May 2nd, 2019. Cataclysm 101. Location: Carson City, Nevada. Due to their proximity, the San Francisco Guardians were the first major team to arrive and assist.
Within six hours, every last hero on the team was dead. The ensuing three months, often referred to as San Francisco’s “open season,” saw the greatest amount of superhuman conflict the region has ever seen. Criminals, super and normal alike, openly roamed the streets, searching for marks. Independent heroes, vigilantes, and Guardians from other cities engaged villains in daytime warfare for days at a time. Martial law was declared, and civilians were advised to minimize time spent outside.
When all was said and done, some 3,789 people had been killed, including 62 supers. Over 40,000 hospitalizations were recorded in relation to the open season, and official figures state that the total property damage was estimated to be in excess of $18.7 billion.
But San Francisco’s open season is no unique case. Time and time, we see patterns of sharply increased activity in association with sudden shifts in power—and, more importantly, escalation.
Take, for instance, our next example: the week of October 16th, 2024. The Killjoy Incident. Location: Chicago, Illinois.
- Excerpt taken from The God Complex, a polarizing documentary examining the effect of superhuman organizations on the United States
#
“Jekyll’s a Shifter, sort of like Zach here,” Adam explained, his eyes flickering between Vivian and the screen. He gestured animatedly as he spoke. “He’s a borderline. Either C-rank or B-rank, depending on some external factor we’re not sure about.”
“Cute name,” Ayaka said, plopping down onto her beanbag with an opened bag of chips. “It doesn’t exactly fit his power, but I bet the other option he had was, like, Werewolf.”
“I fuck with Werewolf,” Zach said. He was completely sprawled out. If someone had told Vivian that he had woken up in his beanbag and would end his day asleep in, she would’ve believed them.
“You fuck with a lot of things,” Ayaka said, tossing a chip at his forehead. “You don’t end up fucking anyone, though.”
That startled a choked laugh out of Vivian. She was unsure of whether laughing at a group of friends needling each other was acceptable, but the delivery of the joke in the same chipper, bubbly tone that Lycoris used when she was talking about, say, heroing—that caught her off guard.
“I resent that statement,” Zach said.
“Like I was saying,” Adam said, a toothy smile belying his tone, “In his base state, he’s got power, but Jekyll’s alternate form is—oh, here it is.”
The high-resolution drone footage on the screen zoomed in on the two fighters.
Widower wore power armor, so she was either a Synth or heavily reliant on the services of one. Vivian noted that down in case it became relevant, whether they were fighting with or against her. She hoped it wouldn’t be the latter.
Jekyll was mid-transformation. Shifters changed their genetic makeup, Vivian knew, though the exact mechanism by which they did it and the result of their shifts varied wildly from super to super. This villain’s transformation saw him turn into a beast resembling a Greek statue of a man nearly twice his original size. His exposed skin turned an ashen grey, and the streetclothes he’d been wearing tore.
“Impressive figure,” Sydney said. Her eyes were affixed to the screen. Vivian was tempted to ask if she was focusing on the powers being demonstrated or the admittedly well-defined muscles the villain was now displaying, but she figured that Sydney wasn’t the type of person to find that funny.
“Do you think he gets his transformation from the moon?” Zach asked. “Werewolf and all?”
Adam grabbed the remote and pushed a few buttons. The perspective displayed on the screen changed, showing a cloudless, moonless sky. “I doubt it. We know that his power scales with how angry he is, though. Or, well, not know. We think. I’ve watched this one before. Later in the video, we see him scale to A-rank for a few seconds when he gets pissed.”
“Hey, spoilers,” Zach complained. “If he gets stronger when he’s mad, why didn’t he name himself after the Hulk?”
“Who?” Ayaka asked.
“Zach, you read the most obscure garbage,” Adam said. “Nobody knows what you’re talking about.”
“I remember Ra—er, one of my friends mentioning something like that,” Vivian supplied. It was immensely awkward trying to break into an established friend group’s conversation, but she powered through it. I have to make connections, she told herself. “Isn’t that from that one comics company? Uh, two letter name… I don’t remember the name. They wrote Superman?”
“No, the company that bought them out wrote Superman,” Zach said, sounding faintly annoyed. “They’re basically dead now, though. Only the real ones even remember the comics.”
“Like I said, obscure garbage. I’m turning the video back on.” Adam tapped the remote a couple more times, and the drone footage resumed.
They watched in silence for a while longer as Widower used a suite of lasers, grappling hooks, and some Synth tech that none of them recognized to try and pin Jekyll down. Just as Adam had promised, the villain got angrier and angrier with every blow. After a bit, Widower stopped going for indirect hits and just started lasering him directly.
“He’s a functional B-rank Aegis/Brawler while he’s in this form,” Adam said. “Maybe with an added bonus of D in Mover.”
“I disagree,” Sydney said, steepling her fingers. “He starts at C on the physical side. Then he scales. Notice how he still tries to dodge most of Widower’s shots early on before he starts tanking.”
“Widower also started shooting faster,” Adam argued.
“He could just be hopped up on adrenaline later in the fight,” Ayaka suggested. “That takes a lot of the pain away.”
“I can vouch for that,” Vivian said, wincing. Her gunshot wound still ached, but when she’d first received it, she’d barely noticed. “Wait, do you not have an Esper that can tell you more about their powers?”
Lachlan had been able to, after all.
“What?” Zach asked. “How new are you?”
“Very.”
Adam paused the video. “Viv—it’s Viv, right?” At Vivian’s nod, he continued on. “Powers that interface with other powers like that are super, super rare. Especially for Espers. We have a think tank that collaborates with the Guardians to figure out ranks, but it’s also good for us to have a practical idea of what we’re facing.”
“Oh,” was all she could think of as a response. “Okay. Makes sense.”
That did explain why Lachlan was ranked so highly, and also why the Guardians hadn’t registered him on the wiki.
They continued watching the footage until it was finished, which wasn’t long after. Jekyll got visibly stronger as he fought—vein-like white lines over his skin started to glow lightly, and his punches got stronger.
The video cut off abruptly when Jekyll, now three times his original size, landed a single punch on Widower and sent her flying through what looked like an run-down apartment complex.
“A squatter died,” Sydney said. “I remember this post-action report.”
“The building was otherwise uninhabited, though,” Adam said. “That was good.”
Vivian continued to be surprised at how little supers seemed to care for the lives that were lost in their line of work, but she was starting to understand it. If everything ended in deaths, it was easier to stop caring than to care about each and every one of them.
“Adam. Let’s say our squad was assigned to deal with this. What’s your plan of attack?” Sydney asked.
“Your squad?” Vivian asked. “Are you four here a group?”
“Typically, yes, though Tsunami frequently requisitions Shockwave for his,” Sydney replied. “Director Williams chose to split us up for the raid operation.”
From the tone of her voice, she didn’t particularly agree with that decision.
“As I was saying,” Sydney continued, “Adam?”
“Jekyll’s an endurance Shifter,” Adam replied, his tone suddenly formal. “Hit him hard, hit him fast. Widower’s containment didn’t work because she was limiting collateral damage and eliminating the risk of killing him. Since he’s harboring Killjoy, escalation restrictions should be lifted, which means we don’t have the same issue.
“If I was the only one fighting, I would try a lethal shock. In a group, I would say have one person—maybe you, since you’re an Aegis—run distraction. Keep him busy, then jump him with everyone else and go for the head.”
“I concur,” Sydney said. “Fast and hard.”
Zach snorted, then abruptly silenced himself when Sydney gave him a look.
“Keep in mind that he’s going to be with friends,” Ayaka said, gracefully ignoring her teammate. “Especially if we’re on a raid.”
“I don’t think command will send us on a raid,” Sydney said. “Not immediately, at least.”
“You think so?” Vivian asked. “I was wondering when we were going to get back to that. What happens next?”
“I’ve seen this happen before,” Sydney explained. “2019. San Francisco. I was still a B, and EHC did not end up sending me, but I sat in on briefings. For an organization like Killjoy’s, power comes in numbers. Our target is a vulnerable Synth, so he’ll be protected. My guess at the plan of action: we isolate his defense, capture or kill them, and perform another raid when they’re gone, eliminating him in the end.”
“Makes sense,” Ayaka said. “That won’t make for great video, though.”
“No, it won’t,” Sydney agreed. “But our results will speak louder than our social media, this time around.”
“Killjoy’s been updated to A-rank,” Adam said, scrolling on his phone. “Taking him and his organization down will look good for us whether or not we share the gorey parts.”
“We’ll need to know who we’re working with,” Sydney said, turning to look at Vivian.
Her stare was intense. Vivian could see where she got the Amazon moniker from. Even standing at five foot one or two, the shorter woman had a presence that made Vivian feel small.
“Uh, hi,” Vivian said. “You need me to explain my powers?”
“Explanations can be done later,” Sydney said. “Zach, get up. We’re going to spar.”
#
The sparring room was remarkably nice. Vivian had done kung fu for a few years back in middle school, and though she’d lived in a relatively upscale area, the gym she’d done it at hadn’t cleaned their sparring mats often enough, and the entire place had stunk of old body odor and new sweaty bodies.
Here, though, the room practically sparkled. Vivian could pick out the scent of antiseptic on the air. There were mirrors on all four walls, giving any combatant within a great view of literally everything around them. A few dummies lined up in a far corner of the room, though Sydney—Amazon now, maybe—didn’t so much as glance at them.
None of them had changed into their costumes. Vivian wondered what that meant. When Sydney had said sparring…
The short blonde stepped onto the mat, shucked off her slippers, and turned to face Vivian.
Then, inexplicably, she reached into her vest and drew a knife.
“Uh, what?” Vivian said. “I don’t know how to knife fight.”
“She’s not here to knife fight!” Ayaka said brightly.
Sydney slit her own wrists.
“What the fuck,” Vivian said, stumbling back as bright red blood streamed out of the senior heroine’s arms, coating her hands and dripping onto the pristine mats beneath. “What the fuck.”
What the fuck, she asked. It was the wrong question, but it was what slipped out of her mouth at the site of Nathan covered in his own blood, the missing kitchen scissors in his hand.
She brought her hands to her eyes, and that didn’t help because she accidentally caught a glimpse of her own scars in the process. After gaining her vial, they’d faded enough that people had stopped asking her about them. The cuts were easy to make. Too easy for how much red they produced. She couldn’t stop making them.
Vivian clutched her chest. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart was pounding a million miles a minute, but it was so tight, she couldn’t, she couldn’t, this wasn’t happening, she—
“Shrimp!” Ayaka shouted, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Viv, Mantis, are you okay?”
“I—I’m fine,” she said shakily. In. Out. Inhale, 2, 3, 4. Hold, 2, 3—okay, exhale, 2, 3, 4—inhale, hold, exhale, inhale hold exhale. “I’m fine.”
“Do you need a doctor?” Ayaka asked softly.
Vivian shook her head. “Stupid of me. It’s not a problem.”
It was very much a problem, but she’d already embarrassed herself enough in front of the other heroes. She wasn’t going to dig her hole any deeper.
“I apologize,” Sydney said, still bleeding. “I should have warned you.”
“It’s fine, it really is,” Vivian lied, forcing herself to look at Amazon. “But, uh, why?”
“Similar to Jekyll, my power increases over the course of a fight,” Sydney said. “For me, the trigger is damage. See?”
She held up her arms. Though they were coated in blood, Vivian could see that the wounds were already closing.
“So you were setting up,” she said, suddenly feeling extraordinarily stupid.
“I am,” Amazon said. “I wanted to see what you could do with your power, and I would prefer to be as durable as possible when it comes to testing.”
“That makes sense,” Vivian said dumbly. Her heart was still racing so loudly she could barely hear the heroine. “Uh, we can continue. I’m alright now.”
“You don’t sound alright,” Ayaka said. “But hey, if that’s the attitude that keeps you going, keep at it!”
“Is that going to be an issue in the field?” Adam asked brusquely. “We’re not going to be able to work with someone who faints at the sight of blood.”
Fuck you, Vivian almost said. Her vision hazed with rage. He didn’t know anything about her. I’ve killed people. I’ve watched them die. Do you want to see what it feels like? Will it be an issue in the field if your pitiful excuse for a brain leaked out of your ears? It took all of her self-control to not say or do anything stupid.
“No, it’s not a problem,” Ayaka said, intercepting the question for her. “She took a bullet from a suicide super and shot back, Adam. She can handle herself.”
“Right,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Vivian lied again. “Amazon, what do you want me to do?”
The blonde heroine slashed her own skin again. Then again. Vivian looked away.
“I want you to use whatever you have,” she said. “Lycoris tells me that you have a Kinetic power and a pain-inflicting one. There are a few trinkets in here that you can use the former on. I would like you to attempt the latter on me.”
Pain-inflicting? Oh, right. Lycoris had seen Vivian pinch Whiteout’s nerves and send him into a catatonic fit of pain.
Hm. Well, the assumption that she had two distinct D or C-rank powers was better than them—and by extention, the Guardians—knowing that her power was an assassination tool, at least. Vivian could work with that.
“Both of them are pretty low-range,” Vivian said. “I can try, though. Are you ready?”
“One second.” Amazon raised the knife again and stabbed herself in the stomach with it.
Or, well, she tried to. The tip of the knife stopped after piercing through her shirt.
That gave away some information about her power. It wasn’t just selective invulnerability—it applied to her whole body. If it also applied to the inside of her body, Vivian was going to be fresh out of luck trying to affect her.
“I am ready,” Amazon said, wiping the knife off on her vest and stowing it. “Activate your power whenever you’re ready. I promise I will not hurt you. You have my word.”
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
Well, wasn’t that reassuring.
“Here goes nothing,” Vivian muttered, closing the distance just enough to get Amazon within the range of her power.
She aimed her power carefully, taking great care not to accidentally hit her brain. Vivian was pretty sure that Amazon’s power extended to her insides, but if it didn’t, she did not want to be known as the person who gave an A-rank heroine a stroke.
Fifth cranial nerve, she reminded herself, thankful for the sleepless nights she’d spent studying biology.
Vivian reached out and squeezed.
Amazon’s eyes flew wide open, and then she frowned, pursing her lips like she’d bitten into a particularly sour lemon.
“Ja pierdolę,” she hissed after a moment. “Stop.”
Vivian released the pressure immediately. “Sorry, sorry, sorry—“
“Don’t apologize,” Amazon said. “That was good. Your power is very effective.”
“I didn’t expect that to work,” Vivian said honestly.
“It is good to have a reminder of my limits from time to time,” the blonde said. “Thank you. That was debilitating. I could not move.”
Zach whistled. “Damn.”
“I told you she was strong,” Ayaka crowed.
“This is a remarkable power,” Sydney said. She frowned. “You were sorted into D-rank?”
“It takes time,” Vivian said, hastily scrabbling for an excuse. “It takes a few moments, and I need to be in close range, and I have no Aegis power, so it’s rough. Even against a normal, they can kind of beat me up in that time.”
“I see,” Sydney said. “Your power has value in the field. If we can stall a single target for long enough, we may be able to instantly win a fight with you on the scene.”
That made Vivian feel better than it should have. Her chest swelled with—not pride, exactly, but fulfillment, maybe? Validation?
“I’ll try not to disappoint,” she said.
“What about your other power?” Adam asked. “Telekinesis?”
“I don’t have my stuff,” Vivian said. “But if you’d hand over the knife?”
“Not this knife,” Amazon said. She pulled her cellphone out of a separate vest pocket. “Here. Lift this.”
“I want that vest,” Vivian said. “You have so many pockets.”
“Right?” Ayaka laughed. “But she won’t tell us where she got it!”
Vivian lifted the phone, had it do a loop around her, picking up speed, then returned it.
“I don’t have a very high amount of force on my Kinetic power,” Vivian explained, “but I have a lot of granularity, and I can move anything with it. I’ve been using it to activate stun guns or lighters at range, and I also have chalk powder and capsaicin bags that I can control. It’s pretty low-range, though.”
“Laaaaaame,” Zach drawled.
For some reason, the direct insult made her less mad than Adam had earlier. “What’s so lame about it?”
“How limited is your telekinesis?” Zach asked. “It’s just force, right? Do you have an upper limit on speed?”
He was so much more engaged now than he had been earlier. Vivian would have put him down as a powers geek, but Zach had been half-asleep while watching the superpowered fight on the big TV.
“I did some testing with my friend, and I think we said it was around fifty Newtons? Something like that? And no, I don’t think there’s a limit to speed. Not that I’ve had an opportunity to try. I can’t really get anything to go super fast within my range.”
“Alright,” Zach said. “Let me grab my shit. You definitely have way more you could be doing.”
He turned and left the sparring room, letting the door swing shut behind him.
“What?” Vivian really needed to reduce her reliance on that word. She’d been using it a lot, recently.
“He can be a bit of an ass about it, but he’s usually got good ideas,” Ayaka said. “He actually informed a lot of my current fighting style.”
That last sentence was what made it click. Vivian had wondered what made him tick—he’d looked like a total bum, and she was under the impression that EHC was a proficient enough hero organization to not hire bums.
He wasn’t a powers geek. If Vivian had to guess, she would say that Zach loved figuring out how to use them.
“I look forward to it,” she said. Strangely enough, it wasn’t a lie.
#
Lachlan texted her before Zach came back, and Vivian begged off for a couple of minutes to answer. Adam—Shockwave—ended up asking Amazon for a spar, no powers involved, so the two of them were currently in the process of beating the shit out of each other.
Okay, it was mostly Amazon beating Shockwave. She wasn’t even trying to hit the hero, but he still ended up on his back after almost every single bout. No matter what Adam tried, she ended up tripping him, hitting joints and soft points, and in one particularly painful-looking case, kneeing him right between the legs.
Lachlan: Just touched down in Chicago. Going straight to HQ, just like I guessed. Full armed escort and everything.
Lachlan: I tried using my power, just a bit, and let me tell you: the big city is nothing like Lafayette.
Lachlan: Hate to say it, but the higher ups might’ve been right to ship me off to bumfuck nowhere. Damn near passed out trying to find a vial. There’s a lot of power here.
Vivian: I wouldn’t say the higher ups are right on anything but im biased
Vivian: Good luck tho
Vivian: I assume you’re not going to be able to help me out then
Lachlan: I’ll see what I can swing
Lachlan: ttyl, gotta bounce
Vivian: o7 cya
“Here we go!” Zach said, more excited than Vivian had heard him be at any other point so far. “Check this out!”
He had a brown duffel bag tucked under one arm, which he plopped down right on the still-bloody training mat.
“Damn!” Adam huffed from the floor, massaging his ribs. “You kick hard.”
“You don’t,” Amazon replied with the closest thing to a smile she’d shown so far. “What did you bring for Mantis Shrimp, Zach?”
“Powers testing gear,” he replied, . “Stuff that she really should have used when getting ranked.”
“Move it to the testing room, then,” Amazon said.
“Or don’t,” Ayaka said. “It’s only your pay getting docked for the damage, right? I think it’d be funny.”
Zach shot her a baleful glare, then picked the bag up again. “Alright. I assume you don’t want to fistfight our glorious brute here, anyway. Let’s move.”
She followed them out, pausing only to check her phone when it buzzed.
sparrow: hey viv this is technically classified but your risking your life so I figured its fine
sparrow: SRU and Guardians borh want to figure out who the traitor in the indy group is, so they’re sending every suspect to chicago
sparrow: that’s five supers coming your way. They’ll be split up, but yeah, just a warning
vivy77: wtf why? Isn’t this already messy enough?
sparrow: I don’t like it either. my units on standby so we’re probably not going to get deployed but we have access to the news. The way I hear it, this new guy director williams is really pushing the idea of doing “maximum efficiency” which means a lot of stupid stupid decisions
Huh. That… added a lot of useful context to the raids. And the EHC supers’ apparent distaste for the SRU.
vivy77: makes sense, gotcha, I’ll keep an eye out. Hope you don’t get selected in
sparrow: me too. Stay safe. Lmk if you need anything—don’t have much money but I can swing maybe a few hundred to a couple grand if u really need it
vivy77: I really appreciate it, not necessary though. Thanks. Ttyl
“Who are you texting?” Ayaka said, drawing the words out like an overly curious high schooler. Considering the fact she looked to be at least a year younger than Vivian, it was possible she was an overly curious high schooler. “Boyfriend? Girlfriend?”
Vivian hesitated on how to answer that, then said, “Just a contact. They’re giving me an update on the SRU’s response.”
“Ooh, our Viv has connections!” Ayaka beamed. “Is it about Indianapolis?”
“You already know?” Vivian asked. She wasn’t sure why that surprised her.
“Ayaka knows everything,” Adam said. “She’s our media liaison, but you’d think she’s also the first point of contact with how fast she gets new information.”
“I think it’ll be interesting,” Ayaka said. “It’s stupid, of course, but stupidity is a key part of making superheroing exciting!”
“Easy for you to say,” Vivian groused. “You’re the only one of us who comes back after they die.”
That got a chuckle out of Zach and Adam, which was startlingly gratifying.
“I don’t like it,” Amazon said simply.
It was odd how quickly she’d gone from Sydney to Amazon in Vivian’s head. She hadn’t even put on a costume. Just the shift in her posture, attitude, and expression had done it.
“Here we are,” Zach said, grunting with effort as he transferred his bag from one shoulder to the other. “Powers testing room, baby!”
Amazon pushed the door open. “I’m excited to see what you have.”
“Don’t give me expectations,” Zach groaned. “Now I’ll look stupid if it doesn’t work.”
“I’ll try and make it work,” Vivian offered.
“There’s the spirit,” Ayaka said.
“Does EHC not have, like, power specialists or something?” Vivian asked.
“Oh, we do,” Zach said. “I’m just better.”
“We sometimes have specialists,” Adam said, ignoring his teammate. “The normals that do power analysis aren’t available right now, since they’re working on the Killjoy case, and the Espers we use are all contractors, just like us. None of them want to be in Chicago right now.”
“For good reason,” Amazon said. “Now show us what you have, Barbarian.”
“I was already about to show you,” Zach said. “Did you know that when you tell someone to do something while they’re already doing it, they want to do it waaaaayyyy less?”
“Get on with it, Zach,” Ayaka said. “Nobody likes a spoilsport.”
“Alright,” he said, reaching into the bag and taking out… a circle of PVC pipe?
“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with this,” Vivian admitted. “It’s, uh, very bendy.”
Was PVC supposed to bend like that? Did they sell it in that shape, or had Zach done it himself? She had so many questions.
“This is part of advanced Kinetic ranking tests,” Zach said. “Did you seriously not have it?”
“She got tested in Lafayette, Zach,” Ayaka said. “I’m surprised they even had a computer to record it on.”
Vivian snorted.
“Ah,” Zach said, nodding sagely. “Of course. Well, advantage of being in this hellhole instead of that one: you get this cool thing. There’s a hundred gram ball bearing inside this, and there’s a speedometer that’ll record how fast you can get it to go. Don’t worry about breaking it. It’s built to endure.”
That might have been the most words she’d heard Zach say in one go. He really was into this stuff, wasn’t he?
“I can try,” Vivian said dubiously. She took the pipe in her hands—it was too heavy to lift with her power alone—and started using her telekinesis indiscriminately inside of it until she heard the metal ball within start to roll. After that, she eyeballed where the ball was, then kept pushing.
She couldn’t get her power to stay on the ball the entire time, but eventually, she realized that it wasn’t necessary for her to do so. So long as she continued to apply a force to it, the ball continued to accelerate.
“Ooh, shit,” Zach said about fifteen seconds in. “Alright, stop.”
Vivian stopped. It took some time before the sound of the ball pinging around the inside of the tube stopped.
“Okay,” the hero said, “Your power works really well on small things. That was a zero-to-sixty in less than a second. Do you know how fast that was going at the end?”
“Uh, no?” Vivian had been able to hear it, but she hadn’t felt the force of the ball against her hands. There’d been some Synth tech in play there, dampening it.
“Thirty-six hundred meters per second. Triple the speed of a bullet.”
“Oh, huh,” Vivian said. “That’s neat.”
“That’s neat? That’s all you have to say? This is why I never do nice things for people.”
“She’s not wrong,” Adam said. “It’s useful, but with that amount of setup, she may as well use a gun.”
“Don’t be a spoilsport, man.” Zach groaned.
“I don’t think that’s exactly right, either,” Ayaka interjected. “Would you say Contingency could be replaced by a railgun?”
“That’s different.”
“Only in scale,” Amazon said. “It’s an interesting facet of your power. Small items accelerate much faster, I presume.”
“If your power is based on a total amount of force, you can totally get a lightweight item going super, super fast,” Zach rambled. “You do that with a tiny explosive in a contained tube like this one, then pop it open, face it toward the enemy? Boom. Plus, you don’t only need to do it with the lightest stuff. It’s the same principle as Contingency, right? But he uses gravity to power his whole setup, and you use your power. If you just keep something swirling around you fast enough, you can send it flying at mach speed.”
Okay, that definitely was the most Vivian had heard him say in one go.
“Thanks for the suggestion,” she said. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to implement that, but I’ll practice with it.”
“Oh, I had one more thing,” Zach said. “I wanted to see if your power reacted on instinct.”
“We’re not shooting her,” Adam said.
“But—”
“No, not even with a BB gun. You poked the last guy’s eye out.”
“That wasn’t even my fault! He had other problems.”
“She’s already been shot once. Let’s not repeat that. Also, again, if she needs more medical attention, it’s out of your paycheck. And her health insurance, but you’ll feel that.”
“My health insurance sucks,” Vivian offered.
“Fiiiiine,” Zach said, deflating.
“I’ve seen what I need to see,” Amazon declared.
“Oh, sick,” Ayaka said. “She passes?”
“I was being tested?”
“We have temporary heroes working with us all the time,” Amazon said. Vivian thought of the “D-rank intern” that Lycoris had mentioned in passing—he’d died today, hadn’t he? She shuddered. “My squad receives quite a few.”
“Mostly because of the SRU,” Adam said.
“Mostly them,” Amazon agreed. “I inform command if I believe our temps are unable to work with us, whether that is due to a lack of power, an inability to work with others, or any number of reasons.”
“Everyone I vet passes,” Adam crowed.
“Me too,” Ayaka replied.
“This is the first one you’ve brought in,” Adam said.
“Exactly.” Ayaka opened her mouth to say more, but her phone rang. She picked it up, said a quick few words, and hung up. “Hey, Viv, the guys over at Costumes are ready for you. Want to come?”
“We can clean the mats,” Adam said. “That means you too, Zach.”
“Blergh,” the super in question groaned.
“Follow me,” Ayaka said. “C’mon! It’ll be fun!”
#
Vivian did not care for the process of getting fitted at all. It involved far too many measurements with tapes that touched far too much of her body. She’d never liked shopping for clothes growing up, and it was looking like she wasn’t going to like the tailors any more than that.
At least they were professional about it. They even let her take an extra ten minutes to go back up to Ayaka’s room, disinfect her helmet, and return with her face hidden. Although Vivian had resigned herself to the fact that she was going to have to reveal her face to the other superheroes, she’d managed to convince herself of its necessity. That necessity definitely didn’t extend to the costumers.
The costume department was surprisingly large. They’d taken over three separate conference rooms just for fitting, and there had been half a dozen people taking notes and discussing Vivian’s costume replacement when she and Ayaka had arrived.
There were only two of them now, since they’d apparently finished their deliberations on the broad strokes.
“I wasn’t expecting this much… rigor,” Vivian said once the tailor was finally done taking her measurements. “Don’t I just need a new bodysuit?”
“Our image matters,” the glasses-wearing man who could’ve been a schoolteacher said over his clipboard. “This is a major incident, and until the end of it, you’re associated with us. That is how long your contract is for, correct?”
Contract? Vivian hadn’t signed anything.
“It is,” Ayaka said hastily. “Right up until Killjoy is dead or incarcerated.”
Oh. Huh. They hadn’t discussed that, but Vivian had planned to stay for that long anyway. She was going to miss school, which sucked, but this was so much better than that. It was worse, in some ways—school didn’t involve getting shot, nor did it involve murder—but to go back to red-black trees and hashing and the buzzing of her power begging to be used after today would be torture.
If it got her free stuff, she’d take it.
“Exactly,” glasses man said. “Eva, do you have what you need?”
“Yep,” the woman who’d been measuring her said. “It shouldn’t take long to make the requisite adjustments. Give me five.”
“Wait, you already have something prepared?” Vivian asked. “Is it just a standard replacement, then?”
“Not exactly,” said glasses guy, who definitely had a nametag that Vivian was too nearsighted to read. She’d left her glasses upstairs. “For temporary heroes, our base is the standard uniform, correct. However, here at Echelon, we know that branding is key. Mantis Shrimp, you’re a relatively unestablished independent hero, but thanks to some of your accomplishments, you have gained a minor following amongst college students in the Midwest. That following has grown a little, thanks to our current situation.”
That would be because of the leaked footage of her fight against one of the suicide supers, Vivian assumed. If Killjoy’s situation was garnering more attention, it stood to reason that there would be some people digging through old clips relating to him.
“However,” he continued, “your brand is currently largely associated with your power, not your costume. As such, we were able to take more liberty with our design.”
“How do you know that? I’m genuinely curious.”
“Sentiment analysis. We use proprietary software to run through any comment on a post about Mantis Shrimp or mentioning you, and then analyze trends in the body of text.”
“I’m familiar with the concept.” Machine learning was her college field, after all. “What does mine say?”
“That’s a rabbit hole,” Ayaka said, chuckling. “Half of my commenters just want to bone me.”
“31%,” the man said.
“Half of the men, then. It’s not that important, Mark.”
“Fair,” Mark—thank god she had a name to associate with him now—said. “We found that while nearly two-thirds of the comments about you were discussing possibilities for the extent of your power, very few had anything to say about the costume. Furthermore, it seems that the majority of your audience has picked one half of your name to refer to you as. Mantis or Shrimp.”
Vivian sighed. “Yeah, the heroes do that too. I figured.”
At least Mark didn’t criticize her choice in name. “We think that leaning into the Mantis branding is better than the latter. While we could push audience sentiment towards both directions—for instance, we could pick more pinks and oranges to associate you with Shrimp—our conversations with Lycoris tell us that you would prefer the former.”
“I would,” Vivian said. Shrimp was kind of an endearing name when Rachel used it, but a bunch of strangers calling her that? Ugh. Mantis was cooler.
Mark nodded. “Then our decisions seem to align with your choices.”
Eva walked back into the room, this time with a pair of assistants lugging a clothesrack full of costume parts.
Vivian’s eyes widened. There were a few different pieces, but the main costume was a sleek black bodysuit with green highlights at the chest, arms, and hands over baggy black pants with pockets within.
“I’ll take it,” she said immediately.
Eva sighed in relief. “Thank god. That’s four less iterations than the last temp who came through here.”
“Do you plan on continuing to wear the helmet?” Mark asked. “There’s a cowl and facemask aspect to this costume.”
“I do,” Vivian said. Lachlan had paid a lot for it, and she felt bad not using it. Also, it had a lot of functionality that a facemask just couldn’t achieve.
The two costumers shared a look, then shrugged.
“It’s your choice,” Eva said. “We’d do a redesign if we had time, but we don’t have time. As long as you’re with Echelon, you can swap it out.”
“Thank you,” Vivian said, meaning it.
They vacated the fitting room to give her some privacy to change, then returned when she gave the signal.
The costume was shockingly comfortable. It looked bulky and armored from the outside, but there was a layer of cool, insulating fabric before whatever armor it had. The bodysuit and pants weren’t the only pieces, either—there were two long, metal gloves with gears that clicked and whirred to resize and fit themselves to her hands and forearms.
“You look great!” Ayaka exclaimed. “This is so much better for camera.”
“As per standard,” Mark said, reading off his clipboard, “your costume is bullet resistant from the pelvis to the shoulderblade. Your pants have pockets on the inside, which should give you room to store any potential weapons or powders you plan on using in battle.
“The gloves are primarily for aesthetic effect, though they are safe to use as gauntlets. There is a button between each index finger and thumb. Pressing both will create a harmless green flame, courtesy of our proprietary pyrotechnic technology. We advise you use this feature when actively using your power.”
“Very good,” Ayaka said sagely. “Perfect corporate drone.”
“Get off my back,” Mark grumbled. “You know I have to say this.”
Vivian found the buttons Mark had indicated, then pressed both of them.
Sure enough, her hands sparkled with a heatless green light. It looked dangerous, but even at point blank, she didn’t feel any of it.
“Oh, that’s going to look incredible on camera,” Ayaka said. “It’s perfect.”
“Thank you,” Vivian said. “Am I, uh, supposed to pay for this?”
“Stay with your team, do your assignments, and show up for the cameras,” Eva said. “That’s it. Your value is greater than that of a single costume design.”
So this was all hers, now?
She resisted the urge to burst out laughing. She felt like she’d scammed them. They’d given a D-rank super with almost nothing to her name bulletproof armor? There was no way this costume had come cheap.
“Well, I really do appreciate it,” Vivian said.
“It’s so good,” Ayaka told her. “Want to get some training in? If we’re not able to record what we do later, some practice footage could be great for this.”
“Practice footage?”
#
As Vivian soon learned, “practice footage” meant recording her while she fiddled around with her telekinesis. Lycoris took videos of her with a couple dozen random bits of junk from Zach’s duffel bag, then one of her stopping a cloud of chalk in mid-air and very poorly drawing a mantis shrimp with it, then another of her sending a light dodgeball swirling around her until it was too fast for her to control and went spiraling out straight into a training dummy.
It was, to Vivian’s complete and utter surprise, fun.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt that.
They spent more time training, then they went back to review additional footage of everyone from the Gravekeepers. Once they were thoroughly tired of that, Zach put on a cheesy stoner comedy that Vivian laughed entirely too hard at.
Ayaka had a guest bedroom in her penthouse, because of course she did, and when it hit 10 PM, Vivian slept the sleep of the dead.
Ten hours later, she woke up, having had the best night of sleep she’d had in a year.
Of course, all good things came to an end, and this temporary bliss was no different.
The call came less than half an hour after she woke up. Later, Vivian would learn that it had gone from the Guardians to Director Williams to Tsunami and then, finally, to Lycoris and Amazon, so by the time it reached them, it was old news.
Lycoris, Amazon, Shockwave, and even Barbarian were in full costume within ten minutes. Vivian followed suit.
They met in the same place they had the day before, but this time, nobody was smiling. The TV was off, and though Vivian might have been imagining it, the lighting felt different.
“Last night,” Lycoris said, “Jekyll followed a Guardian home and killed him in his sleep.”
“For once, Director Williams, the Guardians, and the EHC are in agreement,” Amazon continued. “Jekyll has been issued a kill order. We’ve been assigned to deliver on it.”