NaNo2013: Speedster's Secret: Part 14

Luna’s mother had provided her with a stocking to open before breakfast, only a little thing with five presents in but it was nice to feel included even if it meant she got woken up at six. After the stocking presents had been opened, she helped cook the full English breakfast that the family shared before those who wanted to go to Church went to do so while Juliet and Michael stayed behind and played with the board game that had been slipped into Michael’s stocking.

Once everyone was back and the roast turkey had been put into the oven to cook, they all settled in the living room to open the presents under the tree. They were halfway through doing so when Michael’s phone went off.

“Sorry.” Michael apologised as he pulled it out of his pocket, “What the...?” He murmured as he flipped it open, “Spike? It’s Christmas Day, mate. You know I’m busy until... what?” There was silence from Michael for a minute or so, then he scrambled across the room, face white and eyes wide, turning on the TV despite the objections of Luna and his parents.

“Mikey?” Luna asked, worried as he seized the remote and flipped over to the news channel where a harried looking reporter was reporting from the top of a building.

“What you see below me,” She was saying as the camera panned across a horde of robots and robosuited individuals, all of whom were stood between the military and the warehouse Speedster had scoped out a week ago. “Is a standstill that has been reached by the military and the robot army belonging to Sawyer. The military are hesitant to attack the people trapped inside the now fully controlled suits of metal armour, while Sawyer seems content to ensure that no one can enter the complex while his forces raid banks and shops.”

“It’s Christmas Day!” Luna protested, forgetting about her parents for the moment as they watched a cannon unfold from the arm of one of the robosuits and open fire on the armed forces opposite. “There’s a rule!”

“Our rules, not his.” Shade pointed out, irritation obvious and having shoved Michael aside easily to watch this for himself. “It’s a clever plan.” He continued, wishing he had thought of it himself, “Using innocent bystanders as shields for his robots. They can’t open fire without being accused of massacring thousands of disabled people.”

“Michael!” His mother sounded disturbed that her son seemed almost approving of what was going on.

As the military finally seemed to make up their mind, a burst of air sent everything that wasn’t nailed down flying. Luna palled and shot out the living room door, able to hear someone moving upstairs. Shade followed at a more sedate pace, easily able to hear the argument going on upstairs.

“Speeds, you can’t!” Luna was protesting, “Not alone!”

“There’s no one else, Luna.” Speedster snapped back, “None of the others are close enough and no one else can get close enough quickly enough. They’re firing on the cops, it won’t be long until they start firing back, innocent bystanders or not. I won’t let that happen. I can’t. This is my mess, I have to fix it.”

“And you’re changing into your costume from the film why?” Shade asked, poking his head around the door, watching as Speedster struggled with the zip on her catsuit, “You’re not a real superhero.”

“Because,” Speedster explained as Luna, who still looked torn about what was going on, batted her friend’s hands away from the zip and helped her do it up, “If I don’t wear anything that’s mine and at least try and hide my features the military may not trust me, but they shouldn’t be able to use facial recognition software either.” She finished as she slipped her mask down over her face, her eyes watching the pair carefully from the slits. “Now if you don’t mind...”

“Actually, I’m not here to stop you. You were told you had to clear up your messes.” Shade shrugged, “I just wanted to make sure you had this to give him. If he’s playing with the Club’s heroes, he needs to know the villain handbook.”

“You guys have a handbook?” Speedster looked amused despite the situation.

“Speeds, hang on one sec and I’ll come with you.” Luna promised, shooting into her room to get changed.

“Yes we do. Don’t read it, it’s for villain eyes only.” Shade nodded, watching his sister go, amused, “Also you’re not taking her, I need her.”

“No, I know I’m not.” Speedster reassured him, feeling weird in doing so, “I’ll make sure he gets this. You guys watch the TV, I’ll be on shortly.” With that she shot out of the building, waiting only until she had reached the road, at which point Shade heard one of Speedster’s signature sonic booms.

“Was that...?” Luna looked panicked as she slipped out of her room, half changed.

“Gone.” Shade nodded, amused at her reaction, “She had no intention of taking you. You’ll just slow her down.”

“But...” Luna looked hurt.

“Go get out of that mess.” Shade sniggered, “And do it fast. One of us will have to explain things to our parents and would you rather it was me?”

“No!” Luna yelped, shaking her head and darting for her room, “Very much no.” She continued as she shut the door behind her. Shade chuckled and headed downstairs, to where his parents were picking up everything that had been blown everywhere in Juliet’s first burst of speed.

On screen the military were setting up rather big guns and Shade couldn’t help but wonder with an amused detachment, whether Speedster would make it in time. Despite her speed, it was going to come close.

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.