Nice, well written piece. I like the Icon bit. I always suspected thats what Serge was thinking when I went in.
How come the killer ants episode is always the one Macgiver people remember?
Loved all 3 stories. Play less - write more 
Great background and I want to know more about this other persona she has come to the truce with.
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Nice, well written piece. I like the Icon bit. I always suspected thats what Serge was thinking when I went in.
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Either that or, for return customers, "What have they done to my lovely costume?! They've bled on it! Oooh, I'm so going to overcharge them on the clean-up."
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How come the killer ants episode is always the one Macgiver people remember?
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Because that's the only MacGuyver episode with a well-played villain?
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Loved all 3 stories. Play less - write more
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Ack. Then I'd never see another level. Glad you enjoyed it.
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Great background and I want to know more about this other persona she has come to the truce with.
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Now that would be telling. (Besides, I don't know more about them yet.)
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Nice, well written piece. I like the Icon bit. I always suspected thats what Serge was thinking when I went in.
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Either that or, for return customers, "What have they done to my lovely costume?! They've bled on it! Oooh, I'm so going to overcharge them on the clean-up."
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How come the killer ants episode is always the one Macgiver people remember?
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Because that's the only MacGuyver episode with a well-played villain?
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Loved all 3 stories. Play less - write more
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Ack. Then I'd never see another level. Glad you enjoyed it.
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Great background and I want to know more about this other persona she has come to the truce with.
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Now that would be telling. (Besides, I don't know more about them yet.)
[Here we go; the final parts of Swallowtail's origin story. The earlier parts can be read here: Part 1 and Part 2]
-- Part 3 --
Nothing on TV. Well, her alarm clock claimed it was 3 am, so that figured. Catherine gave up the channel slalom with a frustrated sigh and turned off the TV. She rolled back onto her back and stared at her roof. It could have done with a new coat of paint. Didn't dad have some old buckets of paint in the basement closet?
Catherine was halfway out of her bed before she realised that starting to paint her room at three o'clock in the morning was not on the right side of the sane/insane divide.
"God. What is wrong with me?" She flopped back onto the bed with a groan. Ever since she came back from Europe she'd been restless; she hardly even slept. It didn't help that all her friends were either on vacation or working or, damn them, still getting study credits from helping out on the Normandy dig.
She grabbed the remote and turned on the TV again. Nothing but infomercials and re-runs of old soaps. Oh great. A MacGuyver marathon. Getting up to paint the roof was looking more and more alluring.
Catherine sighed and rubbed absentmindedly at the spot between her breasts where the arrow had hit her. She didn't care what that geek over at MAGI thought, or what the x-rays had shown. Someone had shot her with an arrow -- a real one. Okay, so it had been some kind of freaky magic arrow or something, but it had been a real freaky arrow. She could still feel a lump where the arrow-head had stuck -- and the x-rays be damned.
On the TV, MacGuyver was fighting against an army of killer ants with a silver dollar and a piece of string. Catherine turned it off in disgust and glanced to her alarm clock. A quarter past three. Oh sod it! She rolled out of bed and rummaged through her closet for some training clothes. There was a night-open gym a few blocks away. Maybe if she burnt off some energy on the treadmill she could finally get some sleep. Besides, anything had to better than spending the night watching Mullet-Man on the TV.
Walking home from the gym, Catherine's arms and chest were lead. She didn't know what had gotten into her but after the treadmill she had hit the swimming pool and after the swimming pool she had hit the weights. She'd spent forever with the dumbbells and the barbells; she'd even done four sets of repetitions with a kettle-bell. Her muscles felt like silly-putty that had been crumbled up into marbles and slapped roughly back together again -- and she still wasn't the least bit sleepy.
She glanced up from her muscle-weary study of the pavement and noticed that the Champion Sports shop on her block had already opened. Had she really spent that long at the gym? On an impulse she crossed the street and went inside. She'd gotten money on her travel insurance just the other day, and while she fully intended to spend most of it on clothes, aybe she could pick up a cheap set of weights to have in her room.
Catherine dumped her purchases onto her bed and stood watching the load for a moment, confused and a little scared. Why had she bought all that stuff? Extra string, nocking points, a wrist release, bracers, not to mention all the stuff just for the arrows: arrow heads, arrow shafts, arrow nocks, arrow wanes and lining tape to fasten the wanes with. Oh, and the bow of course; a forty pound Martin X-200 recurve that the guy at Champion had said was a good choice. She didn't even want to think about what it all had cost; her dad was going to have a total cow when he found out.
For a moment she considered calling that Gregor guy at MAGI. He had told her to call if anything weird happened, after all. No, on second thought what was the use? He'd just brush her off and claim the she'd never really been shot with an arrow at all, just like he had before. Anyway, he'd probably been talking about her starting to see dead people or moving stuff with her mind or other freaky stuff, not a major bout of impulse shopping. After all, it wasn't like this was the first time she'd bought expensive stuff she didn't need.
Catherine put her concerns away next to her guilt. She would deal with her dad's reaction when he actually reacted and not in advance. Might as well enjoy the goods in peace first. She unwrapped the bow and spent a moment just enjoying the shiny newness of it, then struggled for a while before she managed to string it; her muscles weren't going to forgive her their abuse anytime soon, that was certain. She raised the bow and pulled the string to her cheek with a quick, fluid movement, aiming an imaginary arrow out her window.
"Nice." Catherine grinned and slowly relaxed the string back up. It was a nice bow. In spite of her protesting arms and shoulders she had been able to hold it surprisingly steady at full pull and she loved how the strength of the bow seemed to perfectly match her own.
This was going to be fun. She search the web to find a nearby archery range to shoot at. There was bound to be one; Paragon City had one of everything nearby. But that would have to wait. First she had a roof to paint.
-- Part 4 --
What was she doing outside? Catherine blinked and tried to shake the cobwebs from her head. The last she could remembered was going sleep after spending half the night fletching arrows. Maybe the paint-fumes had made her sleep-walk or something. Could paint-fumes do that?
God. She was even carrying her bow and one of the quivers. Those fumes must have really gotten her high. At least the fresh air had brought her back to her senses while she was only a couple of blocks from her house. Hopefully she could make it home without anyone seeing her and calling the police. She had no idea how to even start explain what she was doing outside at this time of night with a lethal weapon.
Luckily the street seemed deserted. No, not quite. There some teenager came on his paper-round, pulling a squeaky trolley after him. Without a moment's thought Catherine stepped back into the shadows at the mouth of an alley. In a single movement drew and nocked an arrow, raised the bow and pulled back, aiming the arrow at the kid's chest.
"That one." The words hung suddenly in her mind, clear and decisive.
"No!" In her confusion, Catherine almost released the arrow before she realised what she was doing and with a horror-driven effort of will she wrenched the bow away and down.
The kid stopped and looked up in astonishment at her outburst. He hadn't noticed her till then and didn't know how close he had come to being murdered. For a heartbeat they looked at each other; he surprised, she horrified, then Catherine panicked and ran off down the alley.
A man with a beer-gut stood silhouetted against the light in a second floor window. Even as she was running Catherine aimed and pulled back on the bow. "That one" the words in her mind demanded, but she shook her head in refusal and then she'd run past, the chance of a shot gone.
She left the alley at a flat sprint, scaring the daylights out of a worn-looking ****** who had been leaning against a lamp-post near the mouth of the alley.
"That one!" The words were angry now, indignant, but the ****** was already behind her and Catherine batted away the impulse to turn and raise her bow.
She stopped at the mouth of the alley to catch her breath. She had been running in the wrong direction, almost straight away from her home. The logical thing to do would be to turn around and backtrack along the way she had run but that meant going past the people she'd almost shot at once. Catherine wasn't sure if she'd be able to keep fighting it back.
As she stood in the alley debating what to do, two sharp bangs as from firecrackers sounded from across the street, and the door to a convenience store further down slammed open. A large man waring ski mask stormed out and came running straight towards her, a large, black gun in his hand. Someone was screaming.
"That one!"
"Yes," Catherine allowed. This time she didn't fight the impulse to raise the bow, "That one."
-- Epilogue --
"Ummm... Excuse me?"
Serge glanced up from the Milanese fashion magazine he was studying and considered the outfit of the girl in front of him with a critical and not a little disdainful eye. Amateurs just shouldn't try for fashion -- they always failed. That shirt for instance? A horrible match with the quiver.
"Yes, can I help you?" he asked with all the professional courtesy he could muster. Of course he could help her, that was obvious.
"I need a costume." the girl blurted out, apparently feeling out of place among the bright halogen lights and understated Italian furniture at the Icon shop. It was not an uncommon reaction.
Serge placed his left hand against his chin, index-finger resting along his jaw, and gave the girl a long, appraising look.
"Why, of course you do," he agreed, "What name or alias should I put on the order?"
Catherine was silent for a moment, a far-away look to her eyes.
"Swallowtail," she said after a moment and raised her head to meet Serge's look of polite inquisitiveness, "You can call us Swallowtail."