Think, Mark, think!
Having acquired a suit, I didn't rush headlong into the turmoil of superhero freelancing, as Will expected me to. Truth be told, he hadn't seen my suit at all yet, and considering its design, it's not a given that he would recognize me even if he saw me on TV.
But soon something did happen that forced me to put my new red tights on under my clothes and, slipping the mask into my pocket, secretly leave the house behind my mother's back to head to a neighboring city.
The blame lay with a report playing on the local news channel about a terrorist attack in a shopping mall. It was a very special case.
First, the terrorists who took the building's staff and visitors hostage didn't demand money, a helicopter and a free air corridor to Mexico, or even twenty pizzas. Instead, they demanded that a very specific super fly to them, providing a description to the police and the press. And in this description—red hair, a pink suit with a skirt, five feet tall—one could recognize a superheroine who had recently made a name for herself while apprehending a dangerous cyborg villain known as Killcannon (Killing Cannon, yeah... let's do without translation this time). And this heroine, as is easy to guess, was Atom Eve, my classmate in history class, a good friend in my past life, and a member of a yet-to-be-formed teenage superhero team. True, the apprehension of Killcannon wasn't a particularly high-profile case, so the reporters couldn't yet figure out exactly who the criminals were demanding, instead listing various female heroes with a penchant for pink who might fit the description... there turned out to be surprisingly many of them.
Second, Eve once mentioned that she had "dealt with her past" even before she met Rex and joined the team, but never told the details, limiting herself to saying it was the worst day of her life.
And third, thanks to the temporary incapacitation of the majority of the Guardians of the Globe, my father—Omni-Man, is still in high demand. And today is no exception; quite the opposite, today he faces a long and exhausting battle with one of Earth's quite significant internal threats. Internal not only in the sense of belonging to the planet, but also in the sense that these guys literally live in magma.
(God! I hope Mark gets his powers soon)
And he will be there all day, warming his Viltrumite bones in the embraces of the Magmanites, which means I have some freedom of action... until Mom realizes her son is missing yet again. I can't wait to move out of my parents' house: when I didn't have powers and certain, let's say, adult needs, living in my parents' house was like a fully-provided resort, but now it's a constant headache.
When I arrived at the scene under the guise of an ordinary onlooker, of which there were many, I discovered that Black Samson had already beaten Eve and me to it. However, he wasn't in a hurry to start solving the problem and just stood with the cops, guessing exactly who the criminals were demanding to be handed over. Had this happened a couple of years ago, Samson, I have almost no doubt, would have already tried to do something himself: after all, he didn't get his spot in the Guardians through a racial quota. But the current Samson is only a pale shadow of his former self. And this is quite obvious to anyone who has followed his career with any attention. He hasn't participated in serious battles for half a year—ever since he almost died in one of them—and only shows up at such minor incidents where he can still do something and remind his fans of his existence. Whatever the nature of Samson's powers is, they are leaving him.
Five minutes of police pacing back and forth and sluggish attempts to start negotiations with the captors later, the guest of honor herself appeared on the horizon. Dive-bombing behind the cops and Samson, Eve took a deep breath for resolve, and with a brave look, as if she had done this a hundred times already, asked an officer what the matter was here.
During a short conversation, it suddenly became clear that the newcomer perfectly fit the criminals' description, and Eve immediately declared that she would handle it. Samson pretended everything was fine, and only the officer showed a modicum of concern, suspecting that the hero under the mask was too young, but Eve ostentatiously brushed off his involvement, stating that everything was perfectly fine and she was a big hero.
And... she decided to simply play into the enemy's hands and walk into the set trap alone, having not the slightest idea what was waiting for her there... with that attitude, it's no wonder this day became a nightmare for her in her past life.
"Seriously, Eve. There are sometimes threats on this planet that manage to drag even me—a larva of a cosmic superbeing—through the mud, where are you sticking your nose? One lucky bullet is enough for you."
I pulled on the mask covering my eyes, but left the suit under my clothes for now—I don't want the first appearance of my fake superhero persona to be so close to home. But I still need to keep an eye on Eve. Yes, she survived this encounter in that world, but Ave Maria didn't wipe the floor with the Guardians there either, so I'm not sure of anything anymore and... I'm worried about her... lest something happens. After all, right now Eve is still a loner, neither Robot's team nor even that idiot Rex will come to her aid—she simply hasn't met them yet, and there is even less hope for Samson.
She even went through the main entrance, not even thinking of hiding her presence or at least somehow preparing for a sudden attack. I, taking advantage of the lack of aerial surveillance of the building, infiltrated inside through a huge hole in the supermarket's roof, which the criminals themselves had apparently left.
And I immediately saw the instigators of the commotion themselves—thanks to my super-speed, practically equivalent to invisibility when it comes to beings with normal perception—there were only five of them and they were very strange kids.
First, they were all obviously children, and the youngest looked about ten years old at most.
Second, they all had severe physical deformities. And the younger the child, the more significant their health problems were.
And considering that they were all dressed in identical clothes—tight, swimsuit-like shorts plus tops for the girls—while each had a serial number on their belts, starting from two and ending with six, a suspicion about the origin of this group of five immediately crept into my head. The oldest—Number Two—a blond teenager, maybe a year younger than me or something like that, was the most normal-looking, a small cleft lip and a creepy bang covering his eyes not counting. But the rest...
The next in age, a red-haired girl, had a significant defect in her skull bones and either a crack in the bone or a lobotomy scar on her forehead with a bald patch around it stretching all the way to the top of her head.
"Number Four"—a boy—had no body hair at all, and all his skin had a bright red hue, as if burned, plus, again, a distorted face.
"Number Five"—again a girl—but you could only guess that thanks to the top, since her face was disfigured by a hump descending from her forehead to her nose and extending to her left cheek. From somewhere on the back of her head, a few pathetic tufts of blond hair hung down.
"Number Six"—that very ten-year-old boy—I would have taken for a non-human life form altogether in any other situation. He was completely lilac-colored, and only ribs and veins showed blue through his translucent skin. But he had completely normal, albeit completely gray, hair.
Just the appearance of these kids alone would have been enough to ruin the psyche of someone overly impressionable, especially if you think about what kind of life they had.
"So the reports were true—you're alive!" the oldest spoke up, addressing Eve. "If you behave yourself, it will stay that way."
"E-excuse me," Eve answered, stumbling, discouraged by the appearance of the children and the speaker's tone. "I... do I know you?"
"I spent most of my life in a tube." Number Two began to narrate, walking towards Eve. "After you 'died', they decided they needed to try again—move on, believe in the future."
He walked almost right up to the girl and reached out his hand to her, as if wanting to make sure of the reality of her existence, while continuing his story.
"When I was born, they tried to teach me how to be as good as..." at this moment, when he had almost touched Eve, frightened, she recoiled and created a protective wall of dense air, which cleanly severed the guy's hand.
Now that wasn't nice... he hadn't even done anything to you yet!
But the pain and loss of the limb didn't alarm Number Two at all—he didn't even bleed from the stump—and he continued his speech from the exact spot he had stopped a second earlier:
"As good as you—the daughter who was perfect in their imagination."
"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" Eve panicked, staring wide-eyed at the consequences of using her powers. But he didn't need her apologies; he calmly picked up his hand from the floor and continued his accusatory speech:
"I tried again and again to bring their perfect ideas of you to life, but I failed time after time, and they... put me back in the fucking tube!" Towards the end, he dropped the act of calmness and coldness and transitioned to a scream. "To them, you had no flaws, because they never even knew you! How could I measure up?!"
At the end, he pressed his hand to the stump, and it immediately grew back on. But it wasn't regeneration at all; I think he directly controls the molecules and atoms of his body himself, rearranging them at his own discretion—which confirms his words, because this is the exact same ability that Eve herself possesses. True, she always said she couldn't manipulate living flesh, but Number Two clearly doesn't have such limitations.
"And now it turns out you were alive all this time. And you are just as beautiful as they said!" He had completely wound himself up and flown into a rage, trying to strike Eve with his reattached arm. "And I hate you for it!"
A so-so idea, because Eve had already honed her abilities to automation and, of course, again erected a wall of dense air between herself and the attacker, against which he smashed his hand, this time practically into mincemeat.
"We all hate you," he added, following the recoiling Eve with his gaze. "The little ones probably hate you even more than I do. But they can't say as many words to you, because unlike me, they never left the tube long enough to learn how to speak."
And they rushed to attack Eve again, this time as a whole crowd, but only to maim themselves against the dense protective dome erected by the girl. Mostly they transformed their own bodies, growing muscles, turning arms into maces, sledgehammers, or blades. The smallest one even turned into a cloud of lilac smoke altogether, but only to move right up to the dome in that state, after which he became himself again and exhaled a beam of dense lilac air into Eve's dome—and out of everything they demonstrated, this was the closest to what Eve did herself.
And what should I do? The situation turned out to be not so simple. The kids, of course, are wrong to blame all their troubles on Eve, because she didn't choose to be born a perfect superweapon and be saved by her creator-father. If anyone is to blame for their crippled existence and terrible fate, it's him, and those idiots who tried to continue the project having lost the lead scientist and all the results of his work... speaking of scientists...
"And how did you sneak in here?" I caught a gray-bearded old man in a snow-white lab coat, who was secretly making his way through the rubble towards the hostages—who everyone had safely forgotten about with Eve's appearance—rushing to get away from the scene of the superfamilial showdown. "Tired of living?"
"Let me go!" the unexpectedly spry old man began to struggle desperately when I lifted him off the floor, holding him by the collar of his clothes. "I have to help her!"
"And how will you help Samantha? Become a hostage in the hands of her opponents?"
"I..." he wanted to object to something, but apparently realized the counter-productivity of his actions himself—he's a scientist after all, he should know how to use his brains. "I'll think of something. Wait, you know her name? You know her secret identity? Who are you anyway?"
"Too many questions at once... but yes, I'm a super, and I know Eve."
"Then you have to help her! I can't do it, but you can... they're about to break through the barrier!"
All this time, Eve's creepy super-brothers and super-sisters continued to pound on her dome, and their efforts finally began to bear fruit—the walls cracked.
"Calm down, grandpa, she's not there anymore." And confirming my words, Eve popped out of a tunnel under the floor that she had made with her power.
After which she hurried to hide from the attackers behind the wall next to us and... began to pray.
"Dear God," she addressed the ceiling, clasping her hands in a pleading gesture, not noticing us standing on the other side of the opening sheltering her. "I've been a good girl this year. Please replace these scary kids with five little Killcannons and I will never ask for anything else in my entire life!"
"Eve!" while I was coming up with a witty joke, the old man drew Samantha's attention. Asshole, ruined the moment—this is a first impression, I had a chance to show myself in the best light!
"Doc?" Under the gaze of the shocked Eve, I put her creator on the floor. "And you?" she shifted a bewildered look to me.
"Think, Mark, think, I urgently need a witty joke, all is not lost yet!"
P.S. Snotty Eve, during her recent debut, by rights, this picture should have been placed in the chapter where Mark mentioned the abundance of various flying wildness, including in children's form, but let it be here: