=== CURT ===

After my two favorite people called me an idiot, I got to work. It's the only thing I'm really good at. Des wasn't there to disapprove, and Cindi just sat there and watched. She asked questions like what I was doing and why. What I was actually doing was going through every patent I could find in the Wan En files I had stolen to see if there was any EMP technology. It wasn't super likely. EMPs are not incredibly useful, especially to a tech mogul like Wan. I didn't find anything like that, but I did find another potential solution. A powerful signal blocker. Between that and something to short it out, we may be able to knock it out for long enough to get it out of her back.

  "What if when the signal is cut off, it just blows up?" Cindi asked. It was a reasonable question.

  "Well, most signals are not sent out constantly. Usually, they're pulses. Every couple of minutes. So, the first thing we have to do is isolate the signal that it's receiving and see how it works. Once we figure that out, we can plan from there."

  "Hmm. And then what?"

  "Depending on how long the pulse is, we might be able to do the surgery. I might be able to target the thing and pop it out anywhere in the world. Then we see."

  "Then we see what?"

  "What . . . What we want to do from there." My voice was small. I could feel Cindi looking at me. I didn't like thinking about that; I also didn't take my eyes from the computer screen.

  "Curt."

  "Mm?" I responded.

  "Look at me." I did so hesitantly. It took a lot of will to meet her eyes. "Why are you so worried about us? About our future. Nothing has to change."

  I laughed. Kind of. It was more like a soft cough mixed with a chuckle. I went back to the screen. Or tried to, anyway. Cindi grabbed my chin and pulled my eyes back to hers. "I . . . I had never said it before. To anyone."

  "Oh." She considered it for a moment. "Oh, is that it? You know. You're really dumb for such a smart guy."

  "Or," I began, lifting a finger, eager for any distraction. "I'm really smart for such a dumb guy."

  "Maybe." She leaned in and kissed me. Then she bodily dragged me from the laptop to the bed. The hotel bed. My place wasn't safe. Cindi took us to a hotel when she gathered me. She had used my stuff. I had made the UI simple enough so that almost anyone could use it. We were out of the States; I didn't really know where. But they had internet. And booze. And I had had some to drink after my conversation with Des and Cind. Then Cind took them back to their clinic. And that's when I started working. Cindi brought me back to the present with more soft kisses. "I've said it before."

  "Most people have."

  "But there's a difference."

  "Oh?"

  "When I said it previously, it was a distraction. It was to get something or to make someone pay attention to me." Her fingers were entangled in my hair. "But not with you. I've. . . I've never needed to . . . distract you."

  "Could be that I just don't have anything you want," I suggested.

  "Oh, you have one or two things I want."

  "Like what?"

  "I'm still waiting for you to make me one of your little toys so I can pop around the world," she said with a grin. I shook my head.

  "Nah."

  "Nah?"

  "Yeah. Can't have that. Then you could just teleport all over the place, and you wouldn't have any use for me. My fragile, male ego could not handle it."

  "Well, there's always the other reason," Cindi purred against my neck.

  "And what's that?"

  "You're warm. It's cold being naked all the time." After that, we went to bed. Kind of. I woke up the following day with the sun peeking through the curtains and sighed. I checked my phone when I got out of bed to use the restroom. And this was a mistake. I had over 99 notifications on Twitter. That was way more than I had ever had before. By a magnitude. At least.

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Felix the Cat and 4000 people are now following you.

Felix the Cat mentioned you.

@curtreese418 ur esvaner right???

[Comments] 13 | [Retweets] 2 | [Likes] 45 | [Share]

There were hundreds of tweets like this. I scrolled through the constant stream on my profile. Before tweeting, I remembered to turn off my Geolocation on my phone. Most phones have it on constantly nowadays, but I had jail-broken this one ages ago. I could do basically anything I wanted with the settings. Hundreds of people wanted to hear from me. I managed to find an interview Kari did with David Thrawn. I watched that and the retweets of my little rant against Kari, Bion, and heroes. I came off as a whiny child. Which made sense. But it resonated with people. I read a lot of the threads, and there were tons of stories of people who were hurt by falling rubble, who had their cars or buildings destroyed and couldn't go home or to work afterwards. Sometimes because there was nothing left to return to. I considered all of this and made a decision.

  I went to my Twitter profile and changed my handle and name. Esvanir had been taken, and so had a lot of other variants, but I eventually found one that was about as good as I could expect.

Curtis Reese | Esvanir

@CReese_Esvanir

He/Him

Activist Thief/IT Specialist

ACAB | BLM | Trans Rights

Avalare | Joined September 2013

295 Following | 4782 Followers

Not all of the reactions to my identity being out there were positive. Many people, especially Bion and Smash Gal fans, were threatening to kill me. Twitter has always been toothless to death threats, so that was hardly a surprise. A bunch of people called me a coward and an idiot and anything else they could think of. But that wasn't what stuck out to me. It was that people were taking me seriously. This is a lot of responsibility, I thought. I've been avoiding real responsibility since I was 20. I don't need this.

  One of the first things I noticed was that there was a lot of fan art. Some of it was wholesome; some of it was really well done; a lot wasn't. A not-insignificant portion of it was porn. Some of it was with Marcelli and I, which was the worst thing I had ever seen. Some of it was with Smash Gal and I. There was apparently a tag for that. #SmashVanir. It ranged from hand-holding to . . . Anything you can imagine probably is only about 60% as graphic as what I saw. It was . . . Weird. People also shipped me with Cherry. And @buckcherry, which was her official account, had weighed in on this. She had suggested the ship name #CheSvy publicly. I finished up in the bathroom, stormed out, and glared at her. "What the hell is this!?"

  "What is what, Curt?" She asked, yawning. She glanced at my phone and then grinned. "Oh, yes. People were still using that Cannoneer woman's tag. I just suggested my better alternative."

  "You realize that substantiates the claim, right? People will know."

  "People already know, Essy. They know that you belong to me. They have since I saved you." She shrugged and stood up and stretched. "Besides, that's not even the worst of it."

  "Wh-what do you mean?"

  "You haven't seen #SmaChesVan, have you?"

  "What in . . . What is that?"

  "It's the threesome tag. There's. . . Lots of creative art in it." She walked over and kissed my cheek. "If there's a hero or villain anywhere on the same hemisphere, there's art of them somewhere. Now you're a part of the club."

  "And you're okay with it?"

  "It's not a matter of being okay or not okay with something, Curt. It simply is. Go with the flow. And enjoy it. You look handsome in a lot of the art." I deflated. She had a point. I wasn't going to stop the internet from making porn. Rule 34 existed. And so did Rule 63. Which I did not Google. Immediately.

  I set up a business email for Esvanir and bought the domain esvanir.com. I had been contacted by David Thrawn's assistant a couple days ago, and he wanted to interview me. Just like he did with Kari. I thought about it; I couldn't do it in person. But Kari had had her word about me. It seems only fair that I should have mine. Explain myself. I'd have to talk to Cind about it. She was the criminal mastermind. She'd know what to do. Because I sure didn't. This was all new.

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=== KARI ===

"That son of a bitch changed his name!" I exclaimed.

  "Kari! Language!" My mother said, piercing her salad violently.

  "But he changed his name!"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Curt. He changed his Twitter name. He's calling himself Esvanir. He's not turning himself in."

  "Well, you never really expected him to, did you?"

  "I . . . I hoped he would. I hoped my interview would bring him to his senses."

  "Dear, you're strong and fast, but you can't change what's in people's hearts. Curt . . . Curt was always a troubled boy."

  "You liked him."

  "No, you liked him, and we felt . . . We didn't like seeing someone so . . . troubled. We wanted to help."

  "Because you liked him. There are lots of poor kids you could've helped." Mom frowned at this and shook her head.

  "I had hoped our guidance could . . . help him. Keep him from going down a bad path."

  "That worked well."

  "Yes, well, it was out of our control."

  Our conversation was cut a bit short when I got a call. "Hello?"

  "Hey, Kari. I'm out of the hospital. I was . . . I was wondering if you might take me out on patrol. I'm not quite 100% yet, and I could sure use a hero to help me out."

  "Of course, I will, Chuck. That sounds like a lot of fun. And I need to let off some steam. 20 minutes?"

  "Sure." We disconnected, and mom and I finished lunch. She took an Uber back home. I flew out to meet Chuck. He was dressed in his blue and white costume that framed his face and was very tight. Tight enough to see some of the bandages still around his arms, legs, and torso. He was looking a lot better. Maybe a little thinner. He smiled when he saw me, but I think he was still in pain. We would take it slow today. We flew around the city, and I forced him to take breaks. That wasn't what I said. I said that I wanted to stop off for ice cream. Or boba. Boba smoothies are so good.

  "I know what you're doing, Kari. It's not necessary."

  "Boba smoothies are always necessary."

  "Yeah, but taking this many breaks isn't."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," I lied, looking away from him as I sipped my drink.

  "C'mon on now," he began. "I'm literally psychic. I can go into your brain whenever I want and prove it."

  "But you wouldn't," I said. "Besides, you shouldn't go in there right now."

  "Why?"

  "Because it's private. And you might not like what you see." He stared at me for a long time. His eyes bored into mine. I knew what they looked like under the mask. I could just barely see their outlines; he had soft brown eyes. And he was looking concerned.

  "I already know you're really angry about something. You're furious, and you're putting on a happy face because you think that's who you have to be."

  "If I let the anger out now, it won't be at the right target."

  "You probably shouldn't be thinking in terms of targets for your anger. That's not exactly healthy."

  "You are such a shrink."

  "Yeah, that's my day job."

  "You're a psychic psychologist?"

  "Hell of a business card, right?" He said playfully.

  "How do you know I'm that angry?"

  "It's in the set of your jaw. The way you roll your shoulders when we find someone. And the fact that I'm a psychic. It's pouring off of you in waves. And while I can try and not to read your mind, I can't block out emotions. Not when they're that strong."

  "That's. . . Fine. I'm angry. And I'm worried about you. It might be too soon for you to be out."

  "We're superheroes, Kar. It's always too soon," he said. He finished his smoothie, dropped off the side of the building we were sitting on, and promptly plummeted a hundred feet before catching himself and flying off. I sighed and followed him. We did some more patrols, and it was a pretty quiet night overall. For a while.

  We did discover some people robbing a jewelry store. There were four thieves. Three women and a man.

  "Well, now, friends. This store appears to be closed. And you don't appear to be paying." Whenever he used his Professor Mind voice, he sounded really corny. Especially when he said stuff like that. The criminals froze and turned to face us. One of the women cracked her knuckles and came out to us. She jumped up and socked PM in the face, and he went flying into a wall. She landed and spun a kick at me; I caught her leg and threw her back. She turned in the air and caught herself. Two of the others came out. One of them clapped their hands, and a shockwave shot out. I flew back but caught myself. That had broken glass; it had shattered the concrete. These guys were pretty strong. I charged down, and the first woman ax kicked me into the ground, which crumpled underneath me. It almost hurt. I pushed myself up. Clap-On, that's what I'm going to call her. As Clap-on slammed her hands together again. I grabbed the first woman, the martial artist, and threw her in the way of the shockwave, and we both went flying. She crashed down closer.

  The third person started waving her hands in a strange pattern, and energy coalesced between them. I dashed forward, and she threw the wave on, and it slammed into me. My muscles gave out, and I landed on the ground again, twitching. Professor Mind was back and slammed down on her with a psychic dump truck. Literally. He constructed a psychic dump truck and dumped it down onto the three. Two managed to dodge, but the first caught it. The Fighter, I guess? She resisted the force of his assault, even as he pushed down harder on her. She then threw it to the side, and he went with it. It was dismissed after a moment, but she had walked up to Chuck's form and started laying in on him. The man stepped out of the jewelry store and looked around.

  "Enough!" He snapped. "We need to get going."

  The women looked at him and shrugged. He started walking. There was a roar of fire that came from across the street. A bright purple streak burned into my retinas. The man screamed in pain and collapsed. All of his flesh had burned off. He was nothing but bones. The women looked around until there was another streak of purple flame. Clap-On dispersed it with a shockwave. A woman in samurai armor was standing tall on the hood of a car, and she slashed through the air with a sword several times, flinging more purple flames across the street. The women all scattered, and one slammed down into Chuck, who screamed in agony. The smell of burning flesh wafted through the air. I picked myself up and charged to his side. I patted the fires out as the criminals scattered. The woman started to chase them in giant clunking steps. She caught up to one of them in a few strides and chopped her in half, leaving smoldering piles in the wake of her sword.

  I clenched my fists and rushed to her. She had started pursuing one of the others, but I wasn't going to allow her to kill someone. I couldn't. "What the hell do you think you're doing!?"

  "What you can't. Get out of my way, girl. Or I'll make you."

  "Excuse me? You're a murderer."

  "I'm murdering those that need to be killed. Killers, thieves, those too weak to do what must be done to stop the first two," she said and slashed out. I had planned on just taking it, figuring I'd be resistant to whatever she was doing, but the sword bit into my flesh, and I charged back. "See? The sword knows you're impure. All of you are impure."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" I demanded. I charged down, but she swiped her blade at me, and I narrowly dodged. She followed me. She wasn't as fast as I was, but she predicted where I was going, and the sword tore through my leg, and I gasped and spun and tried to kick her. She had expected that too and got out of the way.

  "The sword kills the impure. It wouldn't do anything to you if you were a good person."

  "Lady Blade!" Professor Mind called out. "Stop this. You can't just go around murdering people."

  "I can murder the degenerates. I can rid the world of them and make it a better place." She turned to Chuck and grinned. "Tonight, you will both join the other degenerates. You will fall."

  She whipped her blade around, and flames shot forth in an arcing X formation. Professor Mind dodged to the side, raising a shield as well. He then fell out of the air and struggled to stay up. He was in no condition for this fight. I could stop her, though. I charged forward, figuring that with her back to me, she wouldn't be able to react in time. I was wrong. She swung the sword behind her and spun with it. I felt every nerve sever and sear shut as the blade tore through my flesh. It felt like it took years. I dove to the side and slammed into the ground. I looked down, and there was a burning scar across my chest and upper clavicle. I winced as I stood up. She grinned at me. I charged forward at Mach 1, and the air itself split. She swung her sword, and there was a burst of flame around her. I felt the fire cling to my clothes and spun to extinguish it. I could go faster, but I couldn't always control my force output when I did. She grinned and shot another lance of fire at PM. She's really out to kill him. Fuck! I blasted forward, scooped him up in my arms, flew him to the top of a roof, and laid him down.

  He was breathing hard. The fire had burned through his bandages and some of his stitches. He tried to stand, but I pushed him back down and peered over the ledge. The armored woman was following us. She couldn't fly, but she could do gymnastics in that heavy armor. She did a flip from a pole and landed on a building three roofs down from us. I stood up and braced myself. Kar, don't! You're hurt; You can't get to her without a lot of damage.

  "Damn it, PM! She murdered two people in front of me. She tried to kill you!"

  "She will kill me if she defeats you. And it looks like she might." I winced. He had a point. She could kill him if I wasn't careful. And she might even be able to kill me. She jumped to the roof just before us and started running. I looked back at Chuck. He needed to get back to the hospital. See a doctor. I sighed. I've never run away from a fight before . . . Damn it! I grabbed him and blasted off. She sent another firebolt after us, but it didn't move at Mach anything. And I did.

=== CURT ===

I snapped down to a store real quick. Cindi was asleep, and Des was back in Avalare. And I needed to get out of the room for a while. I needed to stop doom-scrolling on Twitter. It was terrible. People were constantly sending me things, asking me for help, blaming me for stuff, tagging me in art, asking my opinion about anything. And it was all so much. I couldn't handle it; I needed to step away. But if I was on my laptop, I couldn't. I would keep a tab open, and I had a hard time ignoring the number. I get why celebrities have publicists for this kind of thing now.

  So, I went out to a convenience store. I gathered up a bunch of snacks. We were somewhere in Europe; I think it was either France or Spain; I'm not sure. I grabbed some brands I recognized and a lot that I didn't. I figured I would try out whatever they had and see if I could find a new favorite. There were a lot of people. No one seemed to recognize me. I guess being internet-famous isn't the same as actually being famous. Thank fuck for that. I got in the back of the line; It moved at a glacial speed; I tapped my foot impatiently. I could just snap out. I didn't have to wait in line, but that didn't seem right. These people weren't rich. They were just trying to make do with what was available to them.

  There was a TV on in the background. I didn't speak the language, but a newscaster was talking about Smash Gal and me. There were pictures of us on the screen. Bion appeared for a moment. I grimaced and shrank down a little, hoping no one would recognize me. No one did, thankfully. Eventually, I got to the front of the line and paid. The cashier looked at me suspiciously as he bagged my things. I gathered them and thanked him in English. Just as I got to the door, he shouted at me in a thick accent, "Esvanir!?"

  I grimaced and teleported back into the building. Cindi looked up from the bed. "What's that?"

  "Junk food," I responded, tossing the bags on the bed and grabbing something.

  "Ugh. Curt. You can just order room service."

  "They don't have Doritos," I said through a mouthful.

  "You're honestly choosing corn chips over a five-star chef."

  "I'm a simple man," I responded, holding the bag out for her. She took a chip in a delicate hand and tried it. She chewed for a moment, considering.

  "They're not terrible," she said noncommittally.