Nemesis

Part 03: Dysfunctional

I closed my hand, cutting off the lightning, and faced my tormentor. "Okay, Fluckface, what the fluck do you want?"

No, I wasn't lisping; every time I mangled his name like that, I saw a tiny twitch in his cheek. Piss someone off enough, and maybe they'll make a mistake that you can capitalise on.

"The name is Flux," he growled. "Treat it with some respect, and maybe I'll go easy on you."

I heard a metallic grinding from behind me, but I didn't dare look around.

"Well, maybe I don't have any more flux to give," I retorted. "Now, I don't know what sort of -"

I found out what the grinding noise was. It was from a manhole cover, lifting up from the manhole that it had previously been covering.

I found this out when the cover hit me in the kidneys.

Allow me to assure you of one thing; having a manhole cover frisbee you in the kidneys is absolutely no fun whatsoever. Even if the Surgeon General issues a statement saying that having this happen to you is actually a health-positive experience, I will remain firmly unconvinced.

It fucking hurt.

I came to on my hands and knees, doing my best to hork my lungs up. The manhole cover hovered right in front of my face, humming slightly. I had no idea why it was humming – some magnetism-related physics bullshit, probably – but this made it all the more intimidating. Behind me, I heard the police stumbling to their feet, but they weren't coming to interfere. I was vaguely disappointed; I wished they would interfere, if only to get me away from this airborne psycho who seemed to enjoy kicking me around with his powers.

Slowly, painfully, I regained my feet, using a light pole for support. Flux let me; the manhole cover hovered nearby, just waiting for its chance.

I revised my plan of pissing him off until he made a mistake; currently, it seemed that pissing him off merely made him more likely to beat the living bejeezus out of me, and in public, with full legal approval at that. I felt vaguely aggrieved at that; when would I get my turn at beating the bejeezus out of him? It was something I was looking forward to.

"Give up yet, villain?" he asked. Fuck me; he was actually gloating. Seriously. I was only vaguely subdued, and I hadn't yet actually been restrained, and he was already acting like I was on the way to the big house.

I didn't answer; the manhole cover edged a little closer. I moved around so that the light pole was between me and it. It swung around behind me; I hastily dodged out of the way before it could smack me in the back of the legs.

"There's nowhere to go, villain," he told me. More of that damned gloating; I wanted so badly to play a tune on his face with a baseball bat. "Anywhere you want to dodge, I can still get to you."

I hid a smile; he was wrong there. And in fact, he had just given me the heads-up on how to escape him. But first …

One of those ribbons ran up into the light-pole that I was leaning against. I had an idea what the ribbon was by now, given what my power was. And all the time I had been leaning against the pole, something deep inside me had been begging, pleading, for me to touch the ribbon. But not with my left hand. With my right hand.

"Oh, I'll give up," I assured Flux, clamping my right hand right over the ribbon. Immediately, liquid fire shot down my right arm into my body, and all the sluggishness, all the pain, all the injury, seemed to just fall away. I stood straighter as the energy poured into me; I could swear my hair was standing on end. I'm fairly certain my eyes were glowing.

"What are you - " he began.

"Right after you kiss my ass!" I yelled, and changed hands.

I didn't shoot lightning at him again; that would have been stupid. Well, more stupid than most of what I do, from day to day. Instead, I clamped my hand on to the pole; my power, plus all the electricity that I'd just absorbed, flooded into it.

The street light attached to the pole blew out. Flux was hovering directly under it, and he yelled in surprise as he was showered with shattered plastic and hot sparks.

I'd figured out why he was hovering there; he was a magnetic manipulator, and it was easier to 'hang' from a metal overhead than push down against the ground. Or so I guessed.

Anyway, time for part two of my daring escape plan.

I sprinted toward the open manhole, and jumped in.

He'd been right that I wouldn't be able to escape the cover above ground. But manhole covers couldn't fit into manholes. It was kind of their thing.

It was kind of depressing that falling into an open manhole was probably going to be the best thing that happened to me, that day. But hey, Murphy's an asshole that way.

Rhia hung at the back of the crowd, watching the action. It looked like Flux had found someone else to pick on; she felt kind of sorry for the lightning guy, but at least it might take the pressure off of her and the others for a while. Besides, he was a big guy; it looked like he could take a beating.

Cleo was near her, but she wasn't watching; nor would she have been, even if she could see past the crowd. It wasn't what she was here for; she was working the crowd, and the kid was a natural at it. Even without her parahuman abilities, Cleo had a talent for sneaking and picking pockets; with them, she was made for it. Rhia tried to keep track of her, and succeeded for the most part, but sight and hearing just tended to slide off of her.

Not so much the sense of touch; Rhia spotted it when Cleo got just a little too cocky, and tried to lift a guy's wallet from his inside pocket. The guy felt her hand, and reacted faster than Cleo had reckoned for. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her half off her feet as she tried to pull away.

"Fuckin' little thief!" he snapped. "I'm gonna -"

"Honey!" gushed Rhia, pushing through the crowd toward him. "I've been looking for you everywhere!"

He looked around at her; their eyes met, and she felt the click of contact. "Oh, hey, sweetie," he mumbled, his mouth trying to catch up with his brain. "Sorry to have kept you waiting, I just … "

She reached out, took his wallet from Cleo's hand, and freed Cleo's wrist from his grip in the same moment. "I think you dropped this, sweetie," she told him.

"Oh, uh, thanks," he replied vaguely, looking around, but Cleo had already dodged behind someone else; by the time his eyes came back to Rhia, he had forgotten the pickpocket. After all, his wallet was right there in his hand.

There was a crack as a street-light exploded, followed by a mass exclamation, the reason for which Rhia didn't bother finding out. "Listen," she told the man, "I saw the most divine pair of shoes in this shop just up the road; can I have some money to buy them?"

"Of course, honey," he assured her, opening his wallet and handing her a couple of hundreds. "I'll, uh, see you, uh … "

"Right back here," she told him with a forced giggle, standing on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. "I won't keep you waiting too long."

Turning, she ducked away through the now-dispersing crowd, trying to get out of the man's sight before suppressing her power. Going by previous experience, it would take about thirty seconds before the man's true memories started burning through the false ones her power had overlaid on his mind. It would take about five minutes, however, before he stopped seeing her as whoever he thought she was.

Normally, people retained their wits when her power attracted them to her. But when she pushed the contact, as she had just now, she was able to confuse them momentarily, overriding their understanding of what was going on. She hadn't wanted to, but if that man had made a fuss with Flux present, it could have gone very badly for Cleo.

She shuddered; every time she used her power like that, she felt dirty all over. But sometimes, she just had no choice at all.

At least I got a couple of hundred out of it, she told herself. Maybe that'll be enough to keep Troll happy.

But even as she formed the thought, she knew that she was fooling herself.

There was no keeping Troll happy.

Jumping into an open manhole was not, I quickly discovered, the most optimal choice I could have made. The fact that the rest of my current range of choices was even less optimal was a mere detail; put simply, jumping into a manhole is a fucking stupid idea.

I tried to grab the ladder and failed, several times. For the most part, I did my best to only use my right hand, but at one point, my left hand did open, causing the ladder and all nearby metal to spark wildly as the branching electricity discharged dramatically from my palm. And with all that, I still failed to actually grab the ladder.

Whether fortunately or otherwise, the falling phase of my plan ended very shortly afterward, in the usual fashion; a hard impact with an unyielding surface. Followed immediately with me rolling sideways, to have a much softer impact with a rather yielding surface. The nature of the surface was extremely and immediately apparent to me, because my sense of smell simply up and quit at this point in time.

To put it another way; I had just fallen into something that could charitably be described as 'liquid', but I wasn't swimming. A much more accurate phrase to describe my progress would be 'going through the motions'.

Coughing and choking, I scrambled back on to the ledge, and tried to scrape the worst of what I had just fallen into, off of me. It didn't want to leave me go, so I grimaced and used my weapon of last resort; opening my left hand, I played the lightning over myself.

All I personally felt was a mild tingling; so I was effectively immune to my own power. Good to know. The stench was utterly horrifying; my sense of smell reported this to me, before shutting up shop and taking its summer holidays. But the aftermath was more or less rewarding; I was able to brush the detritus, blasted and desiccated as it was, off of me in just a few moments. It didn't do more than scorch my clothes, for which I was profoundly grateful; I didn't even dare dwell on the concept, just in case Murphy'd had something planned for me along those lines, and had forgotten.

In any case, I knew I had to keep moving, just in case Flux decided to come down into the sewers himself. But between the flowing cape he wore, and that spic-and-span costume, I doubted very much that he'd lower himself that far. Pun intended.

However, running from something is not functionally the same as running to something, which meant that I didn't have any place to go. Although I had zero intention of staying underground; people may live in the sewers, someplace or other, but not in this sewer. This was a place you visited – briefly – then got the hell out of again. Even the fabled sewer alligators of urban myth would probably give this place, and its eye-watering stench, a wide berth. So I trekked a few hundred yards until I found another manhole, then went to the next one instead, just in case.

Climbing the ladder without electrifying everything in the vicinity was initially a challenge, until I realised that hey, I didn't give a flying moose turd about that. So, ladder crackling merrily, I climbed up and out of the sewer.

Of course, I had gone for more than a few minutes without Murphy being a dick to me, so I very carefully raised the cover, so that I could take a look around. The next thing I knew, there was a tremendous impact on my hand and the top of my head, and I was halfway down the ladder, wedged into the shaft, trying to figure out a) what had hit me, b) whether I had a concussion or a brain haemorrhage, and c) if my hand was broken.

And Murphy strikes again. Fuck my life.

In time, I figured out that a) it had been a truck, the manhole apparently being in the middle of the fucking street, b) neither, but it was ringing like the doorbell next to a Jehovah's Witness convention, and c) probably not, but I kind of wished that it had been my left hand. That way, I'd actually have an excuse for not using it.

Painfully, I climbed back up the ladder to the manhole. I could've gone back down and found another one, but I was starting to get pissed off. And besides, I didn't want to climb down, just to climb up again, farther down.

Yes, I tend to make bad judgements when angry. Is this any real surprise?

This time, I jolted the cover up and let it fall straight away, snatching a quick look as I did so. Fortunately, as it seemed; just a moment later, what sounded like a heavy truck drove straight over the top of it. However, now I had an idea of which direction the traffic was proceeding from, so I snatched another glance. Nothing was coming – miracle of miracles – so I shoved the cover up and scrambled out of my noisome sanctuary.

Shoving the cover back into place – it wouldn't do to give Flux an idea of where I had emerged, after all – I rolled to my feet and got off the street.

And promptly got lost.

"We could go out again," quavered Cleo; Rhia wished she would shut up. Troll was annoyed enough already.

With one massive hand wrapped around Cleo's arm, Troll leaned his malformed face down toward hers. "Really, Sprite?" he rumbled. "Flux is out and about, as you say. If this man reports the matter, he'll be on the lookout for us. You should have played it safe, taken a few wallets, moved on."

He shook the girl by her arm; she cried out with pain. "But you got caught, because you tried to be smart."

"Troll!" cried Rhia. "Leave her alone. She didn't do anything wrong." She fished out the money from her pocket. "Here, look, I scored a couple of hundred myself."

The hulking figure of the man who called himself Troll, nearly eight feet tall and almost as broad across the shoulders, turned toward her, discarding Cleo like a forgotten rag doll.

Rhia watched Justin, behind Troll's back, move forward and help the teenager up; she clung to the pudgy boy, trying not to openly cry. As Troll neared her, she looked up at him, holding the money up. She could feel her power trying to engage; at this range, he was hugely intimidating, and that was one of the trigger conditions for her ability. But she didn't let it happen; she wouldn't let it happen.

"Changeling," he growled. "Only two hundred?" He reached out, plucked the money from her fingers. "You know you could make much more than that. More than the little thief, if you put your mind to it."

Rhia felt nausea rising in her throat at what he was insinuating. "N-no," she insisted. "I can't. I won't."

His hand cupped her face, rough fingertips caressing her jawline. "You can, and you should," he insisted. "You have the ability to present any man, any woman, with the love of their life. They would pay, and pay, and pay. We would be able to afford more than just food for everyone. Clothes, pretty baubles, for you and Sprite. The type of special education that Gargoyle needs."

She winced at that; it was a low blow. Justin was developmentally challenged; he had trouble reading and writing, and anything more complex than simple math was beyond him. Rhia didn't know what was wrong with him, or even if it wasn't the sign of a deeper intelligence. But no matter what it was, Justin had a sweet personality, and cared for Cleo and Rhia just as much as they cared for him.

Troll, he feared, just as Cleo and Rhia did. Which just went to prove that he had some brains.

But even for that, even if Troll didn't do what he did with the rest of the money they brought him, and sequester it away somewhere instead of giving them more money back for better food, Rhia could not do what he was saying she should. Could not and would not.

Fearing his reaction, she nonetheless shook her head. "N-no," she whispered. "No. I can't."

He growled, then, and she felt terror as his grip tightened. Her power slipped its leash then, and she felt it working its magic. His hand loosened, and he looked upon her with what could almost have been tenderness. But his words shattered the illusion.

"No matter. I'll just take you for myself then."

Up until now, she had managed to hold her power back from the affect it was undoubtedly going to have on him. But that point had now been passed. He had seen her power in full effect, and he was no doubt entranced.

Which meant very bad things for her.

"No!" she shouted, not caring how her voice echoed in the abandoned building. "Troll! No! Please!"

He smiled then, baring his yellowed, crooked teeth, and she felt utter dread. "Yes," he told her. "Plead with me. I like it."

Somewhere along the way, I had managed to bang my knee, so I was limping. To be honest, I was somewhat surprised that I wasn't nursing, say, broken legs, broken arms, and several other things starting with 'broken', from the fall into the sewer, and then when the car ran over the manhole cover when I was holding it up. Even the place where I'd been shot had stopped hurting; feeling around back there located a hole in the coat, another in the shirt, but unbroken skin beneath that.

I'd been bleeding from the wound. I'd felt the blood.

Of course, not bleeding anymore from a previous gunshot wound counted as a 'plus' in the ledger, one of very few going around. All the same, this made me jumpy; Murphy surely had another wagonload of bad luck careening down the tracks toward me, and it would be a good idea for me to keep an eye out for it.

And there it was. I was skulking – inasmuch as a six-foot-plus guy in a trenchcoat can skulk – down a side-street, lined with what appeared to be abandoned buildings, when I heard what was clearly a woman crying out for help.

It was a trap.

I knew it was a trap.

She may as well have been calling out "Hey, come here and get shat on all over again!"

I'd been dumped in the shit already today. Literally, in fact. And I really, really didn't want to get into another altercation, one that might have already attracted police attention. Or Flux. I really didn't want to tangle with Flux again.

And yet, I noted that I was heading in that direction anyway. Toward the obvious trap. In the direction that I most definitely did not want to go. Seriously, for a villain, I've got way too many good intentions to make a good deal of it.

I got to the door in the side of the building and dragged it open. Inside was fairly dim, but I could see several people. This was obviously the trap; an eight-foot-tall guy, manhandling a pretty girl. Behind them, a pudgy kid was … growing some sort of rocky hide from his body?

"Hey!" he called out. "Let Rhia go!"

He tackled the big guy from behind, which only reinforced my opinion that some people shouldn't be tackled at all; a casual backhand sent him flying through the air, to smash into a wall and fall to the ground.

I sighed. This was my cue. Intervene, they turn on me, the trap is sprung, the cops get me. Yay.

Well, maybe I'd get a good solid meal in prison. And a chance to call a lawyer.

Because trap or no, I couldn't let this go past, without at least trying to stop it.

Sometimes I fucking hate my good impulses.

I stepped forward. "Hey!"

Rhia struggled in Troll's grip. She'd felt hope, for just a second, when Justin tried to stand up for her. But Troll had smashed him away; his rocky carapace had splintered on impact with the brick wall. Cleo was trying to help him up, but it was clear that neither of them was going to be able to help her. Troll was finally going to take from her what she'd known he wanted, the first time she had seen him. And she was powerless to stop him. She clenched her eyes shut …

"Hey!"

The voice was masculine, mature, neither Troll's gravelly growl nor Justin's softer tones. Troll paused, his fingers inches away from tearing her clothes. "Who the fuck are you?" he growled.

Rhia turned her head; a man was walking toward them across the uneven floor. She frowned; was that the guy that Flux had been confronting?

"Doesn't matter," the guy told him. He sounded beaten down, tired. Even his walk was almost listless, as though he was just doing things by the numbers. He didn't stride, like a hero. His foot caught on a loose brick, and he stumbled, almost fell, but caught himself. "You're gonna let her go, turd-face."

Troll growled. "You watch your mouth, man," he challenged. "Or I'll break every bone in your body, fuck you up good."

The man stopped, and for a heart-stopping moment, Rhia thought he was going to just turn around, leave. Let Troll do what he had been about to do.

Then he sighed. "Fucking do it, then," he stated. "Give me your best shot. My day's already fucked in so many ways it's having to grow new orifices to fit, so let's see if you can top what's already happened to me."

Rhia found herself sprawling on the ground, as Troll stepped over her, toward the interloper. The big man didn't issue any more challenges, make any more threats. He just stepped in and swung one massive fist.

The man was dead, Rhia knew that. In the moment that blow landed, every bone would be broken, and he would be flung away. Troll would triumph, as he always had.

But somehow, it did not happen. The blow whistled in, but the man wasn't there anymore. He had stepped in, and he had grabbed Troll in a very important, very sensitive, part of his anatomy.

And then Troll screamed. His bellow shook dust from the walls, and made the very dirt on the floor jump. His very body seemed to be outlined in a pale blue crackling fire.

Rhia knew exactly what this was; she had seen the man employ it, uselessly, against Flux. It hadn't worked, then.

Now, it worked.

Oh, how it worked.

Troll fell over, shaking the building a second time; he wasn't screaming any more. He wasn't making any noise at all. His eyes were open, and his mouth was open, and smoke was curling up out of the latter.

The man who had killed him, the man with the strangely-streaked white hair, looked down at the smoking corpse.

"Fuck my life," he muttered, then fell over backward.

End of Part Three