Semi-Retired Villain Adopts Hero

Originally posted here March 21, 2020:

writing-prompt-s:

You’d known, intellectually, that your heroic nemesis was a teenager, but it didn’t really sink in until the day their school called because your number was the only one on their emergency contact list.

Here’s the thing, okay? 

I knew she was young. Like, obviously she was young. A mask and costume can only disguise so much, right? But I thought, for sure, college age. It’s hard to tell for sure through costumes and she wears a lot of padding and armor. (Very sensible, it’s a dangerous job.) 

Still, I took it easy on her. No head blows, right? I also tried to avoid any joint injuries, because I suspected she was on a sports team. (Turns out she runs track.)

Like, sure, I’m a ‘villainess’ or whatever, but I’m not actually fuckin evil. I want what I want but I don’t actually want to maim some idealistic coed over it. Like, come on. Life is hard enough for young women. I know that.

And I got the sense that, for her, it was mostly for show as well. Sure, she thrashed the shit out of that fucker with the tentacles, but he was planning some sort of gory sacrifice, fair’s fair. Even as I went easy on her, I got the sense she was going easy on me, is my point. She pulled her blows. 

But. You lose sponsorships if you just let the bad guy get away, you know, and college ain’t cheap. Right? So she’s gotta make a show of it. 

So the newspaper called me her nemesis because we kept coming to blows, but mostly it was a show, and it was about 50/50. 

I should have tracked her down. I made a promise to myself not to, you know? I felt like that was crossing a line. But now that I know… shit. I’m kicking myself. I could have known. But I was like, you know, a young woman, the last thing she needs is some creepy old lady stalking her. I should have, though. 

Okay, so here’s what happened.

I honestly have been a bit lax in the local villainy, lately. I was kind of thinking of retiring, in all honesty. My goals were more or less hit and, like, if I just keep doing this stuff for the hell of it… well, that crosses a line, right? Like, I wasn’t doing it to just be mean, I had a plan, and that’s… well, it’s done. Plan accomplished.

Look, I’m not super noble here. I was poor and hungry and wanted enough money to not be poor and hungry again, alright? But I’m more or less set for life, especially if I’m careful, and I just don’t have any excuses anymore. If I keep doing it, I’m just being greedy, and the world has enough of that. I know some of my colleagues are not sufficiently familiar with concepts of ‘enough’ but, also, I was still in the biz long after they’d flamed out or died or been jailed because I do have limits, and lines I won’t cross. 

For example, I don’t kill people, I try not to injure them more than bruises. Except that one time where I did. 

Okay, honestly, that was part of what put me off of things for a while, the thing with Magma Dude. I’ll admit it. He was going to burn through that daycare to get to me. I had to get him unconscious. I didn’t actually mean to hit him that hard. And like if he’d just been gunning for me or whatever, like, them’s the breaks, I’d have fought but not to the death. But if he was unconscious, he wasn’t controlling the magma flow anymore and it would slow down. So I hit him as hard as I could in the head and ran for the daycare. (I knew as soon as I hit him that it was too hard and he was gone, but there were more important things. It’s why I try to avoid the head, just, like, in general. Even with accelerated healing super teens.)

They’re still running articles about that day, on slow news days. You know what picture they run with that? Dead hero on the ground? No. Noooo. He had his hero license revoked post-humously by the Guild. Like, that never happens- twice in the last sixty years, counting Magma Dude. I still wish- well, I didn’t mean to kill him, just to stop him. I hope that counts for enough. But no, the photo they run, when they talk about that day? 

Me in mask, full black costume with the spikes (they’re foam, because I’m sensible) running out of a flaming daycare, dual-wielding babies and a toddler in a monkey costume on my back. Said toddler? Gnawing on the now clearly foam spikes, because he’s ripped a chunk out of one already. The teeth marks are clearly visible in the photo. 

Anyway, it’d be silly to show up and rob a bank after that, you know? Like, c’mon. At the very least, I’d have to ditch the spikes.

Also, like, tiny babies almost died because I wanted to hit a nice round number. I mean, it’s mostly Magma Dude’s fault, because that was a shitty dick move, but I still have some culpability there, you know? And anyway that’s not the point. The point is Errata, young hero, my nemesis (according to the press). 

(Humorous sidenote, she told me that she told the press Erratum, meaning, like, a list of errors affixed to a printed book, and they ran with Errata because they misheard her, and ended up just rolling with it because it was funny to her.)

She’s been my ‘nemesis’ for 2 years, okay? So excuse me for thinking she started heroing when she was like 18. She had sponsorships, alright? You can’t legally have them if you’re a minor, you know? There were six lawsuits in New York about that and it went to the Supreme Court. They can be held liable if they knowingly sponsor a minor in this biz. How was I to know? 

I could have found out, that’s how. I fully believed she was too young to be doing this. I could have stopped it, and just decided it was none of my business. She almost died! Several times. Not at my hands, obviously, but heroing is dangerous fucking work! 

So, anyway, I was bumming around the house. Moping, honestly. Trying to figure out what I was going to do. It was time for me to retire, one last time out to show that I’m leaving, but the thought of doing one last show if things could go that bad- it left a bad taste in my mouth. Thinking maybe if I just… stopped the press might think that I decided I was done and I wouldn’t have to make a show of it, maybe. More moping. 

I get a call from the local high school and told… well, I’m not going to tell you her real name. We’ll say it was Evelyn Green. I was told my ‘child’ Evelyn Green had been taken to the hospital, it was a minor injury at school but she would need someone at the hospital. Fortunately I’m pretty good at rolling with it when weird stuff happens. Life of a villain, you know. 

Here’s the funny thing- they used one of my false identities, that shared the last name with her (fairly common name). Now most of them are largely digital identities, that I use for moving money or products around. That particular ID is one I do use around town, but as far as I knew there wasn’t a minor associated with it.

Obviously, I thought it might be a trap, but went in disguise rather than in uniform. That ID is solid, and should stand up to auditing as well as face to face interviews. The house associated with that ID is also solid, so I just did a check to make sure I had the right wallet, threw on a decent disguise, and put some stuff in the trunk, you know, just in case. (Impossible to detect without special powers, and even then you have to know where to look, and how to look).

I headed to the hospital and figured that playing innocent would work better than anything else. Like, if they already knew about my extra identities, they’d have just come down on the house, and the one Green lives out of would pass muster, I thought. 

But there were no signs of a trap, and eventually I ended up in the ER with an excuse about traffic. I was told she couldn’t discharge without her guardian signing her out, and so I got shown back to the mystery person. I even worked up an excuse for why I’d be there for some kid I didn’t know. 

As soon as I walked in the little room, she burst into tears and started apologizing, and I sent all the people out of the room for a moment of privacy. 

I immediately knew who she was, of course. The way she held herself- even with her arm in a sling- and her hair color, her eye color- masks and body armor only go so far. 

I sat on the edge of the bed and held her, for a minute, and then I asked her what had happened.

Apparently her shoulder had come dislodged at school, they’d popped it back in and she needed to wear a sling for a while. (By the time we were talking it was already healed, but she needed to wear a sling for appearance’s sake.)

That was nowhere near to answering all of my questions about everything, but of course the hospital wasn’t the place. I did glance down her sling to make sure she wasn’t wearing a wire. 

Listen, I was sympathetic, but I’m not stupid. 

Anyway, I managed to get her calmed down and freed her from the hospital- if you have the same last name and look old enough to her mother, you don’t get a lot of questions, in all honesty. It’s kind of terrifying, even though it worked in my favor this time. There has to be a better system, you know? 

Anyway, I got her in the car. I was using one of my mundane cars so I didn’t have any fun gadgets. This was one of those moments. Did I trust her enough to be open with her, or was she in on a sting? 

She was still bruised, though it was healing, so I decided that if there was a sting I would have Words with whomever decided to fuck her shoulder up to do it. Just because she has healing powers doesn’t mean that won’t come back to bite her in the ass later. You injure a joint enough, you can get arthritis in it, and dislocation is common in our biz.

So I started it up and started driving. She was quiet for a few blocks. It was very surreal, to be honest. Like, 2 months ago we’d been slugging it out in front of a bank, and now she’s in my car with her arm in a sling, much more clearly a teenage girl than I ever realized. Wild. 

I finally decided to take the plunge. Of all the people likely to set me up, she didn’t seem anywhere on the list. Sometimes you just have to decide- do I trust, or not? I decided I did. 

“Okay,” I said. “I have no idea what’s going on.” I didn’t know where to start. I was kind of thinking ‘holy shit she’s a child’ over and over.

“Dislocated shoulder.” 

“Yeah. Got that.”

She sighed. “I had to have an emergency contact for school.”

“But, kiddo, you don’t have literally anybody else?” Wrong question.

She burst into tears again. 

Well, shit. I pulled over and stopped at a park and just let her cry for a bit. I told her I wasn’t upset with her or anything, I just needed to know what was going on so I could help with whatever it is. I wasn’t mad, I was genuinely baffled. 

I did get her calmed down (this involved a cheeseburger and a milkshake) and she started telling me her story. Her parents threw her out a few years ago because of religion? She won’t tell me all of it, and I decided not to pry to much. But she had nowhere to go. Some friends she could crash with for a few days, but homeless teens mean someone asks questions, and she was adamant that she wasn’t going back home. 

Like, what do I know? I got booted out at 18 and told never to come back, so I kinda understood, but that’s at least somewhat acceptable with a legal adult, it’s abhorrent for a 15-year-old. She doesn’t talk much about her folks and I don’t blame her. 

She decided to get into heroing. She wanted to help people, and she knew enough to fake the paperwork so she could be sponsored. (She’s some kind of super computer nerd, as well, which is apparently part of how she knew about my secondary identities. All of them, which is kind of terrifying.)

I guess I’ve been her emergency contact through the school for a while now? She says she knew I pulled my blows and probably could be relied on to at least show up and get her out of hock. (Her words, not mine.) 

Remember how I said she’s almost died a couple of times? And she had to crawl off to her shitty little apartment (her sponsorship deals SUCK) and deal with it alone. She’s 17! I have been trying not to think about all the times when she was younger and that happened because I would like to be able to sleep at night, sometimes. How did I not know I was punching a fifteen year old? A full body costume, a big mask, and lots of body armor, I guess, but still. Like, the work of my nightmares. 

She says she’s an accelerated healer (which I already knew), but she’s been missing school, her grades are tanking, she’s afraid she isn’t going to graduate. (Once I got her going on what happened, she just kept talking and I wasn’t going to ask her to stop.) She didn’t know how she was going to get into college now. 

I didn’t even know I had a maternal instinct until that day, you know? Like sure, I took it easy on her because she was young and wouldn’t let that dingus kill a building full of kids and pulled some of the kids out, but that’s just from a ‘we live in a society’ standpoint. I’m not a monster, you know? There’s a difference between that and like ‘oh shit she needs an adult, I’m an adult, I can fix this problem’. 

I took her to her apartment, packed up her clothes and her things (she did not have much, what little she had she spent on her hero stuff, apparently) and took her home immediately. Like, I can’t solve everything that’s wrong with the world and I’d honestly been pretty selfish up to this point (circumstances led to an exemption or two, but overall) but here’s a problem and I found I gave a shit and that was that. 

And I thought there would be some big argument but she kind of said ‘okay’ in this soft voice and jesus fuck, I almost died right there. Like I put her up in the guest room and got her settled in and as soon as she was in bed she was out. Just straight to sleep. That’s trust. I know she could have powered through the night but, no, straight out. For some reason this child I have punched trusted me enough to sleep in my home. 

And I was like, ‘oh, fuck, I have a kid now’. 

Like I hadn’t even been thinking, I was just acting on instinct. Like, hell no you’re not going to live in this tiny shitty apartment complex on your own. 

Not that she couldn’t- she clearly could, and had been- but she shouldn’t. She’s competent, you know. But she needed to be, you know, worrying about tests and going to the mall or… snapchatting, or whatever, she needed someone making sure she was doing homework and got a hot meal now and then, she needed a chance to be a kid. Not nearly dying because some schmuck decided he wanted to turn everybody into radioactive mutants.

(It wouldn’t have worked, he’d have just killed everybody in downtown and given everybody else, like, all the cancer. Science villains are the worst. Peer research, man! That’s what it’s for! Just because you took two classes your freshman year doesn’t mean you know shit!) 

Anyway, we did end up having a couple of shouting matches, that first month. Which is how I ended up back in a mask again.

Look, she had some valid points about the hero she’d created, but she needed to get her fucking grades up! She needed to be in school! 

If she sticks to it and gets through college, she can take it back up if she wants to, or we’ll retire the character, or whatever. We’re close enough in size that I can pull it off, though it took some work to find the right wig, and we had to shift some padding around. I’m going to implement a slight costume change that should make that less of a thing, though, I don’t like the vulnerability of a wig.

Anyway, that’s the story of how I went from being a semi-retired villain to a hero and parent in, like, less than 30 days.