NaNo2013: Speedster's Secret: Part 3

However Hex was pretty good at keeping her word when it was beneficial to her, so at least if she was going to hit something, it would, in theory, be the padding she knew Snap had put out for just that reason.

“Of course, Speedster, with your healing factor and durability,” Hex continued nonchalantly, her smirk growing slightly as she spoke, “I can throw you around a lot more than I can Luna. She’s a bit fragile compared to us.”

Speedster couldn’t help the wince that came with that. Hex was right. Luna’s powers were in her magic, magic that involved her life energy and soul. She had none received none of the physical benefits that Juliet had during the Fusion. She knew why. The people she and Luna had Fused with had been from completely different dimensions, been different species and had different enemies. The only link between the two had been the World Spheres. Hex was from a different world again. One with magic and mayhem but not the same sort of magic that Luna and Michael used. It was part of what made events so problematic. None of them, except Luna and Shade, had Fused with someone from the same dimension as another of the Club so none of them could really understand the problems that the others were going through.

They could try, they all did, but they couldn’t fully understand the problems because none of them had the same ones. They all had to adjust to bodies that had been shifted to fit the roles they now played and powers that sometimes acted up when they weren’t supposed to because emotions got in the way of common sense. Even the people who had Fused with humans had changed slightly, be it just hair and eye colour changes, growing or shrinking a few inches, gaining or losing muscle weight or worse, like in Hex’s case, suddenly seemed to gain a stone or so in weight.

If anything Speedster was just happy that when her body had shifted, she had only gained green eyes, blue hair and some sort of personal shield that prevented her clothes and shoes from catching fire from the heat of moving at the speeds she went at. That, along with her healing factor, increased durability and gaining the ability to process the world around her at much higher speeds, something that was necessary unless she planned on crashing into everything. She knew who her Fusion was and he wasn’t human so it could have been much worse. She could always dye her hair back to its original colour and she could have had giant quills of spiky death coming out of her back. Things that she did not consider necessary since there were no robots to fight in her world.

“It’s okay, Speeds.” Luna smiled softly at her before slipping her mask into place, “I’ll protect you.”

“Thanks.” Juliet replied, an honest smile on her face even as she knew she would have to fight her instincts to prevent her from stepping between Luna and any incoming attacks. It was just for the film, they weren’t really fighting Hex and she had read the script, both of them had to go down during this scene. Back when they had first read the script, Hex had promised to pull her punches so Juliet knew that neither of them would get properly hurt. That didn’t mean she liked it.

When Hex stepped out of the cover provided by the screen, Luna turned to Juliet with a small, rueful smile. “It took me almost an hour to get my Other Self to step back and promise not to react when I get blasted for this.” She admitted as Speedster struggled with the zip on her catsuit.

“I’m not surprised.” Speedster sighed as she felt Luna’s hands bat at hers and she tugged her ponytail out of the way so Luna could get to the zip, “She’s rather protective of you.”

“I know. It’s weird, considering she’s part of me, but I know.” Luna sounded like she was grimacing as Speedster felt something tugging upwards at the zip, before her friend let out a huff and pulled the zip down slightly, “Ah ha, got the fabric caught in the zip.” Speedster felt the zip go all the way up and turned to grin at her friend even as she pulled her own mask on.

“Is it me or does this feel a bit like cheating?” Juliet could not help but ask as she emerged from the screen to find that Michael had already been at work, summoning an illusion of the environment that Snap wanted for the scene or a close approximation, using his powers over the shadows. Where others in Snap’s class had to build props from scratch and make do with what scenery they could build or buy, Snap had her friends who could do things like this and were willing to work for nothing.

She had confirmed her project with her tutors before her friends had even started helping her, though the teachers had had no idea that her ‘overly ambitious’ project was actually viable, and as long as she put her friend’s names in the credits along with what they had done, there was no problem in them helping her out.

Speedster kind of wished she had been a fly on the wall when Snap had showed her teachers the trailer they had created in order to prove the project’s viability. The reactions apparently, had  been hilarious. There had been accusations of plagerism flying around for a while until the most sceptical of her tutors had come and sat in on one of the recording sessions. That had actually been one of the more difficult sessions as they had had to hide their powers but it had prevented the tutors from accusing her of taking footage from another flim, even if they had had to reshoot it on a different day with powers in full swing in order to get the effects exactly the same as the rest of the footage.

“A little.” Luna agreed, looking around at the effects her brother had put into place. She recognised the scenery from a couple of the cards in his Duel Monsters deck. He had always preferred the creepier, darker zombie and fiend cards along with torture based spells and traps. All in all it made them rather fitting to be used as the basis for the summoned surroundings they were in.

It also made her wary of getting too close to the walls. She knew what each of things her brother had based the scenery on could do. She didn’t really want to see their effects up close and personal. Still she had to trust that he knew what he was doing. He had been providing the scenery for the villain’s lair up until this point after all. And he was her brother, she had faith in him. If he thought he could control the cards he had summoned enough for them to act just as scenery, she had to trust that.

Still she was a little nervous as she and Speedster stepped into the room, which had been transformed from a typical university studio to a dark, dank, dungeon. A chair had been transformed into a throne and the slam of the door to the corridor beyond seemed much more ominous than it really should.

“Ready?” Snap asked, picking up the video camera closest to her as Spike and Michael moved into position behind the other two set up across the room.

“I’m always ready.” Hex smirked at her as she moved across the room, her imposing presence seeming to fit perfectly in the room in comparison to the two heroes, which was kind of the point.

“Luna? Speeds?” Snap asked, looking the pair over.

“We’re ready to go whenever you are.” Speedster nodded, before glancing at Luna, “Right?”

“Yup.” Luna nodded, not really looking forward to this in the slightest.

“Then let’s get rolling.” 

NaNo 2013: Speedster's Secrets: Part 2

“Oh...” Juliet paused, realising she had been had. She did not get to say anything else about it though as they were joined by another member of the Club. The huge, broad shouldered Nate, stepped through the door and glanced around, a scowl settling on his face for a moment when he saw that it was only Juliet and Nicola around.

“Hi Spike.” Nicola waved, earning herself a smile from the young man. She was fully aware his problem was not with her, but with Speedster, who had kicked his butt a few times over the last year despite his ability to breathe fire and the hard, almost iron strong shell that had formed along his back.

“Hi Snap,” His return wave was friendly, though the glower he gave Juliet as he turned to her was much less so, “Speedster.” He nodded unhappily.

“Spike.” Juiliet nodded back, unsurprised. She knew she was less than popular amongst those in their group who had Fused with villains from the worlds linked to their Spheres. It was the price she paid for being one of the voices of reason that had spoken against revealing their powers to the world officially and stepping in to prevent anyone who tried to use their powers against someone who wasn’t super powered. As she packed her World Sphere away, Nate moved over to the equipment to double check it before they started filming. Since it was Nicola’s project but Nate’s equipment, she chose not to object when he fiddled with one or two things, though she did start arguing with him over the placement of one of the cameras when he started moving the one in the back corner to get at the screen.

Speedster wisely backed away from the conversation that was slowly turning into a row and moved over to the costume box, picking out the items from the pile that belonged to her costume. Since this was a super hero project, Snap, who had been good at sewing even before she had Fused with a costume designer from another dimension who created new costumes for her friend on an almost daily basis, had created a costume for each of the heroes and the villains.

Juliet’s costume was mostly blues and whites, with hints of silver as highlighting. Unlike some of the others there was no cape and not only because it would slow her down.  While some of the others who were taking part in the project thought capes looked awesome, she had decided they were a hazard years ago. They could get caught in too much and they could be grabbed by the bad guy and either ripped off or used as a choking hazard.

While she did not have to wear the superhero get up when she was not acting as a superhero onscreen, she did kind of like the way it had been tailored to her exact measurements and her colour preferences. The costume had no stupid little skirt like some anime heroine costumes did and instead consisted of a pair of an almost skin tight, short sleeved lycra catsuit that was just loose enough she could hide a sports bra underneath it and a pair of deep treaded tough boots with the same sort of support as her running trainers, making them one of her favourite pairs of shoes. If they hadn’t been for the costume only she would have asked Snap if she could wear them everywhere.

She had no hood or full face mask, instead her catsuit came with a domino mask that was in blue with silver markings that made her eyes stand out. As masks went it wasn’t particularly effective at hiding her true identity but it was only meant to be symbolic for the movie anyway. She wasn’t too worried about someone working out who she was and what her powers were from student project that would never be seen past Snap, the Club and her tutors anyway.

As Snap and Spike continued to argue about camera placement and equipment, Juliet was joined by one of the twins. Mira looked tired as she slumped down at Juliet’s side and her flinch as her brother walked through the door was enough to let Speedster know that there had been another ‘debate.’ The twins had Fused with two people from the same universe, but unfortunately for them Mira had Fused with the hero while her brother had Fused with one of the villains and both had developed the split personality disorders that went with those people along with the powers.

“You okay, Luna?” Speedster worried at her friend. She felt particularly protective of Luna, since she had been the girl’s first friend at the university and had seen people try and take advantage of the girl who was surprisingly innocent considering her age and life experience.

“Yes, no. I don’t know.” Mira admitted as she glanced over at her brother. “We finally came to an agreement with him.”

The emphasis she put on ‘him’ told Juliet exactly who she was talking about. Unlike Luna, her brother didn’t consider his ‘other self’ part of him. Instead he tried to ignore his psychotic personality and contain the mayhem it caused. The way Luna did it, she could work with her other personality, even hold conversations and figure things out together, much the way the hero she had Fused with did. The way Michael did it meant that when the psychotic personality escaped the saner one’s chains, something bad normally happened.

And somehow Luna had managed to come to an agreement with it.

“How?” Speedster asked, shocked. She had only narrowly escaped having to deal with the lunatic and that had only been because Luna had thrown herself in the way first.

“Well when I first realised it was Shade I was dealing with, not Michael, I stepped back to let my other self deal with it since she’s better with our magic than I am.” Luna explained, reminding Juliet that Michael refused to use his Club name where the psycho variant of him used it rather than his real name. “But he didn’t want to fight.”

“Is he sick?”

“I did wonder that. I mean Mikey gets the worst colds around this time of year and if he doesn’t catch the flu at some point it’ll be a miracle.” Luna shrugged, “But no. It turns out he’s figured that we’re not a threat to his taking over the world and as his sister I should be working with him, not against him.”

“But you are, and you shouldn’t.” Speedster frowned, confused.

“Oh I know we are...I am.” Mira grimaced slightly as she realised she was talking about herself as two people again. Technically with her split personalities she was right, but that didn’t mean she liked admitting it out loud even around Juliet who knew the truth. “No one else in the Club can use the magic we can, it was part of our Fusion even though we should need the focuses in order to wield them.”

“So did you tell him you weren’t helping him take over the world?” Juliet asked, still confused by this turn of events.

“I did.” Luna nodded, amused by something, “He said that I’ll change my mind and that it’s apparently far too much effort to try and take my powers when I’m so genre savvy, so he’ll try a different route.”

“And that should worry me more than it does.” Speedster scowled, glancing over at Michael who had gone straight over to Spike and pulled him away from the row, the pair now discussing something that she wasn’t sure if she should be worried about or not.

“Oh and apparently he’s not too worried about you either, since he’s the only Villain Fusion in the entire club who doesn’t have to worry about catching you first.” Mira warned her. Juliet scowled as she realised that was true. The type of magic that Mira and Michael could wield meant that once the magic was in motion it wouldn’t matter how fast she was, she would have to stop and play their game because there would be no other escape.

“If you didn’t get into a fight with him, why are you so tired?” Speedster couldn’t help but ask.

“All nighter on coursework.” Mira chuckled, “I haven’t actually slept since yesterday.”

“Are you going to be alright to...you know?” She gestured to the crate of costumes and then around at the cameras and the props set up.

“I should be.” Mira shrugged as she pulled her own costume out of the box. Unlike Speedster’s costume, Luna’s had the itty bitty skirt, but an imperial purple one over tiny black lycra shorts, along with a tight imperial purple tank top, all of which had gold markings made from golden thread. Luna had a cape, one that was black on the outside and purple on the inside, and her black boots were knee high and had slight heels. Her domino mask was black with gold markings around the edge. It made her look more like a villain than a hero, but considering Luna’s insane hair colours, it suited her. “I have access to coffee and sugar. I’ll be set until I crash tonight and hey, I don’t have to worry about Shade stabbing me in the back anymore.”

“Which is always a good thing.” Speedster agreed, standing up and heading for the screens set up at the back of the room. There were two groups of screens there, both with pieces of paper attached to them. One had a blue ‘M’ on while the other had a pink ‘F.’ The two girls headed behind the latter of the two and got into their superhero costumes. By the time they were done the others who were to be involved in today’s recording had arrived and they had been joined behind the screen by villainess of the short film.

“G’afternoon Hex.” Speedster nodded to her, earning herself a grunt and the evil eye back. The other girl, who had Fused with a powerful but particularly smart witch, wasn’t one for conversation at the best of times and considering the books Juliet could see poking out of her bag, she assumed that there was a lot of coursework Hex was skipping out of doing in order to be here.

“We are taking this outside aren’t we?” Luna asked nervously as she poked her head around the screens and considered the size of the room, “I mean we’ve never tried using our powers in such a confined space before and...”

“If you bothered to remember the script, that’s kind of the point.” Hex reminded her, a small smirk on her face, “I, the bad guy, am going to get to kick your butts because you’re too inexperienced with your powers, Speedster can’t move at full speed in such close quarters when you lot are around and Chi isn’t here.” She paused and poked her own head around the screen, thinking for a moment before saying, “If it helps, I’ll try and make sure you hit the padding.”

“You are looking forward to this way too much.” Speedster grouched, knowing that she was about to get her butt kicked and not looking forward to having to let it happen. She wasn’t at as much of a disadvantage indoors as the others seemed to think so she could defend herself if she was allowed but it wasn’t in the script so she was going to have to let Hex send her flying. It wasn’t going to be pleasant but it was the price they paid for using their powers to make up for special effects.