Interlude Fifty: Agni (Patreon)

She watched as the interviewer tore into Andrew.

He was trying his best, but he was fumbling. Logan Michaels had years of experience in making even seasoned politicians squirm.

For all his power, Andrew was still just a kid. And he couldn't even tell that he was being - to put it simply - bullied.

She grinned.

She knew how to deal with bullies.

Five steps to the washroom. She pulled the door shut and retrieved her costume.

Knee-high boots. Blue leggings with the flame motif. The god-awful red-and-blue top. The mask, with its blue background and red sparkles. The blue-and-orange cape.

She stared at herself in the mirror for a second. She hadn't worn the costume for years. Not since Rawalpindi.

She hadn't felt like a hero since that day.

Until Andrew.

She switched on the lighter and gazed into the flame.

Flash Teleport.

And, in a burst of smoke, she was on the stage.

Logan Michaels jerked backwards in his chair.

"Why, Logan!" She smiled at him. "How nice to see you in person! I'm a huge fan!"

"Agni?" Belessar's voice was surprised. "What are you doing here?"

"Crashing your interview, love," she grinned, walking over. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she lowered her lips to his helmet - gods he was tall, even sitting down - and gave him a loud, sloppy kiss.

For a few seconds, the entire studio was silent. Logan Michaels was staring at them, fascinated. She took up a position standing behind Andrew's sofa and gave Logan a wicked smile. "Logan, I'm very cross with you."

"Ah… Sorry, Miss Agni, I hope I haven't done anything to upset you?"

"It's just Agni, and you have. Honestly. You call my boyfriend on to your show but not me?" She made a disappointed face. "I'm hurt. I thought you treated men and women equally?"

"Really sorry, Agni!" Logan exclaimed. "You're welcome on the show anytime. Right now, in fact." He gestured wildly to the staff off-screen. "Let's get you a chair."

"You can have mine," Belessar started to get up.

She put a hand on his shoulder. "Sit down, lover boy. I'm quite happy to sit on your lap."

She could tell Andrew was blushing underneath the mask. Good. Behind the entire Belessar persona, he was still too shy for his own good.

A harried-looking bunch of staffers were lugging a sofa towards the stage. She looked at Andrew. "Belessar?"

Wordlessly, he gestured, and the sofa began to levitate. It gently floated through the air and settled down next to his.

"Good. Now me."

She felt the loss of gravity, as Andrew's power lifted her up into the air and gently placed her on the couch.

"Perfect," she purred. Andrew nodded in acknowledgement.

"So," she turned to Logan. "I believe you were asking Andrew some questions, Logan? About, hmm, his relationship with the girls Phoenix Company."

"We can pass on that," Logan was sweating. Did he think she would set his studio on fire?

As fun as that would be, it wasn't the plan.

"No, I'd like to talk about it," she replied. "Because it's a question that's been asked by, well, a lot of people. Here's a strong, powerful, respected hero on one side, and a bunch of pretty girls on the other. Whom he rescued. Surely, he's entitled to something, right?"

"Is he?" asked Logan neutrally.

"Yes. Their loyalty. Phoenix Company have been working for the Dragonflies for a while now." Agni smirked. "So really, Belessar's their boss."

"I see," siad Logan. "And as their boss…."

"He ensures a safe working environment."

Logan's eyebrows shot up. "They fight the aliens."

"Yeah, but the aliens don't want to rape them, just kill them. It's pretty impersonal." Agni's smirk widened. "It's refreshing to be shot at because of your species instead of your gender."

"Refreshing," Logan murmured neutrally.

“Very. And I believe you asked about the Giovanni protocols. I can confirm that they are being followed.”

“Belessar doesn’t even know what they are…”

“But I do. Protocol one, in an organization where members of one community report to a supervisor from a completely different community, there must be a formal mechanism of counselling available to both employees and supervisor, with an impartial third party belonging to the employee community and able to communicate peer-to-peer with the supervisor.” Agni grinned nastily at Michaels. “Phoenix Company is mostly women, and they need a woman they can talk to who can raise any concerns to their boss - and isn’t in the chain of command. That’s me.”

“You’re the … Giovanni protocols mandated coach for Phoenix Company.”

“Oh yeah. As to your other question, Logan, you implied some of Phoenix Company might be sleeping with Belessar." She pouted. "I'm hurt. I really am. Because you seem to think I can't hold on to my man?"

"I didn't mean that," Logan replied hastily.

“Honestly, think about it. If you were a sexy siren type and wanted to grab yourself a superhero," Agni cocked her head, "would you pick my man? Not a great idea. I mean, maybe if you were fireproof...." A tiny wisp of flame - no larger than a lighter - ignited from her forefinger. "Otherwise, bad idea. So as you can see, Protocol Two - no sexual relationships between employees and supervisors - is most certainly being followed. The day it isn’t, there’ll be a few mysterious burnt-out corpses for the cops to find."

"So there's nothing going on between Belessar and the women of Phoenix Company," Logan nodded his head rapidly. "I think everyone's very clear on that. But your relationship with Belessar - that's quite a shocker for most fans."

"Never been too worried about fans," Agni said.  "But it's been good for the both of us. We have a lot in common."

"Such as?"

"We both hate rapists, for starters," Agni replied, "and we both became famous for killing a bunch of them."

Logan Michaels looked puzzled. "I'm sorry?"

"You know about Rawalpindi, right?"

"Yes…." Logan replied cautiously, "... but only what's been publicly reported. Your fight with the Pakistani army and General Duraid?"

"Only what's been publicly reported? Oh dear." Agni shook her head. "So much more happened that night. Stuff which never made the papers."

"Would you be open to discussing it?" Logan asked cautiously.

"Sure. In fact, we can talk about it right now."

"So can you tell us how things started out?"

"Well, one night when I was fifteen, King Shah came into my room."

Logan's jaw dropped. "You were fifteen?"

"Yes. I'm 2055 born."

"You were…. fourteen at Delhi?"

"Yes. Any more basic math questions? No? Anyway, King Shah and Waqtwazir helped me out at Delhi…. I was a pretty scared kid after my first team had been killed by the aliens. Shah and Waqtwazir basically found me on the battlefield that day, crying over the bodies of my friends. They talked me into accompanying them. Helped me get through the battle. So by the time we were done, I was pretty grateful to them." She shrugged. "After the battle, we exchanged names and addresses."

"You gave them your name and home address?"

"Fourteen. And they gave me theirs. We all three swore that we wouldn't let our countries' mutual enmity come between us."

"That must have been a big thing."

"You have no idea. I'd visited Cafe Leopold and seen the bullet holes. So it was a pretty big thing for me."

"So… King Shah came to you…"

"He flew in that night. He'd been crying. Duraid had taken his family hostage in the sweep of Lahore. The thing is…" She shrugged. "Duraid probably wanted to just threaten them. But his father had already been shot dead by the soldiers in the raid. For 'resisting arrest'."

"Resisting… arrest?”

“King Shah’s father had a gun at home. Pretty common in Lahore, but the soldiers found it and just shot him on the spot. Then they picked up his mother, seven-year-old brother and ten-year-old sister, roped them into a van and shipped them off to Rawalpindi along with several thousand others from Shahdara. It was the biggest raid in Lahore in years.”

“King Shah told you that?”

“It all came tumbling out in less than fifteen minutes. I got the story in bits and pieces. King Shah wasn’t that old himself. So we talked. And we realized that there was only one way to help his family.” Agni shrugged. “We’d have to go to Rawalpindi and get them - and everyone else - free.”

“That must have been a scary thought.”

“Oh, it was terrifying. For King Shah, it was going against the men who’d ruled his country for years. For me? It was crossing into Pakistan and taking on the entire Pakistani Army. Not a small prospect.

“Still, rescuing people is what heroes do, right? So we talked, and between us we came up with a plan. King Shah and I knew Hifara - she owed him from Dubai. We worked out that we’d go to Rawalpindi, find the camp and dig a network of tunnels underneath. Then I’d help create a diversion while Hifara got the people out to safety.” She took a deep breath. “And King Shah would assassinate Duraid.”

“You planned to assassinate Duraid at the outset?”

“The General had made it very clear where he stood. King Shah pointed out that if we just got the people free, the Pakistani soldiers would come after them - and then we’d be back where we started. The only way to make sure they didn’t chase us - was by removing the man giving the orders.” Agni shrugged. “I wasn’t too keen on the idea - which is why King Shah told me he’d do it.”

“He volunteered to murder Duraid?”

“Assassinate. And it had to be done - you can’t simply give an army general a black eye and expect him to stay silent. That’s why the original plan was for me to start a series of fires as a diversion, for King Shah to hit Army House in the chaos and Hifara to carry out the rescue while we were occupying everyone’s attention.”

“But that’s not exactly what happened.”

“No.” Agni took a deep breath. “To understand the events of that night…. My power lets me do several things with fire. One of them is that I can see through flames.”

“You can see through flames? What kind of flames?”

“Candles, lighter flames, small fires - anything within my range and control. I can see into it as if I were there. I can only look through one flame at a time - but I can send a small flame, the size of an eye, into a room. And spy on what’s happening there.”

“That’s… quite an ability. A very intrusive one.”

“And one which can be easily defeated by a sprinkler system.”

Logan laughed politely. “So, perhaps not that unobtrusive then.”

“Not at all. If I’m spying on you, you’ll see a flame somewhere in the room - generally on the walls. And it’s not as if I can pay attention to more than one person at a time.”

“So, what happened that night?”

“The Lahore hostages were being held in a prison camp with more than a thousand guards. Hifara and I got fairly close - we were maybe a hundred metres from the wall - when she started digging tunnels underneath. She told me to scout out the inside of the camp with my flames.

“So I did. I sent tiny sparks through the fence. The camp was pretty well lit - floodlights, armed guards patrolling - and the prisoners were being housed in these massive sheds. Thousands of people, all located in large warehouses, packed together like sardines.

“There were a few smaller buildings to the side, though. Apartment complexes and the like. I thought at first, these must be where the guards live, so let’s check them out too.

“I sent a flame into the first window I found, and there was a guard there all right. A naked guard mounted on top of a teenage girl, and one who didn’t look too happy to be there.

“Well, I got angry. So I set the guy’s hair on fire.”

Logan smiled. “That must have helped the girl.”

“Yeah - she ran out screaming. I think she got away. Anyway, the guard started yelling, so I intensified the flames. It took a few seconds, but he was dead soon enough.”

“Isn’t that a little…. Brutal?”

“My country had the death penalty for that sort of thing.”

Logan wisely stayed silent.

“Anyway, I was pretty angry. Still, as good as getting that girl free felt, I needed to scope out the rest of the building, see what the guards were doing. So I sent the flame into the next door apartment.

“And I found another guard and another girl.”

“... Two victims that close together?” Logan seemed surprised.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought at first. This girl was in even worse condition - her face was all bloody, and the guard was choking her while he…. Well, I got even angrier. So I set his hair on fire again. He jumped up and ran to the bathroom - at which point I set the rest of him on fire. Starting with his ….” Agni waved her hands in the air suggestively. “You know.”

Logan nodded gravely. “That must have been a pretty traumatic experience for you. Given that you were just fifteen.”

Agni nodded. “Fifteen and hot-tempered. At that point I was swearing a lot, calling the guards names my mother would’ve fainted at hearing. Hifara noticed.

“Hifara was a sweet lady - very level-headed - but a lot older than me. So when I started swearing she came and asked me what was wrong.

“So I told her. Two rooms, two rapists - not a pretty picture. I was angry - very angry. So I said, if I find another, I’m burning the entire camp down.

“Hifara took my words pretty seriously. That wasn’t what we’d come to do, and she said as much. We argued for a bit - I recall it was pretty intense - and we agreed that I wouldn’t do it for one more, or two more. She needed time to finish the tunnels.”

“Did Hifara threaten to use force to stop you?”

Agni smiled crookedly. “That’s not how we argued. I was angry about it, so was she… but she needed the time. As I recall, her exact words were ‘If you find one or two more, you’ll stay your hand. Give me time to finish the tunnels, and then we’ll talk.’ At which point I said, ‘If I find five more, I’m burning every single guard in there alive.’”

“A bold claim.”

“I had no idea if I could do it, then. I just knew I needed to do something. So at that point Hifara suggests I use the time while she’s fixing up the tunnels to survey the camp properly. Mark the exits. Find and fix the locations of the guards. And count the rapists. If I counted more than five by the time she was done, I could do what I wanted.” Agni sighed. “I truly believe she thought those two were an exception.”

“What happened after that?” asked Logan.

Agni smiled bitterly. “Fifty-three.”

Logan frowned. “Pardon me?”

“I counted fifty-three guards in the camp who were either raping or torturing a prisoner. Some victims were young, some old, some boys. It didn’t seem to matter. There were … things … happening everywhere. Some guards were indulging themselves in different ways - beating people bloody, torturing them with instruments, one was cutting off a man’s fingers one by one.

“I was sick to my stomach. I hadn’t imagined humans being capable of this kind of cruelty.

“When Hifara told me she was done with her tunnels, I told her the number. She didn’t believe me at first, asked if I was sure. I told her there were almost three thousand guards in that camp, and I’d probably scanned less than half of them.

“She got real quiet right then. Scared quiet. Then she said she could get the prisoners out through the tunnels, if there was a diversion.

“So I said, well, time to start the diversion. And then I summoned a flame and teleported through it.

“The first room I got to was that of a soldier in mid-activity. I set his beard on fire. When he jumped up and ran to the bathroom, I carbonized him. Then I jumped to the next room with a flame, and burned the men I found there. There were two girls in that room - I think they got out afterwards. Anyway, I kept jumping from room to room, burning down soldiers one after another.

“In fifteen minutes, I’d cleared half the building. One of the rooms I jumped into had an officer who was talking to someone higher up on videoconference - I thought it was the camp commandant. I fried the officer. Then I looked at the videoconference and saw a man smoking a cigar - so I jumped to the cigar flame.

“There were five other men in that room. I killed them. There were other people on the videoconference - they saw me and started screaming, threatening me with nukes.

“I think I laughed then. It was so bizarre.

“Then I walked out and realized I wasn’t in the camp commandant’s office. I was in the General Headquarters of the Pakistani Army in Rawalpindi.”

Logan Michaels gulped. “That… must have been a surprise.”

“Didn’t have time to process it. A bunch of MPs saw me and pointed rifles. So I set them on fire. Then other soldiers showed up and started shooting, so I set those on fire. After that things just escalated.”

“What happened at the camp?”

“Well I had apparently created quite a distraction at the camp by that time. Guards were running all over the place, looking for who caused this. Of course, they couldn’t find me, because I was in the General Headquarters. Hifara, meanwhile, triggered some collapses under the guard barracks, pinning them down and creating enough confusion to let the prisoners start escaping.

“I spent the next hour dodging bullets and setting more things on fire. At some point, I think there were tanks, but those also burn quite nicely.”

“You set tanks on fire?”

“I set their ammunition on fire. When a high explosive shell blows up inside a tank, it makes for a very big boom.”

“I see….”

“At this point a lot of stuff was on fire, including most of the General Headquarters, several barracks, a lot of fuel stores and depots, and a whole lot of soldiers.”

“From all accounts, you evaded the soldiers quite skilfully.”

“Fifteen-year-old girl. I just kept jumping from flame to flame. I’d blow up a tank, they’d try to figure out what caused it, call fire on my position, and I’d jump to the burning tank’s flames.”

“There are accounts by survivors of that battle that you were impossible to predict. They couldn’t figure out what target you would hit next.”

“I had no idea what I would hit next, either. I just… reacted. Whatever I saw, wherever I saw a soldier, or a tank, or a jeep, or a building …. I just torched it.”

“At some point you also hit the army’s housing complex?”

“Yes, I did.”

“You burnt down a lot of homes that night.”

“In my defence, the homeowners were shooting at me. Look - battle’s not easy to describe. Ultras acting on their own don’t have the luxury of aerial tracking or intel inputs that make targets easy to identify. At one point I found myself in the middle of an area with a lot of soldiers in uniform getting into cars and jeeps, some of whom were carrying guns - so I let loose. Set everything on fire. After that?” Agni shrugged. “The fires got out of control.”

“A lot of people died that night. Do you feel that all of them deserved to?”

Clever little journalist, he was setting her up for a trap. “I went in there with an objective, Logan. To get the hostages from Lahore freed.” She shrugged. “I think I achieved that.”

“But at such a cost?”

“Well, if you want to count costs, we could always surrender to the aliens,” smiled Agni. “I’m sure the Hierarchy would stop bombing our cities then.”

“Surely there were less violent ways to secure the hostages’ freedom.”

“Ways which would have taken time? Tell me, Logan, how many times would it be acceptable for those guards to have their way with the hostages before a less violent way worked?”

“Surely not all of those killed at Rawalpindi were equally criminal….”

“It doesn’t matter, Logan,” she cut him off sharply. “If you allow criminal, violent men to flourish under the guard of your organization, then you are just as responsible as they are. You want to rape, torture and kill your citizens? You will burn. You want to shield those guilty of such crimes because it’s ‘convenient’ for your organization? You will burn. You belong to a family that benefits from these actions? You will burn. That’s what it is.”

Logan had turned pale. “Even the families?”

“Even the families, Logan.”

“That’s not very heroic…..”

“Logan Michaels, I am a supervillain.” Her eyes bored into him. “You can dress me up in a pretty costume. You can sit me down on a chair and chat nicely about the weather. You can even invite me to tea, and I’ll eat cake and sip a cup with you. But none of that changes who I am. Don’t forget that.”

She could see Logan sweating. He’d understood a little, now.

“My cause, Logan, is to make sure that men with guns do not turn ordinary people into slaves. That’s why I intervened in Sudan, and in Medellin.”

“In Medellin you fought the cartels….”

“I fought cartel militias, Logan. If a man puts a gun to your head and puts you in chains, I don’t care whether he’s wearing a uniform or not. It doesn’t matter whether the chains are barbed wire fences, mind control, or drug addiction. I will come for that man, and for any and all of his brethren. I am a supervillain, Logan Michaels, and that is my cause.”

Logan wisely stayed silent.

It was Belessar who spoke up. “But you’ll give people a chance, won’t you? A chance to come clean. Surrender.”

“Why not, lover boy?” Agni purred. “If they surrender before we show up, sure. If they resist? You break them down, and I’ll burn them all.”

“So you don’t actually hunt armies,” remarked Logan.

“I hunt rapists and murderers, Logan. I don’t particularly care if they wear a uniform.” She smiled wickedly. “The ones who parade around in uniforms I make an example out of. The rest just…. die mysteriously in a fire.”

She could sense the thoughts rapidly flickering through Michaels’ mind. “So your actions in Sudan and Medellin….”

“If a militia, police force, or organized military starts to torture and kill civilians? I’ll intervene. And so will Belessar. That’s the other thing we have in common, Logan.

“You see, very few men will risk their lives for what’s right, even if it goes against what’s popular. Belessar does. I do. You can label us heroes, villains, or nothing at all - we don’t care.”

"So you're not actually opposed to armies. Just rapists."

"A fairly accurate summary."

"The UN has you designated as an international terrorist….."

"Meh."

Logan Michaels paused. ".... meh?"

Agni shrugged. "It doesn't get in the way of my doing what needs doing."

"Why didn't you ever tell anyone about the… story behind Rawalpindi?"

"Well, King Shah asked me to keep quiet about it until the controversy died down. Then he was killed. Afterwards, nobody asked."

"Nobody asked?"

"I got some requests for interviews, but not credible ones. Too many ultras masquerading as reporters and looking for a famous takedown."

“Let me apologise for those on behalf of the journalistic community."

"Not your fault.”

“What’s your take on the allegations about Belessar practicing mind-control?”

“He doesn’t have any technology that allows it. I know; I’ve seen the inside of his workshop. Which he needs to clean….”

“My workshop is perfectly organized, thank you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, back when I was investigating him - and yes, that did happen - there were a lot of rumours spread by the Grunters. I’ll admit to being misled, actually; I suspected he had brainwashed a lot of folks. So I went and got a mindshield, one strong enough to withstand a Master assault indefinitely. And then, afterwards, I tested it on several of the Phoenix Company volunteers. They’re free of mental influence now.”

“The court records…”

“The court records were of scans taken the day after the Grunter mansion raid. There was a Master there, all right, called Dreamspeaker. He spent a great deal of time brainwashing the women there into believing all sorts of stuff. Which is why Commandant Cullen gets her team scanned, independently, every month; they’ve come up clean from further manipulation since then.”

“Thank you for sharing that. If I may ask, though … what's next for you?"

Agni shrugged. "Let's see. I'm having a great time with Belessar so far. We date, we go see movies…."

Logan's eyes went wide. "You and Belessar go to movie theatres?"

"Out of costume, sure. We look pretty unremarkable. Just another couple out on a date." Agni smirked. "Although I am looking forward to some mugger trying to rob us."

The interviewer laughed. "That would be quite funny."

"You have no idea. I really want to see the look on the mugger's face."

"And are there, well, plans for more than dating?"

"Naughty, naughty." Agni crooked a finger at Logan. "We'll keep that to ourselves, thank you."

"Sorry, just doing my job. Anyway, we saw you in action against the aliens in London, and again at Singapore. Will you be taking part in any more defences?"

“Most certainly.”

“And you’re number four on the leaderboards. Do you think you have a chance of being called up to Skyguard?”

“That’s for the Sled to decide, Logan. Perhaps you can interview it next.”

Logan smiled genially. “We’ll be happy to, if Bastion can arrange it. Anyway, if you are called up, will you go?”

She grinned. “Not gonna confirm, but I’ll certainly think about it.”

"Thank you so much, Agni, Belessar. And to our viewers, thank you for tuning in to this exclusive interview. Remember: you heard it here first, live on Tonight with Logan Michaels. Good night, everyone!"