Chapter Text
The morning sun invaded Madison's bedroom, dragging her from her dreams of banks and trade deals with a slow, reluctant mumble.
"No, insider trading doesn't work like that, candelabra..."
It took her a few moments to realize she was no longer talking to furniture in business suits, and a few moments more to place her location--her bedroom, on the twenty fifth of December 2010. She sat up with a grumble, running her hand through her hair. That had been... a weird dream, really. There was a being made of starlight, a... casino slot machine? Then a lot of talking and something about birds... she'd been in the middle of a banking meeting with a wardrobe and her cadre when she woke up.
The weirdest part was that she remembered the banking talk. Loans, interest, obfuscating income, money laundering... that wardrobe had been a master criminal, and for some reason the crime stuff was sticking in her head instead of fading away.
Madison huffed a half-amused "kuh" as she wrangled herself out of her bedsheets. A dream that gave her perfect knowledge of how to dodge taxes? Oh, like anything she'd learned had any real world value. Even it was somehow real, that sort of skill wasn't very useful for a teenage girl whose income was maybe a hundred a month if her parents were feeling generous. Maybe she could play the stock market... nah, that wasn't 'tax evasion' so much as 'investment' which, Madison knew, was a very different thing.
With a final yawn, she made her way to the bathroom for her morning routine, dismissing the dream from her mind as easily as her memories of her midnight wish.
"There she is," Madison's mom said as she noticed her coming down the hall a quarter hour later. "Good morning, honey."
"Morning," Madison replied, letting out a cheerful hum as the smell of fresh pancakes hit her nose. "Hey Dad."
"Hey Mads. Merry christmas!" Her dad smiled. "You want to open up your presents now?"
Madison rolled her eyes with a grin. The Clements family christmas wasn't as big as TV christmases, what with there only being three of them, so their gifting usually went by in under an hour, then they'd spend the rest of the morning enjoying 'christmas breakfast' before Mom and Dad went off to work, leaving Madison alone to do... whatever. It was... nice, peaceful in a way. But of course her dad would make jokes about 'maybe you want to wait' or something every year, and while she understood them now they were still dad jokes. That is to say, funny, but nobody would ever actually admit it.
"Sure, Dad. And..." Something in her heart moved for a moment. "...actually... maybe we could, I don't know, bake cookies before you head out?"
"Yeah, that sounds nice. Little odd you want to bake, though. I never thought you would be interested in that."
"Yeah, I... guess I just want to do something a little more christmasy? I don't know." Madison shrugged. "Could be fun."
Her parents shared a look, before her mother smiled. "I think we can be a little late to work today."
The baking session had been... weirdly entertaining. Mostly because of how the family teased each other. The baking itself was boring, and they took the time while the cookies were baking to open their presents. Madison had got some really cute clothes from Dad and a book on heroes from Mom; she'd gotten her mom a necklace and her dad a new tie, while they'd gotten each other a fancy dress and a book on cars, respectively. Predictable, but comforting, and the cookies were good too.
She didn't usually miss her parents on Christmas afternoons, she thought she'd outgrown that, but... well, here she was, alone in the house, and it felt... weirdly empty all of the sudden. Which was strange, the house wasn't big enough to be empty; there were four and a half rooms centered around a single hallway, not more than ten like in the big houses she'd seen some of the more wealthy sorts in the city have. True, it wasn't quite as small as an apartment, but there was a reason she didn't invite anybody over.
Well... there were multiple reasons...
Madison shook her head, trying to distract herself from her thoughts with some other, more persistent thoughts. The weird dream she'd had this morning had mostly faded away, but the parts about moving money persisted. She had thoughts about shell companies, about offshore banking accounts, hell, she even had thoughts about digital money tracking. After a few moments, curiosity drove her to her computer, where she looked up as much as she could about the subjects bouncing around in her head. It wasn't like any of the stuff she was thinking about could actually be real, right? It had to be a dream. Dream logic. Yeah.
An hour passed.
Another.
Madison Clements, slowly, leaned back from her monitor. Everything she'd considered was... accurate. Every little trick. Every loophole. Every bit of white-collar fraud. Somehow, her dream had communicated knowledge she did not have and couldn't have learned.
So... cape, obviously. Had to be a cape doing a thing. It wasn't like she was a cape. She couldn't have just woken up with powers.
...right?
As Madison spun around in her chair, she rose a hand halfway. Then she hesitated. Why a hand? She should try flying, right...?
No... no, there was something. Something else, now that she focused. Something, and if she pushed--
Water did not spray from her hand, there was not enough force for it to be considered a spray. It drizzled from her fingertips like they were a collection of faucets, five thin streams succumbing to gravity the moment they came into being.
"Oh," said Madison.
She cut off the power, looking inward at what she'd discovered in the ephemeral condition of herself. The water thing was there, and her tax evasion knowledge was... over there, in a different cubbyhole in her mind, packed tightly enough that she didn't think anything else would fit. And there was... something else? It was in a third cubbyhole, and she almost missed it; when she poked at it with her thoughts, it didn't seem to do anything at all.
"Okay," Madison said to the room. "I'm... well, I'm not a cape, because wow my powers suck, but... I've got powers. Somehow."
That was... she had powers. She'd just woken up with powers. Could she... would she wake up with more powers? Would she get more powerful over time, like Dauntless? Or was she stuck as a cut-rate Eidolon? She'd be the most pathetic hero in the world--
Hero....
Madison stared at the wet spot on the floor, not for any real interest in the dampness but more... because she needed somewhere to point her eyes.
Like she could ever be a hero. Her, a high school bully, and that was with some generous interpretation of the situation. Hell, she wasn't even sure she wanted to be a hero. Or a rogue. Or... anything like that. The cape scene was fun to watch, but it would be terrifying to get caught up in.
And yet...
It wasn't the fighting that kept her attention. Or the colorful costumes. Or... well, okay, the gossip was fun, really. But the idea of being a cape... it came with attention. Something about her that wasn't just her position. Something about her that wasn't just her looks. Something... important. Something that mattered.
Someone that mattered.
That's what it came down to, in the end. Madison didn't want to rush headlong into danger, or smile for the cameras, or prance about in spandex. No, what she wanted... what she'd always wanted, now that she thought about it, was to be somebody that mattered. Maybe not even made a difference mattered, or important, but just... mattered. To somebody. Inherently.
"Right," she muttered sarcastically to the empty room. "Tax fraud and dripfingers. Like anybody would want a cape like me." Hell, even if she got new powers, there was no guarantee they'd be anything worth talking about.
Still... she had powers. That... had to count for something. Right?