Casualties are to be expected in the course of superhuman activities. Recently, our foremost statisticians found that in only a year and a half, an estimated four million people have perished either directly or indirectly thanks to superhuman actions, overtaking stroke as the second-most common cause of death worldwide.
At least, it would have been second—instead, it is third, behind the Cataclysms. In the wake of what is now being termed the Third Cataclysm, which is currently believed to have caused upwards of three million casualties in addition to five hundred thousand additional deaths from failed nuclear termination attempts, it is rapidly growing clear that superhumans, who often have the potential to be more effective against these apocalyptic events than conventional weaponry, are an unfortunate necessity. As such, these Accords shall tackle the grim task of determining which monsters must be allowed to walk free to prevent disaster from befalling even more.
God help us all.
- An anonymous speaker representing the United Kingdom shortly after the city of Manchester was annihilated by the Third Cataclysm; excerpt taken from the closing days of the 1972 conference that would produce the London Superhuman Accords
#
The message was old. Its timestamp marked it as having been sent at 11:34 PM. Vivian cursed herself. That was only an hour or so past when she’d slept, wasn’t it?
Stupid, stupid, stupid. She was so goddamn stupid. If she’d just taken a little longer to sleep, done a little less in the day…
“Deep breaths, Viv,” she muttered, dialing 911.
She paused, her finger halfway to the call icon. 911 was an emergency line, right? This could technically qualify as an emergency, but it could technically not be—she hit the button.
The phone clicked, then went silent. It said calling… on the screen, but second after second passed with no response. Did I do something wrong?
Then, after what seemed like an eternity, it rang once.
“911, what’s your emergency?” The operator sounded bored, so bored, how could he be bored when Sarah needed help—Vivian calmed herself just in time to panic again, fumbling with her phone in an attempt to navigate back to her messages.
“My roommate, uh, she sent me an emergency text saying she’s been kidnapped and that she had to hide her phone so she couldn’t call 911 and it’s been nine and a half hours and—yeah. Yeah.” The words tumbled out of her mouth all at once, unstoppable until she realized she had nothing else to say.
“What’s the address?” was the next question, equally as calm as the first.
“Uh, um, near 102, uh, South 10th Street?” Vivian’s voice lilted up at the end of the sentence, making it a question. “She said it was, sorry, I think she was trying to tell me that Killjoy had her.”
A pause.
“To clarify, that is 102 South 10th Street, and the emergency is that you believe your roommate has been kidnapped by the villain Killjoy?” If he’d sounded like he was reclining in his chair before, the operator was at attention now. She could hear the difference.
“Yeah. I can read the text if you need?”
“That would be ideal. Please.” On the other end, Vivian could hear the faint click-click-click of buttons being pressed. Was that a good sign?
As instructed, Vivian repeated the text, glossing over the misspellings.
“Are you near the location right now?” the operator asked.
“No,” Vivian said. “I got the text a while ago. Should I be?”
“No. Stay where you are, ma’am. What’s your name?”
Name? Why do you need that? “Vivian Li.”
“Thank you…” the sound of tapping keys, softer than before, whispered through the phone line. “And what’s your phone number, ma’am?”
She gave that too, though a little more hesitantly. The dispatcher repeated it, asking for confirmation.
“Thank you,” he said once she gave it. “The police and Guardians have been notified and are on their way. If you get more information, please call again. Is there anything else you’d like to add?”
Please get there in time. Don’t mess this up. Don’t lie to me. None of that was helpful, so Vivian kept her mouth shut. “That’s all. Thanks.”
The operator hung up and Vivian exhaled hard. Her heart pounded like she’d just finished a mile run. Her mouth was dry.
“Great way to start off a morning,” she muttered sourly.
The dispatcher had told her to stay put, but that definitely wasn’t happening. Vivian tossed open her closet. Time mattered more than style, so she picked the clothes that looked easiest to put on—a dark bodysuit with neon blue highlights that the seller had sworn up and down was stab-resistant, a loose black skirt with pockets sewn onto the inside to store the various powders Lachlan had bought, comfortable leggings that didn’t look special but apparently cost seven hundred dollars, and enough holstered knives to make a Marine blush.
The helmet went on top of all of that alongside a small backpack carrying her stun guns alongside the remaining miscellaneous items. Comparing her costume to her makeshift bank-robber outfit from the night she’d become a murderer was like night and day. She allowed herself a handful of seconds to check herself out in the mirror—wow, I look like a real hero—and then it was time to move.
Vivian was going to have to get used to running around with so much stuff strapped to her, she realized quickly. For now, she could use her power as a stopgap to keep her pockets from spilling open when she missed a step, but in the heat of a chase, that measly fifty Newtons might be required for something else. Dropping a load of pepper powder, chalk, knives, and who knew what else onto her legs was not her idea of a good time.
That wasn’t the only sudden realization she made. Halfway between her dorm and the elevator, she froze.
There’re always people in the elevators. Vivian knew that there were a couple of heroes on campus with semi-open identities—Guiding Star aka Kylie Sienna, a B-rank Synth was even in one of her math classes—but Vivian planned on not being one of them. If she revealed that there was a new super on campus today, she wasn’t going to let them know the exact floor she lived on.
Instead, she took the stairs, which were predictably empty.
By the time she exited the dorm building on the ground floor, her skin prickled with equal parts agitation and impatience. As soon as she stepped outside, that became equal parts agitation, impatience, and cold. It was only September, but the past few days had been abnormally chilly. She made a mental note to look into a warmer costume for the winter.
Vivian set 102 South 10th Street as the destination on her phone’s map app and set off at a brisk walk, trying not to look too much like she was clutching her skirt. Everything was fine for about five minutes until she hit the main road, which was actually called State Street because nothing in this city followed proper naming conventions.
Anyway, it was a Sunday morning, and even if the usual September warmth was gone, weekends still meant freedom for college students. The sun was shining, shirtless frat boys were blasting music in front of Phi Delta Theta, and college kids were everywhere on the sidewalk.
Most people kept to themselves or their friend groups, but Vivian could practically feel their stares as she passed them. Heads turned as she walked, leading to hushed conversations that were definitely about her, and she wondered whether that was because the outfit was attractive (not that she was a good judge of that) or if she was transparently a new super. Maybe both.
It was more disturbing than she expected. Vivian had never been good at being the center of attention, though she liked it when it was obviously positive. This was less like positivity and more like being fresh meat thrown into a pool full of sharks.
She kept her head down as much as she could, thankful that nobody could see her face through the helmet’s visor, and kept on following the instructions. It turned out that the helmet had a Bluetooth connection, which let her sync her phone’s GPS to it.
“Hey, you—you in the helmet,” a girl said from behind her.
Vivian froze, then cursed herself for freezing. She spotted the source of the unfamiliar voice in the rearview camera—another student, maybe a year older than her.
“Are you a new super?” the stranger asked. “Hero? Villain? Neither? Or maybe a cosplayer? I can’t tell who you’re supposed to be, though. Mind if I take a picture?” She accompanied that last part by drawing her phone like a dueling pistol and snapping a selfie before said new super could react.
Vivian stood there for several moments like she’d been caught stealing from the cookie jar before she managed to engage her higher brain faculties again. “Hero. I’m busy—er, on a mission. Sorry. I need to hurry.”
The stranger squealed with delight. Vivian resisted the urge to clock her in the face. People actually do that?
“Oh my god, I can’t believe I got to meet a new one! Your outfit’s so cute! And your voice—wow, is that a machine changing it or your power? It’s awesome. Seriously. Good luck out there.”
My what?
And that was how Vivian learned that Lachlan’s custom-order helmet also had a voice modulator.
#
Thankfully, the rest of her walk proceeded without much incident. Each time someone tried to stop her and ask a question, she got better at giving them the same canned response. There was a point where someone started following her, which was a concern, but he gave up around the time she started crossing the bridge from West Lafayette (the college town) into Lafayette (the shitty city with roughly one redeeming quality, which was that it was connected to the college).
The crowd thinned out the further she went, and by the time she was in proximity of her final destination, nobody was on the streets.
From start to finish, it took about forty-five minutes. Vivian checked the time—9:47 AM. Assuming the police and Guardian response time was similar, they’d probably beaten her here.
Sure enough, when the maps app said she was on the correct street, she saw that a couple of police cars had already pulled up into the parking lot of the target building, their strobe lights on but their sirens off.
There was no sign of the actual policemen besides the cars. It looked like they’d gone inside the… art museum?
Vivian frowned. Sure enough, the hotel-looking building had a sign emblazoned onto its walls proudly declaring it the ART MUSEUM of Greater Lafayette. Was this seriously the right place? The location functions on modern cell phones were usually accurate, but maybe she’d gotten it wrong. Why would Killjoy be storing captives in an art museum?
Hell, why would he be taking captives in the first place?
The answer to the first of her silent questions turned out to be ‘yes.’ Though the security seemed lax, there was still a single, tired, college-age officer in one of the cars nursing a coffee. He was suspiciously unsuspecting of Vivian, allowing her through when she took fifteen seconds to explain she was an independent hero. He didn’t even ask for identification.
She pushed her way past a door that had a cheery CLOSED - opens at 11 AM every day sign and a less cheery DO NOT ENTER - LAFAYETTE PD sticker hastily taped under it and entered.
Oh, this is definitely the right place.
Unless the police had trashed the place—which was entirely possible, of course—someone must have had a field day running through the museum. Not a single installation was where it was supposed to be. Half the walls had little plaques explaining the details of paintings that were no longer there, and every pedestal’s installation had either been stolen or knocked over.
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There was no rhyme or reason to what was broken and what was stolen. Then again, this was her first time visiting this museum. Still, she had to wonder why a cage with a metal pigeon inside was something to be smashed against the ground until the bird sculpture’s head separated from its body but the neighboring installation, once titled Caged Feathers, was entirely gone.
Vivian rapped herself on the head, then realized she was still wearing the helmet. She wasn’t here to gawk at the wreckage of an art museum, she was here to find her roommate.
Which, now that she was present in the location Sarah had sent her, was easier said than done. Where did you hide a captive in an art museum?
“…goddamn junkies,” a voice elsewhere in the building said, barely audible. “Pain in the ass.”
Gingerly stepping around the debris on the floor, Vivian made her way towards the voice. It wasn’t a familiar voice, but there were only a scant few options for people it could be.
Sure enough, she found three police officers in a stripped-bare exhibit that looked something like a high school nurse’s office.
They chatted loudly amongst themselves, discussing their gripes with this job. Their conversation was a high enough volume that when Vivian entered the room, doing her best to suppress her footsteps, they didn’t immediately notice her.
That gave her enough time to examine the room, which was one of the remaining few she hadn’t been in yet—this museum was relatively small in size, limited to only a handful of exhibits.
It was empty right now but it hadn’t been, she realized. There were signs of habitation. Crumbs gathered in corners. No fine dust coated the ground. Here and there, there was a messy imprint of a dirty hand or shoe that didn’t obviously belong to the police officers.
Most damning was the fact that the room evidently hadn’t been entirely cleaned out. With her helmet, Vivian’s vision was clear enough that she could spot where light glinted off of tiny metal needles that had to have come from syringes.
That explains the junkie comment.
It was around then, after she’d had a solid half-minute to take the ruined exhibit in, that the police officers finally noticed her.
“Hey!” the shortest one of them shouted, drawing his gun. He didn’t point it at her, but Vivian’s hackles raised. She very nearly did something very stupid that definitely would’ve gotten her shot. “Who are you? Hands in the air!”
“Jesus, Jeff, don’t do that,” another one of them admonished him. She was an older woman, but Vivian was too focused on trying to keep herself from flinging one of her many tools at the guy with the gun to take in any details. “Do you remember rule 1?”
The officer apparently named Jeff did not let go of his gun, though he pointed it lower. “Uh, always listen to Lisa?”
“That’s rule number zero,” the third officer piped in. He was the one that had complained about the junkies. Idly, Vivian noticed he had a lit cigarette in his mouth. The irony of that was not lost on her. “Rule number one is don’t fight supers if we don’t have to.”
“Especially not new ones,” the woman—Lisa?—said, nodding. “Especially especially not new ones that we don’t know the allegiance of.”
“But protocol is to—“
“To assess the situation and determine the best course of action,” Lisa said with a sigh. “Jeff, we’re not SRU. You know the city’s not big enough for that.”
By the weary look plastered on both Lisa’s and the smoker’s faces, this was not the first time they’d had issues with this officer.
Vivian found herself at a loss for what to do while they argued. She used her power, pulling on the capsaicin and chalk dust, telekinetically scooping bits of it out and quietly hovering them to the floor.
If this goes wrong, I can try to pepper spray the gunman and blind him with the chalk, then get in close enough to slap the gun with my power, Vivian thought, gripping a knife through her skirt. It didn’t look like it was going to shake out that way, but it never hurt to be prepared.
“Do you know what happened to the last guy I saw who pulled a gun on an unknown super?” Lisa asked, her voice overpowering everyone else’s. “His name was Maxwell Smith, Jeff. He was my partner before you. Max wanted to be a hero just like you, and he drew on the super we now call Pine.”
“That’s a bad guy,” Jeff argued. “Max did the right thing.”
“Pine reversed gravity. Knocked Max’s aim off. Also knocked the house next to them off its foundations. He dropped all of them from two hundred feet up. I had to clean Max off the street with a goddamn mop.”
“Then—“
“And we couldn’t do a goddamn thing, because Pine has done more to protect other people than you or I ever have,” Lisa hissed. “He fought against Cataclysm 101 in 2022 when it hit his hometown.”
“Don’t fight the enemy you don’t know,” the smoker summarized. “Seriously.”
How can they just talk about their dead friend like that? Even now, trying to explain what had happened to Mom and her brother shut Vivian down for hours.
She sucked in a deep breath, tearing her mind off that. She refused to let herself spiral when Sarah was counting on her.
“Um, I appreciate the argument,” Vivian said. “Could you maybe put the gun down now? It’s really kind of awkward.”
Jeff had a stricken expression on his face as he placed his pistol back where it was supposed to be.
“Why do they like the SRU more than us? Shouldn’t they respect us?”” Lisa said in a nasal voice, rolling her eyes. “Jeff, you know you have a problem, but Jesus. You don’t fix your behavior and you’re never seeing a super except on the news.”
He did not reply.
“Sorry about the mess,” the smoker said, putting his cigarette out and tossing it onto the floor. He glanced at her suspiciously. “You are a hero, right? Carl was supposed to be on lookout.”
“Yes,” Vivian said, glad they were back on topic with no pistols pointed at her. “There were captives here. They’re not here anymore, right?”
That was the other contributor to the general bad feeling she’d gotten, though it had been awfully quiet while a gun was pointed in her direction.
I’m too late. She always was.
“That’s what we think we’re seeing,” Lisa said. “This could be a big deal, ma’am. I understand you’re new?”
The sudden shift from casual anger to practiced politeness threw Vivian off, but she nodded.
“Well, ma’am, if you’re new, you might not yet have noticed that we don’t have an SRU detachment in this city.”
“The city’s too small for military force,” Vivian said. “I’ve had it explained to me.”
“Great. Ma’am, I don’t know how you caught wind of this, but John here—“ the smoker waved at that—“is our detective, and he says that in combination with phone logs we recovered, there is reason to believe that our resident villains have crossed a line.”
“Okay,” Vivian said. “Okay. Why are there so few of you?”
Lisa grimaced. “We’re waiting on assistance, both from the police and the Guardians. We’re in the middle of nowhere here. Unless you happen to be an Esper, we need to wait for the Indy Guardians to drive Jackal over.”
“Goddamn supers,” Jeff muttered, his spirit apparently not entirely diminished by the stern talking-to he’d received. “You—“
“Look, I get shit-talking supers,” Vivian said, sudden irritation surging within her. “Sure. Fine. Whatever. Can you do that after we figure out where the missing kidnapping victims are?”
If that didn’t shut him up, the death glare Lisa shot him did.
“I’m sorry about him, ma’am,” Lisa said, turning back. “Could I get your name?”
“Don’t have one yet, but I’m a Kinetic. How much of a wait are we expecting?” Vivian was growing increasingly impatient with this. She wasn’t terribly attached to Sarah, but her roommate was nice to her and now she was gone and Vivian hadn’t been able to stop it. And here she was, stuck arguing with an idiot, a hypocrite, and their boss.
“I called as soon as I got on site,” the latter said, clasping her hands behind her back. “That was fifteen minutes ago. Assuming a standard response time… two more hours?”
Vivian sighed deeply. “Okay. Fine. I didn’t have anything else to do today, I guess.”
“A Lafayette Guardian should be on site soon,” Lisa added. “Ten minutes, hopefully less. They should have a way to communicate to indies. Just hold on for a bit.”
Great. Just great. Hopefully it wouldn’t be Alexander.
They settled into a tense, uncomfortable silence. While they waited, Vivian prepared her arsenal. Which was a fancy way to say she unholstered a stun gun, took a box of ball bearings out of her pack, and created floating spheres out of pepper spray and chalk dust.
Arina, she thought, repeating it to herself. That’s what I’m doing this for.
She could stomach this.
It took twenty-six minutes and forty-seven seconds for the super to show up.
#
The time was 10:21 AM, and Vivian was bored.
She felt really, really bad that she was bored. This was the type of situation where she should’ve been wracked with worry for her sorta-friend or maybe even trepidation over the fact that she was a murderer in the presence of trigger-happy police.
But nope. She was bored out of her mind. Neither the police nor Vivian had the necessary skillset to piece together what had happened here past the obvious, and they didn’t want to disturb the evidence, so they just sat there while she fooled around with her telekinesis.
About five minutes in, she’d taken out her phone and started playing a rhythm game. It was less entertaining with the sound off, but she didn’t want to figure out how to connect her phone to the helmet (if there even was a sound system in it) in front of three people that didn’t particularly like her.
By the time she picked up the sound of crunching footsteps elsewhere in the museum, Vivian was ready to call it a day and go home.
Still, the other super was here now, which hopefully meant a new perspective or updated information. Vivian hadn’t been able to tune into the police scanner for the same reason she couldn’t listen to her game, so it was entirely possible the situation had developed further while she’d been stuck here waiting.
“I’m so sorry about the wait, ma’am,” Lisa said. “They said it wouldn’t be long, I—“
“It’s fine,” she replied shortly.
The older woman had already apologized half a dozen times. Her response had grown quicker each time. Honestly, Lisa was starting to get on her nerves. They all were.
“Hey, we’re in here!” Vivian shouted. Please get here faster. “Watch your step, there’s a bunch of shit scattered everywhere.”
The Guardian didn’t seem to care, if the continued sounds of someone stomping on broken art were anything to go by.
He entered the room behind her. She caught his entrance in her rearview camera, sighed a breath of relief, and was about to turn to greet him when Lisa tensed.
Something was wrong. Vivian was always attentive to body language. Maybe too attentive, these days, but there was no putting that particular bit of toothpaste back into the tube. Nothing escaped her notice. Nothing that indicated trouble, at least.
Unlike the days when a conversation over the dinner table was the only opportunity she had to guess if her brother was going to try to slip a knife to cut—don’t go there, she thought, wrenching herself away—the answer today was simple.
The super was glowing with cold blue light and she’d mistaken that for a costume, but he was dressed like a normal. His jeans were ripped, his Purdue shirt had more tears than was normal, and perhaps most importantly, drool dripped freely from his mouth like he’d forgotten how to swallow.
Oh, and there was still the matter of the light emanating from his body, which she realized wasn’t actually light but a mist of some kind.
Whoever this was, it wasn’t a Guardian.
Vivian’s memory wasn’t perfect, but the bank robbery had been only yesterday. Ephialtes had looked like this.
She should’ve said something heroic. Get back or stay behind me or even a less powerful but helpful statement like look out.
“Shit!” Vivian shouted, instinctively throwing a hand up to shield herself.
Jeff panicked, fumbling for his weapon. Lisa cursed at him, but did the same. John dropped his cigarette.
The crazed super acted before any of the officers could.
In the movies, supers always made dramatic movements to accompany the usage of their powers. Even when she knew they were unrealistic for the sake of the big screen, Vivian had still expected a gesture of some kind. A hand thrust forward, maybe.
Instead, the drooling man lurched forward a single step and the mist condensed, flowing into his skin.
Vivian watched with horrified fascination as his skin turned a sickly shade of blue and he surged forward, arms flopping bonelessly behind him.
A single deafening shot rang out Jack’s gun—it missed.
Then the super abruptly stopped, dropping from sprint to standstill in an instant. His arms flew forward, propelled by his forward momentum, and condensed mist exploded out of his skin in the form of a hundred tiny knives.
Vivian reacted instinctively, batting as much as she could away with her power. The mist dissipated surprisingly quickly when she hit it with her telekinesis, like it massed nothing at all. Even in its dissolving form, it gave her a bad feeling. There was no chance in hell she was letting any of that hit her. Killjoy had taught her enough.
As soon as she dispersed the power, a switch flipped in her brain. She felt oddly disconnected from it all, like she was watching this happen to someone else driving her body, but now she had to move.
She used the rearview camera to judge where the super was, mentally designating him as “Mist Guy” for lack of an actual name.
Mist Guy was out of her range, if only barely, but she didn’t need him to be in range to affect him.
Lachlan bought me all this stuff, she thought, launching two dozen ball bearings at him. I may as well try it out.
Vivian turned to face him just as he moved forward again, mist coalescing around him—and promptly tripped on a ball bearing.
Behind her, someone groaned in pain, but she didn’t have time to address that. She used the momentary distraction to close the distance between her and Mist Guy. It only took a few steps to get within range to use her power.
She’d dropped the cloud of pepper spray when she was defending herself against the stranger’s power, but it was still within range for her to pick it back up and send it hurtling at his eyes.
Just as he righted himself, her cloud impacted his face—except it didn’t. Mist poured from his open mouth, and the force of it was so great that she couldn’t take full control over it with her power.
A primal growl tore itself from his throat. That definitely wasn’t normal. Whatever Killjoy had given this man must have affected his mental faculties.
And his physical ones too, she realized. Mist Guy’s arms were openly bleeding from shoulder to wrist. Whatever his power had done to send those mist shards sailing at them, they hadn’t protected his arms.
And he didn’t seem to feel the bleeding.
Mist Guy took another step forward, kicking the ball bearings aside, and Vivian muttered a silent apology.
At the last second, she realized that there were police officers watching. This was not the time nor the place she wanted to reveal her plausibility-breaking power.
So she took a page out of the movies. She punched the air with all her might, and she used her power to punch Mist Guy in the eye.
That got a reaction. Vitreous liquid and mist alike spilled from the eye, and Mist Guy howled in pain and anger, bringing both bloody hands to cover the injured eye.
She needed to take some anatomy classes. She only knew how to target external organs and the brain so far, which was a little more lethal than she’d like.
I’m officially a D-rank. Do the officers know that? That was a pretty powerful hit. No. They couldn’t. The officers hadn’t even recognized her. Still, she thought, I should watch what I’m doing.
Vivian used her power again, careful not to get too close.
She’d panicked that first time with Jester, then again at the bank. Now, though, she just kind of felt bad for the guy in front of her. Was it because she’d gotten better at using her powers? Or was she just growing desensitized to super combat?
Or maybe, she thought, it’s that restless part of my power speaking. That buzzing feeling was entirely gone now, replaced by a vague sense of fulfillment.
She didn’t know which answer she wanted.
What she did know was that her stun gun weighed less than a third of a pound and delivered a hundred thousand volts of charge when activated.
Mist Guy was still recovering from the eye shot when Vivian’s jet black stun gun made contact with his neck.
When she was mostly satisfied that he wouldn’t be moving anytime soon, she turned back to the officers.
Jeff’s shooting arm hung limply by his side, bleeding from the shoulder where he’d been hit. His gun clattered to the ground from useless fingers as she watched. The officer’s eyes were wide with shock. Vivian guessed he hadn’t processed the situation yet.
John was on the ground, but he looked to be okay. He’d cowered intentionally.
Vivian’s eyes flicked to the last officer as Lisa let out a forceful, pained sigh.
Both of her hands were clasped over her stomach.
A familiar, overwhelming dread slammed into Vivian, stealing her breath away. If she felt oddly disconnected during the fight, this brought her screaming back, skin prickling with the patterns of fear and worry she’d etched into her mind again and again. She was aware of herself and of Lisa and of their breath and the temperature in the air and the blood seeping through her hands and the tone of her pain and—and Lisa closed her eyes.
The only officer who’d showed her proper respect tumbled to the ground in a boneless heap.