Chapter 4: Mallrats

I skipped classes the next couple days following my first outing as a cape. I'd told my professors and my two roommates the same story I'd told Gary — that it had been from an allergic reaction to something I'd eaten.

My left eye was swollen shut like I'd been attacked by an entire swarm of strawberries — the only thing on this Earth I was actually allergic to. Six hours of on-and-off cold compresses had thankfully revealed that there wasn't any permanent damage to my eyesight, but the socket still ached and the purple-turning-yellow area of the entire left side of my face still pulsed every time I moved my jaw or brow.

I took a sip of my coffee and leaned into the fresh freezer-pack wrapped in a towel, arm propped up on my desk as I squinted at my desktop monitor. I'd been browsing PHO and working on my programming capstone project — mostly browsing PHO, though, if I was being honest.

My other monitor had my Gambit client open, which was currently capturing Gary's stream, my developer stream, and a few other vanilla news-ticker streams I'd configured filters for. Not a lot of people knew about the program or the gmbt protocol, but it was something a lot of my classmates used to pass around party invites, news, rumers, and the like.

Gambit was basically like a great big bulletin board that you could read and submit topics through with channels, keywords, and other filters. The only differences between it and something more board-based like PHO was that it was decentralized and ran on each user's computers, and that there were no databases or user accounts — everything was transmitted real-time and you only got to read what someone put out there if you were tuned into their channel at the time.

It was very popular with both tinkers and normal technologically-forward people, since messages were authenticated with public RSA 15360 keys, which were sent with each one. It made the entire platform anonymous and yet completely reliable as a news outlet, since the Gambit client was able to link the public keys of each message to other messages from the same private key, confirming that the same user was posting without relying on a database of user accounts. The client was open source and had a hash signature so that users could verify each version was authentic.

It was also for these reasons that it was very unpopular with people who didn't computer very well.

I felt… I wasn't sure. Giddy, maybe. Giddy and sore and I kept drawing my eyes to the cape news Gambit tab. I clicked it and skimmed the feed. Most of it was not about my outing, but a lot of them were — maybe one out of five and one out of three for local Chicago news outlets.

Cape attack shines light on FCC's ethical malfeasance

Malfeasance...

I opened my web browser and typed it into search. A definition popped up as a suggested answer.

Wrongdoing, especially by a public official or celebrity.

I rolled the word over my tongue like I had the past twenty cape names. I knew I needed to go out and publicly name myself or else the PRT or PHO would do it for me. There were already a few tentative names floating around: Telefrag, Swap, and my least favorite, Jump Sphere.

I shivered. Yeah, no way, dude. My own picks were a little more fitting — which was probably partly because nobody knew exactly what my powers could do besides teleporting things: Void or Blight. I'd been favoring Blight ever since realizing my jumping to the void created these strange floating black orbs in the real world if I went back and forth to the same spot a few times. I'd never had the chance to figure out what they were for or what they did, but they were very solid and seemed to be immovable during the few hours they lasted.

Malfeasance.

Hmm... It seemed to sort of fit, and it was certainly what I wanted to bring to people's attention with Scumbag Pulaski's behavior and resulting policies on the internet as a whole. Malfeasance. I didn't know, it just seemed more serious and powerful than Blight or Void and definitely not as lame as Jump Sphere.

It also sounded way more like a villain name, but...well, I guess I kind of was a villain in the eyes of the public. Even if what I did was totally justified, I did kind of steal his car. I didn't want to go out killing people like The Folk or Iron Banner, but I also absolutely did not see myself joining up with a hero group and rescuing kittens from trees.

"Ugh," I groaned as I smiled, adjusting the ice pack. I scraped my lip with my front teeth and clicked open my VPN client, making sure I was still cloaked. "Alright, alright, alright." I chanted, opening up the new post option in Gambit and selecting the private key I'd used on the #WebDev public channel when I'd originally asked for opinions on what I should do with my powers.

[#WebDev] Fuck up Alan Pulaski's Viper cuz he's a POS dickbag.
Signature: UpbAftD86G2ASJww … [expand] [aka: ideaBro] [unset nickname]

Why yes. Don't mind if I do. Or...did, I guessed.

I moved to the post body of the #WebDev channel and started typing.

[#WebDev] This is Malfeasance. I'm the cape who pwnd Pulaski's car the other night. Check the signature against my last post to confirm. I figured I'd get the word out before the idiots on PHO named me something retarded. I'll be making an account on PHO in

I paused typing and clicked back to PHO in my browser, going to the registration section and typing Malfeasance into the user registration field. Thankfully, miraculously, the name was not taken. Small mercies, right? I quickly registered the new account and switched back to Gambit, backspacing a bit.

I've registered an account on PHO under the same name and will get it verified in a few days. Go ahead and AMA in the meantime and thanks for the great idea :)
Signature: srRjaQ7rrD69qmVc ... [expand] [you]

I hit send and leaned back in my chair, taking a sip of coffee and waiting for responses to come through.

Private message from A_real:

Malfeasance: What're the requirements for cape verification?
A_real: You will need to provide a photograph of yourself using your power while holding up a piece of paper with your username on it. You can upload it via the badge verification option in your profile settings. You will need to select "Cape" as a badge before uploading, otherwise the system won't even give you the option.
Malfeasance: Thanks. Is it ok if I scrub the images exif data before uploading? I'm kinda paranoid about these kinds of things.
A_real *New Message*: As long as you do not modify the image itself, you are free to remove metadata, yes. Our system strips it as part of the upload process, but for verification it makes no difference.

"Seriously, Sasha," Alice whined, causing me to look up from my phone at her. I reached for a cold french fry and switched the phone's screen off. "If I'd known that you just wanted to walk around — sit around," she corrected, "with your face in your phone, I would have asked Gary to go with me."

"Yeah, good luck getting him out of his cave," I mumbled into another fry.

"What was that?"

"S-sorry, I've just been a bit distracted with this project I'm working on," I stuttered, trying to stay as vague as possible. It was believable. Like Gary, our server-admin roommate, I could hole up in my room for days working on development side-projects. "Are you...done?" I eyed her two large plastic bags filled with clothes and the paper one that looked to hold a couple scented candles.

"Not a chance!" she reached for a few of my fries and I batted her hand away, scooting my food court tray closer. "Rude!" she rolled her eyes at me and shifted her feet, adjusting her grip on the bags.

"So like, can we head back to the car and put these in the trunk?" she asked. "I don't want to carry these around and we still have a level and a half to go before we've gone through the whole place."

"Why can't you go by yourself?" I gave her a look, my skin prickling in annoyance. I'd only agreed to go with her so that I could head to the costume shop that was a few blocks away — so I could look for a costume for my Malfeasance persona. Luckily, it was a little under two months until Halloween and it was expected for normal people to be buying things like that.

Unluckily, I didn't have a car of my own, since I was a poor college student, so I had to carpool with my other roommate, Alice.

"Well," she grimaced, as though it hurt to answer. "I just don't want to walk around in the parking garage by myself. Y'know, since that cape attack in one the other night."

"Ooooh," I grinned, eating another fry. "And big, bad me is going to protect you from the parahumans lurking in the car garage? Want me to throw your bags at them?"

"Don't be such a bitch." She eyed the badly-done concealer I'd applied to my eye. "I...just figured there's strength in numbers."

"Fine, yeah," I said, standing up and grabbing my lunch tray. I didn't really want to argue, and lazy as I was, if this helped us get to the costume shop faster…

We walked out of the food court and up the escalators, and were headed out the automated doors to the parking garage when I spotted a crowd gathered around the soft-padded children's "play area" that occupied an open space — near some of the pretzel booths. Alice didn't seem to be interested.

"Alice!" I called, pausing and turning back toward the crowd. "Wait up; I wanna see what's going on over here!"

She groaned and drooped her shoulders as she made it to the padded feet-mats of the automated doors, triggering them open. Her dramatic display was drowned out by clapping from the crowd and a muted flash of red.

"Ok," Alice huffed, holding out one of the larger plastic bags. "But you're carrying some of these if we're — hey, is that a cape?"

And it was. As we approached, I caught sight of woman standing in the center of the crowd of parents and clapping children. She was dressed in multi-layered spandex — a long-sleeve black top and bottom with a looser short-sleeve red top and skirt on top, with red boots. Red crystalline gauntlets and shin-guards were attached to her limbs and the same crystal substance made up her helmet, which had a solid, smooth, semi-transparent texture to it that obscured her face.

"Here you go!" her muffled voice came out from behind her helmet. She handed a little boy what looked to be the most life like cat statue I'd ever seen — and it looked to be made out of solid...whatever her armor was made of. It looked like ruby, but I doubted she would be handing out something so valuable like this.

"Th-thank you, m-mis!" the boy stuttered, ducking back into the croud and into what had to be his mother's arms, holding the cat statue out to the parent like she hadn't just seen the cape give it to him.

"Shit, that's Garnett!" Alice hissed in excitement, standing on her tiptoes and putting her precious shopping bags on the ground like she didn't care at all if they got taken. She pulled out her phone and snapped a few pics. "Oh, man, I think this is the first time she's done a public appearance since joining the wards. I'm gonna get so much rep for this on PHO!"

"I didn't know you were such a cape groupie," I raised my eyebrows at her.

"Uh," she looked at me and the bags, not seeming to register what I said. She bit her lip and looked up at me. "Watch the bags, kay?"

Before I could respond, she bulldozed her five-foot-three frame through the parents and onlookers and to the teenage superhero, clasping her hands in front of her face like she was saying a prayer — if you could pray while bouncing up and down.

"Fuck me…" I mumbled, grabbing the two bags she'd dropped and dragged them back toward the pretzel stand.

The pretzel guy gave me a look when I sat down in one of the two-person tables without ordering, but I pretended not to notice.

It was probably going to be a while until we left the mall.

End notes: Hey friends. Well, this finally got updated. Hurray!

Listen, hey, has anyone else been having trouble with copy-pasting text from Google Docs into the FF editor? It completely strips out italics / bold / formatting. It's really fucking annoying, actually.