Dirty Little Secret Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Hints of Truth

Next Tuesday was a… day. The manager for another department had decided the meeting he’d called for an interdepartmental project had to be in person, so Ethan had to cram his way onto the overcrowded subway to get into the office, since the bridge was still out.

The meeting itself ended up being late. Oh, and it barely warranted being a video call, let alone an in person meeting.

At least the other manager had the decency to provide doughnuts and coffee. It didn’t make it worth it, but it helped.

Ethan was trying to pick which type to grab, torn between maple dip and chocolate glaze, when he swore he heard a female voice whisper in his ear. A shiver running down his back, he turned to see who was behind him, only to find no one there.

“Did you hear something?” Dr. Xiang asked Jenny as the pair stood a comfortable distance away.

“No?” Jenny replied, looking confused.

Ethan was about to mention he’d heard something when he noticed the odd look in the eyes of most of the other men at the meeting. Their eyes seemed to be glazing over.

Wait, there was a slight pink glow to them.

“The Red Lady,” Ethan muttered, his fear getting worse.

After his mother, the Red Lady was probably the supervillainess he feared the most. Her ability to use magic to hypnotize all men… it was the stuff of nightmares for him. His fear got worse as he swore he could barely make out more feminine whispering.

Was his phobia actually protecting him?

Before he could think about that much further the other men in the room started walking towards the few women present. Their motions were sluggish, but a couple had been able to block the doors before those not being controlled worked out what happened.

Dr. Xiang tried reasoning with the men as they trudged forward, but they were lost to the hypnotic magic of the Red Lady. Ethan found himself hovering, not quite sure what to do. Would the girls be safe, just restrained? Or was the Red Lady planning violence?

It was always hard to tell with her. Some reports said she was a misanthropic monster who killed for fun. But then there were the rumours about her protecting children or abused women. Ethan didn’t know which were more reliable. The press did like covering up good done by supervillains sometimes.

As he weighed his options, the hypnotized men seemed satisfied with merely restraining the women in the room.

“Come on, Mike! Can’t you fight it, at least?” Jenny asked, a bit of desperation in her voice.

The guy in question raised an eyebrow. “Just because I’m gay you think I can’t care about the women in my life as much as a straight guy?”

“It doesn’t work on romantic feelings,” one of the women from the other department said, as Jenny looked confused. “It’s pure mind control. It just works on something specifically to masculinity. That’s why it also doesn’t work on lesbians… generally. Obviously gender gets blurry sometimes.”

Ethan didn’t really pay attention to the specifics of that conversation. He focused on trying to come up with an escape plan. If he could get out he could probably call for help, right? So he wasn’t just being selfish.

Confident in his reasoning, he decided to try to slip out, managing to get into the hall and halfway to the nearest stairwell when he found himself face to face with the Red Lady herself. She was strolling down the hallway radiating smugness as a half dozen or so hypnotized men followed her, raining praise on her.

“Of course we never realised you’d come for the predictions department, oh Red Lady.”

“Your intelligence is matched only by your beauty, oh Red Lady.”

And so on.

She was basking in the praise until her eyes landed on Ethan. He felt himself panicking, and blurted the first compliment that popped in his head.

“You’re terrifyingly beautiful, miss Red Lady, ma’am,” he blurted.

She stopped fully in her tracks, staring at him.

“You’re not under my control…”

“What? No. O-of course I am. No man can escape your power after all,” he stammered.

“I’m not sure how you’ve escaped my control, but since you didn’t stay put… grab him,” she said.

Before Ethan could respond he was surrounded by male coworkers, grabbing him and holding him in place. The Red Lady turned to the nearest window and punched it, a spiderweb of cracks spreading through the reinforced glass.

Because, right. She had mild superstrength on top of her mind control magic. As if the latter wasn’t enough.

“If you’re immune to mind control you’ve probably got other superpowers, and this city already has too many superheroes,” she said, turning back to him.

“I-I… I really don’t think—I’m just—have a phobi—phobia,” Ethan stammered before the Red Lady lifted him by the neck.

She didn’t listen, simply shifting her feet to toss him through the window with enough force to break through the weakened window panes.

And then Ethan was flying through the air.

No doubt to his death. At the hands of a supervillainess. About how he’d figured he’d go in the end.

There wasn’t much time left now, so he wondered how his life flashing before his eyes would go. Would that break through any of the mental memory blocks he had? Did he want it t—oomph.

Suddenly he found himself being held against a large muscular chest by equally muscular arms.

“Hello, citizen. I hope you enjoyed your flight, but I do advise agains—Ethan?”

Ethan stared up at the face of Captain Wrecking Ball. While the man was a good 30cm taller than Ethan, there was a softness to his strong features that made people comfortable. And was why he was most male citizens of Northford’s top pick for ‘man crush’.

But…

“How do you know my name?” Ethan asked, as Captain Wrecking Ball’s warm brown eyes locked onto him with an odd level of familiarity.

“Uh… that—you—uh,” Captain Wrecking Ball stammered as they hovered somewhere around the 15th floor of the office building.

As far as Ethan knew, they’d never met. And he was pretty sure he’d have remembered meeting a 208cm tall walking tank before.

“I was, uh,” the tank of a man said, while looking around to make sure that no one was in earshot. “L-looking up folks in town in witness protection for an investigation.”

He was definitely lying, but Ethan had no idea what the truth was.

Plus, it wasn’t like there was any reason to suspect ulterior motives from Captain Wrecking Ball, of all people. If someone that powerful was evil they didn’t exactly tend to feel the need to hide it.

Maybe the Cap just had the ability to shrink down to a more human size for he civilian life and wanted to keep a cover on that? Ethan couldn’t really blame someone wanting to keep a few secrets.

Whatever it was, Ethan decided it was best to nod and go along with the Captain’s cover story.

“Aherm. W-well, either way, I should really get you to safety, citizen,” the Cap said, while… blushing?

“That would be appreciated… but, you’re not planning to go in to fight the Red Lady, are you?” Ethan asked, as he was flown to a nearby roof.

“I am.”

“But you’re a guy,” Ethan replied, as a fact slipped into his mind about the Captain. Namely his tendency to attend the annual Pride Parade. “Being gay doesn’t protect you from her magic.”

For whatever reason that made the taller man blush again. “I have enough experience with her to be pretty good at resisting. Plus, I would stop someone I genuinely cared about from doing the sort of things she does, so her powers don’t get in the way of trying to capture her.”

“Ah. Right. I guess that makes sense,” Ethan mumbled. “And, you’re good to fight again after last week?”

“Oh, yep. Back to normal again. Dr. Medic is an excellent physician after all,” the Cap replied with a grin.

Right. Ethan mentally kicked himself for forgetting the Captain was on a team with a man whose superpower was healing others.

“I appreciate you worrying about me though, Eth—citizen,” the large man said, before zipping off into the air.

Ethan watched him fly off very unsure what to make of all that. It really had felt like Captain Wrecking Ball knew him. Any ability of his to guess which of his neighbours or co-workers might be the strongest superhero in the city was thrown off by the fact that of course the Captain felt familiar to him. He was also one of the three most famous heroes in the city, who was on tv all the time. Everyone was at least somewhat familiar with him.

Well, he could worry about it later. He just had to get off this roof. Which meant—the door was locked.

He stared at it for a moment, before looking around to see if there were any others. But no. There also didn’t seem to be a fire escape.

-

He’d ended up phoning the fire department to get him down. Though they managed to get ahold of the building manager to unlock the door for him instead of having to send over a full crew. Which was sort of less embarrassing, but also made him feel silly for not thinking of that himself.

At least he had pretty good cell service, which let him watch the news coverage of the fight while he waited to get let down. Captain Wrecking Ball and his teammate The Queen of Swords had managed to subdue Ethan’s controlled coworkers without anyone getting seriously hurt.

Not before the Red Lady had smashed the company supercomputer mainframe designed to calculate likely future supervillain targets. Which led to X-Tech’s stock values plummeting when Ethan checked.

At least his job was secure for the immediate future as he headed down to be interviewed by the police. Being part of the repair team meant they were needed in the aftermath of the battle.

The police proved another headache, though. While the Northford Police Services were generally pretty clean and trustworthy (the higher than average number of superheroes in town were very ready to step in when the police stepped out of line, keeping them on the straight and narrow) they were still bureaucratic. And difficult to convince about Ethan’s phobia protecting him.

“Seriously, a phobia of all women?” the officer asked.

“Well, I’ve mostly got it down to a phobia of women with direct power over me, but… yes. I can call my therapist if you’d like some official paperwork?” he replied.

“And that just happened to protect you? Letting you slip out unharmed?”

“Do you not see the scrapes on my cheeks and how my clothes are cut up? I was thrown out of a window! I almost died!” Ethan countered. “If Captain Wrecking Ball hadn’t caught me I’d be a stain on the sidewalk right now!”

“One sec,” the officer replied, pulling out a radio to call in for confirmation.

A few moments later the radio chirped to life, another officer replying that Captain Wrecking Ball confirmed the story.

“Mhm. Alright… well, if you find yourself immune to any other mind control efforts, do let the NPS know, Mr. Quinten,” the officer said.

“Oh. Definitely,” he muttered as he got up, feeling more than a little stiff as the adrenaline wore off.

He decided to head over to where the paramedics were, to get checked for glass and have his cuts cleaned up.

Luckily he’d apparently avoided getting any significant amounts of glass in his body, only needing a couple tiny bits removed. Still, getting all his scrapes cleaned stung and took longer than he liked.

Heading away from the crowd at last, and heading towards the subway, he was surprised to see Dr. Xiang sitting on a bench nearby. He was extra surprised about the fact Dr. Xiang was wearing an activated change collar right now, and seemed more than a little lost in thought.

“I’d say a penny for your thoughts, but we don’t have those anymore, so… a dime, maybe?” Ethan said, strolling over to ‘him’.

Dr. Xiang blinked, turning to Ethan. “I… I kind of heard her. The Red Lady… I’m trying to figure out if that means something.”

“Oh?” Ethan asked, sitting down on the bench beside ‘him’, but keeping his distance as much as he could. “Not just a leftover from using that collar?”

“I’m not sure. It probably is? But I thought it might be worth thinking about how I feel a little more. The fact that the collar works for me at all is worth thinking about after all.”

“Don’t they just work for everyone?” he asked, feeling a little nervous about the answer. “I heard they turn people into whatever they want to look like?”

“Ehh… sort of? They transform you into what you really want to look like as a member of the opposite sex,” Dr. Xiang replied. “Which, for most people, means the minimal possible change because they don’t have any way that they actually want to be. Like, they don’t even look like they’ve had a hormonal change. For a few people that works well enough, because they were already androgynous. For most… not as much.”

Ethan gave a slow nod, letting Xiang continue.

“Some people have a deeper desire, though. Mine was driven more about escaping sexism in a depressingly male dominated program,” ‘he’ explained. “At least I think that’s all it is.”

“So… does everyone who actually changes still generally look about as similar as your two forms?” Ethan asked.

“Usually? But… not always. Some people have a stronger desire for change than others,” Xiang replied.

It was time for Ethan to nod again, as he thought about ‘Julie’. ‘She’ was just so feminine he couldn’t begin to guess what ‘her’ male form could look like.

Which he found comforting.