Vivian is too hard on herself. She’s intelligent, personable, and very goal-oriented. If she gets a vial, she’ll make a great hero with the right support network.
That said, I don’t think I’m the right person for her. She’s deeply hurt in a way I’m not equipped to help. I’m a lot better at breaking things down than I am building people up, and she needs soone to build her up. If there’s nobody else on the team who wants her case, I’ll take it and do the best I can, but in the long run, I don’t think I’ll be good for her. She needs soone who can understand her and bring her up—a real friend, not just a hero. I don’t know if I can do that.
- Unarchived psychological evaluation of Vivian “Mantis Shrimp” Li by Sunrise of the San Francisco Guardians, 2020
#
Sunrise looked towards Echelon. “What are you thinking, keeping a civilian with you? An indie just took out Venus. You saw what they did to the Guardian. This is my friend, and she needs to be evacuated before… oh, shit. Shit.”
“Yeah,” Vivian said unhappily. “Yeah.”
The only hero she’d ever spent ti with as a normal massaged his temples with one hand, opening his mouth and closing it like he had sothing to say and thought better of it.
“West Lafayette,” he said. “I should have figured.”
“I don’t know where in the hero etiquette book it says ‘keep on outing your friend,’ but I didn’t read to that part,” Vivian said.
“This—I’m sorry, you’re right. I’m not following protocol. You can see why this would co as a shock to .”
“You know each other?” Lycoris asked. “That explains so things. We can—“
“Not the ti,” Amazon said.
“Right. Sorry.”
“You’re Mantis Shrimp,” Sunrise said, still reeling in shock.
“I go by Mantis,” Vivian replied. “It’s easier to say.”
This didn’t feel real. Vivian had felt distant from her own body before, but now it was like her head had been stuffed full of cotton. Reality had a dreamlike quality to it, because surely this wasn’t how she was going to tell Sunrise she was a hero. This wasn’t the situation she would have gotten herself thrown into.
“You took down Venus.”
“What did the Guardians tell you?” Vivian asked, her defenses sliding back into place. This was a grounded subject. This was sothing that she knew they were running offense on already. “Because I highly doubt it’s what happened.”
She noticed idly that one of Sunrise’s hands was starting to glow. It wasn’t at the sa intensity that she knew signified him charging up one of his infamous light-beam attacks, but it looked like a warning.
I might have to kill him. Vivian jolted in her skin as that thought crossed her mind.
This was Sunrise. The superhero who’d talked her through life, who’d helped her family get back on their feet after twin tragedies had been followed up by half of their living room falling as collateral damage during the street wars in San Francisco.
Yet she was thinking of killing him. She wanted to bla that on a Washer, so external influence that would explain away the instinct to murder, but Mantis had just taken down the only super who could have done that.
This was all her. Vivian had made herself into a killer, and she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to stop.
“V—Mantis,” Sunrise said. “You’re doing it again. Stay with
here.”
You’re doing it again. This was the sa hero who’d reached a hand out to her when she’d needed it the most. He hadn’t been able to help as much as either of them had wanted, but he’d tried, and he hadn’t stopped trying.
“Sorry,” Vivian said, unsure what she was apologizing before. “Were you saying sothing?”
“I was,” Sunrise said, brushing off his costu and standing straighter as if the disapproving glares from the rest of the Echelon team were reminding him what he was here for. “I heard that Mantis Shrimp was involved in the mutilation and takedown of Venus, an Indianapolis Guardian.”
“After she tried to take down our entire fucking team,” Vivian hissed. “Seriously?”
Sunrise clicked his tongue. He liked doing that when he was nervous, Vivian rembered. It rarely made it to recorded content because he was a lot better at keeping control of himself when he knew he was on cara.
“But you did this?” Sunrise asked.
“How is that important? Her power stopped working on
thanks to Lycoris resetting , and I disabled her before she could use it again.”
“With your power?”
“Sunrise,” Amazon said sharply. “There’s an open call up.”
Vivian’s hero wore a visor, but she still caught the way his eyes flickered to her hands, bloodied from the digging she’d done in Venus’ eye sockets.
“Does your father know?” Sunrise asked quietly.
She stared him down for a mont, then shook her head. He’d helped her too much for her to just stonewall him, but this? She had never anticipated eting Sunrise as a superhero, let alone outing herself to him. A nasty knot of pressure balled up in her chest.
Anxiety ca to her in different forms. So days, it was a sudden strike—she’d be thinking about her family, or death, or the future, and suddenly a shock so intense she worried she was suffering from a heart attack would course through her body. Others, like today, it was a slow, budding feeling. Sothing was wrong, and her body knew it. It wasn’t an affliction she could cure through dication or diet or exercise or any of the hundred things Mom had always told her to do.
It was just there, and it wasn’t going to get any better.
“I think that we should pick this up at a different ti,” Vivian said, trying to asure her words so she didn’t get any angrier at Sunrise than he deserved. It’s not his fault that he’s in a shitty system that lies to its heroes, she thought. “I don’t think I’m in the right ntal state for this, and the situation looks a little more pressing.”
Sunrise put a hand on her shoulder. When she’d first t him, he’d done the sa, and it’d nearly led to her punching an A-rank hero in the face. Over ti, she’d grown used enough with him to let him give her gestures like this, and it had beco oddly comforting.
To her great displeasure, she found that this was no longer the case. If anything, it was far, far worse than it had been the night after her mother’s death.
She didn’t let the disgust make it to her face.
“I trust you,” Sunrise said, quiet but firm. “I’m sorry for mismanaging the situation. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
That… didn’t make the knot disappear, but it helped soothe the ache just a little bit. He was a hero amongst heroes, and despite everything else, that still held true.
Vivian nodded and slipped away from his hand. “I’m not going anywhere with Venus.”
“I understand,” Sunrise said, though he couldn’t hide the ever-so-slight tick in his tone that said he was humoring her. That he was making an effort was, for the ti being, enough. “Then Venus and… Shockwave?”
“I’m frying her if she says a single word to ,” Shockwave said, raising his voice enough that the injured Washer was sure to hear him. “I don’t want to be unprofessional, Sunrise, but she tried to assassinate half of our team.”
“Understood,” Sunrise said. “I’ll keep her from speaking to you.”
He turned and hovered over to the Healer. Replacent wasn’t a familiar na to Vivian—was he also an out-of-towner? Whatever the case, his operating area looked like a slaughterhouse. Venus was covered with far more blood than Vivian had produced, and parts of her looked wrong.
Curious, Mantis stepped closer, avoiding the blood as well as she could. She kept her power at the ready, prepared to repeat her destruction of Venus’ vocal cords the mont she tried sothing.
Her eyes had been replaced. Scintillating purples and reds ran across midnight black orbs. The “iris,” so to speak, took up the entirety of the eye socket, and the surface looked less like an eye and more like an acidic solution with a box of crayons dissolved in it. They didn’t fit her skull correct, and they bulged out into her head, giving her a distinctly alien look.
The Washer’s throat had been similarly modified. Grey-black wires with the sa vibrant colors coursing through them traced their way from her throat to a device planted over her chest.
“You…” Venus rasped. “You did this to .”
She sounded like three people at once, as if Replacent’s fixes to her vocal chords had planted an entire extra person in there. Before, when her power was active, Vivian had likened her voice to an angel’s. Now? Even without it active, Venus could have passed for a biblically accurate nephilim.
It sent a chill down her spine. Looking at the “healed” Washer made her viscerally uncomfortable, moreso than even witnessing the gory ss she’d made of Venus’ face.
“You heard us,” Mantis said, falling back into that disconnect from her body. “Say another word. I fucking dare you.”
Sunrise gave her an odd look. Vivian took her stolen sunglasses off and t it flatly. She didn’t know what her gaze looked like, but judging from the way he reacted, it couldn’t have been pleasant.
“The situation is only going to get worse,” Sunrise told Venus. “Cooperate or get left behind. It’s your choice.”
She didn’t say another word.
“Shockwave,” Sunrise said. “Are you prepared?”
“How’s Replacent getting back?” Shockwave asked, joining him.
“The sa way Amazon is,” Replacent said, lighting a cigarette. “I have my ways.”
He tapped the cane on the ground, then stood up straight. His hunch vanished in an instant, and his cloak fluttered behind him, revealing dark, armored legs that were far too long with more joints than any leg should have. At full height, Replacent stood nearly eight feet tall.
“Pleasure… eting you all,” he said, taking another puff of the cigarette. “Until our paths cross again.”
He took massive, bounding strides out through the shattered window faster than Vivian dared to go on the freeway back ho.
“I’ll stay in touch if necessary, but we’re going to need to switch channels,” Amazon said. “Lycoris, Mantis, good luck. Sunrise, Shockwave, let’s get going.”
“Good luck, boss,” Lycoris said, sounding as sincere as Vivian had ever heard her.
“Co back safely,” Vivian said softly.
Sunrise turned towards her and nodded, flashing her his trademark smile. Every trace of unsureness had faded from his fra.
Amazon ran after Replacent. Sunrise picked up Shockwave under one arm and hoisted Venus with the other and flew off.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Lycoris asked. “This is—“
“I can do this,” Vivian said. “I have to.”
“Why? You’ve just been mind controlled, brutalized a Washer so bad she’ll never be able to go out in public again, and outed yourself to soone I presu you knew as a civilian. You deserve the opportunity to leave this behind.”
“Don’t make
go over this again,” Vivian said. “This is—this is my responsibility, whether or not you think that’s BS. That’s what heroes do.”
“I won’t,” Lycoris said. “So long as you’re sure.”
“One hundred percent.”
Vivian’s boots left bloody prints on the airport’s white tile as they left.
#
Lycoris didn’t have imdiate access to her supercar, a Mover, or even an Echelon van right off the bat, so she acquired transit in a rather odd manner.
Vivian thought that it said sothing about superheroing that less than five minutes after leaving the site of a brutal massacre, she was stabilizing Lycoris’ phone with her power as the heroine made cutesy sounds and poses for her audience as she literally requested to borrow soone’s car.
“There’s no way that works,” Vivian said afterwards.
“You underestimate the power of how many of these people think they genuinely know us,” Lycoris countered. “Hook them in enough, and they start to think you’re their friends. Do you know how many dudes I’ve never t think that they have a shot at putting a kid in ?”
Vivian made a face. “Eugh.”
“It’s a lot. Yes, it’s gross, but in tis of need, having an obsessive fanbase can be helpful for things. Oop. There we go. Give
a second.” Lycoris started typing frantically.
“This feels unethical sohow.”
“If it weren’t for the fact that we need a car ASAP, maybe. All of Echelon’s heroes are on call and city traffic’s in gridlock because of Sears Tower blowing up. Even at max speed, it’ll take a solid hour before anyone can get a van here. On the other hand…”
Did you know this story is from ? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Vivian waited.
“Damn, that would’ve been so great timing,” Lycoris pouted. “He’s coming, though.”
True to her word, just about ten minutes later, a lone red motorcyclist swerved through the bumper-to-bumper traffic jam, cutting it dangerously close to the cars going the other direction. He ca to an awkward stop next to the arrivals gate that Lycoris and Vivian were waiting at.
“Let
handle this real quick, ‘kay?” Lycoris whispered, sauntering towards the stranger.
Vivian watched in moderately disgusted horror as if it was a car wreck and not her friend and popular superheroine interacting with a random fan.
If Lycoris’ typical bright, bouncy charm was a ten out of ten, she had just ratcheted it up to an eleven. Her smile was positively dazzling, her body language far too excited for just eting a fan. She didn’t comnt on the motorcyclist’s roaming eyes, nor the fact that he was way too into her personal space.
“Hey, Mantis!” Lycoris exclaid, clearly indicating Vivian. “Take a picture for us?”
Lycoris handed Vivian the phone.
Is this really necessary?
A few pictures later, the fan—who looked to be a balding white man in his late 20s—left, practically beaming with glee.
“Rember, this is our little secret!” Lycoris reminded him.
“Of course!” he practically sang.
“This is going to be a pain,” Lycoris sighed after. “I think I managed it fine, but if soone thinks that he’s my new boyfriend…”
Vivian mimicked a retch. “That was kind of gross.”
Lycoris shrugged. “Which part? What I did? What he did?”
“Both, I guess? Sorry.”
The heroine sighed. “I’ve made my peace with it. It’s not my fault that my fans have deluded themselves into thinking that they have a personal relationship with a heroine they’ve only seen through thirty-second clips on their phone, and it’s not their fault that I’ve decided to make use of that. I’d much rather not have to deal with creepy, touchy fans, but I’ll do what I have to when it matters. Think of it this way: whether this is gross or not, it’s going to help us save lives.”
“Right,” Vivian said, shaking her head. There was no poing in discussing the derits of parasocial relationships when a villain was actively burning the tallest building in the city to the ground. “Let’s just go, then.”
“You said it,” Lycoris said, patting the motorbike. “Aethercycle 2019. Basically new! This guy likes his bikes.”
The motorcycle seat was barely long enough to seat two. Vivian eyed it suspiciously. “I haven’t ridden a motorcycle before.”
“Would you rather walk?”
Lycoris sat in front. Vivian got on behind her, unsure of herself. “No helts, I assu.”
“Nope. If we crash, I’ll reset us. Don’t be shy, hold on! If you don’t, you’re probably going to fall off and die.”
Vivian wrapped her arms around Lycoris’ costud torso, holding her tight.
“Alright,” Lycoris said. “Let’s save so lives.”
#
Just as Lycoris had said, the entire city was practically locked down. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper, intersections werer full, and a heavy layer of smoke reduced visibility.
Despite that, Lycoris took them at speeds that would have been insane even if there were no cars on their highway.
Vivian swallowed a scream. Lycoris’ hair flapped into Vivian’s face, and she held on tighter, pressing the two of them closer together.
“Slow down!” she shouted.
“I haven’t hit anything yet!” Lycoris replied.
Visibility only got worse as they continued along. The choking black smog increased in thickness as they got closer to the Sears Tower. Vivian could not have been more thankful for her decision to grab a mask.
Lycoris’ control over the bike was every bit as proficient as her ability with her own car, but that didn’t help Vivian feel any safer. The wind and stinging gas buffeted her face so bad that she could barely keep her eyes open.
She decided that she didn’t want to keep her eyes open to see how close Lycoris was getting to the cars on either side of them anyway.
By the ti she no longer feared for her life, she felt like she’d been on the bike for an hour.
“You can let go now,” Lycoris said. “We’re here.”
Judging from the ti on her phone, it had been roughly ten minutes.
She unstuck herself from the other heroine, brushing herself off.
“Let
geotag this real quick,” Lycoris said. “Hopefully it doesn’t break in the anti.”
Vivian couldn’t see the Sears Tower.
Seven or eight years ago, she’d visited her grandpa in Beijing. She’d never known the man—six months after she’d been born, an accident during a routine hospital procedure had resulted in the flow of oxygen to his brain ceasing for nine minutes, and he’d been in a coma since. The sight of her family mber just lying in an ICU bed, vacant eyes opening and shutting to the sound of his ECG, had left a deep impression on her, but the air had been what caught her attention the most.
From her grandpa’s hospital window, she hadn’t been able to see the building across the street. Whether it was because of the nearby mining accident the month before or the general pollution from their rapid, super-driven industrialization, the smog had been so heavy that Vivian had practically needed a flashlight to walk down the street.
It was worse now. She didn’t know why she’d made the connection with her previous journey, but now she couldn’t get the image of her grandpa out of her head, dead in all but na.
The pit that had ford when Sunrise had discovered she was here was only getting worse.
“Co on,” Lycoris said, grabbing her hand. “No ti to waste.”
Lycoris must have had so heads-up display in her visor or so hidden facet of her power that enabled her to see through the smoke, because she guided Vivian like it was clear as day.
The Guardians had set up a base camp of sorts. Hastily prepared tents with the Red Cross and Guardians logos on them dotted the sidewalk and road, which had been cleared of cars.
Vivian still couldn’t see the tower, but she thought she could make out its shape rising high into the air, a beacon of smoky light amidst the dark fog.
Lycoris tugged her along towards one of the tents.
The inside slled of coppery blood and smoke. Thanks to her recent, intense familiarity with the sight of death, Vivian kept herself from retching like she knew she would have before.
She could barely feel the disgust and horror that should have been present. It was like soone else was simulating her emotional response for her and having her watch rather than actually experiencing them.
This was one of at least a dozen tents, and it was full of the dying. Heroes with red armbands tended to the injured, each of them using a Healer power or sothing similar to patch the threads of life back together.
Lycoris tapped her ear and, after a pause, spoke rapidly into it. She wasn’t talking to Tsunami this ti, but even if she was using English, she spoke so quickly and with so many acronyms that Vivian couldn’t understand it.
“This is going to get a little ssy,” Lycoris warned. “You can still turn back now.”
“ssy how?”
At the front of the tent, four people popped into existence. Vivian startled at the sight, then again when she saw the white paint sluicing off of each of them.
“Asphalt down!” the man at the center of the group said. He carried one body in his arms, while the others were leaning on him. “Two injured civs. Go!”
A pair of harried EMTs rushed over to the hero, gathering the people he’d brought back up and carting them away on stretchers.
“ssy like that,” Lycoris said. “They need people in the building. The temps aren’t isolated to one section, so you might run into them. We don’t have Mover powers, so we’d be acting as bodyguards.”
“Fuck,” Vivian said.
“You!” the hero shouted, pointing at the pair of heroines. His voice was frayed with stress and exhaustion. “How are you at protection?”
“Could be better, could be worse!” Lycoris replied. “You’re Chroma?”
“Yeah! I need help with evac!”
“Now or never,” Lycoris said to Vivian. “You have every right to leave, but we need a decision.”
I want to be a hero.
The thought ca out of nowhere. It wasn’t one she’d co up with now; rather, it echoed from her past. A younger Vivian, broken in a different way from the one who’d killed at least four people with her own hands. One who’d been closer to the brink. She’d been saved then.
“Shit,” Vivian cursed again. “Alright, let’s go.”
Chroma’s power apparently involved a large amount of wet paint splattered on an empty part of the tent. He told them to keep at least a hand on him as he activated it. Unsure of what exactly he did but unwilling to waste the ti to ask, Mantis and Lycoris followed suit.
They sank into the paint and the world stopped making sense. For a brief, panicked mont, Vivian thought she was drowning. Alien colors twisted and blended together before her eyes, surrounding all three of them and encompassing their existences.
At the end of the paint-like world was a single, glowing exit, which Chroma led them into. All told, the process took less than five seconds.
They erged into hell.
#
Sunrise’s approach to any deploynt was always a question of risk and reward. His flight made him a powerful Mover, and with the increased strength he had from his powerset, he was ideal for search-and-rescue, especially in a 110-story tower where a lot of Movers who excelled at horizontal speed would be restricted in their capabilities.
On the other hand, the beam attack for which he’d been nad was one of the most devastatingly effective weapons across the entirety of the Guardian Agency.
Usually, he could make his decisions more quickly. Every life-or-death scenario he got sent into involved the question of whether his role would be as a defender or an attacker, after all. He’d gotten used to making the judgnt call and living with the consequences after.
Today, though, as he hovered around the seventieth floor of the Actune Building—forrly the Sears Tower—Sunrise found his judgnt shaken.
Vivian Li is a hero.
“Sunrise, I don’t an to press you,” Shockwave pressed, “but you’re still carrying two supers and we are a very lethal distance from the ground.”
He blinked himself back into awareness, cursing himself silently. This was no ti to be drifting off. Every second he delayed was another second where people died. When you got as powerful as Sunrise was, not acting was as bad as pulling the trigger yourself.
“My apologies,” he said. “Do you have a floor in mind? I’m not looped into the Indianapolis Guardians’ comms, and the Chicago ones only told
to co to the tower.”
“Eighty to ninety,” Shockwave said after a mont. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the rush of the wind. “We don’t have anything better than that. Nobody’s got eyes on Killjoy.”
Sunrise nodded, then gave him a verbal confirmation when he rembered that Shockwave wasn’t exactly looking at his head when he was being carried a solid thousand feet off the ground. Seriously, what’s gotten into ?
He tried to clear his head unsuccessfully, then turned his attention back to the problem at hand. The amount of smoke billowing off of the building made it hard for him to identify which floor was to bla for it, even though the radiant aura that ca with his power illuminated the space around them.
Sunrise wasn’t going to get anything done from out here. He approached the building, thankful for the visor that kept the smoke from stinging his eyes.
The wind whistled with an increasing ferocity as he drew closer. The ongoing incident had broken a fair chunk of the windows, it seed. Glass trickled out from the shattered apertures, falling into the smoky void below.
The floor hadn’t been properly evacuated, Sunrise saw. There were people sheltering behind cubicles, in broken closets, under corpses—it was a ss. The smoke was even thicker inside the building, making it harder to see further inside, but judging from the ongoing alien sounds of powers being thrown around, the situation was anything but resolved.
A thunderous crack sounded from within the smoke, and a figure ca flying out of it, slamming into an already shattered window. The broken glass couldn’t handle the force of a person hitting it at freeway speeds, and they tumbled out.
Sunrise’s instincts overtook the new conflict within him.
“Handle Venus!” he shouted at Shockwave. “Her job is to pacify!”
He didn’t wait for the corporate hero to confirm that he’d heard the command before throwing Shockwave and Venus in with all the force and montum he could manage. It wasn’t going to be an easy landing for them, but it was nothing compared to an eighty-floor drop.
Sunrise dove.
He’d chosen his na not only for the sunbeams he could bring to bear but for what the sun represented. It took light eight and a half minutes to reach the Earth, and while Sunrise wasn’t nearly that fast, he still had speed.
It was more than enough for him to catch up to the falling person. Hero, villain, civilian—he didn’t care. aningless death was aningless. If it was a hero or civilian, he’d save them or bring them back to the fight. A villain could be redeed, and for the purposes of this fight, the win condition was stopping the villains from killing more. Taking them out of the fight accomplished that.
Sunrise’s light illuminated just enough of the smoke for him to catch the falling figure in his arms with less than twenty floors to go before he hit the ground.
A heroine, it seed. One he recognized.
“You’re late,” Amazon told him.
“There were complications,” he said honestly. “But I was. I’m sorry.”
“Take
back up. You’ll save
so ti.”
There was no thank-you, no emotional statent. It wasn’t necessary. Amazon would have survived the fall, and Sunrise was the most convenient Mover in the area.
“You need to get your head in the ga,” Amazon admonished him as the two of them rose. She barely raised her voice, but he could hear her loud and clear anyway. “I know your profile. It’s not like you.”
“It’s my fault,” Sunrise admitted. “It doesn’t concern you. I’ll be ready.”
“That’s all I need to hear,” she said. “Shoot to kill. I know you prefer not to, but every last super we’re up against has been backed into a corner by Killjoy’s drugs. The ones who have tried reason and restraint are dead or dying.”
Before he could think up a response, they were back to the chaos.
Amazon leapt from his arms, apparently unconcerned with the fact that she was using his chest as a jumping-off point. Sunrise followed suit.
It was bedlam on the… eighty-sixth floor, judging by the few intact signs. There were too many fires to spend ti on putting out, many literal.
Sunrise quickly grew certain that it was a power creating the smoke. There was too much of it just to be coming from the fires, and earlier footage had been far cleaner than the all-pervading fog now. His suspicions only deepend when he experintally fired a laser at low power and the smoke crumbled away like it was a living being.
Although Amazon had said to shoot to kill, Sunrise had to be careful. Search-and-rescue teams kept on popping in and out, utilizing teleport abilities to co in, grab a couple civilians, and co out. Sunrise almost instinctively fired at a group the first ti they teleported in, but managed to redirect his blast towards another clash of powers elsewhere at the last second.
He really was not operating at his best.
Try as he might, as he hovered from office to office, searching for the sources of the powers that had turned the tower into a hellscape, his mind kept on returning to her.
Vivian was a hero, and not only that, she was likely in this ss. She stood accused of aggravated assault on a a Guardian, was implicated in a couple of manslaughter cases that certainly wouldn’t hold water after this incident, and had otherwise been living life as a hero for… how long now?
The sudden appearance of an unfamiliar, uncostud super startled him out of his thoughts. A balding middle-aged man in a business suit broke through a layer of drywall without breaking a sweat, his eyes bulging in a way that reminded him of Replacent’s fix to Venus’ face. His pupils were so horrendously dilated that the bloodshot whites were barely visible, and black sludge spilled forth from every orifice in his body. Purple fla ignited across his entire body, igniting the sludge even as it spilled out.
He hissed sothing unintelligible. A temp super.
Sunrise preferred to solve problems without violence, but he was a practical man. He hadn’t co this far by always pulling his punches.
He activated his power, full-force. A second sun shone inside the eighty-sixth floor for roughly zero point three seconds, all of its power focused on a single target.
There were not even ashes left to bury—only a sar on the ground where once there had been a living, breathing human. Sunrise ntally apologized to whoever the man had been. He would have to attend the service if he was ever identified.
All too soon, his thoughts returned to the sa abyss they’d been in. Four years ago, he’d almost been too late to respond to a call about a young woman who had been ready to throw herself from the top of a ten-story building. Sunrise had later learned that she had already been on the crisis point list that the Guardians kept—a list of those who had recently undergone intense, personal trauma and thus had a higher-than-average chance to receive a vial of their own.
San Francisco’s crisis point program had fallen apart thanks to the massive amounts of turnover in the years prior, so Sunrise had ended up assigned to her case. The bureaucracy had figured that since he had a pre-existing interaction with her, he was the man for the job.
He’d considered himself a poor fit for Vivian, but he’d put everything into it. She hadn’t been having the best of tis, but to so extent, she seed to have recovered.
Except she hadn’t. Recovered people weren’t supposed to get powers. That wasn’t sothing you got if you were a whole, complete person.
How long had it been? A month? A few months? God, he’d been so stupid. She’d even texted him about superhero questions out of the blue.
He hadn’t wanted this life for her. There were upsides to becoming a hero, for sure, but Sunrise had so much blood on his hands already that he knew it was never going to wash out. From the rumors and reports he’d heard, Vivian already had so on her own, and it was only going to get worse.
She could die here, today, and there would be nothing Sunrise could do about it.
All he had ever wanted to do was save people. When he’d first received his powers, he’d wanted to protect the world.
Did he even deserve to dream of that? Could he even save one person?
In terms of raw power, he might have ranked in the top twenty in the nation, but why did that matter if he couldn’t do anything with it?
He continued, but his heart was too busy with the girl he’d failed to piece back together.
If there was one rule to superhuman fights, it was that anything could happen. Even the Dyad were, at the end of the day, mortal beings. One bad day, one distracted mont, and everything could be over in an instant.
And Sunrise was having a very bad day.
He never saw the temporary, Killjoy-created super that erged from underneath the desk in an office he’d failed to check well enough.
Sunrise did, however, see the spear of energy that pierced straight through his torso.
#
“Eighty-two is clear,” Chroma said, breathing hard. “Do we need a break?”
Vivian was growing numb. Her job was simple, and she was remarkably effective at it. Though the temp supers were largely committed to the higher floors, a fair few of them hadn’t activated their powers until they’d gotten lower, or they’d been otherwise infected by an agent of Killjoy. Once activated, they would interfere with search and rescue, kill whoever they could see, and otherwise be a nuisance.
All she had to do was take them down first.
She didn’t know if she’d killed any of them. She’d aid for throats, heads, and hearts, but their trio kept on disappearing into one of Chroma’s paint portals before she could tell what effect she’d had on the others.
“No,” she said, at the sa ti Lycoris said, “Mantis?”
“No,” Vivian repeated. “Everyone else is working their hardest. My power is fine, and I’m unhurt.”
“If you say so,” Chroma said, popping a paint-filled ballon. “Let’s get started on eighty-three.”
I hope Sunrise is doing okay.
They returned to the battle.
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