My Super Secret life…Villain-19.

*Before…

I shrug and smile. “I have my secrets it’s part of my charm.”

Link looks frustrated and amused at the same time. “It is dammit.”

I finish my coffee and I start getting everything on and finish it all with leather gloves those thin ones you see as the fancy type on TV as presents and stuff for women and black combat/hiking boots.

I’m moving around and getting a feel for it and Link looks at me and gives me a thumbs up while she’s yawning. “Looks good kinda paramilitary though.”

“I wanted lots of pockets.”

“I thought that you’d go all cape and cowl spooky like.”

I look at her as I’m actually fitting my gear in to all the pouches and pockets and slots. “No capes.”

*And Now…

Link is smiling and she looks at me. “So why like this aren’t like costumes and stuff all the rage up on the surface?’

I roll my eyes. “I’m not a white hat Link and I’m not part of big-gay-villain theatre I don’t want or need to run around looking like I fell out of a comic book or a cheesy cartoon.”

She’s smiling. “You sound like people here.”

I look at her. “Uhm…no, while I think that there’s some folks down here Link that are like pretty reasonable and that they’re surviving as best they can there’s just as many screwy things here as there are up there but I know things up there, it’s my world.”

She nods. “It’s never really been mine, but there’s lots of people that come down here to stay.”

I look at her. “I don’t mind it here really it’s just not my life Link.”

We share a look and then a light kiss and she nods. “You still need that help though, you’re alone up there and there’s not exactly a lot of people there to train with that don’t want you to sign up long term with them or like put you in jail.”

I nod because that’s pretty much true anyone that can train a meta is either big time criminal outfits, terrorists or the military or spooks from elsewhere here recruiting…even the Ark Angels and Halo have contracts for their trainees to sign.

Here at least it seems that in might be a commodity seeing as the whole place is a community of mutants of one kind or another.

We head off and she locks her place up and then she takes me in another direction and that’s more towards the walls were we parted ways with Shepherd but we actually don’t go to where they’re at exactly but to this area that looks pretty different, it’s built from things from the ship and it’s very close to a surface sort of design except it’s towers.

I’m going to assume they used pipes and they’re big ones but you actually can’t tell that by looking at then they’re very well designed and they’re so done and redone that you can’t tell that they’re recycled.

I can feel myself walking into these overlapping blankets of power of some kind and even Link seems to notice it and I look over to her.

“This is The Alcove; it’s where the most knowledgeable Meta’s in Freaktown have gathered here under truce to study our lives and genes and powers Rook, really just about anything about us.”

“So lots of overlapping energy things then?”

She nods. “It’s dangerous here so watch yourself.”

“Oh? Attitudes?”

“No experiments, training goofs and lots of other things but since some of the most powerful know Meta’s and unknown ones are here the mood is surprisingly decent.”

We walk in and she’s getting the usual response of smiles. Except on her own Fae-Meta grounds Link is pretty well liked here and me…well here it seem that I’m not even considered that much or I’m getting a few curious stares.

It’s a big place each tower’s about five hundred feet wide.

Yeah and it’s a pipe.

When you’re down here you miss that sometimes, the face it’s not a cave above us but metal and that the things that ran this thing ages ago were huge and that this whole ship is rumored and reliably rumored to be the size of a large continent.

But five hundred feet… that’s like easily eight or ten houses long in most places and this place is full of people and of course people that are doing things.

Sorry Ark Angels about your Halo Meta School Hogwarts already exists and there’s even that whole magic town all around it full of fantastic creatures.

And I should remember all of that stuff from that whole mythology, with there definitely being people to look out for here and dangerous politics too.

I take stock of myself especially since I’m getting looks in likely how I’m dressed as much as I’m a new person and there’s a few that I’m sure that is because I’m here with Link.

She seems though to be better though of here.

But there’s some that definitely seem like they’re taking notes of her being here and me being here with her.

“So this place is like The big deal here?”

“The Alcove is sort of the seat for the powers that be down here and they hold like a sort of council and things but it’s also like all of the things that make up Freaktown’s whole community structure and stuff.”

“So it’s city hall?”

“With less red tape and more powers as well as sort of being our university.”

“University?”

“We keep records and we study here too and even down here we need education and stuff to actually live and keep things working.”

“So you have degrees?”

“No, nothing like that…well sort of something like that we go by the guild system down here more than anything.”

We go and she sort of shows the guild wall with the patches for the trades and plain is apprentice and a white border is a journeyman and a copper border is tradesman and gold is a master of the craft.

It’s definitely interesting, and I’m seeing already another sort of clash from her to the surface.

There’s a whole lot of conservative assholes that won’t remotely ever respect this sort of education especially with it coming from mutie culture.

Link takes me through a few doors and then to a set of stairs and there’s a checkpoint with people there with a few people that look like they’re powered and definitely mutants as one has reddish skin and he’s very muscled in an abnormal way and the other is sheet white and she’s has eyes that look like a cat’s and she seems like she might have been Asian before her changes.

Both are wearing flash-patches for the guardsmen here.

The woman is giving me looks.

I look back and there’s some tension there. Not like she knows me or has a reason to dislike me but she seems like she’s a fighter type.

Sizing me up I think.

And then we’re going up spiral stairs so we’re in one of the pipes I think. It’s well made but still very basic. Scavenged goods welded into place but with decent care and someone really tried to have all of this at least be uniform as possible.

It’s one of the things that sort of speaks to me here in Freaktown.

Ever since I ran it’s been me and myself and my whole life is scavenge and steal really.

But I still am going home.

I made that home it’s mine and then there’s the whole thing with me and being rook and the neighborhood. That’s mine too.

Besides my cat must be freaking out now.

We stop on a floor and the pipe is big enough like I said to have floors and Link rings a doorbell and a woman comes to the door and I can feel the psi on her and she’s looking at me and she nods to both of us.

“Link, you have a friend?”

Link nods and smiles. “Yes Ma’am. This is Rook, Rook this is Rita she’s one of the elders here and a member of the council as well as being a powerful reader.”

“A reader of what?” I ask.

Rita looks at me. “Everything, I’m a scanner and I can feel things and intuit them as well have seen more than my fair share of things so I might be able to help you.”

“Help me with what?”

“Understanding your powers more.”

I look at her, stare and she’s looking back at me and it’s not a stare it’s something else, something softer but it’s steady and I can sort of feel something coming off of her….that she means me no harm…that she’s honest.
And I think that this is me doing it because her eyebrows just rose a little.

“I can help you with figuring out that too.”

I smile a little because this time her expression in wry and she looks like she was making a joke out of it.

“Okay…I think we can do this so how does it work?”

She moves and walks us over to a set of couches that are likely mismatched but have matching blanket covers over them and they are cute.

Okay yes cute, they have potted flowers on them and there’s cats playing and while I’m kind of sort of not a girl I kind of sort of am too.

Despite things, part of me has learned to sort of embrace these things.

And Rita despite being who and what she is comes across as a middle aged sort of aunt.

And she even has a glass dish with candies in it and she goes and makes us tea.

The tea is really third rate.

There’s so much here that just isn’t things that normals have or people like them have, people on the surface.

I sort of feel kind of guilty.

I mean I have better tea in my cupboard and I barely use it.

Rita smiles in a kind way. “We’d appreciate anything you’d bring Rook.”

“You weren’t in my head?”

“Not without permission and my powers don’t exactly work that way.”

“Then how did you?”

“I’m a reader and that includes facial expressions, I’m afraid my poor tea was written all over your face and well the rest I could guess from where you’re at.”

“Yeah so need to wear my mask more.”

I’m not too happy with myself over that whole thing. I need to have a better poker face really.

But Rita’s smile is somewhat comforting.
She settles across from me and she holds out her hand and I take it and she takes out a little rubber jet ball. “Now I’m going to start to read you and I’m going to feel out your powers and how they work and hopefully revealing that energy and where it comes from and goes to will help us define what you are and how you do the things that you do.”

I look at her. “So just play with the ball?”

“Just play with the ball Neo.”

I scrunch my face up, that’s such an old thing, ancient actually but somethings like that and Jedi things just never died out.

I reach out to the ball with my mind and I lift it and I start to move it too and then bounce it. Bouncing a ball with telekinetics is one thing but try to keep it up, try dribbling the ball and you discover a whole universe of all these micro-variables that are trying to work on the ball that you never think of until you’re actually trying to control it non-physically.

It’s not just grip but it’s feeling the spin the alterations of the spin as it bounces each time and it’s something that I have played with actually a lot.

I had found a few discarded golf balls and a few tennis balls when I was younger and I was on the streets and yeah you have to learn control but it’s also something to do.

Out there on the streets in hiding and cold and starving and afraid to go anywhere when you are wanted by the cops.

Rita feels odd, I can feel this sort of pull on my powers rather than an invasion and that’s actually better but it’s also risky for her.

That has to leave you open.

Brave lady.

There’s other test too that she has me do and there’s building a model with telekinetics and then doing one of those shifting puzzle cube things and even making a paper airplane and flying it but also controlling how it flies and for how long that I can keep that up.

The trick with that is that I can feel the way that the air behaves in relation to the paper and I can actually adjust the paper to react to that.

Okay that took some time, it also took me making flaps and using those and even charging the plane with my telekinetics to change the way the friction with the air behaves.

Forty six minutes is sort of the limit that I can do here with one through and the air flow in her quarters.

Okay it’s a little gratifying to see her staring at me in surprise.

And then it’s weights, and how much I can do and pressure I can exert on something.

It’s not all of my tricks but she’s not asking for things that I can do she’s just asking me to do things that she wants me to do.

My lift is actually up some I’m trembling with thirty eight pounds and that’s floating it at a crawl. Raw power wise I’m utter shit when it comes to telekinetics.

But it is more than I could do.

We finish and she’s looking at me.

“You’re a meta psi.”

“Meta psi?” Well that sort of makes sense given my body.

A meta psi is a mutant with psi abilities and often those come with having some mutations and also on occasion there’s other things that aren’t psionics that are meta abilities.

“Yes, first and foremost you’re a psi and you’re a telekinetic but you also have a strong psi-body field that’s the sort of psi-awareness and blocking that you have. It’s middling common actually and a defense against other psionics. It’s a sort of natural defense in psi-evolution against others that might be able to lash out at you with other non-physical psi attacks.”

I nod. ‘Okay that makes sense can I strengthen it?”

She nods. “With training and practice yes, but defensive powers are harder than most to evolve.”

I nod. “That makes sense since they’re passive.”

She smiles. “I can actually help you with that if you’re willing.”

I take a drink of the tea and make a face. “I’m willing once I can work some things out on the surface with my surface live and everything.”

Rita says. “Of course, there’s no rush right?”

I shrug. “Not yet but who knows?”

She takes a drink of her tea and looks at me. “Your meta-ability though plays directly into your psi powers.”

“My meta ability?”

“You’re able to sense and absorb and manipulate kinetic energy.”

“Oh…well doesn’t all telekinetic people do that?”

“No, most have no clue how to feel out how to change the relationship of the way things move and the relationship between that and physics and then even use the power in things like momentum…that just can’t do it but you my dear can do that and more I think.”

“So that means?”

“That means that your facility in tee-kay is based largely on that, you don’t just release force but you can control it and shape those forces. It’s why you can do all of those things that you can do.”

“Oh…that too makes a whole lot of sense.”

My head’s already running with the possibilities, I mean I’d been going on the assumption I was just a TK psionic but this means a whole lot more….hugely more.

I take a breath and lean back. “So anything else?”

“You’re still in stage two of mutation though it’s slowed right now to a crawl.”

Oh…oh well that’s not good.

Stage one is when you first develop power, it’s even hidden in most parts and then there’s stage two when you are going through physical changes as your powers manifest…this is basically saying I’m still mutating.

“So will I become a biological female?”

“No, that’s not where I think things are heading for you. I think that you’re going to become something else somewhere in the middle of things at least sexually.”

“So can you tell where my mutations are going to be heading towards?”

“No right now it’s far too slow for me to have any sort of a read on it. If anything you’re even pretty static.”

“Static?”

“Slower, I don’t think you’ll be changing a whole lot anytime soon.”

“Oh.”

“Including aging Rook, you might be this way for quite a while; you might even age slower than other people do.”

“Like Link?”

“Link’s is related to her healing factor actually which many of the Fae meta’s seem to have.”

That’s actually good to know; I have a feeling I did less than ingratiate myself to the ones that don’t like Link. It might take some doing to fight one of them if it ever comes to that.

I look at Rita. “Is there anything else?”

She shakes her head. “No, not really or rather not at this time.”

I take a breath and I sit back.

“So what do I owe you?”

“Nothing.”

I look at her. “Nothing?”

“Nothing Rook, I do this for people like us because knowing is so very, very important.”

“Hence valuable.”

Rita smiles and she gets up. “For me this is a thing I do for free, it’s a spiritual thing for me even. It helps the meta community for as many of us to know what we can do and what we can’t do.”

We’re looking at each other and she’s just so open…and dammit if I don’t actually believe her too.

I shake my head to clear it.

“Well thank you then I’ll try and pay it forwards.”

“That’s a good idea, but I wouldn’t mind some tea if you happen to bring some the next time that you’re down here.”

I smile at that. “Deal then, I will at least bring some tea.”

I look around and Link’s not there but I find her outside talking to Shepherd about something and she looks at me and she smiles. “How’d it go?”

“Fine, sort of disappointing.”

She tilts her head. “Disappointing?”

“Apparently I’m still mutating and it’s super slow now that it’s started and I’m not going to become a girl anytime soon.”

Shepard looks at me but doesn’t say anything.

It’s nice that some folks have manners about all of this.

Link however asks. “You want to be a girl?”

“I’m a good deal there already actually going all the way would make my life easier.”

Link says. “Or not, it’s no picnic being a girl.”

I look at her. “Yeah true but it’d go a long way in my life to actually have something up top.”

She nods. “I can sort of see that, and you look good while stuffed.”

I shrug and pull my hood back up but leave my mask where it is. Link looks at me. “Anything else interesting?”

“Actually yes and lots to think about and to train with and for.”

Shepherd looks at me. “Come train with us.”

“I do my powers training alone mostly.”

“You’re Rook out of The Brickworks, you’ve been fighting and you have been lucky so far honestly. Come and guest with us for a while and we can show you some actual fighting.”

I look at him and it’s really tempting to take him up on his offer but... “Sorry I can’t right now I have a cat at home that needs me and I’ve been gone way too long plus I have other obligations.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure; actually I will be headed out today.”

Link asks. “Now?”

Okay she sounds disappointed and I kind of like that she sounds disappointed.

“Yeah I think that’d be best but if you two want to come with me then maybe we can figure something out for me getting things to you in the way of supplies.”

Shepherd nods and doesn’t push me. “I’ll escort you to where you can find your way out and we’ll appreciate the help too.”

We go together with Link to get my things and she and I have a few seriously pleasurable moments together while Shepherd goes off to find us a ride or so he says and after that and getting cleaned up we head down to meet him at the base of her blockhouse and he has a heavy truck and we get is and we start to head out which takes a while for the crowds in the streets and then we’re out of there and we’re off to the outside.

Well not the outside but outside of Freaktown and then there’s like all the rest of this place here underground.

There’s a lot of looks there, mixes of hope and despair and those that have these looks of envy and more.

I guess all of the gates have these shanty towns here and it’s not just anthros or meta’s but everyone that can’t make it up on the surface, can’t even make it on the streets there or had to leave them because their desperate.

Or their loved ones are desperate…I think I see families here unlike mine.

Parents that gave everything to stay with their child even when they became something they didn’t understand.

It’s a quiet drive and we’re still keeping watch the entire time while we’re driving through the place. It might be huge here and there might be large sections where there’s no light between the ship sources that are making light…and that’s where you find people living and huddled or using them as way-stations until they get to the gates of Freaktown.

We’re staying on guard because there’s dangers here.

Gangs and raiders and sometimes who knows what might take a run at us.

Shepherd doesn’t seem too worried though even is all of his holsters are unfastened.

I suppose you’re down here long enough.

Then we get to the other place where I have to wear the hood and that’s not fun but I can get why.

I’m an ally, sure Link and I have been lovers but that’s not enough for them not to be cautious.

And it’s a long drive up and out of there and I do recognize the tunnel that she and I came in through when the hood comes off.

Shepherd parks.

He’s not going outside the tunnel unless he has to.

I don’t blame him that’s dangerous unless there’s enough gain.

And I have a special phone number to call and they’ll get ahold of me at a place we agreed on to meet at and that’s the old carpet factory on Fontaine road. That’s in my district but out in the industrial side of things and yet it’s on the older edges of that area and it’s been closed and used as a general squat for ages now.

Link’s looking at me and she takes my hands.

“I’m going to miss you Rook.”

“I’ll miss you too, we had a good time.”

She’s looking at me. “Just a good time?”

I know what she wants but that’s just going to lead to us getting involved in things and she has a lot of things that I’m not sure that I want to get involved with.

“More than that but I’m not ready or willing to walk out on my life here Link, I’ve worked my ass off to get where I’m at right now.”

She sighs. “Yeah I know it’s just we were really good together.”

“We’re still good together we’re just not going to be together all the time y’know. I’ll be back, I’ll be around.”

She steps in and we kiss and we kiss and it’s something pretty damned special too with a whole lot of passion there and promises too.

A kiss with a promise to miss you is a powerful thing.

I break the kiss and I do my telekinetic force ball roller blades and I slide backwards and pull my mask down and then I spin and turn and I’m out of the tunnels and onto the pavement and headed for home as fast as I can skate.

Knowing what I know now I can feel the difference in the powers, that I’m making energy I actually tap all of the time and I can manipulate that power too…I feed that motion of the skates and the velocity and then my skate motion and I’m picking up speed and then I get to a city bus and I bleed off power from the bus and I whip out and through the traffic.

Yes, yes, yes this is more like it, much more like it.

I have to be going at least ninety kilometers per hour now and I think that’s the limit right now of what I’m doing but it’s enough…on two feet it’s plenty enough and I make my way back into my own neighborhood just past dark and I’m not there on my streets ten minutes when I hear a woman crying out in pain and there’s sobbing as A guy’s there in a fairly pricey leather jacket and nice clothes yelling at three teenaged girls.

“You fuckin owe my money bitches! I gave you this alley so you could suck and fuck good off these guys here at the plant.”

There’s a girl on the ground that’s the one crying and the one that’s been beaten and she’s saying. “They’re not buying there’s like barely anyone working Jack, it’s not our fault!”

He backhands her again and she reels and she’s sobbing.

I come in fast and I kick him as I’m sliding in…right in his chest and I release all my force through that foot and that brings me to a sudden halt.

Jack…not so much.

He goes a dozen feet into the alley wall and he screams in shock and pain and surprise and I drop my stuff and reach behind me and I swing the spiked mace into his hand as it was reaching for something.

A pistol falls out.

He’s screaming and holding his fairly mangled hand and I swing again right down at the knee of the hand that I hurt because it’s harder for him to defend and there’s a great crunch.

Ooooh this is a really effective weapon, seriously I’ve never really used this before.

I pull the gun into my hand and switch the safety on and I put it in a pocket.

He’s screaming. “You! You fucking freak what gives you the right to assault me!”

“You assaulted them; I just assumed it was somehow suddenly okay.”

“Don’t worry I won’t kill you Jack, but you can spread the message that I’m back.”

He tries to defend the other knee but he only has one good hand to do it with and that’s what I hit and he’s howling in pain and he’s shitting himself and I spin the mace with my fingers a few times building energy up and kinetics.

“No more pimps, the girls can work here however the fuck that they want to but no more pimps…no more Jacks.”

I don’t do the knee instead I shatter the pavement beside him with a blow that makes a yard wide set of cracks in the pavement and he’s freaking out and curled up and cowering.

I take his wallet, his drugs, and his phone and car keys.

I dial 911. “Hello police this is Rook, there’s a girl beating pimp over on the garbage pick-up alley beside Carter Mufflers. He’ll need an ambulance and he had a gun too.”

I take all of his cash the entire wad and I take his driver’s license too and the rest the gun and the drugs and the phone I toss into his car along with the keys and I lock everything.

I leave skating off towards Jack’s address on his license.

There’s a smile on my face under the mask.