SepticGentleman

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

𝕎 𝕚 𝕝 𝕝 𝕠 𝕨

“Yes we are,” Willow responds plainly. She smiles a bit as she stares at the large, open waste tunnel entrance in the distance. “It just doesn’t feel like it yet.”

She had assembled herself in preparation for the sewage-sifting. A heavy, grey, hooded nylon coat, clearly a little too big for her, going down to her knees. An old pair of ski goggles and a black cloth hung around her neck. A pair of black gloves, duct-taped around her coat’s cuffs - she doesn’t want to risk any filth getting on her, whenever she may have to stay corporeal. A pair of black snow pants and rubber boots, similarly duct taped (with a bit of difficulty, given their heftiness).

An unawares bystander might think she’s going on an extended expedition in the Yukon.

Or part of a team of amateur jewel thieves.

Or that it’s just part of the ‘standard Willow weirdness’. Doesn’t matter.

Did she over-prepare a little as someone who can phase through walls and sewer muck? Maybe. But she feels glad that she did - the preparation makes the occasion feel all the more important.

And exciting.

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

𝕎 𝕚 𝕝 𝕝 𝕠 𝕨

“I saw it flee the scene,” Willow replied to Elle’s inquiry, “It melded with one of the sewer pipes and traveled down the tunnel. I have no idea where it could have gone, but…”

She paused for a moment to gather her words, adjusting herself as Helen began to doze off a bit with her head resting on Willow’s shoulder.

“I could explore the sewers well enough on my own,” she began plainly, “no need to open any manholes. I don’t know who would want to come with me, it’s very filthy down there. But we’d have to find a proper entrance if so.”

She really doesn’t have a plan. But jumping blindly into the sewers seemed like an alright place to start. Hopefully someone else chimes in with a better idea - where to start looking, what to bring with them - because Willows was getting too caught up in imagining what they could possibly find down there, and how dangerous it could be.

And what to tell her father, of course.

“Does anyone know the tunnel network very well?”

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

𝕎 𝕚 𝕝 𝕝 𝕠 𝕨

Finally, a hook. Just after she’d given up.

“I saw…” Willow begins, leaning in a little closer to Dexter, as if to talk in secret - she’s not sure why she does it, it just happens. Everyone else is too preoccupied to notice, or even hear her over the sea of voices throughout the estate.

“I saw it go down into the sewer tunnel, inside one of the big concrete pipes. Not really inside but, it fused with it.”

She fidgets her hands around like a small child attempting to illustrate something through a mix of simple and complex gestures.

“It ran away. I don’t know where it went, I didn’t follow it, but… it’s definitely still out there somewhere, underneath the town.”

She’s getting very into this so-far one-sided conversation. She readjusts her position on the couch to meet with Dexter’s eyes more directly. Hers are open wide, the black sclera like some small abyss filled with youthful courage and curiosity. She pays no mind at all to how physically close she is to him.

“I don’t know what it is, but I really want to find out,” Willow calmly declares, “I’ve been thinking about searching the sewers for it. But… I don’t know what I would do if I even found it.”

She has lots of things. Ability, bravery, drive… but she doesn’t have a plan.

“What do you think?”

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

𝕎 𝕚 𝕝 𝕝 𝕠 𝕨

She always forgets when she’s high.

“No thank you.” Willow says, in response to Helen’s invitation to join her in the smoking. She has the slightest hint of resentment in her ethereal voice. Far be it from her to get in the way of her friend having a good time, but it wasn’t something she was comfortable with getting involved with herself. And thus, this was pretty much it for the two of them tonight. No talking about anything golem-related, that was for sure.

“Awwwwww, come oooooooon…” Helen says, still on the floor, trailing off into a giggle as she tries to get Willow to partake of the smoke filling up the room.

“No.” Willow says again, “You just… have fun here. I’ll see you later.”

And with that, the ghostly Willow descended through the floor of the room, leaving Helen and the gaggle of other ‘inebriated’ students to their own devices.

Well, device. There was only one bong.

---

Willow drops down above the crowd of people, taking a brief moment to look around and see what was happening.

She sees Henry and Elle at the pong table, getting started on their match, Christopher being the premier spectator - with a very verdant date alongside him. The image of a gargantuan Henry holding a comparatively tiny paddle in his hand puts a smile on Willow’s face.

She sees Dexter nearby as well, talking with Mateo Ramos - the ‘War Pig’. The latter is seated on the floor in a puddle of yellow liquid. Willow puts two and two together easily enough - Dexter is just being nice.

Willow touches down in the crowd and recorporealizes. The moment she does, she is mashed against by a couple other people who hadn’t noticed her. “Watch it,” one of them says, nearly spilling their drink as they move away. Willow brushes it off and, with little else she can think of doing, decides to sit and watch the grand game of beer pong in action.

Her desire to talk about the golem is still there. But if everyone else is more focused on having fun, well…

She can put it aside for now.

Willow ghosts-and-floats over to the couch by the table, recorporealizing and taking up some of the free room left on it. She sits and smiles at Henry and Elle, and passes another to Christopher nearby, waiting and watching for the game to begin.

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

𝕎 𝕚 𝕝 𝕝 𝕠 𝕨

Willow has never once tried marijuana. And most likely, she never will. Her father’s not a fan of the stuff, but more importantly, the smell is what drives her away from any notion of sampling it. ‘Dank’ does not sit well with the girl.

Helen is much more open-minded on it, however. Over the years, her extended usage of i’s and y’s in her messaging had become a telltale sign that she was high. Sometimes, it’s funny to watch. Other times, Willow just has to sit and wait for it to be over. It’s one of the few activities the two will never bond over. And now, it means they won’t be having a distinctly meaningful conversation about the golem tonight.

Oh, well. Might be for the best. No one’s really here to talk about things, are they?

In the midst of the downstairs crowd, Willow ghosts up and ascends to the upper half of the house. What Helen failed to tell her was which room she was in, so Willow had to resort to checking them one by one. The Charles estate was somewhat labyrinthian to her.

She pokes her head through the floor of the nearest room on the upper half of the estate - a bathroom, as it turns out. There, she finds a young man hunched over a toilet, in the middle of some awful retching and heaving. Willow leaves right before he vomits into the toilet, unnoticed.

The second room Willow enters is a bedroom. Two students are on top of the bed, almost fully disrobed, kissing each other very sloppily. Willow’s eyes widen as she quickly ducks back under the floor before she witnesses any further ‘action’. Thankfully, she goes unnoticed once again.

Finally, in the third room, she happens upon Helen, surrounded by a small assortment of other students, all on varying levels of high. The room is clouded by dim grey vapor. Willow rises up into the room proper, but does not recorporealize out of hesitance towards breathing any of the smoke in. She instinctively waves her hand in front of her face, despite the fact that it does nothing.

“Helen?” Willow asks in her ethereal voice, hovering a few feet away from her seated friend, bong in hand. “How are you feeling?”

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

𝕎 𝕚 𝕝 𝕝 𝕠 𝕨

“You’re absolutely sure you want to go?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not gonna do anything stupid or dangerous, even if everyone else is doing it, because you know better?”

“Of course.”

“You’re not gonna drink any beer because I know they’ll have beer there, and you still think it tastes awful ever since I gave you a sip of one two years ago?”

“Still awful.”

“And if anything bad does happen, anyone makes you uncomfortable or anything like that, what’ll you do?”

“Ghost up, fly home.”

“Okay then.” Lloyd claps his hands together and gives his daughter a smile. “You are officially allowed to go to the Charles boy’s party.”

Some people would call this ‘bad parenting’. Lloyd Dendry has long stopped pretending that he has any control over his daughter’s desires or actions. She explores condemned buildings and abandoned facilities for fun. Her fear response is almost nonexistent in mundane situations. Trying to ground her is a futile effort.

Lloyd does not want to risk severely harming his relationship with his daughter, for fear that she might fly away and never come back to him. Thus, he lets her do what she wants, to temper her own limits for outings through personal experience. So far, it’s worked out alright. She is familiar with her own limits.

For tonight’s event, Willow has dressed herself in a navy blue turtleneck, slim black pants, small dress shoes intended for young men - she doesn’t like high heels - and to top it all off, one of her many ‘grandmother coats’, long and black and adorned with faded floral patterns, with gray-speckled fur along the collar and cuffs.

She loves coats like this. She currently has 38 in her wardrobe. The collection grows every year.

“Love you, sweetie. Be good.” Lloyd leans over the antique store counter and kisses Willow on her forehead. She closes her eyes and smiles.

She steps and turns away, and in an instant, shifts into her ethereal form, leaps off the floor, and phases through the ceiling, up and out of the Rustic Palace.

Lloyd rapidly taps his fingers on the counter as his anxiety immediately begins to stir once more.

…

She soars as a wisp through the evening air, fast-approaching her destination, the Charles Estate.

Willow has never formally met Chad Charles. The two belong to drastically different social circles, after all. But yet he knows her name, and has even said hello to her once in a very blue moon. Those few pleasant experiences were enough to make the girl feel comfortable attending this soirée.

But besides simple entertainment, Willow had a more direct reason for being present. What she saw during the golem’s attack still rolled around in her brain all weekend. Saturday became a day of reflection for everyone, staying put and ruminating on what they had witnessed. Here was where everyone would be to try and brush the event off by drinking and partying, but Willow wanted more so to talk all about it. What the golem’s origins could be, if it were a being of its own accord or a Leesburgh Child brewing chaos for their own malicious entertainment - getting caught in the action with Helen and Elle, albeit not as directly as others, stoked Willow’s curiosity rather fiercely.

And those who were in the thick of it. The gargantuans Henry and Titus, tackling the monster head-on. Christopher hitting it with his infamous brimstream. Evelyn helping everyone else just by being there, surely. And Dexter - all Willow saw was a blur, but a heroic blur it was.

He was the one who’d asked her to attend this party in the first place. Whether he would still show up or not after the events of two days prior was up in the air, however.

She certainly hopes to see him there, so she can tell him he did a good job.

Willow arrives at the Charles Estate, the building bursting with lights and life, yet still in the party’s adolescence. She’s rarely one of the first people to arrive at a gathering, but tonight she feels very eager, so early she is. She touches down and recorporealizes near the walk to the front door.

“Willow! Hey!” Chad Charles’ voice sounds boisterously from above. “Flyin’ and stylin’, nice! Good to see ya!”

She looks up at him, smiles, and waves. Somehow she always feels a little surprised that he remembers her name. Others arriving mostly just pass by her. Some give vaguely offended stares, wondering what one of the weird girls is doing here - and if it means Helen will be attending as well.

It doesn’t faze her. She just smiles and steps inside.

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

𝕎 𝕚 𝕝 𝕝 𝕠 𝕨

A concrete beast lurks beneath Leesburgh. It roots itself in the pipeworks of the sewers, like a parasite in someone’s veins. Willow is the only one who has seen the golem in its reduced form, as far as she knows. It fled west, and for a brief moment, Willow contemplated giving chase. But doing such a thing on her own, and with no shred of a plan beyond simple observation, she decided against it. At the very least, she has something to tell the others - those who are interested, mind.

She ascends from the ground and recorporealizes in front of the Mooncash. The ASA are now on the scene, pointing and yelling as they are prone to do. Willow watches them cordon off the site where the golem had emerged. She then turns her head, looking for her friends.

As it turns out, Helen and Elle are nearby, tending to a young boy who has suffered some form of injury - or at least, seeing him to the right people who will tend to him. They don’t see Willow right away as she begins to make her way towards them, but then…

“Willow?”

It’s her father’s voice. She turns around. There he is, dressed in a white-and-red patterned sweater that looks more in season for Christmas than anything else. But it is not Christmas today.

“Willow!”

She stands still as he runs to her, and immediately embraces her in a tight, worry-fueled, fatherly hug. She hugs him back, though not quite as visibly emotional about it.

“What happened?!” Lloyd Dendry’s voice is an audible combination of relief and distress. “You were supposed to call me! You were supposed to find somewhere to hide, what happened?”

Willow thinks about telling him all about the golem and the pipe in the sewer tunnel.

“I hid underground.”

She decides against it. For now.

“Oh…” Lloyd is calmed some by his daughter’s dry response. “Right. Makes sense.” He releases his daughter from the super-hug and looks her straight in her freakish black eyes. “Where are your friends? Where’s Helen and Elle?”

“Over there.” She points to the two, nearby.

“Oh thank God…” Lloyd runs his left hand through his hair in a front-to-back maneuver. This is a frequent gesture of his, and the reason his light grey hair is always so messy. He turns to his left, seeing where the ASA are operating.

“What happened here? What was that thing?”

Willow looks on with him. She doesn’t say anything in response.

But she certainly wants to find out.

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

𝕎 𝕚 𝕝 𝕝 𝕠 𝕨

All of Elle’s words were met with what might have looked like a blank stare on Willow’s part, but was truly just the face of intense listening. She covered a lot of ground there. And she made a good point of what Willow should do next. One of them was, at least.

The golem had come up from the underground. As Willow had no real way of combating it directly like the others outside were doing, finding out what’s going on where the golem was rooted seemed like a job she was somewhat uniquely qualified for.

But that would mean leaving Helen on her own.

Willow makes her way over to her friend. “Hey,” she says, “I’m gonna do what she said.”

“Do what?” Helen replies.

“I’m gonna go down and see what’s under it,” Willow elaborates. “I can’t- I can’t fight it, but I can find out more about it. That helps, right?” She then grabs both of Helen’s hands and holds them up, gripping them firmly. She’s never done this gesture before - she’s seen it in shows and films. All the danger in the air is making her copycat a bit. It just seems like the right thing to do as she asks Helen, “Will you be okay if I leave you alone? I promise I’ll come back.”

Helen is silent for a moment, before nodding her head affirmatively. “Yeah,” she says, “I’ll be fine. Go do it.”

Willow nods. She detaches her hands from Helen’s and steps back. She turns to give the golem one more look, and then shifts into her phantom form.

She sinks into the floor.

---

She starts in the pipeworks below Mooncash. She advances forward, in the direction of the golem. She passes through the wall into solid concrete, and then into dirt, pipes, underground infrastructure. It’s all very dark.

She stops for a moment to ascend back up to the surface, just barely peeking her head out so her eyes can catch sight of the golem’s position. She winces at the intensity of the blaring dubstep music from all the cars (she’s not sure why that’s happening, but it must be for a good reason). She sees Henry and Titus MacArthur - the other monumentally sized boy from school - going toe-to-stalk with the golem. She sees Dexter covering his ears a bit away. She sees Christopher and Evelyn and Elle all outside, in the thick of the action.

And there’s Willow, just a little wispy half-a-head sticking up from out of the asphalt.

She goes back down, nearing where the golem is rooted. In the dark, wet, filth-ridden brickwork sewers of Leesburgh, Willow finds herself momentarily comforted by the fact that none of this grime can get on her. She feels the pounding of the music even down here. She continues forward, until she finds exactly what she’s looking for.

There’s a large… very large concrete pipe along the sewer wall, extending both ways down the tunnel, past where Willow can see. She looks at where the golem is rooted - a large, pulpy mass of dark liquid concrete, extending upwards and breaking through the brickwork. Very thin bits of light eek through the damage, illuminating the disturbance in the pipe.

There’s no sign of any other CLs anywhere down in the sewer. No one is directly controlling the golem, as far as Willow can surmise - it simply sprang up here on its own accord.

She keeps staring at the messy concrete pipe. She doesn’t know what, if anything, she should do next. She just stares.

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

𝕎 𝕚 𝕝 𝕝 𝕠 𝕨

“What do we do?”

What could they do? Certainly not fight that stone-skin monstrosity. Henry, Dexter, and Christopher were the ones out there doing the fighting, from what Willow could see as she stood up and peered out the shattered window.

The golem’s attention lies elsewhere at the moment. Everyone inside Mooncash is safe from its immediate wrath, but still reeling from the destruction of its ranged assault. Willow, Helen, and Elle - their occasionally-invisible friend - are all inside, amidst a group of injured civilians.

Willow decides on a course of action.

“We should help.”

She mantles over the ruined counter and rushes to the aid of a man lying on the floor, dazed and confused. She helps prop him up against an overturned table, and wipes some blood from his forehead with the sleeve of her coat. He waves her off after that, saying, “I’m fine, I’m fine, go- go on…” rather insincerely. Willow does as the man bids. She stands up and turns to scan the interior, and she catches sight of her sketchbook. It’s been flung across the floor from the impact of the light post, opened and page-down in the rubble. Some pages have been messily folded from the position they landed in.

Not too bad.

Willow picks up her sketchbook and disregards its damaged state. That’s not what’s important right now. She looks for someone else to help, when her phone rings. She almost doesn’t hear it at all. She takes it out of her coat pocket and looks at the caller ID.

It’s her father. She answers the call.

“Dad?”

“Willow! Honey!”

Far away from the rampaging and destruction, Lloyd Dendry stands atop the roof of the Rustic Palace - his and his daughter’s occasional relaxation spot - and observes the scene playing out with a pair of binoculars in one of his hands, and his phone in the other.

“Where are you? What’s going on, what is that thing?”

His words are fast and frantic.

“A golem,” Willow replies with remarkable calm, “I’m at the cafe with Helen. Elle is here too. We’re all alive.”

“Okay, okay, honey- you need to take your friends and get away from there, okay? As fast as you can! Just get somewhere safe! Then call me, tell me where you are, and I’ll come get you! Okay?”

She wants to say no. She wants to say she’s going to help the injured and, perhaps through some unconventional and miraculous series of events, find a way to help destroy the golem, or banish it back to the depths from whence it came. She wants to say she’s going to do something heroic.

Instead…

“Okay.”

“Okay! Please be safe! I love you, honey!”

The call ends. Willow lowers her phone and looks at it for a moment, before turning her head towards Helen and Elle.

Will she listen? Listen to her father and run to safety?

She wasn’t sure. She’d rather follow someone else’s lead.

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

𝕎 𝕚 𝕝 𝕝 𝕠 𝕨

“GET DOWN!”

Danger close.

Split second.

Willow turns from staring out the window at the serpent-golem in bewilderment, towards a stunned Helen, some twenty feet away, behind the counter.

She has no time to wonder about the creature.

Instinct kicks in.

She ghosts. She shoots from her seat - leaving her sketchbook on the table - soars across the cafe floor, phasing right through all the furniture and scrambling patrons. She makes a fast bend around the counter, recorporealizes mid-movement next to Helen, and uses her momentum to tackle her to the floor, right before-

BOOM. CRASH. SHATTER.

An explosion of noise.

Glass flies everywhere. The lights flicker. People are screaming.

Willow holds onto Helen tightly for a moment after the impact. They’re both on the floor. Her heart is on the verge of jumping out of her chest from the rate of its beating. She finally raises her head and turns around, looking at the streetlamp that they have so narrowly avoided, penetrating the wall behind the counter.

Willow can’t see anyone else from where she is. All she knows for sure is that Helen is safe.

Or at least - safe as can be, with the golem still outside.