Hypothermia had a… bumpy backstory.
In a better world, she would be a Top Hero, and probably of some more populated state. She had the looks, ones at least comparable if not surpassing Virtue. Her individuality was… something special, something that she managed to reforge into something even more special thanks to insane work ethic.
Of course, a lot of villains had that. It’s not as if the good guys had a monopoly on good looks. You could be a total, unrepentant monster and still look almost otherworldly beautiful, just ask Demiurge. Same with hard work, you need it to get anywhere regardless of your job.
Hypothermia, though? She was kind. Protective. Empathetic. Had something of an artist’s soul in her.
What stopped her from living on the right side of the law was, in short, the total parenting failure that her parents clearly were. Relatively common thing, Revenant sometimes felt as if that gave birth to at least 20% of villains out there.
The remaining 80% were shared between daddy issues and mommy issues, with a significant tilt towards daddy issues. Yes, he knows from personal experience. He is in that particular category.
People who grew up with both of their parents present and supportive somehow became threats to society much less often. Who would have thought, eh?
Hypothermia had the distinct bad luck of being born to completely shitty parents and having a completely shitty childhood, which ended up ruining her life and leading to her eventual death during a lone rearguard action, a sacrifice that she performed to help the US’ Most Wanted escape.
The woman that emerges from the tube is just as beautiful as Revenant remembered her as. Long, flowing hair, reaching her waist and in a color that was somewhere between silver and pale blue. Unblemished skin that was white, pretty close to being pale, yet still looking perfectly natural and healthy.
He can only imagine her DNA to be mostly composed of Pure genes, at least in anything even remotely connected to her appearance.
Especially as she also has a figure that could serve as an encyclopedic definition of feminine. Wide hips, narrow shoulders, large yet perky breasts… to be honest, Revenant is actually quite surprised with himself that he noticed that.
It didn't matter to him in the past. Less than that, he didn’t even notice it before. Huh. He really wasn’t in his best mind back then.
They have no clothes for her. Nothing spawned. For a good reason. And no, Hypothermia wasn’t lounging around naked.
She emerged from the tube, saw Revenant in front of her, blinked in surprise (extremely expressive for her), then snapped her finger.
In a heartbeat, the moisture in the air around her solidifies, flowers of ice blooming mid-air before changing shape. Her individuality reshaping them into a flowing blue-ish robe, decorated with intricate patterns of silver flowers.
All of that is ice. Just of different hues and composition. Despite touching her skin, she has no issues with the cold. There is just something to her individuality that makes her impervious to cold temperatures.
One time, she rigged her robe so that parts of it continuously melted and froze, giving an impression of the flowers growing and blooming. As Revenant said, she had something of an artist in her.
She also erased Columbus, the capital city of the State of Ohio, from the map. With a single usage of her individuality. Sure, the heroes evacuated it beforehand, planning to use it to stop the villains that captured most of the central states from marching towards Washington D.C, but… was there ever an evacuation that managed to get everyone out of the affected area? Especially in America?
Some people were just that stupid.
Regretfully, recreating the exact same set of circumstances that made it possible was going to be nigh-impossible, at least until they find their way to the surface of this hell. The same situation as with Virtue. Living nukes and physical gods downscaled to a ‘mere’ heavy-hitters.
“You’re alright.” Hypothermia says, her eyes still on Revenant. For now, she’s ignoring Humility that’s standing right next to him. “I’m glad.”
‘I’m glad’, she says. The woman that voluntarily stayed behind to let him escape, and died in the process, returns back to life and sees him, standing in front of her, unharmed… and she says that she’s glad.
With nothing but a faint smile on her face.
Yes. It was just the Hypothermia that he knew. Even in the company of all the emotionally stunted powerhouses that formed the ranks of his villain lieutenants, she was unequaled. On both fields.
There is just no chance for her to make a move. So, Revenant does it. He approaches her and hugs her, Hypothermia embracing him back. She doesn’t cry, she just holds him there.
He’d really complain about how extraordinarily stunted she was on the field of emotions, but… yeah, that would make him a hypocrite. Let’s be honest, he is guilty of the same crime, just to a smaller degree.
They stay like that for almost half a minute, Hypothermia saying nothing, just hugging him. Then he takes a step back, because… yeah, he can see a growing irritation on Onslaught’s face with how long it was taking. It’s time to do something important.
“Hypothermia, the situation is a bit more complicated than you probably expect.” Revenant says, ignoring Decay’s chuckle in the background. “Way more complicated, in fact. That’s why, I’d like you to turn around and… well, not freak out too much.”
One simple question. How did Revenant get to see the look on Onslaught’s face while hugging Hypothermia? Well, it’s because she took her position behind Hypothermia, right next and a little bit behind the resurrection tube.
Destro was standing right behind her, so that she had a wall to lean on with her back.
Hypothermia looks back… and freezes. Not literally, but she simply stops moving, remaining so perfectly still that Revenant needs to consciously check for signs of life (like, minuscule movements of her chest signifying that she still breathes) to know that she’s actually alive.
Destro grins. Onslaught smiles.
“Hi there, Thermy!” She says. If Revenant didn’t know her well enough, he’d probably fall for her acting skills and think that she was calm and almost carefree while saying it. “Uhm, I didn’t mess up the timetable, right? I was supposed to say it once she turned to face me and…”
“No, but you should get ready for a hug to end all hugs.” Destro replies. And yes, Hypothermia is actually walking towards Onslaught this time, rather than just standing there awkwardly like it was with Revenant.
Hey. Being reunited with him is one thing, being reunited with her best friend for life years after death? That's a completely different thing, and Revenant understands that completely. Especially once taking into the account the fact that she’s, well, Hypothermia.
“Aah!” Onslaught yelps out when the hug finally happens. “You’re cold! What did I tell you about hugging me with your ice clothes on?!” Hypothermia’s embrace only grows tighter. “And stop crying, Thermy! You’re crying icicles at the top of my head! Ouch!”
In Revenant’s opinion, her complaints might have actually achieved something if she wasn’t hugging Hypothermia back with all her might.
Absolutely adorable. And wow, Hypothermia actually cried, even if a little? That’s a new one. She was… well, even Revenant could learn a few things from how perfectly she was hiding her emotions. Even if it wasn’t done consciously.
“So…” Humility decides to break the silence in the side of the room not occupied by two sobbing dumbasses. And yes, Onslaught is sobbing now too - and yes, due to proximity, her tears change to miniature icicles too, or would if there was a space for that. But the hug is too tight. “... care to elaborate on the backstory?”
“Shouldn’t you be elsewhere, making sure that Clockmaker doesn’t lose it completely and blow us up with her Uragan-B bomb just to see how it works in practice?” Revenant replies. Humility tilts its head towards him. He has a feeling that he was just given a ‘you think that I’m stupid enough to leave any of the bombs in her reach?’ look. “She and her brother had a pair of really asshole parents.”
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how much asshole are we talking about?” Humility replies with a question.
“Solid 9, I think.” Revenant replies. Ten was Archvile’s treatment of Judgment and Nemesis, but honestly, Hypothermia’s parents were pretty close to that. Just less competent about it. “It was some fucked up new age cult with a post-Wishgranter theology, treating individualities as sacred. Cue extreme training with them, and pretty much nothing else. If you were born within the compound, you were going to leave it as an overly powerful brute who would have problems counting up to a hundred.”
“Sounds like a poor man's Villain Academy to me.” Humility replies. Hard to disagree with it.
“Correct.” Revenant says, before clicking his tongue. “Destro dismantled the whole cult the moment he caught wind of its existence. Make no mistake, it was pragmatism on his end. He was the one who helped them, so… a lot of the victims of the cult ended up joining the People’s Liberation Front. Including Hypothermia’s brother.”
Iceberg was a dick, in the opinion of almost everyone that knew him. His own sister included. But he was an incredibly powerful dick, one capable of fighting on equal grounds against most of the Top Heroes.
He had a nice death, though not a lot of people mourned him, even on their side.
“And Hypothermia herself?” Humility asks. Revenant points at the spectacle in front of them (at least Onslaught stopped complaining).
“She was Onslaught’s professional wheelchair-pusher.” Revenant then adds. “Pretty much her eyes, legs and hands. All while being as close as friends can be. Not a part of the PLF, she never felt attachment to the ideology behind it. She was there mostly for her bestie, and since she had no other useful skills and couldn’t become a hero with her backstory, Destro made her into her daughter’s official caretaker and bodyguard.”
“No useful skills?” Humility asks back. “Couldn’t she just… learn them?”
“She knew nothing, aside from her combat skills.” Revenant replies. “And then ran into people like Destro, people that were her exact opposite. What do you think it did to her already faltering self-esteem?” Humility doesn’t answer. “Destro did his best to fix it once he realized the problem, but… no therapy can help you if you think that you’re not worth the time and don’t cooperate with the therapists at all.”
“That bad, eh?” Humility replies. “I see. Well, hopefully she’ll get better this time. No more plot restraints on character development.”
Surprisingly nice of it to think like that. And he genuinely hopes that it’d be like that. Hypothermia is at least of average intelligence level. At least. She just refuses to see it, with the stubbornness of an oaf.
If telling someone that they’re fine was a cure to mental issues, there would be no crazy people in this world. It’s the same with low self-esteem. Telling people that suffer from it that they are wrong isn’t enough to heal them.
The world, regretfully, doesn’t run on shonen anime logic. The demon lord (namely, Archvile) was slain not by power of friendship, but by spite and obsessive desire for revenge. Plus a lot of military-level operational planning.
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In the meantime, he should probably come and join the hug pile. Before Hypothermia remembers that she dumped him there and feels bad about it. He doesn’t want to ruin the best moment in her life.
***
Hypothermia’s response to being shared the shocking truth about the world was… scarce. Very scarce. To be honest, Revenant didn’t expect anything else.
Her eyes were a tiny bit wider for maybe three seconds, before returning to their normal size. Then she nodded.
That was all.
Hypothermia’s strength of willpower was always an inspiration to Revenant. That, or, well, she might have simply not bothered thinking too much about too complicated things. She was alive, Onslaught was alive, Revenant was alive, Destro was alive, who cares why, right?
Revenant’s propensity for overthinking things is sometimes a pain in the ass.
In the meantime, he quickly uncovers the Holy Relic. Those weren’t really used anymore (aside from helping people wobble around the medbay when still recovering), but they still managed to secure a wheelchair.
It had an automatic mode, where it could be used by the person sitting in it to drive around, but there was also a manual mode in case of people with injuries preventing them from doing it.
There was something incredibly heartwarming in Hypothermia pushing Onslaught’s wheelchair around with an incredibly serious look on her face and small frozen tears occasionally forming in the corners of her eyes, before her individuality made those disappear. Typically by merging them with her clothes.
Her face was mostly unmoved during the process.
Hypothermia’s issues with expressing her emotions were as incredible as they were terrifying and sad.
He decides to let Onslaught and Hypothermia have a quiet moment together, and leaves to do something else. Contrary to popular opinion, his daily schedule is packed to the brim these days.
***
It took her a while to get a good read at Hypothermia after they met for the first time. But… in the end, Onslaught had an unfair advantage over everyone else. Despite - or, to be exact, because of - her blindness.
Hypothermia had incredibly expressive hands.
And no, Onslaught isn’t making a kinky joke here. Even if she is very curious as to how… expressive Revy’s hands could be if he finally used them properly. Why? Well, she doesn’t make kinky jokes about Thermy.
It’d feel weird. Not because Onslaught was purely heterosexual (she started there, but to be honest, she was at this point kinky enough that she wouldn’t mind checking the alternative if she wasn’t so much into Revy). But because Thermy was more of a big sister to her.
Except with less biting and fighting. It might be detracting significantly from the Having Siblings Experience, but… she likes it that way.
She always wanted siblings. Hypothermia showed up to fill that void, and it was great. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to imagine Chronoshift as a very early daughter or more like a younger sister. A mixture of both?
To return to the subject, she was reading Hypothermia’s emotions from her hands. The minuscule… tensing of muscles. Contrary to popular opinions, her hearing wasn’t the only sense that got so good. Her brain finding another usage for the part of itself that was supposed to spend time processing sights.
On the outside, Hypothermia was the same ice queen as always. Quiet, her face unmoving. Her voice - even if she happened to speak - would be comparably robotic and expressionless to what Humility had going.
But under it? Every second of holding her hand spoke volumes to Onslaught. On the inside, Hypothermia was screaming, crying, disbelieving and suspecting that it all might have been a dream… and being afraid of waking up from it.
Her individuality was as incredible as always. A small bit of ice, clasped around the handle, freeing her hand so that she could hold Onslaught’s up above her head. Helping Destro’s daughter read her big sister’s emotions.
“I wanted to thank you, Thermy.” Onslaught says. “For everything.”
Hypothermia radiates confusion and guilt. The big dummy. The big, beautiful dummy that she considered her sister and one of the three most important people in her life. The person that she was ready to entrust Revy to.
“Thermy, you’ve literally died saving his life.” Onslaught says. “I couldn’t ask you for more. I couldn’t hope for more from you.”
“I didn’t save him.” Hypothermia replies quietly. “I tried. I never confessed. I just let him die. You told me to take care of him, and… I didn’t.”
“It might be a surprising thing to hear.” Onslaught replies. “But I really think that dying to save his life beats not confessing your eternal love to him.”
Hypothermia says nothing. But it’s clear to Onslaught what she thinks. That to her, fighting a thousand battles was easier than speaking her mind, even when she knew that Revenant knew her mind already.
That’s how it is when a living weapon develops human emotions.
Not being capable of basic things such as expressing herself only worsened her self-esteem issues. Hypothermia was a big bundle of issues that Onslaught had no idea how to fix, despite trying for a long time.
If Revenant wouldn’t have a meltdown over it, Onslaught would be seriously tempted to find someone with a brainwashing individuality just to make Thermy stop being a dumbass and seek help.
Demagogue could do it. But… Demagogue made a rule. Only used her individuality for villainous purposes, against enemies of the PLF. Destro supported it wholeheartedly, because Demagogue’s power was… terrifying.
Destro was a man of more than just overwhelming strength and charisma. He was also a man of logic, capable of foreseeing potential threats and making sure that they never developed into existence.
With how terrifying Demagogue’s individuality was, and how much power it could potentially give her over the people? Supporting moral boundaries and sticking to it was a perfectly logical thing.
Revenant did his best to continue this policy. Demagogue was… terrifying.
“I’m happy for you two.” Hypothermia says quietly. Her hand speaks of nothing but truth. Despite loving Revenant with her entire heart, she immediately takes a step out of it to let the two of them be happy.
Because she didn’t see herself as being worthy of Revenant’s time. But she really wanted both of them to be happy. And was ready to sacrifice her own happiness for that goal, without a shred of hesitation.
New life, new her. This time? This time Onslaught was going to help her. And she already has something of a faint framework of a plan.
***
“So how did you work dinner with Wilcher go?” Revenant asks. Destro just dropped by to share some new intel. He looks almost cheerful, then again he always looks like that. Well-trained mask.
Revenant finally had something resembling an office. He loved having an office. One of the few guilty pleasures he had in his life. He could command on the run, but… there was something comforting in having a desk, a computer, a bookshelf full of folders filled with documents.
There was no printer in his room. He had a computer, yes, and had a lot of things written down on it. But he mostly used it to check things on the internet, to navigate reports and paperwork that VAA seemed to run on.
Big part of his collection of folders? Profiles. Heroes, villains, notable agents of the FBI and CIA, officers from the US Army, government officials. No notes on the margins. Each time new intel came, he rewrote the whole thing by hand.
A ritual. Comforting, relaxing and… sane. He didn’t have many of those, but he cherished those he had.
He didn’t have a computer now. Not yet. No bookshelf. No folders. But he had a pen and a desk. It was nice. He also had Humility that also dropped by for the meeting, and this was… moderately nice.
Destro sits down on the chair on the other side of the desk, glancing at Humility before returning his eyes to Revenant.
“Reasonably nice.” Destro replies. “He is… inexperienced, and way out of his depth. That contributes to how nervous he is most of the time. But he has a head on his shoulders, that much is true. I had no need to lie there.”
Revenant leans back in his own seat.
“Your assessment?” Revenant asks. Destro grins a little.
“I don’t think he is hiding anything.” Destro replies. “His backstory fits his behavior, no anomalies to speak for. I can read people well, politics are all about that and establishing connections with people. Unless he is someone of similar caliber as Archvile when lying is involved, he is whom he claims to be. Yet to meet the other two, though.”
Revenant nods. Archvile had more than just Bestowal. He was also a shapeshifter. Not a proof of his suspected demonic heritage - he gave someone an individuality that could reflect individualities, then gave him a weak shapeshifting individuality that got reflected back to Archvile himself. It… damaged his health, which is why he never tried to repeat it.
But it was useful in avoiding Invincible and the police, since he was a great actor that never looked the same way twice.
“Anything else you’ve learned?” Revenant asks back. Destro scratches his chin thoughtfully.
“I asked some questions about what happened to New Springfield.” Destro replies. “Mostly because I was personally curious about it.” That was interesting, Revenant decided. “I found some… weird things.”
Revenant glances at Humility.
“I don’t know anything about Visitor’s arrival.” Humility replies. “I appeared here afterward. What exactly did you find?”
“Wilcher didn’t know a thing about Visitor.” Destro replies. “No one did, it was a complete shock to everyone, of course. But… there were oddities he noticed before its arrival.”
Oddities, huh. That’s how things get interesting.
“Three days prior, they’ve all got a warning.” Destro continues. “Emergency Alert System, pretty much ripped off the US’ system of our times, just with newer graphics and displaying directly in your head through some fancy communication implants that everyone had. Told everyone that a ‘dangerous astronomical phenomenon’ was going to occur in three days. Gather food and water, head to a shelter, take your weapon if you have it, if you can’t find a place in a shelter, hide in the nearest sturdy building, you know the standard things.” Revenant nods. “The slightly less standard thing was the instruction to not look at the night sky and, on the third day, don’t look up at all. But I guess we can understand where it came from.”
Revenant nods. Yeah, it was probably hard for the local government to explain the massive eldritch abomination in the sky over the planet. Just in case, he glances at Humility.
“The local government knowing about the Nightmares is a normal thing?” He asks. They were supposed to be hidden and so on.
“Major governments do know.” Humility replies. “Smaller ones do not, because of the Confederation’s government being afraid of some of them declining into some Nightmare-worshiping cultism. But this was a capital of an ethnopolity, they needed to have an embassy of the Confederation. And at least someone in it had to know. Precisely to explain the bullshit to the local government in case something like this happened, and tell them what to do to save themselves. Nine chances out of ten that the embassy called the president and told him to disseminate the EAS warning, all while sending a warning outside the system. Which explains why the Explorers’ Guild kill fleet showed up so quickly.”
Nice to know that the Confederation of Mankind considered the survival of as many of the affected people as possible an important thing. It made them look a bit less like total dicks.
“I figured as much.” Destro nods, surprising Revenant a bit. “The fun stuff happened later. Less than a day after the warning was broadcasted, the local network went down, together with all the media.”
“That’s normal?” Revenant glances at Humility again.
“No.” Humility replies. “New Springfield was a developed country. A lot of satellites. And even if the Visitor swallowed those days before it did the planet, you can expect all major settlements to be connected with underground lines. They are supposed to be the backups in case of the planet coming under siege and an enemy fleet destroying the satellite network. I don’t think that the local government would be suicidal enough to limit its usage to military comms, if only to let the locals stay in contact with their distant relatives and prevent an outbreak of panic caused by the EAS warning followed by lack of clarification on the source of the threat from the government.”
“And that’s when things started to get even funnier.” Destro decided to continue the tale when Humility’s brief lecture was over. “Because around that time, Lane Simon, the state governor of the New Highrock state and the boss of our friend Wilcher, suddenly vanished from her office.”
“Evacuation of top officials to some underground bunker system or off-world?” Revenant asks. Destro shakes his head.
“I’d believe it, if not for the fact that around the same time things started going off the script.” Destro replies. “Wilcher suspected that there was an evacuation and he wasn’t included, so he packed his stuff and left the building immediately, heading to the smaller community where his family lived. Less than five minutes later he walked past a short column of armored vehicles heading in the opposite direction, and he swears he heard gunfire and explosions from the direction of the governor’s office. But he didn’t go back to check it out.”
“Infighting.” Revenant summarizes. “That’s… an odd thing to do on the eve of a cosmic disaster. Or am I the weird one here?” He then adds, while glancing at the AI.
“You’re not.” Humility replies. “This is odd. Unless some local revolutionary group tried to stage a coup at the last minute, while taking advantage of the confusion brought by the EAS message. You should probably ask them more about that. But in the meantime?” The AI stays quiet for a moment. “I think that your theory about something being seriously wrong with New Springfield might have been correct, Revenant.”
***
Hypothermia!
Not sure about her eyes, but the rest is... just right.
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