Of Heroes And Villains

In which a superhero meets his match, masks are uncovered and a mad scientist just tries to get some mad science-ing done without getting distracted by the antics of her magical minion.

Fanart by the talented Ian Samson, creator of City of Reality and artist of The Wotch


Amelia wasn’t having the best day.

In fact, she’d been having a week that was decidedly non-optimal. This displeased her.

She sighed softly, taking off her goggles and massaging her temples.

Working with magic was infuriating on any day, but today it was making her feel like she was 5 years old again, just starting to study quantum physics and being absolutely incensed at the sense it did not make.

This isn’t ever going to get better.

She stared at the inky black portal swirling in front of her, the gaping abyss leading to some sort of eldritch dimension she’d pinpointed as the source of arcane energy. A source, anyway. Magic didn’t even have the decency to be internally consistent, being powered by several clashing sources leading to very confused mage apprentices who were told they had to be calm and precise to cast their magic, only to grow strongest during irrational emotional outbursts.

“Foolish Mortal!” The voice was a low snarl, its terrible cadence capable of tearing apart the minds of lesser humans. It peeled away the thin threads of sanity, playing them like an instrument to create a symphony of madness. Amelia had captured its owner a few days ago; fished it right out of the portal in front of her. She’d been bored. “Stare Not Into The Sacred Depths of Our Home, For Our Home Is Vast And Terrible And Stares Back Until It Swallows You Whole And Your Feeble Mind –“

“Hush, Sir Fluffington. Don’t make me turn the translator off again.”

The abomination currently inhabiting the form of one of her test rabbits bared its teeth at her, but had the good sense to shut up.

A breeze blew through her long black hair and the portal disappeared with a pop.

Amelia blinked and tilted her head.

She was suddenly very cold. The fine hairs on her arms stood on end as she shivered.

Amelia hadn’t been cold in years. Her powers kept the air around her perfectly attuned to her comfort zone.

She did not care for the feeling. Not one bit.

Amelia snapped her fingers, but no blue sparks appeared.

Some mild curiosity stirred and she tapped a few buttons on her wrist. The panels on the walls detached themselves to reveal her computers. She checked the security feeds for intruders foolish enough to think they could defeat her just because she couldn’t set them on fire with her mind anymore. Amelia had piranhas for just such an occasion.

The halls and winding paths of her lair were deserted.

Amelia was alone.

She scowled and expanded her search, activating her bugs. They were tiny little nanobots she’d scattered all over the city, appropriately enough disguised as mobile insects. While Amelia did not particularly care what was going on outside, it was still a good idea to keep an eye on things. It had served her well when her bugs had transmitted images of where exactly her minion had been sneaking off to.

It had sickened her.

Granted, she had watched for a while with morbid curiosity when she’d realized that the man Diane had been painstakingly squeezing into a corset was not just any hero, but Shade. She remembered him, as she remembered everything thanks to her flawless memory. He’d once assaulted her as part of a taskforce, those plasma blades of his leaving scratches on her armor before she swatted him away like the insignificant fly he was. One of the few heroes who’d managed to get close enough to even remotely damage her. None had been able to do more than that.

Well, until Constance. Constance had taught Amelia the meaning of pain, a lesson she had not forgotten.

She exhaled, sensing the dark nature of her thoughts, and forced her attention on the screens.

The power suppression field appeared to be affecting the entire city; or at least most of it. The outer districts and the suburbs had been spared. The footage her bugs displayed flickered rapidly, showing the extent of the devastation. Amelia focused on the outer districts, looking for the edge of the field. It did not take her long – 16 seconds, to be exact – to determine that the field was radial in nature and likely dome-shaped as well, extending some 8 miles in diameter. A quick calculation told her it was centered on Faultline.

She leaned back in her chair when she saw who stood at the focal point of the field.

Amelia did not know the red-haired woman. Back when she’d been active, she’d made a point of knowing every single active Meta in the city – specifically their weaknesses – and had accounted for all of them in the designs of her armor and weaponry. All but Constance, of course.

This meant this Meta had to have become active after Amelia’s retirement. The field was coming from her.

But she did not matter as much as the black-haired woman who was kneeling in front of her, slowly and painstakingly getting up.

Was Shade about to get killed? Oh, but she hoped so.

Amelia would send the red-haired woman a gift basket.

They called her a mad scientist. They were wrong.

Amelia was not, nor had she ever been, mad. Madness was not conductive to doing science, and thus she had no use for it.

Madness was trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Science was trying many different things, making note of the result, and then adjusting her methods until she got what she wanted.

PsyKick had taken Constance from her.

Shade was taking Diane from her.

And while the urge to punish the hero was so very, very strong, she refrained.

What she’d done to PsyKick had been wrong.

Not morally. Amelia did not care about that. No, it was wrong because it had not worked. Constance had left.

Amelia did not quite understand why it had not worked, but she chalked it up to people being irrational. She often wished people could be more like numbers. It was how she had approached the situation – like a math problem. The obvious solution, to her, had been to shuffle a variable from one side to the other for the equation to make sense again.

But it had been wrong. Amelia did not like being wrong. And she did not make the same mistake twice.

She had tried warning Diane. She had tried sending her on villainous errands to deepen the rift between them. She had tried sowing distrust in Shade’s mind.

And she had tried telling Diane just how lonely she was without her sister.

And then Diane had left.

Telling her about PsyKick had been wrong, too, she saw that now. Hindsight was, as the lesser mortals said, 20/20, and when mixing unknown substances, one never quite knew which would have an explosive reaction until after it was too late.

She’d contemplated turning her brainwashing machine on Diane. Wipe Shade from her mind or, better yet, make her hate the hero. And make her love and serve Amelia.

Amelia could not really find a fault with this plan – Diane would never, ever leave her again.

But.

Something about it made her uneasy.

Amelia wasn’t really sure what, exactly, made Diane so important to her. She was not like her sister; Amelia couldn’t carry a real conversation with her. Diane was, to be perfectly candid, an imbecile. No more an imbecile than the rest of the human race when viewed from Amelia’s high vantage point, but an imbecile nonetheless.

But she also made Amelia smile. She had extended a hand in friendship without Amelia having to do anything. Amelia hadn’t threatened loved ones. Amelia hadn’t threatened her. But Diane still did what she asked, sometimes.

It was unprecedented.

And Amelia had grown used to it, basking in the knowledge that she had a minion who served her faithfully and willingly.

A brainwashed Diane would never know the difference. Amelia would.

But if Shade died at hands that were not her own… Amelia smiled brightly and leaned back to watch.

Her smile died when her bugs transmitted the image of a woman at the very edges of the plaza, running toward the confrontation.

No.

Was it not enough that Shade was stealing her minion? Now she put her in danger as well?

And when the red-haired woman turned her glowing gaze toward Diane, Amelia barely even thought about what she was doing, activating her teleporter to go save her friend.