Chapter 5 - Alice I
Alice ignored the polite nodding of the campus guard walking past her as she jumped up two steps at a time right into the university Physics department, the place she had sacrificed the last four years of her life to. She struggled more than usual with the backpack weighing her down, not used to carrying more than a laptop up the stairs.
Today was going to be her last day and tomorrow it would be everyone else's too. A deranged giggle escaped her otherwise carefully neutral face. Professor Mathews had accused her of plagiarism and falsifying data for the last time. They wanted to strip her of her Masters degree, she would strip them of everything else.
When she closed the glass entrance doors behind her, happy that her access code still worked, and took in the dark hallway dividing lecture halls, classrooms and offices, she knew she had time. Still, she couldn't help but hurry along as she pulled out her newly bought flashlight from her backpack, her jittery body not allowing anything else.
Every open room and every locked door got a little package, disguised as gift boxes but in reality cobbled together from all her electronics and household chemicals. Not even her toothbrush and toothpaste survived. Since she had gotten her power a week ago, after the insulting meeting where they had threatened what she had sacrificed her whole life for, she had barely gotten a wink of sleep, her whole time dedicated to creating enough payload to completely erase anyone who had ever insulted her work.
She had made sure there was going to be a chain reaction, the only trigger she would need was for her last and biggest creation. Alice had gotten the idea for it after finding a box of rat poison a previous tenant left under her bathroom sink. It was going to be specifically for Mathews early morning class in the largest lecture hall. She had made sure he was going to have the most excruciating end.
She installed the last device right by the front, the mess of loose wires and plastic bottles full with a mixture she had personally invented was taped to the underside of the lectern. It only took a second to pair it with her rudimentary trigger, a button from her old microwave on top of her shampoo bottle containing remnants of her cellphone, and basked in her accomplishment for a moment. Tomorrow the whole department wouldn't exist anymore.
Yes, tomorrow she would leave school and never look back, Cornell obviously didn't deserve her. With her powers she could do anything now. Everyone would acknowledge her genius.
Then, as she was stuffing the trigger back into her now empty backpack, it was suddenly yanked out of her hand. Alice's heart skipped a beat, her empty hand opening and closing in pure surprise.
"I can understand wanting to blow up a school." The deep voice snapped her out of it and she whipped her flashlight around, illuminating… nothing. No, there was something, a shadow shaped like a man floating above the first row with her trigger in his hand, idly examining it before looking down at her again. "I just wish you thought a little bigger."
Alice was frozen for a moment, the shock of this cape's sudden appearance not allowing her to respond immediately even though she felt a familiar rage rise up inside her, the rage against her parents and professors, who all thought they were so much smarter than her.
"I don't give a fuck what you think about what I'm doing. But if you don't give me that back, I'm gonna…" She growled out, clenching her hand into a fist in frustration. Alice hadn't expected to encounter another cape so quickly. She didn't have any more bombs on her right now but there was one of them right behind her. If she could get to it...
The cape just ignored her threat though, and asked his own question instead while floating closer. "Did you know that the Protectorate is on its way already?"
"I doubt it." Alice scoffed and tried to inch back towards her just installed bomb, while making it look like she was retreating from him. "How would they even know what I'm doing? For that matter, why did you decide to butt into my business?"
"They have Thinkers." The parahuman dismissively answered her as he played with her creation, throwing it in the air, letting it rotate and land back in his hand. "As for why I am here, I think you can imagine why." He meaningfully motioned the trigger in her direction.
She blinked, her thoughts racing. If he told the truth and there really were Thinkers in the Protectorate powerful enough to divine her plan, then it must mean he was an even more powerful Thinker or… Alice smiled, the lectern now beside her.
"You got the same message as the heroes and somehow got here first. And to do what? Stop me before..." She said, so close to touching her bomb. The range could be changed on the fly with a little adjustment and then she just had to throw it towards him.
"No, I don't want to stop you." He interrupted her, making her clench her teeth. "Like I said, I just wish you thought bigger. You are operating on the small perspective of an academic, I'm going to show you how large the world really is."
Alice didn't know what he meant and she also didn't care at this point. She just wanted to shut this asshole up. Her earlier good mood was almost forgotten, her eyes narrowed as she stared at the condescending dark shape right in front of her.
Suddenly she lunged towards her bomb at the same time as she saw him nonchalantly pressing the trigger. Bakuda gaped at the moron as her heart skipped a beat and dropped into her stomach. She had just enough time to think about how to possibly disable it but then it was already too late. She could see that the injection fluid had already left the side chamber and was mixing with the main compound she had made out of drain cleaner and some rat pesticide, building up pressure due to the heat the mixture was suddenly producing.
Alice didn't even have time to curse the idiot before the little insulation bubble broke and the pressure inside vented explosively in all directions, the lectern splintering before her and green, viscous fluid was immediately covering every surface of the room. It met exactly zero resistance as it melted through the seats, the floors, the walls and even the ceiling with a disturbing hiss. She knew the acid would eat through anything down to bedrock, nothing in a room with this bomb could survive.
Reflexively she had closed her eyes. She was right above her creation, her death was assured.
Only when the expected pain didn't come and she started to hear more and more explosions as the rest of her bombs were detonating, one after the other, did she realize she was still alive, not a splash of acid on her. Alice slowly opened her eyes just a smidge, blinking in surprise at the other parahuman. He was now extremely close, barely a handspan in front of her.
"As I said: Perspective." He stated, only the floor around them untouched by her creations. It was like there was a bubble around them that was repelling the various effects of her bombs.
Ice cubes as wide as a bus impacted the wall right behind her, a web of steel, the tips pointed like spears sliding right over them, balls of almost sentient electricity smashing into a pillar of sponge twelve yards high, only to get wiped away by good old kinetic force. All these effects and more were destroying the building piecemeal, interacting, creating novel effects and throwing shards of their various components all around them. It was like she was in the eye of the storm, witnessing her own ability up close.
As the effects slowly petered out, the hissing of her acid bomb the only sound left, Alice tried to recover from her near death experience.
She had thought that she would only be able to witness her creations from afar, cheering them on as they leveled her enemies. Being right in the middle of them was something she never expected to experience.
It was beautiful and terrifying.
Finally, she licked her lips and gave a tiny nod in acknowledgement. She had never felt fear like this before and she knew how the world worked. There was a reason why he had shown off his powers in such a way. "O, okay, I, I…" Her voice sounded weak and pathetic even to her own ears. She reflexively cleared her throat. "I take it, you want to recruit me?"
"Now you get it." The lunatic laughed, setting a single hand gently on her shoulder. It was cold. "I even have a signing bonus for you. We'll just have to travel for a little bit."
"Travel? How…" Alice could barely voice her question before the support of the floor below them was finally eaten away completely and just fell into the pit the main lecture hall had become.
She flailed for a moment, expecting to follow but she was frozen in the air, feeling like she had put on a full body stocking which was slightly compressing her everywhere. Suddenly she became aware of the hand on her shoulder again, suctioned to her skin.
For a moment they were just floating there, then started rising out of the massive hole in the roof. Alice stared down at the university and felt some satisfaction at seeing parts of the campus completely destroyed, the buildings surrounding the Physics department were probably unsalvageable too. Unfortunately it wasn't her that had pulled the trigger so she couldn't be completely satisfied.
Still, the formerly majestic old buildings were now reshaped into abstract sculptures. A beautiful monument to her revenge.
"It's a start." She was broken out of her reverie by her companion's deep voice. "You'll top it in a month."
Alice scoffed but felt flattered despite herself. "Of course." Then she suddenly remembered something before they left completely. "I need to go back to my room to get my tools and my other stuff."
"We are going to stop at a Walmart to get you better tools." He answered with a chuckle, his words underscored by the symphony of emergency responders arriving from outside the campus. "Get your pants there too."
"None that are going to fit me." Alice grumbled venomously. "Do I look two hundred pounds, dummy?" The insult had just slipped out, something she would say to a fellow student or even assistant professor. Not to a parahuman that could protect himself and her from her bombs so easily. He had also shown enough abilities that she could deduce a theme to them. She didn't know if he was a complete Black Hole Changer or just had extremely strong gravity powers, which allowed him to stop light from bouncing off his body, but the implications were pretty bad. Or good now that she was on his side.
If her mouth didn't just fuck it up for her.
Thankfully he just tightened his hand on her shoulder for a moment, enough to let her know it wasn't appreciated. Alice winced and lowered her head, catching sight of Legend, the head honcho of the Protectorate himself, arriving with a rainbow lightshow. His blue and white costume stood out against the dark night, a subtle glow coming from his whole body. He was looking around the campus, trying to find survivors or more likely the one responsible for the situation. For some reason he didn't spare them even a glance.
"That's a real dummy." Her still nameless Boss interrupted her thoughts as they suddenly started moving forward, leaving Legend and Cornell University behind them. The landscape was zooming past extremely quickly now, seemingly without any input or effort on his part. She couldn't even feel any acceleration either. It was like everything around them was moving and they were standing still. Alice knew of course that people in space didn't feel any acceleration but recreating that in the atmosphere...
Could she… yes, a black hole bomb, easy, her mind was already creating designs for it. Sometimes her genius surprised even herself. It would take a lot of material and building the tools to build the tools to build her creation, but it was possible.
"He has the power of a god but refuses to accept the responsibility." Before she could get too deeply into her tinkering, hindered by not having any materials at all. The other parahuman continued talking. Her eyebrows raised, why would gods have responsibility? "He delegates the most important decisions to politicians or bureaucrats, trying to use them as a shield for his own conscience."
"What's he supposed to do instead?" She asked, wanting to know more. Alice had of course heard about groups who declared capes gods on earth and stuff like that but it had always sounded useless to her when she wasn't a parahuman herself. Now that she was...
"Whatever he wants." He answered, his other hand coming up and squeezing her other shoulder. "Until he clashes with someone else doing whatever he or she wants. Then they fight and then both will do whatever the winner wants."
"...That's what you want to be? A god?" Alice asked with a slight derision, getting a chuckle in response.
"No, in comparison to the rest of humanity I already am one." He said without a trace of arrogance in his voice. It was just a fact to him. Either he was so monstrously powerful that it was the simple truth or he was exceptionally delusional. She really didn't know what would be better for her. "Now I'm just searching for the rest of my pantheon."
Alice of course understood the implication quite clearly. While they would all be gods in the eye of the people, her boss was of course planning to stay at the top. Zeus, Odin or Amaterasu. The chief god. She had to think about this. It sounded very tempting and, anyway, it was always possible to usurp him at some point.
Before she knew it, they stopped at a closed Walmart somewhere in Virginia, which didn't hinder her Boss in the least. As they neared, the backdoor crumpled inwards, seemingly by itself and they were in. She was sorely tempted to take a lot of the electronics or even weapons in the store but her boss waved her off. Tools, clothes and toiletries, nothing else. Her heart beat fast at her first robbery and she quickly gathered everything she would need, three red toolboxes and a suitcase were filled and they were off in half an hour. Her boss looked bored with it.
Alice was now already used to the discomforting feeling of watching the world zip by. It felt like barely ten minutes before they slowed down and she finally got a view of their destination. They had arrived in a boring village in the middle of America, the roofs of the one story bungalows interspersed with small fields creating a tapestry you could find thousands of times all across the country.
If it wasn't for the massive walls Alice could see just on the horizon, circling the settlement, she would have said they had gotten lost.
"Where are we?" She asked as a feeling of unease started to creep up her spine. They hovered downwards, the freshly paved road completely abandoned, only a single red pontiac parked in front of a quaint little farm house. It was an almost picturesque scene.
Her boss stayed silent and touched down on the ground, leaving her standing in the middle of the road with her luggage. Then he lightly placed his hand on the pristine looking vehicle.
Alice couldn't suppress her gasp as immediately the car transformed, the hood unraveling into dozens of scythes of metallic silver trying to stab the person daring to touch them. If it had been anyone else, she would have been worried about their health but the only thing they accomplished was ineffectually sliding off her Boss' body. The mechanical creature disguised as a car continued to transform, heaving up higher and higher, more scythes and blades and grasping cables bearing down on him. It was demonstrating way more mass than should have been possible, the two ton car suddenly more than ten tons of writhing metal.
It was instantaneously crushed, the massive machine crumpling inwards, falling forward into the dark hand of the parahuman. In barely a second it was compacted up into a small ball, no bigger than a baseball. The Black Hole Changer then turned towards her, throwing the destroyed machine over the back of his shoulder right at the farmhouse.
"Let me introduce you to your signing bonus: The Machine Army, or as I like to call them: The Unlimited Tinker Supply."
As the single family house behind him started to transform into hundreds of mechanical killing machines, Alice felt her own deranged grin form. Maybe this whole being a god business might not be such a bad idea after all.
AN: Damn, poor Alice getting forced into joining an evil organisation. What a hero she could have been. lol
