Heroes Wear Capes

“So last night the space-time continuum ripped apart in the middle of your apartment, which only makes it slightly less intense than last year’s Thanksgiving.”

~ Winn Scott

Xander was too jumpy to stop pacing. Actually, he was sure he wasn’t even pacing, but just running laps around his closet bedroom at an inhuman speed. If his mother walked in, she would freak.

That stopped him from running circles. His mother walking in on her only son blurring by and creating a tornado in his room was probably not a favorable option.

Actually, Xander’s room did remarkably resemble the aftermath of a hurricane with the wreckage of homework and clothes and blankets haphazardly covering the floor. That’s what happened when you decided the best way to get rid of your nerves was to run laps in your bedroom that could already barley fit its bed and dresser.

It seemed to be a very good thing that he had stopped running at that exact moment though, because Xander’s mom poked her head in the door with a smile. In fact, one paper that had been flying around the room had only just floated to the floor when she opened her mouth to speak, “Xander, honey, someone is here to see you.”

Xander groaned. “If it’s John, tell him to go away and stop pestering me about Mera. I have . . . homework.”

She popped her hip. “If it was John, I would definitely not let him in our house with this mess on the floor. How do you expect to have a husband or wife one day if you can’t take care of your own room first? I swear, all of you nasty teenage boys are pigs.”

“But you still love me,” Xander smirked.

“That’s not the issue at play. Anyways, your visitor is in the kitchen.”

Xander made sure her back was turned before he zoomed around his room to quickly pick up his things and put them away. In seconds the room was back to how it was before.

Probably one of the best things to come from super speed, if he was being honest.

Xander walked out into the main room, curious as to who would be visiting him other than John. He still needed to go to Wild Fire’s headquarters later on, so he hoped they wouldn’t take long.

“Honey, you never told me how polite your friend Mera was.”

Xander stopped in his tracks. It was a sight he never thought he’d see. Mera Deauxma was standing at his kitchen counter with his mother, smiling gleefully.

(Xander had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming)

(Like, his dream girl was in his house, standing only a couple of feet from him!)

“Um . . .”

Mera chuckled. “It’s no big deal Mrs. Mendez. We don’t even know each other that well.”

Mrs. Mendez tilted her head. “Oh, I’d have thought by the way he goes on about you that you two were, you know, closer.”

Xander wanted to throw himself off of a cliff.

Thankfully, Mera took the route that was much less painful for him.

“Well, I hope I meet your expectation of me then. I wouldn’t want to let anyone down.”

His mom laughed and smiled. “So, why have you decided to stop by today?”

Mera immediately straightened, like she suddenly remembered why she had shown up at Xander’s house.

“Well, Xander and I have this project in history and we need to desperately work on it.”

Xander furrowed his eyebrows. “I thought we were meeting later today though?”

His mom frowned. “You didn’t tell me you were going out tonight.”

He almost cursed under his breath.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Mrs. Mendez. I hadn’t realized Xander didn’t tell you. I do hope he can still help,” Mera pleaded. “He really is an expert on the late eighteen hundreds.”

Xander was in fact no such expert.

“Well, in that case,” his mom broke, “it would only make sense that my boy helps. I wouldn’t try and keep him from his school work, you know.”

“Yes, and this project is worth half the grade,” Xander added.

Mrs. Mendez put her hands on her hips. “Well, then what are you waiting for? Don’t let an old lady like me stop you from doing a project with a pretty girl, Xander.”

Xander didn’t think it was possible to blush more than he already was.

“Yeah, Xander,” Mera responded, smirking broadly.

Of course the one time his crush steps inside his house, his mom embarrassed the hell out of him.

Mera took his arms and dragged him out of his own house. When they were on the street, he broke from her grip and crossed his arms.

“Hey, what’s with the schedule change on me? I didn’t want my mother knowing I was out doing stuff tonight. Potentially dangerous stuff I might add.”

Mera sighed. “Look, Artic Frost moved up her timetable. Besides, you should really at least be telling your mother that you’re going out to do something. What if she comes home early or wakes up in the middle of the night and can’t find you? You don’t want to worry her.”

Xander pouted. “I bet Wild Fire doesn’t report back to his mommy.”

Mera straightened immediately. “That’s only because his parents don’t even know he’s home half of the time between their yelling and drunkenness.”

Xander was struck with an opposition to his preconceived notion of the hero. Somehow when you thought of a superhero, the image that came to mind was a perfect person with a perfect life, not someone with a broken family. Heroes were the pillars in society, so for something to set them apart from the high pedestal people built for them was strange.

Then again, he had to remember his own family. A mother working hard to pay the bills with an absentee father that they didn’t talk about. His situation wasn’t perfect either and he was an aspiring hero himself.

“Well, let’s stop hovering and go to Wild Fire’s hideout. We have a special gift for you.”

Xander brightened. A gift? A gift from a superhero right before he was going to have to probably fight a villain?

“Awesome!”

Celeste sighed and tapped her foot. Of course they would be late.

Why were superheroes ever trusted for anything? Like, they couldn’t even arrive at the right time to a drop point. Was it that hard to set an alarm so you could leave your hideout at the right time? Or maybe even call Momentum for a piggyback ride?

To be fair, she did change the time at the last minute, but that had only been a precautionary move. She didn’t want to have to roam the inner city with a presumably priceless piece of jewelry for longer than she had to.

Of course, she didn’t have the actual necklace that she had stolen from the Schows. It was a knockoff curtesy of her jeweler. He had already sold off the diamonds in the real piece and they would be untraceable by this time. He’d given her the money she’d earned plus the replica. He thought it would come in handy, and it definitely would.

Wild Fire would take the necklace in exchange for Momentum and by the time he turned it in to the police and realized it was a fake, she would be long gone on the roof of the Rossi Corp building with Momentum delivered with a bow on his head to the CEO of an empire.

What? She was a villain. This was what they did.

(If Wild Fire expected anything less, he was an idiot.)

And, to think, soon Celeste would know his identity. He didn’t know that as soon as he handed over Momentum, she would have the ultimate blackmail against him. No super wanted their identity released to the world, and, while some survived, not all were as sturdy in their reputation as the League of Legends super team. Wild Fire lived in a city with too many heroes, and if that city knew his name and his occupation, they would drop him in the blink of an eye.

She could run rampant around the city without worrying about Wild Fire stopping her. She could steal as many priceless artifacts from as many aristocrats as she wanted with no fear of retribution.

Celeste could even make Wild Fire do a villainous activity or two. Yes, that would really knock him down a notch from his high pedestal.

Sighing out of boredom, Celeste looked down on the city square she was supposed to be meeting Wild Fire in. It was relatively busy, which she wanted to use to her advantage. With civilians around, her nemesis was less likely to try something that could get people hurt. He was soft that way.

Celeste noted a group of elementary age children walking out of the Kingdom City Super Museum. She figured that while she waited she may as well have some fun.

It was the start of spring, so the cold temperatures were behind them. When snow started falling in the middle of downtown, most of the adults knew what was up immediately. When your city hosted a super villain with ice powers, you tended to get fairly scared of random snow falling, but, despite that fact, the kids were overjoyed. Thanks to Celeste, the ground was soon covered in two inches of snow. While some people looked around trying to spot the infamous villain, the kids who came out of the museum were delighted, throwing snowballs and pausing to make snowmen out of the soft snow.

It made Celeste smile. Children didn’t know she was evil, so they were grateful for the snow.

In a split second decision, Celeste jumped down from the building she was residing on. She made sure there was a tuft of snow to break her fall. When she stood up in the square, the people who saw her immediately tried to find shelter to hide from the villain. Grinning at the fear from the people in the square, she took a step forward.

And got hit by a snowball.

Slowly, she turned and saw the group of children who were playing in the snow. A girl with brown hair and a pretty face had wide eyes and one hand holding a snowball. The boy next to her started laughing.

Celeste brushed the snow off of her super suit and stared down the kids. They seemed positively petrified now. They probably just realized who she was.

She snapped her fingers and a small cloud formed above the little girl’s head. Fluffy snow fell from the cloud and onto her head. Soon she and the other kids were laughing, and trying to catch the snow that was falling.

But then the snow in front of Celeste was melted in a blast of fire and she lost her concentration, the snow clouds in the square and above the girl’s head disappearing. Though, by this point there was already half a foot of snow from her overpowered clouds.

“Wild Fire, why do you always have to ruin my fun?” Celeste asked rhetorically, turning to see him land in the snow after flying through the air with his fire.

The ground around where Wild Fire landed was already rapidly melting into a pool of slush. He radiated too much heat for the snow to withstand him. If he wasn’t careful, he would cause the street to flood.

“Fun? I thought today was strictly business?”

Celeste wanted to wipe that perfect smirk off of his face so bad.

“You wouldn’t know the definition of fun, Wild Fire. You’re too stuck up for that.” Celeste goaded.

The snow around his feet started to melt even faster. “You don’t know anything about me, Elsa.”

She laughed. “Oh, I know enough. Now, how about a certain little hero?”

Wild Fire crossed his arms and shook his head. “No, I need to see the necklace first.”

Celeste sighed and untucked the necklace around her neck from under her suit. It did look strikingly like the original. If only Celeste was one for flashy jewelry.

“And what about Momentum?” The hero asked. “What will you do with him?”

“We’ll just have a fun little chat,” Celeste promised, though her fingers were crossed behind her back. Wild Fire didn’t know that the Rossi fortune was after the speedy hero, so he shouldn’t know what she wanted with him. Though, Celeste wouldn’t be surprised if the little weasel had found out one way or another what she’d been hired to do.

She wondered, did he know how she was being paid?

“Somehow I doubt your honesty.” Wild Fire commented.

Celeste laughed. “Why? I’m the most trustworthy person I know.”

He looked positively angry now. The melted snow at his feet was turning the snow around it into slush, making the road slowly turn into a gray watery mush. And to think how pretty the snow-white street had been before Wild Fire came along.

In a flash of light, Momentum appeared next to Wild Fire. The path through the snow he had sped through was melted down, so Celeste could plainly see he had only been waiting around the corner. The friction of his running on her snow only played to her advantage.

The hero also seemed to have had an upgrade in the outfit since the last pictures she had seen of him on the news. Gone were the ratty hoodie and ripped jeans of before. In their place was a real spandex suit most likely made by Hermes Enterprises. They made just about every supers’ suit, even her own. They were extremely secretive and usually made the suits through anonymous donations and delivered them straight to the hero or villain they were made for. Their suits were top notch and they cared the same for heroes and villains in their materials. It was just business to them, they didn’t care what you did while in the suits.

And Celeste had to say that she quite liked his outfit. It wasn’t flashy like Wild Fire’s or White Knight’s costumes and was instead a combination of muted blues and reds. It faded from red at the top to dark blue at his boots. A lone ranger style mask covered his face, letting his dark hair be shown standing up from running so fast. It gave her the impression he was trying too hard to be patriotic, but not all battles could be won.

“What? No cape? I thought heroes wore capes?”

Momentum frowned for a moment and then turned to Wild Fire. “Yeah, why no cape?”

Celeste could see the irritation fly through Wild Fire’s face. He used to have a cape, something only worn by heroes a little too stuck on their image like White Knight and The Marvel. Then Celeste took the streets. Whenever Wild Fire attacked her, she liked to poke giant holes in his capes with ice shards and made blizzards tangle it around streetlamps. Eventually Wild Fire decided to cut off the cape entirely instead of replacing it every time he met his arch nemesis.

“Heroes don’t need capes to defeat villains like you.”

Momentum smiled. “Ooh, that was a good one. I need to write that down.”

Celeste stifled a laugh. Trevor Rossi thought this idiot was the one who killed his father? She wasn’t going to be the one to tell him he was wrong and lose the chance at her pay.

Wild Fire sighed and continued his speech. “Now, how about that necklace?”

She thought about it for a moment. The necklace was of no real use to her, so she could just give it up without a thought, but at the same time she had to put on a show.

“You didn’t think I’d give it up that easily, did you?”

She smiled sinisterly and restarted her snowstorm that Wild Fire and so rudely interrupted.

It was time for a fight.