Epiphany
Arkham Asylum, Southern New Jersey
"Hurry up, girl—y'know th' 'guests' get antsy if room service's late!"
"Just about ready, ma'am," replied the apprentice chef, giving the soup in the semi-industrial scale stewpot a gentle stir...with a ladle held dagger stiff in a gnarl of a fist.
Daria had, she supposed, every right and reason to be nervous that evening, though that was hardly the reason for her death grip on the harmless old cooking implement. She wasn't nervous, really. Elated, if anything.
...But she was fairly sure the ladle would slip from her sweat-slick hand if she didn't hold back her arm's tremor with sheer will.
She clucked, quietly, to herself. She'd probably overdone it...an "accidental" overdose of her usual MAOI cocktail would hardly bring about Serotonin Syndrome so quickly, and to such a noticable degree...but she might still be able to bluff it away. Maybe.
In any case, she thought, glancing across the "hospital" kitchen before cracking the vial taped under her sleeve, and pouring it into the simmering broth, it's better than the alternative.
She smiled. If I have nothing else...I'll have my brain.
It was an old story, really...ever since her old life had died, that lovely graduation day, when the costumed freaks had blown into her world. Leaving nothing...and no one...behind—just crowds of smiles. And Daria's brain.
Daria had never been atheletic. Nor particularly agile, or charismatic. She'd had no extraordinary military or technological skill—and those were some things she'd found that she simply couldn't learn. Normally, there was no real shame in that—but when one thirsts for vengeance in a world of "costumed champions," gods in all but name...having a fine brain only serves to make one realize the futility of striking against into the "game" of olympians. And a strong will only stokes rage and madness over one's impotence to avenge wounded pride.
She'd thought that was why she hated the world's "heroes," once. That because she lacked inhuman powers, she could never measure up, never join them, defending against evil. That had been brushed aside, though, for a new theory; that she hated them because of how they operated; self-appointed, glorified vigilantes, deciding on their own to direct the world's fate.
But, as Daria reflected, stirring the powdered MPTP into the soup, letting it dissolve into invisible nothingness, that was just another 'golden calf.' A mental 'false idol,' that she'd believed to satisfy some psychological need.
But, clever, and tormented, her brain had eeked out the truth...
She didn't hate "heroes" because she envied them, or feared their power. There were too many analogous situations in mundane, non-superheroic life that didn't bother her. And she was, although she was sad to realize it, too much of a pragmatist to stand for using a "the means justify the ends" philosophy to condemn super-powered vigilantism. After all, how many times had the world indeed improved it's lot, throughout man's long history, by mavericks, adventurers, and iconoclasts? Or by tyrants, spymasters, cutthroats?
She didn't, she realized, resent the heroes for having their power, or fear their claiming the right to use it.
She hated them because they didn't use it. Because the 'gods' existed, and they had the power to smite and strike down evil...but most of them wouldn't do it. They had the power, but they wouldn't take the responsibility. All of the responsibility...like being responsible for the continued existance of a rictus-faced joke of a psychopath who'd slain hundreds of innocents on a campus grounds in Boston, one beautiful summer day, for no reason but laughs. And smiles.
And the gods in all but name would let that man live, and kill again, and again. Just so they could convince themselves that they were still people, not gods.
They'd let the whole world die, pieces at a time...just so they could keep wearing their costumes.
Daria's brain brought the truth to her. Her will forced her to see it, to admit it. To act.
Her brain...now shethed in near-toxic neurochemical "armor" against the neurotoxin she'd smuggled into her workplace at the "hospital." "Hospital" might be a sham, but "workplace" was certainly apt...it was her magnum workplace, really.
Her smile grew as she wordlessly brought the stewpot over to the prep table, where another of the kitchen staff began dutifully ladling out a healthy supper for twelve of the world's most dangerous metahuman criminals held in the asylum that night.
There was nothing deadly about the fine, homestyle stuff Daria had prepared...nothing so base. Killing was wrong, wasn't it? That's what all the heroes say, right?
But, as a matter of fact, Daria thought, hanging up her apron for the evening, there was nothing inherantly deadly about something that would quietly burn out the midbrain's substantia nigra. The "patients" would simply eat, turn in for the night...and awaken—heh. "awaken." For awhile, anyway—the next morning as they began to suffer from an extremely late-stage Parkinsonian disorder, as their brains lost all ability to produce dopamine. A condition that, sadly, medical science couldn't quite compensate for.
Nor could a supervillain, now paralyzed and all but catatonic, gathering dust while strapped to a bed, somewhere.
As Daria punched her timecard before leaving for home that evening, her brain, a steadfast realist, reminded her that she probably wouldn't get away with it.
But she smiled. She would survive it, though. And long enough to know that, if even for an instant, she'd done it. She'd risen above mundane human failings. She'd spit in the world's face.
She'd beaten the villain who'd taken the people she loved, and beaten the heroes who wouldn't protect them. She'd beaten the Joker...
...and she'd beaten Batman.
...there are only two kinds of men in the human race
There's the one staying put in his proper place
And the one with his foot in the other one's face!
—Sweeney Todd
—8/16/2006
A PPMB "Iron Chef" challange, IIRC.
An old story of mine...thought I'd plop it somewhere it'd be a tad more accessible.