What’s Up, Danger
Rey acclimates to her powers
Rey Walker, better known as the superhero Neon, had very suddenly become a celebrity after being inducted into Astra’s League, the world's most prestigious superhero organization. She sat in the League's headquarters, FursTech Tower in Danesville, Wisconsin, at 3 in the morning January 1st 2101, watching as 24-hour news stations scrambled to uncover everything they could about this random punk-rocker who had just been thrust onto the world's stage. Her best friends and long-time crime-fighting partners Hilda Furst, Elle Ectric, and Shailene Octavia stood around watching the same holographic screens where they were also being analysed for the same reasons.
“This is so weird,” Rey commented as she watched the TMZ office argue about the team’s power levels while all still wearing party hats from their New Years party just hours before.
“You’ll get used to it,” Aradia Furst told her.
“I’m literally being interviewed by like 17 people every single minute and I hate it,” Hilda said. She was apparently Aradia’s second cousin three times removed (Hilda’s great-great-great-great-grandparents were Aradia’s great-grandparents), which Hilda had only learned when she saw it on MSNBC’s coverage of her. “I’ve never killed myself in public before but I’m this fucking close to doing it just to have one less body for everybody to interrogate.” She’d never been this stressed out by her power before, at least that she’d let her best friends know.
“This is exactly why I don’t like going out in public,” Elle said.
“Well, I guess you’re going to be travelling exclusively by lightning bolt forever now because your ass is famous worldwide.”
“I wish my ass was famous,” Shailene mumbled.
“Don’t go getting any ideas, now,” Aradia chastised. “We’re public figures, we have to keep a clean facade.”
“I mean, do we have to? Or is that just how things have been done? What if it’s tasteful? With, like, a real photographer?”
“If you want to draw Astra’s ire, go ahead. But I’ll be looking down my nose at you the whole time.”
“All I heard was ‘go ahead’.”
“Do you pay us?” Hilda asked. “Or would we have to do brand deals and shit.”
“You each get a monthly stipend which will support a quite comfortable housing arrangement,” Aradia answered. “Anything else you wish to earn on top of that is up to you. I would suggest that you wait to get comfortable with your new income before you start trying to supplement it.”
“Is that on top of, or replacing, your basic income program?”
Aradia was at a loss for words. “No League members have ever been on the program before. I never even considered that it was a possibility.”
Rey’s phone dinged with a new message. She was actually kind of surprised that it wasn’t just constantly going off since the press conference. The text, and the ones that immediately followed it, read:
Hey, this is Felicia The waitress From the diner You gave me your number Are you busy right now? You’re probably busy You can ignore me if you’re busy
With a brief burst of her superspeed Rey texted back:
I'm not busy don’t worry Just watching the news hyd?
What is this, the 20s? ‘hyd’?
I’m old fashioned
I get enough old fashioned at this fucking diner
Is your shift over?
Almost. Another hour
You work third shift often?
Only tonight I drew the short straw to work the new year shift
You busy after?
I was planning on sleeping
That’s probably a good idea
I could wait until after getting an early breakfast tho
Wanna come to Danesville? I know a couple places
Danesville is a 10 hour drive from here
I can carry you Btw, whats the actual address of the diner I kinda just stumbled upon you last time
1 Mile Run Rd Allenwood PA We’re right next to Little Mountain State Park off I-80
Suddenly Hilda jumped out of her seat, yelling “FUCK!”
“What is it?” Aradia asked.
“The Harlequin just showed up at one of my bank security guard jobs. Midwest Federal.”
A plasma trail traced from the chair Rey had been sitting in to the workshop’s balcony, where Rey already was, leaning over it to look out over the city. “Alright Aradia, time to hold up your end of the bargain.”
“I suppose it is.” Aradia got to work casting a portal, but instead of waiting Rey jumped over the railing and ran down the side of the building. Running down a building was always much harder than running up one, but it was so much more exhilarating. On her way down, she sent one last text to Felicia:
Gotta go. Duty calls. See you in an hour hopefully If I never text back then that means I’m dead 👉😎👉
She made it to the bottom with no problems, and flowed through the city until she stopped in front of the bank. Five of Hilda in bank security guard uniforms were standing with their handguns pointed at the door. All the lights inside were dark, and the front door looked like it had been smashed in. A second later the portal Aradia had been casting finally opened, behind Hilda and Rey.
“Wait,” Shay said, double-taking at the balcony of the workshop behind her. “How did you...”
“I’ve been here for like five minutes, guys,” Rey taunted.
An ATM came flying out of the bank’s front doors, followed by a shrill roar. Rey stepped out of the way, pulling one of Hilda who was also in the way along with her.
“What the fuck was that? I thought you said the Harlequin was in there?”
“I swear to god I saw her mask for an instant before she killed me,” Hilda said.
“Is she working with somebody new?”
“Let’s not wait to see...” Aradia said. “HARLEQUIN!” I know you’re in there. You’ve slipped under my radar for far too long.”
Another roar rang out. And then a slow stomping, slowly growing closer. And eventually some creature stepped out of the shadows, with red-and-white checkered scales, wearing the Harlequin’s mask: a plain featureless oval, half red and half white. Except the mask had been split across its width, a third of the way up, by a thick crack which was now its mouth.
“What the fuck is that thing?” Elle asked.
It spoke, in a low, rasping tone. “Hello, Aradia. Recognise me?”
“Why should I, fiend?” Aradia demanded.
“Twofold, witch. Your father was a thorn in my side for decades, one. And you and I spoke face to face only 7 days and a few hours ago, two.”
The Harlequin had been a consistent foe of her father in his early days before joining Astra’s League, this Aradia was familiar with. But, seven days and a few hours ago, Aradia had been at Johanna Kerr’s christmas ball, before it had been blown up by what evidence suggested was the Harlequin, or at least her goons. Aradia would have remembered encountering this beast there.
“What happened to you, Harlequin. This is something new, even for you.”
“I’ll spare you the details of my weakness, if you please. I’ll only have you know that it was and remains to be very painful.”
Something clicked in Aradia’s mind. Could it have something to do with the massive explosion the Harlequin had triggered after Aradia had left the christmas ball? If she had been at the ball to trigger the bomb, she likely would also have been caught in it. That would be more than enough energy to disrupt the impenetrability of her superhuman skin and possibly cause this strange alteration. It was a chemistry gauntlet to work through some other time, however, and especially not as a mere thought experiment.
“Then allow me to relieve your pain,” Aradia announced, straightening her back, and drawing herself up into the standard casting stance, one hand held in front of the other, fingers ready to trace magic circles into the air. “Girls, do what you do.”
The very first thing the Harlequin did was wrench a piece of the door frame out of the wall, and attempt to use it as a javelin to spear Aradia. As before, Rey leapt in to pull Aradia out of the way of the projectile, which embedded into a concrete wall across the street.
“Don’t worry about me getting hit,” Aradia told Rey. “I’m more robust than I look. Focus on taking this thing out.” She then quickly summoned a simple but strong magical barrier, and used it to give herself cover while maneuvered herself next to Hilda.
Meanwhile, Elle and Shay put their powers to work together, performing one of their favorite tag-team moves. Shay reached out and liberated the bronze fixtures from the destroyed door, which she psychically compacted into two rods and Elle then pumped a voltage differential into. Shay launched them at the Harlequin, which hit and elicited a scream as the voltages equalized through her.
Once Aradia had sidled up to Hilda, she asked of her “I’m going to need you to duplicate something for me, quickly.”
“What is it?”
Aradia knelt down and anchored her barrier to the street. She then plucked a dimly glowing white jewel off one of her necklaces and handed it to Hilda. “Its magic and that's all you'll understand even if I explained it. Took me a few years to understand myself.”
Hilda took the jewel and quickly duplicated herself to five, before passing the now 5 jewels to the middle-most her and re-condensing herself back to one. She repeated the duplication once more, before handing them to Aradia. Piled together in a hoard of 25, their combined glow was now about as bright as an average light bulb.
“That’ll do quite nicely,” Aradia said. She dumped all but one into her sleeve, cradling the last one in her palm. She pumped her light through her skin into the jem.
Aradia stood up, clenching her other fist and dissipating the shield she had summoned. She tossed the jewel towards the Harlequin, and yelled “Rey! Blast this with me!”
While Aradia cast a spell to focus her light, Rey zipped in and examined the jem. In the compressed time that her power afforded her, she grabbed it out of the air, and made a deliberate pondering pose for a long enough fraction of a second that she would be visible doing it. She then walked up to the Harlequin, and held it out in front of the Harlequin’s mask. While the Harlequin did a double-take at the audacity of the act, Rey asked “This a good spot?”
“Perfect.” Aradia illuminated the jem with a brilliant white laser projected from her fingertip. Rey, for her own part, channeled her power to siphon some of the plasma that was fueling her into it as well. It was less than a second before Rey felt a crack, and took that has her cue to let go and back away very casually.
Rey watched from a roof across the street as the jewel exploded, throwing the Harlequin through the wall of the bank.
She only recently had been able to go this fast, after Aradia had given her an upgrade: The Heart. The Heart was a backpack fusion reactor that produced functionally infinite plasma for her to fuel her power with. She use to be able to consistently hit speeds of about fifteen miles a minute, but she’d only be able to sustain that for a handful of minutes. With the Heart, however, she’d been clocking a mile a second, and she had been able to sustain that for at least fifteen minutes, long enough to run from New York City to Danesville, without a sweat.
She pulled her phone out and checked to see Felicia’s response:
If that becomes the last text you ever send anybody i’m donating this phone to the smithsonian for their astras league exhibit
Rey smiled, and put her phone away. She went to step off the roof, but stopped when she noticed a strange flower growing out of the gravel spread across the roof. She summoned some plasma to her palm to shine a light on the flower, which closed its petals against the intense beam of sun-simulacrum.
She heard a crunch against the gravel behind her, and as quickly as she could she turned to face the sound, delivering her neck quite nicely into the grasp of a viney tentacle.
“Well, well, well,” world-infamous supervillainess Babalon said, as she lifted Rey off the ground.
She was dark-skinned, indian-american if Rey remembered the various tv specials about her correctly. Her hair was a long braided tangle, interwoven with branches and interspersed with flowers. She was wearing a bodysuit that was either made of leaves or designed to look like it was made of leaves. Holding her up off the ground were a dozen or so ten-foot-long, inch-thick vines that sprouted from her back and waist, one of which was stretched out and holding Rey. Each vine ended in a bundle of two-foot-long “fingers” each of which could move individually but tended to be used in groups. The fingers were what was wrapped around Rey's neck, preventing her from making her retreat.
Babalon drew herself closer to Rey. “It seems the self-pompous priestess of light has found herself a new disciple. Wanna know what I did to the last one?”
“I'm good, actually. Hey, why'd you name yourself Babalon?” Rey responded, grabbing the vine around her neck with both hands and channeling some of her plasma into it. Babalon recoiled as two feet of that vine was instantly incinerated.
“She gave you the Light too?! HOW?!” Babalon screamed as she swung another of her vines at Rey, faster even than most other superspeedsters Rey had ever met. No wonder she was on the top tier, worthy of being one of the few that drew Astra herself out to fight.
Rey needed to actually focus. Her new upgrade gave her an edge, but only barely.
She boosted herself backwards, remembering just a little too late that the edge of the roof had been behind her. She tripped over the parapet and fell back over the edge, and slowed time down to give her some space for thought. She was about 5 stories up. It would take about 4 seconds to reach the ground. That was plenty of time. She brought her hand to her chin and pondered.
She had only had three hours to adjust to her new power level, but she was fairly confident in her ability. She had developed one specific new skill, something almost unnoticeable that she had nonetheless noticed running up and down buildings all night. She just needed to figure out how to do it on purpose.
She felt the writing mass of plasma on her back, the Heart, given to her by Aradia. She felt its warmth, its light. “The Light”, Babalon had called it. Astra, local goddess she was, had never revealed what it was that fueled her cosmic might, but she did do a lot of glowing while she used it. Was this the same Light? Rey had no idea, but it was a fun little supposition to make. And it did somewhat explain the aforementioned new skill.
“Are you... posing?” Babalon asked, apparently appalled by the gall Rey was exhibiting.
Rey had been focusing on both her inner monologue and maintaining the hand to the chin, and hadn’t noticed that time had resumed normal speed and she hadn’t continued falling.
“What the fuck?!” Shay yelled. “I’m not doing that!
Rey looked at herself. She appeared to be just standing at a 90 degree angle from vertical, 45 feet above the street. “Huh. Didn’t know I could do that.” As she moved, the plasma trail that indicated she was using her power traced her every gesture.
Babalon lunged over the edge, and Rey cut out her power to drop herself out of reach. Shay reached out and grabbed Rey before she hit the ground, following the unprecedented failure of Rey to reactivate the hovering part with the rest of her powers.
“That was weird,” Rey told the others as she righted herself. “Anyway, what’s up with this bitch, Rad?”
Aradia gave Rey a look of annoyance for using her nickname. “That’s Jane Newark. She’s...” Aradia sighed. “A pseudodemon, and a Whore.”
“Wow, strong words. But, I get the idea. Let’s kick her ass.”
A brick whizzed past Rey's head. “Forgetting something?” the Harlequin growled.
“Elle, help me out with Babalon, the rest of you keep dealing with dollface.”
Elle zapped up to the roof with Babalon, with Rey following.
“The witch’s new toys are out to play, I see...” Babalon said as she circled the two. “I’ve killed 5 of Astra’s League, you two small fries don’t stand a chance.”
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Rey said winding up a punch, Elle standing behind her. “Elle, now!”
Elle jumped forwards, converting herself into pure electrical energy, electrical plasma. She wrapped herself around Rey’s arm, and Rey absorbed her and used her energy to launch herself forward, fist first. Elle released herself the instant Rey’s fist hit Babalon’s chest, exploding out of Rey’s hand, shooting forwards and launching Babalon into the sky.
Elle continued to the clouds, dragging Babalon along with her. She rematerialized periodically, taking opportunities to give Babalon a kick or two before returning to plasma to dodge Babalon’s flailing vines. On the ground, Rey flowed through the streets, following Elle’s flashes of lightning.
Elle eventually let Babalon go in the middle of a cloud over a field outside the city. She struck down to the ground, and started waiting for Babalon to fall down to her. Rey caught up only a few seconds later. They acknowledged each other with a fistbump that crackled with static and neon.
“So what was with that flying thing back there?” Elle asked.
“I don’t really know. This nuclear backpack Rad gave me has some fucking magic in it or something.”
“Can you do it again?”
“I mean, probably. I don’t know how though. How do you do it?”
‘“It’s just an instinctual extension of my power. But it’s not really the same as, like, how Astra flies.”
“I mean, obviously. But I gotta start somewhere.”
“What if you just try running up?”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“When you run with your power, it’s like pushing yourself in the direction you want to go, right? Just do that, but up.”
“I don’t know...” Rey was silent as she looked up to inspect Babalon's progress towards the ground. “Wait, shit, I just got it.”
“Got what?”
“It’s the Garden of Babalon, because she controls plants.”
Elle sighed. “That does make sense, yeah. You wanna give it a go, with me giving you a boost?”
“Give what a go?”
“Running up.”
“I mean, sure. But you gotta promise to catch me if it don't work.” Rey reached out her hand towards Elle
“Deal.” Elle took Rey’s hand. “3, 2, 1...” Elle converted to lightning and crackled over Rey’s skin as Rey absorbed her, before Rey knelt down and then jumped into the air, Elle releasing herself to give Rey a little extra height.
Rey tried doing what Elle suggested, activating her power to try to force herself higher. As Elle jumped out of her, Rey tried to siphon some of the extra energy Elle had given her, and add it to her reservoir.
She didn’t expect that she would be rocketed into the sky at the same speed she could run. She passed Babalon, still on her own journey down, before she knew what was happening, and hit the clouds in a single second.
Elle, still nearly on the ground, for a second thought her friend had exploded or somehow vaporized herself, until she backed away and saw Rey’s plasma trail tracing a thick, bright line straight up. “Holy shit, Rey.”
Rey, now whizzing past the clouds, considered what to do next. She calmly pulled some plasma from the Heart, though not nearly as much as she used to get into this position, and then tried activating her power downwards to slow her still very rapid ascent through the atmosphere. She managed to stop herself before she got to the point where the air would be too thin to breath, and then let herself start to drop back down to Earth. She periodically slowed herself down, until she was continuously doing it, and was floating like she had done accidentally before. She experimented with the hypothetical throttle of her power, gently increasing and decreasing to raise higher and lower, and then tried to change the angle at which the was directing her power, and managed to achieve something quite analogous to how she assumed someone like Astra could fly.
She glanced down, and noticed Elle zapping around a very angry looking dot, and dropped down to join her.
“Nice of you to join us,” Elle said as Rey gently fell to a stop a few dozen feet above the grass.
“Hey, turns out, I can totally fly.”
“Join the club.”
“We just did, like 5 hours ago.”
“Shut and help me, Rey.”
Rey dropped down to the ground, where Babalon was swinging her vines wildly to try and and reach the two heroes floating just out of her reach.
“You getting tired yet?” Rey asked her. “If you want I could go get Astra, somebody you can actually get some good swings in with.”
“Don’t act like you’re too powerful for me. You haven’t laid a finger on me either, you stupid punk.”
“Tell that to your singed vine.”
Babalon lunged at Rey, growling with frustration. Rey zipped past her vines, and grabbed the vine harness that anchored her plant limbs to her human body. Rey pumped plasma directly from the Heart onto the vines, incinerating them and burning away the leaf-like costume Babalon was wearing.
Babalon swung one of her human arms, hitting Rey and sending her flying.
Rey crashed into the grass, rolling and yelling in pain. “FUCK! I think my rib is broken...”
Babalon, now robbed of her major advantage and seething with rage, stomped towards the now vulnerable hero. “That’s why it takes Astra to handle me, you petulant child. She can take a hit.”
Elle zapped over to Rey, to put herself between Rey and Babalon. “You get back, you bitch.” Elle unwound the chains she kept wrapped around her arms, and started swinging them, striking sparks between them. “We aren’t done here, yet.”
“I’ll just kill you both, then.”
Elle ran at Babalon, and then zapped around her, leaving her chains corporeal enough to wrap around Babalon’s arms. Elle materialized behind her and twisted the chains to bind Babalon’s arms behind her. “Do anything stupid and your heart’s a piece of burnt toast.”
“Bold of you to assume I have one.”
“Well, if you say so.” Elle pumped 10,000 volts across her hands, sending the current across Babalon’s shoulders, setting her skin on fire most evidently. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Elle atomized the chains and rematerialized them back on her own arms, and then kicked Babalon to the ground, where she screamed in apparent agony. “Rey, do you think you can walk?”
Rey slowly got to her feet, grunting occasionally whenever she agitated the broken rib. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Can you send up a flare?”
“Yeah.” Rey raised her palm up to the sky, and launched a plasma ball into the air, arcing slightly towards the city.
A portal appeared a dozen seconds later, out of which Aradia, Shay, and Hilda stepped. Rey saw, through the portal, the Harlequin, restrained tightly by a few dozen feet of chain wrapped around her, being loaded into a police van.
“Good work, girls,” Aradia congratulated. “You are certainly working hard to earn your place on this team.” Aradia strode towards the writhing Babalon, and pulled all of the adamantium from the jewelry she was wearing and sent it to lift Babalon and hogtie her. “Wait until Astra hears how the youngest members of the League took you down on their own.”
“Your threats of humiliation mean nothing, witch,” Babalon spat.
Aradia muzzled Babalon with the remaining adamantium she had. “Shut the fuck up, Whore.”
Rey limped over. “Hey, I don’t suppose you got any healing magic, do you?”
“Depends how severe your injury.”
“Broken rib?”
“Just one? No trouble at all.” Aradia quickly danced out a spell, which sent a warmth up through Rey’s ribcage. “Now, I would suggest you rest for a while before...”
“No can do, doc, I’ve got a date to keep.” Punctuated by a communal sigh from all five of the other women, Rey zipped off.
