My Super Secret Life…Villain 5
Chapter 5
Thankfully I passed out at some point as I was crying myself to sleep and there was the distinct sort of feeling that someone had shot me up with something fizzyly and bubbly and hurt like hell.
Really hurt like hell and right now it doesn’t feel much better.
My guts hurt.
My insides hurt and it’s like someone is grabbing them and squeezing and twisting.
I really am not a people person and yet right now I’m really regretting that and feeling very small now, very alone now and really, really scared. I’m too sick to go get help…and I can’t really call people to send an ambulance here…there’s too much stuff, I’m not starting over I’m not…
I really, really want my Mum…or someone that cares about me.
But that just wouldn’t be my life now would it?
So I’m here clutching my pillow lengthwise and shivering through things and petting the cat whenever she’s brave enough to come near…twice I went to pet her and touch her and she cat screeched in fear and took off.
Cat’s and dogs and horses are all sort of known to be able to pick out or pick out on some of the various Psi or Meta abilities.
I likely freaked her the hell out by power surging or something.
I know that I’ve woken up a time of two just soaked in sweat and too weak to really move. Just enough to force myself to eat some of those nutrient bars and gag the other stuff I need down before even chewing wears me out.
Wished I was dead.
Then I really wished I was dead.
I came too with the cat yowling at me…loud and anguished and plaintively yowling as she nudged my face and thwapped my head with a paw until I moved my head. I hurt from being sore but just from being sore and I couldn’t help but smile just a little as she went to her food dish and yowled and circled it like it being empty was to end of days.
“Oka…” (Cough, cough…) “Okay…I’m getting up.”
My voice is different. Deeper and softer actually, before I had that sort of a pre-puberty shrill edge that I couldn’t shake despite my age. I sound older now, like maybe my age if things had kept going?
I haul myself of bed and I’ve hair in my eyes and I my face and it’s not blonde any more it’s black…not just black but…no…seeing it through the light up close to my eyes…blue…it’s this deep, deep midnight blue.
And there’s a lot more of it that I thought there’d be.
I was actually expecting the jiggle, I was so expecting the whole jiggle and bounce whatever of me starting breasts. But no?
I sort of peek down my top and okay…my nipples seem a bit bigger but I have to look to notice and other than that they feel like I’m still a carpenters delight.
Actually maybe a bit more there in like muscle? Like a flat girl with great tone, or exercises or maybe like a professional runner. I might have burned off the body fat or it just hasn’t had a chance to settle but. I don’t feel itchy. Like they’re coming in or anything, even feeling them up is well doing a bit of feeling it but not feeling the whole breast thing and everything that’s supposed to be with breasts I think…well since apparently I don’t have them it’s a big question mark.
And that’s not pleasing the cat either who voices he displeasure again and looks up at me like I’m the bad master at some horrible kitten mill.
“Okay, okay…keep your fur on.”
This new voice is going to take some getting used to. I trudge to the kitchen and get a can of cat food, open it and proceed to try to fill her dish and as anyone with a cat will tell you is a pain when they won’t let you be.
Cat fed or rather gorging I fill her water and head to the bathroom to inspect the damage. I’m moving a bit different like there’s something swively about my hips and their center. I have sway.
“Uh-huh…”
I get undresses and check myself out in the mirror. I’m still femi-androgynous. I still have the girl plumbing and there’s hips but not really wide ones but a bit more than a guy would have and just enough to give me a…a…I think I have a really nice ass.
I mean I’m not sure as far as evaluating that stuff since I never really felt sexual before but my legs are longer and I have this really tight and curvy bottom. Great aside from my girly kinds of clothes I’m not sure if any of my pants will fit.
My hair has to be two feet longer, years of hair growth in a span of days…and it’s the only hair on my body it seems I’m even bald down below.
There’s a hint of blue in the roots of my hair where in meets my scalp so it looks a bit odd and the same for my lashes which are really long and tinted like my hair with the blueness so it sort of looks like permanent eye make up.
My face too…fuller lips and fleshed out cheeks and I look really pretty regardless of my sort of girl sort of not gender.
But oh my random religious deity I stink.
“Okay shower time…”
Actually I perform number one and two first because it’s just better to do those things before you get into the shower. Not that I’ve ever number two in the shower but I’ve heard of people doing the first one in the shower and all I can say is effing ick.
Ick, ick, ick…my feet are down there y’know?
“Oh…I’m punchy…I need food.”
I think my silly sort of mood is from that light headed thing when your sugars are down. I haven’t even tried to use my powers yet and I’m not sure that I’m going to until I get clean and get some food in my system.
Washing uhm inside felt different…more awake? Sensitive? Different really different.
But oh my random religious deity washing my hair felt sooooo good…I think it made part of my brain melt and the heat was just…I actually shower rinsed and repeated the entire process.
I do everything on manual right now until I feel better and then until I can really cut loose somewhere safe. So it’s towel drying my hair and cursing as I walk to the kitchen trying to work the knots and tangles of a few nights clear…
“Oh screw it I’m getting a professional to do this.”
I start eating stuff right out of the fridge smelling and checking out what’s good of not and end up having to toss out some Chinese, and some cheese, five hot dogs left in a pack. My chocolate cake.
I nuke some eggs in a cheap scramble, eat two cheese slices before throwing the last of them over the eggs. Oh…that tasted like more, it must be the protein.
I grab another two cheese slices and my jar of peanut butter and head into my bedroom and start gong through my clothes. Most of my shirts and sweaters fit I tend to baggy or stretchy clothes anyway. I have about three pairs of baggy pants that sort of fit. I think I gained about four inches in leg length and my butt’s changed shape. Two other pairs can make decent cut offs.
My panties are way too tight, all of my underwear is off really. The same thing with my tights and my leggings and my shoes…dammit, shoes…my sneakers, boots.
“Great it’s not quite starting all over again but it’s close.”
I get some trash bags together and I start sorting things through. I really might as well start to houseclean and de-clutter while I’m doing that. I put on some music and in between spoonfuls of peanut butter I start bagging clothes and everything I don’t want, don’t need or want something new for and haul it downstairs to an empty closet so I can give it away for charity.
Actually if I can get a hold of Sheppard or maybe…Link…I can give these things to the refugee’s and mutants down in Freaktown.
It takes a few hours and I feel better from moving around and the food I’ve eaten have started to filter through my body and I don’t feel as spacey or as punchy. I still don’t feel like me even though I’m me…I’m still sore and aching in that growing pains way. And my arms are a bit longer and I’m taller so there’s a very strange thing where I’m taller.
…… “It’s like going from being thirteen or fourteen to seventeen or eighteen…or rather catching up…”
“Fucking Jeff…just had to be right.”
Sigh.
I get dressed. I need to go out. I get into my least tight pair of underwear boxer briefs and I put on a denim faded skirt and one of my bras after loosening things to fit the changes to my shoulders and have get my gel inserts in. yes I dress as a girl mostly well because it’s how I pass best for a normal. I toss a once far baggier t-shirt over that and my large army jacket and grab a few things. Marbles, switchblade, a few zip ties, disguise make up. Stuff just in case…
Then my purse, yes remember part of my disguise as a normal what girl doesn’t usually have a purse. Mine is a re-made army shoulder bag with all sorts of gothy shoulder flashes sewn onto it like bio-hazard signs and peace symbols and stuff like that. I get a pair of sunglasses on and check the mirror. I look like a sort of gothy-punk-emo girl. In this city it’ll do I’ll blend in until I can get different looks going on.
I head out and lock things up and make my way through the neighborhood until I get to the bus stop.
It’s still the same even though I feel different. The brickyards is old, it’s the two, three hundred years old remnants of where people settled in Ark City when things were booming with industries were bringing stuff in from the mountains and the mines and there were foundries and shipyards for space ships. But time took it’s toll, there was a war with another government over the alien ship and tech that’s there or was there and add in just things moving, progress it’s hard here.
But at the same time… there’s this grit in this section of the mega-city, people still here, hanging on, different neighborhoods in neighborhoods and this place still changing with immigrants and stuff.
But there’s other things.
I see hookers, cast off homeless people and there’s bad gangs around. Here in my home grounds the Fuller’s are the scum in charge. They’re a shave gang. Skin heads they used to call them ages ago but shaves have mutated like the rest of society and they’re not so much about the whole race thing even though they have like charter rules like no Blacks or Hispanics they are more about heritage and turf. Gangs are actually sort of clannish in these areas. There are faster more punker gangs in the faster areas of town but here the gangs are old and have history.
Doesn’t make them bigger or badder. Just a gang.
The Fullers get their name from the screwdriver, sharpened to a shiv it’s their signature weapon.
I see a car go past with four or five of them inside acting like they own the place. I watch people avoid eye contact, get bust doing something else, anything else. I see them stop and talk to one of the pimps down the street…baggy gets passed off for an envelope.
One of them is looking at me, checking me out and I don’t have my head turned to his direction. Sunglasses are keeping me safe from the whole eye contact thing but the way he’s looking at me like he’s going to take what he wants and he wants… crap…he’s getting out of the car and coming towards me with this cocky swagger. I see his eyes fixing on me and narrowing.
The bus pulls up just in time and I step inside quickly.
Could I take him? Yeah, easy.
But I live here, this is my safe spot and I can’t jeopardize that.
Grr…I’m going to have to deal with this somehow.
I feel his stare on my ass…I see him looking at me with this you’re mine smile as I sit down and he pulls a screwdriver and scrapes it along the bus. It’s the Brickyards…so no one says shit and there’s several people really cared that he did that.
I force myself to get up and move from the seat I took to another one away from him and that he see’s that he scared me.
You stare these guys down and they get a bit crazy like they’re being challenged. Oh he still might follow but he might be more content to stick to business and like his ego stroke.
But I’m really wanting to take that screwdriver and manually adjust his colon.
I get a few looks from the other passengers that’s mixed from annoyance to sympathy to having been there themselves. I sort of hunch in my jacket and keep to myself until I get a few transfers and then take the train.
“I so need a car.”
I do and I don’t see Ark City is huge, huge like the size…well it’s a city of close between two and three hundred million people. It’s incredibly spread out but at the same time…the ship’s right under us. This is the very first colonial city and it covers from one end of this sort of C shaped mountain chain to the other. Mass transit is really the best way to get places if you don’t have a big load of stuff. Traffic in this city can be absolutely thick…It’s like I live in a city like that Metropolis place from the comics but in reality it’s actually a lot like New York City used to be on Earth before Earth started that whole heritage city stuff.
But like every time you’re living without a car of your own you. Have to haul stuff you don’t want to from either the bus stop or from a cab. But I don’t want others to know where I live so I can’t have the cab stop out in front of my place.
Maybe I need to pull a real job and make some real cash to get a car that’ll pass scan. Yeah…
Dunno…
There’s stepping up your game then there’s getting in deeply over your head.
I get off the train at Bright Valley. It’s a big suburban area with that core of streets that are set up for shopping with malls and fast food and all the stuff the young urban-suburban people need to survive. Comet Coffee…I swear out here you can get something at one and still be drinking it by the time you get to another. It’s like that…actually it’s a “Little Boxes” kind of place. Look up Pete Seger in the history index if you don’t get the reference.
I get looks but not as I walk to one of the malls that has stores for my gift cards. I brought cash too. I still fit in even here because it’s not like Emo-goth-punk has gone out of style…never will as long as you have moody teens. There’s lots of other kids that look like me around here. Heck I’m actually kind of tame compared to some of them.
I’m not fussy either with stuff. I’ll shop in department stores, I don’t turn my nose up at anything really. But the first stop is at the clothing section in Smiley’s It’s the place that has the big yellow happy face logo.
New clothes, underwear…I get sets, and once I find a good pair in the right size I go and buy a few variety packs of them in cotton then some grown up underwear. I get some different gel forms too. Other stuff, jeans lots of those, two track suits, Yoga gear, sneakers and shoes and even some boots as I go through the store and the mall.
I’m getting quite a load by the time I’ve gone through Smiley’s and the rest of the mall. Thankfully there is a cart check place where you can drop off your stuff so I can get my other things. Groceries…those I can get locally. I do get stuff at a costume place, needed in my profession, the hardware store again there’s things I can use and pick up while I’m out. I get lots of white all weather spray paint, and I hit a sports supply place.
I go out for supper at a place in the mall. Nothing too fancy but I’m hungry and I eat and watch people.
Men…
Women…
I’m really trying to be objective here but…
Well I suppose it doesn’t help if I’m sort of still stuck in my neutral head space but there are a few people that I find…interesting?
Men…actually just a few and it’s usually just one maybe two things about them that I find interesting.
I’m saying interesting since I’m not sure about the whole attraction thing.
And then there’s women…those I’m finding more interesting than men, the way they move and look some of the styles but the curves too. The way that they bounce and swivel and sway, this strange sort of grace they have is much more appealing to me.
So…
Maybe if I start getting this thing down about gender and attraction and feelings and everything I might kind of sort of be a lesbian?
Maybe?
Or does me knowing I started off as a boy pre-mutations have me just adding that in? I know that seeing couples together or even just seeing friends hanging out hurts. I feel pretty lonely watching that and it’s hitting harder than ever and I get that headachy blinky thing going where I want to cry. I hold them back until it passes because crying seldom makes anything better and I hate doing stuff like that in public.
It’s harder to keep it I now too.
Hormones?
Anyways. I stay just killing time at the Mall until closing before getting a cab. Ten thirty at night it’s after midnight by the time I get home and the cabfare is really steep. It took over an hour to drive to within two blocks of home and that ran me close to two hundred dollars.
I really need to step things up, I need a car. The meter just kills you and I have to honestly cough up a pretty big tip for going way out of his way. An Aero-Cab would have been cheaper but really noticed.
And I have to stay off the radar.
I’m a meta powered mutant criminal…the cape types can say things are all above board but we both know the government…yeah, too tempting. And if I can dream up some pretty nasty stuff and all the rumors…
Yeah, no thanks.
The Fullers aren’t around and I don’t get a lot of notice getting home with the full load after two blocks. It’s late and I’m away from the places that people usually hang around at night at.
The cat’s giving me hell when I get home until I feed her again and change the litter and take out the trash after I unpackage everything.
Okay…
First thing. I reach out and try moving a few pillows…it feels pretty much the same sort of using my powers.
I get my smartphone out and take some pictures of me in front of one of my random brick walls in my place. I then print out one of me. I look emo but cute. It’s a nice girl picture and just what I need.
The rest of the night I spend practicing my powers.
Control, control, control…you get the best results with practice. Lots of practice. And things have changed. I can see kinetic forces, energy…it’s grey blue to me and the faster more energy or force it has the more that gets bright.
I have to want to see it and it’s strange because I can see the eddies of force like heat sort of. Like on a thermo camera with the waves and even some of those almost after images.
I close my eyes but still try to see and I can see the kinetic force around me. It’s scary and fascinating but the first thing I try is sonar…sound has force right?
It sort of works, it take a lot of concentration and I can only see/feel about five feet around me.
But…I get to see how my powers seem to work. I gather the bleeding off of free and decaying kinetic force and wrap it around something that I’m going to move.
I even gather some up to my hand.
I send a ball of it out and explode it…oh like a flare with my eyes closed.
It play with it for hours. Until I can do it by letting out these pulses from my body itself and it lets me see about thirty feet around me.
I get dizzy three times when I feel the cat.
It moved my field of sensing to lock in on the cat and it was further passed my arc of vision. A couple of those other tries more than I could turn my head. See it’s not a physical based sense so I can move it all around my three points around me.
“I’m like a bat…”
A harder pulse rattles things, and sort of sounds like a newspaper getting dropped on the floor. My walls in the apartment aren’t too thick and I get a dim glimpse of the wiring. Strong pulses and I can see through things…like ultrasound.
I go to bed dreaming of all of the implications.
………………………………The next day is all about the training. I do as much around the house as I can using my telekinetic. I’m stronger too…I can move about three hundred pounds now mentally, or rather control about that much force to lift that much dead weight.
That’s actually a lot of force added when you think about it. Plus being able to see the force I’m controlling really helps a lot and I spend all afternoon making shapes just out of force in my hands and then using the power to use them. saw blades, drill, cutting disc, grinder wheels, all made out of energy…kinetics.
Great things to break into places. Even better things to remove all the stains and stuff in the bathroom tiles.
It sounds mundane but it’s not. The more you know how to use what you’ve got the more effective you are.
I get ready after supper and my nap and a coffee.
………………………………......... My new look.
A black tinted heavy plastic hockey mask. Like the visors football players wear sometimes but this is a goalie mask. Hooded plain black sweatshirt under a black denim vest with lots of pockets. Cargo pants, heavy belt with all my pouches, hiking boots and metal studded goth gloves. I look badassed or I think so.
…………………………..I take a satchel with me and a few toys and things I need and my backpack with extras in it. And I head off into the night without my board…I don’t need it now…there’s a layer of two kinetic or telekinetic films under my feet and I’m skating on the fact that between the kinetic energy I have on the ground and under my feet is frictionless…ice like.
I’m pretty fast but with practice I’ll get faster. I’ll still use the board because the RPM trick is just too easy on the energy but tonight’s a trial run.
I hit this spot, they’re not ganged up but pay protection but they run drugs, ice-cocaine…that’s like crack but this is a snowflakey blue powder that absorbs and melts on the tongue and is really addictive like all the plague drugs.
I find the house place…the row of houses and I send in my marbles first. I hit the walls, windows and doors things in the hall and they start freaking out. I start to be able to see everything inside.
I reach out band burst the lights. Some run outside, I kick the first guy in the thigh…applied force it takes nothing to break bones. I break the thighbone with the kick, I stomp bash his knee, I force strike the next guy in the ribs and spread the force out…I don’t want to send his ribs through his lungs but I’m more than good with breaking everyone of them.
I step inside and I don’t spare any of them. I jam their guns with force and I beat them brutally. Not to kill them but to do more than scare them….I want them not able to be well enough to come back here.
One screams. “Who are you?! What do you want!?”
“My name is Rook…these streets here between Robertson corner and the mill tracks is mine…you let them know, you let all of the scum like you know that this is my area now…this is Sleepy Hollow and I’m the horseman.”
I use my reverb trick when I talk, I sound dark and whispery and raspy even while yelling at him and him I leave really beaten….
It sounds bad, it sounds mean but these are really piece of shit dealers and they’d turn someone out for tricks for owing on their addictions. I told you that I’m not that nice a person. I couldn’t care less if these shits burst into flames right in front of me. Sometimes there are people who aren’t worth the second chances.
I know the cops’ll be here soon.
I take the cash, I take the dirty drug money and I take some other things too but the drugs, the guns…I leave that to the cops.
Though I shape the spray of one of the spray paint cans I’ve with me and I leave a few images like a stencil of a rook chess piece with a rook raven perched and mantled on it all in white.
I slip out and parkour away over a few rooftops.
Eat three energy bars and drink a bottle of water…use a bathroom in a vacant place I feel out as I keep moving. I go to each one of those places…the boundaries of My Territory and spend a couple of hours peeling off all the tags and graffiti it’s easy I just sink some force in and feel the difference between the brick and the paint and pull the paint off.
I make my tags here instead…all white…all my double rooks, and I make sure that everyone will see it all.
It’s even on the pavement.
………………………My last thing.
I find him at one of their hangouts and I wait until he’s alone, heading out the fire door of the shitty hole in the wall bar. He lights a smoke and he…he doesn’t weigh three hundred pounds so I grab him around the ankles telekinetically and I pull him to the roof.
“Hold” him over the edge with one hand. I’m actually floating him. He screamed, he went for a gun. I spike of force his finger ad the trigger area. There’s blood, he screams. I can feel his buddies running outside hearing him.
I hold my photo to his face.
“See her!?” More yelling, more reverb.
He pulls his screwdriver and swings. I nudge his arm with force and he misses and stabs himself in the leg.
I sort of fake karate chop his crotch and “see”…my target and I pop one of his balls as the chop hits like a grape.
Big tough shave ganger screams.
“Do you fucking see her!?”
“Yes!…yes…yes…!”
“She’s fucking mine!? I ever!, fucking ever see any of you looking ay her ever again I’ll fucking kill you! Understand me!”
He screams, cries, whines…
“Do you fucking understand me!”
“Yeeeeeesss!”
I drop him the four stories down.
He hits hard and his friends open fire.
I move out of the way fast and head off running away parkouring again. I could have tried to fight them but without the advantage of planning and surprise…I’m not getting into a firefight. I’m not bulletproof unless I can mess with the guns.
That’s almost enough. I actually do a patrol of things from the rooftops. Like when I went to help Sheppard and Link I can clear jumps that others can’t by lifting my weight some. This lets me go places I shouldn’t be able to go. It’s just too far to jump. And in the dark of night…I move like a ghost.
I stop a pimp from beating a girl into a pulp in an alley and He’s quick work. I land hit him with a force strike but at less power to the diaphragm and drive the air out of him the grabbed him by the throat and held him there until the few seconds it took his lights to go out. I leave him fixed to my symbol held to the wall by screws I got from the hardware store. I took his cash and his bling and used his phone to dial the police. I try to make the girl as comfortable as possible….she’s already out of it.
It’s late, near dawn by the time I get home and I can make it there with a leap to my roof from the closest building nearly forty feet away.
I’m tired…hungry…sore…
A pan of home fries and a shower later and I fall into bed and smile at the pile of cash on my dressing table.
I just robbed a drug house of close to twelve thousand dollars, I hurt eight people total pretty bad tonight and I drew a line in the sand for my neighborhood.
This far no further.
I’ve never slept better in my life.
Comments
"I’ve never slept better in my life."
very cool. I'm hoping she can find a way to somehow get a pardon for her past life, and become a hero. otherwise, you just KNOW some caped crusader or other is going to drop by to try and "arrest" her.
As much as the AA's (Ark Angels) are the very top Cape team...
even they would be hard pressed to help Rook get clear of her legal issues from the trouble as a child to the stuff she's doing now. There's a lot of assault charges that could and will be leveled at them.
Thanks for enjoying this:)
*Great Big Angel Hugs*
Bailey...A Proud Supporter of Team Dorothy:)
Bailey Summers
I'd say major failure as a
I'd say major failure as a villian :D So she decided to be a vigilante?
I personally don't understand why people hang out at all mall. It isn't much different as hanging out at a train station. Standing around watching people... So not my hobby ^^
When will you do something about her romance ambitions? I'd kind of like to see the kid again that started the whole transformation issue.
Thank you for writing this captivating story,
*hugs*
Beyogi
Rook was mostly killing time at the mall once her...
shopping was done. Gangers tend to get to a point when they're not causing trouble or running business and cut loose and party so she was waiting for it to get as late as possible. But people watching is a thing that a lot of people do especially if you're trying to find things out about yourself by trying to see them in others.
Rook will be seeing more of Link for sure. Rook will need some things that she can only get through some illegal sources and there is a black market in Freaktown that's pretty big. Plus as Rook keeps more and more stuff from going down in her turf it makes it a safer zone for the mutant underground to move through.
Which can lead to lots of things.
I'm really glad that you're enjoying this:)
*Big Hugs*
Bailey.
Bailey Summers
: D
This mostly female person kicks some serious ass! = )
*Bows respectfully*
Yes she does, a very different character:)
*Returns bow of respect for most honorable samurai kitten Mega-Tomboy*
Bailey.
Bailey Summers
Villain?
As one of the other commentators points out, villain or vigillante? I guess its a matter of perspective to some degree. Maybe in that she keeps the money she steals from the crooks makes her a little bit villain at this point? Either way, she can make the Brickyards a much better place if she tries and I hope she does. It won't be easy though not working with the cops or other capes as there is only so long she can stay 'under the radar' as it were.
That was a seriously kewl explanation of her sonar powers btw. :-)
Thank you for another enjoyable chapter.
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
Rook's best seen as an Anti-heroine.
In the sense that they sort of do heroic things but they're a villain about it much more than a vigilante. She has this sort of Marvel girl mixed with Daredevil thing going on and maybe hints of Batman too.
Her powers are psionic based. Rook's a telekinetic and can see the kinetic energy that she manipulates. I'm kind of winging it really because I sort of am not satisfied with a psi being able to move things "Just because."
Also...There are a lot of things that you can do with a lot of super powers that gets ignored or not used. Like the sonar idea...if you can "touch" things without touching them you should be able to feel through this power too, you might have to practice this but you should be able to do that and more.
She intends on trying to make things a little better around her area fist and maybe some other places and she knows that'll draw hear but since she mutated she's been in the heat one way or another.
With the block down that was holding her back, she's feeling things more and differently as hormones and stuff will be hitting her system. It's taking her too that point of...
This Far no further.
*Great Big Hugs.*
Bailey.
Bailey Summers
Potentials
I love the way you've shown her powers. It's almost like she has Clairsentience that shows her the kinetic energy or perhaps the potential energy about her. That lets her give little pushes to get big results. It's all about control. Sense both of these things are psionic powers it makes a lot of sense, Bravo!
As for her change, Wow! It does sound as if her body suddenly caught up with her age. I'm not too sure about the breast development unless she is 'budding' because usually girls are about finished around 17 or 18. Still that just might be normal for her. Not every girl has a built in Mae West. If they did plastic surgeons wouldn't be doing such a big business in breast implants.
I really like this character. Like you said an anti-hero, Robin Hood.
Hugs
Grover
IMHO the completion of her meta sexchange & overall growth used
-up a lot of calories. I mean, she grew a complete set of sex organs, her build altered and she grew a lot taller and longer limbed. That took huge resources. And she wasn't very big or heavyset to begin with. Her body damn near canibalized itself.
She even commented on it herself. And her greatly increased, enhanced powers didn't come from nowhere.
Thought she could just be a wirely athetic build. Nothing wrong with that. Sometimes those girls age the best. The really curvy ones seem more at risk for getting overwieght.I suspect as the meta/mutation completes and she gains baack a few pounds alot if it will go to her hips and chest. Hard to say. As a meta all bets are off.
Definitley an antihero type. A Clint Eastwood antihero--ine.
Sweet.
John in Wauwatosa
P.S. I suspect we have not seen the last of the elvin girl who triggered this all either. I got the impression Link had fallen in love with her despite their broief encounter. Hum, Link? An empath/healer? Did she see the inner good in our *villian*?
John in Wauwatosa
You're right on the money John!
Though I'm not sure about her growing breasts yet. I wasn't planning on it really since she's a mutant and things are different down there or it could be more power blockage. Her street-doc thinks there's psychsomatic stuff going on but he's really just making educated guesses.
I do like her drive and her attitude right now. It has changed though and it's sort of a vulnerability issue...she looks older and she might get more...girlish and it's scary...and she wants to be safe in her regular life so she's using Rook to try to change that a bit at least.
*Big Hugs*
Bailey.
Bailey Summers
Oh Grover that's just the kind of term for that:)
I love the Clairsentience idea with this and it's very much what it's like. Rook's not that powerful in the raw power sense of it all but she's learned to get as much utility out of things as she can to do as much as she can and be really effective. There's a lot more she'll eventually figure out how to do.
Rook right now would agree that she's grown up a lot more to where she might be at her current age if she wasn't power locked.
She hates that Jeff might have been right and her mind was using her powers to keep her from growing up anymore than it had to. She did age but really slowly, and hadn't hit puberty.
She's king of scared to about what might come with that too.
I'm really glad that you liked this:)
*Great Big Hugs*
Bailey.
Bailey Summers
Technically Villain
As one of the other commentators points out, villain or vigillante? I guess its a matter of perspective to some degree. Maybe in that she keeps the money she steals from the crooks makes her a little bit villain at this point?
Remember, she makes her living as a thief. While she minimizes local harm, and does good things with a lot of what she steals, she fits into the "villain" category. Not "super villain" (despite her powers), or at least, not on the A list (or even B or C). She is a small time crook with an otherwise active sense of civic duty and responsibility.
Jorey
.
Great point Jorey:)
Rook see herself that way too. In the eyes of those that will be after her she's a serious thief having stolen a large amount of money and valuables over time plus the counts of break and enter she'd have if she gets caught about that now there's a lot of assault or worse charges piled onto her as well.
Hence Villain.
But the ease at how she can hurt people even if they were scumbags...yeah she knows she's already labeled by the law as a supervillain.
*Big Hugs*
Bailey.
Bailey Summers
so, map?
do you have a map on your wall at home to keep track of Arc City?
she may not like pissing in the shower but she marked her territory pretty clearly.
nice chapter, thanks
No map on my wall but there is a map Lonewolf:)
Ark City and even New Haven is based off a long running hero based role playing game that I've run for years.
*Hugs and Howls*
Bailey.
Bailey Summers
"No Man's Land"
I'm guessing you're something of a comic book junkie (my apologies if I'm wrong) -- did you ever read the Batman: No Man's Land arc(*)? I'm getting a lot of the same vibes as I did from those books, and I'm really looking forward to seeing where Rook's line-on-the-blacktop takes her(**).
Unfortunately, claiming her turf as dramatically as she did will probably draw a lot of the attention that she professes to really not want. F'rinstance: If she drives out all the mundane gangs, some gang with meta backing might see the void and move in to knock her off and claim her turf as their own, probably trying to make an example of her in the process. On the other side of the blue line, if police reports start appearing that some new meta-powered vigilante named "Rook" is cracking thug heads, it might draw the attention of some of the city's police-affiliated super-teams. Of course, the local beat cops might be willing to look the other way on some of her excessive uses of force (I suspect they're a rather hard-bitten bunch), but I can imagine at least one cop-cape dropping in to say "Hi" and perhaps ask her to rein it in just a bit. Y'know, off-the-record and all.
(*- Nickel tour: In the immediately previous arc, Cataclysm, Gotham gets hit with a powerful earthquake (7.9? something like that) and gets utterly wrecked. In No Man's Land, politicking results in the city being evacuated and abandoned by the government, rather than trying to rebuild it.(***) As a result, various groups, both mundane and masked, heroic or villainous, start staking out territories and try to rule/protect the remaining refugees as they see fit. You know things are getting hairy when the cops are spraying "GCPD" tags.)
(**-for pronounular sanity's sake.)
(***- Like if after Katrina(****(*****)) the govenments had just gone, "Nope!", evacuated everyone they could, and then just barred the place off.)
(****- It was written in the nineties. I don't think that same storyline would fly after the Katrina and the Indonesian and Japanese Tsunamis.)
(*****- Nested footnotes are fun! Wheee!(*x6))
(*x6- OOOOoooo-kay, maybe bedtime...)
Thanks Anansi!
Great comment first off and the footnotes made me laugh more and more as I read them:) You've got some great Ideas there and unfortunately I've missed a lot of stuff in the comic universes and storylines simply because of lack of comic shops. We have a new one and it looks pretty stable so...I'm catching back up on some of the things that I like to read.
I hope that you'll like this sort of story thread. While not Batman there's some stuff inspired by the old Daredevil stories that were more based in Hellskitchen before it started to change. The Brickyards are a lot like the barrens though in Gotham.
*Big Hugs*
Bailey.
Bailey Summers
One minor detail
She goes to all the trouble to "educate" that thug to leave her alter-ego alone, then she drops him four stories on his head. Kind of a waste of time, wasn't it?
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
He lived.
She knows it really hurt him and broke stuff but she was pretty sure he'd live. There was stuff there to break his fall somewhat. The fact he was badly hurt? Rook doesn't care she's pretty sure that he was a rapist anyway.
*Big Hugs*
Bailey.
Bailey Summers
So cool!
I've been very behind, so I'm working on catching up. This is a very cool story (like yours pretty much all are), and I really like Rook. She's very interesting, and I can't wait to see more of her!
I hope her new powers and the claiming of her territory attracts Link. I think there is real potential there.
Love it!
Wren
I'm way too behind too Honey:)
I'm really glad that you liked it though and just getting a stable zone in an area of town that's more or less out of the eyes of the general public will bring the Mutant underground most likely because they need places to safely move through in order to get to someplace safe.
Link just so happens to be a member of the Mutant underground so...:)
*Big Hugz*
Bailey.
Bailey Summers
She's the Batman of the neighbourhood
Or should I say Rookwoman. lol
Just Rook, that's fine.
But yeah she's got a bit of that going on.
*Big Hugs*
Bailey.
Bailey Summers
I do hope she was smart
I do hope she was smart enough to *not* center her territory on where she lives. Because the center of the tagged area *is* where everybody will expect her to live.
Brooke brooke at shadowgard dot com
http://brooke.shadowgard.com/
Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world
"Lola", the Kinks
No it's not centered on her place Brooke.
But Rook does live in the zone she had marked out. She's trying not to have this spill out into her regular life if you can call her life regular.
*Hugs*
Bailey.
Bailey Summers
she maybe a badass vigilante
she maybe a badass vigilante but she's no villain, she just has her own rules when it comes to justice