Operation First Noelle: The Other Side

Reese sat at the piano in a cramped bar full of patrons who were mostly drunk and only half listening. Next to the half empty glass of bourbon Reese’s comm. chirped to life and the voice he had been waiting for crackled out of the speaker.

“Attention, Alliance. I have determined the location where Noelle Frost is being held. Any available Alliance members—meet me at the Astoria gate.”

The piano player smirked slightly and leaned forward toward the microphone. “Okay, this is gonna be the last song.” Of course they all thought that it meant the last song of the evening, but what he meant was that he expected this to be the lost song he’d ever play. Not that he thought for a moment that he would fail in his mission. He just knew what he was about to do, and though it hurt a bit to give up a large part of him felt relieved.

sunshine

He collected his communicator and moved swiftly out the door. Once on the street he pressed the button for private communication. “Tink, I’m forwarding you The coordinates of Noles’ location. Think you can hack the cams?”

“I should be able to.”

“Good, I want to be able to see the room where they’re holding her.”

“Do you have a monitor?”

“Uh… Would like a TV work?”

“That will be fine.”

“Okay, meet me at Ed’s apartment in like 10 minutes.”

Reese entered the Zoning Office in city hall. He’d put in some time there for community service, so gaining access to their computers was easy. He looked at the specs for the building the team was going to be raiding and jotted down a few notes on the back of a piece of paper he randomly pulled out of the file. Then it was off to meet Tink.

Ed wasn’t home. She and Agent Worthless were probably out wrestling somewhere and pretending to call it training. Tink let Reese in and Noelle’s cell was already live on channel three. He studied it very closely taking in every stick of furniture in the small room and also noting every hint of movement for a good couple minutes. “I may need some explosives. Ed have anything like that?”

“She might but-“

“Good.”

Reese helped himself to searching for anything that might go boom. He found one of her mines and what appeared to be a crudely made detonator fashioned out of an old alarm clock. “Thanks a lot. I’ll see ya.”

Finally he was ready to make his way to Astoria. While getting off the Green Line in Talos, Vin, or at least what was very similar to Vin found him. “We need to talk.”

“Now? I’m a bit busy.”

“Yes I heard I’ll go with you.” Her voice was strangely horse and she definitely didn’t look like Vin but Reese was too focused on the mission to ask a lot of questions. Vin does a lot of magic. With magic this sort of thing happens all the time. “It’s about Allegro.”

“I figured as much. Whatever you have to do to get her back, do it. If you need to make a trade for her or something, I’ll go.” He removed the necklace that Ulric made for Allegro from around his neck and handed it to the Vin-like creature. “Here, this should help.” A couple yards ahead Reese could see the gathered group of heroes chit-chatting like they were standing by the water cooler. Ted gave his little pre-game briefing and Reese walked off as soon as his part was explained. Not to be disrespectful, he just needed the extra time to get into position. Manhole covers are a bit heavy.


Noelle hadn’t moved much since Spade and Star brought her to her new quarters. It was cooler, certainly, and she was grateful for it, but after days and days of the sapping heat, she didn’t have the energy to do much. She sat curled in the corner of another locked room; not a cell this time, just a small, sparsely furnished room that she imaged was supposed to have been an office or something similar.

She stared at the wall opposite her, not seeing it. She’d discovered, at some point during her captivity, a way of “zoning out,” a kind of directed daydream, of a sort, and used it to remember missions with her friends, or to think of things to come. Fights – battles, big and small – where she and a group of others knocked some villains around, rescued trapped hostages, found clues, or destroyed technology, all for the greater good. They played almost like a movie in her head – running around a forest with Nora, Erin, Hype and Syn, Puck Fair, and Stateswoman, or traveling with a number of other Storm Knights through a portal to battle other-dimensional bad guys. Moments with Kid – fighting side by side, or alone, at home, ice frosting over the windows of his apartment. Laughing with her friends. Joking with them. All of them. No one…

No one dead. She blinked, and came out of her daydream. Someone had died, and it was partly her fault. She couldn’t forget that. If she hadn’t been taken, hadn’t rushed to help Reese on her own… whatever happened with Star might not have happened.

Noelle wiped away the tears. She’d find a way to deal with it. She had to. She’d –


What’s better than one distraction? Two distractions. As if a super-powered ex-football player charging through your front door wasn’t enough, how would a portion of your basement collapsing into the sewers aid an already panicked situation? Reese set the mine in a weak portion of the sewer ceiling just below the old building. He backed up almost to where he entered the tunnels and closed his eyes before triggering the detonator.

Noelle paused in her ruminations, ears perked. Was that…? A distant crash, someone yelling. Maybe. She wrapped her arms tighter around herself and started hoping again.

After a few more minutes, as the noise of a fight got louder or closer, there was a flash, and Noelle suddenly noticed a kind of silence, like there’d been a sound just below her ability to hear it that had been abruptly shut off. This is it, she thought. This has to be it. Grabbing for any ounce of moisture in the air around her and thinking cold thoughts, she reached and -flung- an icy blast at the locked door.

It hit.

Noelle exhaled with her first grin in days and reached to pull forth another volley of ice, aiming to blast her way out. A swirl of cool air surrounded her hand… but that was it. She dropped her arm, suddenly exhausted. She hadn’t known – how could she? – how her powers were going to react after days of being “shut off,” so to speak. She felt almost like a battery, which had managed one last good jolt before it needed to be completely recharged.

She muttered, “OK, so I wait. They’ll be here soon.”

A very familiar voice spoke up from behind her. “How about now? Is “now” good?”

Noelle spun around to the shadows in the corner of her cell. “Reese!” She wasn’t aware of crossing the distance to him, just flung her arms around him and squeezed, so happy to see a friendly face. To see a friend.

“Is it cold in here or is it just…one of us?”

Noelle half-laughed, half-sobbed. Choking back tears, she hugged him again, his arms hanging down at his sides. But something felt... off. Noelle thought back, just for a second, to that time they'd been in the Carnie warehouse, on the couch. If she hadn't been listening to the coalition comm that night, hadn't rushed into a snap decision based on something she'd heard... who knows what could have happened between them?

It was too much to think about now. From the hallway, she thought she recognized Ted's voice shouting something, and her fingers curled in Reese's shirt. She knew she should go out there, to help, to thank everyone… but she remembered her feeble swirl of air, and knew she’d be next to useless. “Reese, I… I can't go out there. Can't help them. I just…” She looked up at him, her dirty face smudged with the lines of tears that had crossed it in the past few days. “I just want to go home. Can you take me home?”

Reese hugged her close and whispered into her ear, “Close your eyes.” With a single step backward retreating into the darkness, they were gone.

Noelle lifted her head from where it rested on Reese’s chest during the cold, dark trip through the Void, and recognized her apartment. The familiar walls, her tv, the glass doors to the balcony, the closet through the bedroom door that held her prized possessions, her shoes. Home.

She walked around, touching the surface of things, running her fingers along the top of the kitchen table, patting the soft upholstery of her couch, seeing her journal tucked under a scattering of papers on her coffee table. She turned back to Reese, still standing in the darkened corner near the front door. “Thanks again, Reese. I…”

“Chilly?”

Noelle whirled around at the sound of her nickname in a familiar Memphis drawl, and saw a figure framed in the open door to the balcony. “Kid!”

Without another word, they flew to each other, Kid’s arms wrapping around her as she jumped into them, their lips meeting in a flurry of kisses. When Noelle noticed the world around them again, Reese was gone.

Reese appeared again in the building he was currently calling home. He sat on his ratty old couch and then it dawned on him. Reporting in might be a good idea.

Derek rose and turned instantly on the remaining cards. They stared at him, incredulously, while he flattened them with a pair of punches.

Ted was about to join in when his com chirped on his team channel. Ted flipped his belt switch and answered, “Yes?”

Reese almost disinterested voice mumbled, “I’ve got her. She’s out.”