#menace9

The Spring Praestan was once an ornately decorated building, an immaculate structure poised in opposition to the sky, casting a cool shadow onto the street below. The building, a privately constructed apartment complex intended to house the upper-ring of New Monmouth City, stood firmly in the North-most point of the city; it lay far from the quaint town square, in the once bustling collection of stores, hotels, and offices that stacked the streets. At the opening of The Spring Praestan, many people drew both hope and solace from the construction of the building: it was to gentrify the area with the thickest collection of buildings in the city, and, perhaps, draw attention to the high crime rates that plagued the streets. The building itself was constructed in an unorganized fashion. The bottom of the building stood in an almost Roman fashion, with eight columns lined across the base, stretching a maximum of fifty feet to the top of an arch that surrounded the front doors of the building. The front of the building, itself, consisted of a staggering amount of glass windows and two glass doors that lay directly in the center of the building, hidden from view by the center-most column. Inside the building was a large lobby-like entrance way, leading to a slew of elevators and stairwells. Just beyond that, in the furthest back portion of the first floor, lay the Praestan Moonbeam, a restaurant constructed and run inside the apartment complex. In this now-abandoned restaurant, Menace sat across from Eloise, wishing, more than anything, that there was still some semblance of food somewhere in his immediate surroundings.

“You nervous?” Eloise asked him, as she noticed he was fingering the goggles that hung around his neck. She had dressed casually for the meeting; her hair fell freely behind her shoulders, which were covered by a plain, white T-shirt with the name “Trickshot” written across it in black, bold letters that looked as though they attempted to pop forth, out from the shirt. Nate had laughed when he saw the shirt she had decided to wear; with villains and heroes being in the public eye, companies quickly decided to capitalize on them. Suddenly, at every Hot Topic Nate could buy a shirt representing practically any hero or villain that he’d ever heard of, including himself. With this shirt, she wore jean-shorts, and sandals. Eloise had told Nate that, during the summer, it was a sin to wear anything but sandals to cover your feet.

“A little.” Nate admitted. “What is she doing hanging out in places like this?” He asked. “And how did you two become friends?”

“All people have their own certain proclivities.” Eloise said, spinning a strand of her hair with her finger. “Maybe this is just her aesthetic. And all super-villains know each other, you know that.” Eloise nodded. “Just like all heroes know each other; when it’s us against the world, we gotta stick together.” She explained.

“That’s right, so what happened to you?” Nate turned to see a girl standing a few feet behind him in the abandoned restaurant. He recognized that she was taller than he was, if only by a few inches, and dressed entirely in black. She had straight hair that barely touched beneath her chin. The part in her hair was oriented slightly to the left, splitting so that it just covered the top of her left eye before falling off to the side. Freckles were scattered across her face, which gave an almost rustic look to her beauty, which clashed heavily with the heavy, black mascara she had chosen to wear. She looked, as far as Nate could tell, fit, if not too thin. She stomped forward as she walked, her combat boots slamming into the ground with each step. “Why did you leave?”

“Things change.”  Eloise told her, refusing to look directly at the girl. “I had to make a choice, Marie.”

“And you didn’t choose me.” She said. She turned her head to look at Menace, perhaps noticing him for the first time, or perhaps she had not cared to acknowledge him. “Heh. Hanging out with heroes now? How far you’ve fallen.” Nate refused to say a word. He could feel the tension of the scene playing out in front of him, and he felt as though he’d stumbled upon a moment he should not be a part of. “What do you have to say for yourself? The group is not happy with you, El. You know what happens to people who leave. I can’t keep defending you from them, especially if you’re going to hold company with this one.” She gestured to the Menace.

“Ever thought I don’t need your protection?” Eloise mumbled quietly to herself.

“What was that?” Marie asked, leaning in closer.

“Ever thought I don’t need your protection?” She repeated, throwing her face closer to Marie, so that they were only inches apart. “You’ve always been like this, you always do this. I’m not a child, I don’t need to be smothered, I can make my own choices.” The two glared at each other. “You try to hide it, but I can see, Mare. I can see. You’re exhausted. The fatigue shows. The hickeys on your neck? God, Mare, are you just letting them do whatever they want to you?” Nate hadn’t noticed the bruises, but, looking very closely, he could see small blotches of concealer that didn’t quite match her skin color. “I always used to think you were better than that, that we were better than that.” Eloise pulled her face away from Marie’s. “Then I realized, some time ago, that you weren’t. I didn’t want to be like you. So I left.”

“I’m done.” Marie said. “Done helping you. Done with you.” The girl stood upright and began to walk away as Eloise stared fiercely. Nate, remembering why he came, swiftly stood.

“Do you remember me, Marie?” He asked. Marie turned to look at him, and he looked into her eyes. Without Marie saying a word, he’d received his answer. He sat back in the booth across from Eloise as he heard the villain stomp back out the door. Eloise and Nate sat in silence for a moment. She was on the verge of tears. He was deep in his own mind, thinking about another world, about all the things Marie could have been. In another life, where things were even the slightest bit different, who knows what could have happened?

“You saw it too, right?” Eloise said slowly, her voice was a shattered windowpane, where, even though the cracks were apparent and glaring, the pane refused to fall. “In her eyes… She’s not there anymore.”

The Mutation was a very good hero. He lived and breathed the business, trained in his spare time, and used the rest to forge lasting relationships and ponder morality. He had been wanting to work with Menace for a very long time, as the two had bonded during the most recent CEF (Catastrophic-Event-Function), and had been close friends ever since. In addition, the Mutation was by no means stupid, which, he figured, meant that everyone else was for not realizing that the Menace was, by far, the most powerful hero alive since the passing of Ultraman. In fact, he was fairly certain that not even Nate himself knew the limits of his powers, but — and also theorized by the Mutation — perhaps Menace’s powers had no limits. In half of the stories Nate had told him, Nate had somehow, miraculously pulled off an incredible feat by accessing powers that he did not even know he had. At the very least, the Mutation was curious.

The main problem was that Nate was, arguably, very hard to work with. That is not to say that Menace was not an excellent hero, or that, when he showed up, he was as good an ally as anyone. No, the real trick in working with the Menace was to get him to show up. The Mutation was very offset by Nate’s tendency to be late or, sometimes, not show up at all. He had received texts from the Menace a few hours after starting his shift where he apologized for not showing up, then still failed to show up. So, Anthony’s shift having started an hour ago and the sun having firmly set, he decided that Nate was most likely not coming, and that he should just go about his business as normal.

Luckily for him, the night was cool, and the center of town square was sparsely populated. The Mutation sighed as he leaned back on his bench, wondering who or what might come along to ruin his peaceful evening. Just then, as if the universe had an overwhelming desire to appease him, a girl fell onto the bench next to him, forcing him to sit up straight, and remove his arms from the span of the bench, placing them back in his lap. The girl was not bad looking, with short, black hair and all black clothes. She wore too much eyeliner, the Mutation thought, and mixed with her light sprinkling of freckles she appeared to be some odd mix of vampire and farm-girl.

“You’re a hero, right?” She asked. She tilted her head down, and lifted her eyes so that Anthony was forced to look into her dazzling, emerald green eyes. “I need a hero.” She said, inching closer o the bench to Anthony.

“What do you need, ma’am?” The Mutation asked.

“Some mean people took my purse.” She said in a half-whiney voice.

“Do you know where these people are, ma’am?” Anthony asked, sighing. The worst part about being a hero, the Mutation always thought, is that, even though I know this is a trap, I still have to go. The girl nodded. “Of course you do.” The girl grabbed his hand, lifted him from the bench, and began walking him in the direction of the North end of town. The Mutation used his free hand to send a text to the Menace: Get your fucking ass here now, I’m about to get jumped. He attached his location to the text and prayed that Nate wasn’t a total scumbag.

Anthony began to analyze the situation, wondering what he could do, and when, to escape or win an ensuing fight. It kept throwing him off, however, that the girl pulling him smelt incredible; she smelt like a strawberry blended in a vanilla milkshake. It was an annoyingly distracting smell, as he could not ignore it, and it kept drawing his eyes to the girl leading him. “Where are we going?” He asked, but the girl just kept pulling him forward, until she came to a sudden stop. The Mutation looked around and noticed that he was across the street from the Spring Praestan. The moon lingered in the night sky that he could make out just above the top of the building. “Where are the muggers?”

“Inside.” The girl said.

“Yeah, fuck that.” The Mutation said. “I’m not that stupid.” He glanced down at his hand to notice that the ring he always wore across his finger had been lifted. He looked back up at the girl. “Seriously? Are we really doing this?” The girl lifted her foot into his groin and he howled as he collapsed onto his knees. He dropped his hand to the ground, onto the cement sidewalk and sighed. He felt his hand begin to mutate, condensing into the equivalent of a cement brick. He wiggled his now rock-like fingers as he stood up, still in a large bit of pain. The girl threw her fist at his face, but he brushed it aside and then slammed his cement-fist onto her head. She crumpled like a paper bag. Just then his phone buzzed, and he lifted it from his pocket. It was from Menace, it read: Sorry, something important came up. The Mutation laughed.

Nate was not lying, something important had come up. Just before he was to begin his shift with the Mutation, he received a text from Courtney. Apparently, there was something he needed to see immediately. He figured it would only take a moment, and so decided to swing by the cube in the Wharton State Forest, where she was staying. The cube, a large, wooden, natural structure amongst the trees of the forest served as the Menace’s base of operations and, frequently, the bedroom of the White Witch.

He arrived at the cube as his shift with the Mutation was supposed to begin, but he felt a text would be an unnecessary inconvenience, as he would be only a moment. He climbed the ladder into the cube, where he was met with a tackle-hug from Courtney, forcing him onto his back.

“Everything okay?” He asked, and she let go of him, standing, and walked to the Northwest corner of the cube.

“I was kinda scared.” The White Witch told him. “I took a mid-afternoon nap after my meditations, and when I woke up, there was this, just lying on me.” She handed him a crisply folded, white piece of paper. He opened it, reading the words written in neat calligraphy: