Chapter 4 - Markus II

I was drifting over the Downtown area, nullifying earth's gravity on myself barely needing any of my attention as I watched the last worker drones leaving their parking garages and returning to their depressingly boring lives. It was like watching an anthill, the level of activity was interesting but you knew if you wanted, you could level the whole thing with barely any effort.

My power twitched at that idle thought and I couldn't stop the giddy feeling riding in my nonexistent gut. All their lives were in the palm of my hands and they didn't even know it.

Unfortunately I doubted that they would care about it even if they did know. Personally, I was never comfortable with anyone more powerful above me, that's why I had tried so hard for so long to get my power, that's why I tried to stay as independent as possible in everything I did.

Experience told me that I was fairly alone in that conviction. The rest of the population, they didn't care that the Endbringers existed, destroying a city every few months, or that the Slaughterhouse Nine were massacring villages or Nilbog was making worse and more powerful monsters or that the Machine Army territory was growing every day. And those were just things that threatened Americans.

This was a deathworld and most people just didn't care. It was the perfect situation for someone to step in and shatter the illusion of a government led by ordinary people. They had already accepted that the personally powerful weren't subject to the same rules they were.

But even if one of those average, apathetic people were to become powerful… What was the saying? Youth was wasted on the young. On Earth Bet it was: Power was wasted on weak minds.

I scowled, Panacea definitely was one of those weak minds. Watching the Dallon siblings leave left a bitter taste in my mouth. The way the girl had acted while being one of the most powerful people on the planet was pathetic, abhorred. Even as a dumb teenager in my first life, and I was a real moron, I would have at least accepted the deal even if just to buy time.

What would it have cost her to string me along for a while, at least until she could rally the troops to take me out. Not that it would have worked but it would have been a better plan than touching me without knowing anything about me. My skin could have been acidic for all she knew.

Anyway, Panacea was a dead end for now. I could try to negotiate with Brandish instead but I doubted that anything would come out of it. The older woman was a lawyer, which almost guaranteed that she would give me the run around as much as possible. And even if I could put a deal together, was it really better than just directly forcing Panacea to work for me? What stopped her from screwing me anyway? Healing the burns and then giving cancer would be very tempting to a very spiteful girl.

Unfortunately healers of her caliber weren't easy to find. Kidnapping Bonesaw was always a possibility but she was probably going to be even more spiteful than Panacea. In contrast to those two, Scapegoat in San Diego was the much better option. He might be a Ward but from what I remembered he was extremely mercenary. Definitely easier to deal with.

As I thought about heading to the west coast and really putting the speed of my power to the test, I saw a radiant figure dart out of an alley below me, almost a complete inversion of my own appearance. She shined so brightly that even the ants below had to look up for once.

My interest started to grow as I watched her fly between the tall buildings towards the former ABB territory, her speed impressive. She would be just perfect for my future plans.

Besides, didn't the Empire have a healer too?

Kayden I

Three hours of her afternoon wasted on a useless patrol. Besides two strung out druggies she hadn't found anybody connected to the ABB at all. The junkies told her that all Asians had gone to ground after Oni Lee and Lung had been killed. She knew that already of course, the news had barely talked about anything else since yesterday. The fact that it was a pretty well filmed event, as far as Cape encounters went, probably helped.

She was almost jealous, having fought the two ABB capes herself and won more than once and the journalists usually spent barely five minutes on it. They also refused to praise her or acknowledge that she hadn't been part of the Empire for almost a year now, which was always the most frustrating thing. She tried to help these people by removing the filth on the streets without an ounce of compensation and the only thing she got was contempt.

How could she show that she wasn't with Max anymore?

Kayden sighed as she turned off her powers in the alley beside her apartment building and walked around the block to the front entrance. The upscale location was thankfully unaffordable for the wrong sort of people which meant she didn't have to look over her shoulder when she unlocked the entrance.

Just two years ago she thought she had life all figured out. She had married her dream man, was respected at her job and then even got pregnant with the first of their surely many future children. Then suddenly nothing she did was good enough.

Once she had missed one of his phone calls while she had a gynecologist appointment and he refused to let her back into the apartment for two hours. She was just starting to show and almost peed herself in the hallway. At that point she probably should have noticed Max was far from perfect, but she even apologized to him afterwards. It was like she was possessed, he was her world at that point.

Kayden entered the elevator, leaning against the back mirror as the doors closed in front of her.

Only the birth of Aster changed things. As soon as she was born, that little girl became her new everything and Max's behavior was unacceptable. Just the thought that he could humiliate her daughter the same way he had humiliated her was making her blood boil.

Speaking of her beautiful little girl, she hoped her stepson Theo had tired her out a little bit. As much as she loved hearing Asters giggles, she would also enjoy just a single night of good sleep. Unfortunately that didn't seem possible for her lately, even if her daughter didn't wake her up. Since leaving the empire it always felt like she was sleeping with one eye open. After she was let go without much of a fight from Max she always expected the other shoe to drop, she always wondered if she was still part of his plans even now.

Her keys jiggled as she unlocked the thick pine door leading into her spacious apartment. She didn't want to toot her own horn too much but the way the entrance hall was laid out was very elegant. The tasteful dark oak shoe rack and the positioning of some cute decorations only added to the feeling. If there was anything she was confident in then it was her instincts for interior design.

After pulling off her shoes, she hated when people used shoes in their homes, and setting them next to Theos sneakers, she entered her lit up living room.

"Theo, I'm back." She whispered, trying to not wake her baby, and expecting to see Theos chubby form on the couch playing some game or at the table doing homework. She frowned when she didn't see him immediately but that wasn't too strange, he was probably just playing with Aster.

With a happy smile on her face Kayden tiptoed toward the children's bedroom, excited to see that little face again. Maybe she was going to be frowny in her sleep tonight. Last time she missed taking a photo of that adorable expression.

With a soft push she opened the door, and her heart immediately dropped. Her stepson Theo was sitting on the floor, staring up at the other occupant of the room. It was a dark man, oddly two dimensional with no shadows to define his structure, like the world itself was telling her that he shouldn't be there. At first she couldn't even tell that he wasn't turned towards her but at the crib, a single undefined finger extended as he tickled a sleepy Aster, who squirmed at his soft touch.

Kayden knew this man, and had seen him trigger on the news from different phone recordings of people filming outside their hospital rooms. Apparently Lung had decided to attack a hospital that night. It also hadn't escaped her notice that he was almost a complete mirror of her own appearance. She tried to get over her shock at having him currently in her apartment.

"An older brother should always watch out for his younger siblings." His deep voice rumbled as he turned to the still Theo, at the same time catching sight of where she was standing in the doorway. "Ah, back already?"

With a swallow Kayden finally found her voice, her power reflexively activating and lighting up the dark room in a harsh glare. "Get away from my daughter." She had never heard her own voice so hard and threatening before, her usually high and soft tone nowhere to be found. Her hand warmed up as she prepped one of her artillery beams. She would blast him if he harmed a single hair on Aster's head.

Thankfully the man just laughed while sliding away from the crib, floating an inch above the ground. It was more unsettling than Kayden had expected. "I'm here to talk." He didn't seem surprised by her powers at all, confirming that he had somehow found her home since last night. Was he planning to take out all the heavy hitters in the city? Or was he a member of the Empire all along?

"Theo, take Aster." Her stepson scrambled forwards, clearly panicked but still extremely gentle as he picked up the groggily blinking baby, rushing towards and then behind her. Her right hand glowing like the sun, her energy reserves dipping as she pumped more into her attack.

As soon as her child was safe, Kayden fired the prepped beam of destructive light right at the intruder, wanting to incinerate him for coming to her home. With a grim frown, she expected the whole side of the exterior wall to explode outwards, her blasts strong enough to level buildings. She would be exposed for good this time, maybe she was even putting the whole Empire's secret identities in jeopardy. But at the moment she just didn't care, she just wanted to remove the threat to her baby.

Then, to her shock, there was no explosion, no crumbling of brick and glass, there was no damage at all. Just like when he had absorbed Lungs flames on those videos, which were magnitudes weaker than her own beams, the light didn't hit anything. It just entered his body, slightly curving around inside of him and then just vanished. It was like her blast had entered a portal into a world of darkness and been stretched into infinity.

She gaped at the sight. She had never had her power nullified like that. Kayden was used to being the most dangerous person on the battlefield, even the likes of Lung and Dauntless had to be worried with her in the air. This man didn't even seem bothered by her attack, treating it like a slight distraction.

"That wasn't necessary." He genuinely sounded disappointed in her. "We aren't impulsive teenagers." The man moved toward her now that any threat she posed was obviously an empty one.

"Shouldn't have threatened my child then." She practically growled at him, though some of the heat was now gone, a strange prickle of embarrassment at the back of her mind. Her baby was behind her and he hadn't done anything threatening so far. Beyond breaking into her home of course but she had been part of the Empire long enough to know that he could have done many evil things while she had been out on patrol. He seemed courteous in comparison.

"I understand." He conceded as she moved backwards, keeping herself between him and the children. He flew upright past her into her living room without so much as a glance at them and settled on the armchair across her expensive couch. "Sit down, I have it on good authority that you are trying to turn your life around. Let's talk about it."

AN: Never seen Purity be recruited before. I will try not to whitewash her.