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Peregrine
Of course, tonight, of all nights, would be the night my roommate decides to lock the window. I think mutinously, reaching into one of the pouches on my belt in an attempt to find the lock-picking tool that I remember stashing in there. My bad mood is only increased by the throbbing headache centered around my left eye, the pressure from my mask over the area just making things worse. What I’d really like to know, is just what was Kendra doing in my room? I distinctly recall leaving my bedroom window unlocked, and slightly ajar even, specifically to avoid this very scenario.
At long last, I manage to find the tool I’m looking for and unlock the door, pushing the sash up and hauling myself into the room. Now that I’m in, I dash across the room to lock the door, not wanting my roomie to walk in on me while I’m in uniform. That would be an unfortunate way to either give up my whole secret identity, or potentially get my alter ego accused of a B&E. Wow, a superhero with a criminal record, the source of my current headache would really get a kick out of that.
Now that I’m alone, with both the door shut and the blinds pulled down over the window, it’s time to escape from my kevlar-polymer body armor, hide the evidence, and put on something comfortable. Sweatpants after a night of patrolling the streets of Beldegard are like a blessing from the heavens. A soft, stretchy, cotton blessing.
I carefully remove my home-made costume. Benefits of being a multi-media art student, you learn surprisingly useful skills. Being a vigilante would’ve been considerably more inconvenient if I hadn’t known how to make my own threads. Though if the rumors I had heard from a couple of the other heroes in the area were to be believed, there was some sort of shop downtown that catered to our… particular clientele. Oh well, not a major issue, I was perfectly capable of designing and creating the “Peregrine” costume myself. For the most part, the costume was just a gray bodysuit with kevlar over anywhere that is in desperate need of protection. I would’ve preferred a bit more armor, but I’d realized when designing the suit that I would need to find a balance between mortality and mobility.
I had made concessions to both my theme and my sense of humor in a cape with dark flecks on a pale interior, and the mask, a sharp beak-like curve over my nose and the eyes lined with dark marks. Those emphasize the changes to my appearance… caused by my abilities. Everyone with abilities experiences a change to their appearance when they use their powers. My eyes change from their normal hazel-green to a metallic gold, similar to a bird of prey’s. I probably ought to provide a little more detail about the “other heroes” I’ve referenced. See, starting a few years ago, a sort of… virus, started going around. It gave the people infected unusual abilities, but some people started using these gifts to commit crimes, and the normal police can’t do much about these empowered individuals. So, a number of people who wanted to use their powers to do good got together and started planning.
They formed a sort of league, to fight the villains. Everyone was assigned a villainous opponent, whose nefarious actions they would be expected to counteract. A decision was made that due to the mistrust of people without abilities for those with them, the villains can’t just be put in prison. It takes too many resources to contain a large number of them. So, an accord was created between the heroes and the villains: Heroes would stop the villains, but wouldn’t put them in prison so long as no innocent lives were lost, and property damages were kept to a minimum. It worked shockingly well. So now, Beldegard had some of the highest, and most interesting crime rates in the United States.
I had been approached by the league when my abilities manifested. Enhanced speed, strength, reflexes, and the real kicker was my senses. I can see and hear things from ridiculously far away. That, combined with the speed, led me to the title for my alter ego.
When I joined, I’d been assigned a “nemesis” of my own to fight. Some guy who called himself “Frost”. The man could produce ice from his hands, and lowered the temperature of whatever space he inhabited. He had a nasty habit of frosting over my mask so I couldn’t see whenever we fought. That’s what he’d done right before landing the punch that gave me the black eye removing my mask revealed.
His own mask was made of his ice, as was a lot of his costume. Since it wasn’t ordinary ice, but produced by his abilities, it served him as well as my armor did me. His… ‘frosted’ haha, mask was ornate, and covered the top half of his face, as well as his hair turning white whenever he used his abilities. I say “turned” because it started fading back to his normal color (whatever that was) whenever he didn’t use his powers multiple times in succession. It was usually blond by the time our fights really ended, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a darker color usually.
Speaking of which, I’d gotten a view of his face from an entirely new angle this evening. Image of the man in mind, I pull out a sketchbook from my school bag. The first half of the book is taken up with concept art for my costume, designs and such that I had been contemplating near the beginning of my run as Peregrine. The rest consists of the sketches I’ve been making of Frost.
Another benefit of being an art student is having a decent visual memory, and the ability to put to paper what I’ve seen. For instance, the sketches I’ve been making of my nemesis in an attempt to figure out what he looks like when he’s in civvies. It’s not technically in the “rules” of the league to try to figure out your nemesis’ identity, but I’ve always been more curious than was probably good for me. Maybe I should’ve called myself “The Cat” instead.
I was just finishing a final curlicue on one of the patterns of the mask, and nearly jumped out my skin when Kendra started pounding on my door.
“Mel! You promised you’d help me study for my Bio exam Tuesday! Get your butt out here, I ordered a pizza” she yells, and I can hear her feet pattering back down the hall to the living room. Sighing, I close my sketchbook and set it with a stack of other notebooks on my desk before heading out to the living room. I stop by the kitchen and grab a bag of frozen peas on the way to put over my bruised eye. Groaning softly at the blissful coldness, I walk into the room where Kendra is sprawled across the couch. She sits up to give me a despairing look, gesturing at her biology textbook before her eyes widen in surprise and concern.
“Whoa, dude! What happened to your face!” she exclaims worriedly, walking toward me and pulling the peas away to reveal my quickly-purpling skin.
“I’m such an idiot, I walked right into an opening door today in the art building” I lie quickly, replacing the peas where they can do some good.
Kendra looked at me, slightly skeptical, but nodded and we turn to her copious amounts of biology homework. That takes up a few hours of our time, and it’s rather late by the time we turn in. By this point, I’m exhausted from school and patrol, and the world is practically swirling around me. I barely remember to put the notebooks I’ll need for class tomorrow into my bag. I grab the stack sitting on my desk and shove them into the satchel I use to carry my belongings, leaving my desk empty except for a mug filled with paint brushes on the corner. I stare at them wistfully for a moment, it’s been too long since I last worked with paints, before hauling myself into bed and falling immediately to sleep.
***
The next day, after classes, I have to go to the bank to check up on a few things with my account. I had recently opened a new one, and I wanted to make sure all of my affairs were in order. So far it had been a pretty good day, and despite still being tired, I manage to smile brightly at the teller whose window I’ve gotten to.
That smile is wiped abruptly off my face when a horribly familiar laugh rings out through the center atrium of the bank, and the room sinks to temperatures near freezing. A blast of ice comes from the direction of the doorway, encasing the bronze statue of the bank’s founder in a frozen tomb.
“Everyone on the ground! This is just business: Cooperate, and nobody will get hurt!”
Frost. And now I’m stuck as a hostage, so no chance of slipping off and changing into my suit to help these civilians without revealing myself. In retrospect, I probably looked out of place standing there glaring into the middle distance, contemplating why my life is like this, and what I must have done in the previous one to deserve all of this nonsense, while those around me scrambled to get onto the floor in an effort to avoid angering the potentially-dangerous super villain. I wasn’t particularly concerned, my nemesis, despite his name, really isn’t cold-blooded enough to kill some random civilian for something like delayed compliance with his demands. Honestly, in that way, I suppose you could say Frost is pretty chill (I hate myself).
However, those around me didn’t know Frost as well as I do, and some concerned older lady decided that my college-student hind end needed to be saved from my own stupid self, so she grabbed the bottom of my bag and attempted to use it to pull me to the floor. Extra unfortunately, my elderly and rather temperamental satchel did not appreciate this affront to its dignity, and decided proper revenge would be to have the strap fastening pull open, causing the woman’s next exuberant tug to send it falling to the floor, flying open, and sending one of my notebooks sliding across the floor to the middle of the atrium. Landing directly at Frost’s feet.
He looked down curiously, and bent to pick up the book. My blood ran cold when I saw what it was. That was not meant to be in that bag! That was never meant to see the outside of my apartment. And yet, there it was. My sketchbook, somehow having mistakenly gotten into my bag, was now directly in the hands of my arch nemesis.
And of course, it just had to have fallen open to one of the pages that contained multiple sketches of the man himself.
Kill me now.
***
Frost
It had been a slow day in Beldegard, and the waning heat of summer was making my powers flicker beneath the surface of my skin, causing my hair to lighten against my will and making hands feel itchy from want to shoot out ice and lower the temperature around me to escape the horrible weather. I couldn’t wait for winter, when my powers were at their peak and I didn’t have to deal with the nuisance of warmth in my vicinity. In the meantime, the itch in my hands made another impulse more prevalent in my mind. If my abilities are going to be reactive anyways, may as well do something productive with them. Besides, maybe a good fight and some entertaining banter with Peregrine would help distract me from my foul mood.
Hmm, nobody in the VOBS ("Villains of Beldegard Society", lame name, I know) had attacked the Beldegard Central Bank recently. That ought to do well enough for a nice stretch for my abilities, as well as serving to attract my nemesis for a fight. So, I head back to my apartment to drop off my bags and change into my “costume”, as my roommate Rodney so charmingly calls it. He’s sitting on the couch playing one of his video games when I walk in, one of the more intricate ones with a great deal of lore that I could never hope to comprehend without at least a few hours of study. He waves as I enter, and I salute back, walking straight back to my own room. Glancing at the clock, I decide that I do indeed have plenty of time to rob the bank, and ought to still have enough time this evening to make a decent start on the Engineering homework I need to complete over the next few days.
Plans decided, I swap out my civilian attire for the black body armor that makes up the majority of my costume, and the blue thermal shirt that goes over it. Wearing the shirt helps me gain better control of just how far the temperature around me drops. Finally, I use a bit of my abilities to construct an opaque mask of ice that covers the top half of my face, this expenditure of power making my normally-dark-brown hair lighten to a dirty blond. And so my transformation from Tim, the engineering student; to Frost, the cold-wielding super villain, is complete.
And now to storm Beldegard Central.
As I travel towards the bank, it occurs to me that I probably ought to apologize to Peregrine when she shows up. I had sucker-punched her pretty badly the night before, and I doubted that had been a fun injury to explain to whoever she needed to interact with in her normal life. Of course, maybe she had a system with someone like what I have with Rodney, where they know about her ah, extracurricular activities and know what her mysterious wounds and bruises stem from. Based on what I’ve been able to see of her though, I rather doubt that. She strikes me more as a Spiderman type than an Iron Man, when it came to keeping secret identities a secret.
At that point, I reach the bank, striding into the building and causing the room to drop to a low temperature, as people's’ breath starts to fog in front of their faces. Dramatic entrances are a specialty of mine, and I can’t bear to disappoint, so I send a blast of power towards the bronze statue of the bank’s owner, turning the bronze statue into an ice cube.
“Everyone on the ground! This is just business: Cooperate, and nobody will get hurt!” I shout, spinning in a circle to take in the people in the bank. Not too large a crowd, that’s good. My eyes catch on one girl who’s still standing, facing the teller window she had apparently been interacting with prior to my assault on the building. There’s an older woman on the ground who’s gesturing frantically at her, trying to get her to sit down as everyone else is moving to, but she seems oblivious. I can’t blame her, she looks about my age, really quite pretty, and I can perfectly understand how out of it one can get after pulling an all-nighter or two for a class. I’d guess that’s what’s going on here.
The girl doesn’t notice the woman’s verbal attempts at getting her onto the ground, so the woman reaches for the girls bag, trying to pull her down that way, but instead the bag’s strap slips, causing the bag to fall open, and a notebook with a red and white cover slides across the floor in my direction, stopping just at my feet. I reach down to pick it up, not noticing the girl’s mortified face before the sketches on the page in front of me. All of which are shockingly good representations of me.
“Have you been sketching me?” I ask incredulously, turning to the girl just in time to see her flush crimson, and then she stalks toward me, once more oblivious to the horrified looks of those around her. She grabs her bag on the way, then snatches the sketchbook out of my hand.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you that it’s rude to look through people’s things without their permission?” she snaps, and I stand there flabbergasted. Now, I may not be the most dangerous villain in the VOBS, but I was no lightweight either. It’s not like it was Marmot Man she had decided to antagonize, and I was both shocked and awed by her brazenness.
“Manners generally aren’t the predominant concern when one is committing grand larceny” I reply, gesturing expansively to the space around us. “And you’re one to talk, don’t you know it’s not particularly polite to point out the social gaffes of others in front of an audience?” I see her eyes flash dangerously, clearly planning a rebuttal, but I manage to get my next bit out first.
“But I suppose I can forgive the slight from such a talented artist, and work of art, as yourself,” I say with a smile, grin expanding when the girl’s eyes widen and her blush intensifies in color. She’s almost as much fun to mess with as Peregrine, and will certainly serve for a grand distraction until my nemesis arrives.
However, before my new verbal sparring partner can return with a strike of her own, the police arrive outside. Not Peregrine, but a distinctive nuisance nonetheless. While she’s momentarily distracted by the sirens outside, I manage to snag the sketchbook back out of her bag. She’s right, it’s impolite, but I am quite literally a thief so I don’t know what exactly she was expecting. I manage to push it into my jacket to hide it from her view as I smirk and salute the girl.
“Thanks for the conversation, but I unfortunately have to take my exit now” I can’t resist adding on “and thank you for the lovely new portraits”. I see her eyes narrow before I turn and use my abilities to put up a wall of ice between myself and officers to make my escape. I turn into the dark alleys, and run laughing back towards home. Once I arrive, I wave once more to Rodney, this time in a much better mood, and go into my room to look over the drawings I’ve swiped.
The latter half of the book consists entirely of sketches of me from various angles, mostly my face, with a surprising amount of emphasis on the varying patterns of my mask. That’s rather flattering, a put a bit of work into making my masks look elegant, but I had been beginning to suspect that nobody really noticed. Clearly, the lovely young artist definitely did.
However, the first half wasn’t me, but rather, my nemesis. The whole first half of the book was drawings of Peregrine. It takes me a few moments to realize though, that these aren’t simply sketches of a subject the girl had observed. These are design schematics, an artistic format that I’m far more familiar with.
Well well well, my nemesis has quite the talent for sketching, doesn’t she. I’ll have to return this, and see if I can figure out how to get her to tell me just why she’s been making drawings of me. And maybe, if all goes ideally, ask her if she’d like to get coffee sometime.
Though, I guess ice cream would be more my style.