Author's Notes: Just so you're all aware, these chapters and several more are available on Spacebattles. I'm posting the final versions, mostly so I can have an accurate wordcount honestly, here but I've been primarily writing this story over there. The story is actually all the way up to Chapter 10 over there. I'd link it but as you all know, does not get along well with links. Googling Copacetic and my penname will definitely get you there though if you're interested enough to read on.
Enjoy!
Chapter Five: Interlude – Hero
"AAAgghhh!" I screamed, jerking up in my bed. Sweat poured down my forehead and soaked the sheets beneath me.
I panted, staring at the room around me in relief. My bedroom. My dorm room. Thank god.
"Just a dream, just a dream, just another fucking dream!" I breathed, trying to make myself believe it and failing.
"Christ Theresa, again? It's been three nights!" My roommate whined, and I cringed, feeling a small spike of guilt that did nothing to ease the all consuming fear of failure that had haunted me since that day.
The damn seminar. How I wish I'd never gone.
"You." She had pointed a finger at me, her eyes burning with a sort of passion that I didn't understand. I'd been excited. Why? I liked attention? I wanted to end the taunts the professors were sending at Vigilant? I'd been happy to be picked, if a bit frightened. So naive. I shuddered.
I met Marietta's eyes and for a brief moment she looked normal. Normal. Then her skin began to shrivel and shrink. Wrinkles appeared under her eyes. Her hair had faded to gray then white then nothing at all. In moments I was looking at the tired eyes of a ninety year old woman staring at me as if… as if…
As if I'd woken her in the middle of the night, annoyed. Teenage, again. Another figment of my damn imagination.
"I know, I'm sorry. It's just not going away," I murmured tiredly, wiping my eyes, and hoping today the visions of my imagined failure might cease.
I'm so fucked up...
I rose, ignoring Marietta's grumbling. We shared a room the two of us and if I was getting up it made it difficult for her to continue to sleep. She didn't like me very much anymore… Not after I'd failed her.
In an effort to appease the girl, I ran my ethernet cable out into the main room bringing my laptop with me to sit on one of the chairs. I dragged a blanket out there too, as the tile floor was chilly and I only had light pajamas. I wouldn't be getting anymore sleep anyway.
I opened the laptop and blinked several times at the neon blue light burned my tired retinas. Once I'd finally blinked enough to be able to read the screen, I looked at the time shining in the lower right corner. Four A.M. Shit, no wonder Marietta was pissed.
I ran a search. My video, or rather Taylor's and my video, for it could belong to no one but the two of us, had a ridiculous view count. Reading even the first few comments that mentioned me had me near to tears again.
How dare they call me fake! They didn't know. They hadn't felt her eyes burning into them. They hadn't seen the cross she'd borne, the pain she'd suffered, and the fire that remained where her soul should be...
They'd be crying too if they'd had to meet her eyes and hear her words, like weights being tossed onto my shoulders. Weights handed down to me, crafted of misery. I felt like she was unloading just an ounce of her own to ease her burden, but enough to crush me like a twig.
Fuck who was I kidding? My video? Pfft. I was a two-bit actor in a play that girl had conducted from thin air and a light breeze. She'd trampled over the professors like they were children. She used me as a prop and then beat me over the heads of those old men and women until I broke. It had done the trick. I'd felt more than a little pity for Vigilant when I realized what they were trying to do to him but did I have to be broken for Taylor's point to be made?
Taylor… so plain a name for such a person. She terrified me, on a level that I wasn't sure I could compare to anything else.
What had I cared about only a few days ago? My music? Stale and broken now. My keyboard in the living area had gone untouched ever since the seminar, collecting dust now, nevermind that I was an honors musician! How could I give a flying fuck about music when I was going to get everyone killed.
It wasn't real Theresa! It wasn't real!
"Okay. Now you're a hero," she told me. Simple as that. I was a hero. I had responsibility now. The first weight draped over my shoulders. A cloak, heavy with a burden that I was still unfamiliar with, even after all these nights.
It feels so real now.
Telling myself how it had only been words did nothing to ease my fear. My terror. Powers. I'd wanted them so badly once, just like everyone else. When they started cropping up over the past year or so, they'd become a craze. Scion was gone, and the fear was easing up. A whole world with powers existed and now it was our turn to join.
Now I knew the truth. A nightmare world. A devil world. Earth Bet.
How can I protect them? How can I make sure that story never comes true? How how how!?
Fuck. I shook my head to clear it. I had to do something… I was going crazy. My nightmares were bad and how I saw people in daylight was no better.
What was happening to me?
"...kill your team if you fuck up, even once…"
I turned back to my computer. There was respite in the internet. There I could hunt. I could find information that I desperately needed.
I researched everything. I learned every scrap of information I could about Earth Bet, piecing together knowledge that seemed so sensationalistic, so god-damned stupid, or so obvious as to be useless. I cross referenced, checked stories of survivors against those who'd been near the portals before they closed. Refugee's who no longer had names going to their governments asking for identity. For credentials. Most had been given that, which wreaked havoc on Hispanic immigration laws.
The Golden morning was the new definition for panic. Deaths.
Seattle, home of the Seahawks, had been the first to be wiped off the map. Sydney, Okinawa, the whole island, New Orleans, again. Nashville. Only by then did the government unleash the nukes on him… right in the middle of New York. We'd been blessedly saved when Scion and the nuke both had been plunged into a portal of the Golden Man's own making. True collapse had just about begun when blessedly, the wave of power erupted around all the portals. They had begun appearing from nowhere filled with hundreds of fleeing refugees only hours before, running, running as far into our world as they could. Then the eruption had blown through, killing everything within ten miles of these portals. That on its own probably killed as many people Scion had. A small price to pay to stop him, most thought.
They all agreed on one thing, whether from Aleph, Gimmel, or any other Earth. Earth Bet was where it all began. Earth Bet was where it had ended, and their own reality had been the wall that shielded us from true annihilation.
If there even was an Earth Bet anymore, it was probably a dismal place indeed.
The portals remained open for 37 hours and 12 minutes after the explosion. Corroboration between countries puts those in other nations closing only a few seconds later or earlier. All of them had closed within the same minute.
I need more than this! This doesn't tell me anything!
I changed my search. Obelisk. The murderess. She'd killed the teacher and started the whole thing. If not for her there wouldn't have even been a seminar! Not one like that at least. Something those professors with all their learning hadn't understood, it seemed. Or maybe Vigilant had just been the most convenient target.
Obelisk was the catalyst, cascading down to Vigilant's intervention, the professor's death, the seminar, Vigilant's innocent –and failing– defence, and finally Taylor.
The villain was a good place to start. How could I fight her? How could I protect people from her? Defense? No her power was too versatile. Give people armor? No, too many. Always another victim. No no no! Too many weaknesses in people! To many places to defend!
I see in my mind obelisks rise from out of the ground impaling the defenseless kids sitting in the grass while I watch in horror.
"Do you keep fighting them?"
I… I…
My response is exactly the same as it was then. Stuttering stupid, struck dumb by her… presence.
"Do you keep fighting them!?" It was even quieter that time but it felt like a scream to me.
Yes yes, god yes, anything! Just stop looking at me!
I was such a fucking coward. I felt the next weight drop on me even as the words repeated themselves over and over in my mind.
"Good. That's good. You're all alive!"
It seems like something worth celebrating. I have the gratitude of the people. That small audience of two hundred becomes a multitude before my eyes. They love me but…
I turned my eyes down towards the stump of a right arm and gulped reflexively.
Not real. I'm not missing an arm. I don't even have powers. I continued typing, trying to ignore the play that was refreshing itself in my mind. Typing with a hand I can't see but can still feel, watching the keys depress seemingly of their own accord.
I knew I was still dreaming but the insanity was going further than any dreams before. Closer to that dark end where I failed and everyone died than any dreams before it. Here, finally, I found my spine.
I won't fail. I won't let this dream reach that end Taylor.
The figment in my imagination cocked a sort of sad eyebrow. As if… maybe she knew. Maybe she knew exactly what I was going through.
She gestured somewhere else. Somewhere far off and I turned to see nothing. Just my wall.
Taylor gave a knowing smile and nodded once more towards the wall. I saw nothing! What the hell kind of dream was…
A speck. Tiny, almost unmeasurable, but growing in my perception. A small piece extracted melding with…me? Merging with me? A small piece of infinity. I SAW. A being, bright and gold, the light fading slowly. Another being, similar to the first. Less and more at the same time. I didn't understand. They were both dying. They were…?
VAST! ENORMOUS!
I turned back to Taylor, my image of Taylor, but she was gone.
"Theresa!"
"Gah!" I screamed, and awoke. I was in my bed again. Marietta stood over me and the light was on. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was finally over. At least for tonight. The lights were never on in my dreams, and I could find a modicum of safety from the visions as long as I wasn't asleep. The only lights in my dreams come from my laptop when I was madly searching for anything to help me and can't find anything useful. Just more pictures of Blight's victims, or the horrifying images of Alan Coals.
"Hey… you okay?" She asks, this time genuinely concerned, unlike the annoyance of her dream version. This time her face didn't wither. I've actually woken up this time.
"Better now," I tell her. "T-thanks. Thanks for watching out for me."
She'd been a good friend these past few days ever since my nightmares began. Ever since Taylor told me I'd been unable to save all the people sitting in the grass. Marietta had been one of those I hadn't been able to save.
"This isn't getting better Theresa, it's getting worse. You need to talk to somebody. Or confront her about it," she scolded in a mothering tone that I'd seen occasionally from her. We'd been roommates for two years already, both of us going on our third now.
I shuddered and pulled the covers up over my face, partly for dramatic effect, partly for humor, and partly because the idea of just confronting Taylor Hebert was just that scary.
"Oh she's not that bad." I felt a pillow land on my head from under my covers. "I'm telling you. She wrote it off with a joke the next day is what the freshmen are saying. The ones in her math class."
I blinked. "Wait she's a freshman?"
For some reason the idea that the source of my horror these past few nights was over two years my junior irritated me.
Theresa shrugged. "She's in College Algebra, Bio I, all the starter classes really. Heard she's trying to join the speech club."
I let my jaw fall open at that a little and threw the covers off myself. "Are they insane!?"
Marietta laughed.
"I'm serious! She's like… like…!"
Honestly it was probably a pretty good idea, in theory. I could see it now though. "Villa Grove University Speech Club Disqualified in Debate for Excessive Use of Anguish."
I scoffed a little, which slowly morphed into a near full laugh joining Marietta. I rubbed at my eyes to wake up a little.
"What time is it?" I asked dismally.
"Almost three in the afternoon," she told me.
I sniffed in a bit of shock. Well. I'd finally gotten some sleep. Almost eight whole hours of nightmares. Thank god. Now I could probably go another two or three days before I had to do it again.
Wasn't that a comforting thought?
"You feeling any better today? Maybe wanna go out somewhere?" Marietta asked gingerly.
I sighed. I hadn't been able to be my usual peppy self since Taylor had twisted my mind and began haunting my dreams. Not that I'd ever been very peppy. My issues with failure were legendary among our dorm, because my venting system was my electric keyboard and writing music. My roommate and those down in the rooms beside ours were pretty non-confrontational but after my nine hour composition marathon when I was made 2nd Piano instead of 1st last year, they'd been begging me to shut up.
Music wasn't going to make this one go away though. Somehow I couldn't even bring myself to want to play. I didn't want to do anything. Food tasted stale to me, friends just made me feel more guilty, and school…
Hah. As if I'd ever enjoyed any of the classes other than the music ones.
"Yeah… I'm gonna head out." I told her. I had to get out of the dorm. She was right about that. The tiny room was stifling and not good for my rapidly deteriorating mental state.
"Oh? We're going to get some Arby's in an hour or two. Want to wait?"
I shoved on a pair of slacks as I shook my head towards her. "Nah I think I'm just gonna go for a walk. I probably won't be gone too long. Just need to clear my head a little."
Marietta shrugged in a 'suit yourself' manner. She was worried about me and more than a little concerned. I could hardly keep down a bit of bread lately, and as a result I was losing weight rapidly. If I could bring myself to care, I might even feel a bit of pride in that. I'd always been a little chubby. Who knew losing that extra fat could be so easy? Just don't feel like eating. At all.
It took a little while to get ready but I didn't put half the effort into it that I normally did. I'd skipped classes Friday and whiled away the days since watching Family Guy or stand-up comedy on my computer, trying to distract myself from the disturbing images that kept cropping up in my mind.
It hadn't worked, and watching Peter Griffin, a cartoon character, deteriorate like one of Blight's victims had promptly soured that pastime.
Four hours later I found myself wandering. I'd walked all the way up 18th, or what passed for the main road in this town. It was a city, I knew but it felt so small compared to New York where I'd grown up.
Students laughed merrily outside the entrance to bars, some being obnoxiously loud. Others walked to restaurants in groups, with the occasional oddball on his or her own, most nose deep in their phones or books.
How could I protect them all from Obelisk? From Blight?
The tower. You can build it. Defend everything.
I shivered. Where the hell had that thought come from?
I continued on, my feet leading my subconsciously while I swam in my own thoughts. So lost in thought was I that I was startled when a deeper masculine barked out a surprised "Oh! You."
I looked up. Sure enough, I'd somehow found my way to the courtyard where the bleachers were. Where the seminar had been. A few people were wandering around the sidewalks but the bleachers were empty save for a single man, looking straight at me.
I didn't know what to say.
"You're that… Hero girl." Devin Maxworth said simply.
I shrugged.
"She fuck you up, too?"
I didn't need to ask who. The answer was as obvious. I nodded.
"I could use some company. Wanna have a seat?"
I wasn't really sure. This man was central to all of my problems but he'd been the final break. He'd abandoned everyone, even if he'd been manipulated into his answer. It still hurt. It felt like we'd been betrayed.
I sat down.
We were quiet for a while. I hadn't yet actually said a word to him and it grated on the guy. I couldn't really blame him. I supposed I was being a little creepy.
"So… do you ah… talk?" He asked when the silence managed to become too awkward.
"Yeah," I said with smile, which I felt guilty about the second I showed it. He had short brown hair and a broad face, with a wide jaw. He was muscled, his body showing strong evidence of daily workouts. His eyes were the only thing really unusual about him as they seemed a hair bigger than normal. As if maybe they had no whites. Just pupil all the way around. Reminded me a little of anime eyes actually. Unnerving.
Useful. Camera's with full vision, playback on a spherical room walls. Workable. Surveillance rooms on upper levels.
What? Before my eyes were… schematics? Blueprints? As if… I…?
Whatever. I didn't have time to worry about that.
"So, what brings you back to this fucking place?" He asked me as he lay back on the large stone bleacher.
"I don't really know. I've been walking for hours. I guess this is just where I ended up." I told him simply. "How about you?"
"Been here for almost the whole day," he said. "No one seems to want to sit with me much anymore. Looks like they took me abandoning the professors as me abandoning everyone. Fuck, I feel like such an ass. I didn't mean I wouldn't ever help anyone again but everyone seems to be taking it that way."
I cringed. At least no one else seemed to blame me like that. It could've been worse. I had to deal with my own imagined failure. My own belief that I would simply abandon everyone. Lose everyone. Thank god she hadn't made me answer. Abandon my team and fight to hopefully save people who hated me? Vigilant was probably feeling worse than I was. But his problem was easy enough to fix.
"Uhm. Have you thought about just trying to stop a crime? Show that you didn't mean you'd abandon everyone? Just the professors who were slinging hate at you?" I asked, honestly curious.
He gave a bitter laugh. "Heh. See any crime around here? Honestly, I almost wish Obelisk would try another robbery just so I could earn a pinch of my reputation back. When I first got these powers I thought it was going to be so awesome. Just like the comic books! Who knew I'd lose all my friends, girlfriend, and job in the first two months. And that was before fucking Taylor and her damn speech."
Shit. I thought I had it bad. It seemed he'd lost everything to his powers. Even with all that though…
"You still did the right thing though."
He stared at me and I gave him a smile. I felt strangely comfortable around him. We were connected through a horrifying shared experience. The others who watched the video didn't understand what it had been like, being the focus of Taylor's gaze. I was almost certain she had a power of her own. A power far more terrifying than Vigilant, Obelisk, Blight, or any other cape I could think of.
The alternative was that I was having nightmares, losing sleep, obsessing, forgetting my music, and all around losing my life because a girl talked at me for a few minutes. That said a lot about my self esteem. Or lack of it.
"You think?" He asked. "For me, it wasn't about doing the right thing. My friends were… jealous. My girlfriend apparently thought my eyes were creepy and she hated that I could see through… erm… Ah."
I giggled. Weirdly, I didn't mind. Its not like he could turn off his eyesight, and his eyes had been purely focused on mine this whole time.
Er… wait. Spherical vision. His eyes were focused 'everywhere' at once. So maybe they had been lingering on my privates. Okay, yeah, I could see why his ex might find that a little creepy.
"Then what was it about?" I asked, subconsciously folding my arms across my chest.
He frowned at my gesture, a guilty grimace that said quite a bit about his personality. I liked him a bit more for that, but still didn't let my hands fall. He was clearly feeling ashamed of what he could do.
"It was… it was… validation, I guess. I'd lost most of my friends already, and my girlfriend was on edge. I felt like being a hero would make the trouble it'd given me already worth it. Just made everything worse though," He sighed, dismally.
I shook my head and put a hand on his shoulder. "No it didn't. Like Taylor said, you might've saved everyone else's life in that bank. Obelisk could've killed everyone."
"That's not what I meant. Is it selfish that I was only thinking about how I made everything worse for me?" He asked. "I know Taylor was probably right. What I did felt right, and still does, but I can't help but think my life wouldn't be quite so shitty right now If I hadn't done a damn thing."
It was so simple though. Couldn't he see? No one ever said being a hero was easy and he'd already proven himself under pressure once. His words at the seminar, and even him telling me now how hard dealing with the consequences of his actions was, only further validated that they'd been the right ones. He'd saved people.
"So?" I asked. "So what? So you have doubts. You want things to go well for you. Who doesn't?"
"You think its that easy?" He asked.
"Yeah. Its human to be a little selfish." I said simply. "Its human to not want to save people like those professors, too. Taylor twisted it, but I knew what you meant."
I'd do almost anything to get rid of these damn dreams, for example.
"Wish Diana would've seen it that way. What's your name, Hero?" He asked with a quirk of his cheek.
"Theresa," I told him cocking my own head, flushing a little. Was it weird that I liked being called that? Bah.
"Devin," He said quickly. "But you probably already knew that."
"Yeah but its nice to hear from the person behind the powers. You're not all that bad from what I've seen. I don't know if I could've done what you did at that bank."
Civilians difficult to defend here. Area open, protection minimal. Bunker required.
"Hey, listen. Uh… any chance you want to go get a drink with me? Talking with you has been… nice." He stuttered lamely.
Wow. Oh wow, did not see that one coming. He was so damned shy it was cute. Especially since he was such a burly person. I couldn't help but wonder just how much of my body he could see with those too-wide eyes of his but...
I haven't seen a single person maimed or withered since I started talking to him.
"Sure."
"What the fuck, Hero!?" Devin yelled from somewhere outside, startling the shit out of me. I clanged my head against the hard metal underside of the third floor of the contraption I was building, but he didn't seem to care much about that.
"Oooowwww…" I moaned grabbing my throbbing forehead. "Don't scare me like that!" I yelled back down. It was pretty dark in here and that made it really hard to see where he was. I activated the surveillance system on my glasses and synced it to one of the camera's I had on the front entrance.
"What the hell did you do to this place!?" He yelled. He really was an obnoxious sort.
"I was just… tinkering." I told him, my voice echoing through the floors and vibrating the metal Vigilant couldn't see through.
"You've been gone for two days Theresa! I'm really getting worried about you."
"Come on it wasn't that long," I yelled. Unfortunately I managed to lose my concentration and dropped my wrench. It clattered right by my ear with yet another loud 'clang.'
"Seriously, what the hell do you do out here?" He asked me, his tone fading from angered to merely curious. "This thing is huge!"
"That's what I said!" I told him, unable to resist the sex joke, and I could almost feel him blush. Honestly, for a guy who could see anyone naked at any time, he was such a prude.
I smiled a little, picking my torque wrench back up and starting to twist again. Oh god dammit. My goggles had dented the metal! How the hell did that happen!? Ugh. Oh well. It was a deep interior part anyways and not a vital one.
A love dent. It'd be my little secret. Also, good to know that these goggles I'd built were sturdy as hell! My forehead much less so.
I thought I was getting the hang of what I could do. Little ideas here and there, with big ones stashed away, ideas growing for them every so often.
I needed to protect people, keep them safe, and weirdly, the best way to do that was to know what was coming. That and a mixture of Devin's uncanny ability to always know where everything was had sparked my first idea.
Surveillance drones. The real trick wasn't building them but making them able to recharge their own batteries whenever they got low. I kept four or five situated about me all the time, and tagged Devin with two or three. They had a bloody annoying alarm when danger was near that I'd cannibalized from my alarm clock and duplicated several times over.
Devin had been... annoyed at them of course. That lead to cloaking them. At first that had been a problem but the more I thought about it, the easier it became.
The more I thought about any problem the easier it became. I could churn out ten of the little drones in an hour now, each with their own personal cloaking devices so they blended into the scenery.
All I had to do was want to protect something and nothing could stop me. I'd needed a receptor because there wasn't much point in having all that surveillance if I couldn't watch what was going on, so I'd built the goggles. My goggles could uplink to any one of the drones at will. Not perfect but, I made do.
"Theresa, can you come down from there?" Devin asked, whining cutely.
"Why don't you come up here?" I asked coyly.
In the month since we'd met nearly my entire life hand turned upside down. And almost entirely for the better.
Devin was… great. I loved spending time with him, but more than that… this new hobby of mine. It was fulfilling in a way nothing else I'd ever done before could compare to.
It took two weeks and the knowledge that I'd built automated flying drones as a part of a hobby before I realized that something seriously unusual was going on. I'd thought the metal crafting and welding had just been an unusual talent at first. I'd liked it a lot more once I'd gotten my hands dirty and oily. Then I'd loved it. Soon I revelled in the feeling.
I had powers. Some sort of superhuman intelligence that allowed me to build… stuff. Really fucking cool stuff.
"Theresa, dammit I don't even know where you are!"
Hmm, he actually seemed a little bit pissed. Probably better talk to him.
"Alright, on my way down. Just let me mark my place." I yelled down. I hung the wrench on a small divot I'd made for it, as I knew I'd be spending quite a while up there when I'd first started building this, but grabbed most of my other tools. It would really suck to lose one of them up here, especially when I finally activated the thing.
It was going to be my masterpiece. For now, anyway, until I could get the material to start building The Tower. I could hardly believe that this shit was possible, but I was building it, and it was coming together before my eyes.
My portable bunker, with shrinking tech.
Fuck yeah.
I shimmied my way out of the space in the second floor's ceiling, which was a rather tight squeeze, and slowly made my way to the open panel before climbing out onto the third floor. The roof wasn't covered yet so the thing looked like a shell with multiple levels held up by a dome-like skeleton of Phrinny Metal. That was the name I was playing with for it anyway. A new alloy that I'd had to create to withstand the effect of shrinking, and the barriers that would be held in place by its strength. Among… other uses.
Like shielding the eyes of a man who could see through anything.
"There you are!" Devin exclaimed.
He needs eye protection. Should build him some goggles too for when he's not in the armor. Fuck, I hope he likes it!
I slid down a ladder and bounded down the next one before finally coming to a stop on solid ground.
"Hi Devin!" I said, happily. I really felt good about today.
"Theresa, I know you like building stuff lately but Marietta called me and told me that you broke your keyboard for…" He paused, his eyes trailing downwards, which was weird enough on its own. He rarely actually turned his eyes since they could see everywhere. "...Is that a blow torch?"
I looked down to the canister and spicket hanging off my belt loop and resting against my baggy work pants.
"Yes. Yes it is." I told him, slightly embarrassed.
"Where… did you get… a…?"
"I sorta built it. I built almost everything here."
"Where did you get all the metal!?"
"The building next door's support frame on the top floor. Just kinda pushed it off and dragged it over really, one piece at a time" I told him flippantly.
It suddenly occurred to me that I might look a little less attractive to him than ever at the moment. I was dirty. I probably looked like ass right now. I brought a hand to my cheek and rubbed, cringing at the black soot I found on my thumb.
"Ah… er… you wanted to talk about something?" I asked, a little ashamed. My newest creation, the work of two days, had taken up nearly the entirety of my workshop, an abandoned building on the northeast side of town, and I'd been here nonstop that whole time. I think I slept under the staircase I'd built for the second floor…
"I'm just worried about you! You… Your friends say you used to love your music. Hell I love your music! When I found out you'd busted up your keyboard I…"
My heart gave a tiny little leap at that. He cared about me. Fuck I was so goddamn lucky.
Diana eat your heart out you bitch! I win! You can't have him back so there!
"Devin… I… don't care about music anymore. I don't… I can't. This… this is too big. I have to build it. I have to build everything."
He cocked a curious eyebrow at me.
"I… you know how you call me Hero sometimes?" I asked, tugging on my braid as it hung down on my right shoulder. I'd taken to wearing it in a braid lately. Oh, fuck I was still wearing my goggles! I must look like an alien!
He nodded.
"I'm going to be. That's my name… I… well, maybe its better if I show you."
He followed me sort of mutely as I walked him over towards where I was keeping our powersuits hidden. Fuck I was so nervous. What if he didn't go for it? I wrung my hands a bit as I pulled up to where both of our suits were hidden under some cheap curtains I'd found in the next building.
I pulled them off to reveal the gleaming golden metal of my own suit and the shining emerald I'd chosen for his.
His jaw dropped.
"Devin. I… I'm going to be Hero. Capital H. She gave me the name, and whatever this thing I can do is, it lets me build things that can protect people. Maybe protect everyone if I work hard enough. Everything I try to build gets easier and easier the more I work at it. I… I want to show Taylor that I won't fail. I want to… fuck I don't know. I… built you this... Uhm, Devin?"
He looks so stupid with his mouth hanging open like that.
He turned, slowly bringing his unusual eyes around to stare at me directly. "Uhm… Devin?" I repeated.
"You… built me a costume? Holy fuck that thing looks cool." He breathed, his eyes focused so much I thought he might actually not be able to see me.
Heh, boys and their toys. Fuck yeah it looks cool! I built it, dammit! I'm Hero! Best builder alive! I think.
"Uhm. Yes? D-do you like it?" I said, much more shyly than my thoughts.
"You have got to be the most awesome girlfriend a guy could ever have."
Without warning he swept me into a toe curling kiss.
I was going to be the best Hero this world had ever seen. I was going to start my own section of the Wardens, right here. I'd protect this whole city and someday maybe I'd be able to build something that could save everyone from bastards like Blight. I'd live up to the name she gave me.
I'm stronger than all your misery. I'll show you… Taylor.
End Chapter