[Original] Better than the Fall - part 5
Title: Better than the Fall - part 5
Fandom: Original (superheroes)
Rating: PG
Summary: The journey to badass normal.
Notes: teen team series. Issues #19 and (obviously) the other part of #24 are particularly of interest.
[Issue #24]
She doesn’t stop travelling, of course.
She does have one of the world’s most dangerous super-villains after her blood.
In that sense, she’s fleeing: she never stays long anywhere. She does everything like she might be gone in the morning, urgency thrumming through her as she greets people and shares a joke and info and salutes and moves on. But she finds out that there’s a purpose in running, too, and it’s one that isn’t leaving her past self behind.
Every place she visits is a victory against Dr Nightmare, and every new trick she learns to make her body perform some neat kick, every semi-acrobatic tumble she practices to learn how to take a fall, every sleight of hand and change of heart that lets her avoid her teacher’s strikes in the heat of battle, is a victory for tomorrow.
Maybe she can’t rise through the air, but she can leap from a building, and she’s still soaring. Maybe she can’t lose a guy in a labyrinth of heart-pounding neon illusions anymore, but she can punch him in the neck and send him into shock all the same.
Maybe she’s lost her powers, but she’ll never be powerless. It’s a blink, it’s a flash, it’s a rush, and it’s fantastic.
She finds people, wherever she goes, that teach her how to do this thing, searching them out and following their instructions how to find the next on her ricocheting journey. And in the meantime she sees the world she was missing out on.
That’ll never get old.
She keeps her name, Ecstasy. It’s hers, she took it.
At some point she starts rubbing elbows with people she’d heard about. Ecstasy may not be a household name, she’s been around the block a few times. This isn’t her first team, or even her second (though the least said about that one, the better), and she’s known people who’ve known people.
(There’s the meal she eats on the same bench as someone who looks just like Stingray in Thailand, and who tries to high-five her, two American tourists on a vaguation. There’s the alternate dimension ripping open in India, and when she takes down one squiggly octopus with a spool of fishing line, there’s a shape whizzing past her that takes care of the others, and later on she thinks that might have been Dasher, but then he didn’t even slow down to tell her what she was doing wrong. There’s, in Germany, the total surprise when she finds one of her old teammates, and they spend the next three days rooting out a drug-dealing gang. There’s this guy who worked with System, this civilian, who rescues her when she almost gets killed in a GUILT outpost in Nigeria, and who reminds her a little of Promise.)
*
It’s another day another crisis, in Chile, and there are people in a cage screaming while lightning bolts start crackling along the edges of the cage, and writing she cannot make out start glowing, and there’s - yes - a priestly shadow lifting their arms on a raised alter, and presumably chanting.
The heat blurs the shapes as flicker of blue flame start to rise from the lines drawn on the ground. The sound echoes weirdly, like shouting in a cave cut with moments of blank.
For a second it’s disorienting and so familiar Ecstasy feels the aching like ash in her mouth, so close to how her powers used to make her feel. It’s not her powers.
Ecstasy runs.
She tackles the chanting person to the ground right as it turns into flame, and the ghostly cage fades, the blue fire vanishes, there’s still flesh under her hands. The creature lets out a screech that empties her mind, and if she weren’t used to things like it, if her powers hadn’t gotten her used to reality breaking up under her feet, she’d be gaping and foetal against its attacks.
She closes one hand around the creature’s right wrist, one hand around the creature’s neck, smoldering under her glove, and presses. It arches and wrestles, she locks her knees around its waist, and snarls.
In a flash, its mouth opens and spits embers at her, and she lets go of the creature’s hand, and hits it, aiming for the eyes and the ears, make it hurt. It’s stronger than a normal human, and Ecstasy hangs on for dear life, she’s in way over her head, she’s done it again, isn’t it great?
When a hand lands on her shoulder, she startles but her training keeps her from falling off her target.
“It’s okay, you can stop now.”
Blinking, she looks up; the voice belongs to a round-faced, dark-skinned woman in a silver domino mask, her hair pulled up in a ponytail.
Ecstasy feels her eyes widening, and her mouth fall open.
“I’ll take the Chaotic from here,” Swan Song says.
It takes Ecstasy a moment to process. Dumbly she removes herself from the creature - it’s stopped moving like a puppet with cut-off strings - and helps Swan Song to load it on her shoulders. Swan Song is barely taller than her.
“You did good work,” Swan Song tells her, before taking flight.
Ecstasy stays a long time watching the horizon, where Swan Song disappeared.
Maybe it’s time to go home.
*
Getting back where she left feels like it should take longer than it does. All she needs to do is buy a plane ticket, then a train, and there she is. The city hasn’t changed, except for the falling leaves, golden under her feet. There’s a cold wind in the air, and she stops to wrap her scarf tighter around her neck, pulling it up on her cheeks while she breathes in deep. It… smells like home.
Then she hears the TV running live, the reporter telling about the bank-robbing spree of the two super-powered criminals known as Dart and Rip; they’re even now on the way to -
She’s in luck, to the bank just across the train station.
The cops try to keep the civilians away, but Dart and Rip have super-speed, so the security cordon isn’t up yet, though she can already hear the sirens, and there are always bystanders more interested in the show than in their well-being.
And she’s not any civilian.
There’s a window she can reach and after that it’s only a matter of seconds before she’s in; she’s taken to carry drips of acid, for when she’s got to get out in a hurry, and they work even better on wrought iron as they do on state-of-the-art power-absorbing handcuffs. Inside, she takes a moment to get her breath back.
If she’s right, it shouldn’t be long before the team shows up, and she doesn’t want to cramp their style.
But just in case they’re busy someplace else, she’ll check around and see if any bright opportunity presents itself. She didn’t sneak in to cower while Dart and Rip get away.
She steps out in the corridor to see someone dressed as a counter clerk disable a security camera. Inside help? In a second, she’s on her, pinning the woman against the wall.
“May I help you?” she grins.
The woman’s eyes widen and her face shifts liquidly until Ecstasy is staring at a stunned Analogue.
“What are you doing-”
“Sorry, sorry,” Ecstasy grimaces as she releases her friend.
Analogue grows back into herself, glances at the camera and flips around to face Ecstasy. “No, seriously, what are you doing here? Are you back? I’m happy you are, but seriously, you need to get out of here!”
The alarmed urgency in her teammate’s voice is just one more welcome home.
“Oh,” Ecstasy shrugs, and smiles. “I’m just gonna help.”
Fandom: Original (superheroes)
Rating: PG
Summary: The journey to badass normal.
Notes: teen team series. Issues #19 and (obviously) the other part of #24 are particularly of interest.
[Issue #24]
She doesn’t stop travelling, of course.
She does have one of the world’s most dangerous super-villains after her blood.
In that sense, she’s fleeing: she never stays long anywhere. She does everything like she might be gone in the morning, urgency thrumming through her as she greets people and shares a joke and info and salutes and moves on. But she finds out that there’s a purpose in running, too, and it’s one that isn’t leaving her past self behind.
Every place she visits is a victory against Dr Nightmare, and every new trick she learns to make her body perform some neat kick, every semi-acrobatic tumble she practices to learn how to take a fall, every sleight of hand and change of heart that lets her avoid her teacher’s strikes in the heat of battle, is a victory for tomorrow.
Maybe she can’t rise through the air, but she can leap from a building, and she’s still soaring. Maybe she can’t lose a guy in a labyrinth of heart-pounding neon illusions anymore, but she can punch him in the neck and send him into shock all the same.
Maybe she’s lost her powers, but she’ll never be powerless. It’s a blink, it’s a flash, it’s a rush, and it’s fantastic.
She finds people, wherever she goes, that teach her how to do this thing, searching them out and following their instructions how to find the next on her ricocheting journey. And in the meantime she sees the world she was missing out on.
That’ll never get old.
She keeps her name, Ecstasy. It’s hers, she took it.
At some point she starts rubbing elbows with people she’d heard about. Ecstasy may not be a household name, she’s been around the block a few times. This isn’t her first team, or even her second (though the least said about that one, the better), and she’s known people who’ve known people.
(There’s the meal she eats on the same bench as someone who looks just like Stingray in Thailand, and who tries to high-five her, two American tourists on a vaguation. There’s the alternate dimension ripping open in India, and when she takes down one squiggly octopus with a spool of fishing line, there’s a shape whizzing past her that takes care of the others, and later on she thinks that might have been Dasher, but then he didn’t even slow down to tell her what she was doing wrong. There’s, in Germany, the total surprise when she finds one of her old teammates, and they spend the next three days rooting out a drug-dealing gang. There’s this guy who worked with System, this civilian, who rescues her when she almost gets killed in a GUILT outpost in Nigeria, and who reminds her a little of Promise.)
*
It’s another day another crisis, in Chile, and there are people in a cage screaming while lightning bolts start crackling along the edges of the cage, and writing she cannot make out start glowing, and there’s - yes - a priestly shadow lifting their arms on a raised alter, and presumably chanting.
The heat blurs the shapes as flicker of blue flame start to rise from the lines drawn on the ground. The sound echoes weirdly, like shouting in a cave cut with moments of blank.
For a second it’s disorienting and so familiar Ecstasy feels the aching like ash in her mouth, so close to how her powers used to make her feel. It’s not her powers.
Ecstasy runs.
She tackles the chanting person to the ground right as it turns into flame, and the ghostly cage fades, the blue fire vanishes, there’s still flesh under her hands. The creature lets out a screech that empties her mind, and if she weren’t used to things like it, if her powers hadn’t gotten her used to reality breaking up under her feet, she’d be gaping and foetal against its attacks.
She closes one hand around the creature’s right wrist, one hand around the creature’s neck, smoldering under her glove, and presses. It arches and wrestles, she locks her knees around its waist, and snarls.
In a flash, its mouth opens and spits embers at her, and she lets go of the creature’s hand, and hits it, aiming for the eyes and the ears, make it hurt. It’s stronger than a normal human, and Ecstasy hangs on for dear life, she’s in way over her head, she’s done it again, isn’t it great?
When a hand lands on her shoulder, she startles but her training keeps her from falling off her target.
“It’s okay, you can stop now.”
Blinking, she looks up; the voice belongs to a round-faced, dark-skinned woman in a silver domino mask, her hair pulled up in a ponytail.
Ecstasy feels her eyes widening, and her mouth fall open.
“I’ll take the Chaotic from here,” Swan Song says.
It takes Ecstasy a moment to process. Dumbly she removes herself from the creature - it’s stopped moving like a puppet with cut-off strings - and helps Swan Song to load it on her shoulders. Swan Song is barely taller than her.
“You did good work,” Swan Song tells her, before taking flight.
Ecstasy stays a long time watching the horizon, where Swan Song disappeared.
Maybe it’s time to go home.
*
Getting back where she left feels like it should take longer than it does. All she needs to do is buy a plane ticket, then a train, and there she is. The city hasn’t changed, except for the falling leaves, golden under her feet. There’s a cold wind in the air, and she stops to wrap her scarf tighter around her neck, pulling it up on her cheeks while she breathes in deep. It… smells like home.
Then she hears the TV running live, the reporter telling about the bank-robbing spree of the two super-powered criminals known as Dart and Rip; they’re even now on the way to -
She’s in luck, to the bank just across the train station.
The cops try to keep the civilians away, but Dart and Rip have super-speed, so the security cordon isn’t up yet, though she can already hear the sirens, and there are always bystanders more interested in the show than in their well-being.
And she’s not any civilian.
There’s a window she can reach and after that it’s only a matter of seconds before she’s in; she’s taken to carry drips of acid, for when she’s got to get out in a hurry, and they work even better on wrought iron as they do on state-of-the-art power-absorbing handcuffs. Inside, she takes a moment to get her breath back.
If she’s right, it shouldn’t be long before the team shows up, and she doesn’t want to cramp their style.
But just in case they’re busy someplace else, she’ll check around and see if any bright opportunity presents itself. She didn’t sneak in to cower while Dart and Rip get away.
She steps out in the corridor to see someone dressed as a counter clerk disable a security camera. Inside help? In a second, she’s on her, pinning the woman against the wall.
“May I help you?” she grins.
The woman’s eyes widen and her face shifts liquidly until Ecstasy is staring at a stunned Analogue.
“What are you doing-”
“Sorry, sorry,” Ecstasy grimaces as she releases her friend.
Analogue grows back into herself, glances at the camera and flips around to face Ecstasy. “No, seriously, what are you doing here? Are you back? I’m happy you are, but seriously, you need to get out of here!”
The alarmed urgency in her teammate’s voice is just one more welcome home.
“Oh,” Ecstasy shrugs, and smiles. “I’m just gonna help.”