The Paths Not Taken
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Of Heroes And Villains:
The Paths Not Taken
By Minikisa
There are moments that change a life forever. And within those moments, heroes and villains alike are born of choice.
Paragon City.
A shining monument to humanity’s greatest achievements.
Capitol of the spandex industry.
And a huge pain in the ass to live in if you didn’t have laser beams shooting out of various orifices.
The window of the coffee shop shattered as a villain was thrown through it, crashing into one of the tables. Wood splintered and glass shards rained down upon the customers who, used to catastrophe as they were, immediately took appropriate action: cowering beneath the tables. Some, more pro-active than others, started running and screaming.
The villain growled menacingly, his palms crackling with freaky mutant magic or whatever.
“Now don’t make me throw you through another window,” said Captain Patriot. “Because I will. Collateral damage is fun, who cares about the civilians, LOL.”
“He did not say lol,” Elaine interrupted, lips curved into an amused smile.
“Would you let me tell the story? And stop smirking. It was deeply traumatic.”
Elaine raised her hands in a pacifying gesture, and let Jeffrey finish his daring tale of narrowly avoiding danger and skillfully dodging every opportunity for marginal bravery. Reading between the lines it was evident he’d been caught in a small skirmish without serious injuries, but he was hyperventilating nonetheless.
“…and that’s why I’m late. Ugh. I can’t wait to get out of here.”
Paragon was an acquired taste. The city was so used to doomsday scenarios that every single building had elaborate evacuation plans that could be put into motion within seconds. To stroll down its streets was to flirt with excitement and danger – without having to put out with mortal peril. Heroes kept casualties remarkably low.
Well, at least they used to.
She lightly patted Jeffrey’s hand and held out her – as of yet untouched – cup of coffee as a peace offering. She’d make do without caffeine, somehow. And if not, there would always be a hero at hand to stop her addiction-fueled rampage.
“Well, only two more exams to go and you just might.” She lightly tapped the book lying forgotten on the table, their study session somewhat removed from its purpose to dedicate time to Jeff’s epic tale of woe.
He squinted at her. “And you won’t?”
Elaine shrugged and smiled. “I like it here.”
When she’d moved here for college, it had taken her all of a day to fall deeply in love with the city of heroes. Even now, with time, experience and rising villains slowly eroding its shine, she could not imagine going back to living elsewhere.
Yes, it put her in danger of facing the worst of humanity.
But it also brought her close to the very best.
Elaine, being of the rather average persuasion, was neither. But she could aspire.
“Seriously though, we should get started on this sometime this afternoon lest we both end up failing miserably and are forced to become the Dominatrix’ minions to make ends meet. And let’s face it, while I would rock that uniform, you definitely wouldn’t.” Jeff made a lewd gesture at her but grinned nonetheless. Her phone started ringing. “…right after this.”
Elaine glanced at the caller ID, and then hung up, laying the phone back on the table.
“Never mind.”
It rang again.
Elaine sighed, resigned, and picked it up, waving vaguely at Jeff as she excused herself to the kitchen for some measure of privacy.
“Hello, Elaine.” The voice was low and subdued, in stark contrast to the gregarious personality it belonged to.
“John.” Elaine carefully modulated her voice to give it just the right inflection. Why hello there, stranger who is calling my phone, you have not been occupying my thoughts at all, so much so that your continued existence completely slipped my mind until you, just now, reminded me of it.
At least, that’s what she hoped it conveyed. Considering her thoughts were spiraling into a hyperactive frenzy, analyzing all the reasons he might be calling her, she cared about his existence a little more than that. Maybe.
The last time she’d seen him, he’d been fighting a villain on national TV, with Miss Chief at his side.
The last time she’d actually seen him in person, he’d been apologetically trying to explain just why Elaine had caught him in bed with Miss Chief.
Elaine admired superheroes greatly. To make friends with one had been a dream come true. She’d gotten to know him as a person, a brave, wonderful person – whom she could never fully understand because she did not share his lifestyle.
Elaine still admired superheroes.
But she’d decided that she would admire them from afar.
Elaine blinked when she realized he hadn’t interrupted her musings. The only thing she heard was tense silence crackling in her ear.
“What’s up? Or did you just call to hear my angelic voice?”
“…Wildfire broke out of prison this morning.”
She closed her eyes, her mouth suddenly very dry. “And that is relevant to my interests because…?” Please don’t say, please don’t say it.
“She’ll probably come after you.” The words seemed to have been extracted from him with tweezers, dragged reluctantly into the open.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Elaine’s voice was cold enough to put John’s ice blasts to shame.
Being the love interest of a major hero marked a person for constant kidnapping attempts by archnemesis, lesser archnemeses and, really, just any villain who wanted to get Freeze Flash’s attention. Elaine had learned far more about restraints, ropes and knots than she ever cared to know. On the plus side, she now had the expertise to have an exciting career as a domme if she were so inclined.
“We were still together when I defeated her,” John mumbled, sounding even more apologetic.
“Does this woman not fact check?!”
“Well…”
Stupid question, really. Wildfire was known for one thing and one thing only: being hot. The lab that had turned her into a living weapon had not seen fit to equip her with anything resembling higher thought processes. It was meant to make her docile and easy to control, but instead it created a very destructive idiot with poor impulse control. As her creators had found out when she had burned the lab down.
And she held a very special grudge against Freeze Flash.
John cleared his throat. “If you could come in for protective custody until she’s caught, that would be great. It won’t take long,” he rushed to add. “You know she has all subtlety of, well, a raging inferno. We’ll find her soon.”
The thought of going to The Wardens’ headquarter made Elaine’s stomach twist with anxiety.
They had been her friends – or so she’d thought.
It turned out that most superheroes were convinced that relationships with civilians were simply doomed from the start. They’d been expecting things to fall apart, and while they had been very friendly to Elaine, they, unlike her, had never gotten attached. Or at least gotten less attached than they were to their teammate Miss Chief, who had joined a year after Elaine had become a part of John’s – and The Wardens’ – life.
“Yeah,” she said in a dull voice. “Sure. I’ll be right over.”
As mortifying as this was shaping up to be, Elaine was neither dumb nor suicidal enough to turn down the protection she apparently needed.
She hung up without another word, and gazed over her shoulder at Jeff.
Building a new social circle was hard even when the old one didn’t keep casting its shadow over her.
Elaine slung her bag over her shoulder, adjusting the strap, and fell into a brisk walk. She’d decided going home would be too much of a risk; she could probably ask one of the Wardens to get her clothes and whatever else she might need. The thought of making Miss Chief play fetch brought a brief smile to her face, before she admonished herself for being petty.
The most frustrating part about being betrayed by people who spent their days rescuing kittens and orphans from burning buildings was that she couldn’t even properly rant about what awful people they were. Not even in her own head.
She sighed, dejected, and focused on the path ahead as she made her way toward the docks. It was a chilly autumn day, yet a warm breeze made her skin tingle pleasantly.
Too warm.
Elaine froze for a fraction of a second, then accelerated her pace. She just had to get to the hidden teleportation pad to gain entrance to the headquarters; they were sprinkled all over the city and this one was closest. Only a few hundred more feet and she’d be fine.
The narrow alley ahead of her caught fire, blocking her path.
Elaine whirled around, but another thin line of fire had flickered to life behind her.
Trapped.
Her knuckles briefly turned white as she clutched her bag, but then she forced herself to relax. She exhaled. She straightened her back. And then she spoke.
“You’ve got the wrong girl, Wildfire.”
A coquettish giggle was her only answer as a costumed woman casually stepped through the flames, tossing her long blond hair. She was smiling wildly.
“No, I think I have you, like, exactly where I want you.”
“He cheated on me,” Elaine said flatly.
Wildfire blinked, taken aback. Then her demeanor shifted instantly. “Oh, honey.”
“Yeah.”
“Men are jerks,” Wildfire said sympathetically.
Elaine nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak as the villainess wrapped an arm around her shoulder and squeezed.
“There, there. Did you dump him?”
“I did.”
“Good for you.”
“Yeah.” She tried to summon tears, which, thanks to the smoke burning in her eyes, came surprisingly easily. “He won’t come for me.”
Wildfire patted her cheek. “Oh, honey.” She smiled. “Nice try. Like a hero would just leave you to die.”
Elaine exhaled, the tears drying as quickly as they’d appeared. “Can’t blame me for trying.” And then she kicked Wildfire’s shin and swept her leg, unbalancing the villainess. Then Elaine, dropping her bag and already stripping out of her jacket, ran toward the fire. The barrier was thin, thin enough to run through, and whatever minor burns she might sustain were surely preferable to whatever notoriously unstable Wildfire might do in a fit of rage.
She covered her mouth and eyes with her jacket and jumped.
Flames licked at her skin, and she definitely smelled burned hair – but then it was gone and she was in the clear. The sleeves of her coat were on fire so she discarded it, and broke into a sprint.
A tremor ran down her spine and she stumbled, her vision going white.
Her hands closed around the alien device, the metal cracking under her considerable strength. One of the insectoid soldier screeched at her in a language she did not know. Her only response was a cold smile, baring her teeth. She was certain that destroying the beacon would cut off the steady stream of reinforcement so she tightened her grip until sparks flew. A tremor ran down her spine.
Elaine blinked, disoriented, and shook her head. She was lying on the pavement, her knees scraped open, and she scrambled to get back up. The click of high heels behind her heralded Wildfire’s approach, she had to get away, it was only a few hundred feet to the base entrance, she just had to –
She blacked out.
There was something under her skin. Itching. No, sizzling.
Elaine groaned softly, bracing herself for pain.
There was none.
In fact, she felt amazing.
She pushed herself up, her green eyes unfocused as she stared at her hands. Gloves. White gloves. She was wearing white gloves.
Elaine was fairly certain she didn’t even own white gloves.
She sat back on her knees, absently noticing that they didn’t hurt anymore, and blinked rapidly as she surveyed her surroundings. Her brain appeared to have thrown its hands up and given up on this processing things business, because it took quite some time for the sight to sink in.
The docks. Or what was left of them. Elaine was kneeling in the middle of a smoking crater.
Her lips parted.
Had Wildfire done this?
But how had Elaine survived?
She pushed herself to stand up, incredulously noting the knee-high combat boots. Something brushed the back of her elbow and she turned her head.
Cape.
Elaine was wearing a cape.
Finally, her brain formulated a highly sophisticated response to her situation.
What.
Suddenly the air was filled with the hum of rocket boots and the high-pitched whine of laser cannons being charged. Elaine craned her neck, gazing up at the armored PPD descending all around the crater. The heavy division of the Paragon Police Department wore highly advanced combat armor, giving each of them firepower and durability surpassing that of tanks. These squads were deployed only for the most dangerous of villains, Threat Level Six and up.
No doubt the explosion had drawn their attention.
Elaine tentatively took a step toward them, but then she realized they were aiming their cannons at her.
“Event Horizon,” snarled a heavily distorted voice from beneath a helmet. “You are under arrest for murder.”
Author's Note: And thus begins the third adventure Of Heroes And Villains =D To all my new readers, welcome! To all my faithful readers, welcome back! While I strive to make my stories as self-contained as possible, if you have not read the previous stories in this series, I strongly recommend it, else many of the characters might lack critical context. Remember that comments, speculation and reviews feed the muse, and I hope you all enjoy the tale I have in store for you!
The Paths Not Taken Chapter 2
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Of Heroes And Villains:
The Paths Not Taken
By Minikisa
There are moments that change a life forever. And within those moments, heroes and villains alike are born of choice.
Officer Pearson did his best to keep his arm steady as he aimed it at the perfect Ten. His visor glinted, masking his widened eyes. He and his squad had faced their share of threats, but this was above their pay grade. Far above.
The red-haired woman was standing frozen in the midst of a crater that had blown half the docks away, staring at him. She looked impossibly young and innocent, but this was the woman who had one of the highest hero kill counts of all existing villains. Pearson had been called in to clean up the massacre at The Asylum; he knew exactly what she was capable of.
She raised her hands, and Pearson tensed for an attack. He could feel faint panic over the mental communication link that made their squadron so effective, which was never a good sign. The comm link made them vulnerable to feedback loops, which was why emotions had to be kept in check.
One of his men lost his nerve and discharged his cannon.
Event Horizon yelped, a ridiculously high-pitched and girlish sound that had no business coming from a mass murderer, and snapped her arms up.
The ARES Mk. 2 arsenal integrated into their armor was one of the most sophisticated weapon systems known to humankind, augmented with cutting edge technology from Reynolds Industries’ science division. A single plasma discharge could level a building and burn through the hull of a tank.
The red bolt simply dissipated when it hit Event Horizon.
She didn’t even appear to notice, still holding her arms up as if bracing for impact.
Doomed.
They were all beyond doomed.
Event Horizon slowly lowered her hands, blinking up at them. Then she took a deep breath, Pearson already mentally composing his last words, and then she spoke, her voice ringing loud and clear.
“I surrender!”
Pearson watched the mass murderer through the one-way glass. She was screwing up her pert nose and tracing the outlines of a faint scar over her right eye, frowning at her reflection as if she’d never seen it before.
He gazed once more at the power suppressor cuffs around her wrists, just to make sure that they were still there. Unbeknownst to her, there had been a great and ferocious mental battle over who should be the one to cuff her, every one of them suspecting a trap and not wanting to go near her. But no, she had been silently cooperative as they teleported to the most secure police precinct in Paragon.
But there was a calculating gleam in her eyes that Pearson did not like at all. She was scrutinizing everyone and everything with far too much intensity.
He straightened his back and then pushed open the door. She looked up at the whirring sound of his armored boots stomping toward her and dropped her hand, leaning back against the chair as he sat down opposite of the small desk between them.
Sitting in full heavy armor was deeply uncomfortable, but meeting her dressed in uniform armed with nothing but his gun would have felt even worse.
For a long moment silence reigned.
Event Horizon tilted her head but said nothing. He wasn’t quite sure what game the monstrously powerful fallen hero was playing, but he would not play along.
Officer Pearson laid down a thick file on the table. “Ms. Elaine Evans.” It wasn’t a question; let her know that they had figured out her secret identity. His sharp gaze snapped up – he had taken off the helmet just so he could use his patented Glare on her. “Correct?”
She sighed. “Apparently.”
His lips thinned, and he opened the folder. “You’ve been linked to 49 counts of –“
“I want a lawyer.”
“… murder and 74 counts of manslaughter.”
“Lawyer,” she repeated.
“Do you have one?” he snapped.
“No. But I’m not obligated to talk to you until I’ve had legal counsel.”
“And who would willingly defend you, Event Horizon?”
She tilted her head. “Is this some sort of dystopian nightmare world where the rule of law no longer exists?”
“…no.”
“Did aliens take over the world and pass a number of new laws stripping us all of our basic human rights whilst possibly also legalizing certain probing endeavors?”
“No.”
“So you are in fact obligated to get me a lawyer when I ask for one.”
Pearson ground his teeth.
She smiled sweetly.
Elaine closed her eyes, taking deep and even breaths.
She was calm. Serene. Definitely not freaking out in any way, shape or form.
Her lungs begged her for just a little hyperventilation, but she shut that nonsense right down. There would be time for that later. For now, she had to think rationally, survive, and find out what the hell was going on.
She opened her eyes, her gaze immediately wandering to the mirror. A familiar face gazed back, and yet it was wrong. There were scars on the right side of her face, faint and almost healed, but still visible. She tilted her head, sweeping back her messy red hair to reveal her neck, which had similar scar tissue. She wondered just how far down her body it extended.
Elaine tentatively tugged at her white glove, squeezing it past the power suppressors, and hissed in a sharp breath.
The burn marks covered her entire right arm, and did not heal as neatly as the ones on her face. Instantly she thought of Wildfire, swallowing heavily. She had refused to entertain the notion, but… was this her future?
49 counts of murder and 74 counts of manslaughter.
Jane stopped in front of the one-way mirror, and sighed. Then she futilely combed her hair with her fingers, knowing that it was a fruitless endeavor. No matter how many cans of hairspray fell victim to her quest of making her hair as voluminous as possible, it never did quite hide her small, red horns.
Truly, the most useless mutation there ever was.
She couldn’t even impale anyone with them, no matter how tempted she was whenever she got called the devil’s advocate.
Though with this client, she might actually earn her nickname.
The lawyer sighed and pushed open the door to the interrogation room.
“Ms. Evans,” she said primly, sitting down in front of her. She could feel the fallen heroine’s gaze on her, but did not look up, adjusting her glasses before neatly adjusting her shabby briefcase to stand just right. “My name is Jane Tanaka and I’m the lawyer you requ-“
“What year is this?”
Jane glanced up, meeting green eyes staring at her with intensity. “Come again?”
“What year is this?” she repeated.
Jane sighed. “2014. And if I may say so preemptively, if you’re hoping to plead innocent on account of time travel shenanigans, your chances are slim.”
Event Horizon leaned back in her chair and exhaled in what appeared to be relief.
“Not time travel, no.” Then she peered at Jane, the scrutiny back in her gaze. “Okay. So I think there’s some sort of Alternate Universe thing going on.”
“Is there?” Jane said in a dry voice.
Event Horizon frowned, then pressed on, “I just woke up in that crater. I have no idea who Event Horizon is, or what exactly she has done. I’m just… I’m just an average girl. I never had any powers.”
Silence reigned.
Jane lifted her glasses to rub the bridge of her nose.
“There’s legal precedent for this, right?” Event Horizon sounded pitifully hopeful.
“You could say that.” Jane barely kept the sarcasm out of her voice. Barely. “In that almost every single one of my clients attempts to go for that defense. Well, not every. It’s fairly evenly split between ‘My evil counterpart from an alternate universe did it’ and ‘A psychic made me do it’. And I will tell you what I tell them – no judge will buy it.”
Event Horizon’s lips parted in a silent oh.
“If what you say is true, then all you have to do is remain in custody. It should only be a matter of time until the real,” Jane mentally inserted air quotes, “Event Horizon shows herself in public.”
“I…” She squirmed in her seat. “I’m in her body. I think. And she might be in mine, back home…” She trailed off, eyes widening in horror.
“Of course. So there’ll be no proof of your claim forthcoming.”
Her brows furrowed.
“I’d let a psychic read –“
“Your mind? Another psychic could just as easily have modified your memories beforehand.”
The frown deepened.
“But it’s true.”
“Yes. A wonderfully plausible claim that is almost impossible to prove or disprove conclusively, which is why using that defense is all but an admission of guilt.”
And then Event Horizon laughed.
It was the giddy hysterical laughter of someone about to have a nervous breakdown.
“So what you’re saying is… people use that plea so often that judges instinctively dismiss it – because it’s so reasonable. Right. Okay.”
Her fist came down on the table and a pulse wave washed over the room.
Event Horizon’s eyes glowed like stars.
And the power suppressor cuffs were cracking with a purple glow.
“You know, I did everything a law abiding citizen should. I didn’t try to run. I cooperated. And I get that I look like some horrible villain to you, but I deserve to be heard and not have my own lawyer dismiss me with scathing sarca-“
The lights flickered before the light bulbs above exploded, raining shards of glass down upon them.
Jane lay passed out on the floor a moment later.
A white-haired woman wearing a police uniform was standing over her unconscious form, fingertips crackling with electricity.
The Paths Not Taken Chapter 3
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Of Heroes And Villains:
The Paths Not Taken
By Minikisa
There are moments that change a life forever. And within those moments, heroes and villains alike are born of choice.
Elaine rammed her foot against the table in an effort to push herself away from the woman who had just knocked out her lawyer, only for the table to flip over and be thrown back. Her eyes widened when the white-haired woman jumped high to evade and gracefully landed to perch atop of it, gazing down at her with pale eyes.
There was something incredibly disconcerting about those eyes.
After a moment she realized there were tiny lightning bolts fanning out over the irises.
“It’s rude to throw tables at people,” the woman chided.
“It’s rude to attack unsuspecting lawyers,” Elaine shot back and the woman chuckled.
Elaine balled her fists, gaze darting down to her cuffed hands. She didn’t understand what was happening – she was hardly an expert on arresting Metas, but she knew enough to know that these cuffs should have left her completely powerless.
Considering that she was facing what appeared to be a villain, not being helpless wasn’t exactly a bad thing, but it only added to her already considerable confusion.
“You’ll want to take those off,” the woman drawled and pulled a key ring from her police belt. “Don’t want you starving and having a repeat performance of the Event, do we?”
“The what?” Elaine’s eyes narrowed in suspicion at the keys.
“You’ll find out soon enough, my little complication.” She hopped from the table and leisurely strolled toward Elaine, who tensed and backed away as far as the small room would allow.
“Oh, do stop wasting time; we have a daring escape ahead of us. Sir Fluffington won’t keep them distracted forever.”
David crashed to the floor, sharp pain stabbing at his shoulder as he landed badly.
“Pain,” he declared as boldly as one could while lying on the floor. “Should be illegal.”
Shade chuckled.
“Pain is a good teacher.”
She really took far too much delight in hurting him. It was probably revenge for all the years he had gone out of his way to annoy her. It hadn’t been malicious; he’d just enjoyed provoking a reaction other than fawning.
Shade held out her hand to help him get back up, but he waved her off, the power suppressor bracelet on his wrist glinting in the dim light of the Reynolds Mansion’s training room.
“Just… going to wait until everything stops spinning. No offense, but that seems like poor architectural choices on your part. Nobody likes a spinning ceiling, bro.”
“I’ll consult my interior designer,” was the dry answer as she sat down next to him.
She wasn’t even out of breath.
David flopped onto his belly and deactivated the bracelet, sighing in relief when strength and energy flowed back into his body, the pain instantly fading.
His martial art skills remained laughable.
As evidenced by Shade suppressing a laugh every time she had him on his ass. Which was often.
“You need to stop parrying when you can dodge,” said the woman in question. “You’re taking far too much unnecessary damage.”
And yet, training with her was preferable to training with Caroline whose methods probably violated the Geneva Convention. After one training session with her, he’d limped back to Shade who, while acerbic, was surprisingly patient. And also knew regimens not invented by psychotic assassins.
“I know.” His voice was muffled against the padded floor, and she patted him on the back. Seven years of invincibility had left his instincts utterly dulled. His body had completely forgotten what flinching in the face of incoming danger even was.
Moments like these he wondered why he even bothered. He was one of the strongest metahumans to ever live to begin with; he didn’t need to put himself through this when he had been a decent hero for years.
And yet…
“Want a break?”
David heaved himself to sit up, and stretched an arm to loosen the tension in his shoulder.
“No.”
Decent just wasn’t good enough anymore.
“So is there really no way I can convince either of you to train shirtless?” Diane interjected, red eyes sparkling.
David brushed his fingers through his blond curls, before vigorously rubbing the wet hair with a towel as he stepped out of the bathroom. He was wearing nothing but his jeans and, as expected, Diane was already lying in wait, grinning broadly when she saw his bare chest.
“Stop objectifying me.”
“Never!”
He laughed softly and made his way to the kitchen, for once not getting turned around in the labyrinthine mansion. He just followed the smell of delicious food beckoning him closer.
Kara was an amazing cook. It was something to look forward to when he came here, despite the beating he invariably took.
Diane trailed behind him, no doubt ogling his backside, judging by the purring sound coming from her direction. Her brazen sexuality used to disconcert him, leaving him on edge and expecting to be stabbed in the back by a jealous Shade at any moment. Surprisingly, Kara did not seem to mind at all.
He’d asked her once how she could be so laid back about her girlfriend flirting with everything that moved.
“Diane appreciates beauty. But at the end of the day, she loves me and me alone.”
And that had been that.
David fished out a clean shirt as they passed the hall where he’d unceremoniously dropped his bag and pulled it over his head, all the while ignoring Diane when she mimed being stabbed in the heart.
“Don’t take the precious away!”
“Dork,” David replied with a small grin, absently strapping his hero communicator to his wrist, disguised as a simple watch.
The former villainess was an odd one, but then, nobody had ever accused him of being well adjusted either. As much as she seemed to relish teasing him, he enjoyed her company. She had a way of setting people at ease, and along with Kara had become one of the few people around whom he didn’t feel like a complete idiot when he opened his mouth.
Diane grinned back and pranced ahead into the kitchen.
“… quite possibly the most awkward moment of my life, and that’s a field with a lot of competition.”
Shade sighed as she spoke.
“Psy really needs to stop trying to get me and Tex to be friends.”
“Yes, what could you possibly have in common with a short-tempered hero?” Shade turned a butter knife in his direction, before she realized that she was making her point for him, and David grinned.
“Are you trying to tell me you like Tex?”
“I don’t. But then, I didn’t like Psy back when you were dating Dawn.” He shrugged expansively and gestured his fork at Kara’s chest. “People change, bro.”
Kara wordlessly arched an eyebrow, lips quirking, and David realized his slip.
Maybe people changed, but David had a hell of a time changing his speech patterns.
David wasn’t sure when exactly he’d started exaggerating his demeanor, but it had helped ease the crushing expectations that came with his particular costume. Better to see the disappointment flash in people’s eyes up front rather than gradually reveal just how much he didn’t measure up.
Kara, however, had slapped him upside the head and rather rightfully pointed out that he was sabotaging himself. Which was true, considering that it had taken him five years of being a hero to truly befriend another cape to whom he was neither Son Of Captain Patriot nor That Meathead.
A small blue light on his watch started blinking at the same time as Kara straightened, raising her hand to press it against her ear.
City-wide alerts were rare in a city that could shrug off rampaging 50 foot robots as just another Tuesday.
David curiously tapped his wrist, and tensed at the broadcast.
“…Level Ten. I repeat, Event Horizon is destroying the Peregrine Police Precinct.”
The Paths Not Taken Chapter 4
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Of Heroes And Villains:
The Paths Not Taken
By Minikisa
There are moments that change a life forever. And within those moments, heroes and villains alike are born of choice.
Elaine stood frozen, flexing her fingers as she stared at the woman in front of her. Her palms were strangely warm, heat pricking at the inside of her skin like tiny needles.
Sir… Fluffington?
Had she heard that right?
Elaine didn’t know just how much more of this she could take.
The woman dangled the keychain in front of her like a cat toy, offering her freedom. Yet what kind of person would assault a police station and break out a mass murderer? Not one Elaine wanted to follow.
But letting herself be arrested seemed like a poor choice more and more. There was a good chance she might wind up in jail forever, with no way to prove her innocence.
Flash Freeze would not be coming to her rescue. Elaine would have to save herself.
Her fingers clenched into a fist at that thought and she raised her chin.
The woman discretely pointed a finger toward Elaine’s hands, leaning in to whisper, “Psst. You might want to get that under control.”
After a long moment of staring the woman down, Elaine allowed herself a glance out of the corner of her eyes.
Her palms were glowing with a strange purple light.
“You are wasting an awful lot of energy to overcome the cuffs just to be a lamp. Either commit to mayhem or stop draining yourself. And just between you and me – you draining yourself is bad.”
“I know that,” Elaine snapped, her temper frayed. She might not have been a mutant or mage herself – up until today, anyway – but she knew about the basics of energy exhaustion and the consequences thereof, as any school kid would.
“Oh, you misunderstand me. Draining yourself won’t kill you.” The woman’s eerie smile hardened. “It’ll kill others.”
Elaine inhaled sharply, and the heat in her hands surged, sparks sizzling between her fingertips. No, no, that was the opposite of what she wanted, so she splayed her fingers and shook her hand as if it was on fire – which it was – but the light only seemed to be intensifying with her distress.
And then it occurred to her that maybe the clearly morally questionable woman was just trying to get her not to use her powers.
Deep breath.
“How…?”
“You are asking the wrong question. You’ll find out how your powers work soon enough.” She sauntered closer, and Elaine had nowhere to back up to. “The question you should be asking is why you have powers.” She made a sweeping gesture toward the stray papers scattered on the floor, loosened from the police files when the table had been flipped over. “Or rather, why she does, and you didn’t.”
“How do you…?”
“Now that we’ve got that all cleared up, let’s go on a madcap adventure!”
“Enough!” The woman blinked at her with big and vacant eyes, looking like a child whose enthusiastic ramblings just got interrupted. Elaine struggled to focus her thoughts on what she wanted to know first – every time a question rose to the forefront, it got shot in the back by another question proclaiming that it was far more pressing than that other, clearly inferior and probably mentally deficient query.
After a long moment of the woman staring at her like an owl, Elaine realized that she couldn’t keep calling her The Woman. “Who are you and why are you freeing me?”
The woman clucked her tongue, seeming annoyed as her eyes became blank and distant. “We’ve had this conversatio – ah. Perhaps not. Gods, but I hate reruns.”
With that, she swooped into a deep, elegant bow.
“Who I am is not important, but you may call me Seer. Also acceptable are Oracle Without Equal, Your Supremeness, or Greased Lightning. I would give you a real name, but then I’d have to lie, and that would, of course, be deeply wrong. I am nothing if not an honest woman.”
“Funny. That’s exactly what a liar would say.”
“So it is.” She flashed a smile and reached to ruffle Elaine’s hair who jerked back, only to regret that instantly when it tore at her hair. “I like you, my little abomination.”
Heat flared once more, and the woman drew back her blistered fingertips, looking at her reproachfully.
Elaine, torn between being offended and apologetic, willed the purple sparks to subside.
“Anyway,” the seer drawled. “To give you the cliff notes version, I know things, I saw you were innocent and if you don’t come with me, you will rot in here for a long, long time.” She paused, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “A long time being about a week. That’s when people would start falling out of the sky, courtesy of your powers.”
Elaine swallowed heavily. “And how do I know you’re not lying?”
“You don’t.” She smiled sweetly. “You can always stay here and find out.”
The ground shook, accompanied by the low rumble of an explosion not far from them, shattering the one-way mirror to reveal the dimly lit room behind it. The seer raised her head and then adjusted the police hat she was wearing. “And that’s our cue. So you can stay here and hope that someone believes your story and then does something about it, or…” She casually sauntered to the door, stepping over the lawyer’s unconscious body, and gazed over her shoulder at Elaine. “You can follow me and work to save yourself. Your choice.”
And then she slipped out of the small interrogation room.
Elaine stood frozen for a long moment.
Then she cursed, and hurried after the woman.
The laser cannon mounted to his arm hummed as it was charged. Pearson gritted his teeth, ignoring the mental anguish resonating over the comm link as yet another of his squad members was cut down by the… thing.
Rogers fell to the ground, the armor that had withstood the full might of a Rikti mothership broken and laid bare, the jagged metal plates revealing the pilot within. The damaged armor thankfully kept transmitting his vitals, showing that his comrade was still breathing in there.
“Foolish Mortal,” boomed that grating voice, synthesized and artificial, yet with an otherworldly undercurrent that set Pearson’s teeth on edge. “Your Pitiful Efforts To Defeat That Which Your Tiny Minds Cannot Begin To Comprehend Would Be Amusing If We Were Not Lowering Ourselves To Even Acknowledge Your Existence.”
The brittle ground shook under the weight of heavily armored boots, the seemingly invulnerable body glinting in the sunlight streaming in through the broken walls of the police station.
It was the most fearsome and technologically sophisticated opponents his squad had ever faced. So far they had not even been able to penetrate its forcefields to leave so much as a scratch.
There was something horrifically undignified about losing to a cyborg that had fluffy bunny ears grafted to its head.
Electricity sizzled as the fingertip slid along the smooth metal, searching for an access point. The seer hummed, brows drawing together – and then the power suppression cuffs finally clicked open and fell to the ground.
Elaine staggered as something indescribable surged within her, and wrapped her arms tightly around herself, shivering.
“Power tastes sweet, doesn’t it? You only notice how sweet after it is taken.” The woman’s eyes grew hard and cold, but a moment later they were vacant and distant once more. She kicked away the handcuff, and it slid out of view. “Don’t let yourself be cuffed again.”
“Duly noted,” Elaine said, massaging her forehead. “Now would you please explain what exactly my powe-“
Another explosion shook the precinct and Elaine craned her neck.
“…are people being killed?” The heat that was never far from the surface rose once more, stinging at the inside of her palm. She had powers, shouldn’t she… not just stand by?
“No,” the seer answered cheerfully. “Just a cunning distraction involving property damage. Maybe some light bruising. Probably not so light bruising of certain egos. This way.”
She made a sharp turn into a narrow stairwell and Elaine followed at length, suspiciously gazing at the woman’s backside. For all that she decided that not rotting in a cell was the preferable option, she trusted that strange woman about as far as she could throw her.
Then Elaine belatedly realized that this might be a poor turn of phrase given this body’s immense powers.
As they ascended the winding stairs, she frowned. “Where are we going?”
“The roof.” Elaine caught a glimpse of the vacant smile and came to the conclusion that what unsettled her most about the white-haired woman – apart from the nonsensical ramblings and the eyes – was the eerie nonchalance with which she was cheerfully violating federal law.
Elaine battled twinges of guilt when she jaywalked.
Best that she not think too hard about what she was complicit in right now lest the perfectly law-abiding citizen that had woken up this morning to what had promised to be an utterly ordinary day might finally lose it and initiate Mental Breakdown Protocol, possibly with the Weep In Fetal Position subroutine.
“So how are we going to get off the r-“
Just as they reached the last flight of stairs, the door to the stairwell was blown from its hinges and Elaine shrieked. A second later mortification hit, its intensity directly proportional to the truly lofty height her pitch had reached. Her plan of appearing cool, calm and collected and not at all like the highly strung mess she currently felt like was not working quite as she intended.
So she steeled herself and tried to project the aura of a superpowered badass who was not at all way out of her depth, thank you very much, as a truly massive cyborg squeezed itself through the hole in the wall it had created.
Its black visor glinted with red light. Even though it had no visible eyes, she felt its gaze on her.
And then it lunged at her with an inhuman screech.
Elaine almost lost her footing on the stairs as she instinctively tried to retreat, but a delicate hand caught her upper arm in a surprisingly strong grip. Her vision went white, a thunderous noise almost rupturing her eardrums and then she was standing, disoriented, at the top of the staircase.
The seer let go off her, staring down at the mechanical monster at the bottom of the stairs.
“Bad Sir Fluffington,” she scolded. “She’s off limits.”
And the fluffy rabbit ears, the existence of which Elaine only now deliriously noticed, drooped and flattened.
“But The Devourer…” Somehow the coldly synthetic voice managed to sound like an apologetic whine.
“Hush, or I’ll ask Amelia to uninstall your wifi capabilities.”
How it could pout without actually having lips was beyond Elaine. Then again, her brain was diverting significant amounts of resources toward preserving her sanity, so it didn’t have a whole lot of neurons to spare.
The seer patted her hair and then not-so-gently nudged her toward the metal door not far from them.
Elaine blinked blearily against the sunlight as the seer pushed open the heavy door. She crossed her arms over her chest to shield against the chill breeze, intensely aware of the heavy footfalls behind them. The cyborg was climbing up the stairs, so she darted outside, wanting as much distance between them as possible.
In fact, she’d decided she wanted to put as much distance between her and the woman, too. Preferably in the magnitude of miles. As soon as they were clear of the police station…
She frowned when she noticed no immediate escape path. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d expected. A helicopter, maybe.
The seer crooked a finger, standing near the edge of the roof leading to the fire escape, and Elaine warily approached.
“What, are they not guarding the stairs?” she asked incredulously.
“Oh, they are.” A hand came down on her shoulder and the seer smiled.
And pushed.
Elaine screamed, the sound swallowed by the wind rushing past her ears. The world spun on its axis as it passed her by in a blur, the only thing standing out in stark detail the ground below. It was closing in on her with a swiftness that Elaine found to be inappropriate bordering on very, very alarming.
And then the world stood still.
The vicious wind died down.
And that was when Elaine realized she could fly.
Riora leaned over the edge of the roof, watching the young woman below flail about with uncoordinated enthusiasm. She exhaled a sigh of relief, closing her eyes as the future shifted into something resembling order.
She hated complications this late in her long game.
But, as always, she adapted. After all, a good strategist had contingency plans.
“This Creature.”
Riora slightly tilted her head toward the otherworldly Old One sealed within metal and wires.
And for the first time, she heard something resembling fear in its inhuman voice.
“It Needs To Die.”
She smiled reassuringly, and twirled a thin strand of red hair between her fingertips.
“Working on it.”
Author's Note: Well, guys... I've finally transferred all chapters from tgstorytime to here, and thus concludes my daily postings! From now on chapters will be posted as I write them :)