Of Heroes And Villains: The Ties That Bind An assassin. A fallen hero. An unlikely meeting. The road to redemption is long and hard and filled with explosives.

PsyKick gazed at his morning coffee, trying to put last night out of his mind.

It had been a long time since he dreamed of his old Mistress. Most of the time he tried not to think about her. His new one was so much better; she never asked him to do things that horrified him.

He knew he wasn’t thinking right, that he should be calling them something else, but he couldn’t even find the mental energy to do that.

“Morning.”

The voice was low, yet feminine, and he watched Kara out of the corner of his eyes as she slid into the seat next to him. They were sitting in an opulent kitchen. Mistress had been right; the mansion was absolutely huge, and he could easily see himself getting turned around. As they’d entered the foyer, Kara had gestured vaguely. Pick a room, any room.

“Where’s Mistress Diane?” There. Compromise.

Kara’s pale eyes lingered on him for a long moment, and she said nothing. Strangely, despite her jealousy yesterday her face was remarkably stoic, no judgment in her gaze. He still could not figure out where he’d met her before.

“She’s at work.” Her lips twitched in wry amusement. “She had a little rant about how they make her go in even when it inconveniences her. I think the concept offends her.”

PsyKick smiled weakly, trying to imagine Mistress working anywhere.

“So I’ll be keeping you company until she’s back.”

“Keeping an eye on the crazy hero?”

“Yes.”

He blinked at her bluntness.

Kara took a sip from her own coffee. “Know that as long as I’m around, you will never have opportunity to follow your programming, because I can, and will, kick your ass.” She met his gaze and her voice softened. “You are safe here, okay?”

And others were safe from him.

Maybe it should have bothered him, but instead it gave him peace.

How could he not remember this woman? A personality and appearance like hers ought to be extremely distinctive.

Oh.

He was an idiot not to have considered it before. She was probably a reformed villain like Diane, and the last time he’d met her they’d been on opposite sides. He squinted at her.

“…Eldritch Eclipse?”

Kara spat out her coffee, and then stared at him with extreme outrage written on her face.


***


PsyKick thought he knew the meaning of awkward.

That was until he spent an afternoon with Kara. The woman was incredibly taciturn, never saying more than a few words at a time. She didn’t seem to know how to initiate conversation either, because he caught her opening and closing her mouth soundlessly a few times.

His own social skills were rusty, to say the least, so he really wasn’t any better.

But then Kara had found the magic words.

“So, uh, you were pretty taken with the Mercedes. Do you like cars?”

And now Stephen was in heaven.

Kara had led him to a garage filled with rows and rows of vintage cars.

“My dad’s collection,” she’d said with a small shrug, in a tone that told him she did not particularly care for the beauties spread out before them. Still, after she’d gruffly invited him to do whatever the hell you want, she rose high on PsyKick’s list of favorite people in the world.

It was a bit of a short list at the moment. It mostly consisted of Mistress Diane.

And his old teammates…

He shook his head at that thought, putting them out of his mind, and concentrated on the engine in front of him. Unlike the other cars which, while somewhat dusty, were in perfect condition, this 1964 Shelby Cobra appeared to have been abandoned mid-restoration. He poked around the wires with curiosity.

Stephen had worked summers at a mechanic’s. When his powers manifested, he couldn’t even hope to shut out the voices of everyone around him. It wasn’t easy hearing every catty and unkind thought that never left anyone’s lips. So he’d fled into solitude as best as he could, tinkering with every bit of machinery he could find just so he had something other than people to think about.

He had been going to university on a scholarship, studying to be an engineer. And met Constance.

PsyKick pushed that thought aside.

After three years of being institutionalized, that scholarship was likely gone now. There was no way he could afford higher education without it.

He pushed that thought aside, too.

“So with some tools and spare parts, I’m pretty sure I could fix this.”

“Knock yourself out,” Kara said dryly.


***


Texplosion groaned in misery as he materialized in the med bay of Founder’s Creek hospital. Okay, so charging those mobsters head-on may not have been his brightest idea, but they usually never shot to kill a hero.

One of them had to have had bad aim.

“God, he’s bleeding all over the pod, get the healer!”

Healer.

At Founder’s Creek?

God, no, not her.

He blacked out, and woke to red eyes staring down at him. Tex hissed and scrambled away from her. The bitch smirked at him.

“Pro-tip: Try to avoid the bullets next time. If something is flying at you with high velocity, that is not your cue to hug it.”

Tex was generally fairly relaxed when it came to villains; unlike many of his teammates, he had no deep-seated hatred toward them. No childhood trauma. No cataclysmic event that made him don a cape. He fought them because it was the right thing to do – and, if he was being honest, because of the fangirls – and not out of some personal vendetta. What else was he gonna do with the power to blow shit up?

He never had a problem with reformed villains either. In fact, there were few people Tex did not get along with.

Her, though. He hated her.

Cinder Snow.

Dionaea.

Everyone had seen the footage of the infamous mad scientist saving the woman in front of him. And Dionaea, despite her supposed change of heart, had never renounced their association; never spoke a bad word about her creator. Everyone just welcomed her with open arms anyway, because she was a healer, and healers couldn’t possibly be evil.

Even Shade, that hateful psychopath who probably jerked himself off at night to the thought of maiming villains, was fooled by her act. Not that Shade was physically capable of jerking off these days. Magical accident, yeah, right. Dawn had told him what had led to their breakup.

Well, Tex was not fooled. He knew that a good power did not make a good person. And a villain created by Cinder Snow, who had murdered his best friend in all but body, could never be good.

“Fuck off,” he growled, and Dionaea tilted her head, her smirk widening.

“Oh, Tex, no need for such profuse gratitude. You may express it with a Thank You note or a gift basket or your Firstborn.” She struck a heroic pose. “It’s all in a day’s work.”

Lord, but he hated her.

He swung his legs off the gurney and looked around for his iconic Stetson.

A bright light flashed in front of his eyes and he blinked rapidly. Dionaea was happily tapping on her smartphone.

“What are you doing?” he said through gritted teeth.

“Taking your picture. Sending it to the Oxford dictionary people so they can put it right next to ingrate and wanker and bad friend.”

Was she delusional?

“I am not your friend,” he hissed.

“I’m aware. Alas, other people are not so lucky.” Her red eyes glowed and he realized with a start that she was angry. He’d never seen her angry before; she always maintained a carefree smile that only infuriated him more.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

She turned to leave as if she had nothing more to say.

Texplosion stared after her, his brows creased in a frown.


***


Diane wrapped her arms tightly around Kara, resting her forehead on her shoulder as shadows enveloped them.

Diane did not carpool. She commuted to work entirely via violating the laws of physics with the help of a certain heroine. Diane grinned at that thought, even as vertigo hit hard, as it always did.

She swayed a little and Kara steadied her.

Diane fell onto the lavish bed they shared at night and grinned up at her lover. “So, how’d it go?”

Kara shrugged noncommittally, prompting a sigh from Diane.

Letting PsyKick leave the hospital with minimal supervision was a risk; he could relapse and try to seek out a villain again. In fact, all the doctors had strongly advised her against this course of action, but then, they’d been shit at treating him while she was making progress, so Diane had overruled their objections.

He needed this.

It was painfully obvious that she had hit a wall with Stephen. The very thing that had allowed her to get through to him in the first place – pretending to be a villain and becoming the focal point of his programming – was now standing in the way of his recovery. He had a hard time relating to her as anything but his Mistress.

PsyKick needed someone else to relate to.

Someone he saw as an equal.

A friend.

Kara had informed her that he’d once been best friends with Texplosion, but as far as Diane knew, no one but her had ever visited him in recent months. Not even Constance. Hadn’t they been epically in love?

Diane wasn’t quite sure when she had become invested in his happiness.

She peered up at Kara, who’d been quite supportive of her efforts to rehabilitate Stephen. Diane nursed the hope that Kara might be the friend he needed.

But Kara didn’t actually like him. She only agreed to help him because she approved of Diane being interested in helping someone, something Diane had been quite happy to exploit to get Stephen into the mansion.

Apparently there had been bad blood between them at some point, the nature of which Kara refused to elaborate upon. She’d hoped that leaving them alone would give them time to bond.

Though if PsyKick had been BFFs with Texplosion, Diane could almost imagine it.

Or maybe not.

She just had a hard time picturing Stephen being anything like that jackass.


***


“Hey, Shade,” the hero drawled in a mocking lilt.

Shade ignored him, dispatching two more henchmen with ruthless efficiency.

“Magical accident, huh?”

Darkness whirled and her blades cut down one more.

“So I heard you have a craving for cock these days.”

The shadows flowed and Kara pressed her blade against his spine.

“Hey Texplosion, I heard you have a craving for my sword up your ass.”

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Author's Note: So, I don't want to be one of those authors who guilttrips their readers into reviews, buuuut... that's exactly what I'm doing! If you enjoy this story, please do consider leaving a little note; every comment I get makes me smile. It doesn't matter if it's positive or negative, I thrive on feedback and use it to improve myself. When I get almost no comments on a chapter, it makes me wonder if I did something horrifically wrong.