When she was a kid, Nico’s father always taught her to stand up for the little guy. He put her in karate classes, made sure both she and her sister were ready to face whatever the world threw at them, made sure they had the morality necessary to protect those who weren’t. When the Avengers first popped up on the news circuits and Nico grinned her stupid, fourteen-year-old grin and proclaimed that she’d be a superhero someday, too, Robert Minoru had smiled, nodded his head, and said of course you will, sweetie. Nico’s father, she knew, would have wanted her to fight for every lost cause, to be a champion for those weaker than her.
But Nico’s father was also, as it turned out, a supervillain.
It was a complicated whirlwind, a strange combination of bad habits and good intentions. In his own mind, Nico was sure, Robert Minoru was a superhero all his own. In Nico’s, he was anything but. And doing anything like what he’d wanted her to do, being anything close to the person he’d encouraged her to be? It felt wrong. When she saw people in trouble now, Nico ran. She didn’t step in to help, didn’t fight for people who couldn’t fight for themselves, didn’t use her powers for anything more than keeping herself and her friends alive. Nico wasn’t a superhero.
She just lived in a city full of them.
Heroes like the woman in front of her now, stepping in to save a man before a group of gunmen who seemed to be targeting him could interfere. Nico watched with a frozen fascination as the woman took out three men at once, making it all look so effortless. The woman didn’t see the fourth gunman, the one crouching behind a dumpster and leveling his gun at his target’s head... but Nico did. And Nico wasn’t a hero, she wasn’t, but it seemed like a waste to let the man this stranger was saving get shot just because she missed one gunman. Sucking in a breath, Nico pricked her finger with the needle she’d taken to carrying in her pocket, letting a drop of blood spill so the Staff of One could emerge from her chest. The second it was in her hands, she turned to the man. “Water gun,” she murmured, and the pistol in his hand turned to a squirt gun just as he pulled the trigger, hitting his target with a splash of clear, harmless water. Nico sighed a quiet breath of relief... until all eyes turned towards her and she stood frozen. “Ah, shit,” she muttered, locking eyes with the heroine. “I, uh --- I didn’t mean to step on your toes there.”
