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.

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Diane hummed happily, skipping past Amelia’s lab, then did a double take followed by a quick backtrack. Amelia, her palm crackling with ice crystals, was currently in the process of traumatizing the laws of thermodynamics, dragging the Nernst-Simon statement kicking and screaming out in the open to feed it to the metaphorical sharks.

Amelia also had actual sharks, augmented with lasers, but she kept those in another lair.

Diane raised her eyebrows until they almost disappeared in her hairline, crossing her arms to alleviate the freezing cold.

“Hey, Amelia! I’m going out.”

The ice beam abruptly cut off, and she turned to face Diane, reaching up to remove her goggles. She stared for an uncomfortably long moment.

“Again?”

Diane shrugged and smiled blithely. She’d been quite vague about her late night activities but then Amelia was her friend, not her jailer. She didn’t really care all that much what Diane got up to as long as she didn’t draw attention to their location.

Still, she’d been a little nosier lately and Diane wondered why. There could be a nuclear war raging outside and it would not draw Amelia’s attention from her research.

The scientist in question pursed her lips, seeming to weigh her words, which was just beyond strange. Diane had thought Amelia’s internal word filter, much like her own, was irreparably broken.

“Be careful,” she said quietly and Diane drew back, startled. She had never heard Amelia use such a solemn tone of voice before.

“What are you talking about?”

“Heroes like him make for poor pets. They do not bend. They break.” Amelia’s dark eyes met hers. “And they take everyone in the vicinity down with them.”


***


Shade frowned as the criminal slumped to the floor on his second hit.

It shouldn’t have taken two hits.

Something was extremely off, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on what. As a martial artist he knew his body’s strengths and limits extremely well, and they weren’t as they should be. His attacks didn’t land quite right, and he was tiring more easily. If it wasn’t for his newly acquired healing factor, he would have suspected he was coming down with something.

Shade teleported to his favorite vantage point atop a skyscraper just a little out of the way of the city’s center, still pondering his diminished strength as he gazed out at the skyline. Truthfully, it wasn’t all that surprising – he wasn’t training obsessively anymore, instead opting to spend more time with a certain villainess. Even when he did train, he didn’t feel that compulsion to keep training until his muscles screamed in protest so that he could fall into bed in both physical and mental exhaustion. Now that he thought about it, he’d taken up his insane training regimen to combat his insomnia – or rather, to combat the dark thoughts and impulses that would come to him when lying in bed alone with his thoughts.

Shade hummed thoughtfully. He’d always known the way he lived his life wasn’t an ideal one, but he hadn’t realized just how downright depressing it was. No friends, no social life, just endless days consisting of sleep, food, training and hunting criminals, the monotony periodically broken by his monthly corporate meeting when he was reminded that he was Ian and not just Shade. Looking back on it with a slightly different perspective, it was unsettling.

My only friend is a villainous sexy plant.

He should do something about that.

In the distance a familiar purple flash illuminated the night. His long dormant social skills stirred, reminding him with some help from his conscience that he’d blown Amethyst off like a complete and utter asshole.

Shadows gathered around his feet.

If he was going to turn his life around and make some friends, he might as well start now.

He materialized in the rough proximity of where the light had originated, only to immediately blink five feet to the right to dodge the body hurling toward him. The costumed villainess hit the nearby wall, leaving cracks in the bricks. Her knees hit the floor and she swayed dangerously, clearly on the verge of losing consciousness.

A purple arc of light hit her square in the chest, and she fell over, yet the barrage of attacks did not let up, lighting up the night again and again until the pavement around the villainess’ still form had all but crumbled.

“Being a little rough, aren’t you?” Shade drawled, frowning at Amethyst Star.

The light dimmed and she turned toward him with a motion that was unsettlingly slow. “You’re one to talk. How many have you put in the hospital this week?”

Shade did have a tendency to break an awful lot of bones. But then, he also didn’t have the power to subdue people with less violence. “Point. But she’s down.”

“Yes, well…” Amethyst exhaled, blowing a stray strand of long hair from her face. “Just making sure she stays down. Here to give me lectures on style, Shade?”

He fidgeted, not quite sure how to disarm her hostility. Goddammit, hadn’t he been charming once? Long, long ago? “I came to… apologize.”

Amethyst tilted her head, squinting at him. “For what? Teleporting away while I was pouring my heart out?”

“Yes. That.”

She shrugged and turned away, fiddling with an electronic device strapped to her wrist, no doubt alerting the police to the location of her capture. “Whatever, Shade, it’s how you end all your conversations; I shouldn’t have expected any different.”

He bristled at the implication. True, he did exit stage left like that a lot, but he wasn’t quite so inconsiderate as to do it mid-conversation. Well, with the exception of the Captain whom he left like that more often than not when he reached his threshold for attempted fistbumps.

Shade cleared his throat. Okay. He could fix this. “I hear congratulations are in order.”

Her trial had come and gone, and she’d been cleared of all charges, deemed to have acted under duress. Despite the media firestorm, at least the law was still firmly on the side of heroes.

The corners of her mouth tightened and she said nothing, just stepping toward the unconscious body to roughly haul her up and cuff her with energy-suppressants.

“I sense you’re not happy,” he said, giving up on this being pleasantly polite business and letting his sardonic nature bleed through.

“Well, aren’t you a psychologist all of the sudden,” she bit back, turning toward him and crossing her arms.

“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”

“Yes, well, I’m all out of bright and bubbly. What do you want, Shade?”

He exhaled. “Look, I’m just here to tell you that I’m sorry. Sorry for disappearing when you wanted someone to talk to, sorry for the shit you have to put up with, sorry that I don’t know how to help.”

She blinked rapidly, swaying slightly.

“Oh my god, you’re emoting! I just lost twenty bucks to Captain Dudebro.”

“…what.”

The heroine looked abashed, like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “There’s… there’s this betting pool in the E. On whether or not you’re secretly a robot.”

“I’m repeating myself, but what.”

And suddenly Amethyst was giggling, almost like her old self. “It’s just… you’re usually so… like you don’t understand this thing we humans call ee-mo-shun.”


***


“I just thought it’d be, you know, different.” Amethyst drew her knees up to her chest, gazing out at the city stretching out before them.

“Different how?”

“Like, once I was acquitted, everything would go back to normal. That people would love me again.” She smiled sadly. “Pretty stupid, huh?”

“No. Just hopeful.”

She rested her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes. “I can’t stand it, listening to what they say. I have worked so hard, sacrificed so much, and this is how they repay me.”

Shade shifted uncomfortably, gently placing a hand on her hair. “You can’t be a hero for someone else’s approval. You just have to do the right thing no matter what.”

“I know,” she said wistfully. “It just gets so hard sometimes…”


***


Amelia’s ominous warning echoed in Diane’s mind as she pressed her back against the wall, burying her hand in her lover’s coal black hair. Shade was on his knees in front of her, wearing a navy blue corset around his surprisingly slim waist, pressing his lips to her heated sex and lovingly kissing her most intimate part. She watched as he worshipped her body as he often did, far more focused on her pleasure than his own.

They break.

Amelia had refused to elaborate, wordlessly returning to her experiment as if she’d said everything that needed to be said. When Diane had tried to press the subject, the mad scientist had grown annoyed, snapping that she was distracting her from important research.

Diane had always been free with her affection, pursuing relationships with whoever struck her fancy. It had been insinuated that she was a mistake half the population of her home town lined up to make and the other half lined up to repeat. Diane had laughed at such gossip and then proceeded to live up to her reputation once she ran away from that little backwater hick town.

Pleasure was fleeting and life even more so. Man, woman, it did not matter to her. She was careful not to get attached to anyone – getting attached meant that a goodbye would hurt. And the goodbye was inevitable.

But despite not caring for them as they sometimes wished she would, she prided herself on leaving her lovers better off than she found them. True, she greedily took all the pleasure they could give her and then moved on, but she gave as good as she got, loosening their inhibitions and leaving them with fond memories of a wild ride.

Their names and faces blurred together in her mind, half-remembered and mostly forgotten.

She didn’t think she’d ever forget him, though.

“Kara,” she gasped breathlessly and he gazed up at her with adoration written plainly in his stunning eyes.

Am I breaking you?