Warren Peace was a hero. Really.
They made business cards.
Hotshot. Certified Superhero. XXX-XXX-XXXX.
Being a superhero meant, along with the powers, he was trained in what was right and wrong. He was levelheaded in the face of certain death, and he had a fancy-ass uniform.
Right now, out of the rather short list of requirements for being a superhero, he just had the superpowers. And if anything, he had too much power.
Honestly? He blamed Skeetzo. The poor excuse of a supervillain just lived to try his patience. First, he sent plasma blast after blast into the crowd (but did they really have to watch all the time? His job wasn't like a wrestling match. There was no ring.) Then, the little bastard went and got a hostage. Some teenage punk with bright neon blue hair and big startled eyes that looked at him like a Bambi deer and for a second flashed a fiery amber that just got his blood boiling.
Well, his blood burning would be more accurate.
Warren Peace, in that situation, did what every hero in that situation was trained to do. Save the citizen, then secure the villain.
So he ended up burning a large crater into the ground with his enthusiasm (his powers have been getting a little more kick aas he's been getting older.) And so what if his fire-proof uniform got a little destroyed around the arms and torso. He may have been a little out of line when he started wailing on the guy, while he was on fire, and Will may have gotten a little singed when he tried to drag Warren off the bastard... So what if he got carried away. It's not like Stronghold was invincible. Warren's sure he got hurt before... Sometime. He definitely got burned before his powers kicked in.
Skeetzo may have filed a restraining order an sued for hospital bills and the like, but the girl was safe and that was all that mattered.
The bit about the uniform getting destroyed, though, was a little bit of a problem. He only had the one, because not only was he too new to the whole Superhero thing to have any major sponsors yet, but he also never really saw the need to have more than one. If he didn't join up the league with Will, he would've contented himself with being a small fish saving the world in his old leather jacket and a pair of jeans.
The league had an image, though, and even though he was a rookie he had to maintain that image. His uniform was as plain as he could afford. Just black spandex with red armor. Hell, he could've just ordered a plain uniform online. But Layla and Magenta insisted that he go to this fancy boutique he didn't give two shits about. They were moving up in the ranks, their little ragtag group, and the girls were pushing the rest to get better uniforms.
The boutique was called Jem. Maj and Layla had already gone, spent hundreds of dollars on clothes, and came back stylish and expensive-looking. And now they were in the papers almost as much as Stronghold.
That would be interesting and all if Warren cared. Over the years, he learned that arguing with the girls was pretty useless. Hell, trying to resist any of the group only managed to waste his energy. Even scaring Ethan shitless lost it's appeal after awhile. The boy always came back. Like a puppy.
Stronger men than him would've given up eventually.
He smiled a little bit, scaring some of the civilians around him, remembering the time when Zach clapped him on the back after taking care of that cave-in. His shoulder flamed up and gave the glowstick blisters. Sure, the lecture Layla parroted to him afterwards had him itching to punch a wall, but the frightened look on Neon's face had been worth it. And if Magenta could laugh about it, it couldn't have been that bad.
Warren took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. Time to man up and get it over with. It's not like it was some mutant villain terrorizing the community with it's acid projectiles again. It was just a store.
It looked like a pretty average store, actually. The clothes he saw in the window were civilian ones and as fancy looking as any regular boutique you'd see in the city. If he had girl parts, he'd probably say it was the shit. But he had man parts. Which means he didn't care for this at all.
He walked through the door anyway. If he had the wrong address, then tough shit for the girls. Finding the right place would probably take too damn long and he'd end up missing his appointment. If this didn't work, fuck protocol. He'd just save the world shirtless.
"Hello, welcome to Jem! Can I help you with something?" The girl, barely out of high school (not that he was much older, but still,) looked up from her magazine with a perky smile. He smiled back, reluctantly, and did a quick sweep of the store. All civilian clothes.
"Uh, yeah. I'm wondering if I'm at the right Jem. I have an appointment scheduled? Under Peace."
"Oh! The 1:00?" She asks, shuffling some papers around at the wooden counter she was standing behind. The whole place was filled with antique furniture, the clothes looked like high-end designer shit that girls went crazy over, and was he really here right now? "Right in the back, sir. Maia! Can you take Mr. Peace to the back?"
"Right away." A familiar-looking redhead came into view from seemingly out of nowhere.
"Ah." Of course. One of the girls from Sky High. That was why the girls were so insistent they get the clothes from here. That jacket in the corner looked familiar, too. One of Maj's favorites. They were probably here all the time.
She gave him a small smile at the look of shock on his face and led him through the clothes to a door in the back.
"I'm kind of surprised you're here." She says quietly as they enter a small office. There are those sewing mannequins (is that what they're called? Fuck, he doesn't care enough to know,) in the corner, civilian and super alike, and a long black desk with a neat little sketchpad and a sewing machine on it. He doesn't really have much of an opinion on it, other than it's a little cluttered with the boxes of fabric and the pages and pages of designs tacked onto the wall.
"Why is that?" He asks, able to keep up a conversation and observe his surroundings at the same time.
She gives him another smile, and he's beginning to think that she knows something he doesn't, because the smile looks like it's expecting some type of reaction. He reluctantly smiles back.
"Nothing, nothing. I'm overanalyzing. Tea? She'll be a minute. Some packages just came in and she's signing off again."
"I'm good, thanks."
"Right. I'll just be outside then, call me if you need anything."
"Sure. Thanks." More smiles were exchanged before she left.
He let out a breath of air and took out a book. Perfume, the story about the serial-killer who made perfume out of the women he killed. It was a little twisted, but doing good for a living made everything fluffy feel like work. A few minutes with Jean-Baptiste's mind and Warren heard the door click.
He stood up out of habit (because superheroes were nothing if not polite,) and turned around to shake hands with the woman he'd be working with. Maybe it'll be another super from school. Like that psycho Janice or something. She always seemed into fashion.
He stopped short.
The hair was darker, longer, her features more defined, the makeup less severe, but it was her. All grown-up and filled out, her legs going on for miles underneath the pencil skirt and put together like a fucking model or something.
Emily.
His one that got away.
Author's Note: I couldn't resist myself. I have a whole ton of other stories to finish, but I couldn't help it.