Chapter Text
History is the worst class. Nia sat there for 45 minutes just to hear about these old guys that died many eons ago. She wanted to finish a painting that she started yesterday in art class.
It was a simple painting, an oil painting of a person Nia found on Pinterest, with some flowers at the bottom. Nia planned to use this warm color palette that she randomly generated, because God knows Nia couldn’t pick colors herself. It had no meaning to it, though if Nia’s art teacher asked, it had the answer to the universe hidden underneath each stroke.
Nia could only think about how in a few minutes the bell would ring and she would be able to work on the piece for two straight periods, due to the fact she had study hall right before her art class.
Her best friend would be there. They have the same class next period. She would be there with her pretty eyes, pretty hair, interesting—
“Harris! Since you seem so enthralled in our lesson today, could you tell me what was the first ever capital of the U.S?” Nia’s teacher, Mr.Sullivan, cut through her thoughts.
Mr.Sullivan was a pain in Nia’s ass. He would always call on her, seemed to grade her papers more harshly, and would call on her randomly. Like now. He is tall and lanky, and could fool someone into thinking that he was still 30. But everyone knows that he’s probably 50. He dressed like he was at least. He had always worn a buttoned up shirt with some old looking khaki pants with some crusty brown loafers that clacked every time he walked a step.
Nia jumped before answering, “Uh…Washington D.C?”
The class erupted in laughter as Nia answered the question wrong. She shrunk into her desk, hiding under her sweatshirt.
“Start paying attention Harris, you never know when there is going to be a pop quiz!” Mr.Sullivan laughed quietly.
Yeah, Nia hated history.
Thankfully, the bell rang for the next period, and Nia quickly started packing up. When she was finished packing, a hand slammed onto her desk.
“You need to get your brain out of the clouds!” Nia looked up to see Emilia Silva. Emmie was one of her closest friends, she was almost exactly the same as Nia, except she was more energetic. She was wearing the same overall dress she wore everyday with a white puffy shirt underneath. She had her hair in box braids, which were tied back into a long ponytail. Not only was she on the cheerleading squad, giving her the ideal body for Instagram, her skin was a chocolate brown and her eyes were the same. She was literally perfect.
“I was just thinking about my painting! You can’t blame me, I was technically thinking academically.” Nia sighed, “Whatever, I get to work on it now anyways.”
Nia got up and walked towards her study hall with Emmie talking about some random topics, topics that always came up.
“Practice was so annoying yesterday.” Emmie groaned.
“Practice is always annoying to you.” Nia softly laughed, “I don’t know how you can still do cheerleading when you complain about it all the time.”
“I have been doing it for way too long, I got attached!” Emmie laughed, “But seriously the drama yesterday was insane!”
“Oh really?” Nia raised an eyebrow, walking into the art room. This was their routine. Emmie would come into Nia’s history class and would update Nia on all of the cheerleading drama while Nia paints.
Nia grabbed the oil paints, the turpentine, and brushes she needed as Emmie was rambling on about some girl not being able to tumble.
“I am telling you! She is trying to be captain when she can’t do the simplest things!“ Emmie sat down next to Nia, “She’s a try-hard!”
“Why don’t you try and be captain then?” Nia asked, placing her painting on one of the easels.
“Too much work.” Emmie put it simply, “Besides, if I am the least judgemental person on the cheer team, I don’t want to know what the other girls say about people.”
“I see.” Nia had finished the underpainting yesterday, so she was just painting in the details.
Painting was an escape for Nia. Emmie would probably make fun of her for being philosophical, but it was true. After fighting as EG, the next day she would try to paint to forget the day prior. Normally it’s some random pictures that Nia found online, other times she comes up with a painting based on what happened while patrolling, if something interesting happened.
Emmie was oddly quiet that day though. Normally Emmie would enter into Nia’s painting time and ask her things like “Did you get good food for lunch?” or “Did you do the homework from last week?” or “Wanna hear about this guy everyone is obsessed with?”
But today she was silent. She was mostly just looking at Nia, as she painted the details on the roses.
“You good Emmie?” Nia asked concerned, “You are oddly quiet.”
“Can I try and paint?” Emmie suddenly asked, “I-I know I have never asked before, but it seems fun.”
This was new. This was so out of character of Emmie to do. She suddenly seemed shy and reclusive, unlike her energetic self. As if she was asking to do something against the law, like stealing or murder.
Nia was thrown off guard, “W-what?”
“Nevermind! It was stupid anyways!” Emmie suddenly blurted out, placing her hands on her face.
“N-no it’s fine!” Nia stood from where she was sitting and gestured for Emmie to sit in her seat, “I’ll help you.”
Emmie sat in Nia’s seat, and Nia sat next to her. Nia then grabbed a brush with paint on it and handed it to her.
“Okay, just paint in that one section there, since it’s a solid color, so you can get used to it.” Nia said, and pointed at a section in the background that was still blank.
Emmie silently and slowly started painting that one section, the brush going only in one direction, which proved to be hurting the brush. Nia asked for the brush back, and painted a small stroke of paint with the brush going back and forth.
“This way it won’t harm the brush, and you get more paint out of it.” Nia painted a smaller section, out of the corner of her eye she noticed how Emmie was just staring at her and not at the painting.
Emmie was out of it, staring at how Nia’s arm moved while she painted, and how Nia’s hair was tied up and it’s super messy because she didn’t tie her hair correctly, despite the fact that Emmie clearly offered to do it for her only for her to reject—
Nia stopped painting, “Emmie?”
Emmie jumped, seemingly getting her mind out of whatever she was thinking about.
“Get your head out of the clouds Emmie!” Nia said mockingly.
“Oh shut up!” Emmie playfully shoved her.
Suddenly, both Nia’s and Emmie’s phone went off. Nia looked at what it was on her phone and it was Ana.
The Most Boring Hero 1:30pm:
Emergency. Suit in the car. Get your ass over here.
The Most Boring Hero 1:31:
Also I brought lunch at Dad’s request so you don’t starve.
Both of the girls stood up and at the same time went, “I have to go somewhere!”
They awkwardly laughed and jinxed themselves again, “Where are you going?”
The girls stared at each other awkwardly for a couple seconds, before Nia spoke up.
“I’ll just go…” Nia gestured towards the door, grabbing her bag.
“Yeah…” Emmie said, before she ran out the door.
Nia ran towards Ana’s car, which was parked in the loop in front of the lobby. She quickly threw her backpack to the backseat and jumped to the front seat. Ana was already fully geared and ready to go as Prometheus.
“What’s the emergency?” Nia asked, grabbing her suit from the glovebox.
“Apparently, Icestorm, Blade and Dreamer are going to attack another laboratory for materials.” Prometheus states.
“You would think since they are a super big villian company you could afford the chemicals.” Nia joked.
Nia finally changed into her suit, it was still a tight fit, but not really in a bad way. Her communicator on her arm was the only bulky thing on her suit. It was purple with light purple stripes, which Percy once joked that it looked like Captain Marvel’s suit, to the point where Nia almost changed her suit entirely. Nia put her hair up into two space buns, and now she was finally ready.
“I don’t understand while you tie your hair up.” Prometheus states, “It’s so inconvenient.”
“It’s more inconvenient to have hair in your face than taking the time to tie it up.” Nia began, “Also don’t you braid your hair?”
“My hair is always braided.” Prometheus stated outright.
“Fair enough.” Nia looked out the window and they were now in an alleyway.
“Okay. Out.” Prometheus stated, shoving Nia out.
“Okay jeez!” Nia got out of the car and followed Prometheus into, what seemed like, the lab that they were planning on attacking.
Puppeteer and Arson were already there fighting Blade and Icestorm, however Dreamer was nowhere to be found.
“Electro, look for Dreamer! I’m going to help out Puppeteer and Arson!” Prometheus stated, and before Nia could argue she had run off.
“Whatever, leave me alone with a supervillain.” Nia grumbled, as she started to search for Dreamer.
Dreamer was one of the more passive villains. Due to the fact that her power only worked when people were asleep. She can control dreams, if it wasn’t already obvious by the name already.
Dreamer can manipulate dreams into whatever she wants them to be, except she doesn’t have the power to put people to sleep, so her power is utterly useless on the field. However, they seemed to give Dreamer special grenades that did make people fall asleep, with some sort of gas. She also has actual grenades in case things get bad, so overall just don’t breathe or just wear a gas mask, and you’re set!
Nia had neither the ability to hold her breath for extended periods of time or a gas mask. So she was already done for.
Nia climbed up onto the roof with the ladder on the lab's walls, mostly for viewpoint purposes, not because Nia couldn’t find Dreamer anywhere and was freaking out. Clearly.
Suddenly, Nia heard a gravelly voice on that same rooftop. One she recognized so well.
“ElectroGhost!” Dreamer exclaims, “Can I call you EG? Imma call you EG.”
Nia groaned, “Please don’t call me that—“
“EG! You seemed to have found me!” Dreamer laughed, “See here’s the deal, I need to use that ladder that is right behind you, and you are kinda in the way. So if you could step to the side, that would be cool and I won’t hurt you!”
“Why would I trust you?” Nia questions.
“I have gassed thousands of people obviously, why wouldn’t you?” Dreamer states, before she started to run for the ladder.
Nia quickly channeled electricity onto her hands and shocked Dreamer back to where they were originally.
Dreamer flew back, and hit her head onto the brick wall at the end of the roof.
“I forgot about how you had electricity hands. Jazz hands? Electric hands?” Dreamer groaned, and she stranded up, “Man, I didn’t want to use this, but you are being a pain!”
Dreamer threw out what Nia recognized immediately as her sleeping grenade and covered her face.
“Wait, you think this is the sleeping one?” Dreamer laughed, “Nah, this is the actual boom boom one!”
“Wait wha—“ Before Nia could even finish, the grenade blew up what seemed like half of the roof, and Dreamer jumped off without a scratch, only a probable concussion to her name.
Nia wanted to say that she, Mission Impossible style, ran off the roof and didn’t get blown to bits. However, though she didn’t get blown to smithereens, she did get slightly hit by the bomb, cause the left side of her face to almost burned off entirely.
Thankfully they had a healer at home who could—
“I can’t fix all of it.” Viktor’s russian accent came clearer than anyone else who was in the infirmary.
Nia didn’t remember how she got there in the first place, she just remembered the explosion and Dreamer running off.
“Wha..What happened?” Nia’s voice came out nasally and gravelly.
“Nia! You’re awake!” Tom was the first one to come over to her bed, “You were out for a while there. Even Ana was getting worried!”
“I was not!” Ana stated, “I was more worried about her suit.”
“Mhm. Sure… tell that to me after you came crying into my room once Vicktor started healing her.” Now it was Will, who laughed as Ana playfully punched him.
“I’m glad some of my healing worked, but as I was saying earlier, if I do anymore I'll probably be out of it for a month or even longer.” Vicktor added, “However it should leave some badass scarring on your face for a bit while it heals naturally.”
“Cool.” Was all Nia could say before she passed out again.