After doing some digging in the underground fight clubs of Castleburg, something caught his eye. A symbol that a fighter wore, eerily familiar to the time when his life turned upside down. A funeral service, he remembered, but that wouldn’t make much sense for their emblem to be branded into his skin. While it could have been a tattoo designed to make a statement, Zhaire was a little more perceptive than that.
During the fight, the combatant didn’t seem to want to fight. There was growing hesitance, a tendency to look over his shoulder at someone outside the cage. The fight could have been fixed, but it seemed to be in his favor. It was clear that he was matched up with a much weaker opponent, whose powers he seemed immune to. Eventually, he finished the fight with a single blow to the opponent’s head, but it looked like pulling teeth.
Going on a gut feeling, Zy decided he’d look into it. After going through an online forum in the dark web for the club, he found a name and that name, in turn, led to Utica. He had questions that needed answering, and they were long overdue.
Zy told Powers that he’d be back. So, that was how he ended up on the train leading upstate. He stood with a bag slipped over his shoulder as they were nearing the station. Attempts from the attendants to get him to sit down were dismissed. His eyes were glued to the window in thought. As city streets and skyscrapers faded into trees and fields, anxious tension built up in him. Questions of his past, of what he thought he knew, ate at him.
A man wearing that symbol on his jacket took the bodies of his mother and brother. Claiming to work with the funeral services. Though, at the burial, only his mother went down, while his brother had a fucking plaque on a wall. He was told that it was a “special memorial for a special boy”.
Why couldn’t he see the body? The police report said that his body was never found...but that was a lie. That man had him. For what purpose, Zy swore to find out. What if he was alive, all this time? What if--
The train’s sudden stop caught him off guard and his bag fell onto a girl a row over from him. Zy blinked but quickly went to retrieve it.
“Sorry about that--” He caught himself mid-breath at who he had stumbled across.
The girl in question, who had been otherwise occupied by happily listening to her favourite playlist, looked up when a dull pain suddenly bloomed across the back of her head.
“Ouch...” The word slipped out in a disgruntled mutter, a hand reaching up to gently rub at where she’d been unceremoniously hit, trying not to mess up the somewhat neat french braids that were in place. Satisfied that she wasn’t bleeding, Brianna turned to complain to the responsible party. Though when she saw who it was, any insults she had been preparing to wield, disappeared into thin air.
“Zy!” The brunette exclaimed, green eyes widening in a sudden burst of excitement.
“What are you doing here?! I mean, are you going to Utica?” Brie scoffed at the idea, even if she was also going to the exact same place. Though for the Brookside native, the idea of going to anywhere that wasn’t a giant ass city was pretty amusing.
”Sit down, sit down.” She smiled, pulling on his arm in an attempt to try and get him to occupy the luckily free seat next to her.
“Hey B.” Zy chuckled. Well now he felt a little bad that he wasn’t paying attention. Briefly checking the surroundings of the current stop, it appeared Utica was the next stop. So when she tugged his arm, he was happy to sit down. For whatever reason, it was always a surreal sort of nostalgia whenever the young man bumped into Brie. Well, he supposed he’d only seen his old best friend in passing since his return to the northeast US. Most of his time in the city had been dedicated to finding the Red Baron.
Zhaire set his bag down by his feet. Thinking about her question, he shrugged needlessly.
“I was heading upstate to come down from the highs from the city smoke.” He joked, though shaking his head a little.
“Nah, I just had some business to tend to up here.” Zy explained. Before saying that, he had briefly thought about telling his intentions for going to Utica. Though, in the end, he didn’t have enough proof that he wasn’t just chasing an empty rabbit hole. If he told her the reason directly, knowing her, she’d probably drop what she was doing to help him. Zy didn’t want that, plus not even knowing the threat at hand; whatever it was had to be more trouble than it was worth for her.
He caught himself staring and turned his gaze elsewhere.
“So, where are you headed? You going to Utica?” He reflected the question back with a smaller smile.
“Yep! I’m off to an electricians convention!” Brie beamed, seemingly genuinely excited about it. To be honest, the young hero really had no idea what happened at a convention, but when she’d been invited she’d had grand ideas about rooms packed full of wires and generators. She would be sorely disappointed to find out this was not the case.
“I thought they hated me cause I cause blackouts and stuff, but apparently some company wants me to be their sponsor!” She added happily.
“What kind of business do you have?” Her head tilted to reflect her curiosity, eyes glancing over to Zys own even when he looked away.
“Is it HERO stuff?” Brie had been so happy when she’d found out Zy was working for HERO, though as of yet they’d really had no chance to work together, even though she knew it would be totally cool if they did.
Zhaire shrugged his shoulders at her question.
“Nah, I’m just checking to see if an old friend still lives up here. I’d have called first but he’s an old guy, not too tech savvy.”This was true to a certain extent, as he did want to find the man that took him away, he’d surely be old by now...At least that’s what he told himself. From her explanation, it seemed like she was just up here on a trip just because. He was glad to hear that she was coming up here for what seemed like a fun reason. While what she said about the counterintuitive reasoning against her invitation was interesting, Zy didn’t suspect enough for foul play to be at work. He definitely didn’t want to ruin her trip if she was just taking a break from HERO.
“But, it looks like I’m running into young friends on the way.” Zy smirked, kicking his feet up on the seats of the empty row in front of them.
“So, how you been all this time? We hadn’t exactly had time to catch up…”Her eyebrows raised questioningly at the mention of an old friend, wondering who he could mean. They’d once run in the same circles though she supposed that had been a long time ago now. Inwardly shrugging her shoulders, she smiled lightly at his question.
“I’ve been great!” Brie replied, pulling her own feet up so that they were tucked underneath her, despite having been told multiple times by the train conductor to stop doing this.
“Well...working for HERO was kinda weird at first. They have loads of rules and stuff, and I kept getting told off for weird reasons.” Frowning, her nose scrunched up in annoyance at this thought.
“But they pay super well so I guess it’s worth it...but what about you?! I thought you’d fallen off the face of the earth for a while y’know.” A small frown briefly flashed across her face as she nudged him in the side with her elbow. It wasn’t that she had been worried, he could obviously look after himself, but it had still saddened her to lose contact with one of her closest friends.
Zy seemed rather attentive to her description of working for HERO. From the sounds of it, Powers’ organization was strict but worth it, at least for her. It was a strange feeling between being genuinely happy for her, yet hurt when learning she was doing great without him. There was once a time where they were something close to inseparable. Of course it was his own fault for leaving, and like she could read his mind, she asked about it.
He looked at her and he smiled, though it was rather small.
“I...It was hard to function after Mom died and I…lost Dizzy. Some of my family was close, I initially would have lived with them…” Zhaire paused, staring off into nothing now. There were several seconds of silence as his body tensed and slowly relaxed again. His head shook.
“But I couldn’t-- Not after what happened. So, I left and I drifted from place to place for a while. Been a lot of places, learned a lot of things. Went through a period where I was eh...angry.” Zy darkly chuckled.
“But I met some old kung fu guy, when I came back to the northeast US, he lives in Jersey. He helped me through it, to gain control over myself.” He calmly gestured with his hands, now able to look back at Brie.
“He taught me a few tricks too.” He smirked.
“Apparently, he worked with HERO back in its early days, and lived in Brookside too. He inspired me to come back as he kept reminding me of home and you.--” He froze momentarily.
“And everyone that was still here when I left, I mean.” Zy was sure he masterfully recovered that fumble of words.
“With the skills I learned, I figured I could use it to help home. I guess Glide tipped Powers off to what I was trying to do because he found me and offered me the job. I thought about it a while, and I took it.”Zy sighed, feeling like he was talking forever. To be honest, this was probably the first time he got it out in the form of words. Even more honestly, one of the only times he felt comfortable enough.
With all of that said, he wasn’t sure what to add, so he kept quiet.
“Right…” Brie's voice quieted as he spoke about his family. Although she had always struggled to understand others when they spoke of loving their parents, she knew how close Zy had been to his mom.
“I’m so sorry about that Zy. Your mom was great…” She smiled lightly,
“But Dizzy? What do you mean you lost him?” The young hero looked down at the ends of her brunette braids, playing with one of them absentmindedly as she remembered the time when she’d tried to dye her hair an outstandingly brash colour of pink. It was amazing how easily she could feel herself slipping into that familiar back-and-forth that had always passed so easily between them, even though they’d both been tearaway teenagers when he’d disappeared.
Despite the sadness of his earlier words, she was unable to stop the loud laugh that escaped her lips when he mentioned his mentor, prompting a few stares from the passengers around them.
“Wait, did you say a Kung Fu guy? Really?! That’s brilliant!” She shook her head, breaking the palpable tension.
“You’ll have to show me some of your moves.” The hero raised her eyebrows challengingly at him,
“Though I bet I’m still a better fighter.” She was of course referring to her own brand of rather scrappy fighting, which although chaotic, usually yielded her pretty satisfactory results.
Zy hadn’t realized his wording drew attention to Dizzy’s absence, and he was thinking of ways to change the subject. However, she did it for him, smoothly smirking and crossing his arms. Some of the weight that he dragged on his shoulders felt lighter, with her lighthearted mood. He remembered her always doing that. That light in the dark; the diamond in the rough. It was what drew him to her in the first place, a quality Zy was sure her new group of friends liked about her as well.
“I’m sure we’ll see one way or another.” Zy jested, looking back up as apparently an announcement on the screen declared they were nearing the Utica Transit Station. Zy pulled his feet back down and sat up a little straighter.
“Well, it looks like our stop’s coming up.” It ate at him a little, as he was hoping to talk to her a little longer. At least he managed to get through this part of the reunion with her, as it wasn’t like this was the last time they’d see each other. He was actually pretty glad that she wasn’t mad at him for running off, as that was really one of the things holding him back from approaching earlier on.
“It was cool; running into you again. Felt like old times.”Brie's gaze followed his to look up at the screen and she nodded, reaching over for her clearly well-loved backpack, which was fraying at the edges and had smudges of dirt on the canvas fabric.
“That was quick!” She grinned as she watched the train begin to slowly pull into the station.
“Yeah, it was super fun to catch up. We should meet up after Utica or something, or even here if you’re not too busy!” Brie looked over to him as she stood up, slinging the straps of her bag over her arms.
“I’m probably gonna be bored out of my mind when I’m not at the conference.” She’d heard that Utica wasn’t very interesting, though she’d already begun to google touristy things to do. Brie had never really been a tourist before so even a city as mundane of this was enough to excite her. It would be even more fun if Zy tagged along as well, though she supposed he was going to be busy with his old friend...whoever that was. Although she was still curious about it, she knew Zy well enough not to push it any further than she already had done. As much as she desperately wanted to do.
“Well, see ya later!” The young hero pulled him into a quick hug as people began to trail out of the carriage, shooting him one last smile before following after them. Zy’s hand raised to wave after she started off, the other slugging his duffel over the shoulder.
Stepping out of the train and looking around, a feeling of anticipation welled up in his stomach. Just like that, it was up to him now. The mystery of his childhood had roots in this downbeat town. If Dizzy was still alive or not, Zhaire was going to find out.
No matter what it takes.
