't use her telepathy because looking at him--the drawn pallor of his face, the shredded ruin of skin and guts when they peel back his shirt--she doesn't need to read minds to know what they're going to say.

Aegis goes to push away her punch on instinct and can't suppress the noise of pain the action shocks out of him, the nerves in his wrists screaming in protest like he's tried to pump the brakes on a speeding car. Her fist slides right through his parry and into his face. There's the wet crunch of his nose breaking as he steps backwards and sideways, fighting for distance. 

Behind him, the target has picked up his discarded gun and is leveling at the woman with unsteady hands.

Stand down you crazy bitch! he shouts, I'll fucking use this if I have to! You know how much I paid for them? 

physis

He watches the target go down beneath the woman's fists. Watches as his face devolves from something face-shaped into something not. The man is trying to beg for help from Aegis, although it's hard to get comprehensible words out beneath the onslaught. Aegis watches, for a moment, and then picks up the gun the target dropped. It's a Barrett M107A1 and extraordinarily reliable in the field. He's also under much stricter orders to bring his entire arsenal back intact, himself included, then he is to keep the man alive.

At some point, in Aegis' analysis of the situation, he was demoted from target to man. Such is the risk of hiring a brainwashed assassin tortured into loyalty to one organization and one organization only. 

Aegis disappears.

The sound of gunshots shakes Thalia out of her shock-induced reverie. She's been staring, she realizes, at the medical responders working over--over the body, without really seeing what's happening or understanding what's going on. The girl is clinging to her leg, as if now that she's had human touch she can't lose it again, and Thalia peels her off as gently as she can. She's not sure she succeeds, but the man who shot the boy is still out there. She needs to find him.

physis

Thalia arrives slightly behind the police, touching down just as the cop is handcuffing the other woman. She looks dully at the corpse on the ground, the face reduced to flesh-colored sludge, nothing human to be found there, and tries to summon some sort of disgust, some sort of anger at the fact. She thinks about how this is exactly what's wrong with vigilante justice and finds that she feels nothing. It's not even the worst dead body she's seen tonight, after all. 

The woman speaks and the cop doesn't answer her question. The truth rises to the tip of Thalia's lips, but she swallows it back down. Even if she disagrees with her methods, the two of them were on the same side tonight. One of them should leave here still able to look at themselves in the mirror.

Her hands are shaking at her side, she realizes, and she clenches them into fists to attain some semblance of stillness and calm. The other cop is approaching her, looking extremely tired already. "We're going to need a statement, Valk," she says. Thalia recognizes her, somewhat. They've worked together before, if in very different circumstances. Brighter circumstances. "Everything you saw, everything you did." The woman shrugs and looks apologetic: you know the drill, her expressions says.

physis