Heroes and Villians (closed for Felix)

[MadMissJ]

The last few years of her life had been some of the most stressful. Well, for one she’d graduated high school, of course she’d promised to call, to write, to skype to do everything she could to keep in contact with her closest friends. The people she’d known almost her whole life. She’d broken up with her High School sweetheart. Though they’d been perfect together, some would have thought that she’d have gone for the star quarterback, but no, her honey had been president of the student council and she, his Vice president. They’d starred in their school plays and musicals together, they had their lunch period together where they would hold hands. They had a standing date before pep rallies and he’d never been terribly pushy with his affections.

And he’d been gay.

Yup. He’d figured it out around the same time as he’d reached up her T-shirt that bared their school name on it and with his hand over her bra, confessed that he just wasn’t that into her. Or any girls. It had been an awkward ‘goodnight’ a week before their graduation. Fawn had thought that perhaps that was to be the more horrible and embarrassing experience in her whole life, but then there was…the incident. At their graduation, in a sea of cap and gowns there had been nothing but heat and sudden impact as something had fallen to the earth, tearing up the turf of their home football field. The next few months were a blur of bandages, pain, confusion and more than a little mental trauma. That was until the news organizations got the survivors together. She’d been put next to a boy that she’d barely recognized, but she’d smiled at him anyway, taking her seat. She couldn’t read the mixture of emotions on his face, however, Fawn being Fawn, reached over to touch his arm with her fingertips that were sticking out from her cast to brush them across the back of his hand.

“Don’t worry about it. I bet they won’t even talk to us.” But the touch had sizzled through her, made him memorable, and was strong enough to make her pull back suddenly. And from that moment, and every moment since then, she’d begun to heal faster, didn’t break like normal humans. After shaking hands with others, she could see some of their most painful moments, and could use some of their most useful talents. Mid-year her freshman year she’d decided that she was going to concentrate on forensics and biology, and that was the goal she’d been working toward. Fawn Rhodes could touch an officer and go and shoot a gun with precision, touch a person and discover the moment that they’d put a roofie in some girl’s drink two years ago.

So needless to say, she was trying to learn to control it. Freshman year had taken its toll on her. But made her so much more motivated to do something other than carry the knowledge with her. She’d begun to sew her mask, something simple, white and blue. Her bodysuit was equally pristine, only her fingers showed and would allow her to touch and take whatever she wanted. And she was learning to try and recall things she’d done before, powers and abilities she’d acquired.

The first day of her second year in college, and she was distracted. She’d seen someone, that boy, the one who had sat next to her, the one who had facilitated her quick recovery. Because he hadn’t been hurt? She didn’t know. But she’d stood in her sweater and jeans, trying to decide if she would cross the street to say “Hello.” She did, of course she had to. The blonde smiled like they were old friends, given him her number and asked him to call, if he wanted. But instead of walking back to her dorm, she’d walked with him. And at the end of the night, well, it was with great reluctance that she’d gone back home. Fawn could have talked to him all night. The blonde, green-eyed girl had told him when her last class was the next day, so when her phone started to ring, she fumbled through her purse, hand plunging inside and shifting everything around until she found it on the very bottom of the bag.

“Hello?” Mildly excited sounding, she couldn’t keep the grin out of her voice.

 

[Felix80]

Superman. His father was Superman. It was the only thing that made sense. Strength, speed, flight, heat vision, x-ray vision, super hearing, telescopic and microscopic vision. Jack had them all. Superman had to be his father.

His mother never told him who his father was. Considering her lifestyle choices, Jack assumed she didn't know. His mother was a whore. Not in the sense that she slept around, but that she slept around in exchange for goods and services. Usually meth. Sometimes heroine. Hollywood tends to glamorize prostitution. Working Girl. Pretty Woman. Mighty Aphrodite. The Client List. And so on.

Jack's mother was more like Wendy from Breaking Bad.

So when he started developing superpowers as a teenager he tried harder than ever to figure out who his father was. But his mother simply didn't know. He started fantasizing about being a hero. With the Justice League and the Teen Titans around, what teenager didn't want to be a hero. Like every other kid on the planet, Jack wanted to be Booster Gold! There were movies about him and comic books and he was always in the news, in the middle of the fight!

But heroes don't come from downtown Crown City. Shit, heroes didn't come from Crown City at all. Or come to Crown City. Crown City, where the corruption starts at the top and goes all the way to the bottom. It wasn't generally violent, not like Bludhaven, and Superheroes don't fight against corruption.

So Jack didn't become a hero. He was too busy trying to make rent, to put food on the table, to find ways to keep Mom off meth. Yeah, like that would ever happen.

Jack didn't want to break the law. Not at first. He tried to get welfare, assisted living. He got caught up in red tape. Crown City got more money for welfare than any other city in the state, then almost any other city in the USA. But that money never seemed to make it to the people who needed it. Especially not Jack's family.

So Jack started gambling. He'd play people in basketball for five, ten bucks a game. They didn't stand a chance. He was just a little faster, a little stronger, jumped a little higher. He never went all out. He never had to.

From there he started playing cards. Just little pots, in games that would let a teenager sit in. You can't bluff someone with x-ray vision.

Then he started making book. As the bookie he didn't need to use his powers. And he made alot more money. He had a perfect memory and his brain worked like a computer, grinding out the odds. And if people couldn't pay, he could break legs just fine on his own.

That's what he was doing at the school on graduation day. He had dropped out of school years ago. No truant officer ever came looking for him. Shit, the police commissioner's son was one of his clients. That's why he was there, collecting on bets, or paying them off, from a couple students and teachers.

He didn't want to be part of the reunion piece in the newspaper, but he figured it was a good way to drum up some business. Not that he could put an advertisement in the paper, but meeting new people opened doors. Networking is what they called it.

Jack didn't remember the girl. It had been over a year. He was standing on a street corner, waiting for a bus. He'd been scouting the University's football team, trying to figure odds on them. This co-ed walked right up to him and started talking like she knew him. She was cute and all but it wasn't until she mentioned the incident that he remembered her. She gave him her number and told him to call. They started talking and didn't stop until late in the night.

Wow. There weren't alot of girls in Jack's life. There weren't alot of girls who gambled with bookies to start with. Beyond that, Jack was concerned about not being able to control himself when he was being intimate. Super strength would be bad enough, he'd seen Hancock, but what if his heat vision went off? Or freeze breath?

Fawn was easy to talk to. And Jack was very well read. Drop out or not, he wasn't stupid. Whenever he came across something he didn't understand, whether in a movie or a news article or in a novel, he would do a Google search. If it intrigued him enough he would read a book or two on the subject. It was pretty amazing to have someone to talk to about all these different subjects.

Mom wasn't at the apartment when Jack got home. That wasn't normal, but it wasn't uncommon either. Probably out chasing a fix.

The next day she wasn't home. Still, not unheard of. So he made his rounds. The police commissioner's kid had been on a losing streak and now the kid was ducking Jack's calls. That was a tough one. He didn't like hurting people. Usually a threat was enough. But a threat against this kid could bring heat on to Jack. Breaking his leg would definitely get the cops on him. Not that they could hurt him, but what they could do to his mother, or anyone he cared about. Jack would have to think about this one. How to handle it. What to do?

He let it stew. The answer would come, or it wouldn't.

After her classes were over, Jack dialed Fawn's number.

"Hello?" She said

"Hey, it's Jack. You wanna get a bite to eat?"

 

[MadMissJ]

She’s said that she just needed to change and she’d meet him at a popular sandwich place just off campus. She’d reached her dorm, to find that her roommate was out, and so she had only her own opinion of what to wear. Which was both a curse and a blessing. The blue eyed blonde, drew out half of her closet and spread it out on her bed. There were outfits she could put together for actual dates, but that seemed a little too on the nose. After much debate with herself, she just chose a mid-thigh skirt and a collared shirt under a pink sweater. There was a little voice in the back of her head that said that Jake wasn’t the sort of boy who was really looking for her type of appeal. Classic girl-next-door. But it’s what she was. There was just the simple action of slipping on her white, cat’s eyes glasses before she was out the door.

It was only a few hops down the steps before Fawn looked around, eyes darting left and right before she started at a run. It was her practice of recall that enabled her to speed up, it felt like her toes hardly hit the ground, around her everyone seemed to slow, moving at just a fraction of the speed that they had used before. The fabric of her skirt whipped around her legs and Fawn stopped a few blocks from the place she was meeting Jack, hopping from one foot to the other, her white sneakers were smoking…just a little. She’d have to consider a stronger material for her footwear if she was going to be doing that. Kicking up her heel she looked over her shoulder at the sole of it and tried to hold off a laugh of surprise at the slightly melted rubber that showed there. So much for that pair.

Still, they would hold up to some regular walking. Which she did, shortly after attempting to fix her hair, it wasn’t that bad, a little windswept but nothing that she couldn’t blame on the current weather. Still when she got to the shop which was a bit busy considering that it was late afternoon and most of the student body was clamoring for something other than the cafeteria, and the underclassmen were waiting for friends to get them a beer or two. She spotted Jack quickly, smiling and giving him a small wave with her fingers before sidling over to put her purse on the table and take her seat across from him.

“You must have been close.” She smiled, seeing as she’d run and he was already here. Once she sat, Fawn smoothed her hands down her sweater, her self-awareness was on red-alert, making her first few movements with him awkward. “How’s your day been?” Fawn was reaching and she knew it, considering she’d only really had one full conversation with the man. “This place has one of those jukeboxes that you can put on songs from your phone. Last time I was here, some guy placed ‘What’s New Pussycat’ about sixteen times. I thought there was going to be a riot.” The girl mused, then rested her crossed arms on the table in front of her.

“I’m glad you called.” And she was, the pleasure made her cheeks a little pinker, her eyes just a bit brighter. “I didn’t think you would so soon.”