Chapter Text
The room felt slanted. It looked perfectly normal, but Alex’s vision swayed for a moment and she put a hand flat on the wall to steady herself.
"Huh", she thought intelligently.
The wall felt cold beneath her hand, but that was probably just because the hero she was fighting had ice powers.
The hero. She was fighting. Right.
Alex turned and grinned at the sight of the ice hero in midair moving in slow motion.
He was shouting something with his arms raised at strange angles to perform some pretentious move that would surely be devastating to someone who couldn’t slow time.
Alex didn’t use time distortion often, because then the fight wouldn’t be fun, but today, she felt like she just wanted to go home.
She was fine, she just hated the cold.
Alex sauntered over to the hero’s chair and draped herself over it while she waited for the time distortion to let up.
She didn’t have to wait long.
As soon as she crossed her boots, with the faux fur, the hero shouted “YOU WILL NEVER BEST ME VILLAIN,” and valiantly crushed the empty space Alex once occupied with a pillar of ice.
“Behind you,” Alex snickered.
The hero whipped his head around and waved his arms to summon ice particles that formed an army of sculptures. He gave a sharp whistle and a wave of ice arrows, soldiers on horseback, and swordsmen flew towards Alex.
Alex blew a puff of air onto her pointer finger, and a small golden flame appeared and grew into a fiery snake that twisted into the air gracefully before striking down at the ice army.
“ACHOO”
The room was quiet as the sound of a sneeze echoed past the ice stalactites. Snow dust filled the air as Alex and the hero stared at each other across the aftermath.
The fire snake never reached the ice army. Instead several steel bars the size of tree trunks had been stabbed through the figures.
“Did you- did you mean to do that?” asked the hero.
Alex closed her mouth since it had dropped open in surprise. She knew she could stab people with steel trees, but she really hadn’t meant to this time.
“Of course I meant to, hero!” Alex said, “Man, imagine being bested by a sneeze that’s gotta be embarrassing.”
The hero opened his mouth to retort, but another sneeze from Alex dumped two tons of water on both of them.
The hero made a what-the-heck motion from his position under several shields of ice he made to not die from 2,000 pounds of water. Alex made a what-the-fuck motion at the ceiling.
Floating in the ice chair, Alex squeezed the end of her cape while the hero decided that it would be best if he left to find back up.
He was halfway through a secret passage in the wall, when Alex looked up, “Oh no you don’t,” she said and tried to block it off with an energy barrier.
Key word being “tried”.
An S-tier sneeze sent out a tornado of air that rocketed her backwards and she slammed into the wall.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Alex woke up feeling great.
Great as in greatly considering murder if she had to be cold for another second.
…
Okay that was a second, time for murder.
Alex groaned and rubbed her head. Time to assess the damage. She looked up and saw that she was underwater… Good news, she could breathe underwater.
Bad news, there were a lot of shapes moving around above the water searching the ice heroes base for something, probably her.
She swam over to the waterproof electricity box behind a now underwater desk, and used a molten hand to melt it. The power flickered out, and she could hear the many heroes that arrived as backup start barking orders and forming a plan.
She chuckled to herself before breaking the surface of the water, and rising up dramatically and lit by the yellow glow of her eyes.
Darkness and confusion did not bode well for the heroes, as a few splashes let Alex know her blasts of magma met their targets, but her head suddenly pulsed painfully.
She squeezed her eyes shut, and when she opened them again she couldn’t see.
“Ah, well that can’t be good,” she thought. She realized that she could still see a little bit around the edges of her field of vision, but it was like a big blob object was right in the middle.
In the middle of figuring this out, a hero landed a blow to her lower back. Her kidney was complaining now too, wow physical forms were inconvenient.
A stinging feeling crossed her arm, something tore her cape, and what felt like a boulder slammed into her stomach.
Just how many heroes showed up anyways? Cowards.
She wished she hadn’t turned off the lights, she wished she could see properly, she was stronger than all of them if she could just figure out what was happening to her.
From the corner of her eye, she saw a coordinated attack, evident by the glow of several heroes’ powers working together.
Alex tried to warp away, but that just caused her head to pulse in pain again. She tried to slow time again which really made her feel like the room was spinning.
She could still do this.
She just needed -
A blast of multi-colored light stopped her train of thought.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
“Yes, this is the villain, sir.”
“Is it safe to allow her to be moved through the city?”
“It’s the fastest way to Eternity, and besides, she has the power-cancelling hand cuffs AND leg cuffs this time.”
“Alright, I’d still like to send one of my people with you to drive the truck, that way you all can focus on making sure we all keep our jobs. Hey, you there, go with them and call me if anything happens, got it?”
“Yessir”
Alex kept her eyes closed, partially because it made her head hurt less, and partially because there had been a voice in her head telling her to not move. It sounded a lot like that cute agent that got assigned to drive her to prison.
They seemed familiar.