James Cameron and Charles Eglee own Dark Angel. My use is in no way meant to challenge their copyrights. This piece is not intended for any profit on the part of the writer, nor is it meant to detract from the commercial viability of the aforementioned copyright. Any similarity to any events or persons, either real or fictional, is unintended.
Where's My Moriarty?
by
Nevermore
Max sat quietly at the top of the Space Needle, wondering what life was all about. It really didn't seem that there was any point to it all. Sure, she had been gifted with superhuman abilities as a result of being a government genetics experiment, but those 'gifts' did not come without a price. To any casual observer, that price was obvious – she needed tryptophan to survive. In addition, there was also the recent revelation that every new day brought with it the possibility that she would simply begin to spontaneously age at a lethally accelerated rate. But neither of these pitfalls of her existence held her attention now. Her mind was consumed with another matter, one which she had not started to think about until recently.
Max had come to the conclusion that she was simply too perfect, and the result was boredom. Nothing in the world could really touch her – she was too much of a physical threat for anyone outside of her own project to ever be a challenge for her, and no disease had a chance against her artificially augmented immune system. She was in no danger. For any 'ordinary' person, this would be a comforting thought; she knew that truth all too well. Humans generally needed to feel safe. It was to increase security in the world that the project that had produced her had first been conceived. By using artificial, genetically engineered super soldiers, the government hoped to insulate itself more effectively against external threats.
Being a super soldier not only in nature, but also in her education, Max constantly sought out new challenges for herself. She always thrilled at the idea of a new building to rob or a different scam to pull. In the end, it all meant nothing. Only now, after everything she had been through, did she finally understand what was missing in her life – she needed some kind of arch-nemesis. She knew her abilities effectively made her a real-life super-hero. Her life was empty, though, without a true super-villain. She tried to remember the scenarios of comic books before the pulse – Batman had the Joker, Superman had Lex Luthor, and the X-Men had Magneto. The struggles these fictional heroes endured to defeat their nemeses helped define what they were. Max had no such adversary to help her give meaning to her own existence.
For years she had been consumed with hatred for, and fear of, Lydecker. He had been her boogeyman, the one thing that was guaranteed to bring her nightmares and constantly keep her looking over her shoulder. She had met him twice recently, though, and had concluded that she was not at all impressed with the supposed scourge of her existence. In fact, a terrorist would have put a cap in him if I hadn't saved his sorry ass, Max mused. What kind of super-villain needs to be saved by his nemesis? That's pathetic. She concluded that she was just way out of Lydecker's league and resolved to never again live in fear of him.
Max leaned back and thought the matter through once again. She could, of course, become a crusader for Logan's cause, but what was the point? None of the men and women she would face would be worthy of her. True, there were all too many wicked people who should be removed from the scene, but there were normal people, the ones like Logan, who were already fighting that war. They didn't need her. In fact, Max felt her involvement would only cheapen any success that Logan eventually achieved. That thought bothered her. She had come to respect the man, and care deeply about him. She didn't want to do anything that would lessen his success.
What she needed was for one of her fellow Manticore escapees to show up in town and set up shop as some kind of criminal kingpin. That would do the trick – she would finally have someone worthy of her attention as a defender of justice, or at least what passed for justice in a third world nation. Maybe aliens could land and try to take over the planet, leaving Max to take up the fight to free her world from its alien overlords. She smiled as that thought occurred to her. Maybe I've been reading the old comic books a little too much lately. Max shrugged her shoulders and stood up, deciding that she had best get back home to do her laundry. All these abilities, and I still have to wash my own clothes, she thought with a grin. It would definitely have been better to be Batman – at least he always had Alfred for crap like this.