Authors Note: The next story about Kallisti the Friar is one I had problems with and have not been able to complete. I felt uncomfortable with the direction the story was taking and it fought me all the way until I got to the point I couldn’t write it anymore. Its a shame because I knew the ending would have had a big emotional punch and develop the character of Kallisti the Friar in a very powerful way. However the route to that was going into places that I feel uncomfortable writing about. This was supposed to be a fun thing, not create problems or anxiety.

Here is a summary of the plot which skips over some of the more uncomfortable bits. Be warned, there are adult themes in this story so those of a delicate or juvenile dispostion should read no futher!

 

 

Kallisti the Friar is approached by a girl member of the Skulls gang  she met and helped before.  If you’ve done the Kings Row Skulls arc The Lords of Death, she’s one of the girls on the upper level of the mission where you are disguised as a Skull and trying to infiltrate the gang.  She’s one of the people who escape with you when the building is raided. Violet explains that girls are going missing and she is worried what is happening to them. Friar decides to dig out her undercover gear to become a Skull girl again, enlisting the aid of Longbow to do so. By the time she is ready to go undercover though, Violet herself has gone missing. Friar goes undercover pretending to be Violet’s cousin from out of town and makes a name for herself with her athletic dancing!

She’s picked by the local boss, Bonespur, for ‘special attention’, which ends up with her being drugged and waking up in a cage with several other girls including Violet, on board a ship destination unknown. During the trip the girls are treated to a variety of degrading and humiliating abuse designed to break their spirit (this was the part I found most difficult to write). They are told that of the 12 who start the trip, they only need 10 left at the end, a tactic designed to pit the girls against each other in a struggle for survival. . Friar has a constant internal battle as she knows she could stop this abuse at any point but it would then mean they would not get to the bottom of what is happening to the girl and who is responsible. During the journey,  Violet is murdered in front of them all as an example of what happens when they rebel or don’t comply with everything demanded of them. Friar herself having to endure abuse, both physical and sexual, some of which makes her question the treatment she experienced while growing up in the Monastery in her original timeline, recognising that the regime she grew up under was itself highly abusive and manipulative.

As the journey continues, she discovers that another girl she has befriended is pregnant and if their captors find out, they would almost certainly dispose of her! In the end, one of the ‘enemy’ girls who they had clashed with early in the journey and had caused Friar to be punished in a sadistic manner, sacrifices herself to save the pregnant girl. At journey’s end, the surviving girls are cleaned up and paraded in a ‘slave market’ where a  collection of rich and powerful men bid on them.

It is only at this point when the organisers of this despicable trade can be identified that she breaks cover, summons her team of heroes and Longbow  and takes revenge on her tormentors. She find it hard to control her fury at what was done to the girls she travelled with as well as the girls who had gone missing before but manages to restrain herself and avoid killing the perpetrators.

 After the fight there is an emotional reunion with Kallisti Gold and the other Kallistis who came to her aid, but she is heartbroken by her inability to save all the girls.

In an epilogue, Friar visits the pregnant girl, Sally, some months later. She has settled down with her ex-boyfriend back in her home town outside Paragon City and has had her baby, a little girl. She tells Friar that she has named the baby Violet in memory of their friend who never came back. Friar reveals that she too had a baby girl in her youth back in her original timeline, but just says that she died, revealing her grief that she has suppressed for many years.

Friar returns to Paragon City, but she is changed from the person who met Violet a few months before.   

Being a superhero isn’t always about thwarting world-shattering events…

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