She sipped her coffee, gathering her thoughts.
Cait looked like a college student: a cheerful fat buddha smiled from her chest on a charcoal tee that declared "Rub my Tummy: It's Good Luck;" a pale pink dress-shirt underlaid that, and tattered bleached jeans covered her long, coltish legs. She looked too young, though: her face and her body were youthful (if nubile;) she looked like a seventeen year old.
Her eyes, though, and the way she smiles, the way she walks - she looks young, but she feels older.
She made quick eye contact and smiled.
Jesus, Daniel, stop staring!
"Where did I leave off last time?" She dumped sugar packets in her coffee.
"With your father, I think. Some device of his?" Her face darkens.
"The psychic drainer. It turned out that I was partly wrong about what I thought it did; I thought it drained away my intuition - and it did - but I thought it left my actual abilities unaffected. It didn't: instead, they became more and more potent. I found inanimate objects lifting off, people would suddenly clutch their heads in agony when I walked by," she said, stirring the sugar around; sugar and spices rose to the surface, bright against the deep brown of the coffee. "That wasn't the only thing I was wrong about. I'd thought that reading had given me the power to persuade. Not at all; reading had only been the outlet. I was psychic." Looking at my expression, she laughed.
"I know how it sounds. Here, think of a number. Any number, no matter how large."
Nine hundred and eleve--
"Nine hundred and eleven," she said. "I know." I shook my head, incredulous.
"Why are you telling me all this? Why did I get this story?"
"Because I know you, Daniel. I read minds unconsciously," she said, gesturing around us. "I passed you when I was in your office, looking for somebody who could tell my story the way it deserves to be told. I'm not a bad person, Daniel; most people wouldn't be able to be objective." Cait sounded upset. "I don't want to be remembered as one."
"That's why? Because you think I can tell your story best?" I'm skeptical. Even I have to admit, I'm not the best reporter in my office; I'm not well-known at all.
"Your mind was -- there are some minds that are strong."
"As in smart?" She shook her head vehemently.
"No, not at all. Just strong. Their messages spread, they're easy to read; I see them a lot in skilled speakers. I think it has something to do with how eloquent you are." She gulps down coffee. Mine steams next to my recorder, untouched. "Are you going to drink that?" I shake my head and she leans over the table. For an instant --
"Whoa, whoa, hey there, down boy!" She blushes. "Okay, yeah, so your mind was the strongest I've ever seen. I could feel it from three stories away, through the walls, amidst the other people - who were no weaklings, you have good coworkers. It was incredible. Almost intoxicating. I was too scared to contact you there; I hadn't met anybody else who had psychic powers before, I didn't know if you might have them. If you exposed me there..." Her face is still red. It's striking against the black and white of her hair. Her strange eyes are covered by brown contacts so dark they seem almost black.
"Daniel, didn't I just say how easy it was to read your mind?"
"Pfft, says the girl who just talked about how intoxicating I am," I grin.
"Oh, God," she says, embarrassed. "Can we just get back to the story?"
"Yes ma'am!"
"You sidetracked me with your question about why I picked you, right, okay. I explained. You understand now?"
"I think so. You thought I might be something special, and you were curious; you thought I could tell your story best. Right?" She nods.
"Right, yeah. After I escaped from the military base where my father had taken me - like most normal human beings, he took me to a place where he felt safe - I looked into his psychic research. It was easy; I just asked Arachnos soldiers that I saw. They don't attack you if you're polite enough, and I could always just control their leaders. He'd been working on two things: psychic implants and psychic blockers. What he'd done, I theorized, was give me a psychic blocker. That would make sense; the reading was what eventually wore it away, allowed me to begin to touch the beginnings of my power. By then, I'd learned a little of how to control my other ones - telekinesis, a little basic mind-reading and mind-control - though persuasion was still what I was best at," she said.
"I still didn't get where my powers had come from, though. Was I a mutant? I'd heard a little about those, though never a psychic one. Was I the product of genetic engineering? That was my mother's specialty. I had no idea, though I knew how I should find out. I went for my mother." Suddenly, the air goes out of her. She laid her head on the table, quietly crying.
"Cait? Cait, what's wrong?"
Why am I so concerned? This is a murderer, a thief -- a criminal.
"That doesn't mean I'm not a person," she said, voice muffled. She's right. I reached across the table and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back.
"Are you going to be okay?"
"No. I don't think so. I don't think I'm ever going to get over what she did to me."
"What do you mean?" I asked, puzzled.
"I don't really want to talk about it. Jesus, Daniel, I always end up like this. My past needs to be less dramatic," she said, laughing. She wiped tears away.
"I could've found her in my sleep: she was waiting for me at my old house, where we'd all lived before the divorce. When I came in on her, in the night, she shot me. I was lucky; even without intuition, I had reflex. Telekinesis stopped the bullets. Mind reading and torture got me what I wanted to know. More than I wanted to know." Cait sighed.
"Daniel, I'm not human. Close, maybe, but not the genuine article. I'm an alien: my mother called my race Fey - like a nymph, or a dryad. I still don't know much about what I am; there are a few physical markings," she said. "Here, let me show you." She unbuttoned the top button of her shirt, pulling it aside.
"Stop having a heart attack, it's just a shoulder." Said shoulder was covered in dark green spatters like paint, dark like tattoos. "I've got more, but they're not in places appropriate for public showing," the villain said, laughing.
"Thighs, stomach, et cetera," she said. "All are dark green, and I seem to get more as I get stronger. Example: last week, I developed pyrokinesis - the ability to control flame - and, at the same time, I developed a spattering of those, I don't know - markings? Markings all across my back."
She's silent.
Is she done? Is that it?
Cait shrugs. "I guess it is. I can't think of anything else." I'm incredulous.
"Well, what happened next?"
"I got a costume, and I went out into the Rogue Isles." The words seem forced.
"How did you become a villain? Nothing you've done so far, not really, is evil. I don't get it." Sibilant smiles bitterly.
"I became a villain?"
"Of course you did," I said angrily. "You've said it yourself. You don't deny it when I think it or say it."
"How am I a villain?" She asks, curious. "What did I do that made me one?" I have to stop and think about it.
"You've killed people, you've robbe--" The villain shakes her head vehemently.
"I've never stolen anything. Not for my own use. I have killed people, yes - but so have half the heroes in Paragon."
"What, what are you talking about? You're a villain, you ca--" She cuts me off, angry.
"I'm a villain because the Rogue Isles have never spawned a hero from their own soil."
"What?" She leans over the table, her voice thick with anger.
"The Rogue Isles have had only supervillains. All the heroes who have ever been here are from foreign soil. It's an automatic assumption that any superpowered being is a villain. The fact that I killed people doing what I do didn't help, yes, but there are people in Paragon called heroes who do the same."
"So, you're saying it's all a matter of misrepresentation?" Cait, furious, clenches her fists.
"Yes. It is. I've spent the last year saving lives, fighting villains--"
"And killing people. You murdered."
"Damn it, I told you, heroes do that --"
"Not real heroes." Her anger dissipates suddenly.
"Yeah." Her face is hot with anger, her eyes dark with bitterness. "You're right."