Chapter Nine

More Like, Antiheroes

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you busy this afternoon? if not, come meet us at the café. amai & i are together. we'll be at your favorite spot.

Leo thinks he must be the stupidest person on the planet right now. There he is, still fuming about the trick Vanessa and company played on him three days after he found out, yet on her invitation to come meet he hops in his mother's car then comes to the place she's set.

Rational people would have deduced that this is not the best idea. He's emotional, they're meeting at a place where a lot of people could get hurt if something goes wrong, and he's playing into a plan wherein she's the one who has set the terms. The obvious choice when she texted him fifteen minutes ago was to ignore like he had done the first time she messaged him after he found out.

But no, he has to make it absolutely difficult. He had to abandon all common sense.

He gets out of the car and had to reluctantly acknowledge that part of the reason he's there today is because he still kind of trusts Vanessa. He doesn't know why, but he does. It's the most frustrating, especially because she and Chuck were the ones who disappointed him most. Nevertheless, a small part of him still urges him to see the best in his new friends.

Walking in through the back door, he spots Amai first. She's at the table by the door, her back turned way from the coffee crowd amassing by the counter, her concentration directed solely on the chessboard in front of her. He searches for Vanessa. True to her word, he finds her at his favorite booth, leaning on the side facing the wall.

And facing away from the cameras, Leo can't help but add.

"Ah. So I did get the right number," Vanessa says, her smile a darker shade of red in this secluded part of the cafe. She waits until he's settled on the chair across her then adds, "Chuck and I didn't get a reply from you. We were starting to think you've given us wrong information."

Leo doesn't respond. Instead, he only looked at her, wondering if she's actually smiling because she finds him pitiful.

Vanessa slides a large mug of steaming beverage towards him. "I figured you might want some. You wouldn't share the last time so I'm assuming it's your favorite," she says, her smile curiously smaller.

Is she discouraged?

Leo shakes off the sympathy creeping into him. He can't feel that way. That would mean a second defeat.

"Bad day?" Vanessa tries again.

Leo says nothing.

Vanessa coolly takes a hearty sip from her mug. "You're going to have to tell me why you're mad, Leo," she says, that hint of sadness and confusion a little louder in her voice now. "I know you might want me to right now, but I can't read your mind."

"That's right. You can only influence me into doing something you want me to do," Leo finally speaks.

Vanessa leans back on her seat with a sigh. She thinks about this information then she clicks her tongue. "You saw the list," she concludes.

"And I thought you said you can't read my mind."

"I can't, just like I can't influence you the way you think I can," Vanessa says. She notes the hurt in his voice and does her best to smile despite the hostility. "It was just a matter of time. You've got a hero team staying at your house, three of which are registered in the Superhero Network. You're a very curious guy. I figured you'd see it eventually."

"How long have you been watching me?"

Vanessa's bottom lip juts upward. "I won't say I've been watching you, but I did gather information about you after we first met."

"Is it so that you can use me to get more information about them?" Leo asks, something within him breaking a little at that.

Vanessa, unknown to him, understands the implications of his words. "No," she assures him simply.

"Then why?"

"Because, like I said, you're special."

Leo laughs humorlessly. "Right. I'm so special that I believed everything you told me as if they were all true."

"They are all true."

"How do you expect me to believe that? You're considered a supervillain, Vanessa. Number Four on that list! One of the people on the superheroes' No Fight List!"

Adversely, that seems to amuse her. "No Fight List?"

Leo looks at her dryly. "Out of all the things I told you, that's the one you picked up?"

"Because I don't want to believe the other things you picked up," Vanessa says. "I am on that list. So what? It may have had all those information about me there but that doesn't make it all true."

The hurt he sees in her eyes causes Leo's anger to wane into disappointment. "Then which ones aren't?" he asks.

"That I'm a bad person," Vanessa answers. She takes another sip of her drink, and when she puts the mug down, the softness in her eyes has become partially clouded by something detached and lonely. "I'm offended that you believe I'm much worse than Martin Farren."

All the tumultuous emotions beating inside him cease at that. How could he have forgotten? The man who has ruined her life, the one who's caused her to be on the run all these years. Martin Farren isn't even on that list, he doesn't think.

Again, he knows he shouldn't, but his gut moves him to believe her. While it could be advantageous to her to have him fall for a lie, the clear fact is that he doesn't read any ill motives from her. At this point, it seems that she's more hurt of his accusation than he is of her crime of omission.

Still: "You could've at least given me a head's up. It definitely would've saved me from feeling like a dum-dum after seeing that list."

She smirks. "You are not dumb, Leo Dooley," she says. "But you do assume a lot of things."

Leo glares at her.

"I do hope you understand that when I took you to the hangar, I knew you were related to superheroes and that you once were one, too," Vanessa tells him. "That never made a difference to me."

"But it changes things for me," Leo says. "What would others think when they find out I've been hanging out with Numbers 1, 4, 7 and 24? By now you must know that things are kind of crazy for us. What would it look like when it becomes known that I've been hanging out, eating fries and drinking tea with supervillains who are supposed to be dead?"

Vanessa's smirk widens, amused by something else he said. "We're not villains, Leo," she tells him instead.

"Then what are you?"

"We're more like...antiheroes."

"Anti...heroes," Leo repeats. "What's the difference?"

"We're heroes for our own causes."

"Heroes. For your own causes."

"Yep."

"And what is your cause?"

"Make others fear me—"

"Then what's—"

"—so Martin Farren will never, ever think about coming near me ever again."

Like earlier, his gut tells him she's being truthful. How else would she have that undercurrent of despise, disgust, and pure, unadulterated anger in her eyes? "What about Seo Woo and Chuck? What are their causes?" he asks in surrender.

"I don't know what Seo Woo's is. He rarely ever uses his abilities, and on the times he did, he happened to go against superheroes, ones that aren't as straight as an arrow as the comic books make it seem. But he did it to stand up to them and protect himself. He's never seriously hurt anyone. There was nothing wrong in what he did."

Then, as she thinks of Chuck, she smiles. "Chuck, you're going to have to ask yourself," she says. "He's not the bad person you think him to be, at least not anymore. He's changed, and the way he did helped even me not to become as evil as the people I hated."

Leo glances back at Amai. "What about her and Nisha?"

"They don't really have an affiliation, but if we're going to be technical, I guess they're antiheroes by association," says Vanessa. "Chuck adopted them into the group, too, just like he did with me. He took them in to save them from the people trying to come after them."

As Leo looks back at Amai and considers the things he's learned and concluded, it upsets him a little that it only took that much for him to let Vanessa off the hook. He had plans of giving her this speech about real friendship and everything! But all he ended up doing is repeating the things she said and asking questions that, while needed to be asked, don't seem to make a lot of impact once answered.

It's all his fault. He had to be sympathetic and kind and understanding and friendly. That's probably why he's become the filler character even in his own life.

Yet, even with all the anger and disappointment gone, one thing still lingers: doubt. "I get what you're saying, and I accept everything, but I don't know that I should come back to the hangar," he tells Vanessa.

Vanessa tilts her head. She mulls over it a moment, and then, "That's disappointing." She sighs and smiles a small smile at him. "I really thought you'd be different from them."

Shock begin to take root somewhere in him as he watches Vanessa get up from her seat. "Vanessa..."

"I have this for you." Vanessa takes out a USB from her right jacket pocket then gently slides it over to him. "This will explain to you what I mean whenever I say you're special. Maybe you'd also see the reason why I persisted in having you come to the hangar."

"Why did you?" Leo says just as she's to leave the booth.

Unlike the ones that he's seen on her face before, the one that he sees now, that coming from a broken heart, wakes him to a reality that for the first time, he's read a person wrong. "Because you needed friends," Vanessa tells him. Afterwards, she goes to Amai, tells her it's time to leave, and then leads her out the door.

Leo leans back and sighs, his shoulders a lot heavier than when he came in.

In retrospect, he could've done things more differently. He could've told her what he's taking issue with, and he could've given her time to answer. He could've refrained from accusing her from the get-go. But everything's been done, and he knows that by letting his anger and worries speak for him, he had created a chink in what had seemed to be strong bonds of friendship.

He looks down at the USB on the table. Vanessa said there were answers there. Though he dreads it, he decides to start there.

He goes home and watches it that afternoon. The flash drive contains only one file, a video. Clicking on it, he sees that it's from two surveillance cameras—particularly the entrance of the cafe and the one mounted on the far-end wall where his favorite booth is.

He sees himself on the right camera, at the bottom right part of the screen, his table littered with pages and packets from school, a book, his phone, and the extra large mug Ahmed always fills up whenever he orders peppermint mocha cappuccino. In the video, he has just plugged his earphones in.

The left camera shows things proceeding as they do on a usual, busier afternoon at the café. Shortly, though, the identifiable walk and form of the girl he had met at the same place earlier comes into view. One by one, customers at the front of the store start to faint.

Shiver slinks through Leo's skin as he watches everyone in the store pass out when Vanessa walks in, her smile as wide and unbothered as if everything is proceeding as normal.

Coming in, she steps over a few of the unconscious people lying on the ground. She comes to the counter, seemingly intent on making her own coffee, when something suddenly catches her attention. She searches around, eyes alert, and follows something.

Meanwhile, on the right camera, he was still working on his homework, nodding his head to the music.

It doesn't take long until the video shows him the moment they first met. Vanessa looks as surprised as he feels now while she looks upon the anomaly that was him.

You're interesting, Vanessa told him that day.

What's wrong with me? Leo asks as he watches himself on that day, sitting at the booth, unaffected and unaware of the biggest surprise to have hit him thus far.