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Of Heroes And Villains:
The Paths Not Taken
By Minikisa
There are moments that change a life forever. And within those moments, heroes and villains alike are born of choice.
Elaine stood frozen, flexing her fingers as she stared at the woman in front of her. Her palms were strangely warm, heat pricking at the inside of her skin like tiny needles.
Sir… Fluffington?
Had she heard that right?
Elaine didn’t know just how much more of this she could take.
The woman dangled the keychain in front of her like a cat toy, offering her freedom. Yet what kind of person would assault a police station and break out a mass murderer? Not one Elaine wanted to follow.
But letting herself be arrested seemed like a poor choice more and more. There was a good chance she might wind up in jail forever, with no way to prove her innocence.
Flash Freeze would not be coming to her rescue. Elaine would have to save herself.
Her fingers clenched into a fist at that thought and she raised her chin.
The woman discretely pointed a finger toward Elaine’s hands, leaning in to whisper, “Psst. You might want to get that under control.”
After a long moment of staring the woman down, Elaine allowed herself a glance out of the corner of her eyes.
Her palms were glowing with a strange purple light.
“You are wasting an awful lot of energy to overcome the cuffs just to be a lamp. Either commit to mayhem or stop draining yourself. And just between you and me – you draining yourself is bad.”
“I know that,” Elaine snapped, her temper frayed. She might not have been a mutant or mage herself – up until today, anyway – but she knew about the basics of energy exhaustion and the consequences thereof, as any school kid would.
“Oh, you misunderstand me. Draining yourself won’t kill you.” The woman’s eerie smile hardened. “It’ll kill others.”
Elaine inhaled sharply, and the heat in her hands surged, sparks sizzling between her fingertips. No, no, that was the opposite of what she wanted, so she splayed her fingers and shook her hand as if it was on fire – which it was – but the light only seemed to be intensifying with her distress.
And then it occurred to her that maybe the clearly morally questionable woman was just trying to get her not to use her powers.
Deep breath.
“How…?”
“You are asking the wrong question. You’ll find out how your powers work soon enough.” She sauntered closer, and Elaine had nowhere to back up to. “The question you should be asking is why you have powers.” She made a sweeping gesture toward the stray papers scattered on the floor, loosened from the police files when the table had been flipped over. “Or rather, why she does, and you didn’t.”
“How do you…?”
“Now that we’ve got that all cleared up, let’s go on a madcap adventure!”
“Enough!” The woman blinked at her with big and vacant eyes, looking like a child whose enthusiastic ramblings just got interrupted. Elaine struggled to focus her thoughts on what she wanted to know first – every time a question rose to the forefront, it got shot in the back by another question proclaiming that it was far more pressing than that other, clearly inferior and probably mentally deficient query.
After a long moment of the woman staring at her like an owl, Elaine realized that she couldn’t keep calling her The Woman. “Who are you and why are you freeing me?”
The woman clucked her tongue, seeming annoyed as her eyes became blank and distant. “We’ve had this conversatio – ah. Perhaps not. Gods, but I hate reruns.”
With that, she swooped into a deep, elegant bow.
“Who I am is not important, but you may call me Seer. Also acceptable are Oracle Without Equal, Your Supremeness, or Greased Lightning. I would give you a real name, but then I’d have to lie, and that would, of course, be deeply wrong. I am nothing if not an honest woman.”
“Funny. That’s exactly what a liar would say.”
“So it is.” She flashed a smile and reached to ruffle Elaine’s hair who jerked back, only to regret that instantly when it tore at her hair. “I like you, my little abomination.”
Heat flared once more, and the woman drew back her blistered fingertips, looking at her reproachfully.
Elaine, torn between being offended and apologetic, willed the purple sparks to subside.
“Anyway,” the seer drawled. “To give you the cliff notes version, I know things, I saw you were innocent and if you don’t come with me, you will rot in here for a long, long time.” She paused, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “A long time being about a week. That’s when people would start falling out of the sky, courtesy of your powers.”
Elaine swallowed heavily. “And how do I know you’re not lying?”
“You don’t.” She smiled sweetly. “You can always stay here and find out.”
The ground shook, accompanied by the low rumble of an explosion not far from them, shattering the one-way mirror to reveal the dimly lit room behind it. The seer raised her head and then adjusted the police hat she was wearing. “And that’s our cue. So you can stay here and hope that someone believes your story and then does something about it, or…” She casually sauntered to the door, stepping over the lawyer’s unconscious body, and gazed over her shoulder at Elaine. “You can follow me and work to save yourself. Your choice.”
And then she slipped out of the small interrogation room.
Elaine stood frozen for a long moment.
Then she cursed, and hurried after the woman.
***
The laser cannon mounted to his arm hummed as it was charged. Pearson gritted his teeth, ignoring the mental anguish resonating over the comm link as yet another of his squad members was cut down by the… thing.
Rogers fell to the ground, the armor that had withstood the full might of a Rikti mothership broken and laid bare, the jagged metal plates revealing the pilot within. The damaged armor thankfully kept transmitting his vitals, showing that his comrade was still breathing in there.
“Foolish Mortal,” boomed that grating voice, synthesized and artificial, yet with an otherworldly undercurrent that set Pearson’s teeth on edge. “Your Pitiful Efforts To Defeat That Which Your Tiny Minds Cannot Begin To Comprehend Would Be Amusing If We Were Not Lowering Ourselves To Even Acknowledge Your Existence.”
The brittle ground shook under the weight of heavily armored boots, the seemingly invulnerable body glinting in the sunlight streaming in through the broken walls of the police station.
It was the most fearsome and technologically sophisticated opponents his squad had ever faced. So far they had not even been able to penetrate its forcefields to leave so much as a scratch.
There was something horrifically undignified about losing to a cyborg that had fluffy bunny ears grafted to its head.
***
Electricity sizzled as the fingertip slid along the smooth metal, searching for an access point. The seer hummed, brows drawing together – and then the power suppression cuffs finally clicked open and fell to the ground.
Elaine staggered as something indescribable surged within her, and wrapped her arms tightly around herself, shivering.
“Power tastes sweet, doesn’t it? You only notice how sweet after it is taken.” The woman’s eyes grew hard and cold, but a moment later they were vacant and distant once more. She kicked away the handcuff, and it slid out of view. “Don’t let yourself be cuffed again.”
“Duly noted,” Elaine said, massaging her forehead. “Now would you please explain what exactly my powe-“
Another explosion shook the precinct and Elaine craned her neck.
“…are people being killed?” The heat that was never far from the surface rose once more, stinging at the inside of her palm. She had powers, shouldn’t she… not just stand by?
“No,” the seer answered cheerfully. “Just a cunning distraction involving property damage. Maybe some light bruising. Probably not so light bruising of certain egos. This way.”
She made a sharp turn into a narrow stairwell and Elaine followed at length, suspiciously gazing at the woman’s backside. For all that she decided that not rotting in a cell was the preferable option, she trusted that strange woman about as far as she could throw her.
Then Elaine belatedly realized that this might be a poor turn of phrase given this body’s immense powers.
As they ascended the winding stairs, she frowned. “Where are we going?”
“The roof.” Elaine caught a glimpse of the vacant smile and came to the conclusion that what unsettled her most about the white-haired woman – apart from the nonsensical ramblings and the eyes – was the eerie nonchalance with which she was cheerfully violating federal law.
Elaine battled twinges of guilt when she jaywalked.
Best that she not think too hard about what she was complicit in right now lest the perfectly law-abiding citizen that had woken up this morning to what had promised to be an utterly ordinary day might finally lose it and initiate Mental Breakdown Protocol, possibly with the Weep In Fetal Position subroutine.
“So how are we going to get off the r-“
Just as they reached the last flight of stairs, the door to the stairwell was blown from its hinges and Elaine shrieked. A second later mortification hit, its intensity directly proportional to the truly lofty height her pitch had reached. Her plan of appearing cool, calm and collected and not at all like the highly strung mess she currently felt like was not working quite as she intended.
So she steeled herself and tried to project the aura of a superpowered badass who was not at all way out of her depth, thank you very much, as a truly massive cyborg squeezed itself through the hole in the wall it had created.
Its black visor glinted with red light. Even though it had no visible eyes, she felt its gaze on her.
And then it lunged at her with an inhuman screech.
Elaine almost lost her footing on the stairs as she instinctively tried to retreat, but a delicate hand caught her upper arm in a surprisingly strong grip. Her vision went white, a thunderous noise almost rupturing her eardrums and then she was standing, disoriented, at the top of the staircase.
The seer let go off her, staring down at the mechanical monster at the bottom of the stairs.
“Bad Sir Fluffington,” she scolded. “She’s off limits.”
And the fluffy rabbit ears, the existence of which Elaine only now deliriously noticed, drooped and flattened.
“But The Devourer…” Somehow the coldly synthetic voice managed to sound like an apologetic whine.
“Hush, or I’ll ask Amelia to uninstall your wifi capabilities.”
How it could pout without actually having lips was beyond Elaine. Then again, her brain was diverting significant amounts of resources toward preserving her sanity, so it didn’t have a whole lot of neurons to spare.
The seer patted her hair and then not-so-gently nudged her toward the metal door not far from them.
Elaine blinked blearily against the sunlight as the seer pushed open the heavy door. She crossed her arms over her chest to shield against the chill breeze, intensely aware of the heavy footfalls behind them. The cyborg was climbing up the stairs, so she darted outside, wanting as much distance between them as possible.
In fact, she’d decided she wanted to put as much distance between her and the woman, too. Preferably in the magnitude of miles. As soon as they were clear of the police station…
She frowned when she noticed no immediate escape path. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d expected. A helicopter, maybe.
The seer crooked a finger, standing near the edge of the roof leading to the fire escape, and Elaine warily approached.
“What, are they not guarding the stairs?” she asked incredulously.
“Oh, they are.” A hand came down on her shoulder and the seer smiled.
And pushed.
Elaine screamed, the sound swallowed by the wind rushing past her ears. The world spun on its axis as it passed her by in a blur, the only thing standing out in stark detail the ground below. It was closing in on her with a swiftness that Elaine found to be inappropriate bordering on very, very alarming.
And then the world stood still.
The vicious wind died down.
And that was when Elaine realized she could fly.
***
Riora leaned over the edge of the roof, watching the young woman below flail about with uncoordinated enthusiasm. She exhaled a sigh of relief, closing her eyes as the future shifted into something resembling order.
She hated complications this late in her long game.
But, as always, she adapted. After all, a good strategist had contingency plans.
“This Creature.”
Riora slightly tilted her head toward the otherworldly Old One sealed within metal and wires.
And for the first time, she heard something resembling fear in its inhuman voice.
“It Needs To Die.”
She smiled reassuringly, and twirled a thin strand of red hair between her fingertips.
“Working on it.”
Author's Note: Well, guys... I've finally transferred all chapters from tgstorytime to here, and thus concludes my daily postings! From now on chapters will be posted as I write them :)
Of Heroes And Villains:
The Paths Not Taken
By Minikisa
There are moments that change a life forever. And within those moments, heroes and villains alike are born of choice.
Elaine stood frozen, flexing her fingers as she stared at the woman in front of her. Her palms were strangely warm, heat pricking at the inside of her skin like tiny needles.
Sir… Fluffington?
Had she heard that right?
Elaine didn’t know just how much more of this she could take.
The woman dangled the keychain in front of her like a cat toy, offering her freedom. Yet what kind of person would assault a police station and break out a mass murderer? Not one Elaine wanted to follow.
But letting herself be arrested seemed like a poor choice more and more. There was a good chance she might wind up in jail forever, with no way to prove her innocence.
Flash Freeze would not be coming to her rescue. Elaine would have to save herself.
Her fingers clenched into a fist at that thought and she raised her chin.
The woman discretely pointed a finger toward Elaine’s hands, leaning in to whisper, “Psst. You might want to get that under control.”
After a long moment of staring the woman down, Elaine allowed herself a glance out of the corner of her eyes.
Her palms were glowing with a strange purple light.
“You are wasting an awful lot of energy to overcome the cuffs just to be a lamp. Either commit to mayhem or stop draining yourself. And just between you and me – you draining yourself is bad.”
“I know that,” Elaine snapped, her temper frayed. She might not have been a mutant or mage herself – up until today, anyway – but she knew about the basics of energy exhaustion and the consequences thereof, as any school kid would.
“Oh, you misunderstand me. Draining yourself won’t kill you.” The woman’s eerie smile hardened. “It’ll kill others.”
Elaine inhaled sharply, and the heat in her hands surged, sparks sizzling between her fingertips. No, no, that was the opposite of what she wanted, so she splayed her fingers and shook her hand as if it was on fire – which it was – but the light only seemed to be intensifying with her distress.
And then it occurred to her that maybe the clearly morally questionable woman was just trying to get her not to use her powers.
Deep breath.
“How…?”
“You are asking the wrong question. You’ll find out how your powers work soon enough.” She sauntered closer, and Elaine had nowhere to back up to. “The question you should be asking is why you have powers.” She made a sweeping gesture toward the stray papers scattered on the floor, loosened from the police files when the table had been flipped over. “Or rather, why she does, and you didn’t.”
“How do you…?”
“Now that we’ve got that all cleared up, let’s go on a madcap adventure!”
“Enough!” The woman blinked at her with big and vacant eyes, looking like a child whose enthusiastic ramblings just got interrupted. Elaine struggled to focus her thoughts on what she wanted to know first – every time a question rose to the forefront, it got shot in the back by another question proclaiming that it was far more pressing than that other, clearly inferior and probably mentally deficient query.
After a long moment of the woman staring at her like an owl, Elaine realized that she couldn’t keep calling her The Woman. “Who are you and why are you freeing me?”
The woman clucked her tongue, seeming annoyed as her eyes became blank and distant. “We’ve had this conversatio – ah. Perhaps not. Gods, but I hate reruns.”
With that, she swooped into a deep, elegant bow.
“Who I am is not important, but you may call me Seer. Also acceptable are Oracle Without Equal, Your Supremeness, or Greased Lightning. I would give you a real name, but then I’d have to lie, and that would, of course, be deeply wrong. I am nothing if not an honest woman.”
“Funny. That’s exactly what a liar would say.”
“So it is.” She flashed a smile and reached to ruffle Elaine’s hair who jerked back, only to regret that instantly when it tore at her hair. “I like you, my little abomination.”
Heat flared once more, and the woman drew back her blistered fingertips, looking at her reproachfully.
Elaine, torn between being offended and apologetic, willed the purple sparks to subside.
“Anyway,” the seer drawled. “To give you the cliff notes version, I know things, I saw you were innocent and if you don’t come with me, you will rot in here for a long, long time.” She paused, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “A long time being about a week. That’s when people would start falling out of the sky, courtesy of your powers.”
Elaine swallowed heavily. “And how do I know you’re not lying?”
“You don’t.” She smiled sweetly. “You can always stay here and find out.”
The ground shook, accompanied by the low rumble of an explosion not far from them, shattering the one-way mirror to reveal the dimly lit room behind it. The seer raised her head and then adjusted the police hat she was wearing. “And that’s our cue. So you can stay here and hope that someone believes your story and then does something about it, or…” She casually sauntered to the door, stepping over the lawyer’s unconscious body, and gazed over her shoulder at Elaine. “You can follow me and work to save yourself. Your choice.”
And then she slipped out of the small interrogation room.
Elaine stood frozen for a long moment.
Then she cursed, and hurried after the woman.
The laser cannon mounted to his arm hummed as it was charged. Pearson gritted his teeth, ignoring the mental anguish resonating over the comm link as yet another of his squad members was cut down by the… thing.
Rogers fell to the ground, the armor that had withstood the full might of a Rikti mothership broken and laid bare, the jagged metal plates revealing the pilot within. The damaged armor thankfully kept transmitting his vitals, showing that his comrade was still breathing in there.
“Foolish Mortal,” boomed that grating voice, synthesized and artificial, yet with an otherworldly undercurrent that set Pearson’s teeth on edge. “Your Pitiful Efforts To Defeat That Which Your Tiny Minds Cannot Begin To Comprehend Would Be Amusing If We Were Not Lowering Ourselves To Even Acknowledge Your Existence.”
The brittle ground shook under the weight of heavily armored boots, the seemingly invulnerable body glinting in the sunlight streaming in through the broken walls of the police station.
It was the most fearsome and technologically sophisticated opponents his squad had ever faced. So far they had not even been able to penetrate its forcefields to leave so much as a scratch.
There was something horrifically undignified about losing to a cyborg that had fluffy bunny ears grafted to its head.
Electricity sizzled as the fingertip slid along the smooth metal, searching for an access point. The seer hummed, brows drawing together – and then the power suppression cuffs finally clicked open and fell to the ground.
Elaine staggered as something indescribable surged within her, and wrapped her arms tightly around herself, shivering.
“Power tastes sweet, doesn’t it? You only notice how sweet after it is taken.” The woman’s eyes grew hard and cold, but a moment later they were vacant and distant once more. She kicked away the handcuff, and it slid out of view. “Don’t let yourself be cuffed again.”
“Duly noted,” Elaine said, massaging her forehead. “Now would you please explain what exactly my powe-“
Another explosion shook the precinct and Elaine craned her neck.
“…are people being killed?” The heat that was never far from the surface rose once more, stinging at the inside of her palm. She had powers, shouldn’t she… not just stand by?
“No,” the seer answered cheerfully. “Just a cunning distraction involving property damage. Maybe some light bruising. Probably not so light bruising of certain egos. This way.”
She made a sharp turn into a narrow stairwell and Elaine followed at length, suspiciously gazing at the woman’s backside. For all that she decided that not rotting in a cell was the preferable option, she trusted that strange woman about as far as she could throw her.
Then Elaine belatedly realized that this might be a poor turn of phrase given this body’s immense powers.
As they ascended the winding stairs, she frowned. “Where are we going?”
“The roof.” Elaine caught a glimpse of the vacant smile and came to the conclusion that what unsettled her most about the white-haired woman – apart from the nonsensical ramblings and the eyes – was the eerie nonchalance with which she was cheerfully violating federal law.
Elaine battled twinges of guilt when she jaywalked.
Best that she not think too hard about what she was complicit in right now lest the perfectly law-abiding citizen that had woken up this morning to what had promised to be an utterly ordinary day might finally lose it and initiate Mental Breakdown Protocol, possibly with the Weep In Fetal Position subroutine.
“So how are we going to get off the r-“
Just as they reached the last flight of stairs, the door to the stairwell was blown from its hinges and Elaine shrieked. A second later mortification hit, its intensity directly proportional to the truly lofty height her pitch had reached. Her plan of appearing cool, calm and collected and not at all like the highly strung mess she currently felt like was not working quite as she intended.
So she steeled herself and tried to project the aura of a superpowered badass who was not at all way out of her depth, thank you very much, as a truly massive cyborg squeezed itself through the hole in the wall it had created.
Its black visor glinted with red light. Even though it had no visible eyes, she felt its gaze on her.
And then it lunged at her with an inhuman screech.
Elaine almost lost her footing on the stairs as she instinctively tried to retreat, but a delicate hand caught her upper arm in a surprisingly strong grip. Her vision went white, a thunderous noise almost rupturing her eardrums and then she was standing, disoriented, at the top of the staircase.
The seer let go off her, staring down at the mechanical monster at the bottom of the stairs.
“Bad Sir Fluffington,” she scolded. “She’s off limits.”
And the fluffy rabbit ears, the existence of which Elaine only now deliriously noticed, drooped and flattened.
“But The Devourer…” Somehow the coldly synthetic voice managed to sound like an apologetic whine.
“Hush, or I’ll ask Amelia to uninstall your wifi capabilities.”
How it could pout without actually having lips was beyond Elaine. Then again, her brain was diverting significant amounts of resources toward preserving her sanity, so it didn’t have a whole lot of neurons to spare.
The seer patted her hair and then not-so-gently nudged her toward the metal door not far from them.
Elaine blinked blearily against the sunlight as the seer pushed open the heavy door. She crossed her arms over her chest to shield against the chill breeze, intensely aware of the heavy footfalls behind them. The cyborg was climbing up the stairs, so she darted outside, wanting as much distance between them as possible.
In fact, she’d decided she wanted to put as much distance between her and the woman, too. Preferably in the magnitude of miles. As soon as they were clear of the police station…
She frowned when she noticed no immediate escape path. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d expected. A helicopter, maybe.
The seer crooked a finger, standing near the edge of the roof leading to the fire escape, and Elaine warily approached.
“What, are they not guarding the stairs?” she asked incredulously.
“Oh, they are.” A hand came down on her shoulder and the seer smiled.
And pushed.
Elaine screamed, the sound swallowed by the wind rushing past her ears. The world spun on its axis as it passed her by in a blur, the only thing standing out in stark detail the ground below. It was closing in on her with a swiftness that Elaine found to be inappropriate bordering on very, very alarming.
And then the world stood still.
The vicious wind died down.
And that was when Elaine realized she could fly.
Riora leaned over the edge of the roof, watching the young woman below flail about with uncoordinated enthusiasm. She exhaled a sigh of relief, closing her eyes as the future shifted into something resembling order.
She hated complications this late in her long game.
But, as always, she adapted. After all, a good strategist had contingency plans.
“This Creature.”
Riora slightly tilted her head toward the otherworldly Old One sealed within metal and wires.
And for the first time, she heard something resembling fear in its inhuman voice.
“It Needs To Die.”
She smiled reassuringly, and twirled a thin strand of red hair between her fingertips.
“Working on it.”
Author's Note: Well, guys... I've finally transferred all chapters from tgstorytime to here, and thus concludes my daily postings! From now on chapters will be posted as I write them :)
Comments
Surely we shall die!
I can only hope you write stories faster than I do... :P
The alternate self mind switch was a very unexpected plot twist. Very interesting!
So how about...
Adventures in Shapeshifting while we wait? :3
“Working on it.”
can't wait for the next chapter.
The Devourer and Old Ones?
Can't wait to find out what this is all about. I'm also getting a Whateley vibe, as in "Tennyo vs. The GOOs". Could it be that Event Horizon is a bit of a Tennyo expy, considering her powers? ;-)
*chuckles*
I'm aware of the Whateley universe in the abstract sense, but I've never read it, but if you're finding similiarities, it's not exactly surprising. Paying homage to a genre involves the use of well-worn tropes :) These stories are my love letter to the superhero genre, and I imagine Whateley is the same.
The Old Ones is likewise just a little reference to H.P. Lovecraft and not really going to be plotrelevant. Amelia enslaving the equivalent of Cthullu just amuses me. Now The Devourer on the other hand... :3
Ok, a teensy bit of explanation then
In the Whateley universe, the creatures from the Lovecraft Mythos exist. H.P. Lovecraft was a seer/prophet rather than a fantasy/horror author.
Tennyo is the result of a young mutant merging with an ancient space entity that was once built as an anti-GOO weapon. In Whateley canon, she has already killed and eaten a few minor demonic entities. So the name "Devourer" would fit, even if it is not one of Tennyo's "nicknames" in Whateley canon...
Hoo boy!
As usual, your dialogue and descriptions of what the characters are thinking and feeling at times are very entertaining and often funny. A huge, very nasty cyborg housing an evil spirit with fluffy bunny ears? That pouts? Snerk.
Maggie
Working on it ??? !!!
This could be interesting or bad maybe badly interesting. " The next question Are You a God? "
Correct answer Yes, even if you are not, play along get some distance then run like a bunny ? oops poor choice of critter. But Sir Fluffington? OMG what a vision.
Giggles
Misha Nova
With those with open eyes the world reads like a book
Help!
Please help, Minikisa - I am having withdrawal symptoms!
However, I don't want you to publish anything you aren't happy with, and in my mind it takes a lot of work to produce the quality you do.
That said, I am nearly frantic waiting for the next chapter...
Hugs,
A.
Well
What is it about Elaine that would give Oracle cause to kill her? We know she's powerful, very powerful, but is she possibly that world (universe?) breaking?
I'd like to say I'm going to the next chapter, but there aren't any more :(
Are you still going to continue writing this story?
-Tas
I wish this story was continued
its one of my favorites, and I really would love to see how it ends ...