Super Jaded (8/23) (Patreon)

Chapter 8: Argument

“How are you holding up?”

“Not well.” Fern replied honestly, her gaze remaining fixed on a random point on the wall. That was the state she was in when I had opened the door, one she didn’t appear to want to leave.

My fists were already beginning to tremble. I couldn’t bear to see my favorite person in such a demoralizing state.

“Look, Fern, I just want to say—“

“He’s dead, Nina.” She interrupted me. It was only then I realized that a live broadcast had been playing from her phone this whole time with the audio muted.

I quickly shifted into a more defensive tone.

“Well, I-I didn’t… look. He was taking photos of us, okay? Photos of you! I didn’t mean to drop that guy from such a height, but at least he’s finally out of our hair, right?”

“I’m not talking about him, Nina.” She then pointed discordantly to the phone next to her. The news feed was showing photos of some older man I didn’t recognize.

“Was he… like, your grandpa, or…”

“Did you really not notice!?” Fern snapped back, finally looking me in the eyes. “Oh god, I thought you were just struggling to cope or…”

“W-what is it, Fern!?”

“Nina… you killed this man.”

My further silence clearly indicated how lost I was, so she continued.

“This morning, when you rammed into that wall at super-speed… the resulting debris hospitalized him and he died a few hours later. The media only just revealed these details.”

“Well… I mean… there’s always collateral damage to account for when—“

“This was a completely avoidable event! You didn’t have to barge through that building on my behalf! All it led to was an innocent man becoming another statistic!”

Now I was getting angry. I couldn’t believe even Fern was taking a hard stance against me. My own girlfriend! Possibly even my future wife!

“Grrraaugh! What do you want me to do, huh? He’s dead! I can’t undo that!”

Her anger dissipated immediately. So did mine.

Fern sighed. It wasn’t a disappointed one nor one of regret. She just seemed tired. Despite my new body not requiring sleep, I was feeling pretty tired too. Fern was right. It was a pretty fucked up situation and I was partially to blame. It had just been so long since a complaint about how I was handling things felt genuine.

I wanted to move on, but that seemed like it would be an impossibility now. Why did my life need to be full of such pointless suffering? All I wanted was some peace and quiet to be with my favorite woman in the world, and everything else seemed to interfere with that!

“Neens, sometimes I just wish I had your powers,” Fern started to speak, her breath shaky as she calmed herself. I didn’t cut her off, no matter how outlandish it initially sounded.

“I’d use them to overthrow the people who deserve it the most. Not slave away upholding their system.”

“What are you saying, Fern? Do you want me to assassinate the president or something?”

“Not exactly,” she responded in the same semi-melancholic tone as before. “I’d use them to overthrow billionaires, rebuild infrastructure and topple oppressive dictatorships. Not just fight petty thieves all day.”

“No! I-I can’t just do that!” I shot back. Had this been Fern’s true desire all this time? “I-I can’t just do that! I have the mayor on speed-dial! I couldn’t betray his trust! This isn’t what my Grandpa would have wanted!”

I then paused, searching for more counter arguments but came up short. I don’t think I actually believed a single word that came out of my mouth.

Fern’s eyes then returned to the wall. I felt like shit to see that happen. She was truly honest about ways to make this better and all I could do was regurgitate half-hearted excuses.

But then, Fern changed the subject again. “Well, speaking of the mayor, he’s been trying to reach you for a few minutes now. He called me saying that there was an urgent matter for your two to discuss and that he couldn’t get a hold of you.”

Right. I had destroyed both my phone and the landline.

“Fern, forget about that, I want to—“

“Just go.” Fern said sternly, closing her eyes to hide a thinly veiled expression of pain on her perfect face. “I’ll be fine, just go.”

I wanted to say something, holding a hand out despondently. But upon further consideration I decided to follow her advice.

I didn’t look back. For the third time today, I shot out a window to fly somewhere specific. Except in each of these cases, the destination was a place I desired less and less to actually go to.

The sun was setting as I flew above the bustling city. I was certain that the people below were looking at me with disgust, but I couldn’t bring myself to check. I kept my vision straight as I landed in the front yard of the Mayor’s office.

The intimidating building was nothing new to me, yet the circumstances of my visit certainly were. Out of the corner of my eye, all of the security personnel seemed to be masking all sorts of expressions. The most prominent ones were fear and anger.

But I also knew what these men were capable of against me, that being absolutely nothing. They could detonate a nuke in this building and it wouldn’t so much as burn a perfect hair off of my head.

As I finished my walk through the valley of judging faces, I arrived in the mayor’s office. I remembered it all too fondly. A room more glass than brick with three out of four walls making up a massive bay window that allowed him to see almost all of the city.

I must have showed up rather early, as the mayor seemed to be shocked by my arrival, quickly telling off someone else who was either in the room with him or on some sort of computer screen. I was able to parse the words “go, now” from his lips, but I ultimately thought nothing of it.

“Hello, Nina!” He was all too quick to switch back to his happy, friendly persona that his speech felt quite jarring. Especially considering I had a hunch about the topic of this meeting.

“Hi there, Mr. Atishon. What’s this urgent call all about?”

“Getting right to the punch, are we?” He added an exaggerated laugh for good measure before clasping his hands together. “Nina, we need to talk about your recent behavior.”

What the hell was this? Why was he talking down to me like I was a child or something? I shot him a dirty look.

He quickly changed his tune to a more serious one, speaking in a rather hushed voice out of fear that someone else was listening. “Listen, I’m glad I got you here before the media did. Do you know how much hot water you’re in right now?”

I just rolled my eyes. This was nothing new. But the mayor didn’t take too kindly to my downplay of this situation.

“Look, Nina, you saved me and my miner’s lives in that collapse several years ago, I owe you my life! I know you’re a person who wishes to do good! So please, work with me here!”

He didn’t know me. Not at all. I was one more bad day away from doing something not-so-good just to vent my frustrations. I wasn’t even sure if I still “wished” to do good things. It felt more like an obligation at this point to help a society of people who didn’t seem to give a shit about me anymore.

My eyes narrowed in disgust at the man in front of me. “Work with you? I already do that every day! And what do I get? Nothing, except for a life of ridicule and regret! I’ve dedicated my entire life at this point to being a public servant and no one ever says thanks or even shows me a tiny little smidgeon of respect!”

As the volume of my voice increased in tenacity, I saw the mayor reach under his desk ever-so-slowly as if I wouldn’t notice him. But I didn’t object—I wanted to see him call security on me, so I continued to rant.

“Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I didn’t save you from that mine! Maybe we would’ve actually had a competent mayor around he—”

I found myself interrupted by the most puzzling sight. The mayor himself, Archie Atishon, pointing a gun at me. I wasn’t exactly surprised at this point, but did he really think he of all people was going to threaten me?

“Take one more step and you can say goodbye to those hero powers of yours, Ms. Etana.” His entire tone had changed to one of a fearful frenzy. But my emotions were still intact.

“Really? You’re gonna threaten me with a handgun?”

“This isn’t just any old handgun. There have been… rumors swirling around on the internet. You’ve got a weakness. Something I possess right here in this very gun.”

I should have been a little cautious at that. What if he knew something I didn’t? But I wasn’t worried at all. I was more so in disbelief that a supposed “friend” that “owed me his life” would be so quick to pull a gun on me.

“And this supposed weakness is?”

“Tungsten bullet. Supposed to negate your grandfather’s serum. Take one more step towards me and I will shoot.”

“So, you know about my grandpa?” I responded with snark, callous to his threat. “That’s a bit high up on the info chain for a mere mayor, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I keep in touch with the FBI,” he said, trying to match my confidence, probably to hide his overwhelming fear. “They know you and I have a rather trusting bond. Paid me handsomely for information.”

So, the FBI was afraid of me too? Wasn’t exactly a surprise. Although I highly doubted that they told the mayor to fire tungsten bullets at me if threatened.

Testing that theory, I took a step forward. The mayor readied his stance, and I could hear his heart rate increase drastically. I was more likely to give the poor asshole a heart attack before he’d ever get the chance to pull the trigger.

“Nina, I swear to god!” He said through gritted teeth.

I took another step.

“Nina, don’t make me do this. Just walk away.”

I could have just used superspeed to end the confrontation quicker. I’d be right at his throat in an instant. But I found it far more entertaining to toy with him like this. It was a great reprieve from the stress of my life.

So, needless to say, I took yet another step.

“Fine then! You asked for it!”

He fired the bullet and I didn’t even use superspeed to move out of the way. My confidence paid off when the piece of ballistic metal was stopped by my forehead like any other high-speed weapon. I let it fall to my hand. The bullet resembled more of a metal mushroom with its flattened top.

I zipped forward and crushed the gun into giblets in his hand. The mayor immediately cowered in fear, falling out of his office chair and onto the floor like a pathetic little rat scrambling to escape the sight of a human.

“Well Archie, I wouldn’t believe everything I hear on the internet.”

I inched closer to him with every word, all he could do was curl further into a ball.

“P-please! Have mercy! Just-just let me go! I-I could spin a narrative about the deaths of those two men! I promise everything will return to normal! I bet my life on it!”

I just shook my head. With a single finger to his collar, I lifted his eyes up to mine.

“You’re quick to bet your life on things, aren’t you, Atishon? So quick, that you forgot that you already ‘owe your life to me.’ Isn’t that right?”

His heartbeat was like a jackhammer. His words were getting caught in his throat. He knew that I had made up my mind already and there was nothing he could do to convince me otherwise.

“Well then, I know exactly what to do with this pathetic fucking life that has been given to me.”

With what looked to be no more force than an underhanded toss, I chucked Archie Atishon straight through the massive bay window. Being on the tenth floor meant that he probably wasn’t going to land on the street level pleasantly.

I didn’t even stick around to witness the aftermath. That gun-pulling piece of shit didn’t even deserve my disapproving gaze over his corpse. But judging by the screams and alarms of the city below, the fall definitely did him in.

I exited the building the same way he did, except I could fly. He could only fall.

I needed to make my way back to Fern. I needed her embrace. I didn’t care how receptive she may have been to my actions, I just needed her to hug me like she always did when I was in a rut.

I had lost everything. My fame, my respect with authorities and my drive to keep being a hero.

But at least I still had Fern.

Then I got home.

The place was trashed.

Fern was lying face-down on the floor.