RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Writer's Block They Fight Crime.

I love the feeling of opening the door to a new apartment. Or I imagine I would love it, were it not for the guy who almost knocks me down as he rushes past the open door. I'm not even passed the threshold and he's already opened all the cupboard doors in the kitchen.

"Hey! All these things are empty!"

I roll my eyes. "Why wouldn't they be? We haven't moved in yet."

"Race you to the bedrooms!" I let him run. Even if I wasn't the mature one, I couldn't outrun him. 'He' is Will Du, faster than any man or woman I'll ever know, and equally as annoying.

It wasn't my idea to room with him. In fact, my idea was that he was the second best person to room with, and everybody else in the world was tied for first. But the big guys determined that we both needed a place to carry out our missions, and one apartment costs less than two so here we are.

Barely two steps later and Will's already back to torment me some more. "So counting us, this city has to have like a million people living in it."

"Two point two million," I answer without thinking.

"Bitch, you pulled that out of your ass."

"Don't call me bitch, Will," I say. I'd be angry, only I know that he has no idea how to seriously talk to a woman like me, having had so little human female contact since breastfeeding. "I got it from the last census."

"Don't call me Will, and I won't call you bitch." He actually looks at me quietly for a second and I know what he wants me to say. I can't help but roll my eyes again.

"Oh, SNAP!" I say with exaggerated enthusiasm. He reacts with way too much glee.

"Haha, Burn!" he says. "I'll see if you're right."

He's out to count how many people are in the city. I'm not making that up. I sit down on the couch, exhausted from just mere minutes of casual conversation with Will Du. I glance around at the apartment. It looks much nicer when it's empty.

"1,347."

"Excuse me?" she says, trying not to look too surprised of seeing me pop in front of her. Right, like she coulda seen me coming when I'm running at full speed...

"1,347 people in the city."

She goes back to unpacking her stuff and doesn't bother looking at me as she talks. "Unless there was a recent plague or alien invasion I'm unaware of, that's impossible."

I let myself fall backwards, and before I reach the floor there's a sofa under me to break my fall. She can't not be impressed by that trick. "Well, actually, I got bored after counting 1,437... or something. I kinda lost count."

"I'm surprised you can count that high," she sternly replies, not the slightest bit of playfulness in her voice. She looks at me for half a second, only to verify what I'm sitting on. "Move that sofa out of my room if you don't want me to turn it into ashes."

I get up and the sofa is gone. It's good I returned it now, 'cause the family in Denver I took it from were starting to wonder what was going on. "Listen, Alf, I've been meaning to ask..."

My words are cut short by the cold look she's giving me now. I wonder if she has heat vision. Man, I hope she doesn't have heat vision...

"My name is Alfhild," she informs me. "Not Alf, Alfhid. Alf is a furry alien who hides in your kitchen and threatens to eat your cat, but never does. Alfhild never threatens. She does."

Suddenly, I'm extremely glad Mr. Mittens is safe back at my dad's. "Aaaanyway..." I can't help swallowing saliva before I speak again, but I guess that's less telling of how much she scares me than talking with a broken voice "...I wanted to ask you, you got any actual powers or is that 'little friend' of yours everything you got goin' for yourself?"

"You'll find out when they send us on our first assignment... assuming your don't get killed within the first five seconds."

All right, I figure that's enough small talk. Time to work some subtle Du moves... "Hey, don't you think it's weird that the big boys put a dude and a chick of close age living together?"

"What do you mean?" Oh, you know what I mean. I love it when they play hard to get.

"I mean... maybe they expected us to, like... mate or something, don't you think?" She looks at me again, and this time the coldness is gone. No, there's something else there... lust, maybe? "I mean, they do this sort of thing all the time..." I continue, now that I've got her attention. "The next step of human evolution could be one night away. Think about it."

"Will," she says, standing in front of me, the sexual tension so dense it almost crushes our bodies, "...I'm gay."

She's all mine. The old Du magic once again...

Wait. Did you just say she's gay?

"Oh." I sit on a borrowed beach chair. "Yeah... That makes sense. I mean, with a name like Alfhild... I can't say I'm surprised, really."

"And even if I wasn't, with a codename like 'SNAP', I can't say the prospect of intercourse with you sounds too exciting."

"Y-Yeah... Well, now that the tension between us is dealt with, we can finally get to work. I'll be in my room in case you need me."

That went well.

It wasn't out of conceit that I knew he was going to make a pass at me sooner or later, so I had prepared for it. Given what I said earlier about cats, I can't believe he didn't go for the obvious "eating pussy" joke. It'll probably occur to him later.

The last piece of equipment I unpack is also by far the most important. I'm so used to it at this point that it doesn't feel like it weighs more than a feather anymore. I pull the strap around my shoulder and hold it by the familiar grips. Even in my hands it looks for all the world like a giant phallic symbol.

With the most possible precaution, I gently, VERY gently, squeeze the trigger. The flame extends from the nozzle as if it were a last minute addition to it, but it belonged there all along. In the hands of anybody else, the whole place would have been up in flames and I would have lived up to my codename. But I know what I'm doing.

After a few seconds I let it go. There's a lifetime supply of adrenaline in my bloodstream right now as my breathing starts to level.

Okay, so my roommate's a pain, but other than that, a girl could get used to this kind of freedom.

As soon as I hook up the phone, it starts ringing. How crazy is that? What's even crazier is that I know who it is.

"Hey dad." I don't bother asking him how he got this number. I don't have this number. I just hooked up the phone, for Gob's sake.

"No, haven't done it yet. I'll d..." Oh boy, here we go. "Dad, I can unpack my all stuff in like .002 seconds. I'll do it later, okay?"

Even if he's being a fascist fuck, I can tell when he's worried about me. Not that I can blame him, considering... But, fuck, I'm 22. I can take care of myself.

More routine questions. "Some chick. No powers, I think, just a... Yes, a female. Naaaah, she's gay. Yes, dad, they let gays in now." He starts telling me about the Rainbow Warrior controversy, back in his day. "Dad, that doesn't mean every gay member the big boys kick out is gonna kidnap a satellite and threaten to sterilize a continent with a giant ray. I think she'd just roast everyone's weiner, plain and simple."

After 9 minutes of awkward conversation, he's finally ran out of dull topics to keep me on the line. It'd be a lot easier if he'd just told me he wants to talk, instead of dwelling on stuff like the weather and public transporation in the big city. He's got a story about 'the good old days' for each one of these topics, by the way... courtesy of his tendency to fight gimmicky villains, like Weatherman or Bus Boy.

We're about to call it a night, when he insists on telling me to unpack my stuff. "Yeah, I just did it. It's all set up," I lie, unwilling to stretch the agony any further. "Dad...?"

Suddenly, I feel a much too familiar slap on the back of my head. I turn around, and the window is open. On the other side of the line, my dad tells me to get off my ass, unpack my shit, and stop lying to him. He hangs up.

Even after all that, I can't help smiling. It must have taken him at least three seconds to cross the five states between us. That's kinda cute.

We're trained to fight. Ceaseless hours, learning to hone a craft and repeat it until it becomes second nature, as involuntary as putting your feet forward one at a time. But they didn't train us to handle boredom. I hate to admit this is the one area in which I am envious of Will. He never has to be bored.

I might as well have been given the order "Hurry up and wait!" for all I'm doing at the moment. Okay, so there's a laundry list of things that we, or more likely I, need to do to get settled in the city. We're supposed to get in touch with the local contact of our bosses, we should at some point get on speaking terms with the mayor and chief of police. Thanks to the recent election that one will be a whole lot easier. They might even welcome us here these days, fancy that.

I get a call that I was expecting sooner or later. My doctor. "What's up?" That wasn't intended to sound like a Bugs Bunny reference. I just suck at formalities.

"Hello, Alfhild. You got everything you need?"

"Yeah."

"Take today's dosage yet?"

"Going to as soon as I hang up."

"Need any refills?"

"Not at the moment."

"Feel okay?"

"Sure."

"All right. Call me if you need anything." We both hang up. Yay for father figures.

"How are we gonna know when they need us?" I ask, and her look inmediately makes me feel stupid.

"They'll let us know," she says, her face buried in the crime section of the local newspaper. "It's their job."

"Yeah, but what if there's an emergency out there and all the phone lines are dead and--"

Before I can finish, she picks up the phone and holds it to her ear. "Sounds fine to me."

I look out the window at the busy but peaceful city. Something bad could be happening right now, and we're sitting here, doing nothing. "Can't I just go out there for a sec and make sure there are no supervillains taking over a building, or...?"

"No, you can't." She puts down the Gazette. Uh-oh. "Wanna know why? Because, even if you do find an emergency, there's nothing we can do about it. The whole point of joining an organization like this is being organized. That means, no patrolling on our own, unless they tell us to. We're not vigilantes."

I look outside again, hoping for red skies or blue thunder, but the city is the same as before. "You know, in his day my dad would just go out and fight the first costumed loon he found..."

"...and that's how good guys ended up fighting each other for two hours before realizing they were on the same side. Think about all the time and resources they wasted doing that, not to mention the destruction of public property. Now that we're all overseen by the same organism, our activity can be focused more efficiently. Things are better this way."

Crap. My roommate is not only boring, she's a fascist. I resist the urge to compare the system to Nazi Germany, 'cause her name is kinda German-sounding and she may be sensitive about that whole thing. 'Don't mention the war to a German,' my dad always said. Then again, he also said the Holocaust was invented by Steven Spielberg...

Damn, this sucks. "If you ask me, they're taking all the fun out of the game."

"This is not a--"

The doorbell rings, and before the buzz stops I'm already there. I hesitate before opening the door. "You think it's them? You think they got a mission for us?"

"Why don't you open the door and find out?" Even with her condescending tone, I swear I felt a bit of excitement in her voice. She wants to kick some ass as bad as I do.

I do as she said, only to find a jolly fat man in a hawaiian shirt standing outside, holding a cake.

"Welcome to the neighbourhood!"

"Wha?"

"I said..." the fat man walks past me and leaves the cake on our dinner table "...welcome to the neighbourhood!"

"Yeeeeeah..." I'm confused. "Who are you?"

"Why, your neighbour!" The fat man is already on his way to the kitchen. I look at Alfhild, and her distrusting frown tells me she doesn't know him either.

"Where do you keep your eating utensils?" the man asks from the kitchen. "We can't eat cake with our hands, can we?"

"Should I grab the guy and drop him in the middle of Nevada?" I ask my rommate.

"No. Don't use your powers in front of him." On her way to the kitchen, Alfhild quietly closes the door to her bedroom, probably so our 'guest' doesn't see the big flamethrower laying on the bed.

Before she can enter the kitchen, the man comes out holding some napkins, three plastic spoons, and the electric knife I got for Christmas (My uncles never know what to get me. I also got a scotch tape dispenser and some toner.)

"I should have realized you'd have no kitchen appliances, having just moved in," the man says, cutting the cake with the (unplugged) knife. "I apologize for being so thoughtless. I have plenty of forks and knives in my place."

"Uh... No sweat." He hands me a napkin and a spoon, then drops a generous piece of cake on my hands.

He does the same to Alfhild. "Here you go, young lady..."

"Alfhild, please," she corrects him. "And your name is...?"

"Euphrates! I'm sorry for not shaking your hand, but I've got some icing on me." He takes his own piece of cake, wraps it with napkins, and grabs a spoon only to place it in his pocket. Apparently, forks and knives is all he has. "Now, I'd love to stay and eat with you, but I'm afraid I'm a bit busy."

The man announces he'll show himself out, and kindly waves goodbye. "See you later, Alfhild. See you..."

"Will."

"See you, Will!" He closes the door behind him, and everything is as it was before he arrived. Except for the cake and the napkins, I mean. We probably look kinda silly, standing there without saying a word.

"So, what do you make of that?" I ask Alfhild, amazed that she doesn't feel as confused as I do (or at least she doesn't show it).

"He could be just a whacky neighbour who wanted to be friendly..." she says, leaving her piece of cake on the table without touching it. "But then again, he could also be a spy placed next to us, either by the big guys themselves or by someone else. Until we know for sure, I suggest we remain cautious and don't accept any--"

She freezes when she sees what I'm doing. "Hey, thi shit's actua'y pre'y good! You go'a eat your piece?" She turns around and walks away. "Wha?"

We finally got a call that we could go out and do something. Not anything fun, but necessary and all the same, it staves off boredom a little. The guys up top arranged a meeting with the mayor.

On the way over to City Hall, I almost felt a little bad on Will's behalf. Until we're properly registered here, I can't use my preferred means of transportation. He could have run ahead of me and waited, but I didn't like the idea of him having several minutes of unaccountability. It's one thing if he runs off into trouble on his free time...only he'd have to answer for that. After we get our orders, though, we're responsible for one another.

So he had to take the bus with me. And all sorts of other people who we'll want to avoid in the future. The guy closest to me scratched himself for half the ride, then tried getting my attention the other half. Lovely. He was the only guy whose attention was focused somewhere other than Will's foot tapping impatiently at like a thousand miles per hour.

It's not soon enough that we're in the mayor's office. He sits down behind his desk, on which rests a nameplate reading "Mayor Campell," without painstaking pleasantries or introductions. He's got my vote for that, if nothing else. He's a lot younger than most politicians I've seen.

"I've only got five minutes before I gotta be somewhere else. Go." He gets to the point quickly. I figure I should show him the same respect.

"We're new in town and we need to get registered. You know who we represent, I assume."

He nods. "Of course. I hold your bosses in high regard and look forward to working with you two."

Will cuts in. "If you like our bosses so much then why do we have to go through all this registering? We could be out helping the city already without this shit." I wish I could gag him.

Campbell smiles, surprisingly patient. "It's something, alright. After all, the bad ones of your ilk--no offense--are not going to go through the registration process, and the good ones don't need it." He shrugs a little. "The voters have their reasons..."

I jump in, hoping to undo Will's complaining. "It's understandable. I mean, your stances regarding us are progressive, and the last election showed that people want change. But there's a limit, too...people can only stand so many catastrophes before they wonder if there's such a thing as too much tolerance." I have no idea if what I said made any sense but it sounded good.

The mayor smiles and checks his watch. "Well, I'll let you all get started. My secretary will be in shortly. I've got an appointment." He extends his hand to us.

"Got to get in a quick nine at the club, eh, Mr. Mayor?" Will says as he shakes Campbell's hand. Always has to make a joke, the fucking--

Campbell laughs it off. Good. I shake his hand and he's out. "You know," I say to Will. "You could at least pretend to be professional. It might be fun, if you treat it as sort of an inside joke."

He chuckles. "Since when do YOU find inside jokes funny?"

Before I can respond the door opens and an ugly middle age woman in an even uglier dress walks in. This city's fashion scene must really suck.

She sighs and hands each of us a piece of paper that says 'Evaluation and Registration.' "One of you go to room 101, the other go to room 121. When you walk out this room, one is directly to the left and one is directly to the right. Don't walk in the same direction and you'll be fine." She leaves. I feel like I should stop and ask her another question but she's clearly got no heart for this work. I'd kill myself before I'd let myself end up like that. Or provoke someone else into killing me.

I take room 121. I don't know why we'd be split up like this but it's not like I'll complain. I find the room and knock. I hear a voice say something. I open the door and walk in.

There's a chair and a couch. A man is sitting on the chair with glasses. He's old enough to be my grandfather. He's smiling.

Oh, SHIT.

Psychological evaluations.

This is gonna suck. I can only imagine what kind of minefield they'll find inside my head...not to mention Will's.

Hey JJ, I tried to PM you but it says This user is not accepting private messages. Fix that pls.

Done. Sorry about that.

"We almost done here?"

"Ah, we haven't started yet, Mr. Du..." I hate it when they call me Mr. Du. And I hate shrinks. Especially ones who dress like it's 1889. "Now, why don't you lay down on the couch so we can begin our psychological evaluation? My name is Doctor Thomas Rice, by the way."

I reluctantly obey, trying to look as displeased as I can. The comfortable pillows make that a hard task. Damn, I could marry this couch. Seriously, I gotta get me one of these.

But, anyway, back to being pissy. "I thought you'd know all you need to know about me by now..."

"Oh? What makes you say that?" he asks, looking geniunelly surprised. "Why, you walked into this room barely ten seconds ago! Or does it seem like ten minutes, because of your special abilities?"

"Nah, time doesn't slow down for me (unless I want it to, I mean). I was sayin' that 'cause you got that mind-reading gizmo there..." I point at his ear and he inmediately checks the piece of alien technology inside it with his hand, probably making sure it isn't sticking out.

"Very observant, Will!" he says with a smile, his pale face turning pink. "How did you know what the mind-lobe does?"

"My dad had one of those, a gift from one of his 'buddies'... But, uh, shouldn't you know that already?"

"No, Will, I'm not reading your mind. This mind-lobe has very limited capability. It only gives me general mood impressions... For example, it told me you were uncomfortable when I called you 'Mr. Du'. Anything more than that would be illegal without a warrant, I'm afraid."

"Ye-ah, tell that to my dad..."

"Your father... The Swift, correct? Impressive career."

Oh, great. He's a fan. "Depends on who you ask."

"Did he use the mind-lobe on you when you were a boy, Will?"

Crap. I walked right into that one. Or ran into it, if you wanna be cute. "Eh, sometimes. Like, if someone had peed on the kitchen sink... or, or something... he'd use it to find out which one of us did it."

"How do you get along with your father?"

"Dude, he used an alien earplug to read my mind. How do you think we got along? The man is a fascist, and a manipulative control freak."

"And yet, you've decided to follow his footsteps. Or was that not your own decision?"

I laugh at the question to let him know how ridiculous it is, and hopefully make him feel stupid. "You mean like, he forced me to get into this business? Ha, no, he's completely the opposite. Ever since th... Ever since he retired, he's been telling me I need to get a 'real career'. He can do this for 29 years, but it's too dangerous for me. Rrrright."

"So, you did the opposite of what he demanded of you, and followed his path."

"Hey, what else could I do? 'Sides, a burger flipper with super-speed doesn't do much good to anyone."

"Except the obese and impatient, of course."

"Of course," I repeat, mocking his funny accent.

"Have you considered the possibility that your father only discouraged you from being a protector because he was counting on you to rebel against him?"

"You mean, he wants me to do it so he told me not to do it so I'd do it because he doesn't want me to do it? That's fucked."

"If he's, as you called him, a 'manipulative control freak', would you put something like this past him?"

I know he's wrong... but I still feel like a sucker. "You know what? Even if that was true, his little plan is gonna backfire and hit him in the face."

"Why do you say that?"

"'Cause I'm much better than him at this. I won't be remembered as the 'son of...'. He'll be the sidenote in my Who's Who entry. A red link in my Wikipedia article. I'm gonna be so big, he's gonna look like Gary Coleman next to me."

"Maybe that's what he wanted all along."

"Dude, you don't know my dad," I inform him, sitting up on his incredibly comfortable couch. "For starters, he hates Gary Coleman."

He smiles. "I think we're done here."

Dr. Rice approves me, with the condition that I come back to see him every week. And here I thought it had gone well.

I'd get the hell out of here, but Alfhild made me promise I'd wait for her if her session lasted longer more than mine. And it does. A lot longer. A lot lot longer. It's like she knew this would happen, the clever bitch.

What the hell are they doing in there? Maybe she got a lesbian shrink, and they began talking about Alf's first gay experience, and now they're totally making out on the couch. Daaaaaaamn... that was a great couch.

35 minutes later, after I've been politely asked to leave every office in the building, the door to the room Alfhild went into finally begins to open. If I have to come back once a week, I bet she's gonna be here twice a day. Sucks for her.

As the door opens, I hear something weird. Is that... weeping?!

"It's okay, it wasn't that terrible..." A man who looks almost exactly like Dr. Rice weeps under Alfhild's arm. As he cleans his face with an old handkerchief, she looks at me and shrugs. Then continues trying to console him.

I'm even more confused when the man puts away the handkerchief and I'm able to see his face. It turns out that clothes aren't the only thing he has in common with Dr. Rice... who happens to come out of his office at this precise moment.

Rice walks up to his double, and suddenly they become one. It happened so fast that even I can't tell how they did it. "Take care, Miss Alfson. See you next week, Will."

When the man walks back into his office (well, one of 'em), I turn to Alfhild, who's already on her way to the exit. "What did you do to the poor guy?"

"Nothing, we just talked," she coldly replies. "So, you have to come back? He practically begged me not to."

"Oh, that's just great..."

After we finished the whole registration process, we found this little deli to grab something to eat. Walking back home, I can't help but notice how spacious the city really is, nothing like every other city I've ever visited.

I let Will talk. The...unnerving experience of the session was enough talking for me today. He's telling me some random stories about his dad. Will really seems to hate his old man. Sounds like a luxury to me.

For about half a block I stop listening because something on the other side of the street grabs my attention. Part of our training was teaching us how to notice everything in our surroundings, so I've been looking all over the place like a paranoid schizophrenic, but I think now I've finally caught something suspicious.

Eventually I halt Will for a moment and point to what I'm seeing. "That look odd to you?" I ask.

He follows where I'm looking. He gasps. "My god, you're right!" he shouts in exagerrated fashion. "An attractive young lady standing by her lonesome, and I don't have her number!"

I reach out my hand to stop him before he runs over there. "Come on, Will, look at the whole picture. She's leaning against a car, no money in the meter, and look at the store she's in front of."

Will glances up and reads the sign. "Kincaid's Jewelers. So what? I've never seen you wear jewelry."

I guess I'll have to hammer the point home. "How many other downtown stores do you suspect have a 'closed' sign up at 3 in the afternoon?" If this were a cartoon the light bulb would have just turned on over his head. Then suddenly he pulls me down and hides us behind a car.

"We gotta be careful or she'll see us!" he whispers. Will's seen too many movies, I think.

"Who cares if she sees us?" I say. "We're not the ones with anything to hide." Still, I have no problem indulging in whatever little spy fantasy he's playing out right now so we watch her through a side window. She's definitely nervous.

Two guys casually walk out the door of the jeweler's. One second later an alarm goes off in the shop. They immediately look paniced and scramble into a car, practically knocking each other over doing so. Idiots probably trusted the clerk that he wasn't going to tell anybody.

"Well, we're registered now, Will," I say, standing up. "Let's do this. First, I'll need my--" I haven't finished and I already feel the straps around my shoulders and the flamethrower in my hand. "Thank you." Will's in costume himself now. He's eager. Here we go...

They don't get very far before Will runs out in front of the car. The girl's driving and she veers so sharply to avoid him that she ends up with the car perfectly perpendicular to the center line. It's a narrow street with cars parked on both sides, so there's little room for maneuvering. She's basically trapped. Way to go, Will!

Unfortunately, he ruins the good will I have toward him right away. "Villains, prepare to be SNAPPED and BURNED!" Even I have to cringe. At least he didn't call them 'evildoers'...yet.

I jog on over, so I'm on one side of the car and Will's on the other. Analyze the situation, I say to myself: girl at the steering wheel, engine still running; one guy in the front seat next to her, one guy in the back behind her. Neither were wearing seat belts so they're a little discombobulated by the sharp turn and stop.

I aim the nuzzle at the guy in the back. Not very big, but very young...they're all just kids. WE are all just kids here.

"Okay now, nice and easy, out of the car with your hands where I can see them," I say, keeping my voice calm and level, like the heroes always do in the movies. The guy in the back raises his hands but I get a feeling he won't be doing this easy.

Sure enough, his plan 'springs' into action. He opens and kicks his door out, trying to get it to hit me. Only I wasn't standing close enough to it so it flies out, then flies back and hits him in the leg. Right on the shin. Ow. I actually feel for him when he shouts in pain.

"Now that we've got that out of the way, let's go to Plan B: stepping out nice and easy." I look at the two in the front. The girl's gripping the wheels extremely tight and looking straight ahead rather than at me. Her knuckles are white. I address them after the guy in back finally steps out. "You too, Bonnie and Clyde. Move slowly and easily and it'll be better for all of us."

The guy in front has other ideas. He shouts out "The Vertigo Man does not go quietly!" What the fuck is this, a Max Fleischer cartoon? He pulls himself through the passenger window and climbs to the car's hood. He looks down at me, like he's daring me to try something. Whatever.

"Will, you take that one." What happens next happens so fast...but none too smooth. Here's basically all I see: a blur climbs the car, the 'Vertigo Man' panics and almost falls over to the ground but manages to stay atop the hood, and suddenly Will's flying over me at top speed. I duck instinctively and hear a collision behind me. When I turn around, I see a piss-yellow car with a huge dent in the side that probably wasn't there before, and Will's stumbling like a drunken sailor.

The rest of us all freeze for a moment. The girl still isn't looking in this direction. I don't know what to say.

Finally the guy on the ground asks Vertigo Man, "Dude, what did you just do?"

Vertigo Man, for his part, seems just as shocked. "I...I don't know! Motherfucker moved so fast, and I just kind of...you think he's dead?" Kind of a stupid question since Will's trying to stand up, but the kid's a little shaken up so I won't hold it against him.

"Don't worry, he'll be fine. He only hit his head," I say, trying to relax my muscles a bit and finding the trigger again. "But let's stop this before somebody does something that can't be taken back. Just surrender now so nobody else gets hurt." Not easy to bargain when the more powerful member was just taken out of the equation, but I've been told I can be quite intimidating, even without any weapon in my hands.

Vertigo Man looks at his accomplice, who looks at me. "Uh...we kind of can't do that," he says.

I show them I'm getting angry. "Fine, let's do this the hard way," I say. I squeeze the trigger and the flame emerges, just enough to be menacing. The kid yelps a little and flicks his wrist and...suddenly the flame is out. I squeeze the trigger harder, and still nothing. What the fuck?

"I didn't know you could do that!" Vertigo Man says from the hood. This is just fucking great. We're getting owned by two guys who clearly don't know what they're doing and a chick who may as well be comatose.

"I don't need any damn gun, I'll just take care of you two myself," I snarl. The kid on the ground clearly ain't a fighter because he immediately runs around to the other side of the car when I advance towards him. Fine. Vertigo Man seems to be a bigger threat anyways so I start to climb the back of the car.

When I lift my foot to put on the back bumper, however, the car is suddenly no longer underneath me and the world feels like its spinning. Desperately, I try to grab onto something around me but it feels like I'm in limbo or something. I move my arms to brace my fall, only to feel something smack my forehead hard. I'm seeing stars. Am I on the ground or floating? I can't tell anymore.

Something rolls me over, or pulls me somewhere or does something I can't quite figure out, and I hear some quick shuffling of feet, some car doors open and close and eventually something drives away. There is ground underneath me, I decide. It's kind of warm. Pleasant warmth.

An unseen force pulls me up and my feet are kind of underneath me. I feel an arm around my back and trying to support me under my shoulder. I think a voice asks if I'm all right. After a couple seconds I decide the floating voice might want an answer.

"I'll be okay," I mumble. "I only hit my head..." Then the world spins again and goes black.

In the ass!

"Dude, we got 0WN3D." I feel stupid two seconds after saying that. Two seconds? I'm not as fast as I used to be.

We're back in our stupid apartment, and I'm still wearing my stupid superhero costume. It's just the generic blue and white uniform the Big Boys gave us, only this one has a hoodie. I used to think it looked cool. Now I can't wait to take it off... except I'm naked under it and I don't want Alfhild to doubt her homosexuality at the sight of my Willie.

"I was like a fucking amateur!" I exclaim, sitting next to her as she does maintenance on her flamethrower. "I got my ass handed to me before I could even call 'em 'evildoers'. Now I'll probably never get to say it. I'm a fucking failure, man. I'm a... I'm just... hey, you can stop me anytime, you know?"

She's cold as ever. "You're still alive."

"Yeah, I'm not dead, but I'm a loser, which is like five times worse. I'm such a lamer. What kind of stupid fucking codename is 'Snap', anyway? All one-syllabe codenames are lame, that's a fucking RULE. No offense."

"None taken." She just sits there, cleaning her bazooka (whatevs) while I open my soul to her. How I hate her.
Well, not really. But you know what I mean.

"You could be a little more sympathetic, you know..." I tell her, but she doesn't show the slightest sign of having heard me. If her static expression has changed in the least, it's been on a mollecular level. "You were there too! You also saw how easily they kicked our asses! Hell, you probably saw it better then me, since you weren't laying semi-conscious on the pavement for most of the fight."

No reply. Only the almost imperceptible sound of the piece of cloth polishing the metal.

"Don't you care? I'm your partner. Your life is probably gonna depend on me one of th--"

"Will," she interrupts, "I got owned too."

"Wha?"

She sighs. "I mean... I got 0WN3D too."

"No, I mean... Wha? You don't hate me because of what happened back there?"

"I got knocked out too. It only happened to you first because you're faster than me. If you hadn't awakened and taken me here, I'd probably still be laying there, being molested by a hobo."

As soon as I'm able to shake off the mental image I realize... Whoa, she's bringing herself down to make me feel better! That's so... human of her.

"So... what do we do now?" I ask.

"Easy," she says, back to her emotionless tone of voice, "we track them down and we own 'em back."

Somewhere else.

"Dude, we 0WN3D!" the slim guy with the spiky hair yells. "Did you see how the speedster lost control after I worked my vertigo on his ass?"

"And the face on the chick when I made the flame go off!" adds the heavier guy with the mini-afro.

"You were great too, bro. I didn't know you could transmute elements like that."

"Is that what I did?"

"Calm down, boys," says the only woman in the room. "You'll have plenty of time to cirle jerk when we sell the loot at the black market. Until then, Mike--"

"HEY!" spiky hair yells, again. He is quite fond of yelling, that one. "It's 'The Vertigo Man', man. 'Mike' is my slave name."

"Yeah! And for your information, it's only a circle jerk if there's more than two guys doin' it." Mini-afro turns red. "I'm just sayin'."

The woman laughs. "I think Circle Jerk should be your codename, since you seem to know so much about the subject."

Mini-afro is hurt. "Yeah, well, yours should be... Ice Queen."

"That IS my codename, dumbass. I shoot ice from my fingers. What else could it be?"

"Yeah, well... shut up."

"But seriously, bro," Vertigo Man says, "when are you gonna decide on a codename?"

"Uhhhh... Fire Lad?"

"Gay," VM sentences. "Besides, turning air into fire is only one of your abilities... in theory, since you haven't even learned how to use it yet. AND, you don't wanna make it seem like you and 'Ice Queen' are a couple."

"Ew, no. Okay, okay, what about... Element Storm."

"Richard Simmons-gay."

Ice Queen laughs again. "I hate to interrupt your favorite subject, boys, but it's time we contact our bosses."

"Whoa, what for? Those guys give me the creeps."

"Yeah, I thought this job was small enough to keep it to ourselves..."

"They don't care about our miserable loot, Circle Jerk... but they're gonna be very interested to learn that the newest registered protectors in town are two little turds. You know how they love taking advantage of opportunities like these to make a point..."

I think I have a minor concussion. And I seem to remember reading that when you have a concussion you shouldn't go to sleep, but I didn't care much for that advice last night.

Waking up this morning didn't alleviate that sting of defeat. They taught us to expect to lose. Particularly to lose our first fight, or one of our first ones. The important thing is to remember that everybody loses, but not everybody survives to tell about it, so we should be grateful every second we're still alive. Small consolation, I say.

My morning face is still on when the knock on the door gets both Will and I to the living room. I silently pray it's not the Hawaiian shirt guy again...I've got enough of a headache as it is.

It's not, fortunately. It's a twentysomething man, with shaggy hair and Goodwill-level clothes. His eyes look a little spaced out. I'm positive he's high. Let Will handle this one.

"Hey," he says, in an eerily calm manner. "I live upstairs from you. I didn't think anybody was down here but I heard you yesterday."

"Yeah, we just moved in," Will says. He's not his usual wise-ass self, and for some reason that...saddens me. I guess he's never had to learn to put on a brave face.

"I figured I should introduce myself, since I never talked to the last people here," the new guy says. Strangely, he continues to stand there in the middle of our living room without introducing himself. He seems to be studying the room the way I did when I first walked in. Another costume? Probably not, I decide. He's likely just trying to remember where he is.

"No offense," I decide to break my silence. "But this isn't going to be a thing, is it? We're not going to have a parade of neighbors stop by one by one and have to endure awkward introductions, are we?"

He blinks at me for a second, then thinks about it. "I doubt it," he concludes. "The only person who came to my door was some fat guy named Hades." I give him an A for effort.

"So how will we learn your name, big guy?" Will asks. "Do we just randomly guess until we hit on it?"

"Oh, sorry," stoner seems to be jolted back to reality. "I'm Trevor. I lose my train of thought sometimes." Before we can respond he suddenly looks right at me. "Are you a vet?"

The question was so out-of-the-blue I think my sophisticated response is, "Huh?"

Will starts laughing. "A vet? Pal, you couldn't be more wrong. You should've heard what she said she does to cats yesterday!"

Trevor shakes his head. "No, I mean, I just got back from the desert myself."

Oh! He's asking me if I'm in the military! "No," I say to him. The phone rings and Will's answering it. "What made you ask?"

"It's just you kind of act like me a little, your posture and build, and all that." He must be talking about a previous incarnation of himself--he's been slouching this whole time. Also, he's definitely stopped hitting the gym since returning. Still, my opinion of him instantly changes...a combat veteran! Right above us! There might be something he can teach us.

Will interrupts. "As much fun as we're having, we have to go." I give him my best quizzical look, since I know we have nothing scheduled. I wonder if he's just trying to get out of talking to this guy, but then he clarifies, "We have to go into the city and contact somebody." He puts the emphasis on "city" and "contact," and I get what he means. I nod to him.

"We're going to have to talk later, Trevor," I say to him. I want to be polite because there might be more than one reason to actually talk to him later. Trevor nods, and doesn't walk out so much as saunter out, and he drifts away without another word.

Will and I get to finally meet the local contact of our bosses. Supposedly, these are the guys who can make our jobs a lot easier, and we really, REALLY need that right about now. As we close our apartment door behind us, Will remarks, "Maybe next time, Trevor will remember to ask for our names, too."

Turns out that the guy our bosses told us to meet, their contact in the city, is a lot less formal than we imagined. When he e-mailed us the address of the place where the meeting would be, the last thing we expected it to be was a fast food restaurant. And yet, here we are. Waiting for him with french fries and plastic toys in our hands.

Well, I'm holding french fries and plastic toys, at least. Alfhild just sits there, looking serious... in complete contrast to the screaming kids and laughing clowns that fill the place.

"Maybe this is like an intimidating technique," I say as I examine the mini-frisbee thrower, or whatever the hell the lame excuse for a toy inside the impenetrable plastic bag is called.

"You think Jolly Meal gifts are intimidating?" Alfhild asks. "You must have had a scary childhood."

"Shut up. What I mean is... maybe he asked to meet us here so we'd be all like, WTF?" I'm beginning to struggle with the plastic bag and am seriously considering using my teeth to open it... even though one of my greatest non-dad-related childhood traumas is choking with a small piece of plastic trying to do exactly this, at age 7. Hey, maybe Alf's on to something! "Then he'll show up, and... we'll just... ARGH! How do you open this?!"

Alfhild takes the bag from my hands and opens it with disturbingly little effort. I'd say she's spent her whole life opening little plastic bags with toys in them, but she doesn't look like the type who frequents this sort of establishment.

"Fucking impressive!" someone says, as if reading my thoughts. It's a brown haired guy in a trenchcoat, in the process of sitting in our table. "I've never been able to open those little pieces of shit. Never."

"Yeeeah..." I look at Alfhild to see if she's gonna ask what we're both thinking, but she looks even more disconcerted than me. "So... are you our local contact?"

"Name's Richards," he says, helping himself to one of my fries. "You can call me 'your local contact'." He's a lot younger than I imagined. Late 20's, I think. And he doesn't look the slightest bit like a cape. He's not what I expected at all, but I'm just glad they didn't assign us to one of my dad's friends. I know he still has some connections to the Big Guys, and that woulda been... weird.

He opens one of my sachets of ketchups and pockets two more. "Lemme guess: you're 'SNAP'. And..." he turns to Alfhild "...you must be 'BURN'."

Maybe it's the fact that he's chewing a french fry as he speaks, but he somehow manages to say her codename as if it was a dirty word. Like a part of the female anathomy you never knew had a name. Apparently Alfhild heard it the same way, 'cause she's looking pretty annoyed. She crosses her arms. "Yes, that's me."

"Well," he wipes his hand with my napkin, "you kids need anything? Found your place all right? The Mayor give you any shit?"

"No, that went by pretty well..." Alfhild answers. "We actually thought you had something important to tell us. Hence... this meeting."

"Eh, you know, the usual. I know this city like the back of my elbow, so if you ever get lost, gimme a shout. If I'm not avaliable, there's that other contact guy... whatshisname... Christopher Trinity."

"I don't think they ever mentioned that name to us," she says.

"Yeah, he's the default emergency contact for all newbies. Lovely job. But anyway, I'm the first person you should call for anything. Don't wanna bother the important people with our little problems, do we? You get in trouble, you call me. You need to talk to the guys upstairs, you call me. You feelin' lonely at night... you catch my drift." He winks at Alf, then looks at me. "That last one don't go for you. Nice menu choice, by the way."

I look at the colorful box my meal came from and feel as embarassed as Alfhild is feeling pissed (seriously, I think the only reason she hasn't kicked his face yet is that they'd probably suspend her). "Um... I just got this 'cause... The other burgers are too big for my stomach."

"No, I'm with you, brother. That's my favorite item in the menu."

"You tasted the nuggets?"

"I've been meaning to! You got five bucks I can borrow?"

"It's only 2.50..."

"Yeah, but now I gotta get a soda and shit... You know how it is."

I laugh, awkwardly, unsure of whether I should reach into my wallet or not. Just when it looks like he's gonna open his mouth again, either to repeat his request or say something innapproapiate to Alfhild, the sound of a loud explosion cuts him short.

As the kids in the restaurant run to their mommies and a general conmotion arises, Richards' attitude changes completely. Probably as an automatic reaction, he reaches into his inner coat pocket and grabs a strange metal artifact. What is that? The hilt of a broken sword...?

"That was about 15 blocks from here," Alfhild says, leaving her chair as Richards does the same. "Isn't there a bank in that direction?"

"Oh?" Suddenly, the urgency in Richards' actions seems to disappear. "You gonna get that?" Alfhild looks at me and I look at Richards. He sits. "Yeah... Yeah, you guys get that. You can use the experience points."

She frowns at him for less than a second. "Will, get my gun and go there. Don't act until we're both in the scene unless there's someone in danger."

"Yeah, yeah, I know the drill..."

She turns towards our contact on her way to the exit. "You've been a great help," she says in a sarcastic tone.

"Heh. If things get too hot for you kids, you got my cell number." He sips on my coke and waves bye-bye.

I'm glad her flamethrower is back home, or he'd be... "WILL! Snap out of it!" she yells. "We have work to do!"

And with that, I'm gone...

Through the headaches, I've been replaying yesterday's dustup in my mind like the Zapruder film. I figure there are two major flaws in how we approached the situation: we both stayed grounded(ie, at the same level), and we attacked one at a time.

I can correct the first one easily. Stepping out of the joint, I activate the pack and feel the flames propel my skyward. From here I can hover on over to that bank and check things out, and hopefully get the drop on whoever, or whatever decided to fuck with my city!

My city. I can definitely fall in love with saying that.

I'm not so high up that people look like ants beneath me, but they sure do look less impressive from my vantagepoint. I haven't gotten used to this yet...I still feel as if I'm dreaming when I see the gawkers underneath go by. As long as it's not one of those dreams where I'm wearing a bra and nothing else, I'll be fine up here.

Something seems a little odd when I approach the bank and wind down the power, gently lowering myself. Will's standing on the bank steps and probably thinking the same thing. It's too quiet here...a couple of people, not enough to even call a crowd, are kind of meandering about. No alarms are going off here.

Finally, I reach the pavement and ask Will, "What's up?"

"Just waiting for you. Either this is the most polite forced robbery in history or we're in the wrong place."

"Okay, so where--"

Before I finish answering my question it's answered by a source almost directly behind me, saying something to the effect of "KRAKA-BOOOMM!!"

"Right about there, I'd say," Will says. I guess he's in a helpful mood today.

The explosion we just heard, the second in a few minutes, came from the department store directly in front of the bank. That I don't get. You're a robber with explosives in the vicinity a place that holds billions of dollars, and you settle for scoring a new wardrobe?

Unless... this isn't a robbery. Maybe it's just a guy who likes to blow things up.

Alfhild starts up her jetpack and heads for the fifth floor, the one with the broken windows and, you know, all the fire and stuff. I grab the mini walkie-talkie that comes in the belt of my uniform and call her while she's still in the air. "Uh, Alfie dear, wouldn't it be wiser for you to enter the building through a floor that hasn't exploded in the past 10 seconds?"

"This is precisely the one floor where I don't risk being blown to pieces upon entrance. They're not gonna blow it up twice," her voice answers. "You go in through the front door and inspect the place. Be prepared for anything."

"Got it, chief." As strange as it sounds, I gotta admit I kinda like taking orders from this chick. We both had the same training (as far as I know), but it's like she knows a lot better than me how to act during combat. Of course, this is balanced out by the fact that I'm like 1000 times faster than her and could kick her ass in less than a second...

I'm inside the building now, and I can state with confidence that the first floor is completely empty. Of people, I mean. There's still discount clothes and perfumes and all the crap everyone seems to love, but there's nobody here to go into debt over them. It did seem a little weird that people didn't come running out of the building after the explosions, now that I think about. It's the middle of the week so it's improbable the the store is closed... unless I forgot another holiday. It's not December, is it? You kinda lose track of time when you move fast. And I move very fast. Did I mention I could kick Alfhild's ass in like half a second?

After making sure nobody is hiding under a counter or anything, I move on to the second floor. Also empty. This is looking more and more like a hostage situation. As I reach the third floor, something weird happens. It takes me a while to realize I've slowed down considerably, for no apparent reason. I swear this never happened to me before, and I'm not just saying that, like every other guy. Are... Are my powers failing me? Are my nerves affecting me? No, that's impossible, I didn't slow down during the other fight and I was just as nervous... Unless the defeat affected me more than I thought. See, this is what happens when you go see a shrink! You think like this for the rest of the day.

These thoughts cause me to crash with a rack a clothes, something I'd normally avoid with extreme ease. I instinctly reach out to grab it before it hits the floor, but I soon notice that wasn't necessary. The rack hangs in mid-air, barely moving downwards, like a movie in slow motion. Unless the rack has recently suffered a serious defeat and is feeling distraught over it, I think it's safe to say that the loss of speed isn't the result of my internal problems. The whole place has slowed down. I didn't realize this earlier because there's still no people around.

I can feel things getting even slower as I run to the fourth floor. Once I'm there, it takes everything I got to move in normal speed. Most people aren't lucky enough to have superspeed powers in a situation like this, which becomes obvious when looking at the 200 or so human statues crowding this floor. Normally I'd count them all in a heartbeat just for kicks, but right now I'm struggling to even walk through them.

The people look like they're in the middle of different activities, most of which are innaplicable to a place as crowded as this (like, say, walking). It's like they were grabbed from all the floors and dropped here. It gets exponentially harder to move as I get closer to the center of the floor, where there's some sort of elevated structure I can't get a clear look at. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say whatever is causing this strange predicament is placed there. Is it too naive to hope that it has a visible 'off' switch? Bah, even if it had one, I doubt I'd be able to move by the time I get to it.

It turns out that the structure in the center is some sort of stage. This is probably where a rejected gameshow host grabs a mic and starts yelling out the latest discounts and special promotions with an annoyingly upbeat tone. Looking at the people standing on the stage, I guess the guy with the suit who looks like he's frozen in the middle of a jingle is the 'host'. I'm gonna take yet another wild guess: the one with the red cloak who's looking at me and smiling is the villain.

"You must be 'SNAP'," he says, seemingly unaffected by the time-stopping phenomenon. "Let me tell you something; you don't look too 'snappy' right now."

Does everyone in this business think they're a comedian? Maybe there's a parallel universe where there are no superheroes or villains, but comedians have their own clubs and stuff, and they just stand up in front of people and tell their jokes, and occasionally get TV specials, and...

*POW!*

Ouch. If I wasn't moving in slow motion, the punch he just landed on my face would have me on the floor. Instead, I'm just floating there, like an average clothes rack. How the hell did he get off the stage so fast? Oh, wait. So... this is how it feels to be slow.

Still falling backwards, I try to make a fist to strike back, but the most menacing form my hand can give me right now is a duck. He just stands there, smiling as he looks at me, waiting for me to reach the floor. He has all the time in the world.

"Let me tell you how this is gonna work: I'm gonna 'unfreeze' the floor directly above us, which I stopped the moment your partner landed into it, and then I'm gonna blow it up again. How's that sound? Any objections? No?" The most I can do right now is frown. "Didn't think so."

He turns around and walks towards a box with several wires coming out of it, that I hadn't seen before. During the few seconds it takes him to reach the box, I'm able to concentrate enough to move my hand to the walkie talkie in my belt. I can feel my nose starting to bleed, and I'm not sure if it's because of the punch or the effort I'm making. He places his hand in a lever, and I'm able to press the 'speak' button in the talkie. My hand is almost moving at normal speed right now. It's strange to see your veins pop up because of the pressure when you're moving so slow.

"ALFHILD, GET OUT OF THERE!" I mean to yell. Only the sound of the "A" comes out of my mouth, staying suspended in time and sounding like a never-ending whistle. The annoying sound is soon joined by the loud explosion in the floor directly above me. I wonder if the frozen people around me can hear it. I wonder if they're as terrified as I am.

This must be Hell...everything is on fire, and even at half-off the clothes are overpriced.

One-liners aside, I clearly made a major misjudgement. I know, because I've had way too much time to think about it. When I landed, I stopped, and stayed stopped. I could still breathe and think, but it was almost as if I had become stuck in time, a sort of anti-Billy Pilgrim.

While I was trying to figure out if it was molasses or something more sinister that was holding me in place, I suddenly felt a release of the pressure. After taking a second to gather myself, I took a step forward.

I'm not sure if the sound of the explosion destroyed my eardrums first, or if the inferno blinded me, but either way I resort to my one fallback strategy: reflex. Being stuck before made everything after feel that much faster, and soon I have my eyes squeezed shut, my head down and all my concentration focused on protecting the area immediately surrounding my body. I wonder if this is what the Vertigo Man felt when he worked us over while panic-stricken.

The fact that I feel nothing physically makes me all the more worried about opening my eyes again, for fear that I won't actually be here when I do, but as the seconds stretch into tens of seconds, I realize I can actually feel the flames push away from me, as they swirl about and eventually fade out, one by one. It's when I feel something wet strike my head and back that I finally stand up and open my eyes.

The emergency sprinkler system is activated. Lord knows why they were tolerant of the first explosion but are keen to put this one out. I won't complain. I need a minute to gather my thoughts, and the cold water feels nice on my aching head.

I try to force my training to kick in, but it's not easy when my ears are still ringing. Assess the situation: some motherfucker froze me when I landed, and either the same motherfucker or a different motherfucker blew some shit up and it fucked up everything. Also, my communicator's shot to Hell. They didn't teach to analyze in profanities, btw. That's just my own personal touch.

So if I'm fighting somebody who can "stop time," as it were, saw me coming, cause(?) explosions...does he think I'm dead? Probably. No way he(or she or they) could assume I'd survive that blast. The only way anybody'd know the full extent of my power is if they trained me, and I'm fairly certain this isn't some exercise the big guys dreamed up to teach us a valuable lesson or some shit.

If he thinks I'm dead, I could get some sort of drop on him. Maybe sneak through the building's vents and do some spy work? Hm...a little too "Die Hard" for my tastes, and it would inevitably lead to my using some wretched line that Will would love, like "Nine million terrorists in the world and I gotta kill one with feet smaller than my sister." So no vents. If he's capable of stopping me when he can't even see me, then chances are very good that one look at me will keep me planted in my tracks, so I have virtually no margin of error to work with here.

I look up into the water that's still raining down on me and what little fire is still here amongst all the scorched earth. It's very pretty. Suddenly a realization hits me: I was still breathing when I was frozen in time, wasn't I? And I'm sure the sprinklers would have still been flowing nicely had they gone off earlier. I haven't been more sure of anything in my life.

I glance down at the weapon I'm holding as a delicious thought crosses my mind: He can't stop elements.

That's the easy part. The hard part will be figuring out the best way to use this information and put this asshole in a Hell of his own.

He killed Alfhild. He killed her. He killed my partner, and I didn't do anything to stop him.

He grins and looks at me. "Oh, come on. Don't look so grim. You do appreciate the irony of it, don't you? I mean, her codename was BURN, and she went out with a ball of fire. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies."

He starts circling around me, as if I was a damn statue. "And don't get me started on you! Your codename is SNAP... you're the son of the fastest man on earth... and right now you have the speed of a dead snail." He stops and stares at me, his grin gone. "I could punch you to death right now and there's nothing you could do about it."

He takes a cigarette from a guy's jacket and uses a woman's frozen hand to hold it, as he searches her purse for a lighter. "See, that's why I don't have a codename. They're just asking for trouble. If someone has a job for me, they ask for 'that guy who can stop time'." He puffs on the woman's face and her static eyes turn red. "I don't like to bullshit around."

I'm still leaning back from his punch, but he straightens my back and pats me on the shoulder. "Ah, don't worry, kid. I'm not gonna kill you too... As long as you deliver a message for me, that is." He stands in front of me, his eyes menacingly fixed on mine. This guy is a nutjob. "Tell your bosses this city hasn't been theirs for a long time. They're not the only ones who pulled their shit together and got organized. We're recruiting too, and there's already hundreds of us. Keep sending your rookies, and we'll keep returning them in body ba--" His serious face cracks when he rolls his eyes and he chuckles. "Okay, that's what my bosses told me to say... Now here's something extra from me: Tell 'em that if they feel like coming down from their treehouse up in the sky, the least they could do is send someone worth fighting. Don't send kids to a man's job, for crying out loud. That's just cruel, to all of us."

He takes one last smoke and puts out his cigar on my neck. It's as painful as I remember. "Okay, I'm gonna go get what's left of your partner, so you can show it to your bosses. Then maybe you can keep her, you know, as a keepsake. I don't need to tell you not to move a finger while I'm gone, do I?" He's gone up the stairs, leaving me alone with 200 other statues. Even as I double my efforts to move my body, I wonder what the point is. He doesn't seem to be planning to kill any of the hostages, and he already said he wouldn't kill me. Capturing and turning him over to the law wouldn't make that big of a difference, espcially since there are hundreds like him out there. Punching him wouldn't bring Alfhild back.

Though it sure as hell would feel good.

I look at my right hand and notice the fist I started minutes ago has just finished forming. That took a while, but at least it means I can still move. That's when it hits me: hey, my eyes can move normally! I'm still reeling from that realisation, when I hear the sound of someone tapping on a window. The sound is so faint you normally wouldn't be able to hear it in a busy place like this, unless you were standing next to the window, but thanks to the unnatural lack of activity it echoes through the floor.

They tap again. I'm halfway through the slowest neck movement ever... when I see her there, floating outside the window in her jetpack. I wanna scream her name, but I remember the 'A' from the last time I yelled is still ringing in my ears. She's holding something and pointing at it, but from this distance I can't tell... Is that her walkie-talkie? Oh, shit, my left finger is still pressing the 'talk' button. I remove it as fast as I can, and her voice starts coming out of the small speaker...

"Will, I heard everything. We gotta butt-fuck this motherfucker."

I carefully crack open the window and sneak in. I don't know how good the guy's hearing is so I won't test it. It's bizarre walking through all the bodies standing still, like one of those cheesy Xmas specials where the main characters can't be seen or heard by those around them.

I get to Will. At first he seems as frozen as the rest of them, but his eyes are moving. I don't know how much time I have before the guy upstairs figures out he's not gonna find my corpse, so I try to cram as much information into each sentence as possible.

"Snap out of it, Will," I whisper to him, not meaning to make a play on his code name. "We need to get these hostages out of here. At first I was thinking if I could lure him away from this floor I could just fry him right off, but we still don't know the extent of his power. He may be like a powder keg or something, one spark and he takes the whole place down, so we need it empty to confront him. I need you to start moving and get these people out of here, come on."

Will's eyes look anguished. He's not moving any faster. Lord, his confidence must be completely shot right now. I close my eyes and take a deep breath: I know I'm going to regret this later. When I open my eyes, I talk again, making the look in my eyes softer than usual. "Will, baby," I say, my voice sweet as honey. "I can't do this alone. I need your speed and your strength right now." From the look on his face, all I've done is confuse him. He's probably going to make another pass at me after we get out of this...unless I'm lucky enough that we don't get out of this.

Okay, different tactic is needed. I make my voice harsh again. "Dammit, Will, you can move thousands of miles in less than a second. I don't care that this fucker thinks he can slow down time, he can't slow YOU down. You just need to get your head out of your ass long enough to realize this fuckhead can't stand up to the two of us!" I wonder for a moment if I should hit him, then decide that would probably make only me feel better. I judge his reaction through his eyes(although his fingers appear to be moving slightly), and I'm not seeing anything encouraging right now.

There's one last chance I have to get him out of this stupor. I didn't want to resort to this, and he's probably going to hate me for it later, but he's left me no choice. I let out a frustrated sigh.

"Your father was right," I say with as much bluntness and insensitivity as possible. "You should never have tried to be like him." The flare that starts in his eyes seem to shoot a spasm throughout his body. I have to keep pressing on this one. "What, you don't like me saying that? Let's face it, it's the fucking truth. If your old man was still around, Vertigo Man would have been defeated before he realized he was in a fight yesterday." Will is slowly regaining his balance right now, so I can't stop now. "The Swift would never have even needed a partner to fuck this guy's shit up."

I have to hide my glee as Will now looks like he's walking through molasses. I've probably already done enough, but just in case... "Oh, you think that just because you've managed to put your right foot in front of your left one that means something, that maybe it means you got what it takes to fight heavy hitters like this? You have to walk before you run, sure, but real men like your father were running years ago." That one did it, I think. Something snaps in his demeanor, both his fists clench, and I can tell he's approaching his full speed again.

Which is good, because unless I'm paranoid, I hear footsteps.

I can't see him from my standing position, but I can hear his footsteps approaching me. Though he clearly didn't find Alfhild's burnt body upstairs like he expected to, his pace seems as relaxed as before.

"I couldn't find your friend between all that debris, Will... but don't worry, she'll turn up sooner or later," he says with a small grin, as he walks past me. "You'll have plenty of time to look for her once I'm out of here. Her body's probably buried under a wall or something...." He begins unhooking wires from the box of explosives near the stage, occasionally gazing at me as he works. "I do hope her skull wasn't squashed, or you'll have nothing to show your..." He stops what he's doing, and looks at me. "Wai--"

He probably realized my posture isn't exactly the same as when he left me to go upstairs, but before he can finish a word, I'm already running towards him. I instinctly slow down to avoid pulverizing his skull when I punch him, which proves to be a mistake... This gives him time to raise his hand and point at me, and suddenly my whole right arm goes numb, "freezing" again. He probably can't concentrate enough to stop my whole body, but one arm is enough to throw off my balance, causing me to crash on the metal structure under the stage.
Ouch.

By the time I recover, he's quickly making his way through the sea of paralyzed people. It's a straight line from my position to his, so I should get there in no time... if all the people hadn't suddenly been unfrozen. After a split second of hesitation, the crowd of hundreds starts panicking and chaotically making their way to the stairs, slowing me down considerably as I try to avoid running into them. Their collective fear and urgency tells me they were counscious while frozen, after all. They heard everything this S.O.B. said, and know what he's capable of.

I'm able to see him running towards the elevators, when I hear a woman yelling from behind me. I turn around and see that she's about to be trampled by the running crowd. By the time I've put her out of harm's way, our favorite time-stopping supervillain is already inside the elevator. The doors begin to close. I make my way there as fast as I can, but another quick movement of his hand makes my feet temporarily freeze, making me land on my chin. I'd say "double ouch", but right now I'm too pissed for that sort of thing. The doors close.

The elevator is going up. If he was running up the stairs I could catch him, but now I won't be able to get my hands on him until the door opens, and he'll be ready for me by then. He'll probably go all the way to the last floor to buy himself some extra time... I'm guessing the "R" after the "10" means he'll be getting off at the roof. How about that. Before she went out the window with her jetpack, Alfhild told me to get him to go up there. When that door opens, he'll be ready for me, but at the same time she'll be ready for him.

I'm not too thrilled that things ended up working according to her plan... I wanted to get this guy myself. And, yeah, a big part of that is that I didn't wanna give Alfhild the satisfaction of beating him herself. She may have survived a huge explosion, but she definitely got the easy part on this one...

The door underneath me opens, which means that Will succeeded and my plan worked. Hopefully this isn't just a fluke.

I let the guy(whose name we still don't know) take a couple steps out onto the roof before I send the fireball at him. It stops around him, almost wrapping him up like a coccoon. This is not his time freezing thing, but my doing.

"Give up now, or this is going to get real ugly," I say to him. There's enough fire around him to back it up. I feel my body freeze, meaning he's using his power on me, but it looks like I was right: he can't do a damn thing about the fire. It'll just stay around him as long as I keep it there.

He doesn't give me his usual cocky answer, so Will must have punctured his swagger a little before the guy came up here. I do hear him mutter something that I believe rhymes with "trucking kitsch" and then...he jumps through the fire!

I hear him scream but I can't react myself because he's keeping me frozen. He emerges from the flames with one arm on fire and probably at least some part of his body a little singed. I try to move the fire so that it stays around him, but either he's moving too fast or being stuck is affecting my concentration because he manages to light his back on fire.

I try to yell out for him to stop but my jaw muscles are too stiff to open my mouth. Then I notice his right arm, that is still on fire, seems to be completely limp as he continues to move around the roof, either looking for me or looking for an escape route. An awful thought occurs to me: he's selectively freezing parts of his body that are burning so he doesn't feel the pain. This seems to be confirmed when his left leg appears to go dead, too, and he hobbles along.

Right now I'm trying to actually move the flames away from him but his movements have become so erratic that he keeps running(limping?) into them anyways. Good Lord, part of his face is burned, but he just freezes it and moves on.

I have felt helpless before, under certain circumstances but this is at a whole new level. A guy is burning himself to death right in front of me and I literally can't move a muscle to save him, or even tell him to stop. I don't think he even realizes his back is still burning. He's starting to look like a walking pile of burnt skin. If he'd just stop fighting me I could help him, but...somehow, I don't think he'd accept that option even if he knew it was on the table.

After what seems like an eternity, but is probably only a few seconds, he slows down, falls to his knees, and collapses face-first on the roof. He tries to struggle up again but finally passes out from the pain he was trying to ignore.

Slowly I can feel my body becoming "unfrozen," and once I can get my legs and arms moving again I hop down and run to him, putting out the fire that was still going all over his back. I gently roll him over on his back to get a look at him, and the way his skin feels...I don't even want to describe it. Part of our training included some first-aid work, but this guy's injuries are way beyond my capacity.

I hear the door open behind me. It better be Will or everything is going to get worse before it gets better.

Thankfully, I recognize his voice. "The hostages are all gone now." Will's next to me a split-second later, takes one look at the guy and his eyes bug out. "Holy mother of...what did you do to the guy?"

"I didn't mean to," I say, a lot more defensively than I intended. "I mean, he kind of...he did this to himself." I can't waste time explaining what I mean. "Will, he doesn't have much time, we need to get him help and I think it's too dangerous to move him. Go to the hospital and bring a couple of doctors here immediately. Don't worry about telling them anything, I'll describe the situation to them, just get them here! Make sure you don't go so fast that the doctors pass out when you're running them over. After that, grab all the supplies you can think of from the hospital that aren't being used on someone else. We'll compensate them for it later. Go."

He's off. I take a deep breath. We were told that we might face a situation where we'd have to kill in order to save. Even if that were true, I'd rather not start racking up a body count with my first successful mission.

It's sunset in the big city. The department store is almost empty by now: the cops cleared the scene, the fire department made sure there wasn't any structural damage, the reporters came and went and, more importantly, the hostages are safe in their homes. The only one who's still there by the time I get back from the hospital is my assigned partner, Alfhild, sitting on the edge of the rooftop in silence.

"How is he?" she asks me the moment I arrive, without even turning her head to make sure it's me. It creeps me out when she does that. She's talking about the super-terrorist we just defeated... the one she unintentionally burned alive.

"Counscious. Too counscious, I'd say." I sit next to her. "Before they sedated him, he sent you his regards... unless when he yelled 'I swear I'm gonna kill that bitch' he was talking about me. I'm not actually sure."

She continues staring into the horizon, without saying a word. You know, all I wanted a few hours ago was to be the one to beat the bad guy... and now that I see her, I'm not so sure I would have enjoyed that.

"We should be heading back home," she says, eventually.

"Oh, right. Sorry for taking so long in the hospital... I had to tell the cops what happened here like 20 times. On top of that, the Big Boys called to let us know we have a meeting with one of their guys tomorrow, to fill a report about all this..."

"Yeah, that's standard procedure." She sighs. "...but it still sucks."

"I mean, at least if they beamed us up to the HQ it'd be worth it... but they told me we're gonna fill the report in on of their offices in the city. It's not even a fully equipped hi-tech office, just a regular one. I asked."

"You've never seen the HQ either, huh?" Alfhild says. "I hear it's really something. It's half spaceship, half hotel, with rooms for every single registered member..."

"Every single one?"

"Yeah, but since no one but the core group gets to go up there, the Big Boys probably use the rooms to sleep with each other in a different bed every night."

"You know, we should be out there, saving people! Not sitting in an office, filling a report... I bet Superman doesn't have to fill reports every time he fights Solomon Grundy."

"That's probably because he's fictional, Will."

"Yeah, well... you know what I mean."

We both agreed that we should be home by now, but for some reason neither of us gets up to leave. We stay sitting there on the rooftop, as the sky turns dark. We try to joke, but it's obvious that we still feel uneasy about the way this whole thing ended. Something feels... unresolved.

"You kids did good," a familiar voice says, breaking our silence. For a second I fear it might be my dad and I instinctly shield the back of my head. Those head-slaps are a bitch, even when they're friendly.

"Easy there, junior... I ain't gonna eat you," says our local contact to the Big Boys, Richards. He crudely lands his ass on the space of ledge between us, and takes a pack of cigarettes from his trenchoat. "You want one?"

"No, thanks, I don't..."

"I wasn't talking to you, runner," he cuts me short. "Miss Alfson?"

Alfhild takes a cigarette and, without a hint of aggression, throws it away. As the cigarette falls 10 stories down to the street, a wide-eyed Richards watches it as if it was a piece of his soul.

"Lovely," he says when it finally lands. "But seriously... you did one heck of a job against Martin there."

Richards lights his cigarette. "Martin?" Alfhild asks.

"That's how we call the time-stopper. He doesn't have a codename, so we had to name him something when we added him to our database. He's given some heavy hitters a hard time, you know... I'm sure the core group will be impressed when they he hear was beaten by two kids. Maybe they'll send a compensation your way, or somethin'."

"You think... we'll get to see the HQ?" I ask.

"Ha! HA!" He coughs smoke and pounds his chest, until he calms down. "No. I haven't seen the HQ, pal... and, lemme tell you something, I'll be pretty pissed if you get to see it before me. Heh." He starts coughing again, until he has to put out the cigarette on the ledge. "Now my smoke's ruined... Nice job, jackass."

Richards gets up and starts walking away. "Don't be late to the meeting tomorrow, or they'll cut off your balls."

The sun is down by now. We're ready to go home. "Thanks, Richards," Alfhild says, maybe wishing he doesn't hear her from the other side of the rooftop.

"Call me Steve," he replies. "Welcome to Thunder City, kids."

THE END

As soon as the powers that be are capable, this thread can be destickied and locked. kthx