Saint Joseph School

It was hot. The guards outside the compound gate were fairly relaxed, sharing a cigarette between the two of them, the easy flow of their native Portuguese belying the speed at which they could bring up their Arachnos-supplied submachine guns if Maddy was reckless.

From where she watched from the foliage, Steel Magnolia smiled to herself. Maddy enjoyed being reckless, she enjoyed risks, and she enjoyed pitting her skills against the odds. She wasn’t stupid, however. The operation was to get in and out undetected, but she knew that was going to be an impossibility, judging on the number of troops and guards she’d seen going into the installation over the past three days. Stealth wasn’t her strong point. Besides, the moment she broke into the mainframe for the codes she needed, the alarms would go off, and she wasn’t so accomplished a cyberjock as to prevent that from happening.

Killing…that was a strong point. She couldn’t handle an army, though. The best Maddy could hope for was to slip in as far as she could go, hack into the mainframe, and bug out like a roach caught in the open when the kitchen lights came on. No lingering, no testing the opposition, just out and gone.

Maddy felt a cramp beginning in her thigh where she crouched, and diverted her attention long enough to increase circulation in that part of her body with practiced ease of will. She wasn’t super-powered, but Maddy had gained a surprising amount in the way of esoteric knowledge in her time away in the field, biofeedback techniques being the least of it.

Maddy ran a mental checklist of her weapons for possibly the twentieth time that hour. Palm grenades. Hypo-darts. Expansible taser rods. Her signature leaf-shaped throwing spikes, coated with the hallucinogenic formula belonging to the Magnolia tradition.

The guards glanced toward her hiding place several times as they chatted, but of course saw nothing. The precise technologies involved escaped her, but the unique properties of her combat suit caused her to blend into the terrain with nary a fringe effect from its camouflaging aura to be seen. The suit could run off its batteries for a full week before needing a recharge. Her eyes stayed alert, scanning the walls of the seemingly impenetrable fortress. If necessary, she’d wait a week or even longer for an opportunity to penetrate the compound, hiding herself under a truck or something like that rolling by—

Her hip vibrated. Though Maddy stayed still as a rock, her heart leapt up into her mouth. Her hand slid down to the device on her belt, touching it like it was a bomb.

Though to the casual observer it might have seemed like only a moment before Steel Magnolia quietly withdrew from the trees and started making her way back to her aircraft, for Maddy it was an interminable excruciation of indecision, followed by what was for Steel Magnolia the equivalent of a panicked rout.

Her daughter was in trouble.

Her sister answered on the first ring. “Maddy?”

Her throat was dry. “Yes, Sylvia, it’s me. What’s happened?”

There was a silence on the other end, pregnant with all the things she was sure Sylvia wanted to say to her. The night skies outside of the cockpit mirrored the chill in Maddy’s heart. It might have been a relief, then, just to have Sylvia lose her cool and scream bloody murder just this one time, Maddy thought, but all her sister said was, “How soon can you get to Rhode Island?” A pause, then: “I…can’t describe what’s happened to ‘Del…you have to see for yourself, Madeleine, I haven’t the words.” Her voice was deliberate, as if Sylvia were trying with great difficulty not to lose her legendary control.

Frustrated, Maddy said, “Why can’t you just tell me what’s wrong with my daughter?” Her fingers tightened on the joystick until her knuckles went bone-white.

Again, a pause. “Because,” Sylvia finally said, each word inexorably hammered out from grief and anger like iron on an anvil, “we need you here, Madeleine, not out there trying to find a solution that gives you an excuse to stay away from the consequences of your actions. Get your ass—“ (the uncharacteristic vulgarity from her older sister made Maddy wince despite herself) “—to Paragon City, or it’s quite possible we could lose her. We’re at the infirmary at Saint Joseph’s School.”

And it’s your fault, Maddy, the dial tone seemed to say as Sylvia disconnected without another word.

Maddy blinked once in the sudden stillness, then took a deep breath and screamed, “DAMMIT!” With a vicious thrust, she throttled the dropship’s engines into overdrive.

She didn’t try to get Sylvia back. She was on her way.

After Maddy saw what happened to ‘Del for herself, she and Sylvia sat in her hotel suite at the Paragon Doubletree, staring at the spaces over each other’s shoulders in silence.

If they had been closer in age, instead of a decade apart, they might have been mistaken for twins…as it was, Sylvia had stayed in surprisingly good shape despite the lack of extracurricular activities that Maddy pursued as Steel Magnolia. Both women were strong, lithe, and graceful, but Maddy was pared down to the bone, all angles and little make-up, where Sylvia was supple, sensual, unmarred, save for the exhaustion in her face.

Maddy spoke first. “She’s still human,” she said.

Sylvia looked at her. No thanks to you, Maddy, my dear, her eyes of Sweetwater green replied.

“She’s changed, but she’ll come back from it. The doctors say so.” Maddy couldn’t even bring herself to believe her own words.

“The doctors,” Sylvia repeated. The contempt was there, ready, but she held it back, barely, the effort making her sound brittle, tired. “The doctors are dealing with something they can’t understand, Madeleine. We don’t even understand. You certainly showed no understanding when you sent ‘Del that vial on a chain.”

Maddy’s temper flared. Finally, something to bite on like tinfoil. “I wasn’t going to send it to you, Syl,” she snarled, her hand going up to the locks of hair she’d shorn years ago, a tic she'd thought she'd outgrown. “You made your feelings quite clear about getting any gifts from me.”

Sylvia slammed her hand down on the table. “Gift?” she cried angrily. “You used that girl! Used her like she was expendable, just a courier for that damned witch’s brew! Your own daughter!”

“There was no one else I could trust with it,” Maddy averred, not meeting Sylvia’s eyes. “You’ve got too many nosy friends in Savannah, and having you wear it in place of the jewelry you like to wear would have drawn too much attention. I needed family to take care of it, and it fit what a teenage girl would have on her person.”

“And a safe wouldn’t have worked?” Sylvia asked, incredulous.

Maddy ran her fingers through her neck-length ‘do, exasperated. “You put things of value in safes. Or safe deposit boxes. That’s the first place someone would have checked. I didn’t want to have it, and I couldn’t give it to you. It’s our family’s responsibility to safeguard the formula, so I sent it on to ‘Del.” She finally looked Sylvia in the face. “I meant to tell her everything when I got back,” she said softly, “letting her make the decision on what to do with it.”

“My God, Maddy. She’s sixteen. We have enough trouble with children and drugs in this day and age, and you wanted to give her a choice? As it turns out, she didn’t have one in the end, did she?” Sylvia observed, bitterness rancid in every word as she stood up and turned away from her sister, looking out the window over the Steel Canyon skyline.

“I had a plan, Syl,” Maddy said quietly. “There was no reason for the people that were looking for Grandma’s formula to come back to Sweetwater Rest and look for it.”

Sylvia turned to look back at Maddy. “How could you be sure?”

“Because they’d already been in the mansion several times before I realized what was happening and took off,” said Maddy simply. “They were good. Joe and I—“ here her voice caught, oh, Joe,”—Joe and I started finding little clues that we were all under surveillance and that we had infiltrators physically coming into the house to look for what we finally concluded was the Magnolia legacy. I’m pretty sure they kept y’all under observation for some time after I left to go after the bastards that killed Joe. I didn’t tell you or Great-Grandma because I needed for you to act like you didn’t know about being watched,” she added, seeing Sylvia about to reply in renewed outrage.

Her sister refused to be pacified. With subdued horror, she said, “You left us alone in that house with invaders coming in and out at all hours. What if they’d decided to play rough, Maddy? What if they had held us hostage and contacted you to bring them what they wanted?”

“I kept them busy, Syl,” Maddy told her with a calm she didn’t quite feel. “I made sure I was the most interesting target. After I took care of…the first priority, I started hunting down Great-Nana’s other enemies, which set the fox in the henhouse as far as they were concerned. It was only by luck that I came across the one who was reverse-engineering the Sweetwater elixir.” She paused, remembering.

“S’funny, Verteschmann thought his attempt to recreate the elixir was a failure, but he hadn’t read what I had. In Nana’s journals, she mentioned several people tried the elixir and got nothing, but that it always worked for her. While I was chasing Verteschmann down, I got a real strong whiff of poison gas. I was dying. He left me for dead, but he dropped a vial of the elixir as he was running. I had nothing left to lose, so I broke the vial and drank it down, hoping that it would work for me as it worked for Nana. It saved my life, though I didn’t get any powers from it.”

“You were luckier than you deserve, Madeleine,” said Sylvia. “Far luckier than ‘Del."

“She’s a…she’s a tree, Mad. Your daughter is a tree.” Sylvia approached Maddy with an intensity born of the desire to shake sense into her younger sibling. “This isn’t a joke, or a dream, it’s real.”

“Oh, I know it’s real, Syl,” Maddy assured her wryly. “I’ve gone over the story with you and those kids several times already to have that sink in. I don’t deny that part of this is my fault. I had no idea that either of you were in danger, which is why I sent the rest of the formula back to ‘Del while I tried to make sure there was no more out there floating around.

“But part of this is ‘Del’s fault, and part of it is yours as well, Sylvia.” Maddy stood up, crossing her wiry bare-sleeved arms as Sylvia’s mouth gaped. "There's enough blame for everyone."

“Our fault?” she began to sputter. “How—?” Her protests died as she saw the look on her sister’s face.

Maddy motioned for Sylvia to sit down.

“We both saw what happened on the digital videos in the infirmary the Saint Joseph’s people supplied us with,” she began, “and I don’t think the Carpenter boy was lying about what happened in the chapel just before ‘Del’s transformation started. While you’ve been sitting ‘Del for me, during the last three or four days between when I got here and today, I’ve been investigating what’s been going on since ‘Del arrived at the school.

“Syl, I still believe you did the right thing by sending her to Saint Joseph’s. When you mentioned where she was going, I looked up what information I could about that institution and the faculty. It was a good choice. She could be protected up here, with a faculty that knew its way around keeping the students in their care safe. It was, and still is, the best place for ‘Del to be, to learn to control her powers. It showed very quick thinking on your part, and because of that, I figured you had things well in hand for me not to pull myself back home. Judging from what you told me then, there was no reason.

“I had to go incommunicado for a while so that I could track down the rest of the bad guys, so staying in touch on developments with ‘Del wasn’t an option for me. That was a bad decision on my part, and I own that.

“You sent ‘Del to SJS, and, from what I’ve read from the e-mails she sent you and some of the teachers I’ve spoken with, she was fitting in nicely at the school, and becoming popular, yet she was having a serious time adjusting to the concept of having paranormal abilities. She didn’t want them, didn’t like having them, and most of the time, she regarded herself and her fellow students as freaks. She wanted her powers to go away so that she could live a normal life…whatever that means, nowadays.”

“That’s what she was going to Saint Joseph’s for!” Sylvia protested. “To enable her to live the life she wanted, eventually.”

Maddy held up a finger. “Syl, I’m not big on having super-powers myself. Never wanted them, they seem to be more trouble than they’re worth. But, after talking with Sister Moltar and the rest of the faculty, I’ve come to understand that SJS is about learning what role the paranormal will play in these kids’ lives. If it were as easy as taking the powers away, I’m sure the parents if not the kids themselves would be signing up for the procedure necessary to accomplish that.

“It isn’t just a matter of having the powers, Syl…it’s what one does with them that’s just as or more important than whether you can melt concrete with fire blasts, or lift a ship over your head. The school curriculum focuses on ethics, political science, critical thinking, and leadership. The student body is being taught how to integrate themselves into society. To all appearances, ‘Del opted out of participating. She did her homework willingly enough, but she couldn’t take her situation seriously. When her classmates got into uniform, she saw them as playing at costumed heroes, not as dedicated citizens attempting to live up to their best in fulfilling their municipal duty. She skipped one-on-one training sessions with your tacit permission because both of you regarded them as options, despite the teachers telling you both that they were essentials.”

Sylvia glared at Maddy. “Running around in long underwear and elaborate costumes interfering with the duties of police officers in at attempt at misguided vigilantism isn’t normal,” she said through gritted teeth in a voice that could chill snow, “but I wouldn’t expect that you would understand that at all.”

Maddy brushed her off in irritation. “This isn’t about me. I’ve already admitted my part in this. This is about you, the adult guardian in this equation. I left ‘Del in your care, thinking she had a strong guiding hand in you. Instead of helping her accept her powers and consequently seeing the need to learn more about them and train them, you condoned her trying to put them in a suitcase under her bed. You encouraged her to enjoy high school, with the idea that among so many other peers with abilities, she wouldn’t stand out and could get actually get by that way with finishing a school year.

“Then she started going out with Brandon Jordan, a golden boy who comes from a family with a tradition of honest-to-God superheroics. According to all accounts, this boy had a rep for playing the field until he met ‘Del and fell head-over-heels for her. They became steady pretty fast. I don’t know if what he feels for her is real love, but he’s certainly a Prince Charming to her princess, take your pick as to which one, and I’m pretty sure she got swept off her feet by Little Lord Jordan in a big way. Of course, I know my daughter well enough even at a remove or two that she’s got her charms as well, thanks in part to you and good old southron upbringing. Brandon has got a gentlemanly way that plays to ‘Del’s damsel to a T, and vice versa.

“This isn’t a college, Sylvia, it’s a high school. ‘Del can be incredibly mature when she wants to be, but Brandon is her first big love. She was hanging around with him constantly, and it was inevitable that with his family history, he’d start eroding her resistance to playing super-hero. You treated her like a little adult, when she is anything but.”

Maddy looked hard at Sylvia. “This is where that training might have helped, and a little more supervision. Now she wanted to go a-gallivanting with her new boyfriend, but she thought it was as easy as waving a wand. No repercussions, like in the romance bodice-rippers you two love so much. With Brandon, she always felt protected, because when she called, he’d get to her in a snap. He dropped everything he was doing when she called him, did you know that?” Without waiting for a response, she plowed on. “I checked, Sylvia. You came to visit ‘Del a month after she started, then you registered on the school schedule to visit at Christmastime. To me, that doesn’t seem nowhere near enough time to get a sense of who she’s hanging with. You relied too much on what she was writing about in her letters to you, and spent little time trying to see for yourself.

“For instance, I’m sure you didn’t know ‘Del had been spending almost all of her free time in October in Rhode Island’s equivalent of Brigadoon, Croatoa. If I hadn’t found her diary, no one except her friends would even known what was happening to her there!” Maddy heard her voice spiraling up as she recalled the details of her daughter’s journal entries, and forced herself to a reasonable poise.

“W-what happened to her?” Sylvia stammered, her eyes wide.

“Suffice to say she ate some food at a restaurant in that zone that was spiked with some kind of hallucinogen. She tripped for three weeks, Syl!”

“I talked to her several times in October, she sounded fine! You’re exaggerating!” Sylvia retorted. “Or she was being fanciful!” Sylvia fanned herself in a gesture that also suggested waving her sister's assertions away.

Without a word, Maddy strode over to her shoulder bag, and withdrew a pink-and-lacebound book, tossing into Sylvia’s lap before she continued and her sister started thumbing through the pages.

“If she was being fanciful, she needed help anyway. But if she wasn’t, and I’m thinking in light of recent events that she wasn’t, while she was in Croatoa, ’Del was drugged by what some employers of mine would call, ‘humanoid entities of indeterminate origin.’ She also says in there that she was caught outside during a landing invasion from the Rikti while ‘on patrol’ with Brandon, and that she changed when she was caught on the edge of a bomb-blast, into what she calls a “tree-girl”. Not to mention that some kids claimed they saw a ‘redcap’ following ‘Del that she didn’t see, but they did.”

“Insane,” breathed Sylvia as she continued to browse through ‘Del’s diary.

Maddy fell into one of the armchairs in the room. “Look at where she talks about waking up in Croatoa at sunrise. Or the leaves on her bed. Or bleeding sap instead of blood. It gets worse as you go on. But the worst of all is the tone of each entry, increasing in fear, nightmares, panic….but through it all she says she won’t tell anyone. Not because she can’t, but because she won’t. She talks about how she feels safe nowhere, especially in light of what the Carpenter boy did several weeks ago to Saint Joseph’s cheer squad.”

“Jake? What did he do?” She sounded puzzled at first. “He saved her at the chapel…”

Maddy grimaced. “He also put a magical spell on the squad girls whose effects would have landed him on charges of attempted date rape pre-Harry Potter. While it’s being downplayed as a prank gone horribly wrong, the administration is still dealing with the fallout from that mess. If it weren’t for the fact that the school super-computer recorded ‘Del saying something to the Jordan boy to the effect of trying to defend Jake….”

Maddy held her fists to her temples as if she thought her skull would come apart.

“The guidance counselor and I sat down to piece together the events leading up to the change," Maddy continued, "with ‘Del apparently becoming a full-grown tree in the middle of the school infirmary. It’s only a guess, but we think what triggered ‘Del’s change was prolonged stress compounded by her lack of familiarity with what her powers could do. She wanted to withdraw from the unpleasantness of so many of her illusions shattering at once, under extreme mental duress, and her powers responded to it instinctively. Right now, the specialists think it’s likely she’s only partially merged with a tree, rather than being a tree, but they’re having difficulty with the imaging sonar to determine that for sure.”

Sylvia closed the book, visibly stunned. “Could…could ‘Del have become a tree to avoid a rape attempt?” Maddy’s sister ventured timidly.

Maddy shook her head. “We considered that, but ‘Del hasn’t mentioned it since we’ve been able to establish communication with her. She’s been asking after both Brandon and Jake, in the way she has left to her now.”

Sylvia shuddered, remembering. “It’s horrible.”

Maddy shrugged, the casual gesture more of acquiescence than nonchalance. “It’s creative. Can you imagine how what kind of thinking it takes to withdraw just enough chlorophyll from specific cells in green leaves to write on them? Not to mention releasing pollen that heightens basic empathy? At least we know she’s alive, conscious, and coherent.”

They fell silent for a while, each lost in their own thoughts.

As they watched the sun set, Sylvia said, in a small voice so unlike her, “I’m sorry, Maddy. You’re right. About everything you said to me, about what I’ve done, and haven’t done.”

Maddy fingered one arm of the chair. “I wasn’t here, so if you screwed up, I helped. We both made some major errors in judgment, and ‘Del is paying the price for our mistakes. We can only hope that ‘Del can bounce back from this, or wants to, and that we’ve learned enough to play our parts in her life the right way.”