Piper’s finger trembled as it hovered over the green call button.

Am I really doing this?

She hadn’t needed to look for Moxie’s number; she remembered it well. It had been her emergency hotline as a kid. Whenever she needed her big sis, she just had to dial that number, and Moxie would come to the rescue. There had never been a danger her big sis hadn’t been able to save her from. Whether it was a bully or a bump in the night, Moxie had always come when she called...

***

“Here,” Moxie said, holding out her hand to Piper. She was holding something, offering it to her little sister.

It was cold. Autumn was invading the climate of Central City with the swift brutality of a military invasion. A gust of wind made Moxie shiver.

Piper rubbed her eyes, sniffling. Her scraped knees still sang with pain. She could feel the gravel, pockmarked into her palms from her attempt to catch herself, falling in little avalanches and bouncing off her shabby shirt. She eyed the object in Moxie’s hand wonderingly.

“What is that?” Piper asked her big sis.

Moxie smiled, kneeling down to look her little sis in the eyes. Moxie was only a few years older than Piper, but the two sisters were on opposite ends of their first major growth spurts.

Moxie winked at Piper. “Just take it, okay?”

Piper did. She turned the device over and over in her little hands. Her eyes sparkled with delight as she opened it at its hinge, revealing a small screen and a button pad. She looked at Moxie quizzically.

“It’s a phone,” Moxie explained. “But it’s a very special phone, okay? It’s not like the fancy phones the kids at school have. This phone is magic.”

“Magic?” Piper repeated, awed.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Moxie smiled. She pulled an identical phone from her pocket and showed it to Piper. “I have one just like it, see?”

“Wow!” Piper beamed. “How did you get these?”

Moxie winked again. “Listen, Piper. You’re getting to be a big girl, right?”

“Right!” Piper said proudly, her dirty cheeks shiny with drying tears.

“Right. And because you’re a big girl, I’m going to have to leave you alone more often, okay? But,” Moxie said, raising a finger against Piper’s fresh sniffles, “I’ll always be in reach. Here, watch.”

Moxie opened her phone and pressed several buttons, then raised it to her ear. To Piper’s delight, her own phone began to buzz and ring. At Moxie’s direction, Piper opened the phone and accepted her sister’s call.

“Hello?” Piper giggled.

“Hello!” Moxie replied, smiling. “See, Piper? Anytime you need me, you can always reach me. Just call me with your phone, and I’ll come help you.”

Piper stared down at the phone with a mixture of emotions that Moxie found difficult to decipher. She worried about Piper. She had taken care of her little sister for three years now, ever since their parents died. Piper had only been four years old then, and Moxie had been ten.

“How do I call you?” Piper asked quietly.

Moxie carefully taught her the phone number. Piper’s face was scrunched in determined concentration as she memorized it. Then, after a long moment, she dialed the number. Moxie’s phone buzzed and rang. Piper laughed brightly.

“It worked! I did it, Moxie!”

“Yeah, you did! Good work, sis!” Moxie high-fived Piper.

Piper’s small face became very serious. “What if I forget the numbers?”

“You won’t. Trust me. Whenever you need me most, you’ll remember the numbers.”

Piper nodded slowly. When she looked at Moxie again, her eyes were worried. “Moxie?”

“Yeah?”

“What if… What if the phone doesn’t work? What if you don’t answer?”

For a moment, Moxie felt a pain in her heart that she had never known before. It was a very adult sort of pain, a pain she would not understand for many years to come. As soon as it had come, the pain passed, and her thirteen-year-old mind quickly forgot it. But in the future, Moxie would always feel a sense of forgotten nostalgia when that pain pricked her heart.

Moxie put her hands on Piper’s shoulders and pulled her in for a tight hug. The sisters held each other for a long time.

“I promise, Piper. No matter what happens, if you call me, I’ll come to help you. Even if the phone breaks, it can’t stop me from hearing you call for me.”

Piper sniffled loudly. “Really?”

“Really,” Moxie said. “That’s the special power big sisters are given, Piper. No matter where you are, if you call me, I’ll hear you. Because I’m your big sis, and you’re my little sis. Whenever you need me, I’ll be there.”

Piper nodded, gripping the phone tightly in her small fist. She smiled up at Moxie, who returned the smile warmly.

The two girls set off for the market, Moxie flipping the single coin she had to feed them for the day. They walked hand in hand, Piper’s short legs taking two steps for each one of Moxie’s. As Piper looked up at her big sis, she felt so much love swell within her heart that, for just a moment, the future seemed to hold nothing but hope and light.

***

Piper pressed the green call button and raised the phone to her ear. Her heart was racing. Her mind felt blurry.

Am I really doing this? She wondered again.

How many years had it been since she’d called her big sister? She pretended not to know the answer, because that was less painful than acknowledging the truth.

Moxie hadn’t kept her promise.

The phone began to ring. Piper felt her shoulder blades prickle with nervous energy. Her whole head felt hot as an oven. She couldn’t stop bouncing her legs. She was grateful to be alone; Nico, Gramps, and Tux had headed up to the roof to give her some privacy.

One ring. Two rings. Three. The space of silence between each fuzzy-sounding ring was empty as a graveyard. Piper fought against the urge to simply hang up. Now that she was doing it, she didn’t know that she wanted to be calling her sister at all.

For five years, Moxie had kept her word to Piper. For five years, she had always been there for her. For five years, Piper had felt secure in the knowledge that her big sis had her back.

But that had all ended six years ago.

The phone rang a seventh time. An eighth time. A ninth.

Piper fought the memories down. She was determined to see this thing through.

Thirteen rings. Fourteen. Then, after the fifteenth ring…

BEEEEEEEEEP. CLICK. The call ended, unanswered.

Piper lowered the phone, looking at its battered form, its dimly lit screen, its scuffed edges. The image of her big sister offering this same phone to her that day flashed through her mind. For an instant, she could almost feel the tight embrace of Moxie hugging her eleven years ago.

Then another image flashed into her mind.

A burst of gunfire. A hulking silhouette looming over her. A pair of white spats glowing out of the darkness. A look in Moxie’s eyes that Piper had never seen before; a look of desperation, determination, and desolation.

“Go, dammit! Leave me alone! GET OUT OF HERE!”

Piper blinked back the tears. She hadn’t thought of that day, save in her nightmares, for at least two years. It had taken a long time for her to shut that door. And here she was, deliberately opening it once again.

She looked at the phone once again, hesitating. Should she call again? Should she try one last time, once and for all? After all, wasn’t that why she had kept the phone for the last six years? Hadn’t she been hoping, hoping against hope, hoping against her better judgement, hoping against even her own desires...

She snapped the phone shut, hesitated, and stuffed it into her pocket.

The door slammed behind her as she made for the roof to join the others.

***

Nico ran a finger up and down the new pinstripe on his right sleeve. His eyes were unfocused, his mind far away. His thoughts twisted and turned in different directions. Takashi’s haunted eyes, the closed door in his home, Elizabeth’s words… “No, Nico. It’s not the heels…”

But like the threads on a loom, all these thoughts continued to come together and wrap around each other, revealing a greater, ever-present question. The question overwhelmed everything else, eclipsing Nico’s mind with an overwhelming force.

What did the second stripe do?

It was a question whose impenetrability daunted Nico. Gramps’ words from this morning - had it really just been this morning? - hadn’t done much to help Nico solve the problem. “Just have to keep experimenting, I guess. Keep training. Remember, you learn more from your failures than from your successes.”

“But how?” Nico muttered under his breath. Gramps and Tux were too far away to hear him - they were eating and talking on the other side of the rooftop - but Nico still felt self-conscious about his lack of an answer.

Was he just being impatient? After all, the second stripe had only appeared the night before. From everything Gramps kept talking about, Nico supposed he ought to feel mildly inquisitive about the second stripe. By the contrary, he felt a frantic desperation crawling in his stomach every time he thought about it.

He looked out to the horizon over Central City. Based on the position of the sun, he guessed the afternoon was already half over. That meant that they only had a little over one more day to get their hands on a license tracer. A twinge of worry colored his thoughts as he wondered how Piper’s call with her big sister was going. Would she be able to arrange a meeting? Could they really solve this problem so easily?

Takashi’s voice echoed through Nico’s mind, the Human Resources representative’s haunted eyes peering out of the darkness of Nico’s fears...

“KEH KEH KEH! Dreams come true! Keh Keh Keh! Oh, that’s rich! You really are an idiot! Keh Keh Keh! You believe that schlock?! You think it’s real?!”

CLANG

He looked up suddenly as the rooftop access door opened. Piper stepped out onto the roof, her orange hair flaming to life as it caught the daylight. The sight of her cleared Nico’s mind like a drunk sticking his head in a barrel of icy water.

At first he smiled at her, but then he saw the look on her face. He stood and approached her.

Gramps and Tux walked over, the cat licking crumbs from her snout, the old man wiping his greasy fingers on his work apron. Piper was silent as the three of them joined her, her lips thin and pale with suppressed emotion.

“How’d it go?” Gramps asked gently.

Piper shook her head. “She didn’t answer. I… I don’t know why I thought that would work.”

Tux leapt onto Piper’s hat as quietly as a whisper. “Do not fret, Piper. We will find another way.”

“Yeah,” Nico said. Piper met his eyes for a moment, then looked down at her feet.

“She doesn’t care anymore,” she murmured.

Gramps, not hearing this, said briskly, “Alright then! No problem, Piper. You said your sis is with the Colombo Mafia, right? I’ve done work with them before. I think I can set up a meeting myself.”

“You can?” Piper asked, her voice hollow. Whatever storm was raging within her, she seemed determined to suppress it now.

Gramps nodded. “Yeah. I’ll warn you both, though: this might not go well. The Six Families are as likely to hurt us as help us. We’ll have to be careful about this. I just hope Toothpick can meet tonight. We’re running low on time.”

“Toothpick?” Nico asked.

“He’s an officer,” Gramps explained. “Usually, dealing with black market suppliers like me is handled by mobsters at his level. It’s a job too important to trust to a thug, but too menial to bother the bosses.”

“Gotcha,” Nico said. The sight of Piper’s distress, much as she was trying to hide it now, was distracting him from Gramps’ explanation. Piper, for her part, was listening to the old man attentively.

Without waiting for further questions, Gramps walked to the rooftop access door and opened it. “C’mon,” he called, then began to descend the stairs.

Piper turned and followed Gramps without a word, Tux riding atop her hat. After a moment’s hesitation, Nico followed her.

***

Toothpick’s loping gait slowed as he saw Tiny approaching. The giant man was walking the blue-haired artist through the hallway toward their cell. Toothpick stepped aside to let the pair pass, nodding deferentially to Tiny. The big man nodded back.

Toothpick paused in the hall for a long moment, deep in thought. He heard the door of the artist’s cell open and close, then all was quiet.

“Shit,” he snarled, lighting a cigarette. “You gotta sneak up on me like that, Monroe?”

Monroe let out a light giggle, then stepped out from behind him and lit her own cigarette on Toothpick’s still-lit lighter.

“Just having some fun,” she teased.

Monroe’s short hair, and the dark tights that covered her legs beneath her short skirt, were the same color. She looked young, pretty, naive, but any fool who made the mistake of underestimating her wouldn’t live long enough to realize their mistake.

She took a long drag on her cigarette and looked at Toothpick morosely. “I’m so bored! When is Spats gonna let us do something fun, do you think?”

Toothpick shrugged. Though he’d never admit it to Monroe, he was feeling the boredom as well. Ever since the blue-haired artist and their green-haired friend had come into the picture, Spats had… changed. Toothpick was quite content to ride out this slow season while Spats made and executed his grand schemes, just so long as the money kept coming and their power kept growing. So far, so good, on both counts.

“Why don’t you scram, huh?” Toothpick sighed. “Why do you gotta stick to me like glue all the time? Just some peace and quiet, some time to think, right, that’s all I want right now.”

Monroe winked at him impishly. “Oh, sure. No problem.”

She then proceeded to lean against the wall, arms folded, cigarette glowing. Toothpick sighed again, more in resignation than in irritation.

They stood there in the hall for some time, as the muffled sounds of Spats torturing some poor schmuck occasionally escaped the tightly shut doors of the boss’ office. Tiny was apparently having a long conversation with the artist as well - the door to the artist’s cell never opened.

Toothpick’s phone buzzed in his pocket as he took the final drag from his cigarette. He let the ringer go for a few moments as he put the cigarette out and tossed it into the ashtray, then daintily took a small silver case out of his coat pocket. He pressed a small round button on the case’s top, and a single toothpick popped up. Only after he had pulled the toothpick from the case and clamped it between his teeth did he reach into his pocket and answer the call. Monroe rolled her eyes with an amused smirk, but said nothing.

“What’s the pull?” Toothpick said into the phone.

“Two on top, another in the running,” replied the voice on the other end.

Toothpick sniffed. “Alright, what do ya want, Patchwork?”

***

Nico watched Gramps closely as he spoke into the phone. It was like he was looking at a different person than the old man he’d begun to know these last few days. Gramps’ voice was firm, more in command than he’d yet heard it.

“I need a specialized item,” Gramps said. “Class 3.”

“Mhm,” Toothpick grunted. “What item, exactly?”

Gramps closed his eyes before speaking, as though bracing himself. Nico felt a small prick of nerves. Suddenly, he felt a soft touch against his shoulder. He turned to see Piper had put one hand on him, with the other clenched into a fist against her mouth. She didn’t look at Nico - her attention was entirely focused on Gramps.

The old man took a deep breath before saying, “A license tracer. Unused.”

Toothpick whistled in amazement. “That’s a big ask, Patchwork. You know what we charge for something like that?”

“It gets better,” Gramps cut in. “I need it tonight.”

There was a long silence. For a moment, Nico feared that Toothpick had hung up on Gramps. But then, the tinny sound of the mobster’s voice came through the phone once more.

“Patchwork.”

“Yeah?”

“Are you crazy or just stupid?”

Gramps smiled grimly. “Maybe both, Toothpick. But I’m serious about this.”

“Right.”

There was another long pause. Gramps crossed his fingers. At last, Toothpick spoke again.

“As luck would have it, and I mean you got some kinda angels or devils on your side, I don’t know which, we just happen to have one available.”

Gramps broke into a huge smile of relief. “That so? I’ll have to thank my angels and devils, then.”

“Yeah, here’s the thing though, friend. We only have the one. If you want it, it’s going to cost you. Big time.”

“Not a problem.”

“Is that so? Can you dance to the tune of 250 grand, Patchwork?”

Nico’s jaw dropped. Piper’s hand tightened on his shoulder. They looked at one another with expressions of utter horror.

Two hundred and fifty grand?!

It was an astonishing amount. It was more than ten times Nico’s yearly pay in his last job, before he’d defeated Rudy. Now that he was the Supervisor, it was exactly ten times Nico’s yearly pay.

Piper and Nico stared at Gramps as he seemed to run some calculations in his mind. To both of their shock, the old man didn’t look phased in the slightest. In fact, a sly grin was touching the corners of his mouth.

“I’ll tell you what, Toothpick,” he said. “250 grand for the license tracer, and I’ll tip you another 50 grand if we can make the exchange tonight. Just for your trouble.”

THREE HUNDRED GRAND?!

Piper and Nico fell backward, lying on the floor in astonished silence. Tux meowed indignantly as she was tossed from her comfortable perch atop Piper’s hat. Gramps put a finger to his lips, an amused twinkle in his eye.

“You’re serious, Patchwork?” Toothpick asked.

“Dead serious, Toothpick.”

“Alright old man, you got a deal. Tonight. Eight o’clock. The usual spot. Bring the full amount, and we’ll make the exchange right there.”

“Deal,” Gramps said. “Okay if I bring some friends?”

“Friends?” Toothpick sounded surprised, but he quickly shook it off. “Alright, sure. Long as you’re okay with us bringing some… friends… of our own.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Gramps replied warmly. “Until tonight, Toothpick.”

“Yeah, alright, Patchwork. Don’t be late.”

“I won’t,” said Gramps, and hung up the phone. He was quiet for several seconds, then let out a shaky sigh. He looked at Nico and Piper, who were still lying on the floor in shock.

“Well,” chuckled the old man, “That went better than expected, didn’t it?”