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patamon · 2 years

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Koushiro Izumi Week

I unknowingly incorporated almost all the suggested Koushiro week prompts into this fic XD. Can you spot them all 👀

Title: One Rainy Afternoon Character: Koushiro Izumi (for @izumikoushiroweek ) Word Count: 4390 Rating: G Summary: One rainy afternoon, Koushiro heard a cry that changes everything...

Cross-posted on AO3

Read below the cut 👇

One Rainy Afternoon

There were few things in life that could divert Koushiro’s attention away from whatever complex problems chewing through his mind.

Today, he found himself captivated by one of those few things.

The rain puddles by his feet, they resembled, in almost perfect symmetry, the splotches of pattern found on Kabuterimon’s wings. Koushiro could recall them with sharp clarity: the translucent patterns and oblong shapes, bringing him back to those life-defining adventures of his youth, during moments that captivated him enough to tear his sight away from the bright glares of his computer screen.

For a moment, he became absorbed in the shapes of the puddles. He questioned and wondered the probabilities of it settling into the shape it did. He hypothesized its origin and mapped out the path of its descent, not realizing the shape and colour of the traffic signal before him had changed, and what ensued was an onslaught of pedestrians pushing and muscling their way past him, damp clothings brushed past him with disgruntled force.

Get out of the way.

Move it or lose it, idiot.

“Sorry, sorry,” Koushiro mumbled, before readjusting the grip on his umbrella and bag of bottled oolong tea, then making his way to the other side of the street.

Once over, Koushiro whisked himself into one of the smaller side streets, sighing in relief at the quieter, calmer atmosphere it offered. Without warning, the rain overhead picked up its pace, prompting Koushiro to do the same. The oolong tea bottles in his bag somehow grew heavier in tandem with the rain all around him.

He only had the comfort of his dry apartment in mind when through the pitter patter of rain on pavement, he heard it: a sound as fragile and delicate as breaking glass, shooting through dense, humid air to pierce his attention. He whipped himself around, his feet nearly slipping on wet concrete, but through the grace of Qinglongmon, he managed to hold steady, eyes searching and scanning his surroundings while his ears honed in on the empty streets around him.

Then, he heard it again, and this time, the sound sharpened into a familiar call.

Meow.

Koushiro gasped, with careful attention to the dripping umbrella and his sacred haul of oolong tea, he maneuvered himself until he was low on the ground, scrutinizing holes and crevices with narrowed eyes.

Meee-owww.

He flinched. This time, there was an infliction to the call, a long drawn out syllable indicating discomfort…or pain. He doubled his effort to scan the area until finally, a spark of something shiny caught his eyes. There was but one logical course of action, he followed the light, only to find a soggy cardboard box tucked behind a crowded bike rack.

“Meow”

He stood frozen for a moment, not daring to breathe lest any outburst might scare away his caller. But in spite of his fear, the sound came forth again, this time with obvious desperation.

“Meeeee-ooowwww!”

“Here, here,” he cried out instinctively. His bag of oolong tea hit the wet floor, but he barely noticed in his attempt to squeeze closer to the box, and upon lowering himself, he finally laid eyes on his feline caller.

By no means was this the first time he had seen a cat. He spent many afternoons and evenings over at Taichi’s apartment, where Miko would hiss at him from afar or threaten to claw out his eyes if he dared walk too close. But this was the first time he had seen this cat, and he was struck by the visible fear in its large green eyes, its rail-thin body drenched with rain, the matted black fur betraying just how skinny it was.

“Uh…hello?” he attempted. The cat looked up at him with an unblinking gaze, the only response he received was a quick twitch of its right ear.

“Uh…” he fumbled through possible courses of action in his mind, parsing and sorting them by logic and sensibility.

“But I know nothing about cats,” he mumbled.

He could call someone who had more experiences with cats. He pulled out his phone from his soaked jacket pocket, but the only person he had in mind was Hikari, but he sensed it might be awkward to call her just to talk about his current predicament.

The cat opened its mouth, and from the depth of its emaciated body, it cried out again.

“MEEOOWWW”

Koushiro flinched, then the situation escalated to a point where he could no longer parse through the possibilities, for the cat emerged right then and there. It was smaller and thinner than he could ever imagined, and it swayed more than it walked, betraying how exhausted and weak it must really be.

“Uhh…What are you…?”

It plopped down on wet concrete, right before Koushiro’s frozen body and looked up at him with pleading eyes, and suddenly, Koushiro was transported back to when he was ten, when he locked eyes with the dark round ones of Mochimon’s for the first time. He understood now…

“You don’t have anywhere to go, do you?”

The cat did not change its stance, but merely lifted its head up a few millimetres higher, waiting for Koushiro to make his move.

Koushiro sighed, “I guess…the least I can do is bring you home to give you some food,” he mumbled in resignation, then scooped the cat up with his free arm and made his way home, the bag of oolong tea long forgotten behind him in the rain.

—-

There were still a myriad of questions in Koushiro’s mind as he walked into his building with the newfound cat tucked in his arm.

What do cats eat?

How often do they eat?

How often do they drink water?

Are some foods dangerous for cats?

What happens if they need to use the bathroom?

Where can he find a litter box?

But although he could not find clear answers to his questions, it did become clear to him that his feline refugee was in worse shape than he thought. It shook and shivered the entire way home, Koushiro could feel the hard edges of its bones poking through as he held it in his arms. Occasionally, it emitted a pitiful mew, but otherwise kept quiet as it laid in Koushiro’s hold underneath the cover of his black umbrella.

Once he returned to his apartment, dry and warm and safe, he rummaged through cabinets and shelves in search of suitable food for the cat. Unlucky for them both, he wasn’t the best at keeping his pantries stocked, his diet on a good day consisted of an unhealthy amount of bottled oolong tea and premade sandwiches he picked up from any convenience store he stumbled across. The best he could offer was a leftover tuna onigiri he picked up for lunch two days ago. But despite the questionable expiry date, the cat devoured it all, digging into the tuna filling at a speed that put him on edge.

“Hey…um…slow down…uh…you’ll get a stomachache,” Koushiro chided, albeit he felt a little more than silly speaking to a cat the way his parents spoke to him when he was a child.

The cat was a little more than halfway through his meal when its entire body went rigid. Koushiro’s eyes widened, his hand flew towards his chest as he gawked at the cat, wondering if he inadvertently killed it through food poisoning. But before he could take action, the cat pounced away, scurrying underneath his sofa before three knocks sounded out at his door, followed by the chime of his doorbell.

He scurried towards the door, his hand barely on the knob before Taichi’s voice boomed out on the other side.

“Koushiro, it’s me”

Koushiro opened the door hurriedly to reveal a drenched Taichi, rainwater dripping from the top of his brown hair to the soles of his shoes, a brown parcel tucked underneath his arms.

“Here,” he asserted before handing the parcel to Koushiro, “It’s that package you wanted from your office”

“Oh!” Koushiro cried out, then accepted the package with glee. His memory came back to him bit-by-bit, of the project he was working on before finding out he was out of oolong tea, of the frantic message he sent Taichi just moments before he stepped out to the grocery store.

“So…What’s in the package?” Taichi questioned

“A new book published by a Digimon researcher I knew in India. I needed to look something up to help me with this project I was working on before…” his voice trailed off, remembering his trip to the grocery store, remembering the cry that distracted him from his route home.

“So…aren’t you going to invite me in?” Taichi asked, his voice breaking through Koushiro’s reverie.

Koushiro blushed. Any other day, he would have, especially knowing Taichi marched across the city in a torrential downpour to bring him this book. But today, today his heart and thoughts were preoccupied by different priorities.

“Actually um…I’m kind of…maybe not today.”

“What? I walked forty minutes in the rain to deliver the book to you. Can’t you at least let me wait out the rain in your apartment?”

“How about…um…how about I call you an Uber?”

Taichi narrowed his eyes, his gaze now directed to the inside of his apartment, to the glass of water he left for the cat before Taichi’s entrance interrupted its meal.

“Do you have guests over?” Taichi inquired, in a somewhat salacious voice.

Koushiro winced, “No…no it’s not that”

Taichi burst into a rambunctious laugh, then winked obnoxiously at Koushiro, who stood like a deer in headlights.

“Say no more, Kou, I’ll leave you be, but…you have to tell me all about it at work tomorrow”

“What? No no no no no, I…it’s not that…I swear!”

Taichi pursed his lips and shrugged, “Listen, Kou, you don’t have to be embarrassed about it. We’re all adults here.”

Koushiro sighed, “No, it’s not what you think…it’s…alright fine, come on in, you might be able to help me with this…given that you have experience in this field.”

Taichi gave an uneasy stare, but the prospect of a warm and dry shelter was much too enticing to pass off, so he entered Koushiro’s apartment and closed the door, shedding his wet outerwear onto the foyer floor.

“Should I be scared?” he demanded in a hesitant voice.

In response, Koushiro beckoned Taichi over to his sofa, putting his fingers on his lips as he pointed to the darkened space beneath.

Taichi eyed it cautiously, then emitted a nervous giggle while he stared Koushiro down.

“What are you setting me up for?”

Koushiro jabbed his finger towards the space, “I think it’s better…if you see for yourself”

They bent down to their knees and pushed their heads into the small space. It took awhile for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but once it did, Koushiro saw the cat huddled deep into a corner, its large green eyes widened with fear.

Taichi gasped and drew his head out immediately, prompting Koushiro to follow suit.

“Is that a…cat?” Taichi inquired.

Koushiro nodded, “Yeah…I found it on my way home from the store. I couldn’t leave it on its own so…”

Taichi laughed and shook his head, “Had no idea you were a cat person, Kou. Did Miko awaken something in you?”

Koushiro rolled his eyes. Both he and Taichi knew he had a very strained relationship with the Yagami cat, but he chose to ignore the statement and moved on with his question.

“So…can you help me out with this?”

Taichi took a step back, “What do you mean? Like….take the cat?”

Koushiro shrugged, “Well…I think it’s best since you’ve owned a cat before…”

“No. Nope, no, no thanks. I did my share of cat caring with Miko growing up”

“Okay fine…don’t take the cat, but…can you at least tell me what to do? You have experience, so…how can I care for it? What do I feed it? What does the cat need?”

Taichi stroked his chin thoughtfully, “Let’s see…you’ll definitely need cat food, both the dry and wet ones, which leads to…food bowl, and a cat fountain, and you’ll definitely need a litter box, a cat bed, and maybe some cat toys…”

“Wow, there,” Koushiro interrupted. Cat toys? “I’m not…I’m not keeping the cat, I just need some small supplies for until I bring it to a proper shelter”

Taichi raised one eyebrow, skewering Koushiro with a stare he could only describe as doubt.

“Oh yeah…how long are you planning to keep it?”

Koushiro pursed his lips, “I don’t know…a few days? But not longer than a week.”

Taichi shrugged, “Alright…whatever you say,” he bent down and studied the cat with one eye closed, “What type of cat is it?”

“I don’t know…black?”

“Really? Like it’s all black?”

“Yeah, why? Is that…is there something significant about that?”

Taichi chuckled, then stood up again with his gaze still locked on the space beneath Koushiro’s coach, “Actually…yeah…black cats are…well…okay, let me tell you a story, but you can’t tell Hikari this, swear to me you won’t tell her.”

Koushiro scrunched his face in confusion before finally nodding, “Alright? I mean…I don’t know how anything you tell me could come up in my conversations with Hikari, but…let’s hear it”

Taichi shot him an annoyed look, but obliged and continued his story.

“The truth is…Miko was originally a black cat, an all black one like the one you found but well…when my Dad and I brought him home from the shelter, my mom freaked out and demanded that it be taken back and ask for a different one instead…that’s how we ended up with the Miko we had.”

Koushiro gasped, “No way…why?”

“Well…a lot of people are scared of black cats. They’re really superstitious about these things. I still remember my mom’s tirade when we brought the first cat home, about how Hikari was already a sickly child as she is, and bringing in a black cat will only give us bad luck.”

“But…they’re just cats, what difference does it make what colour they are? It’s not their fault they were born with black hair”

Taichi gave a wistful smile, “That’s just the way it goes sometimes. I heard black cats are usually the last to get adopted, and there are so many left in shelters that sometimes, they have to put them down to make room for other cats that get brought in.”

Koushiro’s chest tightened, he looked down at the space underneath the sofa and thought of the round green eyes that honed in on him in that drenched cardboard box, of the way it shivered in his arms as he walked it home, and the way it devoured the leftover onigiri with a desperation that made his heart ached.

It was just looking for a home, a place to belong to…how could anyone hate it for such empty reasons?

“Is that…are you really telling me the truth?”

Taichi snorted, then walked away and entered Koushiro’s kitchen, opening the fridge without an invitation.

“It’s up to you if you want to believe me or not, but…just keep that in mind before you bring it to the shelter, that’s all.”

—

One week later, it was still on Koushiro’s mind.

Taichi’s stark statement echoed in the recesses of his consciousness each morning, jostled awake by the cat bunting its head against his cheek.

“Wha…what…?” he grumbled groggily. But of course he already knew the what, he had somehow inherited a personal alarm clock, one that runs on a need for a morning feeding at 6:30 in the morning, every morning.

In response, it rubbed its head against Koushiro’s mouth, transferring a good helping of black cat hair onto his tongue.

“Oh…okay…okay I’m up, I’m up…I’m going, I’m going…”

He rolled out of his bed, stumbling out of his bedroom and into his darkened apartment, where subtle changes had slowly accumulated over the past few days. He dug up old pillows and cushions to lay around his minimalistic apartment, creating perfect nap nooks for his new - and as he continued to insist, temporary - roommate.

His feline friend zipped past him and bounded onto the kitchen counter, circling twice before parking itself down and fixing its large green eyes on him.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Koushiro mumbled in between yawns, opening up his cabinet to retrieve a can of unopened cat food.

Immediately, the cat reacted, jumping down to the floor and weaving in-and-out of Koushiro’s legs.

“Hey now, that’s not helping me move any faster,” Koushiro groaned, but to no avail. The cat continued its dance between Koushiro’s limbs, rubbing against him while purring in ecstasy.

Koushiro couldn’t stop a satisfied smile from seeping out between his lips. The first time he heard the cat purr was the first morning he woke up with it in his apartment. He fell asleep to it huddled beneath the sofa, even hours after Taichi had left, but he woke up to the cat laying beside him on his pillow, its purr reminding him of the old school heater his grandparents would wheel into his room during his visits. He had assumed purring was a good sign, but after looking it up, he learned a purr can be as enigmatic as a smile, and somehow, it fascinated Koushiro even more. Only a week in, and he had devoted hours to deciphering the cat’s purrs and eye movements, hypothesizing what thoughts could dance in its mind while it rubbed its head against Koushiro’s arms.

After heaping a mountain of cat food on an old chipped plate, he placed it on the floor beside the cat, then kneeled down and watched it devour the offering at breakneck speed.

“Jeez, you haven’t learned to eat any slower, have you?”

It ignored Koushiro, or perhaps…it didn’t hear him, Koushiro wasn’t sure. Only after it licked the last of the food from the bowl did it finally move closer to him, then bunted its head once again against Koushiro’s shin as if to say thanks.

“You’re welcome,” Koushiro chimed off.

The cat gave a satisfied mew, then parked itself down on the floor before closing its eyes and opening them slowly. According to his research these past few weeks, this gesture was much less ambiguous than a purr. When a cat engages in slow-blinking, it feels safe and comfortable enough to let down its guard, and although finding this out thrilled him to a surprising degree, it also left something else in the depth of his heart as well.

Guilt.

Beyond researching cat behaviours and cat caring strategies, Koushiro was busy looking up other things as well.

Cat sanctuaries in Tokyo

Safest animal shelters near me

Black cats

Black cats adoption rate

Black cat superstition

Do shelters put down black cats because there are too many of them?

Every result he pulled up added to his uncertainty and doubt, swaying him back-and-forth between his choices.

“Don’t give me that look,” Koushiro sighed, albeit with a hue of sadness staining his tone, “You know you can’t stay here much longer.”

The cat turned away, as if understanding every word Koushiro spoke, and ambled off towards his makeshift litter box - an old wash basin Koushiro found filled with the cheapest litter he could buy from the grocery store. Koushiro sighed in defeat, watching as the cat kicked up a storm of dirt, no doubt voicing its displeasure at Koushiro’s intentions.

“Although…” he mumbled, before his thoughts were cut short by a series of chimes from his phone.

He turned his attention to the screen, unsurprised to find his mother’s name appearing on the caller list.

“Hello? Mom?” he greeted.

“Good morning, Koushiro,” came his mom’s usual cheerful voice through the receiver. He let loose an unbridled smile, imagining his mother bustling through her balcony garden, her phone in one hand, the other with her purple watering can to sprinkle just the right amount of water on her beloved flowers.

“I’m calling to see if you’re awake,” his mom continued, “And to remind you to eat your breakfast, and oolong tea is not breakfast, don’t try convincing me otherwise. I don’t care how much vitamin the labels say it has…”

Koushiro held back a chuckle, his thoughts drifting away as he listened to his mother retell the harrowing account of securing the last batch of fresh salmon at the fish market yesterday, beating old Miss Suzuki from a few doors down.

He recalled, with fondness that pinched his stomach, how his mother used to take him to that very fish market, teaching him the marks of a fresh fish, and the ones to avoid. There were passersby that cast adoring gazes upon both of them, and he remembered the old fisherman vendors asking the question with toothless grins.

Is that your son?

And even in his youth, he remembered catching the subtle twitches of his mother’s lips, the way her fingers would stiffen with his palm in hers.

Yes, yes it is. This is Koushiro, my son, and I’m…I’m his mother.

Koushiro inhaled deeply, feeling the question fill his lungs without his consent, but nevertheless, he welcomed it anyways.

“Mom?”

His mom paused his story, there was a slight hesitation, then a response.

“What is it?”

“What made you and dad decide to adopt me?”

Koushiro heard the gasp emanating from the receiver, then a dull thud indicating his mother had dropped the watering can in shock. But he bit his lips and waited, and waited, and waited, until his mother finally responded with a small chuckle.

“You know…everyone always speaks of adoption as if it was a one way street.”

Koushiro froze. Unbeknownst to him, the cat had made its way back to where he stood, as if sensing the tension in his body. It bounded onto the kitchen counter and squeezed itself close, its head desperately pushing up against his palm, begging for attention.

“When we told people we had plans to adopt you, it was always wow, how kind of you and that boy is so lucky. They talked about us doing some great favours for you, as if we were saving your life.”

“Well…you did…in a way…”

“I don’t know about that, Koushiro, but…”

Finally, Koushiro noticed the cat by his side. He looked down at its wide green eyes, remembering the first time it called out to him, desperate for a place to belong.

“I guess…now is as good a time as any to tell you the full story…”

Koushiro’s face contorted in confusion. He remained silent as his mother continued her story, which was preceded by a heavy sigh.

“Originally, we…intended to foster you, at least until Social Services figured out a long term solution for your future. I had thought of adopting you right then and there, but we didn’t think it was a good time since your dad was still travelling a lot for work, and I was working nights. So a week went by, and Social Services was sending messages about a potential family that lives in Nagoya that was eager to meet you, but…when it came time to make plans to bring you there…I couldn’t…we couldn’t do it. I kept remembering the way you laughed when your dad played with you, the way you nestled into my arms when I held you, the way you babbled like you were talking to us, asking us questions…Even when you were a baby, it seemed like…you were already asking questions and wanting to learn everything about the world.”

His mother’s voice broke, the crack of her syllables shattering his own heart. Koushiro clutched his chest and backtracked, until his back made contact with some corner of his apartment. Without missing a beat, the cat hopped off the counter, following Koushiro until it was close enough to rub up against his quivering legs.

“So you see, Kou,” his mother continued, “It’s not so much that we chose you, it was that you chose us.”

“I…I did?” Koushiro questioned in a soft voice.

“Yes, yes you did. If there’s anything we learned, it’s that…adoption is a beautiful bond forged through reciprocity, it’s about both parties opening up their hearts, and accepting one another…as family. In the end, we chose each other.”

Koushiro smiled. His vision became blurry by burgeoning tears, but he held them back, building mental levees with the will of steel. He bent down and bundled up the cat in his arms, then brought him close to his chest, feeling its purr vibrate against his chest.

“Thanks, mom,” he acknowledged.

“Anytime…my son”

Once his phone conversation ended (after a few more stories from his mother about Old Miss Suzuki down the hall), Koushiro decided to fix himself a cup of coffee, and as he sat by his window watching the morning unfold, the cat leapt up to the table with a graceful bound, reminding him of the grasshoppers that fascinated him as a child.

In his research, he learned that grasshoppers are a symbol of good luck, and spent hours building contraptions to catch them in his backyard. He never succeeded, but perhaps it was the start of his fondness for insects.

“Batta,” he mused, and scratched the spot between his ears, where Koushiro knew his new cat loved to be scratched.

The cat responded with a soft meow, then bunted Koushiro’s hands affectionately like it always did when it seeked his attention.

“Yeah…Batta, I think that’s what I’ll call you,” he said with a smile, “Now…let’s see about buying you some supplies, since you’ll be staying with me from now on, maybe a proper bed, and…some cat toys.”

Batta closed its eyes, then opened them again slowly and purposefully, and that was all the confirmation Koushiro needed to understand.

They had chosen one another, and they were now each other’s forever homes.

(Author’s note: “Batta” is Japanese for grasshopper 🦗)

#Digimon #Digimon Adventure #izumikoushiroweek2022 #Koushiro Izumi #Breewrites

19 notes · View notes

artificial-ascension · 2 days

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Sometimes I see personal accounts of racism, antisemitism, ableism, fatphobia and other such social injustices which I do not experience and get so fucking mad hearing about how other people have been treated, but it's like, there's not really a point in going "Grrr that was so awful of them. That's so terrible I, a random white/skinny/able-bodied/goy, am really angry on your behalf"

Cause I mean... one, I'm certain no one cares, and it's just kinda virtue signaling at that point, and two, I don't think people afflicted by any sort of bigotry complaining about their experience need anyone to be mad on their behalf. I don't really think that's the point of sharing those experiences, just to make people who don't have them be mad for them, so much as it is venting and/or a learning experience where the takeaway is not "I'm so mad I'm gonna daydream about beating up the Bad Person who said that" but rather "There are people who experience things I do not and also experience certain things worse than I could imagine. Here are the material realities of another person's life." And furthermore, deciding to take that information and fight for, or at the very least support and uplift people who have been affected in such ways is infinitely better than yelling about how you think that's just terrible and showing off your weird savior complex in a random Tumblr users notes.

Tl dr: I think bigotry is bad and the fact that other people get treated so badly makes me angry. I just don't think that's productive to be saying every 20 minutes because being nice to people is an infinitely better use of time and energy than being mean even if someone really deserves it.

#this is just me ranting and raving like a mad man #this also wasn't inspired by anything so much as something I had on my mind #and this isn't talking about people going like 'hey fuck my ex friend who turned out to be racist am I right everyone' on their account #so much as it is people going 'here are all the medical hardships I have faced as an intersex person'#or 'recent antisemetic events that have happened to me as a jew'#where I think commenta about how angry that makes you are irrelevant and unproductive #of course I am making a post about being angry at these things but you see I am making my own post and not bother some random #also if you're a person in one of the groups I've mentioned or one of the many I didn't feel free to add commentary #I wrote this from the perspective of an outsider to these posts and as someone who also experiences a good deal of bigotry #non of those specific types mind you so if you have imput I'd love to hear

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ka-writes · 3 years

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——————

Notes- Did I decide I was gonna write a fic at 2:00 AM? Yes yes I did... anyways I don’t have an archive account yet but I wanted to get it out there.... um here is chapter one of my space AU, because I absolutely fell in love with the AU.

——————

Inspired by:

Humans are Space Velociraptors

By:FreshRoses_InMyGarden_NeedTheRain

Some kids come from storks, others come from crashed spaceships

By: mmmajora

Home Again, Home Again

By: teeth_eater

All works can be found on Ao3

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Ohh also challenge if you wanna do it, fill in the Title! And another one... if you were an alien what question would you ask a human other than basic questions, like name and age.

Also suggestions are always appreciated! And if you wanna support my main blog it is kadoodle.. also I have no updating schedule so I will when I want to.

——————

Warnings: Cussing, mentions of tight spaces and characters being trapped, mentions of corpses, and needles.

——————

“Humans are [Insert text here]”

Chapter 1: Idiots kidnap the wrong kid..

Honestly, life hasn't been bad. His needs were met, most of the time, and he had a.. place to sleep…

Yeah no life wasn’t great.

Tommy was easily, barely, avoiding Social Services. Sleeping on benches and occasionally grass. He got whatever wasn’t wanted and had an official bag for the first time. He had some spare clothes, and no money. The authorities stopped looking for him after a while and the only main challenge was getting essentials.

No one would miss him. No one would look for him. Therefore he was the perfect target among many others. The only thing setting him apart was his sheer ability to survive, not a want, like many of the others, it was a fact he would survive. Not that his captors knew that of course.

Alternative: Tommy gets kidnapped by aliens and sbi rescues him.

——————

He woke up in a cage.

Not a cell or a room, a fucking cage.

There were a few others in various cages around the room. All of which were either dead or close to it. Most of the ones still alive had been there for months, possibly years. No one knew of course.

The smell of rotting bodies stenched the place with a coppery coating. The room wasn’t large but not quite small. It was dull grey with layers of grime settling on the floor and cages. The room was long and skinny, lined with cages against either wall in a zig zag format. The only light was coming from the small door window, which happened to be positioned right in front of Tommy. It glowed a faint yellow and was blurry, not allowing Tommy to see into the hall.

Shadows would occasionally pass by the window. None ever stopped at it. Causing the ever growing hunger to grow more. Once one had stopped at the door, not for more than a second, before it screeched. It was inhuman and sounded like a hurt hawk from one of those nature documentaries. Tommy shoved his hands onto his ears and waited for it to stop. The thing chuckled, not like a human, but something close to it.

——————

Tommy waited for what seemed like hours before something happened. The door opened, sliding into the ceiling. A weird looking creature stepped in. It looked like it had a porcelain mask over its face with a painted smiley face. There were no ears or hair, instead just more porcelain, which formed a spear which sat on shadows. The thing was wearing a lime green hoodie and black leather pants that seemingly faded into the creature's legs. The knees bent inwards causing it to look awfully awkward as it crouched near Tommy’s cage. The hands were long and lanky with no real palm. The creature also had a tail that looked close to how Tommy pictured a devil's tail to look. This was the first time in ages Tommy was glad to be behind bars.

The thing pointed at itself and said,

“Dream.”

In the most heavily accented English Tommy had ever heard. That didn’t matter as much of the fact that the seemingly painted smile moved with the words.

“Come.”

The creature unlocked the cage and half dragged Tommy out of the cage into what Tommy presumed to be the lab. He noticed a window. The only thing for miles was stars. He was in space. He had been kidnapped by Aliens. Fuck.

——————

Humans were a heavily avoided species. The things were what kids would expect to come out of their closet. They were feared, and for good reason.

The first ship to find Earth was ecstatic. Finding another intelligent species in what would’ve been deemed as a planetary desert was a scientific breakthrough. Causing the entirety of the media to go insane for a couple of years.. That was until the first ship ventured onto the planet. It was immediately shot down. The entire crew was killed and the entirety of the ship was destroyed in a matter of minutes. The ISF (Intergalactic Safety Force) deemed it as a no flight zone and claimed to punish anyone in the desert. Even so poachers smuggled humans and within days had their ship crashed.

The only ones allowed to take humans were scientists, who were specialized in taking care of difficult species. They were allowed to test on said species and do whatever they wanted, in the name of science of course. Most people didn’t care how they treated them and were really only interested in what could kill them.

Which is where Wilbur came in. He was a toxicologist, a scientist studying poisons, he also dealt with various potions and other chemical mixes. This knowledge is what gained his entry to the Dream Team Ship.

He had been testing on around nine different humans for the past six months on the celestial calendar. This time Dream, his boss and the captain, brought in a juvenile human. He was skinny and lanky. Clearly had been starving before being taken. He felt bad before shaking off his pity.

“V74 and V83. Make sure he can communicate beforehand.” Dream promptly stated before leaving the kid in the room.

Wilbur tried not to think about his terrified face, before he clipped on the translator. Usually it is worn on the back of the head, since humans brains are vastly different than most species, it is clipped to the left side of the head.

The translator looks like a simple device when in reality it took dozens of celestial years to perfect it. It’s a small silver disk that ingrains into the part of the brain that controls communicating. After the body gets used to the device it can translate any language into one you understand instantly.

It took a couple more years for the translator to incorporate the estimated 7,000 languages spoken on Earth. For a planet that has been isolated it has a more complex and diverse set of cultures and languages, than Pellucidian has had in centuries. To say Wilbur was jealous, wouldn’t be far from the truth. Not that he studied cultures for a living. It was something that always interested him.

He put the device on the kid’s head and grimaced at the pain that was on the kid’s face. He quickly dried up the blood and mixed a solution that would ease the pain. It was clear and tasted like water, which is the only way they got humans to take the pain reduction.

The kid relaxed for a spilt second before tending at the unfamiliar setting.

“Where am I?” He snapped, causing Wilbur to jump back a bit, before collecting himself and standing up.

“The Dream Team craft’s labatory.” The kid’s face flashed with panic for a split second, “You have two testings scheduled for today. It will go quickly.”

“Will it be painful?” The kid asked. As standard for testing, Wilbur ignored the question and measured the substances. He quickly cleaned the puncture spot before giving him the needle.

The kid winced in pain. Wilbur swiftly led him to the testing chair. It had restraints that moved with the patient's body, which prevented bruising while keeping them in place. Wilbur clicked them on and sat at the desk located to the left of the kid.

“What did you inject into me?” The kid asked clearly trying to fight off the anesthetic.

“A dosage of Lidocaine, which is an anesthetic for your species. It’s only to numb pain that may come with the solutions we will be using today.” The kid’s face flashed with a deeper panic than before, causing Wilbur to tense. “We won’t start yet, since we have a list of questions to go through before we begin.” Wilbur lied. He hated testing people, especially kids. Dream of course didn’t care, like the rest of the Dreamon species. It made him sick. That was when he made a split second decision. Hoping he could get a distress signal out, without alerting the other crew members. He was gonna get the kid off the ship, at the next stop of course. Which was in three celestial hours.

The kid scoffed, clearly not believing the lie. He paused a moment thinking over his options before he smirked,“Fine. Ask me what you want bitch-boy!” Wilbur gasped, clearly not anticipating the insult.

——————

Chapter 1 End

1406 words

——————

End notes: Why the hell does google docs make it so hard to copy and paste??

Also I had to do some intense googling for this... I hope you enjoyed!

(Also also this is my first ever fanfic... please give feedback and reblog!!)

Minor mistakes are forgiven... don’t expect me to be perfect... I am dyslexic.

——————

Tommy: ....

Wilbur: ....

*intense starring*

Wilbur POV: I am kidnapping it.

——————

Chapter 2:

#my writing #my fanfic tag #okay 2 rb #tommy mcyt #wilbur soot #dream mcyt #dream smp fanfiction #sbi au #space au

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notyourdayrdream · 3 years

Text

Summer’s Almost Over (So Come Spend it with Me)

Day Thirteen, Side A: Wry

(read it here on AO3)

A/N: this is the second part to yesterday’s chapter, so it would make more sense if you read that one first!

Blaine was getting the feeling Kurt wouldn’t call.

The hours ticked by; eight, nine, ten, eleven. He did everything to distract himself, from looking through his song journal to facetiming Leslie and wishing her grandmother a happy birthday in person. He showered and was about to tuck his knees under himself and accept his fate when his phone rang. It scared the shit out of him.

He scrambled to find it, of course he left it on the kitchen island. He nearly tripped over his feet, and in the whole spectacle he missed the call.

“Shit.” Blaine dialed back almost immediately, pacing back and forth his apartment as he waited for the line to pick up. “Hey, sorry I missed your call, my phone was…Kurt?”

The other end was muffled on the other end, the sound of moving fabric pressed its way into Blaine’s ear. “Yeah?”

“Are you crying?” Blaine asked, pulling on a pair of dark jeans. He always felt so underdressed around Kurt. He grabbed his keys and slipped out of his apartment.

Kurt sniffed. “Yeah. I’m outside the complex. On the steps.” Blaine nodded to himself and took the stairs two at a time.

He was there when Blaine opened the door, slim body leaning against the rusted railing. Blaine had to admit he looked gorgeous; light skinny jeans and a brown bomber jacket. But he didn’t give himself too long to indulge when Kurt turned around and his eyes were puffy.

“Hey,” he said, eyes a mix of surprise and relief. This was the first time Blaine had ever seen him nervous. “I, um. Hey, Blaine.”

“I’m guessing this meant it went bad?” Blaine asked, mainly to make him smile.

Kurt gave a wry smile, his nose scrunching up. “You could say that.”

“C’mon.” Blaine wrapped his arm around Kurt’s and led them down the street. “Let’s go out.” Kurt followed him and they walked in comfortable silence. He wondered if this was what having a boyfriend was like.

It had to be twelve thirty when Blaine opened the creaky doors to a twenty-four hour diner a few blocks away. The linoleum floors were chipped and the neon sign had been broken long before Blaine moved into the neighborhood. It was empty save for an old man, who read a newspaper with a date of 1969.

As he and Kurt slid into opposite ends of a booth with cracked pleather seats, a woman in an off white uniform came up to them with a notepad and pencil.

“Well if it isn’t Blaine Warbler,” she smiled with her eyes instead of her mouth. “And a friend!”

“Hello, Ms. Donna,” Blaine said, blushing from the nickname. “This is Kurt, he’s a friend of mine.” Kurt waved hello and went back to peering at the menu.

“It’s so nice to meet you! You know, Blaine doesn’t ever bring people here with him.”

“Is that so?” Kurt smiles at Donna and then at Blaine, mirth dancing the blue ocean of his eyes.

Blaine blurted, “How’s your granddaughter?” As he moved to kick Kurt under the table. He missed terribly and stubbed his toe on wood.

“She’s just lovely, she misses you.” Donna smiled and placed a hand the color of black coffee atop his. Her touch was warm and papery. “You’ll be back for piano lessons soon, right?”

“Of course! I’m out of school for the summer, so tell Destiny I can’t wait to see her.” He knew the girl had a little crush on him, and he just didn’t have the heart to tell her he liked boys. He thought it was sweet.

She smiled and jerked, as if remembering she was at work. “Now tell me what you two would like,” she said, pulling her short pencil from his wispy gray curls.

They ordered coffee and a water, and Donna winked at Blaine as obviously as possible on her way to the bar. He didn’t know how much more red his face could get.

“She’s nice,” Kurt said, taking his coffee with a ‘thank you’ after Donna placed their drinks on the table. “I didn’t know you played piano.”

Blaine shook two sugar packets, enough to make his drink just sweet enough. Kurt, on the other hand, poured at least for packaged creamers into his, until the drink was the color of caramel. “Yeah, it’s the first instrument I learned to play.” The only one his dad said was acceptable for an Anderson to learn. It was classy and gave you the right kind of character. Blaine still didn’t know if he played it out of spite or not.

Kurt’s eyes went wide. “First? You can play more?”

Blaine went over the list in his head. Once he learned piano and violin, the other ones fell into place. But he didn’t want to brag, so he just said, “Just a few more.” And kept the brag humble.

He tried to move on and get the subject off him.

“So how was your date?”

To his horror, Kurt’s nose scrunched up like he was trying not to cry. He looked up at the ceiling for a moment and then back down, his eyes glassy when he did. “Could we not talk about that right now?”

Blaine’s eyebrows knitted together. He reached out for Kurt’s hand. “Yeah, of course.” Even if he wanted to know who hurt him so badly, he didn’t want to pry.

Kurt’s lips turned up; a half smile, half gratitude. He blew his nose on a scratchy napkin. After a moment, he smirked and said, “So, I’m the first person you’ve brought here?”

Blaine felt the blood rush to his face. Something about being with Kurt made that happen more frequently. “Shut up,” he said in feigned indignation, more embarrassed than anything. Kurt laughed, deep and unabashed and absolutely gorgeous. Blaine couldn’t help but laugh too.

Blaine also couldn’t help but think of it as a coincidence when the older man slid fifty cents into the crackling jukebox to play “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by Frankie Valli, and they way Kurt’s eyes traced the outline of his lips when he thought he wasn’t looking.

The sky was dark blue and stormy by the time they exited the diner. It wasn’t close at all to sunrise, but Blaine liked to imagine the sun peeking out from the horizon.

Kurt tapped his shoulder and handed him an earbud. He looked happier now, his date hopefully forgotten. Blaine popped the earbud in and relaxed his shoulders when the soft melody of a Motown flooded his senses.

“So what’re your plans now that you’ve graduated?” Blaine asked. It was a silly question, sort of like something a parent would ask. But it had occurred to him he didn’t actually know Kurt too well.

Kurt sighed. “I actually don’t know anymore.” He jogged to make the pedestrian cross signal countdown. He grabbed Blaine’s wrist to pull him forward, who was mercilessly dragged behind. Stupid short legs.

He continued once they made it to the other side of the street. He hadn’t let go of Blaine’s wrist, and it occurred to him that he didn’t want him to. “My friend, Rachel, she’s on her Broadway run as Fanny Brice,” he smiled fondly, as if remembering a distant memory. “She’s brilliant. Meanwhile I’m playing Peter Pan and Prince Eric at preschools and nursing homes.”

“I just don’t know if this thing I put my whole life into is something I want anymore.” Blaine had noticed that Kurt had this amazing talent of not sounding bitter or jealous, even when he had every right to be. “Do you ever feel like that?”

He thought about it for a moment while the song ended. “All the time,” Blaine admitted for the first time out loud. “I’m good at singing and acting, I always have been. I was in show choir because it was safe. Now it just feels stagnant.” He had been doing the same thing since high school. Singing, dancing around a stage, being one of the few gay men in his classes able to play ‘manly’ roles. Because he could hide. Blaine was so tired of hiding.

“What if I want to be a teacher, or a doctor or something?” He exclaimed. It was an exaggeration, but still. He wasn’t only a theatre nerd. He didn’t have to only be that.

Kurt laughed. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. A New York Never, but there was nobody on the quiet suburban streets anyway. He turned so they were facing each other, and once again his face was filled with this anxiety Blaine couldn’t pinpoint. “You’re full of surprises, Blaine Warbler.” Blaine met his eyes, and instead of backing away, he stared right back. “You’re a wonder.”

They walked the rest of the way home in silence, hands swinging slightly between them.

“I had a lot of fun,” Kurt said, wrapping his earbud wires around his phone. He and Blaine stood on opposite ends of the door to their complex. “Thanks for getting me out of my funk.”

“It was my pleasure,” Blaine offered lamely. His pleasure? What was he, an eighteenth century gentleman? “I mean, it was no big deal. I’ll see you later, okay?” He held back a yawn and opened the door to the dark foyer.

“Wait!” Kurt cried, a lot too loud for the two of them. He was rocking on his heels. He was nervous?

“I um, liked doing this with you, and I was wondering…God, why is this so hard?” He cut himself off abruptly. It was sort of freaking Blaine out to see him like that, but he was more confused than anything.

“Kurt—”

“Would you like to go out again sometime?” He blurted, eyes screwed shut. “At a place a bit fancier than a diner?”

Oh.

“Yes, Blaine breathed out way too quickly. “I mean, if you’d want to.”

“Really?” Kurt asked, as if there was a possibility he’d say no. His eyes lit up. “That’s cool. I’ll text you or something.” He tried to cover up his excitement by biting his lip, to no avail.

“Yeah, yeah,” Blaine nodded until he gave himself whiplash. “Well, goodnight.” He moved to shut the door. Oh the embarrassing celebration dance he was going to do when he got upstairs.

“Blaine?” Kurt called out again, a chuckle at the edge of his words. “Could you hold the door?” He pointed, and of course. Only Blaine would be living in the same complex as his crush.

#tan lines and tan hands #spaceorphan's sophisticated challenge: wry #klaine #klaine fanfiction #wait now i’m actually liking this #what if i continued it whoops #also what is it with me and diners?#they’re peak romance places for me #glee

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mengyan · 4 years

Note

Omg hey! I’m so exited to read the Valentine’s Day collab!! I love love loooove your writing so much!! So anyway I wrote my first Carulia fanfic and I just wanted to ask you what you think of this small bit? If it’s bad please tell me-I wanna improve🥺

If you don’t wanna critique it I totally get it, it is kind of long.

Julia POV

Warm rays of sunshine brushed Julia’s freckled cheeks, making up for the bite of frost in the air. The sky was a cheerful blue today, reflecting her mood. She was sitting at a street corner, admiring the view of quaint little shops that resembled the cutesy designs of dollhouses.

Saturday morning chatter rung in her ears in soft, eloquent words of French that were so different from the English required for her job. A frenzy of Bonjour’s (hello/good morning) and Comment allez vous? (How are you doing?) could be heard from across the street.

It was good to be home, to have a day off to enjoy the beauty she had forgotten Poiters possessed. As an avid traveller, there was nowhere quite like the city. Nothing could match it’s charming, Romanesque buildings or tranquil solitude.

Julia smiled at nothing in particular, a flaky, warm croissant in one hand and a timeless romance novel in the other.

How long had it been since she had gotten to relax like this? To enjoy the nature of her city and not have to chase a certain red rogue across the globe? The very same red rogue she struggled to protect from her coworkers?

A sigh escaped her lips. Suddenly her mind wandered to someone she hadn’t wanted to think about: Carmen Sandiego. The thief never ceased to plague her thoughts lately. A warm blush tinted her cheeks as she recalled the kiss they had shared in Cairo, Egypt. There was a sort of thrill in knowing it was so, so wrong, and Julia hated the adrenaline rush it gave her.

Their last interaction had been a week ago, and it had been on an ACME mission rather than the late night visits the thief had begun to pay her. The absence of the red rogue pained her terribly. She missed Carmen. She missed everything about her from her cunning gray eyes to her knowing smile, the light rasp to her voice, and the feel of her lips. She had barely gotten to see the lady in red recently.

Would this be what a relationship with the woman would entail? Random visits sprinkled through the weeks while Carmen gallivanted around the globe and Julia had to pretend she wanted her behind bars? Would she be doomed to live with this uncertainty, this emptiness?

At her inner turmoil, the thief seemed to appear before her with her signature smirk, the curl of her lips forever ingrained in Julia’s memory. Hallucination-Carmen spoke, reciting the promise she had made her not too long ago. “We can have a normal relationship, Jules. We’ll be able to see each other everyday, go on dates, do all of that couple-y stuff. I promise.”

Julia had scoffed at that, of course. Maybe in another world where she wasn’t dating a thief, for goodness sakes. But still she wished there was some way the red rogue could fulfill her promise. Julia knew that what Carmen was doing was absolutely important but....she couldn’t help but be selfish and wish she had her to herself.

On top of that, though, there was the fear that whatever was happening between the two was nothing but physical on Carmen’s end, that this...fling...would be over in a heartbeat and the red rogue would once again disappear with Julia’s heart, only this time she wouldn’t return.

She didn’t want fo think about that.

Trying to take her mind off her worries, Julia reopened her book. The petite woman frowned, nibbling on the last of her pastry and lazily scanning the page for anything interesting. It was one of her favorites, yet she couldn’t bring herself to relax, to forget.

Sighing, she closed the book with a sense of finality, tucking it safely in her messenger bag. It was no use. Nothing could keep Julia’s attention from Carmen for long.

“Partir déjà?” Said Nadia, Julia’s friend and the cashier. The woman adjusted the side of her hijab before opening the cash register. “Habituellement, vous passez toute la matinée ici lorsque vous êtes absent.”

TRANSLATION: “Leaving Already?.....Usually you spend the entire morning here when you’re off.”

Julia smiled sadly. “Quelque chose me vient à l'esprit ces derniers temps, Je ne peux pas me détendre.”

TRANSLATION: “Something has been on my mind lately. I can’t relax.”

Nadia smirked knowingly. “Querelle d'amant?“

TRANSLATION: “Lover’s Quarrel?“

Julia felt her cheeks heat up. Nadia was one of the few people who even knew she was seeing someone, let alone the fact that that someone was a thief. “Entre autres, oui. Il s’agit plus de mon travail.“

TRANSLATION: “Among other things, yes. It’s more about my job.“

Nadia shook her head, making a tut sound. “Tu travailles trop dur.“ She inserted her credit card into the register, swiping twice before the transaction was complete. “Vous savez, les filles et moi allons au Buckingham Club ce soir. Tu devrais venir. Je parie que cela vous fera oublier ... quel est son nom? Carolyn?“

TRANSLATION: You work too hard....You know, the girls and I are hitting the Buckingham Club tonight. You should come. I bet that’ll take your mind off of...what’s her name? Carolyn?“

“Carmen.“ Julia corrected with a smile. “Et Je ne sais pas, pas ce soir. je n'en ai pas vraiment envie.”

TRANSLATION: “Carmen....I don’t know, not tonight. I don’t really feel like it.”

“ S'il vous plaît? Ce sera amusant!?” Nadia replied, making an exaggerated pouty face.

TRANSLATION: “Please? It’ll be fun!”

“Je ne devrais vraiment pas.....”

TRANSLATION: “I really shouldn’t...”

The cashier shook her head, pressing her lips into a thin line. “Oh, Julia, tu es toujours aussi ennuyeuse.”

TRANSLATION: “Oh, Julia, you’re always such a bore.”

Jules simply smiled in response, pushing the rim of her glasses up her nose. “Peut-être la prochaine fois, Nadia.”

TRANSLATION: “Maybe next time, Nadia.”

She said her goodbyes and left the small cafe, the little bell at the door signaling her departure. The cool, crisp air met Julia immediately, the frost already kissing her skin. She turned the corner, making a beeline for her apartment complex when suddenly, a certain beeping sound caught her attention.

A very familiar beeping sound.

She threw a discreet glance over her shoulder before darting into the nearest alleyway, ducking behind the nearest dumpster before removing her pen from her pocket.

Julia clicked the cap, tossing it to the ground as she wrinkled her nose at the stench.

“Agent Argent.“ Chief’s no-nonsense voice came as her hologram blossomed. “I have a new mi-“ She paused, taking in Julia’s location.

“Are you behind a dumpster, Agent?“

Julia felt her cheeks heat slightly “I was in public and had to be...creative...“ She replied curtly, breathing through her mouth.

“Right....anyhoo,“ Chief began again, adjusting her blazer. “I’ve got on assignment for you. I’m sorry to interupt your time off, but you’re the closest agent in proximity.“

Julia smiled sadly, scratching her wrist. “It’s alright, chief. I was feeling restless anyway.“

Chief cocked her head in mild concern. “I’m sorry to hear that, Argent. It’s nothing too serious, but we have reports of some meddling with the security systems at the Louvre. I need you to investigate.“

“Of course. Will Agent Zari or Devineaux be accompanying me?“ She asked, already picturing the splendor at the Louvre. Maybe a trip to the museum was just what she needed today.

“No. Zari and Devineaux are on a case in Santo Domingo.“ Chief said, beginning to pace the length of the alleyway.

“Khadija or Jonas, then?“ Julia replied, referencing two agents she’d been paired with in the past, albeit less frequently than Chase or Zari.

“You’ll be going it alone today. Intel indicates that Carmen Sandiego won’t be present. I trust you can handle a routine check up.”

“I’ll take care of it, chief.“ She answered, giving a small salute to her superior. Internally, Julia released a sigh of relief that she wouldn’t have to tail Carmen.

“Good. Transportation has already been arranged and the details should be on your phone.“ Chief said, crossing her arms. Almost simultaneously, her phone pinged with an encrypted email from ACME.

“Don’t disapoint me, Agent.“ With a terse nod, the hologram disappeared from before her.

Quickly, she darted home and changed into her ACME-issued suit before making her way to the train station. Paris was waiting, after all.

...

No matter how many times she frequented the city, Paris never ceased to amaze Julia with a million new places she hadn’t visited yet. The Louvre, however, was an outlier to the fact. It was Julia’s favorite spot to hit whenever she was in the area.

It had been One-Thirty when her train had pulled into the Paris Saint Lazare, a station settled on the right bank of the Seine and the one closest in proximity to her destination.

The Louvre lay before her in all its grandiose splendor, afternoon sunlight glinting off of the crystal pyramid and casting a rainbow into the burbling fountain before it. The Famed palace of the same name was set on either sides of it, the tasteful renaissance era architecture transporting her into another time.

Julia smiled. She knew every corner of the museum. Every nook and crany was immortalized in her mind from it’s renowned Petite Galerie to it’s extended Egyptian exhibit.

She removed her ACME card from her messenger bag, thumbing it’s side to allow her interpol credentials before going to speak with the security

As promised, a staff member was waiting for her once she got inside.

“Bonjour. Julia Argent, Interpol Britain?“ A tall, skinny man with hooded blue eyes and unkempt blonde hair stepped forward.

“Oui.“ She replied, flashing her badge. “Marcel Cardone?“

“Oui, correct.“ He answered in a thick French accent. “Thank you for coming.“ He said, gesturing for her to walk with him.

Julia smiled. “Bien sûr. J'ai été informé mes supérieurs de la mission. Pouvez-vous me dire quel semble être exactement le problème?“

TRANSLATION: “Of course. I was briefed by my superiors on the mission. Can you tell me what exactly seems to be the problem?“

Marcel spoke as he led her through the halls of the grand building. “Do not worry, I am fluent in English. I do not know the details but the head of security will inform you on the matter.“

“Sounds good,“ Julia said reverting back to English. Her guide stopped at a door with la sécurité (security) written in bold script.

“This is it, mademoiselle.“ Marcel said, opening the door and leading her to the back. Standing before her was another door. Probably to an office, Julia guessed. “Monsieur Toussaint? L'agent d'Interpol est arrivé.“

TRANSLATION: “Mr.Toussaint? The interpol agent has arrived.“

A tall, stocky man with brown skin glanced up, adjusting his glasses. “L'agent? Miss, le problème s'est corrigé juste avant votre arrivée.”

TRANSLATION: “The Agent? Miss, the issue corrected itself just before you arrived.”

“Il n'y a donc rien de mal avec la sécurité?” Julia asked, confused.

TRANSLATION: “So is there nothing wrong with the security?“

“Plus maintenant, non...” Mr.Toussaint answered, scrutinizing her.

TRANSLATION. “Not anymore, no.”

“Mais je suis venu tout ce chemin...” She answered, slightly disappointed.

TRANSLATION: “But I came all this way....”

The man scratched the side of his head in mild concern. “Nous sommes désolés, mademoiselle. Perhaps you would like a tour of the Louvre in compensation?”

TRANSLATION: “We are sorry, Miss. Perhaps you would like a tour of the Louvre in compensation?”

“No, it’s quite alright, thank you.” Julia murmured, tugging at the hem of sleeve.

“Please accept. Nous allons même le rendre gratuit!”

TRANSLATION: Please accept. We will even make it free!”

“If you insist.” Julia smiled awkwardly.

“Good.” Mr.Toussaint lifted the phone on his desk, dialing as he spoke. “Cheryl? Préparez-vous à faire une visite. Oui. Rencontrez-la près des statues.”

TRANSLATION. “Cheryl? Prepare to give a tour. Yes. Meet her by the statues.”

The balding man put the phone down, swiping through the many papers scattered on his desk. “Our tour guide, Cheryl, will meet you out by our Sculpture Department. Please enjoy your day.”

They exchanged goodbyes and thank-yous before Mr. Toussaint returned to the millions of files on his desk and Julia to the swarming museum crowds.

Deftly, Julia navigated the throngs of people, making her way to the modern sculpture exhibit. As promised a woman was waiting before the exhibit checking her watch.

Her dark red-brunette hair was pulled into a pony-tail, and a pair of green khakis and a blue blouse contrasting against her flawless brown skin. From the back of her head, Julia could see a thick pair of glasses settling at the rim of her nose.

She seemed familiar, so very familiar....

And then she spoke. “Enjoying the view, Jules?”

The light rasp, the sultry tone of voice...

The petite woman gasped. “Carmen?”

“Surprise.” The thief said with a smirk.

“What’re you doing here?!” Julia asked, confused. Was Carmen behind the security issue already being solved before she arrived?

“You must have mistaken me for someone else,” The Red Rogue grinned coyly, reaching over gracefully and slipping her fingers between Julia’s. “I’m just Cheryl Vasquez, foreign exchange student and Louvre Tour guide.”

“Of course.” Julia scoffed but played along. “And what would Cheryl Vasquez be doing touring the Louvre?”

“If you’re asking whether I’m here to stop VILE, then no. They aren’t trying to steal anything. I’m here of my own accord.” Carmen replied, her thumb tracing circles along Julia’s palm.

“So I suppose it’s just a coincidence that I was sent here on a mission?”

Carmen winked at her, her rouged lips relaxing into their signature grin. “Yep. A coincidence. Absolutely nothing more.”

A twitch of annoyance flared within Julia. Sometimes Carmen’s games could get tiring. “Well then, since you aren’t stealing anything, I’ll be on my way then.”

“What?” The thief said, for once taken aback.

“You heard me.” Julia began with a smirk, turning in the other direction. “Have a nice day, Miss Sandiego. The Louvre is quite the sight to see.”

“Not so fast, Jules.” Carmen grasped her wrists gently, pulling her in close. Julia blushed, her mouth mere inches from the thief’s. She parted her lips gently, her eyelids sinking lower. Her tongue flecked across the expanse of her bottom lips as she waited to meet the thief’s lips for the first time in more than a week.

“Huh?” Julia said in confusion as she felt the other woman’s heat move away from her own.

Carmen was no longer before her, lips moving closer. Instead she darted away from the smaller woman, a smug grin scrawled on her beautiful face. She waved Julia’s ACME gas gun in the air teasingly, throwing her a wink. “A theft in progress is occurring, agent. You’re lawfully required to follow.”

“Carmen!” Julia shouted in shock, not at all caring about the attention they were gaining from their fellow museum-go-ers. “Give it back!”

“Come and get me!” She called with a trickle of laughter, disappearing into the hordes of people.

Julia smiled despite her frustration and ran after her, for once not at all caring that her behavior was extremely unprofessional.

That was what Carmen did to her. She...freed her. Allowed Julia to relax, to sit still, to live in the moment.

Julia felt all the tension that had built up over the course of the week melt away as she pursued the chase and danced across the Louvre court yard.

She chased Carmen out of the museum, nearing the edge of the complex. “Aha!” Julia shouted, finally catching up to her lover and realizing a smile had formed on her lips.

“You’ve got me, alright,” Carmen smiled, lowering her lashes flirtatiously as her voice lowered teasingly. She slipped her arms around Julia’s waist being just tall enough that the shorter woman had to slightly look up to meet her eyes. “Now what’re you gonna do with me?”

Julia answered her with a kiss, feeling the thief’s bright red lipstick smear onto her mouth. The lady in red captured Julia’s lower lip with her teeth, chuckling at the ACME agent’s Yelp of surprise as she tugged. Every gasp that managed to escape her lips was swallowed by Carmen’s mouth as she pulled her closer with passion.

“Mhm, I’ve missed that.” Julia smiled. “I’ve missed you.”

“You aren’t the only one.” Carmen purred against her lips. “You have no idea how badly I wanted to come and see you...but...”

“It’s alright, Carmen. I understand.” Julia whispered, touching her forehead to the Latina’s and lacing her fingers through the thief’s. “Do you plan on telling me why you’re here, though?”

“Can’t I just pay a visit to my favorite ACME agent?” She teased, beginning to lead Julia out of the museum complex.

“At my apartment, yes. But here?”

“Okay fine....” The thief relented, turning away. Julia spotted a tiny tinge of a blush dusting her cheeks. Carmen? Blushing? “I....may or may not have had my team hack the museum security and leave a trace to VILE to get you sent here.”

“Carmen!” Julia hissed. “You could get caught! And for what? Just to see me? You can meet me at my apartment!”

“Hey, hey, what’s done is done, alright?” She said, her arms flying in front of her in attempt to calm her down. Then, she smiled. “Aww you were worried about me. That’s adorable.“

“Thats-Thats not!....Thats not the point!“ Julia tried to fight a blush but it was no use.

Carmen laughed, caressing Julia’s face and tilting her chin up to meet her eyes. “Hey. I know you mean well. I’ll be more careful from now on. Promise.“

“O...Okay.“ Julia murmured, the woman in red’s slate gray eyes catching her off guard.

“But...since you’re already here....we should make the most of it, no?“ Carmen smiled sweetly, for once with no tinge of smugness to it.

“Alright.“ Julia relented with a small grin. “So is this a....date?“

The latina winked, her teeth sliding over her bottom lip. “Do you want it to be?“

“No! I mean...I just thought...“

“Relax, I’m messing with you.“ Carmen said, taking Julia’s hands in hers. “The truth is...Jules...I wanted to prove that I’m serious about this. About us. You...mean a lot to me, and I want us to be about more than just random hookups.“

The petite woman felt herself smiling at the other’s words, and gave the red rogue’s hands a squeeze. “You have no idea how relieved I am to hear you say that.“

Carmen returned her grin, running her thumb over Julia’s knuckles. “Explanations aside, are you ready for the greatest date in the world?“

Julia’s brow tugged upwards along with her lips. “The greatest, huh?“

Carmen threw her a flirty glance. “Hey, I don’t settle for second best.“

“I can see that. Alright then, Miss Sandiego.“ The shorter woman said coyly, “Show me what you got.“

....

ANON!! THIS IS SO AMAZING OH MY GOD?? for your first fic this is incredible and i absolutely love how you write them!! everything is so in character and carmen absolutely would create an entire heist just to meet up with jules 😭

i don’t have much to critique: just a few minor spelling errors here and there and some misplaced punctuation but that’s it, everything else is so good?? i’m serious this gave me so much serotonin omg,,, if you post it on ao3 let me know and i’ll be sure to leave kudos and a comment!! <3

and thank you so much for enjoying my writing, i can say the same for you :D

#asking carmen #long post #receiving julethief fic in my asks inbox is a blessing

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bnhasimpgirltm · 4 years

Text

Meet Me in the Stars (Bakugo x Reader)

Pairings: Bakugo Katsuki x Reader

Warnings: Character Death, Blood, Knife, swearing

Genre: angst, a tad bit of fluff if you put this oneshot under a microscope

Word Count: 2221

Type: oneshot

A/N: I feel like this isn’t as good as my other A N G S T, but I think I wrote Bakugo decently in character for him turning villain. Unedited because I got so excited. I’ll probably edit it after I post. As always, enjoy!

------------------------------

Katsuki had been missing for months.

You two had been fighting a group of villians, and not realizing how many of them there were, you two had gone in opposite directions in an attempt to divert them. He told you not to come to save him if things went south, and stupidly, you agreed because you thought that he would be okay.

You didn’t even know anything was wrong until you saw the large explosion cloud rising over the city. You waited to see if another one would rise, signaling that Katsuki was fighting off the villians, but it never came. The air calmed around you and everything was quiet, but you were anything but calm.

Did they kidnap him again? Or worse, was Katsuki dead? Tears came to your eyes as you thought about your life without your explosive boyfriend.

No. He’s strong. He’ll come back to us. I know it. We’ll be back at our apartment tonight laughing over how dumb the villians are and watching a movie while eating soba.

Trusting Katsuki’s abilities, you went back to the agency and hoped that you would see him there when you came back. As you searched for his blonde head in the crowd, you got increasingly worried.

“(Y/N)!” You heard. You turned towards the voice and saw Midoriya pushing through the crowd of heroes and towards you.

“Midoriya!” You call back. “Do you know where Katsuki is?”

He’s silent and avoids your eyes.

“Midoriya! Where is Katsuki!” You grab his shoulders and shake him. “Did he come back?”

“(Y/N), Kacchan isn’t here,” he says and then shakes his head.

“No!” You yell. “Stop lying to me!”

“We’ll find him. I promise you,” Midoriya hugs you.

“We better,” you say.

You and Midoriya dedicated all of your time to trying to find Katsuki, and went back to where his explosion was last seen to see if anything was missed.

It was like he was never there.

The search continued and every hero gave their condolences, but life had moved on without Katsuki, and you had been forced to move on with it.

As less and less resources were dedicated to helping find the number two hero, you worked harder than ever, wanting nothing more than to bring your Katsuki back.

After a month and a half of searching, they declared him deceased and completely stopped looking for him.

You had begged them to keep searching, but they refused saying it was a waste of time and resources looking for a dead hero. You were about to give up too, exhausted and lost.

Until today.

It was like any other night for the past months without Katsuki. The apartment was too quiet and the sweet nitrogycerin smell that usually wafted through was gone. You microwaved the leftovers of your lunch and started to eat dinner alone. Ashido, Kaminari, and Kirishima had asked you if you wanted to go eat with them, but you declined politely, saying that you didn’t feel up to it today.

You hadn’t felt up to anything since Katsuki went missing. Midoriya and Momo said you needed to get out again, constantly texting you and checking up on you and trying to get you to leave your apartment for something other than work or grocery shopping in your sweatpants and t-shirt.

You hear the door creak open and you assumed it was Kirishima again. He often dropped by after the Bakusquad had ate to give you some leftover food.

“Just put it on the coffee table Kirishima,” you tiredly say. “Thanks for bringing food by again.”

You drop your plate in the sink and get up to talk to Kirishima. Then you smell it.

Sweet and warm.

Katsuki? No that’s impossble. It can’t be.

“I’m not Weird Hair,” the voice says.

But it was.

“Katsuki?” Disbelief plagues your voice.

He’s wearing a pair of black sweatpants and a black t-shirt, and is unscathed aside from the bandage that covers part of his arm.

“Where were you?” Stepping towards him so you could get a closer look at him, your hero training kicks in and you realize that he has something holstered at his hip.

A gun? No, it’s too skinny.

“I was captured again,” he whispers.

“I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry,” you look at him and silently start to cry.

“Don’t be,” he snaps at you.

“How can I not be sorry when I caused you so much pain?” You ask him.

“They didn’t even touch me,” he says.

“W-what? How?” You questioned.

“Well, now is the time to ask what I was going to ask,” he grabs your hand and looks at you with those red eyes that you loved so much.

Katsuki, now isn’t the time to ask me to marry you! You aggressively think.

“Come with me and join the League of Villains,” he says.

A shocked look takes over your face and you’re speechless.

“What? Katsuki, you’re joking right?” You plead, hoping that it wasn’t true. “They’re villains! Bad guys!”

“Villains is a very subjective word! Why the hell are they villains? Is it because they don’t have the same beliefs as these fame hungry people we call heroes?” He scoffs.

“How could you do this? You wanted to save people and be a good hero!” You cry out.

“And I am. I wanted to be a hero because it aligned with my goals. They used to want to save people! Now they don’t care!” Katsuki yells in anger. “Come with me, because I know that you want to save people too!”

“Katsuki I can’t just join the League of Villains! I’ve wanted to be a hero for so long and that dream came true. You want me to give up my dream so I can join an illegal villain organization?” You’re angry at him now too.

“We don’t have to be the villains anymore,” he says, reffering to the League.

“We? Katsuki you’re so far down this hole of righteousness that you can’t take your head out of your ass to see how awful the League is! They kill people!” You grab the sleeve of his t-shirt and look him in the eye. “You’re okay with that? That they kill to get what they want?”

“They’re just moving toward a goal,” he says. “I did awful things to get to where I am too! How am I any different?” He shrugs you off of his arm.

“You never killed anyone!” You angrily say.

“Are you sure about that?” Katsuki looks down in shame.

“Who?” You yell. “Who was it?”

“Raccoon Eyes,Tape Face, Weird Hair, Dunce Face.” He quietly admits. “They were in the way. All of them were coming to the apartment and they were in the way.”

No. Your friends. His friends. Dead. All of them.

“Oh my gosh.” You start to cry. “It’s not too late Katsuki. You can still escape this and be a real hero,” you try to convince him. “We can tell the cops that the League made you do it!”

“What if I don’t want to escape?” He slams his hand on your living room table. “This is exactly, what I want!”

“No it isn’t, and I love you too much to let you throw away your life like this.” Silently, you wrap your arms around him and naturally, he leans into your embrace, then he tenses up and shifts. You shrug it off at first, blaming it on nerves, and then you feel a sharp, stabbing pain on your upper abdomen.

Katsuki pulls back and repeatedly says “I’m sorry.”

You realize that you were stabbed. By the man that you loved more than anything in the world. By the man that is your world. The knife that he plunged into your flesh was stained dark red by your blood.

So it was a knife. You bitterly thought. How fitting, that the person who took my life is the one who I trusted most with it.

Suddenly, your legs felt weak and you started to fall towards the ground. Katsuki caught you and cradled you against him.

“I had to do it, I’m sorry,” He sobs and holds your weak form close to him.

“I still love you,” You weakly say, and it breaks him.

How could you still love him? He had stabbed you! He didn’t ask you however, he just voiced how he felt back.

“I love you too,” he says. “I love you and I had to take you from this awful world because it doesn’t deserve someone like you to save it.”

“I hate that I have to go so soon,” you stop and take a breath. “I hate that I’m going to die knowing that you’re throwing away everything you worked for.”

“I’m not throwing it away. I’m just going on a different path to get to the same goal,” he explains.

“I always loved that about you. You do anything it takes to reach a goal.” It needed to be said, but you felt your energy deplete and run out of your body faster than ever. You knew that the end is near.

Closing your eyes, you smile, because you don’t fear death. You don’t fear the next adventure that is to come, even if it won’t be on this Earth.

Katsuki holds your hand as you take your last breath, and sees your closed eyes and smile. He knows that you are braver than he will ever be, and cradles you against his chest, watching as you leave him behind.

Then, everything is over.

For a moment, Katsuki’s world stops spinning, and he wants you to come back and jump into his arms. He wants to be with you for the rest of his life, but it’s too late. What’s done is done, and the only thing he can do is gently lay your lifeless body on the tile of your kitchen and wash his knife in your sink.

As he watches the vermillion red of your blood wash down the sink, he’s reminded of how you always told him how much you loved the color of his eyes, and he breaks down all over again.

You were a real hero, and nobody deserved you, not even him.

Katsuki walks out of the room, making sure to avoid looking at your body, and leaves the apartment, locking it up behind him. He knew that someone would find you eventually, but he would be long gone once that happened.

Leaving the complex, he realizes that it’s around 1 AM, and the stars are still high in the sky.

You had always talked about how once you died you would live among the stars, watching down at Earth and laughing at the stupidity of the humans that were living. He always laughed when you said this, thinking that it was ridiculous to think that the dead lived among the stars, but right now, he hoped to God that it was true.

Stopping at the gate, Katsuki turned around and sat on the grass in front of the apartment complex. It was cool and soft, and when he laid his head down on it he remembered when you two went stargazing in the bed of his truck.

And that’s Cassiopeia, “The Queen”, just like me! You had joked. He wished that you were here with him now, watching the stars and in his arms.

As Katsuki laid in the plush grass, he knew that one day, he would join you in the stars and see you again. He knew that everything horrible he did in his life would all be worth it, because he didn’t know when it was going to happen, but he would someday rise up and be taken up to the stars, just like you had said.

Katsuki looked up at the Cassiopeia constellation and framed it with his fingers. He imagined you up there, sitting on the “L” shape, and for the first time in months, he smiled. A real, genuine smile.

This world was so awful and evil, with so many disgusting people that you had worked until the end to save everyone from.

He owed it to you. He was going to make the world a better place. The place that you had wanted to create when you had become a hero.

Bakugo Katsuki had a lot of work to do, and not a lot of time to do it.

But the world and all of its inevitable evil could wait.

For now, he would watch the stars, just like you had, and hope that when he saw you again, whenever that was, you would find it in yourself to forgive him for everything he did.

He hoped that you would forgive him, because once you did, he would finally be able to forgive himself.

And so it goes, Bakugo Katsuki looking up and watching the stars, pressing pause on his life for just this short moment. He imagined you smiling down at him, and smiled back. Katsuki knew that until he came back to the sky, you would watch him succeed in doing what you always wanted.

And the knowledge that you would always be with him as long as the stars were there was enough to finally put his restless soul at peace.

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uncloseted · 4 years

Note

Do you think skinny is the beauty standard? Not just the hourglass figure but as in genuinely skinny?

No, or, at least, not right now in the US. I think there are always two beauty standards- one is what men find most physically attractive, and the other is the standard women hold other women to. Right now, neither of those are a skinny look.

Starting with male beauty standards for women, in the US, women frequently overestimate men’s preferences for thinness. Men will rank a mid-range, healthy BMI as more attractive than a BMI that’s underweight. Male beauty standards for women are hypothesized to be more focused on evolutionary indicators of fertility, so it makes sense that a healthy weight would be considered more attractive (since being underweight can cause fertility issues).

So, thinness seems to be a beauty standard that women judge other women against. As our culture has developed, beauty standards have become more stringent and complex; the “insta baddie” beauty standard we have now (giant butt and boobs, impossibly tiny waist, super tan, ultra thick hair, cat eyes, high cheekbones, big lips, etc) is nearly impossible to have naturally. By engaging in that beauty standard, people are signaling that they have the money, time, and status to alter their body on a whim, just like in the 90s and 00s, people were signaling that they had the money, time, and status to be super thin. I think the transition from super skinny to impossibly enhanced body has come from a few things. In part, I think it’s because anyone can be skinny, and people can be skinny naturally- so it’s not as much of a status symbol as it could be. I think it’s also because with this beauty standard, we can claim to be embracing “all beauty” (because look! The perfect woman has features from all different ethnicities and is absolutely not starving herself to be skinny! We like big butts! Body positivity!!!) while actually narrowing what “acceptable” beauty is.

I hope that kind of answers your question. I’m always kind of afraid to comment on cultural issues because I don’t want to accidentally say something hurtful. This is just how I’m looking at the issue now, and I’m curious to hear your takes on it. Also, if you’ve read any interesting articles or academic papers about changing beauty standards and the “insta body”, please let me know! I’m still scouring the internet for a book I read for school that posited beauty standards get more stringent during periods where women are gaining more rights.

#Anonymous #effys-closet #effys closet

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echotrinityme · 3 years

Text

You will be loved Chapter 13: Henry is Being Sus

Ellie Rose's POV

I can't believe, I escape the Wall! All thanks to my new friend Henry Stickmin. He's a legend in the criminal world, he's has stolen countless valuable items and invaded police several times. I also heard he stopped committing crimes when he was pardoned by the Government when he was recruited to help them with something important.

If he was pardoned then why was he at the Wall in the first place? I guess Canada has different laws than the US, well he wanted to escape and I helped him get a boost up. At first, I thought he was going to abandoned me but I was wrong.

He helped me up and we both escaped the complex together, now I'm riding the motorcycle that we found and he's holding on to me around my waist. He has thin arms for a dude, he also looks skinny. Has he eaten before? We kept going until we stopped at a random clearing.

I put the motorcycle to stop and he got off first, I stayed on the motorcycle while he was pacing. He furrowed his brow and he stopped pacing, he fished around in his pocket to find a small ear piece.

"What are you going to do with that?" I asked him, he was trying to make the device work. He glanced up and started to sign me his answer.

"I'm gonna call someone." he replied.

"Who?"

"A friend of mine."

As soon as he said he blushed, which surprises me for a bit. A friend he says? I got to meet this friend, he pressed the button and waited for someone to pick up.

Charles Calvin's POV

I was flying in my helicopter when I was picking up a signal from my headset, I tapped the signal to see who was trying to contact me. It was Henry, he went missing a while go. No one know where he was, not even Dominic knew. He was using the earpiece I gave to him a long time ago.

"Hey Hen, glad to hear from ya bud." I answered, I was relieved to hear from him again. I was worried for him and so was everyone else back at the base, yes even Rupert. Rupert is starting to warm up to Henry.

"Where are you?" I asked him, he quickly told me he was kidnapped and he escaped. He gave me the coordinates of his location, I quickly put in the coordinates and I immediately headed straight to him.

He also mentioned he had a friend with him, I hope this new friend is better than Dominic.

No One's POV

Charles finally got to their location, he glanced down to find Henry and his new friend waving up at him. He landed next to them and he opened the door, he ran over to Henry.

He immediately jumped to hug him, catching Henry off guard to the point to almost falling to the ground. They both hugged for a while until a clearing of a throat snapped them both out their fantasy world.

"Um...Hi." said Ellie with a smirk on her face.

Both boys' faces were pink from embarrassment and they quickly pulled away from each other, Charles took the time to introduce himself to her.

"Hey, I'm Charles and you are?" asked Charles.

"The name's Ellie Rose." replied Ellie.

"So Ellie what brings you here with my pal Henry?" questioned Charles.

"We both were captured by the Wall." explained Henry.

"The Wall!" shouted Charles, he was furious with that information.

"Yes." answered Ellie.

"Why were you there at the Wall in the first place? You didn't commit crimes again did you?"

"No!"

"Then how come you were there at one of the most notorious prisons?"asked Charles again.

"They kidnapped me out of nowhere." replied Henry with an unamused expression on his face.

Charles turned to Ellie who was watching the conversation with interest.

"What about you? What were you in the complex for?" questioned Charles.

"Uh...I don't want to talk to about it." answered Ellie with a sheepish laugh.

"Well, I'm glad you helped Henry escape that place and vice versa." said Charles with a beaming grin.

"No problem." replied Ellie.

"Any friend of Henry's is a friend of mine."

The trio laughed and they all headed to the helicopter, Charles started the engine while Henry sated next to him in the co-pilot seat. Ellie sat in the cockpit and admiring the Government owned air vehicle with keen interest.

On the way back to the base, Henry, Charles, and Ellie were chatting about random topics like childhood memories, what were their parents like, stupid things they did, etc.

They got to the base, Charles let Henry and Ellie out of the helicopter. Charles stopped the engine and followed them, Charles led them to the General's tent to report him on finding them.

"Hey General." said Charles while saluting him.

"At ease, Charles." said Galeforce, he noticed Henry and Ellie standing behind him.

"Henry! Where were you? You disappeared and everyone was worried." exclaimed Galeforce.

Henry's face became pink of that admission, he never thought everyone even cared about him being missing. Maybe only Charles...and probobaly Dominic, Dominic! He completely forgot it about him. He wonders what Dominic is doing right now.

"Henry?" asked Galeforce, tentatively.

"I was kidnapped by the Wall." quickly signed Henry while he was trying to make sure no one noticed he was zoning out.

"The Wall?" questioned Galeforce, softly.

Henry, Charles, and Ellie nodded, Galeforce noticed Ellie for the first time. He wondered who she was and why were they were there in the first place and also, why was Henry kidnapped if he was pardoned by the Government.

"Who are you, miss?" asked Galeforce, who turned his attention on to Ellie who was surprised at the question.

"My name's Ellie Rose, sir." replied Ellie Rose with a firm frown on her face, she's not sure if she was going to be arrested or something else.

"I'm going to ask you and Henry a couple questions." said Galeforce firmly.

Ellie and Henry both looked at each other in confusion while Charles was watching the scene with morbid curiosity.

"How did you guys managed to get captured in the first?" demanded Galeforce.

Henry was about to answer but stopped himself, he didn't to reveal sensitive information involving his capture. He didn't want to make Dom angry, he's going to have to lie to Galeforce. Ellie decided to answer first not realizing why Henry didn't answer him right away.

"I was captured because of a crime I'm not comfortable to tell yet." answered Ellie, Galeforce nodded slowly and he looked at Henry. Henry was looking down at his boots as if they were more interesting than anything else, he also gave a vibe that says he would rather be anywhere else than here.

"Henry...what's your story?" asked Galeforce in concern, Ellie already knew the story well part of it, Charles on the other hand wanted to know how and why he was in there in the first place.

Henry jumped at the question and he began to panic, he's not ready to tell them on how he got kidnapped but if he don't say anything he will look like he's hiding secrets...which he actually is.

"Uh...I...was just walking and felt something prick into my neck and a while after that I woke up with my hands locked up." stammered Henry who was acting like it he calm on the outside but on the inside, he hated himself for lying to them especially Charles.

He felt shame and guilt at the same time and it wasn't pretty, sure when he was a criminal he had no trouble lying to the cops and other people. However, when he got stolen from his home by the Government to help them take down the Topphat Clan, it changed his entire being.

Henry got pardoned by the Government and he strike a friendship with Charles and he built a life being a former thief.

The General, Charles, and Ellie stared at him with concern, Galeforce accepted the answer while the other two didn't buy it. Henry was acting weird and both Charles and Ellie is gonna find out what's going with Henry.

Before Galeforce can ask anymore questions, Henry quickly signed he had to go and left without giving anyone a chance to answer him. Everyone stared where Henry was just at with bewilderment, they wondered why Henry is in a hurry.

Charles glanced at the General with a determined look on his face and beckoned Ellie to follow him to find Henry, before they went out he glanced at Galeforce.

"Don't worry, Ellie and I will find him sir." said Charles while Ellie nodded her head in agreement.

Galeforce nodded and dismissed them both while reminding Ellie she still needs to be asked a few more questions, she gave him a single nod and left.

Meanwhile Henry was still running, to where? He doesn't know as long it's away from the tent, what Henry didn't do is watch where he was going. He bumped into someone and it's not just some random person, it was Dominic.

"Oof! Hey dumbass can't you see that I'm walk-Henry! exclaimed Dominic who was shocked, he quickly grabbed Henry who flinched and expected a punch but instead got a hug.

Henry's eyes widened, he never thought Dom would give him a hug. He only does on it on rare good days, Dom was hugging him tight and Henry wasn't sure if he should hug back or just stand there.

Dominic stopped hugging him cause he noticed Henry wasn't hugging him, he looked at him and frowned.

"What's wrong, sweetheart?" asked Dominic, sweetly. Even though the words sounded sweet the way he said it made it sound he's faking it.

"Um...Uh...I." stammered Henry, he was to give an answer until he finally gave in and hugged him backed.

Dom was satisfied and resume hugging him but his grip suddenly became tight, and he leaned in to whispered to Henry's ear. Henry froze when Dom began to spoke and his whole body quivered in fear.

"Never ever leave me like that again." threaten Dom with a snarl, Henry felt a wave of strong emotion since his returned from the Wall. His mind was blank, his body was cold, and his heart was numb. Henry nodded his head slowly and Dom grabbed his arm roughly taking him back to his apartment.

Unbeknownst to them, someone saw the whole thing and that someone was Dave Panpa.

#Henry Stickmin #henry stickmim collection #thsc #the henry stickmin collection #charles calvin #ellie rose #hubert galeforce #thsc charles calvin #thsc ellie rose #thsc hubert galeforce #dave panpa #thsc dave panpa #stickvin #henrles #thsc henry stickmin

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alarawriting · 4 years

Text

The Cold At The Heart of the Light: Chapter One

I’ve decided I’ll post probably the first three chapters of this as I work on it. There’s currently six chapters written and the seventh is started; I have been planning about twelve of them.

This is gonna have to be edited a lot when I finish the whole thing -- it’s too goddamn long, for one thing -- but I can’t spend too much time editing the first draft when I’m not done with it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

As soon as the maid led me to the living room and I got my first look at the little girl, I could tell the child was dying. She was sitting on an overstuffed, white suede couch with brown fringy pillows all around her, at the back of a living room that looked like something out of House Beautiful, all tall wide windows and understated elegance in brown and beige and gold and white. She was maybe about seven, if her disease hadn’t undersized her, feet dangling off the couch and not moving. When children whose feet are dangling are not kicking those feet, and there is neither a book nor a TV nearby to explain the discrepancy, I can generally tell something is wrong. Her blonde curly wig was as expensive as the décor of her parents’ living room, but I’m an expert in these matters – I could tell the chemo had taken her hair. And her skin was dull and dry looking, her eyes vague and unfocused, her expression indrawn and blank, her small limbs painfully skinny. She showed all the signs of either being abused, drugged, or severely ill, and given that her father had called me in, I knew that at least it was the last. Probably the second as well. The pharmaceutical industry has never solved the problem of stopping children’s pain to my satisfaction (or, for that matter, the children’s.)

Her mother would have been an elegantly plastic politician’s wife if she hadn’t been sitting tensely at the edge of the sofa, arm around her daughter, clutching the child. Fear and anxiety make even women with $500 haircuts and botoxed foreheads seem human. I’d already forgotten the woman’s name; after checking over the daughter with a quick glance, I turned to focus on her father. Senator John Lightman, one of those politicians who manages to look “boyish” simply by being a thin dark-haired man in his prime when everyone else in the Senate is somewhere between 60 and dead, was walking toward me, reaching out a hand as if to shake it. I saw the look of puzzlement cross his face as he got a good look at me. “Are you…”

“Dr. Mystery?” I filled in the blank. “Yes, of course, I apologize. You couldn’t possibly recognize me like this.” I had arrived in a stock form, a middle-aged woman of average height, weight and appearance with blonde graying hair in a short fluffy do. I couldn’t very well drive around town in my working form, but now that I was here, it was time to shock and awe the mundanes. With a thought, I transformed.

When I first adopted this as my working form, it used to take me ten or twenty minutes in front of a mirror to get it just right, because it doesn’t look human enough for me to use DNA as a model anywhere – I have to brute-force it. But by this time I’d been doing it for so many years, it took only a few seconds. Changing doesn’t hurt – it feels like having a really good stretch, actually.

In a moment, I was six feet tall, simultaneously busty and thin, with the golden skin of an Academy award, iris-less purple eyes with cat pupils, and flame-red hair down to the small of my back. I wore a skin-tight black leather catsuit with no shoes, and modified pelvis and leg muscles so I looked like I was wearing high heels even though I was barefoot – an anatomic impossibility for other women, but there’s no point in having total control over your own flesh if you can’t use it to show off a little. To complete the costume I grew a white cotton labcoat over the catsuit; not exactly a cape, but the name is Doctor Mystery, not Ms. Mystery or Lady Mystery or Sexy Chick I’d Like To Do Mystery.

Being a supervillain’s all about the power and the respect. Back when my working form wasn’t quite so do-me hot, I actually used to get less respect as a villain, as if a woman couldn’t possibly really be all that mad, bad and dangerous to know if she doesn’t look like a supermodel. But when I do the catsuit without the lab coat, I get respect as a badass with dangerous powers and incredible fighting skills, not as a biomedical genius. Not that I’m not a badass with dangerous powers and incredible fighting skills, but I’m not a teen thug for hire anymore, I’m a bona fide mad scientist and I want people to remember that, dammit.

Mrs. Lightman’s eyes went wide, and she made a tiny little yelping noise and clutched her little girl… who rather than looking frightened, actually looked mildly interested for the first time since I’d arrived. Her dad was trying to hide it, but his lips had compressed as if he were trying not to bite them and there was just the tiniest tremor in his hands. I expected Mrs. Lightman’s reaction, but the Senator could have gone one of two ways – men usually react to me with fear or lust, or a combination. I didn’t think I saw lust in Senator Lightman, and when I took his hand and shook it, I confirmed it. He was on the verge of peeing his pants. I might have believed he wasn’t reacting with any lust because he really had eyes only for his wife, if he weren’t a politician. But I’ve known very few male politicians to be faithful, and even they couldn’t avoid being lustful. Senator Lightman was terrified of me because I was a Proxima and he was a Sapien-centric bigot. Also, probably, because I was a supervillain and a killer and I could drop him dead in a second, turn him inside out, make the skin melt off his flesh or give him cancer, just from the touch of his hand in mine. But I suspected I’d have gotten the same reaction if I’d been a member of the Peace Force, or even a Girl Scout with purple eyes and gold skin trying to sell him cookies. He hated my kind, but he needed me today.

And I intended to use his need to my people’s advantage.

“Introduce me to your family, Senator,” I said.

I felt his adrenaline spike through the skin connection of our clasped hands, but he managed not to show it. He let go of me. “This is my wife, Dot, and our daughter Mindy. She’s eight.”

I walked over to Mindy and knelt down in front of her, prompting more tension and white knuckles from her mother clasping her. “Hello, Mindy,” I said.

“Hi,” she mumbled.

“Do you know who I am?”

“My daddy says you’re some kind of super doctor.”

Super doctor. I liked that. “He’s right. I’m here to help you. I imagine you’ve gotten real tired of being sick.”

She smiled wanly. “Yeah.”

“Let me have your hands.”

“Will it hurt?” Her tone was tired and apathetic, as if it didn’t really matter if it was going to hurt or not. I suspected it was more resignation than apathy.

“Not at all.” I smiled at her. “I’m a super doctor, remember? It doesn’t hurt if I don’t want it to.”

She gave me her small hands and I clasped them in mine. I can’t entirely describe what I feel when I examine a living creature, not in terms that refer to the senses everyone else has. It’s like feeling a symphony or hearing a tapestry. Everything is very complex and interrelated, and I get signals from thousands of processes in the body, but it all melds together into a single big picture. The big picture here was that Mindy’s body was attacking itself. Her bone marrow was busily churning out cancerous white blood cells that didn’t work, filling her bloodstream with useless cells that crowded out and starved the working, useful ones. The pain signals were overwhelming even with the drugs trying to mask them, and the drugs themselves were dulling her mind as much as the fatigue and weakness from the disease.

Like many terminally ill children, she was quiet and accepting, which is constantly mistaken in glurgy human interest stories about terminally ill children for bravery. Children who go out with scarves on their bald heads and run lemonade stands to raise money to research and cure their own illnesses are brave. Children who are too tired to feel fear and have been living with a disease too long to cry about it are just normal human beings. Mindy was a normal human being, and her leukemia was also perfectly normal, something I’d dealt with a hundred times before.

I closed my eyes so I could focus better on Mindy’s internal world. First I triggered the release of endorphins into her bloodstream to mask any pain caused by what I was about to do. The human body rebels against my power, seeing my authority as a violation of its autonomy, and frequently reacts by tattling to the brain about it in a way that the mind perceives as agonizing, but unspecific, pain. As I told Mindy, though, no one feels pain in my hands unless I allow it. As soon as her body was saturated with endorphins and I’d shut down most of the internal sensory trunk lines to the brain, making her internally numb while leaving her ability to sense anything touching her skin, I swept my concentration through her body and killed every immature white blood cell she had. I then targeted the surviving mature white cells and forced them to rapidly replicate and mature, until she had almost a normal white blood cell count and they all worked correctly.

To finish off, I blocked the drugs that hadn’t been working so well anyway, turned the internal nerves back on, and filled Mindy with a combination of endorphin and oxytocin, and other hormones designed to make people feel good. This particular cocktail wouldn’t have sexual effects – Mindy’s brain lacked some of the structures needed to process that, yet, and I always took great care with children not to do anything inappropriate to their age. After what my own father did to me… well, I may be a supervillain, but I am not a child molester, and that makes me better than he was. What I was going for – what I always gave the children I treated – can be best described, if you remember being a kid, as the excitement from knowing you’re about to go to an amusement park, coupled with the pleasure you get from eating ice cream, and all that combined with the warm snuggly feeling you get when you’re cuddled with your parents. Mindy wouldn’t know why, in the future, she looked forward to my visits and felt very warm and positive emotions toward me. She would just know that seeing Dr. Mystery would be the coolest thing ever, and just my presence would be more fun than any doctor’s office lollipop ever was.

Combine such warm and pleasant emotions with the freakish physical appearance of an obvious Proxima, and Mindy would not grow up to share her dad’s bigotry, even if he tried to teach it to her.

“Mindy?” Dot Lightman asked, her voice trembling slightly. “Are you all right?”

Mindy lifted her head. Her skin didn’t look any better, of course – I hadn’t done any cosmetic work – but her eyes were refocusing, turning bright and engaged. “Mommy? I feel good, Mommy. I think the doctor fixed me!”

With my endorphin cocktail chasing away her fatigue temporarily, she leapt to her feet. “Thank you, Super Doctor Mystery! I feel all better!” She twirled around, perhaps to prove to all of us that she was fully healed… and stumbled. “Whoa, dizzy!”

“Slow up there, kiddo,” I said. “You’re not cured. You feel a lot better and you’re going to be a lot better, but you’ve spent a couple of years being sick and you’re not going to be back to your full strength overnight. Take it easy.”

“Is she—is she going to be cured?” her mother asked, looking at me, her lower lip trembling.

“She’s much healthier, right now. But no, as I said, I haven’t cured her yet. I triggered a temporary remission and bolstered her immune system to compensate for what the disease did to it, so she needn’t suffer while she’s waiting for a full cure.” I turned to Senator Lightman. “To cure her, I’ll need to perform three treatments, about two months apart. The cost will be $8,000 per treatment. When we’re done, not only won’t she have leukemia, but the genetic potential for cancer will be purged from her system, so it will be very, very unlikely that she ever get any cancer-like disease again. Short of living on top of a radioactive landfill, of course, but you understand what I mean.”

“Oh, God….” Mrs. Lightman started to cry. “Oh, God, thank you…”

“Don’t cry, Mommy,” Mindy said, and gave her mom a hug. “It’s good news. Don’t cry.”

“I’m crying because I’m so happy,” Mrs. Lightman said.

“I—I don’t know what to say, Doctor. You have a deal. I’d pay anything to save Mindy’s life, and your prices… well, they’re much more reasonable than I was led to assume. I’d pay more than that for hospital treatments, even with the insurance.” I was pretty sure this was a fib – Senators get damn good health insurance. But of course Lightman belonged to the party that thought that health insurance was a privilege, not a right, and downplaying the high quality of his own state-sponsored insurance was probably a reflex by this point.

I smiled at him. “That’s because most of my payment is non-monetary.”

“Non-monetary?”

“Let’s go have a discussion, Senator. I imagine you must have a private office in this house somewhere?”

His wife gave me a hard-eyed look. I returned her look with an “oh, please” expression, just the slightest of eye rolls and sardonic smile. “There’s nothing you can say to me that you can’t say in front of my wife,” Lightman said, his voice hardening.

“Yes, there is,” I said, pleasantly. “You want to tell her all about it when we’re done talking, that’s your prerogative. But I am here to negotiate with a United States Senator, not a husband or a father.”

He stiffened. “All right,” he said slowly. “We can go downstairs to the den.”

“Is it—is it going to be all right?” Dot Lightman asked her husband.

“I don’t see that I have much choice, Dot,” he said. “She’s the only hope Mindy has. You know that.”

“Mommy? Can I play outside?”

“Sure. Sure thing,” Dot said, her voice breaking again. “I’ll play with you.”

“Don’t let her overexert herself,” I said. “As I said, she’s better, not cured, and even if she were cured she’d still need time to recover her energy. She wants to run around and play now because she’s not in pain, but she actually still does need to save her strength.”

“We’ll go for a walk,” Dot said. “How’s that sound, Mindy?”

“Sure, Mommy. We can do that.”

“The den is this way,” Senator Lightman said.

It was a typical suburban finished basement, not nearly as fancy looking as the living room, if you didn’t count the huge projection television. I perched on the still-nice-but-obviously-worn couch, sitting on the back of it. “Let’s get down to it, Senator,” I said. “You’re a member of the Committee to Analyze Parahuman Activity. You’re aware as well as I am that the United States government has been investigating or implementing various techniques to control or eliminate the Proxima population, including laws to create a registry for us as if we’re sex offenders, black ops soldiers with power suits to hunt us down, attempting to find cures for us like we’re a disease, secret databases being maintained in an attempt to identify us in the absence of a registry law… so on and so forth.” I didn’t mention the biowarfare; people who didn’t live through being imprisoned in a government research facility and watching others being injected with various tailored viruses have a tendency to assume that government biowarfare is the stuff of paranoid conspiracy theories, and I doubted anyone had actually let Congress know what was going on there. The others, I was pretty sure he’d been briefed on, if not actively involved with. “And you’re an active supporter of the Human Definition Amendment, which would deprive us of any human rights whatsoever on the basis of junk science.”

The faintest beading of sweat broke out on his forehead. “The United States government hasn’t taken any illegal actions to ‘control’ the Proxima population, as you put it, and certainly not to eliminate you. You must understand, however, that we do have the right and the duty to protect normal humans from people like…”

He hesitated just a moment too long. “Me?”

“I was going to say, people like Caesar Primus or Optometron. But if the rumors about your activities are true, then yes, you. Weren’t you some sort of assassin? An enforcer for a drug lord?”

While technically the description was almost true, the idea of describing David as a “drug lord” almost made me laugh. Almost. I don’t actually have a lot of a sense of humor when it comes to David. “And I was rehabilitated by the Peace Force and today I’m a fine, upstanding citizen who cures little girls of leukemia,” I said.

“That isn’t a lot of comfort to the families of the people you killed.”

“Maybe not. But if I’d been killed by American soldiers in power suits then, your daughter would be out of luck now, wouldn’t she?” I slid off the back of the couch and paced around him. “And this isn’t about me. How many people were saved when the Irregulars stopped that second plane from crashing into the Trade Towers? When they held up the collapsing building so the firefighters could get out? When the Peace Force shored up the levees in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina so the city didn’t flood, or when Maui’s volcano went active and they shut it down again?” The Senator didn’t actually need to know that was a plot of Professor Octohedron’s, if he didn’t already. The Peace Force hadn’t actually broadcast the fact that the disaster had been caused by a Proxima in the first place; I only knew about it because Octohedron continued to believe that he could get into my pants if only he could impress me enough, and he hadn’t actually ever managed to figure out that I wasn’t impressed by grandiose plots to take over the world by threatening to activate volcanoes. “You might owe your life to a Proxima. You are about to owe your daughter’s life. So I want your support for our basic human rights. Oppose the Parahuman Registry, oppose the research to kill us or break us of our powers, and oppose the Human Definition Amendment.”

“The Human Definition Amendment isn’t designed to take away your human rights,” he said. “It’s designed to clarify the rights you do have. I mean, there have to be different ways to handle you people vs. the rest of us. Remember when the ACLU sued on behalf of the Heat Miser? They said that it was cruel and unusual punishment to keep him continuously drugged in prison. And as soon as they won and the drugs were withdrawn, his powers came back and he burned the prison down. 700 people were killed, over 100 guards and the rest of them human inmates, who’d been sentenced to serve time in jail for their crimes, not to burn to death.”

“Then you redefine cruel and unusual punishment to state that methods intended to block Proximas from using superhuman powers to escape from prison are not cruel and are perfectly usual. Passing an amendment to the Constitution that declares that Proximas aren’t human is overkill.”

“It actually declares that humans belong to the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, and that the law should not be automatically extended to grant human rights to people who can destroy our entire planet with a thought just because some bleeding heart doesn’t think they deserve to go to jail for killing hundreds of people.”

“Yes, and by declaring that Homo sapiens promixus does not automatically count as human, it effectively says that we’re not, and we can be shot on sight with no one but the ASPCA to worry about our murders, let alone suffer discrimination in every part of our lives. You do not live with the reality of what being defined as non-human means, Senator. I do.”

“And you, Doctor, don’t live with the reality of inhabiting a world filled with creatures who can kill you with a thought, steal everything you own, destroy your home without even touching it, or make you believe that up is down and black is white.”

I could argue that last point, if I wanted to be a smartass – I lived in the world where there was conservative talk radio, and it had convinced any number of people that up was down and black was white. But that would be sidetracking. “True. But you’re so focused on perceiving yourself as a victim of the existence of Proximas that you’ve given no thought to what it would be like to be one of us. And you really should. Because you have a child, Senator, and she is too young to be confirmed as Sapien or Proxima. You don’t know what she is, and you’re just assuming she’s Sapien. What if she’s Proxima?”

He blinked. “Well, of course I—but she doesn’t have anything in her background – I mean neither her mother nor I have anything unusual, genetically—“

“No one knows what’s causing the sudden explosion in powered humans, Senator, but we do know that it’s some type of mutation. 90% of Proximas have parents who were Sapien. And the number is that low only because some of us have started having kids. If your daughter was a Proxima with two fully Sapien parents, she’d be in the same boat as most Proximas. Including me. So you really need to think about it.”

“Well, I – I certainly wouldn’t treat Mindy any differently if she were – but if she were, you’d know, wouldn’t you?”

“I didn’t check for it. But I could, yes.”

“Well, if she turned out to be, you could just fix it, right? As part of the treatment?”

I stared at him as if I’d just found him on my shoe. “Of course I could. And if she was black, I could make her white and blonde and blue-eyed. And I could change her into a boy if you decided you really wanted a son. Have you any idea how offensive what you just said is?”

“I – I didn’t mean to give offense. I just want Mindy to have a normal life.”

“Most Proximas do. I don't look like this all the time, Senator. When I'm not treating hopeless cases, I live in a nice little townhouse, with two cats and a cockatiel. I go dancing with men friends on weekends, I buy groceries, I do my laundry. I choose to look like this when I'm treating people like your daughter, because I have no desire to be kidnapped and pressed into the service of crime lords or the government."

"Why would the government kidnap you? Proximas have rights. If you’ve served your time for your previous crimes, and committed no new ones--"

"--I would still have the power to make old men young, cure impotence and infertility, heal disease and scarring, change people's appearances... come on now, Senator, don't be naive. If you had a way to make me heal your daughter without paying my price, you'd do it. And I think you're basically a good man, who’s concerned for the child he loves. Can you say none of your colleagues would want me to heal them? To restore lost youth, or whatever they had lost?" I thought of the white room then, the snipers with guns outside ready to blow my head off if the important old men screaming under my hands didn’t get up and walk free completely healed when I was done. Never again.

"I... suppose power corrupts. There are some bad elements in any system, but that doesn't mean the system is evil."

"I didn’t say the system was evil. I said it’s not designed to protect people like me. And if you and your fellows have their way, it’ll be even harder for me to live a normal, safe life.” I shook my head. "We're sidetracking. If Mindy turns out to be a Proxima, she could still have an entirely normal and happy life, so long as you didn't reject her for it and the government didn't kill her for it."

"I would never reject Mindy. No matter what. If-- if she was a parahuman--"

"Then your opinions on appropriate treatment of Proximas would be rather different, wouldn't they?"

He sighed. “Look, I have a constituency, Doctor Mystery. They elected me into office to protect them and serve them, and they have ideas as to what constitutes doing that. If I do something that they don’t approve of, I won’t have the power they’ve given me for very long.”

I flopped down on his couch again. “Oh, baloney. You mean that if you can’t fearmonger about hidden Proximas living among us and the draconian measures the Daddy State will take under your watch to protect the poor scared soccer moms and NASCAR dads, you can’t get elected.” I sat up and leaned forward. “It’s all bullshit. The tide of history always favors greater human rights, greater freedoms, greater protections for minorities vs. mobs. And it always works out better in the end that way. I understand that you have to protect yourself from lunatics who shoot death rays out of their elbows, but you know, you also have to protect yourself from lunatics who break into the McDonalds’ with a gun and start shooting people, and somehow it was your party who decided it was an unacceptable infringement on your freedom to hunt, shoot intruders, and generally feel like manly men to make people undergo background checks to get assault weapons.”

“The Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms.”

“The Constitution wouldn’t say that if you passed an amendment redefining a ‘well-regulated militia’ as the National Guard. Which I’m not saying you should. I’m in favor of your right to protect yourself with a gun. I’m in favor of your right to shoot animals for fun if you feel like it; I’m a Darwinist and you’re a predator. It’s in your genes. Go shoot deer if you want. But the Constitution currently states that I am a human being, because it doesn’t say that I’m not, and I was born in the United States to two human beings, share 99.9% of my DNA with you, speak your language, look like you, and have sex with you. Well, not you personally, but Sapiens men. So if it’s so vitally important to preserve the right to bear arms, because it’s in the Constitution, that it’s okay to let sociopaths get guns and shoot up college campuses, then it is vastly more important to make sure that every child born in this country to human parents is defined as human.

“If you pass this Definition of Humanity amendment in order to protect your constituency, and Mindy turns out to be a Proxima, then she can be raped and her rapist could be charged with bestiality at best, because she wouldn’t be legally a child who can be molested, she’d be legally an animal. She could be killed, and the most her killer could be charged with is animal cruelty. No school would have to take her, no hospital would have to treat her diseases, no restaurant would have to let her in to eat with you. You would have to fight a battle to get her treated in a way that you humans take for granted, every time. Want her to die in a car accident because the paramedics didn’t want to treat a Proxima? Want her to die in a fire because the firefighters didn’t want to risk themselves going into a burning building for someone who isn’t even human? There are better ways to defend Sapiens than making it legally open season on us.”

“But you’re against those too. The Parahuman Registry would allow us to track dangerous people without having to deprive any of you of basic civil rights.”

“Except I’ve never heard of a version of it suggesting that only parahuman criminals be added to the registry.”

“Well, dangerous parahumans haven’t necessarily committed crimes yet. But for instance, if your next door neighbor turns up dead of a heart attack and everyone knows you were fighting with him, isn’t it important that the police know you have the power to stop people’s hearts by touching them?”

“If your next door neighbor has a gun, isn’t it important that you know about it so you can keep your daughter from playing in his yard?”

“Most gun owners are law abiding citizens, and if someone is killed with a gun we already have laws on the books to help the police track down the killer. If someone is killed with a superpower, we wouldn’t even necessarily know to look for a superpower.”

“So educate the cops better on superpowers. Most Proximas are law abiding citizens. If you kill your neighbor by hitting him over the head with a frying pan, does that mean you needed to be on some sort of registry of frying pan owners?” I started pacing again. “It’s irrelevant in any case. I don’t care what your personal beliefs are. I care that you love your daughter and want her to be healthy.”

“So you’re blackmailing me.”

“Blackmail? I’m demanding payment. When your campaign contributors give you money for re-election, they’re not blackmailing you to expect that you’re going to show them some quid pro quo. I’m offering you something far, far more valuable than a few dollars in your re-election coffers; I’m offering you your daughter’s life and health. I think expecting a little quid pro quo is not unreasonable.”

“And what if I refused? Would you let her die?”

At one point that would have been a tough one; in this line of work you have to appear to be compassionate, but you also have to be tough or the patients will walk all over you. I had had plenty of experience dealing with this particular conundrum, though. “Do you know what I did for Mindy today? Do you understand her disease at all?”

“I don’t know what you did, no. You keep saying you made her better but you didn’t cure her. But I do know something about her disease. The doctors tell me that she’s making too many white blood cells, and it’s crowding out and killing the rest of her blood.”

“Close. They’re immature, cancerous blood cells, so they don’t work to protect her from disease the way mature white blood cells would. This lowers her general immunity, and yes, it clogs up her bloodstream and takes resource away from working cells. What I did today was to kill all the immature cells and regenerate some of the mature ones. She still has leukemia; she’s still making too many immature cells. Without a full treatment that will never stop. What I’ve done is to ease her symptoms. Until she builds up too many immature cells again, she’ll feel better.” I leaned on the wall, arms folded. “I’m perfectly capable of doing this every six months and never actually curing her. She’ll feel better, and she’ll have a happy, normal life, as long as she gets her treatments on time. The one time she misses a treatment, though – maybe because the government kidnapped me, arrested me, killed me or took my powers away – she’ll have full-blown leukemia again, and within a year or two she’ll die.” I pushed off the wall. “So you can support me up front because it’s the right thing to do for the person who gave you back your daughter’s life, or you can hedge and haw and refuse to get with my program, and if so your daughter will be well for exactly as long as I am able to continue treating her. The very laws you want to pass that will harm me, will block my ability to heal her sooner or later, and then she’ll die, and it’ll be your fault.”

“And how do I know that if I promise to do as you ask, you really will heal Mindy and you won’t just do what you just said?”

“How do I know that if I really heal Mindy, you won’t go back on your word and start pushing for the Human Definition Amendment again? It’s a matter of trust, Senator. You trust me, I trust you. Or you don’t trust me, I don’t trust you. Tit for tat. What’s it going to be?”

He took a deep breath. “I’m not going to just rubber stamp your suggestions. Even if that was the right thing to do for my constituency, and it’s not. I’m going to study the situation and try to do the best thing to protect my people and yours. You can accept that or not.”

“All right, I’ll accept that, with one caveat. The Human Definition Amendment is totally off-limits. You can switch your support to the Inclusive Humanity Amendment, or just drop your support of Human Definition, but if you don’t publicly do one or the other within the month Mindy does not get fully cured. The other stuff, do the studies you want to do, but I think you’ll find that when you look at Proximas as if we are people and not weird animal things with superpowers, you’ll find it a lot easier to come up with ways to help protect your kind without harming mine.”

Lightman nodded. “All right, Doctor. Then we have a deal. When do you want to perform the first treatment?”

“If you’ve got $8,000 lying around in a checking account, we can do it today.”

“I do. Who do I make the check out to? I don’t imagine you can cash a check made out to Doctor Mystery.”

“Make it out to Miracle of Life, LLC.” I had about twenty-seven of these shell companies I used to funnel my various payments through, since even Senators typically had a hard time coming up with $8,000 in small unmarked bills on short notice, and a girl’s gotta eat. Playing politics is all well and good, but I needed to cover the mortgage and the gas money for my various trips to clients, plus the funds for my various Activities of Mad Science. Just because you can manipulate any organic tissue with a touch, doesn’t mean you get your beakers and retorts and Petri dishes for free. “Let’s go upstairs. I’m sure Mindy is eager to begin freeing herself from this disease.”

“Of course.”

At the top of the stairs, I reached out for his hand. Too afraid of giving offense to refuse me, he took it, and I shook with him. “Pleasure doing business with you, Senator. Go call your daughter in, give me a check and we’ll do this thing.”

“Thank you, Dr. Mystery. I may not entirely approve of your politics, but thank you for giving my daughter back her life.”

He wouldn’t be thanking me so much if he had known I’d just planted a tiny clump of slow-growing cancerous cells deep in his brain. It’d be a year from now before he started feeling any symptoms, and that would land in the middle of his re-election campaign. If he did what I wanted after I finished healing his daughter and we were on good terms, I’d find some excuse to come by and heal him or prune it down again. If not… there was a reason I was a feared supervillain even though most people knew me, if they knew me at all, as some kind of uber-doctor. You didn’t double-cross Dr. Mystery and survive it. Ever.

Well, unless you were Dr. Suryabati Chandrasekhar. Then you got any number of free passes.

***

The truth was, I was being something of a hypocrite.

I was offended at Lightman’s suggestion that I make his daughter a Sapiens if she turned out to be a Proxima, but not for the reason I told him. The difference between a Proxima becoming a Sapien and a Sapien becoming Proxima isn’t the difference between black changing to white or male changing to female. The difference was described by Plato as a man raised in the darkness leaving the cave to see the light of the sun, vs. a man raised in the sunlight doomed to spend the rest of his life in a cave. Making a Proxima a Sapiens is like giving someone a lobotomy, or a clitoridectomy, or binding her feet until she can’t walk. It’s an obscenity, a Harrison Bergeron nightmare of breaking the best down to the level of the mediocre, taking away a birthright one was born with.

Making a Sapien a Proxima is, on the other hand, one of my great callings in life.

Mindy Lightman wasn’t a Proxima before I touched her. But she would be, before I was done. I did a preliminary assessment of her DNA while I was performing the first treatment, and I stored a small amount of her cellular matter in a pocket under the skin of my hand, to study at length later. I’d determine how much energy her mitochondria could supply her and which latent powers-complex genes she had, and which powers they were likely to ignite into. If she had something distressing, like death touch or world-shattering TK or the gene for turning blue, I’d edit the complex over the next two sessions into something more palatable for the child of a public figure, something frilly and unthreatening. Maybe the ability to make pretty light shows, or fly. Most flyers loved it, and it didn’t seem to frighten Sapiens as much as some other powers did.

When I left the Lightmans’, now back in my middle-aged lady persona, I headed first to the bank to deposit the check. Senators whose daughter’s lives are on the line don’t give me checks that bounce, but they do take time to clear, so the sooner I got it in, the better. And then I dumped the rental car at the airport, changed form in the bathroom, and got on the Metro to head back home.

****

Science fact: There is only one gene that determines the difference between a Sapiens and a Proxima.

To most people this seems insane. Proximas come in an entire extra range of colors besides the human norm, have powers ordinary humans can only dream of, and get energy to fuel these powers from a source that is frankly incomprehensible. We just have to be a separate species, in most people’s minds. When Proximas were first discovered, there was a huge push to label us a fully separate species – Homo superior (thankfully, that one got shot down real fast) or Homo proximus, “the man who comes next.” Scientists – not me at the time, since I was too young, but reputable geneticists and biologists – had to constantly point out that the definition of a species is that they cannot viably interbreed. The children of superpowered and ordinary humans were themselves perfectly fertile. Ergo, we cannot be a separate species.

But we hadn’t mapped the genome then, and we didn’t know exactly why Proximas had powers. So scientists made, in my opinion, a mistake. They agreed to classify us as a separate sub-species.

You’ve grown up being told that you are Homo sapiens. What you might not know is that technically, if you’re not a parahuman, you are actually Homo sapiens sapiens. There were several other subspecies of humans, all extinct, such as Homo sapiens idaltu (elderly wise man). It is still scientific nonsense to call us a subspecies, when we’re only different by one gene – to put this in perspective, parents and children differ by many, many more than one gene – and in fact the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature keeps debating changing it to Homo sapiens sapiens proximus or dropping the designate proximus entirely. But the scientific evidence that we aren’t even a separate subspecies gets even less play in the media than studies that show that men and women are alike, if such a thing is possible. And at least the Homo sapiens proximus nomenclature reinforces that we are of the human species.

The trouble is, most people don’t know that the true name of Homo sapiens is actually Homo sapiens sapiens. So when they hear the short designators – Sapiens vs. Proxima – they assume that our species is Homo proximus. We’re widely believed to be an entirely separate species, and it doesn’t help that high-profile supervillains like Caesar Primus (who is 2,000 years old and knows as much as any Roman gladiator about science, which is to say, diddly jack), or Professor Octohedron (a brilliant physicist and inventor, but he knows about as much biology as I know about fixing my car, and let me put it this way, the last time I ended up dead on the side of the road I needed a friendly dude passing by to tell me I’d run out of oil) are constantly spouting off about how we are a new, superior species. Informed laypeople and doctors usually know better, but the truth – that we are different by only one gene – is so appallingly counterintuitive that you almost need to be a geneticist or an evolutionary biologist to get it.

But here’s the truth.

The human genome is packed with genes that don’t do anything. Most come from our evolutionary history. You may have heard that we are less than 1% genetically different from chimpanzees. That 1% consists mostly of control genes, which govern when, how and if the other genes turn on.

It turns out that some of those genes generate superpowers, under the right conditions. One of them turns melanin, the brown pigment of humans, blue in the presence of a hormone called catalysine. Others use catalysine to activate superhuman abilities. All humans carry some of these genes. But only a very, very tiny number – about 1 in 10,000 – have the gene that codes for the creation of catalysine.

Like testosterone, catalysine has two surges in a person’s life cycle. One is pre-natally. The amount generated is small and doesn’t pass the placental barrier, so no, pregnant women do not manifest superpowers when carrying a Proxima baby. That’s an urban myth. The surge pre-natally does little, usually, except to prepare the brain to control superpowers someday, creating a brain nucleus and appropriate wiring. In cases where the child has two Proxima genes – for example, the child of two Proxima parents-- the amount of catalysine created pre-natally might be enough to distort the child’s appearance, begin converting melanin into azurin, or awaken a low level of superpower.

When the child hits puberty, the same genes that turn on sex hormones turn on catalysine production. The superpowers appear, and wire up to the brain structures created in utero. If the child has the gene for azurin conversion, their pigment changes from brown to blue – so pale red-haired and blonde white children suddenly develop purple, green or blue hair, while brown-skinned children turn blue all over. (Azurin is also rare. Only about 5% of all people carry the gene for azurin production, and only Proximas ever display it. Non-Proximas with the azurin mutation never express it, and end up creating perfectly normal melanin, because they are never exposed to catalysine.)

The “power mitochondria” are another pan-human phenomenon that only expresses itself in Proximas. All living cells on Earth contain tiny organelles called mitochondria – practically separate living things, with their own DNA, they use oxygen and sugar to generate the chemical that powers all life, ATP. Power mitochondria vastly overproduce ATP, and no one knows where they get the energy to do it – it’s like they suck potential energy out of the universe and convert it to life force. But they do this only when activated by catalysine within the cell. About 1/3rd of humans have power mitochondria. In the presence of the Proxima gene, these people generate energy above and beyond what they take in from food and air, which is then consumed by their superpowers. Without power mitochondria, a Proxima must draw from their own life force to fuel their superpower, which makes their powers pretty weak. The exact same genes for telekinesis can code for a person that can lift 70 lbs with their mind with effort vs. a person who can lift an aircraft carrier out of the water and break it in half, depending on the presence and output of the power mitochondria. Since mitochondria are passed by the mother, Proximas who inherit their power from a powerful mother will always be very powerful themselves, whereas Proximas who inherit from a powerful Proxima father depend entirely on the hidden status of their mother for their own strength.

(Funny fact, here: when Proximas were first discovered, male Proximas freely dated, married and fathered children on human women, because our entire society says it’s okay for men to have wives who are weaker than they are. Proxima women, on the other hand, mostly stuck to their own kind. In the seven years since we discovered the role of the power mitochondria, we have seen a dramatic reversal in which powerful Proxima men will not marry or get serious with human women unless they consider themselves “childfree” or have had the human woman’s mitochondria analyzed for power status, and more and more Proxima women are dating Sapiens men.)

So most of what goes into making a Proxima is actually in a vast percentage of the human population – 30% have power mitochondria, pretty much all of them have powers-complex. It’s the presence of the single gene that codes for catalysine production that makes a person Proxima as opposed to Sapiens. My belief was that Proximas would not be safe from the fear and envy of Sapiens unless we were normalized. The more Proximas there were, the more the law would adapt to and accommodate us and our needs and the less we’d need to fear the mob of Sapiens out to kill or control us. So my primary work, since I became Dr. Mystery, had been to increase the number of Proximas by giving as many Sapiens the Proxima gene as I can.

In my early experiments, when I used uncontrolled methods like retroviruses to mutate people, there were high casualty rates. Sapiens adults whose brains have not been exposed to catalysine in utero can’t control whatever superpowers they develop if they suddenly start making catalysine. So I started working primarily with children, usually terminally or chronically ill children that I could get direct access to. My power can create new brain pathways, and in a child or teen, with a developing brain, I can do it transparently, with no one noticing. Adults cannot experience sudden brain growth and change without noticing that something’s wrong – memories suddenly becoming lost, well-developed skills becoming weaker, mood swings, etc—so I only alter adults into Proximas if they request it. I often modify women of child-bearing age so that all their eggs carry the Proxima gene, ensuring that they’ll give birth to Proximas if they ever have kids. It’s harder with men, because men are generating new sperm all the time – I’d have to alter the spermatogonia, and since they’re part of the body, the body’s immune system might notice that they are genetically different from the other cells and attack them, making the man infertile. So I only make men into Proxima-fathers if I have plenty of time to work with them and tweak their immune systems, if necessary – and if they’re likely to have kids. Gay men coming to me to save them from AIDS and 70-year-olds who don’t want to get Alzheimer’s are usually not worth modifying reproductively.

The Peace Force were aware of my work, and opposed it. They believed it was wrong of me to change people’s genes without their consent. Technically, maybe they were right, but come on, what sane person would object to having superpowers? The only reason anyone would not want to be a Proxima is the prejudice against us, and I was working on that too. So I had to maintain a low profile because every so often the Peace Force would take it into their heads to try to capture me. I’m pretty sure this wasn’t fully legal – I was pardoned for my activities as Megamorph by Bill Clinton (did you know that Hillary Clinton once had breast cancer? No? Well, neither does anyone else), and nothing illegal I’d done as Dr. Mystery could be proven in a court of law. But the law hadn’t caught up with Proxima abilities, so the Peace Force never overly concerned themselves with whether they could prove wrongdoing or not. Their mentor and leader, Dr. Suryabati Chandrasekhar, aka Doctor Sun, was a telepath, and if she said, “Bad guy! Go fetch!” they would jump like puppydogs after a thrown stick.

So I lived in Baltimore, in a townhome in the Woodberry neighborhood, on Television Hill, because living directly under the broadcast tower generated enough interference that Suri couldn’t find me telepathically. I’d have preferred Little Italy, or better yet, a real city like New York or Philly (and I’d come way down in the world, admitting that Philly is a real city), but New York was far too close to Suri, whose base of operations was in Manhattan, and a lot of my work was done with politicians, making Baltimore or DC more convenient than Philly. And DC had the Special Service, human police in power suits who patrolled to protect the Capitol from parahuman attack. I never felt safe in DC. My Woodberry home had civilians living on both sides and a children’s day care across the street, ensuring that the Peace Force couldn’t attack me in force – they’d know the threat to civilians from a power battle would be too great to risk it politically for my sake (and to be fair, most of them are goody-two-shoes hero types who wouldn’t risk civilians, especially preschool children, even if they had perfect political cover for the operation.) So I figured that if Suri ever found me, she’d still think twice about siccing her dogs on me.

Also, the Light Rail, Baltimore’s sad and pathetic substitute for a subway, had a stop near my home. I didn’t learn to drive until I was 28, and I still hated it with a passion. I was a Brooklyn girl – give me a city with buses and subways and railways, so I wouldn’t have to dodge hurtling chunks of death metal just to get where I was going. From DC’s Metro, after I dropped my rental car at the airport, I changed at Union Station to the Camden line, took it to the baseball stadium in Baltimore, and changed there for the Light Rail. This took far longer than a car would have, but didn’t involve me being isolated in a tiny box with no source of living organic matter other than my own flesh and facing careening metal boxes coming right for me. It also didn’t involve traffic jams, which are brutal on the DC Beltway. A short walk from my stop later, and I was home.

As I unlocked my front door, Brian the cockatiel chirped at me wildly, flapping his wings in his cage. I’m really proud of Brian – in some ways he’s my greatest work. He used to be a man, or the head of a man, who attempted to rape me once. The truly pathetic thing was that Brian had been a good-looking guy, wiry and blond, the way I like them, and if he’d been willing to wait half an hour I would happily have had sex with him. But he hadn’t wanted sex, he’d wanted rape – the only reason he dated women and went back to their houses with them, rather than jumping out of the bushes with a knife, was that he was a lawyer and knew that a handsome man with money who date rapes a woman will basically never, ever be convicted. People think rapists have to be hard up for sex, or have to somehow look evil – the idea that a handsome, charming guy who could get any woman he wanted would actually prefer to hold screaming women down and force them when he could get consensual sex with the exact same woman instead breaks people’s brains. They assume the woman must be lying, because what man who could get mutual fun would prefer to commit rape? No one wants to admit how common misogynistic sadists actually are or how normal they look.

I found out from Brian that he’d date-raped ten women before me, that only two had tried to press charges, and the cops had refused to take the charges in one case and upset the other one so badly with their disbelief that she’d dropped the charges. I found this out while I had him paralyzed but still able to feel sensation, his voice made too hoarse to do more than whisper no matter how much he suffered, on a cot in the basement. Over the course of the two weeks that I used him in experiments, he told me his entire life story, amidst lots of self-justifications, begging, pleading and promising to change his ways. Then I started turning his body parts into animals, bit by bit. The rats and mice I made of his arms and legs didn’t come out right, and they died. The cockroaches who used to be his testicles were actually very robust, but after the cat knocked over the terrarium I was keeping them in, I had to get an exterminator to kill them because who wants cockroaches in their house? I was actually quite sad when the puppy I made out of his guts wouldn’t wake up and live – sometimes they just won’t come alive no matter what I do. Living things are very complex, and it’s more an art than a science to do things like make life into different life.

Since at that point, Brian had no way to digest food or ingest water, and he was therefore only a day or two away from death, I finally put him out of his misery by turning his head into a cockatiel and his torso into an iguana, a gecko, and a handful of tropical fish. Nothing lived longer than a week except the cockatiel, which so far had lasted three years. I often wondered, since I’d used some of the original brain tissue in making Brian’s new cockatiel brain, if he had any dim sense that he used to be human.

I fed Brian a cracker, re-absorbed my shoes into my flesh, and took back my original human form before plopping down on the couch to relax and await my cats. My actual body was permanently frozen at about age 22 or so; I changed it so often, I’d never really had the opportunity to let it naturally age. I could have forced it up to 36, where I really was, if I had to, but why bother? No one was going to see me and think less of me for looking too childish. My natural form is about 5’4” and built like a gymnast – tiny breasts, thickly muscled legs and arms, a rounded and balanced body with a low center of gravity and nothing sticking way out of line with the rest of it. For gymnastics – my childhood passion – and for combat, it was a fantastic body, and I used it for years as Megamorph before it occurred to me that maybe I should hide my true face if I was going to be a criminal. For instantly commanding respect, making men drool and women envy, or sending the signal “I AM A SERIOUS CRIMINAL MASTERMIND”, it wasn’t so good. It was short, the face looked too young and soft (and too much like a young, soft Gillian Anderson – people in med school actually used to call me “Scully”), and a body perfectly proportioned for gymnastics or martial arts isn’t all that attractive by the psycho standards of our culture. But it was my body, and in my home, with the shades drawn and the security system on, I went back to it because it was me.

As I wiggled my toes on my shag carpet and then propped my feet up on my coffee table, I wondered where my cats were. They were well-fed cats, but their heightened metabolisms made them constantly hungry, and they knew I was a sucker for giving them treats when I’d first come home. Normally, they’d be leaping on me minutes after my arrival. This worried me. If I had accidentally shut them in the bedroom, Angelkitty would probably pee on my ceiling to express her displeasure and Pikachu might have destroyed my furniture with a few good lightning blasts by now.

My cats were also experiments. I’d been curious to see if the genetic structures I’d observed in other mammals that seemed related to the human powers-complex were in fact superpowers, so I got myself a pair of abandoned newborn kittens and in between the droppers of kitten formula (I really drew the line at making cat milk in my own breasts; those little things have teeth very early), I modified them to generate catalysine. The female promptly grew bird wings (which didn’t attach to the right spot on her back and were too small; she’d never have flown if I hadn’t heavily modified them for her), and the male developed the ability to shoot lightning out of his paws, so I named them Angelkitty and Pikachu. (Technically, if you have seen the Pokemon cartoon, which I admit I have, Pikachu is a mouse that shoots electricity, or something rodentlike anyway, but come on, there aren’t exactly any mythological figures of cats that shoot electricity.) Angelkitty’s a Siamese and Pikachu is mostly white with some orange. They don’t have power mitochondria – that does appear to be a human thing – so they eat like pigs. I could feed six ordinary cats off what my two eat, but they remain extraordinarily svelte, almost feral in their slimness. And so if they weren’t here to pester me for fish treats, something was wrong.

I got up and went out to the kitchen. To my relief, my cats were still noshing on their tuna fish, which amazingly it looked like they had barely touched before I came home. (I always fed them human food. Why not? I had the money to keep them in canned tuna rather than cat food, and they loved the stuff.) Pikachu looked up at me, gave me a meow that I interpreted as “Oh, you’re home, good,” and then went back to his meal.

Wait a minute. There was more food in the bowl than there had been when I said good-bye to them this morning. And it was beyond the realm of possibility that they’d left so much food untouched for so long, anyway. And the tuna looked fresh out of the can. So how—

“I was wondering when you were going to get home,” a woman’s voice said behind me. I was already spinning to face her, preparing to leap at her, but as soon as I saw her I realized it was hopeless. “Don’t you ever feed these cats? They look like they’re starving.”

Ciana Kim, aka Sapphire, my once-classmate and current dire nemesis, was standing – well, floating—above my stairs in her traditional blue bubble, her features slightly obscured by the blue distortion and concealed behind her mask. The combat leader of the Peace Force was in my house.

I backed up. I couldn’t take Sapphire directly. Her power was to generate spherical or toroid magnetic fields, which glowed blue due to the way they bent light, hence her name. I needed organic channels to send my power through—behind her force field, Sapphire was totally safe from me, because I couldn’t touch her. I wasn’t safe from her, though. She could generate a force field around me, trapping me, any time she wanted.

There was a switch by the door to my basement, labeled “FURNACE – DO NOT TOUCH,” that would actually activate an EMP. All the computer and electronic equipment I had in my house outside the Faraday cage of the basement would fry, but Sapphire’s power would fail as well, and I could leap on her before she could reset her power. Or, if I didn’t really want to replace my MP3 player, phones, and the laptop in the bedroom, perhaps I could grab Pikachu and throw him at her. He’d be startled enough to discharge a bolt, and the electrical surge should pop her field like a soap bubble. I knew I had a faster reaction time than Sapphire – after years of modifying and tuning up my nervous system, I’m faster than anyone who doesn’t have super-speed as a specific power – so I should be able to grab her and neutralize her power or knock her out before she could get a force field back up again. I was reluctant to do that because Pikachu was my kitty and throwing him at superheroes seemed kind of mean, even though I knew he wouldn’t be hurt, but the EMP generator could theoretically blow out TV Hill, and then I’d have to dodge swarms of reporters trying to find out why they suddenly couldn’t get on the air anymore.

I stalled for time. “They’ve got very fast metabolisms. I feed them all the time, but they’ll pester anyone they meet for more.”

Sapphire rolled her eyes. “Oh, stand down, Meg. If I was here to capture you or beat you up, I’d have done it before you knew I was here.”

She had a point. Sapphire wasn’t stupid, and she had completely gotten the drop on me, to the point that I was actually really embarrassed about it. “So what do you want? Cooking advice? I always prefer to replace the generic vegetable oil with olive or canola, it’s easier on the heart.” The last time I’d been in the same household as her, Ciana Kim had refused to learn to cook, for very similar reasons to her refusal to learn hand-to-hand combat.

She ignored my jab. “Doctor Sun sent me. She needs your help and she asked me to ask you.”

I blinked. Doctor Sun wanted my help? Cold day in hell. But it’d have to get a lot colder before I’d say yes. “She wants my help? And she actually thinks I might agree? Excuse me, but the last time I interacted with any of you people you wrecked my lab, ruined four years of work and set me back half a million dollars.”

“You were infecting children’s vaccines with a retrovirus. Did you seriously think we’d let you just get away with it?”

“All it would have done was make them into Proximas. What do you think I am?”

“Someone who mutates people against their will. And how do you know that’s all it would have done? Retroviruses mutate. Besides, it’s still wrong to change people without their consent. How do you know those kids would even have wanted superpowers?”

“Oh, be real. Who wouldn’t want superpowers?”

“If I wasn’t a Proxima, I might have been an Olympic gold medalist.”

She was telling the truth. One of the things that annoyed me so much about Ciana was how close her life had been to mine, minus the dysfunctional family. I, too, had had Olympic dreams once, and my coach had told me when I was 11 that I might seriously make it as a contender. But no matter how good I’d been, I’d never really had a chance; if my parents hadn’t died when I was 13, some other aspect of my family’s screwed-up-ness would have ruined it for me.

Ciana Kim, however, had had a good and loving family who’d pushed her hard in the belief that she could achieve anything. She was a third-generation Korean American from California and her parents were doctors or something like that, and they’d stood behind her every step of the way. Even after everything had fallen apart in my life and I’d basically become a thug for hire, I had followed the Olympic gymnastic news, so I’d known all about this as it was happening.

Ciana was originally to be the USA’s representative to the Olympics in Seoul for women’s artistic gymnastics. Much was made in the media of a Korean American going to Seoul to represent America, but Ciana had been very photogenic and full of great soundbites about how she was as American as apple pie and she was honored to represent our great country and she was so looking forward to bringing a medal home for the US and she was following in Mary Lou Retton’s footsteps and blah blah blah. And then, a week before the Olympics, it had come out that she was a Proxima. They’d finally figured out that doing a blood test for catalysine would find any Proxima with an active power.

The truth is that even now, twenty years later, as an experienced superhero who uses her powers all the time, Ciana still can’t use her powers invisibly. There’s always a shiny blue blob there. And she had no training with her powers when she was 16, so it would have been even more implausible that she could have somehow used her powers to secretly cheat. I would be disqualified from a Sapiens competition in gymnastics in any sane world because of what my powers actually are, but Ciana was disqualified solely from anti-Proxima prejudice (and, to be fair, probably some anti-Asian prejudice from the Americans whose job it would have been to advocate for her). The Americans paid for their prejudices when Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union took home all the women’s gymnastics medals (I don’t like Ciana, but I’m pretty sure she would have won at least a silver in something, if not a gold.) Ciana was recruited by Dr. Chandrasekhar to learn how to use her powers and eventually join the Peace Force, Dr. Chandrasekhar’s UN-supported superhero team.

So it wasn’t that I had no respect for Ciana’s loss, but it irritated me that she saw the problem as being that she was a Proxima rather than that the Olympic committee was scared of Proximas. And also, that being an Olympic medalist was better than being a superhero. “Yeah yeah, you could have had your moment of glory, and nowadays you’d be selling sneakers and breakfast cereal to pay the bills, assuming anyone even remembered you at all. What’s Mary Lou Retton doing with her life?”

“She’s been an Olympics commentator, and she’s a motivational speaker who supports physical fitness.”

Trust Ciana to actually know this. “And that’s better than being a superhero how? You save lives, you have an action figure, millions of little girls look up to you—“

“—I wear a mask when I save lives because otherwise supervillains or stalkers might hunt me down, no one knows my real name, my family aren’t allowed to tell anyone what I do for a living, I’ll probably never have a normal life with a husband and kids—“

“--You could marry some guy and quit the superhero business any time you wanted to, it’s just your overblown sense of responsibility that says you can’t quit your job to have babies until your powers give out on you, because you think the world needs you, and if that’s the case where would they have been if you hadn’t been a Proxima?”

“Someone else would have taken my place if I hadn’t been a Proxima. And all of this is besides the point; no matter how great you or even I might think it is to have superpowers, the fact is that you were planning to infect helpless babies with a retrovirus that would have mutated them. Some of them might have died of it. Some might have been killed by their families for being Proximas once they manifested. You don’t have the right to play God that way.”

“Nobody would have died of my virus,” I retorted. “I tested it thoroughly ahead of time. But you also notice, I haven’t done it again.”

“Because you know we’ll stop you.”

“Because I listened to your arguments that retroviruses are unstable and highly prone to mutation, and I decided that maybe you have a point.”

“Then why did you bring it up?”

“You didn’t even try to just persuade me. You just blew up my lab! Do you know how many vials of vaccine I hadn’t modified yet you destroyed?”

“All of this is pointless,” Sapphire snapped. “I’m wasting time arguing with you when Doctor Sun is dying. Are you coming or not?”

Wait, what? Dying?

I had been a half-crazed killer with no self-esteem, no sense of myself being able to be or do anything good, no belief that anyone could ever care about me – at least not without dying for it – after David died. Dr. Chandrasekhar had taken me in and taught me that I could have a better destiny than being a tool for monsters to use to kill each other with; that I didn’t have to be a monster myself. I could use my powers for good. I could help people. I could be a decent person.

Viewed from her perspective, I suppose, it didn’t last – I freely admit I am a supervillain and I do highly unethical things, up to and including killing people. But I do it for a cause I believe in. I do it to save my people from the bio-engineered diseases I was forced to participate in creating at Sonnebend. I do it so girls with superpowers who are going to medical school to learn how to save lives will not be kidnapped, stripped of their powers except when convenient for their captors, raped, tortured and forced to use their powers to heal enemies and kill their own kind, by agents of their own government. I do it so my people can enjoy the same rights and privileges as every other human on this planet. And the fact that I can fight for a cause, that I can see myself as a person with a noble goal of my own… I owe that entirely to Doctor Sun.

No matter what she does to me, no matter what she orders her Peace Force to do, I can’t ever get away from that.

“Dying of what?”

“She was kidnapped and raped by Caesar Primus. When she escaped, she was two months’ pregnant, but the doctors say it seems more like six months. The child is growing too rapidly for her to handle it, and it’ll kill her.”

Oh, God.

My heart started pounding, my throat went dry. I could feel the adrenaline surging, my sympathetic nervous system revving up for a totally inappropriate fight-or-flight response. I couldn’t stop imagining the reality behind Sapphire’s words. It didn’t help that I’d once had sex with Primus myself – consensual, sort of, but I could entirely too easily imagine what it’d be like to be raped by him, without powers to protect you. And Primus was immune to telepathy, so effectively Suri would have been helpless. God, no. I didn’t want to think about that.

So I was flippant, and cold. “Doctor Sun’s a woman of the world. You’re telling me she’s never heard of an abortion?”

“She doesn’t want an abortion. She says she won’t compound Primus’ act by taking an innocent life.”

“When did Doctor Sun turn into a pro-lifer?”

“She says the baby has a mind and she won’t kill it.” Sapphire floated herself down onto my dining room floor, still surrounded by a protective bubble but no longer on my stairs. “Are you going to help, or not?”

“I’m a feminist Darwinist. I’m morally opposed to letting a fetus conceived in rape live. It lets dangerous genes persist in the population. Suri knows that.”

Sapphire sighed explosively. “Fine. I knew you weren’t going to be any help, but Doctor Sun believed in you. I’ll just go tell her I was right and she was wrong.”

“What is this supposed to be, reverse psychology?”

“Nothing reverse about it. I knew before I got here that I would be wasting my time. You’re a killer with no conscience; why Doctor Sun ever thought you might help, I have no idea.”

“Because she knows me better than you.” I stepped forward. “If this is reverse psychology bullshit, it isn’t necessary. I’ve known I was going to agree to help you since you told me she was dying. And if you really believe what you’re saying, then nyaah nyaah nyaah. I’m a doctor; everything I do, I do to save lives. And at least I have to try to persuade Doctor Sun to abort the thing. Besides, if she was raped by Primus she might have injuries she could need my help with.” Primus had hammered at me like he was trying to break my pelvis, and without my powers he might actually have done so. And I’d voluntarily gone to bed with him. What he’d do to a woman he was raping, I really really didn’t want to imagine.

I didn’t mention to Sapphire that this was partly my fault anyway. When I’d met her, Suri (Dr. Suri to me in those days, but I feel I have the right to call her by her first name now) had been dying slowly of multiple sclerosis. She had met me on a good day; she’d only needed crutches and braces to move. On bad days she’d been confined to a wheelchair, and on really bad days she’d had to stay in bed. I’d healed her, and in the process I’d turned her from a forty-something woman approaching menopause back to a woman in her prime, young and healthy, physically in her 20’s. It had been almost 20 years since I’d done that; Suri would be approaching menopause again, but obviously wasn’t there yet. By now she’d be well past childbearing if I hadn’t de-aged her when I’d healed her disease.

I didn’t know whether Primus had raped her to torture her, to express domination over her, to really make the Peace Force mad at him, or to impregnate her, but I knew he had enough control over his body that if he hadn’t wanted to impregnate her, it wouldn’t have happened. It was entirely possible that the goal of the whole thing had been to force her to carry his child; Suri was an enormously powerful Proxima with high output power mitochondria, and most women with such energy-full mitochondria would have had a power they could use to fight back against Primus. Blocking a Proxima woman’s powers while she was pregnant carried high risk to the fetus if it too was a Proxima; it could prevent the fetus from developing the ability to control its powers as an adult. Suri was rare in that she was incredibly powerful but only telepathic, with no telekinetic abilities, and with Primus’ immunity to telepathy, she’d have had no way to fight back against him even at her full power. If Primus had wanted a powerful woman to pass her mitochondria to his child, and he hadn’t cared about her consent, there were few Proximas who’d make a better target for him. And if that was the case, then the whole thing wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t made her younger, sixteen years ago.

Sapphire blinked. “Wait. You are coming?”

“I just said so. But we have to bring my cats. They need to eat more than the average cat – they’d starve if I left them without food for three or four days, and obviously I can’t ask the neighbors to come feed them.”

“Fine. Sedate them; I don’t need a cat flying all over my car, or meowing and moaning in his carrier the whole time. We’ll put them in one of the suites and make sure they get fed.”

I took my cell phone – it had all of my appointments and contacts in it, and I’d have to call them all to reschedule once I knew how long this was going to take. If I could talk Suri into aborting the fetus, this could probably go very quickly, but I knew how stubborn she was. If I had to save the baby too, I could possibly have to take a few weeks.

Damn Suri. Why the hell was I taking time off my work and spending four hours in a car with one of the people who most annoyed me in the entire world to go save my greatest opponent anyway? From a problem she could just fix herself if she wasn’t so damn stubborn?

But I already knew. I couldn’t let Suryabati Chandrasekhar die; not under any circumstances, and most especially not if she’d asked for me specifically. Our differences were ideological; what she’d done for me went beyond ideology. I would fight her and her people when I had to, but if she was dying and she needed me, I had to go.

#nanowrimo #cold light #wip #supervillains #tw: csa #tw: rape #the trigger warnings are for things being talked about not things we see

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