II. Everything You Ever
Summary: Justin drags Alex along on yet another mission of cinematic redemption, because a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Everyone's a hero in their own way, so they say, but when Alex tries to lend a caring hand, will it lead to a brand new day? Or will events take a horrible turn?
Spoilers: OK, I usually don't telegraph these things, but if you haven't seen Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog yet, please stop right here. Then slap yourself a few times for your silly short-sightedness, and go watch it. Because, seriously, you're missing out. Really. (Oh, and there's also a few minor spoilers for episode 3.22, "Captain Jim Bob Sherwood", but that's neither here nor there.)
Disclaimer: Over two years and fifteen fanfics later, I still don't own Wizards of Waverly Place, more's the pity. Nor do I own Dr. Horrible, but that's not quite as big a deal to me.
Author's Note: I hadn't intended to follow the Iron Man chapter with yet another super-person-themed installment, but I found myself inspired when Dr. Horrible premiered on the CW a few weeks ago. Don't blame me, blame my muse. (And for my long-time readers curious about the fate of OTP, don't fret: the next chapter is half-written, and will go up soon. I just had to get this out of the way first.)
ii.
And then suddenly, with a bright flash of light and a slight tinkling noise, they appeared. In the middle of the sidewalk. On a very busy street. In broad daylight. In what appeared to be downtown Los Angeles. Alex gave a start as she took all this in, and hurriedly dropped her brother's hand and hid her still-glowing wand behind her back. It was a pretty feeble attempt to hide the truth of what had just happened, even by Alex's standards. But despite the fact that they'd just materialized out of thin air, nobody else on the street seemed terribly concerned. Or even gave them so much as a second glance, for that matter. Even the woman with the baby carriage, who'd had to stop suddenly to keep from crashing into them when they'd appeared in her path, merely shot her a look of annoyance as her baby started to cry.
"Pardon us, ma'am," Justin said smoothly, even as he grabbed Alex by the wrist and started tugging her towards the street. "Terribly sorry about that."
"Well, I should certainly hope so!" the young mother snapped after them. She leaned forward to pick up her crying infant, and raised her voice to be heard over it as she cradled it to her chest to comfort it. "Why don't you idiots ever watch where you're popping in?"
Alex blinked at her over her shoulder, then nearly stumbled off the curb as Justin pulled her into the road, to weave their way through the gridlocked traffic.
"Justin, why isn't she freaked out?" she asked, as he towed her around the front of a yellow cab. "And why aren't you freaked out that she isn't freaked out?"
"Because superpowers are relatively commonplace, here," Justin said, without looking back at her. "These people probably see folks teleport in and out all the time. C'mon, keep up."
"Oh great," Alex groaned. "Lemme guess, we're in another one of your dorky superhero movies?"
"No, Alex," Justin sighed. "Well...actually, yes. Sort of. But not really...look, it's complicated, OK? And I don't have time to explain."
"So who asked you to?" Alex scoffed, as she dodged around the front end of a yellow cab. The driver made a rude gesture at her, so she flipped him the bird right back. "Do you ever watch anything that doesn't have capes, or Klingons, or lightsabers in it? Crap like this is why you keep getting pantsed in P.E. You know that, right?"
"This one is different," Justin insisted. "You'll like it, OK? You liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer, didn't you?"
"Ugh, that's exactly what you said when you made me watch that stupid space-western show," said Alex, wrinkling her nose. "And OK, I'll admit Captain Tightpants was reasonably hot, but you can keep your crazy space incest to yourself, thank you very much."
Justin gave a frustrated grunt as he pulled her up onto the curb on the opposite side of the street. "Alex, for the last time, Simon and River Tam are not—"
"Psh, whatever! They were totally doing it. Maybe not right up there on the screen for everyone to see, but trust me. It's sub-sexed."
"Subtext!" Justin snapped, stopping in his tracks so abruptly that she ran into the back of him. He turned on his heels to glare at her. "The word is subtext!"
"Oh," Alex blinked at him, then shrugged one shoulder. "Well, I like my word better."
Justin opened his mouth to reply, then apparently thought better of it and slowly exhaled instead.
"Listen, could we please just focus, here?"
"Focus on what, exactly? You haven't even told me what you're doing here, dorkface!"
"The only thing I need you to do is keep out of the way," Justin snapped. "The only reason I brought you at all is so you wouldn't pop in unexpectedly and mess everything up like you did last time."
"Hey, that was so not my fault!" Alex protested. "I'm not the one who put on a robot suit and went all rampagey just because RDJ made a pass at—"
She broke off as Justin abruptly turned and started walking briskly towards a large, old-looking building ahead of him, forcing Alex to jog a few steps to catch up. The long, white banner that fluttered gently in the breeze above the front doors read "Caring Hands Homeless Shelter - Grand Opening".
"Jesus, egghead, what's your big hurry?" Alex asked. "You literally just got this DVD. Don't you want to watch it at least once before we skip to the end and start messing with it?"
"I've already seen it," Justin said, huffing slightly as he hurried up the steps. "I know exactly what I have to do."
"Ohhhhhhhh no," Alex groaned. "I know that tone of voice. This is another one of your stupid little missions, isn't it? Where you 'let justice prevail' and 'put right what once went wrong'?"
"Stop making air quotes at me," Justin snapped over his shoulder. "And they're not stupid. Captain Jim Bob Sherwood would approve. And Sam Beckett would understand."
"Who, you mean the play-writing guy?"
"No, not the—!" Justin stopped short again at the top of the steps and stared at her in surprise. "Wait, you actually know that there was a playwright named Sam Beckett?"
"Duh," Alex snorted as she stepped up next to him and smoothed out her skirt over her tights. "I had to do a report on him last semester for English, so me and Harper pulled him out of a picture on Wikipedia so she could interview him for me. Dude was kinda funny, in a sarcastic way, but emo as shit."
Justin gaped at her. "You're kidding me."
"True story, swear to God. Harper popped a huge lady-boner over him, too. She even wanted to show him some modern theatre, but all we could get tickets for last-minute at that booth in Times Square was Avenue Q. And he got all bitchy about it, and demanded we send him back. Right in the middle of The Internet Is For Porn. Huge scene, it was this whole big thing. But I mean, who can blame him, right? Because ugh, musicals are...what? Why are you looking at me like that?"
Staring at her as though she'd suddenly grown a third eye on her forehead, Justin slowly shook his head in a combination of amazement and disgust. Without taking his eyes off her, he silently reached out and yanked open one of the large double-doors at the entrance. Holding it open, he gestured with his other hand for her to enter. Alex rolled her eyes at him, but smiled nevertheless. Justin Russo, ever the gentleman, even with the little sister who drove him batshit most of the time.
"Look, egghead," she said to him as she stepped through, "the whole point of me researching this stupid spell for us in the first place was to have fun with it, not for you to—what the fuck?"
This time it was Alex's turn to stop short as she realized she'd walked into the middle of a full-blown musical number. A large man in a brown T-shirt and black rubber gloves, with a—was that a hammer on his chest?—was pacing back and forth on a stage at the front of the room as he belted out a song to an orchestral accompaniment that seemed to come from everywhere at once. The audience arrayed before him swayed in their folding chairs in time to the music, utterly transfixed by him. Several of them, Alex couldn't help but notice, looked suspiciously like homeless people.
"Everyone's a hero in their own way
Everyone's got something they can do
Get up, get out and fly
Especially that guy, he smells like poo"
"Oh, good," Justin said from behind her, with a sigh of relief. "We haven't missed it."
"Justin, where the hell have you brought me?" Alex growled, eyeing him suspiciously. "And why the hell is that dude singing?"
"Shhhhh!" somebody from the audience hissed, and several of them actually turned in their seats to glare at them, even a few of the homeless-looking ones. Alex glared right back, but Justin grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her up the middle aisle, to sit in two of the unoccupied folding chairs near the back. For his part, the tall signing dude up at the front didn't seem to have noticed them, so wrapped up was he in singing that all of them—but mostly him—were heroes. In their own way.
"God," Alex observed, "what a douchecanoe!"
"Shhhhhh!" somebody hissed again. Alex glanced around, to see two girls and a beefy guy in matching brown shirts with Hammer-dude's face on them—some kind of groupies, apparently—in the row ahead giving her stink-eye. Snorting at them, she started to get back to her feet, only to have Justin tug her back down again.
"Alex, keep your voice down!" Justin hissed in her ear. "We don't want to draw attention to ourselves!"
"Well, maybe you should have thought about that before you dragged me into the middle of a production number, Justin!" Alex hissed back. "What the hell is this, some kind of superhero musical?"
"It's an internet musical, actually," Justin corrected her. "That, yes, happens to feature superheroes. But it's really more about a supervill—"
"What did I just say about musicals!" Alex snarled under her breath. "I've vaporized every single copy of Camp Rock 2 that Harper's brought home for a reason! Even the one she got off Netflix! I don't do musicals, Justin!"
"Look, it's only for a few minutes, OK? Just one more song after this one, and we're—"
"'One more after this one?' Are you shitting me?"
"—home free," Justin finished, ignoring her. "All you have to do is sit here, not cause a disruption, and let me do my thing. Then we're out of here. We're talking ten minutes, tops."
"Ugh, fine!" Alex huffed. She slouched back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. "But you'd better not expect me to sing along, because it is so not happening!"
Justin actually chuckled at that. "Yeah, no. I've watched you play Rock Band with Max and Harper, Alex. Trust me, the last thing anyone wants is for you to sing."
Alex shot him a withering look—because, dammit, the only reason they kept failing on "Together, Forever" was because Max was absolute crap on bass guitar—then shook her head and turned her attention back to the douchecanoe up at the front, singing something about being "poverty's new sherrif". She blinked as a sudden realization struck her, then leaned forward in her seat and squinted.
"Hey wait, isn't that Captain Tightpants?"
"Ethcuthe you, but hith name ith Captain Hammer!" Groupie #3 hissed, turning partway around in his own chair to sneer at her. "Now would you kindly thtuff a thock in it already?"
"Hey!" Justin said. "Buddy, that's my sis—"
"Justin," Alex broke in, holding up one palm towards him to cut him off, then laid it on the shoulder of the scowling groupie as she smiled prettily at him.
"Try and shush me just one more time, dude," she whispered, her smile growing wider and tighter, "they'll be calling you the Colostomy Bag Kid. You get me, big man?"
The lisping groupie's eyes went wide, even as his complexion faded to a deathly pale. Glancing from Alex to Justin and back again, he muttered something under his breath then spun stiffly around in his seat to face forward again, where Captain Hammer (née Tightpants) was insisting he didn't care if most of his audience was made up of scary, alcoholic bums.
"EVERYBODY!" he shouted, waving for them all to join in.
"Pfft, hardly!" Alex snorted, even as practically everyone else in the room raised their arms and began to sway in unison...except for Justin, who was staring at her with something approaching stunned amazement.
"Oh, what are you looking at?" she asked. "Justin, I've slayed a dragon, for Christ's sake. You think I can't handle some oversized fanboy with a speech impediment? I don't need you to stick up for me. I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself."
"Oh hey, no question," Justin said quietly. "It's not that at all. I'm frankly just shocked that you actually know what a colostomy bag is."
"Oh I know, right?" Alex beamed. "I think I got it from Grey's Anatomy or something. Isn't it amazing what I retain?"
"Everyone's a hero in their own way," Captain Hammerpants sang, as he hopped back up onto the stage.
"(We're heroes, too)," the audience sang back in unison as they swayed, somehow managing to spontanously harmonize with one another.
"Everyone can blaze a hero's trail."
"(We're just like you!)"
"Jesus, this is creepy," Alex said, as her eyes swept over the crowd. "Remember the time the zombie horde attacked my anti-prom? And we hand to dance-battle them? Even that was way less creepy that this."
"Mmm-hmm," Justin muttered, but he wasn't really listening. His attention was drawn not to the front of the room, but to the rear, where a large red cloth was draped over...well, something.
"Don't worry if it's hard If you're not a friggin' tard You will prevail!"
"Hey, what's under there?" Alex asked, as she took notice of it for the first time.
"Hammer thinks that it's a statue of him that the city's dedicating in his honor for confronting the homelessness problem," Justin replied, watching it expectantly. "But it's not."
"Everyone's a hero in their own way."
"(We're heroes too.)"
"OK, and...?" Alex prompted, because that really hadn't answered her question. "What's really under there, then?"
"Everyone's a hero in their—"
And then as if on cue, the red cloth was thrown aside and fluttered to the ground, and a brilliant flash of blue light burst out from within. It was so bright that, even though she turned her head away and shut her eyes tight, Alex still saw coloured spots dancing in the blackness. This was accompanied by a high-pitched sound that could only be characterized as a "zap", as well as a few surprised gasps from the crowd surrounding her. And then...
"MU-HU-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"Him," Justin said quietly into the shocked silence that followed, right before the piano chords started.
Blinking away the last of the lights from her vision, Alex tried to get her eyes to focus...and found herself staring at Captain Hammer, frozen in place behind the podium, and glowing a bright, pulsing blue. Confused, Alex turned to Justin for an explanation, only to see him still staring with open awe at the pedestal where Captain Hammerpants had supposedly expected his statue to be. With a frown, she twisted around in her own seat to see what the big deal was. There, she discovered a boyish-looking blonde dude in an oversized white lab coat, with a pair of large, dark goggles perched on his head. He sneered in malevolent triumph as he stepped out from behind the tripod-mounted ray gun that stood on the pedestal, the tip of it also glowing a bright, pulsing blue.
"Ohhhhhhh, I get it!" Alex said, as she watched him step down and begin to creep up the aisle in time with the eerie piano chords. "He's an evil scientist, and that's a freeze ray! Wait, but isn't that Barney from How I Met Your Mother?"
She realized she'd said this too loud when he frowned and cocked an eyebrow at her as he passed.
"Alex...!" Justin grunted through clenched teeth beside her.
"Oh, sorry dude," Alex said patting the air with both hands. "Go on and have your moment. My bad."
Evil Scientist Barney's puzzled frown frown deepened a little for a second or two, before he shook his head sharply, and apparently put her out of his mind as he began to sing:
"Look at these people
Amazing how sheep will
Show up for the slaughter"
Alex watched him for a moment, making sure he'd forgotten about her, before she turned back to Justin and opened her mouth to ask what he was planning.
"No one condemning you
Lined up like lemmings you
Led to the water"
But Justin wasn't there—he was already up out of his seat, and was up on the pedestal, prying open a panel on the side of Evil Scientist Barney's freeze ray, and fiddling with its insides.
"Why can't they see what I see?
Why can't they hear the lies?"
Sparing another glance up the aisle—where Evil Scientist Barney was mounting the steps towards the frozen Captain Hammerpants—Alex leaned forward to fish her wand out of the side of her boot, then spun it in a tight circle, out of sight near the floor.
"Maybe the fee's too pricey
For them to realize
Your disguise is slipping"
"Literarium Terrarium Activa Caesura!" she said, whispering so that no one would hear her over the music, and Evil Scientist Barney's singing.
The tip of her wand flared bright green for a moment, and a large transluscent 'Pause' symbol—two vertical lines, side by side—shimmered briefly in the air before it.
"I think you're slip—"
Everything around her stopped: the creepy piano chords, Evil Scientist Barney's warbling, even the low, persistent hum of the freeze ray behind her. Everyone stood frozen in place like living statues, unblinking and unmoving, whether they were a smelly hobo, a cowering fanboy groupie, or some lunatic in a lab coat and enormous white, rubber gloves.
"There," she said proudly, holstering her wand back in her boot and standing up. She turned around and beamed at Justin, before brushing off her palms as though at the end of a hard day's work. "You're welcome, egghead."
"What the—?" Justin blinked at the guts of the freeze ray, then looked at her with a grimace. "Alex, what did you just do?"
"What do you think, nerdbutt? I paused the DVD so you could sabatoge Evil Scientist Barney's little ray gun without him noticing. Duh!" Alex hopped up onto the pedestal across from him, on the other side of it. "That's what we're here to do, right? Make it go boom, or whatever, so that Captain Hammerpants can get unfrozen and knock Evil Scientist Barney's adorable little block off for truth, justice and the blah blah blah?"
"No, that's not what we're here to—wait, adorable? You think Dr. Horrible is cute?"
"His name is Doctor Horrible? Really? Snkt! Even Professor Eviltini had a better supervillain name, and hers sounds like a drink you'd make with with rum and cherry Coke." She turned to look up on the stage, where Dr. Horrible was frozen in mid-sneer next to Captain Hammerpants, and shrugged. "Sure, I guess he's kinda cute. I mean, he's better-looking when he's suited-up on HIMYM, but even dressed like you, he's—"
"How is he dressed like me?" Justin cut her off, looking down at himself. "I'm wearing a Star Wars T-shirt and jeans!"
"I mean when you're in your room doing your stupid mad-scientist robot experiments, dork," Alex said, rolling her eyes. "You look just like that: lab coat, welding goggles. OK, you don't have the gloves, but...say, what's the deal with that, anyway? Why do they both have on these big rubber gloves? Is that a thing here?"
"Alex..." Justin closed his eyes and sighed, faux-patiently, then let out his breath slowly as he inwardly counted to ten. "Look, I know you're trying to help, if I'm actually going to fix this thing, I need the power to be flowing so I can determine why exactly it shorts out, first. So could you please unpause everything and stay out of the way like I asked you to?"
"But, Justin...if I do that, won't Doc Horri-Barney there notice you fooling around with his ray gun thingie and, like, go batshit?"
Hunched over and poking at the innards of the freeze ray again with a miniature screwdriver, Justin shook his head. "No, as long as Captain Hammer stays frozen, I think he'll be too wrapped up his song to notice."
"What are you, high? We're right out in the open! There's no way he's going to miss—"
"He's a supervillain, Alex," Justin sighed. "Monologuing obliviously while the heroes tamper with his fiendish death trap is what supervillains do. He's just doing it in song, that's all. It's a trope, look it up. Now would you hurry up and resumo, already?"
"All right, geez. Forgive me for trying to help." Frowning at him, Alex hitched her knee up to her chest and fished her wand back out of her boot. Holding it aloft, she started to give it a twist, then stopped as a sudden thought struck her.
"Hang on, did you just say you were trying to fix it?" she asked, confused. "You meant to say wreck it, right? Because I thought NPH was playing the bad guy, here..."
"Dammit, Alex!" Slapping the top of the freeze ray and standing up just enough to glare at her over the top of it, Justin pointed at her with the screwdriver, his grey eyes flaring angrily. "Stop wasting my time and just do it! Now!"
"OK, OK! Jesus, calm down already!" Unnerved, Alex stepped back off the podium to put some distance between her and her brother, then raised her wand and spun it in a circle. "Literarium Terrarium Activa Resumo."
The tip of her wand again flared a bright green, as a large transluscent 'Play' symbol briefly shimmered in the air above it. Immediately the room around them swung back into motion, with nobody showing any awareness of the fact that they'd stopped. Even the creepy piano chords resumed as Doc Horri-Barney picked up his song right where he'd left off. But even as he started to walk back up the aisle towards them, he didn't even spare the freeze ray a second glance, so intent was he on creeping out his uneasy captive audience.
God, but it annoyed her whenever Justin was right about things. The fact that it happened so goddamned often only made it worse.
Snorting to herself in disgust, Alex threw herself into the nearest empty chair and—without even bothering to put her wand away—crossed her arms over her chest. Ignoring Justin, barely paying attention to Doc Horri-Barney as he stalked back and forth and sang about cavemen and thunder, she pouted. Hard. So hard that she thought she might actually sprain her bottom lip from jutting it out so far.
But long seconds passed, and Justin still hadn't given in. Still hadn't dropped everything and flocked to her side to apologize and try to make everything OK, like he usually did when she made him feel guilty for snapping at her and/or not letting her have her way. Curious, she risked a glance over her shoulder to see what was taking him so long...and then her jaw dropped as she realized he'd completely forgotten about her altogether. Squinting into the open side of the freeze ray, poking at it with the screwdriver in one hand and some kind of electrical doo-dad in the other, his face bathed in an eerie blue glow, it was as though all of his attention was actually focussed on what he was doing.
Furious, Alex stood up, balling her hands into fists at her sides, clutching her wand so tightly that her knuckles went white. She opened her mouth to call out Justin's name...then broke off as, to her left, Dr. Horri-Barney pulled a second, smaller but more threatening-looking ray gun out of his coat, and opened fire.
Granted, it was only the ceiling that he fired at, and though it flashed a bright, angry red, even that didn't seem all that worse for the experience. But the crowd screamed and began to scatter all the same. Even the creepy piano chords reacted, growing harder and more aggressive as they were suddenly backed by a full orchestra.
"Go ahead – run away
Say it was horrible
Spread the word – tell a friend
Tell them the tale
Get a pic – do a blog
Heroes are over with
Look at him – not a word
Hammer, meet nail!"
"Justin!" Alex cried out, crossing to the podium and jumping up onto it. "Justin, we have to—!"
"Kinda busy here, Alex!" Justin said, without looking up from whatever he was doing with the freeze ray.
Gawking at him, Alex reached over the top of the freeze ray to flick him on the ear. Justin flinched in pain, then picked his head up to glare back at her.
"Alex, what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks do you think you're—?"
"Would you look at what's going on?" Alex pointed stiff-armed to her left, where Doc Horri-Barney was indiscriminantly waving his gun at the fleeing crowd as he sang. "We have to do something!"
"I am doing something!" Justin snarled, as he reached back into the freeze ray. Sparks leapt from within as he touched it with the electrical doo-hickey, whatever it was.
"Well, whatever you're doing, do it faster!" Alex flinched as Doc Horri-Barney shot the ceiling again, bathing the room in an eerie flickering red glow. "He's gonna kill somebody with that thing!"
"Yes, that's why it's called a Death Ray," Justin snarked. "Look, he's not hurting anyone with it, just scaring people. And if you'll just shut up for a minute and let me finish what I'm doing here, nobody will get hurt, OK?"
"But Justin—!"
"Alex!" Though he clearly didn't want to, Justin tore his eyes away from the sparking innards of the freeze ray just long enough to look into hers. "You have to trust me. Please. I know what I'm doing. It'll be all right."
Alex opened her mouth to protest, then slowly closed it again, and simply nodded.
"OK," Justin said, sparing her a tight smile before he looked back into the guts of the freeze ray. "Just give me a few seconds, here..."
Letting out a shaky breath, Alex turned her head to watch Doc Horri-Barney again, curious as to why the music had gotten all quiet and tense again. The mad scientist had stopped singing, stopped intimidating the audience, and was casting his gaze about the room as though he were looking for somebody. Alex raised her wand defensively, ready to fire off a curse the second his eyes landed on her and Justin...but oddly, they never did.
"No sign of Penny
Good — I would do anything
Not to have her see"
Satisfied that he hadn't found whoever it was he was looking for—this "Penny" chick, she assumed—Horri-Barney hefted his death ray in both hands and mounted the steps towards the stage, and the frozen Captain Hammerpants.
"It's gonna be bloody
Head up Billy buddy
There's no time for mercy"
He raised the ray gun, pointed it at Hammer's head, seemed to hesitate...
"Justin...!" Alex urged him, wand still held at the read, her eyes darting between Horrible's back, and the glowing tip of the still-functioning freeze ray.
"I know, I know, I know!" Justin muttered. "Hang on, I think I've fixed it..."
The music grew loud and ominous again as Horrible took a deep breath to steel himself, then raised the death ray once more, and pressed it to Captain Hammer's forehead.
"Here goes no mercy...!"
And finally—trust him or not—Alex couldn't wait on Justin any longer.
"Before this douche can fire his beam, wrap him in a containment stream!" she shouted.
Flicking her wand at him like she was cracking a whip, she fired a crackling ribbon of indigo-cyan lighting at him. Horrible cried out in pain and surprise as it struck him in the back, then coiled itself around him like an electrified boa constrictor, pinning his arms to his sides in the process.
"Ahhh-owwww!" he yelped, as the music broke off abruptly. Shuddering like an epileptic on a caffeine drip, he looked down at himself, and the ribbons of blue-red energy surrounding him. "What the hell is—? Oh, balls!"
Beside her, Justin jerked fully upright, his eyes and mouth forming three perfect circles as he looked from Alex, to the struggling Dr. Horrible, and back again.
"Alex, no!" he yelled, lunging over the freeze ray to grab at her wrist with both hands. "Stop! You don't understand!"
"Let go, Justin!" she snarled back, wrenching her arm to the side, out of his grasp. "I've got this!"
Tugging back on her wand so forcefully had an immediate effect on the confinement beam, pulling it backwards and yanking Doctor Horrible right off his feet.
"Mother—!" he blurted out as he sailed backwards off the steps, losing his grip on the death ray in the process. The ray gun flew up out of his hands, bounced off the edge of the podium with a loud crack and a shower of bright read sparks, then hurtled towards the floor—
("Noooooooo!" Justin screamed at the top of his lungs, right before he hurled himself bodily at Alex.)
—where it suddenly exploded on impact in a brilliant scarlet flash, letting loose an expanding shockwave that rippled just above Alex's head as Justin crash-tackled her off the pedestal, scalding her scalp with prickly head and singeing the ends of her hair. As her world turned itself sideways, jagged, sizzling pieces of shrapnel shot off in all directions, whistling through the air to embed themselves in the walls, floors, ceiling, and even in the podium directly in front of the still-frozen Captain Hammer. She had maybe a half-second to marvel at how lucky he was not to have been impaled before she hit the ground, crying out as Justin's shoulder drove the wind out of her. Her wand slipped from her grasp and rolled a few inches away, momentarily forgotten. The containment stream that arced from its tip disappeared into nothingness.
Alex couldn't tell how long she lay curled into a fetal position on the floor, coughing and gasping desperately as she struggled to get her breath back. It felt like an eternity before the dark spots stopped dancing before her eyes. She kept waiting for Justin to help her, the way he always did, to lift her up onto her feet and check her over for cuts and bruises, with his soulful grey eyes brimming over with worry. But it never happened.
And so Alex was pretty pissed off when she finally forced herself upright, groaning and still a little out of breath. The feeling was only compounded when she realized that Justin not only seemed completely unconcerned, but wasn't even paying attenion to her in the first place. Glaring daggers at his back, she snatched her wand up off the floor where it lay, then took a step forward and punched him in the shoulder, hard.
"Thanks for the help, jerkface," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "I'm fine, by the way, in case you were worried you'd killed me, or whatever."
But Justin didn't reply, didn't even flinch away from the blow or complain about how he easily he bruised, like he normally did. He just stood there, shoulders slumped, facing away from her towards...well, who cared what it was? It wasn't her, and that's all that mattered.
"Hey!" she said, reaching out and snapping her fingers right in front of his face. "Egghead! I am talking to—!"
Justin surprised her by grabbing her hand and pulling it down out of his field of vision, slowly but deliberately, his grip uncomfortably tight, bordering on painful. But he still didn't look at her, didn't even so much as blink. Alex narrowed her eyes at him, huffed in frustration, then finally glanced in the direction he was staring, to see what the big deal was.
And then, despite herself, she gasped.
Dr. Horrible knelt on the floor near the front of the room, just of to the side, his back to them, his entire body shaking like a leaf on a tree. And before him, slumped against the wall, was a pale, pretty redhead in a modest dress and sensible cardigan, breathing rapidly, with two pieces of jagged shrapnel sticking out of her chest.
"Oh my God!" Alex said, taking a step towards them. But Justin tugged roughly on her hand, holding her back, and shook his head. "We have to—!"
"It's too late," he said quietly, his voice raw with emotion.
Alex turned to look at him—at the defeated expression on his face, at the way his eyes misted over, as they tended to whenever his "allergies" were acting up—then looked back. Shifting her hand in his, she gripped it back just as tightly, as they watched the redhead murmur something she couldn't hear, right before the light went out of her eyes, and her head lolled to the left. Watching her, Dr. Horrible reached uncertainly towards her, and then just...deflated...right before their eyes, as though his entire world had just ended, right along with hers.
Alex swallowed hard against the twin lumps that had suddenly appeared on either side of her windpipe.
"Who is she?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "I mean...who was she?"
Justin let out a noise that was half-sigh, half-groan.
"Her name is Penny," he said. "She's Captain Hammer's girlfriend. Billy—Dr. Horrible—is in love with her. It's kind of a long story. You have to had watched the whole thing to get it."
Alex snorted bitterly. Hadn't she made that very same point?
"And what was it she said?" she asked instead. "Right before she...?"
"'Don't worry,'" Justin replied. "'Captain Hammer will save us.'"
Alex's eyes flicked towards the stage, where Captain Hammer still stood behind the podium—glowing blue and frozen—even as the piano came in again, slow and quiet, playing high, mournful chords, unscored with a deep sinister base. And as the strings started, blinking back "allergies" of her own, Alex turned her gaze back to her brother, anger rising and twisting itself up with the unfamiliar nauseous empty feeling that had suddenly appeared in the pit of her stomach without warning. And before anyone could sully the moment by breaking into song, she raised her left hand and flicked the tip of her wand violently to the side, without saying a word.
And though there hadn't been a proper spell attached to it, somehow the laws of magic, or whatever, had understood. The little globe on the end of her wand flared bright green, and everyone in the room just stopped, save for her and Justin.
"But you kept him frozen, didn't you?" she growled, her voice low as she glared at Justin. "This is all your fault!'
"Me?!" he snapped, whirling to face her, his eyes flaring. "I was trying to prevent this! I've been planning it for months! You're the one who zapped Billy and made him drop the death ray!"
"Hello?! Because it's a death ray!" Alex shouted back. "He was going to kill Captain Hammerpants!"
"No, he wouldn't have!" Justin snarled. "You saw how he hesitated! Doctor Horrible doesn't have it in him to kill anybody, not even a complete jerk like Captain Hammer! If you'd just stayed out of my way and trusted me, like I said—!"
"But he's the bad guy!" Alex yelled. "What the fuck, Justin? Since when do you side with the bad guy? What would Captain Jim Bob Sherwood say?"
"I told you, he'd approve!" Justin said sullenly, crossing his arms over his chest. "Especially if it meant saving Penny's life. In fact, in issue 482, he actually lied to an overzealous admiral of the Interplanetary Justice Force about the true whereabouts of his arch-nemesis Archibald Van Cleef, allowing him to escape certain doom, because he sensed that the evil professor could possibly be redeemed. Ha!"
"Redeemed? Seriously?" Alex pointed towards Dr. Horrible with the tip of her wand. "Did you not listen to a single word he sang? He wants to destroy the entire world, then take over whatever's left standing. He is bad news, I mean it. And coming from me, that's saying something!"
"Just because he's the villain doesn't make him a bad guy, Alex."
"What? Are you even listening to yourself? Who are you, and what have you done with the real Justin?"
"I'm Alex Russo's big brother," Justin said pointedly. "Trust me, I've learned to recognize an evil genius with a heart of gold when I see one."
Alex opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. And smiled.
"Is that why you always help me whenever I mess up?" she asked, after a moment. "Because you think I can be redeemed?"
Justin's cheeks flared a deep pink as he looked away, then shrugged.
"Nobody who saves a wizard daycare centre from a dragon attack single-handedly can be allbad," he muttered, "even if she does it for her own selfish reasons."
"Hey, I was trying to get Merlin's Hat to give to Dad as a birthday present," Alex said. "I wouldn't exactly call that selfish, dork."
Justin cocked an eyebrow at her, and grinned. "My point exactly."
Now it was Alex's turn to blush fiercely and look away. Rolling her eyes, she gestured towards the frozen Dr. Horrible with the tip of her wand. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. What happens next, nerdbutt?"
Justin let out a heavy sigh. "Well, Captain Hammer goes into psychotherapy, while Billy—uh, that is, Dr. Horrible—achieves his dream of joining the Evil League of Evil, but—"
"No, egghead! I mean how do we fix this?" Alex shot his a look of disdain. "And 'Evil League of Evil'? Really? Even I could come up with a better name than that."
"I think it's meant to be bad on purpose," Justin explained. "Look, Alex...I don't know that we can fix this. Or even that we should. I'm starting to think that this is pre-destined to end badly. I mean, it is Joss Whedon, after all..."
"Oh, psh! Just because we tried it your way and it didn't work doesn't mean we can't do it," Alex said. She tapped the tip of her wand thoughtfully against her chin. "All we have to do is out-evil genius him..."
"Who, Dr. Horrible?" Justin asked, with a puzzled frown. "Or Joss Whedon?"
"...so that's exactly what we're gonna do!" Alex said, snapping her fingers. As she twirled her wand in the air again, both she and Justin were enveloped in a bright, blue-white flash.
"Alex!" Justin exclaimed as it started to fade a half-second later. "What did you do?"
"Turned us into supervillains, duh!" Alex looked him up and down. "Who exactly are you supposed to be? Some kind of fancy bunny?"
Justin looked down at himself, to take in the tuxedo-with-tails that Alex had flashed him into, then reached up to feel the fuzzy, grey mouse ears that stuck through either side of the top hat that sat on the top of his head.
"Oh! I'm Archibald Van Cleef!" he grinned. "See, I'm a billionaire scientist who experiments on himself, but then a mouse climbed into one of my chambers during an experiment, so now I'm half-mouse, half-billionaire scientist."
"Uh huh," Alex said, then raised a fist to her mouth and pretend-coughed. "Lame!"
"Well, who the heck are you supposed to be?" Justin asked, as he eyed his sister's floor-length, figure-hugging, black lace gown.
Alex tilted her head back, light glinting off her tiara as she placed her hands on her slender waist, and popped one hip. "Evil Queen!"
Justin blinked at her, then shook his head. "Yeah, no, there are no evil queens in Dr. Horrible's world, so far as we know."
"Oh, there's always an evil queen," Alex retorted, cocking an eyebrow. "Sometimes she's the head cheerleader, sometimes she's the fairy tale godmother, and sometimes—" she cocked an eyebrow and grinned wickedly at him— "she's your sister."
"Oh...kay," Justin said, not quite sure what to do with that. "But why are we supervillains, exactly?"
"Well, obviously so we can beat Dr. Horrible to the punch, and show up to kick Captain Hammerpants' douchecanoe ass and kidnap his girlfriend before he can even reveal himself," Alex said, matter-of-factly.
"Oh." Justin frowned at this. "Um, and to what end are we doing this?"
Alex rolled her eyes theatrically. "So that Dr. Horrible can zap us both with the freeze ray, save Penny's life, and redeem himself, dorkus! Hello?"
"Oh!" Justin smiled at this, then nodded enthusiastically. "I guess that could work."
"Pfft, of course it'll work," Alex scoffed. She started to hoist her wand, but hesitated. "You're sure Barney won't use his death ray on us though, right?"
"It's Billy," Justin corrected her, hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his waistcoat. "And I'm positive."
"Hmm, OK," Alex said. "I trust you. But if he kills us, I'm never speaking to you again."
And with that she lifted her wand above her head, spun it tightly through the air, and shouted "Literarium Terrarium Activa, Prioris Scēna!"
The tip of her wand flared bright green. A transluscent symbol, consisting of a vertical line followed by two arrowheads pointing to left, flared briefly above it. And then, with a bright flash of light and a slight tinkling noise, they were gone.
