The chapter began with the need to bring the story focus back onto Jinx, as well as connecting her arc with Terra's, but then it turned into something wholly different. I've been meaning to touch upon the real Mikron's brutal exploits for some time now anyway, so I'm pleased.
She was in her twenties again in lighter times where everything was so simple. Her hair was longer now, but still done up in her customary style, devil horns that drooped over from the weight. Soft, not stiff, but to the child before her, she was the devil itself.
"...I don't like you."
"I don't like you either, kid."
The little boy's face scrunched up into distaste. "Why do you always got to be around here? You're annoy—gah!"
She'd flicked in him the forehead. "Yeah, yeah, you're annoying, too...brat."
With all the indignation of a wronged child, he puffed his cheeks and fixed upon her a frighteningly cute glare. Her answering smile was languid, indulging, but she still shoved the plate towards him. "Eat it. All of it." And then she smirked. "Unless you want to waste the food your precious idol cooked for you."
He swiveled his glare onto the plate of charred something. "I...am not eating that."
"Picky, picky." The woman buffed her nails, hardly paying him any attention. "Little brats like you can't possibly appreciate having a superhero finding time out of his busy schedule to cook for you." He bristled at her tone.
Flinging a dramatic finger at her, he said, "You eat it! Your boyfriend made it! Eat it. Eat it!"
She stared at him, incredulous. "Do you want me to die?"
"Then make me something!"
"I don't cook, kid."
"Yeah...you don't cook, you don't clean, you don't do any—"
"Finish that thought and you die."
"..." Sullen, he pushed his food around with a fork. "...You suck. Villain."
"Ex-villain, thanks."
"Leave me alone."
"Sorry, but somebody's got to babysit you." Her sigh pronounced, she added, "Besides, it's not like I like doing this. You're monopolizing the person I want the most."
She may have sounded flippant, but there was something about the way she was looking at him that made him stop short.
After a long pause, she added, "I despise you for that. You know."
And his surprised features melded and warped into a familiar costumed face, and those cherub, boyish looks she loved so much suddenly dissipated back into the boy from before. Older now, but not by much.
His features were angry and his suit was as vibrant as ever. He stood before her as she sat, imprisoned, in a cage. This was his second visit and she tired of his interrogation.
She had recognized him from the moment he first stepped through that door into the room that detained her. She refused to acknowledge him, though, refused to call him by name or by his supposed identity.
And her refusal infuriated him. He hadn't 't recognized her at all, but whatever he may have remembered was quickly bulldozed over by his overwhelmingly self-righteous feelings. He saw nothing before him but a villain without a name, a villain whose sole purpose was to help him in his bumbling investigations.
He did not deserve it, her acknowledgment of his superhero identity. He wasn't even aware of the complete and utter burden donning that suit should have been. He was a brat. He was too young. He was naïve. He was an eyesore. He was that splotch of history that should have, otherwise, stayed in the her past. She didn't know why this was happening now of all times. She didn't know why this ghost had to appear now...of all times.
His questions amused her at first. It'd become a game to her to see how far she could go in frustrating him before he gave up. But she'd forgotten the childish superiority baby-faced vigilantes all were afflicted with. She hated it. She hated him, the memories, the old affections for a face long gone. The suit he wore, it was all wrong. This gangly man-child clashed with the person in her dreams, memories, impressions.
He disgusted her.
His questions amused her at first. But she tired of games. She tired of indulging this boy before her; playing at superheros was so pathetic. She wanted to rip and shred that fantasy apart. She wanted to see his despair as she stomped all over his dreams.
He amused her, his questions amused her, but then they turned towards an unpleasant direction.
Fantastical technology that could inject a serum into the bloodstream and cause the victim to erupt in bubbling boils. Pus and sickness and all lethargic death. Explosive vials that had the acidic taint that could kill a man with mere contact. Nameless, scentless gases that entered through the pores, only to forcibly sew them shut through a noxious reaction. A small sample of the biological havoc that man's technology was capable of and not even she was aware of all the weapons he'd produced.
She knew only the effects. She'd made it a point to stay far from his weaponry—her goal lied with her to-be husband's killer, not an old teammate's. She didn't give a damn if it was his expertise that was partially at fault for the rotting, foul state of Jump and its sister cities. He wasn't her business anymore. She hadn't thought of him in nearly a decade, not clearly, at least. Not on a conscious level.
But then this brat brought it all back. She hated him for it, just as she hated him when he was a wide-eyed adorable child glorifying in his bastardized, fledging powers.
She'd been jealous. She hadn't been able to admit it at the time, but she had felt threatened by that protegee of his, that boy who would one day walk in his footsteps. First, he had to be trained into a sidekick. And then someday, that little boy would ascend to his mentor's place and take over that lineage.
It was a simple, simple thing. Common, ridiculously so, but that was how the world had worked. And Wally West, in particular, had adored the idea, the concept, the plan, the status quo of participating in such a superhero thing. He was...forgetting her.
They'd gone through so much together. Perhaps he was hurt by the estrangement. He was a Titan and yet not a Titan. A fallout. He'd done it all for her. For her. He suffered through that awkward and bitter time after he'd hurt their trust, those self-righteous good guys. But she was there for him, wasn't he? She was his life's love. They'd gone through so much together. He was able to put her life straight, and she was grateful to him and adored him even more.
She was the only one by his side, the only one he could depend on. None of his allies understood the extent he went for her. He cited it was love. She was his support pillar. She never turned her back on him, never wasting his sacrifices. They'd been living together, she and him, and she loved it, loved that they were finally together.
No disease would have been able to pull them apart, surely. But he was prone to overprotective tendencies—as if she would go away. She would never leave him. Literally or metaphorically, it wasn't possible. To save her, he hurt his reputation and stoically bore through his decision of teaming up with villains.
The Titans had been so lost, so confused, and so hurt. But they knew nothing. They knew nothing.
Gizmo liked to play with things he shouldn't have played with at all. It would've been so easy to coax and tempt the boy into stealing that virus off of the Brotherhood. It would've been so easy to manipulate him through his greed. For a few years after the theft, he experimented and learned and played with it to his heart's content, spurred on by the betrayal of his one female teammate. And then the disease was released, stolen from him, and she caught it. Simple as that.
Afterwards was a whirlwind of events not even she knew the full extent of. Gizmo had been terrifying in his own right, the fury of having been used by an organization long dealt with and maybe even the guilt of having her potential death on his hands? They weren't so close as to have an explicit bond, but they were once teammates, unconscious allies in a world growing rapidly more and more hostile towards people like them. It didn't even matter if she was running with the good guys or dating an honorary Titan. It made it worse, actually. That scrutiny.
And then...he found out, that charming silver-tongued man who had been able to bring her over to his side. That charismatic, easygoing smile disappeared. He changed.
Had she not been in a fatal situation, surely the secrecy and the betrayal of trust would have dissolved their relationship. He never understood why she never told him from the start. Neither did she. Perhaps she was afraid of her fairytale ending shattering before her eyes. Perhaps she'd been wallowing in denial.
Perhaps she was keeping it a secret from him because she was trying to punish him for putting another person into his heart.
It didn't matter by then anyways. The moment he found out how frantically she'd been keeping this disease from him, he confronted her. It was painful, of course. A lot of tense silences with meaningful glances and gazes that communicated far more between them than words would have been able to. A lot of bitter, acidic twangs in the back of their throats. A lot of hurt.
But then sometime, somewhere, along the way, he not only willingly broke ties and communication with the Teen Titans, but he full-heartedly joined her old side. She'd been so thrown by that abrupt decision. She remembered how he said nothing before he disappeared with an old teammate she had no clue how to treat.
Gizmo, who had then been conflicted with leaving an old traitor of a teammate to die or to help bother to clean up his own mess, was shocked to the core when the boyfriend of said teammate suddenly appeared out of nowhere in his home.
H.I.V.E. Academy had long been dissolved, their headmaster gone missing, and the H.I.V.E. Five was now truly made up of five members. Gizmo was the leader and he'd transformed them into a ruthless team, an aggressive, no-mercy policy group. It hadn't taken much effort either because everyone had been smarting in their own way by their former leader's betrayal. Her flippant disregard of them had been something wholly unexpected, and the final battle of the Brotherhood of Evil versus the Teen Titans opened their eyes to a lot of things.
All Gizmo had done was rerouted their priorities, just as he rerouted the unexpected hurt and anger and frustration from her betrayal into determination and cold resolve. What had she always preached and ranted to them? About how they were lazy, purposeless group of pathetic mini-villains? Was that what she said? Well, he would show her differently. He would show her that she would regret ever double-crossing the H.I.V.E. Five.
That was how he felt.
And things had been going well. He had a new virus to play with, a biological tool that he was wholly inexperienced with. But he learned. He experimented. He played and played and played until he convinced himself that her death was necessary and that any old friendship or ties with their old leader was obsolete. Completely and utterly.
At one point, he wondered why the hell the Brotherhood had this little project of theirs hidden away in their arsenal. This could have been used for great and devastating effect on the enemy. This could have been used to wipe out all of those pesky magic users the good guy side was littered with. This could have been used to analiate that annoying bitch among the immediate Teen Titans, the one they so depended on as a healer.
What were they thinking, Gizmo wondered, putting this weapon into reserve?
An unfinished, incomplete project. Unstable, but the possibilities were endless. He hadn't ever thought of biological warfare before because his expertise was with machines and the mechanical nature of his tech. That was his trademark, after all, but could he break his own reputation and shock the world with his power?
Could he finally become someone to be feared?
And...could he finally get rid of this empty, gaping hurt in him that he had no idea what to do about? How impotent he was when he couldn't even properly handle these agonizing feelings in him after she left. He wanted it to stop, that spiraling, aching out-of-control sensation in his head that wouldn't let him just sit down and plot out her demise.
But, ah. This was different. This was the Brotherhood's pet project so neatly handed off to him. He could continue their work. He could become a name to fear. He could finally succeed where that traitorous wannabe fake villainess had not. And he would start with her.
But then that damnable thief destroyed all his efforts, erased his datebase, and stole the one thing that would act as the impetus for his extraordinary debut into the world. That damnable thief. Who, who was it? Who? Who had the nerve to do such a thing. Who the fuck would impede his progress, stop him from reaching the height of his capacity?!
And then that thief stole it from him, the chance to kill Jinx. He stole his moment of glory. That bastard stole...her.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair.
Nothing was fair.
That falling sensation was happening again where he'd become all choked up and unable to speak or breathe—that spiraling, out-of-control sense that seized his mind and made him unable to think. It was happening again. She was dying. Surely. She was dying and that victory was taken from him—why, why, why.
But the guilt, he was unprepared to feel that guilt.
And then the Flash showed up on his doorstep, the strangest expression on his face, as he demanded the villain's help.
If only he knew who had been the propagator of his girlfriend's disease. Wally West wouldn't have let him walk out of that building alive. But he hadn't known, and Gizmo was strangely relieved.
Which made him weak. Because he was afraid—afraid of a superhero? How stupid. Heroes weren't frightening at all because they were goodie goodies and self-righteous and had the full and loving support of the people. Superheroes could do no wrong and were the figureheads of Justice and crap like that.
So there was no need to be afraid. Not at all. It was ridiculous, really, to look upon that bright and shining face and be scared.
But he was. He was, he was, he was because that wasn't the honorary Titan Kid Flash on his doorstep or the glorious and magnificent Flash, the patron of Central City. It was...
It was Jinx's lover, the guy who would rip the earth apart to save her.
What a cute, sweet ordeal. Or at least it should have been. But the guy looking to draft Gizmo of the H.I.V.E. Five into his grand slam of a journey wasn't cute or sweet. He wasn't even fully a good guy either because that savage grin he wore didn't suggest he wasn't above using any technique possible to get from Point A to Point B.
The means justified the end. That man felt just like that, and Gizmo was unwillingly enthralled.
To what extent would the Flash go? It was something he wanted to see. He wanted to see how twisted and cruel a man could become for the ironic sake of saving a loved one. He wanted to see that glorious transformation from the goody-goody good guy who ripped Jinx away from them to a man Gizmo could possibly admire.
He wanted to see it. He wanted to see the complete and utter fall of Wally West.
This was the superhero who had broke convention and created controversy by dating an ex-villainess. This was the man who had to nerve to place her as his first priority and justice second.
It would be interesting, would it not, to see what would become of him at the end of their journey?
But there was a personal stake in this situation as well. Gizmo finally learned the name of the thief who so wronged him.
His old headmaster. The one called Blood.
And just as Jinx's lover was hellbent on destroying this man and dragging all the cure and answers out of him first, Gizmo relished in the thought of revenge.
He would let the Flash scurry all across the world to rip apart all of Brother Blood's hideouts. And then once they would confront Blood, once West had all of his useless answers, Gizmo would kill them both. He wanted to see it! He wanted to see the expression on the Flash's face right before he betrayed him. He wanted that bastard to know the extent of his ire and pain and hatred for taking Jinx away from them—from him.
And once that business would be dealt with, the old geezer would be next.
And then after that? After that...
After that...Jinx would be left to die. Jinx would die. She would finally, finally die.
It was a heady thought. It enthralled him more than the possibility of seeing Wally West turn dark.
Only—he didn't expect another teammate to betray him. He never would have thought that Kyd Wykkyd would go behind his back—their backs—and sneak around to help Jinx. That villain knew things, things none of the others possibly knew, but it was completely unexpected when he used those very same things to save her.
Irony. That the Flash would be beaten by a villain...that Kyd Wykkyd, the most logical and compliant and ruthless one of them all, would cave into old feelings and save the traitor.
It was—unexpected. They had self-preservation instincts, they all did. But every villain was out for themselves except them because Gizmo held them together and made them strong. He was responsible for forcing them to pick themselves off. They should've been grateful to him. He was their leader, and his word was law.
And Kyd Wykkyd betrayed them. Another traitorous teammate...but Kyd Wykkyd betrayed them at a dear cost.
While Gizmo was gleefully working with the Flash, Kyd Wykkyd had been busy trying to save her, their old leader. The end product was infuriating—that Jinx would be able to walk free while Kyd Wykkyd would be inflicted with her disease in turn? That everything that had made him worth anything would be gone and locked away in a child's mind? Who the hell had expected him to regress into that body? What kind of twisted magical law was at work that would render a once useful ally into an empty headed, blank faced child?
Weak. Worthless—how the fuck was Gizmo supposed to take revenge if the ignorant brat had no idea what he was paying his life for?!
What the hell was he supposed to do now?
It was this scene he returned to from his alliance with West. They'd tracked Blood down, who then had somehow been audacious enough to kill the superhero before Gizmo could. Again, Gizmo was robbed of another potential satisfaction. Furious, he attacked.
The old geezer fled, laughing and taunting and taunting.
Gizmo had come back frustrated beyond words. His H.I.V.E. Five faction was slowly being reduced to some useless child's plaything. He was unprepared to deal with the super deformed Kyd Wykkyd or how to deal with his underlings' frantic news of that event. He was unprepared to encounter the entire wrath of the Teen Titans, who had somehow got it into their heads that he was responsible for stealing Wally West away from them. He was also unprepared to deal with the sudden strain on the relationship he was forming with a new supplier situated in Steel City.
Red X was demanding that he accept Jinx back.
What the hell.
In Jinx's grief-stricken AWOL absence, she'd apparently stumbled onto Red X's home and somehow got his new and tentative supplier to take her under his wing. Somehow, Red X convinced her to become a villainess again. Somehow, she agreed, throwing all of her dead boyfriend's values out the window.
It was more than mind blowing—it was mind fuckery at its finest, and Gizmo didn't buy it for a minute. And Red X was expecting him to take her back? And ignore her betrayal? Ignore everything these past years had stood for?
Red X didn't do something so petty as to deny his services to Gizmo. Instead, he easily turned right around and betrayed Gizmo's expectations.
Gizmo had no time to deal with an errant dealer. It was that man's business after all—distasteful, but none of his business. He didn't want anything to do with Jinx anymore. He was sick of the name, actually, and quite tired of her flippant, fleeting whims.
Perhaps even the Flash's sacrifice had been in vain. It was a surprisingly bitter thought. Her superhero boyfriend had crossed taboos after taboos for her, toeing the line between righteous and corrupt, and it was all for nothing?
It was not only a bitter revelation, but a disappointing one as well. Her double crossing turnaround revealed how irrevocably pointless it was to waste anymore time on her. He was done playing around with her. He was through. He left her there to rot on that highway to Steel and swore to himself, again, that it was none of his business.
He turned his attentions to his original goal—making himself more powerful, more well known, and more and more influential. He'd long been interested in the fledging H.I.V.E. organization Jinx had been starting up again, but found its pathetic villains fall short.
A useless bunch who sought her out for protection in the face of the government's new iron-fisted administration and policies.
He'd been, naturally, disappointed. He wondered what that man Blood would have thought of this bastardized version of his grand academy.
And then the government started to act...interesting.
He merged his crew with Jinx's, and realized she was not truly dark. She didn't have any of the aspirations he had, but she was showing promising signs of a cutthroat mentality. This new Jinx, this pathetic, grieving one, had hardened and become cold under Red X's hands. It was interesting, interesting! That smuggler had molded her into something worthwhile after all.
Something...potentially usable.
He didn't bother much with her plans. She wanted to provide a haven and to give asylum to fellow persecuted villains, but he wanted none of that. He didn't place any worth into metahumans who couldn't even protect themselves. However, he had encountered the few worthwhile villains at the new H.I.V.E..
The ones who thirsted for revenge, but had none of the means or discipline to do so. The ones who'd grown to hate the government and wanted to revolutionize the H.I.V.E. into an army that could fight back. The angry ones. The hardened ones. Yes—Gizmo wanted to use those kinds of people.
They would help him realize his dream.
His meager faction made up originally of three villains grew to enormous proportions. It grew rapidly, and it was far too easy to spread rumors of discontent in the body of the H.I.V.E.. A split was slowly growing, and Mikron was on the non-stagnant, winning side. He broke off and formalized his group into something to be feared.
Jinx was angry, naturally, but she was too short-sighted, too naïve, to think that he would be her support pillar for forever. He was finished with her. He was not out to be her friend. He had plans, plans that needed to be put into effect immediately, and she had no part in these plans.
The stupid girl eventually followed him. An unexpected, duly noted surprise. Perhaps there were some last vestiges of her good guy stint still in her—perhaps she was afraid of being alone again, of being abandoned.
Was she so desperate to turn to him as her savior? She would soon learn that rousing sleeping feelings of anger and betrayal was not a good idea.
She was just asking to be used, and so Mikron obliged her.
First phase of his plans was to be subtle and gradual, slinking and creeping and entrenching into the cracks and holes the country left open for them. It was a phase that required patience and time. His men were restless, but then so was he. This was also the time where he scouted for other like minded villains and weeded out the weaker ones in his entourage. He had to find people who realized the importance of first settling down so deeply and firmly that they could never be moved from their foundations.
A passive stage? Hardly. It was not only a transition period of transforming his men's mentality and preparing them for he ordeal ahead, but it was also a calculated move to attack the government with a hit-and-run tactic. He would train his men in this way, let them gain experience, and allow them to feel and taste and just begin to grasp the hidden future that he was presenting to them. It allowed them to vent, with glee, their anger against the structure that wanted to destroy them.
Jinx's abilities as a hacker was an asset for him. It had given her temporary reprieve among his allies, but he was hardly amused when she balked at the more ruthless moves on his part. Her first assignments were simple—bankrupt a company here and there. It was hardly something to offend even her sensibilities.
But it was the little things that turned her off, he guessed. The clever embezzlement used to fund inhumane experiments, ones indulging in his biologically inclined weaponry. The heinous kidnappings, ones that inevitably tore happy families apart and definitely immoral when the victims were sold elsewhere or out of the country. The not-so subtle terrorism he employed when he began to hire out Terra Markov's creativity, until she'd become one of the crew.
The first phase, The Counterattack, was so fun. His subordinates agreed, those mindless, brutal men. He'd ensnared their loyalty and used them to the fullest. And if Jinx was suddenly indecisive over where her loyalties were supposed to be...well, then, he'd have to cut her loose. She was a liability—what, with her flitting whims.
She'd fled before he could do anything, though, like the double crossing traitor she was.
He proceeded with his second phase, The Takeover.
Terra Markov, his passionate second-in-command, did not disappoint him. It was truly her time to shine when she was ordered to wreak as much havoc as she wished. And she did, even with their shaky relationship, she threw herself into his mission with a fervor he didn't understand, but saw as an opportunity. Her inner demons chased her this far into his cause, so Mikron found no reason not to trust her when he was the only one giving her life a purpose. He was not blind to what he was providing for her useless life.
The country was fairly falling apart with its panic at this point, and it had been easy to get there. Laughably so. A crumbling house of cards that was quickly degenerating into chaos—then somehow, somewhere along the way, his name got out into the public.
The media had frantically seized upon this threat that was no longer unnamed while politicians had run about left and right, powerless and helpless.
But the true terror laid in the west coast. Wild, crazed plans of quarantine and the like were suggested, but not everybody was quite willing to accept this radical plan of cutting off nearly half of the country. It was like No Man's Land all over again, but much worse.
And it was glorious.
With his men infiltrating all levels of society, it added to the panic as neighbor turned against neighbor, and every civilian was seized with a terror not unlike the 50's paranoia about the spread of communism. Superheroes were beginning to lose their prestige as Mikron shrewdly revealed, twice fold in one move, the government's dirty secret of villain eradication and his men's own metahuman status. He played the public, and it was glorious.
Mikron honestly never had given a damn about the villains who were executed rather than imprisoned. In his eyes, they were weak for getting caught in the first place. He was advocating to put a stop to the government's corruption, and many of his subordinates were passionately fighting for this cause, but he didn't care. It was a propaganda tool for him, a way to manipulate the metahumans at his beck and call.
It was nearing the end of the second year of the quaint media-termed Catalyst when everything suddenly all went to hell.
Terra Markov, his passionate second-in-command, hadn't disappointed him when she was a mercenary and hadn't disappointed him still when she'd finally become his close subordinate.
As per his orders, she rooted out Xenothium for experimental purposes. He knew the results of combining its devastating power with his technology would be beyond words. It had not only been used as a tentative fuel years before, but with his intelligence and tenacity to make something out of the raw material other than fuel, it had infinite potential.
And it was all his at his command.
It was a heady feeling to know that all of his aspirations would finally be realized. And it was utterly satisfying to know that he did it all with his own power.
Still, he had the vague sense that he should be prepared to abort the mission immediately if need be. His men were like drones—they couldn't survive without being led like blind, hapless sheep. All of his hard work would be rendered useless if he happened to die before the final curtain call. He didn't even consider the possibility of being captured anytime during his efforts to bring his plans to fruition.
If he had to, he would even scar the earth itself. His name would be remembered forever and he would've ultimately succeeded in his goals, even if he did end up dead.
This was his obsession, what he lived and breathed for...to be never forgotten. He would never be lost within the obscure pages of history. He would accomplish what countless of villains had tried to do before him—he would rule the world.
Not physically. He would never manage to enslave an entire planet, and he had absolutely no desire for such a tired old cliché as that, but his legacy would haunt tens of millions of people and he would never be forgotten.
He would live on, thriving in the terror of old memories. He would live on, lurking underneath generation old fear even as this age's posterity would appear. He would live on, the first to have accomplished such a worldly feat.
He would become immortal. His name would be known.
And his contingency plan, prepared for the unthinkable possibility of his too early demise, would be placed entirely in the hands of an unknowing Terra Markov.
If need to be, she would be the one to suffer his last and greatest manipulation and become the trigger for his last and greatest experimentation. If he died before he could properly see to the end of his operation, then he would be assured in the success of a backup plan that would guarantee his name would never be lost.
And if he did die before his intended time, then he would take the whole damn world with him.
Finally. Gizmo, exposed. Clearly, he's not an anti-hero. Terra's arc will reveal what was Gizmo's last intentions for her—which succeeded, FYI. I feel really bad for Jinx, though, who's had misconceptions about Gizmo from the very start. In the end Gizmo's motives may be cliché, but it's evolved and spiraled completely out of control from the simple hurt he felt from her Season 5 betrayal. But, man, I love him to bits.
The point of reintroducing Bart was to shed a different, negative light on Jinx's relationship with Wally. I'm glad I finally got his death out of the way, however depressing it may be, but a Wally West-Gizmo alliance makes me happy because it's so unusual. And, no, Wally didn't die dark (Harry Potter terms beware); he was thinking about Jinx all the way through.