Forecast (2nd Person Hero to Villain Story)

Summary: You’ve been a hero for half your life. You’ve fought villains so powerful that they’re called monsters. You’ve foiled bank robberies, saved babies, and stopped the city from exploding into flames. Being a hero is all you know and yet...this is it. The last straw.

Today is the day you become a villain.

——-—

The pizza box is empty, a greasy circle the ghost of what was supposed to be your dinner. You can hear your team laughing in the other room, deciding on what to watch in the last few hours of their shift. Apparently they finished patrolling a lot earlier than you. You stare at the crumpled napkins, the dirty plates, the half-full glasses of cola. Are you expected to clean this up?

You ache. Twenty-six and your knees won’t ever be the same. They radiate pain up to your hips. The fresh bruises on your back throb in time with your heart and the bandage half-heartedly taped to your forehead feels suspiciously damp. One of your shoulders clicks when you raise your arms too high and nearly half your teeth are fake.

“Misty’s back!”

You turn to see your team leader grinning at you from the doorway, half-eaten pizza in hand. Flame-Man is out of uniform except for his mask. The leather flames lick up the sides of his face and highlight his perfectly coiffed hair. The sweats he’s wearing aren’t fireproof which means he’s not combat ready. When he picked you up over a decade ago, he emphasized the importance of always being combat ready.

“Looks like you ran into trouble,” Flame-Man says. He scratches his side. “Was it the warehouses? Is it the mob, like we thought?”

We. You’re the one who ran the recon on the abandoned warehouses just outside of town. You’re the one who wrote the report for that discovery and you’re the one who followed through on the plan to stop the human traffickers. “Yes.”

“Yo, Flame, we’re watching Buffy!” one of your team calls from the living room.

“Be right there,” Flame yells over his shoulder. He shakes his head and grins at you. “It’s always Buffy.” He makes an effort to look more serious then ruins it by taking another bite of pizza. “So are the warehouses sorted?”

“No,” you say. “I found an address for another base. With the code we intercepted last week, I think that’s where the auction is happening.” You do your best to forget the pizza, the sweats he’s wearing, Buffy, everything. “Sir, we need to get there tonight. We never figured out when the auction is happening. The sooner we act--”

“Misty.”

Your mouth snaps shut. You know that tone of voice. Flame-Man picked you up when you were a child, barely thirteen and afraid of your own power. Because of that, you think he’s learned to ignore what you say. Like a parent dismissing a willful child. “Sir.”

“The team needs to rest,” Flame-Man says. He shakes his head. “Tomorrow is soon enough to look into it. You have two choices; either go finish your patrol or relax. Grab a slice of pizza and come watch Buffy.”

Your stomach rumbles. “There isn’t any pizza left.”

“Really?” Flame-Man half-laughs, looking over his shoulder. “Guys, I told you to leave some for Misty!”

More laughter as the team defends themselves. You hear them accuse Flame-Man of grabbing the last slice and he turns back into the living room, dismissing you entirely.

You see yourself at a crossroads. On one path, you shrug this off too. You take off your black parka and change out of your bright blue body suit into pajamas. You order yourself another pizza and go into the living room.

On the other…

You fish the key to HQ out of your inside pocket and drop it on the table. Some part of you might have been smart enough to anticipate this because there’s nothing important left in your room. A spare bodysuit, a mask, a few weapons. Nothing you’ll be able to use now.

You walk out of headquarters. The street is nearly empty. A few cars drift past slowly, not willing to break speed limits in front of a Hero Force building. Dark clouds blot out the moon, a supernatural wind picking up and shaking the first few fall leaves off the trees and onto the damp sidewalk. Your power is a cold buzz under your skin.

You’re done.

-----------.

You’ve always hated your costume. The bodysuit is obnoxiously bright and makes you an easy target. The mask Flame-Man picked for you is cotton and itches every time it gets wet. The parka is the only piece you chose and your team fought you on it for weeks.

It’s cold, you argued. I can’t run around in spandex.

At least make it a brighter color, Flame-Man relented.

Buy me a brighter one and I will.

He never did so the black stayed.

You stop in the entryway of your apartment. You’ve lived here since you were fifteen, right after Flame-Man helped you get emancipated. Back then it’d felt like a gift. A whole bedroom to yourself, a kitchen with a microwave and hot plate, a bathroom with hot water! You’d saved all of your paychecks to decorate it, hanging up christmas lights and painting the walls a soft pink. You’d made it feel like home. A home for the first time in your life.

Now it feels like a prison.

The kitchen/living room combo isn’t big enough for a couch. The armchair in the corner is Flame-Man’s spot for when he used to come and “check up” on you. It’s a constant reminder of him and his mentorship. Once upon a time, that reminder brought you comfort. Now it makes you remember the childhood he’s stolen from you, the blood and the sweat and the tears he’s demanded of you. Your lips purse as you stare at it. If you could, you’d throw it out. You pause on your way to the bedroom.

Why can’t you throw it out?

Your heartbeat picks up. You could throw it out. There’s nothing stopping you. You’ve decided to quit the team, there’s no reason for him to visit you anymore. More than that, you don’t want him to visit anymore. You don’t want to see his face or hear his voice or his excuses. You don’t want to see the team because --

Because I hate them.

The thought shakes you. You’ve never allowed yourself to dwell on these feelings. Flame-Man always taught that negativity makes you a bad hero. But you’re not a hero anymore and something unclenches in your chest. You’re not a hero so these thoughts are okay now.

It’s okay. The relief that sweeps through you, like pain leaving your body, is euphoric.

You don’t like the team. They’re braggarts, parading in front of the media long before the battle is won. Their reports are always badly written and filled with lies. They’ve mocked you for trying, they’ve hit you harder than necessary in training, they’ve ignored you just like Flame-Man has.

Flame-Man. You’re trembling in your apartment, eyes wide and sightless on the armchair in front of you. He’s been a support for you. Without him, you wouldn’t have gotten emancipated. You wouldn’t have had the money to make your own life or the confidence to try and help others.

Support? Maybe. But at what cost?

You nearly drowned when you were thirteen. Your powers have always been too strong and Flame-Man warned you to be careful. But he’s the one who took you into the field, a child willing to do anything for the grownup who showed her the least bit of kindness. He yelled at you for flooding the mountains the villains were hiding in, not once asking if you were okay after being swept away by a flash flood. He told you you were reckless, but who asked you to bring the rain? Who asked you to help him despite lack of training? Who asked?

You were a child. Flame-Man took advantage of that. He took advantage of you.

You stalk into your room, ripping off your costume piece by piece. The wind chatters against your single-pane windows. All of the forbidden thoughts crowd your head, louder and louder and louder.

You’ve been used and used badly. The years of criticism and 70 hour weeks, for what? To make his life easier? You thought you were saving the day, but were you? Or were you only a tool to make him look better?

The shower is too hot against your icy skin and you welcome the sting. The water is stained red by the cut on your forehead and all the little knicks you got tonight.

You’ve never been to school. Being a hero has been your life for thirteen years. You’re twenty-six and you can’t sleep on your right side because of the pain in your shoulder. The doctor says you’ll be a good candidate for dentures in a couple years if you keep losing teeth like this. You’ve never had friends your age or a significant other. Too dangerous. But not too dangerous for the other members of the team?

You get out of the shower without washing your hair. You just needed to get the dirt off because you’ve got more work to do tonight. A lot more.

You don’t have a closet. Your clothes hang from an exposed pipe. Sedate colors, nothing that’ll stand out in a crowd, nothing too stylish or too colorful.  You’ve been living like a ghost your entire life for him. For his cause.

Save the day. Why does it feel like you’re the only one who still believes in that?

You pull on black jeans, your work boots, a tan sweater. Your curly hair goes under a beanie. You don’t have too many valuables. You shove them into a suitcase. Maybe you’ve been thinking about this longer than you thought. You’ve got a few thousand dollars in cash, a burner phone, a black mask made out of water-proof material.

The wind is throwing raindrops at your building by the time you’re ready to go, each impact like a bullet against the window.  You need to get out of town before you really let loose. For all your anger, the civilians don’t deserve to be flooded out of house and home. You need to stay calm for just a bit longer.

You throw Flame-Man’s armchair out the window. The glass shatters just as thunder rolls, hiding the sound of its impact with the sidewalk three stories down.

-------------.

“The mob” isn’t quite accurate. You’ve explained that to Flame-Man a hundred times. Heroes don’t deal with normal criminal organizations unless there’s a super-powered individual involved. While the mafia has a heavy hand in “the mob,” they don’t control it. They hire it and, more frequently, buy from it.

They call themselves the Masquerade.

The address you got from the warehouse takes you outside of town, to the north where the national park starts. Clever. The building looks like an abandoned ranger’s hut from the outside, but a brief survey of the area confirms what you suspect. Tire tracks lead into the mountain just below where the ranger’s hut is perched.

Looks like the Masquerade has dug themselves a nice little hidey-hole for the auction.

You roll fog in from the surrounding forest as slowly as you can. Sunrise isn’t for a couple hours so, with any luck, they’ll think it’s a natural weather pattern. Luckily, it seems like the event hasn’t started yet. You pick out one guard hidden behind a tree to the right of the entrance and, after a half hour of watching, you don’t think he’ll be a problem. You’re pretty sure he’s playing games on his phone.

If you were a hero and this was a normal mission, you’d call it here. You don’t have enough support to face whatever the Masquerade has got waiting for you inside the mountain and you’re only 85% sure that they’re auctioning people tonight rather than weapons. If you’re wrong, you could be walking into a bigger firefight than anticipated. Or is it bigger if the merchandise is people?

“Well,” you murmur, “guess I’m finding out tonight.”

You don’t have anything to lose. The paycheck isn’t driving you right now nor is Flame-Man’s expectations. The only thing that has you slinking through the fog towards the guard is your conviction.

Save the day. Whatever shape that takes.

Your fog is too dense to see through now and the guard is starting to notice something is wrong. You can tell he’s looked up from his phone. Your fog doesn’t hinder you as much as it hinders him.

“Hello?” He stands and takes a step in the wrong direction. “I can tell you’re out there. I’ve got a detection power. Announce yourself or I’ll shoot.”

Not a very good detection power if he’s glaring off towards the other side of the entrance.

“I’m here for the auction,” you say. The fog muffles your voice and bounces it around until it sounds like it came from all around. You pick up a rock and creep closer.

You feel him relax. He takes another step in the wrong direction. “Wrong time. That’s not until tomorrow night--ugh!”

You hit him as hard as you can. He’s confirmed that he knows about the auction and that’s all you need to not hold back. He drops and doesn’t move.

There’s blood on the rock.

Maybe you’ll feel bad about that later. You probably won’t. You’ve accidentally killed your fair share of villains over the years with your power and you’ve never had a nightmare about it. You learned from Flame-Man that sacrifice is a part of conviction.

At least this time there won’t be a psych panel to pass.

The door is locked, obviously, but that’s no issue. You summon the rain inside the lock, forcing more and more water in until the metal opens with a pop! The fog rolls past you as the door opens, layering the floor thickly like a red carpet for your entrance.

The guard just inside the door swears and goes for his weapon.

Without thinking, you throw your hand out. Lightning arcs from the sky outside, slamming into his chest. He flies back and lies still.

Okay, you think. When you were thirteen, you didn’t know how to keep the rain contained. Now, you bring the clouds inside with you and not a drop hits the ground until you say so. This might be easier than I expected.

It is.

The building is entirely underground, three levels in total. You sweep through the first one in less than twenty minutes. The Masquerade members you find in the halls, you electrocute. You fill rooms of guards with rain and stand outside the door, perfectly dry, as they drown. Someone tries to shoot you and misses, the fog too thick for them to see you.

But you can see. You can see everything.

You realize that being part of the team didn’t help you. It held you back. Waiting for everyone to get a chance to fight the bad guys, to save the day, was a huge waste of time. Flame-Man might be powerful, but his ability is too dangerous to use quickly. You always had to be on guard to keep his errantly placed flames at bay. But with just you and your rain?

You’re taking the elevator down to level three within an hour of breaking in.

“So you’ve made it here, Misty,” a man says as soon as the elevator doors open. He’s standing in front of a long hallway lined with padlocked doors. You’ve seen him before, in surveillance photos of the mafia. He doesn’t have a villain name, but the heroes have given him one. Subject X. He smiles at you. “I don’t know how you found this place, but you and your team won’t be making it out alive.”

Your powers are distinctive. It shouldn’t be a surprise that he calls you by your hero name, but it is. It’s not a good surprise. You frown. “My team isn’t here.”

Subject X’s eyes flicker. “You came alone? How...foolish.” His grin turns distinctly sinister. “You’ll make for a lovely addition to my auction. Our clientele is always looking for something with a little more power.”

You move before he does, neatly dodging his first punch. Subject X has a physical power, one that allows him to teleport over very small distances. While not exceedingly powerful, he’s unpredictable and is known to get the upper hand against even the most talented combat heroes.

Unfortunately, your rain is slow. You aim a bolt of lightning at him but he’s gone before it lands.

Uh oh, you think.

His second strike lands against your bruised back.  The third strike doesn’t land on the back of your head like he wanted, but it does hit your bad shoulder. He snickers when you stumble. “Looks like the little hero’s bitten off more than she can chew.”

You try to punch him but his face disappears before your fist can connect. He kicks you in the back and you hit the wall and then the ground hard, gasping for breath.

Ah, you think, not so easy after all. You smile with bloody teeth at the thought. Not so easy, sure. But a hell of a lot better than not doing anything, even if it means your death.

“Shall I tell you your fate?” He circles around you like a shark. “These rooms have power suppressing abilities. You’ll be powerless to escape, waiting for your buyer.  It won’t be this auction, no. Heroes are looked for. It’ll be months before my clients will be willing to buy. That’s alright, I’m willing to wait.  If you’re good, I’ll feed you before I put you on that auction pedestal.”

You’ll drown yourself before that happens. You make a show of sitting up without grimacing and bare your teeth at him. “No thanks. I’m sure there’s no vacancy for me.”

He hits you in the face so hard you see stars. When you’re able to blink them out of your eyes, he’s got one of the doors open and shit-eating grin on his face. “Nonsense, look. This one’s all set for you--”

You strike.

All the rain you’ve been holding back from your attacks on the upper floors drops through the elevator shaft. The ceiling of the car isn’t strong enough to hold it back and it rips through the doors like they’re not even there. You’re protected from the force of it by your power, but Subject X isn’t. He’s blasted to the other end of the hall so hard he dents the wall when he hits it.

There should be blood, you think distantly. The last villain Flame-Man faced made a similar dent in the wall and there’d been blood then. He’d blamed you for the villain’s injuries on the official report. You frown and watch Subject X twitch his way out of the wall. He sits there, gasping for breath and glaring at you.

“That was a cheap trick,” he says. “I didn’t—“ His eyes widen. “Wait. No. Nonononono—“

He’s realized that the water is rising still. You watch him as if from a great distance as your rain passes his hips. Then his waist. Then his chest.

“You can’t.” Subject X struggles to stand, splashing feverishly. “You wouldn’t.”

You wouldn’t if the water could get into the cells. But you can feel the rush and pull of the rain and you’re able to guide it away from the cracks in the doors. “You’ve heard the rumors.”

“They’re not true,” Subject X spits. He’s watching the water rise, creeping up past his hips once again. His eyes flash with panic as he realizes that you’re not wavering. He looks back up at you. “You’re not a killer. That’s stupid villains making excuses for losing.” Then, more confidently, “You’re not a killer.”

You hum. There’s a very obvious berth around you. Not a single drop is on your clothes. “Maybe I am.”

Subject X splutters. “You’re not. You’re a hero!”

“Maybe,” you say. The water is to his chest now, almost deep enough that he’ll have to start swimming soon. You eye the ceiling. Only a couple feet left after that. “Shouldn’t you be trying to escape?”

It’s a bad idea to taunt a villain. You expect him to yell. Monologue. Maybe even take your advice and run. You aren’t expecting him to teleport the distance in three blinks, closer and closer until his hands are wrapped around your neck.

Really? The rain is still roaring out of the elevator shaft, filling the hall faster and faster. Unless he thinks he’ll be able to kill you before he drowns, it’s stupid to waste time with this strangulation. And even if he does kill you, there’ll still be all the rain above you, waiting to come down and fill the hall without your say so.

Ah, you realize, he’s panicking.

The water is well above your head now. Rather than steal breaths from the precious few inches of air left, Subjext X submerges completely to keep strangling you. His face is red from anger, even under the water, and his nails do their best to dig into your neck.

You watch him, breathing easily in the air pocket you left around your face, not feeling any of it. You’ve got a protective barrier of ice like a choker around your neck. He’s not hurting you at all.

Subject X dies. He dies without having attempted to use his power even once to save himself. Once you’re sure he’s not going to be moving anymore, you send the rain crawling back upstairs and to the stream running by the complex. Did he really believe you wouldn’t do it? Was he so sure you were hero enough to resist?

In a way, his death makes you sad. He really, really thought you were a hero to the very end.

The hall is silent in the wake of Subject X’s death. Your eyes drift away from the body to the ceiling. Water drips all around you, each droplet ringing. As much as you appreciate Subject X’s belief in your hero status, you definitely can’t be one now.

Not now that you know how good it feels to do the right thing.

You use a bit of your rain to open the nearest cell door. The room beyond is dimly lit, none of the expensive taste from the first few floors reflected in it. There’s a grey cot, a bucket and a woman.

The woman stares at you with wide, bottomless eyes, wedged into the corner between the bed and the wall. There’s no fear on her face, only a despairing sort of resignation that says she’s not expecting to be rescued.

“You Hero Force?” She tips her head back towards the wall, eyes half-lidded. “Might want to close the cell. You fuckers are just going to arrest my anyway, never mind how long that fucker has had me.”

There’s something familiar about the pitch black of her hair and the way shadows writhe out from under her cot that’s familiar. You don’t know her villain name, nor her rank. But you remember the way Flame-man celebrated when she disappeared.

“No, I’m not with Hero Force,” you say. Slowly she lowers her chin until your eyes meet. You test each word. “I…had a disagreement with the way they do things.”

The woman sits up straight. The tatters of her costume - a black, velvet dress - pool around her legs. “Is that right?”

She knows who you are. You can see the knowledge light in her eyes as she takes in the wet walls, the black coat you’re wearing, the ice wrapped around your throat. But she doesn’t call you Misty.

You smile. “That’s right. Like how they’d arrest you. I disagree with that. You’re an asset after all.”

“An asset?”

“Are there more people in these cells?”

She nods slowly, distrust written in the angle of her shoulders.

“I’m going to liberate them,” you say and decide in the same moment. “They’re not going to trust me. You’ve been in captivity with them. You know what it’s like. Will you help me?”

“…and you won’t arrest me after?”

“I don’t even have the power to arrest you now,” you say. Maybe letting the threat of arrest hover over her would be smart, but that’s not how you’re going to do things from now on. “I’m asking you to help me. You can walk out of here if you want.”

She wants to agree. You can feel her hesitation like humidity against your skin. “…what do I call you?”

You know what she’s asking. You may not remember her name or when you met her, but she remembers you. You wonder about the first day she and Flame-Man met. Were you standing over her at his side? Confident? Victorious? Righteous?

Did he tell her that you, Misty, were the reason for her bruises?

Misty is a hero. You are not a hero anymore.

“Call me Tempest,” you say. The name falls from your lips without conscious thought. “And you are?”

“Abyss,” the woman says. She smiles ghoulishly,. Knowingly. “I’m excited to work with you, Tempest.”

You set off to do what’s right.