Brainpunch - CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: The Calm (Patreon)

Most new heroes never seem to fully comprehend that heroing is more than putting a costume on and going out to fight crime. Like most new heroes, I found the media side of superhuman life boring and useless at first. And like most new heroes, I decided to keep my head down and just do what I do best. Move. How did that go for me, you ask?

Well, I’m here, aren’t I?

- Excerpt of a recording of A-rank Mover Skyrider’s promotional tour for her memoir, Behind the Mask

#

Vivian had never felt older than she did now. She was used to using the internet, of course—hell, she would be the first to tell anyone who asked that she was terminally online. According to her laptop, she spent nearly eighty hours on a screen every single week.

But being on the other side of it? Creating and posting short-form content? Having the discovery algorithm be explained to her?

God, she felt like she was her dad’s age.

Thankfully, Ayaka was a natural at this, and unlike Vivian, she was actually good at walking a complete dumbass through the steps she needed.

“So, most of the time, social media like this hella promotes consistency and quantity,” she was saying. “Personally, I upload two to three times a day.”

“A day?” Vivian said. “The shit? What do you even post about? There’s no way you get into enough fights to get that much footage.”

“Oh, hell no,” Ayaka said, laughing. “I’d have zero personal time if I fought that much. Actually, the fight edits are usually a once every week or two weeks type of thing. Most of the time, I try to take a look at whatever’s trending and do it.”

“And what does that usually end up being?”

“It’s… hard to break down,” Ayaka replied. “There are a ton of different types of videos that get big, and I’ve had a ton of viral successes too. People really like day-in-the-life-of videos, but I also do educational facts, Q&A, power-assisted dances, that kind of stuff.”

“And all of this is, what, just to build your public image?” Vivian asked. “That seems a little absurd, sorry.”

Despite how much Echelon and Ayaka had tried to hammer the idea of image being critically important to her—or maybe because how much they’d tried—Vivian couldn’t quite believe it.

“I know we might go a little hard on it, but it’s the difference between making ten thousand a year or a million,” Lycoris said. “You’ve seen how the Guardians operate, right?”

Vivian snorted. “With mind control? Yeah. Fuuuck that. If I never see the inside of a Guardians HQ again, it’ll be too soon.”

“Exactly,” Ayaka said. “The vested interests in the Guardians also have enough pull over the major news organizations, so they never get too big a black eye. That stuff matters. What do you think would happen if every Joe Schmoe on the street suddenly learned that the Guardians do a pretty significant chunk of their ‘recruiting’ through Washers? Do you think they’d be happier knowing that almost a trillion of their tax dollars fund an organization that does that, or one that saves puppies and fights Cataclysms?”

“I can see your point,” Vivian acknowledged. “Can’t someone just… ruin that, though? By saying something about it? Like, if I wanted to—”

“Don’t even think about it.” Ayaka cut her off with uncharacteristic seriousness. “Even I wouldn’t do that. Think about it. If it’s so obvious, why hasn’t someone tried it before?”

“They probably have, and it didn’t work,” Vivian said. “Shit.”

“Smart girl. Yeah. The Guardians are too big to fail. Any accusation that gets brought up against them gets dismissed, crushed into oblivion, and forgotten about.” Lycoris beamed, her infinite supply of cheer welling up once more. “And if you do everything right, you can get on the same level!”

Vivian shuddered. “I’m not sure I want to.”

“Oh, come off it,” Ayaka said. “You’re not going to be Washing people, but let’s say you have a bad day. You go a bit too far. The public learns that you accidentally killed a civvie while executing a kill order. I’d much rather be Lycoris, the hero with three point seven million followers who’s doing her absolute best to serve her people, than Lycoris, the dark, edgy nobody that’ll look great in a courtroom.”

That still left a bad taste in Vivian’s mouth, but she decided against arguing over it. It wasn’t like she didn’t have her fair share of trouble to cover up, too.

She wondered how the public would react to what she’d done, then realized that was a can of worms she would much rather stay unopened.

“Now, I’m not saying you have to post as much as I do,” Ayaka said. “I treat this as part of my job because it is my job. Even without forcing yourself to spike the algorithm, you’ll pick up a decent audience. They want to see cool supers, and your power is cool.”

“Thanks?” Vivian said. “I’m not sure what I’d do, exactly.”

“Well, you can get a start by copying.” Ayaka handed Vivian her phone, tuned to @ShockwaveHeroEHC. “I picked Adam because you know him and because he’s a Kinetic, just like you. He’s a pretty textbook example of what Kinetics should be doing on the platform. First, look at his username—hero name, occupation, organization.”

“Occupation? Isn’t that pretty obvious?”

“Not with a billion people using the app. Now, look at this.”

Ayaka showed her a video with a comment pinned in the top right. In it, Shockwave—in full costume—used his power to create a rainbow that flashed to the beat of some catchy song, except it was infused with the synthetic, crackling sounds of his lightning.

“Audience interaction, power display, trending audio—classic,” Ayaka said. “Your turn.”

“My turn?”

“Your turn.”

Vivian groaned again. “Why does this bother me more than the actual heroing part?”

“You get used to it,” Ayaka said sympathetically.

#

After entirely too long and way too much help from Ayaka, Vivian filmed a short video of her drawing a spiral out of gathered dust on the ground to the tune of some hypnotic-sounding clip. With that and the edit of her filmed, Ayaka told her that it wasn’t time to release them yet.

“You want the first thing available to be an official introduction,” she said. “Full costume, hero name, basics of your power, the whole shebang.”

“I’m not doing that now,” Vivian said, rubbing her eyes. “I’m tired as shit.”

“Completely understandable,” Ayaka said. “On that note, I’m going to hit the gym.”

Vivian considered going for all of five seconds before remembering that she was still recovering from a gunshot wound.

“I’m going to get some rest,” Vivian said. “Maybe watch some TV or something.”

“You do that. I’m going to go split the cash with the rest of them, too.”

The other hero left shortly after, leaving Vivian alone with her thoughts and… roughly twenty-eight thousand dollars in cash, if she was counting the stacks right.

“Holy shit,” she muttered to herself.

It still didn’t seem real. She used her power on a stack of it, floating the money around her head.

That was enough money that she could cancel her loans. She was still within the timeframe to do so.

It was a lifechanging sum, but Vivian still couldn’t get herself to accept that.

Thinking about loans got her thinking about school, and she cursed silently.

She’d made a promise to her dad to graduate, and she wasn’t going to be able to do that if she wasn’t showing up to any of her classes.

Vivian opened her laptop and started emailing professors, then checking to see what homework was online.

Stuck in the middle of a massive superhero crisis, and I’m holed up doing Systems homework, she thought to herself. Vivian exhaled a ghost of a laugh at that. It was absurd, but then again, everything after her first night out had been like a different world. When everything was absurd, nothing was.

Except for the difficulty of this homework, at least. Vivian’s online friends all said that they were managing fine, but god, she hated catching up on an assignment a week late.

Lachlan: Hey, got a moment?

She hadn’t been making much progress anyway. Assembly language was the bane of her existence right now. Any distraction was welcome.

Vivian: All the time in the world what’s up

Vivian: ur meeting go okay?

Lachlan: So I

Lachlan: Yeah, it went fine. There was a whole bunch of legalese basically talking about what we’re going to do for the press release.

Vivian: Damn

Vivian: of all the things to talk about after something like that

Lachlan: That’s the Guardians for you. It’s probably going to end up being a standard cover-up. Jackal and Raven dead thanks to the terrorist Gravekeepers. Something like that.

Lachlan: I wish we could go and do something fun like the bank, but they really are tracking my blood. I tested it out. Made sure the cameras were off and everything. Didn’t even make it out of my room.

Vivian: jfc that’s fucked, you should hop out whenever you can

Lachlan: Can’t. Won’t. Not going to say more when I’m sure some psycho up in command is reading all my messages as I send them.

Vivian: also you thought the bank was fun?

Lachlan: Compared to this, yeah. It’s super taxing using my power in a large city. It’s like trying to listen for a single voice in a library vs. in a goddamn baseball stadium at the bottom of the 9th, bases loaded, two strikes.

Vivian: ur a baseball nerd lol never woulda pinged you for that

Vivian: So that’s why you didn’t tell us Jekyll was bricked up already

Lachlan: Please never refer to him like that again, Christ. But yeah. I can detect where people are, and the general shape of their power. Command’s having me charge it up so I can find their vials.

Vivian: Didn’t they use their vial on Ephialtes?

Lachlan: I should be able to find the temps, too. Plus, it’s not out of the question that they have more, especially with how fast Killjoy got established.

Vivian: Do you know when we’re going to get sent out next?

Lachlan: EHC? No idea. In general? Basically no idea, but I can guess. Maybe a couple days? Director Williams is getting heat from DC, I think. Guy’s learning why we have an escalation protocol.

Vivian: DC? Feds getting involved?

Lachlan: SRU central command is. We’re probably going to see a big, decisive push on a single day. We’re still looking for the traitor.

Vivian: Not jackal I assume

Lachlan: Yeah, no shit. We don’t have perfect eyes on everyone, but suspicion is currently leaning towards Venus (Washer) and Armory (Synth).

Vivian paused. Venus. That name was far too familiar to her. She was in town? Vivian was going to have to avoid her.

Vivian: Are we going to be trying to find the traitor before we go and clear out Killjoy and the Gravekeepers, then?

Lachlan: Depends on their response. If they escalate, we will too. Hopefully right now they’ll see this as tit for tat.

Vivian: What is with you and using these boomer ass expressions

Lachlan: LOL don’t worry about it. I’ll let you know if something urgent happens.

Vivian: kk lmk

Fantastic. That left her with exactly nothing to do.

Okay, that wasn’t true. She had a load of homework to do, and there was plenty she could do to try to set up her social media, but that was work. Vivian didn’t want to do work.

For a profession that revolved around beating the shit out of people, superheroing was mentally exhausting. That didn’t seem particularly fair.

She practiced with her power instead. That, at least, relieved some of the pressure to get something done. It didn’t get her any closer to being done with her fifty-point assignment or her introduction for her socials, but it took the edge off.

As she’d found in the last couple of days, her telekinesis was a far stronger tool than she’d initially given herself credit for. At close ranges, it could be lethal, and if she could bring more effective tools, she would actually have a chance at standing up against more powerful enemies.

Though that once again brought her to the same dillemma she’d had when considering how much of her power to reveal. She knew that even if all she did for the rest of her life was immediately resort to punching brains, she could find a place somewhere. Not as an A-lister, obviously—but she could find a place.

The question was: would she be able to stay out of the Guardians’ clutches in the meantime? Vivian wasn’t sure if she was being too paranoid, but the conversation with Lachlan had brought a select few very stark memories to mind.

Around the Guardians, there was no such thing as being too paranoid. Hell, Venus, the same woman who’d fucking brainwashed her, was in Chicago. There was every chance that they would even cross paths, thanks to the death squad she was on.

She needed an in to a corporation, she decided, especially since Ayaka was helping her increase her name recognition.

Maybe Echelon would work for her.

Then again, she was still a D-rank. Vivian wasn’t delusional. Echelon was like all the other corporate hero organizations. Cs had a chance at getting in if their powers fit a profile they needed, but Ds?

Not a shot in hell.

She was going to have to be exceptional for the rest of this particular stint. Hopefully, that would be enough for her to get a foot in the door.

Vivian fiddled around with her power, sending a knife orbiting around her. Although she wasn’t particularly clear about the physics of it, it seemed like she didn’t actually need the track that Zach had created for her. Yes, it got harder to control it once it got up to speed, but at that point, it’d be a problem for both her and whoever her enemy was.

Was it just her imagination, or was her power actually getting stronger? If it was, any quantitative changes were miniscule enough that Vivian didn’t have a useful scale to confirm them, but she definitely felt like her control was getting better.

Powers liked being used. Even if she slept through half of her AS 120 classes, she knew that much. It was even on the subject of the online coursework for the week.

Vivian stared at her computer, a half dozen Missing! indicators blinking at her accusatorily.

I don’t think I need to stay in school, she thought. After all, she had just made almost thirty thousand dollars in the course of a single week.

But that wasn’t usual, was it? These were special circumstances, and once it was over, she had no idea if she was even going to be able to find villains with the same kind of easily accessible stashes that the ones here did.

This wasn’t a consistent source of income. Especially alone.

And, more importantly, she’d promised. Dad had made her swear. Mom had wanted to see her daughter graduate with the same CS degree that she had, and that was one person Vivian was never going to break a promise to.

Any of the nice feeling she’d had from talking to Lachlan, practicing her powers, and luxuriating in being a fair sight wealthier than she’d been a week ago disappeared at that, leaving nothing but a pit of disappointment gnawing at her gut.

Vivian sighed, setting her phone aside, and she got back to work.

#

“Fucking piece of shit computer, at least tell me why you’re fucking segfaulting!” Vivian shouted at her emotionless glowing metal brick. “This is some bullshit.”

If she ever found whatever Synth had created the Assembly language, she was going to wring that smug piece of shit’s neck until he stopped moving, then punch him in the brain for good measure.

“You alright, Viv?”

Vivian startled. She hadn’t even heard the door open.

“Oh,” she said, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“No, no, go on,” Ayaka said, tossing her a can. Vivian caught it with her power. “I know roughly fuck all about computers.”

“I don’t think I can explain them to you,” Vivian said, saving her work and closing her laptop lid with a sigh. “I wish I didn’t have to do this…”

“You don’t, you know,” Ayaka said. “This being school, I imagine?”

“Yeah,” Vivian sighed. “It’s not fun.”

Ayaka cracked open her can and took a sip. “Ahhhh. Try some. It’s nice.”

Vivian eyed the hot pink aluminum dubiously. “Is this alcoholic, or is it going to stop my heart?”

“The latter,” Ayaka said. “My favorite brand of energy drink. It’s illegal in twelve states, but that’s only because they don’t let Synths sell their wares there.”

“You seem know a lot of Synths,” Vivian said, opening her can.

“I’m well connected,” Ayaka said. “You’ll make them, too. If you choose to go down this path, that is.”

“You make it sound like there’s other options.” Vivian took a sip of the drink and winced. “Wow. I feel like I’m drinking cotton candy.”

“Sugarfree!” Ayaka crowed. “Of course there’s different paths. You’re a Kinetic. You could work off that energy by helping out construction workers or something. Stay in school, experiment with your powers, go join the corporate life—I dunno.”

“Construction?” Vivian asked. “The superhero I talked to said to fight to take the edge off the powers bothering me.”

Ayaka snorted. “Was he a Guardian?”

“Oh.”

Just like that, her estimation of the Guardians—and, painfully, Sunrise—dropped another notch. She hadn’t thought that was possible.

“Anyway, I sort of doubt you want to do that. Very few heroes do.”

Vivian shook her head. “I don’t think I can understate how dead I feel when I’m working this. It’s…. It’s not fun.”

“I get it,” Ayaka said. “I was working to be a doctor before this, did you know?”

“Really?” Vivian didn’t voice that she thought Ayaka was still in high school.

“Yeah. I was just starting my first year of pre-med when I got my vial. I despised it, so I swapped. I hero full-time, then I show up to a few creative writing or philosophy classes here and there.”

“You don’t strike me as a philosophy kind of girl.”

“I didn’t strike you as a car girl either,” Ayaka said. “Or a smoking girl.”

“Those, I get now,” Vivian said. “Consequences of driving really fast or smoking don’t matter when you can just reset. But philosophy?”

“Helps with the ennui,” Ayaka replied. “But that’s neither here nor there. Look, I can’t promise you a spot in Echelon, but I can vouch for you. The whole team can. If you want to participate in the next round of candidate testing, you probably could.”

“Which will be when?”

Ayaka shrugged. “Whenever this is done, probably. We were supposed to have them this week. The whole suicide super debacle hasn’t helped matters.”

Vivian winced. “Makes sense. I’ll consider it.”

She was going to do more than consider it, she already knew. It took practically everything she had to not get on her knees and beg Ayaka to put her name forth.

“On that note, we do have more to do,” the heroine in question said. “It’s not a raid, this time. We’re running security.”

“Security,” Vivian repeated. “Security on what?”

“Mayor’s making a statement,” Ayaka said. “Part of it is to control the people, because they are not taking to the quarantine well. The other part is to bait their strike teams out of hiding.”

“I assume by ‘their,’ you mean the Gravekeepers?”

“Yeah. We’re assuming they’re going to counter-escalate, because we weren’t exactly subtle.”

Vivian thought back to the gunshots, the wholesale destruction of an apartment unit, and the subsequent evacuation of the entire building.

“I guess we could have been quieter.”

They both laughed at that.

“It’ll be tomorrow, around noon,” Ayaka said. “It was just announced. Don’t push yourself too hard. We’ll need the energy for the event.”

“Got it,” Vivian replied. “It’s not like I was going to move much, anyway. I need to get this homework done.”

“Ah,” Ayaka said. “Hey, tell you what. How about you forget the homework for now and come out with the team? It’ll be fun.”

“The entire team? Like, going out in the city? In this climate?”

“Psh, don’t worry. It’s not like there’s war on the streets here. If we go in plainclothes, we’ll still have our powers. We’ll be the safest people around.”

“If you say so,” Vivian said hesitatingly. She didn’t know how she was supposed to turn Ayaka down. She was so earnest, too…

“I’ll get Adam to do your homework for you,” Ayaka offered. “He’s an electrical engineer.”

“Deal.” Vivian practically jumped out of her seat to agree. “Wait, the guy with electricity power is a—“

“Yup. Make sure to make fun of him for it. Tell him Zach told you.”

Vivian chuckled. “Will do, boss.”

#

Going out in public without a costume on felt weird. It shouldn’t have. Vivian had been out of costume for nearly her entire life. Even after beginning her time as a hero, she had still been going to class. She never did her morning runs in costume, either.

But after just two days of this crisis, she felt naked without it.

Sydney and Zach had come with Ayaka and Vivian. She wasn’t sure what they would have to contribute when they were just going to a shopping mall, but they didn’t bring everything about their hero personas into the rest of their lives.

Amazon was a fearsome, no-nonsense leader, but Sydney was apparently actually capable of smiling when considering a new dress to buy for the winter. Zach was still lazy as hell, but he had a surprisingly good eye for fashion.

Vivian wasn’t terribly interested in buying clothes, but she had to admit that having company was nice.

It shouldn’t have been too foreign. She’d had a decent friend circle in high school, after all.

But it had been a couple of years. They’d drifted apart despite promises that they would stay in touch. At first, it had been daily voice calls, then weekly, and nowadays… the only person from her old groupchat that she still kept in contact with was Rachel.

Being with the team had been nice before, in the sense that it made her feel legitimate as a hero. A professional, not just a dumb girl dressed up in armored spandex.

Being with them out of costume, away from HQ? It made her feel like she was in highschool before her family troubles, back in the days when she could avoid looking at the future and not feel the impending doom of what lay ahead of her.

It took a weight off her shoulders.

Ayaka insisted that she try on at least a dozen different outfits. Though Vivian swore up and down that her fashion sense was awful enough that she wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, she had to admit that the collective of Sydney, Ayaka, and Zach had good taste.

Maybe it wasn’t the best financial decision to leave the store three hundred dollars lighter and two bags of clothes heavier, but she had never had this much money before. Vivian figured she could excuse one or two celebratory purchases.

For lunch, they had fast food so greasy that the burger wrappers were dripping through before they even took a single bite.

Nobody said a word about heroing the entire time. Vivian wondered whether that was intentional, but she wasn’t going to be the first one to break the unspoken peace. The mall felt like a different world. One where she could pretend that everything was going to be okay.

They talked about themselves. Vivian divulged her troubles with class, and Zach sympathized.

“I dropped out of college twice,” he said between bites of heart-stopping burger. “Physics at CMU, then chemistry at a community. Not my thing.”

Amazon, on the other hand, had a degree in aerospace engineering of all things.

“How does that help you?” Vivian asked.

“I can guess how people will fly if I hit them really hard,” Amazon said drily. That might have been the first joke Vivian had heard her make.

Like with all dreams, though, it had to come to an end.

As they were leaving the mall, Vivian thought she could feel the air getting colder around her.

“Ah, shit,” she said.

“What is it?” Ayaka asked.

“How fast can we get back to HQ?” Vivian asked.

“Well, I’m driving, so… five minutes, maybe?”

“Or five days in the hospital,” Zach said.

“I think we might have a problem on our hands,” Vivian said. “If my guess is right, we’re going to need to suit up soon.”

“Shit,” Ayaka said, looking up. She must have felt it too. “Yeah. You’re right. Hopefully it’s nothing.”

It was not, in fact, nothing.

The weather got progressively colder as they returned to headquarters. By the time they were there, it was a full ten degrees colder than it had been earlier.

They got the call as Ayaka pulled them into the parking lot.

“A-rank,” Sydney said, all business again. “Whiteout. Ruler, very wide range. He’s not alone. He has a temp super with him. Unidentified. All hands on deck.”

“Shit,” Vivian said.

I should make sure he stays down this time, she thought. Vivian recoiled a moment later, realizing she had casually just tossed killing back on the plate.

But that was their best option, wasn’t it?

“It’s a kill order,” Ayaka said. “They’re escalating early. Gravekeepers are mobilizing, too.”

Murder on her mind, Vivian joined the rest as they prepared for war.