Bad Beat - Chapter 61 - Interlude 3 (Patreon)

The Los Angeles Megacity, being what it was, where it was, and who its inhabitants were, was always just a bit on the verge of total chaos.

Usually, this was expressed when one of the constant premieres happened, and the streets of Hollywood were flooded with stars, star wannabes, and an ocean of fans who made sure to express their love and obsession with as much noise as possible.

During those events, there was always something happening.

But that was mundane.

“Normal” people doing things to “normal” people.

Then there were the racially motivated situations. The Megacity was a melting pot of hundreds of different cultures, religions, traditions, and who knew what else. There was always someone hating someone else just because of their skin color or because they wore a hat with the wrong color.

Despite that, to the surprise of many, especially those who got their information from the mainstream media and talk shows, racially motivated crime was way down, on account of people having so much other stuff to deal with than committing crimes against each other over skin color or religion.

Not that it didn’t happen, but most people were more preoccupied with the supers.

And not because they loved them.

Generally, if you went around anywhere in the Los Angeles Megacity, most people would tell you that they hated the fact that so many supers called their city home. They hated the fact that they were at the mercy of capricious demigods who considered collateral damage part of life and didn’t care about the little people.

Naturally, the media didn’t portray this side of the populace.

Every time somebody tuned in to any channel that dealt with or followed supers, all they would see were starry-eyed fans, deeply obsessed nerds, or even respected individuals giving thanks for the supers’ actions.

Thus, when the yellow cloud of an unknown substance went up in the San Bernardino district, what most people saw on their television, or on the websites and forums they regularly visited, were videos and pictures of the Los Angeles Police Department, Disaster Response teams, and even the CDC detachment permanently stationed in the city due to the high number of super situations, arriving and dealing with the suspicious attack, while the talking heads were constantly reassuring everyone that nothing was going on and the city was sure to handle it without any issues.

Then the supers arrived, and the interest and attention tripled within seconds.

There was at least one dedicated livestream focused on every present super, some with even more, depending on their fame or looks. By the time five minutes had elapsed, the number of people both in Los Angeles and all around the world watching the situation exceeded one hundred thousand.

Granted, most of those viewers were there for catastrophe tourism, or to ogle the behinds of supers dressed in very tight spandex and similar clothing. Still, people were watching. And talking.

Like in one of the local forums, where people were discussing what effects it would have on the district. The area where the yellow cloud emerged was derelict and abandoned, so a lot of people were hoping that once it was dealt with, the city or some other company would take the time to demolish those old warehouses and build something useful there.

In turn, this brought out the crazies who thought that one of those development companies was behind the yellow cloud, hoping to devalue the area, buy it for cheap, then build some new high-rise and cash in.

[FORUM THREAD]

[Yellow Cloud in the old Warehouse District]

[LookeyLuke / ORIGINAL POSTER] (Simp) (Unethical Watcher)[2010. May XX] |

Hey people!

I was out… watching things, when I spotted some really weird yellow gas rising from the old warehouses. You know the ones where the junkies hsoot up and some of those x-rated porn companies do the shooting.

Here are some pics: [LINK][LINK][LINK]

And a vid: [LINK]

EDIT 1: Police closed the area, they put out a press release here: [LINK]

EDIT 2: CDC spotted: [LINK]

EDIT 3: Supers arrived: [LINK]

[QuestionMark] (Questionable)[2010. May XX] | Post #002

First!

What were you looking at @LookeyLuke? Do we have to have another talk?

[LookeyLuke / ORIGINAL POSTER] (Simp) (Unethical Watcher)[2010. May XX] | Post #003

I was watching birds. And you can’t prove it otherwise.

[PixelPirate] (Senior Senoritos)[2010. May XX] | Post #004

Do we know what the yellow gas is? Because that to me looks like mustard gas. Is it mustard gas? Should we think about panicking?

[TheReasonableOne] (Seen some shit) (Too old to care)[2010. May XX] | Post #005

@PixelPirate: If it were mustard gas, the police response would be different. Remember the thing with MustardGirl? They thought she was firing mustard gas. Look up how that ended, and look at what they are doing. Plus the cloud itself is different. It pretty much stays in one place.

[WhatCouldGoWrong] (Professional Paranoid)[2010. May XX] | Post #006

I am pretty sure this is some power interactiong going wrong. There have been rumors about an alchemy based super somewhere in the district. My bet is on one of the gangs trying to recruit them and this is the result.

When the cloud is removed the police will find at least one body there. I guarantee it!

[LookeyLuke / ORIGINAL POSTER] (Simp) (Unethical Watcher)[2010. May XX] | Post #007

I saw nobody exciting the cloud. If there were gang members tehre they either left or still there.

[SomeGuyOnline] (New Member)[2010. May XX] | Post #008

Lol, they are not leaving! Police put up an energy shield to contain the cloud. [LINK]

[WanderingMind] (Over the rainbow)[2010. May XX] | Post #009

Not to be that guy, but seeing as we are not going to die in chemical warfare, let us aim our eyes to the delicious cakes that were served to us on spandex platter.

[LINK][LINK][LINK][LINK][LINK][LINK]

[TheReasonableOne] (Seen some shit) (Too old to care)[2010. May XX] | Post #010

@WanderingMind: Once again, thank you for your opinion. Please seek help.

Anyway, I read some of the more technical reports and based on the samples they had taken its some variety of the smoke that is in smoke grenades. There are some anomalies, but CDC doesn’t think it’s anything biologically dangerous.

[DefinetlyHuman] (Sparkling) (Programmer)[2010. May XX] | Post #011

Guys, I’m pretty sure this was a fight between two supers! Maybe a lover’s fight! Yellow is the color of friendship in flower language! This was one way one of them wanted to express that they just wanted to stay friends. So cute!

[WanderingMind] (Over the rainbow) (Allrounder)[2010. May XX] | Post #012

@DefinetlyHuman: you may be onto somehting. Who knows maybe we will se the birth of another super couple! Have you seen Bombshell? She was bringing the cake to that party. Hard!

[PixelPirate] (Senior Senoritos)[2010. May XX] | Post #013

Not again… @DefinetlyHuman please stop the shipping. You were wrong about the Wolf pack, and you are wrong about this too.

Instead let’s talk about smoke grenades… if the super can make those, what else can they make? Are we going to have another Burst Burnitator happening? I know most of the craters were turned into small ponds or lakes, but I have friends who died in those explosions. I don’t want to see another repeat.

[DefinetlyHuman] (Sparkling) (Programmer)[2010. May XX] | Post #014

I was so right! They are definitely a polycule! You can see it in the pictures! Why else would they name themselves after Wolves?

[PAGE 001 of 123]

***

She looked in the mirror and smirked.

“Still sexy as fuck,” she declared with a smirk on her face. She was dressed in a fluffy bathrobe decorated with some stupid company’s logo she was sponsored by. Probably. There was a chance she had taken the robe from somewhere and forgotten about it.

The room around her was a changing room with a makeup table and a full clothing rack filled with all manner of clothing, all in her size, ready to be worn. On the small sofa in the corner was her costume, with only the mask staying on her face. Her hair was professionally done, the hairdresser having just scurried out of the changing room, leaving her alone with the last of the preparations.

She struck a few poses in front of the full-body mirror covering one of the walls before picking up her phone, unlocking it, and starting to scroll through her apps until she landed on one of the messaging apps, and one specific person.

She had assigned a picture to them, cropped out from one of the videos someone had taken of them, his stupid face on display, eyes wide and mouth open in a scream as the two of them flew up into the sky.

She giggled. Every time she saw that picture, she couldn’t help it.

Originally, she had simply picked him up because the smart people in IT had randomly selected him for questioning. Naturally, at first, she didn’t think much of him. He was scrawny and scared of his own shadow.

Then…

He proved to be much more interesting.

It took a while to recognize what she had felt when they interacted, but by the next time they met, she was very sure that the guy had managed to absorb her power. That punch just proved she was right.

As always.

Then she saw his eyes, and instead of playing with him, she decided to use him.

She hated those eyes. They were the same eyes she saw in the mirror. The eyes that saw everything as it was, looking through the glamour woven for the public to distract them with shiny and sparkly things.

Then she realized how he looked at her.

There was fear… oh, so much fear. Delicious and invigorating. It always made her feel good when someone realized how far below her they were. But beyond that brief flash of fear and pain, there was a knowing look that told her that he read her like an open book.

He knew exactly what she was.

He saw beyond the carefully crafted public image that hundreds of people and dozens of PR firms labored over. Within a second, he saw her for what she was.

And that did things to her she couldn’t name. She wanted to rip out those eyes and stomp them while listening to his screams. She wanted to talk to him to see if she could finally converse with someone who knew who she was.

She wanted to play with him. The way he adorably tried to hold himself up and pretend he wasn’t scared just made her want to toy with him more and more. Thus, the declaration of ownership. She had always wanted a dog, but for some reason, none of them liked her.

Well, bully for them, because she finally got one.

She didn’t even care about that Enchanter guy. For all she cared, he could go and die in a ditch, but the delicious panic on the guy’s face when she told him the deadline was enough to keep her happy for hours afterward.

Leaning forward and pulling the puffy robe apart, she revealed the lingerie set barely covering her assets, struck a seductive pose while smirking directly at the mirror, and took a few pictures. Relaxing slightly, she spent a moment selecting the perfect one and sent it to him.

BestShellRack: Doggy! Don’t forget! End of the week! XO XO

She stood in one place, holding the phone in both hands, watching as the three dots appeared under her message. Then her eyes widened, and the smile on her face grew when she read the message.

Gabriel: OK

“Hehe… stoic as always, little doggy,” she murmured as she waited for a moment to see if he sent anything more, but when nothing came, she closed the app and locked the phone. “But don’t worry. I’m going to tame you…”

Giggling to herself, she put away the phone, made sure her makeup was in order, not a hair was out of place, and that her ‘dress’ was properly on before turning around.

As she wrenched the door open, the smile automatically slid off her face, replaced by a cold, indifferent look, ignoring the way all the people hanging around followed her form. She didn’t care. They didn’t matter. Their eyes lacked the same depth as those of her new pet.

For a moment, she wished he were here and watching all those people salivating at the chance to see her bare skin, but then she changed her mind. Her new pet was for her own enjoyment, not for others.

A little walk later, she entered the studio, where they were just waiting for her. Evelyn was standing to the side, her empty eyes, void of anything she could see or understand, following her; a brief, almost impossible-to-see frown appeared on her mouth.

She faltered for a moment in her steps but recovered before anyone could spot it. With a dramatic movement, she disrobed, revealing her amazingly sculpted body, and struck a pose.

“Let’s get this session started!”

For a long moment, everyone just stared at her and her body as she gleefully drank in their attention before growing quickly bored of it. It was fun the first five times, but nowadays, it was just a routine. Disrobe, show off her body, rake in the money, and watch as people pretended they weren’t staring at her body.

She had no idea what kind of clothing she was wearing, who it belonged to, or who she was doing marketing for, but that didn’t matter.

As the slightly nervous photographer began to direct her, her mind was only on those defiant eyes, imagining what she would do to them.

***

Ana stared at the screen of the small TV she managed to buy with her meager savings and tried to hold back her tears. It took her so long to gather all those materials. So long to figure out the chemical formulas that her power was whispering to her.

Just as long as it took her to realize she had powers after that horrible night at the diner.

But in the end, she managed to put together a complete set of things. She didn’t know what for, but the simple action of creating her new chemicals was enough to relax her, so she kept doing it.

And as she stared at the TV screen, occasionally looking down at her phone, still showing the unknown number that had delivered the ominous message, she couldn’t help but feel the usual despair encroaching into her soul.

Here she was, on the cusp of something great, just for the universe, as always, to take a shit on her and ruin everything.

Ignoring how the neighbors’ yelling tried to overpower the sound coming from the TV through the thin and cheap walls, Ana let out a small sob and buried her face in her hand.

She sobbed while also trying to keep silent.

The last time she cried, the thin walls made sure her neighbors heard every last second. She didn’t want a repeat. The pitying looks were one thing, but the offers from a variety of disgusting people to “cheer” her up were too much.

There was only so much a person could take. She was poor, worked in a shitty diner with an aggressive boss who had no idea how business worked and kept piling demands on her, while her own family was off somewhere deep into drugs. She barely managed to keep paying for the community college she was attending in hopes of getting a degree that would allow her to escape this situation.

And now, she was told in no uncertain terms that the decisions she had made had resulted in one of the biggest companies in the city, and probably the country, actively hunting her.

For a moment, she glanced toward her bag between choked sobs, considering the chemicals there, but in the end, she was too tired to do anything.

Ana fell asleep on her lumpy mattress, crying her eyes out, while the chorus of the news report and the neighbors yelling washed over her, her mind in turmoil as everything that had happened kept replaying itself.

And every time she remembered what happened, her errors got magnified, her traitorous mind pointing out how many times she had fucked up and how easily she could have escaped without creating an environmental disaster that the entire nation was watching.

If she had just paid attention to the chemicals coating the old warehouses…

If she had just not reacted in pure panic when spotting the other costumed individual…

So many ifs…

And so many regrets…

Her last half-conscious, half-delirious thoughts revolved around the mysterious costumed man who held her life in his hands. As she finally slipped into the depths of the land of Morpheus, she could see the beginning of a chemical formula that would take care of her problems…

Forever…

A/N: A bit of bummer chapter... but well... Actions have consequences.