Chapter Text
# CHAPTER 1 #
I sucked in a raspy breath, consciousness finally returning to me. My vision was blurry, and all I could hear was the sound of retching and the door alarm of a car going off. It took me a long moment to remember where I was, or at least, where I had been. It was as if time had skipped for a moment. One second I was walking down the sidewalk, the next, my body was splayed out on the hard asphalt. I opened my eyes, and the light from one of the streetlights that worked made me squint. Had I blacked out? I propped myself up on my arm and looked around. My clothes were covered in tears and broken seams, and a deep red stain marked the fabric near the frayed edges of my jacket and pants. My head was killing me; a dull throb making my heart beat in my ears. Why- what had happened?
I felt something wet on my forehead slowly drip down onto my eyebrow. I reached up to wipe it off, and when I brought my hand back in front of my eyes, my palm and fingers were coated in a deep red. It clung to my fingers like paint, but it was warm, alarmingly so. Blood.
Was I in shock? I didn’t feel a thing, aside from the fading headache. I blinked the rest of the blood out of my eyes and looked behind me, finally identifying the source of the door alarm. A silver sedan was stopped on the side of the pavement, its front bumper badly dented and scraped by the asphalt. The hood of the car and the road in front of it was shining and wet with what I could only assume was someone's blood.
The driver, a thin man in a torn denim jacket, was standing next to the car with his back to me. His fingers were tangled up in his hair, tugging on it as if he was attempting to rip chunks of hair from his scalp in base fear. I didn’t think he noticed me sitting up, or at least he didn’t react to me just yet.
A girl stood next to him, leaning against the car with legs shaking like she was about to fall over. She was young; the two of them were probably in their early twenties, if not younger. Her clothes were clinging to her limbs as if they were about to fall off of her gaunt figure. Currently she was bent over, a stream of spittle leaving her mouth from where she had presumably thrown up her dinner.
“Hey!” I weakly shouted in their direction. It came out more as a whisper than I intended, my throat feeling constricted. I coughed, spitting out a clump of something onto the road. I didn’t look to see what it was. The driver and the girl, maybe they were partners? They looked at each other for a moment, as if to verify they heard the noise as well, before looking over. Their faces went a ghostly pale under the glow of the streetlight.
“Jesus, you’re alive?” he exclaimed. “Are you okay?”
I didn’t know how to answer that question. I was acutely aware that, as my senses came back to me, I didn’t feel anything. No pain at all. The headache was gone, and there was only a lingering tingling sensation, as if a scab had just been pulled off of my entire body. Yet, despite my apparently healthy state, all evidence pointed to the simple fact that I had just had my entire body pancaked.
I tried to choke down the burgeoning panic, looking down at myself and reaching to feel my limbs, head, and face. Bits of gravel and asphalt from the road stuck to my body, my clothes missing large swaths from the knees, elbows, and arms. My legs felt sticky, but they didn’t hurt or have any major injuries that I could tell. My face felt fine, save for the dried blood clinging around my eyes.
“Depends, am I missing anything? Maybe we could check the pavement for some spare brain.” I cracked a smile, more of a nervous tic than an actual attempt at humor.
“Fuck, you’re one of those cape things!” he yelled at me, more incredulous than angry. I noticed a bit of a slurring in his speech as he spoke. He was stumbling slightly as he spoke.
Me, a cape? I didn’t know what to think of that. On the one hand, he had apparently hit me with a car, and I seemed to be fine. On the other hand, well… The reality of what happened finally seemed to click in my head; the realization that I had in fact just undergone something that was not entirely of my comprehension.
“Do I need a hospital?” I croaked. They looked at me like they were looking at a ghost. My hand came up to wipe the rest of the blood away from my face.
“Honey, the fact you’re even breathing is a miracle,” the girl spoke up. “You came out of nowhere- slid for a good twenty or thirty yards...” She sounded breathless and on the verge of tears.
I wiggled my toes and stood up. I didn’t feel any of the asphalt scrapes, and as far as I knew, they’d vanished or never even existed at all. If I really had been run over, my bones should be powder and I should be dead. The way they looked at me when I got up, the way they backed away in fear- I suppose there’s no good way to describe what that felt like. You hit a girl, she skips across the road like a rock on a lake, you watch her break every bone on her body, she gets up like nothing even happened and even starts making jokes. Yeah, that might fuck up your day. It certainly fucked up mine.
Was this some sort of prank? There was no way that I was someone who could survive something of that magnitude, much less without a scratch to speak of. The more I watched the drunk guy and his girlfriend, the more I realized it wasn’t some weird elaborate scheme. Their demeanor suggested that this wasn’t any sort of joke- or anything less than an apparent miracle, from what the girl said.
I swiped the remaining bits of loose gravel off my face and arms. The drying blood helped it stick to my skin. My coat was ruined, as were my pants. They were both ripped and drenched in blood, but where it came from, I couldn’t tell. I felt along my body again, trying to find scrapes, cuts, anything. Nothing. It felt silly, trying to find injuries like I was looking for a way out of this ridiculous scenario.
Anything to prove to myself I didn’t just wake up from an apparent death, scratch free. At that moment, I thought that if I had somehow found a cut, that might somehow excuse the lack of pulverized bones or gaping wounds. The girl and the driver backed up, retreating to their car, afraid. Were they afraid of me?
I noticed my backpack had ripped open during the impact, my schoolwork littering the pavement. I sighed. Somehow, that was more annoying than having been hit by a car. It was the little things, I supposed. “Could you help me get my stuff?” I asked, maybe a little more nonchalantly than I should’ve.
“Listen, we don’t wanna be a part of any cape shit.” The driver raised his hands, stumbling backwards towards his car. He crammed himself back inside hurriedly, and the girl did the same as soon as she noticed his hasty retreat. She hesitated, maybe wanting to help, but she was left with little choice as the man slammed his door shut and motioned for her to get in.
The tires of the silver sedan screeched as the tail lights faded into the distance, a dislodged front bumper dragging between the front tires. I stood in the middle of a road, covered in blood, with my papers fluttering about behind me. Strangely, the only thing that crossed my mind- other than the fact they just ran off without helping- was my Spanish test tomorrow. Maybe I could get a doctor’s note.
#
Once I got my hands to stop shaking as badly and my breathing to slow, I started surveying the street and assessing the damage. Collecting my things from the road was tedious and downright infuriating, my fingers trembling with the leftover adrenaline as I grabbed each individual sheet of paper. Somehow my backpack had opened in the crash and my folders had flown open, spraying their contents all over the roadway. Some fluttered about in the wind, one of which I was certain was tomorrow's homework, half completed and speckled with red.
I must’ve looked insane. Maybe I was. I had just discovered I apparently had super powers or something of the sort, and Mr. Shilliday’s math homework flying off into the breeze was somehow of more importance to me. I guessed I realized that powers or not, one more failing grade and it was Delta for me. I didn’t need to spend my summer re-doing calculus, especially not now that I knew I could be running around and fighting crime. I stopped for a moment, feeling slightly dumb. If I had powers, they probably could help me out. I held out my hand, tried to concentrate, pulling on something in my brain, like how they described it in my Parahuman Studies class.
I didn’t feel anything, other than a fading headache. I tried to focus on a strange tingle in the back of my head, only to realize that it was the wind blowing my hair. Seriously? I thought to myself. I go through all the trouble of being hit by a car and I don’t even have anything to show for it. What kind of power did I even get, if I actually got one? The power of not-being-affected-by-being-hit-by-a-car?
I gave up and continued picking the papers up from the ground. Some were soggy from the runoff, some were red. I frowned as I picked those up. One of the straps had broken off my backpack, forcing me to sling it over one shoulder as I trudged home.
I headed back to my mom's house, still astounded that I wasn’t feeling any sort of pain. Should I… call the cops? It wasn’t like there was much of a reason to, all things considered. The only real damage had been to the car, and I had walked away more or less bruiseless. That being said, every few moments I checked over my shoulder just to make sure there wouldn’t be a repeat of what happened tonight.
It was an agonizingly long walk, every moment being dragged out by the fading adrenaline running through my system. I reached into my pocket to check for my phone, and jammed my fingers into a pocket filled with shattered plastic.
Fuck, of course it was broken.
The glass was sharp in my pocket, and I felt the sting of a long cut down my index finger. I hissed in pain and quickly withdrew my hand, expecting to see a mangled, torn up mess. Instead, there was a single bead of blood trailing from the tip of my pointer finger. I traced its path to the cut it had come from, a jagged gash down the side of my pointer. Where blood had been slowly trickling, I saw the skin push itself together and forcibly seal shut like it was magnetic.
I stopped my walk, staring at the area on my hand where the cut had been. The blood still trailed down my hand until it was just a smear, but the cut had vanished within a moment of noticing it. My adrenaline seemed to pick up again, my heart beating louder in my chest as I picked up my pace.
Reaching my house, I cautiously stuck my hand into the outside pocket of my backpack to retrieve the key, only to feel torn fabric. There was a hole in that pocket, and my key must have fallen out sometime on the way from the accident. Not wanting to bother returning to search the dark street, I quickly retrieved the spare key that my mom had hidden in one of the planters to the side of the door. Something to look for on the walk to school tomorrow, I supposed. Pushing the door open slowly but with a discernible noise, I stepped into the house and walked towards my room.
“Quinn, is that you?” my mom’s voice called out from a room at the end of the hall, not even bothering to use my name.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I called back, bristling slightly. My voice sounded hollow as I responded, but she probably didn’t even notice. She had more or less refused to call me by my chosen name for the past six months or so, and when she did, she would use it with this ironic venom that made me wish she just hadn’t even used it to begin with. My dad was significantly more open to calling me Roxy. He’d immediately taken to the idea of having me as a daughter. He even insisted that I take self defense classes since, in his words, “every girl should know how to defend herself.” I’d like to think that I was pretty good at it, but an unfortunate side effect was that it cut into our time together.
I pushed the door open to my room, my mother completely oblivious to my ragged and bloody state. Caked in blood, I set my backpack down by my desk. My room was pretty cluttered, with music and movie posters covering nearly every inch of my walls. Clothes were strewn about beside my bed, and the sheets lay in tangles. Part of the reason that it was in this state was due to spite, as I refused to clean it, no matter how many times my mom reminded me to. Sure, it was petty and juvenile, but that was sort of my thing.
I strode to my bathroom and looked myself over in the mirror. I half expected to look like some sort of monster, or have grown a third arm or something. Nothing of the sort had developed, as far as I could tell. My hair was an artificially lightened blonde, with streaks of a pink box dye running down the sides along my face. My body was fairly lithe, with little excess body mass anywhere. The self defense classes that I took were enough to keep me in some form of shape, faint traces of muscle on my arms and legs, but otherwise I was built like a weirdly tall 12 year old. 16 was an extremely awkward age for me, with my normal puberty forcibly halted about halfway through and another puberty in its beginning stages. The wonders of hormones.
The person staring back at me in the mirror looked like she was a victim in a slasher movie, but she hadn’t quite gotten her stage makeup done yet. My jacket and shirt barely clung onto my frame with how torn they were, sticking to my skin with dried blood. My pants had a massive chunk missing from them, assumedly from where I had skidded along the pavement. The only thing that was in decent shape were my shoes, which, ironically enough, looked like they had been the part of my body that had been in contact with the ground the least.
I stripped off my horribly torn clothes and threw them straight into the trash, not even bothering to see if they were salvageable or not. I started a shower and waited for the water to get warm.
I felt like I was about to fall over; a sudden wave of exhaustion and emotion washed over my body. My hands clamped down around the edge of the countertop to stabilize myself as I tried to process everything running through my mind. It seemed that I could heal, but I had no idea to what extent. Was it situational? Was it a one-time thing?
I stopped to calm down before I hyperventilated. Forcing myself to step into the shower, I watched the caked-on blood run down my legs and into the drain with a grimace. This was my blood, and I should be feeling sick right now. Well, technically I should be dead right now, but it still struck me that everything felt too… good. Nothing hurt, or felt broken, or even sore. I’d gotten hit by a car, and I’d walked away without even a bruise. It felt wrong, alien to me.
It took a long while for the blood to clear off, long enough that my mother banged on the door and yelled about the water bill. I might’ve tried to quip something at her if I didn’t know better. If she couldn’t accept a trans daughter, I doubt she’d accept a parahuman trans daughter. I closed my eyes and curled into a ball in the corner of the tub. Under the cover of the torrential noise of water hitting porcelain, I couldn’t stop myself from letting out an adrenaline filled cry of terror. It didn’t feel like a release, it didn’t feel like a weight was lifted as I let the tears roll and disappear into the tub. I had died today, and I’d had the misfortune of living through it.
#
My walk to school the next day was agonizingly slow. It felt like every 30 seconds I had to glance over my shoulder, just to make sure there was no silver sedan careening in my direction. It had taken every fiber of my being not to skip school, but honestly, I felt like I should have. There was no way that I could manage any semblance of focus today.
I carried my papers in a loose binder, the plastic bulging with the sheer amount of paper that I had to cram inside. Some of my homework was bloodstained, so I had copied it down on a different sheet before school to avoid any questions.
I slowed my walk as I reached the crossing to the other side of the road. It was dark outside, but the rising sun allowed me to survey the asphalt. A dark stain was set into the paint of the crosswalk, shards of silver plastic littering the road leading up to the point of impact. I glanced over the site of the wreck, a knot growing heavy in my stomach. So, it was real, it hadn’t been a fucked up dream or prank. I had died here last night and gone home like nothing had happened. I must have been in shock last night; maybe I was still in shock. Everything felt numb and overwhelming at the same time, impossible to process without losing my mind. I felt tears prick at the corners of my eyes as I crossed the road. I didn’t see my key, but then again, I didn’t look too hard.
Maybe I should contact someone about what happened. The police wouldn’t know what to do, especially if I was really a parahuman. I still had my doubts about whether I was or not, my brain scrambling for some sort of answer. Maybe another cape had come in and saved me but didn’t stick around to explain it. Maybe they healed me or put some sort of invulnerability field around me. Why would they leave without saying something? It was unlikely, but I wanted to think that it was true.
Should I contact the local branch of superheroes? The Parahuman Response Team was the government agency that usually was in charge of this sort of thing, but my heart dropped at the notion of going to them for help. More likely than not, they would either claim they couldn’t help, or slap some charges on me for public endangerment or something of the sort. Trust in the PRT was limited nowadays, with the organization recently going through some major leadership changes to try and root out corruption.
I had little trust in agencies like that to begin with, a notion instilled in me through experience and advice from my father. The events of the past month or so had only reinforced that idea. My dad was a bit of a conspiracy nut, and he was convinced that something massive happened, leading to a lot of the major capes resigning. I couldn’t help but agree. I really couldn’t blame him for his distaste of the agency, as it seemed like all of his claims had recently been proven to be true.
I continued my walk to school, shoving my trembling hands in my pockets. No PRT, no heroes, no cops. Not even my mom. Maybe my dad, but he was out of town at the moment, on some sort of business trip. Something to think about for the next time that I saw him, whenever that would be.
Fremont High was only a few minutes' walk from the crash site. My pulse slowed down now that the crosswalk was no longer in view. The sky was dark, threatening rain as the October wind cut through my jacket. I was wearing one of my old jackets, my favorite one having been trashed beyond all repair. I wore the same pair of shoes, hoping that nobody would notice the faint splatters of blood on the sides. Overall, I was dressed relatively modestly. Showing skin wasn’t really my thing, and I usually covered myself up with a jacket and jeans. Today was no exception.
The school loomed in front of me, the prospect of class making me feel nauseous. While I wouldn’t consider myself a stellar student, I would be hard pressed to find a teacher with a complaint about me. At least, I assumed so. I was quiet in my classes, turned in my homework on time, and almost never got caught cheating off someone else. All in all, I considered myself a fairly average student. Although, to be fair, it wasn’t like Fremont High was incredibly challenging in the work it gave us.
As most public schools were nowadays, Fremont was chronically underfunded, with teachers that were barely paid above minimum wage. Most of the teachers here were either new, fresh out of college adults looking to establish a career and get noticed by one of the higher budget schools in the area, or old teachers that should’ve retired in the 90s. There wasn’t really anyone in between.
One of the unforeseen circumstances of the recent influx of people into Seattle over the last ten or so years was the strain on the education system. A rash of new schools quickly went up with the government money set aside for accommodating the refugees and migrants from across the country. Japan, Wisconsin, Brockton Bay, New York… everyone was flocking to Seattle. Unfortunately, when that government money ran out, they pretended like the school system was in peak shape when it was barely held together with duct tape.
It wasn’t surprising to enter Fremont and see a trash can positioned under a new dripping hole in the ceiling or hear some story about another raccoon or squirrel that had started living in the ceiling above a classroom. One time about a month or two ago, a bird had gotten its way into the gym through a window that didn’t close, and it took a whole mess of teachers and students, and even one of the C list heroes that apparently went to the school to chase it out through the window.
That being said, it wasn’t a bad school. Sure, it was underfunded, had apathetic teachers, was more or less falling apart as the days went on despite how recently it was built, and was infested with rodents, but… it could be worse. Somehow. At least I wasn’t bullied or anything.
The school itself was two floors, a brick building that was built in between two parallel sets of roads. It was just a squat rectangle with a yard surrounding it — one of the most boring designs in the universe. I pushed into the double doors, falling in with a wave of students making their way to class. A perk of living close to school was the ability to walk to school right when classes started, leaving me to sleep in until then. Unfortunately, my first class was Spanish, and I hadn’t found my study sheet from the wreck last night. It felt odd to care about such a small thing when an event like that had just occurred, but it still annoyed me how close I was to failing.
The test itself wasn’t hard, just tedious. After an hour of bubbling answers onto a sheet, I turned it in and headed to English. Ms. Williams was a good enough teacher, one of those old ladies that wasn’t too much of a hardass about doing work. She just made us read a lot, or at least attempted to. She began lecturing us on Catcher in the Rye, but it faded into a dull murmur as I doodled while pretending to take notes.
She was one of those teachers that tried to adapt to modern life, but took 10 minutes to find the power button for the projector. I didn’t mind; it meant less time that I had to spend pretending to pay attention.
#
The lunch bell rang faster than I expected, my heart spiking into my throat with the sudden noise. I calmed myself down as the class started to disperse, the din of conversation filling the room before long. The door creaked open and students started to file into the hall, eager to leave. I was thankful that lunch was finally here, my stomach was growling as if it was about to digest itself. I made my way to the lunch room in a daze, the adrenaline from the sudden shock fading quickly. The thrum of students seemed to envelop me as I followed the rest of the herd to the cafeteria. I sat down at my normal seat near the corner of the room, one of the few booths with cushions. It was really just two long seats with a table in the middle, but I had claimed it early enough in the year that it was generally accepted to be our seat. The rest of the students either sat at the scattered circular tables, or dispersed through the school to eat wherever they wanted. I dug my food out of my backpack, almost tearing open the paper bag as I scrambled for my sandwich.
I hadn’t slept well the night before for obvious reasons, and as soon as I scarfed down my lunch, I let my head rest on my hand. I blinked, and time seemed to skip. Suddenly, two people were at my lunch table, looking at me expectantly.
“What about you, Roxy?”
“Hm?” I was shaken from my stupor, but the clamor of the lunch crowd made the boy’s question nearly incomprehensible. I blinked away the remnants of sleep, significantly more alert with my makeshift nap. How long had they been here? Did they just not notice that I had been asleep?
“You even awake over there?” Jonas asked with a grin, punching my shoulder lightly. “I said, if you were a cape, what’d you think your power’d be? See, Alex thinks it would be cool to talk to animals, but honestly, there’s no way they have anything interesting to say. I think, go with a classic: Invisibility.”
The shaggy haired boy waggled his eyebrows, leaving very little to the imagination as to why he chose said power. It took me about 2 seconds to really process what he meant. I gave him a playful look. Invisibility wasn’t his real answer, everyone at the table knew that.
“Gross. I dunno, I haven’t really thought about it before.” I twirled one of the dyed streaks in my hair with my finger, trying with every cell in my body to seem inconspicuous. That was the problem with trying to act normal though. As soon as you started trying, everyone around you immediately knew something was up.
Luckily, Jonas seemed to take my reluctance in stride and continued with his barrage. “C’mon, we all know you’d be a little shit if you were ever a cape,” the loudmouthed boy continued to chatter, adding to the ceaseless waves of noise coming from the rest of the cafeteria. “You have to have some idea of what you would want.”
“I dunno. Maybe a tinker?” I cringed as I answered, knowing that I was going to get more than my fair share of shit for such a lame response. This sort of thing happened every time. Jonas, one of my closest friends from childhood, lived for every single moment that he could poke fun at me. It was one of his most endearing and infuriating traits, the way his flop of hair hung over his eyes as they gained that all too-familiar spark.
“A tinker?” the boy said incredulously. “Not to mention the stupid amount of brains you gotta have that you don’t…” He reached over and rapped on my head with a few knuckles, a sharp smile plastered on his face as I raised my hands to defend myself. “You wanna be a tinker? You could have anything, something cool! You could literally do whatever tinker power you wanted but just do it with powers. But no, Roxanne over here seemingly wants to be some cape wannabe computer nerd.” He snorted, making me look over to the other girl at the table, the two of us sharing a knowing glance.
“Yeah, fair enough. Stupid answer I guess.” I nodded with a reserved smile, resting my chin on my hand. Honestly, I had just chosen the first thing that came to mind. It wasn’t that I was particularly interested in electronics or mechanics or anything. My technological experience was mostly limited to pirating music.
Alex, the quietest at the table so far, crossed her arms and set her elbows on the table as she drew in a breath. “I dunno, I think tinkers are kinda neat,” she said, almost defensively.
“Oh boy, here comes the Exo brigade.” I snorted, earning a fist bump from Jonas as Alex waved the brunette hair from her increasingly red face.
“Oh, this is coming from the two idiots with insatiable boners for Showboat.” She glanced between us, both of whom were sharing an equally pained expression.
“Valid point,” I admitted, and Jonas shrugged in noncommittal deference.
“She is hotter though,” Jonas piped up, quieter than before, obviously a little spooked by Alex’s muscles.
“Agreed.” I huffed with a smirk. Sure, we both had crushes on the mascot of the local Wards, but who didn’t? Her costume was designed to draw attention, just enough to lure in the eyes but not enough to reveal her secret identity. Not that it would matter, I bet that half the school could recognize her just with a look at her rack.
The Wards were kind of the junior division of the Protectorate, the adults herding local teenagers together into a team of heroes. Every major city had their own team of Wards, who reported directly to the PRT and the local Protectorate. The Seattle Wards were known for being a bit… unconventional, but yet surprisingly effective regardless. I wasn’t a big fan of them, aside from a little bit of a hardon for Showboat.
“Whatever, not like you two have a chance with her, even if she went here.” Alex sounded defensive, her shoulder length curls bobbing with her head movements as she started to get animated.
“And you’re saying you could pin down Exo? C’mon, you know that kid is some computer lab nerd or something behind that mask. Although, who knows, maybe he’s into femdom. Nerds often are,” Jonas joked, flicking a crumb of his lunch off of the table at the girl.
I snorted, taking a moment to look at the two others at the lunch table. Jonas hunched over what remained of a tray of school lunch, his deep brown eyes flitting around the group as if he were watching a tennis match. He seemed to be gauging the reactions of the two of us to each and every word. With a mouth filled with artificial cafeteria meat and bread, his strangely slender finger was tapping against the table as he waited for a response to his self-proclaimed cleverness. He was by no means athletic, giving off the appearance of perhaps a musician, or even an artist. As far as I knew, he was neither.
Alex, on the other hand, was a bit more muscular in her build. As one of the substitutes for the basketball team, she often wore her shoulder length brown hair back, but today she had let it out to hang around her face. She was significantly taller than Jonas and I, a good head over Jonas and at least a few inches over me. Despite her formidable height, she was the most shy of the three of us.
Just as I finished wrapping up my own moment of reflection, another thought started to nag at the base of my skull. “Jonas?” I asked, cocking my head as I looked over towards the boy.
“Roxanne?” Jonas responded with a grin that suggested he knew exactly how much it made me feel weird to use my full name.
“Do you really think I’d be a villain if I had powers?” I bit my lip as I asked, already knowing his answer.
“Not if you were a tinker. Most of them are too up their own ass to even jaywalk.” Jonas smirked, poking a french fry in my direction as if to punctuate his statement.
“No, I mean, seriously. If I had powers, do you think I would be a bad guy?” My eyebrows knit together, my lips pursing slightly as I leaned in towards Jonas.
The boy’s shift in posture was a sudden reversal from his previously joking demeanor, his shoulders hunching slightly as he relaxed. He pondered the question, as absurd and out of left field as he probably thought it was. “I dunno, actually,” he murmured, the levity in his voice gone. “Being totally honest, maybe, but I don’t think you would be one of the really bad ones. You don’t strike me as anyone, like, Slaughterhouse Nine level or one of the Circle. I think you would be one of the ones just doing it for kicks. Anarchy ‘n all that stuff. Always on the run from the good guys, knocking over mailboxes or tp’ing rich people’s houses, or anything else that seems like fun. I dunno, am I wrong?”
“... I guess not.” I leaned back slightly, my mind racing.
My thoughts were interrupted by the lunch bell, the three of us exchanging short goodbyes before we dispersed to our individual classes. Talking to the two of them had significantly raised my spirits from when I had arrived at school, but now there was an almost manic energy building in my throat.
Jonas’ comment stuck in my head like a psychic splinter. Do they really see me as someone who could be a criminal? I caught myself repeating the question too many times, and yet never was able to drag myself into any sort of answer. Sure, I had my wild streaks, but a criminal? Well. Maybe.
What I had failed to share with Jonas would’ve earned me a permanent reprieve from his jabs and jokes, but yet, it hadn’t seemed like the right time to bring it up. Well, that was a lie. When he asked me what power I would’ve wanted, I could’ve answered honestly.
Well, Jonas. I would’ve said, steepling my fingers like an overdramatic movie bad guy. Funny of you to mention that. You see, I actually do have powers. Yes, you heard me right. Your best friend has one of the lamest powers on the planet.
That being said, I would’ve traded my power for anything. Hell, a few weeks ago, that chick Weaver popped up on the news, and she only had the power to talk to bugs or something. I would take that hands down over being able to heal. At least then I could probably do something useful other than get myself hurt.
“... Roxanne, you good?” A hushed voice came from over my shoulder. One of my classmates was leaning forward over her desk, a worried look on her face. She was cute, but I never really talked to her much. Zayna, I think her name was. She had curly black hair that was cut pretty short, hanging just below her eyes. A bright silver nose ring and earrings studded her face, contrasting nicely with the darker shade of her skin. She sat behind me in a few of my classes, but I was surprised she even knew my name.
It took me a moment to figure out why she had asked, but my hand was white-knuckling on my desk, and I probably looked like I was about to throw up. Fuck, I really was out of it today. “Y-Yeah, I’m fine.” I cleared my throat and straightened in my chair, earning a sour look from Mr. Hendrix. He moved on quickly, continuing his lecture on the historical exchange of crops from the Americas to Europe. He was one of the younger teachers, but he was one of those white guys that thought that he could pull off dreadlocks. It was really, really bad.
With the agonizingly slow speed of the rest of the period, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that it felt like some superpowered act of slowing time. Shrinking out of Mr. Hendrix’s class with an apologetic glance, I hurried off to my last period for the day.
I kept my head down as I entered class, barely even looking at the other students. It was kind of an unspoken agreement in Mr. Shilliday’s class that we kept to ourselves, and suffered in silence. It was hard to sit through Calculus with ideas racing through my head as if they were determined to reach every neuron possible, but the impulses calmed down as soon as I pulled out a piece of paper and a pen.
Becoming a Supervillain I began to write, rolling my eyes at myself as I did.
Pros: Fun. Get to do what I want. Money. See myself in the news(?) I left a question mark after that last one, not quite sure I wanted to be so recognizable. Maybe I could show Jonas and Alex though, if I got played on TV or something.
Cons: Maybe get beat up? (maybe heal, but will hurt). People will hate me. Jail?
I frowned at that last one. Not many capes went to jail, but the ones that did had a pretty high chance of going to the Birdcage. Not the most appealing prospect. But that was usually saved for the worst of the worst, those that they couldn’t just rough up and let back out on the streets or keep inside a jail with the regular convicts. That seemed to happen for a surprising amount of the capes in the area, especially in the northwestern states. Plus, it wasn’t like I would really ever get notorious enough to get sent to jail or anything. Maybe I could even get away with pretending I didn’t have a power, that way they would let me off easy.
Either way though, the Pros definitely outweighed the Cons. If I looked past how stupid it was that I was making a Pro/Con list for committing crimes, that was. It wasn’t much longer before the bell rang, my frantic scribbling about powers and villains apparently passing off as taking notes during the lecture. I quickly stuffed the paper in my bag to make sure nobody would walk past my desk and see it, hurrying towards the door before I even had my bag all the way on my shoulder.
What would I even do, anyways? Rob a bank by letting the guards shoot me until they’re out of bullets? I smiled to myself slightly. And what if I’m just overestimating my power? What if I have no idea how it works, and it backfires and I wind up dead?
What a stupid thought, thinking I could be a supervillain. I was just a high school student with the ability to negate papercuts, not some S-class cape that could take on a whole city single handed. I took the paper back out of my pocket, using my hand as a surface to write on.
Becoming a Hero I wrote on the other side.
Pros: I don’t get thrown in jail, Showboat???, I don’t feel guilty
Cons: Being told what to do, authorities, big brother, probably boring, no free time, I might lose my friends
I shook my head as if the action would dispel the thoughts from my mind. I didn’t want to be a hero. You could tell the kids who turned up in the Wards came from good homes, like, they oozed privilege.
I didn’t want to be looked at like that, the spotlight, the scrutiny. I could hardly handle my own criticism, and thousands of other people constantly obsessing over me? But if that were the case, would being a villain make that any better? I crumpled the paper up before anyone took a look and shoved it back in my pocket.
#
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♦ Topic: Seattle Cape Chat?
In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Seattle
Castmerk (banned)
Posted on October 8, 2011
Can anyone verify if this is real?
Topic has been deleted by a moderator
Int.24:
Connecting to "agChat.ParahumansOnline016.par:6667" (Attempt 1 of 55)
Resolving Host Name
Connecting…
Connected.
Using identity "ro4dkill", nick "ro4dkill"
Welcome to Parahumans Online Chatroom #219, ‘Seattle Cool Kids Club’. Don't get each other arrested.
Glow-worm:
Connecting to “pChat.ParahumansOnline.SCKC(6667)” (Attempt 90)
Resolving Host Name
Connecting…
Connected.
Using identity “ro4dkill”
Welcome to SCKC Private Chat. Forum thread.
[You are logged in as: ro4dkill]
[Joining chat room: Seattle Cape Discussion]
[ro4dkill connected]
[birdofnofeather] whoever hit that jewlery store last week, fuck you. that was my job.
[masterofpuppets]: you snooze you looze, bitch
[taketwo]: Please shut up, literally nobody cares.
[thinkingwithp0rtals]: anyone feel like there’s been a shortage of new capes recently?
[flashbangwasalreadytaken]: yeah lol, maybe they’re just too scared to show their faces
[ro4dkill]: maybe we just don’t know what to do with our powers
[taketwo]: anyone know who tf that is?
[thinkingwithp0rtals]: no clue.
[notsamara connected]
[notsamara]: uploaded imageface.png
[flashbangwasalreadytaken]: Logo we know that’s you, I s2g the next time I see you in costume you’re fucking dead.
[notsamara]: lol get fucked
[notsamara disconnected]
[taketwo]: Fuck, Shawe, disconnect. Logo just had to ruin the party.
[taketwo disconnected]
[flashbangwasalreadytaken disconnected]
[thinkingwithp0rtals]: ro4dkill you still there?
[ro4dkill]: Yeah, sorry. New here.
[thinkingwithp0rtals]: How did you even find this chatroom?
[ro4dkill]: Someone posted it on the forums. It got deleted by admins, like, immediately though.
[thinkingwithp0rtals]: Are you serious about not knowing what to do with your powers?
[ro4dkill]: yeah, triggered pretty recently. I've been thinking about what to do for like 2 days now.
[ro4dkill]: been distracted enough that some girl in my class had to make sure I wasn’t about to throw up lmao
[thinkingwithp0rtals]: it’ll get better with time, trust me.
[thinkingwithp0rtals]: just keep an open mind.
[thinkingwithp0rtals disconnected]
I sighed, disconnecting from that chatroom. That was… weird. Had I shared too much? I was still questioning whether the chatroom was even real, but so far I had no reason to believe it wasn’t. It wasn’t like I was putting too much faith in the message board anyways, it was just more of a distraction than anything else. Either way, it was almost time for school and I needed to leave my computer regardless.
I had put a bit of effort into researching local teams and capes, but it was a lot more difficult than it seemed. The Parahuman Online Forums helped some, but everyone there seemed to already be so much of a cape geek, it was hard to actually understand what they were saying. The wiki wasn’t much better, with most of the information sparse or speculative at best. Nothing useful, unless I wanted to attend trivia night.
All in all, finding information on how to be a criminal was difficult. I wasn’t even that invested in it to begin with, but this was even more discouraging. I closed my laptop with a sigh, resigning myself to go to school for the day.