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Cynthia officially hated whoever popularized spandex as the basis for each and every superhero costume.
"You look fantastic."
I look ridiculous she thought, but didn't dare say out loud. Lance was looking at her, fatherly pride and joy in his gaze, and she already knew that she would throw herself under a car if she were to be the one crushing that look in his eyes, that were growing mistier by the second (oh lord, was he tearing up?). Instead, she forced a sheepish smile, turning to look at her mentor fully.
If the colour scheme hadn't been audacious enough (dark blue and red, with silver accents- okay, admittedly she didn't mind that all that much, it was actually kind of cool and the bold hues looked damn good on her if she dared say so herself), there was a teensy weensy little problem with it:
"It's... a bit tight."
One hell of an euphemism, really: she could feel fabric between her asscheeks, and it was incredibly distracting. At least, she figured that the jacket covered her hip area a little bit, but it was a pretty small comfort.
Lance frowned in sympathy. "Yeah, it happens to everyone. The cloth will stretch after a few missions, don't worry- and if it doesn't, we'll get Valérie to make you a new costume. Did I ever tell you about my first costume? Rocketman's first reaction-"
"-was to ask you which strip club you'd come out of. I know. You told me." Five times, as a matter of fact, and that was not counting the times she heard the story while he was telling it to someone else.
Still, she recognized it for what it was, an attempt at making her feel better in his own, uh, very special way- and surprisingly enough it worked, a little bit. She could feel her mouth quirking up, and Lance brightened up considerably before his smile turned a bit guilty.
"For what it's worth, I'm sorry you have to go into action so early. If it was up to me-"
"If it was up to you," she replied, firmly but not unkindly and nodding at his arm, which was currently clad in a dark orange cast, "you would go into battle even with a broken arm. You yourself said I'm ready, right? Trust me, I can do this."
His eyes went soft at that. "Oh, Cynthia, of course I trust you. You're my best student, after all."
"Don't let Silver hear you."
It was a joke, of course it was (it's not like Silver was actually allowed to fight- or like he even wanted to be Lance's student at all to be honest), but the look of pure distress that made its way on the man's face was so heart-wrenchingly genuine that Cynthia couldn't help but laugh.
In the loosest sense of the word, she'd always been a fan of Doctor Magma.
He'd been a villain for a while, even before her own powers had awakened, and watching his shenanigans on TV had always been entertaining: he was loud, dramatic, had a lot of cool tech, and always got himself defeated in some real funny way before running away with his tail between his legs. It was almost like watching some sort of live action cartoon- and when Aqua Guile got involved, that was the equivalent of a special crossover episode, with the absolutely hilarious rivalry between them taking the spotlight.
As it turned out, the guy was far less funny when you were fighting against him in real life and not just looking at him getting his ass beat through a screen.
She narrowly avoided a flying ac unit, suddently glad that Valérie had chosen to make the suit very form fitting and easy to move in. Super regeneration may have been a part of her skillset, but getting hit in the face with a fifty kilogram mass of metal would still feel mighty unpleasant, and she currently didn't fully trust her ability to destroy the projectiles without causing a disaster, energy restlessly travelling up and down her arms and making the air crackle around her.
Maybe I should've insisted on some more power control lessons before going on a mission...
"Careful" she bit out cheekily, "you could've hurt someone with that."
"I wouldn't have to do any of this if you pathetic wannabe heroes would just leave me alone!" Doctor Magma's voice came distorted and slightly muffled from inside his massive and admittedly pretty sweet looking exoskeleton (mecha. It was a mecha and that was so fucking cool, Cynthia wasn't entirely sure how to deal with it). "My methods may be unorthodox, but I'm doing this for the sake of humanity!"
"Dude, forgive me if I don't believe you but, you were robbing a jewel store. Not exactly philantropist material."
The mecha crossed its massive arms, accidentally giving away the fact that it was motion controlled (or that the Doctor was dramatic enough to waste time and effort to do that specific maneuver with manual controls, which, alright, that sounded exactly like something he would do). "I have given up on explaining my plans to laymen. All you need to know is that I needed some very specific stones for one of my machines, and I just so happened to be short on funds."
"Short on funds? Maybe you should use your money on the stones you need, instead of using them on some sort of knockoff Gundam."
The thing stiffened visibly. Oh yeah, definitely movement controlled. Volkner would probably have a field day once she told him about it. "I'll have you know that this was handmade, with scrap materials" he mumbled, palpable offense in his voice, probably at the insinuation that he'd bought the thing or something. The horror.
Cynthia waved a hand dismissively. Banter was fine, she could do banter. Just keep him busy until Flint or Lucian or whoever showed up, and everything would be golden. "Yeah, yeah, glad you're enviromentally-aware, whatever. Still, how many of these stones do you even need? This is already the third robbery this week."
"... What?"
"I said, how many-"
"I heard you the first time!" His voice went an octave higher in irritation and what she could identify as confusion. "What other robberies? This is my first this year!"
"The fact that you have to add a 'this year' to that phrase..." she muttered, successfully hiding the way the revelation had blindsided her.
If Doctor Magma hadn't been the one to... then who had?
She very nearly jumped as a cold hand descended on her shoulder, and she turned to look at the familiar sight of Volkner's armour. She hadn't even heard him land.
"I'll take it from here if you don't mind. Nice exoskeleton, Doc."
"Maybe he lied?"
Wallace shook his head, resting his chin on his hand with a dramatic sigh. "That's not his style. We all know that for all his flaws, Doctor Magma has always been almost brutally honest. Besides," he turned towards Cynthia, who straightened up immediately "you said he sounded genuine, yes?"
She cleared her throat. "Ah, well. That's just the impression I got, maybe you would disagree. You have been fighting him for a much longer time than me, after all." Her voice sounded a bit sullen even to her, and Lance shot her a funny look as the other Champions murmured in worry among themselves at this new development.
"That old fool isn't much of a liar, that's true," mumbled Steven with a frown, "but I could swear I've seen him at the location of one of the robberies."
Diantha tapped her fingers on the table, brow furrowing as well. "But that makes no sense, does it? Weren't you in Hoenn, at the time? How could you have seen him?"
A cloud of unease fell in the room at the revelation, Steven going chalk white as he realized that Diantha was right. "Besides, now that I think about it, it just wasn't his usual modus operandi. He snuck in, which is pretty difficult to do when your entire skillset is based on bulky and unsubtle technology. And nobody has ever seen him not surrounded by his equipment, so would you even be able to recognize him without it?"
"I'm guessing then that what we're dealing with here is either an illusionist, a memory alterer, or a reality bender." Alder rubbed his eyes, tiredness exuding from the heavy tilt in his lips and the slump of his broad shoulders. Cynthia could understand why- a new superpowered villain was always bad news, and especially reality benders (and psychics to a lesser degree, as Lance knew very well) could be extremely dangerous- but to see the older hero that worried still felt a bit like a gut punch. "This is an extremely serious situation, but for now we have little to no information to base ourselves off of. I suggest we put our respective Leagues on full alert, and have a meeting the instant something new is discovered."
Everybody murmured their assent, and he smiled wanly. "Well then, we should probably go rest a bit. Between injuries and jet lag, I'd be surprised if more than one of us wasn't five seconds away from falling asleep in their chair."
They made their way out of the conference room, Lance trotting behind Cynthia and quickly catching up to her.
"Hey. What's wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong."
The Champion frowned, looking at her like he was trying to read her mind. "No, I can tell you're upset about something. Is this about Doctor Magma? Because you handled him pretty well for your first real mission, if that's what you're worried about."
Her shoulders slumped and she let out a sigh, though she didn't stop walking. "He ran away" she said, eventually.
A blink. "He always does- one of the legal requirements for being defined as a supervillain is having evaded capture at the hands of certified superpowered individuals at least three times. You know that."
"Lance, he ran away because of me. If I hadn't hesitated to use my powers, I could've easily wrecked that mecha, you know it."
For a long moment he just looked at her, one eyebrow raising slowly in a way that would've been comedic hadn't she been in a pretty horrid mood. "Well, why didn't you use them?"
"Because I was afraid of accidentally destroying the city!" She snarled, exasperated. "You know I'm not good at the whole holding back thing, I've accidentally melted training dummies before. I didn't want to kill the poor bastard or something."
They walked in silence for a few minutes, before Lance cleared his throat awkwardly. "On his first mission, Wallace caused a flood."
"Huh?"
"Volkner caused a city-wide blackout that took two days to solve. Diantha accidentally reflected a laser beam on a bunch of cars. Empty cars, mind, but still. Clair demolished a shop, and Leon got lost on the way to the rescue site and KO'd the wrong dude. Even I-" he cut himself off, clearing his throat again as a blush rose on his cheeks. "Well, my point is, most of us have done something really stupid and had to pay for a lot of damage we caused because we underestimated our powers or overestimated our control over them. You stopped before that could happen, so I'd personally count it as a win."
Silence fell between them again.
"What did you do?"
He just laughed nervously and speedwalked away, refusing to answer Cynthia's question.
By the time Lance's arm had healed, no news on the mysterious robber had come up.
This wasn't surprising: by the nature of the beast, psychics, illusionists and reality benders were notoriously difficult to pin down, unless they were really careless with their powers. For all they knew, they'd actually run into the villain and had gotten their memories of the incident altered.
It unnerved Cynthia, the idea that someone could mess with her brain without her knowing, but as she exposed that thought Lance had just shrugged.
"You get used to it, in our line of work. Thankfully our medical team is pretty great, so as long as someone doesn't scramble our brains like eggs it's going to be alright. Though... I understand if you'd rather not have to deal with this. I am completely recovered, after all."
It'd been partly serious, partly teasing, and as Cynthia openly scoffed at the idea Lance dropped it with a smile.
It was unusual for supers to work in a team but, surprisingly (or maybe not, they were friends, not to mention mentor and student after all) she found that they worked well together. Cynthia would jump around like a monkey on crack, getting the villain of the week's attention so that Lance could blast them straight into a hospital bed completely unimpeded with his slow charging but devastating attacks.
And, in the end, it was precisely them being a team that unveiled the mystery.
She wasn't entirely sure when it'd appeared- all she knew was that suddently Lance (and the guy they'd been fighting, some minion of Rocketman's with a stupid name like Prototype or something similar) had dropped like a sack of flour, a nearby trash bag probably the only thing keeping him from breaking his nose on the way down.
She jumped back, keeping herself from impulsively running to check on him as she examined the area, trying to search for something that would explain the sudden fall. Looking closer, his body (please be just unconscious she desperately pleaded inwardly) was surrounded by what looked like black smoke, looking less like the one you get from burning green wood and more like some sort of videogame evil mist that curses you on contact as it curled and twisted on the ground.
"Hm. I see I missed someone. I don't think I've ever seen you before, Hero."
Despite herself, Cynthia winced as a voice that sounded like its owner had gargled tv static came from some... thing that had emerged from the fucking wall like a nightmare wraith. Not that it looked much better than that, honestly.
Two piercing and near glowing blue eyes glared at her from a soot black, noseless and mouthless face, a whitish cloud bursting from its head in a mockery of hair. The entire body was smokey, feetless and taloned, and glimpses of red, purple and gold glowed under whatever poor excuse of a skin it had. Around its left wrist was wrapped a red chain that glowed ominously.
She'd never felt the need to wash her eyes with bleach before, but there was a first time for everything, wasn't there?
She steeled herself, fists clenching. "I'm Draco Meteor," she bit out, "and you made a huge mistake in attacking my mentor."
For a creature who lacked at least two thirds of a face, the judgemental and mildly baffled look it shot her was surprisingly expressive.
"... What a stupid name."
She opened her mouth to protest- then closed it. She couldn't exactly disagree there. "Well, what is your name then, oh great Name Rater?"
It raised its head haughtily, clawed hands going behind his back in what definitely counted as a Trademark Villain Pose. "You may refer to me as the Red Chain, if you wish to address me so badly."
"Red Chain? That's just as lame as Draco Meteor! At least I had my name chosen for me, what's your excuse?"
Its offended look made her melt into a fit of giggles, but she stopped laughing when it launched itself towards her, talons outstretched.
"Don't you think it's cool? A new hero, fighting a new villain. Almost poetic, don't you think?"
"Not really."
Personally, she was rather fond of the local librarian. It was incomprehensible to Flint, who had once described him as looking like someone who "kidnaps firstborns if you can't guess his name within a week", but honestly, he really wasn't that bad.
His name was Cyrus, and he was an engineering student working at the library part-time. A smart student, if Lucian's words were anything to go by. Top grades in almost all his classes, and a very promising project in clean energy research he'd been working on, alone, since he was ten showed that he had the brains to be one of the most brilliant men of the generation.
He was also extremely grumpy, but in a rather endearing "I'm actually really shy and don't know how to deal with people speaking to me outside of professional contexts" way, that had Cynthia immediately decide that she would be the extrovert to forcefully adopt him.
And, really, she was relatively sure that he didn't actually mind her too much. She'd seen the way he shut any attempt at conversation down when he really didn't like his interlocutor, and he didn't do that with her. He was snarky, and deadpan, but he entertained her attempts at conversation. So yes! Not nasty grumpy, just socially awkward grumpy. Totally a different beast, Flint.
"What would your superhero persona be, if you had powers?" She asked, looking at him curiously. It was a question she asked often to her non-super friends, few as they were; it was always fun to see what the answers would be, going from the wish fulfilling ones to the well-thought out or self deprecating ones.
"I'd be the Librarian, and my superpower would be to make noisy girls shut up as I try to do my job."
... Or the snarky ones. She gently swatted at his arm, mouth curved in a grin. "Oh, shut up."
"You asked."
"That's so not what I meant, and you know it! I want a serious answer, c'mon." He looked up at her, and she beat her eyelashes innocently. "Pwetty Pwease?"
He rolled his eyes, but it was affectionate. Or so she hoped.
"... Something that would let me help people who are suffering."
She looked at him wide eyed and he shrugged, a slight red dusting creeping over his pale cheeks. "Childish, isn't it?"
"No, ah..."
"Cynthia!"
She turned, mouth twitching upwards at Cyrus' hissed "silence!" coming from behind her.
"Lucian?"
"The professor needs you. Now."
Oh. That was code for "one of the Champions wants to talk with you about some very un-secret-identity things". Very well then.
They hurried away, but not before she waved Cyrus goodbye, receiving a half hearted gesture back.
"You know," said Lucian once they got out of earshot, "I think he likes you."
She snorted. "Who, Cyrus? Don't be silly. He just tolerates me because I don't get offended easily, is all. Hell, I think his one true love is probably some sort of fancy motherboard" she declared, with the confidence of someone who knew exactly jack shit about engineering.
Lucian just smiled, wisely choosing not to press it.
Cyrus leant down on his desk, forehead resting on the cool wood of it as he tried to will the embarrassing heat in his face away.
Get a hold on yourself, Cyrus.
God, he was so screwed.
"Nightmares."
"I'm doing fine, thanks for asking. How about you?"
Wallace ignored her sass and stood up, looking like complete shit for probably the first time in his life, deep bags under his eyes and hair in a state of complete disarray.
"I've been asking around and- Red Chain's powers. They're related to sleep and nightmares. Staying too close to him for too long is a ticket to Dreamland, and not the fun one."
It made sense. After the villain had gotten tired of avoiding her blows (or maybe had gotten spooked by the amount of times she almost got him in the head) and had left, she'd gone to check on Lance, seeing to her great relief that he was just unconscious, though clearly not enjoying it in the least. After staying under Cheryl's care for a bit he'd woken up, unable to say anything about the experience except for the fact that it had "sucked balls".
(He'd gone pale as he noticed Silver being present- as if the kid didn't regularly hear and say far worse, but that was Lance for you. Cynthia's good ol' special boy.)
Still...
"What about the whole melting-into-the-shadows thing? And the way he brainwashed Steven? That hardly feels related."
Wallace's mouth twisted in a grimace as she mentioned his friend, and Caitlin lazily spoke up from her chair on the other side of the room. "Dreams are fundamentally your brain elaborating on what it's seen during the day via making you perceive things that don't exist. If you can force a person to dream something, you can also force them to believe they're seeing things that aren't actually there."
"So... he actually made me and Steven hallucinate? Maybe start with that next time Wallace, that sounds significantly more threatening than just 'nightmares'."
"His control over awake people seems limited. Now that we're aware of him and what he can do, chances are we'll be less easy to manipulate- we just need to be careful not to get conked out by his side ability." He took a deep breath, seemingly steeling himself before aiming a look at Cynthia. "I was thinking about recommending you as Red Chain's nemesis, if you feel up for it. You seemed to hold your own well against him, last time."
A nemesis- there were very rare cases where a superhero got assigned a specific villain as their privileged target. It usually meant that the hero had a skillset specifically equipped to deal with them, or simply had a lot of experience with that specific foe, or their ilk. Having a nemesis was a point of pride for many- the only people she could think of right now who had one were Alder and Diantha.
If she were to accept, she would be the youngest nemesis in the history of the Leagues- bar Red, of course, but nobody counted Red when talking about these things, for many obvious reasons.
She bit her lip.
Nodded. "Sure. Why not."
"Fancy seeing you here, Chain."
The villain stiffened, before turning his head towards Cynthia with a long-suffering sigh. "Hello to you too. How many times do I have to tell you that I don't particularly appreciate that nickname?"
"Well, I would call you Red but that would just be confusing, now wouldn't it?"
"Is Red Chain really that difficult to say?"
She shrugged. "You have to admit it is a bit of a mouthful."
"Do try to see my perspective on this- with powers such as these, it was either that or an unbearably edgy name." He turned fully towards her, semitransparent body tensing up slightly as he nodded politely. "Now, let us get this fight out of the way, shall we?"
She grinned, and despite the gear hiding her face she knew he could hear it in her voice. "Yeah, let's."