IV: The Girl Who Ran: Red Eve

I: House of Virtue

Oriana stuffed a load of clothes in the washer. Way too many clothes. But there was only so much hand-washing she could do with thirty extra orphans in the house.

"Ori! Someone's at the door!" Johnny yelled from the livingroom.

Oriana frowned, "Don't answer it!" Who the h*** was making calls in Gotham at this hour? Nobody would be caught dead outside in the middle of the day, usually. She dumped detergent in the machine and started it, wiping her hands on her pants.

"They're knocking really hard! Hurry up!" Johnny's sister, Lilia, hollered.

She jogged out of the laundry room, through a couple of kids playing on the floor with nearly-hairless Barbies, and to the front door. She peeped out the side window and cursed. She threw the door open.

A tall, blonde man-- probably the most handsome man Oriana had ever seen-- was holding a unconscious woman in his arms, blood dripping from her white streak. A little group of people stood behind him. Oriana took one look and let them in. "Hurry up!" She could see the woman's chest heaving up and down, trying to get oxygen into her lungs.

Oriana turned back to the kids, "Red, go grab my papa's medical bag out of the office. James and Robyn, take your bikes and go get Mama from Ms. Nelson's house. Tell her to swing by the bank and bring whatever AB+ they have left." The kids she'd ordered got right to it, but the rest froze in anticipation. "The rest of you, leave the living room for right now. GO! Stay here, Maria!" The kids scrambled away.

Oriana motioned to the oblong coffee table, "Set her there." She cursed under her breath, "D*** you, Tati."

The man set her down gently. Too gently. Oriana sighed. Tatiana got all the cute guys. "Welcome to the House of Virtue. We stitch up vigilantes and house orphans year around," she deadpanned to the group.

Red came up with the medical bag, before Oriana could see their responses, "Thank you, bud. Go downstairs, please." Red nodded and scampered off.

Oriana dragged an ottoman next to the coffee table and looked at Tatiana. "G**, what'd y'all do to her?" She saw the problem immediately. Three bullet wounds. A fractured cheekbone. Along with many slim lines of stitches that looked like they had been done by a six-year-old.

"Woah, it wasn't us," a black man, the only one among them, protested.

Oriana dug around her father's bag for the tweezers, then looked up and raised her eyebrow, surveying them, "Uh-huh. And I bet you all are such precious angels, hmm?" She cracked a smile and looked at Maria. "Who are these people?"

Maria shrugged and brought her the little fishbowl full of crumpled bullets off the mantle. She took a deep breath, "Tio Bucky, Tio Steven, Natasha Romanoff, Wanda Maximoff, Helmut, and I don't know that lady." She pointed at the black lady who was holding her side.

"Huh." Oriana wiped off the tweezers. "So, you're the cousin." She glanced at the man who looked most like Tatiana.

"Yeah," he said, shoving a hand in his pocket.

Oriana sighed again, "How much blood has she lost?"

"Four or five pints... maybe more," the redhead, whom she presumed was Natasha, answered.

Oriana rolled her eyes and plunged the tweezers into one of the wounds, laying her hand on Tatiana hard abs to keep her steady, "Well, I gotta find the bullets before I can fix her, so I suggest you take a seat. Or you can go downstairs and watch Moana. Just don't corrupt the kids. There's some food in the kitchen, but I don't know what."

A short silence ensued, but no one moved.

"Alright then, who's injured?" she asked glancing up from her job. She found one bullet, pulled it out, plinged it into the bowl, and moved onto the next one.