Capes

Chapter Twenty Seven

| THE CEASE-FIRE |

THE amount of disturbances the Puppeteer managed to cause within a week probably set a record.  I had never encountered someone with her kind of dark ambition before.  She stopped for absolutely nothing.  No one.  Her mission wasn't complete unless she destroyed everything.

Once the dust was settled, the Puppeteer would go through with her plans to rule- even if that meant ruling over a city of rubble.

Day disturbances weren't common since the bus explosion but during the night, it was like there had been a massive prison break all over the city.  Every night.  People ran rampant, terrified of the Puppeteer, terrified of what would happen if their city's superheroes failed them.  If we failed them.

The Puppeteer had turned Glass Heights into the city of pandemonium.

I wasn't sure if people even knew what law was anymore.  Good people, bad people, there was no one who wasn't mixed up in the mess that had overtaken our city.  The Puppeteer was ruthless in getting what she wanted.

The cops had seemingly banded with us since the bus incident.  They didn't chase me down when they saw me sprinting down the streets because they knew where I was going- straight to the source of the turmoil.  The scarlet demoness herself.

It was humorous in its own horrible way; how now that there was a villain wreaking havoc on my life and the life of those I considered allies and friends, I was trusted by the cops.  They saw me as a protector when unthinkable darkness came, never before.

Within the first two days, five minutes of sleep and rest time became normal.  During the day I was doing my hardest to be Paige Oliver, not rousing suspicion with Moira about not getting my work done for college, and when it became night, I was being Shade and going around cleaning up the messes the Puppeteer had made, just so my life was even more complicated.

An upside to being so busy was that I had no time to think about Blake, no time to wonder if what I was doing was the right thing- wanting Illusion when I had just come out of a relationship that had meant so much to me.  Illusion felt like he was already a part of me though, relating to me like he was someone I knew.

Could I really denounce my happiness to honour Blake's and my split when Illusion uplifted me and made me feel indescribable joy?

We still had so much more to go through before Illusion and I could consider each other trustworthy along with everything else.  I trusted him to protect me in a fight and he trusted me the same but I wasn't sure if I was ready to hand over my heart to him.

And then, our identities.  I had no idea what to do about those.  I had no idea if I would know anytime soon.  There was so much going on, there always seemed to be so much occurring within my life, and this didn't take the most important spot out of what needed to be taken care of.  The Puppeteer had to come ahead of my love life, as sad as that realization was to acknowledge.